New Work Network

Critical Communities roundtable discussion, Writing Encounters (York St John University Sep 08)

Posted by: NWN

Posted by: NWN

Writing Encounters (York St John University 11-14 Sept 08) is an international symposium for writing artists, researchers, curators, producers and teachers who have an interest in the encounter between art, writing and performance, as well as the way in which forms of writing are currently changing in response to new technologies and networks. The conference website: www.thespacebetweenwords.org and www2.yorksj.ac.uk/default.asp?Page_ID=5570&Parent_ID=2349

At Writing Encounters Open Dialogues and New Work Network will host 'Critical Communities' a roundtable discussion for all delegates that asks;
* what kind of encounters do artists and writers have?
* What relationships do existing structures enable writers and artists to have?
* What is produced in these encounters?
* How can such critical relationships be safeguarded within artistic communities?

As an online community of members involved in the production of new, interdisciplinary and live work, the New Work Network membership is at the front line of the debate concerning the conditions of such textual, critical encounters.

This Critical Communities forum is the online writing pad that will inform this debate. It is also a chance for those members who are unable to get to York to participate in the debate before, during and after the conference.

We hope you will contribute your personal experiences, thoughts or examples and ensure your voice is heard.


Open Dialogues and NWN

Edited by NWN on 5/9/2008 15:27:16
Edited by NWN on 3/2/2009 12:08:02

Critical Communities

Posted by: rachellois

Posted by: rachellois

Posted by: rachellois


As writers, readers, artists, teachers, critics, curators or publishers New Work Network Members are involved in the production and dissemination of new, live and time-based work and are implicated in the inter-related act of writing about it.

The relationships and encounters we have with writing, art and performance take many forms and produce various outcomes. But the encounter itself; the physical and temporal event of writing oN/as performance and the political, ideological and critical aspects it embodies, is frequently subsumed in written, performed or artistic products. Moreover, the practical aspects and critical implications of such encounters often remain implicit within artistic communities.

Critical Communities aims to make these encounters explicit. The questions for artists and writers alike are: What is at stake when critical writing takes new work as its subject and object? What do you think happens or is produced when new work artists and writers come together? How can the related act of making new work and writing about it be re-configured? Can we - artists and writers of new work - change the way we work together?

Critical encounters
What kinds of encounters do artists making new work have with critical writers and writing? What kind of encounters are possible? What encounters are desirable?

The product
What do you think happens or is produced artists and writers come together? Or when critical writing takes new work as its subject and object?

Personal testimony
What are the pitfalls or difficulties in critical writing on or as performance and new work? What are the problems you experience - whether you are writing, or being written about/with/on?

Critical Conditions
What are the pedagogies or conditions of writing – whether art writing, journalism, or theoretical writing- within the public arts and Higher Education sectors? How do such conditions, structures and methods impact upon the practice of writing on and as art?

Making changes
How can live, new media or participatory artists and writers – and the work they produce - bring about new, non hierarchical ways of working together in text? What are the advantages of these approaches? What kind of writing might these approaches produce?



Open Dialogues; critical writing and debate as discourse and practice.

Edited by rachellois on 29/8/2008 15:03:08
Edited by rachellois on 29/8/2008 15:10:58

Re: Critical Communities

Posted by: Hannah_Crosson

Hi Rachel Lois

Well, I find these opening questions very interesting, but also quite difficult to begin to open up and get into!

So I thought I’d take one question at a time:

“What kinds of encounters do artists making new work have with critical writers and writing?

I find that this separation of ‘artist’ and ‘writer’ makes a dynamic that is unequal. I don’t want to start talking about the difference in quality of art to writing, and how one discipline can relate to another, but it is interesting when art becomes ‘remixed’ into text, and ‘authored’ by a writer’s voice.

I guess this has similarities to a photographer’s image of an artist’s work – that the image is the photographer’s ‘work’ and not the artist’s. Manuel Vason, has worked in an interesting way with this, and directly attempted to address this dynamic of ‘maker’ (artist) and documenter/analyst (photographer) by collaborating with artists to ‘make’ images.

Bock and Vincenzi’s ‘Invisible Dances’ is also an interesting example to start unpicking the relationship between artist and writer. As live work can only be seen by a limited number of people, many more people will read about it after the event. With Invisible Dances, an audience member of one described what she was seeing of the performance down the phone, to future audiences, while another sat outside the space and wrote down what she could hear of the performance taking place, so that Invisible Dances as a work exists as a written text and voice recording: www.artsadmin.co.uk/projects/project.php?id=44

Last year, I wrote an essay about Oleg Kulik ‘becoming animal’ through performance, and had to base the whole of my ideas of his work on a few VHS/ DVD clips (available at the Live Art Development Agency’s Study Room) and the amazingly vivid written response of an ‘eye witness’. Through reading her response, I felt excited and unnerved, as if I had gone through the same experience myself. The text was so strong that I still have a memory of it, as though the memory of seeing of Kulik’s work is my own (but of course it is my own memory: of a text, of someone else’s memory, that I then wrote about…)

Here the writers voice is essential in enabling live work to reach wider audiences – and I guess this is a ‘desirable’ encounter between live work/ art work and writing – that text is often so much easier to access and far reaching.

However, there is the other side of the coin: that the writers voice takes on an authority, that can feel greater than the work itself. In reading the eye witness’ response, I had a very clear perspective of the work, but this perspective was from one person, noticeably not the artist himself. When the writer is making a critical response to work, this can be an extremely challenging place for artists.

I have not had another person write about my work, but it would be interesting to hear from artists who have, and how they found this 'encounter'.

Re: Critical Communities

Posted by: joanna

Hi Hannah,

You raise some really interesting points - some of which I will try to expand on here and others I hope to bring to the table at the conference.

The example you gave of the photographer Manuel Vason and how he has attempted to address issues of authorship by collaborating with artists to 'make' images, for me re-emphasises how little 'collaboration' happens in the current critical conditions for writing practice. Does anyone have an example of when a writer and artist have collaborated in the making of writing of text? And is it possible for a joint authorship to occur, when in short, the writer actually writes the article? The obvious format in which 'collaboration' most explicity happens is that of the interview. Particularly in those where both interviewer/interviewee are both quoted in the text and it is their conversation that is recorded (having almost equal input in to the conversation as opposed to brief question, detailed answer). The other example that comes to mind is from the Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin project, where one of the aims of the project was to 'explore the role of criticism in relation to participatory art'. This developed critical writing from writers who were also participants, blurring their role even further: http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog/


Generally speaking however, in the current conditions whereby critical writing takes place, it is more likely that 'art writing, journalism' and even 'theoretical writing' all take place with the writer clearly positioning themselves 'outside' the work and still trying to be as objective as possible in regards to their perspective. Viewing as an 'audience' or spectator, rather than a particpiant, co-maker or co-artist/author of the work. This critical distance is something which I think was entrenched historicaly from the practice of writing 'critiques' whereby the writer approaches the work with as few pre-conceptions, pre-existent relationships or pre-formed opinions of the artist or work as possible. Of course the writer fails before they even lift a pen or touch a key, as it is impossible to approach any work with a clean slate and not to be influenced by our own knowledge and previous experiences. Here, however we are talking about 'critical writing' not critiques, and I think this shift from 'critique to critical' is extremely significant and has opened up the questions posed in Rachel Lois' opening call.

Is it now possible to embrace our close proximity to the work our critical writing is addressing? To acknowledge and address the issues surrounding previous knowledge, personal relationships with artists and immediate communities of which both artist and writer are part of? Is it now possible to ask for an artists collaboration? To work with them before, during and after the performance/action and yet still be critical? Again, referring to the New Life Berlin:Open Dialogues project, I believe it is possible, but as to how this model of participation, consultation and critical writing can work for arts journals, higher education and the publics arts sector is still questionable. As is whether complete co-authorship can take place, with both artist and writer inputting in equal measure. I tend to feel that no matter how much input and collaboration takes place, a piece of text has to belong to its author and 'critical distance' is still an issue of great importance.

Re: Critical Communities

Posted by: mp20

In response to these posts, my question is - what is the function of critical writing?

I think it's very interesting that Joanna picks up on the concepts of authorship and critical distance. I think they have an uneasy presence in contemporary critical writing - they are tolerated but also ignored. We all know (don't we?) that the author is dead and that meaning is contingent. So why do we bother to write or read about art at all?

Someone once told me that when Barthes proclaimed the death of the author, what he actually meant was ‘the birth of the critic’. If the person who produces a work of art has no desire or control over what it means, then it follows that the person who gives an opinion about the work doesn’t need to answer to anybody’s ideas except her own. It all sounds very democratic – cultural objects float around our lives, gathering meaning and momentum whenever we bestow it on them. But the problem is that this renders the whole act of critical debate meaningless. What is the point of writing about something if it’s impossible to reach a consensus? Hasn’t meaning just transferred from the work of art (for example) and onto the critic? And doesn’t that mean that cultural debate simply becomes a matter of who can shout the loudest?

In this context, ‘critical distance’ also becomes redundant, because the critical encounter is located exactly in the lack of distance between subject and object. It is obvious that writing is an act of interpretation, and not one of deliverance. Critical distance is rendered impossible.

Of course, I’m oversimplifying Barthes’ argument, as well as the whole of post-structuralism, but that is the way that it filters into common knowledge. And that’s what I find interesting – how the concepts of authorship and critical distance have been ousted from the mythology that surrounds contemporary writing practice.

Clearly, they are both still integral to the act of writing itself. In a sense, the idea that meaning does not emanate from a work of art means that the identity of the person who writes about it becomes very important – the writer is not a conduit for public opinion, but a mercenary reporting from the line of fire.

At the same time, however, a published text – which is to say, a public text – needs to have something in common with its reader in order to be readable at all. If you think of critical distance as the ability to reflect on an experience from the outside, then this is the kind of communicative structure that has to underpin any piece of writing, especially one about art.

What is the point of critical writing in all this confusion? What do artists want from it? Why do writers want to write it? What do readers stand to gain? I think it is worth returning to the act of writing as a specific type of cultural activity to answer these questions. (I'll leave that for someone else to try ...)

Re: Critical Communities

Posted by: Hannah_Crosson

Phew…what a lot of stuff to think about.

I like the point of the ‘death of the author’ and how Barthes would see that the ‘meaning’ of a work cannot be explained by the ‘maker’ of the work, but the meaning exists in the minds (and body/emotions?) of the viewer/reader. I just checked out the death of the author, and lovely wikipedia brought up a good article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_author and put it like this:

“Every work is "eternally written here and now," with each re-reading, because the "origin" of meaning lies exclusively in "language itself" and its impressions on the reader.””

I wanted to mention in my first post, that I was very struck by a woman who was studying the same course as me last year, when she said (she is a photographer) that she wanted to learn how to write with more confidence and find better ways of writing about her own work, as she felt disempowered that other people were writing about her work and imbuing it with meanings that weren’t her own. She was quite irate about it, and I was left wondering whether artists can or should stake a claim to the meaning of their works? If Barthes is right in what he says (and I think he is), then why are artists so encouraged and hungry to write about their own work? Is it to claim back some sense of authorship? Is it to ring fence what the work is about – create a territory of meaning? Why are we all hung up on this?

For me it comes back to language being about power, and how artists engage with languages which in turn define their work, whilst also making it “easier to access and far reaching”. I think it is also a trend of the moment in a way – in the sense that within art school education, you are encouraged to write about your work, you write it’s meanings and ‘value’ for Arts Council applications, you communicate about it by way of artists biogs, statements on the gallery wall, in the programme notes…etc

But there is also another use for critical writing for artists: to engage in a structure, that written language demands, forces and then enables you to opporate your brain in a very different way than creating art works – it allows other things to come in, new ideas and perspectives that can in turn enrich the work you make. The question of whether artists are making 'critical writing' when they write about their own work is tricky and assumes that artists can't be critically distant enough (objective enough) to write critically about their own work. But I think this assumes that we cannot make critical distance within ourselves. Critical 'distance' with oneself can be a creative process, for example Richard Layzell’s recent project with Tanya Koswycz: http://www.rescen.net/publications/cream_pages.html

On another note....The lovely wikipedia article mentioned above also suggests that with the ‘Death of the Author’ comes the birth of the reader. I think this – the act/ desire to read, goes someway to responding to your questions Mary…

Re: Critical Communities

Posted by: charlfox

Hannah, Mary
I was struck by the idea of writing as a performative or creative act and by Rachel's thoughts on collaborations between writers or writing and artists or artworks. As much of this kind of collaboration should be encouraged (more of this please)it does come up against the wall of language, of published words and authority.
With new technology and web it seems some of the authority of publication has diminished but this open access still doesn't address the frustrations Hannah talks about. How could we encourage more crossover between writing and performing etc? Break down the ownership of the author (writer) and the artist (maker).

Charlie

Re: Critical Communities

Posted by: joanna

I think Barthes is very important here. I didn't get chance to input in to the live round table event at the symposium, but I was going to add was very much along these lines. I have posted it below:

I often see the relationship between artist and audience as one that opens up an 'ideological transaction', a dialogue that occurs in the moment of performance. Meaning is not prescribed by the artist, but is something created in the meeting of both artist/performer with audience/spectator. This is even more evident in Live performance as audience react to artist and artist reacts to audience. They are both operating in the time and space of the performance and therefore both have a direct input in to any 'meaning' that is created.

Thinking along these lines therefore, I would argue that the critical writer both notates and documents the event of performance, but also the writings critical, they continue this cultural dialogue and creation of meaning. Throwing the discussion back out to a wider readership and possibly back to the artist. Because of the formality and structure of writing however, I think the authority and power in the written word, somehow mean it is read as often the end of the conversation, and this is not necessarily the intention of the writer.

The current way in which readers respond to writing is usally informally in conversation, email or via online 'comments' to blog posts. As Charlie pointed out, the ability to respond to writing is now also becoming more attainable on the web, and a good example of how a piece of critical writing has lead on to a wider cultural discussion is Germaine Greers blog 'Artists Self -Mutilation' to site one example:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/artblog/2008/feb/11/artistsselfmutilationisdull

Is there any way writers could ask for or encourage more formal responses to their writing? And is this likely to ever have the same response as online blogs? Perhaps artists and writers could work in news to foster an ongoing dialogue beyond the performance and beyond the first piece of writing?

Re: Critical Communities

Posted by: joanna

Sorry if some of this post doesn't make complete sense, I somehow ended up not logged in and had to post this message again.

In the final paragraph it should read 'Perhaps artists and writers could work in new ways' and not 'news'

Joanna

Re: Critical Communities

Posted by: rachellois

Great posts so far. The symposium Writing Encounters has now been and gone but the work I saw there- both in text and performance, has certainly left an indelible mark on me as a practitioner.

A big thank you to everyone who contributed to the 'Critical Communties' roundtable we held. In the context of the symposia, with its equal focus on theory and practice, the discussions in the roundtable were really pertinent to the kinds of writing encounters artists and writers have with each other, art and writing.

We will be following up what was said at the roundtable in another post really soon, but for now I wanted to do a cheeky plug (!) and let everyone know about an informal talk Mary and I will be giving at Limoncello Gallery on Monday 29th as part of their Punctuation Programme.

The talk relates to our thinking regarding a new model of critical writing, one that encourages the kind of close working partnerships we have been discussing here on this forum. The talk is in part informed by Open Dialogues' presentation at Writing Encounters (excerpts of which we will post online for those who are interested to read) and is based on our own encounters as writers.

I hope those of you who have been following this forum might come along and join in, details at http://open-dialogues.blogspot.com/2008/09/limoncello-open-dialogues-29-september.html