New Work Network

Critical Communities: Dialogue Project

Posted by: NWN

Critical Communities is a dialogue, discussion and writing project that will explore and expand what it means to be critical in writing on and as new work (live and interdisciplinary art).

Critical Communities will run from February to May 2009, and will take place through face to face meetings and online. The project will culminate in a print-on-demand publication, produced by the writers and artists involved in Critical Communities, to be published in 2009.

Critical Communities is designed to generate debate around the ways we critically engage and communicate live and interdisciplinary arts practices. For more information on this project see here

Participants have applied to take part in this project and will use this forum space to continue and develop discussions in between the live meetings taking place between February and March. Members who aren't involved as participants can still engage in Critical Communities by taking part in these forum discussions.

Re: Critical Communities: Dialogue Project

Posted by: rachellois

We are pleased to announce the participants of the collaborative critical writing project Critical Communities.

The London Critical Community includes Emma Bennett, David Berridge, Chloe Dechery, Rikke Hansen, Tim Jeeves, Emma Leach, Bill Leslie, Johanna Linsley, Mary Paterson, Jim Prevett and Cally Spooner.

The Yorkshire Critical Community includes Rachel Lois Clapham, Emma Cocker, Amelia Crouch, Joanna Loveday, Charlotte Morgan and Nathan Walker. With special guest provocateurs Sohail Khan, Alfredo Cramerotti and Derek Horton.

Together the participants represent a community of new work/writing practitioners who will meet regularly in London and Yorkshire to discuss notions of 'the critical' in relation to critical writing both on and as new work. We will be critiquing our own art/writing and that of others, examining alternate critical modes both on and off the page and collaboratively developing a publication. The community will also act as a sustained network for experimental writing/new work practitioners in the London and Yorkshire areas.


The Critical Community members are each profiled here on the NWN website, and will use this forum space to share their thoughts.


Critical Communities has been developed by Open Dialogues and New Work Network (NWN) and is supported by East Street Arts, The London Consortium and Space.

Re: Critical Communities: Dialogue Project

Posted by: rikkehansen

Critical Communities, The London Group
Notes from our first meeting, 24.02.09
(compiled by Johanna Linsley and Rikke Hansen)


Present:

Emma Bennett, David Berridge, Chloe Dechery, Tim Jeeves, Emma Leach, Bill Leslie, Cally Spooner, Johanna Linsley, Rikke Hansen, Hannah Crosson and Mary Patterson


The group:

After a brief introduction it became clear that our group consists of a diverse bunch of people. Some are involved in art making, some mainly consider themselves to be writers, whilst others are keen to break down the distinction. However, what unites us is that we are all eager to question what we do and how we do it, that we are, in short, 'critical' of our own practice. So, in order to discuss this idea of being critical as something that unites us, we divided into two sub-groups for the evening. Our task was to engage in a collective brainstorm by bringing together our, nonetheless quite different, understandings of the terms 'critical' and 'community'.

What follows here is a brief summary of what the individual groups discussed:


'Sub-group near the door':

We started out by talking about the term 'critical'. It turned out that we had quite different understandings of the notion; yet, it was these differences that sparked the dialogue and it felt like we could go on discussing the issue for a long time. We quickly decided that this diversity was a good thing and that what we wanted from Critical Communities was a forum in which all these different approaches to critical practice could meet.

Firstly, we talked about general definitions of art criticism as something applied to the artwork from the outside. This idea was countered by a notion of self-critique or self-reference in which the artwork or the text incorporates its own critique. A question that popped up was what it might mean for a work to be in a state of 'crisis' or in a 'critical condition'. We then went on to make distinctions between different historical notions of critique, from a Kantian critique, to cultural and social critiques. We also talked about a possible relationship between performativity and criticality, as a way of escaping the internal self-referentiality of the Greenbergian mordern artwork and moving towards a reflexivity in writing/artmaking that is both about itself but also addresses the role of the reader, viewer and so on.

We agreed that being 'critical' was an activity rather than an essential quality of the work, a 'doing' rather than a 'being' as such. In this sense, we did not wish to reduce critique to a universal set of rules. Yet, some still felt it was useful to investigate the dialectics between a general, abstract notion of critique and the different, actual forms such critique might take (reviews, features, etc.). We agreed to disagree on this matter.

Then we turned our attention to the term 'community'. We were handed the notes from the other sub-group (just like they received our notes on the term ‘critical’). It was interesting to see how different it was to work on top of existing notes and we reflected on how that in itself was a way of being thrown into a community beyond our own sub-group. Our debate was also very guided by the fact that we had already discussed the term 'critical' so we were keen on finding a way of being critical within a community but still be part of the community itself. We talked about the possibility of being united by common interests, yet separated by conflicting goals. Another word that came up was 'hospitality' as a way of welcoming difference. We also talked about communities in flux and discussed what might make a community different from other types of groups (a family, a club, etc.), and whether a community is defined from the inside or the outside; that is, whether a comminuty needs an 'outside' to exist.


'Sub-group near the window':

We talked about 'community':

Let’s find a beginning to start at.

Community is people. Maybe that’s basic. No it seems good to say. Community is human.(Human is community? Wait, we’re not there yet).

Care in the community. Community is contributing to community. I’m part of the ‘Hackney Community’ if I contribute to its mechanisms.

Community is recycling.

Community is an event. The man upstairs dies, and everyone in the building clears out his flat. All of a sudden we know we’re supposed to know each other.

Community is a place. It may not 'be' all the time, but it has to 'be' somewhere: town hall, church, blog. What about the ‘gay community’? What about the 'deaf community'? Does community make identity spatial? Is that a problem?

Is community community? Or is it always communities? Does there need to be an outside? Does that outside threaten? Does 'in' a community mean marked as 'not-out' of the community?

We talked about 'critical':

A para-definition: 'critical' as 'crucial' as 'urgent'. A proper definition: critical as a careful and precise analytic. A bitchy definition: nice shoes... *eyebrow cocked*

A deeply attractive proposal: a return to the clarity of chains of analytic propositions. Analytic propositions contain their own truth value. Remember? Perfect. Let’s apply analytic chains to objects. Let's get somewhere real and practical and concrete and inarguable. Let's get on with it. Let’s care for the object. Let’s take the object on its own terms. Let’s talk terms.

Terms like analytic and truth value and object. Oh right. What are those again?

Wait. Let's not reinvent discourse. Let's not reinvent the object. Let's have a provisional object. We'll all agree that it's temporary, and we’ll care for it, and then we'll practice 'critical' on it, and then we'll take it away, and then we'll know what 'critical' is.

Ok maybe no object. What about just critical? Critical as attitude. Critical as camp. (Camp as critical?)

Ok but also not critical as attitude as art school students performing 'mean to each other'.

'Care', too, please.

What does that mean?


Final Thoughts:

As the time ran out on these discussions, it was apparent that each group had only just begun to clear an area for thought. Upon comparing notes, we also realized that both areas overlapped in key ways. Particularly, there seemed to be a recurring interest throughout the room in the tension between 'inside' and 'outside'. This interest applied both to the conversation on 'critical' and 'community'. Do we need 'inside' and 'outside' to think the concepts of 'critical' and 'community'? What are the implications of that? Are there other ways to think?

'Performativity' is also a common concern. 'Critical' and 'community' as activity, or even attitude, seems a useful mode to develop. For instance, while we seem to agree that 'performativity' helps solve a problem of 'universality' or 'essence', there was some question in the room about what might have been lost in abandoning those latter notions.

We ended the first meeting by making a plan for documenting the discussions here, with the aim of developing these strands further before we meet again in two weeks time. We then extended the conversation to a pub down the street.


Johanna and Rikke

Re: Critical Communities: Dialogue Project

Posted by: emmaleach

Posted by: emmaleach

This was an interesting exercise - surprisingly interesting. I love language and definitions but don't like it when a subject is talked into abstraction. I felt we managed to keep it all to a helpful, practical level for most of the time and churned up some surprising stuff. I definitely feel like I have a richer understanding of the words 'critical' and 'community' now. A couple of things I've been thinking of since:

COMMUNITY
Through the whole discussion I was struggling to think of examples of community that related to me. I guess I feel English, but we all decided that didn't really count. I feel very much a product of my family, with a shared set of values and responsibilities, and that I suppose could count as a community. At least it's a way that I'm defined - I call myself a Leach. Otherwise, part of the artistic community? I would say yes, others no. Does anyone else feel like this community business doesn't really chime with them?

CRITICAL
We talked very briefly about the definition of critical as something unconstructive like, "I don't like your shoes." We talked a lot longer about the dictionary definition of critical. Something that really interests me is the tension between these two definitions. A similar thing has happened with the word "argument" - the cultural understanding of this word is negative, rather than exploratory. Any thoughts? I wonder is there is a reaction here against informed debate and the elitism that can often come with it, changing these discursive words that should be quite neutral into meanings that are aggressive and unpleasant.

Edited by emmaleach on 2/3/2009 23:35:39

Re: Critical Communities: Dialogue Project

Posted by: rikkehansen

Some interesting thoughts Emma...

I find it difficult to separate ‘critical’ and ‘community’ in this respect. Or maybe that should be ‘critical’ and ‘context’. Whenever I am commissioned to write a review I always seem to be working up against a limit (overall style of the journal, general readability, word count, deadlines, etc.). I don’t think that necessarily inhibits my ability to be critical; at times I think criticality comes from pushing against existing limits (ok, I don’t include word count and deadlines in those limits). So, being critical also demands an awareness of context – of the community for and from which one writes. When I write reviews or catalogue essays, I generally find myself on the side of, not the beholder, but a beholder. This singularity is important to me because it turns writing into an event. The event-structure of certain forms of writing is also, I think, a crucial element of a text’s critical potential; it allows the writer/reader to be ‘in’ the situation, as opposed to simply looking in from the outside.

There is a paragraph (§ 47) in Adorno’s Minima Moralia that starts with the sentence ‘de gustibus est disputandum’. My Latin is a bit rusty but I think it translates into something like ‘one should dispute about taste’. Which is of course the opposite of the more dismissive: ‘that’s “just” a matter of taste’ – a statement which seems to imply that taste is something merely subjective, meaning that one cannot really dispute about taste. It is also crucially different from a definition that sees taste as being something universal or, for that matter, belonging to an elite of taste-makers. Today, ‘taste’ is of course a rather strange word; it already sounds dated and horribly Kantian. What I am referring to here, however, is the kind of taste that is exercised whenever one makes a claim to being critical, from the basic ‘I like’ or ‘I don’t like’, to a more in-depth sense of critique. And then there is the subsequent call to communicate such ‘claims to taste’ in critical writing, which is what interests me. What I would like to do is to write in a way that opens up the aesthetic question of ‘taste’ by inserting the text/argument like a wedge into an on-going debate, without universalising or essentialising notions of aesthetic judgment. In that sense I want to ‘dispute about taste’. I wouldn’t say I always manage to do that though. Far from. But this is why I am excited about taking part in the Critical Communities Dialogue Project.

Rikke

Re: Critical Communities: Dialogue Project

Posted by: rachellois

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to -really briefly- re-cap what we discussed in Yorkshire on the 25th Feb- something for the rest of our group to spark off maybe?.....

Together, we discussed what 'the critical' and also 'being critical' might mean to us as a group.

We talked about groundlessness and presupposition in terms of how criticality may well not be the outcome of accumulative knowledge, how a suitable set of clear critical ‘tools’ may well never be developed, how the critical might be an undoing, or need to remain unarticulated-able. In relation to this we talked about the importance of doubt and the role of the skeptic. We talked a post theory position towards the critical- about enacting or ‘living out’ the embedded, active nature of the critical in relation to academic practice and thought. Conflict - the idea that the critical is pushing off or away from something existing, as per the Karl Popper quote from his paper ‘Science; conjectures, refutations’ in Twenty Questions: an Introduction to Philosophy, “A critical attitude needs for its raw material, as it were, theories or beliefs which are held more or less dogmatically” What might ‘the critical’ be pushing away from here and now? The element of risk and its counterpart- care- were discussed, as was the negative, or other of critical the ‘un-critical- and aspects of exclusivity in relation to critical practice and our activity as a critical community (who and what is an uncritical community). As well as discussing our own work, we made specific reference to texts by Irit Rogoff, Adrian Rifkin, Alain Badiou, Karl Popper, Merlau Ponty and Hannah Arendt- an eclectic mix of the old and the new, the fashionable and the not so.

Clearly a gloss on the evening bordering on parody! But what I did want to include here on the forum was the writing exercises we agreed to do for the next session on the 11th. Where we will be bringing texts along, presenting our current work, and discuss being critical on the page.

You asked me to select an exercise - I have chosen Exercise No. 28 ‘Autopilot’ from Charles Bwrnstein’s Writing Experiments http://www.writing.upenn.edu/bernstein/experiments.html, Bernstein’s is a list of text experiments that were inspired by Bernadette Mayers’ Journal Ideas, http://www.writing.upenn.edu/library/Mayer-Bernadette_Experiments.html

“ Trying as hard as you can not to think or consider what you are writing, write as much as you can as fast as you can without any editing or concern for syntax, grammar, narrative, or logic. Try to keep this going for as long as possible: one hour, two hours, three hours: don't look back don't look up”.

There are loads of good ones to choose from, but ‘Autopilot’ might fit well with bringing about an awareness of the present, a being in the moment, or a way to perhaps bring about some groundlessness? – who knows. Let’s all stick to 30 mins writing time for the exercise- for the sake of parity between our contributions. I like the idea of presenting the texts raw and unedited- as you thought them in that moment, i;e no tweaking, polishing or editing. But up to you. We can all read our contributions out on the 11th for those who have done it.

Leaving you with two quotes to spur us all on ‘til next time:


Pablo Picasso: 'Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working'

Ernest Hemmingway: ' First drafts are shit. They are, however, necessary shit'

Re: Critical Communities: Dialogue Project

Posted by: joanna

Thanks Rachel, I was looking to write a summation of our first meeting, but you did a great job.

A couple of other things I would like to throw in to the mix that I found really interesting at our first meeting:

1)Criticism (as it exists in journals/art press at present) is outmoded. This was an idea thrown forward that I somehow grasped onto. If we are responding to new work our writing must also be more contemporarily 'critical'. This 'outmodedness' seemed to provide both a reason as to why stigma and negativity could be attached to current forms of criticism, as well as setting writers a challenge; are writers working in the new work sector, interested in this project questioning criticality, precisely because they are interested in new work? This would encourage a new style of written response to new work from those on the project. Rather than examining the 'review' or journal article, how can our community look into new critical responses to new work? For me, how critical writing can respond to the work in as current and fresh a mode as possible is an exiting prospect, and with this in mind, the possibilties of where writing can go from this platform are numerous...

2)We talked about the triangular relationship between artist, curator and writer. Where the power exists or is eluded to exist, and how these roles merge and cross (often artists are curators, writers are artists, curators are writers, or all three etc.)We also went on to talk aboout critical writing as an artistic practice in itself. Moving away from 'straight criticism' and expanding notions of what criticism could be. Could it shift away from writing into art? Could our writing be as much as part of our practice as our art?

3)Do we have to unlearn criticism to learn how to be truly critical? And how would you attempt this?

I mentioned at the meeting I am partilcarly interested in writing that breaches the gap between academic, artistic and critical writing. I am also keen to look at how far these relationships (between writer/artist/curator) can be pushed until they snap/break/become dysfunctional. When are you too close to a piece of work or an artist that you are unable to write critically about the work? And if your writing is revealing in other ways, is this not as valied as a critical/ objective opinion? These are some of the questions I will be thinking about over the next week.

I also mentioned the article on Critical Writing on AN. For those who haven't seen it go to:http://www.a-n.co.uk/interface/article/379627

Joanna

Re: Critical Communities: Dialogue Project

Posted by: rikkehansen

Posted by: rikkehansen

Hi Joanna,

Taking the opportunity here to set up a dialogue between the two ‘Critical Communities’...

I think you – and the Yorkshire group - have got a point about ‘reviews’ and ‘journal articles’ being somewhat outmoded forms of critical writing. Although I think you can still be critical within them (in the constructive sense).

What I generally miss though, is the dialogical aspect of writing. A journal’s letters page is there to provide some sort of dialogue between readers and writers; yet, this rarely happens; most of the time it ends up being little more than insider bickering. In this sense, such formats for writing remain rather fixed. Also, the kind of institutional reflexivity that one finds on the letters page may very well serve to domesticate critique, by showing that journals are willing to question their own editorial politics, thereby taking the 'sting' out of any counter-arguments. There is no easy answer to this problem. It seems to be part of that old chestnut of institutions, galleries, museums, etc, incorporating their own (post-Duchampian) critique. But it does call for a redefinition of critique, for other ways of being critical.

There are, of course, a small number of journals which do play around with format, but they are far between. When I say, in post #5, that what I want to do is to push up against existing limits – and, in this sense, turn these restraints into something that also enables critical writing - I should probably add that this ‘pushing up against’ is, of course, itself limited by the fact that most journals do not welcome it, or only welcome it in small amounts. Which leaves one, as a writer, to go in search of a journal that ‘fits’ with one’s writing (god, that sounds a bit sad). But it is of course far more daring, interesting and worthwhile to try to change the format itself and come up with something new. And, yes, I think this is a key challenge which we should take on as part of the Critical Communities Dialogue Project.

Rikke

Edited by rikkehansen on 5/3/2009 23:44:24

Re: Critical Communities: Dialogue Project

Posted by: emmaleach

Rikke, I liked what you said about the letter pages. I love reading them, but I always forget and get out of the loop - then they can seem impenetrable.

An obvious format to use is this forum! If you're interested in dialogue-as-writing, this exercise jumped out from one of the writing exercise links (thanks rachellois):

"Create a collaborative journal: musical notation and poetry; two writers alternating days; two writing about the same subject each day, etc."

We could try out an adapted version of this for writing critically as a community?

Re: Critical Communities: Dialogue Project

Posted by: timmyfatlips

Having just made the time to take in a number of the issues raised in the thread so far, I figure an appropriate moment for my tuppen’worth to be tossed into the mix may have arrived.

I wholeheartedly agree with you Rikke that one of the most exciting opportunities present in the Critical Communities project is to dialogue about possible new forms of critique. Forms that reflect more appropriately the evolving nature of new work. It feels appropriate to have as something that lingers at the back of our communal mind as the project unfolds.

As Emma suggests, a good starting point in experimenting with this idea are Bernstein’s writing experiments, or our own variations of them. Using these as critical tools to explore an idea, a reaction to a work, the notion of criticism itself, all this feels suspiciously exciting.

I think your suggestion sounds great Emma, I’d definitely be up for doing something along those lines with you, and with as many other people feel like joining in. And hopefully the London group are also up for doing the half hour of automatic writing.

I’ve often found that my preference for an artwork is one that is accessible but operates on a number of levels beyond this. Which isn’t to say that elitism and essential prior knowledge is inherently negative, but that it is exclusive, and more often than not, unnecessarily so.

Similarly, I’m interested in criticism that operates in a number of dimensions and there does seem to be, perhaps more so than in artworks themselves, a greater need for knowledge of external references in criticism than in new work itself.
What about forms of criticism that cross into more everyday forms of writing? Fridge notes / shopping lists, jokes, comic strips? What could be said differently if these forms were used?

Deadlines do suck, but I quite like word counts.