othering

well, we came we saw we presented and were regulary othered.
were back and we had a good if not a hard work time. Thank you lou and kate for input, you were voices and quotes within our talk.
steve will no doubt say that i was negative about our performance but as always in hindsight all things can be improved upon.
However i think we made [or should i say steve more than me] our mark and as such are thinking of turning to radical cartography as a response to the neo liberals!

above is photo of a small section of a collection of botanically correct 3D glass flower and cross sections contained in the Boston Natural History Museum which believe it or not rendered us both speech less for a good 10 minutes!!!

shift from function to meaning

Well it's apparently the most influencial piece of art ever made. Old Duchamps fountain function to meaning in all it's glorious simplisity. Kate Pahl comments on Boston talk so good I need to publish them and final comment very interesting - can we reverse it for the achedemics to make things more interesting are you bringing the Comtempory socially engaged arts practise into the ethnographic project - we must have a new project in here somewhere just need a funder

STEVE

Systems of objects – linking back to the abstract- our worlds are shaped by our interaction with made objects. Kate P explores objects and meaning and objects as collective texts and looks through an ethnographic material culture lens. We explore objects and their personal resonances and meanings through practical making and juxtaposition. This paper presents the notion that through collaboration Artist and ethnographer can work side by side to explore the same area of study and use their distinct approaches to enhance and triangulate research to produce outcomes which have value within both the artistic and academic context. Presenting the idea of validation for art practise within the academy but also the validation and visability of ethnographic research within the sites and communities explored.

Quote Baudrillaud

So perhaps talk about the fact that we are interested in the same thing and open to sharing insights rather than looking for a tool or a resource or something to study.

Set the scene:
Artemis – the background to residency, why academics
Background to our practice, what as artists do we do.

Conversation bit:
Kate we want you in this conversation – we intend to flash up paragraphs on a power point, so you become part of the conversation. In red is our questions
Kate’s bit:

Kate Pahl – where am I coming from:

· My work had been looking at ‘sedimented identities in texts’ (Rowsell and Pahl 2007) how far could this theory be applied to artists?
· I had increasingly been looking at ways of creating material cultural displays in museums that reflected home objects – Ferham families grew out of that (www.ferhamfamilies.com) and more recently a project developing a family learning resource pack called Every Object Tells a Story (www.everyobjecttellsastory.org)
· I wanted to work across homes, schools and museums to look at how artefacts open up learning and literacy.
· This project, with its focus on the role of a collection of artefacts, Artemis, in opening up learning, plus with a focus on two artists and their work, was therefore ideal for me.

I see the role of artist as a kind of ‘fast academic’ (in conversation Steve Pool 2006) and wanted to work with artists for the following reasons:

· Steve and Kate were working on themes that I was interested, in particular how ways of being could be described in their art,
· They were also working across domains of communities, schools and museums in a way I wanted to learn from
· I saw their work as a kind of intellectual visual space I could both learn from and contribute to

The role of Artist - seeing the value in the difference – frame of reference and lens
We are interested in systems, community, people and objects therefore the collboration is affective, reference art and anthropologly book. Please comment
Relationship to the field – do we /can we have a different relationship to ‘field”

Process of doing the project – artists and academics together:

· Collaborative, dialogic meaning making in project team meetings.
· Process of learning from each other, not seeing ‘academic as expert’ or ‘visual artist as expert’ but looking at cross-over.
· Ethnography seemed important site for this generative collaborative intellectual work
· Making the familiar strange (Agar 1996) important for project

We think that the AAA will like the fact that we are both practising artists and we want to sort of let the work do a bit of the talking for us so this bit is the meat of the presentation and we want to make the dialogue about the pieses why and how they work their agency the ability for a piece to make thinking visiable and be about very complex things but in fact be very simple. We also want to feel confident about what we are talking about and felt we could address the main points in our abstract submission by talking about the work rather than abstract ideas which seems
Steve bit – breakfasts - altering system and meaning
Kate bit – dwelling, we all have to dwell, function and meaning and how that says everything. Value.


Value, summing up, ideas for future
Kate / Lou please say something about the items in red
Where is the value in this kind of work? Where do we want to go?
Validation – do we and can this be about validating each others work, rather than the artist being the resource to open up academies. Not make work about people but with people.
Revelations – what does this collaboration offer for new ways of working and thinking for future. –

Kate’s bit

Kate Pahl found it useful to go back to the origins of British Social Anthropology to think through Kate G’s work. Her work, in focusing on the everyday usefulness of tools on her family farm, reminded Kate of the shift in British Social Anthropology from Function to Meaning (Pocock 1985) and the way in which the cargoes in Malinowski’s fieldwork in his seminal 1023 book, Cargoes of the Western Pacific, were analysed in relation to their function, whereas Mary Douglas in her book Purity and Danger (1950’s) focused on wider issues of symbolism and meaning in her study of Leviticus. The work of British Social Anthropology enabled there to be a connection across the project Kate was engaged in to a reflection on an academic tradition and to understand more clearly the role of anthropology in looking at the relationships between objects and people.

The project team saw these ideas as generative when looking at a collection of objects as vast and randomly assembled as the Leeds Artemis collection, which was a collection of objects derived from museums, with their own logic of practice.
The artists’ use of the Aura Scorer, deriving from Walter Benjamin, while light-hearted, pointed to a more serious discussion the team had about value, identities and objects.
Objects had their own Auras, that could be graded and assessed and these gradings were tied to identity narratives that could be summonsed with particular objects.


Joint phd’s artist and academis working in same ‘field’ to explore same subject

I would like to see this continue with a kind of interrogation of some key domains of academic knowledge eg social anthropology with you and Kate doing a test site of this eg ethnography, doing tools etc and me and Lou discussing the moving of ideas from academic to artistic domain through that.

We are quite confident speaking about our thing and the theory around it. Our concerns are we don’t want to sound thick or ill informed. Yet we want it to be accessable and personal.
Please advise
Do we need to frame it more in an academic context. Shall we talk about praxis. What about material culture stuff do you think we need

I think you could mention the Pocock stuff – move from Function to Meaning in your work (Kate G could do that bit)
I also like the focus on Benjamin and how you adapted his ideas for your own. (both of you)
What I think is interesting is your TAKE on academic ideas. Academics are very solemn and alsways cite stuff. You have a more playful approach. (both of you)
Therefore the shift from function to meaning becomes both re-vitalised and re-contextualised.

There! I have it!
This project had been about re-contextualising academic ideas in the artistic domain.
This is so interesting.
Will write later as am in Dorset and it is very far away.

our idea for boston - planning stage

Systems of objects – linking back to the abstract- our worlds are shaped by our interaction with made objects. Kate P explores objects and meaning and objects as collective texts and looks through an ethnographic material culture lens. We explore objects and their personal resonances and meanings through practical making and juxtaposition. This paper presents the notion that through collaboration Artist and ethnographer can work side by side to explore the same area of study and use their distinct approaches to enhance and triangulate research to produce outcomes which have value within both the artistic and academic context. Presenting the idea of validation for art practise within the academy but also the validation and visability of ethnographic research within the sites and communities explored.

Quote Baudrillaud
So perhaps talk about the fact that we are interested in the same thing and open to sharing insights rather than looking for a tool or a resource or something to study.

Set the scene:
Artemis – the background to residency, why academics
Background to our practice, what as artists do we do.

Conversation bit:
Kate we want you in this conversation – we intend to flash up paragraphs on a power point, so you become part of the conversation. In red is our questions
Role of artist? role of academic?
The role of Artist - seeing the value in the difference – frame of reference and lens
We are interested in systems, community, people and objects therefore the collboration is affective, reference art and anthropologly book. Please comment
Relationship to the field – do we /can we have a different relationship to ‘field”
We are thinking to introduce that people are participants in the project,and not subjects of a study and we are not sure academics do that, are we right?

We think that the AAA will like the fact that we are both practising artists and we want to sort of let the work do a bit of the talking for us so this bit is the meat of the presentation and we want to make the dialogue about the pieses why and how they work their agency the ability for a piece to make thinking visiable and be about very complex things but in fact be very simple. We also want to feel confident about what we are talking about and felt we could address the main points in our abstract submission by talking about the work rather than abstract ideas which seems
Steve bit – breakfasts - altering system and meaning
Kate bit – dwelling, we all have to dwell, function and meaning and how that says everything. Value.

Value, summing up, ideas for future
Kate / Lou please say something about the items in red
Where is the value in this kind of work? Where do we want to go?
Validation – do we and can this be about validating each others work, rather than the artist being the resource to open up academies. Not make work about people but with people.
Revelations – what does this collaboration offer for new ways of working and thinking for future. -Joint phd’s artist and academis working in same ‘field’ to explore same subject


We are quite confident speaking about our thing and the theory around it. Our concerns are we don’t want to sound thick or ill informed. Yet we want it to be accessable and personal.
Please advise
Do we need to frame it more in an academic context. Shall we talk about praxis. What about material culture stuff do you think we need

Getting to the point

I've pulled these two questions from the abstract. I think these can form the context for the Paper in Boston - me and Kate G can talk about how we approach these ideas - I would say something about informing the system I'm working within shaping it's function through meaning adding to the world of objects and questioning meaning by making an object which challenges function within a system or value structure- which is the English breakfast piece - I'm really clear on how all this fits in - Kate G could do something perhaps around ideas of a collection (Rather than just collecting) Kate P and Lou can you think of your slant/ approach on this and we could all perhaps look for points of synergy or where collaberation has helped us to see things from a new perspective - perhaps this idea of creative triangulation has some milage in it. Also I like Kims idea that because an object is there it must have a provenance it asserts itself through it's thingness (Is this Phenomology) "This is this this isn't something else" So an object never really looses it's provenance because this always sits external to it - it's the human part of the equation the thing which allows us to connect to the past and the future - do we need to have somesort of material culture studies input I think it's here we may look a bit thick - I can talk to my archeologist friends - I know a flint expert working at stonehenge and he may be able to give an interesting slant as he is a real focussed specialist or perhaps we just need to focuss in on ethnography and not worry about material culture.

How do objects move in meaning, or move from function to meaning?Does it matter if an object has no provenance?What happens if there is a narrative and no object (the case of the disappearing object)Are objects merely taking their menaing from their form and function or do they acquire new identities as new resonsances and echoes take hold of them?

a bit from me

well , i am also reading the baudrillard system of objects which i concur is very interesting,
I like the bit about handicrafts and by what has been created by someones hand, and how we are fascinated because the moment of their creation can not be reproduced.......all of this part i like..... Intersting perhaps in reference to steves breakfasts and doorstops, and my subject and 3D digital prints, beceause if im right they become functional objects but also mythological....

But what i wanted to say was, i am reading alongside this book - A journey around my room by Xavier de Maistre, I love the echo from each, I hope you know it. But what i like about reading the two together is the Baudrillard one is like the kate and Lou bit of this project and the Xavier one is like me and steve, both deal with the same thing, they just approach it very differently. The first has decided and theorised until he has the answer, the second is pondering, undecided and practical. But both try to find an answer in reference to objects.

This is this

This is This All my thinking started of from this bit in the dear Hunter. So I thought I should put it in. I'm not that interested in warn things in terms of this project only to the extent that we pretend that objects carry with them more traces or signs of their history in the marks or scraches on them - which is funny as when we collect antiques condition is everything - reading or rather dipping into (It's next to the toilet. ) Jean Baudrillards Systems of objects really interesting [Video]

Thanks Steve

For getting us back to the blog.
I do value this space, just been sitting in St Thomas's hospital for 2 weeks, with my father in law, he died last Tuesday.
BUT I have also done some thinking about this project
Thought 1 I shared with Kate which is this:
1. As artists you focus on the thing itself, the object, Kate looks at traces of sheep on grass, Steve looks at worn objects then makes replicas.
This is a sort of phenomenological (ie the thing like aspect of objects) approach, one that looks without the academic 'gaze' but a different kind of gaze.
Focus on sensory nature of objects.
This is why I have steered Kate in the direction of functionalism and away from symbolism and Implicit Meanings - the Mary Douglas take on life.
Sarah Pink writes about this in her book on the sensory home when she talks about sensory ethnography and accessing insider views of the objects.
You two are insiders on your own objects.
here is a response to Steve's point just now:
2. I like the focus on practices, and think you both reside in the realm of practice. This is like Bourdieu's notion of a set of dispositions that guide the way you do things.
this is called the habitus.
Steve is focused on worn objects, the use over time.
Kate is obsessed with intergenenerational objects, with the way they are used on the farm, over genersations.
This is very Kabyle house - here is a quote from Bourdieu:
Whether in verbal products such as poverbs, sayings, gnomic poems, songs or riddles or in objects such as tools, the house or the village, or in practices such as games, contexts of honour, gift exchange or rites, the material that the Kabyle House child ahs to learn is the produce of the systematic applciaiton of a small number of principles conherent in practice (Bourdieu 1990:74)

Boston Steve Austen

We need to start talking papers and presentations. I want to start off simple. Me and Kate think we would like to talk about the Artist as researcher. Something about positioning yourself in relationship to the field. The artists as something you are-rather than something you do. an individual perpective and voice which explores theory in a very practical way. Perhaps something about activily interacting with and trying to change and inform systems rather than understand them - but steering slightly away from Praxis. So celebrate the differences tie this to the practical exploration of the systems of objects through the artemis project but round up by clearly highlighting through example that we are all looking to a greater or lesser extent at the same world (Perhaps)

Please try and keep a theme going I'm going to email you to chivy everbody along - feel like we should do this on the blog so we have a record - comments good but posts would be better

linkage exhinitoin statement

steve and i have now selected all the artwrks from artemis, and have some linkage photos left to get, but we need to write a statement for the entrance way, i have started this and steve suggested blogging it, so here it is, we would like comments please. or additions. cheers

LINKAGE
This exhibition includes 35 examples of artwork from the collection at Artemis, interlinked with images Kate and Steve have taken on their mobile phones.
The mobile phone is omnipresent in contemporary life and used to record: passing moments; significant discoveries or random stumblings. These digital files are often never downloaded, forwarded, or printed out, remaining within the device, building into an archive of captured moments. We accumulate this temporary collection, often discarding it as we change phones, all without significant consideration.
As artists, Kate and Steve are interested in collections and as such have utilised their mobile phones to enable a journey through the Artemis collection and provide an insight into their practice. Like a game of Chinese whispers, we can move from one image to the next observing the lateral ponderings.

Artists Art and Artefacts sees artists Steve Pool and Kate Genever working on a year long, Arts Council England funded, project at Artemis: Education Leeds artefact loan service. Working both individually and collaboratively the artists are researching, exploring and responding to Artemis’ collection of over 10,000 artefacts.

Abstract

I like this abstract bit because it concerns what our collabertion is really about which seems to be exploring a theme in different ways and how each of our approaches if valued in the correct context helps everybody to progress thinking. This is slightly different from the original bid where Kate P and Lou are written in more to support the artists CPD and reflection on practise. So for me it's become far more collaberative which makes the AAA conference thing seem more relevant. Perhaps we could unpick some of this and use it as narrative entry points to our paper - Also I'd like to suggest that we make the trip to Boston part of the work (Artististic concept based) which gives us licence to shake things up a bit.

So I think I've written about this before but on our first trip to Artermis for the very first meeting Kate Pahl started to tell me how she really didn't want to steer the artists and wanted to position herself with enough distance from the project so she wouldn't influence the ideas too much. It seems to me that this is her constant personal battle to find a position in relation to the field which allows her to activly engage with people , reflect, and observe without impacting. Due to excessive enthusiasm Kate is very bad at this but perhaps this is why we want to work with her.

So after deciding on her epistomology she suggests that the project is about canoes and Cargo. This comes from nowhere and is supported by a story of the change in british ethonography over thge last 50 years. I brush this off don't think about it much and suddenly find myself 6 months later asking if an object is a canou or Cargo and strangly understanding what this means. So Kate provides another lens to veiw the work/world through and I get a lot from this - she also provides a different context for ideas. as Artists we try and grow all our ideas ourselves - Like my disfuntional allotment my ideas are all strange shapes don't really look like what they are supposed to but taste really nice as long as you don't try and keep them too long. I don't want to grow veg for a supermarket but sometimes I like to know how it's done. This is a strange metaphor but the phones ringing and I need to go - it reminds me of that film Being there with Peter Sellers in it.

It is me Lou the Pants Blogger making a posting to kick off a discussion about the Boston paper. Ideas so far include exploring collaboration between artists and academics incl. the blurring of roles and how the work has fed into our individual practices - am I right in thinking this? Do we need to revisit the stuff in the abstract if this has been submitted (as abstract text block may already have been sent to print). So here we go:

How do objects get transformed by narratives and how do they become divested of narratives? This presentation will interrogate what we call ‘the systems around the object’ drawing on a year-long research project, funded by the Arts Council UK, involving 2 artists and 2 researchers, and a collection of artefacts for schools in Leeds. It aims to develop theory around how objects can sit within systems, stories and places. Drawing on auto-ethnographic discussion about the relationship between artefacts and their context, this paper seeks to uncover and unsettle this relationship. In particular it will ask the following questions:How do objects move in meaning, or move from function to meaning?Does it matter if an object has no provenance?What happens if there is a narrative and no object (the case of the disappearing object)Are objects merely taking their menaing from their form and function or do they acquire new identities as new resonsances and echoes take hold of them?

what the hell does this mean again?

Lou

im still with it

yes i have been absent but have returned, i do read this, but do not always want to comment or have something to say
i am planning in my next visit to artemis to begin to explore the relationship between objects when displayed - juxtaposed etc. But also currently thinking and trying to work out displaying my work , my archive as it were. Im intrested in the relation of the index to the bulk of work, the potential of selection and choice it offers , does it make us too removed or just offer false possibitly. I am trying to write my index, and will post up picture of it later in the week.
Also have introduced the aura scorer pro forma to college, were upon i was laughed at and told it was a travisty to do that to a benjamin text - i said, bollocks lets not get caught up in the heirarchy of a 'revered' text over a functional practical way to understand. I now have to demonstrate it at a seminar!!!!!!!! im thinking i will borrow the box of things steve and i scored one afternoon.

Doorstops and Heidegger

Well I made it out into my workshop to make Kate a Birthday present. I stole a doorstop from somewhere last week and I'm wondering if it's art or just grand theft doorstop. Thing is I like doorstops as they are handmade often for a specific purpose and their funtion is only really noticed in their absence. Had a big row with Kim as I found her using my Ethno doorstop to prop open the door the other day - I don't know and with her museum background and all. So taking a made real thing out of the world and making it just "in the world" and not "at hand in the world" and then replacing the made thing with a replica or fake of the real thing is why I mentioned Heidegger I wonder if he had doorstops - the danger with this little mini project as we can now call them is people will read lots of metaphors into the actual function of a doorstop rather than get the point about function fake and the real world.

Rolling on

We have an event at the Burngreave community learning campaign, Forum House on the 17th March - do all please come it is a mini project with MLA Yorkshire and 2 family learning practitioners called Every object tells a Story from 10 - 12 and a free lunch after.
The reason I am excited is that I am beginning to see patterns and shapes in my work working with you lot and also doing this project and maybe not getting Translating Objects was good as now I have time to work on all the other things.
I am worried I am not doing my Function to Meaning quotes for Kate - Kate can you tell me what I should do as I tend to work on your project in Dorset and I want to start getting the quotes and ideas together?
I plan to work on it in Dorset over half term which is the 18th Feb week, I intend to be using Malinowski Cargoes and Durkheim and Mauss and Mary Douglas Implicit Meanings.
I am a bit scared as it is raining again and Zahir couldn't come to the meeting we had today because of floods in Mexborough.

Nothing to Say

Funny thing Blogs when you have nothing to say. They are a bit like Kate P vanishing objects a bit lacking in function. I've had a busy distracted couple of weeks and it doesn't seem to be getting much better. It's supposed to be the most depressing day of the year with the worst reported rates of illness at work. It is a bit grey and as my workshop is very cold and large drips of water tend to drop onto the back of my head through gaps between broken floorboards and dislodged slates I think it's ok to catch up with the paperwork.

I have this time now which is real rather than imagined I really am going to clear my dairey for a month and make work for Artemis. To do this I'm trying to earn some money to have in the bank which is why I'm busy. The thing I like about this is it will give me chance to reflect on what work is and through discussion with Kate I think we have both decided that all our work when we are commisioned as artists (apart from some bits) is proper work but it is clearly different and this project is driven by more personal goals and aspirations rather than a direct relationship with a specific audience.

Linkages

Here are our first selection of images for the linkages exhibition it's a bit of a game of finding connections - shape colour politics, context style - a bit of what takes your fancy - each picture will be linked by a picture taken on our phines in the "real" world - came together really well and is a nice examples of how good ideas simply realised can work.

Understanding things

It seems to me that we move towards understanding things in a very simple way - even very complicated things and relationships. it's really easy to set up a smoke screen of complicated things which stop us realising and ultimately understanding that most of the important things we are interested in are quite simple and straightforward to understand but knowing what it is we want to understand is the difficult thing. Arts practice can present a way for us to experiment in a very unscientific way, to search for understanding through active engagement rather than through observation. I think that we should revisit the idea of methodology rather than method for our collaboration - I could dig out the AHRC application to revisit and see if we have any starting points for thinking about doing something in the new year.



I'm amazed that lots of teachers don't seem to want to understand what education is for and that lots of curators don't really question what collections are for and that lots of academics don't really question what their research is for and lots of artists don't think about what their work is for so perhaps this question of social responsibility is also one of agency.

Happy new Year

To everyone
Just to update you we didn't get our grant but somehow I feel relieved in that now I have space and time to think about this project.
I am also interested in where Steve and Kate are going, and their focus on social responsibility.
I like the idea of working on another project, something around the interface between artists and the world and using the object project as a case study.
I am in a writing mode and will happily write about stuff - am thinking about the move fromfunction to meanign and wishing I could go back to the heady days of functionalism.
ALso we have offered and had our offer accepted on a house right on the peaks on the edge of Sheffield.
Hurrah.

A New Year

1. So a new year dawns and my attempt to look sexy in a PVC Santa suit purchased from a sexy super store in the post Christmas sale begins to loose it's gloss. If we can only truly understand things in the past perhaps I need a little more distance from this impulsive purchase. If Walter Benjamin could see that suit crumpled on my bedroom floor he would be overcome by it's immense shadow. Anyway I've had a nice break over Christmas and done lots of thinking around Artemis and the project. I'm 90 percent happy with the way things have gone so far as I think I've learnt a lot about my work and how I want it to develop These are now so clear in my head I can almost write them as bullet points which I think I should do as I am often accused of going around the houses.

1. I think I have a much bigger social responsability than I realised and feel funny about been paid to produce my own work or have cpd opportunities ( This was unexpected)

2. I am really interested in sites and how I can influence them through practise.

3. Both me and Kate work very differently but we are both trying to engage people to look at things differently.

4. I've become really interested in the Agency of objects and ideas and I'm not sure where this has come from but it feels like the start of something - Doorstops spring to mind.

5. I find it hard to make space to make - something always comes up and gets in the way - I feel like Kate has much more focus than me and this is something about the discipline of drawing - I don't think I have a discipline and need to work on this - if my discipline is shifting systems and thought I need to understand this better.

6. I really want to collaborate more with other artists I think this will move my practise on as it will encourage me to communicate better.

So these are things I think I'm beginning to understand a bit better. I am going to take the pressure off and put it on again by not been too focused on producing a new body of work but giving myself a big chunk of time to work just on this project in April through to June so I can better define what my work might look like and how it will have Agency.

Working with lots of Artists on CP projects who feel like they are losing site of their own practise because they are doing too much work in schools I think I have had a good handle on this for a while but this project makes me question this as it is so much more personal but this also makes it feel a bit like a student project - a bit indulgent which goes back to bullet point 1 I think I will tackle this head on so I understand what my problem is. I think I need to become more positive about the role of artists within society and a bit more confident about my role and then it will not be as big an issue it will also be good for me professionally as I have noticed myself putting myself down a bit to much lately and this is very bad if your self employed and want to get people to engage with your work as if I think it's a bit pants everybody else will. Perhaps this is the result of a little two much navel gazing and not giving the project enough dedicated time which I always promise to do but never quite manage. So the Artemis project is becoming phased into introduction, exploration, and production and maybe this pattern could be something I carry into future work.

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