The Hebe Media team are spending two days filling a large and empty room with ideas and plans for the next few months. Exciting but exhausting times, and I've escaped for five minutes to post this insightful video.
Dutton & Swindells took part in the Writing Encounters event I helped to organise back in 2009, at York St. John University, where they talked about their residency in Korea and the formation of the Institute of Beasts. I've been down to PSL a few times since their residency began in January 2011, and had intended to post something about the way the exhibition has evolved. However, courtesy of the wonderful Axis, you get to hear about the monkey nuts straight from the organ grinder... you will get that if you watch the video!
Screen shot from www.ivy4evr.co.uk, Blast Theory's SMS based collaboration with novelist Tony White
Yesterday I attended one in a series of Cultural Conversations, organised by Emma Bearman (@culturevultures) of Culture Vulture fame, wonderfully facilitated by Mike Chitty (@mikechitty) and bringing together a real range of people from artists, curators and producers, to writers and teachers, to technologists and marketeers.
The day used Open Space methods to get a number of small, participant driven, conversations going about the possibilities for using social media within a contemporary art context.
Due to the unforeseen I only managed to participate in two conversations on the day, both very strongly connected by a question about the possibilities for social media as the medium. Interestingly, this idea seemed to divide the room and draw out some strong voices on either side. On the one hand, there were some who felt that social media platforms, as platforms for something, could only be thought of as a means to an end. On the other hand there were those who seemed excited by the idea that social media could be employed as the context for making valid aesthetic experiences, which engage audiences as the end in themselves.
It is this division, or disjunction, between action (how we use it) and idea (what we use it for), that I have taken away with me; along with a question about how we might begin to reconcile these two positions. Put another way, is the value of social media, in a contemporary art context, only in its use as a communication channel or knowledge sharing tool, or do we want to push it further? Whilst it was clear (and you can see this from a quick review of #artconvo activity) that yesterday's event was a helpful one for many of the folk who attended, I felt the conversation was lacking a dimension because it failed to pursue this line of enquiry.
I should point out immediately that this is not meant as criticism, nor aimed at the organisers or any of the lovely people I spoke to. Rather, this reflection is about trying to understand why us 'arts lot' are so very far behind in our thinking about digital in general.
Before the event @culturevultures tweeted the following: "[w]hich artists (living) would you really like to see on Twitter and why?". My nee-jerk response to this question is that I don't really care which artists are online as long as they have something interesting to say or, even better, something important to show us that will alter the way we think about social media, if only for an instant.
I had attended the event with high hopes that I would hear people speaking about ideas and projects that challenged, pushed or just had fun with social media, as well as hearing from those who champion platforms like Twitter as a valuable tool for communication, promotion, occasional activism, and shameless self-promotion. I wanted to leave feeling a sense of expanded possibility, as well as learning something of the 'how-to-do'. I wanted to think about Twitter and Facebook and Foursquare, and so on, as the means of engaging audiences with art, as art, not just as a means of promoting physical works in physical spaces. In a way, I want social media to help art and ideas find people, not the other way around.
I left last year's Shift Happens event with a similar sense of disappointment about how far we have yet to travel across the digital desert. That event has been going for a number of years now, and it still needed a speaker to spend 20 minutes telling attendees what Creative Commons is. Again, this is not a criticism of an important and well organised event, just a reflection on the distance between our creative community, and others in the design, media and communication industries.
One inspiring thing that sticks with me from Shift Happens 2010, is a provocation made by Andy Field, a director of the Forrest Fringe, who said: "it may be true that no one person can break the internet, but we should all be trying". Field's call wasn't a destructive one; it was a call for us to find the limits, to get radical, in the hope that we might find new and wonder-full ways of making stuff happen. I want the same for all social media.
Perhaps a future Cultural Conversation could learn from Watershed's Theatre Sandbox, we could bring some technology into the space, generate some ideas, and play our part in the conversation about how we take part in the rapid change taking place all around us. Otherwise my fear is that we will miss our chance to be co-creators and innovators, destined only to be users of a system created elsewhere, and for purposes we might one day start to question, seriously.
In the meantime, and as a way of sharing some inspiration, links to a few 'social medium' projects I have found on my travels are included below. Please do send feedback on this post via the comments at the bottom, and if you have other links to projects we should know about please post them there too. Many thanks for reading:
Getting Inside Jack Kerouac's Head "is an idea that is a concept that is a blog that is a book that is an object." (Constant Critic) A performative retyping of the recently published original scroll edition of Jack Kerouac’s beat classic, On the Road, Morris’ project first appeared as an ongoing journey through the book, read and re-typed on a Wordpress blog one page per day. The online archive of Getting Inside Jack Kerouac's Head can be found here: http://gettinginsidejackkerouacshead.blogspot.com/. Copies of codex publication of the blog can be purchased here: http://informationasmaterial.com/iam/.
Ivy4Evr is an SMS drama for teenagers created by Blast Theory, written by Tony White, author of novels including Foxy-T (Faber), and commissioned by Channel 4 Education. Find out more here: http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_ivy4evr.html. After registering your mobile number and email address on the Ivy4Evr website, participants begin to receive SMS messages from Ivy – ranging from quick updates about the minutiae of her life right at that moment, to pleas for help with her dilemmas about friends versus family, college and band commitments. You can reply to Ivy as often as you like, and the more you do, the more you will hear back from her.
The Independent's Information supplement containing a guide to the Best 50 Galleries and Museums, 10 of which were picked by our very own Simon Zimmerman. Click the image to visit the online version of the guide.
On the 23rd of October 2010 the Independent published an "Indy Best" with a guide to the top 50 galleries and museums in Great Britain. When we say Hebe Media made the list, we mean it quite literally... Read on to find out more!
Whilst we here at Hebe Media frown on shameful self-publisicts, we couldn't overlook that fact that 10 of the "50 Best" were picked by our very own office mate, Simon Zimmerman. Simon was invited to join the panel to make a selection for the guide because of his long term commitment to the arts: working for Arts Council England for almost a decade, and helping artists and arts organisations around the country.
Simon was asked to select two venues in each of five categories. "It was incredibly difficult to make a choice", says Simon. "I've been extremely privileged in my work to be able to visit many of our national and regional galleries and museums, as well as many of the artist-led and temporary spaces that exist. There is just so much to be proud of in the country, and I wanted to celebrate all of it. However, the challenge was to pick out 10 of the best, and that is what I have attempted to do here."
We've included the full text submitted by Simon, for each of his 10 venues. For the full list of 50, please click the image above and you will be redirected to The Independent's own website...
Big-hitters
BALTIC, Gateshead
BALTIC attracts world-class exhibitions year-round, and has played host to the British Art Show and the Turner Prize. Recent exhibitions include major shows by Yoko Ono, Jenny Holzer, Malcolm McLaren, Martin Parr and Cornelia Parker. It is an international centre for contemporary art and one of the friendliest and most approachable museums in the country.
Whitechapel, London
The jewel in the crown of London’s East End, Whitechapel is recognised around the world as a touchstone of contemporary art. Its doors have been open for more than 100 years, and in that time it has shown work by modern masters, from Picasso to Pollock. In more recent times, a masterful expansion of its galleries has enabled the Whitechapel to host major shows by contemporaries, like last year’s ‘Talking to Strangers’ by Sophie Calle.
Family friendly
New Art Gallery Walsall
Britain is a world leader in gallery education, and New Art Gallery Walsall is an example of why. In the first ten years of being open to the public more than 48,000 school children visited its galleries, and 23,000 people of all ages participated in one of its many educational activities. For family explorers, young and old, there is a unique interactive gallery space called Disco, and there are multi sensory sessions for parents to spend time with babies too.
Nottingham Contemporary
The iconic Nottingham Contemporary is one of the most exciting gallery spaces in the UK, and has attracted more than 200,000 visitors since it opened at the end of last year. It already has a strong track record of offering well considered programmes for people of all ages, and over the Summer of 2010 it pushed the boat out with a programme of free activities for families, children and teenagers, including a 12 metre tall interactive photo booth inspired by the recent Diane Arbus exhibition.
Specialist
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield
Image from: http://hapsical.blogspot.com/2010/09/artist-david-nash.htmlYorkshire Sculpture Park’s spectacular landscape, and award winning gallery spaces each play their own part in making this one of the few places in the world able to host major, large-scale sculpture exhibitions like the current review of Welsh sculptor, David Nash’s 40-year career. With the stunning Hepworth Gallery (also in Wakefield) opening in 2011, and the Henry Moore Institute in the heart of Leeds’s cultural quarter, Yorkshire is celebrating its reputation as the birthplace of modern sculpture.
FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), Liverpool
The future is digital! The team at FACT know this and are dedicated to delivering outstanding and thought provoking exhibition programmes, for people of all ages who want to engage with the possibilities of tomorrow’s digital and interactive art, film and media landscape.
Small but perfectly formed
Shandy Hall, Coxwold
Formerly the home of celebrated writer Laurence Sterne, and now a museum dedicated to his legacy and continuing contribution to the arts, Shandy Hall is nestled in the picturesque village of Coxwold, North Yorkshire. Through exhibitions and artists’ residencies, the museum seeks to explore how the experimental spirit of previous generations of artists, like Sterne, can help us to unlock the work of contemporaries and vice versa. The current exhibition, The Perverse Library, is the first of its kind in Britain, and contains works of ‘conceptual writing’ by Kathy Acker, Kenneth Goldsmith, Pavel Buchler and others, from a generation of artists who have sought a radical reconsideration of the relationship between literature and the visual arts.
Artsway, Sway
The South East is a rich hive of contemporary art activity and set in The New Forrest National Park, Artsway is one of the cornerstones. It began life as the vision of a group of local artists, working from self-made studios in an abandoned old coach house, for a high quality exhibition space. Now a purpose-built and architecturally important gallery, Artsway is best known for commissioning new work; hosting residencies that push the development of artistic practice; and showing work by well-known and emerging artists, including Richard Billingham, Anne Hardy, Jordan Baseman, Alex Frost and Gayle Chong Kwan. Since 2005, Artsway has been re-presenting commissioned work at the Venice Biennial, and has built an international reputation for artistic excellence.
Alternative
Grizedale Arts, Grizedale
Grizedale Arts is based in the central Lake District, just round the corner from John Ruskin’s final resting place, and is committed to exploring how contemporary art and artists (the Grizedale Arts alumni is a who’s who of contemporary art) can contribute to the social, cultural and economic context within which the organisation operates. Strictly speaking, this is not a gallery or a museum. However, its groundbreaking approach might just provide a model for the cultural institutions of tomorrow.
Simon asked us to include this short video made by Juneau Projects, and commissioned by Grizedale.
The Study Room, Live Art Development Agency, London
The protagonists of body centred performance and Live Art have been the producers of some of the most significant documents and artefacts of contemporary art. Indeed, the document has become a kind of site for performance. The Live Art Development Agency has been something of an expert hunter-gatherer in this field and the free, open access Study Room provides a gateway into this provocative and challenging world.
Click here to visit the Independent's online version of the guide...
I know the Hebe Arts pages are getting top-heavy with information about the current exhibition of conceptual writing at Shandy Hall, and I promise to shift focus soon enough. But, whilst the air is filled with excitement about what is going on under Laurence Sterne's roof I thought I'd flag up an article in this week's Independent, which acknowledged The Perverse Library exhibition and recognised the immediacy of conceptual writing in art today.
The article, 'Trouble at Mall' was a critique of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), London: an organisation founded in 1946 to provide a space for the artistic and intellectual avant-garde to meet, exchange and exhibit. In its heyday the ICA was a hot-bed for experimental, provocative and often controversial work. However, in recent years, the article suggests, contemporary art has lost the need for a gatekeeper and the ICA has been left struggling with it's identity and relevance. Kind of ironic, for an organisation whose outgoing leader, Ekow Eshun, said roughly the same about Live Art when he cut off the ICA's support for the artform?
Have a read and post any thoughts in the comments below - is there still a place for the ICA?
Take special notice of the reference to 'conceptualism' towards the end (copied below) and if you haven't already, visit writingencounters.org today and book you place on the free bus tour from York train station to Shandy Hall.
"What is decidedly avant-garde is conceptualism in a quite different art form – literature. Visit Shandy Hall in Yorkshire, where Laurence Sterne wrote his experimental novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, and one will encounter the first exhibition in Britain of conceptual writing. Conceptual writers sometimes steal from other writers, reordering their text and jumbling it up. Bringing together conceptual art and language, this movement has led to fierce attacks from conventional authors. Influenced by Sterne himself (who plagiarised and rearranged passages) and writers like James Joyce, one leading figure in the movement says conceptual writing “seeks to ask what would a non-expressive poetry look like? A poetry of intellect rather than emotion.” Conceptual writing determinedly makes no claim on originality. It includes a transcription of a year’s weather reports and, in the case of one conceptual writer, the simple repetition of the sentence “I will not make anymore boring art.” It’s fitting that the house where one of the world’s most famous experimental novels was written is in the forefront of avant-garde literature." Read more...
Wednesday, March 16, 2011 at 5:10PM 
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