Kate Hopes

10.11.13, a Wednesday, the day of Nelson Mandela’s Funeral, we buy day returns to

HOPE.

Not knowing what the day will turn up we agree to improvise - to have faith in the ability to craft everyday activities into something greater. Walking becomes our tool.

We firstly list what we’ve done:

1.     18 month of sustained and grown work, that still has work to do.

2.     The transformation of the Ruskin Project into the Poly-Technic that perhaps has absorbed Kate and Steve too.  A sensible approach?

3.     The changed emphasis of the project from one that set out to respond to social/local to one that supports artists and art/cultural sector. Needs in different places.

4.     Publications, visits to museums, allotment and library workshops, residencies, a Summer School, Business of Life at MS, Birdland is Everywhere, Diagrams, new contacts, the self sustaining Ruskin Studio, drawing classes, small commissions, Poly Vision…………

5.     The questioning of authorship, appropriation and propositions.

6.     The building of a stronger collaborative practice that looks to the future – we HOPE.

As we list I make a mental note that listing isn’t enough, I’m keen to go further and instead critique what the work does and has done. I want to drill down and interrogate, to ask or consider its future. I am mindful of Big Dave: If it’s successful what does it do?

Steve’s talking of dematerialising. I think of Roy Ascott:

“To discuss what one is doing rather than the artwork which results, to attempt to unravel the loops of creative activity, is, in many ways a behavioural problem. The fusion of art, science and personality is involved. It leads to a consideration of our total relationship to a work of art, in which physical moves may lead to conceptual moves, in which Behaviour relates to idea…. ‘An organism is most efficient when it knows its own internal order.’

If this is right then what of what of my own internal order? I know that from doing a Big 5 Personality trait test, I score very highly for conscientiousness, openness and extraversion, slightly lower for agreeableness and low for neuroticism. Turns out I’m not a psychopath, but my own worst enemy. It does help with the point: Kate makes me do things, in fact I know I cant help but to do things – I act as in action not as in pretend. Knowing all this enables me best positioning, steers me from disappointment to understanding, curtails demands by the self, limits fronting, ensures honesty and enables better reflection. It also explains why I make a good student and worker, why people find me difficult, why Steve cant work with me sometimes because I’m to critical, fast and wont play games, why Kate Pahl says I’m too hard and wont let anything slip and why I think I’m constantly frustrated - wanting more. As such I continue to learn, to be more empathetic; I try to become more efficient.

What of the Kate and Steve’s internal order? I’ve realised we start with different desires, don’t always agree and get irritated. Our combined Big 5 probably reveals we’re neurotic, open, a bit conscientious, not agreeable and problematically extrovert. However I’m proud of the work and so I believe we find the right way for that. I suppose it’s ultimately the work that’s the thing - where we meet honestly. Our friendship, skills and histories allow for a short hand, a tacit knowing, trust, shared creativity, reflective critique. The Crowe and Rawlinson quote used at the start of Number 1 seems more relevant now:

“The motivation for working together is really less to do with bringing different skills to bear on a common problem but rather it is this immediacy of response encountered in the discussion of ideas combined with the consummate otherness of thought which the collaborative partner brings.” From the outside, as a pair, we offer a combination that has potential, are hard working, provide different skills, that makes me appear ponderous and organised while Steve looks talkative and philosophical. On the inside I think the collaboration has made us more efficient and makes the work better.

But what of the work, of the practice, of it’s internal order? What of our relationship to it that Ascott talked of? I think the work, if it’s successful, is of and about change [perhaps learning], value and accessibility. To expand I would say the work:

·       Is deeply entwined with notions of beauty and the old fashioned notion that access to sublime cultural creations and to looking can be valuable.

·       Is about believing things can be better – organisations, lives, opportunities etc, so it strives to ask difficult questions and challenge givens.

·       Carries with it our histories that believe access to art can enable people to create meaning and communicate something about life, love, problems and concerns.

·       Celebrates creativity and values the underdog, the outsider, the unvalued.

·       Gives recognition that there’s all sorts of knowledge and making and its everywhere.

·       Wants to improve accessibility to culture and for institutions to be more open to new models.

·       Tries to provide opportunities for people, including ourselves, to learn, get better and have chances to grow.

·       Does not appropriate action, others, others work, sites or experiences as Art.

·       Doesn’t necessarily look like art but is art-full.

·       Tries to question what is valuable.

·       Asks if it can useful, relevant and is it needed; can it be purposeful?

·       Is crafted, grown, rule finding, risked, developed.

·       Is earnest and serious

and on and on……

I have just read a review of a recognised artist’s exhibition/practice. It said that ….she generated an aesthetic that deftly met the needs of art market and the contemporary institution - it had a consistently and instantly recognisable style and connected to a contemporary critical discourse. These seem useful here and are interesting points to reflect with, so I’ve temporarily adopted them. Our consistent style is the unfinished list above and not an aesthetic one, instead a conceptual/ethical/holistic thing. The contemporary discourse we are connected to is one of…. I don’t know. Steve wonders if it’s pedagogic: to lead the child, but this seems too instrumental, too teacher-ish. But I can see where he’s coming from – to guide, to encourage, to question perhaps? According to others we look to align to participatory theory, social relational ideas, dialogical aesthetics or we are ‘Living as Form’, but these are problematic and ultimately depend on appropriation and we know we don’t want to do that. So what then? A student of mine would say its ideas based.

Instead I wonder if it’s political/resistant, compassionate - a reaction at a meta level to globalised realities, neo liberal approaches, the artworld, local government, government, unconnected thinking, irrelevance….. It is an art that attempts to offer an alternative. It’s connected in part back to the true values of Community Art and when it’s at its best is a catalyst or a trigger. Perhaps in part it also connects to an extended definition of art to Gesamtkunstwerk. I wrote when we were asking ourselves if we were landscape artist that - we were connected to a landscape tradition because being of the world means none of us can be anything else. I kind of now think we are because we can’t be anything else - Wider World Artists.

However, the point is does the work actually talk of this to others? Do they see the continuous line of practice – the consistent style, the political - are we ever clear or too esoteric, too ironic, too ponderous, too modest? Have we ever really understood or thought what we were doing made a difference or was worth it? Have we made enough yet to work it out and have we stopped enough to think? In answer I suspect others aren’t clear and no we haven’t. But I wonder if we had believed enough, had real confidence in the work, thought it did enough, considered ourselves useful enough, made it well enough we would have been further on?

But as we are ‘outside’ and with Hope I feel positive and am prepared to enthuse. As such I think what we have built and grown is potentiality. We have produced an idea that is fecund with possibility. A fertile space, the Poly-Technic, that others are attracted to. Fundamentally we have all together, and I include Amanda in this too, created a space that is generative, alternative, radical, that critiques givens and provides a platform for something new and that’s not just a website?

I was inspired in the night to write some descriptions of us in the style of Art Review. Here they are:

The Poly-Technic has evolved into a platform that crosses multiple displines: one defined by a distinctive methodolgy, based on daily toil, just as a farmer works day by day in the field. As a result the pyhsical boundaries of the Poly-Technic become invisisble, and its artistic activity can be sensed through out the world.

The Poly-Technic, having grown up in the period after 2008, represents a new generation of artist led organisations who waste no time in growing purposeful work and collaborating with wider world partners. The art consists of cross discipline publications, interventions and pedagogic spaces and is normally embedded in local knowledge and global culture, but marked by a strong sociopolitical commentary. The Poly -Technic plays a key role in the creative community supporting young artists to make new work whilst building opportunities that encourage us all to look and think anew.

However I don’t really know how the work has or is been perceived - friends say nice things, I imagine. But I am reminded and kept on my toes by the memory of an old tutor who although successful at receiving funding was considered not relevant and boring; bothered by participant numbers and box ticking and not engaged with the cutting edge of contemporary practice. Whether this is true or not I don’t know? But it does remind me that I walk a thin line, a difficult place that questions where the work works and for who and what I decide to make of that and whether I care? Do I want to be recognised as good, of doing a good job  – of course, by who – everyone! Is it possible? Honestly - no. 

So to the future:

·      To have clarity – clarity of decision, of desire, clarity of vision, clarity of display, audience, ideas, clarity in communication – while leaving room for the clarity provided by chance.

·       I love the work of Phil Collins, the aesthetic, the politics, the generosity, humour and how as audience we are uplifted by the portrayal of people, of lives rescued by culture, of the everyday. I like Jeremy Dellar for his interventions, for his questioning, and like Collins for the recognition of the power of community and desire to build them. But I love others work too, those that just draw, those who just paint, those who build tin Beauty Salons or pointy waymarker signs that don’t need the arrow sign or those who volunteer at homeless shelters, or those that feed cows.  Perhaps some are celebrated more than others for all sorts of reasons by all sorts of audiences/people and that’s something I’m going have to live with - but I will question it.

·       Finish the work in hand, Birdland and that.

·       Create a “Future I love you” weekend away [I’ve decided ‘future I used to love you’ is too sad]. I’m imagining a better way.

·       Write another bid with Steve for the Poly that builds on ideas grown at the ‘Future’ event that puts Wider World Artist at the centre while encouraging partners to fulfil theyre ambitions for it.

Kate Genever.