Resisence in Residence Provocations

A short while ago now, as part of our 'Residence in Residence' weekender at the Tobacco Factory on 11th and 12th September we held a series of simultaneous dsicussion events all starting with a different provocation to find a 'new way of...' Each discussion event began with a provocation written by someone working in that area, the provocations were;

new ways of developing new work by Hannah @ New work Network,
new ways of funding new work by Gary @ The institute of Art and Dissent at Home,
new ways of touring new work by Kate @ Mayfest and BOV and
new ways of presenting new work by Andy @ Forest Fringe.

Each discussion raised some really interesting questions and maybe even a few answers about how we can do things not just differntly but better. Each discussion was recorded in note form so that the discussion could keep going, so please read on and if you have something to add please comment.

New Ways of Developing Work - Ambiton, provocation by Hannah Crosson @ New Work Network

James asked if I’d give a five minute provocation.
He though it would be nice for me to say something about how artists develop their work, what are the steps, the trends, and the trenches of ‘development’. James thought I might like to think about, and make a provocation about, ‘ambition’….. something like……….

Are artists ambitious enough?

But that got me thinking:

Do we all need to strive to be ambitious?
Is it always a good thing, to have ambition?
What does ambition look like?
Is drive as useful as ambition? (Is ambition just ‘directed and focused drive’? Or something else?)
Is it ambitious to develop work in your bedroom and show no body what you’re up to?
Is that as ambitious as wanting to show work in the Royal Opera House?
When does ambition spurn us on and make us achieve bigger things, than if we hadn’t had ambition?
Or, when does ambition become a tractor tyre around our neck, weighing us down and blinding us to what is actually important? (the need to be successful over the need to make work itself)

Thinking about it a personally… I have a strange relationship to ambition. For a start I don’t think I’m particularly ambitious – I have never had a career plan, never thought 5 years in advance and mapped out the steps towards it, have never ‘envisaged’ a career – and yet here I am standing here today as the acting director for a national artists network – NWN… what I mean is, I had no ambition, and look where it got me?! And is a ‘lack’ of ambition what takes you to places you hadn’t already thought of?

Thinking about it again, I don’t think I like ambition. And I’m wondering if artists are actually TOO ambitious! (there’s the provocation!). Ambitious, in that we assume to develop a career we need to have a:

Business plan
Personal statement
Funding application in the post
Tour schedule mapped out
Email lists building
Personal newsletter ready to send to email list
Business cards in the back pocket
Advisory panel in place, or perhaps even a board…

And for all intents and purposes, it would appear that ambition is what makes us become ‘professional’ and what prompts us to strive for success.

But, what is the relationship between these moves and ‘art making’?

Since I started working in the field of live and interdisciplinary arts I’ve had a lot of conversations with artists and suggested angles and advice on how to develop their practice and have also listened to others offering advice, and the advice seems to be: get professional to get your work out there. I’m not knocking this. I think there are benefits to be reaped from this course of action….

But, from a personal perspective, I think there is a danger that the desire to have a ‘successful’ arts practice means that we desire to attain a ‘successful arts career’ and that the drive to develop a career can easily overtake the sentiment to make art and explore ideas.

Perhaps what I’m saying, is that in a system where we enter an art school or university environment, to emerge as an artist seeking a way in the wide world there are steps that are waiting to be followed, they would go:

Leave college
(If we’re good, we’ve already secured our self some platform events whilst studying so transition from student to artist is more seamless)
Perform at any platform opportunity we can – get our work seen
Meet artists and develop a community
Building on larger pieces of work
Document our work and show it online – on a blog, Youtube etc
Take part in workshops – where we can keep our creativity topped up and challenged
Extend our network and connections through the events we’re performing at
Get someone fairly well known in the ‘scene’ to see our work, perhaps write a few lines about it that we can use
Apply for a larger scale opportunities – perhaps a residency with a showing at the end
Approach venues we would like to perform at with our growing CVs and track record of performances
And so on…
… and then…

And then we’re are on the road to ‘success’ and surely it’s ambition that has lead us this far, no?

But is this the best way for everyone; is this the best way to develop our work?

It seems there are pathways towards success, but so far the examples mentioned haven’t indicated an engagement with the work itself. This is about Artist as: entrepreneur, fundraiser, marketing department, copy writer, blogger, web developer…. All the skills needed to develop and sustain an arts practice – to be an artist.

I’m not knocking this approach – it’s helpful that there are steps we can tread and a pathway to a successful artistic career in performance seems less opaque than say, the commercial gallery system, where art is viewed as commodity and given a value, and the value is determined by … who?

But I wonder if the ambition to develop practice, which becomes the ambition to be a good and successful entrepreneur, is a pressure we’re all feeling from others; that it’s what is expected of us, it makes us easier to understand, easier to define, it keeps friends and family happy as they can see ‘progression’, and we can feel our ‘position’ in society which is itself all about scaling up the ladder, but is this path really ‘progression’?

When we’re all funnelling ourselves down the same system, what is the impact on the work we make? What is the impact, on ‘playing the game’ on our thinking about our work? We know that when applying for funding, we’ll have to ‘bend’ our idea to fit a funders criteria: this is going to happen more and more as funding is going to become harder to secure in the coming years and funders have an increasing influence over the nature of the projects they want to fund. So? Are we going to become better at ‘pleasing others’ by following set steps, in the right way, showing the ‘right kind of work’ or are we going to strive along our own path, with our own vision of what success for us looks like?

What I’m really saying is; to want ‘bigger better’ isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. That we’re in this game for the art, and can loose sight of that along the way, when ego’s and insecurity step in. success in my eyes are small things done well, that after time take us off somewhere that we hadn’t expected. Ambition is foresight, and although foresight might be a good thing; to get us out of bed in the morning, working to pay the bills, and giving up smoking so we don’t get lung cancer – there si also a lot to be said for not knowing, for ‘making mistakes’, for having integrity and focusing at times on what really matters to us.. and then we’ll see where that takes us in our art careers…

So, again,

Do we all need to strive to be ambitious?
Is it always a good thing, to have ambition?
What does ambition look like?
Is drive as useful as ambition? (Is ambition just ‘directed and focused drive’? Or something else?)
When does ambition spurn us on and make us achieve bigger things, than if we hadn’t had ambition?
Or, when does ambition become a tractor tyre around our neck, weighing us down and blinding us to what is actually important?

New Ways of Funding New Work, provocation by Gary @ The Institue for the practice of Art and dissent at Home

HANDS UP! Gary has a gun in his bag and he wants your money. He proposes robbing people as a way to fund the arts. Maybe we dont see ourselves as a part of an elite, we are.

Drawbacks- fear of prosecution, fear of reprisals.
Advatages- money is very available. Economies are saturated with cash.

What will our £138 be used for?
Gary's trip back to liverpool, eat on the train, set up meeting with other people.

Q: what is funding? what really happens when you're funded? How careful to we have to be when applying or receiving funding? What systems do we participate in when we accept money?

Is it harder to fund work that doesn’t have a social agenda? Why are funding bodies so removed from individuals who want to create work?

If there is no funding does it reduce access?

If you don't have funding are you robbing yourself?

If you have funding you could use that ethically?

Trying to step outside of a system is almost impossible, maybe completely impossible. But can we intervene in the reproduction of repressive ideologies via artist-led organisations?

Money that has strings attached- not being involved in political organisations as a condition of funding.

Can you gently intervene or provoke these large institutions?

People being silenced by accusations of 'hypocrite'

CONCLUSION: viva la revolution.

New Ways of Touring New Work, provocation by Kate Yedigaroff @ Bristol Old Vic and Mayfest

Why and Who For
Can be a lonely unsatisfying experience for the artists – how can touring be supported
Touring does work when it is a direct engagement with the people it’s for
Artists often lose money touring work
The nature of touring encourages the creation of boring work (there is a sort of apology in the programming of it when it is as easier
Programmers are limited by old fashioned models and spaces and budgets
Touring consortiums work eg. This Way Up (BAC), Escalator (Edinburgh)
Digital distribution of work? Does it compromise the work or extend it
How do we tour work that isn’t made for a studio?
What about Cash-free touring of work – groups of artists hosting or curating the work that comes into a city?
When companies are really successful, audiences tour them. Can we tour audiences not work?
Why do we tour our work? for the company? genuine intention to show the work? to make money?
Residence has been talking about creating a menu of work
When you tour should you know where you are touring to so that can become meaningful in the making of the work?
What about a band performing structure: headline, support act
Should we abolish touring?
Should we only tour work that’s made specifically for where it’s going?
Responses:
Lancaster experimented with audience programming work – James thinks it’s a nice idea but it fails because decisions are made upon the description of the work
that democratisation of programming can become an e-bullying system by artists, false democratisation
artists seem to enjoy it more when it is about the people in the space – perhaps it’s a more satisfying experience to tour a piece like A Western because its form engages with the specific people that are in the space
there are still some experiences in touring where it is genuinely worth doing a one off show (Chester, Action Hero, Green Room, Manchester – The Special Guests)
there is something about just turning up and performing to a few people and then just leaving which is very unfulfilling
how to stop touring feeling like a wasted enterprise – feeling like the venue is ¼ full feels bad but if the capacity is 25 then it feels ok
1 night in a huge schedule for a venue – we fill gaps in their calander/re-mit
even venues that have a programme of experimental work we can still feel
we’ve had more positive experiences in artist -led spaces and festivals
Funding ACE forces us into taking shit gigs as we have to show the work to a certain number of audience members (to be good value for money)
How to companies like Forced Entertainment make that transition from performing to small audiences to selling out. They’ve always had a producer. Partly because they’ve been doing it for twenty years.
Perhaps we should show work less for longer periods
Demographic of people that go to theatres on a Tuesday night in October -it’s difficult to get people to come!
Spaces: Do you also accept that you don’t have big audiences for experimental theatre – find the success in that – eg 1 week a year. A smaller more full experience?
If the audiences know that an artists has a sustained relationship with certain artists perhaps they are more likely to come.
Forest Fringe as a record label
Forest Fringe using their producing skills to fit the artists work into performing contexts well – easier for the venue too
But Forest Fringe is free – so is it sustainable for the artists to be performing for free?
Who is ever going to listen to this in venues – we need to have these conversations with venues
The problem is that the programmers have to convince the business people in their venue that it’s worth the risk
What about a curated program of work that tours out of Bristol
What about artists looking for other groups that might fit with them to tour
Theatre Bristol – creating the package of tour
Fresh Festival – one day long festival (could be turned into a touring festival)
Combining the music support model with the Theatre Bristol package – ie. That a producer from Theatre Bristol chooses one headline act and two companies to support. The headline act plays for two nights and the support acts play alternating nights. However it’s possible that one of the support acts could become the headline act in a venue (or area) where they have a strong following).

New Wayd of Presenting New Work, provocation by Andy Field @ Forest Fringe

When presenting new work, your space needs to be as accessible/accommodating as possible for a wide variety of work. In doing this you often end up with black box studio spaces, which is often an unsatisfactory way of presenting work.

The majority of the most exciting work being made in the UK is being made outside of black box studio spaces – it is engaging with the physical environment in which it is placed.

What is the best environment in which to present new work?
At first glance, Forest Fringe isn’t the immediate choice for presenting new work. It’s low tech, has a bad black out etc etc. The space makes its presence felt – you can’t ignore the presence of the space in the work. If you can pass the challenge of the space it says a lot about the work.

Chris Goode once said that if a cat runs across the stage during a performance and can be incorporated into the show, it’s a testament to the liveness of the space.

Andy’s provocation is: ban all black box studio spaces for two years and see how that challenges artists to think about the liveness of their work.

DISCUSSION

The oppressiveness of the black box could be useful in making work

In Edinburgh – all these amazing spaces are ‘blacked out’ – it suffocates any exterior experience in the work

In unusual spaces – work which aims to start with neutrality will immediately fail

You have to think about the space in which you’re performing when you start making the show

A black box isn’t neutral – would it be interesting to work with those restrictions?

If we abolished all black boxes, would we start to turn against whatever sprung up in their place?

Black boxes attempt to silence any sense of location.

Why do we have theatre spaces which look like cinemas? Theatre can respond to the space in which it’s performed.

Is getting rid of the black box a challenge to the artist, the audience or both?
It’s a provocation to the artist
You do your best thinking in response to a set of circumstances

Is it that because work isn’t so designed any more you can’t get away from the space. You’re surrounded by black in new work instead of the black enabling you to focus on a ‘set’.

The show starts the first time they hear about it and finishes the last time they think about it – Tassos Stevens

The journey to the performance has to be carefully considered

You’re basically instructed to ignore the space when you’re in a black box
Scratch shows – by building from a ten-minute scratch in a studio to a full show, you’re creating a very limited scope for lots of work

Process/Product.
Black box spaces present work as a finished product
A presumed neutrality or absence of space around the work – it presumes the work to be a complete object
Shows that are always in process, and don’t ever reach product – constantly being brought into being, constantly in a process of becoming

Proscenium arch spaces – not ignoring the space

Provide artists with whatever space they need rather than artists having to bend or rework their shows to fit.

Perhaps it’s good sometimes to feel removed from the room in which you’re in
Sometimes you just want to go and sit in the dark and watch something

Thinking of a space when you’re starting to make work can be restrictive – could block creative

Part of the reason for the quality of the stuff coming out of BAC is giving artists the chance to respond to the space

It’s a matter of taste

The feeling that there’s a need to make a studio ‘hit’ that can tour
It’s easy for promoters to be lazy and just book studio work to fit it.