FOCUS#2: GROUPING. A way of working

The introduction text of the book entitled Group Work by the Chicago based group Temporary Services, describes the notion of group collaboration as follows “It’s our sometimes contentious relationship to naming that makes us call ourselves a “group” rather than a collective”, “collaborative entity”, or “cooperative”. Choosing “group”, for Temporary Service, celebrates certain aspects of our own personal backgrounds in group work that aren’t easily named within the sometimes narrowly focused language of art practice. Being a group, for us, means reiterating our place in a larger general culture of people working with other people. It’s a kind of self analysis that led us to seek out other groups and their histories…” .

This second Focus reasons about the meanings and the strategies of group working significant today. Despite the proliferation of texts, exhibitions and talks produced around the topic of participatory art practices, the specific theme of group work has never been treated with the same importance.

In her book entitled Participation, the art critic Claire Bishop, delineates a brief history of the subject, pointing out the difference between the physical participatory artistic practices and the art that interacts with social realm, also indicating the avant-garde period as the starting point of those experimental practices. Moreover she lists three different purposes the participatory art brought into play from the beginning:

1. The activation of a subject “who will be empowered by the experience of physical or symbolic participation”

2. “[…]The gesture of ceding some or all authorial control…”

3. And third, the restoration of a community way of working “ through a collective elaboration of meaning.”

If the British art critic has the merit for having individuated the origins and the principles of participatory art, Janet Kraynak has forwarded the analysis of these practices revealing their weak points. In her article, Dependent Participation: Bruce Nauman’s Environment she argues that nowadays society encourages and supports participation. Nonetheless this process of inclusion leads not to self-determination, but to alienation. Our society, points out Janet Kraynak, doesn’t repress or constrain, instead it seduces, manipulates and enforces conformism. Starting from this consideration, Kraynak demonstrates how participatory art forms are conceived on a dialectic dynamic of participation and control, an intrinsic procedure which cannot escape the market policies. In this sense, even in art, participation is experienced as an obligation, a tacit form of control in which reciprocity is all but guaranteed, and desire and will are exploited becoming forms of control.

Although I agree with both of the critics’ analysis, I think that an important point of reference is missing: the study around the working methodologies of groups and their implications in the art system. In order to clarify, It seems to me that for a complete analysis of participatory art practices we shouldn’t just consider the procedures that include audiences in art pieces but, more importantly, we ought to reflect on the group’s working procedures that are put in practice in order to reach agreement between its members and to smooth criticality when making common decisions. These operations are very distant from situations of control and obligation as explained by Janet Kraynak in her article. In my opinion, they represent real models of participation because they are based on practices of consensus, a term to be intended as described in the Quotations Chapter of the book Group Work by Temporary Services – citation from Act Up New York:

Consensus doesn’t mean that everyone thinks that the decision made is necessarily the best one possible, or even that they are sure it will work. What it does mean is that in coming to that decision, no one felt that her/his on the matter was misunderstood or that it wasn’t given a proper hearing…

Furthermore it’s not surprising that group work has difficulties working within the art system which, according to Brett Bloom in his article Making Art in Groups, Couples and other Configurations, it’s set up to promote and sell the work of individual artists, not groups of them. In fact the effort to reach a group consensus may cause a loss of aesthetic coherence or generate a change in the original aims of the projects – two “risky working procedures” that aren’t usually accepted by Art Institutions. Since group work is not fully recognized by the art world nor by the critical debate around participatory art, it requires a constant self-analysis to adapt itself to different contexts and circumstances. It’s precisely because of its intrinsic capability of self-analysis and self-adaptation that, in my opinion, group work can generate favourable changes and significant variations in the art system.

According to the above analysis, the five projects chosen for this Focus follow two mother lodes. The first reasons about group work as a way to produce participatory processes based on models of consensus rather than forms of control and obligation, with the aim to show some practical examples. This is the case of Re:Group: Beyond Model Of Consensus an exhibition organized by Not An Alternative around the notion of participation in our society with the aim to produce alternatives to the existing social participatory structures; the project also functions as a platform for discussion and most importantly, some of the artpieces are open to be reinvented and extended by the audience. The OURGOODS launch project entitled Workdress by Caroline Woolard, promotes exchanges between a work-dress – designed for the occasion – and local goods and services, contributing to diffuse an alternative way of collaboration. The third example Im/Possible Community organized by Shedhalle in collaboration with ZHdK, foresaw a series of exhibitions, workshops and events to reason around the notion of community presenting alternative kind of groupings.

The other lode launches an historical analysis of group working which reflects on past strategies and groups: Group Work is a book published by Temporary Services and printed by Printed Matter – this book I must confess, has constituted my constant reference point for the analysis developed in this Focus– that investigates groups strategies from the 60s to the present through a series of tools such as interviews to group members, a glossary of group working, a collection of quotations around this concept and a list of art groups that functions as a brief historical record; and at last the event ‘Gathering In, Gathering Around’ organized by Casco Project with the aim to enliven a self-reflection on Casco’s practice starting from a reinterpretation of the group archive in order to put into question the concept of “common”.

Enjoy the reading.

Valerio Del Baglivo

Gathering In, Gathering Around – CASCO PROJECT

‘Gathering In, Gathering Around’, the third event in the ‘Come Alive!’ series, takes place over a two-week period. It focuses on the unearthing of Casco’s own archive, and will host various meetings with visitors interested in the archive as well as with special guests whose practices hinge on the idea of the “common”, which resonates—or dissonates—with the history of communism. Our idea is to reflect broadly on Casco’s practice, but with particular attention being given to the future of the institution in light of the idea of the common, of open sources inviting communal uses. Against the tide of accelerating deregulation and privatization processes, renowned philosophers such as Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou or Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have recently attempted to renew the concept of communism and the idea of common wealth, and artists and other practitioners likewise look into such possibilities. It is in this vein that Casco’s ...[read more]

‘Gathering In, Gathering Around’, the third event in the ‘Come Alive!’ series, takes place over a two-week period. It focuses on the unearthing of Casco’s own archive, and will host various meetings with visitors interested in the archive as well as with special guests whose practices hinge on the idea of the “common”, which resonates—or dissonates—with the history of communism. Our idea is to reflect broadly on Casco’s practice, but with particular attention being given to the future of the institution in light of the idea of the common, of open sources inviting communal uses. Against the tide of accelerating deregulation and privatization processes, renowned philosophers such as Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou or Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have recently attempted to renew the concept of communism and the idea of common wealth, and artists and other practitioners likewise look into such possibilities. It is in this vein that Casco’s archive might be performed.

Both the archive and the meetings will be centered around a circular steel ring designed by NY based architectural collective common room for this occasion. The circular boundary is meant for gathering “around”, rather than gathering “in”, and engages with different ideas of what the “circle” could be. The multiple functions of Casco’s space—whether it be for research, meetings, presentations, construction, or performance—will be fully activated. Projecting as much as reflecting, and collecting new sources and references as much as archiving, will shape events in these two weeks. You are warmly invited to join us in this process.

‘Come Alive!’ is a series of discursive events organised for Casco’s twentieth anniversary, that looks into the social and artistic initiatives and movements of the recent past and their related historiographical processes, alongside Casco’s own. For the third event, questions and issues that have arisen from the two previous events in this series may reemerge such as the performative use of the archive and institutional responsibility; questions on the authority of historiography and the momentum for historical processes and methods; the frictions and contradictions between individuality, collectivity and social movements; and the position of art, or other cultural practices, and the tension with multiplicities of political action.

Event, 21 Jun – 04 Jul 2010

http://www.cascoprojects.org

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Group Work – A book investigating group work from the perspectives of groups themselves – TEMPORARY SERVICES

Based on a pamphlet published by Temporary Services in 2002 titled Group Work: A Compilation of Quotes About Collaboration from a Variety of Sources and Practices, this publication provides a multitude of perspectives on the theme of Group Work by practitioners of artistic group practice from 1960s to the present. The publication presents interviews with Canadian collective General Idea; Chicago collective Haha; the dutch punk band The Ex; the Vienna-based Wochen Klausur; Croatian curatorial group What, How & for Whom (WHW); Funkadelic album designer Pedro Bell; and Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D); along with essays on The Abortion Counseling Service of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union (better known as Jane) and the anarchist Guerilla street theater group The Diggers. A list of words used to describe group practices and a working list of hundreds of collectives from the last four decades rounds out the publication. This book ...[read more]

Based on a pamphlet published by Temporary Services in 2002 titled Group Work: A Compilation of Quotes About Collaboration from a Variety of Sources and Practices, this publication provides a multitude of perspectives on the theme of Group Work by practitioners of artistic group practice from 1960s to the present. The publication presents interviews with Canadian collective General Idea; Chicago collective Haha; the dutch punk band The Ex; the Vienna-based Wochen Klausur; Croatian curatorial group What, How & for Whom (WHW); Funkadelic album designer Pedro Bell; and Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D); along with essays on The Abortion Counseling Service of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union (better known as Jane) and the anarchist Guerilla street theater group The Diggers. A list of words used to describe group practices and a working list of hundreds of collectives from the last four decades rounds out the publication. This book provides unique insights into the workings of groups as it is conceived, planned, and orchestrated by a several people who have first-hand experience with the various misconceptions that the individual-centric art world holds towards groups and their practices. In addition to talking about past projects with the artists interviewed, Temporary Services’ questions center around: group formation, member roles, communication techniques, common misconceptions by art administrators in terms of compensation, recognition and travel, navigating conflict and negotiation, managing individual art practices in light of group membership, and membership changes, including how groups deal with the death of members.

2007, Printed Matter NY

http://www.temporaryservices.org

Comments are closed.

Im/Possible Community – Shedhalle

The present times of crisis and fear of the future increasingly spawn a desire for communality. After having reached the bottom of the scale, notions like “solidarity” or “hospitality” are becoming far more seducing than e. g. “speculation” or “in for greed”. What would happen to us, flexible human beings getting accustomed to being made ever more flexible, if common social grounds didn’t give protection, especially in difficult times? What would happen to the young male broker, meanwhile mutated to enemy no.1, if there weren’t people with different plans and ideas, who support him and put him into perspective. In all the media, throughout society, the seemingly positive aspects of our difficult times are being discussed: Neo-liberalism has (shown) its limits but, at the same time, increased the acceptability of differing values and concepts of social coexistence. We have to wait and see whether these hopes will come true. Considering ...[read more]

The present times of crisis and fear of the future increasingly spawn a desire for communality. After having reached the bottom of the scale, notions like “solidarity” or “hospitality” are becoming far more seducing than e. g. “speculation” or “in for greed”. What would happen to us, flexible human beings getting accustomed to being made ever more flexible, if common social grounds didn’t give protection, especially in difficult times? What would happen to the young male broker, meanwhile mutated to enemy no.1, if there weren’t people with different plans and ideas, who support him and put him into perspective. In all the media, throughout society, the seemingly positive aspects of our difficult times are being discussed: Neo-liberalism has (shown) its limits but, at the same time, increased the acceptability of differing values and concepts of social coexistence. We have to wait and see whether these hopes will come true. Considering the popularity of the lines of political thinking that increasingly aim at and focus on personal ownership and personal contribution doubts may be voiced.

Starting point of the exhibition “Im/Possible Community“ is the assumption that questions pertaining to community cannot be raised in the light of the present crisis only. Communities – if we do not define them as some sort of brotherhood which we join forever and a day – are something we are confronted with every day, something determining our lives, something necessary. (Patchwork)Families, e. g., or Greenpeace. Online communities or the association Shedhalle. Even though it is not out of economical necessity that we seek to study the concept of community, the knowledge that there is only one world makes the questions involved unequally urgent: the global market economy with its imbalances has led to totally new dependencies while the old systems of power still remain intact. Climatologic changes augment these imbalances; the demographical scenarios of the superannuation of the populations in western countries project problems that cannot be solved nationally any longer; last but not least, people have gotten ever more closely connected by the internet and have grown aware of the urgent need of the solution of global conflicts.

No matter if on a small or on a large scale, we have to take up the challenges and to find ways of making toward each other. Not in order to propagate a community of the same but an “unholy alliance” (Haraway), a “motley crew” that is able to respect the differences and that, at least partly, exceeds well known bounds and limits and enemy stereotypes. The example we favour most as a depiction of an im/possible community can be found in a fairy tale by the brothers Grimm, The Bremen Town Musicians: ousted and on the run, trying to escape the deadly peril, donkey, dog, cat, and rooster, by supporting each other, open up new perspectives in life.

The Shedhalle exhibition project focuses on displaying and loosely connecting, in various media, topics and elements involved: invisible networks, utopian communities, walling off, migration, conflict, integrating the different, partitioning and taking part. It draws a bow from the global to the psychodynamics of the smallest communities. Wishing that topics and relations can be seen in a different way, we will, furthermore, present projects introducing alternative groupings.

When talking about an im/possible community we use the word in both senses: impossible, because communities to the extent to which they include and allow differences can be communities only partly and temporarily. And impossible in the sense that prevailing lines of thinking are exceeded, that new values are created and presuppositions disrupted: being outrageous. Im/Possible means to render the split within the group and one’s own ambivalence prolific. Community has to be created, community means permanent work, means voicing desires, means arguing, listening. It is exactly this bargaining, this degree of uncertainty and uncontrollability that makes communities something exciting and rewarding: to act communally, thus, means giving up part of oneself, letting go, dissolving.

One further aspect involved can be seen in the community that is created between the exhibition and the viewers, the audience. We consider the Shedhalle as a symbolic space that allows us to experience something different – the im/possible community – physically, mentally and emotionally very much the same way Irit Rogoff, following Hannah Arendt, considers the exhibition space as a “space of appearance” where something can happen between people and objects.

The whole project “Im/Possible community” equally comprises exhibitions and events and is realised in collaboration with ith/ZHdK. The exhibition is curated by Anke Hoffmann and Yvonne Volkart. The series of lectures and workshops was conceived and prepared by Elke Bippus, with the support of Anne Schuh, Chantal Küng and David Lanz, ith/ZHdK (in German only).

The display brings the seemingly disparate and precarious together and – by its empty centre – creates space for temporary gatherings and events.

Curated by Anke Hoffmann and Yvonne Volkart

7 November 2009 – 31 January 2010

http://www.shedhalle.ch/

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Workdress – OurGoods

Workdress by Caroline Woolard Between an apron and a tool belt, this wrap dress was designed by me (Caroline Woolard) and sewn by a talented male seamstress in New York. I wear it everywhere, from bike trips and studio visits to baking with power tools. This durable dress can only be exchanged for local goods and services, so if you want to spend dollars, make a donation. If you donate $200 or more I will give you a dress. This work dress is the launch project for OurGoods, a peer to peer network for the exchange of goods and services between artists, designers, craftspeople, and anyone with a creative project. http://ourgoods.org/ [read more]

Workdress by Caroline Woolard

Between an apron and a tool belt, this wrap dress was designed by me (Caroline Woolard) and sewn by a talented male seamstress in New York. I wear it everywhere, from bike trips and studio visits to baking with power tools.

This durable dress can only be exchanged for local goods and services, so if you want to spend dollars, make a donation. If you donate $200 or more I will give you a dress.

This work dress is the launch project for OurGoods, a peer to peer network for the exchange of goods and services between artists, designers, craftspeople, and anyone with a creative project.

http://ourgoods.org/

Comments are closed.

Re:Group: Beyond Models Of Consensus – Not an Alternative

Please join Not An Alternative, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, and Upgrade NY! this Thursday, June 10 for the opening of Re:Group: Beyond Models of Consensus, an exhibition which examines models of participation and participation as a model in art and activism. Re:Group proposes that with participation now a dominant paradigm, structuring social interaction, art, activism, the architecture of the city, the internet, and the economy, we are all integrated into participatory structures whether we want to be or not. The exhibition showcases work that subverts existing systems or envisions new alternatives to the ways in which individuals can take part, or choose not to take part, in social and cultural life. Re:Group features work by thirteen artists, designers, hackers, activists, and collectives exploring both the potential and limitations of participation, networked collaboration, and distributed ...[read more]

Please join Not An Alternative, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, and Upgrade NY! this Thursday, June 10 for the opening of Re:Group: Beyond Models of Consensus, an exhibition which examines models of participation and participation as a model in art and activism.

Re:Group proposes that with participation now a dominant paradigm, structuring social interaction, art, activism, the architecture of the city, the internet, and the economy, we are all integrated into participatory structures whether we want to be or not. The exhibition showcases work that subverts existing systems or envisions new alternatives to the ways in which individuals can take part, or choose not to take part, in social and cultural life.

Re:Group features work by thirteen artists, designers, hackers, activists, and collectives exploring both the potential and limitations of participation, networked collaboration, and distributed labor. From the “crowdsourced” projects Ten Thousand Cents and White Glove Tracking to the tactical media art of The Yes Men and Ubermorgen, from the urban interventions of John Hawke and The Institute of Infinitely Small Things to the open platforms of Ushahidi and MakerBot – the exhibition represents a diverse range of critically and socially engaged work that rethinks the institutional practices within urban planning, civil engineering, transportation, industrial design and production, relief work, and the news media.

The exhibition not only presents completed work through gallery installations, but also functions as a platform for new collaborative work. Through workshops, master classes, and discussions led by the exhibiting artists, the processes and methodologies behind the work are opened up to gallery visitors and invited communities, providing an opportunity to extend and reinterpret the artists’ ideas in new and unexpected ways.

JUNE 10 – AUGUST 7, 2010

http://www.notanalternative.net

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