The art of giving lightly

This essay discusses the relationship between teachers and students in art school with particular reference to the author’s educational experience and the knowledge gained from informal learning

A lick: the performances of Angela Bartram

This short essay discusses the performances of artist Angela Bartram whose practice involves interactions with animals which often evoke revulsion in audiences

Art and money: experience destruction exposure

In no other area of human activity is the relationship between production and money as perverse as in the art world. The peculiarity of this relationship may be responsible for the appreciative failure of much of contemporary art and in particular conceptual art. If value is attached to ‘intrinsic’ qualities of an object it would be hard to justify the high prices attached to contemporary artwork. This however raises interesting questions as to the extent to which it is possible to separate economic from other values in art. There have been numerous attempts to break the link between art and money - Roger Fry’s Omega Workshop experiment, offered participants a guaranteed minimum income to free them from economic pressure. Commencing with Art and Commerce in 1926 Fry explored this relationship in a series of publication. In 1971, the Art Workers’ Coalition produced a statement of demands which asked for a small measure of what Fry had offered artist fifty years earlier. In the 1960s and 70s, there was a proliferation of highly politicized work challenging the art/commerce relationship, focusing on the dematerialisation of the artwork as a decommodification strategy. In this paper I will explore these strategies, concentrating mainly on the work of three artist:- Lygia Clark, whose ephemeral artwork, made of easily available cheap material, questioned notions of value and the interaction between the object, the spectator and the artist: Hans Haacke whose 1971 exhibition highlighting the hidden relationship between the art world and commerce, was cancelled by the Guggenheim for fear of offending the museum’s patrons: and the auto destructive work of Gustav Metzger. I will analyze the success or failure of the strategies employed by these artists in light of the art world’s tendency to turn anything into a commodity

Ephemeral art: telling stories to the dead

Abstract: The endurance of the form of storytelling and the compulsion to tell them suggests that telling stories is not merely an entertainment, an optional extra which we can chose to engage with or not, but a fundamental aspect of being. We tell stories to construct and maintain our world. When our sense of reality is damaged through traumatic experiences we attempt to repair our relationship with the world through the repeated telling of our stories. These stories are not just a means of telling but also an attempt to understand. Stories are performed and performative; they do not leave us unchanged but can in fact motivate us to act. They are not merely about things that have happened, but are about significant events that change us. Through our stories we demonstrate that we have not only had experiences but that those experiences have become part of one’s knowledge. In this essay O’ Neill will explore the potential of objects to tell a story, the object that is both the subject of the story and the form of telling. Two ephemeral art works will be considered: Domain of Formlessness (2006) by British artist Alec Shepley and Time and Mrs Tiber (1977) by Canadian artist Liz Magor. Both works embody the process of decay and tell a story of existence overshadowed by the knowledge of certain death and the telling of the story as a means of confronting that knowledge. The ephemeral art object tells a story in circumstances when there are no words, when we have nothing left to say

Death, art and mortality awareness: images of the dead in contemporary art

‘Death, Art and Mortality Awareness: Images of the dead in contemporary art’ Death, Dying and Disposal Conference, Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University, 2009. Dr. Mary O' Neill University of Lincoln.ac.uk [email protected] The knowledge of love and death can make us whole, it can complete us, or it can overwhelm us. We develop elaborate frameworks and rituals to contain this knowledge, to quieten its voice and to render it manageable. But at times it violently confronts us and we know it in a new way, too urgent, too immediate and physical to be pushed aside. This paper will discuss works of art that represent the moment when information about the death becomes knowledge of death and present the site of knowing - the dead body - not to frighten or shock but to share the knowledge that life experiences offer. Focusing on the work of Thai artist Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook and the exhibition Life before Death which showed the work of Journalist Beate Lakotta and photographer Walter Schels, this paper will explore the risk that the dominant themes in discussions of contemporary art works which show the dead - issues of consent and possible distress to viewers - may be, in Zygmaunt Bauman's terms, overdoing ethics. Ethical concerns can be used in the service not only of death denial but more particularly of the avoidance of the painful emotions inherent in love, bereavement and loss. This suggests a way of viewing the works discussed which goes beyond conceiving of them as what Julia Kristeva calls the abject and which sees mortality awareness as part of love and life

What’s your problem? Performance art and the question of value

Discussion of the role of contemporary performance art

An oral response

A textual response to the performance "An oral response" by Angela Bartra

Entitlement, empathy and the ethics of representation: contemporary art and the appropriation of trauma

Almost every day for a period in the early autumn of 2006 the face of Angelika Kluk peered out from the pages of Scottish newspapers. The 23-year-old student from Skoczow, Poland, was murdered and her body concealed beneath the floorboards of a Glasgow church. In the spring of 2008 the story of Angelika returned to the newspapers, but this time it was a controversy about an artwork, The Other Church, that commemorated her. In this paper I will explore the debate surrounding the exhibition of Wilhelm Sasnal’s 16mm film, The Other Church, as part of the GI (Glasgow International) Festival. The film depicted a naked young woman miming to a song. The lyrics were drawn from statements posted on Polish websites where her murder was discussed. Before the exhibition opened a controversy arose in the press about the appropriateness of a work that focused on the death of Angelika Kluk. On 29 March 2008, the Sunday Herald printed an article entitled ‘Fury over tribute to Angelika’. In Writing History, Writing Trauma Dominick La Capra argues that the after effects of traumatic events are 'not fully owned by anyone, and in various ways, affect everyone' (2001, xi) he also cautions against the conflation of the status of victim and bystander in the representation of trauma (2001, 79). I will focus specifically on the ownership of grief as a consequence of traumatic events and who is entitled to portray that grief. In commemoration there is the possibility that a work of art can be perceived as appropriating trauma and exposing old wounds as well as having the potential to aid healing

Concerning bodies [stream convenors and panel chairs]

The 'Concerning Bodies' stream is a collaboration with Eric Daffron (USA) and Becky McLaughlin (USA) that is part of the London Conference of Critical Thought, Royal Holloway University of London, 6-7 June 2013. The stream has two parallel strands detailed below: Stream Title: Concerning Bodies This stream has two points of focus: firstly, the representation, and ethical implications, of bodies (both human and animal) in visual cultures and, secondly, the account of the body (and body parts) in Lacan and Foucault. Papers are invited that address any of the concerns detailed under these two headings: The Body and Ethics – Dead or Alive (Angela Bartram and Mary O'Neill): The body is an important site for analysis of the physical and the social condition. Whether human or animal, the body provides information and experience that communicates what it is to be alive – even in death. This has made the body a source material to be analyzed, scrutinized, dissected, and surveyed in the pursuit of knowledge. The human and animal body has historically been used in medical studies, art education, as a donor material, for reference, and creative practice. The appropriateness of the use of bodies in medical enquiry has historically been sanctioned because it has educational benefit. Could the same level of permission be applied to artistic enquiry? What legislates the appropriate use of the dead body in anatomy and biomedical classes and procedures? What informs the decision that the life room is a place for studies of the live human body only? What ethics govern artistic studies of the socio-physical body in art education and creative practice? We seek papers that discuss the role of critical theory in our understanding of the use of the body in visual culture both historical and contemporary, including, but not limited to: • somataphobia, • scopophilia, • scopophobia, • dissection, • necrophobia, • taxidermy Body Parts and Partial Bodies; Body Cuts and Cut Up Bodies: Lacanian and Foucaultian Approaches (Becky McLaughlin and Eric Daffron): Both Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault took the body as an object of critical inquiry but explored it in divergent ways. This panel will bring together scholars working from Lacanian and/or Foucaultian perspectives to interrogate not simply the body but, more specifically, parts of the body. Collectively, the papers selected for this panel will aspire to answer, among other questions: How do Lacan and Foucault cut up the body, what new forms of subjectivity emerge when we pay attention to particular body parts, and how can we bring Lacanian and Foucaultian theory to bear on ethical concerns about the body? Topics for paper proposals include but are not limited to: • fragmented bodies and bodily decomposition • mirror stage and self reflection • self-abuse and body cutting • disciplined and "docile" bodies • torture and punishment • "subindividuals" • sexuality, sexuation, and oversexed bodies • "technologies of the self" • the voice, the gaze, and the fetish • spanking and other sex games • amputation and disability • addiction and obsession, medicine and therap

⇔ (A ⇔ B means A is true if B is true and A is false if B is false)

⇔ Bartram and O'Neill Negotiating a collaborative relationship has enormous benefits: a sense of comradery, when the making of art can be an isolating process; the ongoing dialogue and critique that can add confidence to a work when it has been tested by two minds rather than one; the knowledge of shared responsibility. There are also huge risks that can be so great they often remain unspoken: trust, ownership, authorship. In a new work developed for In Dialogue Bartram & O'Neill will explore some of the complications of collaboration in a performance dialogue which will take place on a series of blackboards over the course of a day. This durational work will allow both artists and viewers to reflect on the issues raised by collaborative working through a visual dialogue. The work will take as it starting point a statement make by Bartram & O'Neill which will appear in a forthcoming issue of TAJ Q How is the collaborative relationship of Angela Bartram and Mary O’Neill negotiated? What is the aim? Who initiates, and who is the instigator in developing the work? Does it matter? Bartram: The collaboration transcends the boundaries between performance and its legacy, between the performer and observer, between author and interpreter. Rather than the documentation being produced by an onlooker outside the performance, the generation of an accompanying texts becomes integral to the performance itself. Thereby creating a text that is embedded in the physical experience of the performance. In the case of Oral / Response the repetition and rhythm of the action of crushing the sticks of charcoal and blowing the dust is echoed in the tat-tat-tat thud of inscribing the text on the shared surface. O’Neill: Communication and development are negotiated through a dialogue. The partnership is equal in its response to the varying methods and processes that make up its sum parts. Integral to this performance is the distinction between cooperation and collaboration as defined by Pierre Dillenbourg (1996). According to Dillenbourg, “cooperative work is accomplished by the division of labour among participants, as an activity where each person is responsible for a portion of the problem solving...” whereas collaboration involves the “mutual engagement of participants in a coordinated effort to solve the problem together.” (Dillenbourg, 1996) In collaboration the disciplinary ghettos of performance and documentation are abandoned in favour of a mode of practice that allows for a greater level of mutual critique. Performers work together towards a shared goal, the success of the performance, rather than focus on the individual contribution. To this end auto/ethnography enhances the processes of give and take, self-critique, and improvement that enhance the collaborative synergy