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M 1
2
INTER/NATIONALISM
AUTUMN/WINTER 2018 3
4
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Gallery owners, artists and those involved in the arts need all our support. What is worn by many shoulders is easier to wear. And what could be a better goal than making art easier? Easier to reach people through the arts. To inspire you. To change society for the better. Art is creativity. And to be creative means to be human. Art makes us more human. Art needs us, and we need art.
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16 –18 NOVEMBER 2018
LAUNCH 16 NOVEMBER 18:00 17–18 NOVEMBER 12:00–21:00
KÜHLHAUSBERLIN LUCKENWALDER STRASSE 3 10963 BERLIN
CHK Design
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EXPO PARTICIPANTS
The idea that engaging with an international context is somehow more politically progressive I think is fundamentally erroneous.
CONTENT
To my mind the motors of art production and innovation have always literally been located in a place. —Ben Coode-Adams and Freddie Robins
Publishing Director Karl England Associate editor Ben Street Proof and Sub-editor Tash Kahn Book review editor Rosanna Van Mierlo Publisher sluice sluice.info Art Direction & Design Christian Küsters Barbara Nassisi Laima Petrauskaite chkdesign.com Lettering All fonts by Colophon colophon-foundry.org Distribution Central Books centralbooks.com Contact editor@sluice.info sluice.info
Cover image by Ben Coode-Adams Inside front and inside back cover image by Pau Ros
Unsolicited material cannot be returned, though all correspondence will be passed on to the editor. The views expressed in sluice are not necessarily those of the publishers ©2018 ISSN 2398-8398 EAN 9772398839005 Unauthorised copying, hiring or lending of this magazine is prohibited but ask us nicely and we’ll see what we can do. Subscriptions: Subscribe online at sluice.info Sluice magazine is at all times a companion publication to a Sluice initiated project, whether our biennial, expo or simply a programme of associated events, as such the magazine, is positioned as a crucial document of record of art as Praxis. Sluice magazine is concerned with applied theory, we examine how the arts impact our societal and economic environment and vice versa. At Sluice we aim to publish writing that we perceive to have an unmistakable disruptive quality, which might open up traditional art discourse to unexpected ideas, approaches and methods. In this way, our contributor’s backgrounds are not important: we encourage contributions from any and all disciplines. At its best, Sluice magazine should be a site of artistic creation and theoretical reflection that creates confrontations, sparks, and unexpected alliances. Sluice is open to arguments from different (contextually merited) ideological quarters. Sluice magazine is a forum for debate not an echo chamber of assumed rectitude.
10
Acknowledgements Guy Nicholson Sarah England Sanjay Bremakumar Stefan Riebel Andrés R. Londoño Ted Haddon Jack Basrawy
26
INTER/NATIONALISM
10 Editorial 12 Therapy Indigo Richards of QWERTY talks to Tine Louise Kortermand
14 Resistant Materials The Blackwater Polytechnic
46 Shifting Centres Simon Lee Dicker
50 Periclitatus Birds Andrés R. Londoño
Ben Coode-Adams and Freddie Robins
60 Contra–Natura
22 The Supranationalist Art Movement
64 Biocity and the Fall
Manick Govinda
Jamie Jackson
26 What Is A Project Space?
68 Am I Local?
Stefan Riebel
Alistair Gentry
38 Transnationalism
74 Artist-Run Spaces Index
James Bridle
John Angel Rodriguez
75 Subscriptions
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12
E D I T O R I A L
One of the questions Sluice asks on our website in the ‘about’ section is how can we advance emergent discourse via increased interaction on a local, national and international level? This and the other questions are intended to reflect our concerns and maybe those of some of the galleries and projects we work with. When Sluice stages a large scale project – such as our international expo – we are careful to be non-thematic as we strongly feel in a bottom-up cultural sector the participating artists and curators neither need nor welcome top-down thematic interference. In an expo celebrating the breadth of self-organising projects the resultant divergency presented is the point. However, the Sluice magazine is thematic and this edition is broadly themed around the local vs the international. The artist/curator-led scene is often tied to the local (usually influenced by funding parameters or lack of funding altogether). But there is often an awareness that if the local isn’t positioned within a broader inter/national context that it risks becoming parochial. This edition is partly informed by our domestic Brexit debates but mostly the arguments found in these pages are broader than Brexit and focus on the importance of solidarity, inclusion and collaboration. Globalisation is often blamed for environmental damage and the erosion of hard-won workers rights and protections. Is there a way to square internationalism with the destructive nature of globalisation? As nationalism rears its head around the world what response does art have? The Sluice magazine, on this occasion, is published in association with the Sluice EXCHANGE BERLIN, an expo Sluice has developed in partner-ship with Das Institut für Alles Mögliche – both non-profit arts organisations with a focus on supporting the emerging artist & curator-led art scene. Whilst the UK is in the throes of disentanglement from the EU – this November is an opportune time for a UK arts initiative with a German counterpart to deliver an internationally focused event. The expo ambitiously represents the grass-roots by examining how global political shifts impact on artists at a local level. The UK creative sector almost exclusively voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum. However, barring a complete volte-face, the UK will shortly find itself outside the EU. For UK citizens this will require a reappraisal of what it means to be European. There is a debate whether Brexit is a symptom of isolationist tenancies, or a step towards regaining true internationalism. The truth is likely to be different for different sections of society. As far as the creative sectors in both the UK and mainland Europe are concerned it’s important to demonstrate that we are not turning our backs on each other. Sluice connects and promotes artist/curator-run and non-profit galleries and projects – globally. These projects are often isolated by lack of financial resources. The expo leverages one asset that we do possess – the network and the will to act collaboratively to stage events beyond the capability of each of us individually.
13
I NTE RV I E W
INDIGO RICHARDS QWERTY
Tine Louise Kortermand
T H E R A P Y QWERTY member, Indigo, meet
with Tine, on a late afternoon in her small backyard in Odense, Denmark. The temperature is 32°C (90°F) and no wind. Almost as hot, as the autumn 2016, when we exhibited together in Bushwick/New York as part of Sluice’s Exchange Rates expo. We are sitting with a cold drink in the shade, and I ask Tine, what her thoughts are, about exhibiting with us from QWERTY … if anything was different, from her normal procedure.
14
Tine I usually bring everything I am going to use with me, and when you said, we can just find stuff when we arrive ... I thought … ookaaay… and then I was very surprised, when we came to Brooklyn, that there were materials/stuff lying everywhere, we could take and use … it was like entering this giant builders merchant store. That was fantastic … free materials, wood … just lying there in the streets. This was very different from Denmark, where the streets are totally clean, and everything is in order. Indigo Well that is very symptomatic of the way QWERTY works together, that we integrate an element of coincidence, in the building process. We try not to control everything, or each other, but give space for eventuality…the space, the material, the people…it is difficult for me personally…but it is also really fun, and often, unexpected things happen.
Tine Yes, I experienced that strongly the day we performed for 11 hours. It was of course exhausting, but also a really good experience. I usually get to control everything, and know exactly what is going to happen. But here I didn’t know what people would bring, or which stories they would tell me. It was important for me that when the audience entered my RESOUND clinic – and told me about the problems that worried them, that I was able to give them something in return ... a nice little lullaby that could comfort them. So it was both a game, but also really serious business … it was a fragile situation, because it all depended on mutual trust. Could I, in a public room where people walked in and out, create this room of trust? … there was a lot of issues, where I had no control. Indigo But wasn’t that also because none of us could control the situation, so you could lean on us? (Anders Qvist Nielsen, Indigo Richards, Morten Tillitz) Tine Yes, I really like the concept that you are inspired by each other, and everybody is working on each their project simultaneously, and your work evolves during the days you perform. So not everything is set from the beginning. When you don’t have an art piece that is totally finished, then you keep yourself open to inputs. And I felt this flow in the room really strong … A special feeling that, all four of us were tuned into the same frequency.” Indigo Yes, the energy when 3-4 people perform together is fantastic. I also think, that is why we could continue for so many hours … it was so difficult to stop… it felt very important, because we didn’t want to disappoint the audience. How could we tell the next person … well now we are closed?!
Indigo How about the theme; Therapy, was that interesting? Tine All themes are interesting ... haha… therapy… everybody can relate to that ... I had the feeling, that all of us got a really close connection with our public, they could feel that concentration ... we made a collective bubble us 4 artists, from the QWERTY group. Indigo Sometimes I regret that, I don’t have something permanent … an art-piece I can show, when the exhibition is over. We only have the photo documentation and video, so I like the idea that your Lullaby songs live on the internet now. Tine Yes but I think the problem is, that the documentation will never be the same, as experiencing the performance live! We can hear Anders form QWERTY, and Tines husband Rico in the background preparing food for all of us. Tine I think all 4 projects in the QWERTY Therapy exhibition, worked out fantastic together. Anders enters the garden Indigo Hi Anders, don’t you also think, the Therapy sessions were tight?” Anders Yes, that was because Tine was with us.
QWERTY invited visual artist, composer and singer Tine Louise Kortermand to exhibit with them at the 2016 edition of Sluice’s Exchange Rates expo in Bushwick, New York
Tine Yes it was like an improvisation flow that was hard to end. And the energy that the audience brought to the room, influenced us … and in the end, this energy influenced the artwork. Because it was a relational work ... it was a fragile situation for both us, and the audience. QWERTY
tifinger.dk
Tine Louise Kortermand
kortermand.dk
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Ben Coode-Adams and Freddie Robins
R E S I S T A N T
16
M A T E R I A L S
The Blackwater Polytechnic is a visual art organisation operated by Freddie Robins and Ben Coode-Adams as an umbrella for their events and curatorial projects. They are based on their family’s blackcurrant farm in rural Essex in a barn which they have converted into a live/work space. 17
We have a small seasonal gallery. We are fortunate to have been able to work with many generous and professional artists who have enabled us to host some magnificent exhibitions. For us the idea of local is central to what we do. Living where we live ‘local’ is made up of people, culture and landscape - although Freddie and I have different ideas about all those things. For me, the concept of a broader international art context that is somehow better than a local one because it is international I don’t accept. The further idea that engaging with an international context is somehow more politically progressive I think is fundamentally erroneous. To my mind the motors of art production and innovation (if there is such a thing) have always literally been located in a place. From cave paintings, through Renaissance church painting, to Kurt Schwitters working in Cologne - these are all art that has been produced from and because of a specific and urgent geographic circumstance. I think that aesthetic geographic specificity often remains but it is masked by the ubiquity of globalised markets and institutions. I yearn for particularity, specificity and peculiarity in art production. Aside from what I see in front of me, it is my mistranslation of art works and ideas across time, place, and material that is the catalyst for my own work to change and what I find endlessly fascinating. When I look at, for example Japanese prints, how can I make any headway beyond purely aesthetic appreciation? A profound visual misunderstanding is the foundation of a cracking awkwardness that can be rocket fuel for creativity. By embracing our unique flawed local selves, we shed superficial aspirations to belong and be the same as everyone else. Consequently, it is possible to be local anywhere. Living and working in this rural area there is a tremendous weight of ‘local’ both as parochial, i.e. small minded (not an underserved description) but also as banding together with a shared sense of identity. Essex is generally derided within the UK as being culture-less and uncouth. But I think there is more truth and beauty in uncouth yokel-ism than in an identikit dandified pretended internationalism. You just have to work a bit harder to go beyond your own preconceptions and comfortable echo-chamber identity politics to grasp it. We, here in Essex, must do this all the time. That is the work of not living and working in the centre. Freddie Robins writes: “Many people have an idealised view of living in the countryside. They desire cheaper and larger housing, a garden, to have more children or a dog, (usually both), better schools, less crime and greater personal safety. A move to the countryside is for many a dream, a dream which, although I do live in the countryside, I do not share. Their dream is my reality. The countryside is undoubtedly beautiful. At times it is downright breath-taking, but what do you do with all that beauty? It does not move, or inspire me, creatively. Where is the ‘grit’ or the ‘rub’ that I found in my urban life that gave me the impetus to be an artist? Unlike Alice Walker 1 I do not want horses
18
in my landscape. I want people, and lots of them, not just walkers who have lost their way. It is people and our very human predicament that I respond to. However, I want my work to have a relationship to my experiences. I want it to relate to the locality in which I live and in which it was made. My practice is essentially autoethnographic. The American scholar and researcher, Carolyn Ellis, defines this as “research, writing, story and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social and political” 2 . In my practice ‘making’ predominantly replaces ‘writing’. We live just across the county line from ‘Constable Country’ with Flatford Mill and Willy Lott’s House, the site of The Hay Wain (1821). Constable’s most famous image and voted the second most popular painting in any British gallery 3. I am all for the popular but I cannot agree with Constable when he wrote, “The sound of water escaping from mill dams... willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork. I love such things... As long as I do paint I shall never cease to paint such places......They have always been my delight.” Unlike Constable, I do not paint. I knit. A medium idealised and derided in equal measure. An activity associated with the domestic and the parochial, a far cry from what comes to mind when we talk of internationalism. In ‘Someone Else’s Dream’ I make use of the picture knits that were so popular when I was a teenager. In the 1980’s these were regarded as highly fashionable but soon fell out of fashion and have never regained serious appreciation. I have been working with picture knits that depict pastoral scenes; farmhouses with animals, villages complete with churches, pretty streams, rolling hills, blue skies and fluffy white clouds. I have not made these jumpers but found them on eBay. Many hours of skilled labour no longer wanted or valued. Using a technique known as swiss darning, an embroidery stitch that mimics the knitted stitch, I have worked on top of the knitted countryside scenes, changing the idyllic picturesque scenes to the scenes of misery that can, and do, happen in the countryside. Some of the scenes that I have embroidered are from personal experience, some from news stories, all have happened in the countryside. I have embroidered a car crash, a figure hanged from a tree, a house fire, a body drowned in a river, fly-tipping and a crime investigation scene complete with white tent, police DO NOT CROSS tape, police van, car and helicopter. Upon initial viewing these works have a cosy familiarity but the soft, knitted jumpers are completely at odds with the imagery. The material and form resist their stereotype. They exist as a disturbance to those dreams and a friendly reminder of reality.
opposite: Installation shot from the exhibition Happy Days at the Blackwater Polytechnic with posters by Justin Knopp and Simon Emery Scream if you want to go faster Lacquer on 1960's VW Karmann Ghia Bonnet Photo: Douglas Atfield, 2013
Willie Lott’s Cottage, 2018 Photo: Ben Coode-Adams 2018
Unlike Constable, I do not paint. I knit. A medium idealised and derided in equal measure. An activity associated with the domestic and the parochial, a far cry from what comes to mind when we talk of internationalism.
19
Freddie Robins Someone Else’s Dream – burnt Reworked knitted jumper, mixed fibres 2014–16 Photo credit: Douglas Atfield 2016
Upon initial viewing these works have a cosy familiarity but the soft,
20
Freddie Robins Someone Else’s Dream - crashed Reworked knitted jumper, mixed fibres 2014–16 Photo credit: Douglas Atfield 2016
knitted jumpers are completely at odds with the imagery.
21
Ben Coode-Adams Self-Portrait with Bluebird on a Red Ground Watercolour on paper Photo credit: Douglas Atfield 2018
Ben Coode-Adams Cloud Giants Watercolour on paper
22
I wrote a proposal for an exhibition at M100, an artist-run gallery in Odense, Denmark (http://m100. dk) back in April 2017. It is a wonderful optimistic piece of writing about utopian communities trying to make things better for themselves and those around them. And then in June 2017 it was revealed that my neighbours, even some of my friends did not share what I hope are values of tolerance and openness, values I took to be self-evidently for the good. For me this caused a profound and drawn out soul searching. I didn’t want to make art, or put on events for these people. I spent the winter disconsolately picking up litter from the verges of the roads surrounding our farm. At least I could make the little piece of land near me better. Each day a new crop of MacDonald’s packaging, high strength cider and high caffeine drinks cans would appear. I had to work out a way to live with this. I found a receipt in a MacDonald’s paper sack. The local council can use this to track the person who dropped the litter and prosecute them. I was faced with a dilemma. Should I hand in the receipt, an action with unknown and potentially catastrophic consequences for the individual involved? I just put the whole package in the recycling bin. Who am I, from my super quinoa privileged, white middle kale aged home owning male over-educated well-travelled CO2 producing position, to stand in judgement on this person? I stopped picking litter.
Ethically I feel unable to say that a world with MacDonald’s litter, jet skis, high powered motorbikes, giant Porsches, and fountains of prosecco, is a worse world. To live here in Essex, I have to let go of my indignation over these things and submit to other people’s right to determine their own way of living. I will not validate actions I despise by pushing back against them. My only resistance is making art which I make for myself. Landscape and the countryside has become a central theme of my curatorial and artistic interests because the land is politicised more than ever. It is the chemical and biological battleground between the EU and the US. The folksy countryside is the locus of much of English identity, close-knit village life, country pubs, winding lanes, thatched cottages, baking cakes, jam making and cricket. Our identity may appear to be embedded in the rural, but it is the urban, by which I mean London, that dominates. UK farmers, who operate a precarious custodianship of the landscape, are tied, often reluctantly, to sustainable environmental policy under the terms of essential EU subsidy. Farmers rely on the free movement of people, attracting farm-skilled workers, no longer available in the UK, from the Balkans and Baltic. The view of landscape from the city is very different from living in it. Being here in Essex there is not all that much romance. Here in this landscape it is mainly by turns muddy or dusty. It is dark. The birds are staggeringly loud. There is never quiet. A strimmer or chainsaw is always struggling to carve a clear space. This land is resistant. It bites and stings, catches at your clothes, and obstructs you at every turn. I am interested in artists who work with stuff, actual physical things produced with skill and craft, rather than just bought and piled up. I very much like manipulated physical material because it is uncompromisingly visual. I am naturally distrustful of text and words, of theory. I like action. The protests about our leaving the EU, against President Trump, and in support of the #metoo campaign have neatly combined text and action into potent and joyful slogans. I feel we can channel some of that imagery of resistance to mitigate against the political neutering effected by the political right in the UK. We can use words as material and image to at least raise a fist in solidarity and a middle finger to power. Swearing does make you feel better. Notes 1 . Walker, Alice. (1985). Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful, New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich 2 . Ellis, Carolyn. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press 3. Poll organised by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in association with The National Gallery, London. 2005
Ben Coode-Adams & Justin Knopp Proof Letterpress on paper, 2018 Photo credit Ben Coode-Adams
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THE SUPRANATIONALIST
Manick Govinda
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ART MOVEMENT
25
On 23 June 2016, British history was re-ignited. Its citizens, through a ballot box referendum voted to leave the European Union by a majority of 51.9%. I was one of those 17,410,742 who voted to leave. I’ve written and been interviewed in the media often about why I voted the way I did, so I’m not going to repeat myself. Instead, I want to examine the tacit relationship that the majority of artists have with the European Union, which is in dialectical struggle with the majority of the people, the demos and the idea of nationhood. So, what is it that the large majority of artists and cultural institutions love about the EU, besides grants from Creative Europe and the European Regional Development Fund? We don’t love England more for its significant public funding of the arts, which is much bigger than the majority of other European countries (bar France and Germany). The answer lies beyond a narrow self-interest in funding for the arts. The majority of artists in the UK and EU states are what I would call supra-nationalists. “Supranationalism refers to a large amount of power given to an authority which in theory is placed higher than the state” (the euroculturer, 4 November 2013). The distrust of nationhood after the Second World War led to the creation of a Leviathan supranational state, from an economic community to a political union. Many British artists speak of identifying with a “European Identity” in opposition to a “national identity”. Of course, European thought and culture has seeped across borders for centuries, beyond the continent. For example, British and European Enlightenment and the French Revolution’s inspired anti-colonial struggles and nation-building across the world in Africa, Asia, the Caribbeans in the 20th century and further back to the American Revolution of the 1770s. However, European Identity as used by contemporary artists aren’t really thinking about anti-colonial struggles against an empire, or progress, reason or rational thought. If they did, the rational conclusion would be to leave the growing supranational that undermines political decision-making and democratic processes in the respective 28 countries that currently make up the European Union. 26
Manick Govinda a freelance arts consultant. He writes here in a personal capacity.
Orwell described this as “Negative Nationalism”, more specifically as “Anglophobia”, “Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases” (George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism, 1945). The mantle of European Identity adopted by the majority of contemporary artists as a strategy of opposition to Leave voters is manufactured and constructed by the EU project, while the EU furthers its political integration, undermining nationhood, they are part of a generation of what neofunctionalist Ernst Bernard Haas called a “new nationalism”, similar to Orwell’s phrase “negative nationalism”. European Identity in this sense is a top-down construct of the EU. After all, if it was a purely bottom up identification with the idea of a European identity, artists and others who ‘feel European’ would, according to political scientist Michael Bruter, see themselves as belonging to a community defined by “a shared civilisation and heritage, cultural values, religion, ethnic or eventually ethnicity” as well as the perception that “fellow Europeans are closer to them then non-Europeans” (2003). It is this top-down/bottom-up construct of the European identity that has given acceptance and validation to what we Eurosceptics call “Fortress Europe”. Believers of the EU project celebrate the freedom of movement, labour, goods and services within the member-states but are resoundingly silent when it comes to the unfairness, as non-EU trade and citizens are denied these freedoms. Many artists and cultural institutions are colluding with political and financial elites to undermine popular democracy, projecting a culture of fear that leaving the EU will lead to war, an isolated Britain and economic disaster. This defence of the status quo does not bode well for art or for artists. At best, it will worsen the public’s relationship to artist as elitist and disdainful or patronising of everyday people. At worst, art-making will be reduced to a European potpourri, a mixture of collective Euro-banality. Artists should remain fiercely independent, neither European nor British, but to be his or her own person. 27
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Stefan Riebel
What is a project space?
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How many are there in London? Moscow? Mumbai? Pretoria? Why open another one? How much do you get out of it? How do you pay the rent? How do you pay the artists? What about yourself? What is a non-profit art practice?
How is this done?
By whom?
Is running a project
space separate from
an individual art practice?
Richkids?
Why not exhibiting
in existing galleries?
Is a project space one of
these must-haves?
How many are there in Berlin?
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31
32
33
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Like cleaning, taking the trash out, getting new drinks, standing on the bar, watching the gallery, listening to the guests, having a good joke ready, and a wild smile? What does your partner say? What are the kids thinking? A creative process? Self-determination? Room for development?
What about income?
How is your
work-work-balance?
What is happening
with your art?
Is it happening?
How much work does
it take?
For how much art?
Who is doing all that?
And who is doing the rest?
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Is painting the wall a painting? How much can you actually see of the space? Was this here before? Did you renovate? Is there a basement? What is down there? And for how long are you now doing this? How did your practice change?
Are you a team?
How many roles do you play?
How easy can you move
over and into another one?
Are you the curator?
Who is the lawyer?
Who the plumber?
Technician?
Visitor?
Who are you now
reading this?
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37
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there if you would’nt? What kind? Are you in charge? Why do you think people are going to Berlin? Because of the weather? The landscape? Where is the beer? Do you have business cards? What kind of city do you start at?
Do you have an impact
on your neighbors?
And on your city?
What happened?
How many people want
to show their work?
How many people want
to participate?
How much culture do
you put out?
How much would be
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Or is it both?
Or rather caging?
Is this space delivering?
to stay?
How long can you afford
Why are you here?
For you?
is happening?
How much transformation
leaving behind?
What kind are you
So what’s next?
James Bridle
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We live in a time of stark and often violent paradoxes: the increasing liberalisation of social values in some parts of the world compared to increasing fundamentalism in others; the wealth of scientific discovery and technological advances in contrast to climate denialism, “post-factual” and conspiracydriven politics; freedom of movement for goods and finance while individual movement is ever more constricted and subject to law; a drive towards agency, legibility and transparency of process while automation, computerisation and digitisation render more of the world opaque and remote. At every level, mass movement of peoples and the rise of planetary-scale computation is changing the way we think and understand questions of geography, politics, and national identity. These ever-increasing contradictions are seen most acutely at the border. Not merely the border between physical zones and between nation states, with
previous page and left: Jeremy Hutchison Movables 2017 Transnationalisms Furtherfield Gallery Finsbury Park 2018 Photo by Pau Ros
their differing legal jurisdictions and requirements for entry and residency, but also the border between the physical and digital, when we apparently – but perhaps misleadingly and certainly temporarily – cross over into a different zone of possibility and expression. This contradiction is also clear in the balkanisation of newly independent and fragmenting states, and in the rising current of nationalism across Europe, which seems to run in parallel to, and might even be accelerated by, digital connectivity. Some of the most outwardly regressive powers themselves employ what Kremlin theorist Vladislav Surkov has called “non-linear strategy”: a strategy of obfuscation and deliberate contradiction clearly indebted to the convolutions and confusions of the digital terrain – and of art. As ever more varied expressions of individual identity are encouraged, revealed, made possible and validated by online engagement, so at the same time a desperate 43
rearguard action is being fought to codify and restrain those identities – online and off. These new emergent identities are, inevitably and by necessity, transient and contingent, slippery and subject to change and redefinition. The recent exhibition Transnationalisms at Furtherfield Gallery acknowledges and even celebrates the contradictions of the present moment, while insisting on the transformative possibilities of digital tools and networks on historical forms of nationalism, citizenship, and human rights. While the nation state is not about to disappear, it is already pierced and entangled with other, radically different forms. Alternative models and protocols of citizenship, identity, and nationhood are being prototyped and distributed online and through new technologies. Transnationalisms examines the ways in which these new forms are brought into the physical world and used
to disrupt and enfold existing systems. It does not assume the passing of old regimes, but proclaims the inevitability of new ones and strives to make them legible, comprehensible, and accessible. The starting point for Jeremy Hutchison’s work was a found photograph, taken by police at a border point somewhere in the Balkans. It showed the inside of a Mercedes, the headrests torn open to reveal a person hiding inside each seat. This photograph testifies to a reality where human bodies attempt to disguise themselves as inanimate objects, simply to acquire the same freedom of movement as consumer goods. Movables translates this absurdity into a series of photo collages, combining elements of high-end fashion and car adverts, enacting an anthropomorphic fusion between the male form and the consumer product. The results are disquieting yet familiar, since they appropriate a visual language that saturates our everyday 44
urban surroundings, highlighting the connections between transnational freedoms and limitations, and international trade. Jus sanguinis, meaning ‘the right of the blood’, is one of the main ways in which people acquire citizenship: from the blood of their parents. Daniela Ortiz is an artist of Peruvian descent living in Spain, where only babies with Spanish blood are recognized as subjects with the right to nationality at the moment of the birth. As a result, her child would not have access to Spanish nationality. In this performance, undertaken when Ortiz was four months pregnant, she receives a blood transfusion from a Spanish citizen, directly challenging the racist and nationalist regime of citizenship which would classify her Spanish-born child as an immigrant.
Daniela Ortiz and Jus Sanguinis 2016 Transnationalisms Furtherfield Gallery Finsbury Park 2018 Photo by Pau Ros
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The exhibition also included work by:Thiru Seelan, Thiru is a Tamil refugee who arrived in the UK in 2010, following six months of detention in Sri Lanka during which he was tortured for his political affiliations in his work his movement is recorded by a heat sensitive camera more conventionally used as surveillance technology and deployed to monitor borders and crossing points. Raphael Fabre submitted a request for (and was granted) a French ID card using a computer generated photo. The artist’s self-portrait suggests the way in which citizens can construct their own identities, even in an age of powerful and often dehumanising technologies. Jonas Staal’s New Unions is an artistic campaign supporting progressive, emancipatory and autonomist
movements all over Europe, and proposing the creation of a “transdemocratic union” which is not limited by the boundaries of nation states. Critical Computer Engineering Group presented Vending Private Network. Vending Private Network takes the form of a vending machine, equipped with mechanical buttons, a coin-slot and USB ports, it offers 4 VPN routes. Audiences are invited to insert a USB stick into the slot and a coin into the machine, then to select a VPN destination by pressing a mechanical button, a unique transdemocracy VPN configuration file is then written onto their USB stick. With each VPN config. generated, another is covertly shipped to contacts in Turkey, China, Vietnam and Iran.
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This text is an edited version of an essay by James Bridle for the exhibition Transnationalisms at Furtherfield Gallery, Finsbury Park, London, 15 September—21 October 2018. Transnationalisms was curated by James Bridle and featured the artists Thiru Seelan, Raphael Fabre, Jeremy Hutchison, Daniela Ortiz, Jonas Staal and the Critical Computer Engineering Group. Furtherfield is an internationally-renowned digital arts organisation hosting exhibitions, workshops and debate for over 20 years. They collaborate locally and globally with artists, academics, organisations and the public to explore digital culture and the changing world we live in.
furtherfield.org
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Simon Lee Dicker
SHIFTING CENTRES
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Collapse of the social centre “We enter through the side door. Bradford directs us away from the neoclassical portico, with its allusions to Monticello, The White House, and the ancient world, in favour of what is, in effect, the servants’ entrance” 1 Outside the U.S. pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale we are discussing if the dusty grey rubble, strewn with litter, that has been dumped against the wall and spews out to create an entrance like an abandoned car park is part of the work. A friendly and well rehearsed steward steps out of entrance of the exhibition to tell us more. It is part of the work. Mark Bradford, represented by Hauser and Wirth, one of the largest commercial galleries in the world with spaces in Zurich, London, New York, Los Angeles and Somerset, chooses to use the side door.
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The first work that confronts us when entering the building is a bulbous protrusion from the ceiling that inhibits movement around the space and pushes visitors to the edges of the room. The exhibition guide describes this work as suggesting ‘the current collapse of the social centre’, which makes sense now, in words, but when in the room the overpowering materiality takes over and I think about the ‘stuff’ of the world rather than what is not there. The best is hidden beyond the central exhibition. ‘Art+Practice’ is a project set up by the artist to ‘encourage education and culture’ for young people and communities in South Los Angeles and ‘Process Collettivo’ taking place in Venice is a non profit social cooperative that provides work placement opportunities for men and women within Venice’s prison system. Back outside the exhibition the steward is sitting on a shallow step at the front of the apocalyptic vision of the U.S. looking into the distance with her head in her hands.
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No relic of saint nor monument of art nor scene of natural beauty “Nothing much ever happened at West Coker. No great man was born or lived or died there. No battle was fought near it nor did any constitutional crisis have its rise in its neighborhood. It was never the centre of great industry nor the source of widespreading trade. No relic of saint nor monument of art nor scene of natural beauty ever attracted visitors to it.” 2 Sitting on the edge of the horizon I woke from an interrupted sleep, warm dreams like chapters in a book fading into the morning. The Scandinavian style wooden hut that had been my home since arriving was placed just over a wall by a single petrol pump. Looking like an up turned boat it was lit at night by one of only seven street lights that could be found on the island. Its twin sat in the car park behind the building, waiting to find its place. The previous day I returned from the rocky cliffs of the north hill to find two men with farmer’s hands, driving wooden stakes in to the ground and lashing the structure down with highly tensioned ratchet straps.The storm pushed across the island from the Southwest with little resistance. I lay sunken into the mattress, heavy limbed, deferring action for as long as possible until the cold of the rain soaked pillow made me rise. Standing next to the steel armature of its future self the shed size airport is locked when I arrive.
I stand looking at a section of dry stone wall that had been stripped of moss and painted in red and white stripes. The familiar sight of the island post van approaches along the road that dissects the island from top to bottom. I’m met with a smile from the postie as she steps out of the van and I follow her inside. She takes a high-vis jacket from the back of the chair and pulls it over her uniform. The wording on the back reads ‘Airport Staff’. “Have you just changed jobs?” I ask “Aye”, she said through broad smile, whilst switching on a two-way radio transceiver. Through the window I see the gravel runway, a thin strip of grass and beyond the shimmering water another island in the blueness of distance. A scrap of paper on the desk catches my eye. The marks revealing a ritual act of recording and crossing out without giving a clue to their meaning. Luminous orange against a blue grey sky a windsock rises to 45 degrees as if suddenly woken, then sinks back down rest. Once at the centre of a busy trade route the oldest stone house still standing in northern Europe lies just beyond the runway. Papay is now a remote island to the north of the Orkney archipelago sitting on the edge of the horizon. 3 Imaginary ecliptic lines The near perfect sphere of the sun pulls us round with invisible twine
leaving imaginary ecliptic lines. The horizon disappears into a precipitous smudge where the sea meets the sky. A large trawler glides slowly away from Newlyn Harbour out past St Clements’s Isle. I look at the map. Mounts Bay 27, 26, 25, 24 and out of sight. Into the bright fog of the English Channel. Moving round the coast to a memory of Whitesand Bay I walk alone into the cloud. The Atlantic laps gently on to the shore leaving a meandering phosphorescent foam line at the extent of its reach. Within seconds the glow at the edge of the sea disappears and I take a few paces forward in the fog until the next line arrives, marking my path along the beach. The sky, as wet as the sea, glows just slightly brighter than before. St Michaels Mount is just about visible, pointed to by a long strip of quartz set with in black granite at Carn-du that was laid down under a different sun. Folded, twisted and exposed. One week earlier I picked up a rock from beside the canal. A water rounded stone from the wall of the Arsenale. Painted in watercolour in the middle of the front page of a new sketchbook a brick dust watermark soaked through to the other side, tensioning and rippling the paper. Notes 1. U.S. Pavilion Biennale Arte 2017, Venice 2. The Annals of West Coker, Sir Matthew Nathan, Cambridge Press, 1957 3. Notes from PASSING PLACE (an unfinished Orkadian story)
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Andrés R. Londoño
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The series “From the red book of birds from Colombia (Endangered, vulnerable and threatened species)”, published by The Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute, consists of color pencil drawings made on 106 gallery press releases from the participating galleries at the Berlin art fair, abc Art Berlin Contemporary 2014. After a booth by booth collecting of the statements, the series aim at having a didactic sense in which the observer wonders about seasonal movements at art fairs and the fragile situation of birds and migration in Colombia.
kunstomerservice.com
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John Angel Rodriguez
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Contra-Natura explores practices that are originated from the combination of artistic and scientific experimentation in order to understand how nature is structured and organises us. Boundaries as delineators of non-organic life, loss and radiation and how these play into questions of social development and growth. This project of creation establishes a series of contrasting relations between the works that the artists display and the curatorial postulate. In this situation, they indicate processes of substitution and simulation of the organic life. Contra-Natura can be understood as the persistent dichotomic relationship in a world where avatars are now a reality, not only discursive but applied to social and political life. This condition can be identified within the wide range of natures modified, altered and replaced by synthetic mutations. ContraNatura reflects on the contradictions and bifurcations of political systems and economic models that deny the notions of sustainability, renewable energy and the equilibrium between different ecosystems. It is true that the human being in most cases performs actions that unbalance the natural, originating a so-called anthropic system, which is constituted by a series of elements that go hand in hand with the technological, urban, industrial and cultural development of society.
Artworks Photographs
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Evelyn Tovar Luis Eduardo Sampedro
Grey Cube Projects is an independent art project that is emerging as a springboard for thinking experimentation, across participation and development of trans-disciplinary projects.
Grey Cube Projects is an itinerant site of cultural production and interdisciplinary research, therefore we work in partnership with different associates and strategic allies (art galleries, art institutions and academic institutions among others). Grey Cube Projects is an independent art project that is emerging as a springboard for thinking experimentation, across participation and development of transdisciplinary projects. This project is forging a creative network around manifestations of collective execution. Consequently, ongoing participation, knowledge sharing and cross-disciplinary collaborations between artistic, scientific research and practice will be setting the grounds on which new areas of speculation and critical institutional analysis and alternative forms of documentation will arise. For instance, the huge amount of data that technological devices are generating from the oceans, weather and geo-formations is something that needs creative ways of thinking how we are going to visualise and materialise that amount of data.
greycubeprojects.com
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BioCity and the Fall
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Jaime Jackson
BioCity and the Fall is a Salt Road program, part of an artist/curator exchange between five European cities and regions, linked by the European Green Capital program, the Biophilia Educational program in Iceland and the international the Biophilic city network.
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I’ve worked as an artist in the world of climate change for 15 years and have been part of many discussions... In moments of despair, it feels like art can’t begin to touch what needs to be done. At other times, it feels like the creative world can open out the conversation and facts in a way that transcends science and also doesn’t alienate or intimidate the casual or lay audience. —Michèle Noach, Environmental activist & Treeline writer
Sally Payen Greenham Symbole (a)
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The project organised by Salt Road shares academic research and makes content for a touring exhibition and community engagement program based on biomimcry, biophilia and global environmental change. We are linking artists, sustainability organisations, universities and communities in the UK midlands, with Wales, Iceland, Norway and the Basque Country. The project will realise a new body of work related to biomimicry and the wider sphere of climate change. Investigating social, eco-activism and the broader realms of nature and art. It is a grass roots relational and visual art practice project that will engage artists and community groups in each country. Strengthening bodies of work around the aesthetics of Biophilia and Biomimicry, BioCity and the Fall will enable us to integrate artist practice within models of social sustainability and green infrastructure development. To work with artists, researchers and communities regionally, nationally and internationally (through the global Biophilic City Network) to put artists into the frame. Nature is the one thing that is common to us all, it’s what we share. Natural capital is everything nature provides us. It is how we stay alive. Biophilia is about developing our understanding of ‘use value’ rather than ‘exchange value’.
biophiliaeducational.org biophiliccities.org saltroad.org.uk
Biophilic City programme Birmingham is the UK’s only Biophlic City, part of a global network that integrates biophilia into policy & service delivery. The Biophilic Cities Project is an umbrella term that refers to research and policy work on biophilic cities, both domestically and internationally, by Professor Tim Beatley and his team at the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture. Its principal aim is to advance the theory and practice of planning for biophilic cities, through a combination of collaborative research, dialogue and exchange, and teaching. Biophilia means love of living systems, based on the belief that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature, which holds keys to answer our human created problems. Biomimicry in design is a contemporary multi-disciplinary approach to mimic nature, its models, systems, and processes. We aim as artists to bring in social responsibility and poetics to this paradigm. Biophilic cities are cities of abundant nature in close proximity to large numbers of urbanites. Biophilic cities value residents innate connection and access to nature through abundant opportunities to be outside and to enjoy the multisensory aspects of nature by protecting and promoting nature within the city. We will lead the engagement artist team to deliver workshops, dialogues & artist tours, including co-creating a collection of biophilic artworks with participants in the five countries who will gain knowledge of nature and botanical collections (landscapes, plants and archives) and insight into artistic practice. We are bringing participants together from different places and cultures, crossing boundaries to open wider experiences.
We know the catastrophe is possible, probable given recent events, yet we do not believe it will really happen.... I can understand, intellectually that ‘life’ in this country might not be the same in 30 years time as it is today: that if climate change goes ahead unchecked it could in face be profoundly and catastrophically different. But somehow I have been unable to turn this knowledge into a recognition that my own life will alter. Like everyone who has been insulated from death, I have projected the future as repeated instances of the present. —George Monbiot, ‘In Heat’
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A M I LO CA L?
Alistair Gentry
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What is a local artist? I come from East Anglia and when I lived there I didn’t particularly benefit from being from a local artist. Many years ago I had some work in a group show at the old Firstsite in Colchester, long before they had their titanic art shed that sailed around in search of icebergs to crash into, spewing public money from the resulting gashes. The curator put my work on the landing of a staircase at the back of the building, and when I complained about that she put me in the children’s play area instead, where it was shortly thereafter switched off because kids kept messing it up. Two or three of the dozens of galleries or venues around there were ever interested in me. I had to start an artist group just to provide for ourselves the support that regional organisations were being subsidised to provide for local artists and flapped their mouths all the time about giving. Nobody I knew ever got it, except for us because we supported each other.
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It doesn’t help that unlike Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which are mostly beyond their control anyway, the regions of England tend to be regarded by the London-based funders and pontificators as vaguely located appendages to London. Their view of where everything is and what help is needed is like one of those medieval maps with Europe in the centre and the edges just guesses or blank spaces. Cornwall sometimes gets some recognition because they have their own language, but anyone not from the east of England who went to Bury St. Edmunds or Beccles wouldn’t understand a word anybody was saying there either; why isn’t East Anglian a nationality? When I lived in Scotland, though, I wasn’t really local either because I’m English. The best opportunity for me at the time involved moving to China, where my lack of locality was so blatant that people would constantly make racist comments about me because they thought I couldn’t understand what they were saying, and one yokel walked right into a lamp post because I think he was staring at his first ever in-theflesh white person. In fairness there’s a ghastly hinterland of properly local artists wherever you go in the UK or the world, so it’s no wonder the phrase “I’m a local artist” makes anybody running a gallery or arts organisation want to plunge headfirst through a plate glass window to escape. In my Suffolk hometown some local artists
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have banded together to unironically call themselves FAG (Felixstowe Art Group). I genuinely don’t think they realise what their name is spelling out. There’s definitely nothing queer about their sub-Cath Kidston paintings of flowers and biscuit tin views of the town in 1900, except in the non-sexual sense of it being really queer, as in peculiar, to not acknowledge anything that’s happened in art or culture for at least the past hundred years. It’s not a case of rural, suburban, or urban, backwater or centre. The gallery on Brighton seafront that only sells relentlessly positive pictures of cows is probably still there, and if not plenty of others will be flogging oil paintings of flying spitfires and harbours full of yachts, or maybe some abstraction-for-dummies wall clutter from those local artists who’ve caught up with the mid-twentieth century. Hardly any artist in London is local in the sense that they come from there, but some of London’s tiny galleries, whether in the West End or Stratford (sorry, darling, I know you tell people it’s Hackney Wick) can be just as parochial in their own blinkered, metropolitan way. The same goes for the commercial art fairs and many of the artists getting big institutional shows, who can often be triangulated to both the first and second halves of particular London postcodes, none of which I can afford to live in. As even this skeletal outline of where I’ve lived and worked indicates– and believe me, it’s way more complex and messy than this– I’ve survived as an artist by going where the work was. That isn’t really a viable option for
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Am I local purely by omission if I can’t afford to go anywhere, or I’m not allowed to, or don’t dare?
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anybody with a family, or a permanent job that keeps their practice as an artist going. These are just two of the many ways in which the precarious livings of artists relentlessly grind us down and out of our vocation: can’t afford to live in or near one of the hubs, too poor in general, too much of a family life, too tied up with living in a particular place and your responsibilities there... you’re gone. Being forced to stay put can be very bad for almost any occupation if you happen to get stuck in certain locations, because there’s massive inequality of opportunity from place to place, even within the UK, let alone a whole world in which there’s seemingly an ever-growing appetite for re-fortifying and weaponising the borders that many of us thought would be fading away by now. And it’s happening precisely because opportunity and prosperity are so unfairly distributed that millions of people want to or have to leave their home countries. Meanwhile the number of nations I’d fear to visit because of my politics, sexuality and my opinions being out in public keeps getting longer, not shorter. That list now includes the USA. And since in any case we’re being made to feel bad for flying anywhere nowadays because it’s tantamount to choking a baby whale’s blowhole with a packet of plastic drinking straws, what are we meant to do even if we can afford – in any sense of the word – to go where the work is? Am I local purely by omission if I can’t afford to go anywhere, or I’m not allowed to, or don’t dare?
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The phrase “I’m a local artist” makes anybody running a gallery or arts organisation want to plunge headfirst through a plate glass window to escape