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Towards an Understanding of the Contemporary Artist-Led Collective

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Towards an Understanding of the Contemporary Artist-Led Collective The Ecology of Cultural Space: Towards an Understanding of the Contemporary Artist-led Collective John David Wright University of Leeds School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2019 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of John David Wright to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 1 Acknowledgments Thank you to my supervisors, Professor Abigail Harrison Moore and Professor Chris Taylor, for being both critical and constructive throughout. Thank you to members of Assemble and the team at The Baltic Street Playground for being incredibly welcoming, even when I asked strange questions. I would like to especially acknowledge Fran Edgerley for agreeing to help build a Yarn Community dialogue and showing me Sugarhouse Studios. A big thank you to The Cool Couple for engaging in construcutive debate on wide-ranging subject matter. A special mention for all those involved in the mapping study, you all responded promptly to my updates. Thank you to the members of the Retro Bar at the End of the Universe, you are my friends and fellow artivists! I would like to acknowledge the continued support I have received from the academic community in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies. Likewise, my extended artist-led family have provided support and fresh perspectives. Finally, a huge thank you to Kimberly Wright for putting up with my constant roller-coaster of emotions whilst on this journey. 2 Abstract The importance of friendship has been under-researched in relation to artistic discourse. This lack of research becomes particularly acute when considering ambiguous formations of collective artistic activity. My thesis draws upon friendship as a socio-cultural phenomenon in order to situate the artist- led collective both historically and within the contemporary art continuum. Tracing an historiography of the personal relationships which blurred the boundaries between art and politics, from the re- imagining of the medieval artisanal guild in the nineteenth century to the development of Futurism in the early twentieth century, I argue that the contemporary artist-led collective is haunted by these ‘collectivisms past’ and the spectre of autonomy.1 Further, the contradictions located within the ideological notions of individualism, which pervade the neo-liberal capitalist hegemony, both deny collective agency and yet accept collective praxis in the guise of enterprise culture.2 It is this contradictory character that frames my thesis and provides the context for understanding the complex role which friendship plays in the genesis of the contemporary artist-led collective. In order to understand the implications of friendship as a vital component of the artist-led collective, I utilise Relational Dialectics Theory (RDT) developed by Leslie Baxter and Barbara Montgomery, as a conceptual framework. I employ in-depth case studies of the artist-led collective duo The Cool Couple and architecture collective Assemble, in order to explore how friendship informs artist-led collectives throughout their life cycles.3 I question how and why these social bonds, which constitute relationships and thus shape the collectives, interrelate with a multiplicity of forces in their specific cultural ecology. These interrelations are further explored through a mapping study of artist-led collective activity in Leeds, UK. This study problematises the dualistic perspective of resistance and co-option between artist-led collectives and institutions. I argue that the evolution of the artist-led collective is implicitly interrelated with the institution and thus the binary opposition of resistance and co-option becomes a dialectical knot of ever-changing relationships. Finally, I situate myself in the research through an auto-ethnographic study of the artist-led collective The Retro Bar at the End of the Universe, of which I am a founding member. This case study enables an internal view of the social bonds which formed The Retro Bar at the End of the Universe and provides an insight that would otherwise be impossible from an external perspective. 1Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx, orig, ed. 1993 (London: Routledge Classics, 2006), and Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life (Winchester: Zero Books, 2014). 2Gregory Sholette, Collectivism after Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945 (London: University of Minnesota press, 2007). 3Leslie A. Baxter and Barbara M. Montgomery, Relating: Dialogues and Dialectics (London: The Guilford Press, 1996). 3 Table of Contents Exergue ................................................................................................................................................ 10 Introduction: Antanaclasis ................................................................................................................. 11 Practice into Thesis and Thesis into Practice ................................................................................. 15 Introduction: shaping my aims and objectives ................................................................................... 16 Methodology and Conceptual Framework ...................................................................................... 20 Literature Review: Constructing the Canon .................................................................................... 29 What is an artist-led collective? ....................................................................................................... 29 Friendship ........................................................................................................................................ 29 Autonomy-Collectivity and the Ghost of Activism .......................................................................... 31 Place and Space ............................................................................................................................... 39 Chapter 1: The State of Play .............................................................................................................. 44 Chapter 2: (Un)histories of the contemporary artist-led collective ................................................ 62 State-Run Collectivism ..................................................................................................................... 92 The ‘New Collectivism’ .................................................................................................................... 95 Chapter 3: In-depth Case Study- Assemble ..................................................................................... 98 Yarn Community and the Dialogical Imagination ....................................................................... 100 Sugarhouse Studios- London ........................................................................................................ 103 Baltic Street Adventure Playground- Glasgow ............................................................................. 119 Granby Workshop- Liverpool ........................................................................................................ 145 Chapter 4: In-depth Case Study - The Cool Couple ...................................................................... 159 Introducing The Cool Couple ........................................................................................................ 160 Installation at Festival Internazionale di Roma XV Edizione: ROMA, IL MONDO, The MACRO, 2016 ................................................................................................................................ 164 Analysis of A Yarn Community conversation with The Cool Couple .......................................... 170 Chapter 5: The Ecology of Cultural Space: Mapping Artist-led Collectives .............................. 202 The Shape of the Study .................................................................................................................. 205 Method and Methodology .............................................................................................................. 208 The Importance of Studying Together .......................................................................................... 211 Analysis .......................................................................................................................................... 216 The Importance of Scale and Critical Perspectives ...................................................................... 244 Chapter 6: An Auto-ethnographic study of The Retro Bar at the End of the Universe ............. 250 Genesis ............................................................................................................................................ 251 4 Conclusion-Place Matters ................................................................................................................. 287 Illustrations ........................................................................................................................................ 295 ...........................................................................................................................................................
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