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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