This year’s FACP degree show Let the Talking do the Work by 13 Person Collective won the Nagoya Univerity Art Prize this year, and was then selected for Platform at the De La Warr Pavilion, which has just opened.
here is the link https://www.dlwp.com/exhibition/platform-2017/
LET THE TALKING DO THE WORK contains four installations, three videos, two performances, one symposium and one contract as artwork. We have actively withheld the works in their material form, allowing them to exist in the realm of their potential. For artists today, it seems vital to be able to talk about one’s work. So, what might happen if the object is removed entirely, and all that is left is the talking? By inverting the usual degree show experience we leave you to imagine what might have been. Using a fixed framework, each artist is given the opportunity to verbalise their ideas, creating a cacophony of voices. The arrangement of individual headspaces, however, also allows for the viewer to engage on a one to one level with each idea.
CONGRATULATIONS! this work has had lots of praise and positive responses, here are some thoughts from the artist Becky Shaw, who was External Examiner for our course a few years back, and who came to see the show;
Dear makers of ‘Let the Talking do the Work’
The work generated so many thoughts for me and I didn’t have time to say them on Saturday as my kids were running round. I also didn’t have time to listen to each individual, so this is some general thoughts about the whole………
The work made me think about the courage required to work together. There must have been moments when some of you doubted whether this was the right course of action. You were required to leave your ‘individual’ practice by the door- a really difficult step when conventional degree show practice, marking and friends and family all expect to see your ‘talents’ and learning celebrated. The work made palpable to me (real or imagined) internal conversations where each of you reflected on the relationship between your individual needs and working together. Sometimes this was actually in what was said and how, but also in the tension in the room, the problem of listening to one in many etc.
I was really interested in what was raised in the Saturday discussion about the fear of consequences- and how choosing a ‘low cost’ option might impact on the availability of technicians and resources in the future. I thought the work actually evidenced its ‘investment’ really well in the quality of the films and in the ‘professional’ quality of its realisation. At the same time though it made me think about the tyranny of the ‘hot desk’. In places I have worked there is the continuous move to turn studios into generic places where different classes can come in and out, do their desk-top work then email it or put it in a carrier bag. The work set up a really useful and difficult thought process by laying out the overlapping tendencies for institutions to strip away spatial and material practices in the name of being ‘modern’, and for non studio, social practices to position themselves outside the studio. This made me think about Gregory Sholette’s writing where he explores how artists’ critical practices might seem to fit within ‘neoliberal’ agendas, at the same time as opposing them. This where the stuff around autonomy seems so interesting and important again: the ‘becoming political’ stuff we talked about (I strongly recommend Emma Hedditch’s book ‘Coming to have a Public Life’), and about how ‘neoliberalism’ (for want of a better name) encourages individualism, via ‘self care’ etc. but dissolves any sense of individual or group agency. I think this is the essay where Sholette talks about this: http://www.gregorysholette.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/06_somecallit1.pdf
The work also generated some thoughts about what it means to be one sitting amongst others, and the kind of social ‘meniscus’ that Allan Kaprow talks about, and how we should ‘push’ and ‘prod’ this rather than leaving it untroubled. I’m not well up on this stuff but it makes me think about Martin Buber’s conception of ‘I and thee’ exploring how we relate to each other, and also Julia Kristeva’s ‘I love to you’ (albeit talking about romantic relationships).
Thanks again for inviting me. Like Mary Anne said, the work made me think/see too.
Best Wishes, Becky
https://www.shu.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/staff-profiles/becky-shaw
https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/story/7211/
