Open Engagement

Post Conference Catalogue Compiled by Jennifer Delos Reyes

Contents Dana Aleshire Corrina Beesley-Hamond, Lost: Clutter!

Rob Bos, Lost and Found Thoughts Jen Brant and Robin Lambert, A Sense of Place Naomi Buckley and Anna Oxygen, Water. Bridge. Cloud. Earth.

Joanne Bristol, The Institute for Human & Feline Collaboration Terry Chatkupt, Informal Interviews Video Erinn M. Cox, The Family Jewels Cecilia de Jong Jennifer Delos Reyes, Introduction to Open Engagement + An Open Letter From Darren OʼDonnell Linda Duval, Support Groups for Everyday Life Harrell Fletcher, Right On Canada: Some Thoughts in Regard to the Open Engagement Experience + John Holt/Escape From Childhood Reading Group Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine, BINGO: Field of Thoughts Brette Gabel, Long Distance and Long Term Relationships: ʻOne a Dayʼ Erin Gee, Real Friends and Real Interaction – The Realspace Project Free Pizza, Hannah Miami Jickling, Helen Reed, Jen Weih Lori Gordon, Snippets Joyce Grimm, Peggy Lee Interviews Joyce Grimm John Hampton, Purveyor of “The Community Star System” Kate Hartman, TDIFY at Open Engagement Hideous Beast, Josh Ippel and Charlie Roderick Hope Hilton, As the Freak Takes You Kathe Izzo and Sal Randolph, HOW TO MAKE AN EMPTY ROOM Adele Jackson, You Have Just Found a Treasure Kanarinka, All the Things We Didnʼt Say Stuart Keeler, Neighbors & Neighbours Lois Klassen, Comforter Art-Action: a Long-Range Investigation into Bedding and Displacement Lee Knuttila, Les Vampires: Cinema and Contemporary Viewership.

Jessica James Lansdon, Supine Dome Lauren Macdonald, One, Two Step Barbara Meneley, Yes Ashley Neese, This Is For You Berit Nørgaard, My Favorite Darren OʼDonnell, Please Allow Us the Honour of Relaxing You. OPENSOURCE, OPENSOURCE Art at Open Engagement Jude Oritz, Open Engagement Conference: Comments/thoughts/reflection Loretta Paoli, Understand Naomi Potter, CESTA Alice Planas and Tim McNerny, Yada Yada Cyrus W. Smith, The Christmas Song James Servin, The Day I Met Crystal Gayle: (Nearly) Thirty Years of Good Memories Eric Steen, On Open Engagement Maiko Tanaka, Cheer Basics Elena Tejada-Herrera, "I'll Call You": Performative Connections With Real Life Consequences.

Sara Thacher, Proxy Handshakes Markuz Wernli Saito, Have a Bowl of Whisked Tea and Leave a Trace Gordon Winiemko, “Do Relational Aesthetics With Me” Gary Wiseman and Chris Hudson, How the United States Became A Coffee Driven Culture of Expansion and Desire 2008 All materials copyright of the artist

Open Engagement: An Introduction

By Jennifer Delos Reyes Open Engagement: Art After Aesthetic Distance was a hybrid project that used a conference on socially engaged art practices as its foundation and incorporated elements including workshops, exhibitions, residencies, pedagogy, curatorial practice and collaboration. Open Engagement was hosted by the University of Regina, the Dunlop Art Gallery, The Mackenzie Art Gallery and various local Regina residents through the days of October 11-13, 2007. The three days of the event each focused on a theme of exploration; October 11, You are all that I see: Art and everyday experience; October 12, It takes two: Collaborations, collectives, other team relationships; October 13. I始ll call you: Long term relationships, communities, and connectivity. Over 40 national and international contributors were present during Open Engagement. The contributors were selected from a response to a call for submissions and a selection of three invitational individuals who could best represent one of the three themes. This was an around-theclock experience. It was a conference, an exhibition/performance venue, a mini-residency, and a workshop.

Each out-of-town presenter was billeted with a member of the local community. Participants shared meals with one another and members of the local community, commuted together and were encouraged to thank their hosts by leaving a created trace.

The structure of each day began with Three Cheers! a collaboration between Maiko Tanaka and Open Engagement. On day one each participant was introduced to the group and cheered for. For each day of the event a cheer was written that addressed the theme of exploration for the day. Following the morning cheer was a group activity that was centered on the day始s theme. After this was group lunch. Proceeding lunch the conference broke out into 5-8 parallel sessions, this was followed by a panel addressing the day始s topic and discussion. Each evening highlighted a different social event. On day one was a potluck and artist talk by Harrell Fletcher, on day two a small group dinner in the home of a local resident, and on day three a game of bingo followed by a dance party. Throughout Open Engagement connections were made to local individuals, local arts institutions and focused on projects that were made possible through the work of groups of individuals as well as projects that expressed support and solidarity, such as the airport pick ups.

The goal of Open Engagement was to bring together like-minded individuals (artists and audience) around socially engaged art and forge lasting connections, disseminate information, share knowledge, and create networks and connections, and foster the creation of work.

What does it mean to be open? What does it mean to be engaged? What if one were to be both open and engaged simultaneously? Openness is honesty, generosity, a sense of possibility, freedom, free of boundaries and restrictions. To be engaged is a promise. It is a commitment, an obligation. It is also a sense of involvement and participation. To have an “open engagement� implies a commitment that is potentially limited or short lived. But what if the two terms once united could keep their respective definitions making openly engaged a term that would embody an obligation to honesty, sharing and possibility?

It is important to note that this catalogue is just one aspect of a large project that had many contributors and elements. Open Engagement should be looked at as a paratext. This is just one part of a larger text that is made up a variety of sources from the call for submissions, contributor blogs, the conference program, promotional materials, interviews, the conference archive, essays and reviews written on Open Engagement, collateral events, and more. All of these external elements each play a significant and specific role in informing this project.

Thank you, Jen Delos Reyes

Right On Canada: Some Thoughts in Regard to the Open Engagement Experience

By Harrell Fletcher Just before given the keynote conference address I went around and asked some of the Open Exchange participants for topics that came up for them during their three days in Regina. I added a few of my own then tried to respond with thoughts off the top of my head to some of those topics. The following is an attempt to reconstruct to some extent what I said. I started off expressing how impressed I was with Jen Delos Reyesʼ amazing organization and execution of the conference. Then I continued with something like this…

Sincerity When I was in grad school, I TAʼed a class for a professor I liked a lot. He and I came up with various projects and field trips for the students. It was a fun class and, for the most part, it went really well, but there was one student—I think her name was Monica—who hated the class. She was always complaining that the assignments we gave and the work we discussed had nothing to do with “art.” She was herself an unremarkable, fairly traditional photographer.

About three-quarters of the way through the semester, Monica presented a new piece during a critique, and the other students were baffled by what she had done. She set out about fifty Dixie Cups on the ground in rows forming a loose triangle next to the corner of a building on campus. The cups were filled with red punch. It seemed oddly interesting to me in a quiet, slightly ridiculous way but the other students all criticized the piece. Monica didnʼt say anything, so I came up with some thoughts about why I liked it. We then moved on to another studentʼs piece.

A couple of weeks later, during a discussion session, Monica announced that her Dixie Cup piece was a fake and that she had made it to expose the absurdity of the class—of me in particular—and that I had taken the bait. She seemed very satisfied with herself.

The professor was furious. He said he couldnʼt believe that she had done that to the class—and to me—and walked out of the room. I was left alone with the students, as they all looked at me sort of sorrowfully. I thought the situation through and said to Monica, “Well, in my opinion it is still the best piece you have ever done.” I really meant it too. She was totally deflated. The other students smiled, as if some riddle had just been answered. I went on to suggest that even though Monica had intentionally tried to deceive me, she still had sincere intent and had successfully produced a piece that, at least for me, was complex—both formally and conceptually. Though I myself am not interested in deceiving people or in deception, in life or in my work, in the case of Monicaʼs piece, somehow, her motivation to deceive me compelled her to make a work that challenged her own boundaries and contained a kind of energy her earlier work lacked.

A few minutes later, the professor walked back into the room and was visibly surprised to see the class happily discussing the ins and outs of intent and honesty in regard to art. Monica looked disgruntled but, at the same time, seemed to realize that she had unintentionally made a very personal and interesting piece of art. So sincerity is one of those hard to pin down things like art and god. I think it is better to just conclude that it can only be determined subjectively and that there is no intrinsic sincerity or insincerity Social Practice as Opposed to Studio Practice Let me define “art” as anything that anyone calls “art”. That can be a maker or viewer. By calling something “art” it doesnʼt make it art forever just during the time that it is being appreciated as art. Similarly, I donʼt think, as Beuys said, that everyone is an artist, I just think that everyone has the potential to be an artist. If anyone wants to be an artist they can be one as far as Iʼm concerned and that is regardless of their credentials. You definitely donʼt need an academic degree to be an artist. Most of my favorite artists donʼt have academic degrees.

I think an artist is someone who gets to do whatever they want (within whatever limits might be containing them—financial, legal, ethical, psychological.) Other professions or practices donʼt have this level of freedom, dentists need to do dental work, dog trainers train dogs, etc. Those could be fun or not so fun professions to have, but regardless that is what those people need to do until they decide that they want to do something else. Artists can do a project about dentistry or dogs or anything else they are interested in at any time and then can do something else right after or even during, and still remain an artist.

Social Practice in regards to art can be looked at as anything that isnʼt studio practice. By studio practice I mean the dominate way of making art—spending time in a studio working out personal interests into the form of paintings, or objects, or photos, or videos, or some other pretty easily commodifiable form. The often unspoken intention for this studio work is that it will go off to a desirable commercial gallery, be reproduced in art magazines, and eventually wind up in museum collections, while making the artist into a celebrity of sorts, and paying all of the bills. That is the carrot on the stick that keeps this dominate approach alive and kicking, even though very few of these studio practice artists ever get their work shown at all, and most just give up and find some other way to pay off their student loans.

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Iʼve just started up a Social Practice MFA program at Portland State University. There are currently eight students enrolled.

They donʼt get studios like the other MFA students and instead have a shared office and a shared classroom space. Currently we are looking for a more public version of these spaces possibly in the form of an off-grid alternative energy portable building that might locate itself in different parts of the city in vacant lots and at grade schools, etc. The students take some classes with the other studio MFA students but they also spend time on projects in various collaborative groups working with the city of Portland, various non-profits, and applying for public art projects in other places, as well as doing their own individual social practice work. Iʼm trying to show that artists can actually have sustained and supported careers within the public in ways that arenʼt possible when the commercial gallery is the primary system that artists are trying to respond to. So far it is going very well.

Social Responsibility I donʼt think that artists have any greater social responsibility than anyone else, even so called Social Practice artists.

Everyone regardless of their career has the ability to try to help out in life, or to be selfish, or apathetic, or any combination of those things. Iʼve found that my life is more interesting the more I try to engage with the world and learn from other people and experiences. The more experiences I have the greater empathy I have and the more likely Iʼm going to care about things that are not directly related to my own life (partly because through the connections I make more people do become directly related to my life.)

Joelʼs Comment on Amyʼs work I was at an MFA group critique recently. A student in my Social Practice MFA program was showing her work and talking specifically about a project she is doing where she uses a food cart to exchange coffee and pop corn for peopleʼs spontaneous drawings. A student who is in the studio MFA program said that he thought it was nice project but that she should take it further by just going and working at a soup kitchen.

For some reason there is an idea that if you are doing work as an artists that involves the public at all that you owe it to society to act like a saint—that your work is suspect unless you become totally selfless. I told all of the students that the comment was interesting, but should be applied to all artists, so that the next time a painter was having a group crit we should say to them, “this work is fine, but why donʼt you try working in a soup kitchen for awhile.”

Selfishness I think a kind of selfishness is a very good motivation for doing work. One of my selfish motivations is that I want to learn and experience things that I wouldnʼt in my normal life and I use my work to achieve that.

Self Critique Of course it is a good idea to be a little critical about the work you are doing and the way you are being in life, but I think also it is a good idea to not fetishize criticism. That to me is when people feel like you always have to be analyzing and being critical of everything all the time so that the real value is place on the critical dialog instead of the work itself. Art school can get you in that frame of mind sometimes, but personally I donʼt value that approach.

Fears Sometimes people turn real experiences into theoretical ones. For instance Josh said that he had some issues with Darrenʼs massage session project at the First Nations University because he felt like if he didnʼt participate that he would be treated like a pariah. I asked him if that pressure made him participate in the project. He said no. So I asked him if he was then treated like a pariah, and he said no again. But somehow the theoretical concern left him feeling like the project had been irresponsible.

When I pointed out that his real experience with the project countered his theoretical concerns. He seemed to accept that.

Iʼm Not a Social Person Iʼve never been a very social person. Iʼm shy and introverted. When I was a kid I found it very difficult to interact with other people. Then at some point as a young adult I decided that I should try to be more a part of the human race. I decided that I would use my work as a way to get myself to interact with people. It wasnʼt my nature, and it was challenging for me, and still is, but it turns out that people can be very interesting and friendly if you get to know them. Maybe for naturally social people itʼs a good idea to do studio work so they can force themselves to experience being alone, itʼs good to have a balance I think.

Come Together I was doing a weeklong workshop at an art academy in Odensen, Denmark. All of the students there said that the town was not interesting so I asked them to each go out and find someone from the town who was willing to talk for ten minutes about something they knew and cared about. We then had all of those people come over to the academy and do their presentations one after another. It lasted about four hours. The students had to host and introduce the people they selected. The topics included health care, bus routes, skateboarding, scuba diving, furniture polishing, invisible social networks, playing music on the streets, etc. We were all blown away by the variety of knowledge that existed in one little town. Almost all of the presentations were truly interesting too. Since then Iʼve used the same strategy for similar events in London; NYC; Austin, TX, etc. and have done a separate series as part of the American War traveling exhibition which focused specifically on local people talking about war related experiences.

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Right On Canada: Some Thoughts in Regard to the Open Engagement Experience (pages 3-4)

By Harrell Fletcher Collective Learning I teach at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, and I have a class currently where we started by having all of the students tell their life stories to everyone else. It took three classes to get through them all, but they revealed many interesting things that wouldnʼt come out in more cursory introductions. Based on connections the students had we organized a series of field trips to places like a Veterans hospital, an alternative kindergarten, a campus fraternity, a high school geometry class, a Native American community center, a radio station, etc. From those experiences the students broke off into groups to develop projects like a radio show about grandmothers, and a lecture series in the frat house living room. Some of the field trips didnʼt develop into projects, but were still valued as experiences. I like to think of this method as a way to lessen my role as the authority in the classroom and instead we share that role and all become collective learners.

Photography My dad has always liked pointing things out. He literally points to things with his finger--a tree, a building, a cloud, and then he will tell you what he knows about the thing he is pointing to. When I was about ten years old my parents bought me a used 35mm camera and I started walking about taking pictures with it. I realized that it was a way for me to point like my dad at things that I found interesting and then capture them to talk about later on. When I had the camera in my hands the world became a more visually interesting place, or I guess the world didnʼt change but I became more sensitive to what was interesting to me. I continued to take pictures and look at the world in terms of possible photographs for the next couple of decades. Then I decided I didnʼt need a camera anymore, I could just walk around and see interesting things with out the camera device, some of these things that I see turn into projects in one way or another. Largely I think of what I do as an artist as just pointing to things that I think are interesting so that other people will notice and appreciate them too.

Experiential Education When I was in college as an undergraduate at Humboldt State University, which is in a very small hippy town in northern California, I took a class from a teacher named Bill Duvall, he had co-written an important environmental book called Deep Ecology. The class I took was called Experiential Education. On the first day of class Bill Duval asked each of the students to pick an outdoor physical activity to do during class periods for the rest of the semester. Some people chose surfing, some bike riding, and some kayaking. I decided to walk on railroad tracks. I got really good at it, by the end I could walk on the tracks for miles at a time without falling off, I could also run on them, jump from one track to the other, spin around on them, and walk on them with my eyes closed. The class didnʼt meet for the rest of the semester until the last weekend when we all meet up on a camping trip to talk about our personal experiences of doing our activities. Somehow I think about that class often, where as most of the other classes I took in college and all of the tests and papers and discussions that were a part of them are long forgotten.

Farm Apprenticeship Two years after I got my MFA I went back to school to attend an organic farming apprenticeship at UC Santa Cruz. There were forty students all living in tents together on a twenty-acre farm on the university campus. Most of the time we just did a lot of hard labor, but it was so much better than any other educational program Iʼd ever participated in before. Most of what I do as an art professor now is based not my art education but instead on my farming education.

Open Source Approaches In the art world there is so much emphasis on originality. Artists buy right into that, and even though they are always influenced by other people they try pretending that they are not. The galleries promote this idea and encourage “signature styles”, rarification and the star/celebrity system. I can see why the galleries would like that way of doing business because it allows them to inflate prices and make demand, but for artists there is no real benefit. It just suppresses the true way that people develop their work through adapting and hybridizing and creates an environment where artists feel like they have to protect and make secret their process rather than sharing it freely and feeling good about doing that, which I think would be much more healthy both for individuals and as a system.

Making Work That is Accessible to Both Art and Non-Art Publics When I was younger it seemed like it was good to make art that was very obscure, so obscure that even I had no idea what it was about. If anyone asked I would just say that I wanted the viewer to have their own interpretation of what the work was about, but really I now think that was just a way of avoiding having to know what I was doing or why I was doing it. Then it occurred to me that it might be nice if not only I understood what I was doing, but that even non-art trained publics would be able to find the work accessible. Even though Iʼd never been taught to think in that way it turned out to not be very hard to do.

One of my favorite approaches is to do work with a local person or group of people that I met around the place where I am going to have a show. That way they feel invested in the show and invite their friends and family to see it. Working with these people made me avoid doing anything obscure and instead I found ways of making engaging projects in pretty straightforward

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ways. The work is interesting and complex not because I made it that way, but because the people I work with are interesting and complex (as it turns out everyone is). Iʼm just able to put it all into an art context, which makes people consider it in ways they might not otherwise.

Walter I spent two years out of school between undergrad and graduate school. For one of the years I drove around the country and into Mexico living out of my truck, periodically crashing on the couches of friends and family. The other year I lived in Los Gatos, California and worked in the after school program of a small grade school in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I did art projects with all of the kids there from kindergarten to 5th grade. Right away I noticed that the kindergarteners were all interdisciplinary artists, and that they were very fearless and motivated. There was a slow regression that took place as the kids got older and by the time they were in 5th grade there was usually only one kid in each class that was considered an artist and that was because he or she could draw realistically. The rest of the kids were convinced that they had no artistic abilities at all.

One of the kindergarteners I worked with was named Walter, he was the smallest kid in the whole school but he was clearly very intelligent too. Somehow he had learned to multiply and divide in his head and the other older kids loved to throw complicated equations his way and wait for him to come up with the answers, which were almost always correct. Iʼd had bad experiences with math as a kid, and like the 5th graders who had lost their artistic sense of themselves, Iʼd lost any concept of myself being able to do anything but rudimentary math. But Walter wanted more math to tackle and it wasnʼt being supplied in his kindergarten class. So I asked my mathematician friend Cleveland to explain some simple algebra to me. Cleveland is a thoughtful and patient instructor and soon I actually found myself learning and being excited about math with the primary motivation of being able to pass on what I was learning to Walter.

When it came to the art projects for the kids I tried to keep it simple, I liked making books and so I showed them how to make books too. Walter was particularly excited about this activity. Every day he made a new set of drawings on a specific subject of interest like insects, dinosaurs, ghosts, monsters, animals found in Africa, etc. He would then dictate to me the text and title and staple the whole thing together. Then he would run around the little campus and make everyone look at his book. Kids would stop basketball games and gather around to flip through Walterʼs latest creation. After he had shown everyone, Walter would discard the book, with total disinterest (I rescued several from the trash) and started speculating on the next dayʼs book topic.

It occurred to me that Walter was fulfilling a whole little system of parts which are crucial to the artistic process. He determined a subject that was of interest to him, insects, etc. expressed his feelings on the subject through his drawings and text, and then went out to share his product with an audience. There were no other factors or motivations, no hope of using the work to get into grad school, or to get a gallery show, and no desire to make something that looked like something else he saw in Art Forum. It occurred to me that I had started similarly to Walter when I first was interested in making art, but that somewhere along the way that system had been corrupted. I decided to stop making art for a while and then as projects slowly started occurring to me again I tried to compare them with Walterʼs process to determine if I should pursue them or not. It has been difficult to maintain Walterʼs level of simplicity and integrity, but it is always a goal of mine.

Three Classes I taught a class last year in which I had all of the students find a department on campus that wasnʼt the art department and then to find someone there, a professor, student, or staff person, and ask them if they could become an artist in residence for that department. So the students became artists in residence in the black studies dept, the science dept, the music dept, the psychology dept, the systems analysis dept etc. they spent the term learning about and doing projects with that dept.

Periodically the whole class would go on a tour of all of the depts. and see what everyone was up to.

I had another class that as a group went on the same walk together one day each week. We walked for an hour and then turned around and went back to the university. The students were asked to make projects with people and about things they encountered on the walk and to install the work along our walk route. By the end of the term we all had a very different understanding of the neighborhoods we had been walking through then when we started.

There was another class that was made up entirely of field trips. The students were in charge of organizing and conducting the field trip. They were graded on the quality of the field trips they organized. Iʼm not much for grades, but Iʼd rather grade the organization and execution of a class field trip than an object of art. We went to visit dams, and mansions, and parks, and corn mazes, and suburban developments, and recycling centers. It was very educational and fun and interesting too.

Right on Canada Canada seems to have some things going on that the US doesnʼt—free or low cost Health Care, Education, and other social services, also a set of official guidelines about how much artists are supposed to be paid for shows and lectures, etc. Itʼs nice to know that those things are going on. I hope they stay that way.

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Adele Jackson You havej ustf oundat r easur e‌ Finding, selecting and casting objects in resin somehow transforms those objects; they are seen in a new light; they are made special.

To contribute to Open Engagement I wanted to invite people to find small objects that held some personal significance and cast these objects in resin with a view to creating a collective artwork using these individual contributions. This artwork would become a creative trace to leave with my host as a token of my thanks for her hospitality. In practice, the logistics of communicating with people to invite them to find and bring their objects to a workshop and cast them within the schedule of the conference posed a challenge. A solution was for me to find and cast objects in advance of the conference and leave these as treasures for people to find.

So, thousands of miles away from Regina in a Yorkshire town in the North of England, I tried to imagine what people would enjoy finding and started a collection of small and perfectly formed things that I deemed to be special, beautiful, amusing or intriguing in some way. These treasures were lovingly prepared and left around the Regina campus.

A Journey Towards Socially Engaged Practice The conference presentation I gave was very self-indulgent: I sought to look back at the work in which I had been involved, with the intention to examine and better understand my past, current and future practice. For this catalogue, instead of recounting this journey again, I have chosen to highlight a couple of influential experiences that continue to inform how I try to engage with people.

Having a Voice: Communication and Representation During the Inspire artist in residence commission for the South West Yorkshire Mental Health Trust I worked with Sonny, an older man with dementia. Sonny had word finding difficulties and could not easily communicate verbally. The relationship I built with Sonny during the residency was based on a person-centred approach1 in which I endeavoured to learn about andr espondt oSonny ’ sl i f e, interests and concerns. Such an approach is particularly crucial when working with people who struggle to articulate through speech.

Hear i ngt hev oi ceofpeopl ewi t hdement i ai sbot hachal l engeandaj our ney … many people prefer not to take up that challenge and convince themselves that not only is there 2 no voice, but that there is no real person there either (Goldsmith in Marshall p135)

Bybei ngawar eandsensi t i v et oSonny ’ sl i f eandi nt er est st oget herwecr eat edar t wor kt hr ough which his voice could be seen and clearly heard.

Positively Artistic was a project in which I worked with people whose lives were affected by HIV. The group included those living with the virus, those who had lost loved ones through HIV related illnesses and HIV support workers. Through the project people used personally meaningful objects to construct narratives to articulate their stories and perspectives on deeply personal and emotive issues. A diverse collection of artworks were created that gave a broad representation of experiences ranging from stigma, prejudice, sexuality, violation, bereavement, remembrance, physical and emotional health, effects of medication, anger, love, determination, support and hope.

Creating artwork enabled people to maintain their anonymity whilst at the same time sharing personal experience in a direct and powerful voice.

Although I am consciously moving away from practice involving conventional workshop scenarios, the principle of engaging with people to listen to and in some way represent their voices, lives, and experiences remains central in my work.

Inspire Residency: Wood that’ sme

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Positively Artistic: My Treasure

Kitwood, T. (1997) Dementia Reconsidered: the person comes first Open University: Milton Keynes Marshall, M. (Ed.) (1997) State of the Art in Dementia Care Centre for Policy on Aging: London

BINGO: Field of Thoughts For Open Engagement Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine will facilitated a bingo game based on a template Futurefarmers developed last year. The cards are made so that new content can be used for each game. For Open Engagement each participant of the conference was represented instead of a number on the bingo cards.

Below is the description of the original game.

Field of Thoughts: Limited Edition Bingo Cards: A set of custom-made boards are the center piece of a collaborative learning, potluck and gambling game that explores the world's 75 lowest GNP countries.

The project emerged as a way for Futurefarmers to make money for carrying out nonprofit related activities. The idea itself may be blamed directly on the IRS tax booklet entitled: Instructions for Form 1023 for readily identifying both the route to 501(c)3 non-profit incorporation and procedures for legal bingo gaming in the same document. The latter became an increasingly humorous side note while researching the former. A limited edition series of Bingo cards were made possible through the Independent School of Art’s Edition Grant. The grant paid for a die-cut such that the game boards can used for more than one evening of play.

The materials used to make the game boards included: recycled legal files, die-cut, silk screen, offset printing and thread. The legal files were die-cut with 25 penny-sized holes arranged in a circular pattern while maintaining the 5x5 grid of traditional bingo. Seventy-five inserts were printed with random configurations of the 75 lowest GNP countries. These inserts were silk-screened and laser printed to be included in each reusable board. The backs of the boards are composed of heavy tag board with one color offset printing. The fronts and backs are sewn together to hold the inserts in place.

Thirty seven players were invited to a March 26, 2006 test game. Each player was asked to represent one of the 75 featured countries by bringing an obscure or interesting bit of information and to bring an item of food or drink from their assigned country. The night was a combination of collaborative geography, potluck and gambling. The range of food included East Timorian wraps, Somalian milk tea, and Gaza Strip Sweet Potato cookies. The evening served as a testing ground to see whether the bingo platform would work to raise money needed to bring artists to speak in San Francisco, offer workshops, and hold discussions.

In the final round, THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, the winner won the pot of money and a custom bingo card. The neighbor of the winner was considered a co-winner in this “good-neighbor” game, and received a hand-made, cloth ham.

How to play Field of Thoughts: FIELD is a game of chance born out of the bingo tradition. Players purchase game boards for a dollar a piece. (Money is either legal US tender, or a fake banana currency provided.) The boards hold a sheet printed with a 5x5 matrix of icons featuring 25 of the 75 icons possible. Pennies are distributed for use as “chips” to cover the icons in the order called out by the game’s facilitators. The first player to have a card where the drawn icons form a specified pattern is the winner. Winning patterns range from making a straight line (5-in-a-row), filling the outside circle (Around-the-World) or filling the entire card (WholeWide-World). When a player has won they shout “Field!” to stop play and collect the prize.

Number of players: 4+ or play in teams Playing Pieces: -75 boards -75 inserts -Field of Thoughts World Map -150 map markers (75 orange, 75 dark orange) -3 bags of pennies -75 wooden pegs -Glass shaker -money pot Set-Up: -Pick a player to be the caller. This person draws pegs from the glass shaker and calls out the countries for the players to locate and cover on their game boards.

-One or Two other players should be designated for each round to mark the world map as countries are called.

-Players purchase game boards for a dollar a piece. (Money is either legal US tender, or a fake banana currency provided.) This money goes into the pot to be distributed to winners.

-Distribute a couple handfuls of pennies to each player to cover spots on the game board Play: 1. The caller starts the game by drawing the first peg from the shaker.

2. Players who locate the country on their board place cover it with a penny.

3. The dark orange markers can switch out the orange one marking that country on the map to keep track of which countries have been called for the round.

Keep drawing pegs until a player gets a winning pattern: Shout “Field!” to announce your win.

Prizes: Prizes vary depending on the thematic content of each game. *Good Neighbor Prize: Inspired by Hooked on Bingo, pg. 17 "Unbelieving that she could ever get a BINGO because she did not chip. I remember her vividly because not only did she win but I, sitting next to her, received a ham. It was a GOOD NEIGHBOR GAME and hams were prizes given to the person sitting next to the winners that night." *Die-cutting and printing were done by Logos Printing

There are elements that tie us together.

Water. Bridge. Cloud. Earth. There are also shared cultural signifiers. Then there are some that are more fluid. Language can be ambiguous and arbitrary, but it can simultaneously unite, divide, and lead us into action.

We did an experiment in connectivity, materials, semiotics, and the intersection of language with the physical body. Using musical cues, random time constraints, specific rules, and a selective set of materials for each element, participants were asked to work in groups to create a landscape. They were invited to

Strategize, Mingle, and BUILD.

how to not limit the demographic to an “art think� realm.

One of our biggest concerns was

Given the typical conference participant it was important to us to recruit at least some people who were random, unexpected, and not particularly from a social art practice. We found a family in the University cafeteria,

a

young girl, maybe 5 or 6 and her parents. We also found a few young college girls and convinced them that skipping their class to build a sculpture with people they didn’t know would be a good idea. This created just the right amount of difference to allow the project to stretch into liminal space, unmapped territory.

We gave them parameters to push against, frustrated them with time limits and asked them to follow our lead. While building they were not allowed to speak, and while mingling and strategizing they were not allowed to build. We acted as guides during the building, giving them language cues with the music and directions that might inhibit or enhance the building process.

Some examples of our directional cues:

“OK on the count of THREE you can ONLY use your ELBOWS, ready, ONE, TWO, THREE, GO!” “On the count of FIVE I want you to move your hips to the beat of the music, and, ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE!”

“drop, kick, drop, kick, drop, kick.”

“This time keep doing what you are doing, but with your eyes closed”

individual elements into one complete sculptural landscape which was left in the gallery as a remnant of the As a final instruction, each group was asked to bring their

experience. The final piece acted as a physical manifestation of the complicated interplay between agreement, misunderstanding and the ways in which our bodies encounter language.

John Hampton Purveyor of “The Community Star System” In the spirit of art, and life, and art/life, The Community Star System seeks to honor important people from the lives of its participants.

The power of discourse is the honor bestowed on these individuals. Through analyses of interactions between participants and their chosen individuals (people from their personal lives) these lives are given the opportunity to become art. In true Duchampian tradition what is discussed as art is art, and lives are no different.

Taking on all the tropes and pastiche of Relational Aesthetics John Hampton holds a “support group” to help people accept and nurture support from people in their personal communities. Pre-paid postage, envelopes, pens, and paper are offered to the participants and the participants share a story with the group about someone who had a personal impact on their lives. “Unity” is created through the sharing of personal stories of individuals across North America.

The exclusionary act of a committee meeting to bestow honors upon people they personally know is used to unite the members of the support group in their feelings of benevolence. This experience is carried outside of the group through the envelopes and paper, on which the participants are encouraged to share the experience with whomever they spoke about.

A letter from the group is included on the following page.

... AND FIND OR BE FOUND www.beritnoergaard.dk

... WEAR IT

At the conference registration counter people were invited to choose and wear their favourite tag from a selection of 10.

As the selection represented a common denominator each choice added to the complex exchange of signals between all conference participants. Some participants found it a difficult decision and spend quite a long time in front of the selection of tags. Others picked their favorite in a few seconds. Through the following days comparisons were made and new subtle communities created...

PICK YOUR FAVOURITE

“I have been performing other peoples thoughts and feelings, as though they were my own�

Cecilia de Jong

Please Allow Us the Honour of Relaxing You Darren O’Donnell When awkwardness is encountered without presence and attention, old holding patterns in mind and body are reinforced – defenses bristle and prejudices calcify. When awareness is maintained, the body forges new ways of being, thinking, feeling and acting. You don’t discover where the leaks are in an inner tube without adding energy to the system, the more you pump the more the problem manifests and the easier it is to spot and address. So inducing stressful situations that sit a little outside of the realm of life, covered with the billowy shroud of art, provides a relatively elegant way to create fruitful antagonisms and, in turn, generate exciting panoplies of tensions, suppositions, prejudices, and assumptions.

Please Allow Us the Honour of Relaxing You invited the participants of Open Engagement to Massage the students and staff of the First Nations University.

People say that I love to push buttons. I don’t. I love to create situations where it’s okay to be together and uncomfortable, situations where our buttons push themselves and we get to watch and say: oh, shit, there’s a fucking button. What does is this button doing for me? How is it wired? Can I disable it? What happens if it’s pressed harder?

Real Friends and Real Interaction – The Realspace Project – Erin Gee RealSpace uses the website MySpace.com as a template for creating an analog emulation of the popular networking tool. This research project for human behavior took place from October 1st-5th in the 5th Parallel art gallery at the University of Regina, the results presented as a part of the Open Engagement conference.

Using physical tools such as paper, pen, 2-dimensional images, and envelopes, individuals register with RealSpace Administrative Representatives to create an “account”, a personal space where their profile, a combination of personal input that could include an avatar, self description and peer feedback will be displayed. Upon registering an account, RealSpace users may interact with other RealSpace users, contribute to a RealSpace “blog”, leave public comments on paper or leave private messages to be placed in an envelope. While users may still be privy to the discreet, controlled self-representation as well as premeditated use of text to communicate (as on the internet), the users must be physically present in the gallery to send and receive messages, leaving them open to the possibility of “real” interaction with individuals within the space.

Users are given a supply of “friend” tokens, which they may distribute personally at their discretion, ensuring that a “real” interaction takes place in order for one to be considered a “friend”.

Some would argue that the increase of relationships and interpersonal activity vis a vis technology is to the detriment of society’s ability to initiate and maintain relationships within traditional, three dimensional spaces. These interactions are often seen as reclusive, passive,

and are sometimes dismissed as relationships that somehow aren’t as important or valid as those maintained in “real life” or physical space.

The concept of space as a determining factor in defining and valuing a relationship is of central importance to this project, especially

as our perceptions of reality become increasingly blurred through virtual domains, ergonomic technologies, and user interfaces that make our experiences with technology seem more like extensions of real life rather than departures.

The allure of meeting people through the internet as well as

negotiating and maintaining relationships is quite strong, but what is the nature of this attraction, and could elements that distinguish social interaction on the internet be factored from the digital domain by us, “the artists”, in order to engage people in physical, day to day social arenas in a more attractive way?

RealSpace functions an experimental translation of social interaction methods

copied and pasted

that once belonged to the physical domain, into digital systems of maintaining and establishing new relationships, deconstructed and placed once again in their humble three-dimensional environment that they originated from.

In my study of interaction through RealSpace, I found that the urge to simulate real life relationships as experienced on the internet was far more novel than exploring new relationships or reaching out. I was impressed by user content and profile structure, which displayed clear evidence of the fact that it was easier to create than duplicate in RealSpace, whereas in MySpace, it was easier to duplicate than create. This called to question the limits presented by creative opportunities within technology – one can only create if one understands the material completely.

In my work with high school students, the question was asked “Why do we need to ask questions like this about the internet? The internet IS real life”.

The generational gap was curiously mirrored in responses – University students enjoyed engaging in the work and creating profiles, often citing that they enjoyed the dissonance created by the forging of internet and real life interaction. People belonging to generations older than my own came into the gallery, praising my commitment to reality, but were not interested in creating profiles.

These reactions are tied to one community located in a specific environment – I am interested in seeing what other environments have to offer in terms of responses to spaces where lo-tech accessibility meets hi-tech potential

www.erinncox.com erinncox@aol.com | 901.857.2100

The Family Jewels A collection of handmade organs depicting the medical history of my family.

Satin, glass beads, artist’s hair, cotton, silk, wool, ribbons, sequins, lace, pearls, swavorski crystals, rice, ashes, thread, wax, hand-blown glass beads, and other textiles.

6 inches x 4 inches x 4 inches May 2007

memento mori: art of the experiential body

Erinn M. Cox

“Until we are sick, we understand not; — in fine, as Byron says, “Knowledge is Sorrow.”

— John Keats, Letter to J.H. Reynolds, May 3, 18181 On June 7, 2004, I nearly died, and this has consumed me ever since.

As an artist, I am occupied with traumatic body memories and in deciphering the differences between events I classify as life changing and life threatening, though I find at times this division collapses. By recollecting past trials and combining them with elaborate medical histories, I am preserving intangible and tangible ideas, tangled as they are. As I record these dense events visually, I am able to psychologically spread the layers of hidden, private moments that I have allowed to remain buried and festering. I am pushed to a threshold where sensations (grief, fear, and guilt) become so overwhelming that they are, in fact, physically palpable and cancerous.

The sieve of personal illness is inescapable and casts every action, event, or moment of it that is experienced into shadow, as it does the anticipated, ungraspable memories its presence (and therefore its absence) continues to conjure. Illness is invasive; it leaves identifiers, wounds, remnants that the body and mind retain. In this way, it maintains a secret, private invasion in and on the body, affecting (infecting) our physical and emotional states. Life wills us to forget and to move forward, but the residuum of the particular body that carries itself forward does not allow us to do so. In a number of ways, illness is individualizing— it is what makes us interesting,2 but at the same time it acts as a self-betrayal. As Philosopher Edward S. Casey writes, “Illness forces us to pay attention to our bodies, in and by themselves. We get a sense of the thickness of our flesh, and sometimes, even the body as experiencing its own organs.”3 Such trauma magnifies the psychological and emotional forces that make us vulnerable, more human; and I believe beauty resides within that vulnerability. And I know that I am not alone.

An artist living with illness, or heavy reflection of a life threatening illness, or loss of life can show possibilities of living by creating work about it. I find myself inspired by and in the fantastic company of artists such as Felix Gonzales-Torres, Hannah Wilke, Eva Hesse, and Laura Splan. If illness and mortality are part of the everyday experience (both in memory and reality), they are part of all that I see. Illness translated into art is not only necessary, it is beautiful. The beauty and the survival in the aftermath of sickness and death are valid and connective, causing our very bodies to become the stage for our relationships with others. Illness threatens to separate us (and sometimes does), but at the same time, it is what brings us together — without judgment, without anger, without the past. The validity of sustained life in art desires for something real, and it begs for the viewer to take hold, to openly engage with the notions of life and death, sickness and disease, the ugly and the beautiful. With the body as our foundation and sickness its jewel, let us explore the philosophy and art that concerns the sentiments of memento mori: art of the experiential body.

Erinn M. Cox 1

Robert Gittings, Letters of John Keats (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1970) 78.

Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978) 30: “It is with TB that the idea of individual illness was articulated, along with the idea that people are made more conscious as they confront their deaths, and in the images that collected around the disease one can see emerging a modern idea of individuality that has taken in the twentieth century a more aggressive, if no less narcissistic, form. Sickness was a way of making people ‘interesting’ —which is how ‘romantic’ was originally defined.”

3 Edward S. Casey, Remembering (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2000) 174.

2

FREE PIZZA!!!

Helping others in need-ask money for a bus ride. Helping those interested in learning Chinese. Bring my roommate out with me so she can meet new people-she's not from Canada. Volunteer in elementary school. Volunteer in helping people learn spanish.

Donating some money for breast cancer. If people ask me for a favor I will reply with a yes... I will walk around the lake and pick up rubbish. Be unnecessarily complimentary.

Listen to someone's story. Volunteer at a school. Giving all my friends bus tickets.

Become an ambassador. Compliment a stranger. Give a poster to a friend. Drive friend home/back. Danced the "rowboat". Telling a corny joke. Organize exercise in class (during a test!). Be kind to a friend today. Still documentation for the [pizza] project. Will turn my frown upside down!! Compliment a stranger! Be an ambassador. Free Tibet!!

Compliment a stranger. Reading kids book to a class of university students. Video tester.

Compliment a stranger. Free recycle pick-up. Make up a cheesy joke. Laugh. Make a special offer to customers. Write a letter. Hi-5 a homeless person and donate money.

Compliment a stranger. Write a letter to a friend. Canvas for MS. Pet friendly like 10 peeps throughout the day. Compliment a stranger at work tonight. Pet a friend as though you were petting a dog. Let 2 guys go ahead of me in the pizza line. Save a deer from a hunter. Free guitar lessons. I'm gonna stop talking and start listening. Clean my toilet!

Support Michael in all he does always. Gonna git 'R' done! ([establish an] innovative interdisciplinary environmental studies program). Freeze tuition. I will trust strangers.

Think positively and act upon it! Always be at the resident's service. Recycle good thoughts. I helped the free pizza girlz! Gunna walk some dogs! Clean up garbage. Took clothes to the Salvation Army. Volunteer at Wascana Rehab. Bought merchandise supporting breast cancer. Donate food hamper at students union. Say something reassuring. Pick up garbage. Clean the snow in winter. To make Korean food for Mexican friends. Achieve complete globalization in residence. Helping a friend with economics. Volunteering in an elementary school. Cut neighbors lawn. Introducing myself and bringing desserts over to my neighbors. Help a friend who's super busy with classes to help clean his house. She's always willing to be designated driver. Help my friends to improve their spanish. Unicycler impression performance (1). Cook for my friends. Help friends with french. Give people free pizza!!Give out cookies. High Five.

Pet my friend as though she was a dog. I will eat Tom's pizza crust for her. Smile.

Compliment a stranger. Play with niece & nephew for two to three hours. Write a letter to my friend Jacquie in Vancouver. Turn my friend upside down. Smile! Free piano lessons for inner city children. Not wearing any pants. Make up a cheesy joke. I pick a cople of carbrage in campus. Make a joke in chinese. Take out Jackie (widow) - Hot. Will make a new friend. Compliment a stranger. Create a salt-water baby swimming class. Cheesy joke. Take a sick friend soup & story. Do my homework every day. Introduce myself to a stranger. I will help the free pizza. Prepare party for my roomy's birthday. Write a love letter. Blow my nose. Buy groceries for my roomate. Work in the women's center.

Donate to good causes when I can. Share my fridge with my roomie. Sing to my friends!

Corn cups. See phil.delphia eagles- go green. Hang out with a lonely stranger at the airport. Write my grandma a letter. Smile. Sate myself!!!!

FOR ALL THAT YOU HAVE DONE AND ALL THAT YOU HAVE YET TO DO

Tea Project is: Tantamount with discovery Everyone simultaneously

viewing and performing

Appropriating pre-digital

interactive relationships

People, not objects Refining active Participation Oriented by process Juxtaposing formality with fun Examining this assumption: socialization (fun) is impossible without money

Consensual Transformation Temporary refuge from

the commoditized social landscape that surrounds us

How the United States Became A Coffee-Driven Culture of Expansion and Desire

T

he English appropriated tea culture from India and China and made it their own by adding porcelain, milk, fancy silver cutlery, jam and scones. They then began exporting the English version of drinking tea back into the cultures from which they had taken it. When the early English colonialists traveled to the new world, they too brought tea culture with them. It is assumed that high tea taxes and greed led to the American Revolution beginning with the infamous Boston Tea Party. I would suggest, however, that the American Revolution was equally motivated by an intense desire for social liberation.

W

hen the colonists came to the new world they maintained a strong presence of English power and control over their lives by bringing tea. Despite the obvious potential for control in the addictive quality of caffeine there were also opportunities for the English to exert control via the social dependence on (or addiction to) tea (as a social facilitator) in colonial America (similar to the current American economic dependence on oil producing nations today).

I

f a government controls the socialization of its people, that government has absolute control over said people due to the simple fact that socialization is a basic human need intrinsic to our survival. When babies are denied touch they die. Adolescents would rather die than be rejected by their peer group. Men and women take desperate measures to maintain social networks of love, acceptance and stability.

A

s tea was consumed in every level of English society and colonial outpost in the context of leisure and socialization, it could easily be used by the English as a social control mechanism by withholding it or inflating the price (and limiting availability) through Taxes.

The homesick colonialists could engage in the social ritual of tea to remember all the good things about England and the home they had left behind.

However every time a colonist sat down for a cup of tea she was looking back, like Lot’s wife, betraying their primary vision of freedom and pledging their fealty to England’s throne.

J

ust like the final purging of the old, ephemeral relics of a defunct love affair can provide release from the past, so too was the Boston tea party a declaration of independence from a dysfunctional relationship to all things English, including tea. As the Boston Tea Party Participants tossed boxes of tea into the harbor, they were not only rejecting the financial burden tea represented, they were rejecting of a way of life and socialization that had become a barrier to their growth and development as a nation. Ever since this action America has been rapidly developing as an over-caffinated, coffee-driven culture of independence, expansion and desire.

Tea Project 3: After the beginning, prior to the end Gary Wiseman with Chris Hudson, Warren Bates, Sara Armstrong also featuring the generous bakers and tea pot lenders of Regina (thank you all!)

3.1

the past Black and Blue Tea Party: Beginning of the End or Stimulation of Desire dress: black and blue

3.2

the future Red, White and Birth: (End of the Beginning) Revolutionary Evolutionary Tea Party of Regina dress: red and white

3.3

now The Denial of the Democratic Empire / The Rise of the Cynical Façade The Appropriation Tea Party (Beg, Borrow or Steal) dress: in other peoples’ clothes

“Do Relational Aesthetics With Me” I asked four artists each to give a presentation about "relational aesthetics" to four people from Regina. I told the artists they should talk about or do whatever they thought was appropriate to the topic. I didn’t attend the presentations; the idea was for me to see what the local “non-artists” got of the experience.

The artists, in order of Gordon, Rob Bos, Cecilia Jason Wright. The people were Carla Ballman, Rick Roberto (who asked to be pseudonym).

presentation, were Lori de Jong Jespersen, and to whom they presented Morrell, Tony Neal, and represented with a

The day after the presentations I spent time with Carla, Rick, Tony, and Roberto, documenting each encounter with photographs. The goal was for me to find out what had they learned the day before, although the conversations inevitably wandered to other topics.

Roberto and Carla both met me at Café Orange, at the beginning and the end of the day, respectively. Rick met me at his store, Eat Healthy Foods. Tony met me at the Regina Public Library, then took me on a tour of modernist buildings and homes in the area. He had written a photo essay about that subject for a magazine I had happened to pick up in California, where I live, which is how he became involved in the project. Carla, Rick, and Roberto all got involved through the efforts of an intern with the Open Engagement conference.

A couple days later I gave a presentation at the conference about everything I had learned.

– Gordon Winiemko, November, 2007

John Holt/Escape From Childhood Reading Group

By Harrell Fletcher

I like to read books about alternative education for kids from the 60’s and 70’s. There is one writer I’m particularly fond of named John Holt. He wrote a great book called How Children Learn, and then about twenty years later he revised the book by adding comments on his own writing in the margins of the book. He thought that a lot of the text he’d written twenty years earlier didn’t make any sense. One of the things he did agree with is that traditional classrooms are not set up as learning environments because the kids are divided up in terms of age, and because they are forced to sit in desks and not move or talk unless they raise their hand and are called on and then only to regurgitate what the teacher has already told them. He says that instead a learning environment would be one that has a mix of ages and experiences in one place so that people can learn from each other, and that learning happens through doing activities and talking with other people, so those things shouldn’t be suppressed. In later books he suggests that typical schools are really more like prisons for kids rather than places of learning. I tend to agree.

For the conference I requested that participants read John Holt's book Escape From Childhood. Escape From Childhood is one of Holt’s most radical books. Over the years I've read parts of it to various people and it usually evokes strong reactions, both positive and negative. I think it is just interesting to consider his ideas even if you don't agree with them. We had a large group of people show up to the reading group, though most of them hadn’t read the book. I introduced the ideas in the Escape From Childhood and then moderated the discussion that ensued. We concentrated on the concept of lowering the voting age (Holt suggested that there should be no legal cut off and that whoever wants to vote should have a right to) It was an interesting exchange that lasted almost two hours, people seemed like they would have been happy to continue too, but we had to go to lunch. I hope the discussion will encourage more people to consider Holt’s ideas.

For more information about Hideous Beast and Field Test please visit http://hideousbeast.com or email info@hideousbeast.com

HOW IT HAPPENED

WHERE IT WILL GO

In preparation for the project, we contacted Jennifer Delos Reyes, OE Conceptual Director, about the possibility of finding a space to host SHOP on a long-term basis. Through discussion with her and our hostess Andrea Young, we determined that no long-term venue was available. For the duration of the conference we were given space in the Riddel Centre–a common space at the University of Regina, surrounded by a food court and traveling vendors.

For our first trial of Field Test we came away from the conference with a wealth of feedback. Our interactions with participants of SHOP and the dialogue surrounding our lecture presented us with new ways for evaluating the project and how it might manifest in future attempts. Hideous Beast presents its projects to the public in hopes of finding effective ways to communicate ideas. We are often confronted with issues of clarity, and strive to acknowledge its importance. How clear is our intention? How might we improve on previous projects? How do we expand and experiment, avoiding formulaic stagnancy?

Before arriving we also talked to Andrea about where to acquire free things. We looked into Freecycle.org and various other free exchange websites, but since we had easy and readily available form of transportation, it was difficult to pick up items from multiple individuals. Fortunately, Andrea provided a solution. Her mother had quite a surplus of things leftover from a family garage sale and was more than happy to have them taken away. We filled up Andrea’s car with cassettes, LPs, VHS tapes, board games, dolls, wicker baskets, books and toys.

We were given three folding tables to use for the setup of SHOP. In order to mimic the forms used by N55 and to set SHOP apart from the rest of the vendors in the building, we set up the tables in a triangle. We also constructed a triangular pedestal out of cardboard that held information about the project, instructions for its use and the word “SHOP” written on it. For the duration of the 3-day conference we setup SHOP in the morning and broke down in the evening.

By reproducing the works of others, we hope to learn more about method and process. How do ideas hold up when variables change and context shifts? SHOP is presented to the public by N55 and we would like to learn more about their practice. By experiencing their ideas we might understand their proposals. In doing so we also want to widen their project, producing an expanded version of “Manual for SHOP” with the addition of our situation and experience at the conference, eventually producing a manual that grows through time and repeated performances. In retrospect this came across as us trying to critique, or point out flaws in SHOP, which became inflated by our use of terms like “success” and “failure”. Although these terms are important for us, and became part of larger conversations at the conference pertaining to establishing criteria, measuring success, documenting effects, or evaluating effectiveness, our presentation of Field Test was perceived as a quantitative rather than qualitative analysis. This might change though.

WHO WE ARE

WHAT WE DID

Hideous Beast is a collaborative effort between two artists, Josh Ippel and Charlie Roderick. Through organizing structured participatory events we attempt to encourage cultural activity outside the boundaries of mainstream entertainment and fabricated desire.

Hideous Beast is invested in creating alternate forms of social exchange. To further this practice, we investigate the efforts of other artists and cultural producers who promote new understandings and modes of social interaction. Many of these projects carry an imperative for the gesture to be repeated.

This is apparent either implicitly in the ideology and logic of the activity, or explicitly in the form of instruction sets or public presentations. As an extension of our own search for new tactics of engagement and in order to evaluate these reproducible actions, we will recreate other artist’s projects, document and analyze the results.

Critical of the audience as a passive participant, Hideous Beast seeks to coordinate events in which an acknowledged exchange between the event (as entertainment) and the spectator (as collaborator) can generate meanings beyond traditional formalized modes of entertainment.

For Open Engagement, we decided to reproduce SHOP by the artist group, N55. They present the project on their website, http://n55.dk where it is described as follows: “SHOP enables persons to exchange things without the use of money. At SHOP, persons can contribute things for other persons to use, persons can use things, borrow things, swap things, or persons can take things they need. All sorts of things can be available at SHOP.”

Supine Dome

On Friday morning Open Engagement contributors built models of domes. Each model was built from different stuff. Amongst other materials, we used scraps of wood and clothes lines, window blinds and zip ties, gum drops and barbecue spears, soda straws and pipe-cleaners, garden poles and wire. The event was conceived as a historical reenactment of early, failed, geodesic dome experiments. Buckminster Fuller's initial tests at Black Mountain College are relevant to the history of institutionalized art instruction, and the specter of failure in modernism.

Additionally, domes function as an architectural metaphor and instance of community endeavors.

It was my hope that building something together would expose the possibilities and difficulties of collaboration. I am interested to know how conversations can happen through making. What can we salvage from problematic traditions of manufactured culture and rarefied objects? Do reciprocal process create different kinds of objects? How are exchanges effected by different materials?

Does shared labor hinder or amplify the potential for shared experience?

My (dubious) intention was to set the groups up for failure. I provided vague information and disparate materials with the hope that frustration would create a more productive exercise in communal undertakings. But, each group built expressive, and in some cases, structurally sound models – poor architecture, but interesting sculpture.

Many thanks to all those who took part. I learned a great deal at the conference.

I am grateful to have come into close contact with so many vigorous ideas and individuals.

More images from Regina, as well as other dome events, will be available soon at jessicajames.org.

Peggy Lee Interviews Joyce Grimm PL: Have you ever been to Canada before?

JG: No, but Canada has been an attraction in my mind for a while now. Years ago when I was traveling in France I met a Canadian man from Montreal who mistook me for as someone from his country. He provided me with honest insight as to how many of his fellow countrymen felt about people from the US. It was hard for him to believe that I was American and he insisted that I was somehow different. By the end of the evening he had convinced me that Canadians were more my kind of people.

I jumped at the chance to attend the conference in Regina and was happy to finally travel to the north. I think my next visit to Canada will be to Winnipeg. I am a huge fan of Paul Butler’s Collage Party and quite admire the artists he has been working with at the Other Gallery. Last year at Triple Base Gallery we had a Winnipeg film night so it was really great to see a live Daniel Barrow presentation here in Regina. Barrow’s performance consisted of archived footage of Winnipeg’s Public Access and after seeing the selected videos alongside his written commentary; I appreciated the creativity and humor from that city even more.

PL: You wanted to visit Canada but you have also worked on a number of projects that fall into the realm of Social Practice. What kind of answers were you hoping to uncover when attending the conference?

JG: Well, I agreed to go to Regina because I wanted to be a part of a critical forum that was evaluating Social Practice. The same year I started graduate school for Curatorial Practice at California College of the Arts, was the first year they offered a Master’s Degree in a program called Social Practice. There seemed to be many crossovers between the two. In 2006, Ben Kinmont taught a noteworthy class for Social Practice students in which the focus was on ethics in art practice, especially when the artist uses the public as their main medium or works with youth, underserved, or service-needing people. I thought this was a valuable class.

PL: Was there much talk about the subject of ethics during the conference?

JG: No, overall, the events at the University felt more like show and tell. The conference was great for networking and generating supporting feedback. Clearly that must have been something that the artists attending needed. I was expecting more critical discussions about the presented work.

PL: What else to you think is worth mentioning?

JG: I think the whole idea that surrounds Social Practice is not yet clearly defined and in many ways this could be exciting.

PL: What concerns do you have?

JG: I have some really strong opinions about how I have been thinking about the study of Social Practice the last couple of years. The fact that students now pay large sums for this art practice credential made me really curious. With most high-level degrees you know what kind of work you will be qualified to receive once you graduate but with Social Practice I think it could get tricky. I began thinking that a MA in Social Practice could be best in schools that were highly multi-disciplinary and that expanded into a wide array of subjects like science, economics and music.

When Social Practice Projects are done right they can be quite powerful. The most significant types of projects are those that can highlight or extend a way of thinking…like creative problem solving In many ways being an artist is about having the ability to look at the world differently than most other individuals. It is through the works that we create and the way we assimilate information that this becomes apparent.

PL: Creative problem solving sounds like a skill that doesn’t exactly apply to just art.

JG: That’s true and I think of the arena of Social Practice as being one that can bridge all areas of study. I think back to the book written in the 90’s called The Rise of the Creative Class, by Richard Florida. The creative mindset can be hard at work solving the crucial problems that exist today and find a very viable existence in doing just that. The work of Future Farmers is a great example.

PL: In that case, the overriding goal of a Social Practice artist would need to be different.

JG: Do you mean the desire that most artists have involving the solo presentation of their work at a prestigious international institution?

PL: Yes.

Peggy Lee, the 1969 Grammy winner for the recording of Is That All There Is? Joyce Grimm is a freelance curator and writer in San Francisco. She is currently the co-director and cocurator of Triple Base Gallery and is currently employed by the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery.

Previously she worked for the Museum of ContemporaryArt in Denver Colorado and was an instructor for the Denver Art Students League. She has curated for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, designed the film and lecture programming for The Practice Space, and collaborated on events and exhibitions with the Independent School of Art. She has conducted lectures and public programming for UCLA, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art, Arts Initiative Tokyo, The Practice Space, and California College of the Arts. Joyce received her Masters in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts in 2006.

One, Two Step is a short play consisting of two acts. The first act is written prior to the conference, and explores a recent event from my personal life. The second act is written at the conference, and concerns an event from the life of my host or another participant, who has the opportunity to play the role of herself. The play is sight-read, not rehearsed, and every person present has a speaking part. The resulting one-time performance negotiates the role of the audience as performers, interpreters, and originators of a narrative which is at once fictional and non-fictional, personal and collective.

Laura Lauren

Laura Lauren

What do you do?

I…well, I just graduated from U-G…the University of Georgia. My degree was in, Digital Media? It’s an art degree, well, technically it’s art, so.

So you’re an artist?

Well, not exactly, I mean, I guess I am. I do performances. Sometimes I make sculptures…

Brain Lauren Do I make sculptures?

Lauren

Laura Lauren Laura

Not like, “Oh I’m performing now…” You know, I don’t like saying that, like, using the word performance because it sounds so flaky and pretentious and…it’s real, well, not straight-up real, it’s just more real than, than not.

I actually don’t want to talk about this.

Ok, sure…

I mean, it’s boring.

What do you do?

I’m actually a women’s basketball coach.

Phone Lauren So, I heard it’s been getting cold again up there in New York, and I thought you might like to have your clothes. So, if you call me back and tell me your address, I’ll send them to you. I haven’t washed them yet, but I’ll wash them before I send them back. I know how inconvenient it is to do laundry in New York City.

Maybe it’s so bad that you’ll send them back when they get dirty again. And then I can wash them for you. It’s not a big deal for me.

I’ll wash them again and send them back to you, and I’ll be like your laundress.

This is something I can do. This is something I can keep going.

Joyce

Good Evening and welcome to The Quiet Storm on V-103. I’m your host Joyce Littel. It’s time to relax and unwind as we take your requests and spin all your favorite slow jams all night long. I’m about to start this set off with another sexy joint from Atlanta’s own Ciara Princess Harris. Go ahead and sing along, you know I will.

You’re listening to the people’s station, V-103.

Ciara

Chorus Ciara Chorus

Now listen, I been single for a while now, and I been kinda lonely. But I'm looking for someone to talk to, love me, someone who can hold me…

Is that you? (singing) I’m lookin’ for somebody I can call boo, lookin’ for the only one that I can give my all to Tell me if it’s You…you…you… (singing) What you wanna Do…Do…Do…

Les Vampires: Cinema and Contemporary Viewership.

Lee Knuttila.

This interactive screening was held in conjunction with the Regina Film Pool at 1822 Scarth Street on Thursday October 11th, from 1:30 to 3:00.

The character Philippe Guérande, a wily journalist, spends the majority of Louis Feuillade’s “Les Vampires” (1915) attempting to decode and decipher a band of criminals who terrorize France’s bourgeois elite. Throughout the sevenhour silent crime serial the criminal band, known as the Vampires, climb through windows, disappear down alleyways, scale roofs and elude authorities with illusions. But, perhaps the Vampires’ greatest feat is providing an extended allegory for film before 1915, the cinema spectator, and the anxieties about the relationship between artwork and audience.

Before the rise of filmmaking as industry, the normalizing of linear narrative film language, and the disassociation from vaudeville, cinema offered an exhibition space marked by direct address and visual curiosity. Rather than the private voyeurism and narrative absorption that marks film consumption today, audiences would attend screenings to socialize, marvel at the newest visual technologies (the projectors would be placed among the crowd as part of a larger culture of visual tricks), and seek, not a story, but momentary sensations of shock and surprise onscreen1. In the middle of the swirling event was the exhibitor. Free to supply music and sound, edit the films to highlight their favorite sequences and 1

Gunning, Tom. “An Aesthetics of Astonishment: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde.” Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative. London: BFI Publishing, 1990: 56-62.

control film duration by speeding up and slowing the projector, the exhibitor narrated films and used ever-changing commentary to create context for the images onscreen.

Working in conjunction with the Regina Film Pool, I put together an interactive screening of “Les Vampires”. The work began with my essay on the film and the allegory of film as vampire. By graphing the allegory of the haunting vampire specter onto the proletarian public sphere, and the anxiety present in the film onto the crowds, I draw attention to how early cinema articulated difference not against a center, but through an open space and engagement.

I purposely did little preparation in an attempt to create an atmosphere of spontaneity.

Rather, I focused on opening up the sound and image to the audience. For the audio, Laine Gabel was kind enough to do an audio recording of my essay. This was the first track being fed into my audio mixer. The second line was connected to my laptop for music and the third was connected to a microphone. The film pool supplied a remote control that allowed me to jump around episode-to-episode and speed up and slow down individual sequences. Within the space, there were several projectors set up to foreground not only technology, but as an homage to early film’s optical culture of astonishment and incredulity.

The space itself was selected as Scarth St once housed the Capitol theatre, which had live orchestration and was a venue for vaudeville acts.

Given the push for context, I did not want my project to simply become a nostalgic harkening to the past, but rather I wanted to create a discussion on the film and work with cinema studies in a more interactive way. For the performance I did a live mix of music, my narration (both my live voice and the sound of the recorded essay) and the microphone, which was passed among the audience. I welcomed the audience to narrate the film with me, and was overwhelmingly pleased with the resulting lively discussion of “Les Vampires”, the idea of an unbound cinematic space and the potential of an unregulated public event. For the image I tried to find what the audience was interested in, and cue up corresponding scenes.

Though the performance never overcame the problematic relationship of dealing with film histories or the ocular-centric practice of contemporary viewership, I was elated to connect with a crowd, and create a group exhibitor and a commentary voiced, not by an individual, but by a group, engaged with one another.

Comforter Art-Action: a Long-Range Investigation into Bedding and Displacement An incomplete report on human displacement since Open Engagement (2007): October 15 – Miskito Indians and other indigenous people affected by Hurricane Felix in Nicaragua on September 4 continue to require food aid. Almost 20 thousand hectares of crops were destroyed. (source - http://mcc.org/news/news/article.html?id=261 ) October 23 – An estimated 8 thousand Congolese refugees have fled growing violence in the North Kivu province to Bungana, Uganda. (source - http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/471e0ef44.html ) October 23 – 66 people drown after being forces to evacuate smugglers’ boats in deep water near the Yemin coast.

Many displaced people risk this treacherous crossing of the Gulf of Aden from Somalia to Yemen. (source http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/471dfe104.html ) October 31 – Weekend violence in Mogadishu sets off a wave of displacement sending 90 thousand civilians from their homes. (source - http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/4728b68f4.html ) November 2 – Flooding in Tabasco State, Mexico causes the displacement of up to half of the state’s 2 million residents.

November 9 – Conditions worsen for 2 thousand people at the Al Tanf camp on the border between Iraq and Syria.

UNHCR estimates that about 30-40 people arrive every week, trying to escape threats and attacks in Baghdad. (source - http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/47347efa2.html) November 9 – A fire breaks out in one of 7 eastern Nepalese refugee camps that house some 400 individuals from Bhutan. (source - http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/47386c744.html ) November 13 - Tens of thousands of previously uprooted Congolese were on the run again following another confrontation between government forces and suspected renegade troops in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. (source - http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/4739e11d2.html ) November 15 – Cyclone Sidr devastates the Southern Bangladesh coast killing 3500 and displacing an estimated 2 million. (source - http://in.reuters.com/article/southAsiaNews/idINIndia-30666020071124 ) November 15 - Two days of strong winds and rain flood Somalian refugee camps and result in 10 thousand people requiring emergency assistance. (source - http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/473c7ac72.html ) November 22 - Canada has accepted 661 refugees from Iraq to date this year (Sweden – 663; US – 2,015). (source http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20071122.REFUGEES22/TPStory/National) November 21 - UNHCR estimates that more than 2.4 million Iraqis are displaced within Iraq (1,021,962 have been displaced since 2003; 190,146 were displaced between 2003-5; and 1,199,491 have been displaced sing the first Samarra mosque bombing in February/06). According to government estimates, some 2.2 million Iraqis are currently living outside Iraq (5 –700 thousand in Jordon and up to 1.5 million in Syria). Displaced Iraqis say that access to shelter, food, work, water/sanitation and legal aid remain their primary needs. (source - http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/4747058d4.html ) November 21 - UNHCR report that the number of displaced people in Somalia has topped the 1 million mark this week.

60% of the country’s population (600 thousand) has fled the capital of Mogadishu since February. 200 thousand of these have fled in just the past 2 weeks. Fleeing the violence that has plagued Somali’s capital, many of the refugees have located in Galkayo which is free of shelling but where costs of water and food are prohibitive. (source http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/4746fac74.html ) November 21 - A fresh outbreak of fighting between government forces and renegade troops near Rutshuru (Congo) forces thousands to flee their homes in search of safety. There are an estimated 45 thousand internally displaced

people (IDPs) in this area. Safety of refugees in camps near an army base is of primary concern. Some 375 thousand Congolese have been forcibly displaced since last December; there are about 800 thousand IDPs in the province of North Kivu. (source - http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/474588aa4.html ) November 22 - About 250 internally displaced people in eastern Sri Lanka have fled again after returning to find the destruction of their homes. They were first displaced after fighting erupted in their region last September. (source http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/474707974.html ) November 23 - 1 million residents of the Bicol region in the Philippines have been ordered to evacuate as a result of tropical storm “Mina”, the 13th storm to threaten this area this year. (source - http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view_article.php?article_id=102631)

Comforter Art-Action, as a gesture, places evidence of human displacement in the lives of artists, friends, relatives, blanket-makers, community groups…

Through the opportunity to assemble and distribute bedding, Comforter Art-Action participants have an opportunity to process, in a material way, the human consequences of disaster and conflict. It invites social activism at various levels: the simple contribution of fabric or textile art to be part of a refugee blanket; the gathering of individuals to construct blankets; the encouragement to take some action to alleviate suffering or to pressure governments and individuals to increase support for refugees and humanitarian programs.

During Open Engagement, I described how some canonic modern and post-modern artworks utilized bedding to socially activate audiences. I had planned to make a commemorative OE refugee blanket from fabric generated through the conference. That didn’t happen because I forgot to urge people to gather fabric, though that could now be corrected. If upon reading this, you want to participate in this gesture, send me a piece of fabric that you have altered, or make a blanket using the information below, or come up with some other social response.

Comforter specifications • • • •

Use new or nearly new material for fabric artworks or for the entire blanket top Completed blanket or blanket top should be approx. 152 x 203 cm / 60" x 80" If you complete a blanket, winter weight is preferred (use quilt batting to fill the blanket); Knot the top, batting and a warm backing (e.g. polar fleece) together with crochet cotton (knots about 10-15cm / 6" apart) Distribute it to a displaced person in your community or through an NGO like MCC (http://mcc.org/kits/comforters/) Mail individual fabric squares or completed blanket tops to me or contact me for more information: LOIS KLASSEN Comforter Art-Action Box 74540 Vancouver BC V6K 4P4 CANADA http://loiszing.blogs.com/ -Picture documentation of the completed blankets will be returned to all participants.-

photo – Mechelle Lymburner

Cheer Tips Smile A good cheerleader needs to be smiling even when team art is losing. Try practicing cheers and routines in a full length mirror so you can keep an eye on your facial expressions.

Belt It Out

“Cheerleaders are the only humans that can fly”

You gotta have pipes on ya if you’re gonna be a great cheerleader. We’re talking a clear, loud voice. You’ve also gotta be able to maintain that loud voice while performing routines. Also, lie on your stomach and belt out the cheers while concentrating on your gut. This will help you learn to yell from your stomach, rather than your throat. Your vocal chords will thank you later.

Get Snappy A good cheerleader’s moves are always tight and rigid. When you clap, your arms should be in front of your face and should not go past your shoulders on the release.

Have a buddy put his or her hands on your shoulders and learn to clap in the space in between. Eventually, you’ll have that snappy, tight cheerleader clap.

Cheer Basics

POM POM CARE

CHEERLEADING FOR ART Philosophy: • To enhance the art audience and artist experience • To develop individual growth, leadership, and athleticism of the sport of art OPEN ENGAGEMENT CHEER

Objectives: • Raise the level of fan support at art events such as opening receptions, art fairs, and conferences • Encourage vocal support to artists by leading cheers during artmaking events, such as studio visits, residencies and workshops, • To serve as ambassadors of art practice; making appearances at gallery activities, functions and programs • To represent art at various competitive art events throughout the season What would happen if there were cheerleaders for art?

You might be good at basketball You might be good at track But when it comes to relational art practices You might as well step back (Say what?)

You might as well step back (Louder!)

You might as well step back GOOOOOOOOO OPEN ENGAGEMENT!

* Pom poms don’t do well in wet or hot places. * Protecting your pom poms in a plastic bag inside your totebag is a good idea.

You can even place a dryer sheet inside the bag to keep your pom poms from smelling sweaty. * Never leave your pom poms inside your car, especially NOT in direct sunlight.

This will permanently damage your pom poms.

POM POM TECHNIQUES Gripping Pom Poms – A pom pom with a baton handle is the easiest to perform with and easiest to polish with. Make sure your thumb is wrapped around your pom pom’s baton handle and outside of your fingers.

Wrists – Your wrists should be extensions of your arms. When performing with pom poms, you should not break the line of your arms by “breaking” or flexing your wrists.

Shoulders – Your shoulders should be pressed down even when your pom pom motions are overhead.

Peripheral Vision – Keep your pom poms slightly in front of your body. You should be able to see your pom poms in your peripheral vision. It is hard to control pom poms that fly past this point.

HAVE A BOWL OF WHISKED tEA

&

LEAVE A tRACE

Imprints of residue Macha tea from the bottoms of tea bowls whisked and emptied by: (001) Kanarinka (002) Berit Norgaart (003) Lori Gordon (004) Ben Guttin (005) Gary Wiseman (006) Ben Schubert (007) Harrell Fletcher (008) Sal Randolph (009) The Love Artist. /

traditional Japanese hospitality transposed into our contemporary context follows very simple principles for tea encounters of the personal kind: ยบ Embrace the moment. ยบ Chose a place of your liking.

Whisk and share tea thoroughly.

ยบ

GREEN RESIDUES FROM MOMENtS SPENt tOGEtHER

Imprints of residue Macha tea from the bottoms of tea bowls whisked and emptied by: (010) Naomi Potter (011) Leif Thorseth (012) Alison Dean (013) Erinn M. Cox (014), (015), (016), (017), (018) Samples from Tea Party With Gary Wiseman on October 13, 2007.

HAVE A tEA – LEAVE A tRACE was not just an invitation to whisk and sip Macha tea. It provided its guests the opportunity for a shared private moment and spirited encounter that prompts the question what manifests the hereand-now, and what remains after we

leave this very place, this very moment - after we cease to be. the Mobile tea Ceremony is a vessel for absorbing those traces of beauty in human cohabitation. the more undeliberate those traces are, the more significant they become.

Momentarium.org

By Markuz Wernli SaitoÂŻ

OPENSOURCE Art at Open Engagement How do we, as an alternative art space, negotiate issues of aesthetics, non-profit status, branding, community, group work, and democracy?

Come on in. We’re OPEN. OPENSOURCE Art is an alternative art space accommodating variety of non-traditional, community-oriented art projects events within Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. Using our current location as a home base, we intend to host and support a diversity projects: artists’ workshops and lectures; short-term art and events by local, regional, and national artists; and community outreach activities. We intend to initiate and local, national, and international projects, whether independent artists or students and faculty from the local schools.

Originally started as a public space for the display of any and all art projects, OPENSOURCE initiates its programs through open calls to the general public, inviting them to use the space. OPENSOURCE takes proposals and submissions from anyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or age, and without prejudicial reference to a person’s past experience with OPENSOURCE or the creative arts. Anybody who puts forth a proposal is asked what it is they want from OPENSOURCE and what OPENSOURCE can do for them. Proposals are then evaluated, on the understanding of the purpose presented to OPENSOURCE, by a group of participating members who decide between proposals on the basis of simple majority vote.

Active members help facilitate the production of the agreed-upon proposal. This includes, but is not limited to publicity/ promotion, space preparation, communications, solicitation, event staff and coordination, curatorial advice or direction, administration, etc. Though OPENSOURCE operates in ways not unlike a conventional art gallery, OPENSOURCE attempts to distance itself from the limiting functions of most commercially run spaces. OPENSOURCE creates and fosters activities that challenge our prescribed notions of art, its meaning and its role in a capitalist and consumer-based economy. Although it has common financial needs, and expects its members and board members to raise funds for its operations, OPENSOURCE acts without any formal financial or commercial affiliations and strives to avoid the presentation of art objects and activities as consumer products.

As an organization interested most broadly in providing space for cultural practices, we find ourselves asking questions about how we engage some of the most pressing questions about participation. Our presentation at Open Engagement: Art After Aesthetic Distance, looks to foster a dialogue with practitioners in order to create a tool box of answers, and more importantly, continue to ask questions of our role. Inherent in the format of our session are two distinct modes of conversation and collaboration: the corporate model and the dinner gathering.

What strengths does the corporate tactic of brand identity lend to artist groups? What difficulties might it produce?

What structures of decision making allow for intense, fertile exchange, while allowing a fluid and expanding membership?

Does having consistent visual identity and decision making process allow for more thorough discussion of ideas and proposals?

Archives of past activities can serve an educational function for new group members and new audiences. When does the importance placed on an archive overtake the present workings of a group (in terms of labor and ideology)?

How might an artist group maintain an identity without a physical location? Through the web, through publications? Are there problems with relying on brand identity, an ephemeral structure so tied to the ideology of late capitalism ?

How is group activity linked to physical space? Do processes and ideas shift when exchanges take place indirectly?

What role do artist organizations play in local, national, and art communities?

How do groups negotiate individual and collective desires?

n.b. Since we returned from Regina, OPENSOURCE has been given notice that we must vacate our current location by the end of November. We are exploring other options within the community of Champaign-Urbana but plan on continuing to create a space for alternative practices.

For more information on OPENSOURCE Art’s activities, to make a proposal, or to join our mailing list, please visit: http://opensource.boxwith.com.

Thank you very very much.

OPENSOURCE Art (represented by Amber Ginsburg, Katie Hargrave, Josh Ippel, and Charlie Roderick)

Lost and Found A project by Rob Bos

thoughts

presented as part of Open Engagement: Art after Aesthetic Distance October 11-13 2007

goto www.robbos.org www.jendelosreyes.com/openengagement

(top) around the Dunlop in front of Neutral Ground / at the Owl, U of R / by the MacKenzie Art Gallery / Cathedral Area / U of R visual arts stairway

Rob Bos portrait 2007

statement

Rob Bos wants to be an Artist. He has been trying real hard. He has tried to ‘do’ the right stuff all according to plan. for example - He has often worn all black, he got ‘arty’ thick rimmed glasses, made paintings, went to school for art, he has tried to read many ‘heavy art books’, went to art lectures, and art shows, and has tried to ‘understand’ what all this stuff is all about.

After university, starting an art gallery seemed like a good idea, so he did that and the gallery lasted three years hosting over 40 exhibitions.

Rob can be shy and awkward and the gallery gave him something to talk about, helping him to be social. After the gallery closed the best idea he could come up with was presenting five exhibitions at once. Often plagued by depression and low self opinion, Rob has used these personal elements to push himself further - to do something. Ultimately his goal is to find a responsible manner to exist in the world doing as much as he wants, and as little of what he doesn’t.

bring bring* (sound effect) You get a call from your friend. She wants to meet downtown, for coffee. The call was brief, but you can tell it is a relationship problem. Knowing your friend - she is not looking for a solution, but commiseration.

This is fine by you, you don’t really have anything to do today. You have done this before, and heard many of these stories and there is a close familiarity between the two of you. You like hearing the stories, partly as you are interested in relationships and in abstracting values from investigating them. Always looking at the situation from both sides. You think maybe your friend just needs some time away, rather then a solution, resolution, or anything drastic. You meet your friend and settle in to hear what is going on... After a few cups of coffee and a trip to the washroom you feel the visit is coming to an end. A few more points are made, and you tell a last story that you wanted to relate. You relieve yourself again, and come back to the table to say good-bye. You are offered a ride, but decline so you can walk back home. It is Sunday and no have no obligations ( apart from some housework ).

Coffee was a nice interruption, it allowed you to procrastinate a bit longer. Taking a familiar path home, you cross through an alley and notice something on a fire escape. Getting closer, you see it is a small colourful painting. It is various shades of blue and has text that reads ‘LOOK UP’. It makes you pause, and on a whim you grab it. It pulls off easily, and on the back is a card with a website - identifying the work as part of ‘open engagement’. Thinking back to your friend, she seemed sincerely down and upset, but she always does, and you want to give this painting to her, a reminder to look up.

When you get home you set down the painting and decide to check out the website. You wonder what this is all about as you turn on the computer, and wait for it to warm up. You find the site, click on the link ‘Lost and Found thoughts’ wondering about the other links. The link takes you to a facebook album of images. Apparently the artist photographed many such ‘text paintings’ after leaving them back alleys and other places such as where you found yours. One catches your eye, ‘exsplain’ you click on it and it is titled ‘in front of Neutral Ground’.

Seeing the paintings composed you notice the difference of experience - finding one in the real world, and the composed images situated in ‘cyber space’. You consider going back to find th one, Neutral Ground is an artist run centre downtown, but with an empty stomach full of coffee you decide to make supper instead.

(top to bottom) First Nations University /

by Mysteria gallery / around the Art Gallery of Regina/ by the Dunlop Art Gallery

60 pouches of seeds were given out - here are some of the locations where these seeds were plants: - At the southwest edge of the parking lot alongside the First Nations University..

- Along the Mississippi River in Memphis, TN. - We planted our seeds in a flower pot in our apartment in Toronto. Hopefully in the summer we can transplant them into the garden in our back yard.

- Gave the package to mom in Regina. I’m not sure if she planted them yet or not.

- I planted my seeds in the front yard of my billet's house. she lives on Garnet between 15th and 16th. She was a lovely woman.

-When I was given the pouch of seeds I decided I would sow them in memory of my father who passed away earlier this year: I will be sowing the seeds in East Witton, Coverdale in the Yorkshire Dales. There is a spot in by the River Cover that was my Dad's favourite fishing spot when he was growing up; he wants his ashes scattered there.

- A sliver of earth between the parking lot and street outside of the terribly named coffee shop "It's Just Bean Brewed".

Many more seed were planted so keep your eye open for some wild flowers....

A Sense of Place

Robin Lambert and Jennifer Brant What is involved in knowing a place? What process takes place to transform an ordinary spot into a place of significance? What do we notice as we walk down a familiar street or through an unexpected part of the city? How can we connect with a place we visit for only a short time? These are the questions we have in mind with A Sense of Place. This was a project to facilitate the interaction and connection between the participants of Open Engagement and the city of Regina. The objective was to provide the opportunity for individuals to develop and celebrate a relationship with a particular location in the city.

Over the course Open Engagement we gave away or had available 60 hand-made pouches for anyone show was interested.

In each pouch was a small amount of native prairie flower seeds, planting instructions for the seeds and a small painting of the flower that was to be planted. Through the process of meeting, talking to, sharing with many other conference people, all of the pouches were given away. On the next page are a sampling of the paintings, and some of the locations the seeds were planted.

Jen Brant lives on the west coast of Canada where she spends her time teaching, thinking and making objects that may or may not be considered art.

She is fascinated with the world around her, taking great delight in exploring and observing. She is inspired by simple things, unexpected conversations and stories and ordinary, beautiful moments.

Robin Lambert considers himself an artist in pursuit of anticipation and enjoys relishing in idle times. Robin is a recent graduate of the University of Regina MFA program and is currently teaching at Red Deer College in Alberta and has big and modest plans for the future.

HOW TO MAKE AN EMPTY ROOM Begin with a group of people, gathered for a time, an hour or two or three. Greet your guests at the door and invite them to leave their bags & jackets (& cameras & computers) at the door. Provide them a lovely security guard to watch over their possessions.

Stop speaking, except for essential speech.

Remove everything from the room that is not attached to floors or walls..

Sweep.

Create a defined and sacred space to remove the second layer of belongings. Empty pockets & take off shoes, belts and other items that feel to be non-essential.

Sit in a circle on the floor.

Close your eyes and focus on your breath. Feel the weight of your body in the now empty room.

Feel the breath as substance in your body that is also energy. Feel its presence as it touches your lips or nostrils, entering and leaving the body.

Imagine this very same breath entering and leaving each of the guests of the empty room, simultaneously your own and everyone else's (within the room & the world & beyond).

Is the room empty? As empty as we can make it for now.

What do we have once the room is emptied? We are left with ourselves. Each self is a tool kit for being, a tool kit for art making with the capacity to act in an infinite number of ways. At any moment we can make art out of nothing, or anything. Let’s begin with simple thoughts and actions.

HOW TO MAKE AN EMPTY ROOM

Still in the circle, hold hands, left hand up to receive energy and right hand down to transmit.

Make a piece of Invisible Art inside of yourself & squeeze the hand of the person to your right when you are finished. Each person waits to make their Invisible Art until their hand is squeezed.

Join together in pairs and make actions for each other–actions as art works, as gifts traded back and forth.

Return to the circle and have one person begin a ripple–receive an action from the person on your left, pass on that action to your right. Ripple one way, then start another, like the game of telephone.

Each person in turn do an action for the whole group–person to person, or one action for everyone.

Continue making actions as time allows.

When your time is up, come back to the sitting circle, turn out the lights. Spend a little time in the dark, holding hands and breathing together, a meditation.

Return the room to its natural order. Retrieve personal items. Speak whenever you want to.

Be Something Kathe Izzo & Sal Randolph

You have made and unmade an empty room.

http://besomething.org [ photos: Kerri-Lynn Reeves ]

Neighbors & Neighbours Stuart Keeler

If you lived here, you would already be home – a popular North American slogan for boosting urban real estate sales. In our global transient community we live everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Our information age world is based on simulated experiences of people is digitally absorbed through our mediated projected self-identity. Virtually everybody is a somebody through the immediacy of the digital age—a public space where anonymity is rewarded through a cat-and-mouse digital social politic. The nostalgic neighborly exchange, “Can I borrow a cup of sugar?” is now replaced by the overheard cultural mantra, “Dude, did you get my email?.” To walk through a public space, the mall, the neighborhood - the ever ready speed dial is in hand as a form of salvation that entertains boredom, and simultaneously sends a red flag up with the battle cry of “ I am lonely” As citizens of the world, our notions and ideas of neighborly conduct transform the daily patterns of our community. The conference hosted 42 people in 24 homes, the building of kinship in this context reveals a living social art process where curatorial logic was challenged through the pre-conference planning email communication in the match ups between host and guest. Inviting a person into your home that you donʼt know, begets a social experiment of testing taught cultural traditions and home nesting. “Can I get you anything?..a cup of tea or a glass of water?” The rite and passage through the threshold of “the house” to the place of comfort of “the Home”, opens up a social formality with a disappearing mannerist protocol of cause and effect. The space of private meeting public engages the art viewer to participant.

Open Engagement: Art After Aesthetic Distance conference organizer Jen Delos Reyes is interested in the social game of chance with hosting conference visitors from out of town into the homes of Regina residents, here the kindness of strangers becomes a social experiment. This social gesture opens doors to innovative communal social constructs of guest and host within an art context. At the heart of many socially based artworks is the notion to embrace the unexpected, you never know what will happen.

These ideas were pushed even further with her “Guess Whoʼs Coming to Dinner” project where Delos Reyes and her team of volunteers found 25 people from the local community to open their homes up to have a small group of strangers (conference participants) show up to their home for dinner on Friday October 12, at 6:00 PM. One of the dinner hosts, Regan Kirkland, observes,“the dinner party made me into an automatic audience member and participant for the conference, the practice of having us host some of the artists in our homes reinforced the idea that the conference was intended to have participants rather than observers” Here the process is highlighted with new members to a growing community, rather than as passive onlookers, the notion of “guest” has a tradition and expectation within the comfort of ones home the context of art is embraced by a 7 member dinner party with memory as a filter in friendship building experiences among strangers. Observing the observed, how does the context of art change and inform the social patterns of social exchange?

Friendship begins with moments of reflective connection built around mutual respect. Many guests to the conference were offered the use of bicycles, and encouraged to walk to and from the events, these shared public experiences in turn build an open attitude in the visitor and host. These simultaneous moments are laden with small yet significant gestures as we all live in proximity to another person. How we perform in public as “guests” in the space of the city is notable in its social ambiguity with prescribed “rules” which present themselves as learned cultural obligations. Within the social production of space, public meets private - the activity of ʻself” is imposed through set acts and protocol. Our manners and guidelines are stretched when the kindness of strangers creates a new social framework. If we donʼt know our neighbors, how do we know the participant shared social stratosphere of our neighborhood that we can participate in?

It is within the realm of the neighborhood where the practice of daily life begins to transform the “stranger” to the “neighbor”. In a global framework, we are all citizens of the world, as we allow our fences to dissolve. Regan Kirkland, “A person only becomes a neighbour through their interaction with other people -- the person "to whom" and "with whom" and "from whom”. The nostalgic offering of homemade preserves are in spirit with the shared social encounters supporting the spirit of giving as a neighborly gesture. As we are all cast into the social performance of our identity, the role of the mutual conference hosting becomes a full engagement of two communities, one that is in real time, the other challenging the virtual community contacts of each participant who met online initially prior to the conference. As much of social and cultural experience in public and increasingly so private space becomes programmed with the use of digital technology, the absence of “neighbor” is heightened removing the daily construct to a third person singular.

It is only through the act of shared conversation with another person in which the dialogical patterns of daily life can converge within the neighborhood. Creating new social situations within a digital age where privacy is paramount to “self” where connections in the social world beyond the World Wide Web creates a place for human interaction close to home, the one outside our front door. When was the last time you had a conversation with your neighbor?

All photos: "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", Hosted by Regan Kirkland and Darcy Macintyre No photo or portion of these photos may be reproduced without the express written permission of Steven Matwichuk. © Steven Matwichuk (Photographer) & Jen Delos Reyes (Director, Open Engagement) 2007

Long Distance and Long Term Relationships: ‘One a Day’ Brette Gabel During OE: AAD a silver drop box floated around the conference site, with an invitation for conference contributors and visitors to draw a tattoo idea for Brette Gabel to have permanently etched onto her right for arm by local tattoo artist Nathan Donahoe at The Rising Sun Tattoo and Piercing Studio. The tattoo, once complete would become shared ‘property’ of Brette, Nathan and the third, unknown artist. The tattoo is intended to be a starting off point for a long-term (somewhat permanent) relationship between Brette, Nathan and the third artist.

Upon arrival to the tattoo shop Brette and Nathan had not looked through the submissions box and the decision was made minutes before the actual tattooing. And the choice was based entirely on aesthetics and the gut feeling of Brette.

In the final moments before the tattooing, the submission chosen, was designed by artist, Rachel Ellison. Her design is a simple line drawing of an apple, with the phrase ‘an apple a day’ above it. The phrase was changed by Brette and Nathan (with the permission of Rachel over the phone) to ‘One A Day’ to simplify the concept even further.

The tattoo highlights the importance of taking time once a day to do something that you truly enjoy. For Rachel it is enjoying a really good apple.

Following the tattoo Brette and Rachel have since collaborated on a new project with the same theme in the student gallery at The Toronto School of Art. Each day a new art work, or project was completed and documentation was added to the gallery space for a week. At the same time both Brette and Rachel were e-mailing each other information about them selves as a new approach to getting to know each other.

The project can also be found at: http://one1aday.blogspot.com/

Jennifer, Iʼm writing to give you my feedback and impressions of Open Engagement 07.

First off, thanks for making such an amazing and exciting event a reality. It was wonderful from all angles and along all points of my encounter with the project, starting with the fantastic poster that still sits on my wall and which Iʼve seen on plenty of other walls since it first came out. This, to me, succinctly encapsulates the really exciting line your project deftly traversed between art and conference. I havenʼt seen many conference calls for submissions that also and easily are objects you want hanging in your living room. When I first encountered the poster I had no doubt that this event was going to be special and I didnʼt hesitate to contact you to get involved.

For me, as a social practitioner – or whatever you want to call us – the question “is it art?” is an interesting nuisance. We often say it doesnʼt really matter and I think for the most part we mean that, but, on the other hand, it matters a lot. I think of art as a magical cloak, something you can drape over strange and beautiful activities so that they may occur unencumbered by the kinds of questions that plague “life”: propriety, paranoid notions of security, purpose, utility etc. Thereʼs a delicious contradiction in this – the uselessness of art turns out to be itʼs biggest use-value. Hilarious. But we know itʼs a sleight of hand on our part, weʼre magicians and weʼre fine with playing at the outer limits of meaning to generate fruitful antagonisms, and ambiguous and ambivalent meanings.

Because we know that where there is antagonism, ambiguity and ambivalence there is life, movement and change – soft spots in certainty that invite poking.

Open Engagement went beyond any conference Iʼve attended and made the participants – even those who simply came to watch – co-creators. Exactly what a good social practice session should induce. I call my work Social Acupuncture and I would call Open Engagement Social Ashtanga. It was fast, intense, rough, our bodies and minds were put through the paces, people had arguments, people made friends, people made enemies but all so fast that when we were spit out in the end we were left with all of our circuitry – mental and physical – humming. The discussions that came out of my project were fascinating and continued throughout the conference and into cyberspace.

The only criticism I consistently heard – and one I felt myself – was that there was too much to do. If thatʼs the biggest problem, then I think youʼre gold. But, upon reflection, now that Iʼm out in the world living the effects of the conference, I think the Ashtanga metaphor pulls you through. It was intense and fast, but, the time we needed to process during the conference has been bumped into the future with an added urgency. Iʼve been to many conferences but Iʼve never had so many follow-up emails. Already Iʼve seen a bunch of the other participants, as we looked for that processing time that the conference didnʼtʼ permit. And we seem to be finding it, across continents and oceans.

As a side-note, I attended Live in Public: The Art of Engagement in Vancouver on the final Saturday of that weekend and the difference between the two events was profound – this was a conference in the strictest sense with panel after panel and no time to have any real encounters with the people while doing the work. This is what made Open Engagement really unique. That we got to put our money where our mouths were and co-design the conference with you in a very meaningful way, providing activities in which we could encounter each others practice in the flesh and compare, contrast and discuss the effects these events had on us. This is what took the event out of the realm of

conference and into the realm of actual social practice. We did art together and then performed a conference to gage our efforts. It was wonderful.

The highlight was the brilliant Friday night dinner in otherʼs homes. This directly addressed what I am trying to do with my work. I had this picture in my mind of all the conference participants leaking into the homes of Regina, spreading the gospel of social practice, the generosity of our hosts repaid by our generous and excited conversation about what we had been doing, seeing and saying. It was at that point when I was certain that I had been cast in a performance, assigned a role, engaging fully with the two communities, creating one imaginary and virtual community in all of our minds that night. Iʼm sure other participants – both hosts and guests – wondered what everyone else was doing and felt the thrill of knowing that we were all together in our separateness. That, for me, is what I mean what I talk about the Multitude and that, for me, is what social practice is all about and that, for me, is what your conference did.

Now, as I sit in NYC getting ready to perform Haircuts by Children, I know that the collaborative artistry that was Open Engagement is a project that will stretch far into the future.

I used to feel quite alone in this practice, isolated in Toronto, only a few of us managing to keep these ideas floating, wondering if Relational Aesthetics had had its day in the sun but, after your conference, Iʼm feeling confident that there are brilliant people chiseling away at this and those annoying but interesting questions of “is it art” wonʼt be interesting to us for long.

Congratulations Jen. Keep up the good work, sister.

Love, Darren

"I'll Call You"

Performative Connections With Real Life Consequences.

"I'll Call You" was a two week long performance realized between the countries of the USA and Canada. It consisted of telephone calls made from a phone in Miami to several telephone numbers from the Saskatchewan online telephone book.

In order to realize this performance I started studying the history of Saskatchewan. In this way I learned about the history of the First Nations People. This brought me to look for information about prominent First Nations People within Saskatchewan. I learned about the singer Tom Jackson, and politicians like Jim Sinclair, among others. I dialed several telephone numbers within Saskatchewan, including many telephone numbers from several First Nations People's reservations.

Due to the warmer response coming from the First Nations People I contacted by the telephone, I continued calling them. I was interested in creating a situation different than the ordinary and that could allow an exchange of ideas, of information, and a real life cultural interaction between the person on the other side of the line and myself. I also left telephone messages on answering machines. I was interested in relating to the other person's culture. I read the lyrics of Tom Jackson's songs as part of these messages. I wanted to shared what had impacted me while learning about their culture. When I found people willing to hear about my own culture I explained about the history of Peru, its people, its geography, and its different cultural expressions. I also asked questions about their own history.

There was real communication, as we exchanged experiences on both sides. An extremely important aspect in this performance was my own awareness about an ethical responsibility that implied a respectful and sincere approach to the other person on the line. I was extremely fortunate because of the amount of trust I encountered and because of the generosity of the other people sharing their time and their life experiences with me.

This experience was extremely moving for me because it allowed me to have a different understanding of the First Nations history. Factual statistical information learned through my readings on their history, became individualized and emotive information through the personal life anecdotes that were shared with me.

Thanks to this generous trust in sharing these experiences with me I was able to better understand the real psychological implications, the sociological impact and consequences of the policies involved in the negotiations between Canada and the First Nations People through their treaties.

Thus, I could learn many details about the residential schools and their negative impact on the First Nations People. Their children were separated from their parents and relatives, forbidden of speaking their own language and of socializing with their own siblings. When sent back to the reservations they were already estranged from their own culture. The psychological impact of this was devastating, pushing many of them to alcoholism.

The lack of contact with their families while growing up also kept them from receiving their love. Thus, many were unable to express affection and encountered severe difficulties in socializing even among themselves.

This also meant that they lacked appropriate parenting skills, as they lacked contact with their own parents while growing up. This terrible psychological impact of the residential schools was reflected in the

development of many dysfunctional families. This dysfunction was expressed in a high level of alcoholism and social disadaptability. This explains many problems within the youth among the First Nations People.

Later on the government acknowledged the damage inflicted on the First Nations People and their culture and offered some economical compensations, mainly to those people that were sexually molested while been children at the residential schools.

Unfortunately these compensations not only came too late in their lives, but they did not repair the devastating psychological damage that they had already suffered. All these experiences also had a devastating impact in the self-confidence of many First Nations People. The treaties offered technological agricultural assistance that was not always delivered by the government. The problems with the First NationsĘź economy forced many of them to leave the reservations in search for job opportunities. However, they were never wholly assimilated into the Canadian society and as a consequence they settled into ghettos in the suburbs of the cities. Of course there are many First Nations People still living within the reservations. The First Nations People are working on the preservation of their cultural expressions and language, as well as strengthening their families. Building the affection and love that the generations that lived under the residential schools missed so much.

The problematic aspect of this performance lied in the different ways we (the other person and myself) experienced it. As an artist I was approaching people under an artistic criteria, being our cultural exchange an artistic action. But people on the other side of the line perceived me as a regular person. This situation also gave the possibility of talking about art, its different definitions and the ways we understood it. We were engaged in a communication on different levels, based on trust. I chose to offer my own life experiences, and to open myself to the point of my own exposed vulnerability.

Because this happened in real life, it presented the possibility of entering into a real relationship. This of course presented the problems we have in real relationships. We have to decide how committed we want to become. I found a real friend, so when this happened, I decided to finish the performance, and to continue just with life.

My friend honored me by accepting to attend the event, which she later described to me by the telephone.

She traveled for more than one hour from the reservation where she lives, to participate in an art event and conference. She also brought a few of her own works since she is a craft artist. My friend is a very smart open minded person, and traveled so long for a cultural exchange. I want to especially thank Erin Gee, and Jen Weih for their kindness in welcoming my friend. Erin and Jen were interested in knowing her and in appreciating part of the many interesting things my friend has to offer, like her traditional crafts. I have to add that my friend is also a researcher with a deep knowledge in the First Nations history from which I am still learning. We continue talking by the telephone, and writing letters. I still wonder about her. How does her face look like?. Her voice is warm, kind, musical and youthful. She could be 35 years old, but I know she is not. We are still friends now. That is why I said that this is a performance with consequences. It meant a great openness coming from those who accepted me and that spoke to me. Many thanks my friend.

Elena Tejada-Herrera Text for the Book and exhibition: “Open Engagement, Art After Aesthetic Distance� curated and published by Jennifer Delos Reyes and the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Eric Steen On Open Engagement This is a free-write about my experiences in and thoughts about the conference, Open Engagement: Art after Aesthetic Distance. I had first heard about the conference in April or May, 2007. I cannot remember if Jen found me, or if I found Jen, but the initial invitation came via myspace. Knowing the conference was in Canada I pretty much decided that I would not be able to make it. It turned out, however that I began a graduate program, led by Harrell Fletcher, the keynote speaker at Open Engagement, and he ended up needing a ride to the conference because of some passport problems. I immediately said yes, and within 24 hours, a group of us were in Regina, Canada just in time for registration.

Did I have any expectations about the conference? Because I did not spend a lot of time preparing for the conference in any way, I literally packed my bags and took off, I did not really have very much time to generate expectations. I knew that there would be discussions about relational aesthetics and that there would be artist’s projects and possibly performances as examples of the theories we discuss. What I immediately recognized was that the conference, in and of itself, was going to be a “relational piece.” I think this was made possible because it took place in one, reasonably isolated school that required walking from point A to point B with other people. A lot of the people attending the conference were interested in the same ideas, so it made the conference warmer and friendlier than I had expected.

Some of my favorite times in the conference consisted of the meetings we had outside of the school. For example, the large potluck we had at the apartment complex where Harrell gave a lecture on the first night. The dinner we had with other attendees was also a great time. As far as the conference goes, my favorite parts were less the participatory exercises and workshops and more the panel discussions of other artists who discussed what they are working on. The group Hideous Beast I thought had a fantastic lecture and the discussion afterwards was a bit heated. Many people saw some flaws in what the group was doing, saying that if they planned to remake projects that were designated by the original group to be remade AND analyze the projects by saying what was important and not important in the remaking, then they were not allowing future people to remake the event the way the original group originally intended. I saw the value in both arguments and I was quite pleased to see this happening at the conference. This was, however, one of the only times when this happened that I was aware of. The one other time that I can think of was during Harrell Fletcher’s book review when he was discussing children’s rights, lowering the voting age and reforming education. This is already a controversial subject and the nature of the discussion was for debate or open discussion. I also enjoyed the panel where Sara Thacher, Ashley Neese, and Hope Hilton shared their work. It is good to see what other artists are doing by allowing them time to speak about their work. I felt that the hands on workshops were helpful as new processes we can bring to our work, but they did not affect me at a conceptual or intellectual level.

Maybe this was just the workshops that I visited.

Before I go on to assess what I thought the conference was missing, or how to improve it if it is ever done again, I will mention that the conference in many ways changed my own practice. I returned to Oregon with a ready and determined mindset. I felt empowered. I cannot discuss this in detail however because of length restrictions.

Looking back, I think that one large thing that could have been different was in the choosing of artists to participate in the conference. I am specifically speaking about artists who set up some sort of project. I very much enjoyed Gary Wiseman’s tea session because it was participatory, well thought through, conceptual in nature, and basically was not a participatory event solely for the sake of participating in an art project. It was quite layered and quite simple at the same time. Other projects I felt to be quite shallow in many respects. I think that many people hear statements by the more authoritative artists such as generosity and art, everyone is an artist, and spectator vs. participant, and they just do something based on this phrase. No real thought or effort is put into the creation of a project except merely to “be generous” or “make someone else feel creative.” If there is no real substance, other than being generous just to be generous, then the work holds less value to me; it becomes merely a generous act, which is nice, but that’s it. Also this type of work tends to not hold room for any type of critical investigation into it because once criticized it can claim that it was achieving some type of “good” act. I felt that the conference had a number of art projects in this vein and I think this could be avoided in the future by having a stronger screening process and a larger call for projects.

Most importantly I missed critical dialog. It did happen in some places, but not as much as I would have liked. I liked that almost everyone was accepting of each other and I find value in that. I wish however that there had been more facilitated discussions about relational aesthetics, social practice, and this theory that we are all claiming to be a part of. We should be discussing major challenges to the practices of certain artists, mainly led by Claire Bishop. She does not want to bring down this movement, but mostly she points out issues that many people don’t even want to address. Similarly, what about some of the larger artists who are incorporating these ideas, such as Rirkrit Tiravanija, Pawel Althamer, The Yes Men, Pierre Huyghe, and how do they fit in with these practices? Many of them have become large because they find ways to work within the art system, is this something we should aspire to? I know what Harrell Fletcher thinks. I think it would be great to have a more open discussion about these issues. The way to have a more open discussion is to bring in some of these differing views.

I would also say that the conference could be in a better location. While the drive to Canada was nice, and it would have been easier via airplane, it is still a long way away for a large amount of people to travel to. In a larger city, more people are likely to attend or drop in.

Thank you Jen for the opportunity to be involved in this conference and thank you very much for your hospitality.

Support Groups for Everyday Life – organized by Linda Duvall Support groups bring together individuals with some kind of shared personal experience.

During support group meetings, participants have the opportunity to share experiences, converse and learn from each other, and deepen their own understanding of their personal histories. Support groups traditionally are informal and non-institutionalized.

From these support groups develop a network of people who enjoy talking to each other.

For the conference Open Engagement, I developed a series of blank Sign-up sheets that I carried with me. Occasionally I posted them on walls or laid them on tables in conspicuous places. Gradually people contributed topics of particular interest to them.

5These ranged from ‘Fear of Success’ to People who always say yes’. However, one theme emerged as the most popular, and was inserted onto sheets in various forms.

This key issue was the question of how one evaluates relational projects. The largest group was ‘Criticality and Relational Aesthetics’.

What I found particularly interesting was the fact that this was also an ongoing discussion in small groups, but only occasionally became part of the ‘official’ dialogue.

Darren O’Donnell introduced his criteria for assessing his projects during a panel presentation, while, according to my notes, Harrell Fletcher suggested that ‘relational projects cannot be evaluated because they are experiential’. This set the groundwork for a stimulating and necessary discussion that is currently forming the core of the Support Group project.

There have been some stumbling blocks.

Within the first week after the conference, I sat at my computer and attempted to decipher everyone’s email addresses from the sign-up sheets. Finally I contacted the conference organizers for help in verifying email addresses. At the end some were still illegible.

There are many different ways to link people on the Internet. Various people offered to set up systems. What I have learned from this process is that the lowly email is probably the most efficient and effective way to link people on-line. With each new system, many people were lost from the list, or did not join the list serve, etc.

The other process that developed was that because of the overlapping topics of discussion, various groups asked to merge. Because I receive all the discussions, I noticed that certain groups were engaged in stimulating conversations that would be relevant to other groups.

I am now in the process of reorganizing the email lists, reorganizing the groups, and combining the correspondence so that all participants who indicated an interest in assessment issues will receive the complete discussions.

I have particularly valued the way that various people have contributed to the process of both suggesting topics, and becoming involved in difficult discussions.

The process continues.

Jude Ortiz Open Engagement Conference: Comments/thoughts/reflection Nov 9, 2007 Synchronicity led me to the conference. While preparing for an upcoming journey to Regina I came across the event, adjusted my travel dates and flew in from Northern Ontario just as the conference was beginning.

My role of ‘artist is society’ is one of artist, educator and community development practitioner with practice goals of initiating reflection, action and engagement with self, others and community at large. In searching for a more ‘concrete’ evaluative framework around evidence of progress in meeting my goals I have located my practice within a community development framework. I investigate the intersections between contemporary art and community development using art-based initiatives to spark development. I was attracted to the concept of relational aesthetics as a tool for engagement, a ‘first step’, in effecting change and it appeared that the conference would offer a range of interventions that artists are utilizing to initiate engagement.

The conference was lively and offered many choices within the three identified themes.

As with any event the presentations varied in strength and rigor. Since I have spent the last few years in academia and working in the field community development I found my conference discussions revolving around the theoretical basis of the work.

The difference between attending a conference and reading the post-conference website posting of papers, catalogues, etc., is the people you encounter. I was very pleased to really connect with a few artists in particular and look forward to future conversations around systemic change and identifying critical analysis frameworks for evaluating artistic practice.

Thank you for the opportunity to participate and spend some of my days being shiny at the conference in Regina.

Jude Ortiz judeortiz@hotmail.com

Acknowledgments I would first and foremost like to acknowledge the support and guidance of my advisor Rachelle Viader Knowles. Because of her thoughtfulness and dedication a step was taken that took me in a direction that led me towards people and ideas that have greatly shaped my work. Thank you for everything.

Thank you to David Garneau, Kathleen Irwin and Randal Rogers who have also been incredibly supportive of this project and my development throughout the MFA program. For their support I am deeply grateful.

Open Engagement has had many other supporters, among the most important have been the team I have worked closely with over this past year to organize and plan this event. These people are not only amazing people and friends, but are able to make the seemingly impossible happen.

Thank you Steve Matwichuk, Brette Gabel, Andrea Young, Lara Bonokoski, Miranda Mason, Warren Bates, Kristy Fyfe, Lacey Brown and Jeff Nye. Open Engagement has been made possible through financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Regina, The University of Regina Conference Fund and the Faculty of Fine Arts. In addition I would like to thank Alexis Losie, Brenda Yung and the 13th Avenue Coffee House and all of the volunteers for all they have done to help make this event possible.

I would also like to thank Lori Gordon-Auffhammer, Max Auffhammer and Lucy and Megan Codilan for all of their encouragement, perspective and assistance.

To all of the contributors of Open Engagement, thank you: Dana Aleshire, Corrina BeesleyHamond, Joan Borsa, Rob Bos, Jen Brandt, Joanne Bristol, Naomi Buckley, Terry Chatkupt, Jenny Lee Craig, Micki Davis, Cecilia de Jong, Manon De Pauw, Catherine D'Ignazio (kanarinka), Paul Druecke, Linda Duvall, Rachel Ellison, Harrell Fletcher, Blair Fornwald, Amy Franceschini, Brette Gabel, David Garneau, Erin Gee, Amber Ginsberg, Seema Goel, Lori Gordon, Ben Guttin, John Hampton, Kate Hartman, Hideous Beast, Hope Hilton, Anna Huff (Oxygen), Kathe Izzo, Adele Jackson, Hannah Jenklin, Jessie Kainweiller, Stuart Keeler, Mike Keller, Lois Klassen, Lee Knuttila, Rob Labossiere, Robin Lambert, Jessica James Lansdon, Laurel, Lynn Kirby, Erinn M. Cox, Lauren MacDonald, Elizabeth Matheson, Michael McCormack, Barbara Meneley, Ashley Neese, Berit Nørgaard, Darren O'Donnell, Open Source, Jude Oritz, Loretta Paoli, Naomi Potter, Sal Randolph, Helen Reed, Kerri-Lynn Reeves, Room Magazine, James Servin, Diana Sherlock, Eric Steen, Leesa Streifler, Michael Swaine, Maiko Tanaka, Elena Tejada-Herrera, Sara Thatcher, Alice Tseng-Planas, Adam Ward, Jen Weih, Markuz Wernli-Saito, Gordon Winiemko, Gary Wiseman and Andrea Young.

And last but not least I would like to thank all of the people who have contributed to my development over the past years leading up to this project. Without the experiences shared, and the inspiration provided I would not be where I am right now and this project would not be what it is. Thank you all.

Jen Delos Reyes

Contents Dana Aleshire Corrina Beesley-Hamond, Lost: Clutter!

Rob Bos, Lost and Found Thoughts Jen Brant and Robin Lambert, A Sense of Place Naomi Buckley and Anna Oxygen, Water. Bridge. Cloud. Earth.

Joanne Bristol, The Institute for Human & Feline Collaboration Terry Chatkupt, Informal Interviews Video Erinn M. Cox, The Family Jewels Cecilia de Jong Jennifer Delos Reyes, Introduction to Open Engagement + An Open Letter From Darren OʼDonnell Linda Duval, Support Groups for Everyday Life Harrell Fletcher, Right On Canada: Some Thoughts in Regard to the Open Engagement Experience + John Holt/Escape From Childhood Reading Group Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine, BINGO: Field of Thoughts Brette Gabel, Long Distance and Long Term Relationships: ʻOne a Dayʼ Erin Gee, Real Friends and Real Interaction – The Realspace Project Free Pizza, Hannah Miami Jickling, Helen Reed, Jen Weih Lori Gordon, Snippets Joyce Grimm, Peggy Lee Interviews Joyce Grimm John Hampton, Purveyor of “The Community Star System” Kate Hartman, TDIFY at Open Engagement Hideous Beast, Josh Ippel and Charlie Roderick Hope Hilton, As the Freak Takes You Kathe Izzo and Sal Randolph, HOW TO MAKE AN EMPTY ROOM Adele Jackson, You Have Just Found a Treasure Kanarinka, All the Things We Didnʼt Say Stuart Keeler, Neighbors & Neighbours Lois Klassen, Comforter Art-Action: a Long-Range Investigation into Bedding and Displacement Lee Knuttila, Les Vampires: Cinema and Contemporary Viewership.

Jessica James Lansdon, Supine Dome Lauren Macdonald, One, Two Step Barbara Meneley, Yes Ashley Neese, This Is For You Berit Nørgaard, My Favorite Darren OʼDonnell, Please Allow Us the Honour of Relaxing You. OPENSOURCE, OPENSOURCE Art at Open Engagement Jude Oritz, Open Engagement Conference: Comments/thoughts/reflection Loretta Paoli, Understand Naomi Potter, CESTA Alice Planas and Tim McNerny, Yada Yada Cyrus W. Smith, The Christmas Song James Servin, The Day I Met Crystal Gayle: (Nearly) Thirty Years of Good Memories Eric Steen, On Open Engagement Maiko Tanaka, Cheer Basics Elena Tejada-Herrera, "I'll Call You": Performative Connections With Real Life Consequences.

Sara Thacher, Proxy Handshakes Markuz Wernli Saito, Have a Bowl of Whisked Tea and Leave a Trace Gordon Winiemko, “Do Relational Aesthetics With Me” Gary Wiseman and Chris Hudson, How the United States Became A Coffee Driven Culture of Expansion and Desire 2008 All materials copyright of the artist