Pragmatics and New Co-Efficiencies in Contemporary Art

Home , Andy Kaufman, Idea art, Matthieu Laurette, Relational art, Sean Landers, Vanessa Beecroft

MIGRATORY PROJECTS:

PRAGMATICS AND NEW CO-EFFICIENCIES IN CONTEMPORARY ART

2003 - 2005

Andrew Sunley Smith

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Fine Arts

Faculty of Fine Arts University of New South Wales

Research Abstract

The thesis aims to examine, document and prove that the core strategies underlying and inherent within contemporary relational art practices stem not only from pragmatic philosophy but also from a number of key artists previously unaddressed within the context of these ideas. This thesis will provide a critical reference and document that previously has not yet existed in any clear form, locating existing literature, ideas and forms of art in linked sequences that collate and cohesively align the recent history, origins and definitions of this type of work.

The thesis will demonstrate that co-efficient and relational art, are indeed the forerunners to contemporary pragmatic art forms, but crucially theses above definitions are in fact the constituent sub- categories of the broader aspirational form of egalitarian pragmatic art that we are seeing today.

The primary lines of enquiry are to show that American Pragmatism is an essential aspect of relational aesthetics that Nicolas Bourriaud has not examined in his key text. I also wish to prove that American Pragmatism was a major cultural and sociological influence leading to relational aesthetics that Bourriaud neglected to identify.

This thesis intends not only to prove the veracity of the above observations but by extension the intentions of this document are also to function as an essential genealogy of the type of artwork that I am discussing, examining and revealing.

Contents

· Abstract and Introduction 3

· Research Quest 4-5

· Methodology 6-9

· Chapter Abstracts 10-14

Chapters

1. Undercurrents and Relations 15 – 89 The Pre-history of Pragmatic Art and Relational Aesthetics 2. Pragmatism 90 – 119 Revitalisations and Recrudescences 3. Migratory Projects: 120 - 222 Studio Practice – Research Domains 4. Crossflows 223 - 302 Synthesising recent evidential chains of crucial influence 5. The Everyday 303 – 369 Re-engagements with the superstructure 6. Conclusion & Feedback 370 - 393 Feedback Noise and the Empty Lion Cage

INTRODUCTION: THE BUZZ OF THE ENGINE

Expanding Fields of Practice and Everyday Coefficients in Contemporary Art

Through engagement with present social and everyday aesthetic forms, many a contemporary artistic project embodies not only a reinvention and reconfiguration of pragmatism, but also identifies attitudes toward contemporary society and cultural production, that locate combined strategies largely unseen and unused in such amalgamated ways in art before.

The distinct use and transformation of everyday frameworks and formats can be seen as a wish to change, question and reveal our learned and naturalised behaviour patterns toward art and certain structures within culture. The expansion and critique of cloistered institutional paradigms and the traditional formal annexation of art, both in concept and material specialisation, are seen to emerge in these artists works in close dialogue and through pragmatic example. In my view, it is the above mentioned that inexorably limits the scope and ability for art to maintain a greater relevance and resonance within the shared current realities of our time. Within the work of an increasing number of artists using what we shall call everyday formats there is an attempt to take ideas to their extreme end with an imperative placed at the end consequences and conclusions of projects. A focus on the production of situations promoting direct social interaction, and a more expansive and active role for art in culture, is revealing the roles and limitations of various agents involved within art.

Critiques of consumer capitalism, commodity fetishism, increasing ecological anxiety, the continued prevalence of Modernism, the reliance on service industries, along side a questioning of the world we produce and our role in it, is being highlighted and made transparent in forms of art that are increasingly more agile, unruly and yet more connected.

The use of everyday systems and formations in art predominantly represents an openness in attitude, and a willingness to utilise forms directly and flexibly with as little affectation as possible. In short, it means engaging in the use of forms that are widely available, mass produced, familiar and no longer obscure or esoteric. The aesthetic found in this kind of art indicates a new directness and often extreme form of pragmatism so far only momentarily seen and never previously accurately assessed or indeed visually represented. A major problem has occurred in the reception of pragmatics, in that it has never had any clear visual form until now. This thesis asserts this evidence and provides clarity and a visual repertoire that we can see goes far beyond what has always been wrongly described as conceptual art and more recently relational art.

THESIS QUEST

This thesis aims to examine, document and prove that the core strategies underlying and inherent within contemporary relational art practices stem not only from pragmatic philosophy but also from a number of key artists previously unaddressed within the context of these ideas.

The thesis provides the intellectual model and satisfactory account, that values and responds to this type of work evidentially and more accurately through the production of a critical frame of reference and archive, that previously has not yet existed in any clear form. As I have always taken artistic projects to be research domains in them selves. My extended view is that artwork not only operates as, (but is equal to) a critical text and publication. My view is that successful artworks have always operated in this way. Artworks deliver and generate new aesthetics. They contain reactions and sensibilities, which focus, enhance or debase existing precepts and open out far broader and intensive ranges of experiences that directly affect changes in perception.

I will demonstrate that co-efficient and relational art, are indeed the forerunners to contemporary pragmatic art forms, and that crucially these above definitions are in fact the constituent sub-categories of the broader aspirational form of egalitarian pragmatic art that we are seeing today.

The primary lines of enquiry are to show that American Pragmatism is an essential aspect of relational aesthetics that Nicolas Bourriaud has not examined in his key text1. I also wish to prove that American Pragmatism was a major cultural and sociological influence leading to relational aesthetics that Bourriaud neglected to identify.

I intend not only to prove the veracity of the above observations but by extension the intentions of this document are also to function as an essential genealogy of the type of artwork that I am discussing, examining and revealing. My PhD art projects concern only the Pragmatic · What is my art’s use? What is it for?

· Can its relevance be extended? What is its relevance to the greater cultural mass? How and in

what way does it and can it improve life?

· Can subjectivity still exist in Pragmatic work? Can it communicate directly without artifice?

· Can it lead by concrete and more altruistic example rather than symbolic representation?

· What is the conclusion of these artistic projects? Where can meaning and use be located and be

continued after arts exhibition?

1 Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, Les presses du reel, 1998, 2002 (Translated English)

· Can the consequences of art go beyond mere aesthetics?

· How does one link and carry pragmatic ideology into the field of art?

· Can more pragmatic art be identified through materiality alone?

· Can art forms freely migrate and be understood successfully in differing contexts?

· Is the concept of migration in its literal and broadest traversal meaning a key concept that

structurally underscores both the forms and attitudes of new modes of artwork being produced

today?

· Can more altruistic forms of art survive and be successfully communicated within a

contemporary capitalist cultural situation?

· Can art itself combat gaps in knowledge and reduce distancing mechanisms at work in the world

of contemporary consumer culture?

· Is it possible for me to produce a more holistic form of art experience?

· Why is art concerning itself with the production of feedback scenarios?

· Can examples of feedback scenarios in art be found beyond that of my own work?

· Are everyday forms more communicative in directly conferring pragmatic strategies and

feedback attitudes in art?

· Why is there currently a lack of critical writing and visual form that delivers and synthesises the

history of this field of knowledge?

· Why has this type of artwork not been identified correctly and sufficiently written about?

Methodology I began my research by wanting to focus predominantly on living artists, writers, curators, theorists and current contemporary cultural producers, in order to synthesise and place the ideas that I was generating, noticing and collecting. My intentional bias was to study only the most recent and unquantified developments in contemporary art. Through my reading and understanding of the cultural shifts that are associatively emerging around me, I intend to deliver new knowledge and information only gained primarily from this position. Inevitably in order to contextualise the work contained in this thesis, existing literature must be thoroughly examined and addressed but unless otherwise stated this thesis comprises predominantly of living creative and cultural producers. This is not to stubbornly state that knowledge

cannot be gleaned from the dead, it is only to make a point in method that the intention of this thesis is to locate, link and collate only the very latest information being generated today.

The structure has been laboured to provide a firm document and connective examination, illustrating and mirroring my artworks core idea of migration. Migration works as a form of thinking multiplistically, as well as a state in which the constant use of parallels and comparisons, work to satisfactorily identify and recognise precepts of similar experience, specificity and direction. This idea also highlights the growing notion of the open movement of artistic form, and by extension the infusion and blending of various aesthetics.

My ideas are discussed always culminating with creative projects. Projects that I assert are the highest exponents of what I propose is in fact contemporary Pragmatic Art. My own PhD studio work is also intended to serve in unison as a direct and conclusive summation of my research providing its visual form. My studio work and research is already working successfully to deliver my knowledge of this area in many different international exhibition contexts, tutorials, lectures, seminars and professional situations.

The thesis text is delineated by specific paragraph headings that indicate my lines of thought within each chapter. The paragraph headings sign post a chain of assertions that accrue conclusively as each chapter progresses. Existing literature is located with ideas and domains of art in linked sequences that cohesively align the recent history, origins and definitions of this type of work.

The theories in this thesis are further qualified through the vital presence of my PhD research journal, diary entries entitled En Route sections. These sections work as a specifically threaded travelogue, tracking my conversations and delivering my experiences of living and directly engaging the theories herein within my broader context. As my PhD practice is profoundly informed by notions and experiences of travel and migration my En Route journal writings are intentionally left in immediate and raw running form – mirroring exactly the vitality and nuances with which they were first written.2

The En Route insertions serve as key evidence based documentation of my formative thoughts. They are carefully selected diary notes and direct passing encounters of running conversations with some of the main and key international practitioners in the field of my PhD research area. These running and pausing sections intentionally provide transitory moments in the thesis that additionally further link and allow the text to pertinently extend and flow directly and pragmatically, into the everyday conversant world of my creative practice. These passing En Route travelling moments have needlessly to say also provided many of the most significant and profound instances in my research that led me to my observations.

2 This strategy is in line with one of my key working pragmatic research methodologies – that of keeping things vital and immediate where possible and removing any unnecessary conventions and affectations

My intention is that this thesis work as a synthesising document of a new body of artistic knowledge, not only to verify my own theories as to the existence of this mode of working, but also to provide the visual and philosophical forms to anyone seeking information in this area of art practice in future years. The reader will find the most up to date and articulate tools with which to navigate and enjoy this field of previously undefined contemporary work.

My PhD studio practice directly tests the combined philosophy of co-efficiency and relational ideas expanding away from any singular and derivative forms of representational art. My research work aims to combine the idea of direct experience, along with the goal of making pragmatic strategies and sustainable outcomes manifest in artwork. This is clearly outlined and evidenced by within my Migratory Projects PhD studio and exhibition chapter.

Importantly, my studio works have always been the very driving force of this thesis and their production methodology has provided the very engine of my research. Each project I conceived in my Migratory Projects series, has always been an intentionally experimental field tested research domain, that examines the limitations and capacities of my art. The projects were always conceived and executed in this way to actually test my principles of design, construction, usability, and aesthetic development. The individual artworks have been quite literally road tested, as well as exhibited in differing situations always working toward clearly answering my questions regarding the vital use of pragmatism in art to fuse and locate ideas together and be able to communicate and demonstrate the use and knowledge gained from operating in this way.

The projects were driven first and foremost by the construction of a system of art that directly fused with both personal and broader aspects of contemporary life. Each time I made and tested a work I would take notes of how it performed in various environments, in terms of functioning well both communicatively and politically. I was also intrigued to observe whether or not the presence of the individual works, were providing aesthetic dissent or pleasure.

I assert that it is because of the very existence of my own work and the works of the very artists included in this thesis, that we are able to understand and explore all the theories included in my research. It is because of the artworks themselves that we can see more clearly and understand the ideas contained in this thesis. Evidenced together here for the first time. It is not through discussion or writing as yet, that we encounter the ideas of co-efficiency and relationality as components within a pragmatic paradigm. It is through art and because of the work of artists themselves.

The discussion and experience of the artworks and creative projects in my thesis has always been vital. As it is the encounter of the artist’s work that first produced the questions, assertions and findings of this thesis.

Key creative projects from a range of specialised fields of study are present in the form of artists and designers pages. These examined pages are vital case studies and should also be taken as the major influences behind my own studio practices and artistic philosophy, consecutively in attitude, ambition, form and conclusion. They are included to directly illustrate the concepts and arguments of this thesis as well as show how they link dialogically and have progressively influenced each other.

I have intentionally sought practitioners that can indeed be clearly seen to flexibly cross-flow between creative disciplines. The examples provided show the reader how the field of pragmatic art links together and is further expanded and exemplified in my own recent studio and exhibition work for my PhD. The newer artworks presented in the artists pages are not from widely available texts, but from my own hard sought gathered and exhibited ‘Migratory Projects Archives’ comprised of my own transferred slides, collected photocopies and exhibition catalogues found during my extensive research trips and ‘hot of the press’ at my time of writing. The artworks are used to further elucidate the truth and relevance of my research, examining and answering evidentially via ‘direct concrete example’ where ever possible.

My goal throughout my PhD has been to produce a creative mode of working and writing specifically about ‘artworks’ themselves, whereby the theory and practice were continually synonymous and wholly inseparable, each providing a richer and more rewarding experience of the other. This thesis recognises the artwork as crucially imperative and intentionally dominant to the text, Quite simply, prior to this thesis, there has been no adequate means of current visual representation for my ideas.

My PhD studio work is concerned with the most recent forms of Pragmatic art, aiming to locate the governing drives, polemics and intentions within this type of work. Throughout my research I observed a phenomenon in art which I found to be responding to what I can best describe as a perception of contemporary society as being in a state of profound formal, philosophical and aesthetic ‘feedback’, due to and caused by cultural and post-industrial overloading, mass production, alienation (fragmentation) and over consumption and over exploitation of resources. In working toward the final conclusion of my thesis I have steadily implemented information that quantifies my idea. Naturally I am intrigued to ‘see’ the form of art best able to quantify this idea.

During my research I have repeatedly found, that it is artists that are best defining and articulating these effects and reading and responding pragmatically to these realities, in the most articulate, focused and dramatic way today.

Within this newly encountered experiential pragmatic (and what I refer to in my conclusion as a ‘feedback’) situation in art, my intention has also been to articulate that art is only truly found in the encounter and fully realised and understood through the direct experience of it. This notion of direct experience as the main constituent of knowledge is crucial and endemic to pragmatic philosophy. I will show how this notion is a key component of the art contained in this thesis, and within my own PhD studio practice.

My wish is also to leave the reader in the most current situation possible at the time of writing and provide the very best of current and crucially relevant artworks that clearly resonate with the evidence so persistently searched for and asserted in the delivery of this new body of knowledge.

This thesis will for the first time deliver a working intellectual model that provides not only visual form to pragmatism, but will also account for the values and techniques so relevant and in use by these key artists today. It supplants not only a body of knowledge that aids the reception and understanding of the vitality of pragmatic art at work, but also contextualises through analysis, a more accurate positioning of relational aesthetics. The conclusive point of departure presents the complexity of this thinking with the most current visual form and leaves an understanding and perception of art and culture, with a concept I believe we will see increasingly present, in new forms of expansive and increasingly powerful, relevant forms of visual art.

Chapter Abstract 1. Undercurrents and Relations; The Pre-history of Pragmatic Art and Relational Aesthetics This chapter establishes the vital missing genealogy of contemporary pragmatic artwork. It also asserts and delivers the pre-history of relational aesthetics. Highlighting key historic examples from fine art, design, film and architecture that philosophically underpin the aesthetic of today’s contemporary pragmatic art. Particular to this chapter is that I am focusing on very specific and often ‘one-off’ lesser known projects and re-assessing the mis-identifications of key creative pragmatic attempts by various artistic practitioners.

This chapter articulates my belief that the projects specifically mentioned here do not correctly and adequately fit with previous definitions. Many projects therefore have, been misunderstood or remained elusive and proved difficult to quantify before now, therefore their significance has not been correctly contextualised. Ramified by this chapter is my assessment that only now, through the fusion of

simultaneously available ideas can contemporary relational practices and new pragmatic definitions be revealed to be of paramount significance.

In this chapter I introduce the idea of the ‘proto-relational’ project as a better means of understanding some of the key early aspects of the pragmatic projects defined here.

2. Pragmatism This chapter introduces the core of pragmatic philosophy and examines its ideologies in relation to art and posits fundamentally that Pragmatism is the philosophical foundation of all relational art, both in its earlier and recent formations. In many ways this chapter operates as the fulcrum of my analysis. Through the lens of pragmatism, relational aesthetics can crucially be revealed to be one of pragmatisms natural genealogical advancements.

3. Migratory Projects: PhD Studio Practice This is the introduction of my own art practice and studio based activities that form the core of my research in concrete example. The artworks have generated key information and discoveries that have further verified my research into the successful use of more expansive everyday forms. Conceived as individual research domains my artwork has been intended and devised to directly test the very role, materials, aesthetics, reception and capacity of art, to cope with and display a greater range of topics and connectivities relevant to the issues, developments and anxieties of our times and that go far beyond the realms of more static representational art practices. The migratory projects deliver work that operates co- efficiently. Deriving form directly from everyday encounters and influences and working practically, poetically, economically, socially, aesthetically, and holistically. Endemic to the understanding of my art practice are specific terminologies that I have developed, which are outlined in this chapter. I have included direct examples of text and images that featured in my PhD solo exhibitions.

My intention in this chapter is focus my work linguistically yet also keep the encounter of my work as direct as is possible. This chapter of my work is also intended to function as the concrete form and driving force of my research quest. The artworks in the project, clearly show answers and provide new, open and usable formations that prove the benefits of conscripting pragmatic attitudes and forms of knowledge tested and realised throughout my PhD.

4. Crossflows - Current Influential Forms of Creative Pragmatism This chapter importantly contains what I am redefining and asserting evidentially, as contemporary pragmatic artistic examples and interdisciplinary influences that crucially link, and dialogically extend what I have determined as the strongest undercurrents of pragmatic art today. These cross-flows provide a recent and previously unrepresented visual source and unwritten history of artistic pragmatism. They also

further contextualise the work of the artists presented and further locate the aesthetics of my own studio practice.

Also double functioning as pragmatic arts more ‘common’ influences, these crossflows provide concrete evidence that further operates to elucidate my own art practice into broader fields associated beyond traditional notions and of art.

This chapter also examines the contribution and the limitations of writer and curator Nicolas Bourriaud’s recent work on relational aesthetics. Also asserted in relation to pragmatic art, is the pertinent area of social aesthetics, a term first used in the 1980s yet which finds its roots back in Europe in the 1960s and1970s.

Evidence based pages on the most relevant and up to date and examined contemporary projects deliver the outcomes of my knowledge at work. Examples are crystallised into design, film, architecture, gardening and popular culture that are placed to strengthen both the dialogue of this art and also confirm the presence of the pragmatist aesthetic and attitude within various areas and disciplines.

The chapter delivers creative forms that work to expand and deliver concrete evidence and assertions that quantify notions of the most radical shifts in contemporary artistic practice. These shifts are directly practical, philosophically political, social and cultural engagements. This art form as seen here, most definitely no longer provides or creates a context meant for passive enjoyment and representational stasis.

5. Everyday Engagements An introduction and examination of the core concepts and forms that directly inform and synthesise the aesthetic paradigms within contemporary pragmatic art. Due to the broad nature of the idea of the everyday, this chapter is placed to discuss and define the history and deliver the available references that we term as everyday. Definitions begin primarily within an examination of existing literature to outline the iconic shifts in the daily realities of quotidian culture. Perceptions of work, nature and leisure and creativity are explored. I am interested to chart why these areas became somewhat separated in life, as with pragmatic thought and certain art forms in this thesis the ideal aim is to develop a culture that fully integrates these areas more holistically.

Art that conscripts everyday forms attempts to further examine consumer experiences, it is therefore pertinent to examine the construction of the everyday world for it is this which is now being reconstituted and profoundly referenced and used directly.

This chapter examines consumerism and changes in cultural pass times that are crucial to references in my own art practice. The inclusion of ideas regarding developments in the concept of leisure and escape, as defined within modern industrialisation are a key fulcrum in the production and form of my art works. Divisions and modes of everyday definition are also outlined and discussed.

Popular notions as to the genus of ‘common form’ I feel are essential to identify, as many of these forms are conscripted in my work. Associative leisure pursuits and hobbiest do-it-yourself cultures within prevailing Modernist industrial frameworks supply a great portion of the meanings within my creative theories. I also synthesise the notion of alienation emerging within the advent of new divisions and distancing hierarchies developed in industrial culture and address the needs and reasons for the developments of new alternative forms of activity and expression as evidenced by the attempts of artists and designers in this chapter.

It is important to clarify some of the aspects of repetitious mass produced industrial realities and semantics of the so-called, ‘quotidian experience’ to distinguish how more vernacular and one off forms can perhaps again begin to influence or affect the increasingly similar ‘international experience’, especially in the field of art. Mass production and cultural excess and its affect on people and culture are outlined here. This chapter aims to reveal the origins of our predominantly suburban-consumerist and commonly shared cultural experiences. I want to define what our shared realities and experiences may be and investigate how this directly influences art practice today.

The experiences and forms discussed here, lead toward the best examples of a radical art that has been born within a time of the greatest excess of production. How the everyday aspect in pragmatic art works inclusively, and with familiarity that provokes and overloads the viewer is of interest, as it is my belief that it is through the study and understanding of the the principles at work within industrial alienation that the artwork in my conclusion directly operates on.

6. Conclusion and Feedback loops This chapter concludes through a long sought after and awaited specific example of the existence of pragmatic relational co-efficient work in evidence. Something I had hoped to find during my research. A form of artwork in amalgamation and development, and an example of work that I waited many years to find to further prove my research. The conclusion asserts the extended relevance and resonance of the thesis by locating this very latest example (outside of my own work) that illustrates my ideas of this mode of pragmatic art production. To finally locate the work of the artistic example mentioned here further proves the veracity of my research. My thesis is the very evidence that aims to show that forms of pragmatic art are developing reactive strategies and sensibilities that comprise of both aesthetic critique and heightened use of cultural feedback.

This idea of feeding culture back into self via the use or adaptation of often familiar forms is a strategy engaged through what I believe to be a newly emergent form of responsibility and accountability in contemporary art that directly reflects the ideology of a greater pragmatic desire and purpose in art. In this art we find strong notions of the reconstitution of existing culture and the examination of the ideas behind the production and maintenance of excessive systems and structures. The close relation and use of vast structures, waste and debris and accountability is asserted here. The provocation of the viewer to encounter and feel and go beyond the visual experience is also examined.

This thesis and the artworks it contains, is my assertion of my findings and the conclusion that encapsulates the trajectory of the knowledge I have learned from researching and locating my theories. The conclusions and artistic examples that link throughout my thesis function crucially to display specifically relevant knowledge building up to the final assertion and creative example provided in this chapter.

Delivered here is the further extension to my own work. It is the unequivocal evidence of this new aspect of art in a somewhat wilder and more relevant state. The outcome of which, further illustrates and illuminates contemporary forms and techniques that are capable of fully utilising all the strategies asserted in my thesis.

The art included and conclusively discussed here, asserts the notion that the viewer is no longer a passive participant, but in fact a direct and accountable producer of the culture and world around them.

UNDERCURRENTS AND RELATIONS

The Pre-history of Pragmatic Art and Relational Aesthetics

EVERYDAY ENGAGEMENTS

15 ‘The beginning of art is the behaviour adopted by the artist - that set of arrangements and acts whereby one acquires a relevance in the present’ Hubert Damisch1

You may be invited to take part in a meal, be offered a ride in a luxury BMW roadster, propose an item for exchange in an artist's game, stay overnight in a gallery, watch and learn from Josi and Fritz, two Bavarian mechanics, as they disassemble, fix and tune a car. For complete relaxation you can play with an assortment of coloured footballs and space hoppers, take a ride on a merry-go-round and take your leave via a slide, spiralling down through the various floors of a gallery. You can even employ the skills of a group of artists to maximise the energy potential of your green waste in order to fuel the basics of your home or farm on the cheap.

One of the foremost debates present in the work of many contemporary artists involves a direct engagement with the quotidian. Predominantly these artists are interested in the ways in which everyday phenomena and codes can be interconnected with art. Within this mode of artistic practice certain features are generally found: the use of practices more commonly located outside the art world, the articulation of systems, structures and strategies from other fields and an emphasis largely based on process rather than on singular objects or products. Of paramount importance is the pragmatic attempt to engage directly and build reciprocal relationships between art and its audience.

1 Hubert Damisch (1984), Fenêtre jaune cadmium, Editions du Seuil.

Das Social Capital 1998, Rirkrit Tiravanijia

Untitled-One revolution per minute 1996, Rirkrit Tiravanijia

Gluck 1996, Carsten Holler

Sauna 2003-2005, Andrew Sunley Smith

Gluck 1996, Carsten Holler

Untitled Loud 1996, Rirkrit Tiravanijia

UNDERCURRENTS AND RELATIONS

Relational Aesthetics: Recent History Relational aesthetics is an extension of the writings of French curator, writer and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud. His theory began from his editorial writings, observations and interviews conducted for the magazine Documents sur l’art 1 in 1992. This idea was further expanded and translated into English in 2002 and has been widely used and canonised ever since largely without any accurate reflective analysis.

In 1995, Nicolas Bourriaud introduced the term in his exhibition catalogue essay Traffic: an introduction to relational aesthetics. It is closely linked to the idea of social aesthetics and in many ways is its logical development.

Social aesthetics was a term first used in relation to art in 1982 by the American art theorist Bill Olander2. As an art form it has existed in Denmark in a semi defined form, closely associated with activism, at least since the 1960s3. During the 1970s and 80s social aesthetics manifested itself in many forms of cultural activism, civil rights and importantly feminism, which directly questioned and attacked language, as well as passionately critiquing socially coded traditional gender roles and outmoded patterns of thought and behaviour. Also importantly, and by extension, social aesthetics by definition always analyses the connections between aesthetic knowledge, institutional norms and the activities of society at large.

Like any study of aesthetics, it is concerned with the study of rules and appearances and the production of beauty and acceptability, and how these are socially administered, created, reproduced and controlled. Social aesthetics is seen as a way of producing, analysing and communicating art, so that further connections can be created and be established between art and the surrounding society.

The contemporary Danish writer and critic, Lars Bang Larsen,4 writes of the term as being coined as simply the best common denominator to describe the recent increases of art as activism. Bang Larsen points out that art activism is still, not entirely the best way to describe recent changes in art practices. It is perhaps merely more poignant to say that there are more questions being raised today among artists,

1 Founded in 1992 by Nicolas Bourriaud, Eric Troncy, Philippe Parreno and Liam Gillick, this review has come to offer critical resources for the analysis and clarity of a rather foggy post-modernity. 2 Social Aesthetics, in Brian Wallis, ed., Democracy: A Project by Group Material William Olander, 1950-1989,” Village Voice , April 4, 1989, p. 77 3 As found in the work of Danish artists Palle Nilsen, Finn Thybo and Per Bille 4 Lars Bang Larsen is a Danish born freelance writer and curator based in Copenhagen and Bilbao, Spain. He regularly contributes to Frieze, Artforum, Springerin, and other publications. He has written a book on the psychedelic artist Sture Johannesson and essays about visual culture since the 1960s. He has co-curated Momentum (the Nordic Biennial), Pyramids of Mars, Copy Cat, the Echo Show, Fundamentalisms of the New Order, The Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds, Populism and Denmark's participation in the 2004 Bienal de São Paulo. He has also worked with the Danish Contemporary Art Foundation.

20 regarding the role, relevance, use and contexts of art, than have been commonly seen in earlier forms of art activism.

He points out also in his essay on social aesthetics5 that to use the term ‘ephemeral’ to describe this type of art is ill observed, describing its use as much more true in the description of the heritage of Fluxus and Situationism, but that current examples of social aesthetics in art still do not fit very well within the demarcations of these earlier schools.

What we have now in art today, is a fusion of the social and the aesthetic integrated into each other. Within this state, some forms of social aesthetic activity have been deliberately launched within the art circuit as art projects, to disrupt and disturb, in order to highlight broader issues in connection to the production and manufacturing of culture and the very aesthetics that we produce and proceed to live by.

Certain projects qualify traditionally as art, others qualify for artistic discussion and others qualify as artistic and socially relevant projects, some time after their actualisation in different contexts. The contemporary Danish artist Jens Haanings practice could be described as a direct descendant of Danish social aesthetics. Certain works of the American artist Gordon Matta Clark also, Food restaurant and pig roast to name just two. (See artist’s pages)

The dichotomy of art versus reality is often untenable. Yet artistic and social realities are exploded more and more by recent shifts in artistic practices. Art has often been hidden from critique in the larger social field, as it has been guarded and associated the status of being a privileged and an aloof relation to other forms of cultural activities. Art may have appeared weak when located in living reality because of its predominantly traditional formations and often, fragile materials. Present forms of pragmatic art as I see them, open up to the creation of new, more pertinent and relevant articulations of more democratically sourced durable forms and ideas - Today, art could also be seen as attempting to insert awareness and form practical solutions to processes related to the problems of passive non critical consumerism. It is integrating an awareness of a broader world at large, along with notions of accountability and environmentally pressing consequences caused by our very economic, social and cultural activities.

Nowhere in my readings and research into developmental relational aesthetics and social aesthetics have I encountered any awareness, inclusion and discussion of Pragmatism thus far. Considering it is the first new world philosophy to openly conscript and assert the value and pursuit of art (materially and philosophically) to vitally promote socially democratic growth in all arenas of life. Surprisingly, it has been in existence developmentally since the latter half of the 18th Century, yet never more pertinent to art than at present.

5 Social Aesthetics: II examples to begin in the light of a parallel history. Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry Issue 1 1999, pg 77

There exists, within this art-social-aesthetic trajectory, a dichotomy between institutional and non- institutional space. This is due to the very hangover of traditional attitudes to art and the change in perception that is occurring right now. Within Social aesthetics there exists an awareness in the minds of those who experiment with it, that traditionally art has been used for a specific purpose, namely that of serving only the interests of the so called elite. In terms of thinking at least, the idea of art forms as being elite and evermore removed from life, as something precious, is anathema to the quest of this work.

We find in this new area of art, a democratised attitude which probably stems from the early Danish social-activist origins of current pragmatic socially driven art. Social aesthetics, like Pragmatism, believes that art should do the opposite of serving an elite and widen its scope to reach as many people as possible and be an active part of producing cultural worth and values beyond an economic market worth alone. In the broadest sense of the word, art has become populist, in so much as the information that it works with and wants to highlight, change or make relevant is directly concerned with the current anxieties and practices of our daily aspirations.

Yet in this shift to use more popular everyday forms, the most contemporary forms of art have often been criticised for using what has been perceived as trite or crude formations. I think the criticisms are to do more so with the fear of the loss of tradition and old ideas of escapism, romanticism and docile ideas of beauty that many still expect and desire, nostalgically, to be preserved in art. In thinking this way, one fails to perceive and take on the vibrancy, relevance and beauty in the finite details of more everyday art and the vital openness, and variation it celebrates.

“We all know that the most important things in art history in the last forty or fifty years were not popular” 6

The social aesthetic in art often involves a utilitarian or practical aspect that shows and gives a sense of purpose and direct involvement. It could be said that social aesthetics is concerned with the discussion and exploration of the very notion of locating a lasting phenomenon that substantiates a critical and broad cultural analysis, which at its core really questions the purpose of our own existence and our role, function and contribution to society and culture at large.

Also what is crucial to remember is that there is an intentional fusion occurring in this type of work, which involves the enmeshing of the metaphorical value of art with other professional spheres toward the creation of what is hoped to be a more concrete and tangible use of art within its various cultural contexts.

6 Nicolas Bourriaud interviewed by Karen Moss, San Francisco art institute 2003

22 This use of fusion is about the decoding, revealing, enhancing and disrupting of systems that are seen as limited, damaging or ultimately non democratic or aesthetically intolerant.

Relational Aesthetics, a short text, first translated into English in 2002, (but in existence in France since 1995), is an attempt to study the multi-various attitudes and practices within art today, particularly the bringing of social aesthetics and the everyday into contemporary visual culture. While locating a common ground between a number of recent projects, Nicolas Bourriaud notes:

They are not linked together by any style and even less so by any fundamental theme or iconography. What these artists do have in common, though, is more crucial, because they are working within the same practical and theoretical horizon - the realm of relationships between people. Their works highlight social methods of exchange, interactivity with the onlooker within the aesthetic experience proposed. Communication processes, in their tangible dimension are used as tools for linking human beings and groups to one another. 7

If we take art for a moment then, to be predominantly a sociological affair, we can begin to see how the artists evidenced throughout my research, operate as poignant examples, and distillations of the events around them in the social, cultural and technological fields of their time.

Too often, resistant critics are willing to recite endless inventories of yesterday's concerns in order to pinpoint the means of conception and departures in the work of a contemporary artist.8 Any difficulties in the understanding of relational works stem from what is arguably a shortfall and failing within recent theoretical discourse. A leading quest of this thesis is to directly combat this lack of information. An overwhelming majority of critics, artists and philosophers seem reluctant, if not unable, to read and come to grips with the elements which inform and define this contemporary praxis. Within the last twenty years it is as if the academic art world was focused on psychological and literary introspections, and the artists were focused on the illustration of these specified introverted themes. Any form of visual arts theory actually based on the very processes of the visual arts, had throughout the last decade become somewhat secondary.

We have to face the fact that today, certain issues are currently no longer being raised. With respect to the neo-traditionalists and the many activists hooked on past glory days, stylistic allegiance and dogmatism of technique now seem only to indicate an introspective, dysfunctional and insecure approach to art making.

7 Nicolas Bourriaud, An introduction to Relational Aesthetics pg 1 of article. Cream, Contemporary art in Culture 1998 pg 24 8 I was reviewed by a critic who tried to recite references to Francisco de Goya in relation to my work? The critic (from a notable Scottish newspaper) only had dated painterly models to reference, revealing to me his lack of exposure, education and aptitude in articulating contemporary artwork. Oddly he gave me a very positive review.

Nicolas Bourriaud writes: ‘Relational art reveals an awful lot, and in any event, it represents an awaited alternative to the depressing, authoritarian and reactionary thinking, which, in France at least, masquerades as an art theory variant. Today's art is fairly and squarely taking on and taking up the legacy of twentieth-century avant-gardes’.9

Definitions and Distinctions

Relational: The bringing together of multifarious forms, dynamics and social interplays that express a relationship between elements. Aesthetics: In its root meaning is commonly known as the study of sensory-emotional values and or judgements of sentiment and taste. It is traditionally defined as the critical reflection on nature, culture and art. What is of primary interest to me regarding aesthetics (in relation to this thesis) is now more so the mass production of beauty, indeed how it is produced, created, industrially manufactured, perceived within capitalism, disseminated and consumed.

Preconceptions of aesthetics are always responsible in the resistances to new forms of art. Aesthetics are a constructed indexical language. Once one understands this one frees the limitations of imposed taste and quite radically broadens sensibilities to openly take in new experiences and differences.

I am viewing and asserting the notion that relational aesthetics is actually a culmination of many different ideologies and trajectories, that combine selected relevant pasts with very present and pressing current concerns. My view is that Pragmatism, conceptual art, anti capitalist thinking, and various forms of avant guard iconoclastic attitudes, as well as varying forms of social altruism, are located in the more interesting of artists working today. Some of these artists are found mentioned in Nicolas Bourriaud’s text. However, of paramount importance and key to this thesis and what is omitted from Bourriaud’s text, is an under pinning and recognition of Pragmatism in any form.

Equally significant, is that there are many artists I have researched, who are located south of the equator, that in many instances predate the examples Nicolas Bourriaud has noted. I am synthesising these artists into what I term is in fact Pragmatic Art, to provide the credence they deserve and to show their influence on my own work. When Nicolas Bourriaud began his research, he only tracked artists working predominantly in Northern Europe.10 My research not only questions why pragmatic knowledge is omitted from Relational Aesthetics but also expands the knowledge base and awareness of a greater number of significant artists who verify my assertions.

9 Nicolas Bourriaud, An introduction to Relational Aesthetics pg 2 of article. Cream, Contemporary art in Culture 1998 pg 25 10 I fully acknowledge this is a significant point in itself and possibly presents another extension for this thesis, perhaps a second PhD - Yet it is not the primary focus of this investigation.

Nicolas Bourriaud’s writing quite rightly and refreshingly relies directly on the experience of the artwork in order to gain a deeper understanding of the writing. The two are inseparable. The text, Traffic (1996) was written by Bourriaud initially only as a short catalogue format, to be read within close range of viewing the exhibition of the art works.11

The service of Bourriaud Bourriaud wrote on work that already pre-existed in relational aesthetics, he never speculated. His service was to collate the work of a number of artists working around him in unusual and previously undefined ways. His relational theory provides only the first fulcrum in a period of fusion and synthesis of the ideas that are more clearly researched and delivered in this thesis. My view is that because Bourriauds model was so rapidly canonised as a key term of definition and debate it has largely remained unexamined. Its strength is asserted by the visual forms that artists began producing, though notably the text remains unillustrated. Philosophically it was never fully examined in light of Pragmatism, so the appreciation of this work has always stemmed from a very European standpoint, based on a small handful of international artists working in France at that time. My findings reveal that the pragmatic aspect of contemporary art is a much more global phenomenon.

Realignments and Reconnections The bond that relational artists re-establish with reality relies on the true experiences of a lived life. The artist today is no longer visualised as an eccentric loner this is an old fashioned, outmoded and isolating symbol. There is a want to intensify a relationship to the world and to mobilise authenticity within this type of art, to connect again to the real world in ways never attempted before. Illusions of any communion within institutions that are set up around an art based on little content and mere visuals alone, are no longer enough. We are more culturally exposed and far more cynical now.

In the 1980s, there was a collapse in the belief of the reality of the introspective individual self, where art became an indicator of internal trauma and anxiety to which one could do very little about, except acknowledge. The inward journey ceased to be of interest. The relational wave (that arose more or less in parallel around the same time as grunge and techno music in late 1980s and early 1990s), reactivated an intense drive for the sharing of artistic experience, and sought a more important purpose. It is through a concern to rediscover difference as well as the exploration of alternative systems and ‘otherness’ and to find various methods of practically integrating these ideas into the larger system, that the impulse behind much of the aesthetic variation produced today is regulated and levelled with a more common sense of shared reality.

11 This idea of an inseparable experience between written and visual form is something very important in my own work, as developed and exhibited in my Carrier 1 project 2000-2005 which houses my writing and all my references and archive on the projects own construction and its theoretical offshoots for viewers to access.

Relational art is not governed by a general system of art making, or limited formal equations. (Painting, or sculpture, or photography), these equations no longer matter at all. They are, in and of themselves, irrelevant here.

Interactivity and Reconciliation I believe we are currently witnessing the emergence of a new culture of interaction. A new art system has

recently come to be and it is based on the idea of relations 12

Nicolas Bourriaud describes in 1995, before publishing his first work on relational aesthetics in 1996, that he was observing and encountering a site of struggle between the artist and the viewer. He cites the understanding that an artwork is always made up of two different components, the first being what is intended and the second being what was not really meant. It is within the artwork where these two components are reconciled.

He sees this phenomenon of struggle, as one of the first occurrences that undermines more empiricist aesthetics and one that is capable of criticising traditional ideas of universalities. Ideas of which can still be found continuing with a largely unquestioned overwhelming presence in the art world.

What we find in researching Bourriaud (1995-2005) is a cynicism toward formal languages of art, especially toward the singular object as the only site in which meaning is located.

I believe that meaning comes out of the installation of forms, how forms relate between one another, their installation and arrangement in an art space.13

This idea of the relating of forms is by no means new to artists. It is a huge part what we do after all. The extended discussion of interactivity is of greater interest. Nicolas Bourriaud points out notions of interactivity have become something of a buzzword in the arts, yet his concept goes beyond this idea as being based in gadgetry such as the Internet and the use of information technologies in art. He gives the following definitions:

The artist invents relations between people with the aid of signs, forms, actions or gestures. My first point is that I firmly believe it is difficult, nowadays, to represent reality. In a way I think we are through with representing reality…. These are times when we should be producing reality 14

12 Nicolas Bourriaud, Foundazione Antonio Ratti , UnDo.net pg 1, 1995 13 ibid, pg 1, 1995 14 Nicolas Bourriaud, Foundazione Antonio Ratti , pg 2, 1995

26 It is fair to say that today, most contemporary artworks are driven in some way by a need to escape from traditional historic notions of representation in order to activate more commonly located icons based in real encounters of everyday processes. The outcome of traditional art practice, was largely to arrive at only a representation of reality through a painting, sculpture, textile, print, or photograph. Artwork in this vein just coloured or imbued the reality with an idiosyncratic variation of what was already there. Its function was only contemplative and purely aesthetic. In this way its larger function was engaged as an internalising conceptual or emotive proposal. It was not an externalising usable structure that once removed from the gallery had a direct application beyond that of contemplation. Art, in relational and more correctly, pragmatic terms, no longer wants to remain ambiguous in terms of its relations to other systems and realities (architecture, design, civic planning, linguistics, science, engineering, environmental studies, history, pop culture and so forth). Which is why more artists today are busy creating, critiquing, developing and experimenting with other social models.

What is an artist nowadays? It is not someone who makes paintings or sculptures or even installations. For me, these words are totally obsolete, for they do not describe and cannot describe what I do. It is much more accurate to talk in terms of artists producing surfaces, volumes, mechanisms, objects, ideas and situations.

We could even say that the artwork in itself is no longer significant, as a single entity. What is significant, and what is at the core of Bourriaud’s theory, is that the artist brings together in their works, the very connections that are drawn between each work. These sets of relations brought about when producing an artwork are now the most significant part.

The conviviality and openness (and indeed radicalism) evidenced in this thesis was an objective for some artists in the 60s and 70s, yet is now a starting point for artists and considered very much as something to build upon, expand and evolve from.

‘I like to think of History as a toolbox’ 15

The artists that Nicolas Bourriaud mentions in Relational Aesthetics; Philippe Parreno, Pierre Joseph, Peter Fend, Angela Bulloch, Liam Gillick, Douglas Gordon, Dominique Gonzales Foerster, Maurizio Cattelan, Pierre Huyghe, Vanessa Beecroft, Gillian Wearing, Sean Landers, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Philippe Perrin, Gabriel Orozco, Christine Hill, to name a few. Are primary indicators of a greater shift within the ideologies and very philosophy of art production and the change desired in aesthetics and the very materiality of art.

15 International Curator Hans Ulrich Obrist interviewed by Andrew Sunley Smith, The New-Coefficiency Symposium, Glasgow CCA 2006

27 Rirkrit Tiravanijia organised a supper at a collector’s home, and left him the instructions of how to make a Thai soup, Phillip Parreno invited people to persue their favourite hobbies on May day on an industrial assembly line. Vanessa Beecroft used identical clothes, (and identically proportioned woman) and the same red wigs to dress twenty or so woman, whom, visitors could glimpse only from the doorway (Schipper & Krome Gallery Cologne, 1994). Maurizio Cattelan fed rats with ‘Bel paese’ cheese and sold them as multiples, and exhibited recently burgled safes. In a Copenhagen square, Jes Brinch and Henrik Plenge Jacobsen installed an upturned bus, which stirred up rivalries and sparked a riot in the city (Burn out 1994). Christine Hill landed a cashier’s job in a supermarket and organised weekly gym classes in a gallery (Eigen art gallery, Berlin 1994). Pierre Huyghe summoned people to a casting session, made a TV transmitter available to the public and showed photos of men working on billboards, just a few yards from

their work site…16

The artists, designers, architects and creative thinkers that I have researched further and evidenced throughout this thesis are much more concerned unequivocally with pragmatics. They show clearly the underlying influences and extensions to the above and although they link directly to 1990s relational works, these artists are yet even more extreme and practical in the outcomes of their projects. 17 Importantly they are sourced more globally and in many cases pre-date the examples provided by Bourriaud.

Andrea Zittel, Joep Van Lieshout, Jens Haaning, Droog, N55, Superflex, MVRDV, Carsten Holler, Ernst Ellemunter, Anne Hawkes, Mick Hender, Matthieu Laurette, Avital Geva, Rirkrit Tiravanijia, Olafur Elliasson, Rodney Glick, Gina Griffiths, Nisit O Charern, and myself I include here. The earlier examples being Gordon Matta Clark, Hans Haacke, Chris Burden, Yoko Ono, George Maciunas , Shigeru Ban, the Japanese Metabolists,, Wally Byam and Buckminster Fuller. All share the embedded common points and attitudes of Pragmatism and coefficient ideals.

Nicolas Bourriaud uses a fun term he invented in relational aesthetics, the ‘Semionaut’ (‘semio’ as in sign and ‘naut’ as someone who travels). He describes artists as semionauts who travel through language and connect signs and make new combinations of meaning.

The French Sociologist Michel Maffesoli 18, attempted to address and decode the mechanisms at work in the production of images, language and meanings that make our representations, fantasies and symbols

16 Nicolas Bourriaud, Traffic, pg 26,1995 *17 See Artists pages included throughout text. 18 (b1944)One of the most influential sociologists in the contemporary European scene. Director of the journals Sociétes and Cahiers Européens de l’Imaginaire He is also founder and editor of the Centre d’Etudes sur l’Actuel et el Quotidien (CEAQ), in the laboratory of sociological research at the Sorbonne and director of the Centre de Recherche sur l’Imaginaire de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. In the last few years, his writings have dealt with problems such as the return of the archaic in contemporary societies, nomadism, and urban tribes. Maffesoli has published over twenty volumes, and has contributed widely to journals and anthologies. Among his titles in English are, The Time of the Tribes (1995), Ordinary Knowledge: Introduction to Interpretative

28 within contemporary society. In his book, The Contemplation of the World, Figures of Community Style,(1996). He describes images as devices that are able to create small (and large) communities based on shared values and identifications based on dynamics of attraction (something that the modern advertiser knows all too well). Maffesoli is interested in what makes up our collective styles, and by extension, our communities. Just like the artist working in a pragmatic trajectory. What are the images of pragmatism? can this philosophy settle within images alone?

In some ways, this perception and explanation of the image as being at the core of societal structure, helps to explain why artists nowadays desire to operate directly in the fields of pre-existing realities and attempt to introduce themselves into the mechanisms that already produce social governances. It is not just about imagery any longer.

We know that the reality that we inhabit today is made of billions upon billions of images and parts. Yet the role of art is no longer to simply produce and reconcile ‘only’ images. This is a very limiting idea. Art can recycle pre-existing images from many vast and varied fields of production, the media, cinema, the Internet and elsewhere. Yet this is just a tiny part of the its contemporary quest.

Redirection and recycling within relational art and pragmatist art have replaced the old idea of resistance, to the overwhelming influx and mass production of the image environment. Reassessment is the key to the contemporary artist now. We are no longer simply in front of something to which we can reply with blunt resistance, we are now surrounded on all sides, and all we can do is utilise the available energy to redirect and reconfigure the flux to weld stronger more articulate forms for a better equipped and road worthy art to best reflect our times. Contemporary artists today are trying to answer the question of what can be done, with the projects carried out by modern art? What are we to do with all that we inherit? maintain it? Correct it? Make it better? Examine what has actually been achieved? Re-use the best parts and disregard the rest? Assess what benefits were produced?

A systematic idea of recycling and do-it-yourself (DIY) now accompanies a whole global shift in art and culture. This idea is occurring within the very relations that have been created, by capitalism. The conscientious artist is a master recycler. One who understands the meanings of objects and images and how to sample, conscript, hone and best adapt them.

Recycling is both an evident and core part, polemically and conceptually to my own work. It declares the intelligence of necessity as well as resistance to unnecessary consumption of yet more goods.

Sociology (1996), Shadow of Dionysus: Contribution to the Sociology of the Orgy (1993) and The Contemplation of the World: Figures of Community Style (1996).

29 The major industrial countries of the world produce less in terms of raw materials and more and more predominantly; they are simply refining products supplied by third world countries.

There is something at work today within pragmatic art that is crucially about, accountability, balance and equilibrium.

EN ROUTE: Sydney–Glasgow email exchange, Jan 2005 Proposed Migratory Projects, New Co-Efficiency symposium Ideas exchange - Mobile Minerals

Glasgow School of Art lecturer, John Calcutt pointed out that after research he found out that a standard mobile phone relies on many different types of minerals and components sourced from many countries around the world. The mineral coltan(columbite-tantalite) is used to make pin head capacitors that regulate and store energy in a phone. This essential component is mined aggressively and extensively in the Congo in Africa where 80% of the world’s deposits are found.

I’ve since found out that in 2002 the BBC revealed that the price for coltan surged from $65.00 per kg to $600.00 and consequently mining has increased to such an extent that deforestation is threatening the very survival of lowland gorillas. The frenzy for mining coltan has seen the gorilla population decline by 80 – 90% in the last five years as the habitat is destroyed in the rush to supply markets with coltan.

I can’t help but think of all the inane trivia sent and received over the airwaves by mobile phones…. surely 50% of our communication. The link between banal constant communication and destruction of habitat and life is abhorrent.

Utopian Technologies – Bourriaud’s notion of re-use

This very idea of mining and recycling previously existing work in art and re-contextualising it forms the ideas that Bourriaud refers to as Post-production (2002). A term borrowed from the film industry, (associated with the editing phase of a film’s production), Bourriaud examines how many artists today comment on previously made images, films, objects and creative formations, by using, extending and modifying pre-existing forms. (The sampler, the hacker and the DJ provide good models)

The idea of newness in itself is now seen as completely arbitrary. The notion of being pertinent and relevant is more important than just doing something new.

What really good artists do is to create a model for a possible world, and the possible parts of it. Avant gardes were about utopias. How is it possible to transform the world from scratch and rebuild a society, which would be totally different. I think that is totally impossible… and what artists are trying to do now

is to create micro-utopias, neighbourhood utopias.19

19 Nicolas Bourriaud, Foundazione Antonio Ratti , pg 4,1995

31 The last and most recent of our utopian hopes was the idea of information technology, of computation and Information technology revolutionising every sphere of life. Of course the affect of new technologies has been far reaching, but it has also had the effect of making things seem and operate in a very remote kind of way…. cars must be fixed by computer technicians, building and architecture systems are controlled by remote. Navigational systems, even warfare and our perception of it has changed in light of this. This information utopia is about the dominance and achievements of our machines. Computer companies even once speculated on the ‘paper free office’ and in fact delivered the very opposite reality.

In parallel to these digital modes and very important and poignant to me, is the emergence of more direct ‘hands on’, tactile, physically interactive artwork that has grown in unison with the expansion of information technologies. This very occurrence may suggest the necessity for the joy of making and a continuation of the will to live in equilibrium. A world of individual participants actually fabricating their own changes toward leading a more balanced and sustainable situation in which to exist.

HISTORY AS TOOLBOX

Proto-relational forms, resonances and recrudescence

Using my definition of the proto-relational, I am asserting the evidence of early emergent relational strategies, serving to further prove and illustrate the arc of my argument. That pragmatism underpins, and is in fact the forerunner to contemporary relational art practices. My view is that this work has never been previously addressed in relation to pragmatics and relational art, and is in fact, unequivocally part of the development of this type of work. Evidenced here are early examples of pragmatic artists, who attempted to bring larger social and everyday forms and dynamics into play in the projects they were doing. They attempted to broaden the cultural scope and very content of art through a series of ground breaking activities and exhibitions.

What these pragmatic and proto-relational artists share with current examples of contemporary relational art, is that they are in no way representational. In many ways the visual is secondary and simply determined by the process by which the project dictated. These projects have been instructional and influential to the progress and attitude of my own arts practice over the years. In many ways I have always used them consciously as stable building blocks and stepping-stones along the way, and importantly now, these highlighted projects and thinkers are more timely and resonant now than they ever were.

These artists and thinkers were working primarily at the turn of the 20th century and later throughout the sixties and seventies, and always classified generally and quite loosely within conceptual and dematerialist art movements. I would in hind sight classify and assert that these works are in an area all of their own. In

32 linking broader fields and conscripting wider aesthetic cues, aiming beyond just the representational. This art is first and foremost pragmatic and unequivocally proto-relational.

I have also tracked and found examples of artists and designers that have occasionally produced ‘one off’ pragmatic projects, or situations and then returned to more standardised and conventional art practices. These ‘off shoot’ projects, are the ones of interest here, as they have to some degree fallen under the radar of more conventional art writing and classification. These works have therefore suffered misrepresentation. The specific more one-off works that I outline here are crucial to this new body of knowledge. Proto-Relational Strategies

The Independent Group In seeking a greater social use for art, an experimental group working in Britain in 1952, known as the Independent Group 20 was founded by the artists Richard Hamilton, Nigel Henderson, Toni Del Renzio, John McHale, Eduardo Paolozzi and William Turnbull, and the architects, writers and critics Reyner Banham, J.G Ballard and Lawrence Alloway. The group, were based on the "art of discussion, design and display". They worked in a fully interdisciplinary sense, organizing exhibitions, seminars, talks, and curated shows. England at this time was in the first full flush of a newly won economic prosperity that by the end of the fifties had transformed into an incipient mass consumerism. The group welcomed the cultural implications and social changes that burgeoned during this boom. They used forms directly sourced from new mass produced popular culture to set up experimental installations. (This new artistic form of installation including film, objects and still imagery was previously unseen before).

The materiality of their work included use of new glossy magazines, new widescreen movie projection, LP records, television sets, mass print technology, advertisements, montage, printed text, robots, naked bodies, automobiles, domestic goods, building materials and anthropological artifacts, to create an effect with greater meaning and resonance than the experience of stylish abstraction that they viewed as too market driven, effected and esoteric. They used these above forms to construct a critical denigration and subversion of what many believed to be the highest ideals of British Heritage. (Evelyn Waugh21 & George Orwell22 criticized this ‘invasion’). Their tactics were to introduce popular culture into traditionally high art situations. They presented a rootless, mass - produced, industrialized culture in order to expand the very limited notion of what defined culture at that time. Their drive seems to have been genuinely

20 A radical group of young artists within the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. The Independent Group, or IG, was first convened in the winter of 1952–3 and then again in 1953–4. It was responsible for the formulation, discussion and dissemination of many of the basic ideas of British Pop art and of much other new British art in the late 1950s and early 1960s. 21 British Writer (1903-1966), Brideshead Revisited, Many of Waugh's novels depicts British aristocracy and high society, which he savagely satirizes but to which he was also strongly attracted. He was widely admired as a prose stylist and humorist, but as his social conservatism and religiosity became more overt, his works grew more controversial with critics 22 George Orwell (1903-1950), British journalist, political author and novelist wrote Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) His works emphasize the profound consciousness of social injustice, an intense dislike of totalitarianism.

33 explorative as well as it was an aesthetic leveling force, introducing everyday pop cultural forms and style as equally valued alongside established traditional styles.

This expanded notion of an actual experientially encountered everyday culture, in the eyes and minds of the group, was seen as an active agent of social change. The group believed that popular culture and its vast array of products responded not only to economic needs but also to the social and psychological desires of subgroups and individuals in ways never before possible. The Independents envisaged consumers as being able to reshape and appropriate the meanings of culture toward more democratically collective needs. They argued that the ideas and forms within popular culture directly contributed to greater social mobility and self-determination. Popular culture was viewed, contrary to dominant mainstream thinking, as transformative and not a crude or limiting force.

They prided themselves on being informed about all leading forms of popular culture, graphics, films, photo graphics, mechanical know how, music, bodily science and knowledge of industrial design. They gave lectures on helicopter design, machine aesthetics, and principles of verification and invited people from differing fields other than high art to talk about their own specialized areas. The group heralded alternatives of aesthetic form within art, and the inclusion of marginalities as a true method of learning. Cultural identities aside from the mainstream were seen (somewhat stereotypically now) as containing subversive and progressive potential. The possibility of de-centering and redistributing cultural power could, they believed, be achieved with some autonomy, through the direct use and transformation of easily accessible mass-produced forms, images and ideas.

Lawrence Alloway stated his own belief at the time researching and implementing - The modern arrangements of knowledge in non-hierarchic forms 23

The debate for cultural authenticity in the late fifties seems to have been a dominant anxiety surrounding the group. The Independents had an open system in the content of their collected works, so that forms of high and low art were simultaneously placed together to achieve an effect that was primarily concerned with all forms of present and future formations. The aim was to present exhibitions, designs and talks with a full saturation of imagery and forms that were directly associated with contemporary social consumer realities and anxieties of that time.

The groups celebrated achievement was the exhibition "This is Tomorrow", which was opened in 1956 at the White Chapel Gallery. "This is Tomorrow" emerged as not only an aesthetic turning point in British art, (declared as the earliest manifestation of British pop art) but indicated that fusing and openness were the strategies that best reflected seemingly non associated forms and fields of interest coming together. In

23 Modern art & popular culture, readings in high & low: The Independent group, Lynne Cooke pg 199

34 a sort of pragmatic, futurist, pop, industrial, sociological form, they fused scientific developments, art, space travel, science fiction, anthropology and consumerism together in a way never attempted before.

The group seemed to be aiming to show the situation and interplay between all forms of contemporary culture, as well as simultaneously trying to level and equalize through the very material of consumer capitalism pitted against the traditions of high art and its associated aesthetics. Industrial consumer aesthetics were dominant features, in both object materiality and the graphic designs of the show. It is argued that the group were reacting to the spread of what they considered to be the introspective and self- fulfilling style of international abstraction dominating the visual culture of the time. It is worth also pointing out here, that the exhibitions by the Independent Group favored interactivity and were described as very ‘experiential’ affairs.

In 1969 J.G Ballard, exhibited the crushed and wrecked bodies of authentically crashed cars. Ballard said that he had wanted to challenge notions of sanity and acceptability and also asked why there should not be a culture of exhibiting the industrial atrocities and excesses of which we are a part, in very direct and unmediated ways.24

24 The controversial responses to this 1969 exhibition convinced him to continue and write the novel Crash.

‘This is Tomorrow’, Aug 9th -Sept 9th 1956

36 GORDON MATTA CLARK

In 1971,Gordon Matta-Clark was establishing the Food project. Seen as one of the earliest manifestations of what can be identified as a relational project Matta-Clark, along with Caroline Gooden and others, worked to set up a restaurant on Prince Street Soho, New York. In October of that year Food opened its doors serving garlic soup and home made bread. The opening was attended by a large number of artists who could volunteer themselves on a Sunday to design and cook a menu of their own - this became 'special guest chef day'. The menus gradually became more and more elaborate and bizarre, yet the restaurant always maintained a varied and wholesome choice of everyday foodstuffs in order to maintain a stable level of income for all involved.

In the Brooklyn Bridge event, 1971, an annual celebration of the construction of the bridge was organised by the New York municipal art society. The spaces underneath the piers of the bridge were allotted to various artists. On the final night of the festival, Matta-Clark organised a pig on a spit, which was roasted and from which he made 500 sandwiches to feed as many of the bridge’s local inhabitants as were available, and cater for those attending the closing party. The whole process was recorded as the film Pig Roast 1971.

Matta-Clark took on the existing world as a theatre of operations. The Food restaurant is perhaps the most pragmatic and literal excursion into the quotidian. The project was a prime example of social activism, and a mindful necessity to deal with the need to finance projects and earn a living whilst working with friends. The restaurant also became a vehicle for people to be introduced to the art world. Many people contributed and as Food restaurant increased in popularity and notoriety, Matta-Clark and his collaborators managed to spread some of the profits throughout the local art scene - in particular to a new generation of artists whose 'dematerialised' art works and anti-object actions did not really fit or find a compatible venue in the minimalist inspired galleries of the time (57th St).

The area in Soho where Matta-Clark was situated was full of new and unused spaces in which to exhibit and experiment with ideas. It was a perfect opportunity for developing and researching political, post- minimal, and broadening conceptual and pragmatic works.

Food and its related projects intentionally interfered with the standards used to qualify and quantify works of art. Crucially, what was formulated in the Matta-Clark Food collaboration projects has now in my view, become one of the best examples of a major form of altruistic co-efficient and social art form. The outcomes and effects of which now provides one of the very best case studies in how we approach, address and understand contemporary work. Issues of authorship, context art, socially interactive sculpture, (encapsulated in its current form as relational aesthetics) were being dealt with directly by Matta-Clark.

Food 1971, Opening Flyer, Gordon Matta Clark

Food 1971, Gordon Matta Clark

39 A Philosophical Structure of Relationality. The short introduction to the 1987 book, A Thousand Plateaus, by the French Philosopher, Gilles Deleuze and practicing psychoanalyst, and political activist Felix Guattari, is structurally and philosophically of vital importance to this thesis and the artworks created during my research. This essay, infused the international art community with a very organic and usable metaphor aptly named The Rhizome. The Rhizome theory, with its emphasis on multiplicities, lines of flight, re-territorialisations and interconnectivity is written with a scriptural flow that progresses like a search engine. The central idea is intentionally left supple and ambivalent, so that it can be translated into many differing systems.

The biological plant metaphor is of a rhizomatic nodule or root system (as found in Bamboo and types of grasses) that shoots off, growing in all directions. Having no centre or original stem, it endlessly generates and repeats itself, growing through, within, and on top of other more limited systems. This agile and aggressive flexibility, accounts for the success of rhizomatic species. (It can be understood further by relating its description to the Duchampian co-efficient sense of how art actually works on various levels when successful). Due to the beautiful simplicity of the metaphor and its far-reaching implications, arts communities readily absorbed it. It contains all the ideas of co-efficiency, pragmatism and relationality though seemingly this point has never been raised. It is like reading how a complex machine works, understanding the parts of which it comprises, and how best to use it. The rhizome theory metaphor resonates as a flexible, elastic and structural tool for continued open adaptable and progressive attitudes, through greater inclusivity.

‘The rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, and offshoots. The rhizome pertains to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight’. 25

‘A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing. The tree is filiation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance. The tree (vertical static thought structure with only limited extensions) imposes the verb “ to be”, but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction,

“and…and…and…” This conjuncture carries enough force to shake and uproot the verb “to be’.26

It is the culture of conflict and endlessly limiting binary forms produced (as they saw) within capitalist linear thinking, that Deleuze and Guatarri wanted to re-address, move beyond, explode and expose. They considered art as producing zones of subjectivity and existential territories that were of the highest value and provided a point of individual meaning within capitalist cultures that were ultimately founded on mass divisions, wars and de-territorialisations. The axiom of capitalism is that it arises as a worldwide enterprise, internally exterminating forms and therefore meanings that do not benefit its progression. It is

25 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 1998 pg 21 26 A Thousand Plateaus, pg 25

40 believed to be able to solve all our problems endlessly, giving society meaning, replacing emptiness with abundant choice and democratic free thought and totalitarian like confidence. They saw capitalism as endless producing dualisms in all dimensions. These dualisms were articulated as an implicit trap, constantly layered on top of one another, one history overlaying the last.

Each dualism always demands mental correctives that are necessary to undo the dualisms that we had no wish to construct but through which we must pass… The dualisms are the enemy, the enemy entirely necessary to capital… the furniture that we are endlessly rearranging. 27

Deleuze and Guattari introduced the need for constant diversification and reclassification within totalitarian capitalism, in order to readdress and expose the limitations present within binary forms of thought and meaning and perception itself.

Artists, are those, who traverse the world of signs and invent new meanings from many thousands of different sources. They are agents of re-engagement. They operate directly like Rhizomes. There is no point to my mind in alternative models of thought existing if they are only ever referential. To a pragmatist, they must be used and made concrete through writing, through art and directly in life. If these structures are not employed to structure thesis, construct art and exhibitions, devise lectures, make music, and other outcomes they will not be understood. These intellectual models exist to affect culture. My own artwork and thesis also exists to demonstrate this. Attitude as form: The uses of Conceptual art Distinctions and similarities.

In the attempt to quantify new unusual modes of art, misidentifications have been elaborated to describing a supposed return of late, to a form of 'conceptual' art. This definition, though a ‘close relative’ is indeed ill founded and premature. Pragmatic art and by extension relational art in no way or form praises or values immaterial ventures.

Conceptual art and its surrounding climate predominantly fetishized both the thought and the work process. Think here of Joseph Kosuth, Richard long, Wolfgang Laib, and more recently, Sophie Calle.

Conceptual art undoubtedly made way for current contemporary relational art; it was without doubt enjoyably iconoclastic. Yet in hindsight, conceptual work is overly concerned with ‘meaning’ and signification. Looking back now many conceptual works can seem slow, excruciating and somewhat retentive. The great strengths posited by conceptual art, were of course in the questioning of the role and

27 A thousand Plateaus pg 21

41 aesthetics of not only the presentation of art, but also the very purpose of museums and the status of the art object. Conceptual artists radically moved art into different situations.

There has been some debate about the similarity of relational art to that of conceptual work. I would like to simply discuss and place here the only precepts that I have importantly gleaned, and can relate as poignant in ascertaining, both similarity and distinction.

In September 1969, artist and curator Lucy Lippard,28 organised an exhibition ‘557,087 Seattle’ seeking to break with the restrictions of museum exhibition procedures. A total of sixty-two artists spread about the city of Seattle, in obscure, ‘off-site’ unexpected places. The catalogue accompanying the show consisted of 120 cards bearing the various artists’ proposals. This experimental exhibition and its realisation, expressed Lippard’s notion of the dematerialisation of the art object and the ability for art to work successfully outside the cloistered and restrictive boundaries of formal art galleries of the time.

Slightly earlier, from March 22 to April 27 1969, at the Kunsthalle Berne, Switzerland, the Curator Harold Szeeman organised the exhibition - ‘When Attitudes Become Form: Works – Concepts – Processes - Situations- Information. In his statement for the show, Szeeman writes; ‘Artists in this exhibition are in no way object makers, On the contrary they aspire to freedom from the object, and in this way, deepen the levels of meaning. They want the artistic process itself to remain visible.‘29

Harold Szeeman30 wanted to bring together the various art forms that he had been following, conceptual art, earth/land art, anti-form and Arte Povera. He realised that in order to exhibit such work successfully, it was vital to ignore categories, and let the ‘spirit of informality’ take over. Having established the object was incidental, the attitude and very intention of art was declared as everything.

One can see how this is a reaction to the dominant notion of the singular art object as the ultimate expression of artistic achievement. Also, how it was important to debase this idea to allow for validity to be placed in other areas of artistic engagement. Today, there has been a refreshing emphasis placed back on the role of the object. It’s validity, is to be found in its use and role in part of a scenario of ideas. It is not just a means to an end. It is neither conclusive or fetishized, as the end of artistic output. The object

28 American writer, activist and curator b1937 New York. Lippard was among the first writers to recognize the de-materialization concept present in some of the work in conceptual art and was an early champion and supporter of feminist art. 29 When Attitude Becomes Form: Works – Concepts – Processes - Situations- Information. Kunsthalle Berne, March 22-April 27 1969, Curated by Szeeman. 30 Swiss Curator and art historian b1933 - d 2005. Between 1961 to 1969 was curator at Kunsthalle Bern. 1972 director of documenta 5. Since 1998 director for Visual Arts, Biennale de Venezia. Since 1957 curated over 200 exhibitions

42 can often be seen as somewhat transitory in a project realised in todays relational, co-efficient and pragmatic art. It is more an inter-locator than a final representative statement.

Conceptual art, on the whole, can be said to have successfully questioned and challenged the traditional worship of the art object in museums and institutions, as well as it interrogated our methods evaluating a work of art. In this way it shares an initial similarity in intention only with pragmatic art. Methodologies from conceptual work are still practiced today as younger generations find the flexible strategies and iconoclastic positions, employed in conceptual work very useful in elucidating more complex experiences of the world.

Conceptual artists were attentive and wary of restrictive definitions and typologies. Classification was initially anathema to conceptual artists, as many of their works (similarly to the encountered problems in the resistance to Relational Aesthetics) would not clearly fit into any definable zones. Conceptual art simply became the overarching title for creative work, which predominantly questioned art itself, and the structures and institutions around it. This happened simply due to the broadness and perceived openness of its aesthetic base.

Tony Godfrey in his 1998 text on Conceptual art describes that it could not be defined in terms of any medium or style, but rather by the way it questions what art is.

‘Because the work does not take traditional form it demands a more active response from the viewer. It

could be argued that the Conceptual work of art only truly exists in the viewer’s mental participation’. 31

Undoubtedly, from the pick of all the previous art movements, conceptual art has had a substantial formative effect on the attitudes of more avant-garde contemporary artists working today. It crucially instigated the better reception of more expansive projects and forms of representation, including land art and the more reactive de-materialist art of the 1970’s.

The legacy of the fascination with meaning that conceptual art had, has left a delightful regard for the immaterial in art. Yet pragmatic art is looking again directly at material. Especially the materials of our constructed world, and how these materials may be adapted and used for greater, more useful and expansive purposes.

31 Tony Godfrey, Conceptual art 1998 Pg 4

EN ROUTE: Sydney May 2005 Digging, cutting, splitting.

It is very interesting to note, that at a moment in art history when the museum itself and its very meaning was being questioned (predominantly the 60s & 70’s), a number of artists started digging. Digging into the ground, digging under the very foundations of the museums and structures around them. Symbolically and actually revealing the foundations and sections of the construction. Undermining… As if they were also searching for something…

For greater use and meaning perhaps..

Chris Burden, Gordon Matta Clark, Walter de Maria

The legacy from conceptual artists passed on to artists working today, can be found in the recognition that objects are part and parcel of an active language. Objects present a deep connection with time and also with artists themselves. Today, social beliefs, mass media, institutions, politics, histories, and the very processes engaged in daily work are all part of human relations. These realms and realities themselves now create a larger form and the very object for art.

Formal expectations as to the relevance of the objects now engaged in artistic practice, are called into question within relational art. What is the purpose of art? Why do we do it? What is it for? Why does it take and maintain certain forms? Why is arts current form like it is?

Art institutions the world over, stand accused of maintaining the illusion that objects excuse bad ideas, and at worst continue to support the mass-production of forms that are of little use outside their own hierarchies. Preferences for aesthetic anaemia, uncritical thinking and guaranteed marketability often still govern the production and exhibition of a great deal of art in the mainstream today.

Forms of critical contemporary art invariably endeavour to go beyond their mere presence in space. An artwork's ability to open dialogue and implement discussion is a form of negotiation that Marcel Duchamp referred to as 'the co-efficient of art'. Co-efficiency for Duchamp is a temporal process inherent in a work of art, that is about the ability of a work to function in the here and now and to find resonance in the social field of its present. Also to collate and embody the sum of relations with which it is distinctly a part of. The more ways a work can be read, the more efficient and thorough its communication.

For some still today, this co-efficiency is a little tricky and bothersome, as it requires less passivity in viewing and interpretation. It reveals the transparency of many of our interpretive tools. Where do we locate an image? Where do we find gestures and evidence of beauty and harmony? How do we locate the patterns of artistic behaviour? In what context is the work produced? And how is it administered? Co- efficiency (like the rhizome) is intentionally flexible, elastic, slippery and arduous. Yet in its very operation delivers much more resonance and clarity of ideas. through asserting knowledge in related and variable areas simultaneously.

Marcel Duchamp’s Coefficiency: The First Proto-Relational Ideas

Delivering a lecture on the creative process, in New York in 1957, Marcel Duchamp, introduced his new idea of a socially and aesthetically articulate artistic device that was undoubtedly observed and born from his experimentations and controversial use of his notorious readymades,32 1913 –1917.

32 Found objects selected from the everyday, displaced, re-contextualised or modified by the artist

As we know very well today, his ready-mades introduced a new criticality and iconoclastic period in art, which highlighted an awareness of art’s failure to deal with and accept the real world in an unaltered and unmodified way. The trajectory of the readymade became a force that revealed often by juxtaposition, how certain forms of art were continually and repetitiously indoctrinated.

Duchamp’s 1917 readymade, the notorious R. Mutt fountain 1917, was I believe, the first instance of a truly proto-relational artwork. It is this fact alone that allows it so much scope, citation and an ability to make persistent appearances in the discussions of art since it was first created over 50 years ago. I want to fully define once and for all, why this work is successful . Unlike any previous work, It deliberately utilised its context to become the hub of a debate, around the internal workings and biases involved in the recognition and exhibition of art works. It was the first piece ever to question the way in which we qualify and quantify works of art, by means of consciously using the social arena as its material.

The Fountain’s artistic resonance was located as firmly in its social situation, as it was in its aesthetic deviation. It stands today as the first object to reveal the political and complex social connections underlying art, as tangible and workable materials and tools with which the artist can work. Duchamp’s ready-mades, questioned the formal allegiances that predominated both art making and the judgements of art at that time.

In hindsight we can easily view the whole situation of Duchamp’s polemic and the outcome of his readymade artworks. He used the social context of the work as a tool like any other. He deposited an object into a context that highlighted the huge fissures between what was accepted as art and what was not apparently fit to be seen as creative work at the time. The object’s selection and subsequent aesthetic processing were designed to initiate debate and test the behaviours of the society’s directors. Duchamp pointed to the process of an artist selecting something as being equally important as what was produced via methods of traditional representation in painting and sculpture. In remaining anonymous he was able to test the democracy of the selection panel to the full. The debate around the object has arguably become more important than the object itself. This was the intention of this work. The Urinal was an exercise in co-efficiency and true proto-relational practice. Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, R. Mutt, 1917, brought into play the current social biases of the time and also questioned the dominant traditionally representational aesthetic of its day. 33

33 The story of the Fountain/Urinal begins in 1916, when a group of New York artists set up an independent society to organise annual exhibitions. They decided that there would be no jury and no censorship. The society was to be truly democratic. The society consisted of the realist painter William Glackens (President); other directors included artists Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp himself, and art collector William Arensberg.

(The full story of the Fountain is footnoted below for those readers who may not perhaps know the complete story). Duchamp’s move toward diversity

In the same 1957 lecture on the creative process, Marcel Duchamp describes the beholder and viewer as the joint creator of an artwork by way of the co-efficient of art. Duchamp summarizes this event somewhat like the process of a ‘transfer’ of which the artist is not always aware and cannot fully control. The reaction of the beholder/viewer occurs like a kind of aesthetic osmosis.

In brief, his co-efficient theory is also summarised by the ability of a work of art to operate on many various levels of meaning. Under this definition, if a work of art is ‘good and successful’ it will be capable of resonating on many levels; formally, aesthetically, conceptually and socially.

I believe that to try and guess what will happen tomorrow, we must group the ‘isms’ together through their common factor, instead of differentiating them. Scarcely twenty years ago the public still demanded of the work of art some representative detail to justify its interest and admiration. I am inclined, after this examination of the past, to believe that the young artist of tomorrow will refuse to base his/her work on a philosophy as over-simplified as that of the’ representative and non representative’ dilemma.

The young artist of tomorrow will, I believe, have to go still further in this same direction, to bring light to startling new values, which are and always will be the basis of artistic revolutions. Through their close

Prior to the independent society’s first exhibition of April 10th 1917 Duchamp purchased a male urinal from the J.L Mott ironworks showroom, near to where he lived. He then laid it on its back then signed and dated it. (R.Mutt 1917). (The R in the title referred to the French slang for Money bags, ‘Richard’, while the surname Mutt referred to Mutt & Jeff, two cartoon characters at the time, and of course Mr Mott, the ironworks showroom owner). The signed urinal was then submitted to the independent society for exhibition with all the other works proposed.

Upon arrival the urinal was immediately contentious and believed to be a hoax. Arguments started among the directors. Glackens was horrified and thought the object grossly indecent. Walter Arensberg who was in on Duchamp’s game, stood up for the work saying that the artist like all the others had paid his six-dollar entry fee and that under the democratic ideals of the group, the work should be shown with no questions asked. Arensberg described the urinal as a beautiful form freed from its function. A new approach in aesthetic attitude was needed to reveal its aesthetic dimension.

A meeting between all the independent society directors saw the urinal voted out, much to Duchamp’s contestations. The justification to refuse the R.Mutt work, was determined by the fact of it being ‘by no current definition a work of art.’

Duchamp noted that there was no valid democratic or aesthetic reason to refuse the work. Shortly after he handed in his resignation from the group in the hope that it would highlight the censorship that had occurred.

47 connection with the law of supply and demand the visual arts have become a ‘commodity’; the work of art is now a commonplace product like soap and securities.

To avoid dilution, the great artist of tomorrow will go underground34

One must see the above statements as Duchamp’s most lucid, and vital summary of his contribution to the notion of what we now see as unequivocal to the understanding of relational type art practices.

Marcel Duchamp with readymades Pasadena art museum 1963

Quantifying art In quantifying the work of the contemporary pragmatic co-efficient, relational artist, we must first define the factors at work in the assessment. Where is the value and exchange? And what is the concrete conclusion of a relational output?

With regard to the vital exchanges hinted at by Marcel Duchamp, I would like to define the value system used when quantifying a work of art. Common to all the works and projects collated within this thesis, is the consistent revealing of the initial behaviour of the artist, as well as the means of their creative production. A questioning of indoctrinated ‘givens’ within the production of art is also a common factor to all mentioned here. This is important, especially in understanding the lack of reception of pragmatic art, as it has never previously had any visual form what so ever.

The discussion today around the need to re-negotiate new forms of interpretation to accurately address the current ‘value’ of new art practices, indicates a dissatisfaction in both artistic communities and the greater

34 Marcel Duchamp: Where do we go from here? Symposium at the Philadelphia Museum College of the Arts, 1961

48 population, surrounding not only the production and reception of art, but also highlights a need for greater familiarisation and social levelling.

EN ROUTE: Sydney 2005 Fugitive Art, Erskineville, 1/5 Prospect Street

A discussion culminating around working on my Carrier 1 vehicle artwork on the street. The work was not materially seen as art and it was not able to fit inside the normal idea of an ‘artist’s studio’. For legal reasons I was not able to go to a standard mechanics to check all my specific adaptations that were key in developing this work. I also wonder and muse if the work can or would ever be purchased? I want the work to test this.

‘Fugitive art’ A friend has introduced me to her concept of ‘fugitive’ art. She describes it as art, which is on the run, naughty and seemingly un- traceable. It is hard to value and deal with, marginalised and barred from indoctrinated situations. It exists in a fugitive state. By evading definition and the very materials from which it is made.

How is it to be categorised? How is to be entered into the market? How is it to be collected? Is this the endgame for this work?

When someone buys an artwork, what are they actually doing? Is it about shapes colours, style, attitude, prestige, the association, beauty, support, or shock value perhaps? In short it is about experience, what you buy when you buy an artwork is an experience and this experience can take many forms. It does not necessarily simply mean the purchase of a static object form any longer.

To critique relational art on the basis that it does not often provide an object is naïve. It would by extension mean that any enterprise, which does not produce objects is irrelevant. Enterprises such as Philosophy, live performance, direct experience, conversation,

49 teaching, science and so on. Things do not work that way in real life so why should things be expected to be any different in the art world? This desire for product, this desire for the packaged item is a result of industrial and commercial thinking.

Precedents and Foreshadowings

The Situationists: The situationists International was founded by Guy Debord, Asger Jorn and Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio among others in 1957. Their relevance here in this thesis is my interest in their direct reaction to what they perceived as a growing passivity amongst an increasingly uniformed and critically disengaged, consumer mass. They also recognised the failure and limitation of art at the time and its inability to take direct and immediate affect on the world around them. The group wanted to increase critical thinking and resistance to a world they suspected of heading in a deeply depersonalising direction. Their assault on daily life took form through the direct intervention with the ‘everyday’ which they saw as the only site for affective change to occur.

The group was influenced by anarchist ideas and a deep disdain for the capitalist world. Debord defined this disdain in Society of the Spectacle (1967). The group sought to undermine capitalist progress through such tactics as détournements, derives and rabid, aggressive theorising. They were initially interested and concerned with all issues of representation but eventually expelled all the members who were artists. Debord thought that political action and writing were more effective means to change the colonising capitalist world.

Their main drive was to have definitive political effect. They adopted tactics from Henri Lefebvre and Michel DeCerteau to reclaim their own cities, which they felt had been taken over and controlled by developers and large conglomerates. Wandering, exploring and making shortcuts through dictated built environments, as well as pro-actively intervening in situations was also seen as a way to really personalise and regain individual order and autonomy within a planned autocratic world, that they viewed as increasingly and profoundly alienating.

They were famously known on occasion to disrupt church sermons by yelling and contradicting priests. They had a moment of direct political effectiveness when they became involved in the student riots in Paris in 1968. The group formally disbanded four years later. They have come to be identified as an early utopian anti capitalist movement. With idealist and strongly Marxist undertones.

An anonymous and simply noted manifesto from 1960 outlines the group’s drives,

Not to reproduce the past, to resist the bureaucratisation of art, concentrations of culture (museums) are to be seen as a seizure. A realised situationist culture introduces total participation, an interactive art. Against preserved art & toward the organisation of directly lived moments, a culture not dominated by the need to leave traces. Situationist culture will be an art of dialogue. We await the turning point in the inevitable liquidation of the world in all forms. Situationist International manifesto anonymous 1960

Spectacularisation

‘First of all we think that the world must be changed’ Guy Debord

‘The capitalist production system has unified space, breaking down the boundaries between one society and the next. This unification is also a process, at once extensive and intensive, of trivialisation. Just as the accumulation of commodities mass produced for the abstract space of the market, inevitably shattered all regional and legal barriers, as well as those corporative restrictions that served in the middle ages to preserve the quality of craft production, so too it was bound to dissipate the independence and quality of places’. 35

‘The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is 36 mediated by images’.

Society of excess Guy Debord defined the society of the spectacle as a historical moment when commodities and merchandise, especially images, achieved “the total occupation of social life”. Capital reached such a degree of accumulation that it was also turned into imagery in order to best distribute its means of control. It also disseminates its own self appreciation, through forcing the witnessing of its ever expansive accretion. (Adverts, fantasies, and favoured historic events all intensively reproduced). Debord posits in Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1988), that we are now in a further stage of spectacular development: Individuals have shifted from already passive and repetitive interactions, toward the status of an even greater minimum of activity and thought, which is dictated by market forces. As well as being intended to do harm and critique spectacular society, Debord’s ideas serve as a document of the eradication of communism as he witnessed it.

35 Guy Debord - Society of the Spectacle 1967 Pg 120, para 165 36 ibid 1967 Pg 12 para 4

“ Artists have become entirely separated from society, just as they are separated from each other by competition…This enclosed era of primitivism must be superseded by complete communication” Situationist Internationale37

This notion of a more complete communication, can be seen as a wish to assert a more co-efficient means of operation to achieve more useful and multi-layered vital connections to life, through changes desired from art, politics and behaviours adopted by society. We can see the use of Marcel Duchamps observations in action within the Situationists and by extension further relate this to a far more pragmatic creative interaction with contemporary society.

EN ROUTE: Sydney 2003, Reality / personality

The aesthetic of the everyday is being viewed more and more in places where it once was rarely found. It is being produced, and developed somewhere between documentary, news, training video, surveillance and home movie.

TV ‘reality shows’ encourage uniform monomaniac-personalities, to inhabit and exist in the centre of our media focus. Ordinary

37 Situationist Internationale (1960), Constructive Deconstruction, Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art. NIFCA. Helsinki, Finland, INFO issue #2/2003 pp16

52 individuals take centre stage. We are all summoned and invited to play the extras of the spectacle. The cameras turn on us all, we are unscripted, unprepared, unwritten and perhaps with little to say.

We should think on this.

A noticeable emptiness reflects back at us. We often only find consumer personalities on these shows. People wholly absorbed and at the mercy of what culture dictates and offers up as the norm. Without consumption and stripped of their goods and attachments we find a disturbing lack of advancement and thought in these new TV characters.

In percentage terms, Intellectuals and contemporary artists very rarely appear on TV, as their value is not economic or passive.

Popular media seeks another site away from its own emptiness – that site is in the spectator. Talent and wit in entertainment come from the entertainer personality, who knows from years of practice and experience how to condense clear moments of interest.

Is it humanising to watch these personalities completely given over to the spectacle? Or does it just lessen the pinnacle and standards of what should and can be achieved in life and culture?

Passive to Passionate Engagements ‘Situations’ stood in opposition to the spectacle, which promised the world, failed to deliver and induced passivity and mere spectatorship. Through disrupting the status quo, the Situationists intended to substitute crass consumption with creativity, and free the individual from the stultifying effects of advanced capitalism. They argued that the individual was removed, alienated and estranged from direct experiences, and only capable of participating in life as a consumer on every level.

53 The Situationists International, inherited their sense of revolution from reading Karl Marx and maintained a vibrant lineage of iconoclasm through absorbing ideas of the late 19th century nihilist38 movement in Russia. Artistically the group were influenced by the activities of the European Dadaists. The Situationists’ means of affecting change was disruptive. Involving ‘situations’ or as Debord’s describes them;

“The concrete construction of temporary settings of life and their transformation into a higher, passionate nature”

Counteracting alienation What makes the Situationists fundamentally different from post-modern philosophers of the same time, Jean Baudrillard39, Jean Francois-Lyotard40 is their insistence that alienation in advanced capitalist society is neither inevitable nor invincible. Ex situationists T.J Clark and Donald Nicholson-Smith postulated that the history of the Situationists International will someday be directly of use to a new project of resistance. They questioned whether a society organised as an “appearance’ can and should be disrupted on the very field of appearance. We find evidence of this strategy being used directly today in the work of French artist Matthieu Laurette.41

The sheer number of people who spend their time willingly incarcerated in shopping malls, dreaming of infinite purchasing of goods on offer. Buying fashions to look like the stars, owning the biggest $7000.00 surround sound plasma screen television and latest Information technology that logically provides ever greater access to more imagery, is surely testament to the Situationist polemics.

38 Nihilism was popularised by the novelist Ivan Turgenev(1818-1883) asserting that morality does not inherently exist and that moral values are always contrived abstractly. It denies the transcendence of god, stating this belief as absurd. It is used popularly to explain a general mood of despair, that is arguably produced within established systems of strict belief. Nihilism was popular in Russia as a the populous in the 1800’s was finding increasing dissatisfaction with what was in existence all around them. 39 Jean Baudrillard, 1929-2007, French philosopher, sociologist, post-structuralist and post-modernist. Books include. The System of objects 1968, Simulacra and Simulation 1981 40 Jean Françoise Lyotard, The post Modern Condition, 1979 41 French Artist Matthieu Laurette’s, media projects ‘Apparitions and Applause 1998 –2005

EN ROUTE: Sydney 2003 Reproductions and the presence of Debord.

I can now find Debord in numerous libraries, in my photocopies, in catalogues gathered from around the world, even in films rented from the video store. He’s now on youtube.

We must now interpret the transformations of the world. It seems almost impossible to talk of originality. It is fair to say that we can now respond to all the multiple versions and manifestations of ideas, philosophers, designers and artists which surround us. Not only in books or original texts, but also in all the versions and mutations of ideas in magazines, on television and available & abridged on the Internet.

55 Reproduction has meant that many dilutions of any originality permeate via links, into many areas where they once never existed, and perhaps by process of linkage may never have been previously encountered. Reproduction causes infusion, and infusion is cross pollination.

‘Ideas improve. The meaning of words has part in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress demands it. Staying close to the author’s phrasing, plagiarism exploits his expressions, erases false ideas, replaces them with correct ideas’ 42

The above is an indicator of the necessity to open up to the ability of freely conscripting forms in the world, to use and adapt history in a way that it necessarily must be updated and kept vital.

Its like a form of post-production editing, and most definitely an intellectual form that recognises the strength and power of recycling.

GEORGE MACIUNAS Pragmatism, Deployment and Visibility

I want to highlight very specific works of Fluxus founder and leader George Maciunas. I have found that Maciunas’s lesser known projects included here, are infinitely more usable and organised with highly pragmatic and co-efficient undertones and ideals. Of use here is the emergent recognition of the economics of art and the awareness of the individual as directly part of a larger system. In the presentation of waste products in the work of Maciunas, we see the focus on the individual as a consumer, as well as we see a direct move of everyday life into art. In his building projects, Maciunas explores the economy of living through an attempt to creatively influence the standards of architectural forms, so often unquestioned and ubiquitously produced.

In his ‘Plastic Prefab Building System’ of 1965. Maciunas produced detailed drawings of a 1,900 square- foot house constructed of uniform plastic and concrete slabs. His methods of production design and building erection procedures were published in the Washington, D.C newspaper ‘Underground’ in 1966,

42 ibid 1967 Pg145

56 along with an analysis of other prefabricated building systems currently in development or use. Maciunas approached various government authorities in the U.S and in Russia in an attempt to get his building system off the ground. In 1968 he developed the altruistic ‘fluxus co-operative building project’ to buy and renovate cheap unused available loft spaces. The co-operative was designed to provide artists with affordable living and working spaces. His efforts were seen as pioneering and led directly to the creation of Soho in New York becoming an artists’ district.

In 1976 he began to keep all the packaging and residue of all the industrially processed food and medicines that he consumed in one year. He exhibited the remnant cartons, packages and tins at the Art Academy in Berlin. The ‘One Year’ Project highlights the by products of the industry behind daily life. The work also emphasises a form of accountability regarding our consumption. He clustered and ordered all the same cans, the same packages together in tall stacks against the gallery’s walls. Through this sorting, indexing and collecting, Maciunas reveals what is normally hidden and wasted and what we fail to see on a daily basis. He presents a finished ‘accumulated’ form. The work is a sort of short circuit, fed back to us, allowing us to see residual aspects presented as a perverse form of monument. All three of these projects are concerned with a pragmatic effect.

Pre-Fab building System 1965, George Maciunas

One Year 1976 George Maciunas

YOKO ONO ‘Yes’ 1966

59 Japanese migrant artist Yoko Ono, synonymous with Fluxus, embodied early forms of interactivity and pragmatism in her simple and beautiful Yes artwork of 1966. This work is one of the first poetic examples of great influence to my own practice that engages the viewer of art, as a direct and active participant and necessary factor in the completion and success of the work. The new interactive component created in this work, declares a will to end traditionally passive experiences of art.

One has to engage and ‘do’ something in order for this work to deliver its full meaning.

In November 1966, Ono exhibited a "Ceiling Painting" (or the "YES Painting") at the Indica Gallery in London. Viewers had to climb up a white ladder in the center of the room, at the top of the ladder a magnifying glass hanging from the ceiling, allowed them to view the word "YES" written in tiny letters on a framed piece of paper affixed to the ceiling. (The work is credited with bringing Ono and John Lennon together for the first time – during a dialogue that ensued over the piece).

Later in 1969, her collaborations with Lennon saw the production of the pacifist and pragmatic media spectacle Bed-In for peace. Also in 1969, for the work, War is over, if you want it? The couple organized the very situational hiring of billboard spaces for increased infiltration of mass media commercial space. This notion of placing art right into the filed of commercial media space influenced the iconoclastic and highly pragmatic billboard work of artist Jenny Holzer in the 1980’s.

Yes 1966, Yoko Ono

War is Over 1969 John Lennon & Yoko Ono

The Fluxus concept of Intermedia Fluxus artist, Dick Higgins adapted and borrowed the phrase, intermedia from Samuel Coleridge,43 for whom it meant “in the field between the general idea of art media and those of life media” – in other

43 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834, English poet and founder of the Romantic movement, he used the term Intermedium and intermediate often when describing art. For example ‘Painting is the intermediate,

61 words it functioned as a dynamic interstitial space between media forms and between art and life structures.

Intermedia for Higgins was to be an unstable descriptive term predicated on the dynamic exchanges between traditionally distinct artistic and life action categories. This elastic quality of the term was not meant to be vague, but express quite precise structural co-dependent relationships.

Intermedia art, then, is not so much a thing as a function, allowing for almost limitless artistic formations and experiences. Like many of my examples in this paper, the intermedia function developed within specific political and philosophical contexts of the time, namely pragmatism and co-efficiency.

Intermedia: No mode independent from others, no sound without instrument, no document without event, no photograph without light, each intermedia artwork determined it’s own form and medium according to its needs.44

attempts at aesthetic creation. Existing art, to the fluxus artists, was predominantly understood as a museographic reserve for the deliverance of the current status quos.

New fusions and forms of everyday cohabitation Fluxus desired a more free movement and acceptance of everyday forms within art. The group wanted to safeguard art and life, without overwhelming either of the two terms, There was an attempt within their experimentations to build a new territory of genuine neutrality, in which no enclosures of ‘art only for art’ exist. Their creative endeavours attempted to remove any politically dictatorial and aesthetic barriers. Through this, Fluxus sought to neutralise what they saw as the arrogance of art, by means of fusing it with the vitality and vulgarity of life, by means of newly constructed forms. Aiming their works, and their characterisations, to create a new order in the perception of art that outlined a fluid foundation and order of beauty that was very much free and alive.

Contamination and conclusive subversions Contamination was seen as a great strategy in art for redefining beauty and aesthetics. Contamination was not treated as a coincidental tactic, but rather a direct need for infusing and allowing more complexity and diversity into things.

somewhere between a thought and a thing’. Higgins adapted Coleridges terms to best describe the new flexibility he strove to implement in art. 44 Ubi Fluxus ibi motus 1990-1962 Sept 1990 XLIV Esposizione internazionale d’art, La Biennale di Venezia. Pg 29-31

62 This very idea of contamination, is crucial to the vibrancy of PhD work. It has always provided an aspect of lived and concrete reality in my work. Techniques of road testing, the use and presence of soil and dirt, spills, scents, scuffs, dents, fuel, wear and tear and the presence of living things and materials from daily life, present difficult conservation problems when the work is exhibited in cloistered situations and gallery contexts. The various contaminations allow the aesthetic of my work to communicate a world beyond that of the sealed gallery.

“For Fluxus, being different meant flying high above the squalid contests of those who consciously choose total subservience to rules and structures that all intelligent history has tried to cancel. To play with ideas without setting any goals except that of living in the full exaltation of life’s creative possibilities was and is the affirmation of an attitude of unmatched subversion with respect to an obstinately passéist / out of date world”.45

Architecture and Design Portability: knowledge through movement and design for migration In the area of design and architecture, we also start to see early parallel attitudes and ideals emerging of a co-efficient and pragmatic nature. Certain architectural proposals included here, accurately reflect and best personify the practical pragmatic ideologies of more self sufficient, mobile and sustainable design parameters that sought greater social use and flexibility in the built environment.

The new culture of portability was born in response to burgeoning problems of overcrowding and excessively expensive building methods as much as it was a response to the desire and attitude for greater movement and sensitivity within the built environment. Prototype and pragmatic ‘micro-architectures’

45 Fluxus Art, as a private form of subversion, Gino Di Maggio, pg 41

63 began appearing and designers began experimenting reductively, breaking use and necessity into its bare essentials to firstly create new stoic structures, that I assert to be some of the most environmentally conscious and intellectually open models that we can still learn from today.

These pragmatic precursors, looked directly at existing ineffective and costly problems in design and functionality, and were able to create new systems that freely traversed and influenced various fields of creative practice. In this thesis I have included artists that can be seen to directly link to the work of these designers and architects.

The following examples have been of formative importance in the realisation of my own mobile and vehicular projects, in so much as they address the maximisation of given systems and materials and work to best use the most basic of spaces to maximum affect. Carrier 1 (2005), Sauna (2003-05), and Trailer Garden (2003-05).

Attempts to no longer build excessively, but more essentially to our very basic human needs, were translated in new architectures and designs, that were about treading more lightly using cheaply available industrial materials and pre-existing systems. Evident in these following examples we see a strong regard for recycling, and the exploration of living and building, within the best economic and reductive means possible.

CEDRIC PRICE Flexibility, adaptation and multiple use

Visionary English Architect and town planner, Cedric Price46 explored architectures’ potential to nurture change, intellectual growth and social development, rather than to offer a definitive aesthetic statement. He advocated that the aspect of ‘delight’ was to be a serious component within all architecture. He considered himself a non-authoritarian architect and developed his ideas framing them often as ‘non- plans’.

In his ‘Fun Palace’ project of 1961, he proposed a building that was neither destined to last forever or really ever need any renovation. The building was intended to disappear and begin to decay after a ten to

46 Cedric John Price, experimental British architect, b1934, d 2003. Taught part-time at the Architectural Association, London and at the Council of Industrial Design. He later founded 'Polyark', an architectural schools network. Worked also with Buckminster Fuller and influenced architects Richard Rodgers and Renzo Piano

64 twenty year life span. The ‘Fun Palace’ was to be a flexible structure built in a large disused shipyard, which could be added to, according to changes in use and demand. Of paramount importance was that the building should undergo many alterations whilst being occupied. The building was constructed around variable social patterns and needs. The user “would have the freedom as to what to do next” (Cedric Price). Unlike much of the single use architecture of the 1960s, the Fun Palace indicated a sensitive, responsive structure, which would be able to connect various disciplines together and support and house many different practitioners within its changeable parameters. Price’s vision and approach to building comprised of aspects that he regularly termed as flexibility, constant shift, movement, elusiveness, enticement, open-endedness and connect-ability, both in structure and concept.

He also proposed a visionary mobile university ‘Think-belt’ project in 1964, to be constructed using available modified and recycled disused rail carriages on an old railway line system in Britain. Price liked to use and adapt existing technologies; it became part of his aesthetic legacy and politics. He designed the Think-belt University to be eventually connected to Europe via underwater tunnels or bridges. Students would be able to get off and on wherever and whenever they pleased, taking classes in any country. Price envisioned that this university should work without borders and could span the whole of Britain and potentially Europe, introducing knowledge, different cultural experiences and travel to all corners of the landscape. Many of Prices plans, were realised in various forms, but his greatest, and most ambitious

ideas, were often quashed by bureaucracy and conservative planning committees.

He ran an architectural firm and gave celebrated lectures that regularly featured images of bombed traditional buildings as he suggested ‘that was a good place to start’, and asserted his influence as a very respected teacher. He was what I refer to as a ‘generator’, one who sparks and conceives brilliant ideas, which influence other existing individuals and channels of thinking.

‘In England, Architect Cedric Price has designed what he calls a ‘Think-belt’ – an entirely mobile University intended to serve 20,000 students in North Staffordshire and beyond. It will, he says; rely on temporary buildings rather than permanent ones. It will make great use of mobile and variable physical enclosures – classrooms, for example, built inside railway carriages, so that they may be shunted anywhere along the initial four-mile prototype campus’.

‘The ‘Think-belt’ plan proposes that faculty & student apartments are to consist of pressed steel modules that can be hoisted by crane and plugged into an array of building frames. The frames of these modules become the only permanent parts of the structure. The modules can also be fixed to flat bed train carriages and transported around’. Alvin Toffler 47

47 Alvin Toffler, Future Shock 1971, Pan Books ltd, Throw Away Society, pg 61

Fun Palace 1961, Cedric Price

The London Architect from exhibition flyer, RE:CP (publication NAI) 2003

Think-belt Routes - Staffordshire 1965, Cedric Price

RICHARD BUCKMINSTER FULLER Dymaxions. 1929 – 1937 Recycling, mobility, mass production and maximisation - the search for the perfect unity of design and function through economy of means.

In 1929 Richard Buckminster Fuller formulated and developed his ideas of ‘Dymaxions’. - ‘Doing the most with the least’. The maximisation of all structural dynamics of energy in a given form was his aim. Through this he developed his new hybrid objects, the Dymaxion House 1929, The Dymaxion Car 1933, and Dymaxion Bathroom 1936/37.

Best known for his now world famous and internationally used, Geodesic Domes (1947) He defined himself diversely as engineer, designer, researcher, architect, watcher, philosopher, teacher and also occasionally as an artist/scientist.

Fullers earlier Dymaxion concept, (the very principle that led to the creation of the Geodesic Dome architecture) is a major historic influence on my own work. The pragmatic focus of his ideas and the design solutions he used, I consider still to be vitally relevant today. It is key to the majority of my thinking and attitude to art making.

The word Dymaxion was developed by Fuller’s friend Waldo Warren (a name smith renowned for coining words) after hearing Fuller talk and blend ideas constantly for a few days. Warren advocate the invention

67 of new words as a method of aiding thinking as well as a means of introducing new intellectual models more successfully. Fuller was notedly always preoccupied, by trying to understand the ways in which nature was structured. By noting the way a leaf used the finest skeletal structure wrapped in a skin, he found that both the tension of surface and structure were beautifully combined, in order to achieve huge spans capable of extending flat surfaces out through space. ‘Tensegrity’ was also coined by Fuller, when describing the structural elements he had observed in the engineering of highly lightweight forms.

How could he describe how the skin of a leaf holds the structural pressure in unison with such a lightweight and thin fragile skeletal framework beneath. It was through the constant ‘tension’ of the leaf skin, that it could hold structural ‘integrity’. (Words for Fuller and Warren, were like co-efficiencies). Fuller found that tensions created by many units of repeated and slightly varied forms (segments) were a superior way in which to build large, super strong lightweight structures, structures that kept their integrities above and beyond necessary engineering test situations. By maximising all the tensions produced by building structures, he found he could create buildings that did not have any excessive or wasted vectors.48

In the Dymaxion house we find a structure suspended from a central pillar, self-supporting. Rooms were lit by a series of mirrored prisms and the outer skins for these houses were devised as variously transparent, translucent or opaque, depending on your heating and lighting needs and where you were situated in the world climatically and so on. Fuller designed this prototype house to be built of mass produced large planes or sheeting, which was quick to install and low cost to produce when compared to bricks and mortar. Fuller’s Dymaxion Car, was designed to drive at the front and fly at the back like a plane when up to speed. The project introduced the first streamlined car in the world. Built from lightweight aluminium and designed to use as little fuel as possible the car was a hybrid form of land/traction glider. Based on the combined study of yachts, boats and planes.

The Dymaxion Bathroom was an industrially produced die stamped self-supporting modular unit, which housed bath, shower and basin in one unit. The unit was initially high cost in terms of pre-forming but once mass-produced it became cheaper than all the separate components needed to make a bathroom function. (Interestingly the design was not popular amongst the plumbing trades as it meant that maintenance was reduced to a minimum, and it heralded the need no longer to produce expensive, traditionally separate components, toilets, sinks, bathtubs and showers. Plumbers declared that its superbly designed efficiency would put them out of work, and lobbied against Fuller’s design).

The emergency ‘Dymaxion Deployment Units’ of 1940, provided shelter and housing from recycled and modified and rural grain silos. These prototypes eventually influenced Fuller’s own ‘Home Dome’

48 In Kinetics, a term used to describe transference. In this instance, forces or velocities, which are produced when a number of components are combined

68 (Carbondale USA), 1960. Buckminster Fuller’s strategies for economically rationalised design, recycling and redeployment of pre-existent forms intended for use on a mass scale can be seen as directly influential forerunners not only to my own work, but also to the contemporary Dutch collective practices of Atelier van Lieshout and the Danish art/design collective N55 who we will see in following chapters.

Dymaxion House (Prototype) 1929, R.B Fuller

Dymaxion Bathroom 1937, R.B Fuller

69 Dymaxion Car 1933, R.B Fuller

METABOLISM Reductive essential survival space.

In Japan 1960, a number of architects began working with building systems that they defined as Metabolist Architecture49/50.

When designing and constructing the interior my Carrier vehicle project, I had to design for all basic functions of life in the smallest space possible. I reduced actions and needs to their basic function, observed the ergonomics of how well the inside of a mobile vehicle could function as a living space, and constructed modular, foldable and multi-functional space. Sleeping, reading and study, heat insulation, power, running water, storage and also the finished aesthetic of the Carrier vehicle were all highly Metabolist in nature.

To these architects who adopted this name, it meant creating a dynamic environment that could live and grow by discarding its outdated parts and regenerating newer, more viable elements. The idea, according to Noburu Kawazoe 51, was to develop a building system that could cope with the problems of a rapidly changing society, and at the same time maintain and stabilise human lives. The main functions of living were broken down into the bare essentials and biological requirements, and worked out in terms of space. The co-founders of the group were Kiyonori Kitutake, Fumihiko Maki, Noburu Kawazoe and Kisho Kurakawa.

To this day the most enduring and successful member of this group is Kisho Kurakawa. Kurakawa proved to be the more radical designer of the movement, who promoted an architecture that used technologically advanced plug in modules and clip on capsule units suspended from a frame, which he felt would accommodate and best represent elements of growth and change. The most significant and representative examples of Kurakawa’s capsule architecture remains the Nakagin Capsule Tower (1972).

The tower was a studio flats complex in Tokyo where a large number of prefabricated and, in principle, easily replaceable capsules containing living spaces were clipped on to the supporting megastructures of the towers, each comprising a central shaft with staircases, lifts and all necessary plumbing.

49 Metabolism in the general sense as we know it refers to the biological process by which life is maintained through a continuous cycle of interrelated chemicals and protoplasms (31) being produced and destroyed. 50 The living contents of a cell that are surrounded by a larger and containing plasma membrane 51 Japanese Architect b 1926, founder-member of the Metabolist group in 1960

70 In Kurakawa’s Capsule tower we find a prototypical example of exchangeable, recyclable and sustainable technologically advanced architecture.

One can see quite clearly the natural relation to the more popularly known ‘capsule hotels’ built in Japan in 1979 by Kurakawa collaborating with a Japanese furniture manufacturer. The hotels were in fact units designed to be inserted into pre-existing standard buildings.

Nakagin Capsule Tower 1972 (External and internal detail), Kisho Kurakawa

Capsule Hotel (Osaka) 1979 Kisho Kurakawa

SHIGERU BAN ‘Cardboard City, Paper Log Emergency Housing’, Shinimatogawa Park, Kobe, Japan 1995

71 What is relevant and supplanted by this idea, is the notion of re-use. A means of looking critically and intelligently at existing materials in order to produce a pragmatic response that extends both use and value of a previously disregarded item.

Young Japanese architect, Shigeru Ban’s Cardboard city, emerged as a suggested emergency housing project, built in response to the Kobe earthquake of 1995. The structure was developed using recycled paper tubes to form columns, supported from the ground on plastic beer crates. The houses interestingly hark back to the Japanese Shoji paper houses in lightness of materials. Yet, these Paper log houses were designed to use as many industrially sourced and recycled materials as possible and create a form, where the very materials needed, were in abundance in any developed city.

Readymade parts could be assembled with little skill and within very short times. And if the structure should collapse in a violent earthquake, it would not harm its occupants.

These paper log houses are now also being developed as semi permanent housing structures for refugees in Nairobi, Africa. What is of interest aesthetically here, is the way this kind of recycled and regenerative project, ultimately built from what is regarded as ‘waste’, could be carried around or loaded onto a large truck and redeployed.

An intelligent form of dymaxion engineering with waste products.

Cardboard city - Cardboard house (Kobe) 1995, Shigeru Ban

GUSTAV METZGER Preservation, destruction and violence as feedback

73 London in 1961, the artist Gustav Metzger 52 sprayed and painted acid onto three red and black and white nylon 'canvases'; the gradual disintegration of each, individual nylon 'canvas' was the act and creation of Auto-destructive Art. Metzger issued a series of manifestos to accompany the demonstration, where he explains Auto-destructive Art as 'an attack on capitalist values and the drive towards annihilation'. It was a public event, to be witnessed, performed and ‘executed’ along London’s South Bank.

My interest in Metzger is in his use of destructive processes as creative expression. His creative response to the insidious annihilation of fragile systems such as the environment, and indeed people, due to the blind used of technology and obsessive methods of political and economic advancement is very close in many ways, to that of my own arts practice. My own use and adaptation of combustion engine technologies in my work led me through my research to discover to the work of Metzger.

Notably another migrant artist, German born Metzger’s early experiences of Nazi Germany had led him toward a deep commitment to pacifism and to join the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and become a founder member of the Committee of 100 in the United Kingdom.

His political loyalties led to inevitable conflict with the authorities. Not long before his 1961 destruction demonstration, Metzger (along with the philosopher Bertrand Russell and thirty five other members of the Committee of 100) had spent a month in prison for disturbing the peace. Metzger's commitment and deep- rooted fascination in the sense of destructivity was something he wished to explore and reflect. He saw it as being at the heart of the human condition. Metzger attentively observed the emergence of the Cold War policies of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ (MAD) from 1947-1991, that arose with the advent of the competition to own nuclear weapons. He considered the stockpiling of nuclear weapons as directly threatening the actual continued existence of humanity. The revulsion he felt at the violence in society was reflected in the work of other disaffected post-war artists, which led Metzger in 1966 to organize the Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS). DIAS was held in London and consisted of a month long series of events with a three-day symposium at the Africa Centre. DIAS was attended by many key figures from the international avant-garde including Herman Nitsch and another Viennese actionist, Volf Vostell. Early fluxus artists Al Hansen, Ralph Ortiz and Yoko Ono attended from America.

Herman Nitsch's53 '5th Abreaktionsspiel of OM Theatre', (for which Metzger was fined £100 for assisting

52 Born 1926 Germany to Polish Jewish Parents. An Artist and political activist who developed the concept of Auto-Destructive Art together with John Sharkey, Metzger is acclaimed for his protests in political and artistic realms. He was moved to Britain from Germany in 1939 under the Migrant – Refugee Children’s Movement. He has been ‘stateless’ since the 1940s. He is also known for his Art Strike movements. And was involved in the Fluxus art movement. He was also active in the Committee of 100 (a militant resistance organization started by philosopher Bertrand Russell that advocated civil disobedience, direct action and occupation instead of the demonstration march as a more appropriate method of protest against weapons of mass destruction and the Vietnam War.

53 (B1938) Austria. Herman Nitsch is referred to as an "actionist" performance artist. He conceived his art as outside of traditional categories of genre. Nitsch's abstract splatter paintings, like his performance pieces, display a theme of controlled violence, using a

74 in its organization) caused a huge scandal. This performance included images of male genitalia projected onto a mutilated lamb carcass. Metzger was identified by the authorities as an extremist. Having witnessed first hand, mankind's capacity for destruction at the hands of the Nazis and by extension the destruction of the environment, he sees himself as in no way very extreme by comparison.

It is my duty to contemplate extremes, I cannot simply ignore them, and I fight fire with fire. 54

Metzger was also very intrigued with organic processes and cosmology. In 'Earth to Galaxies: on destruction and destructivity' Metzger reflects on the destructivity inherent in the very forces of nature itself:

Can it be said that the sun is destructive? The sun is both preserver and destroyer.55

He asserts Auto-destructive Art as an essential creative act in making people feel the loss that is necessary to value and heighten a level of true perception and feeling.

'Art arises from the feeling and the knowledge that the line between a generative and a destructive reality is paper thin’ 56

His contemplation of the galaxies and the Hebrew concept of 'Ruach' ('Breath of God' -life in all things), lead Metzger, to a contemplation of the perils of materialism and the precious conditions of human existence. He advocated that the lesson for humanity should always be one of humility. As a pacifist and environmentalist, Metzger is integral in the formation of an aesthetic of direct destruction as an experience and process from which to learn and feel.

He advocates direct experience and actual real happening processes, as the most profound way that art could communicate.

Projected for the 2007, United Arab Emirates ‘Sharjah Biennale 8; on art ecology and the politics of change’. A major proposal from 1972 by Metzger will being realized. The project involves 120 cars arranged around a large glass cube case. Their exhaust fumes will collectively fill the sealed case over time as the engines are left to run. This work is Metzger’s monument to our pollution and mindless environmental destruction.

majority of vibrant bright reds to communicate organic mutilation. In the 1950s, Nitsch conceived the Orgien Mysterien Theater ("Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries") staging nearly 100 performances between 1962 and 1998. He is associated with the Vienna Actionists group. Viennese Actionism was a short and violent movement in 20th century art, that can be regarded as the many independent efforts of the 1960s to develop action art (Fluxus, Performance and Happenings etc). Its main participants were Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Rudolf Schwarzkogler and Herman Nitsch. 54 From a lecture given as part of School of Fine Art Events series at The Glasgow Film Theatre, 8 November 1996, organized by Ross Birrell and Alice Angus 55 Ibid, Glasgow Film Theatre, 8 November 1996 56 ibid, Glasgow Film Theatre, 8 November 1996

Acid Painting / Auto Destructive Art 1961, Gustav Metzger In Memoriam, 2006, Gustav Metzger

CHRIS BURDEN Direct Experience

Two key early pragmatic projects from the ‘direct experience’ world of artist Chris Burden highlight my own philosophy of art fusing with design to produce usable solutions and manifest possible alternatives to existing systems. The first is his B-Car project of 1975 . During a two-month period in Venice, California, Burden conceived the design for a small one-passenger automobile that could travel 100 miles per hr and achieve 100 miles per gallon of fuel.

Burden constructed the ‘car’ as an extremely lightweight, basic streamlined structure similar in components to a bicycle and an airplane. He constructed the car as a four-day performance at De Appel art institution in Amsterdam and intended to drive from Amsterdam to Paris during his residency.

He could not obtain a registration to test his vehicle fully in Europe, but was allowed to drive for one afternoon in Paris. The car represents a practical outcome to minimise high fuel consumption. The car also stands as a pragmatic alternative to the large fuel guzzling American cars, so popular at the time. The work was exhibited as Yankee Ingenuity, October 23, 1975, Galerie Stadler, Paris France.

More recently in 1994 Burden devised the pragmatic and philosophical ‘Mini Video Circus’. The original plan was to develop a pilot program for unemployed French youths to travel the countryside with a series of vans or trucks, which would show video footage selected by Burden on a series of TV screens. The project comprised of three Citroen 2CV trucks, each kitted out with four medium TV screens and video decks, plus a pull out tent structure, to house six folding chairs. The content of the video footage was a

76 collection of the most recent and dramatic disasters that had affected California. The LA riots, bush fires and earthquakes.

Based on the old system of town criers delivering news, the video circus showed montages of these recent disasters that have befallen California. A nominal fee was charged to pay a wage for the drivers. Burden states that the mini video circuses playing constant disaster footage would always be extremely popular, as

‘Nothing makes people feel better than seeing disaster fall upon rich and excessive societies’.

Entertainment content aside, this project contains a socially minded, pragmatic attitude in that it was designed to provide interesting work and support a small wage for the unemployed in rural areas of France. The three Citroens were also taken apart and fixed in the gallery spaces enabling the unemployed youths to learn a few essential mechanical skills and also to be able to drive and maintain the cars between journeys.

Burdens specific relevance to my own art projects, is in his environmental critique and enquiring use of the combustion engine. His ‘do-it yourself’ problem solving activities present the direct examples of projects with great social worth, and both economic and environmental benefits.

B Car 1975, Chris Burden VICTOR GRIPPO ‘Construction of a traditional rural oven for making bread’, 1972

What we find here in this work of Victor Grippos, is a pragmatic project that aimed to connect disparate social groups. A ‘do-it-yourself’ experiment in blending forms of art and life, the intention of this work was to transcend class and bond people through the act of sharing and providing.

With the help of a few colleagues in a public square in Buenos Aires, Victor Grippo57 reconstructed a traditional oven, baked bread and handed it out to passers-by for two days. The oven was specifically rural in its style, and its placement within the public centre of a major capital city finally proved problematic as the local police eventually arrived, stopped the baking and destroyed the oven. Grippo was pointing to the notion of art based on sharing and community as well as trying to stimulate awareness of the growing divisions between the communities of the towns and the country regions in Argentina.

Grippo writes his intentions: To translate an object known in a particular environment, by particular people, to another environment, frequented by other kinds of people. Purpose: to rediscover the value of an everyday object which, over and above its constructional and sculptural qualities, represents an attitude (i.e. a way of life) Action:

a) Construction of the oven

57 (B1936–d 2002) was an Argentine painter, engraver and sculptor, considered to be the father of conceptual art in Argentina? He experimented with sculpture and was known for producing kinetic pieces using engines and lighting.

78 b) Making the bread c) Breaking the bread

Educational result: To describe the process of building the oven and baking the bread. The distribution of a leaflet. The public shall be able to participate through the exchange of information. Buenos Aires, 1972 58

‘Construction of a traditional oven for making bread’ 1972, Victor Grippo

58 Victor Grippo, Statement of intentions, Construction of a traditional rural oven for making bread, 1972

Chapter Conclusions: Re-identification Upon examining the practices and aesthetics of the artists and designers mentioned in this chapter, we can see why and how these projects can be so readily drawn upon as the main forerunners to today’s more pragmatic and co-efficient art movements. They provide a clear visual repertoire to help with the reception and understanding of the history of pragmatism in contemporary art.

This chapter enables artists (like myself), to consolidate the most relevant, vital and vibrant pragmatic influences and cues by more accurately ‘redefining’ history. Laying out these forms and ideas, allows us to learn from everything that emerged and may have evaded correct identification. I have provided this chapter specifically to position the evidence, of these more ‘one off’ projects as the forerunners of Pragmatic art. In pulling them free from previous definitions and examining them closely together, I believe it is now possible to re-define these projects unequivocally as the more satisfactory intellectual model that asserts the presence of this mode of working.

In many ways my findings push me to say that these projects have been incorrectly identified and segued, into definitions of art that did not adequately recognise the pragmatic dialog in operation. As a result many of the nuances in the works have not been valued, stated and indeed ‘seen’ correctly.

Perhaps in seeking to highlight the forerunners of pragmatic work today, we are dealing in part, with a newly identifiable legacy of many avant-gardes combined.

A new legacy that only pragmatism consistently allows us to see.

IMAGE APPENDIX

Chapter 1: Undercurrents and Relations

All images in this thesis are taken from the ongoing artwork The Migratory Projects Archive 2002-Ongoing Compiled by the Author for educational use in conjunction with the Carrier vehicle

P17 Das Social Capital 1998, Rirkrit Tiravanijia Untitled-One revolution per minute 1996, Rirkrit Tiravanijia Tirivanijia, Rirkrit and Hyde-Antwi, Frank (1998), Supermarket, De Appel, Amsterdam NL

P18 Gluck 1996, Carsten Holler, Register, fondazione Prada (2000) Sauna 2003-2005, Andrew Sunley Smith

P19 Gluck 1996, Carsten Holler, Register, fondazione Prada (2000) Untitled Loud 1996, Rirkrit Tiravanijia

P39 This Is Tomorrow, 1956, The Independent Group Cooke, Lynne The independent group, British and American Pop Art, a ‘palimcestuous’ legacy From Readings in High & Low: Modern art and popular culture 1990.

P41-42 Food 1971, Gordon Matta Clark Morris Catherine, Bussmann Klaus, Muller Markus (1999), Food - Gordon Matta-Clark, Westfalisches Landesmuseum, Munster

P53 Duchamp with readymades on display Pasadena art museum 1963 www.marcelduchamp.net

P63-64 Pre-Fab building System 1965, George Maciunas One Year 1976, Akademie der Künst Berlin, Photo by Hanns Sohm

P66 Yes 1966, Yoko Ono War is Over 1969 John Lennon & Yoko One

P72 Fun Palace 1961, Cedric Price The London Architect from exhibition flyer, RE:CP (publication NAI) 2003, Cedric Price, Arata Isozaki, Patrick Keiller, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Rem Koolhaas Thinkbelt Routes - Staffordshire 1965, Cedric Price

P75 Dymaxion House 1929, R.B Fuller Dymaxion Car 1933, R.B Fuller Dymaxion Bathroom 1937, R.B Fuller

P77 Nakagin Capsule Tower 1972 (External), Kisho Kurakawa

81 Nakagin Capsule Tower 1972 (Internal detail), Kisho Kurakawa Capsule Hotel (Osaka) 1979 Kisho Kurakawa

P79 Cardboard city - Cardboard house (Kobe) 1995, Shigeru Ban

P82 Acid Painting / Auto Destructive Art 1961, Gustav Metzger In Memoriam, 2006, Gustav Metzger

P84 B Car 1975, (x3) Chris Burden

P86 Construction of a traditional oven for making bread 1972, Victor Grippo

PRAGMATISM

Revitalisations

PRAGMATIC RECRUDESCENCE1

1 Breaking out afresh or into renewed activity; revival or reappearance in active existence

‘It is clear that the day of the new man, the age of futurist manifestos and the moment for summoning a better world all ready to move into, are all well and truly over. Nowadays, we live our utopia on a subjective day-to-day basis, in the real time of tangible and intentionally fragmentary experiments. The artwork at the end of the nineties is presented as a social interstice within which these experiments, and these new 'possibilities of life' turn out to be feasible.’ Nicolas Bourriaud2

As Nicolas Bourriaud clearly describes in his early writings on relational art, it is the new possibilities amongst the various dynamics at work within current art that are of paramount interest today. Yet what I find interesting is that nowhere in his texts is pragmatism examined or even discussed. It is this absence of information that I intend to provide here in this chapter. Notably and crucially, pragmatism has been a way of thinking without accurate visual representation until now. Indeed, my belief is that the broader reception of pragmatism has always been problematic due to this very fact. This thesis now provides the evidence which is so needed.

Taking American pragmatic philosophy3 as the most articulate premise for what I believe is the most resonant and relevant philosophical foundation for contemporary co-efficient, relational and unequivocally ‘pragmatic’ arts practices, this section will illustrate how and why the legacy of this mode of thinking, is capable of linking together with the work of a great many of the creative practitioners I have brought together in this thesis. (As well as directly within my own migratory art practices). Pragmatism has I believe, become firmly situated within the most recent experimental art practices. I will outline the work of John Dewey4, C.S Pierce5, William James6 and Richard Shusterman’s7 more recent

2 Traffic, An Introduction to Relational Aesthetics, 1995 3 A Philosophical movement, pragmatism originated in the United States. The term pragmatism was first used in print by William James, who credited Charles S Peirce with coining the term in the early 1870s. Pragmatists consider practical consequences or real effects to be vital components of both meaning and truth. It gathered further momentum and clarity through the early twentieth- century via W. James and gained increased popularity through the writings of John Dewey. 4 John Dewey (b1859- d1952) was an American psychologist, philosopher, educator, social critic and political activist. He was outspoken on education, domestic and international politics and numerous social movements. Among his many concerns were the support of women's suffrage, progressive education, educator's rights, the Humanistic movement, and achieving the ideal of world peace. Dewey became known as the liberal progressive and democratic voice in a developing modern America. 5 C.S. Peirce (b1839-d1914,USA). American scientist and philosopher best known as the earliest proponent of pragmatism. He was educated as a chemist and worked as a scientist for thirty years. It is his contributions to logic, mathematics, philosophy, and semiotics and his founding of pragmatism for which he is best remembered. An innovator in fields such as mathematics, research methodology, philosophy of science epistemology and metaphysics. Peirce considered himself to be a Logician first and foremost. 6 William James (b1842 –d1910 USA) a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher trained as a medical doctor. Worked also as a physiologist and anatomist. Wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, the psychology of religious experience and mysticism, as well as the philosophy of pragmatism. Brother of realist novelist Henry James and his sister was diarist Alice James. 7 Richard Shusterman (b1949 USA). Educated in Israel, studied English and philosophy. Also served three years in Israeli Military Intelligence. During his early education he became interested in analytic philosophy after teaching at different Israeli academic

distillations of the work of John Dewey, in relation to art practice, showing how pragmatist philosophies and attitudes can be found ‘realised’ in today’s art practices more than ever before.

I believe that pragmatism is at the very core of earlier proto-relational artists’ work, and if we take art to be a social phenomenon, then we can read the creative output of the examples gathered in this paper to be direct reflectors of social and attitudinal shifts within culture at the current time that this thesis is being written. These creative examples included throughout this thesis directly embody pragmatism and the ideals of John Dewey and by extension those that Richard Shusterman articulates. The lack of pragmatic address within the writings of Nicolas Bourriaud is my point of departure.

An American History Philosophically, it may be helpful here to outline a few key points in theory laid down by the American Pragmatists. It is also useful to give a sense of the undercurrents of the time in which pragmatism as a dedicated philosophical field emerged. It is fair to say that in researching the main exponents of the field - John Dewey, William James and Charles Sanders Pierce - a number of similarities in approach can be pinpointed. The formative battle undertaken by the American pragmatists in the ‘new world’, was set initially against religious, classical and empirical modes of thinking.

American pragmatists advocated the renewal of knowledge through necessary rejection of idealism and classical empiricism, which under the scrutiny of the pragmatists was seen as non-essential and dictatorial. Firstly, classical empiricism is not to be confused with modern empiricism, which proposes that concepts located through linguistic expression can only be truly significant if associated with something that can be actually experienced in an elementary, logical and scientific sense.

The problem with the paradigm of classical empiricism was that it advocated the dissemination of knowledge and the interpretation of experience in powerfully filtered forms. The dominant structures traditionally spreading knowledge were of course the Church and the State. More recently, it is the schools and education systems, which are relied upon to manufacture the social fabric of our societies. Traditionally it was expected that only religious and ‘holy’ people (believed to be selected directly by God), such as ministers and those in papal social orders, would be responsible for spreading and articulating 'true' knowledge. Theocentric and overbearing as it was, the Church and its regime of moral codes steered and interpreted experiences, advised people on their lifestyles and directed their internal realities.

institutions, he became the chair of the Philosophy Department at Temple University, Philadelphia (1998-2004). In 1988, he made a conversion from analytic philosophy to pragmatism and started his own project writing and developing John Dewey’s ideas and notions of aesthetics.

The Pragmatists launched a polemic that strove to prove how knowledge was not sacred and exclusive; but in fact should be inclusive and embrace all forms of tangible experience, placing equal worth upon more concrete forms of interpretation. Inclusion was the means of discussing lived subjective experience.

More than a century-old in origin, and best described as America’s first endemic 'new world' philosophy. Pragmatism aimed at recovering contact with experiential reality and tangible actual matter. It is said of the Pragmatists that they hated idealists and romantics due to their continual disdain for contact with tangible and present reality. They disliked any esoteric and abstruse structures within philosophy, hence their vitriolic attitudes towards the corrupt structures of knowledge inherent in most orthodox religions; where heightened and supposedly divine experiences were celebrated, and restricted to an enlightened and initiated minority. Experience to a Pragmatist was defined as an interaction between the self and physical reality. Knowledge and knowing within pragmatism is defined as a process of active engagement between a mind and a tactile physical reality, and not some preordained transcendental affair.

William James (1842-1910) advocated that 'truth' of any kind was found through lived experience and that abstract belief systems existed only because of the great fictions founded in theological practices. James himself was greatly interested in the theories and practices of psychoanalysis toward the turn of the 20th century, and was also from a strong Catholic family background.

Charles Sanders Peirce’s (1839-1914) pragmatic maxim was the theory and study of 'meaning', which could be applied and founded using the multiple differences experienced within a set of beliefs or propositions.

It was the ‘common factors’ observed (whether proven or not, in the case of religion) that indicated to an individual, how an experience could seem to be true or false. Then only after the given experience was tested and found to be shared within a larger group or mass, could it be judged and deemed as true. These theories of belonging and similarity are in fact early forms of sociological practice, and display scientific attitudes toward critiquing and understanding individual belief in religious determinism.8 For James, reality and meaning came only through a direct process of socialisation.

John Dewey, notedly the most outspoken and prolific of the American Pragmatists, stressed that knowledge was in fact an instrument for action rather than an object for contemplation and cool disinterest. He was largely opposed to rhetorical forms of intellectualism, which were seen as passive and

8 Religious Determinism is seen as the logical consequences within the presumed omniscience of God. Also can be referred to as pre-destination. That God has all foreknowledge of all events and so forth.

only partially useful for the assessment of things already structured and fixed within culture. It was this emphasis on highlighting and questioning the conventional nature of concepts, belief systems and institutions that established the Pragmatist’s position. The utility of knowledge and the institutionalisation of beliefs and aesthetic experiences were the ground for study. An emphasis was placed upon moving away from a concept of cultural elitism. Moral imperatives involving greater community were stressed. Relations between people of differing disciplines were seen as essential toward the realisation of goals. Sharing and generosity were seen as the best vehicles for heightening the development of a society, which progresses under growing capitalist paradigms.

In short, true relational and communal structures are seen as the eradicating factors for systems that develop hierarchies and fundamentalist positions. Dewey hoped that Pragmatism would be constantly re- evaluated and interpreted and given new forms- in light of changing conditions. With this line of desire, Dewey indicates the necessity for philosophy to remain malleable and elastic in order to function in any real sense within a contemporary realm. Fundamentalism for Dewey was seen as limited, aggressive, aesthetically narrow, and above all, dangerously restrictive to the development of any given individual.

The Responsibility and Elasticity of Art Richard Shusterman overviews and elaborates on the classification of art and institutional theories of art and aesthetics. He describes the importance of art in Pragmatist aesthetics as being especially attractive to philosophers because of its tremendous elasticity:

Artists - if they win our admiring assent, it is because of their philosophical agility and imaginative ingenuity in games of argumentation and covering ground. 9

He continues to elaborate upon institutions, such as those of state, religion and education as typically involving an articulate network of regimented roles, pre-determined structures, and practices that are clearly codified and very strictly administered. The art world in contrast, by its own determining, is much more varied, diverse and eclectic when functioning well. The brilliance of art, being that, as Shusterman comments;

‘One is not formally registered, baptised or matriculated into the art world, exiled, excommunicated or expelled from it. There are no specified conditions that must be met, nor are there any formulated rules to regulate its actions’.10

9 Richard Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics, Living Beauty, Rethinking Art 1992 & 2000 10 ibid, 1992 & 2000

It is the operative, working, transmuted 'street level' inclusion of the pragmatic attitude that is by far the most intriguing and useful today. Whether the vast majority of artists working with co-efficient relational themes directly draw on pragmatist philosophy is an open question, since historical precedents of relational artists are rarely mentioned and thus far seldom referenced.11

For the relational artists that Bourriaud describes, strategically at least - to be associated and linked to a definitive history may be seen to limit, pigeonhole and detract from the full absorption and understanding of the artists’ endeavours, which aim to be linked directly and unmistakably to the contemporary situation.

To my mind however, the presence of pragmatic attitudes and principles are unmistakable in the works of many of the more radical and interesting contemporary artists today. And, indeed it differentiates them quite clearly from a generalised stream.

However, pragmatism is found directly in a number of artists’ projects, especially in the material attitudes and aesthetics of their work (see images throughout).

Relational work from my own findings and determinations, directly shares a similar philosophy to that of pragmatism, in that it is largely about starting over again. Readdressing old and new information and laying down new base lines and new links, in order to pull away from limiting forms of categorical assessment.

Relational art however, aesthetically and genetically at least, does implicitly link to Conceptual or Fluxus- inspired situations and methods. Lessons are drawn from the study of this earlier work, yet this is quite simply as close as it gets. It is true that the art at the end of the 1990s and in the first decade of 2000, can seem elusive to many and hard to decipher, but one cannot address developments through the use of traditional aesthetics or simplistic old notions of symmetry, balance, beauty and representation. Art just remains a sublime kind of fetish within these definitions.

Parallel Engineering What has not been examined until now, are some of the other fields of influence and thought that work in conjunction with the art of today. These links and fields such as pragmatism, and permaculture, (to name two examples) exist more commonly outside the specialised histories of art, and are drawn upon, aligning

11 *Nicolas Bourriaud in a conversation with me in Sydney in 2005, did say that it was impossible to read everything in all areas. Pragmatism was not something he was aware of at the time, or had read in to the artwork.

into what that I have come to identify from my own theories and art practices, as a form of ‘Parallel Engineering’. I describe this as the use of variously ‘syncretised’ developments of thought, practices and ideologies that emerge around the same time as shifts in art. It also describes the way in which previously existing forms can be merged, adapted and modified to challenge existing paradigms.12

Art as experience: A key text John Dewey, 1934

‘Art’s definition has proved so resistant to theoretical resolution that several philosophers have suggested abandoning the project as altogether futile’.13

According to Richard Shusterman, many contemporary pragmatists, even those with a full respect for the primacy of artistic practice have gone so far as to express that to locate any overall theory of art with any great value is altogether near impossible

John Dewey aimed his analysis beyond the limits of scientific and supremacist philosophy. The dominant and prevailing ideology of Dewey’s time was analytic philosophy, which hoped to understand the world only by logical scientific means. Art & aesthetics were thus given marginal status, and rarely assessed as it was thought art and aesthetics were far too imprecise and woolly to warrant serious investigation.

Pragmatist aesthetics began with John Dewey. He wanted to enlarge the notion of the aesthetic experience and begin a re-conception of art, which was not separated from life, pop culture & more popular forms of everyday cultural expression. Dewey witnessed the narrowing down and elitist divisions occurring within ‘fine arts’, and challenged the analytic philosophies, which too readily discussed art as being too subjective and esoteric. Dewey is the only founding father of pragmatism to write extensively14 on art and aesthetics as a total and wholly important factor that was absolutely central to pragmatic philosophy. John Dewey’s theories of the aesthetics of art contained a revolutionary spirit that placed emphasis on somatic, lived experience, which was in direct opposition to the common perceptions of art at the time

12 In the chapter on my own Migratory Projects, I illustrate and discuss this concept further. 13 Richard Shusterman, Art and Theory between experience and practice / Pragmatist Aesthetics, Living Beauty, Rethinking Art 1992 & 2000 pg 34 14 Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology 1922, Experience and Nature (1925), Art as Experience (1934)

New world philosophy Pragmatism is a distinctly American philosophy arising from America’s rapid growth and opportunistic ‘golden years’ between 1890-1970. Its thinking, introduced a new upbeat, democratic analytical philosophical method that valued difference. It heralded a new philosophical horizon and introduced very grounded intellectual tools that could be used for the reassessment and re-assimilation of culture.

The Sociology of Pragmatics: Migration Culture American Pragmatism came out from the shadow of gloomy, austere and elitist European thinking (largely Theodore Adorno and Karl Marx). It is also my belief that pragmatism came out of a cultural lineage that had its roots in mass migration. The experiences of adapting and noticing how a specific culture operates are very different from growing up within familiar ideologies. This ‘migration aspect’ is one very common to artists such as Marcel Duchamp, George Maciunas, and Yoko Ono, to name only a few. The experience of migration forms very different objective and subjective perceptions, to those that are endemic and pre- existent and already operating in a given culture. The new ‘Americans’ all came from elsewhere, and would have known the limitations of the cultures they left and would have immediately felt the different expectations, and realities involved in adapting to the new American way of living that they themselves were more responsible for constructing.

Extending limitations The pragmatic is of course inextricably linked to the practical. Traditional notions of art (prior to pragmatism) were defined as largely purposeless and were thought to display disinterest in the more important essential utilitarian factors of life. They were seen too be introverted and largely unconcerned with the sciences, economics, politics and the developments of new industry.

Dewey maintained that the parameters of the aesthetic must be enlarged beyond the role that any cultural elitism ascribes. That the conceptions within aesthetics must extend outside of prevailing dominant ideologies. (Ours today of course being high capitalist)

Conceptions of the aesthetic are enlarged by the realisation that it can embrace life in all its broadest forms. Art, life and popular culture, all suffer from constantly entrenched divisions, narrowly identified cloistered and often hierarchical in arrangement and considered attributes (Binary notions of popular art being seen as less skilled and ideas of elite fine art, considered as highly skilled and more disciplined).

‘The emancipatory enlargement of the aesthetic involves a re-conceiving of art in more liberal terms, freeing it from its exalted cloister, where it is isolated from life and contrasted to more popular forms of cultural expression.’ 15

New artistic forms and the re-conception of art Pragmatist art aims to make a real and positive difference within the whole of life. Not confining itself to singular academic or institutional problems. Traditional evaluations of balanced phenomenological aesthetics (Edmund Burke 16) are of no interest now. It must now address today’s living aesthetic debates and new artistic forms. Pragmatic art needs to be made manifest in actual concrete projects. Within the last ten years (1990-2000), pragmatism has emerged again within the work of many contemporary artists. Until recently it has not been able to be clearly expressed or viewed as a ‘new’ aesthetic, because of it simply having no clearly discernible form. Like the criticism of Dewey’s art as experience – being a hodgepodge of conflicting methods and undisciplined speculations, contemporary co-efficient and structurally ‘migratory’ art has endured similar attacks. The want for ‘well behaved’ theories and clean, immediately recognisable linear art forms is still all pervasive in the minds of many. Now with the new visual forms I am evidencing, it ‘is’ possible to obtain a clear view. ‘My defence of the aesthetic legitimacy of popular art and my accounts of ethics as an art of living, both aim at a more expansive and democratic re-conception of art.’17

‘The task of any aesthetic theory is not to capture the truth of our current understanding of art, but rather to re-conceive art so as to enhance its role and appreciation; the ultimate goal is not knowledge but improved experience.’ 18 John Dewey

Unearthing pragmatism Similar to Richard Shusterman’s own account of his encounters and subsequent voyage into pragmatic philosophy, it was perplexingly, ‘not’ taught within my own art school curriculum. I had from time to time unearthed bits and pieces, and had come across Dewey in many forms, through occasional references, citations, paraphrases, footnotes on photocopies and various distillations. It is largely these versions of ‘Deweyan’ pragmatic theory and its influences, which I find today that interest me. I find it hugely interesting and unusual that it was never formally taught in my own art schooling 19. Pragmatism even in

15 Richard Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics 1992, Blackwell press, Oxford UK and Cambridge USA 16 Edmund Burke 1729 –1797, Anglo-Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and Philosopher A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful 1757 17 John Dewey, Art as Experience ,1934 18 op. cit (as above) 19 The author acknowledges awareness that the original Foundation Course system in the UK was designed by artist Lawrence Alloway of the Independent Group and by extension attitudes may filter through – yet it was not within any curriculum to research this group or indeed even associate any ideas of pragmatics with these courses. Experientially, Pragmatism has never featured

its broadest sense, when only functioning as an attitude, can be found to align so precisely with a great many co-efficient and relational art practices that have emerged. The very fact of it even superficially lacking visual form, accounts very simply and directly, for its lack of referencing intellectually in art.

Interrelation From 1900 –1950, pragmatic theories became slowly eclipsed by analytic philosophies of art (namely through the writings of Kant and Hegel). Pragmatism could not be easily absorbed into highly regimented analytic philosophies. Pragmatism was tough minded and directly based itself in empirical experiences. It held an anti-foundationalist position and aimed at disenfranchising orthodoxy on all levels. No element or concept had an independent identity or essence. An object’s entire function as defined within pragmatism was brought about only by its interrelations with all other elements and concepts of the whole to which it firmly belonged. It could not be separated.

Integration – mind & body as one A central feature to Dewey’s liking of art, was for him found in its blending of ‘somatic naturalism’. This for Dewey was something that he saw in art expressed through recognition of all the processes of actual bodily experiences. He found it was artists that continued fearlessly to openly express all the processes of of living. He admired arts ability to deal with and talk of life, sex, death, and all concrete factual bodily experiences – including the less pleasant.

Dewey dedicates the placement of his aesthetics and indeed his understanding of beauty, first and foremost within the natural needs, constitutions and activities of the organism. He aims at recovering the continuity of aesthetic experience within the actual processes of living. For Dewey, all art is the product of interactions between the living organism and it’s tactile environment. Art is a reorganisation of actions, materials and energies whose role is not to deny the natural wants of society. Denial is seen to achieve nothing more than some pure ethereal experience. Instead, Dewey thought that art should provide an integrated expression requiring always both intellectual and bodily dimensions.

‘Art’s aim is to serve the whole creature in a unified vitality’ John Dewey20 Art as a non essential affair The idea of art, as not only an expression of complete aesthetic unification of all modes of internally and externally lived experiences, but as an essential reorganisation and response to the problems in changing

directly within any curriculum I have encountered within any art school to date, unless I myself purposely introduced it as research suggestion. 20 John Dewey Art as Experience pg 122, 1934 - as cited by Richard Shusterman Pragmatist Aesthetics pg 7

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and perceiving a fully open and shared reality was naively met with resistance. Stuart Hampshire 21 in his essay on Logic and Appreciation tells us that, ‘A work of art is gratuitous some ‘thing’ made or done gratuitously and not in response to a problem posed.” 22

(It is not clear whether Hampshire is referring to traditional notions of art or just art in general? This naturally depends on his level of awareness, experience and exposure to modes of creative work). He further states that reasons for serious evaluation could only be given, if aesthetic objects were in fact the solutions to actual problems, rather than just being in his view, ‘gratuitous and unnecessary’.

Richard Shusterman, some decades later counters this thinking by stating that, ‘The underlying motive for such attempts to purify art from any functionality was not to denigrate it as worthless and useless, but to place its worth apart from and above the realm of instrumental value. This strategy was an attempt to protect the autonomy of art from unfair competition with ruthless and dominant utilitarian thinking, for fear that art could not adequately compete in terms of instrumental value‘ 23

Pragmatic art today is often born in response to social, political and by extension aesthetic problems. It’s value is not in the least bit gratuitous and arguably one of its aims and values, is in its ability to level all forms of pretentiousness and socially disconnected modes of working out of arts practice.

The singular versus the mass produced This question of how arts instrumental value could compete as an ‘essential’ and functional part of life, is an interesting one. How did art, especially from 1900 –1950 compete with all the life ‘enhancing’ products that came with the mass manufactured industrialised objects of capitalism? Painters like Jackson Pollock and Franz Klein initially sought to create a more ‘primal’ immediate expression, individuation, notions of chance and immediacy were embraced and seen personified in abstract expressionism. The concept and form of the ‘gesture’, the individual act. Moody, vibrant, esoteric and existential painting populated the international art scene as a means to reclaim individuality as mass production took hold. Later in the 1960’s and early 1970’s artists like Donald Judd, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol and Carl Andre adapted and began to use new more industrialised forms, surfaces and materials. Multiples, mechanical reproduction and repetition of form began to reflected the world at large and the changes going on. Many an artist managed to reflect the new industrialised world successfully - but very few responded to it pragmatically and incisively. (Gordon Matta Clark and Gustav Metzger provide early examples).

21 B1914 – d 2004 UK) An Oxford University Philosopher, university administrator and critic. He was an anti-rationalist thinker who preferred to question rather than answer. He was a humanist and also believed that it was not possible to rest on tidy concrete conclusions alone. 22 Stuart Hampshire, Logic and appreciation 1954, Aesthetics and language, in William Elton edition pg162, Oxford Blackwell press 23 Richard Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics pg 9

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Art’s separation from function Traditionally the aesthetic in art would come to represent a separate realm of freedom; art would be free from function, use and problem solving; this freedom from use, would be seen for a time as its defining and ennobling feature. For John Dewey 24 this seemed absurd, disturbing and alienating. The mistake of the esoteric aesthetic tradition of Kant’s time was to assume that since art had no specific, logical, identifiable function which it could perform better than anything else, it could only be defended as being beyond use and function all together, as having pure ‘intrinsic’ value.

Dewey’s corrective move was not to reject the binary argument between the intrinsic and instrumental value of art, he simply begins to re-interpret the means and the ends. He argues that art’s special function and value lie not in any specialised, singular end, but in serving a variety of ends, which above all enhance our immediate lived experiences.

“Art is thus at once instrumentally valuable and a satisfying end in itself. We are carried to a refreshed attitude toward the circumstances and exigencies of ordinary experience. Art’s instrumentality does not cease when the direct act of perception stops. It continues to operate in indirect channels.” John Dewey25

“That which is merely a utility, satisfies a particular and limited end. The work of (everyday) aesthetic art satisfies many ends… it serves life rather than prescribing a defined and limited mode of living.” John Dewey 26

Satisfying multiple outcomes Everyday aesthetics, as found in fashion, songs, food, cinema, books, magazines the internet, and generally all forms of popular sub-culture, work to modify, link and extend communication. Ideally these areas cross-pollinate, test inform and inspire our other activities and expand our aesthetic tolerances. A sense of deeper cultural engagement can be achieved by critical enjoyment of the above. Of course we can also read all the above categories in the contemporary sense as ‘agents’ for advertising and capitalist consumption, yet they also reveal our cultures in all their entireties, the beautiful and grotesque, the trivial and the profound, the desirable and if necessary the avoidable.

Art in pragmatic terms, inherently invites broad influences into itself, and finds both content and stimulation from a great many sources of experience. In this way it remains vitally connected and thus, ‘keeps alive the power to experience the common world in its fullness’.27 Art and aesthetics, cannot be understood without full appreciation of their socio historical dimensions. Dewey stresses that art is not an

24 John Dewey, Art and experience 1934 25 ibid, pg 144 26 ibid, pg 140 27 John Dewey, Art and Experience, 1934 pg 138

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abstract, autonomously aesthetic notion, but something directly materially rooted in the real world and intrinsically structured by its socio economic and political factors

Therefore, Art renders the world and our presence in it, as more meaningful and tolerable through the

introduction of an attainable and satisfying sense of unity through our open and varied experiences of it.

Dewey shared themes with Michel Foucault28 and Frederick Nietzsche29, who thought that art should never be aloof in any way or display disinterest in the very content of its make up or in what it communicated. Art should cause unified excitement and interest in the mind and in the body and explore the validity of differences, actively making manifest deviations from the norm.

Arts intelligence The philosophy and study of aesthetics in Dewey’s time, was dominated by ‘analytic’ aesthetics. This area modelled itself not as a social philosophy but as a scientific one. Within its reasoning, art and its aesthetics were given a marginal status, often avoided as they were beyond the scope of logical scientific analysis. Analytic aesthetics initially attempted to apply rigorous, scientifically precise methods to the wayward and woolly ‘slippery’ realms of art. It was soon found out that Art was far too ‘relational’, cross-referential, un-handleable and complex, as to be deemed in any way logical. Dewey recognised that art and artists, had to work in a great many areas and on a number of levels simultaneously. He understood that working co-efficiently was a great deal more socially usable than simply working logically.

‘The production of a genuine work of art probably demands more intelligence than does most of the so called thinking that goes on among those who pride themselves on being ‘intellectuals‘ 30 John Dewey

In Dewey’s championing of the multifunctional intelligence of art, he asserted that it was necessary to be wary of indoctrinating administrations that nearly always led to the marginalization and depletion of its vitality and connective forces. (for example the church, the state, and even to try to justify it scientifically).

“Dewey was intent on making connections rather than distinctions. He was keen to connect aspects of human experience and activity, which had been divided by specialist, compartmentalising thought and then more brutally sundered by specialist, compartmentalising institutions in which such fragmented

28 Paul-Michel Foucault,(1926-1984) French Philosopher, sociologist and historian. Best known for his studies of social institutions and writings on the genealogy of knowledge, power and sexuality 29 Frederich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), German Philosopher best known for his radical and critical texts on religion, social criticism, existentialism, ideology, power and science. 30 op.cit, pg 127 - pg 52

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disciplinary thinking is re-inscribed and reinforced. He thus in some ways anticipates Foucault’s more elaborate analysis of disciplinary power and Adorno’s more embittered critique of the social and personal disintegration wrought by our administrative society, which dominates by dividing and then homogenising under it’s bureaucratic forms.” Richard Shusterman31

Dewey’s quest was the recovering of the continuity of aesthetic experience within more normal everyday processes of living. His attempt was to break the stifling hold of the compartmental conception of fine art. He wanted to dispose of the old institutionally entrenched philosophical ideology of aesthetics as being sharply distinguished from real life. He disliked the idea of art being held in a separate realm, experienced only in museums and concert halls and grand institutions that he saw as heavily indoctrinated sites and situations. (Recall here that art groups such as Fluxus likened the idea of the state collecting art as a sort of ‘seizure’ as opposed to a preservation). Capitalism, preservation, status and isolation ‘The growth of capitalism has been a powerful influence in the development of the museum as the proper home for works of art, and in the promotion of the idea that they are apart from common life. The nouveaux riches, who are an important by-product of the capitalist system have felt especially bound to surround themselves with works of fine art, evidence of good standing in the realm of higher culture is displayed by amassing paintings, objects (and other fetishized icons of status). Not merely individuals, but communities and nations, put their cultural good taste in evidence by building opera houses, museums and galleries to show that a community is not wholly absorbed in material wealth, because it is willing to spend it’s gains in patronage of art… these things are seen to reflect and establish superior cultural status, while their segregation from common life reflects the fact that they are not part of a native and spontaneous culture.’ 32

In this statement we find a suspicion of the idea of any ‘static’ organisation of the arts and the idea of the museum as the final resting place for art.

Dewey’s ‘aesthetics of continuity’ Dewey worked to further undermine dichotomous thinking. He questioned the basic dualisms, which reinforced the isolation and fragmentation of our experience of art. He sought out the underlying and largely unexamined premises that people attributed to artists and their expected roles. He began updating our ideas of what art was, and could be.

He was willing to accept distinctions and definitions as flexible and provisional tools. These definitions, marked tendencies and similarities and were capable of providing in depth understandings and insight. He

31 Richard Shusterman,Pragmatist Aesthetics, 1992 p 12 32 John Dewey, Art as Experience, pg14-15

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rejected disciplines as unbreakable inflexible principles that could not be tampered with, especially in terms of evaluation. If classifications and disciplines inhibited or implemented fissures between things, making them unbridgeable, he saw this as non pragmatic and capable of destroying possible fruitful connections between greater, more concrete experiences, which may arise by mixing different media. The distinctions that Dewey observed were made in terms of prominent, significant tendencies or common features or similar attributes of ‘style’. He indicates by extension that stylistic allegiance in art is means of limiting its effect and ability to remain agile. This agility, for Dewey was a principle he thought imperative to arts ability to remain competent, and vitally connected to the flux of life.

Healthy conflicts born from isolation Within Dewey’s holistic overview, it is an analytical error, to try to define an aesthetic by simply isolating any single strand or concept in the total experience of an object or situation. For Dewey, ‘Such words as poetic, architectural, dramatic, sculptural, pictorial, literary…designate tendencies that belong in some degree to every art, because they qualify any complete experience’.33

In this sense he allows for all the parts of a given whole to be seen working together. In art, we must agree with the premise that ‘everything’ chosen and presented is ‘active’. The materials, ideas and context of art should always be considered equally. Dewey believed, that when we separate an object for study we begin to distort and impoverish our understanding of our experience of the whole.

‘The danger of distinctions is that we end up fetishizing them.’ 34

Dewey also believed that when attempting to divide human attributes and faculties within society, (The emotive, the intellectual and the sensory), in any rigid way. We end up causing conflict. In attempting to ascribe higher values and rewards to certain traits such as logic and objectivity above creativity and subjectivity, we force people to choose and devalue many aspects of their feelings and emotions that are in fact their characters. These aspects are evolved to work naturally together and in unison. This conflict of value can lead to forms of self-alienation, through denial of emotions and skills, as certain attributes become ranked, sidelined and controlled in terms of importance.35

33 John Dewey, Art as Experience pg 137, 233 34 ibid, pg 257 35 Marcel Duchamp’s necessary attack on painting as purely a ‘retinal’ occularcentric affair and art that he saw as based purely on outmoded formal clichés

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The mistake of hierarchy Under Dewey’s evaluation, distinctions tend to take on evaluative colouring, and in privileging one term over the other the real value of a subject becomes obscured and degraded. Under such conditions it always seemed that the senses and anything to do with the flesh got a bad name. In making such distinctions, we seemingly end up ignoring the irreplaceable contributions to a fullness found in the totality of life. A fullness that is totally necessary, in forming our more balanced moral and intellectual dimensions. Perhaps Dewey’s most significant argument against separate classification is that it hardens thinking and perception into very fixed routines. It places unquestioned automatic predetermined paths with familiar channels of address that promote limitations.

“Classification sets limits to perception…and restricts creative work…there are obstructions enough in any case in the way of genuine expression. The rules that attend classification add one more handicap” 36

Experience as the only truth “The value of ideals lies in the experiences to which they lead” 37

In terms of defining art, Dewey’s aim was to analyse and expand the concepts and practices, of its established forms of criticism. In Dewey’s assessment of art, experience rather than unexamined truths, should be the final standard.

‘The conception that objects have fixed and unalterable values is precisely the prejudice from which art emancipates us, with the work of art, the proof of the pudding is decidedly in the eating, rather than in any critical principle’ 38

Richard Shusterman further asserts that, “Our aesthetic concepts, including the concept of art itself, are but instruments which need to be challenged and revised when they fail to provide the best experience” 39

Through socio-cultural transformation, via the application of pragmatic philosophy and action, art could instrumentally enrich and improve our immediate experiences and satisfy a greater number of people from a broad range of backgrounds. The very compartmentalisation and spiritualisation of art, set upon some far off pedestal and divorced from the lives of most of us, as an elevated and separate realm, directly contributed to the impoverished aesthetic quality of our lives. Dewey saw this separation as disturbing removal of delight and alternative ways of thinking from people’s minds.

36 ibid, Art as Experience pg 229-230 37 op. cit, as above pg 325 38 op. cit, pg 100-101 39 Richard Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics pg 18

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Status and abuse of art Any elitist equations attached to art will not only alienate, but prevent people from seeking further satisfaction from it. If people feel that art is an exclusive situation, they will feel as if they no longer own it. In associating it to status, models of resistance are implemented. Art can be seen as a thing that belongs elsewhere outside of daily life.

“Identification of art in the high traditional sense can serve an oppressive socio-cultural elite, who seek to assert and bolster its class superiority by making sure that art (at least in it’s canonised modes of appreciation) will remain beyond the taste and reach of the common person, at once marking and reinforcing a general sense of inferiority”.40

Fascination and denial of real life In the very idea of art and aesthetics as belonging to, or being from a separate realm beyond everyday life, logically assumes that ordinary life is a necessarily dismal and joyless, unimaginative coercion. A failure to break this perception, will see art and aesthetics only being enjoyed when we wish to take a break from reality. If we cannot transcend this notion, according to Dewey, art becomes

‘The beauty parlour of civilisation, covering civilisation with an opulent aesthetic surface to hide its ugly horrors and brutalities’ 41

It is this supposed ugliness and brutality of life, that we now need to see and deal with more than ever. We need exposure to the failures of our systems.

Conclusions in elitism The horrors that John Dewey references, include ongoing class snobbery, imperialism, and capitalism’s profit-seeking oppression, social disintegration and alienation of labour through a disengaged and increasingly specialised limited work forces.

Dewey’s pragmatism is closely linked to Marxism in its more ambitious and positive moments. Art’s role, (for John Dewey and for Karl Marx), like that of philosophy, is not to simply criticise reality, but to change it.

Without aesthetic variation, binaries simply maintain precedence; racism, sexism, ageism, sizism, class systems, religious doctrines continue to govern society. Binary codes of behaviour and dysfunctional thought patterns produce only negative effects. These affects are all based on fear, unfamiliarity and lack

40 Richard Shusterman Pragmatist Aesthetics pg 19 41 John Dewey, Art and Experience pg 14-16

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of adequate knowledge. Counter-productive, counter intelligent and unquestioned cloistered behavioural patterns, more so than ever now, are inexcusable.

Dewey urges that despite the risk of corruptive misappropriations by a capitalist world. Art should still be removed from its sacralised position and introduced further into the realm of everyday living, where once re-installed, it may function with greater effect as a guide, model and impetus for constructive reform, rather than being merely an imported adornment, or a wishful imaginary alternative to what is seen as the only singular reality.

Through pragmatism, Dewey promotes, greater emphasis on creativity and imagination with importance placed on the means and the ends. He asserts that this may lead to more immediate satisfaction as opposed to ideas of remote, always deferred and external enjoyments. His message ultimately is to ‘get on’ with it.

Theodore Adorno 42 thought everyday life to be largely impure and poisoned. He thought art should be separate from life, and lead us toward greater ideals; it should avoid contamination from a corrupt world. Adorno did agree however, with Dewey that luxurious bourgeois art is the response to an isolated ascetic life, a life deprived of real gratification in the sphere of immediate sensory experience.43

This idea of contamination and corruption are today gaining greater use in art.

42 (B1903-d1969) German born sociologist, composer and musicologist. Adorno saw the culture industry as an arena whereby critical tendencies or potentials were eliminated. He argued that culture had just become another industry, producing and circulating commodities through mass media, and like any other situation, manipulated the population. He saw pop-culture as a reason why people become passive; through the easily available pleasures of consumption. People were made docile and content, no matter how terrible their situations and circumstances. Adorno argued that cultural goods try to appear different in the market place but they are in fact, just variations on the same repetitious themes. He perceived that the same things are offered to everybody within the standardized production of consumer goods yet saw it as more concealed under the manipulations of taste and official culture's pretenses of individualism. Adorno coined this phenomenon pseudo-individualization. He treated mass-produced culture as dangerous to the high arts and declared that culture industries cultivate false needs. These needs are created by and satisfied by capitalism. For Adorno true essential needs, are only freedom, creativity, and genuine happiness. But he saw the problem with capitalism was that it blurs the line between our false and true needs absolutely. He argued that capitalism had become further entrenched through its attack on the very basis of revolutionary consciousness and that its apex is to fully eradicate the individualism that forms the basis of our creative and critical consciousness. 43 T.W Adorno, Aesthetic theory, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1984

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There is a vital key here; in the opening out of contemporary art, ideas of scrutinising failure, examining damage and dysfunction, are in fact forming the core of many a new creative project today. Imperfections and differences are increasingly celebrated. Imperfections are used and seen as anathema to uniform controlling systems of aesthetics.

Art as a form of social alteration In short, John Dewey thought that our concept of art needed to be reformed. Dominating institutions, class divisions, and hierarchical structures had significantly shaped the concept of art and consequently had been reciprocally reinforced by these institutions. Dewey understood that a permanent solution could not be achieved without a radical social alteration.

He saw the painful rift between industrial production, and individual aesthetic enjoyment forever growing larger in his lifetime. He understood like Karl Marx, that the partial participation of the workers with the objects and wares they mass-produced, could lead to indifference and a shallowing, if not complete removal of intimate aesthetic experience. As the production line continued on, so the world would become ever uniform and similar. For Dewey the art world was not an abstracted or autonomous aesthetic notion, but something wholly and unquestionably infused and enmeshed in the real world and absolutely structured by social, economic and political factors.

Loss of context and increased commodification within globalisation Dewey further reinforces how international industrialisation and capitalism have helped changed art’s production and reception irrevocably. In reading the following statement, we have to be aware that Dewey was also witnessing the early construction of the commercial and international art markets in Modern art.

‘The mobility of trade and populations due to economic systems, has weakened or destroyed the connection between works of art and the various local atmospheres of which it was once the natural expression. As works of art have lost their indigenous status, they have acquired a new one – that of, being specimens of fine art and nothing else…which are now produced, like other articles, for sale in the market’44.

The challenge of eradicating divisions In our current climate of ‘turbo’ capitalism, which divides between producer and consumer, we have a chasm between ordinary and aesthetic experiences. This is reinforced in our notions of work, in leisure, enjoyment and pleasure. Each division has a set of parameters and norms that are socially and now industrially constructed. Our society is dominated by mercenary profit and in order to reach greater profits many people are driven toward a life of mechanistic and largely monotonous joyless production. In this

44 Dewey Art as Experience, 1934 pg 15

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environment and social climate, a gulf between art and life is implicitly practiced. Art is still largely a thing only to be contemplated, quantified, regarded and indeed only seen as active only when framed and formalised in museums and galleries, away from the real world. This way of living is the direct opposite of the goal of pragmatism, and indeed to the pragmatic artist more so. Pragmatic artists as we will see, have directly intervened and conscripted forms directly from the familiar consumer world. They have emerged, by using the very same strategies, materials and structures that the pragmatists feared would ultimately eradicate art, and destroy intimate and vitally connected ‘usable’ aesthetic experience. It is as if the contemporary world is being absorbed by artists today and being returned and re-presented, with some profound rearrangements that are fed-back through the use of contexts, materials and situations that Dewey and also Marcel Duchamp predicted.

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The Pragmatic legacy In understanding pragmatism, we find that the standard theories that have isolated art and disconnected it from other modes of experience are not unchallengeable.

‘Theories, in any form are not pure reasoning, nor are they true indisputable findings, they are the result of varied specifiable extraneous conditions, which are deeply socially embedded in institutions individual minds, and in habits of life’. 45

Dewey cautions against the endorsement of a full-blown economic determinism of the arts within capitalism as he worried that if this form of rationalisation were to take control, then art could just become another form of mass-production. His pragmatist aesthetic theory is unquestionably aimed at social and intellectual reform. A combination of philosophy largely distilled and extended from Marx and Hegel and infused with anti-capitalist fervour and customised to challenge dominant European philosophy of 1950s American (McCarthyism46) and Puritanism, that dominated a landscape filled by industry, capitalism, science, conservatism, anti socialist and communist resistance.

Not surprisingly amongst this climate, John Dewey’s sensitive and radical work became somewhat eclipsed and neglected. 47

EN ROUTE: Perth 2002 Marx Pragmatics

Karl Marx was known to have said to some anxious farmers facing the prospect of an on going famine one day, during a small rally –

45 John Dewey, Art as Experience, pg 16 46 US senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) McCarthyism was an intense and paranoiac anti-communist period of suspicion in the United States lasting approximately through the 1940s to the late 1950s. Many thousands of American citizens were accused of being Communists or being communist sympathizers were subjected to aggressive investigations and questioning before government councils or private committees and agencies. Primary targets of McCarthy’s suspicions were government employees, artists, entertainment industry workers, union activists and educators. It was seen as a sort of cleansing program. 47 Of note here, is that new immigrant Americans, including many migrant artists fleeing the second world war, would also have resisted the majority of their old country politics ideas and ideals, in favour of reform and establishing a new order in which to fully assimilate into the new freedoms associated with the new capitalist world. Marcel Duchamp stated for many years, that he always tried to rid himself of the tyranny of European aesthetics and old artistic determinations.

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‘If we all just stopped going to church to pray for more food, and spent this time in the fields planting more potatoes - we would all be better off’.

Process over product The essence and value of art as we have examined through the lens of pragmatism, is not in mere artefacts, but in the dynamics of experiential activity through which values are created and perceived. The possibility that the process of art can be privileged over any final product of a static kind, aims to define art, by the very quality of experience it provides.

Dewey does not deny the importance of art’s material objects. He states that there can be no aesthetic experience without the object, the object always being the element which fuses and embodies the whole of

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the senses, and which also satisfies all the necessary conditions, that we will tolerate and take as our current aesthetic experiences.

Objects provide the essential components for communing and sharing, and give us our sense of place, as they are based in the very field of current existence that we share on a daily basis.

EN ROUTE: Sydney 2003 Actu-ate, Actu-alise, Actu-ally.

Works of art only exist through lived dynamic experience: In Actu. Art is a mode of living.

A living, breathing actual behaviour.

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Conclusions and Agilities Breaking out of the white cube ‘again’

The notion of pragmatist art in the end as we find it discussed in the lively writings of the new world American philosophers, was to continually be aesthetically vigorous, communally impassioned, and always engaged with the present. Dewey hoped that pragmatism itself as a philosophy would; as it was always designed to be, remain always adaptable and usable. Art within pragmatic thinking should never be neither purposeless nor disinterested.

‘We must get rid of ideas of aesthetic autonomy - the compartmental conception of fine art that segregates it to the separate realm of the museum. Art, life and popular culture have all suffered from these entrenched divisions. There is a fundamental passivity that underlies our established appreciation of high

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art, which is heightened by the traditional aesthetic attitude of disinterested, distanced contemplation which discourages communal interaction or deeply embodied participatory involvement.

The ‘high art’ aesthetic attitude implies a break with the world and the concerns of ordinary life; its premise is that art and real life are, and should be, strictly separated.

There is, however, no compelling reason at this point to accept the narrow aesthetic limits imposed by the established ideology of autonomous art, an ideology that is no longer even creditable. The emancipatory enlargement of the aesthetic involves re-conceiving art in more liberal terms, freeing it from its exalted cloister, where it is isolated from life and differentiated from more popular forms of cultural expression. 48

Pragmatic recrudescence If we take art to actually be more of a social phenomenon, then we can read and see how the collected creative works in this paper, are the reflectors and embodiments of pragmatic philosophy. We can call these artists many things; co-efficient, proto-relational, post conceptual and we would be almost correct, but not accurate enough. The model that best mobilises these definitions simultaneously and ‘collectively’ is pragmatism. In using this model we can clearly define their total creative outputs. Many of the artists included in this paper, are referenced specifically for projects that reached beyond the normal expectations of art. The projects simply align more closely with the idea of the proto-relational/pragmatic art, than they do with the previous definitions of conceptual or dematerialist art. We can also reach more clear understandings of Nicolas Bourriaud’s ‘relational’ intellectual model, through seeing it within the above context.

This recognition of the persistent re-emergence of pragmatic attitudes within art in the last ten years, serves to provide a more accurate definition of what has been ‘going on’ and shows us that the pragmatist ideal of art has been more fully realised today, on a larger scale, than ever before.

48 Richard Shusterman, Breaking out of the white cube, from Suzi Gabliks, Conversations before the end of time London Thames and Hudson1995

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MIGRATORY PROJECTS

PhD Studio Practice - Research Domains

Migratory Projects - Key Concepts & Definitions

1) Migratory Projects - Concept

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I use the term ‘migration’ to describe the free flow and movement of forms and ideas within different disciplines. It is also the means which best describes the profound affects and determinations migration has had on my own personal, cultural and economic life. Secondly, migration forms the very core of my current creative practice and personal philosophies, that have led to a fascination with the profound effects of displacement, loss and the turbulence caused by such events. By extension, the above has led my interests in techniques of self-sufficiency, and to search for flexible intellectual models that link in someway, to the pursuit of creating balance and comfort in unfamiliar landscapes and situations.

The concept also indicates the necessity to blend and translate thought, skills, language and actions from one context into another in order to enhance and diversify any system of limitation.

2) Double function and Double currency

The idea of using an object in different, multiple and various ways. It is also a method of being able to locate and adapt meaning, in a number of various different fields and disciplines. It is closely linked to the idea of co-efficiency and dymaxion principles.

Currency in work of this nature is two fold – it can work through notions of exchange in place of money by offering support, entertainment and direct experience as a form of currency as well as provide aesthetic value for cultural and philosophical appreciation/enjoyment.

An object can be developed to function in daily life beyond, as well as within the art context. The idea of the double functioning object is that art and daily life are explored and brought directly together in wholly inseparable ways. A double functioning object is devised in such a way that its use and meaning can have various purposes, meanings and outcomes. For example; · A packing crate that also functions as a sauna · A trailer that functions not only as a storage space, but also can be adapted to grow and protect plants from the elements, as well as become a usable and transportable garden space or vegetable patch. A mobile platform to support other activities and outcomes. · A vehicle, that can also be adapted to become a portable cinema, a studio, a library, a film unit, portable living space and a means of escape. A vehicular artwork, a custom car, a destructive and also a creative tool. · Items that can be exchanged instead of pay to provide support, pleasure and enjoyable experiences as a form of currency.

3) Parallel engineering

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I have developed a practice and a theory of what I call parallel engineering. This practice is a form of modified extended engineering. The technique not only intentionally progresses through the challenges of marrying together and customising everyday forms, but it is also a contemporary extension of dymaxion principles and attitudes that can redesign and adapt existing forms in very hands on and do-it yourself ways.

Parallel engineering aims to enhance previously existing forms to work more efficiently, or subvert existing forms in radically different ways from their originally intended purpose.

Importantly, this technique can be used where any previously existing form, or idea, or aesthetic is already in place. It occurs only through adaptation and modification. It runs in parallel and contra to existing forms. It may perhaps go unnoticed, yet its outputs are far more sustainable and co-efficient. It feeds the linear world in, and feeds varied alternatives out.

It is a form of deconstruction, reconfiguration and reconstruction of existing mechanical formations and previously existing ideas. Art is itself a form of parallel engineering. It runs parallel and crosses over more and more, into outside worlds as it does so.

My projects Carrier, Trailer Garden and Sauna are all good examples that illustrate this technique.

4) The Prototype As a form of thinking

The prototype is a form of physical thinking. Developing Prototypes is a means of creating a direct form of feedback.

The Prototype manifests a way of thinking that involves all facets of creative manufacture. It engages the hands, the eyes, mathematics and engineering in its broadest sense. The prototype is a built system to display all accrued and developing intelligence. It is a means of engaging and exploring the real dynamics of the physical world, along with idealised concepts that until that point exist only in non-physically tested abstract theoretical and conceptual forms.

Formal physical testing, will quantify reaffirm or shatter basic assumptions that are taken for granted, until the object or form is realised in three dimensions.

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This idea can in its broadest sense, can be utilised to also describe the realm of socially driven contemporary pragmatic art, in so much that an art practice can be set as a test situation that has never been done or produced before. An artist, like any other prototype builder, will learn from direct field experience, and continue to develop a creative practice or object until it fulfils the aims that the artist hopes to achieve.

Prototype ‘thinking’ is a pragmatic method of directly exploring situations. Prototype ‘doing’ is a means of ironing out any flaws, and testing for weaknesses. Prototypes in art are deployed as a way of testing behaviours, predicting failures or breakdowns in a system Prototypes, also highlight the limitations in any given structure. They are a means of testing tolerances and predictabilities.

Art, in essence, operates in this way, often constructing and developing forms or images and situations that may have never previously existed.

5) Arts Afterlife

A concern of mine is to explore the continued worth and value of art beyond the exhibition. What abilities (if any) does art have to exist and continue in a state outside of the exhibition context. It is a term I use to best describe the notion of seeking continued and extended autonomous worth of an art object.

6) Feedback loops

This is an existing term, which I use to best describe a situation whereby culture has reached such a point of immense density and overload that it is beginning to feedback into self. Reaching a point of overflow, we are becoming aware of the increasing notion of cause and effect.

The original term derives from a situation that arises in a mechanical or electrical system when part of the output or circuit returns into the input causing disturbance and damage and disruption of a system’s performance. In music it is associated with the howling and whistling noise in a loud speaker caused by outputted signals returning and competing with each other, the feedback eventually over-riding any predetermined balances between the input and output signals. Feedback is the sound of the electrical loop out of control.

Feedback loops are also occurring in the world of images. In art, it has been partially described through the definition of artists re-using, re-working, consciously plagiarising and adapting previously existing images, films and forms in a way that re-defines and reworks their meanings. Constant cultural repetitions that occur in culture, attain a greater and more profound re-reading or variation of outcome. For me, the

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notion of the feedback loop is synonymous with the idea of ‘Cultural implosion’ – whereby it seems that there is never enough storage space for the overflow, not enough space, too many people, too many things, too much information, too much congestion.

Cultural implosion occurs in heightened situations of extreme accretion and entropy.

MIGRATORY ART PROJECT: TOOLS / SKILLS / MATERIALS LIST During the exhibition of my work, I have always ensured ‘all’ items used are mentioned on didactic panels to indicate the difference and variation in my materials. My intention is to show a broader everyday pallet that is less specialised and no longer based on more commonly identified specialised art materials. Here are the skills learned, the tools, processes and materials used since the inception of the PhD projects.

Skills: Carpentry, painting, welding, design, sewing, drawing, construction, motor mechanics, metal work, glass cutting, mould making, rigging, vinyl lettering, automotive repair, car body sanding, undercoating, filling, top coat spraying and lacquering, audio wiring, rust preparation, recycling, water colouring, building, making of templates, mathematics, engineering, 12 volt and 240 volt wiring, window sealing, fishing, cooking, writing, gardening, driving, filming, film editing, sound work, photography, installation, camping, film projection. Materials: Art packing crates, leather, sheepskin, nylon, acrylic, contact cement, epoxy paint, pigment and resin, carpet, PVC, stainless steel, copper, aluminium, recycled, found and new plywood, pine, Tasmanian oak, marine plywood, Jarrah, galvanised steel, rubber, bearings, silicone, shade-cloth, methylene chloride, turpentine, hydrochloric acid, thinners, petrol, oil, manure, electronic timers, garden hose, worms, gravel, steel cable, tyres, assorted plants, vegetables and herbs, automotive enamel, 12volt lighting, 1500watt power inverter, 120watt alternator, 720 cca deep cycle marine batteries, polystyrene, foam, 60 watt amplifier, speakers, 35mm slide projector, video data projector, DVD player, cassette player, books, halogen lights, 1978 Ford F100 ex ambulance, projection screen, water, mini DV video, VHS player, tin foil, olive oil, fish, camping stove, LP gas, lead, cardboard, petrol generators, neoprene, plumbing conduit, vinyl, second hand box trailer chassis, roofing screws, high tensile bolts, wood screws, nails, aluminium rivets, maps, ink, paper, PVC wood glue, foam mattress, rope, chain, LPG gas, thermo fan, stone, eucalyptus leaves, Tools: Claw hammer, hacksaw, rivet gun, sewing machine, soldering iron, air compressor, spray gun, paint roller and tray, spray cans, Jigsaw, circular saw, table saw, junior hacksaw, chisels, countersink, spade bits, drill bits, 240 volt drill, 14 volt drill, mig welder, arc welder, oxy acetylene, plasma cutter, pencils, marker pens,

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chalk, tape measure, vehicle stands, angle grinders, trowel, shovel, gas stove, garden hose, electric timers, 500watt halogen lights, ladders, router, heat gun, glue gun, spatula, hand plane, finishing sander, belt sander, scribe, needle and thread, scissors, case knife, metal vice, drill press, bolt cutters, silicone gun, welding magnets, paint stripper, methylated spirits, crimping tool, cork sanding block, extension cords, Laptop computer, colour printer, photocopier, tarpaulins, torches, trestle legs, work bench, bitumen roads, cleveland V8 liquid pertroleum gas engine, the Australian landscape

Primary knowledge fields engaged: Pragmatism, Social Aesthetics, Permaculture, Relational Aesthetics, Co-efficiency, Conceptual art, Dematerialist Art, Situationist and Fluxus Art.

Studio based intentions

Delivered here in the form of my PhD art projects is the concrete manifestation of a truly holistic, co- efficient and pragmatic art practice. These closely linked artworks are for me the very engine and driving force of my doctorate research. They have been made possible through the direct application of the new body of knowledge attained and delivered in my research that is fused and synthesised in this thesis.

In asking the primary questions of what is my arts use? What and who is it for? And is it possible for the consequences of art to go beyond mere representational aesthetics? This artwork delivers its knowledge of pragmatism, relational and co-efficient art practices as carefully constructed and interlinked forms that verify the outcomes of the above questions.

In starting these projects from a purely pragmatic point of view I have shown how in the realisation of the projects that this naturally leads to a relational interaction with the culture around it. By extension, through producing this art pragmatically, I am displaying the full use of my understanding of co-efficient principles in operation.

As I have asserted, it is pragmatism that allows this work to operate swiftly on multiple levels, and to move freely and elastically within all relevant modes of definition which can be easily seen here. It is pragmatism that has kept the forms of my work specifically true to the culture around them and has in fact enabled my projects to resonate so well culturally fusing the ideas, politics and concerns of the times in which they have been produced. It is pragmatism that not only contains relational and co-efficient ideas but also asserts them as a more vital and relevant form of art.

On the following pages one will find a defining list of the forms of knowledge techniques and material sensibilities that this project has intimately and most effectively taught me. I have also provided a glossary outlining specific terminologies I have created to better describe certain techniques and manifestation of

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my work. I can verify that at no other time has an art project utilised, honed and extended so much of the whole of my skills and intelligence as a cultural producer, in ways that are forever useful to me throughout life in all its facets. These projects have tested my knowledge of this field of research directly, and applied it with such clear and affective assertions for continued use for anyone who choses to engage with art in this way. These projects have not only changed art in the contexts in which they were exhibited and encountered but they have also integrated, supported and directly changed my own life more creatively and sustainably.

I have evidentially synthesised and created an art practice that communicates directly and without artifice. These projects lead by concrete examples and deliver a truly pragmatic and altruistic new form of art rather than a symbolic and representational mode of art. The intentions of this art are also to test cultural biases and aesthetic sticking points so that art itself is better able to cope and reflect the scope of broader everyday life and be of greater use in far more extendable and applicable ways. My work presents the artist as an astute, erudite, agile, competent and intelligent figure connected to the world. No longer a figure merely creating specialised representations born of a simple binary interactions with the world.

My art practice demonstrates by ‘example’, as opposed to methods of ‘suggestion’ alone, and tests my ideas through the forms I choose, use and adapt. My quest has been to produce art forms that resonate between specialities and agilely utilise more varied ranges of knowledge and expertise. I have also aimed to develop a form of art that is non-representational, and that allows direct encounters to occur in the work. In doing so, the work has provided interactions and experiences that have simply not been possible through more representational forms of art.

My Migratory Projects embody the direct form of a new co-efficiency in contemporary art practice and provide examples of my theories at work. The projects deliver the evidence of pragmatic ideology in art. This ideology introduces its form through a vitality of design that works directly toward improving life, by fusing and concentrating more sustainable techniques of production. In this way the work is critical of overproduction and overconsumption of resources within the very mechanisms of contemporary life.

Dymaxion1 attitudes feature greatly in my solutions to reducing fuel and electricity consumption and have allowed my work to satisfactorily debase and extend common industrial technology in both discreet and very dramatic ways.

The individual artworks in my Migratory Projects series, were conceived and realised as as research domains, and were made in order to gather observations and experiences of their outcomes and affects.

1 Richard Buckminster Fuller, Dymaxions 1929, This was his concept in the Search for the perfect unity of design and function – essentially ‘Doing the most with the least’

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Individual artworks clearly answer my questions and locate my ideas through forms that directly communicate the key concepts pertinent to my thesis, for example;

One projects examines mobility, velocity and destruction. Another projects examines and tests sustainability. Another projects tests the freeing and extendibility of existing forms. The combined intention is to test pragmatic and co-efficient outcomes together. All of the projects implement an active world beyond that of representational form, as a means of breaking or extending artistic aesthetic convention, and push the expectations of art toward operating in less derivative ways. All the projects test the ideas of migratory practices, as a vitally fluid and usable attitude in contemporary arts practice.

I have explained each project in this chapter individually, so that the research and intention of its idiosyncrasies can be fully understood. Each project highlights and demonstrates ideas that are present in the thesis. The vision I had for migratory projects is that they always remain, as they were conceived, in an inter-related sequence.

Through the language of my filming techniques I have explored the capacity of pragmatic projects to still communicate ‘poetically’ and ‘expressively’. I was interested to see how the forms conscripted were best unified to work in communicating the poetic and more dramatic process based elements of my project as directly as possible. I have worked to draw these levels out of the project through film and use of symbolic forward motion and velocity, in order to look at the violence and destruction caused by the physical act of migration.

It is important to say that the very presence of the objects and meanings I have created stand firmly with the patina of their use, in order to declare their tested power in life and take their place in the expressive discourse of my work. A discourse that fuses the intimately hand crafted with the industrially mass produced.

In response to my assertions that show how Pragmatism sustains all the notions of co-efficient and relational aesthetics within its makeup. My aim has been to make a series of ambitious art works that emphasise greater sustainable functions for art and also produce multi-levelled meanings that link broader social processes and aesthetics within clearly resolved projects.

In order to achieve this I have had to research and learn techniques from other fields such as design, mechanics and modular architecture, as well as many gardening, plumbing, electrical, and DIY (do-it- yourself) customisation/adaptation techniques. The Migratory Project, has directly involved experimentation with art’s meaning in different contexts and situations in order to reinvigorate the social

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significance of art practice. The work has been tested and used in everyday life and also tested in multiple gallery and exhibition situations.

This broadening aspect in the work was achieved through the negotiation and demonstration of new modes of combined artistic and more vernacular cultural references and forms. My arts practice has raised issues that question the nature and role of the singular art object as the dominant embodiment of artistic endeavour. I have equally interrogated the function and expectation of the gallery experience and the role of the institution within such a shifting and diverse field. Also Important to define within the project, is that by extension of the very forms I have used, exhibition protocols, conservation and architectural limits have been tested. How is a 3tonne work to fit? How is its use to be monitored? How are living materials to be sustained and maintained?

I have questioned why the majority of art exhibition spaces are built with the intention to show work of certain sizes and materials and also caused expansion of the employment roles in galleries by asking staff to tend, and nurture plants for me during the duration of my exhibitions. (To which all expressed thorough enjoyment). One can see through proof of these artworks that all expectations of the above have been fully expanded, debased, evidentially synthesised and further extended.

I see the art works as successfully realised interlinked domains in their own right that also directly compliment and reflect this thesis. My thesis is intended to function simultaneously as a philosophical work of serious academic achievement and essential archive of my projects, that delivers a new body of vital knowledge never previously available in such extensively researched and clearly identified ways.

The initial intention of my Carrier vehicle 2000-05, Sauna 2000-05 and Trailer Garden 2002-2005 projects, was to operate as a mobile interactive form of my thesis, which, through the language of objects, can be experienced, exhibited and engaged with in a greater physically informative way.

The ideal is that this artistic thesis, can in its ‘art object’ form, ultimately be used on a daily basis. Indicated by its use and existence, is that something far more important and vital than simple aesthetic appreciation can be interwoven and contained by contemporary art practice. The artistic core of this thesis, attempts to re-engage and re-invent art with the possibility of a far greater holistic purpose.

The Migratory Projects can be loosely divided into three categories.

1) The Mobile functional objects. 2) The filmic and process based object works 3) The documentary aspect of the work, which takes the form of photographs, notes,

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diaries, lectures, drawings and writing

My mobile art projects emphasise the necessity of an ongoing value and alternative for art after the exhibition process and also the longevity of art to be maintained outside the system of art collection.

Through the mobile projects, (quite literally and symbolically) I display how important it is to reconfigure and construct new agile possibilities for creative expression, as a means of finding greater resonance and wider contexts for creativity within contemporary life. Through the use of the very notion of mobility, I assert that arts more physically static production modes are up for renegotiation and re-evaluation.

The strategies and production methods in the Migratory Projects are formed through a belief in interdisciplinarity. This belief forms the backbone of the approach I have to my work. The form and aesthetics in the work are first and foremost ‘ideas driven’ and informed by the various problem solving necessities that are encountered through working across different fields. There is no overriding singular art technique, material or craft based loyalty involved in my present work.

‘If a work of art works, it invariably aims beyond its mere presence in space. It is open to dialogue, discussion and that form of inter-human negotiation that Marcel Duchamp called the 'co-efficient of art.’ 2

Many artworks are lost, or eventually get thrown away after exhibition. Once an artwork is collected or purchased, it may disappear from public access. The longevity of art projects and what actually happens to art objects and more transitory forms of installation art, after a given exhibition, have always been a central concern in my work.

My research investigates a sense of ‘double function’ or ‘double currency’ for art, to exist with a directly pragmatic purpose in life and if possible also as a commodity within the art market. My notion of mobile and migratory projects is a direct expression and test of this. Each project directly relates to another, fusing together both specialised and more everyday and common fields of production.

Method and Approach The project developed through the process of various field tests, exhibitions and my own direct engagement in their manufacture. I have clarified and devised not only methods of thinking, along with attitudes of approach to art making, but also I have found it necessary to develop new terminologies to best describe the processes involved in the creation of my artwork. The strategies and materials that I use in my projects are carefully selected as they are ones of very co-efficient natures.

2 Nicolas Bourriaud, An introduction to Relational Aesthetics Cream, Contemporary art in Culture 1998 pg 27

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Definitions As a great part of my practice is based on developing forms of art from processes that reflect and produce situations of direct experience and not upon representation alone, it makes sense that the images of the work form the essential definitions in and of themselves. The images of my work form the dominant part of this chapter, so that the reader may see the work as directly as is possible.

The Encounter The art of the encounter is an imperative part of the viewer’s engagement. The physical presence of the large-scale objects is key in the understanding and enjoyment of the work. Many of the artworks factor in the notion of ‘direct experience’ as essential. We must remember that the projects exist in more ways, than just their ‘visual’ form.

Conceptual Concerns The artworks evolve around central ideas of migration, movement, displacement, disruption and adaptation. The project’s underlying discourse engages in the critique of capitalist mass production. The works demonstrate the ability of the individual to have a more informed and useful active role in the ideological micro systems that surround them. By extension, the work is, at the same time, polemical and iconoclastic. In ways that attempt to introduce forms of positive conjecture and highlight a critique, into not only the prevailing notions of traditional museum use, as only a place for display, but it also questions the outcomes of more mass-produced traditionally annexed and prevailing representational hierarchies of form; Art forms that by enlarge are still more readily accepted within museums and commercial marketplaces today.

The very structures and working strategies of our museums are built and predicated on the notion that creative objects are all to be shown in very similar ways. For example: Projects will take place upon walls, on floors, and require specialised lighting, and viewers are predominantly controlled to ‘see’ art in very static, generally distant and disengaged ways.

Through the process of producing and exhibiting my projects both in Australia and internationally, my method has been to test and develop the work through lectures, teaching, symposiums, and directly through my continuing exhibition processes. Many of the objects that I have produced in this series are designed to be used in my home life and in some way or other, enhance, enrich and modify my own lifestyle in a more ongoing, sustainable and rewarding way.

Each work in the Migratory Projects has explored aspects of Migration, communicating lived experience, as well as exploring the concept in as many relevant ways, forms, meanings and mediums as possible. My

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delivery of this new body of work and new body of knowledge is driven by the profound lack of information in my professional field both academically and aesthetically at the time of my research. There is also a huge gap in understanding regarding work of my kind and that of other pragmatic artists in my field. I intend through my art practice and research to provide the information and evidence so desperately needed in defining this area.

THE MIGRATORY PROJECTS

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PhD studio works

Migratory Projects, Independent PhD Solo Exhibition Invitation 2005

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PhD Exhibition Projects 2005

1. Sauna – Ongoing

2. Trailer Garden - Ongoing

3. Road Trip Dinners

4. Carrier – Ongoing: Comprising Library, Mobile Cinema, Film unit and key fabrication tool for The Drive Out Cinema and Drag Projects.

5. The Drive Out Cinema - Ongoing: Supporting relevant film production and presentations

6. Furniture Drags - Ongoing

7. Micro Gestures - Ongoing – Photographic Archive Includes all drawings and Prototype designs 00/05- Ongoing

Significant and formative early works

· Paint Throw (1991/92)

· Urn (2001)

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Migratory Projects, Additional handout/Floor sheet - Independent PhD Solo Exhibition 2005

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EN ROUTE, Sydney 2005 Migration

Through the process of moving, one is constantly interlinking ideas, forms and concepts between new places. Variation in languages and references must also be understood. Migration is in essence, a series of physical, conceptual, and economic relations, which must be continually assessed, re-applied and adapted in order to be translated successfully into a new and variable world.

This is the desired task of the migrant. To survive, to flourish and to communicate, balance well within a new system and set of parameters. The migrant must transpose systems over and into one another, and work with familiar skills in often very unfamiliar territory. The Migrant also, like no other member of society, must always work harder and learn cultural specifics and references more rapidly.

This process is very similar to developing art. Developing a language, introducing new variations of meaning.

The relational landscape that surrounds the migrant must be mediated and traversed, otherwise a state of alienation and isolation occurs. This in turn produces a form of nostalgic cultural autism and by extension establishes a very myopic state of mind and state of culture.

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Cross-overs

Throughout the last few years, my studio practice has developed largely out of a few primary and fluid themes, which can be located in the ideas and experiences that found their genus in migration, displacement, survival, self sufficiency, parallel engineering, found objects, ideas of function, recycling, sustainability, and the crossover between the worlds of art and everyday life.

One aspect of the project is to take art out of its clean safe environment to engage it with the outside world. The techniques used in the projects are designed to empower the viewer / audience / participants, and the materials used are easily obtainable and familiar. The first projects are made to be instructional, as well as accessible, by means of viewing the ongoing Micro-Gestures3 project.

My PhD artworks demonstrate the idea that an individual can re-engage and directly alter existing systems, notions and forms through the process of understanding, observing, designing and constructing alternatives themselves.4

The primary themes in the projects as well as the varied materials chosen for their production have been tested in various contexts and situations both in Australia and overseas.

Throughout the project, I have extended art to function in various ways, where possible to remain almost fluid and elastic in order to reveal openness and meanings that can be read on many different levels. The work is predominantly ideas driven, and the forms have always changed to suit the ideas. I have had to adapt and learn many skills and techniques to complete all parts of the project, and work and test myself in a number of different situations, climates and landscapes.

These outcomes of my studio/workshop practice are also the aesthetic and conclusive visual form of my Thesis. In saying this, I do not consider for one moment, that the idea of ‘exhibition’ is the final end of the projects. Exhibitions, for me, are considered as ‘evolutional’ situations, whereby the various art works simply exist together for a short while, merging references and showing a cohesive body of work in dialogue with itself and importantly with the outside world.

I have always maintained, that my art practice must in many ways, be able to ‘speak for itself’. It must communicate through texture, feel, form, materials and associative relationships between the objects, images and feelings that are created and associated to the works. I have endeavoured to keep my practice

3 A continuing photographic document of the processes and unseen actions behind each modified work. Through this project I reveal the artworks manufacture and also indicate that they can be copied and emulated, should the viewer, wish to ‘do-it’ them selves. 4 A process that I call Parallel Engineering

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strong and internationally competitive throughout the years of my research, and have sought to regularly test my work wherever possible. I have pursued and taken part in numerous international exhibitions so that the work gets exposure and is articulated within a larger more competitive field.5

Professional Independent PhD Exhibition For my PhD studio work 2005 I made a conscious decision to exhibit my first solo Migratory Projects doctoral exhibition in a context no different from any other real exhibition situation. I organised my show off campus. This involved hire fees, site negotiations, transportation of the work, designing of exhibition invites and all other required text and documentation and social interactions that are needed to complete a professional exhibition. I also required a large open exhibition space with large access doors due to the nature and scale of my work.

Artworks beyond exhibition Throughout the beginnings of the Migratory Project, I explored notions of building self-sufficient objects and develop a type of art that could be continued, and have a kind of afterlife and functional use beyond the exhibition context. The works that best illustrate this are the Carrier vehicles, the Sauna, and the Trailer Garden.6 Each one of these works is not only mobile and usable but required the use of many different fields of expertise and materials. In the Carrier and Trailer works, these two vehicles had to also remain licensed throughout the whole project, so any modifications that I had made, had to withstand professional mechanical scrutiny and normal yearly legal testing and road worthiness.7

I also regularly use my Sauna at home, and the Trailer Garden is used to grow herbs and vegetables that I use for cooking. Right now a three-year old olive tree in the trailer is producing its first fruits and I have so many tomatoes from the trailer I am giving them to friends – The first tomatoes grown at 100kms an hour.

Post-productive strategies, 8 as described by Nicolas Bourriaud in 2002, are to my mind a response to the feelings and observations of extending and finding further function in the ‘pre-existing’. This element of reference and reuse in my work is a declaration and direct push to instigate a culture of re-use within an aesthetic system and culture of continual over production.

5 Exhibitions span from Perth Western Australia, Melbourne, Sydney, London UK, Odense Denmark and Glasgow, Scotland. 6 An earlier work Urn, Tea Shelf (1999) also serves to illustrate these principles. 7 Modifications that were perhaps not strictly legal were simply removed before yearly licensing tests and simply replaced once the vehicles had been certified. In this way it is possible to circumvent any over zealous legal parameters. 8 A vernacular term from cinema, motion pictures, sound and photography. It is the general term for all stages of production occurring after the actual end of shooting and/or recording the completed work. Post-production is, in fact, many different processes grouped under one name. Bourriaud uses the term to describe the methodology of a number of contemporary artists who make work based on pre-existing works of other artists. Reprogramming and re-presentation are the forms of this type of artwork. Postproduction (2002). Publishers: Lukas and Sternberg, New York

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EN ROUTE, Sydney 2005 On Post-production

Nicolas Bourriaud has recently argued that much contemporary art practice can be characterised by the idea of ‘postproduction’. A term borrowed from film language.

Like programmers, editors and DJ’s, Post-productive art, employs techniques of mixing and sampling elements from popular culture. This work brings together many signifiers in order to create a new & varied meaning. It is more than appropriation or post-modern pastiche, which predominantly drew attention to the styles and idiosyncratic conditions attached to art. Artists now reprogram and transform.

Research is a vast key element – remaking whole pre existing art works or situations is becoming commonplace. It is a means for reassessment and a way of overriding an original intention or meaning. The free play of the signifier has now been taken up and taken on, modified and personalised to create new meanings and outcomes.

‘Ideas improve. The meaning of words has a part in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress demands it. Staying close to an author’s phrasing, plagiarism exploits his expressions, erases false ideas, replaces them with correct ideas’.

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Guy Debord 9

EN ROUTE, Note book, Sydney 2005 The world, whole, unedited, uncensored, revealed. The world feeding back into itself.

We need to be able to see ‘everything’. All parts of the whole; the totality of what we do and create. Cause and Effect. Total accountability is necessary. A culture in recognition of the sum of its parts.. A culture, finally, that is whole, complete, unedited, uncensored, Fully revealed… Real, vital and reflective work needs to be made manifest.

Necessary now, is the need to show the whole gamut of the state of play in which we are part. To understand and address the game, that we ourselves created.

What do we destroy as we move…as we change and develop..

We need to see clearly, free of fear, illusion, escapism, sentimentality and denial.

Transparency and a clarity like no other.

9 Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle 1967/1995 Para 207, pg 145

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Feedback loops are the process of agglutination. Massive accretion occurs at all levels that engage with the overproduction of consumptive goods, images, objects and energies. Culture, like the environment, tries to absorb and make sense of all the products, energies and dynamics outputted.

Feedback loops are a revealing and an expression of overproduction. They create a feeling of being overwhelmed, over indulged and out of control. They are as symbolic, as they are real phenomena. They are found and produced in situations of high turbo capitalism.10

EN ROUTE, Sydney 2003 From note books: Developing -

- An art practice that fully involves my body and mind, and all my disciplines.

No need for health clubs, special diets, special exercise. I am not interested in these things – but I am interested in the drive for them. (Sauna from a packing crate, the lifting, the moving, the creation – Physical and mental sustain)

An art that combines self-sufficiency and rewards with a feeling of integration and sustainability.

An art, that is not consumptive, or selfish or bland.

An art that is not pretentious, conceited and formally anaemic,

An art that withstands the rigours of life.

An art that does not need to be protected.

An art that reflects all directions at once.

An art that tests people, that talks about a bigger picture.

10 I do see my Migratory Projects as feedback projects. In my recent Drive Out Cinema film installations where in Furniture Drags I destroy loved and valued items with a vehicle and direct use of the earth, I attempt to illustrate and give visual and actual form to this idea.

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An art that provides a situation, an encounter, an actual event, a moment.

An art that is critical and vital.

An art that no longer only indicates or alludes, but an art that actualises and is direct, concrete living and real.

An art with nothing washed out or diluted.

An art that is cynical, not convinced,

An art that is idealistic, yet an art that leads by example.

MIGRATORY PROJECTS:

Early Backgrounds and Project Accounts

The 360/ Paint Throw

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I will start the introduction of my individual projects with a very early and formative work.

The whole Migratory Project concept, (prior to my own later definitions of it), began formulating in my art practice over ten years ago. I began a project after noticing what I can only describe, as an awareness of the limitation of representational artistic form to communicate a direct experience.

This project also occurred shortly after I felt it completely necessary to stop figurative life drawing classes after seven years of focused study. I reached a point whereby the meaning and purpose of art, something, which I had ‘life long’ always assumed as worthwhile and believed deeply in, had in just one afternoon, simply fallen off me.

I wanted to find out why this feeling had occurred? Why had I felt the limitations of representational art so deeply?

At the time I was using many different departments within my art school, which was considered very unusual and irregular. This project was done when I was specialising in Painting. Prior to this I had made stitched paintings, using second hand canvas and fabric. I also made paintings that were turned and worked on from all angles and also paintings that were to be left outside in the elements, to weather, decay and breakdown.

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This project was the first real project that could not be easily annexed or defined within the various art school disciplines at the time. I was merely concerned with simply trying to produce ‘art’.

The 360 / Paint Throw11 1991/1992

360 canvases were made. All identical in proportion, representing a form of hand made mass production and multiples of the same thing. I made 360 of them as that was all the degrees in a full circle, a cycle. The number represented a loop, a spin and also an implied repetition.

The paintings were primed and thrown as far as I could pitch them, in a field, sometimes individually, sometimes in great clusters. Where they landed - they were marked and measured, painted with the number equaling the meters that they had traveled. The whole work was for me a project that worked in a number of directions with varied meanings. Once all 360 paintings were thrown and measured they were installed as an installation along with the documentary film of their flights and journeys. They were exhibited with mud and grass stains, in a perpetual looping line, indicating a never ending confusing mass of repetition.

At the time I was finding all aspects of painting very repetitious and limited in terms of content and representation. I wanted to break the combinations and the very system of it. ‘Do something else’ – just kept running through my mind. It became a sort of art of quantifying as well as destruction. At the same time I was doing this, I was also painting panels of colour and taking them into the outside environment to reveal the difference and absurdity of trying to represent natural situations with paint from a tube or a tin.

At the time of performing/documenting this action, the desire was to do something ‘more’ with a painting. Following the Duchampian notion of readymades ‘using a Rembrandt perhaps as an ironing board’.

11 365 canvases, each 300mm x 300mm. 100mt tape measure, metal marking pin, glass jar, paint brushes, acrylic paint. VHS tape and Monitor. Exhibited at Curtin University School of Art and HOW THE MOVING STAIRCASE WORKS, independent annex show, Sculpture graduates, Centreway Arcade, Perth WA

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I was experiencing tension regarding the notion of representation and wanted to test this the very base formats on which representations were made (in this instance paintings) in the real world. What else could a canvas do? (And by extension this implied the question of what else could art do?) Would it survive an actual real outdoor experience an actual experience outside of representation? Each canvas became the document of a real actual journey, marked with its own experience. My notion was to test and try these art items pragmatically out in the world and see if they could survive. The project was a document of this endeavor.

The process I had hit upon in this work formed a great part of my methodology for art production, purpose and use thereafter.

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EN ROUTE, Memories from note books, Perth 1991/92 The 360, Paint Throw Pragmatic Assessment and Objectivity: Use and Content

Just before I began making the 360. My belief in art at that time had stopped. I had this incredible sense of stillness, a feeling of not wanting to produce another single representational painting. I felt surrounded. I did not want to produce more of the same thing.

I no longer wanted to be part of that system of production and means of representation. I realised that when I stopped, I stopped being obsessively technical and learned to be critical. I remember saying to a theory lecturer at the time; ‘The most radical thing to do in culture and in art, was to stop production and assess for a while’.

I wanted also to simply see what else a canvas could do and if it could stand up to the rigours of a physical journey, and an experience far outside of its expected normal safety zone.

The work became a kind of duration process event. All 360 canvases were piled up behind a chalk line and then the process of ‘throwing’ began. As the canvases were thrown into the air in a park, some spun twisting and shearing off, crashing and spinning as they hit the ground, others flew straight spinning horizontally like Frisbees, some were thrown as huge stacks, launching into the air from the shoulder, only to come crashing down to earth in a battered pile. After each throw I ran out with a fibre glass tape measure, a jar of black acrylic and a paint brush and marked each canvas with the distance it had travelled, 19.6mt, 8.1mt, 23mt, 5mt and so on until all 360 had been thrown and I was utterly exhausted.

The project can also be seen as an early metaphor for the experience and traumas undergone by a migrant; the getting rid of unessential items, the repeating loss and exhaustion of journeys measured by emotions, the sheer mass and disorder occurring. I titled it ‘360’, as

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for me it represented a loop, a full circle - turning back into itself. A feedback scenario.

The 360 / Paint Throw 1991/92

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Art in a Wild State: The lion in the zoo

The following concept, is a key driving force to the vigour and attitude in my work that to this day I maintain the deepest respect for. What began more consistently with my mobile projects, is that they were exhibited very consciously, with the patina of use. Each time they were shown. They were exhibited as closely as possible to their ‘wild active state’.

The mud, grit, stains and drips, discolourations, dents and smells that occurred from the objects travels and uses were intentionally left. In this way I wanted to indicate that they were living works, and very much part of the flux of the everyday. The contaminations of daily life were as essential as the very forms of the works themselves.

The large-scale mobile components, are all-functional and are maintained and used continually before and after exhibition. The films, drawings and photography also function to display the production processes and initial thinking and designs, as well as display my research and related source materials, in a way that leaves the project open and transparent.

In many ways the mobile projects paraphrased the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein,12 when he was questioned about our basic understanding of the experience, use and failure of spoken and written language.

Wittgenstein’s statement is a proposition that; ‘If a lion could speak we could not understand him’13. Meaning in essence that we do not share the same experiences, physiology or realities that a Lion faces, therefore we have no hope of truly understanding anything a Lion could say.

My extension and paraphrase of this proposition is ‘A lion in a zoo is no longer a lion’. Meaning that, when we look at a lion in a zoo, we are no longer experiencing a lion in its true leonine state. It is not fully operative, it cannot hunt, it offers no threat, it’s potential is vastly diminished. It is in a real sense no longer a real lion. It is not a thing in its natural and wild state.

It becomes a pale unfortunate sign for a lion. A representation of all the things we project onto it. This precept is very similar to the issues currently driving a large part of my art practice. This notion of the real, the removed and the representational is core to my studio work.

12 Austrian-British Philosopher (b1889 – d1951) Philosophically his books Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty are ranked among the top five most important books in twentieth-century philosophy in Canada, the USA and England, Philosophical Investigations is heralded as the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy that successfully appeals across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations. 13 Section 43, Philosophical Investigations, 1953 (Posthumous publication)

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Wherever possible, I have created the objects with processes, that infiltrate, enhance, restore, extend and re-present a form, as close as is actually possible to its basic original manifestation. This ‘wild state’ is important to the end product. I do not produce models; paintings or derivative ‘pre-forms’, or choose to represent them in any other way than in their object form. I work directly on the object in order to work out and hone in on the final outcome.

The New Co-efficient

The artworks produced for my PhD are an aspect of the new co-efficient in art. This new co-efficient, is a developmental extension of the co-efficient associated with Marcel Duchamp in 1957, which was, as evidenced, a typically elastic Duchampian idea14. It is now connected to the definition of relational art, post productive art and to the ideals set out by John Dewey and by extension Richard Shusterman in exploring Pragmatist aesthetics15. The new co-efficient now works to contain and combine in my view, direct pragmatic goals with relational attitudes to form a new far-reaching and broad agenda within contemporary practice.

Marcel Duchamp’s original idea from 1957 has come to its full fruition, not only as a means of looking at, understanding and deciphering art, but is now factored in as part of the genetic makeup. The new co- efficient can be described as not only the legacy, but the distillation of all the most progressive, experimental and socially driven strategies of avant -garde art production and relevant contemporary ideological systems, operating in culture today – capitalism, consumption, economics, information technology, the environment and globalisation. These areas are now readily referenced and integrated, and at times directly conscripted as frameworks for operation.

This redefining of the co-efficient is one of the dominant operational paradigms of contemporary pragmatic artistic production. Its roots and presence are well evidenced here. (Chris Burden, Gordon Matta Clark, Gustav Metzger, George Macunias, Lucy Lippard, Andrea Zittel and Anne Hawkes, among other artists included in this thesis. A number of contemporary curators working today can also be aligned with this idea for example Jonathan Watkins, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Nicolas Bourriaud, Lars Bang Larson, Maia Damianovic, and Hou Hanru. All other relevant designers and architects run throughout the chapters of this thesis).

Economies of One Minimum wage-maximum output – Resistance by Design

14 As discussed in Undercurrents and Relations Chapter of this Thesis 15 Richard Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics, Reliving Beauty, Rethinking art, Rowman and Littlefield 1992

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Of secondary interest to me, has been the exploration of the ability of an artist to work within an average everyday individually earned budget. As well as focusing on more everyday materials and technologies, the project is an experiment in economic - bricolage, to see how much an artist can achieve on a normative income derived from teaching, gallery and museum work and yearly tax returns. In a way, it is my exploration of how far an average artist’s wage can go and how much their skills are valued and worth within a culture. In some way, this is a further means of maximising all the systems within which the artist is engaged. If the projects work they will in some way enhance my life and by extension through supplementation be able to make an average wage and economy of one go further for example, when the Trailer Garden produces vegetables it supplements diet. If one is cold one can heat up in the Sauna as opposed to attempt to heat a whole house. The Carrier runs on cheaper fuel than most cars and is able to operate independently ‘off the grid’ for a long period of time.

For this area of special interest to me I have used myself as the guinea pig. My own life has provided the data from which I will analyze the economic impact and sustainability of the practice. This thesis and my work are based on first hand lived experience and observation.

Combination and Modification Interactivity and the Introduction to my objects

The Migratory Project can also be described as a socially generous and altruistic body of work that is intended to offer proposals and solutions, instructions and gifts (in terms of herbs and vegetables and educational passtimes; through access and use of the extensive contemporary archive). Fusing and intensifying many forms from familiar everyday life, the artworks promote a philosophy of direct experience and interactivity that is essential to the works more fully impacting, in a lived, usable and pragmatic sense.

People are able to climb into the back of the carrier vehicles, read reference texts, view slides and watch films and also project them. They can take saunas, tend, water and pick herbs and vegetables. They can learn how to catch their own fish, cook it on an engine should they wish, learn and view the necessary techniques involved in the creation of such works. The materials, preparations, construction techniques, travelogues, texts, photographs and experimental successes and failures (as these are to be learned from) are all left present in the exhibition formats of the project. (Micro-Gestures 1999-2007). This functions as a means of keeping the project ‘transparent’ and open to the very nature, philosophy and methodology of its manufacture.

The project evidences and supplants an ‘open technique’ of art production that combines practices such as sculpture, design, micro-architecture, car customisation, engineering, food production, household building

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and maintenance techniques, archiving, film production, photography, electronics, camping, self- sufficiency, and do it yourself aesthetics, to communicate the key concepts of my research. Co-efficiency, relationality and pragmatism are synthesized to make a body of work, that successfully articulates a more holistic form of art making.

All of the object-based works16 are ‘active’ in that they are designed for life, ‘brought out’ of and ‘folded back’ into a living system of practical use after exhibition. The duel participatory function of the works directly demonstrates my idea of the necessity of extending use beyond the exhibition context. The work also extends the longevity of discarded objects, emphasising the redeployment, reworking and modification of everyday urban cast-offs.

The projects are underpinned by a darkly humorous dystopian sense of urbanism, that greatly reflects an anxiety, toward excessive industrialisation and our ultimately non-sustainable culture (in its current formation based on excessive consumption of natural resources). My art works are constructed with the abilities to show their own processes and influences. This is achieved through use of accessible references and research documentation. (As found in the Carrier vehicle). Predominately more dystopian ideas are collected in the form of the film component archive, that sits along side my own newly created films.

An interest in cultural entropy, destruction and alienation, is a feature that threads significantly through the work. Along with the concern to critique the systems that produce alienation and remove the individual from the very processes and technologies that surround them.

My studio work is directly informed by endemic Australian cultural forms and activities ranging from popular car culture, restoration and the modification of vehicles for work and leisure, 4 wheel drive and camping culture, as well as the national romantic obsession with ‘getting away’. There is also a consciously ‘working class’ aesthetic, do-it-yourself and self-reliant attitude in the work. This is my way of acknowledging and expanding upon the skills and ideologies from my own background. This is consciously connected to the belief that an individual must ideally possess certain manual dexterities, and familiarities within built and industrial systems, in order to be able to articulate, better understand, adapt and change them from an position of experiential knowledge.

Landscape - Creative use and presence

A key aspect of the mobile works, films and objects is how deeply they are infused, informed, actually tested and ‘sculpted’ by the Australian landscape. The dualism of tolerating the restrictions of urban living is contrasted through ideas of adapting, escaping and existing toward surviving and maintaining oneself

16 The Sauna, Urn, Trailer Garden, Carrier art works

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within more elemental and less artificial environments. This duality is not simply romantic but more about being totally engaged and informed with the broader systems around us.

The experience of the modern landscape, is synonymous with the use of the car in Australia. The road trip is not only a practical necessity, but it is also seen as a voyage of discovery. It is still a zone of delight, and also an implicitly understood scenario that requires a level of organised respect for the natural world, and a certain level of understanding of the machinary that takes one into it.

The physical landscape is a crucially large part of the Migratory Project. It is left present in the tears, rips and patina of the ‘furniture drag’ objects, and it can seen both as psychological space and perhaps an ecologically vengeful character in the Drive Out Cinema.

EN ROUTE, Sydney 2003

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Conflict, negotiation, reduction and excess

My pragmatic artworks are designed for growing urban densities and aim at the reduction of extreme excess.

Retail and industrial aesthetics are the dominant desired, fetishized and sought after cultural forms. I wonder about the influence and the aesthetic of the lo-fi individual hand crafted form…Can it survive?

Art like the urban environment is a zone of negotiation and conflict, where dynamics of retail, territorial politics and aesthetics freely collide.

Why not have many meanings and outcomes as opposed to single ones?

Can an art form do this?…

Can it be useful for more things, and propose the end of singular specialisations?

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MIGRATORY PROJECTS: Early Backgrounds

Urn

2001

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Urn 17 2001

Urn was an experimental project that attempted to stimulate social interaction and awareness of generosity and effort. It is a social and site-specific experiment.

Urn is constructed in response to a site-specific dilemma stemming from lack of collaboration. Students at a university art school could not get mobilised and organise their tea and coffee making facilities. I provided this facility, but secretly, providing no explanation. Urn was built using very strict parameters using only recycled wood and installed using a set budget of $100.00 AUD.

The work was installed at a height of 5 meters, so that an extra effort must be made in order to fully utilise the benefits of the Urn’s service. Urn aims to provide excitement and stimulate adrenalin to those that make tea and interact with the work.

Popular world teas are displayed and available. An extension ladder must be obtained and installed in order to reach the shelf upon which everything is provided for quick tea making. It is hoped that when Urn is installed in a busy space, an individual making tea may be driven to provide refreshment for others whilst visible upon the ladder. Urn is about affecting group dynamics and highlighting more minute gestures of generosity. The little things that may bind people together.

‘I wanted to see, just what sort of socially sensitive and significant project could be achieved on a small budget, and make an artwork which demonstrated my interest in pragmatic outcomes as well as get people to extend and go a little further. I also wanted a mechanism to get people talking over a shared aim’18

‘It’s also about humble…unseen work, and the service industry, what we take for granted. Things which are provided for us… tea is a great and simple start, all we do is get to the shelf at the supermarket and get through the check out… I was interested in all the seemingly easy parts in our culture that we don’t see and experience. But how do things get there? What industrious methods bring that tea to us? The minutiae – it’s about the detail and what we do not see as much as it is about the effort’19.

17 Materials: Plywood, stainless steel, glass, silicone, ceramic, Tasmanian oak, leather, sugar, honey, cotton, ink, plastic, extension cord, double adaptor, Selection of world teas, lemons, Milk, Aluminium 20ft extension ladder. Unique. Dimensions: W 2000mm/ D 280mm/ H 5000mm. Exhibited at Curtin University School of art 2001 and MIGRATORY PROJECTS, (PhD Solo Show) 4th - 26th Feb, New Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney 18 From authors note books on Urn/Earn - micro-gestures, hidden effort and pragmatic outcomes 2001 19 op. cit, From note books as above 2001

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‘As an artwork it is no longer physically passive or static. One must directly engage to make it work’.20

‘It’s a Yoko Ono’ Yes’ piece and a highlighting of the micro-gestures at work behind our culture of commodity, service and demand’.21

‘I want people to wonder how it got there, and who provided it and then to be a little brave and inquisitive in order to find out how it works’.22

Urn was designed to function in daily life and within the art context. It therefore has a double currency and is part of an ongoing series of works looking at multi-purpose pragmatic art.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE:

• URN, CAN BE UTILISED BY OBTAINING AN EXTENSION LADDER • PLEASE LIAISE WITH STUDIO/GALLERY STAFF TO BORROW AND INSTALL • LADDER. • FULL URN TAKES APPROXIMATELY 20 MINUTES TO BOIL • A SMALL BIN IS PROVIDED FOR USED TEA BAGS • PLEASE SWITCH OFF WHEN FINISHED • PLEASE WASH AND RETURN YOUR CUPS FOR OTHERS TO USE

20 op. cit, as above 21 op. cit, as above 22 From authors note books on Urn/Earn - micro-gestures, hidden effort and pragmatic outcomes 2001

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Urn / Tea Shelf (detail at 5 meters) 2001

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Sauna

2003-2005

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Double function - double currency and site Sauna 23 2003 -2005

One of the first works in the Migratory Project series Sauna is a custom designed and built, fully functional portable do-it-yourself sauna, which is powered by a 240v domestic power supply. The main body of the sauna was originally a storage-packing crate from another artwork. It is a hybrid and self- sufficient artwork that combines interaction with pragmatic intentions, design and art in one work. Sauna demonstrates how to use gallery spaces for a broader range of activities, experiences and responses. It transforms exhibition venues into a space where the viewer can, if desired, directly engage and physically participate in the work.

The Sauna was constructed as a major recycling project, using readily available and familiar materials, fusing ideas of metabolist architecture with current notions of renewable and freely available resources. The work is altruistic in nature aiming to relax those who interact with it. Sauna can seat two individuals, and is designed to be ergonomic and user friendly. It invests a disused object associated with the art world (a packing crate) with a totally new purpose and use. Additionally it offers intimate and private space within an exhibition, or any other site where the viewer/participant can relax, contemplate and unwind.

The Sauna uses recycled polystyrene packing and sheeting as internal insulation, recycled pine from pallets for its seating, Perspex off cuts as windows, olive oil (as an internal wood sealant), second hand castors, plywood, an original Bahco(TM) bar heater (bought from a migrant Austrian couple who had carefully stored it in a basement since arriving in Australia in 1976), items from leisure shops, kitchen shops and normal hardware supplies.

The Sauna is designed to seat two people and can easily hold the weight of over 500lbs. It is built to accommodate large and small people and is complete with its own shower and changing facilities.

The completed Sauna when assembled is approximately 2.5meters high, 1meter wide and 1.5meters deep and can be moved virtually anywhere by two people on its eight nylon castors It runs off a domestic power

23 Materials: Plywood, Perspex, stainless steel, rubber, aluminium, copper, polystyrene, recycled pine, olive oil, acrylic, water, stones, polyurethane, jarrah, 240v Bahco heating system, fan, wooden tiles, nylon, cotton, grease, eucalyptus leaves, solar shower bags. Dimensions: H 2500mm / W 3000mm (unpacked) / D 1170mm Exhibited: MIGRATORY PROJECTS, (PhD Solo Show) 4th - 26th Feb, New Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney 2005 CHIASM, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) WA 2000

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source. (Compared to most commercial saunas available on the market that require huge amounts of three phase electrical current and incur huge running costs as well as installation charges).

Of paramount importance to all the projects in this series, is that my artwork be constructed from fairly ubiquitous items. Materials and equipment that are available from most domestic retail outlets, hardware shops or recreational suppliers are the most common things used. I hope to indicate that the viewer could produce more of their own cost effective items, based on the individual needs of their lives.

“When I started the Sauna, I remember being so frustrated by how tired I was physically from all the work I was doing to just survive as an artist and how frustrated I was that I just could not afford to ever relax. I thought of how much health clubs cost…and the industry itself. I wanted to make this piece so that it could be understood in its materiality, seemingly easily made, transparent. I also did not want to consume any more materials, and have to keep buying… I wanted something that could relax my friends and myself, something that played with the expectancy of art too – I wanted an art work that did not ‘behave’, something that utilised the exhibition context for something else. I wanted it to be able to travel and speak of its sustainability. Something restored and utilised from another life. It worked, people used it, and I showed it and tested it in different sites and institutions in Australia and at home. It was designed as part of my Migratory system”.24

Sauna can also be rented, borrowed, leased, installed in yards, gardens and homes. I have also used this work as a form of exchange currency. As a temporary gift, or payment equivalent for people I have worked with or exchanged skills and services with.

Sauna can be transported and delivered to different sites via use of the Trailer Garden when the garden is pulled out and situated in the planter chassis25 (see images) used in conjunction with the Carrier vehicle. It is designed to be synonymous with the system of the other artworks, yet like the other pieces it can work independently on its own.

Sauna therefore has a double currency as it functions directly in daily life and within the art context. One of the series of Migratory Projects it examines work which fuses ideas of use, pragmatics, travel, DIY design, circumvention, survival and self sufficiency.

Sauna has been used and enjoyed by a range of people; blacksmiths, engineering professors, travellers, gallery workers, homeless people, gallery audiences, other artists, friends and willing participants.

24 Authors Sauna notes, from diary 2000-2005, Australia 25 Three welded metal frame structures designed to hold and manoeuvre the six garden boxes out of the trailer and through doorways into homes. These frames also allow the trailer free space to transport objects as required.

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Sauna Original Packing crate (made by author)

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Sauna 2005, Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney 2005

Sauna In Use, 2005, Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney

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Sauna (details) 2003-05

Saunas and Trailer Gardens - from static to active

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The works Sauna and Trailer garden, look directly at transforming a gallery space from a static and normally quiet place of contemplation, into a site where the viewer can, if desired, physically participate and 'activate' the object, in order to test and demonstrate its capabilities. The viewer/participant of these works may also simply benefit from the services that the works provide. Partake in a sauna, eat, or take something from the trailer.

The Trailer garden has gone on various trips throughout Western Australia and New South Wales and has travelled with me as I have moved house and relocated four times, since it was originally built. During road tests and camping trips other travellers used some of the produce grown, and many people have had meals with me at home using herbs and vegetables from the Trailer. The aloe vera plant has been used many times for sunburn treatment, the peppermint for tea, tomatoes, chillies, capsicum, basil and chives are all regularly used in pasta dishes. The Bay leaves for curries and to keep moths and weevils away from flour and other stored goods. Wormwood was also used and grown to deter mosquitoes.

During a residency in the arid wheat-belt town of Kellerberrin Western Australia, the Trailer Garden was maintained by a visiting German artist in exchange for his use of the herbs and vegetables in his meals. These are just a few of the examples of the uses that have occurred.

Common to both of these particular projects, are the holistic ideas of enhancement, delight and relaxation. The Sauna was in some part, humorously conceived, as a device to also relax arts workers.

There is a growing concern that many people battle on in order to just keep going to keep a balance between maintaining the cultures of art, finding decent amounts of income and sustaining the basic necessities of life.

I wanted to produce work that might directly help people pragmatically, and also introduce an aspect of real physical delight back into the strains and ardours of maintaining creative lifestyles.

Trailer Garden

2003-2005

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Trailer Garden Prototype (ink, pencil, on paper) 2003 Trailer garden 26 A Migratory Project Grow light box27 and Planter Box Transfer Chassis28

Custom hand made box trailer, portable vegetable garden. All Road tested.

26 Trailer Garden Dimensions: L2700mm x W1350mm x H2500mm Materials: Mild steel, Rubber, Bearings, epoxy enamel, aluminium, nylon, stainless steel, marine ply, galvanised steel, silicone, shade cloth, cable ties, pigment, blue metal, potting mix, mulch, worms, 12v lights, garden hose, timer, steel cable Exhibited: Prototype road test - Perth International Arts Festival, PARALLEL WORLDS, Perth CBD & International Art Space Kellerberrin, IASKA, WA (Two simultaneous venues) SPIKES - population explosions, UTS Gallery, University of Technology, Sydney 2004 WISH YOU WERE HERE, (Prototype) First Draft Gallery, Sydney. 2003 27 Grow-light box dimensions: L1200mm x W850mm x H120mm Grow-light box Materials: 4 x 36watt UV grow lights, plywood, rubber castors, nylon, Tasmanian oak, stainless steel, 240v power cord, 1 x electronic timer. 28 Planter Chassis Dimensions: L600mm x W1120 x H 550mm (3 of) Materials: Mild steel, rubber castors, grease, recycled ply, polyurethane, epoxy enamel

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The Trailer Garden work, involves the use of a custom-made standard box trailer, which I fabricated and restored. It is an experimental work, which is intended to illustrate the reuse of an everyday, ubiquitous suburban item (often found standing idle on streets) for a greater purpose. This work stemmed from ideas to utilise prime empty spaces within the city. Designed to move with its owner, the trailer contains many plants both edible and medicinal, that can travel and supplement the daily diet of an individual or small group.

An advantage is that the Trailer Garden saves planting and growing food in a fixed non-transportable area.

Devised in ‘dymaxion’ form, the project maximises all available space and potentials provided from a box trailer. Originally the trailer was built up from an old recycled chassis and single axle as the starting point. In this way the project is another renewed and modified extended form. Once the chassis was restored rebuilt and welded, I fabricated a lightweight prototype canopy in aluminium, which was secured into the trailer and then covered in white reflective shade cloth to transform the trailer into a format suitable for use as a portable garden system. A variety of vegetables and herbs were planted in order to see what yields were possible. The trailer carries its own water storage, a hose, a gro-light system, spare tyre and also small built in work platforms.

The Trailer Garden is designed as part of the migratory series and is used in conjunction with the Carrier vehicle and also Sauna. When the planter boxes inside are removed onto the three metal chassis also built, the Trailer Garden becomes the delivery and moving device that transports the Sauna.

The Trailer canopy29 is constructed in modular fashion to be removed and taken apart when the trailer is stationary and then repositioned when the garden is ‘on the road’. When housed in exhibition, the plants are tended and nurtured by staff and viewers and growth is maintained by a fitted grow-light system. The work is interactive and has been used to support various artists and dinners. Trailer Garden was used and tested in conjunction with the Carrier vehicle to make the Road Trip Dinners project (see project page in this chapter).

All plants in the work were monitored and tested up to speeds of 100kmh and biologically it becomes a survival of the fittest. Conceived in Western Australia the project was tested and exhibited and has travelled extensively within Western Australia and throughout New South Wales.

Implicit in the project is the idea of understanding the processes involved in growing and maintaining your own food. The nurturing and maintenance that more commonly is given over to larger consortiums are made possible here in a highly intimate way. The Trailer Garden brings these processes back into our

29 Having tested the aluminium prototype a second stronger steel canopy was designed and built that could withstands greater force and speed on the road.

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highly developed and populated environment and provides a portable solution to hands on growing in situations where space may be at a premium and where long-term permanence may also be an issue.

Trailer Garden Plants Ongoing: 2003 - 05 Rosemary, oregano, basil, lemon thyme, curly parsley, tree wormwood, fennel, garlic, golden cane palms, rhubarb, aloe vera, peppermint, tea tree (melaleuca), liriope grass plant, rocket, tomatoes, coriander, corn, Japanese mondo grass, Kings park wattle, kangaroo paw, Greek basil, Thai Chilli, Mexican tarragon, lemon grass, Spanish olive, cherry tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, dwarf meyer lemon, mint, Spring onion, garlic chives, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, crassula jade, lillipilli bush.

Journeys successfully completed by the Project 2003-2005

· Perth – Kellerberrin, Western Australia = 480kmh return trip · Perth WA - Sydney NSW = 3,957kmh one-way. · Sydney – South coast / Murramarang /Pebbly Beach = 580kmh return trip · Sydney - Barrington Tops- Forster Tuncurry = 985kmh return trip · Sydney CBD, First Draft Gallery Surry Hills = 11kms return trip · UTS gallery, Ultimo = 8kms return trip · Tin Sheds Gallery Solo PhD exhibition = 6kms return trip

Total distance travelled by Trailer Garden (and Carrier Vehicle): 6,027 kms

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EN ROUTE, Perth - Kellerberrin 2003 From note book: Road test Methodology

Upon the first road testing of the Trailer Garden in Western Australia, I found that the first aluminium frame structure was not strong enough to with stand wind speeds above 100kms. Vibration is a large problem from wind and terrain. Heavy pop riveting is insufficient to hold a frame together that will be placed under substantial stress and movement.

Full welds and no movement within the joints is the way to go.

I will keep a record of all the difficulties encountered in the success of the work, in order that the whole process remains transparent and useful, as a resource for other potential Trailer Garden builders.

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Trailer Garden Prototype Road Tests 2003

Trailer Garden Journeys and Techniques of getting into high rise buildings Micro gestures 2003

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EN ROUTE, Sydney NSW 2002 From note books: Transportation, Weather Proofing, Methodology

The prototype trailer garden has been successfully tested In Western Australia. It has also made the journey smoothly to NSW. I have redesigned the work from information learned from my experiments in WA, constructing a new stronger vibration, G force and weather resistant steel canopy and am working on the production of a better system for more rapid interchanging of the trailer from its usual normal - legal use, into that of a portable garden.

I must divide the planting soil area up into sections. This will stop the soil from sliding and moving around at speed, in turn overly stressing the plant roots.

These division boxes will make the garden more secure at speed, user friendly and interchangeable..

Sydney 2003 Domestic engineering -

I’m now working on a further refined planter box-tray and chassis system, produced from fibreglass polyester resin, plywood and steel. The chassis will be modular and reusable for multiple interchanges. Once complete the garden will fit into six sliding planter boxes which will be able to be taken from the trailer, two at a time via three steel chassis constructions, which in turn can be situated in a home, yard or pre-existing indoor or outdoor area.

The trailer in its basic form is co-opted even further beyond its standard uses to become a travelling platform in which small amounts of food and all essential herbs and spices for living can be grown. By extension, the garden, once established in the planter boxes can be removed, and the trailer can be utilised for it’s more normative purpose.

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EN ROUTE, Sydney 2004, After Murramarang, Eden and Barrington Tops Journeys, New South Wales. Carrier Vehicle and Trailer Garden conclusions

It is a case of survival of the fittest… There is wind and vibration damage as well as the stress of movement and the changing orientations of placement to the sun. Some plants survive better than others during extreme travel and displacement.

I have noticed, due to my comparative plant testing, that root systems in the mobile garden grow to be three times as large, as those of the same age and species, that are planted and remain stationary in pots. The Plants actually adapt and form larger root clusters in order to ‘grip on’.

I am not a botanist, but surely there may be implications for use in areas where people are displaced or on the move constantly, war zones, areas of high earthquake activity, travellers, explorers and people who simply do not have enough room to grow things…. The energy, time and resources that go into planting permanent gardens in homes that may go to waste if the occupants move and the new occupants want to change what is previously done. Why not take your garden with you?

This system could be adapted to be pulled by an individual, like a rickshaw, or by a donkey or horse, as well as a motor vehicle. It could also be built on a large lorry or truck and serve to feed a larger number of people.

Sydney 2003 Spatial limitations Cities are built so that internal and external space to grow additional food supplies is extremely limited to the individual. By not growing large yields of food at home other systems of supply are continually in demand. The economy does not like us to provide for ourselves.

So many street areas and parks are littered with trees and plants that produce nothing that we can eat - yet decorative plants spring up with

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every new housing development. ‘Image’ is more important than ‘use’, evidently….

Trailer Garden 2005, New Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney

Trailer Garden (Details) Tomatoes, bay tree, olive tree, lillipilli, parsley, rocket, basil, wormwood 2005, New Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney 2005

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Trailer Garden (composite) Planter boxes and Grow lights, Journeys, moving chassis, road trip documents 2003 - 2005, Trailer Garden Implications/Conclusions

The garden system once fully operative can be repeated and be scaled up onto a larger platform/truck or trailer in order to achieve far greater yields. Impermanent gardens could in theory be taken across land on long journeys, virtually anywhere in the world where wheels can be used. Food crops would not be lost or given up when people move.

Independence with dependence This first Trailer Garden is designed to supplement one’s diet and provide fresh, extra essential nutrition in parallel with that of a normal weekly food shop. Given a mass urban situation whereby we are all dependant on the supermarket or local vegetable shop for the majority of our food and where we have no real control over the production or price the Trailer Garden project recognises this dependence but also provides a suggestion of independence within this system. Why not become, a producer of food as well?

The project manufactures the feeling and actual creation of greater independence within dependence. More control over the methods of how our food is produced and grown is an important issue. We can grow food with very low impact on the environment if we do it right, if everyone takes a little more thought and responsibility.

EN ROUTE: Sydney 2003 Trailer Garden - Council Crops

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Why do councils not plant fruit trees, vegetables and herbs within local communities and employ a number of gardeners and growers to sustain and monitor yields? A great experiment should take place, to replace the ubiquitous non- edible designer foliage, which spreads by committee decision and through ill considered short term urban planning. City occupants of the world could freely enjoy the foodstuffs produced at their doorsteps…. This of course would be subversive to capitalist ideals.

I remember a scene of Bill Mollinson the Tasmanian developer of the permaculture system, sitting on a park bench in The USA, leaning over and pushing lemon tree, apple tree and mulberry seeds firmly into the greens of central park. ‘Think how much food could be grown here, just plant where ever you can, most things will grow…. for those that can’t afford’ I think he muttered.

Desensitising processes

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The processes of growing food, nurturing and tending of various food production methods, has been predominantly removed from our lives. Production processes are annexed off and decentralised, so that we no longer have to think or encounter the processes of life and death and what we eat.30 The Trailer Garden proposes a solution by example.

Found objects / Derelict Trailer, Sydney 2004

30 A recent American reality show ‘worlds apart’ 2004, revealed the incapacity (and horror) of westerners placed within more third world situations. When the Western families were made to gather food and witness the weekly necessity of killing, bleeding and processing a goat, chicken, pig or cow in order that people would have meat to eat. The horror apparent in the faces and speech of the western witnesses is testament to the complete and absolute passivity and lack of knowledge and awareness, with which most of us in the west put food into our mouths. Many members of the high capitalist western families in the episodes of the show, entered into trauma counselling scenarios within their own family groups in order to deal with the situation.30 Although very entertaining it is quite disturbing to witness that so many people have no idea of the processes and energies that are involved in common food production.

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Carrier

2005

Carrier Prototype Drawing (Ink, pencil on paper) 2003

Carrier 31 2005 Unique: modified, restored and customised vehicle. Everything in this work was designed and fabricated by hand using second hand material and parts where possible.

31 Materials: 1978 Ford F100, Perspex, mild steel, stainless steel, fibreglass, aluminium, plywood, acrylic, 12v lighting, 1500w inverter, rubber, foam, 120w alternator, automotive enamel, cotton, 720 cca deep cycle batteries, 120 amp cable, 60amp fuses, nylon, rear projection screen, pvc conduit, DVD & VHS players, amplifier, 2 x 60watt outdoor speakers, cassette deck, voice recorder, books, 35mm slides, CD, LP gas bottle, slide projector, data projector, halogen & tungsten lights, ropes & camping equipment

Exhibited: MIGRATORY PROJECTS, (PhD Solo Show) 4th - 26th Feb, New Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney 2005

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Carrier was conceived as a large-scale multi-purpose highly functional ‘migratory’ artwork-support- system and hub of my PhD studio practices. It can exhibit and play all formats of media and work as a film unit and library of Pragmatic art practices and ideas. The project can show data/movie projection, DVD, VHS, Audio, mp3 files and cassette.32 The work contains a library and functions as a study and fully operational camper vehicle. It is designed and developed to be operationally independent in that it produces and stores its own power and can function off the grid.

The projects aim was to recycle and restore a perfectly usable machine for greater longevity and extended use. The carrier project does not support the purchase of new vehicles but instead highlights the adaptation of previously existing systems. In the process of restoration and manufacture one becomes familiar and competent and aligned with the machine. Being able to fix things oneself is a large part of the experience of the project.

The carrier is a parallel form of engineering, mirroring more normal custom cars but also extending the very use and function of its customisation. The form of the work fuses the old and the new by maximising the energy potentials of the vehicle and adapting space in the vehicle for varied purposes and projects. It shows the influences of the Australian car, DIY and camping culture. The vehicle is an integral part of Migratory Projects as it is designed in connection and as an extension to the Trailer Garden and Sauna works.

Carrier Circuit design– Projector, batteries, alternator, lighting system, (Pencil and Ink on paper) 2004/05 ©. Restoration, modification and functions (Below)

32 Carrier Public Screenings, Playing’s and Interventions (2005). The Drive Out Cinema: Furniture Drags: Andrew Sunley Smith / Zabriski Point: Michelangelo Antonioni / Mon Oncle: Jacques Tati / Two lane Blacktop: Monte Hellman / Vanishing Point: Richard Sarafian Relevant music that has been played from the Carrier. Public Amplification Experiments 2001-05 Devendra Banhart / Nirvana / Willie Nelson / Radio head / Arvo part / AC/DC / Beethoven / Sigur Ros / Vashti Bunvan

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Critical to this work is the use of the combustion engine. In considering a vehicle project it was essential to find an engine that could cope with adaptations and all that would be requested of it. The original vehicle was chosen for its year of manufacture33 and because of its ‘high end’ engine a cleveland V8 5.6 litre, able to run on petrol and LPG. The engine is an integral tool and part of the projects that came out of the Carrier as I wanted to use the engine to drag and destroy objects. In the Drive Out Cinema - Furniture Drag films.34 As a metaphor the engine is a constantly consuming machine that continually burns and exhausts as it keeps moving. A metaphor I liken to contemporary consumer culture. The engine in all its forms (automotive, ship and aeroplane) constantly moves goods and people around the world. It is also a destructive and polluting force environmentally speaking.

In addition to the engine the Carrier’s function supports and provides the power for the Drive Out Cinema and the Furniture Drag projects. It drags, pulls and sculpts the domestic items of furniture chosen for the films.35 It also provides lighting and power for the shooting of the films and documenting of the process.

33 I wanted very much on a personal level for this project to be an extension of the philosophies of Gordon Matta Clark. 1978 was the year of his death and by finding a suitable vehicle with a manufacture date of the same year it gave a nice sense of homage to the work. Matta Clark also had a truck that he called Herman Maydag that when broken down he used in a project Graffiti truck (1973). 34 See following project descriptions in this chapter 35 Of significance, is that I have used the physical landscape itself, very directly, as one of the tools that creates and forms certain objects within my film works and recent installations. It is the landscape combined with the forward movement and velocity of the car that forms, sculpts, breaks, bruises and scrapes the furniture in the Drive Out Cinema / Furniture Drag films and installations.

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The vehicle has also been used to cook using the engine (Road Trip Dinners 2003) and to travel with the Trailer Garden in a number of road tests and explorations into the landscape.

The work also screens films from the adapted roof projection unit. Movies are projected onto a specially made and fitted rear projection screen on the bull bar or straight onto the sides of buildings. The Carrier intensifies and compacts many ideas into one form: green engineering, dymaxion design, micro architecture, shelter, travel, self-sufficiency, workspace, film unit, tool, resource centre. The overall project has involved road trips, social events, screenings, audio plays, and has made a number of films under the banner of the Drive Out Cinema and Furniture Drags.

The works are intentionally duplicitous, offering and displaying notions of escape, independence, interaction and the possibility of education through use of its library. The work is also a highly useful supportive form yet at the same time displays (through its films) that it is also a highly destructive force.

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Carrier Vehicle, 1978 Ford ex ambulance restored and modified, mixed media 2005

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Carrier 2005 New Tin Sheds Exhibition (Projection Screening)

Carrier 2005, (Rear fit out, archive, projection booth, camper, and film unit for Drive Out Cinemas)

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Carrier 2005 (Outdoor screenings)

Carrier 2005 (Road tests and Journeys, Carrier and Trailer Garden, NSW, Eden and Barrington tops)

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Carrier restoration 2003 – Before

Carrier study, archive, library, film unit & Drive Out Cinema facility - After

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EN ROUTE, Carrier vehicle purchase, Western Australia Awareness of all parts and gestures

Engine size, space available, workability, access, parts availability and design.

The selection of the right vehicle is important. I’ve purposefully purchased an older car, requiring care and restoration – it’s always good to learn the specifics.

Amazingly the model year 1978 is ideal. Gordon Matta Clark died of cancer August 27, 1978, Aged 35. A beautifully serendipitous link for me.

A duel LPG/Petrol engine that runs best on Liquid Petroleum Gas (Far cheaper to run than conventionally fuelled vehicles, 60% less polluting and is essentially a by-product of petroleum processing).

I would like in some way for the work to indicate a lineage and extension to Gordon Matta-Clark’s car that he called, ‘Herman Maydag’ 36

36 After crashing the car he then chopped it up after placing it in a public-square in his ‘alternative to Washington Square art show’ in New York, and made the work Graffiti truck 1973. He invited local people, adults and children to adorn and spray his car with whatever they wished. He then exhibited the oxy acetylene cut off sections he had made. Matta Clark saw graffiti as the expression of a disaffected and alienated section of society and wanted to some how include these people in his shows.

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JOYRIDER – ‘ Carrier Support Project’

Carrier Passenger list 2001-05

This list is all the people in the arts who have been assisted by the carrier vehicle, during exhibitions, visits to Australia, within biennales and undertaking any arts based activities.

Name: Origin / Occupation: MATTHIEU LAURETTE FRANCE / Artist PATRICK ‘BORIS’ KREMER LUXEMBOURG /Curator HANS ULRICH OBRIST SWITZERLAND / PARIS / LONDON Curator, writer, critic SHIGIAKI IWAI JAPAN / Artist HERMANUS DE JONGH HOLLAND / Founder member of Atelier van Lieshout SASKIA BOS HOLLAND /Director De Appel / Curator Berlin Biennale 01 MIGUEL ANGEL RIOS MEXICO / Artist FRANZ TURCZYNSKI MEXICO / Industrial designer SIMON PATTERSON ENGLAND /Artist Sydney Biennale 2002 JON BEWLEY ENGLAND / Director Locus Solus, writer NICK TSOUTAS AUSTRALIA / Director Artspace Sydney TIM MASLEN AUSTRALIA/ENGLAND / Artist JENNIFER MEHRA AUSTRALIA/ENGLAND / Artist INWHAN OH KOREA / Artist KEVIN DRAPER AUSTRALIA WA / Artist BRUCE SLATTER AUSTRALIA WA /Artist NICOLE HUITSON AUSTRALIA WA / Teacher & Artist PHILLIP GAMBLEN CANADA/AUSTRALIA / Artist BRIGITTA HUPFEL AUSTRIA/AUSTRALIA / Artist MATTHEW HUNT AUSTRALIA WA / Artist SIMON PERICICH AUSTRALIA WA / Artist & 2002 Samstag scholar THEA CONSTANTINO AUSTRALIA WA / Student, Artist SHEREE GARBUTT AUSTRALIA WA / Student, Artist PAUL CAPORN AUSTRALIA WA / Artist JAQULINE PHILLIPS AUSTRALIA NSW / Art administrator, writer, curator SOPHIE O’BRIEN AUSTRALIA WA/NSW / Curator BRIAN WILSON AUSTRALIA /Finance manager, Sydney Biennale PHILIPPA O’BRIEN AUSTRALIA WA / Public Artist ISABEL O’BRIEN AUSTRALIA/WA/VICT / Photographer NOLA FARMAN AUSTRALIA NSW/WA / Artist POPPY VAN ORD GRAINGER ENGLAND/AUSTRALIA / Artist TOM MCKIM TAS/ AUSTRALIA / Installer HAYDEN FOWLER NEW ZEALAND/ AUSTRALIA / Artist JAMES ANGUS AUSTRALA WA/NSW / Artist SARAH GOFFMAN AUSTRALIA / Artist EMIL GOH MALAYSIA/AUSTRALIA / Artist HAMILTON DARROCH AUSTRALIA / Artist TARA SHIELDS AUSTRALIA / Artist /Educator CRAIG JUDD AUSTRALIA NSW, Education officer Biennale of Sydney RUSSELL STORER AUSTRALIA WA/NSW / Curator MCA MARK BROWN AUSTRALIA / Artist ISABEL CARLOS PORTUGAL / Curator 2004 Sydney Biennale RODNEY GLICK AUSTRALIA / WA /Artist MARTIN SIMS UK / AUSTRALIA /Artist /Educator DAN EGGER AUSTRALIA NSW / Artist MARCO MARCON ITALY / AUSTRALIA /Curator & director International Artspace Kellerberrin Australia, WA LARS LUNDSGAARD DENMARK / Install manager Brandts DK DANNY HOLCROFT UK/SCOT / Artist /Installer AMY SALES UK / SCOT Curator, Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow ALAN KEAN UK/SCOT / Artist & Install manager (CCA) Glasgow

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Road Trip Dinners

2003

Road Trip Dinners37 2003 ‘A Dymaxion Project’

37 This project was assisted by the skills of Hamilton Darroch. Exhibited: Road Trip Dinners, ART & FOOD, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London 2003 MIGRATORY PROJECTS (Carrier/Drive Out Cinema Screening), (PhD Solo Show) 4th - 26th Feb, New Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney 2005

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DVD and printed manual. Shown projected or on Monitor

This project involved the Carrier vehicle and Trailer Garden and was commissioned by an independent curator for the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK. The concept was to create a meal and recipe from lost or unusual food cooking techniques. Using the Carrier vehicle as originally conceived, the heat energy from the engine was maximised and used as an engine oven. I investigated fishing techniques and how to catch and prepare a fresh beach fish from the South Pacific Ocean in Australia. A fish was caught, and using basic ingredients and herbs from the Trailer Garden the fish was cooked on the engine whilst driving.

The day’s events culminated in a meal.

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ROAD TRIP DINNERS Andrew Sunley Smith with Hamilton Darroch

· Fresh Beach Fish With garlic, chilli, basil, parsley, macadamia nuts, & lemon

· Engine Oven Fish baked in bag with pumpkin, roasted macadamias and served with kalamata potato salad

· Roadside breakfast Fresh mango, Italian coffee, honey, soy milk, cornflakes

· Trailer Garden Providing Greek basil, coriander, tomatoes, chilli, garlic, chives, coarse parsley, nasturtium, salad rocket, rosemary, thyme, peppermint as well as medicinal plants & natural insecticides

The work is instructional and is provided with a recipe, cooking times and fishing techniques as follows:

1) Road trip essentials

· 1 Gas bottle 4kg · 1 Camping stove 2 ring · 1 Sharp knife · 1 Chopping board · 1 Water container (20 lit ‘Jerry can’) · 1 Coffee percolator · 2 Chairs · 1 Table · Cups, plates, bowls & cutlery · 1 large Pot & 1 fry pans · 2 Tea towels · Box Matches/lighter · 1 Large bowl (for cleaning & salad mixing) · Aluminium foil. · Sunburn cream · Good hat · Spare wheel · Small pliers & adjustable spanner (from basic tool kit) · Car jack and standard essentials · Shovel in case of car bogging · Tyre pressure gauge (if softening tyres for bush tracks etc)

· Check vehicle oil, lubricants and water levels, lights, indicators before leaving. If towing trailer or caravan make sure that load is secure and that all lights are working.

2) Roadside Breakfast

Serves 2 · 1 Box cornflakes · 2 fresh mangos · Tea (flavour of choice) · Dairy milk & soy milk

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· Honey · Italian coffee (fresh ground)

If leaving early to catch a morning tide, breakfast and especially coffee and tea are somewhat essential. Splice the mango and turn the skin inside out and cut the pieces into the cornflakes and add milk. For coffee and tea I recommend using honey instead of processed sugar as it provides a much fuller taste and aroma especially in coffee.

This breakfast is not too heavy, simple and great for early mornings.

Fresh beach fishing essentials*

*Check local newspapers for high tide time’s sunrise/sunset. (You will need to be up at sunrise to get two good windows of opportunity for landing a fish)

· 1 beach fishing rod (‘Jarvis Walker’) · 1 reel with 6kg line (‘Alvey surf champion’ -‘tri lever drag control’) · 2 Bag ‘Gang hooks’ · 2 bags No 2/0 Suicide hooks · 2 bag No 3 ball sinkers · 2 bag No10 Barrel swivels · Assorted fresh bait, Mullet, Garfish, Pilchards (get these from local fish monger)

It is a good idea to study a little about the fish you intend to catch, such as preferred bait and where they are likely to be feeding such as sand banks, gullies, breakers or rocky headlands etc. You can get hold of any local fishing publication or tide guide from a well-stocked newsagent.

When loading hooks do not leave your bait exposed. Gulls will readily attempt to steal from your bait bag while you are focused elsewhere.

Fast fishing rigs: Line - swivel - line/ball sinker - swivel – hook (follow images provided)

· Keep a lookout for large waves when fishing from rocks.

· Cast in line from chosen spot and be patient

3) Beach Fish Preparation and cooking (Flathead)

1. If one is skilful and lucky enough to catch a fish, quickly remove your hook from its mouth with a pair of small pliers. The fish must be killed quickly and cleanly with a sharp knife through the top of the skull (this is the quickest and least brutal method). Be prepared for a little blood.

2. Place the fish into a bag or cool box. Do not leave on beach, as seagulls are quick to arrive on the scene.

Cleaning and gutting 3. Clean and gut the fish with care (some fish such as Flathead often have poisonous barbs and spikes. It is always a good idea to check most fish thoroughly if you are uncertain)

4. Remove all scales by scraping a sharp knife towards the head of the fish. Rinse in water and keep going until all scales are removed.

5. Turn the fish onto its back and centre your knife between the fish’s gills and draw the blade slowly toward the tail. The incision needs to be long enough to get your hand inside the body and pull guts etc toward the head of the fish. Once you have hold of everything, simply slice away all organs and intestines. (You can give these to any attentive sea gulls)

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6. Once the guts are cleanly removed, rinse the fish in water to make a clean cavity for your filling

Filling & wrapping 7. Place some chopped garlic, chilli, capsicum/red pepper, virgin olive oil, salt & pepper, parsley fresh basil and coarsely chopped macadamia nuts and freshly squeezed lemon into the belly of the fish. Sprinkle virgin olive oil lightly inside and around the fish.

8. Take two layers of kitchen foil and wrap the fish into a tight parcel, making sure that there are no holes, leaks or tears in the foil.

9. When preparing vegetables such as potatoes and pumpkin always chop them into small uniform pieces and keep them tightly packed together. Smaller pieces mean quicker cooking times and packing them tightly means that you maximise the heat throughout the food parcel

4) Engine oven fish baked in a bag

Serves 2 · One freshly caught fish (Flathead, Australian Salmon, Bream, John Dory, Tailor, Sand Whiting, Tarwhine). · 4 cloves fresh garlic · 1 fresh chilli · 1 Spanish onion · 1/4 whole pumpkin · 1 kg potatoes · Chives, · Kalamata olives · Salad rocket · 1 lemon · Pepper & salt (fresh ground) · Parmesan cheese · Macadamia nuts · Virgin olive oil

Engine Oven*

*Times provided are for Ford F100 Cleveland V8 LPG engine

One average size fish takes approximately 60mins @ 80kms hr 30 mins per side to poach. Ideally you will need good stretches of road to keep the engine buzzing. You can start to smell the fish when it’s nearly ready.

Pumpkins and potatoes take a fraction longer approx 90 mins, so begin cooking these before your fish.

· Be sure Engine is clear of oil and grime · Be sure not to loosen any leads when placing fish on engine block · Ensure wrapped fish is firm and will not vibrate loose when travelling · Always start your cooking with a warmed engine (its more preferable for fish and better for the longevity of your car)

Place the fish parcel, wrapped & oiled pumpkin, potatoes, and macadamia nuts on the top of your engine block as close to the middle as you can get. (The more metal surrounding your meal the quicker you will be able to eat it). In a Cleveland V8 the food nestles quite nicely beside the distributor and the carburettor.

*The engine oven cooker works primarily as a poaching device and slow baking tool.

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5) Road Trip Dinner

· Fresh Beach Fish with garlic, chilli, basil, parsley, macadamia nuts, & lemon

· Engine Oven fish baked in bag with pumpkin, roasted macadamias and served with kalamata potato salad

Select a great roadside spot, preferably with good views and some shelter

Once everything is ready take the potatoes, mix with pitted Kalamata olives, chives, lemon juice, salad rocket, chopped tomatoes, parsley, mayonnaise, salt and pepper. Serve fish with engine baked filling. Serve pumpkin on the side with dash of olive oil and fresh ground pepper. Serve baked Macadamia nuts on the side with a little fresh basil.

Serve whole meal with crisp white wine or beverage of choice.

The Drive Out Cinema

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2004-2005

The Drive Out Cinema Australia38 2004-05

The Drive Out Cinema was conceived as a core part and function of the Carrier Project. It is the cinema facility that was designed and built within the vehicle.

A cinema to function off the grid, a cinema of independence, a projection of alternatives. A cinema of encounter.39

Using a second electrical alternator40 that was fitted to the existing engine I was able to draw and store separate electric power in addition to what the vehicle was making when the engine was in motion. In

38 Exhibited: MIGRATORY PROJECTS, (PhD Solo Show) 4th - 26th Feb, New Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney 2005 THE DRIVE OUT CINEMA, Screening, Fig Tree Theatre, Sydney NSW 2005 39 From authors notebooks 2004

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adapting the engine I was able to engage and power my own film unit and run a mobile cinema. As well as being able to project films and audio the Drive Out Cinema is a description of the car when used for filming my own projects directly from it.

The vehicle is fitted with lighting and power sockets to supply film cameras and run monitors so that raw footage can be gathered out in the field and off the grid. As long as the alternator supplies power, it is possible to film and light projects anywhere that is accessible to a car. On the roof of the vehicle is a waterproof housing that holds a data projector for screenings.

The concept of the Drive Out Cinema is multifarious. The title is both a reference and homage to the all but extinct drive in cinemas once popular throughout the country. It is an inversion of the title and reference to my cinema’s mode of operation in that it can go anywhere due to being designed into a vehicle. Secondly, and of importance is the polemic referenced in the title against more popular pedestrian forms of passive cinema and my desire to drive out bland standardised narrative and escapist content that is so often found in large studio film production (Hollywood for example). Thirdly, it was designed so that I could explore notions of landscape and direct use of the earth in making some new sculptural works and process based films. The films to be made are about direct process based experiences involving movement, velocity and destruction.

The intention of the Drive Out Cinema is to not only show my own films (shot via utilising the Carrier facility) but also to show films that contain anti establishment content or narratives of more subversive or anti-capitalist sentiment. The format of the road movie is a genre that populates the archives of the Drive Out Cinema, as do many anti modernist films from the 1960’s and 1970’s.41

In screening films directly from a vehicle it is interesting to show the variables of films that depict and symbolise the car in culture and also the idea of the car as a character within film. The Drive Out Cinema in this way functions as an archive of the meaning of velocity and movement in culture. I intend to gather and source many more films that relate to these concepts as well as relate to the broader Migratory Projects rationale so that many related and relevant films and documentaries may be shown educationally.

Of significance also is the situational potential of the project in being able to project and screen films and images more or less on any surface within the range of its projector at any given time.

The chosen content of the self sufficient Drive Out Cinema is designed to pop up anywhere at any given time.

40 A large coil device that generates electricity from a consistent and repeat-action driving machine. The device is connected via a drive belt. Most popularly found in cars. 41 Mon Oncle: Jacques Tati, Zabriski Point: Michelangelo Antonioni are just two examples.

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The Drive Out Cinema, Installation detail and Film stills 2005

The Drive Out Cinema, Film stills, Furniture drags and Installation detail 2005

The Drive Out Cinema, Film stills 2005

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Furniture Drags

2004-2005

Furniture Drags42

42 DVD, audio, various objects, rope, chain, earth.

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2004 – 2005

The Furniture Drag films are shot always from moving vehicles. The notion of forward movement is vital to the work. Familiar domestic household items of function and comfort are dragged behind a moving vehicle, roped and chained they are slowly and violently ‘sculpted’ and broken apart as they undertake their journeys. The Drag films document direct processes of destruction caused by movement and velocity. The primary content is about migration, displacement, loss, and the turbulence caused by aspects of relocation. Whether enforced or chosen.

There is also an environmental undertone in the work that reveals and underscores the tenuous relationship of our industrial products to that of the earth. Ecologically speaking the elements in the action of the film are all implicitly connected. The vehicle engine pulls the objects causing damage and eventual total breakdown as it continues inexorably forward. A destructive lynching dynamic exists in the film between the machine the earth and the products we cherish and produce in abundance. The earth itself can be seen as exacting an element of revenge: demolishing our fragile comforts.

In the film we see roads, dust clouds, people running attempting to catch up or get left behind, we see familiar items of domestic furniture, dragged and torn apart. The full process is caught on film.

Filmed only at night, in spotlights built into the Carrier vehicle, the objects in the films become removed, highlighted, seemingly drifting, as they are torn, damaged, battered and broken apart. The Drive Out Cinema investigates themes of migration and loss and how these might impact upon human relationships and material possessions.

We witness the full process repeatedly, various items of domestic furniture large and small from beds, fridges, chairs, televisions, cookers, washing machines, design furniture, pianos, book shelves, side boards, ping pong tables, couches, computers are all dragged and eventually destroyed, on deserted roads. Figures run towards us, anxious to catch up and not get left behind. Dusty and muddy surfaces reveal the landscape. Poetic, violent and mesmerizing, finally all the viewer is left with are a series of dissolving lost highways and silent dust clouds that could be a poignant ending or a new beginning.

Exhibited: MIGRATORY PROJECTS, (PhD Solo Show) 4th - 26th Feb, New Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney 2005 THE DRIVE OUT CINEMA, Fig Tree Theatre, Sydney NSW 2005

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The furniture from these films is sculpted and changed by the road and vehicle directly. The scarred, bruised, scraped and demolished pieces form elements of the final installation of the work. These objects act as physical remnants in the spaces in which the films are projected43.

Constant to the film is the deep bellowing drone of the engine and the scraping of the destructive process endured and undergone by the furniture. The destruction of the objects most familiar within our built environments of comfort can also be viewed as symbolic, especially when thought of as destroyed by the combustion engine. The film as well as being a form of encounter, (as we witness the slow destruction of everyday familiar household items) functions as an analogy of our environmental situation. (The more we move and combust the more we loose, environmentally speaking)

The interconnected aspects of the film and the process of its making, highlights the very experience of migration, common to many today. The film also questions our notions of value; through the use of different styles, time periods and variables of furniture the project connects to people of different age groups and backgrounds.

Within the project I want people to consider, see and feel what it is like to lose all that is familiar. As well as question their own needs and desires for the latest items and consumer goods.

43 Please note that no debris is left at the drag sites – I make a point to collect every single fragment, splinter, shard, no matter how small, everything is boxed and bagged -almost forensically sorted and kept with each respective object specifically for exhibition. Mindfully, also no debris is left on road or earth surface at Drag site.

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Favourite Study Chair and Westinghouse Fridge (drawing) Installation details, 2005

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Dining Table Set and Double Bed Remnants Installation details, 2005

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Lounge Suit, Side Table & Vase, Chest of Drawers, Drag remnants - Installation Details 2005

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Door Drag, Installation detail 2005

Sony Television and Coffee Table Drag, Installation detail 2005

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EN ROUTE, Sydney 2005 Slowly Destruction

Mobility of thought and reference indicates an ever changing flexible, elastic and transitory politic. It frees up and introduces new information into social systems.

The reality of travel causes contemplation. Arriving and leaving a place formulates objectivity, allows critiques and creates strategies for operating in variable situations. A new ideology could be based on slowing down. It may use notions of speed and variations of movement to introduce itself.

Destruction is aligned with speed. (Crashes, bullets, missiles, falling) Speed is associated with progress.

Slowing down may mean taking a sauna in a gallery. Can culture ever STOP? Just breathing and relaxing is a symbolic act, if done in the right places.

Is there time to think? Time to adapt and change? Time to breathe, to react. Slowness. reveals intimate action. Rendering with slow motion…. causes a longer view. Frame by frame, image-by-image, structure-by-structure, piece by piece we can see things break apart.

Distort speed. Fixate the stare.

Highlighting…spotlighting…illuminating a destructive system. Show everything, all parts, an open technique. A violent and ‘slow’ technique - to make people notice.

Violence is usually rapid.

Millions of engines and systems ticking over in neutral, waiting to move forward. Repeating. Polluting, outputting and exhausting continually without regard.

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Micro Gestures

2005

Micro Gestures: Carrier first 1/3, (Ink, pencil, printed labels on paper) 2003

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Micro Gestures44 2005 An ongoing photographic archive of manufacture and process.

Micro gestures documents all the unseen labours, constructions, processes, aesthetic decisions and journeys made within the production of each one of the Migratory Projects. Every modified part in design and fabrication is included, as well as all tools and equipment. The photographs function as a means of opening out and displaying an accessible, transparent travelogue of techniques so that each step of the Migratory Projects can be understood remembered and replicated. Micro Gestures can be described as the photo mechanics of all journeys, tests and adaptations performed in each step of the mobile projects. At the same time it is both a history and a manual for use.

The Micro Gestures are instructional and didactic like a guide – in case others may want to explore and learn to adapt and modify similar things in similar ways. The project is a way of bringing the unseen into the forefront. It’s also a means of documenting some of my smaller methods of intervention and what I see in part as resistance to over consumption through skill. For example the project shows how one can recycle and fix objects as opposed to constantly buy new ones.

The project contains images of restoration, modification, re-engineering, road testing, recycling, travel, adaptation and referential influences. The images show how to modify a car’s engine so that it can be used to power a cinema, cook food using the excess heat, illustrate camping and survival techniques and what tools to employ. The project is as much an inventory as it a survival guide and travelogue of the experiences and methods used in the production of The Migratory Projects.

Micro Gestures reveals a way of life. It is an unfolding and a revealing of my world of manufacture. The project is one about connection to skill and technique. It is also about the economy of labor and the aestheticization of it.

Micro Gestures are displayed as pinned up hard copy printouts covering walls from floor to ceiling around exhibition spaces where the Migratory Projects are displayed.

44 800 various images A3 size. Project ongoing. (35mm slide, digital files and printouts) Displayed on large walls. (Intended also to become a printed book). All photographs Andrew Sunley Smith © Exhibited: MIGRATORY PROJECTS, (PhD Solo Show) 4th - 26th Feb, New Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney 2005

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Micro Gestures, Installation view, showing Sumpter Carrier Remnants, Buy Before I Die, remnant shelf

Buy Before I die, Dresser – Carrier Micro Gestures Remnant Shelf By products 2003/05

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Micro Gestures: Photographic Archive (Selection) 16 of 800, 2003-Ongoing

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Micro Gestures: Photographic Archive (Selection) 15 of 800, 2003-Ongoing

Migratory Projects Archive

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Archive Details, Selection from Carrier Library 2005

Migratory Projects Archive45

When I began the Migratory Art Project I wanted to create a reference facility that supported my practice and also collated the philosophies and influences on my work in one place. The Carrier vehicle was designed to also house an archive of all relevant texts, films, and material that relates to its own influence and production.

The archive is the physical form of the bibliography that accompanies this PhD Thesis.

45 Exhibited: MIGRATORY PROJECTS, (PhD Solo Show) 4th - 26th Feb, New Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney 2005 Archive: Comprising of privately owned research books, catalogues, photocopies, maps, flyers, posters, 35mm slides, CD’s, DVDs & VHS films.

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All the books, catalogues films and references I have bought and gathered in relation to Pragmatic art make up this archive. The archive is accessible in the Carrier when it is exhibited and also can be made use of as a teaching aid and discursive tool.

Slide Selection from Migratory Projects Archive, Carrier Library 2005

I have used this archive many times during talks and lectures and it has been invaluable in the formation of this PhD thesis.

To the best of my knowledge at this time the Migratory Projects Archive is the only one in existence in Australia that comprises of all the very latest examples of texts and artworks that have been gathered, sourced and brought together in one place from around the world. The archive is also comprised of flyers and posters and ephemera that I have gathered on research trips within Australia and overseas.

EN ROUTE: Sydney 2005 Migratory Art as a Pragmatic Living System

An artwork, where not everything is done for you. A form of art, which requires the viewer not to be in the singular role of spectator. A work, which is an example of a way to act, an art that is a system of leading ones life.

A demonstration that requires you to engage in order to read and understand properly. A many-faceted thing.

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Create projects that indicate and encourage action, careful consumerism, restoration and caring.

A work that is not easily packaged or summarised into a particular school, nor technical or stylistic allegiance. Works that use art as an adventure and not a system of representational conceits. A work, that is unquestionably ‘real’.

An artwork with a surface and physiology of experience and use.

PhD studio practice conclusions: environmental and fiscal outcomes

Holistic Systems On final analysis of my PhD research and studio practice, I can say directly from experience that the pragmatic projects I developed and created have provided a successfully holistic system of art engaging both functional and aesthetic ideologies -managing to work on levels as practical tools enriching my life and that of others through direct interaction. The work provided ‘direct experiences’ as well as insight not only into the history of my type of art practice but also provided an understanding of its aesthetic reasoning.

On a more personal economic level my Migratory Projects successfully provided daily and annual fiscal benefits and tax reliefs and at times engaged profound interest and a humorously iconic and idiosyncratic

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presence in its integrated levels of Australian symbolism too. I found the rewards of such a large-scale project far out weighed the difficulties.

Environmental My studio projects did provide environmental benefits in a number of ways. As well as the predominant use of reclaimed and recycled objects where possible throughout each artwork. I was able to live during my road trips and field based projects in the Carrier vehicle for weeks at a time. The Carrier project was designed to be self sufficient in carrying all its own water and produced its own electricity for light and heat, when the motor was running. Additionally beneficial was that when the LPG engine was running it produced fifty percent less carbon pollutants then petrol and diesel engines. (Using a second hand, recycled LPG engine as a means to create additional power as I discovered, is less polluting than the cost of producing and purchasing efficient hi-end and highly expensive solar panels that would in fact be needed to generate the same equivalence of power).

Also using my methods of direct alternator power generation and battery storage as a means to produce

and store electricity is a further fifty percent less polluting than the C02 energy emissions produced in order to supply energy needs of average energy grid based home.

When using the Carrier vehicle especially when away from the city, I was using less fossil fuel and emitting less carbon dioxide in doing so. I did not require extra energy for lighting and heat other than was internally generated and stored in the Carriers two large storage batteries.

Fiscal and Economic Benefits Once completed the artworks also brought financial returns and relief. I explored and investigated the reality of registering the Carrier vehicle and Trailer Garden as artwork with a tax accountant and also had the vehicles legally registered as being for everyday personal use with the usual government licensing bodies. In this way I was able to claim any modifications to either project as appreciative value, thereby I was able to claim any materials and equipment I had purchased in the realisation of these works as a tax return. I was interestingly able to claim a percentage of my mileage as a depreciation return on the Carrier vehicle also. Being able to prove that the works were indeed exhibition artworks as well as objects for daily use meant that the projects could always return approximately thirty percent of their production value. Being able to negotiate and quantify these projects in a legal way and explore the financial implications of producing such artworks meant that I was able to find out how such items could provide additional benefits to anyone wishing to undertake such projects.

I have additionally also lent people the Sauna, as an agreed means of payment for small jobs and skills exchanged throughout the production of projects. The Trailer Garden has also produced enough yields to

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supplement my weekly food shops with continual herbs and vegetables. One can see demonstrated here my working example of the direct interpretation of a pragmatic artwork with an inbuilt double currency.

EN ROUTE: Sydney 2004 Conclusions

The dialogic of my artwork is designed to be interchangeable with notions of the co-efficient and the relational – both words are forms of the same idea, they are meant to implement and describe a dynamic of fluidity as well as a key notion of cross-connectivity.

They are of the same seed and pre-figuration of each other. These are expansive and linking words very relevant to movement dynamics, flexible and elastic usable terms.

In so far as art can be taken as an interface, as well as a process of concretizing and actualizing connections. The dialogic is about bringing together various dynamics, forms, languages, groups, ideas and most importantly contexts.

My work in Migratory Projects is in part, about survival in new contexts, making things work, extending the use of things, making things go a little further, adapting and importantly ‘feeding back’ my observations and experiences.

Arts production, like research, is for me is about connections and linkages. It is a process of exposing ideas, overlaying, sorting and differentiating and importantly about ‘testing’, ones own ideas against

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others, strengthening or weakening lines of thought and forms that are developing in ones work and that of others.

IMAGE APPENDIX

Chapter 5: Migratory Projects: All images – Andrew Sunley Smith. All images and designs in this section were conceived and photographed by the author ©

P134 Migratory Projects, Independent PhD Solo Exhibition Invitation 2005, New Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney P135 Migratory Projects, Additional handout/Floor sheet - Independent PhD Solo Exhibition 2005

P149 The 360 / Paint Throw 1991/92 P160 Urn 2001, Detail – Installed 5mt up on wall, Perth Western Australia

P164-166 Sauna Original Packing crate (also made By Author) Sauna 2005, Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney 2005 Sauna In Use, 2005, Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney Sauna Composite details 2003-05

P168 Trailer Garden Prototype 2003

P173 Trailer Garden Prototype Road Tests 2003 Trailer Garden Journeys and Techniques of getting into high-rise buildings - -Micro gestures 2003

P176 Trailer Garden 2005, Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney Trailer Garden (Details) Tomatoes, bay tree, olive tree, lillipilli, rocket, basil, wormwood 2005, New Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney 2005

P177

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Trailer Garden (composite) Planter boxes and Grow lights, Journeys, moving chassis, road trip documents 2004 - 2005, Spikes Population Explosions, UTS gallery, and Solo PhD exhibition New Tin sheds Gallery, Sydney

P180 Derelict Trailer, Sydney 2004 (personal collection) P181 Carrier Prototype Drawing (Ink, pencil on paper) 2003

P183 Carrier Circuit design– Projector, batteries, alternator, lighting system, (Pencil and Ink on paper) 2004/05 ©

Restoration, modification and functions (composite photo)

P185 Carrier Vehicle, 1978 Ford ex Ambulance restored & modified, mixed media, Tin Sheds Gallery Sydney 2005

P186 Carrier 2005 New Tin Sheds Exhibition (Projection Screening), Carrier 2005, (Rear fit out, archive, projection booth, camper, and film unit for Drive Out Cinemas)

P187 Carrier 2005 (Outdoor screenings) Carrier 2005 (Road tests and Journeys, NSW, Eden and Barrington tops)

P188 Carrier restoration 2003 – Before Carrier study, archive, library, film unit & Drive Out Cinema facility – After

P193 Road Trip Dinners, 2003, DVD stills, Composite

P201- 202 The Drive Out Cinema, Film stills and Installation details, furniture drag footage, Sydney Australia, 2005 The Drive Out Cinema / Furniture Drags 2005 Solo PhD Exhibition, New Tin Sheds, Sydney Australia

P206 Furniture Drags - Favourite Study Chair and Westinghouse Fridge (drawing) Installation details, 2005

P207 Furniture Drags - Dining Table Set and Double Bed Remnants Installation details, 2005

P208 Furniture Drags - Lounge Suit, Side Table & Vase, Chest of Drawers, Drag remnants - Installation Details 2005

P209 Furniture Drags - Door Drag, Installation detail 2005 Sony Television and Coffee Table Drag, Installation detail 2005

P211 Micro Gestures: Carrier drawing first 1/3, (Ink, pencil, printed labels on paper) 2003

P213 Micro Gestures, Installation view, showing Sumpter Carrier Remnants, Buy Before I Die, remnant shelf Buy Before I die, Dresser – Carrier Micro Gestures Remnant Shelf, by-products 2003/05

P214-215

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Micro Gestures: Photographic Archive (Vertical Selection) 15 of 800, 2003-Ongoing Micro Gestures: Photographic Archive (Horizontal Selection) 15 of 800, 2003-Ongoing

P216 Archive Details, Selection from Carrier Library 2005

P217 Slide Selection from Migratory Projects Archive, Carrier Library 2005

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CROSSFLOWS

Current Influential forms of Creative Pragmatism

Synthesising recent evidential chains of crucial influence These contemporary pragmatic creative examples, further assert the forms, dialogues and commonalities that crucially build and expand the evidence of the current presence and very recent history of artistic

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pragmatism. (As yet previously unconsolidated recognised, written about or visually represented). These new examples from design, architecture and gardening theories contextualise the interdisciplinary influences of my PhD research. They deliver concrete manifestations that further locate the aesthetics explored and developed in my studio practice

I will mention here certain cultural shifts and contemporary anxieties that underpin my work as well elaborate on the growing awareness of environmental issues, that are present in my work and in the expanded field of new art forms that this thesis examines. The projects evidenced, have all functioned for me as their own research domains and delivered directly usable outcomes that have radically debased and extended the notion of art, via the application of overtly pragmatic methodologies.

My goal is not to isolate these artists and creative practitioners in showing how they differ from previous art - but to inclusively show how they in fact ‘cross-pollinate’ the field of my research and professional studio practice. Each case study has in some way provided significant inspiration and influence in the development and validation of my own work within its Australian context and the broader international arena.

Significantly, I want to crucially insert into this field, the previously unnoticed Australian examples of artwork and ideas that in many cases predate and have developed in parallel with the European and American practices noted here. Along with my own Migratory Projects work, I want to firmly place Australian examples within this field where previously they have never been accounted for or summarised within the greater context of the history and development of more pragmatic work internationally.

My own creative work demonstrates not only an Australian idiosyncrasy and sensibility within an international field, but investigates that the notion of the pragmatic art work in Australia is directly linked and produced through the sensibilities of a strongly pragmatic migrant culture. These influential examples and theories I have gathered and questioned, are the most up to date within this field of study at the time of writing, and crucially have never been brought together or defined within the parameters of pragmatism ever before. The importance of the opposition to pervasive Modernism

In delivering any new world philosophy, especially within Australia, it is important to understand and quickly place Modernism. It is still the dominant cultural paradigm being produced; one only has to look at the suburbs, cities and majority of its art practices to see this. Modernism as a movement, defined itself by ways of contrast and separation, quite often disqualifying the past in favour of an aggressively industrialised future. It allowed itself through its advocated ideas of newness to bask in a fantasy of opposition to influx and fusion. Creating for itself a discourses in ‘purity of form’ creative stability, and prowess achieved through industrial innovation. Local knowledge, and beliefs were moved aside to make

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space for its implementation. (Think of the act land ‘clearance’ and the genocidal treatment of indigenous first nations Australians).

The changes within the imagination of current art are concerned with negotiations and all forms of co- existence, happy to create various forms of 'modi vivendi' to encourage more equitable social relations. In this way contemporary pragmatic and relational art differs radically from Modernist ideals. Even Post- modernism for all of its allegiance to pastiche, tolerance and referencing, when distilled down visually became not much more than a graphic style.

However, many positive things came out of Postmodernism, such as the attack against mono-cultural attitudes, the absorption of cultural diversity and the utilising of pluralist approaches. It was the Post- modern attitude, which was the more progressive legacy. Its iconoclasm is most relevant to my own research along with its notions of sampling and cross referencing from different influences. Within this broadening attitude, boundaries of high and low art merged. The movement however, was still predominantly linked to referencing only art itself.

The majority of the artists within the pragmatic field take their focus from outside the art historical arena, and rely directly upon the flexible everyday, to inform a way ahead. Relational art is based on radically different aesthetic foundations, as there is no prior singular dominant artistic language and material lexicon upon which to rely any longer. The rationale that underpinned the administrative formats of ‘contract art' (under the auspices of modernism), such as minimalism, abstraction and formalism, (which predominated the 1960s and 1970s) and safely maintained its formal repetition (like an industrial process) throughout recent decades, is now well understood and removed.1

From here on out, the group is played off against the mass, neighbourhood against propaganda. Low-tech against high-tech and the tactile against the visual. And today, above all else, the day to day is a far more fertile stomping ground than lowbrow popular culture - a form, which only exists in relation to highbrow

culture. Through it and for it. 2

The Migration of Modernism: The move away from governance

1 The artists practicing relational work today perceive their projects from at least a three-way point of view. 1. Aesthetically. How it is to be translated materially? 2. Socially. How to find and locate any coherence in relation to the vast state of current social production?) 3. Historically. How and ‘if’ to join in the inexorable interplay of artistic references? 2 Nicolas Bourriaud, An introduction to Relational Aesthetics Cream, Contemporary art in Culture 1998 pg 26

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Previously, contemporary culture, according to Clement Greenberg’s3 assessment of modernism, can be read as a sort of purification; a reducing of formal aesthetic qualities into pure essences. Clement Greenberg’s theories envisage the history of art as a kind of duplication of scientific research. A pairing down and isolating of elements toward a presentation of logical consequences and outcomes gained only through the exclusion of popular forms and decorative excesses. In short the many various modes of daily life and the everyday ‘noise’ of existence were denied. An introspection took over and a new romanticised primitivism was the idealised (Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Franz Kline, Willem De Kooning, Jackson Pollock)4

Nicolas Bourriaud points out, that the added effect of this reductive attitude to art production and the writing of its ideology was that it excluded non-western countries and considered all ‘others’ as unscientific and therefore unhistorical. Modernism was firmly situated in the West, and obsessed with the ‘new’. It generally presented and favoured large and ‘monumental’ works. Scale became an important factor, as did the idea of the grand gesture as canonised in Abstract Expressionism. Architecturally controlled forms and abstract modes of expression went hand in hand. These often, sombre works of Abstract Expression were said to contain such truths about the state of being, and in essence communicate the primal forces of the individual and the natural cosmos5

In the end, physically speaking they were only a collection of painted flat surfaces. Any reaction, further use and experience of the work was inevitably very localised, retinal and always static. Always the movement of this work was implied and representational. It was never actual.

In many western histories of art and especially in Clement Greenberg’s modernist ideas, culture is linked to the idea of always paring back and reducing to achieve almost a state of puritanical monomania. A culture always viewable in a clear linear sense, a culture built on getting somewhere in the quickest and most direct way, no space for detournement.6 A culture trapped, speeding inexorably along on a monotonous highway.

3 Clement Greenberg (1909-1994), Influential American critic associated with championing modern art in the United States. An avid lover of abstract expressionism and one of the first writers to elaborate the work of Jackson Pollock. Significant texts include ‘Art and Culture’ 1961 and ‘Homemade Esthetics’: Observations on Art and Taste (posthumous publication 1999) 4 Historically considered the main exponents of this movement. Predominantly New York based. 1946 - 1970 5 Jackson Pollock, Painting No 1-1948, Painting No 5-1948, Painting No1-1950, Lavender Mist, 6 French term now associated with the Situationist Internationalle. Is used in reference to disrupting, derailment, wandering and seeking other notions of experience away from the dictated singular track. It is often used as metaphor for free wandering in order to experience and gather a more rounded experience of a place or topic. Subversively the term refers to a form of cultural sabotage.

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History in these parameters must make sense, be repeatable as clear logical monologue. All other stories that make up a broader view of history are bothersome. There is never a happy compromise, only the eradication of otherness.7

The Rhizome is useful again here, it provides us with a very different viewpoint and model to work with. Rhizomatic theory emerged during a period of Post-modern eclecticism and a growing awareness of otherness. Within Post-modern thought there was a drive to discuss the notion of being ‘free from history’ and the prevailing attitude was one of wading through history, using it like piles of references, to be sampled and reworked an image or idea. We can relate this attitude to the artists of today, that have gleaned and transcribed the benefits of this movement to evolve into pragmatic art.

A successful post-modern artwork was one that displayed an awareness of its references or was executed specifically in blended multiple styles. Patchwork and bric-a-brac art forms became a sort of structural foundation8. As an extension to this a necessary understanding regarding my concept of migration is also useful in this argument. My view is that the cultural migrant surveys and gathers what they can, by necessity keeping only the essential parts where possible. Postmodernism came about at a time when global travel was becoming increasingly common and more affordable. Global migration by choice rather than force also increased exponentially from 1970 to 1990.

During this same period, Installation art gained further notoriety and recognition. One could argue that this broadening of artistic form is a result of the use of the openness that Post-modernism provided along with the necessity to change and reorganise the world to cope with ever broadening realities and newly fusing cultural inferences. Ultimately though, from an artistic standpoint, Postmodernism in all its visual dimensions, exists in my mind as a rather eighties flavoured angular patchwork of ideas and references9.

To be fair, it could be said that it was also the visualised plain of an opening of aesthetics that are now taken for granted within contemporary art. There were moments of great pragmatism too that occurred with the more free play of attitude to new media and alternative sites for art.

7 Palm Springs, Califonia USA is built on native American Agua Caliente Indian land. Did the Agua Caliente really have a use for modernist houses? 8 Neo expressionists like Julian Schnabel and David Salle, contributed to a levelling of cultural values that produced a sort of international style blending artists such as Giorgio de Chirico, Carravagio with Jackson Pollock, Sculpturally Pop art was blended with Joseph Beuys together with classical form, together with advertising media and all manner of hi and low brow multicultural flavours. 9 Architecture: Robert Venturi, Michael Graves, Peter Eisenman. Design: Memphis Design Group Milan

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ANNE HAWKES ‘The Heart of Saturday Night’, Perth, Western Australia, 1983,

At the Praxis art space in Perth 1983, Anne Hawkes exhibited her own customised car as part of her research into the significance of customisation. A pink ‘S series’ Valiant with a pearlised paint job and pink leather interior was exhibited with spotlights, music playing on the car stereo and flowers on the dash board - just like it would have been shown in a car show.

In parallel to this exhibition Hawke’s also published an article entitled “Custom politics: a reading of panel vans as demonstration of cultural antagonism” (Praxis M, #2 July 1983). In this article she discusses the aesthetic differences and difficulties inherent within the current (1980s) art system that makes distinctions and judgements between forms of low and high art. In the article it is suggested that forms of ‘profane creativity’ contain a distinct revolutionary potential. Also within custom culture there is an assertion of otherness and aesthetic resistance to a culture, which attempts to dominate with traditional aesthetic codes. Hawkes states that there is a huge margin outside of high art practices where art has no real meaning.

‘It follows that satisfaction from the viewing experience of works of (high) art are only possible to those educated few who are able to attribute value to them. To the remainder of the population the world of art is contrary to the world of everyday life’. 10

For Anne Hawkes, customisers exist as a ‘subordinate group’ with a tenacious grip on their own forms of artistic expression. The integrity of the aesthetic form of the customisers is undeniable.

‘Their imagery takes it’s meaning from the subordinate cultural position that they hold. If their taste in ornamentation is excessive, bad or eclectic it is partly the result of that exclusion. The custom car, becomes the expression of personal intensity of feeling, as well as the group indictment of the larger failing of contemporary society to sense the importance of an aesthetic in everyday life’.11

10 Anne Hawkes, Praxis M, #2 July 1983 11 Anne Hawkes, Praxis M, #2 July 1983

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‘The Heart of Saturday Night’ project highlighted a field normally outside of traditional art practice, as a site of intensely vigorous cultural expression. Also the project aimed toward the merging of high and low cultural forms. Hawkes also discusses the reworking of capitalist objects by the working class as a way of structuring the aesthetic dimension into everyday life.

Her relevance to Pragmatics is in her aesthetic endeavour. To introduce and transpose an outside field into art in order to declare that art could occur in very vibrant ways expressing a greater sense of variation and pleasure from other parts of a community. Of importance is that her chosen work was also a functioning everyday object of direct use.

The Heart of Saturday Night 1983, Anne Hawkes

(See also my own Carrier Project 2003-2005, to further see these ideas in extension).

NISIT O CHARERN Perth Western Australia / Thailand Best Fish 1999 and Favourite Things 1998

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In Perth, Western Australia, Thai born migrant artist, Nisit o’Charern, made a journey back to Thailand in order to interview local fisherman. The outcome of his project was to document where the best and freshest fish in the country could be found and then publish his findings, revealing the best places to go. He said his drive for this project was that he had noticed how bad the standard of fish was becoming for the locals, as the best catches were all getting exported to foreign countries.

In a previous project, he exhibited a series of people’s favourite chopping boards, which he had managed to borrow for his exhibition. O’Charern expressed a strong interest in the living information and functional objects of peoples lives. He said it took a large amount of skill on his behalf to establish trust with the people to ensure them that they would get their favourite chopping boards returned after his show. ‘It was really interesting to see how attached people were to these little bits of wood’ he said.

In another more aggressive and humorous project he proceeded to sell bullshit over the Internet by the kilo. ‘There is so much of it already around, but I like the challenge of selling it by the bag full’. He collected bags of it from local farmers, dried it out and tried to sell it to galleries and art collectors. It could also be bought and used for fertiliser if people wanted. He had sold fifteen kilos of it, at the time of my talking to him in 1999.

His primary contribution was to reveal the hierarchy involved in art selection and presentation as well as tease the notions of what people believed art could and should be about. O’Charern conceived the art exhibition as a venue where useful normal everyday information should also be imparted, such as where good fish could be caught, what was the current market price of ‘bullshit’ was, and where people could appreciate and discuss their profound love of everyday items.

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Business Card 1998, Nisit O Charern

RODNEY GLICK in collaboration with GINA GRIFFITHS Perth Western Australia School of Art Garden 1994

From 1994-1997, Perth artist Rodney Glick collaborated with Gina Griffiths a graduate student who studied Permaculture gardening to construct a new School of Art garden in the Sculpture Department, at the Curtin University. The intention of the project was to transform an under utilised back lot into a working environment where students could learn something else other than how to coldly capitalise through art processes and think only about their careers.

‘There are all these students just being pumped through here (the art school), all being taught just how to capitalise and just make money as the end goal of art, I’ve been worried about it for a while. I’m going to

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do something about it…. to change, I’m going to introduce a course’. Rodney Glick 199412

The ‘garden project’ was introduced by Rodney into the Art School ‘drawing’ program where various layouts and annual crop rotations were designed and discussed and then put into practice and constructed in the ‘sculpture’ classes.

The pair’s pragmatic garden contribution was intended to show how to plant a growing thing and teach the ideas of something directly useful as well as how to nurture something. The garden still continues today.

Permaculture Garden 1994-1997, Rodney Glick & Gina Griffiths

ERNST ELLEMUNTER Perth, Western Australia ‘The Veggie Van’, 2000

In Perth 2000, at Galerie Düsseldorf, Swiss migrant, Ernst Ellemunter directly exhibited the vehicle and services provided by his everyday job as a fruit and vegetable seller.

Ellemunter turned up every Saturday for three weeks at the gallery, and proceeded to sell his organic vegies to people who turned up. The inclusion of the van transported and unchanged within the exhibition space reflects a decision to no longer follow a traditionally pre-determined logic of exhibition making. Audiences also encountered the artist in a very different light as to what they were accustomed.

Ellemunter did not intend to achieve a disruption, as the work was not explicitly oppositional to the gallery system. Instead the project focused directly on our more mundane social processes such as shopping and

12 Rodney Glick in conversation with the Author 1994

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the cultural expectations of exhibition making, as well as continue to make money for Ernst selling his vegetables while exhibiting.

Anne Hawkes’s car as exhibited in 1983 was part of a larger exhibition that included things far more commonly accepted as art objects. This juxtapositioning element is instrumental in understanding the polemics in each work.

In Ellemunter’s work both the intervention and the readymade are used – combined in order to draw attention to broader areas of cultural production, which existed outside the art world in order to realise the value and economies at work behind creative practices perhaps made by people who did not see themselves as artists. Similar to Hawkes this contribution stands as an early example of the transformation of art making precepts and the presence of Pragmatism.

In doing the above project Ellemunter highlighted his own daily struggle and the economy behind the means by which he funded any production of his art and the fact that he was inextricably linked to this daily reality.

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Veggie Van 2000, Ernst Ellemunter

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SUPERFLEX

Superflex (www.superflex.net) is a Danish interdisciplinary collective of three artists, who work predominantly with fields outside of the visual arts. They challenge institutions such as global aid organisations and the unquestioned autonomy of arts role as a vital cultural practice.

By working extremely pragmatically, they resolve problems through the invention of design solutions to maximise the potential of communication, humanitarian, ecological and socially degraded systems.

‘Biogas’ (1997) looks at the implementation of self-sufficiency and maximises wasted energy. Through collaboration with a Danish engineer and the co-operation of the Tanzanian foundation for sustainable rural development, they designed the Biogas chamber, to produce fuel for cooking and to produce light in developing countries. The Biogas unit was marketed so that it was affordable to most African farmers, and could be exchanged for a cow or two. Superflex were mindful in locating the Biogas system in a way that placed it within high social regard, and advertised using posters with cartoon images and the language of local area in which it was developed.

In a highly functional way, the Biogas system equals a concrete form of aid, and system which slots directly into the bartering economy used by the Tanzanian farmers. Superflex critique the actual assistance provided to third world economies from institutions like UNESCO by focusing on what they observed to be the more essential and pressing demands of implementing hybrid systems that can function and co-exist with endemic economies and individual social desires.

‘Superchannel’ (1996) is an ongoing Superflex communication project. Provided (via the internet, web cam and live streaming) different groups in society a chance to discuss issues and communicate. Superchannel functions essentially like a radio station and is predominantly set up in places where immigrant or senior citizens live, giving people regarded as somewhat outside society a voice and access to a large communication network. Superchannel that began as a project in Coronation Court – (Liverpool's oldest tower block) revealed what is was actually like to live in a modernist housing estate, which at the time of construction in the 1970s was canonised as a perfect, modern utopian situation for individual living.

The flats had become undervalued by shifts in real estate markets and had become degraded and disregarded by local councils and were due for refurbishment.

Superchannel gave a voice to the present day inhabitants of the flats who were able to truly reveal the depressive and horrible situation of what it was like to live in the dingy depressive and decaying flats, the

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Superchannel project also provide a means for neighbours inside the flats to meet and share stories and thereby begin to create a larger more closely knit sense of community where there was no one previously.

One can see how there is a direct link to social arts practices in these pragmatic works by Superflex. What is also achieved is a display of an aesthetic that is wholly governed by its practical usage and nothing more.

Superflex, Superchannel 1996,

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Biogas In Africa 1997, Superflex

N55 www.n55.dk

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Working with issues of trying to establish a relation between the art object and the functions of contemporary everyday life, the Danish art and design collective N55 13 (who reference Buckminster Fuller as an influence) are working pragmatically to construct objects that have ethical as well as practical and aesthetic consequences.

Works they have made in their loosely titled ‘Art and Life’ Series, include the large modular 4.5 tonne ‘Space Frame’ living unit for three to four people, a ‘Hygiene System’ (1997), a stackable interlocking toilet and bathing system, which recycles water. A ‘Clean Air Machine’ (1997), designed for small inner city flats, filters pollutants from architectural interiors. A ‘Home Hydroponic Unit’ (1997), which is an easily maintained indoor greenhouse designed in the form of shelf units. The unit is designed for year round pollutant free vegetables and herbs.

The group, which comprises four artists who met in Copenhagen, work with engineers architects and technicians from differing fields in order to realise and produce their projects. Their own home is where they test their ideas and also doubles as a gallery to launch their projects. Their political stance is to ‘sustain by means of existing in as small a space as possible with the smallest concentrations of power possible’. The group try to avoid the struggles for supremacy that they find exist in large concentrations of power; including the art world.

The construction of this alternative system of living corresponds with modernist notions that everyday objects can influence thought patterns and behavioural patterns and thereby affect the way in which we treat each other and the world at large.

In the way they live together and develop ideas, they critique current living conditions laid out by programs, which they see as set up to limit individuality and our connection to environmental concerns. They see living and art production as a dynamic process that should lead us to continually circumvent economic limitations and resist the separation of our work and social lives. The group believe that our current capitalist way of living is the foundation of our inability to recognise and support difference and the consequences of one’s own daily actions.

In Utrecht Holland, at a press conference in 1999, I ask them if they are aware of ‘Permaculture’ and the ideas of Bill Mollinson that were developed in the late 1970s in Australia. They interestingly and to my surprise, have not heard of Permaculture or Mollinson. This indicates to me that information from Australia is vitally lacking in the international scene.

13 N55, as of November 2000, are Jon Sorvin, Rikke Luther, Cecile Wendt and Ingvil Aerbakke.

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Spaceframe 1996, N55

Home Hydroponic Unit 1997, N55

Hygiene System 1997, N55

EN ROUTE, Tilburg Amsterdam route 1999. ATELIER VAN LEISHOUT

Whilst on a train from Amsterdam to Tilburg, I notice the design influence of Dutch industrial aesthetics on the work of Joep van Lieshout, one of Holland's most noticeable up and coming contemporary hybrid artist/designers. I can locate an aesthetic throughout the work of Lieshout from the mundane sliding doors on the carriage of a train. It is not just pastiche in this case, but practical design solutions in Lieshout’s world. Widely available, hand based (as opposed to machine

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based) cheap pre-existing production techniques and materials are used for some of the modular living spaces fabricated at the Lieshout atelier.

The materials and forms are similar to that of the train carriage (durable, lightweight etc), but what is happening here is not simply a graphic description but a direct utilisation of a problem already solved and perfect for another use.

The practical necessity in maximising the use of small architectural spaces found throughout Holland is employed to its extreme in the manufacture of personalised and low maintenance living spaces. It is accessed directly via a published Lieshout manual, which informs an audience as to the necessary tools, materials and construction techniques required to live a life affordably and alternatively to the brick and tile set.

There are no secrets of technique here. All processes are given over, should you desire a different and more hands-on architectural standard for living. Everything is largely lightweight and portable and can be made through the use of the manual. There are instructions for shelving, stove design, sinks, tables and chairs here. One can even learn personalised livestock butchering techniques and storage as well as general preserving and pickling techniques, should the mood take you.

Lieshout parallels capitalist modular production techniques through his architectural solutions and indicates a new do-it-yourself style utopia. His work and philosophy are born of a dystopian view of the failings of static modern in affordable architecture and design. He indicates no interest in the question of differences between artists and designers. It is an irrelevance for Lieshout.

His exhibitions show his tools, vehicles, distilleries, furniture, bedding and even his own weapons armoury that he has developed and intends to use for his own protection against the state, as he predicts that his attempt for full autonomy will not go down well.

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I find out from asking questions around Amsterdam, that the Atelier van Lieshout in Rotterdam is often visited by police who often confiscate many of Lieshout’s products. Lieshout is questioning and construction his own freedom and means of living ‘off the grid’ as it were. He produces his own electricity and is rumoured to be printing his own currency.

AVL Ville 1999, Atelier van Lieshout

Three Septic Tanks and filters 2001, AVL Clip on architectures 1997, AVL

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Self-composting toilet, 2000, AVL Pilgrim Chicken Coop, 2001, AVL

A manual, Pork Processing 2000, AVL

Clip on architectures 2002, AVL Shelf for Preserves 1998, AVL

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AVL Ville Flyer 2002, Atelier van Lieshout

Construction Manual 2000, AVL Mortars 1996, AVL

Study skull 1996, AVL Mobile shelter for Kröller Müller 1996, AVL

EN ROUTE: Artspace, Sydney Biennale (AVL) 2002 HERMANUS DE JONGH - Circumvention

Hermanus De Jongh, an original founding member of the Dutch Atelier Van Lieshout group is in Sydney to install the work Still for the 2002 Biennale. I have made it my business to be working on the installation of this work.

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Hermanus doesn’t care too much about the presentation of the piece as long as it looks ‘rough and ready’ he says with a grin. He also states that it’s a real pity that the still (which is a distillery for alcohol made from fermenting pig food) is not working, due to the delay on the part of the Biennale, in receiving an Australian brewing license. He wants the work to demonstrate that it is possible to produce perfectly fine alcohol from the most unusual and cheap means.

He declares that the majority of good quality wines are all achieved with additive colours and flavours; the basic recipe is the same. He wants to undermine this over capitalised industry with do-it-yourself initiative.

He grins a lot, and tells stories of police visitations and confiscations of items of weaponry produced at the atelier’s growing communal village in Rotterdam. On the whole the authorities are pretty tolerant “They just like to let us know that they are there” 14 says Hermanus. As one of the original founders of the AVL, by now he knows all the ways around legislation in his home country. He is highly pragmatic in his approach to the atelier’s work production stating, ‘It is now a company with directors and a workforce, but it has to be fun, crucially you have to have fun, it’s political fun’.15

He explains the backgrounds to most of the people working at the atelier. They comprise of mechanics, farmers, art students, failed architects, nurses and also many people who just want to do something else for a while, get away and explore and live in a different way.

‘People are getting sick of the conditioning and the way of normal city life, It’s pretty bleak and impersonal. It’s also great to be fully in control of your life, produce your own power, grow your own food and be

14 Hermanus De Jongh in conversation with the Author, Artspace Sydney 2002 15 ibid, Sydney 2002.

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always involved in all processes of living.” he says, “but even in a democracy.. You have to defend it’16

The Good the Bad and the ugly (Alcohol still) 1998, AVL

Pistolette, 1995 AVL

DROOG Design - www.droogdesign.nl Design Interactive

An innovative Dutch design collective, formed in 1993 in Amsterdam 17. Initially set up to expand the statement on what design could be and do, it has developed by creating innovative concepts that change perspectives on the use of materials and the very mentality of designing.

‘Our products and projects connect with the individual, the user. They deal with slowness, memories,

16 Hermanus De Jongh in conversation with the Author, Artspace Sydney 2002 17 The designers involved comprised of: Jurgen Bey, Martí Quixé, Dick van Hoff, Dinie Besems, Radi Designers, Thomas Widdershoven, Peter van der Jagt, Frank Tjepkema, Thomas Bernstrand, Dawn Finley, Marijn van der Poll

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nostalgia, re-use, craftsmanship, nature. They generate experience, interaction, participation, products that are easy to comprehend, have meaning, tell stories; products that are meant to be cherished and not discarded without thought’. 18

The core of their work takes place in what they call the Droog Lab. In this lab the collective expand and contract in order to collaborate with a broad variety of designers, and with enlightened partners and clients, manufacturers and projects.

‘Within Droog, Cutting edge designers from all over the world can experiment with new concepts, new materials and new techniques but also with age-old craft methods. They keep our brand fresh and vital’. 19

In 1999, Droog along with another design firm Kessels and Kramer decided to attempt to create an empty brand, that they termed ‘Do Create’ (1999). Droog proposed that several designers were to work on the range and that all the products were designed specifically with the idea of direct action and participation.

‘Do hit’, 2000, by Marijn van der Poll, was a creation comprising of a sealed 1meter square steel cube that came supplied with a 6lb sledgehammer. The instructions were that the user buyer was to make their own seat by forming and bashing the cube into whatever shape or form they wanted, and get a bit of exercise too! ‘Do Break’, (2000) by Peter van de Jagt and Frank Tjeptema was a ceramic vase, that was coated inside and out with latex rubber. The designers envisaged a series of ornaments and vessels that were up to withstanding the real up and downs of domestic situations. The press image depicted a yelling woman, with the vase raised above her head ready to throw it across the room. The vase of course, was designed not to break. It would smash, but all the pieces and the form of the vase would remain intact. This way objects could be thrown as necessary to requirements and the owners would never loose or destroy them.

The products in the ‘do’ series are meant to force users to put their personal mark on them. They were all initially shown together in Spazio La Posteria, Milan, Italy, 1999-2000, with large photographs showing the context and the users after they had done their design duties.

Early works from Droog included an iconic recycled ‘rag chair’ by designer Tejo Remy 1991/93. The chair was made only of tightly bundled and bailed rags, that were layered, bound together and tied with strapping. Tejo Remy also created the ‘Drawer set’, 1991/1993 which was made from twenty old drawers he had collected of various sizes, ages and styles. He simply constructed simple plywood boxes around each drawer and then bound them together in a stack, again tied with strapping.

18 www.droogdesign.nl 19 op.cit, as above

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The ‘rag chair’ of Remy’s seems also to be a direct descendant of Frank O Gehry’s ‘Little Beaver’ armchair and ottoman from 1980, which, was made entirely of layers of corrugated cardboard. The rag chair extends the idea of using and recycling materials that are generally considered as waste. There is also a beautiful disruption in displaying the cheapest, scrappiest and lowliest of materials which can all be used to make high end influential and vital designs, that deal with current ecological concerns and issues of reuse and dealing with our waste, pragmatically and creatively.

Do Hit, 2000, Droog Do Break, 2000, Droog

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Do drawers, 1991/93, Droog Do chair, 1991/93, Droog

JENS HAANING Migration Politics

Danish artist Jens Haaning underscores that aesthetics is about people not objects. Haaning replaces the artwork with a set of active relations. He attacks the elaborate program of established aesthetics with exchanges and direct confrontations both inside and outside gallery spaces.

He talks of the ‘art of belonging’ and the way in which people and objects are related and accepted. He talks of the Internet as a means of being ‘alone together with other people’.

Borders are also a recurring issue in Haaning’s work. He has a concern for the people not represented in the normal fields of culture (migrants), and aims to expand and eradicate the borders that exist in the dominant systems of representation. Haaning states his ‘problems’ with art begin with its position in

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society, in Western Europe where he works. Art here is dominated by “white upper class rich people who

believe they are in charge of the world”. 20

He is interested in ideas of re-distribution. The redistribution of wealth, materials, economies and aesthetics are what Haaning indicates his main drives are. He also believes that we should all take an interest in the way our laws and conventions are created and upheld. In establishing ‘confrontations’ and actions, questions are raised that challenge the role of art and art institutions.

‘I like to put up models for self liberation and self reflection. I think we should question the structures we live in’ 21

Haaning exploits the autonomy of the artwork and institutional situation, only to debase and destroy its assumed authority. He cites where Emmanuel Kant22 set out in 1790, (‘The critique of judgement’), to prove that people can create a community, not by voting, nor by speaking the same language, but by simply judging beauty. Kant elaborates that beauty has no concept and no specific definition, but can give rise to particular forms of pleasure. The individual enjoys the presentation of beauty, as there may be a personal interest, or practical use in it.

This personal dimension taints objectivity and clouds the universality of an individual’s pleasure. Aesthetic presentations then, can never be truly universally beautiful. They can only ever remain ‘agreeable’.

Once of the conditions of beauty have been met the individual feels they can claim the right to require the same standards and pleasures from everyone in the social field and thereby claim universality. In this universality it is assumed by the individual, that all others share the same aesthetic judgements as them. Beauty then worryingly becomes thought of as the exclusive property of a ‘universal’ community. Much of the world and its institutions are built on these unquestioned principles. This accounts for the resistance to ‘difference’ and by extension the spread of xenophobia. As Haaning points out, not everyone agrees with the uniformity, and the community begins to lose it’s universality.

20 Hello my name is Jens Haaning, Les Presses du Reel, France + D.A.P distributed art publishers, Ins, New York. Edited Vincent Pecoil and Jens Haaning, 2003. 21 Ibid 2003 22 Immanuel Kant (1724 -1804) German/Prussian Enlightenment Philosopher. It is said that the appearance of his text ‘The Critique of Pure Reason’ (1781), marks the beginning of modern European philosophy. His practical ideas, such as the ‘Categorical Imperative and its implications’ (1785), informed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Political and Economic Covenants (1966), and the International Criminal Court (2002).

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One the works Haaning gained notoriety for was his Weapon Production (1995). In a Copenhagen Gallery space, he organised a production site for the manufacture of street weapons such as pipe bombs, slingshots, cable batons and other deadly ‘everyday’ weapons as used by immigrant street gangs in Copenhagen. The gallery was turned into a factory where viewers could engage fairly intimately or watch the immigrants produce what they had produced many times before in their daily lives.

The weapons represented the actual face of leading a life of ‘survival’ in a cultural system of racial and political intolerance.

In another work ‘Middleburg factory’ (1996) Haaning transposed a whole Turkish owned clothing factory into a Dutch Gallery. The exhibition included the workshop production area, offices and lunchroom. The workers were all Turkish, Bosnian and Iranian migrants and refugees. Throughout the show the factory continued with its normal production of towels, bedclothes and summer dresses. Haaning describes the work as an ‘exhibition of strangers’. The idea was to give cultural visibility to ‘foreigners’ and to reveal how they were positioned and exploited while we as consumers went about our business blissfully unaware. Haaning could find no way to communicate this idea with normal traditional artistic systems. Artistic spaces and methods for Haaning always equal low impact, false and artificial representational activity.

In ‘Super Discount’ (1998) Haaning set up a garage sale style supermarket at the Fri-Art gallery, Fribourg, Switzerland. He purchased goods in France, which he got taxed at the border between France and Switzerland and then drove to the gallery in Fribourg and established his own supermarket.

Having already used some of his artist’s fee to pay taxes on the goods at the border, Haanings Supermarket made it possible for the visitors of the exhibition to shop at 35% cheaper than in normal Swiss Supermarkets, providing Super discount.

The project exploited the absurd warring trade zones between countries so close to one another and provided benefit to the thrifty and less well off people in Fribourg. Goods on offer comprised Pasta, cleaning products, biscuits, coffee, canned food, pet food, cheeses, cakes, olives, gin, flour and even coconuts.

In 2002 Haaning proceeded to make ‘The Refugee Calendar’. This work gave thought and representation to asylum seekers living in Tempere, Finland. The refugees were all awaiting the outcomes of their asylum and citizenship applications.

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For the 2004 Sydney Biennale in Australia, Haaning continued his exchange projects by swapping 200 chairs from the Museum of Contemporary Arts (MCA) quayside café with those of another café in a Vietnamese harbour town. ‘The chair exchange’ (2004) literally prompted ideas of protectionism, and by metaphor and actual physical displacement the project illustrated the resistance to immigrant influx. The exchange raised aesthetic and implicitly economic fears for the MCA café owners, in that the café proprietor was resistant to having his expensive chairs even momentarily exchanged with ‘cheaper’ Vietnamese ones. The owner’s logic was that it would influence café customers and cause embarrassment. This very zone of anxiety, leading up to an exchange ‘deal’ is what Haaning enjoys.

The Vietnamese café side of the deal were excited to have the slick Sydney chairs as it symbolised the ‘wealthy west’ and the ‘modern look’. By forcing the two economies and cultural aesthetics together, the project created a situation, which aimed to shift the viewers attention (and all the various organisers involved) from the objects themselves to the biases and contextual frameworks in which the exchange was created.

Haaning emphasised that the normal processes of economic exchange can usually erase or cut us off from certain dimensions of reality. All the people that were stressed by the exchange situation became a huge part of the project. The Chair Exchange highlighted the xenophobia and protectionism inherent in the system, which is also guilty of upholding exclusivity and intolerance.

Visitors to both MCA and Vietnamese cafés were made aware of the exchange by the simple stylistic displacement of the chairs and also through a menu style flyer, situated on the café tables in both countries.

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Sydney -Thailand Chair Exchange 2004 Jens Hanning

Refugee calendar 2002 Jens Hanning

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Middleburg Summer 1996, Jens Hanning Weapon Production 1995, Jens Haaning

Flag Production 1996 Jens Hanning

Tangible reality is what matters today. All the elements that make up, and continually reproduce systems of limiting philosophical and aesthetic governance are under question. The pragmatic artist is concerned with pointing out system failures, (As seen in Gustav Metzger’s destruction art). More recently in 1998- 2000, Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, secretly poured huge quantities of harmless green food colouring into rivers in Bremen Germany, Los Angeles and in Stockholm Sweden to horrify locals. The project overtly highlighted the mis-use and lack of monitoring that so often slips ‘under the radar’ and causes environmental devastation. He has since repeated this project to great effect in various countries.

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Green River 1998, Olafur Eliasson

The Interstice The growing and burning question in contemporary pragmatic art is: What in fact ‘are’ we doing? Is it necessary to change the objects around us? Or must we first transform the human relations that fix and produce our daily lives? What are we actually working on and produce in our studio’s, workplaces, factories, shops, institutions and offices? The role of art being able to accurately implement systems and forms that are of direct use and application within our ideological systems, is of considerable importance when reflecting on our current and previous social, technological and aesthetic formations.

Karl Marx identified these sites as ‘interstices’; these are places or sites of production that are isolated from the broader field of production and the broader normative social context. Interstices are places that are free from normal market relations. These places do not function in the same way as more pedestrian places, yet little by little they can be contaminated incrementally in the broader social context.

Marcel Duchamp described a similar phenomenon of change.23 He described the moment where things changed or transferred meaning as very finite. He referred to it as the infra thin. He talked of it in terms of a two way material like a gauze or nylon skin or velum which is punctured, ruptured, absorbed or passed through, the infra thin also covered things in an opaque or translucent way, tinting, packaging, enveloping them imbuing them with meaning. The infra-thin for Duchamp is a very fine moment in meaning where one thing can come to mean something else, due to subtle changes or contextual shifts. ‘Good artists’ for Marcel Duchamp were the experts in detecting, moving and articulating these infra-thin meaning shifts.

23 Marcel Duchamp, Artist of the Century, edited by Rudolf Kuenzli and Francis M Nauman, MIT press 1989

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The relevance of the above is that contemporary relational and pragmatic art employs ideas of fine contextual and meaning shifts in the same way. It is an interstice, producing social models, which are sometimes capable and able to contaminate and infuse openly into society. Yet inversely, if the artistic model is inefficient at communicating and socially in need of change, the art will be infused and informed by the greater mass of social relations. It is a sort of process that develops through methods of social accretion.

The contemporary pragmatic artist today collates these social accretions and focuses on building their best actual forms. The intersections ‘between’ people and the externally constructed world is the zone of study. Peoples ideas, unquestioned beliefs, social codes and aesthetic norms, are seen as the items in need of creative highlighting. The pragmatic artist wishes to question anything that they perceive as closed, limiting and non-holistic. They question what governs and controls our consumer everyday realities in order to provide a hopefully more balanced society. The generous pragmatic artist through the choice of form, design and action creates greater intersections between people toward the forming of new broader and more inclusive subjectivisations.

Context and Freedom This type of contemporary artwork is highly attentive to its freedom of movement. It is more inclined to make new structures rather than move directly into older existing ones. Art creation has cut itself some slack since the early 1990s. Marginality has been a necessary key feature as it differentiates and critiques more standardised means of art production and exhibition. Yet, the notion of the artistic periphery as cherished by any avant-garde, is no longer uniformly understood as the point from which to go forward and restructure any valuable challenge. Peripheries are now recognised for their very limitations, they are no good to anyone, unless they are now fully engaged with the larger system. Part of the artist’s role now is to re-engage and reintroduce certain peripheries into the larger context.

Context is the very fulcrum and keyword for relational art’s greatest trajectory. Change will occur through osmosis, as one context flows into the next. The peripheral aspects of relational art infuse the common system and work rhizomatically to infect and revitalise the larger system with a new pragmatic and actual vitality.

The concern for function is anything but minor in this work. This concern represents a dynamic hope in the potential for real impact through art to occur. Under this operability experience is not thought of as an idiosyncratic, individual or subjective affair. Instead, it is considered as coextensive and aligned with more common mass thoughts and feelings. Common experience infuses this art with its sense of order. Common experience assures a certain clarity of communication. We can see in the works of many of these artists asserted throughout this text, that the forms they use, directly reflect and mirror the world around them.

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For example, artists such as my self, Matthieu Laurette, Swetlana Heger and Plamen Dejanov and Jens Haaning.

What then happens when art becomes totally non-representational? As seen with Gordon Matta-Clark, Joep Van Lieshout, Matthieu Laurette, Andrea Zittel, Anne Hawkes, and Ernst Ellemunter? Art in this sense begins to exercise an order, which implements something actual and not symbolic into the real. It is not a reflection, or a companion of the real, but it is of the very same material order as the real. It is ‘less’ symbolic, and leads by concrete example and not by symbolism alone. The only symbolic aspect to this type of work is the attitude and the behaviour adopted by the artists.

When we choose to isolate elements into a gallery exhibition context, we elevate, as well as isolate the complexities of materials, ideas and forms in order that we can contemplate the languages embodied in art. The linking devices that operate in relational art and pragmatic art form a discourse with the tangible world outside, as well as bring the outside world again into discourse with the fixed histrionics of acceptable artistic behaviour and established lines of aesthetic production. These established lines of production are continually engendered within didactic gallery and institutional precepts through which art is generally shown and discussed. These precepts continually reaffirm and perpetuate a clean, tidy, untouchable, white, dust free and well behaved stasis, that makes art seem very sheltered and often anaemic in both content and appearance. These formal standards of ‘art’ ultimately declare and ramify a situation of static conclusion to be ‘viewed’, over a situation of dynamic progressive involvement to be ‘experienced’.

The rejection of formalism The successful embodiment of pragmatic projects, will insist that art move beyond mere representation and take on the real substance of the world ‘head on’. If it must conservatively remain representational then at least it must abandon the idea of the simulacrum24 and the flimsy copying of the world outside and begin to construct a new reality for itself, beyond the representative. It may hopefully build a reality that is no longer based in romantic symbols and structured upon old classical formal concerns. A rejection of this formalism will also indicate the rejection of any artifice. EN ROUTE Sydney 2005 Reading an email from Matthieu laurette.

24 A Latin term used to describe likeness and similarity. It is first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century as used to describe a representation of another thing, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god. French sociologist Jean Baudrillard argued in Simulacra and Simulation (1981), that it is in fact not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right

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The French artist Raymond Hains25 (currently working with Matthieu) said of his works that they existed in the natural state, in a real space, but that prior to ‘extracting’ them from it, no one seems to have taken any pains to ‘see’ them or ‘notice’ them.

Spreading, Fusing, Blending and Expansion

In talking of reality, what exactly are we talking about? Modern art was painstaking in creating its own sites, outlining its manifestos, placing its forms and creating its museums. In the art of the latter end of this century and the beginning of the 21st century there is an aesthetic of contact rather than contract. It is

25 French Artist b1926, Known for his abstract photography using mirrors and deformed misshaped glass. In 1950 he invented the concept of the "Ultra-lettre" and devoted himself to his lettres éclatées (shattered letters). Hains was largely catagorised as a neo Dadaist, and worked predominantly with collage and assemblage.

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suddenly as if art became adrift, no longer having any real place to settle. Yet in the drift and migration from its familiar conventions, ‘shared reality’ became the elected place for real growth to reoccur.

To re-iterate ‘A Thousand Plateaus’ (Gilles Delueuze and Félix Guattari 1981). This book rendered reality as a poly-dimensional situation, a real state of multidirectional facets. Reality was made up of infinite fragments, rhizomes, infinitely reticular sections, images and meanings, which were at once liberated by private drives and subjectivities then simultaneously structured and reconfigured. A Thousand Plateaus26 illustrated how meaning was no longer simply a stationary and stable situation.27 This description functions very well and efficiently for better open structuring of extensive fields of reference. Such as the subjectivities so essential in the understanding of arts philosophy and its production. It is also key, when thinking of complex bodies of knowledge, that are not necessarily straightforward and logical.

The Role of Performative Action and Involvement The contemporary pragmatic artist, who engages in performative elements today, prefers to be seen as just another element in the work. ‘Performance’ for performances sake, as a genre unto itself has been abandoned. It exists now more as a form of Gonzo28 like participation.

Performance in the minds of a new generation of artists is seen to generally loop back to the performer and only the performer’s existential subjectivity. This viewed as overly subjective, and dysfunctionally introspective. Why role play and ‘represent’? when one can actually ‘do’.

26 A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia 1981, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. University of Minnesota Press. 27 To test this, I read the Introductory Rhizome chapter six times throughout one year – and picked up different meanings and links every time 28 ‘Gonzo’ is a style of journalism developed by the American writer Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005) and the British artist illustrator Ralph Steadman (b1936). He popularized term as form of ‘direct participation’ in the story one was telling. It uses personal experiences to provide a clarity of context for any topic being covered. Thompson famously joined the Hells Angels in California in order to write from a more direct perspective. The term and style has been adopted as a Pragmatic research methodology by reporters ever since. It has also been applied to more gritty artistic endeavors, and even referenced as a form of ‘reckless abandon in seeking an edge’. The term has gained currency in photojournalistic and pornographic circles, to describe the ‘direct key involvement’ and participation of the camera person in the acts they are filming.

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MATTHIEU LAURETTE

In the projects gathered and evidenced here Matthieu Laurette questions the fetishisation of value. Through his work he devolves and points out conditions of passivity that prevail in consumer society. He is one of the most directly engaged pragmatic artists that continues and expands the legacy of Guy Debord and the Situationists, as realised in this direct form of interventionist art.

In his project ‘El gran Trueque’ - ‘The Great Exchange’ (2000), the French artist Matthieu Laurette uses advertising rhetoric, television formats and marketing strategies to interrogate some of the economic mechanisms prevalent in culture. Laurette's Great Exchange began with the artist using his entire work production budget to invest in a new two door Fiat car. The project is best described as the subversion and reversal of a capitalist game show, played out in the every common arena (TV) where capitalist structures reaffirm their presence. On purchasing the car, Laurette set about the promotion of his ‘exchange,’ through the Spanish media. He secured a slot on a television station in Bilbao, and began searching for ‘contestants’. The TV show provided the ideal context for the ‘Great Exchange’ to take place. The game

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consisted of a process whereby the audience and contestants, were freely invited to propose an item for exchange each week with the highest monetary value that they guessed was closest to the car. Once selected the car was ‘given’ away and replaced with the next object of highest value, and so forth in descending orders of value until the exchange had reduced all the way down to a set of Dutch liquor glasses.

Laurette's other projects involve his strategies of gaining greater exposure in new contexts for art practice. In Applause (1998-2000) Matthieu actively sought to appear on French TV shows, ‘Blind date’ and ‘Applause’- a public voting show on popularity. On Blind date he talked of being a ‘multi-media artist’ and began to introduce Guy Debord’s theory of the society of the spectacle. On the ‘Applause’ show he attempted to win prizes for maintaining the interest of an audience through discussing his life as an artist. He was winning for a short while, until he was eventually overthrown from first place by an environmental scientist.

In his ‘Freebie King’ project, he also survived for a year - exclusively on food products with money back guarantees. He ate food readily available from large supermarkets and then declared it to be less than 100 percent satisfied. Writing a stream of letters to various food companies he secured a mass of reimbursements. Laurette survived and highlighted the perpetual motion of contemporary capitalism, locating disruptive loops and points of profound irony.

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El Gran Trueque / The great exchange 2000, Matthieu Laurette

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The Freebie King 2000, Matthieu Laurette

EN ROUTE: Perth, Western Australia and Sydney, New South Wales 2002 Apparitions and Look-alikes

We have finally got Matthieu Laurette to Australia during the Perth International Arts Festival (Western Australia). He is exhibiting ‘Apparitions’ and ‘Look-alikes’ at two venues 29. One work is about notions of artists visibility in the media; copyright issues of one’s own appearances and notions of the everyday as grand TV spectacle. The other work looks at ideas of celebrity and the bizarre activities of people who go to great lengths to emulate people’s looks and personalities. At the ‘look-alikes’ exhibition opening we laugh at the

29 Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) Déjà Vu: The 3rd International Look-alike Convention at, Australia, Jan 25, 2002, and John Curtin Gallery The Spectacle is not over and Apparitions27 January - 24 March 2002

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surprisingly intoxicated Elvis, an astounding Billy Connolly and a very still and demure lady Diana. There are many people who do not look like any one else at all, yet they have put themselves forward. Matthieu says,

‘It’s always interesting, to read a culture through the aspirations of its look-alikes, not many people seem to bother looking like well known intellectuals or politicians, its always the celebrities and the more glamorous and ridiculous they are - more people want to be them and try to look like them, its really disturbing’ 30

During a week’s visit to Sydney, Matthieu talks about the personal expense involved in his being selected to represent France for the 2002 Venice Biennale.

‘Now that I have shown at Venice, the pressure to produce actual art objects and versions of my works is great. Every one wants the same things to show, multiples always!’ 31

The commercial pressures of the art market are becoming problematic for Matthieu’s practice.

EN ROUTE Sydney 2002 Matthieu’s Jeans

M is staying with us for a few days. Over breakfast, he tells me of the pressure he is feeling to produce objects for the market since he did Venice. He is still in debt from the travel back and forth to organise his pavilion. He has been requested to produce a series of three of the same works so he can make some sales for his gallery. “I am not an object maker” he says. He has had fun learning how to cast his own face for a model, but he is uneasy about the direction this may take his practice.

30 Matthieu Laurette in conversation with the author, Perth Institute for Contemporary arts 2002 31 M. L. in conversation with the author, Perth Institute for Contemporary arts 2002

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While in Sydney he sees some new jeans, which are the same kind as the ones he had to put on one of his sculptures (The freebie king). ‘I had to part with two of my favourite items of clothing, a top and some jeans, so that the work would really look like me, you know. I thought the sculpture should really wear my everyday clothes, yet ever since the work has been exhibited I have really missed the clothes which I used, they were my favourite two items, and now that the original work has been sold, I can’t really get my clothes back as I had hoped’.

Excitedly he tries on and purchases the new jeans, happy to have finally found a replacement.

The Freebie King (with jeans) 2001, M Laurette EN ROUTE, Sydney 2002 Matthieu’s condition of the spectacle

Showing Matthieu around Sydney I finally located a copy of Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, on Oxford St. Originally published in1967. Matthieu states that it is a main text for his recent works.

The book consists of rabid and vitriolic theorisings. It is structured with numbered paragraphs, and reads as constant flow, with only key headings. It is a running text. A model of writing that I think very usable and alive.

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The spectacle 32 as described by Debord is fundamentally the dominant force, which now controls our society. Basically everything is structured around the idea and actualisation of continuos spectacles. These ‘spectacles’ are arranged and dictated by communications media, advertising, film, political parties, industries and governments.

It is fundamentally about how we can no longer have genuine direct experiences within capitalism. We are doomed to inevitably experience the world through others, who are directed - predominantly by capitalist forces, to live out, and act out various scenarios, that are in many ways pre-programmed, like screen plays…

What Debord posits above all, is the need to get angry. If you are not satisfied with the world in its current form. Get angry, mobilise, and do something about it.

Matthieu’s ‘take’ on the desire to live out the spectacle scenario, is located humorously and disturbingly, in his series of ongoing look a like, conventions, which he organises in various cities in the world. Matthieu says that, he sees the people who are engaged in these behaviours as having serious mental disorders, as many of the people he meets to interview to take part in his exhibitions, do not actually resemble the people they ‘think’ they look like. Some of them ‘are really terrible’ he says. They come from agencies or via word of mouth. Some of them have partial careers as doubles or impersonators. ‘Some just genuinely do look like the celebrities they try to mimic, they can’t help it. It can be uncanny’ he says.

‘What is also important is that o one comes along and says look, I am the double of the hairdresser down the road, come and check it out - For these people it means something, to assume the guise of a celebrity. The bad ones have a real condition’ he says.

32 The work is a series of two hundred and twenty-one short theses of approx a paragraph each. Debord traces the development of a modern society in which authentic social life has been replaced with its representation. He argues the history of social life can be understood as a decline of being into a state of having and ownership. This condition as he saw it, is the historic moment at which the commodity completes its ‘colonization’ of all of our social and private lives.

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This condition is Spectacularisation. Matthieu thinks ‘spectacularisation’ is a real mental illness. It is the true form of the spectacle, its actual condition manifested.

‘Even the lookalikes have agents, just like actors. It’s really interesting’.33

We discuss that no-one seems to want to lead their own original life anymore, and speculate that even this may no longer be possible. By extension this idea of living ‘via association’ may even account for why there is so much repetition of forms in more traditional art also. Perhaps every one is trying to do the same thing to have the same experiences?

33 See Matthieu laurette’s, The spectacle is not over, Apparitions and Déjà vu, Look a likes projects. www.laurette.net

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Déjà vu 2000, M Laurette Today Show NBC, Apparitions 2005, M. Laurette

Applause 1998-2000, M. Laurette Apparitions: Looks Familiar 2003, M. Laurette

SITE: Variable spaces I have found from my own practice that both the street and the gallery contexts are equal in terms of their possibility of exchange. These exchanges simply happen at different speeds. In a gallery, one exhibits under an agreed ‘allowance’ and contract into which a spectator/ viewer willingly arrives.

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On the street one is more likely to engage interactions as brief exchanges, and passing random encounters. People are less likely to be relaxed or willing to engage with interactions on the street, when they occur however they can be are much more heated and direct than one finds in the gallery. The street, is a situation of flux. It is considered more a space for rapid or immediate transactions. The street is considered a place for rapid transience and short journeys. The mere physical presence of an ‘anomaly’ in the everyday street context is a useful form of exhibition. As I have noticed when driving my Carrier vehicle and Trailer Garden - the very presence of art can reach many people and turn heads as they wonder. The obvious presence of these do-it-yourself projects has lead to many enquiries and discussions from interested individuals.

I have aimed and developed in my own artistic to work and functions equally and effectively in both situations. Pragmatic art, to better itself, should be tested in the street and out in the world wherever possible.

Critical form and anti-aesthetic Relational and Pragmatic art work is often criticised as being undisciplined and technically adrift. What is actually going on is that a number of ever-increasing locations in which to operate are being established. and by extension aesthetic notions are being expanded. I must make clear that the artist I include, and that crossflow evidentially through this thesis, are not driven by an ‘anti aesthetic’ but by an aesthetic wholly driven by the forms readily present in our everyday culture.

EN ROUTE, Sydney 2005

Implosion: The first stage of a dynamic towards a situation of feedback and aftershock

To collapse inwards: The violent inward collapse of a structure or vessel resulting from the external pressure being greater than the internal pressure.

The concept of implosion in culture due to mass accretion;

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More and more it seems and feels like consumer society has reached a point of maximum density. Housing, land rights, primary resource ownership battles (Gulf wars), mass migration, continued population growth, over fishing, the depletion of land, the sustainable availability of fresh food crops, pollution and the exhaustion of agriculture, and the continued production of goods and industries that are detrimental to our long term survival. Layer upon layer, more and more, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition. Mass accretion of the same items in culture and industry

Globalisation now signifies the battles for control and capital. Cultural displacement is becoming commonplace and the anxieties and increasing xenophobia about the movements and permanent homes for refugees is becoming a worldwide phenomenon. The high price of living combined with low average wages all contribute to the sense that I describe as Cultural Implosion. A significant affect, which I believe is tempering contemporary culture and by extension the international art scene, causing a response situation.

The local is global and the global is local. Small gestures and actions really do matter. Mindfulness is essential. Nothing is left to chance. Everything becomes conscious.

The feeling of pressure and anxiety continually builds within a state of overproduction, and in this world of overproduced industrial objects, things keeps repeating, backing up, filling all available space.

A kind of continually didactic consumer accretion occurs in all parts of life. ANDREA ZITTEL A-Z Prototype for pocket property 2000 Compaction and the fold out of space.

Micro-utopian experiments The German/American artist first came to prominence with her survival constructions. Making a series of functional modular living units, often out of aircraft luggage freight containers and later in plywood and

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aluminium. She has worked across design art and fashion, also producing a line of clothing made from recycled materials.

Her modular living units indicated a kind of modifiable personal world, equipped with desks, seats, wardrobes and essential space to relax. The units were very reductive and personally utopian – but on a workable basis. They seemed to ‘problem solve’, how best to work with ever decreasing space, yet also explore the very least amount of space that we need for primary activities.

One of Zittel’s lesser-known projects is her A-Z prototype for pocket property. Over two years, She built a fifty-four-ton concrete island between Denmark and Sweden, and proceeded to inhabit the hollow structure with a group of friends. This mobile land mass is the most extreme of Zittels experimental living situations. It combines the desire to never leave ones house with the fantasy of escape, and of getting away from it all.

The Island also indicates a real attempt to live in a microcosm of a utopian state, constructed and real. Zittel and her friends planted gardens, grew food lived slept and loved there. They all lived together until social relations all began to break down.

‘The A-Z Pocket Property combines your three most important possessions; your plot of land, your home and your vehicle into a hybrid prototype product. It is designed as a place with a unique potential for security, autonomy and independence. As our world is increasingly opened up by convenient and affordable travel and communication breakthroughs, it is not surprising that the most human reaction is to try to shrink it back down into manageable proportions…’to go live on a deserted island’, so to speak. In this case the ultimate luxury is not a limitless palette, but a small, intimate universe in which to explore the parameters of one's own personal options’. www.zittel.org

This 54-ton floating concrete island, basically a hollow container designed as a comfortable fully equipped home. There were doorways at either end of the dwelling, which accessed sheltered patios, and pathways winding up the hill at the center of the island, leading to sun decks and observation posts. Several landscaped areas were interspersed across the island, containing plants, vines and even trees. A documentary film exists about life on the island, created by Joachim Haumu in collaboration with Zittel.

The A-Z Pocket Property was in part a result of a true desire to create my own personal ‘intimate universe’. But it is also a dark humoured commentary on the way in which our culture constructs and then capitalises on a human desire for freedom, autonomy, and isolation. Living in American suburbs makes one aware of how land is "packaged" as a consumable product and sold off like products on a supermarket

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shelf. Likewise, in some futuristic manifestation, the Pocket Property is foreseeable as a product, which could be mass-produced to satisfy people’s craving to be in control of their own intimate universes.34

A-Z Pocket Property 2000, Andrea Zittel

34 Andrea Zittel - www.zittel.org

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Comfort Units 2, 1994, Andrea Zittel

HANS PETER WÖRNDLE ‘Gucklhupt’ Prototype ‘Mobile lookout/ transformable house’, 2001, Mondsee Austria The maximisation of basic building form

On the banks of the Mondsee river Austrian artist Hans Peter Wörndle built a plywood construction that is all about movement and changeability. Designed as part of the ‘festival of the regions’, which encouraged the building of artistic and architectural objects. It is a prototype dwelling that explores the ideas of movable furniture and mobile homes. (One can immediately see the links to the fold out work of Andrea Zittel at work in the maximisation of space in this prototype).

Built with a series of hinged and shifting planes from readily available and cheap materials panels could be moved in all directions to deal with light, heat, opening up of views or closing them off. For Wörndle the house structure represents the idea of finding continually changeable vantage points. The final structure evolved during it’s construction – like a prototype. Beginning with a simple wooden cube, infinite variations and adaptations are made possible through the use of sliding planes, hinged panels and

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corners that swing right open to let the outside world in and the inside world out. As a structure it is open ended, allowing any inhabitants to change views and light according to their needs. It is a flexible, transformable house.

Glücklhupt 2001, Hans Peter Wörndle

RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA Flexibility, generosity and altruism in artistic form

The Argentinean / Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija fundamentally challenges the institutional space and the behaviour adopted by the gallery audience. He cooks meals, fixes cars, plays music, organises sleepovers, screens movies, and reconstructs his entire apartment within the exhibition space to be left open 24 hours so that people can use the space for play and socialisation.

He travelled on the road for one month with a group of Thai students in a bus funded by the Philadelphia Museum of Art so he could lead the students to galleries, museums and tourist venues for learning about American culture.

By placing elements of the everyday with the gallery context, Tirivanija blurs the boundaries between the realms of art and domestic space. He is interested in promoting fields of accessible experiences so that people of differing backgrounds and cultures can in fact interact and share the same times, spaces and situations. Like the Danish artist Jens Haaning, Tiravanija's installations do not differ greatly from everyday structures in appearance. It is the context and site specificity that fractures and highlights the roles and functions provided and made possible in a gallery situation.

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One of his strongest aims of Tiravanijas work is to be ‘a good host’ and to be present for conversation and a chat; the most obvious example of this is when he cooks Thai food for those that enter the exhibition space. Tiravanija's work is one of the rare examples of an intervention that effectively breaks down the barriers, which are seen as isolating factors within an audience in the art circuit.

‘I am interested in the different possibilities of existing as a Buddhist, alongside a so-called progressive/modern world that seems to recognise only a particular, capitalistic, western kind of future’.

Rirkrit Tiravanija35

Pad Thai 1991-96, Rirkrit Tiravanijia

Das Social Capital 1998 Rirkrit Tiravanijia One revolution per minute 1996 Rirkrit Tiravanijia

35 Rirkrit Tiravaniji, Supermarket, De Appel publication, Amsterdam NL 1998

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Tomorrow is another day 1993- 1997, R Tiravanijia Untitled music rehearsal studio 1996 Rirkrit Tiravanijia

EN ROUTE 2002 Travel memories from Amsterdam 1999. NL

I remember a feeling of dislocation, a strange worry of not being able to place my art. I was conscious of being displaced, ill at ease in all I talked about in relation to art, its content, purpose and aesthetic. I was profoundly bored with the usual stuff, I knew it could and should do more. I sought support.

On travelling, seeking and having finally found a few examples similar in philosophy and attitude to my own work, I understood immediately how the artistic projects of those who felt this dislocation existed also without category and definition for many years. No one was writing with any clear understanding about the work.

During these years approx 1990-2000 a drift occurred, an attitude of only partial engagement with traditional art forms could be found amongst young artists – thanks to conceptual art they no longer really had to be concerned with what art was. The question became more about ‘where’ art was.

I’d been working in the most isolated city in the world in Western Australia, with very little intellectual dialogue, it was just me and my instincts, but I knew I was doing something right. I was in this

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tiny microcosm. This isolation became my drive. I was prepared to travel the world to find out more.

I am noticing more and more that artists are displaying and talking of ‘disruption’.

The outcome of this disruption has been to further articulate that there is no longer any singular location of culture, artistic form, or content within contemporary art.

An openness is occurring. But it needs tracking.

Dematerialisation and dispersion Artists are now talking more than ever of globalisation. They discuss the conditions of shared experiences and the revolutions in information technologies. They are worried about the nationalist resurgences against human rights. They are concerned to prevent greater destruction of our natural environment and are increasingly critical of the growth of the importance of money as the governing force beneath the whole of societies actions. They wish for more egalitarian economics, and have aspirational concerns for more balanced social justices and equal representation within our consumer ideology.

These areas form the new ‘grand-narratives’ of contemporary pragmatic art. Artist are now responding to the features and relations in the world than to any specific medium or material.

Disturbances and Critical Resistance This type of artwork has a tendency toward transforming and revealing (without illusion or decoration) the somewhat difficult and ugly realities or social concerns of our times into various aesthetic devices .36

A ‘cross-flow’ has been created. The social is a material and the aesthetic domain is more socially accessible to discuss. Without doubt, the critical ability of such new work to be successful in affecting real change, still remains to be quantified. Though it is already obvious that since the mid 1990s this attitude to art making has undoubtedly caused huge ripples within the way a great many artists think and work today,

36 Plan B, April 8th –21st May 2000, DeAppel curatorial training Program exhibition, Amsterdam. Author witness argument where some viewers of this show deemed Heger and Dejanov Quite normal luxury project as a corruption of the use of a public facility and public money.

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and on what they spend their time doing. The methods of representation as well as who will benefit from artistic projects are being directly questioned.

CAN ART STILL REPRESENT THE REAL WORLD? Hi-fi versus low-fi - Choices

Within the complex phenomenon of current economic globalisation there have been massive surges of goods and capital within the world. The expansion and permeation of the multi-million dollar mass-media industries has also produced a surge in the large-scale representations of reality on many levels. Are artists ably equipped today to advance and deposit forms of reality other than those put forward by information and entertainment industries?

Can the activities of artists compete using their own methods of representation? It is not really a question of battling against the mass of media representations. The artist has already lost in most cases in terms of quantity, but it is more or less a debate of quality and content over mass uniformity. Significant, distilled, fascinating, useful and hard hitting experiential moments are the artists prime areas of seduction and impact.

Artistic activity is faced in part with a necessity to confront the seductive regimes of mass image cultures and consumer realities. The artist today looks behind the scenes and dismantles their constructed systems. Opening them out not for profit, or sales but for awareness of all the parts in operation. Misrepresentations and deceits, that are produced in mass culture are usually constructed by the interests of powerful businesses and financial interest groups. Global retail, mass media and entertainment industries are all sustained and sponsored by investment from communications companies, food and drinks companies, clothing manufactures, make up manufactures, automotive industries and so forth. Its only very recently we are seeing a trend in the consumer to actually know where goods have been produced and indeed if the products available to us are equitable. (Fairtrade companies, The Nike child exploitation footwear scandal, The South American Macdonalds deforestation venture, the aggressive land claims and decimation of key ecological habitats for the production of Palm oil). We need to be aware of the reasons these companies continually back and sustain certain forms of consumption, entertainment and manufacture images, so that we can make informed choices that are more sustainable. We need to know more of the micro-gestures and small incremental parts that lead to the whole.

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For the most part, these relationships of conceit remain unregulated. After all - it is in our cultural interests to continually consume and to be pre-occupied with commodities. It is in the interests of maintaining our economies (what ever the costs) Who wants to know that thousands of Orangutans have died or starved to death so that we could have coconut oil face products and hair conditioners? The answer is - I do. The companies know that providing this information would decrease sales. It is a matter of consumer affect now to ask and research. Companies need to be equitable and accountable if they insist on deceit in order to decimate environments, animals and peoples lives in order to supply global consumers with the most unessential and unnecessary luxury goods that we have all grown accustomed to in our ignorance.

The deceit so often seen nowadays, and increasingly related to huge companies driven wholly by profits is about them having us just where they want us, and getting away with it. The little lo-fi artist can indeed successfully take on the hi-fi heavy hitters in culture. Through intelligence, and with resolve toward making the changes that perhaps can regulate awareness and increase the possibility of being better exposed and more informed as to the broader picture, which is so often obscured and simply never provided as the true reflection of reality in which ‘all’ the agencies involved are seen and represented.

With the increasing expansion of digital commercial television, iplayers, podcasts and radio programs, magazine publications and urban advertising (all supported and protected by large financial interests) there still seems to be little room for artists on the channels and airwaves - perhaps this will change through the mediums of youtube and facebook.

Privatised Utopias and Dystopian attitudes in the 90’s Crucial to my synthesising my ideas on the emergence of creative pragmatism, is that I must assert the dominant and formative role, of dystopian thought in contemporary pragmatic art. There exists a generation in art now, that because of much greater exposure to information are realising with greater accuracy the direction in which the world is heading. Throughout the 1990‘s the news was dominated by breaking stories of deforestation, corporate giants exploiting third world labour and land to furnish the west with its trainers and leisure wares. Fast food companies were questioned and made accountable for their corrupted and noxious food-stuffs and made to think about quality and nutrition. Everything in the consumer world seemed insidious and the world at large seemed painfully transparent, evil, selfish, distasteful and questionable.

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Genetically modified food entered into the market place as the best way forward to sustain our needs. Dolly the sheep37 was cloned to world amazement and then began to rapidly deteriorate in health. Science was fallible in its utopian dreams. Superman became paralysed very tragically as the actor Christopher Reeve was thrown from his horse. Dystopia was the situation and it was mercilessly present. I certainly remember that the majority of art I was seeing at this time was continually perpetuating the same old forms that blissfully had nothing to do with the reality of the changes in culture. It was near impossible to locate work that resonated the thoughts and concerns I was feeling.

Battles ensued between consumers and producers as huge conglomerates advanced almost without question. History was proving to be somewhat dubious also as more variables were being written. The stolen generation in Australia was recognised and realised to be an actual and horrific fact in Australia’s recent history to name one of many stark examples.38

Pollution became a ‘real’ issue. Some people slowly began to recycle what they could, an air of accountability drifted into the minds of a generation. In music, crystallising bands like Nirvana achieved huge popularity and relevance capturing and summarising the disrupted, unconvinced and disaffected sense in the air. Like the music, there was deep anger and disdain present, coupled with a feeling that the industrial world was profoundly wrong - and so different from what it had set out to be. Utopia was no longer an option. There was no wisdom or sustainability to be found in the culture of mass consumption in its current form. Denial was not a progressive or acceptable state.

The idea of any harmonious existence within the current environment presented itself as impossible. A younger generation felt a need for change. It was realised that everyone was still attempting to make his or her own private little utopias on a daily basis. But no one was really thinking about the whole and the future. It is a natural condition of being raised in a culture of self-satisfaction and instant gratification to ‘not’ plan ahead. After all, everything will be provided, right? ‘Wrong’.

The Global justice movement became a force that policed corporate bodies that were seen not only as the enemy but the destroyers of the environment, fairness and moral responsibility.

‘The longing for a better world will need to arise at the imagined meeting place of many movements of resistance, as many as there are sites of enclosure and exclusion. The resistance will be as transnational as

capital. Because enclosure takes myriad forms, so shall resistance to it’ 39

37 A ewe, (b1996 – d2003), The first mammal to be successfully cloned by Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell from an single adult cell, using the process of nuclear transfer. 38 Colonialists forcibly removed thousands of children from Indigenous Australian families so that they could be re-educated and assimilated and re-trained to the ways of white Christian settlers. 39 Iain A Boal, First world, ha ha!, City Lights 1995

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The global justice,40 anti capitalist movement, saw the bringing together of radicals, environmentalists, scientists, sociologists, students, animal rights activists, organicists, agronomists and all manor of modern workers on a truly international scale. It was very much a project about getting the ‘truth’ out and rapidly became a vast project heralding a revolution in accountability. The movement was informed through dogged and precise research and sought to get answers from governments, developers and multinational companies. The global justice movement was about hard factual research, direct action and understanding the cause and effect of the scale of our activities, both intimately and expansively on all ecological and environmental life.

We can see here a parallel social awareness and developmental synthesis of a cultural phenomenon that reflects so pertinently the premises and increasing knowledge basis governing the attitudes also prevailing in pragmatic art.

EN ROUTE Sydney 2004 Upgrade Anxiety and Restoration as a Form of Resistance = · The continual desire for newness and the very latest technology. · An anxiety concerning the way of finding happiness, prestige and indicators of social worth.

We are everywhere, the irresistible rise of global anti capitalism, Verso 2003 40 The writer and journalist George Monbiot, beautifully tracked the rise and activities and the philosophies of the movement in its various forms in his weekly articles for the international Guardian newspaper. www.Monbiot.com.

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In a lecture I have just presented, I have defined my idea of upgrade anxiety as the very opposition of the notion of recycling the old. Upgrade anxiety is against restoration and extended use. I describe this anxiety as a new psycho-strata and phase of commodity fetishism.

I’ve coined this term during showing my Trailer Garden project in the exhibition Spikes - Population explosions,41. It relates partially to the drive behind why I’d built and restored an old trailer and made my art system of migratory projects.

I’d been formulating a way to describe a condition that I’d seen many times and encountered and sensed in myself and in others around me. The idea is increasing in culture to buy brand new – rather than preserve, restore or fix the old. It is a very real anxiety and fantasy, which is deeply rooted in our culture.

A large portion of my art is to do with implementing a progressive sense of upgrading but via methods of ‘restoration’ and recycling of materials and objects.

The giant flat screen TV is dreamed about, the MP3 with massive memory, a newer style mobile, the latest laptop, just upgrade your car to a new one every tax year. The massively intricate complex objects around us, are all treated as endlessly replaceable To ‘Upgrade’ – and as soon as possible is the desire; chased by the feeling of lowering ones status or falling behind if one does not act toward upgrading on all fronts.

Learn to maximise everything you ALREADY have. Learn how to fix things, assess all of the dynamics, think of how best to operate within a given set of parameters, think of the bigger picture. Restoration as a form of resistance to waste and over production, and the continued consumption of objects.

PERMACULTURE Pro-activity and Re-design

41 Curated by Jaqueline Boscher at the UTS gallery in Sydney 2004

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Permaculture, conceived and developed by Tasmanian Bill Mollinson42 with David Holmgren43 and Reny Mia Slay44, is a design system for creating sustainable human environments. It combines architecture with biology, agriculture with forestry and forestry with animal husbandry. The word itself is a contraction of permanent agriculture. On one level, permaculture deals with plants animals, buildings and infrastructure (water, energy, communications). However, permaculture is not soley about these elements themselves, more so it is about the relationships we can create between them by the way we place them in the landscape.

The aim of Permaculture is to create systems that are ecologically sound and economically viable. Systems that provide for their own needs, do not exploit or pollute, and are therefore sustainable in the long term. Permaculture uses the inherent qualities of plants and animals combined with the natural characteristics of landscapes and structures to produce a life-supporting system for city and country, using the smallest practical area.

Needless to say the ideas within this system have had great and lasting influence on my own work and ideologies. Using strategies from permaculture I implemented a modular system for food production. I tested the feasibility of this system for being absolutely portable and transitory, and made it so it was easy to copy and implement by other people. Permaculture is a dymaxion system of planting, thinking and design.

Permaculture is based on the observation of natural systems, combined with the wisdom contained in traditional farming systems, and modern scientific and technological knowledge. Although based on sound ecological models, permaculture creates a cultivated enhanced ecology that is designed to produce more human and animal food than is generally found in nature.

The philosophy of permaculture is one of working with, rather than against nature. Its aim is to make protracted and thoughtful observations rather than continue with long non sustainable thoughtless labours. Permacultures first point is to look at plants and animals and understand all of their functions, rather than treating elements as a limited single-product system. Permaculture recognises that each element in a natural system creates and performs many different functions, which can all be utilised and sustained if designed and treated in the right way.

42 b 1928 Stanley Tasmania Australia, Former logger, pest controller, poacher and fisherman. Turned researcher, author, scientist, teacher, and naturalist. Permaculture ideas holistically encompass not only agriculture, horticulture architecture and ecology but also economic systems, land access strategies and legal systems for businesses and communities. Involves the rapid training of individuals so that they understand the natural systems around them, as well as the cause and effect of human interaction within other living systems 43 B 1955 Western Australia, Ecologist and ecological design engineer 44Writer, editor, artist and illustrator, grew up in Canary Islands, educated In USA Involved in the 1970s Back to the Land Movement and worked to developed the first new fully organic farm in California

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In all permanent systems of sustainable agricultures and sustainable cultures generally, the energy needs of the system are provided internally by that system. Modern high intensity crop agriculture is totally dependent on ‘external’ energies. The shift from permanent sustainable systems, where land was held in common, to annual, commercial agricultures, (where land is regarded as a commodity), involves a shift from a low to a high-energy society. This shift uses land in an exploitative and destructive way and demands greater external, non-endemic energy sources; mainly provided by the third world as fuels, fertilisers, proteins, and cheap exploitative hard labour.

Conventional intensive farming mines land of its fertility to produce massive annual grain and vegetable crops. Non-renewable resources are used to support yields and land is eroded through the overstocking of animals and extensive ploughing. Land and water are polluted with phosphates and an array of chemicals. Where trees are stripped and removed to allow for intensive linear crops and large harvesting machinery access, the land is destructed and forced into submission. Over time, salinity finally occurs when the land is worn out and is then simply no longer usable. It lays barren, the topsoil contains no organic plant structures and balance is lost, the soil simply blows away in the wind and becomes too acidic in which to grow anything.

This type of farming has been working with only short terms goals and big profits in mind for far too long. Ultimately it is devastating and irreversible.

In permaculture, ‘houses’ are thought of, not only as a dwellings that supply us singularly with a never ending flow of resources on tap, instead it is viewed as a system which is part of a whole and that if built correctly for its environment, will have very low impact in terms of consumption. The house as a structure, is more often than not a very inefficient system, drawing lots of energy, consuming resources, burning electricity and huge amounts of fossil fuel for lighting, heat and entertainment as well as consuming and wasting vast amounts of water from taps, showers, baths and all of our washing and sanitation needs. The very architectural conventions of house building come under scrutiny as a huge unnecessarily inefficient system if built with no sustainable foresight in mind.

One of permaculture’s greatest and redeeming factors is in its attitude of adaptability and modification of mono-cultural systems. It applies a pragmatic and sensitive philosophy to plants, animals and built structures.

Wastewater from sinks can be diverted to toilet cisterns to flush rather than waste litres of perfectly clean filtered water. Grey water from sinks washing machines and dish washers can be fed into storage containers directly from the house for use on the garden to grow plants flowers and vegetables. The roof is pragmatically seen as a perfect double functioning surface for protection and also a large surface area for

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water catchment. Water storage tanks fitted onto gutters and if fitted with filters can store large amounts of clean fresh rainwater for drinking, washing, heating and bathing.

The design of all these things simply requires a different and smarter more sustainable less wasteful viewpoint. Efficient house design within permaculture is not only about building, but is also about behaviour patterns. Correct placement of houses at the planning and building stage can make the difference. Passive or active solar placement will make all the difference to fuel, light and heating consumption. More importantly now we need to build toward eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels for heating and cooling our houses.

Behavioural changes such as switching all electrical equipment off, not leaving things on standby, wearing warmer clothes rather than turning up the heating. Fitting houses with better insulation, or natural shading devices, not letting taps run while we brush our teeth or wash our hands. Taking shorter showers fitted with limited flow heads, draining our bathwater into storage tanks for use in the garden where possible. It’s primarily about adapting ourselves and modifying our everyday practices and homes to work more efficiently and compliment the world around it rather than just simply pay for the mindless consumption of it.

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Permaculture Design Course DVD cover 1982, & An Introduction to Permaculture 1991 Bill Mollinson, Reny Mia Slay

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EN ROUTE, Sydney, Australia Planet Earth / Facts from the Global Summit Screened SBS, 2005

· Each year the earth loses an area of woodland equivalent to the size of Portugal.

· There are more humans alive than ever before and our consumptive needs have become greater than ever before. Today our population is over 6 billion and by 2050 at this rate of increase we will have a population of over 20 billion.

· There are 800 million cars in use in the world today. The level of C02 emissions is the highest it has been in 750,000 years. In China since 1980 there has been a 68% increase of pollutant emissions. In India emissions are up by 88% since 1980.

· We currently use more 20% more resources than what nature can generate. A single male or female European uses and consumes 50 tonnes of our planet each year.

· Each year in Africa (now regarded as a developing country…) some 3,500 tons of electronic waste alone are just thrown away. E (electronic) waste is a big problem now.

· The 22 warmest years ever recorded, have occurred since 1980.

· There is no longer a ‘they’, they will sort it out, they will change it, – it is WE, only us now, each and every one of us. We cannot be flippant – ‘They’ ….do not exist

· By 2010, using current figures, some 50 million people will be trying to flee and escape environmental deterioration.

· 96% of all the world’s glaciers surveyed, have shrunk. From 1930 to 1990, in 60 years alone, the glaciers have melted by 70%.

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Dr Jill Jeger45 EN ROUTE, Sydney 2005 George Monbiot - Didactics

‘As economies expand, they consume more from the Biosphere… then all we do is put our waste back into the biosphere – That is pollution. We need to develop an economy not so concerned with ideas of expansion but with the realisation that our biosphere is our only economy – without it, we really do have..NOTHING. We need to see that our cultures should all be based firmly on biosphere/economies…it will take a different way of thinking and of living’.

‘The problem is that to respond to this real and condemning information that tells us that we are ultimately wrong and destructive in how we are living, lies outside the normal scope and discourse of most people’.

‘It is as if it’s impossible to perceive that we have actually engineered a situation that is far worse than what we thought. It is engrained through the idea of ‘progress’ and industrial technology that we were innocently constructing a better world for us to live in. To be accountable for this, is beyond most people’s acceptable limits… there are no incentives in place to stop doing what we are doing, nothing from the governments of the world, there are no structures commonly available to the masses to help them to perceive and to structure really essential long term beneficial changes to their lifestyles, thinking and everyday habits’.

‘Our very system needs to change and it needs to change immediately. It must change in revolutionary ways, more serious than any other revolutions that the world and society has experienced to date, and endured. People feel fear and guilt, as they know now, (even the religious ones) that we can do what we thought only God could do, that is….actually destroy the world’.

George Monbiot46

45 Dr Jill Jeger, of The Sustainable Europe Institute, SBS Television, The Planet, Tuesday April 10th 2007

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Everything constructed in permaculture systems, specifically has some prime use in the food chain and is involved in exchanges of energies that support one another. This is a vital factor.

Some of the ethics found in the praxis and teachings of permaculture systems that I have applied directly to my research and art practice are;

1. To think about the long term consequences of yours and others actions. Plan for sustainability and not ‘drain-ability’. (Even in the smallest ‘micro-gestures’ as I call them)

2. Cultivate only the smallest possible land area. Plan for small-scale, energy efficient intensive systems rather than large-scale energy-consuming extensive systems.

3. Be diverse and polycultural – opposing monocultural processes. Diversity provides stability and helps us be ready for change, whether environmental or social.

4. Bring food growing back into the cities and towns, where it has always been traditionally sustainable and part of society. Councils could plant fruit trees, almonds, vines and vegetables and employ many workers to garden the city and harvest and maintain the crops as well as the community at large.

5. Assist people to become self reliant, and claim back responsibility from governments.

6. Use everything at its optimum level and recycle ALL wastes. Create solutions, not problems.

7. Work where it counts.

Relevance and absorption of principles into my Artwork What attracts me creatively to Permaculture is its pragmatic philosophy. I think it important for people to learn responsibility. It directly teaches ‘cause and effect’ and acute awareness of not only the equitable

46 George Monbiot, Professor Oxford Brookes University and columnist for the Guardian Newspaper, SBS Television, The Planet, 2005

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and balanced production of food but also how important it is to learn nurturing aspects. To know how to adapt one’s environment in ‘sustainable’ ways is an essential part of our future.

In art I produce systems and techniques that indicate a direct belief in adaptation and sensitive observation. Vital to my practice has also been to engender the work with a craft that reveals the workings of a single person. The techniques and projects which I have developed demand the learning of a great range of skills in order to adapt and produce sustainable pragmatic systems - the goal of which is to fully engrain oneself in an enhanced holistic life.

EN ROUTE Memories The allotment period - Connecting, sharing and exchanging

I remember clearly as a child in England, my parents always swapping vegetables for chickens and boxes of eggs, bringing home boxes of green earthy things into the kitchen. A lot of trade went on down at their

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allotment on the weekends. They went out every weekend, to spend time and work in the allotment.

What was great is that is was right next to the railway line and used land that really was dormant for so long. Using an industrial byway for greater purpose. All this produce growing organically and so close to the railway line. There was an old pathway that used to connect our town with a neighbouring one, it was always great to walk right through the middle of the allotments, you could smell all the produce, rhubarb leaves, chickens, tomatoes, so much colour and life. There was always loads of insects and birds, cabbage moths too. Looking through fences and chicken wire you could see the things people were growing, all very DIY, knocked together, but I was always amazed at just how much was being grown, everywhere was so leafy and so many different styles of construction and planning. Pumpkins, snow peas, beetroot, lots of scents just filling the air.

My father used to go out with his friends in a boat and catch fish from the North Sea. My contribution as a child was to vomit up a bounty bar that I’d recently eaten due to sea sickness… this acted like a great mashed burly, a few fish rose to the surface to eat it, which made me feel a whole lot worse. I remember dad laughing. The excursions out to sea and the trips to the allotment and the harvesting were always very close affairs, and the rewards were home grown vegetables, free range chickens and the freshest of fish.

We’d all pitch in. My Grandfather too was also a mean grower of rhubarb, his garden contained a huge forest of the stuff, we’d always be chopping it down to take home in newspaper to make desserts. Grandad always took me into nature and showed me the balances, and as a child I got to use the rhubarb knife, which made me feel responsible and proud when I’d bring the huge bundles of rhubarb inside. Grandfather let me use real tools, (and showed me that spiders were more scared of me than I was of them).

The allotment period, as I remember it, was an extremely happy time within the family.

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I remember one of my fondest memories of spring was when we’d visit my aunty and uncle and they used to bring home bags of fresh peas and beans in pods and we’d crack them and eat them – the freshest tasting things, and you could taste the earth in them. There was so much vitality in the clean taste.

The railway lines and cliff tops in our town were just full of free brambles, and gooseberries growing wild. You could spend days filling buckets and bags and there were still thousands left on the prickly bushes. We’d get stung and snagged on the sharp bushes and on nettles but it was all part of the texture of going harvesting and the perils of free food.

Techniques were made to get into bushes where one person would be launched over the top by friends, and then pulled back out once the buckets were filled with the juiciest berries. There were always lots left over for the local wildlife and birds too. The scent of the warm freshly baked bramble pies made sure we endured no end of pains and stings and cuts to get supplies. There was always an angry wasp in on the action attracted by the sweet scents and then angered by the flailing arms of one of the terrified and less experienced pickers, who would run off being chased by the angry wasp (who was in fact just after a taste of the brambles they were also running off with).

In Britain, ‘allotmenting’ in itself was a kind of movement to claim back unused or derelict land. It was such a social thing too.

CARSTEN HÖLLER The Pragmatic Aesthetics of Interactivity: Cause and Effect

Belgian artist Carsten Höller's Pragmatic artistic strategy is to introduce broader fields of direct experience into the context of art. Issues of accountability and our affects upon natural systems are key factors in his

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early works. His work is based largely in his knowledge of science, and so much of his approach to art making stems from this interest in socio-biological and physiologically controlled mechanisms. A Doctor in Agricultural Science and a trained entomologist, Höller’s fascination is to engage and make his audiences very aware of the concept of control and learned behaviour in all forms through highlighting and playing with our behavioural patterns. In the Kunstwerk gallery (1999) in Berlin, exhibition viewers entered a room containing a large fully functioning merry-go-round, complete with laughing adults, dizzy from all the fun.

A vast array of variously sized coloured balls and space-hoppers and a large nylon orange tent/pod in which to play sits alongside. After kicking the balls around the space and playing with the various objects, you can take your leave on a permanently installed stainless steel slide. This spirals down through the lower gallery spaces, and delivers you near the exit of the building. The notion of ‘the viewer’ has expanded here to become the participant and indeed the very site where Höller’s art takes place.47

In the ‘Loverfinches’ (Zurich 1994), Höller converted the exhibition space into an aviary. The finches used in the exhibition had been bred by Höller to sing particular songs taught to them by a handler. During the exhibition a tape player prompts the birds and the viewers to whistle along to specific tunes. Didactic panels inform us that historically the same tunes were taught to previous generations of these finches by a lovesick Italian partisan, so that they might sing for his lover in order to woo her. Subtle manipulation of a biological mechanism for a human whim becomes apparent. The finches in the wild still chirp fragments of songs, which they no doubt identify as their own, unaware that in a previous generation a song was slotted in to their vocabulary for exploitative human romantic purposes.

‘Pest control’ and ‘Jenny happy’ (1993-4), include a selection of pernicious instructions on nine refreshingly creative methods for catching, injuring or killing children. Buried jelly fish adorned with sweets, live power cables baited with sugary delights, playground swings installed on the edges of tall buildings and a vehicle decked out with functional devices for rounding up little monsters, make up this cruel body of work. All of Höller’s devices in this series, actually work and are designed for use.

In ‘Summergarden’ (1994), Höller exhibits potted flowers and vegetables attached to a variety of devices which result in the self-destruction (through strangulation or jet propulsion) of the innocent plants as they inexorably grow. As well as again bringing the control of natural systems into the focus of art, he studies the means and devices of pacification and displays some universal structures that exploit behavioural patterns. Höller toys with instincts.

47 One also feels as if one has behaved naughtily and incorrectly in a gallery situation because of the level of interactivity – People often laugh and scream in Höllers exhibitions. The author was at Berlin Kunstwerk show in 1999.

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He exposes and subverts our beliefs through means of mischief and logical scientific strategy. Höller implies violence with sometimes subtle means and often explicitly in order to make a point. Naturalised behavioural patterns equal cause and effect in the works of Carsten Höller. He uses the context of the gallery space to extend and explore the very nature of our interpretive tools and reveals our behaviour patterns to be more governed by the structure of institutions and contexts than we realise. What are we allowed to do? How do we affect things? Do we understand the things around us? What can be achieved and taken away from an exhibition? What experiences beyond the passive and static can art provide directly?

Höller's aesthetic is consistently bound to function and pragmatics. He works like a scientist producing case studies of cause and effect through the structuring and re-presentation of recreational objects, nature and leisure in all forms.

We are all guinea pigs in large pens for Carsten Höller.

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Lover Finches 1994, Carsten Höller

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Glück/Happy 1994, Carsten Höller

Summergarden 1994 Carsten Höller

Documentation: A Core Component in Pragmatic Art.

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Its influence on my work and the development of my ‘micro-gestures’

Documentation in its broadest forms covers all art variables. It quantifies the processes and labours involved in an artwork - that can be essential in the assessment of truth, history, value and recognition. It can display the full magnitude and process based intensity of a work or project. Where labour was once seen and located in a conclusive singular grand and formal gesture, (the object) contemporary art documentation summarises and translates the labours of process. The depiction of the endeavour of art, is a large part of documentation.

The traditional assumption about the encounter of art in a museum exhibition is proving to be misleading. Art documentation is by definition not art; it merely refers to art – art documentation makes it clear that art is no longer only singular, present and immediately visible, but rather absent and hidden.48

Art documentation at least in my own work, captures momentary glimpses, variations in design and transitory artistic interventions and observations. It is a means of consolidating complicated and lengthy processes, it can document discussions as well as reveal to us the scope and breadth of unusual living circumstances, explorations into culture, situations, environments and milieus, as well as document politically motivated events and actions.

Artistic realities can be recorded and repeatedly shown. It not only takes centre stage now but it can double as essential to research and evidence for time and memorial. Interestingly documentary forms in art have increased within pragmatic art experiences as they have debased the notion of the single-object- outcome-exhibition-event. This provides yet more evidence to indicate the attempt of pragmatic art to increase accessibility toward the understanding of its broader variable component parts.

Broader forms of art can logically only be adequately presented by means of art documentation as a way of capturing the full scope and nuances of meaning. Documentation directly sensitises people to the greater picture and the full reality of the artistic situation. To misunderstand or trivialise art documentation as a simple thing, would be to overlook its prime feature, that is – its similarity to life. It’s no coincidence that museums are often likened to cemeteries: by presenting art as the end result of a life. Museums can obliterate the very vitality of art in favour of the grand singular statement. The artwork is often presented as a conclusion, existing as a monolith of sorts, or as a demarcation of an end.

The function of documentary forms in my own work presents a journey in process. It becomes the conversant and locative form of the work, as much as it is the referential and the instructive (Road Trip

48 Boris Groys (2002) Documenta 11, Catalogue

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Dinners 2003) (Micro Gestures 1999-2005) elements where my art can be successfully understood. It provides the transparency of my techniques and provides more than a mere summation. Documentation links the viewer to a proposal or an instruction. I have used documentation as a prime form in my work, to create manuals that viewers can utilise to copy and use for their own purposes should they wish. (Video instructive works, drawings and plans and photographic micro -gestures).

Arts images on the whole, be they surreal, fantastic, romantic, pornographic, super-realist, abstract or plainly un-realistic are intended to be emblematic and represent either the gap or fusion between life, reality and fantasy. Art images are meant to embellish, derive and locate extended meanings or personal histories. The media as found in print and television are usually thought of as the faithful reproducers of reality. This fact alone is why a number of artists pragmatically decided this was their best arena and newest frontier. (Matthieu Laurette, Heger and Dejanov, for example).

The dominant medium of our bureaucratic age ‘is’ documentation. Applications, planning decrees, reports, complaints, conversations, requests, statistical enquiries, thesis, all manner of project plans and records are measured, written and copied myriad times throughout our emails, photocopies, photographs and digital files. It makes sense culturally that the artist is accordingly quantifying creative practices and conscripting the very same language.

It’s no coincidence that art also uses the same mediums of documentation when it wants to refer directly to itself as ‘life’. Documentation can in this way, become the sole result of art. Hence its prevalence and relevance within Pragmatic forms of art.

IMAGE APPENDIX

Chapter 4: Crossflows

All images in this thesis are taken from the ongoing artwork The Migratory Projects Archive 2002-Ongoing Compiled by the Author for educational use in conjunction with the Carrier vehicle

P230 The Heart of Saturday Night 1983, Anne Hawkes

P232 Business Card 1998, Nisit O Charern

P233 Permaculture Garden 1994-1997, Rodney Glick & Gina Griffiths

P235 Veggie Van 2000, Ernst Ellemunter

P237-238 Superchannel 1996, Superflex Biogas In Africa 1997, Superflex

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P240 Spaceframe 1996, N55 Home Hydroponic Unit 1997, N55 Hygiene System 1997, N55

P242 AVL Ville 1999, Atelier van Lieshout P243 Three Septic Tanks and filters 2001, AVL Clip on architectures 2002, AVL Self-composting toilet, 2000, AVL Pilgrim Chicken Coop, 2001, AVL A manual, Pork Processing 2000, AVL P244 Clip on architectures 2002, AVL Shelf for Preserves 1998, AVL AVL Ville Flyer 2002, Atelier van Lieshout Construction Manual 2000, AVL Mortars 1996, AVL Study skull 1996, AVL Mobile shelter for Kröller Müller 1996, AVL P246 The Good the Bad and the ugly (Alcohol Still) 1998, AVL Pistolette, 1995 AVL

P249 Do Hit 2000, Droog Do Break 2000, Droog Do drawers 1991/93, Droog Do chair 1991/93, Droog

P253 Sydney -Thailand Chair Exchange 2004 Jens Hanning

P254 Refugee calendar 2002 Jens Hanning Weapon Production 1995, Jens Haaning Middleburg Summer 1996, Jens Hanning Flag Production 1996 Jens Hanning

P255 Green River 1998, Olafur Eliasson

P263-264 El Gran Trueque / The great exchange 2000, Matthieu Laurette The Freebie King 2000, Matthieu Laurette

P266 The Freebie King 2001, M Laurette

P269 Déjà vu 2000, M Laurette Today Show NBC, Apparitions 2005, M. Laurette Applause 1998-2000, M. Laurette Apparitions: Looks Familiar 2003, M. Laurette

P273-274 A-Z Pocket Property 2000, Andrea Zittel, www.zittel.com Comfort Unit 2 1994, Andrea Zittel

P275

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Glücklhupt 2001, Hans Peter Wörndle (Small building big ideas, 2000)

P277 Pad Thai 1991-96, Rirkrit Tiravanijia Das Social Capital 1998 Rirkrit Tiravanijia Tomorrow is another day 1993- 1997, Rirkrit Tiravanijia One revolution per minute 1996 Rirkrit Tiravanijia Untitled music rehearsal studio 1996 Rirkrit Tiravanijia

P288 Permaculture Design Course 1982, Bill Mollinson An Introduction to Permaculture 1991

P297-298 Lover Finches 1994, Carsten Höller Glück/Happy 1994, Carsten Höller Summergarden (x2) 1994 Carsten Höller

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THE EVERYDAY

Re-engagements with the Superstructure

The Superstructure of the Everyday

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The proposition here and now, is to decode the contemporary world according to the everyday. The mundane is where radical shifts are created, where inspiration is found, where the greatest challenges occur. It is also where conversations resonate and observations begin. It is where ideas form and where macro and micro revolutions take seed.

The ‘everyday’ is not a simple and clearly defined area. Its elusiveness, indeed carries a certain ‘broad’ mystique when referenced. It is of course permeated by millions of interests, constantly competing desires and trajectories. How it is constructed and the methods by which it affects and permeates our lives is of great interest within the contemporary pragmatic projects examined in this thesis. The everyday is a vast area of ever shifting and upgrading semiology that constitutes our shared consumer sphere.

To understand its signs, we must decode its broad mystique to understand how the forms of the everyday are now placed to link inextricably to our very identities and capitalist landscapes. The commercial world now permeates every corner of our varied and shared realities simply by sheer mass alone. The objects of our everyday create associated histories and of course imbue lineages. These linages are examined here in relation to contemporary pragmatic art, to reveal how this mystique has finally stretched so thin that it has now become transparent.

Definitions of the everyday: Strata’s from Michel de Certeau and Henri Lefebvre

In The Practice of Everyday Life (1980) Michel de Certeau argues that life in consumer cultures is the site of countless tactics of resistance to broader power structures. Walking freely in the city, critically watching TV, folk songs and specifically proletariat workers constant appropriation and restoration of scrap materials and factory technologies – all displayed the creation of resistant creative spaces that exceeded and evaded the order that ‘official culture’ tried to impose.

Micro-level resistance

‘The transformation of life in its smallest most everyday detail, to participate in the consciousness of power, intervening in life in the humblest detail… to change life and lucidly recreate everyday life’. 3

The Practice of Everyday Life 1980, Berkley: University of California Press. English transcript 1984. Michel de Certeau : died 1986. Michel de Certeau’s interests were history, linguistics, psychoanalysis and anthropology. He was also a Jesuit priest. During 1970 his writing became less involved with his obsession on the ‘origins’ of the Jesuit order and he began analysis of everyday life and contemporary culture. He found this re-ordering of the modern world, a much more pressing area of sociological concern 3 Henri Lefebvre, The Critique of Everyday Life, 1947, (J. Moore, Trans 1992)

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In his original 1947 book, The Critique of Everyday Life, Henri Lefebvre attempts to broaden and extend Marxist economic theory by showing that it was not economics alone but in fact everyday life that revealed a sense of discord and alienation. He describes how society once at ‘one with nature’ has through capitalism put strain on this relationship by the removal of symbolic and vital natural orders and balances and replaced them by introducing status and hierarchy among non vital, static and pedestrian consumer objects. This shift in our symbolism from the natural world to the industrially produced is levelled as a damaging removal of knowledge. He comments also that within capitalism one becomes ever increasingly alienated from nature, society, work, everyday life and ultimately one’s body. The only way to recover from this alienation according to Lefebvre, is to critique economic desires and power structures, and more importantly the methods and forms of everyday life and things. The only progressive outcome from this situation is to create realities within the greater power structures. For Henri Lefebvre this was where ‘true meaning’ was to be found.

Michel de Certeau was himself optimistic about the potential for micro-level resistance in everyday practices. He also recognised that it was more frugal people who predominantly walked (he himself was a former Jesuit). It was logically more likely to be the working class rather than the upper classes, that would make deviations and resistances in the city. The ‘working class’ by sheer interface alone with the many component parts that make up contemporary life naturally understand the materiality of constructed space and form, through hands on experience. (The builder, the mechanic, the seamstress, the baker, and so on). It was through the producing of the necessary material forms of daily life and its continual maintenance that an understanding and practical hands on working knowledge of both specific and more general industrialised processes could lead to intelligent adaptations being ‘made’. He advocates ideas of ‘playing’ upon the very mechanisms of discipline and conforming to them, to understand and experience them, only in order to turn them around in some way. EN ROUTE, Perth, Western Australia 1999

Recycling and restoration as resistance to over production. A resistance on a small and familiar exponentially spreading scale 4

4 Sunley Smith, Migratory Projects notebook 1999. Restoration is a form of resistance to new purchase, and a resistance to even more consumption. It is a way of engaging and learning skills that ultimately promote greater independence within consumer structures. It also saves a lot of money. Restoration is also edifying. It also connects you intimately with an object”.

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Searching within familiar formations

In 1980, in The Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau, attempted to map out the previously unexplored in society. He tries to illuminate new spaces and ways to escape from what he termed the ‘technology of control’. For De Certeau everyday life was distinctly different from other practices of daily existence because it is repetitive and unconscious. He distinguishes between the concepts of strategy as created and belonging to institutions and tactics being the methods utilised by individuals as a means of creating spaces for themselves in the environments set up by larger institutions and super powers. He advocates that we should search amongst the very structures of our modern world, in the skyscrapers, homes, television programs, examine our consumer desires, fashions and the various activities and things we produce within the walled spaces that make up a modern society.

In his influential chapter Walking in the City, he describes cities as ‘concepts’ generated by the strategic maneuvering of governments, corporations, and other institutional bodies, who produce things from a very removed, disconnected, objective and great distance. With little intimacy these institutional bodies

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describe cities as unified wholes, always idealized as if seen and experienced by someone looking down from high above. By contrast, the individual inhabitant of these constructed spaces, the walker at street level, moves in ways that are ‘tactical’ and never fully determined by the plans of organizing bodies. Shortcuts are taken, or meandering occurs in spite of the utilitarian layout of the grid of streets. These deviations taken by individuals1 concretely illustrate de Certeau's assertion that everyday life works by a process of adaptation, poaching on the territory of others, recombining the rules and products that already exist in culture. Culture in this way is seen as strongly influenced, but never wholly determined, by rules and products produced by strategizing governments, corporations and institutional bodies.

“Culture is the rule, Art is the exception”5

SUBSTRUCTURES Modernism: Turbo charged colonisation

Modern eras and new technologies usher in a series of revolutions. Contained in these revolutions we find new modes of architecture, new modes of dress, new desires are created new attitudes and philosophies bring new social rituals. Modern living aside from its alienating factors, suddenly presented more and more diversity. In the 18th & early 19th century living was more wholly dependent on region, country, seasonally available resources, climate, age & sex. Living as such, was not subordinate to any singular super industrialised system as it is now. Our current system is faster now, Turbo capitalism produces a seemingly never ending supply of uniform things to own, items to consume, to accelerate and to upgrade our lives. Yet to what end?

Under the spread of Modernism, Lefebvre perceived diversity as slowly and incrementally being interfered with, destroyed and eroded. Sanitised, unified, rationalised, pigeon holed and packaged. Carefully balanced situations, learned and understood from centuries of practice were reduced and taken away from people’s hands and minds. With the industrial machine, the notion of farming, building, creating and thinking changed forever. Mono-culture took over from diversified highly individual cultural practices. Complete colonisation became the methodology of progress. Progress was seen as a colonising force.

1 In situationist texts deviations the Dérive and the Détournement describe the attempts to interface and discuss architectural environments by actually inhabiting them and moving through them without preconceptions. A technique of rapid passage through varied everyday ambiences. Dérives involve playful- constructive behavior and awareness of psycho-geographical effects, and are quite different from the standard notions of a journey, walk or stroll. 5 Jean luc Godard as quoted by Nicolas Bourriaud, Transforming Aesthetics conference. AGNSW 7-9th July 2005

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Under this colonising process, signifiers of diversity are all copied, repeated and made available for purchase. All differences, idiosyncrasies and countercultures can be bought after they have been sanitised, rationalised and mass-produced. Identity itself can be purchased and copied.

Today we see a global tendency toward increasing mass-produced uniformity. Rationality dominates, more and more signs and values are attached to things in order to convey the prestige of their possessors and their own place in the hierarchy of status. The aesthetics of control and of belonging are the governing force. What then of the authenticity of form?

Twins (Pollocks) 33526-44099, Camper shoe catalogue 2005

Pre industrialised nostalgia From the smallest tool to the greatest works of art, objects once possessed a symbolic value linking them to meaning, either to divinity, humanity, power, wisdom or good and evil, the recurring and the

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ephemeral. These immense values placed on objects, were themselves mutable according to social classes, historical circumstances, dominant or subservient forces. Each object, an armchair, a piece of clothing, a kitchen utensil or a house were thus linked to some ‘style’ and therefore as an object contained and reflected the larger dynamics of its local context. Social class, wealth and cultural origin could be directly read and located in an object. Regionalism was unmistakable. There was no international global style nor dominant internationally shared language. The visual arts were only locally relevant. Differences in works of art and artefacts made them tradable. Nowadays arts familiarity and international legibility are valued above all else. Internationalism is everything.

All the independent functional elements and specifics of objects were disengaged, rationalised, summarised and industrially produced throughout the late 18th century and early 19th century. Objects would become wholly dependent on their industrial manufacturers, for parts, maintenance, and restoration. As manufacture was done in places outside the everyday home and social environment, In time people would be so removed from manufacturing processes that they would not know how to fix things. Cottage industries, food production, education and the nature and very perception of work and its role and place in life would change. A service industry culture, wholly reliant on manufacturers is industrializations perfect realisation; the manifest situation of the huge chasm between producers and consumers and a new relationship ripe for making huge profits based on the removal of self sufficiency.

Lefebvre describes the points and methods by which locally and individually produced tools and items were removed, copied and industrialised. Then eventually marketed and sold back to society. It was thought ideally, that by mass-producing the everyday functional objects, society would be given more time to partake in ‘leisure’ activities and matters less concerned with the production of tools and goods.

The modern object clearly states what it is. Its role and its place are not confusing. It was often over designed in order to overstate and reproduce all the signs of its meaningfulness; signs of ease and of quality and wealth and by extension, assumed happiness. (White goods, vehicles, home - entertainment systems). One just has to take a walk around most contemporary homes to see this in operation. Everything was redesigned to reflect the future, from toasters to cars. Industrial production went into overload to present modernity.

Modern objects are designed to be absorbed and integrated into our lives as quickly as possible (the idea of ‘user friendliness’). Predictability is a feature of the industrially produced surface. This surface is repeated thousands upon millions of times and finds its way into our desires. This regularity, by sheer mass alone, becomes the norm. And the point from which everything is then compared and contrasted. The expanse of the flat screen, the smoothness of the object is marketed as the ‘physiology’ of luxury. This physiology asserts itself as if it is a corporation that we must belong to.

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SWETLANA HEGER AND PLAMEN DEJANOV

In the project ‘Quite Normal Luxury’ (1999-2000), Bulgarian and Czech du, Heger and Dejanov attempt to render the terms and mechanisms of corporate involvement in an art project completely transparent.

In a controversial project the German car manufacturer BMW were requested to join and sponsor an ongoing collaboration whereby the two artists would sublet and perversely exploit the spaces allocated to them in exhibitions.

The service provided by the artists included catalogues and promotional material placed directly within the art context showing the BMW companies latest products. In return for this service the artists' received a brand new BMW Z3 Roadster for the duration of the show. The contract of sponsorship negotiated with the car company stipulated that the well-known car advertisements be placed as often and as frequently possible within the gallery spaces. Although choosing the placement of the advertisements, Heger and Dejanov did not place any explanatory text or didactic panels that reinforced the company as the 'Bavarian maker of dreams'.

The very presence of the images and the physical inclusion of the showroom vehicle in the exhibition bring the interrelations of capitalist mechanisms to the forefront. The direct placing and representation of this corporate icon, act as a trigger in the re-evaluation of the art object.

The gallery space is ironically and uncomfortably subverted into another capitalist showroom. The relationship of the artist to corporate power structures is explored and highlighted. Aesthetic realms and interpretive stances are also forced together.

In another project, ‘Gallery Closed For Holidays’ (1999) The artists used sponsorship money to organise a holiday for the duration of an exhibition. The body of the exhibition comprised of vacation snapshots sent back by the artists from their holiday destination. This project attempted to highlight the notion of artists needing a break – it controversially highlighted the need and right for artists to occasionally take holidays from hugely demanding schedules.

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Perfectly Normal Luxury 1999, Heger & Dejanov

Gallery Closed for the Holidays 1999, Swetlana Heger & Plamen Dejanov

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Everyday buildings

In the domain of architecture, a variety of local, regional and national styles have given way to an overall ‘architectural urbanism’, a universalising system of structures and functions in supposedly ‘rational’ geometric forms. One only has to look now at new suburbs and cities all over the world to see this at work. Modernism is still here, and still progressing violently and spreading exponentially. The presence of investment in mass produced realities and highly dictatorial forms is evident on monumental scales. Most modern suburbs are not planned with art galleries in mind or civic places for people to gather and socialise. The only places built for people are shops and cinema complexes, spaces all driven by finance alone.

“I am against monumentality and against architecture in all forms”6

Everyday Food

The same rationalising ‘overall’ uniformity, is also true of industrially produced food. Food is systemised and grouped around various specific household appliances. It is built and shaped for toasters, fridges, freezers, and microwaves. People select fruit on uniformity of colour, of size. Food is selected, picked supplied graded and wasted by the ton, based on its non-uniformity and lack of symmetry.7 Supermarkets are ‘visual’ affairs and arranged somewhat like galleries. The consumer majority select food based on visual premises or label association, rather than taste, quality of production and the growing effects on soils and ecosystems. Quality is often assured, but it is only desired as symmetrical and when in uniform shape. We are trained into this from an early age. A training derived from a lack of exposure to alternatives.

EN ROUTE, Perth Western Australia 1999.

I remember an art student some years ago in a critique session, who formed and grew ‘square’ lemons. ‘Modernist fruits’, I think she called it (as a comment on industrial production).

6 Jimmie Durham, American artist, writer and poet.b1940 Native, Wolf Clan, Cherokee. Lives & works in Berlin and refuses to ever live or set foot in the USA. Instrumental figure in writing the land rights treaty with the United Nations, now used by all native peoples of the world. 7 See the potato wastage in Agnes Varda’s film: The Gleaners & I, 2000, 82mins

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She grew the bodies of the lemons in Perspex boxes on the tree. Then when ready, took the boxes off. She said they were the same size, ‘stackable’ and ‘fully controlled’. The discussion extended to the human body as now suffering from the same controlling situations.

Our bodies within industrialised parameters and aesthetics. ‘Fully controlled’ or ‘out of control’. This simplistic binary, allows no room for tolerance and difference. Uniformity rules, symmetry must be attained and enforced…at all times. Any deviation is to be corrected.

Engines - Metaphors and authenticities The combustion engine is a perfect parallel metaphor for modernism. Forward moving, It is industrially produced, it consumes, it combusts then finally exhausts and pollutes. This ubiquitous industrial form is a key presence in my artwork and a form directly chosen for its familiarity and its dominance in culture. Taken in its broadest form – the engine surrounds us in all aspects of life.

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The totalising system of contemporary capitalist culture has been constructed around the car, and seems ever ready to sacrifice all of society and nature to its dominion. Millions and millions of cars are produced annually, huge road constructions and gigantic volumes of fossil fuel continue to be consumed. People buying and upgrading vehicles unnecessarily every tax year - supporting the production of yet more cars. Greater choices of paranoid safety features, and ergonomic entertainment consoles to entertain us as we slowly emit more CO2 into the atmosphere and slowly choke and sweat, as the globe suffocates and the weather incrementally heats up.

Yet we feel safe.

‘Just billions of engines ticking over in neutral8’

Traffic, Jacques Tati 1971

8 Thom Yorke, ‘And It rained all night’, The Eraser, XL recordings 2005

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Traffic, Jacques Tati 1971

The Red Desert Film Stills 1964 Michelangelo Antonioni

Strangely, the sheer dominance of economically driven consumerist forces makes it nearly impossible for any system to ever pause and stop to re-configure, and produce alternative variations and more flexible and tolerant systems. (See Carrier vehicles 1999-07 in Migratory Projects section). Diversity and

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difference become more intolerable as the mechanisms of well-behaved consumer aesthetics are applied and take over. To stop consuming unnecessarily, ceases the need for production.

The threat of difference Capitalism seeks to absorb all successful alternatives, from the vast to the minute. Especially those, which threaten private ownership, control and profits, (Marxism, communism, socialism, small business, organic farming, subgroups and so on). Other types of social models, lifestyles, appearances, aesthetics, ideas and even our bodies, if they are not exclusively bound to consumerist infra-structures and consumptive regimes, or fit within the defined ideological parameters, are accordingly all to be adjusted, pulled into line and sublimated – (and if not sublimated they are to be annihilated).9

Functionalism and consumerism Today, there still exists a ‘general law’ of functionalism amongst most consumer goods. The everyday can in one sense be defined as the site for a set of functions, which connect and join together systems that might appear to be distinct and separate. Production engenders consumption and aims to make our desires concrete. It aims to serve us, to cater for our whims, it is not critical, its only critique is what it excludes. A generalising force; consumption is manipulated by producers, not by workers and labourers, but by the managers and owners of the means of production.

“The everyday is therefore the most universal and the most unique condition, the most social and the most individuated, the most obvious and the best hidden. The everyday constitutes the platform upon which the bureaucratic society of controlled consumerism is erected.”10

What happens when we aim to adapt or take back the means of production? Until the advent of industrial mass production in the 18th and 19th centuries, ‘things’ - furniture and buildings were built one by one. Throughout the 20th century all of these references began to collapse. After the First World War and the advent of mass migration, furniture and domestic goods began to accordingly decrease in size, decoration and weight for transportability. Societies became more mobile as an imperative means of survival. Through this mobility excessive forms were no longer required. Objects have continued further to reduce in size with advances in technology and practical mobile uses gained from experiences arguably understood from subsequent wars. GPS, Internet, laptops, modems, mobile phones, ipods, cameras and transmitters. Modularity is the current state of fashion; easily assembled furniture, emotionally cold and corporate in design, mostly low cost and ultimately expendable. It is the stuff that fills the houses of the masses today.

9 Iraq, US War/Invasion, Monsanto genetically modified hi-yield food crops illegal cross pollination of smaller farm holdings in Canada. Diet and exercise cultures are now multi- billion dollar industries 10 Henri Lefebvre; Everyday life 1987,pg 7-11

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Mon Oncle 1958 Jacques Tati

Through the advent of cheaper and more modular mass produced items, however, the survival of many displaced and lower socio-economic groups has been made possible. Cheaply available furniture, clothing and vehicles allowed a more democratic and levelled society to be sustained. Inversely, expensive one off items became rare, fetishized, highly prized and sought after.

It is no surprise that many artist’s (as commonly a ‘lower’ socio economic group), have derived work that touches on and locates itself around the very core of ideas devolving and critiquing the dilemmas, joys and excesses of mass production.

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Plamen Dejanov & Swetlana Heger: ‘Plenty Objects of Desire’ 1997

Mass produced abundance replaced shortage in the first world. Our love of abundance began the destructive colonisation of the third world. This continuing colonisation (name your country) ultimately ends with the destruction of nature itself. This world of destruction is currently all pervasive. We are seeing it, living it and exhausting it – each of us, individually on a daily basis. In our houses, cars, offices and work places. A society functioning in the same way as the ubiquitous combustion engine.

We are told and reminded by sheer presence of mass produced goods alone that it is the only way forward. That it is right. Better for all, better for the whole system. How do we get past this traditional and damaging position? Artists do offer clues and answers.

Intellectual refusal of the mundane world

Traditional notions of Intellectual archetypes situated them as people whom did not seek their systems of reference in the everyday. They sought it elsewhere; in established language, cloistered texts and in the esoteric, in discourses long established and in relatively exclusive fields of information. Knowledge was accrued through theological connection, and enlightenment was thought to be attained only through virtuous spiritual endeavour. Metaphors were taken and reiterated always from the classics, Plato, Homer,

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Hesiod, Euripides and predominantly the new and old biblical testaments for governance and moral guidance. The power of old style intellectuals was based and valued in agreed historical alignment and re- iteration of existing doctrines. The power of the new mode of intellectual, resides in their abilities to link things together. To clarify and define new forms and chains of information: The more links that can be traced, asserted and located together, the more powerful and resonant an idea will be.11 New forms of thought that deliver alternative evidence are crucial in implementing changes. The pragmatic artist is a formation of a new intellectualisation, built and manifested.

Averages, Monotonies and the need for change in daily life

The everyday implies on the one hand, cycles, nights and days, seasons, harvests, activity, rest, hunger and satisfaction, desire, fulfilment, the crude, the ordinary, life and death. On the other hand the repetitive gestures of constant work and consumption.12

The average working week is socially governed by the idea of the weekend escape, the blow out, the binge drink, letting loose after the drudgery of the nine to five job. Large aspects of life are structured around the very tolerance and escape from work. The late night shop, weekend sports events, drinking for example. These things are not only about function they are also about escape. This aspect and common need for separation and escape and the division between work and pleasure is something of great interest to my creative work.

The everyday is traditionally associated and seen to signify and impose monotony. Yet, the contradiction at the heart of the idea of traditional everyday-ness is that - everything changes. Mass-production always modifies and redesigns in close alignment with consumer demands, if it doesn’t it fails. Desire for objects and fashions, is fickle. It can wane and decrease. Interest can be lost through too much monotony. Market researchers and organisations monitor ‘culture’. Magazines, TV shows, questionnaires and telephone surveys all seek and highlight changes in desires and trends. They are not merely reflecting. They have an agenda and they are officially or privately funded. National economies invest and expand the cultures in which national economies can survive (government grants are carefully and strategically placed). Production variations displace and sideline the monotonous or no longer desired. (The idea of ‘going out of fashion’) Ideas and forms that have remained unchanged in the world for too long, items that are all too familiar are bypassed or assimilated as the creation of false new needs are implemented. There are always

11 The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord 1967, Relational Aesthetics 2002, Post Production 2002, Nicolas Bourriaud, Also Bourriauds initial ideas introduced in lectures for the concept of the Radicant and the Altermodern 2005. Contemporary curators and writers share a similar approach and method , Hans Ulrich Obrist, Nicolas Bourriaud, Maia Damianovic, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, recent Germain Greer, J.G Ballard. Charles Darwin 1809 –1882 is an early successful example of the new mode of intellectual as naturalist, scientist and controversial pragmatist. 12 Henri Lefebvre, Everyday life 1987 pg7-12

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factions that resist any change, and others that cry out against stagnation. They are both right. It would be presumptuous and naïve to believe that change now, can only be achieved through forward movement. This in itself is an industrial idea.

Unified passivity - An analysis The everyday can also be successfully analysed through aspects of uniformity. Uniformity has increasingly been applied to the major sectors of social life: work, family, private life, sexuality and leisure – these sectors show an organised passivity, in that only certain things are expected as norms within each sector. Ideas of leisure time/activities have become streamlined – imposed and presented as categories, all for consumption. For example, Leisure equals sport, camping, holidays and hobbies. These forms are acceptable forms of leisure and interestingly, they are the ones supported by governments and institutions who build in support of them.

Think of the internationally prevalent funding notions of Culture and Sport? Art again is classified under leisure. Not as a vital social, political and intellectual necessity.

In private home and family life, we are faced with the imposition of consumption through television and the internet. Available choices are directed to us now, via the web at least, based on the traceable activities of the individual (Internet Protocol addresses or IP’s). Marketing companies herald us when they think we may want something similar to what we may have viewed or purchased. (This may lead to a more accurate form of concise consumption in the long term yet it also provides companies with private information on individual activity should we wish it or not).

The passivity underpinning uniformity is felt by the astute, the sensitive, the different and the excluded. It is felt momentarily, rarely at the same time and never all at once. The sense of passivity is accrued and eventually invites (and deserves) reaction - a glitch or a disruption to occur in its passive and pristine order. (As seen manifested in situationism, punk, social riots, terrorism, sexual diversities, artists and creative thinkers).

The idea of extermination and denial and of ‘otherness’ has always been associated with ‘uniformity’. It is the denial of difference, the denial of change, and accordingly the denial of alternative ideas. Uniformity implies a closed and tight system. Within this state of unified passivity one has a general feeling of being engulfed, by ‘ever looping’ expansive repetitions. Constant re-runs, repeating narratives, conservative corporate and institutional fashions, ubiquitous shopping malls. Ever reproducing, ever present. We feel these loops and often cannot escape them. Workers in the contemporary work place are expected to take no part in the larger decisions of a company. Workers are placed directly in closed loops away from

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decision making processes and thereby disempowered from any involvement with governance. In this closed circuit, reaction builds and feedback circulates and will seek a way out.

In art now, one can find the very opposite of closed and tight systems, two immediate and radical examples are demonstrated in the work of Swiss born artist, Christoph Büchel (who we will examine in the conclusion) and Argentine born Rirkrit Tiravanijia already evidenced.

Artists make open systems 13

Pragmatic art is a direct form of ‘cultural feedback’ that uses the very same forms and systems that led to its own emergence .

Screenplays / everyday clichés and psycho-geographies

The sociometry of the western capitalist world is taking on more and more the patina and bad dialogue, of a predicable linear Hollywood script. The woman looks like x, the man looks like x, the family is x, the situation is x, good will prevail and so on. Many of these current iconographies are indeed very limiting and extremely disturbing, perpetuated over and over again. We sometimes articulate our lives around these lived actual ‘screenplays’. (The traditional marriage ritual as visualised by most, is one of these social screenplays. Certain ideas of love and romance are screenplays. The lone traveller, is also a screenplay, the conquering hero, the martyr/terrorist. There are a many more). In literature they take form as ‘grand narratives’. Each screenplay to be lived out in everyday consumer society, demands the presence of a great many accoutrements. The presence of the industries that now exist to furnish the desire to live out these screenplays is evidence of this - Specialised Adventure stores, Marriage stores, Army surplus all allow us to ‘buy into’ fantasies. These screen plays form a psycho-geography of the everyday. To live out these screenplays, demands often very aggressive types of unquestioned consumption.

These screen play / narratives often proceed without conjecture. A great majority of the behavioural patterns that we live out in society can be described as screenplays. Performed in only slightly different ways, in different languages, with only slight variations. We can live out our lives if we desire, through a series of screenplays at certain junctions (and many are very content in doing so). The screenplays are what is expected. We are programmed to create and realise these performances as we live our lives. (Artists are great de-programmers of culture, as is seen in this thesis). Any other variation or deviation from the screenplay initially feels unnatural or odd. The screenplays are true for many – we agree to share in certain clichés. It is largely how we all get along.

13 Artist, Valie Export

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Capitalism is dependent on our ability to constantly keep getting along, performing screenplays. (Towing the line and so on). We see them in adverts, the visualisations of our supposed ideals. Certain industries are focused exclusively on screens and by extension teach us about our social transactions. These performative junctures operate like valves, releasing accumulated pressures, social build-ups and desires. Advertising and mainstream films reflect and show us how to operate within these lived screenplays, just in case we should forget.

The screen for many, is quite disturbingly where ideas of creativity are found and more so ‘located’. The screen is a vicarious site for ‘not’ taking part in any actual processes. A new society of ‘watchers’ far out numbering a society of ‘do-ers’. Is it possible re-address this balance?

My own ‘Drive Out Cinema’ Projects of 2004-05 directly address and asserts the drive for more direct and authentic experiences, to again occur and be supplanted in screen culture, and by extension into everyday life. The screen has over the last decade developed a new status and mythology within contemporary art, and there is good reason for this. It is also a dominant form, based firmly and ever present in the suburban and high density quotidian world.

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EN ROUTE: Amsterdam, Bloemgracht 1999

Capitalism spreads like a woven mesh, it covers everything now like a velum. It simultaneously inhabits and houses everything.

Artists can pop up through the mesh, spreading, connecting and attaching signs and forms to it. Pulling it and stretching it to a point of transparency.

Maximum density

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It can be said optimistically, that we have now reached a point of mass-produced cultural density, whereby most tastes and combinations of desire can be met – identified and reproduced. As consumers we can find almost everything we need or desire. High street stores, and the growth of amazon and eBay provide an endless market place of online shopping. The need for invention is diminished through the availability of most things off the shelf, readymade as it were. Enough consumer products now exist, to make infinite combinations. We are at a point of feedback.14 There is so much in the world now, so much production, that we, as part of life experience in the western world begin to feel overwhelmed and overloaded by this.

Breakdown (2001) Michael Landy EN ROUTE: Sydney 2003 Modernist Puritans

14 See artists page following - Michael Landy, ‘Breakdown’ 2001, The artist took all the items he owned and proceeded to reduce them down to their basic elements. He kept a running itinerary of all the basic weight and mass of these objects as they were shredded and reduced back to their original crude materials. Also see artists Christoph Büchel and the author

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Modernity attempts to eradicate everyday noise. It keeps the dust down and polices diversities. -A tidy, controlled, neat affluent philosophy. An irritating puritan.

Modernism, with its logical aesthetic and seductively formal constituent, is a movement attempting to preserve its aesthetic realm against intellectual, social, and historically diversifying forces threatening it.

In my mind it is often associated with ideas of introversion, paranoia and the comprehension and construction of uniform newness at all costs. Critical analysis can uncover its mechanisms.

It was built through the advent of engines. Engines that demand constant consumption.

EN ROUTE: Sydney 2003 Clay Ketter / Ikea A case study in proof

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I’m in IKEA today. Every time I’m here, I see bleached, tight, tidy versions of American artist Clay Ketter’s shelving and kitchen units, made directly using IKEA designs, free of copyright. Ketter constructs identically sized iconic IKEA items using found or disregarded building materials. His works are elusive scrappy, grungy and functional. Located more in scrap yards and building sites and degraded lived situations. A do it yourself, patch it together world. The works are Idiosyncratic, and imbued with a sense of disturbed manufacture from its creator. Yet they are at the same time so much under the control of the accepted order. Within this framework of familiar design, there is disturbance and disruption from the ideal.

Clay Ketters beautifully hand made recycled items infect my journeys into IKEA. His ‘Billy Bob ‘objects (named after a popular Ikea shelving unit) make me think about the uniformity of the production process, and the empowerment of making my own furniture (Which I do).

He points out these furniture-objects as icons of present time. He makes me question the uniformity, and the bland taste of similarity. Clay Ketter is paranoid and pro-active. He researched the original founders of IKEA and discovered that one company director had a previous affiliation with an eastern European fascist party. Ketter posits that IKEA is another realisation of fascist uniformity in production. An army of consumers all decked out with the same things.

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Big Billy Bob 1995, Clay Ketter

Surface habitat for appliance 1997, Clay Ketter

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Wallpaper ™, Magazine Cover

The Influence of Retail Aesthetics

IKEA is a surround international everyday. It successfully produces unified affordable home combinations. Subtle changes are introduced every year to satisfy slight variations in trend. IKEA is the world of low budget designer lines. It emulates a highly expensive glossy internationalism that can be found in the utopian ‘Wallpaper’ magazine (UK). Wallpaper magazine exists not only to advertise and support the designer fashion world, but stands firmly as an affluent and upwardly mobile generation’s great document of its consumer desires. (This magazine was the biggest selling lifestyle publication internationally 1998-2004). Wallpaper supplants and reflects, with slick attention to detail and high production methods, the ideals of our highly financed future utopias. Dust free, clean lines, expensive materials, sweeping vistas, Nordic forests, and American highways. In short, this magazine is Modernist global culture in international continuum. All images are well lit, (there are no dark corners interestingly), the magazine is designed and formalised to articulate fashionable standards, models are unified and made up. All bodies are controlled, scrutinised, coerced to be similar and uniformly sized. (Think here of Vanessa Beecroft’s point in performances vb16 1996-vb59 2006). In this world, all is illuminated and touched up. It is the uniform desired and unquestioned world at large. Treated, controlled, no longer wild. The magazine is extreme consumer hardcopy hardware.

Why is this significant? These retail aesthetics and the use of mass produced familiar forms are evident in pragmatic art today. Observations in this design area, form the aesthetic foundations to a number of pragmatic art dialogues with consumer desire. (Andrea Zittel, Heger & Dejanov, Clay Ketter for example). Through conscripting certain readily available retail forms art is now able to closely articulate, accurately reflect and critically feedback alternatives, within this untouchable utopia.

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Perhaps it is this heavily treated unobtainable ‘out of reachness’ and lack of attainable tactility in high-end consumer design products why the artist Clay Ketter also made his own worn in, recycled, weathered versions of these glossy designer worlds. His objects stand empty, awaiting the presence of consumer goods to be placed into them. Declaring their very own iconic emptiness.

In Wallpaper magazine art is included and showcased with design, all parts seem to complement and fit together. It functions like an oracle for consumption, a manual of global international style. It is the world as a showroom, finished and presented yet never revealing the hidden parts. Visually fantastic, with high production values, a world created, highly financed and sponsored by large fashion companies, It is a summary of the current international forms of our times and the concrete manifestation of the desires of the upwardly mobile consumer.

In this magazine high end modernity reproduces itself into people’s homes. Images function like colonising machines, they inhabit our thoughts, designed to steer and temper our desires.15 The magazine is funded, obviously to operate this way. As advertisement.

Conflict and transformation in the everyday

Critical analysis of the everyday has been previously articulated in several conflicting ways. Many people treat the everyday with impatience; some want to change it, tidy it a little, and make it more palatable. (It is not necessarily ‘messy’, but often people will act like they would rather not have any everyday sensibilities or formations in the art that they look at, own and consume, they seek escape and fantasy in art). There are of course, those that believe lived subjective experience is neither important nor interesting – rather than enhance it, it should be minimised, sidelined and removed in order to make way for a more rational scientific and purely economically driven existence.

Transformation of the everyday requires certain conditions. A break with the uniformity, be it violent or peaceful, (writing letters of complaint, implementing difference or all out terrorism). In order to change life, society, language, politics, architecture and entertainment must change. Culture must be challenged. It is an abomination to reduce lived experience, and the recognition of any individual life to mean little more than part of a greater circuit. Ultimately this objective rationalisation is the final assimilation of people into mere operative cells of production. (Expendable workers, passive consumers or expendable foot soldiers).

Alienation in everyday work and time.

15 Interestingly, the publisher and co-founder of wallpaper magazine is a trained fine art school graduate. Wallpaper publisher- Alasdhair Willis, attended the same foundation course year as the author, in North Yorkshire

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An understanding of alienation and a sense of otherness is paramount for artists. One has to look at something wholly objectively and with a certain degree of distance in order to begin an accurate understanding of something’s component parts. Alienation is something that is regularly felt, and commonly experienced. It is not imposed, nor desired but it comes every time a break with the system is necessary. Breaks with the system are integral in the production of creative thoughts and art works. Small rebellions may consequentially take place everyday in the minds of workers at all levels, as a way of dealing with monotony.

‘There is a sense that something is wrong in the world of work, in what we are doing everyday. Why are we always doing the same? What will happen if we stop doing?…What will happen if we stop walking, eating, consuming, kissing, working, having fun? In this case, Secret strikes are connected more with the existential meaning of stopping what we normally do. Often the strike is seen as the workers against the boss, but in the collection of Secret Strike videos, this connotation is bigger, it is not the workers against the boss, its more that everyone feels that something is wrong with the rhythm of society…. In these works we will see workers stop, they will move very slowly, every action will be noticed’.16

16 Alicia Framis, Secret Strikes, Annet Gellink Gallery exhibition statement 2005

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Secret Strikes (Film stills) 2005, Alicia Framis

In 1891the way society laboured, and performed activities became newly organised. Frederic W. Taylor invented a form of scientific rationalised social engineering that became known as Taylorism. Work as we know it now, became predetermined and highly organised. Taylor’s new organising methods accompanied and produced an industrial society. His methods were at its core. Taylor determined that every worker should carry out only one singly defined duty.

Taylorism17 began to change how organizations functioned. Before this time, organizations were usually setup in homes or in formal businesses where the workspaces were open. There were no barriers to communication and ideas could flow freely among employees. Taylorism abruptly changed this feature of organizations.

Some of the following describe the affects of Taylorism: · New divisional structures of Hierarchical leadership · Split locations for manufacturing. Offices were divided off and compartmentalized. · Work became highly specialized with divisional labor. · Office features became a symbol of status. · Industry became product and outcome focused - not customer focused. · Manufacturing and industrial companies became the dominant company types. · Individual work practices became singular and fixed, no longer fluid. (workers were often static in one place & walking time was not included in the wage).

We can see Charlie Chaplin commenting on this idea as he performs the same gesture time and time again in his iconoclastic movie Modern Times 1936. Against the clock, Chaplin attempts to keep up with

17 A theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflow processes, improving labor productivity. Shop Management (1905) and The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) Taylorism is viewed now as a division of labor as pushed to its extreme. Leading to a de-skilling of a worker and ultimately a dehumanization of the workplace.

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demands. His own body gets sucked into the machinery as he struggles to keep up. All through history there have been struggles over time, conjectures and reactions over long working hours. Loss of time is industrial capitalism’s worst enemy. Time is money. The new invention of ‘free time’ is in some way a victory over the maximisation of time. Simply put, there is a limited time for working and a limited time reserved for entertainment, which equals ‘free time’. Before Taylorism this division did not exist and the two parts were inexplicably linked integrated and free flowing.

Modern Times 1936 (Stills) Charlie Chaplin

The American Industrialist Henry Ford worked intensively on the complete realisation of Taylorism in his infamous automotive factories. Ford workers were always working on the same machines day in day out, connected to the same spots. (Like Taylorism, walking was also not included in the salary). There is a strong connection that now overarches the placement, hierarchy and the evaluation of artistic activity and the rational logical standardisation of work. 18

Under Fordism, every gesture performed by a worker during their daily lives should produce something that has an immediately quantifiable equivalence of salary. Even now, a salary scale for the production of art has never been worked out.

Alienation - ‘Irrationalisation’ and artistic gesture

Economic rationalisation’s main directive is to minimise all unruly gestures. If anything is seen as unruly and irrational, it is to be prevented and frowned upon. Identified largely as waste. Talking of alienation

18 Artists have, bizarrely in the mainstream, long been incorrectly identified under this industrial paradigm as idle figures. Artists are not quantifiable using industrial models. The very idea of the non-quantative work, outside of industrially rationalised parameters must be eliminated and excluded from what is generally perceived as true and worthy working processes. By identifying artists as idle figures, it meant that they could be seen as non-essential and excess to requirements. This identification is highly political. Artists were identified as outsider figures, romantics, eccentrics and ascribed a certain psychopathology. Artistic endeavour was slowly removed from daily life and identified as something that deserved the least salary. Art became identified as a non-essential and a leisure activity. Very contrary to the aims and purposes of the art within this thesis.

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can be perceived as pessimistic, but on the contrary, artistic activity has always sustained and presented a refusal to be passively exposed to various kinds of cultural and political conditionings. The artist provides lessons that are unique. The artist puts us in front of our daily lives now.

It is this core use of life’s more familiar and ubiquitous forms that give the work in this thesis their currency. The critical artist has an ability to familiarise and understand all that is alienating. This very quest of returning from distancing mechanisms in culture and especially art is now under way. The evidence of this quest is present all throughout the everyday forms in this thesis.

New alienating consumer landscapes

Henri Lefebvre invented the concept of consumer society and considerably influenced defiantly utopian political thought. He was a libertine Marxist, philosopher, historian and sociologist. Poignantly most of his writing was executed during the very birth of mass consumerism after WWII.

In Volume 1 of the Critique of Everyday Life (1947), he deeply examines the so-called ‘trivial’ details of quotidian experience. He sees and reaffirms everyday experience as colonised by the commodity and steeped in the inauthentic. Any attempt to search for any authentic experiences within our society of the spectacle (Guy Debord 1967), he sees as near impossible now. All experiences are colonised, rationalised and packaged. Is it possible to produce new forms of experience?

For Lefebvre, alienation in everyday life is caused by ever expanding consumerist landscapes. These Landscapes and psycho-geographies, are so beautifully documented, symbolised and portrayed visually by the Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, ‘L’eclisse’ 1962, ‘Red Desert’ 1964 and ‘Zabriskie Point’ 1970. In these films the main characters commonly experience alienation, stress, oppression, revolt, reaction and escape from built environments – this is enacted either socially or quite literally by the characters in these films, by escaping and seeking experiences beyond that of the controlled and built environment. Characters often longingly touch windows or are shown in shots whereby they appear

insignificant within industrialised modern environments.

‘Our search for the human takes us far too deep. We seek it in the clouds or in mysteries, whereas it is waiting for us, besieging us, on all sides.’ 19

19 Henri Lefevbre, Critique of Everyday life Vol 1,1987

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L’eclisse, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962

Class distinction and variation in everyday experience

Since modern Industrialisation began, we can equate that the major production of philosophy, art, war, economics and capitalist politics have all been produced and governed by the more affluent and by extension the educated classes. The less affluent classes, were conscripted to support and maintain the wills of ‘upper’ classes at wage levels that barely covered the basic needs of existence.

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Everyday ‘mundane’ working life had always been thought of (by the ruling classes), as that which should be at best, ‘changed’ or exploited for the better. It was seen as something to tolerate and also escape from. Its only freeing force was provided predominantly through the controlling ‘promises’ of religion, and by extension fantasy -the two are highly interchangeable, as the pragmatists examined. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries art came to be seen as something more for the rich, elite and aristocratic classes. (Those with money and time on their hands). Art and its production became removed from shared ‘common’ life. It was extracted from its site of production, removed and placed in museums. Skilled artists were commissioned to ‘illustrate’ the beliefs of the church and preserve and gratify only the dominant hierarchies. Art became available, and accessible to an educated few.

Art began to be raised above the domain of the ‘everyday’. With this in mind, we can take all major notions of contemplated critique, philosophy, poetry and art to belong almost exclusively to an aristocratic class (The very class with the time to think). The dogma of the mundane, everyday, ‘quotidian’ class belonged to the proletariat. Highly skilled manual workers, uneducated in the ways of the aristocracy, were often illiterate, as a result of low wages and no schooling. The realities of these two classes was naturally extremely different. They lived, talked and communicated ‘very’ different languages. What we have here already, is two very real and very separate industrially produced quotidians.

We can further divide these larger divisions, if we think of a more peasant rural class, an industrial working class, and a consumer middle and bourgeois upper class that began to emerge along with the growing trade and exchange of industrialised products. At this point we have ascertained four very different senses of everyday realities, via simply the division of work.

These divisions are much more homogenised today, into those that produce and those that consume. My own artworks aim is to crucially intersect and intentionally feed directly into the above quotidians, by showing that they can be fused to resonate philosophically, economically, aesthetically and conceptually with both division demonstrated as fully interchangeable; the consumer is ‘also’ the producer.

This fact alone is important to me it shows and proves the ability of art to be able to work co-efficiently and across social class. One simply needs to choose and develop forms correctly and the context in which to implement the encounter of art.

Further divisions in everyday life

Under capitalism, ideas of work and leisure were both invented and fully divided. Family life became separate from ‘productive’ activity and so did notions of leisure.

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‘What distinguishes peasant life so profoundly from the life of industrial workers, even today is precisely this inheritance of productive activity. This productive activity is their life in its entirety. The workplace is all around the house; work is not separate from everyday life’.19

‘Bourgeois industrialists overturned and separated what was originally a unified existence of fully integrated labour, family and leisure – all of which were finely balanced and carefully tuned to a way of life; quite literally connected and determined by nature and the seasons’.20

Building a Nation / Jimmie Durham, The village of wounded knee (1973), Indian reservation South Dakota. Defending Land from Police. Photo Michelle Vignes

Early capitalist society began to fragment and focus labour away from community and self sufficiency implementing emphasis on greater production, basic profits which in turn produced surplus goods and further profit. In this way the economic system can become short sighted and imbalanced. Individual labourers became more specialised, less diverse and less self-sufficient. Over time, each individual becomes less ‘self-reliant’. Everyday exposure to particular and varied specialised practices is minimised. There are few individuals today who can fix cars, make clothing, cook, hunt, butcher, farm, grow food,

1919191920 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday life Vol 1,1987 2020202019 Think currently of the plights of the Arabian Bedouin, the San/Kalahari bush people of central Botswana, Aboriginal Australians and many other traditionally self reliant nomadic peoples. They are now facing the dynamics of extinction. Western legalities are coercively set in place by large conglomerates and governments in order to relocate these societies to large cities, eclipsing and denying their ways of life. Access to capitalise on traditionally owned land and natural resources is the driving force. Land development, diamonds, iron ore and mineral mining are sought, along with chances to clear vast landscapes of native vegetation, for intensive farming pursuits. At the turn of the century in the U.S, Native American Indian nations were faced with the same colonising genocidal fate. See also the writings and works of Cherokee artist Jimmy Durham. Columbus day 1975, Building a nation 2006

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execute repairs, educate and build. Most notions of self-reliance today have all but gone from the masses completely.

‘Global Leisure Forms’ - recent occurrences in everyday life

Everyday life as we have discussed has radically changed. Is there a decisive sector in which to singularly find the everyday? We are seeing that it exists in many forms so far. But the problem still lies in its immense and slippery subjectivity.

My everyday will be different from the reader’s everyday. Work, food, shelter and sex may perhaps be fairly essential common anthropological factors. The contemporary everyday makes more sense when discussed in terms of certain ‘global uniformities’. These global uniformities are the experiences that we may share from time to time. It is the global inter-relation of similarities, and cultural over lappings, which now give the notion of the everyday its greater resonance. Certain structures, signifiers, codes, ubiquitous desires and commodities could be said to be the common factors of experience. These common factors range from the minute to the gigantic. Anything from watches, food, shops, clothing, cars, buildings, films, beds, fetishes, travel, TV, shoes, fashion, books, cooking, working and furniture, all physically make up a shared new internationalism.

Leisure has directly given rise to certain forms of global similarities – Sunday walks, soccer, going to the beach, weekend drives, picnics, movies, TV and so on. Capitalism created and slowly exploited and emphasised leisure time as a commercial venture. Around the time of greatly industrialised mass production (1930 – 1960) we see the development of such things as caravan culture21 cinema complexes, home entertainment systems, cycling, motor culture and mass-produced sporting goods. These new widely available leisure activities demanded all sorts of further specialised optional equipment, clothing accessories and surplus items of choice and luxury. Each leisure activity became is its own specialised system. Markets would just continue to expand. Affordability meant that all the benefits of leisure could be enjoyed by all.

21 Wally Byam’s – Airstream TM

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Airstream ™ postcards Wally Byam Company 1960’s Outdoor leisure activities generally involve the ‘rediscovery’ of nature, and the sensorial (often from a safe, sanitised and secure distance. Civic parks, pedestrian woodlands, safaris and so on). Leisure could also involve some form of escape into a vacuum. Hobbies for instance, computer gaming recently, collecting things, home-indoor entertainment. Leisure machines are continually being built and updated with every generation – Televisions, MP3s, CDs, DVDs, cars, ipods, and computers.

Leisure forms in Migratory Projects

Of importance here to my own work, is the connective idea of the emergence of ‘travel’ as leisure, and the associative technologies that compliment it. These travel technologies, are of direct importance as formal elements in my artwork. The engine, the car, the trailer, the moving image, forward movement, notions of escape, the adaptation and modularity of the travelling object, and also the psychology of survival and independence when away from the larger support system; as found in the philosophy and practice of camping.

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WALLY BYAM 22 The Escape -Camping Industrialised / New nomads, and non-permanence The land Yacht ‘AIRSTREAM’

‘Whether we like it or not, any fool can see that this earth is gradually becoming one world. Nobody knows what the form of the one will be, but it’s going to be ‘one’ or none. Theres no point in waiting for things to happen, its time to make or break and its always better to wear out than rust out.’ Wally Byam 1960 23

One of the first extensive examples of leisure fully and successfully industrialised is found in work of Wally Byam. Byam took the idea of ‘trailers’ from very humble beginnings as simple storage spaces and luggage racks and turned them into highly sophisticated transient homes. Beginning with boxy prototypes in 1920, Byam would rest basic structures on Model A Ford chassis, to provide basic bedding, a shelf, a flashlight and some camping equipment all protected from the elements.

He would test his constructions and make adaptations from his experiences on the road. One can see Byam’s early experiments as sociologically relevant in light of the huge demographic shifts that were occurring in America as a result of the great depression. The cultural critic Gilbert Seldes wrote in 1937 at the height of America’s biggest economic collapse

“We are facing a movement of population beside which even the Crusades will seem like Sunday school picnics” 24

22 I discovered the extent of the influence of designer Wally Byam on everyday forms of leisure whilst researching further designs of the Airstream caravan system during the development of my own Trailer Garden artwork. His relevance to this field and on my own work is unquestionable. One can also note the methodology of design to be very similar to many of the notions defined by R Buckminster Fuller in building very strong resistant lightweight structures with minimum materials. 23 Wally Byam, Trailer Travel here and abroad, New York 1961, cited in Airstream the History of the land Yacht, Bryan Burkhart and David Hunt, Chronicle books pg 40, 2000 24 Gilbert Seldes, “ 200,000 Trailers”, Fortune Magazine March 1937, Vol XV, #3

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Wally Byam is the father of expansive modern caravanning culture. He revolutionised not only the design but established the very culture of the ‘movement’. He saw very early on in his career, (a career that grew out of the depression) that legions of male and female factory workers, harvesters, cotton pickers, journeymen, mechanics, and families were migrating from job to job, seeking simpler low-cost alternatives to the skyrocketing rents of industrial cities. He saw the market and requirements in these disenfranchised and vastly underpaid groups.

He discouraged living ‘wholly’ in a trailer at first, emphasising more the notion of the ‘travel trailer’ that could ramble job to job. Burgeoning also in the years that he was developing the Airstream, was the new notion of leisure time, which was born from new industrialised work structures and also from the wealth of a growing generation wanting to take to the road, find freedom, explore and release pent up war time anxieties.

There was not much market research originally into who would actually buy Byam’s early Trailers but from 1932 to 1936 the number of companies making trailers for various uses, had grown from forty eight, up to eight hundred. In the late 1930s The Automotive Daily News, reported that there were approximately 160,000 trailers on the road and only 35,000 of them were factory built. The growing motor industry presented notions for individual travel in ways never thought possible before.

Design and Adaptation By the late 1950s, Wally Byam had perfected the Airstream land yacht -caravan. 13 different models were available by 1963 (a year after his death). From 1932 to 1962, Byam had gone from using a few sheets of plywood and some second hand sinks to producing the only streamlined lightweight caravan in the world. A design that is so iconic still today.

There were no flat spots, on the tops or sides that would act as traps and hinder speed and increase resistance. He was using techniques he’d observed in aircraft design. He used flanged and perforated curved aluminium beams to make the sub-frames, which were then covered by flat aluminium sheets all riveted to form a strong super lightweight rust free skin. Wally Byam described the skin of his Airstreams as a monocoque, a shell, or cocoon. They were built very similarly to that of an aircraft fuselage, where the outer skin bears all, or most of the stresses. The airstream body and the chassis were fused together as a whole, to make one complete unit, a ‘monocoque’.

Byam formed a subculture of ‘caravaners’, The Wally Byam Caravan Club International (WBCC1) that toured the world as he himself managed all of the journeys and tested his Airstreams in direct field situations. He realised the maximum possibilities of use for the humble trailer to operate as a machine for

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discovery and experience for the greater world around us in very low impact ways. He also expressed that he was interested in building the sense of a close mobile community, and that this community had a role and that role was one of diplomacy. A diplomacy that came from introducing and fusing cultures together. As well as sharing cultural differences the caravaner should constantly be learning and introducing new information between situations caused by constantly new and expanding international encounters.

Above all else Wally Byam believed pragmatically in ‘innovation through experience’.

Airstream ™ postcards Wally Byam Company 1960’s

Holistic art, distinctions and values of everyday life

What we are certain of today, is that the idea and manifestation of leisure in advanced capitalist society must constitute a ‘break’ from work. It must also break from education and family life to a large degree. Oddly it is associated with temporarily breaking from ones own life? That a culture produces such a life from which ‘escape’ is a necessity is for me highly questionable.

There is an increasing emphasis on leisure that is characterised by forms of distraction. Leisure it seems, should offer liberation from worry and necessity rather than instigate new concerns and obligations. Artists have generally not chosen to distinguish or implement leisure time within their lives. Work, life and leisure are often more fully integrated into artist’s lives than most other societal areas of productive practice. For an artist, there is little division or zoning between these areas.

Displayed within my research is the pertinent development of an art that integrates work, life and leisure fully back together.

‘There is no more of a sense of genuine ‘leisure’ about a family get-together than there is about gardening or doing odd jobs around the house. So those involved tend to reject ambiguous forms of leisure, which might resemble work or obligation. The cultural aspect strikes them as being irrelevant. They mistrust

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anything which might appear to be educational and head toward distraction, entertainment and repose – activities which are seen to somehow compensate for the difficulties of everyday life’.25

Rejecting rigid forms

Doctored Images of what our everyday should look like were contemplated and phrased so beautifully in 1947 by Henri Lefebvre, when contemplating the new phenomenon of mass advertising,

‘These images so skilfully and so persuasively exploit the demands and dissatisfactions which everyone carries with them. It is indeed very difficult to resist being seduced and fascinated by them, except by becoming rigidly puritanical, and, in rejecting ‘sensationalism’, rejecting ‘the present’ and life itself”. Lefebvre describes further his encounters with: “Images which make the ugly beautiful, the empty full, the sordid elevated –and the hideous fascinating’.26

The everyday can also be seen as a series of constantly repeatedly shared moments where everyone experiences similar cultural cues at various times. The majority of these cues are passive and effortless engagements that become second nature. Buying milk, driving, working and simply spending money all produce the flow of daily life. Billboards, TV adverts, radio, newspapers, commercial signage…all become the standard form of shared witnessed experiences. Created for fast easy interpretation.

Of further relevance to the argument, is that these available and mass produced reference points imbue us (through sheer repeatable mass) with a sense of how and who we should be, and what we ‘should’ think. These common mass reference points, tell us what is easiest and best under the governing structures – yet not what is possibly right or equitable for the good of all.

The imagery of denial What we find in the majority of our mass entertainments is a disturbingly false world. A damaging world of illusion, often sentimental, sweetened, perfect, idealistic and highly manufactured. We are supposed to be soothed and placated by the world it shows us. Illusory images replace our real everyday dissatisfactions. Airbrushed, photo shopped forms and physiques, distort and lie about how we should look and what we should think. Most popular films, popular press, popular art, and most popular music offers us fictions in response to real needs for something powerful and engaging. Escapism is what fuels the production of these fictions. Happiness found in escapism is sustained through denial. This form of production simply needs to stop.

25 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life 1947, pg 34 26 Henri Lefebvre, op cit as pg 56,

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Most artificial sweeteners contain carcinogens.

A number of questions arise. - Can art implement a new form of direct experience, beyond the singularly visual? - Can art counteract the pervasive ness of aggressive consumer aesthetics, which are ultimately damaging the world in non-sustainable ways? - Can art affect people’s everyday lifestyles altruistically and effectively? - Can a more pragmatic and alternative art be successfully inserted into the official cloisters of accepted daily cultural production and consumption?

EN ROUTE: Sydney Sept 2005 SBS - Channel 4 documentary War in website form

A number of American websites publishing photos taken in Bagdad and Iraq provided by ground troops and foot soldiers, were shut down early this year and the hosts heavily fined or jailed by the FBI. The web hosts claimed it was open, free and democratic and in direct correspondence with the various units and collaborating soldier’s wishes to show a real side of the everyday war in Iraq. The FBI declared the content was not desirable to American ideals and extremely unsavoury.

The foot soldier’s images were gruesome yet real and in context to what they had to do. The dead bodies in these pictures were not trophy shots but were an attempt to show the world the real side and the everyday horrors of war as it was experienced first hand.

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EN ROUTESydney, Oct 05 Feedback Channels.

We should have a TV channel, devoted exclusively to showing us all of our oil spills, environmental disasters, war atrocities, brutalities, destruction of wild habitats and wild animals.

It should just run on a loop, perpetually and get upgraded and added to….continually…

We need to see all of our barbarity and stupidity. We need awareness now, more than ever.

A channel, to feedback a constant stream of images and events that we are accountable for as a species.

Holistic - Art/Work/Leisure as One

‘We may certainly affirm that work is the foundation of personal development within social practice. It links the individual with the other workers and also with knowledge; it is through work that the multi- technical education, which controls the sum total of the productive process and social practice, is made possible and necessary’.27

Due to our culture becoming so aligned and colonised by ideas of wealth, ownership, consumerism and reliance on service industries, it has thus for the majority of people become more alienating. A point I find interesting is the desire I have witnessed over the last few years, for a trend in TV shows that reveal behind-the-scenes, specialised practices (even if only partially). This current obsession with ‘Behind the scenes’ programs, DIY shows, cooking and home improvement documentaries, reveal a need for a reconnection to manufacture and process.

We observe in these shows, how the world is constructed from the smallest process outwards (Micro- Gestures). We see how the parts may fit. We are shown the knowledge and resources needed, as well as

27 H. Lefebvre (pg 38/39) op.cit, as pg 58,

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the tricks and skills of the various forms of labour in the world at large. We see people socialising, cooking, being elated, upset, striving, singing, dancing, losing weight, learning new parenting skills, decorating houses, testing their pre-conceptions and nerves in differing situations and cultures.

Programs of this nature are predicated on the first hand on generally helping people. We can watch the struggles and benefits of empowerment and learning skills. What is refreshing to see is that somehow these shows allow us to at least think momentarily that profit may not be the only reward or reason for effort in our culture.

EN ROUTE: Sydney 2006 ‘Carbicide’

I wonder how many units of electrical power a ‘game show’ actually uses? What are the carbon footprints of these forms of trivial entertainment?

Think about the massive lighting set ups, stage construction, electronic equipment, buzzers, monitors, screens, cameras, amplifiers.

There ought to be a game show about the devolving of massive electrical power wastage. Prizes to be awarded in carbon credits. Prizes that are better for everyone.

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EVERYDAY IN SUMMATION Quotidian Art Variables In trying to best represent and establish the everyday, we have journeyed rapidly through discussions of modern social formations, examined consumer desires and outlined varied forms of work and cultural divisions within capitalist paradigms.

Empirically speaking, the quotidian is the only universe we have. The quotidian is in fact our ruling ideology. According to Victor Misiano 28, Art within the quotidian has three primary possibilities,

(1) It can incarnate the comforts of industrial utopia. (2) It can embody an escapist and visionary experience or (3) It can present a meta-description of the whole cultural context.

Misiano tells us that the first option gives life to official art, that which is shown at museums and gala exhibitions, as a euphoric ideal that is both the alternative to everyday routine and at the same time very normative. The second possibility rejects officialdom in a non-conformist way, producing a depressive and ultimately non-attainable romantic existence as the only authentic ideal. The third is art, which understands itself as a self-reflecting activity, working with the structures of the quotidian as the only real and actual context of existence.

28 Victor Misiano b1957 is a curator and critic based in Moscow. Between 1980 and 1990 he was the director of the Center of Contemporary Art, Moscow. In 1996 he co-curated Manifesta 1, the European Biennale of Contemporary Art, held at various locations in Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Currently he is the editor-in-chief and publisher of Khduzhestvenny zhurnal (Moscow Art Magazine).

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The first type of practice is inseparable from institutions and the market therefore devotes itself to the creation of artefacts – pictures & sculptures. The second type also devotes itself to the creation of artefacts, but these pictures and sculptures, often so personalised, are largely predestined to be kept in the artist’s studio. The third kind of meta-descriptive art reflects upon the everyday and thinks of itself as part of this. In the meta-descriptive category we often find, handmade books, conceptual albums, exhibitions in private apartments & houses, poetry, flyers, zines, postcards and so on. This type of art attempts quite directly to insert itself back into the mass-produced super structured world.

This third type gets a little closer to the strategies engaged within co-efficient and relational art. The everyday is the theme, the subject of analysis and the sphere of its functioning. The meta-descriptive form of art aims to consolidate itself in an everyday context. There is a desire to construct jointly, a new register for existence, along with new forms of art.

Everyday art forms aim for consolidation of many different and complex parts. Misiano comments that official well behaved, forms of euphoric art pretend to be objective measuring tools, while the alternative escapist art believes itself to be an inner subjective measuring tool. The art of the meta-quotidian presents itself at least as an inter-subjective structure of connectivity. The latter according to Misiano, is often more generous, innovative and avant-garde of the three.

Generational quotidian – reactions and advantages Quotidian rules and structures are always set up by one generation. The next generation ‘re-codes’ the previous quotidians. Contemporary artists definable under relational premises differ from previous more inter-subjective movements, such as fluxus, situationist and dematerialist artists, as they now draw from a number of areas and influences previously unavailable in such simultaneous ways. It is as simple as being able to combine areas of parallel research and references that in short, have never previously existed before, as they do now here in this thesis synthesising a new form of artistic output and knowledge.

If we think of our current situation like a peak in the landscape of recent history, we find ourselves at a point of advantage. We can ‘overview’ like never before. We can cluster all similar movements together. In comparing these movements we are able for the first time to see similarities and differences which were not consolidated before. Co-efficient, relational and pragmatic art uses many areas simultaneously. It is a summation of avant- garde strategies.

Opposition to the mundane Art was once symbolised as an escape from everyday routines and realities, it encompassed everything beyond the limits of everyday life, freedom, passions and transcendence. Artefacts embodying this

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privileged experience became objects of desire. Nowadays, amongst experimental contemporary artists at least, this compensatory function of art has disappeared. “As a result, the form of an artefact becomes inadequate”.29

The stasis inherent in a single artefact cannot usually stand the dynamics of the capitalist flow. The artefact now risks being subsumed. It must now compete with the flow of signs, and the meanings and new surfaces of technology as well as all the new societies engaged in new variations of activity that go hand in hand with new developments. The mode of the single object as a summation may be obsolete. The art discussed here now offers no more metaphors, no abstracted realities. No singular statements and no safety nets.

Art today faces another task: it must find its place in the natural flow of commodities and locate itself firmly in an economy (or create its own) – to do this the challenge for art has always been to be tradable and purchasable. This logically manifests itself in the form of objects. The object portion of the process of art is crucial for its economic survival. In many ways this is arts governance and arguably (developmentally) its inhibitor.

Expectancy and artistic actions as everyday formations As a means of avoiding the production of more artefacts, the most agile and adequate form of resistance is the ‘artistic action’ a core method used in the development and testing of my own work. Traditionally, artefacts are always expected to be produced by artists. Artefacts are expected the world over to be the dominant form and to be the summary of an artist’s output. This form of output has also changed. The change amplified within certain well-documented actions. Chris Burden, ‘Shoot’, 1971, Gordon Matta Clark, ‘Pig roast’, 1971, ‘Food’ restaurant 71-72, ‘Splitting’ 1974, Hans Haacke, ‘Shapolsky et al’ Manhattan real estate holdings, (data sheets on a real time social system) 1971, Vito Acconci Performance & films, ‘Contacts’ 1971, Marina Abramovic and Ulay, ‘Imponderabilia’, 1976-80, ‘Light/Dark’ 76-80. Recently, young French artist Matthieu Laurette, (Five interventions into the French TV network), ‘Apparitions’, ‘Applause’ 1996-2000 and Belgian artist Francis Alys, ‘Reenactments’, 2000, began to explore the art action once again. These last two young artists can be seen as descendants of direct art action. An artistic action, made in the ‘here and now’ mode, is usually simple, straight forward and devoid of features of scenic, representational art. It is never overly laboured and normally does not repeat principles or static formations. The artistic actions occurring in art today are generally discrete and more often than not, part of an ongoing or larger series of works. I have developed an ongoing series of documentations since the inception of my studio projects called Micro Gestures that directly synthesises these notions. These actions are designed to be implemented into a contemporary reality to show purpose, development

29 Victor Misiano, Radical Quotidian, Everyday, BOS 1998 pg 29

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and evidence. A reality and situation that the artist observes and judges to be deprived of useful and poignant end goals and teleology. 30

Shoot 1971, Chris Burden

Apparitions 1993-95, Matthieu Laurette

30 The philosophical study of design and of purpose. Teleology holds all things to be designed for and directed toward a final result, It supposes that there is an inherent purpose and final cause for everything that exists.

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Pig roast 1971, Gordon Matta-Clark

Splitting 1974 Gordon Matta-Clark

Contemporary artistic actions are rarely announced. Nobody announces a street accident or documents an occasional drop in visit to a friend. The strategy is not dissimilar to a situationist standpoint. Like the reactive situationists, the artistic actions of today may not always be based on rational procedures or necessarily be translated into neat-concise statements. Finally, the duration or event of a work made in the here and now should be synchronic with its creation. The event should be humble, not performed. It should be nothing more than its own event. This is the difference between ‘action’ and ‘artefact’, this ongoing creation, embodies the logical expectation that if not now, then at sometime it will obtain acknowledgement and value.

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As examples we can also think of the Fluxus collectives and Situationists. These groups and art practices did not gain huge critical recognition within their own lifetimes. Why was this? One of my reasons for writing this thesis is to assert and deliver the correct interpretive tools and definitions of not only my own work, but of all the art practices and knowledge bases that I assert are now possible to discuss in much clearer ways with new and previously unwritten definitions.

‘Art action events’ are generally distinguished by trying to be more chaotic or extremely controlled than any existing current situations. Art of this kind joins a rebellion against the standard and established quotidian, and revolts against it. Artists such as Rirkrit Tiravanija, Paul Mcarthy, John Bock, Matthew Barney and Gustav Metzger illustrate this.

‘Art practice therefore takes the shape of terrorist action whose target is everything which embodies the stable and unarguable realm, everything which pretends to be relevant to the plan of existence – Political institutions, museums traditions, authorities, the art community’31 Misiano

Artists role & diversity Nobody assigns any reactive right to an artist, to act or work in this way – the artist assumes this right through sheer effort of observation, aesthetic and social critique, persistence, training and will. It is often in this reactionary role that real concrete difference and broader subjectivities are founded. This experience attained and grounded firmly in tangible reality, now overshadows the transcendental and the drive for any continual fantasist romanticism. Supreme objectivity and liberating positive discourses are again being implemented.

The refreshing though localised observations brought together by Nicolas Bourriaud has been made possible from the realisation that huge gaps and distancing mechanisms and techniques were at work in society and by extension - the art world. The young artists that Bourriaud was encountering were increasingly unhappy at the levels of representation, and difference on show in art institutions. Art was losing its impact and relevance not only in wider social situations, but also crucially amongst the artists themselves.

31 Victor Misiano Radical Quotidian, Everyday, BOS 1998 pg 29

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EN ROUTE: Sydney, 2005 Nicolas Bourriaud in conversation with author, Fatima’s restaurant, Surry Hills.

‘There wasn’t a lot of critical writing, which was up to date and informed about new modalities, I haven’t really done anything new, I just collected what the artists were thinking, doing and saying. It all comes out of the artists’. Nicolas Bourriaud

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As a result of observing and tracking contemporary shifts in art today, I can verify that the language of absolute categories such as conceptual art, abstraction, formalism, performance, painting, sculpture, textiles, design, theory, craft, installation and so on, has become somewhat dissolved. I believe that these categories are no longer very useful. I produce art as I always have, and it utilises most of these definitions. Traditional artistic categories simply no longer work affectively when attempting to describe most contemporary artwork.

The artist Gordon Matta Clark, was no more a sculptor than a performer, he dug, he painted, he photographed, he was involved in situationist activity, he was a conceptual artist, a co-efficient artist, a dematerialist artist, and a proto-relational artist. Rirkrit Tiravanijia seems equally as unstable when it comes

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to definition. (See artist’s page). Above all they are encapsulated and best defined, as I have asserted, as pragmatic.

Periods of Change and Discursive Development The new forms of co-efficient and relational art are from my observations built predominantly on rational and actual problems. In fact many of the artist’s works presented here in this paper exist solely as means of engaging directly with a given issue. These new forms of art aim to directly solve and highlight problems where ever they can. There is a new form of art integrating into life, and back out again. This art is geared toward having great aesthetic and social effect. It creates a phenomenon that I refer to, as a kind of feedback loop. (See artist Christoph Büchel in conclusion chapter)

Well behaved art – The aesthetic antithesis There are many artists today who work solely toward the most emblematic, attractive examples of the here and now. Seemingly contemporary ideas – but with forms based conservatively in representational artistic tradition.32 The main factor at work in well behaved work is the persistent use of the same number of skills utilised and repeated many times until the project is complete. This process is an endgame scenario. It is predictable for the artist. This type of work functions very well commercially, but not conceptually.

32 In Australia at least, two examples (both interestingly have been picked for the national pavilion at the Venice Biennale in recent years) Patricia Piccinini is one example. Piccinini is a contemporary representational artist. She emulates and represents a dystopian view of genetic science, but her work is always formalised in a figurative and simplistic way. The other artist is Ricky Swallow, who carves wooden sculptures in the ‘old’ style. Working skilfully and competently but whose forms are based in contemporary products. Both artists follow endgame scenarios. This means that they know the final outcome of their projects before they finish them. On viewing works by both these artists, their works seemed sealed and inaccessible. For all the colour, fine surfaces and completeness, the work seems anaemic and bland. It requests no further engagement. This leaves it very still and static. Both these artists rely heavily on technical skill, each project generally increasing in size or scale (this is always a linear movement)

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Representational art can bring success, as it is familiar, never really dangerous or truly offensive. It is concise, under control and media friendly. It is at all times, palatable and immediately perceivable. In short, for all of its regulated elements it will only manage to function in the same way as a cartoon. Simplified, rounded off, any disturbance that we might possibly encounter will never be realised or really actually affect us. At best the representational will be the ghost of a thought, or the remnant of a real lived moment, state or perception. It is never the real live actual situation – but a version of it.

The boundaries of art and everyday life Artists, who aim at making everyday social life an aesthetic object, losing the obvious difference between the artistic and the non-artistic, eventually create a new space in the margin between art and non-art.

“ This activity raises basic questions: is it art or hooliganism, avant-garde or vandalism, inspiration or 33 mutilation?” Misiano

The answer in short, to the previous quote is I think that it is ‘all’ of the previous.

“Establishing the right to supreme objectivity starts to constitute a new inter-subjective universe. In other words rebellion against the established quotidian is functionally nothing but a re-coding of the 33 quotidian.”

One’s own quotidian - Power and alternatives References to personal existence are what can distinguish one quotidian from the greater unified sense of the everyday.

‘Each of us will always have privatised knowledge and experience’34

Victor Misiano poses the question, how do we establish any autonomous individual order, without being subordinated to the laws of the dominant forces and paradigms? The fact is, that a personal existence will start to organise itself in accordance with rational, ritualised principles of teleology. This organisation of the personal will strive to declare itself through a series of identifications with the greater social and cultural location points that will lead to a series of desired and specifically determined outcomes. This is largely the idea of sub-cultures. An attitude, perception, fashion or a philosophy, which provides a different take on the world. Subcultures are built on a series of preceding layers, variations and deviations from dominant forces and rely on different reference points.

33 Victor Misiano, Radical Quotidian, Everyday, BOS 1998 pg 30 33 Victor Misiano, (pg 30) op.cit, pg 73 34 Documentary on Film maker Peter Greenaway, from author’s note book -1991

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We can and do construct individual private utopias. Art is an attempt to construct individual order, to indicate the presence of an other. Art is a way of playing the world, of reorganising the forms. Perhaps in a better way, perhaps in a way which no one has ever seen before? Art implements ideas, ‘think zones’ and territories. Each think-zone contains its own dialectics, which align socially with the time in which it was produced.

Quotidian everyday art (of which relational aesthetics is largely built) reveals, through juxtaposition and relocation of various familiar items and systems, the shared super structure of our existence. This type of art presents us with encounters, questions our codes of conduct and presents us with things that we may have missed or ignored.

‘We must make use of what we already have, it’s a matter of re-creating, and reconfiguring’35

Stopping for a moment There are arguably too many objects in the world now. As a way of re-learning and advancing perhaps the most radical thing to do culturally and industrially now is to stop. Stopping as we know is not acceptable. To stop is to be seen to fail under capitalist logic. Forward movement soon ensures those who stop will be forgotten and overtaken by the production of the new.

To stop is near impossible. Stopping is ‘against’ the system.

In daily existence, our individual reality, on roads, in offices, workshops, classrooms, studios, homes, streets, cities and the countryside, is determined and activated by the objects of mass production. These objects vast and small that surround and support us, also aim to keep our aesthetic symbolic and psychological lives together. We feel empowered and enabled. Without these objects we feel bereft and disempowered.

35 Andrew Sunley Smith, Bricolage notes Migratory projects, 2004

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MICHAEL LANDY Breakdown

In February 2001, artist Michael Landy systematically destroyed everything he owned in the name of art. For his project Breakdown, he spent a fortnight in the window of the old C& A shop in London's Oxford Street destroying all his worldly possessions, as passers by looked on in horror.

Landy took all of his 7,006 possessions, and in an extreme ritualistic reversal of consumption, arranged them into eight categories and reduced every one of them back into their base materials.

Printed on large wall sized sheets, the inventory of Landy's possessions resembled a makeshift memorial. The public measured their belongings against his as they questioned whether they could live without their photographs or their address book, their CDs or credit cards. The project caused quite a stir in the press and made people examine their values. Landy had touched upon a rare chord in a consumer - dominated society.

A graduate of Goldsmiths College of Art in the early 1990s, Michael Landy was even more acclaimed than Damien Hirst originally. But as he never made commercially viable, sale-able art, galleries simply dropped him as soon as they realized that he had no commercial exchange value.

‘A London installation artist is reducing every possession he has to dust as part of an exhibition called Break Down. Michael Landy, 37, will shred or granulate everything from socks to family photographs over the next two weeks at the site of the old C&A flagship store on Oxford Street, central London. By the time the installation is complete he will have nothing but a cat called Rats and his girlfriend, Turner Prize winning video artist Gillian Wearing’. BBC news, February 200136

Landy said the event/exhibition, ‘Was an examination of society's romance with consumerism. It's also about the amount of raw material that goes into making objects and about the lifespan of things. But the title also reflects an emotional break down’. 37 Refuse had always been a key part of the artist's work. In 1994 his still life composition comprising of a

36 Report written in my notebook from BBC bulletin. 37 Michael Landy Breakdown, Artangel catalogue publication, London 2001

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bin full of rubbish was shown at the Karsten Schubert Gallery in London. The work was accidentally, thrown away by a cleaner. He had also hit the headlines in 1997, with an installation to celebrate Christmas, commissioned by the Tate Gallery. It featured a large bin filled with empty bottles, used wrapping paper, broken decorations and some dry and dead Christmas trees.

In his Breakdown project, he made an exhaustive inventory of everything he owned, from his socks to original David Bowie singles to his car, a Saab 900. After loading the details of all of his 7,006 objects onto a database. Each was placed on a large system of conveyer belts and ten assistants began the destruction, and shredding of everything that he possessed.

While many of the items were seemingly worthless utensils such as kitchen equipment, Landy also destroyed his valuable art collection, which included works by many of the now renowned young British artists, such as Tracey Emin, Gillian Wearing and Damien Hirst.

‘I see this as the ultimate consumer choice. Once Break Down has finished, a more personal break down, will commence - life without my self-defining belongings.’ Michael Landy38

Breakdown (2001) Michael Landy Prior to being recognised and evaluated, much quotidian art was judged as colourless, monotonous and in contradiction to the established laws of art perception. In order to diversify standards of acceptance, the majority of conceptual art and recent relational art appeared to many, as messy and formless. These forms of art were approached and read with older inappropriate ideas and therefore disregarded, as they did not fit with previous more formal expectations. In other words, the art of the everyday-quotidian was seen to reject any form of stylised, mannered or established pre-ordained forms of communication. It has taken

38 Michael Landy Breakdown, Artangel catalogue publication, London 2001

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some time for this kind of work to be given a valid assessment. Only now through direct use of the artist’s references themselves can we start to clearly see the reasons and read the forms. The recrudescence of interest in the works of the artists mentioned in the Pre-history chapter, is I believe directly accountable to the amount of pragmatic artists pointing out their works in conversations and interviews throughout the last decade.

Quotidian artists appropriate more unusual and eccentric procedures with no less aggression than others who work at privatising and specialising artistic realities, toward removing them from the arena of everyday activities.39

Expanding the field of play The pragmatic artist is not driven singularly by the comfort found in producing multiple critically acceptable, cleverly skilled representational forms and the thought of commercial success, but by the ability to introduce forms of varied sociability and technique into steadfast, aesthetically ‘xenophobic’ and dysfunctional circuits.

This strategy despite its often, difficult aesthetics, contains a highly positive pattern. By rejecting established forms of artistic communication and reception, co-efficient relational art presents a pragmatic and stoic act in an era of consumer capitalist abundance. It values reflection, research and intimacy. It brings forth what it feels needs to be seen. This type of artwork articulates more than most in one encounter. It deals and presents us with the difficult and the unruly, the dirt and patina of the everyday with as little regard for affectation and falsity as is possible. It is more the experienced weathered traveller arriving, hungry and with news as opposed to the carefully groomed, white toothed tanned, Hollywood cast explorer reading from a script.

A kind of ‘autism’ is the price paid by the artists who predominantly defend the values of old style aesthetics and outmoded critical thinking

Conclusions and new categories gained from the everyday Contemporary quotidian art derives from a collapse in the belief in esoteric and obtuse forms of representation. It questions the notion that previous art movements and stylistic allegiances can continue to accurately reflect and resonate our time. Naturally, older systems begin to fail to represent the ‘here and now’ new artistic gestures, environments and realities, are all based on a summation of previous artistic endeavours and movements with all their respective outcomes. Using experimental foundations gleaned from previous historical creative attempts, new pragmatic art practices have been made possible.

39 As mentioned previously, the 18th century was definitive in rarefying art and removing it from everyday life and from the public sphere. Historically it became the norm to house art in churches and museums. Sanctified spaces.

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Pragmatic art is a legacy of avant-garde attempts to connect art to our everyday lives in a way, which is not only aesthetic. It is specifically generated by situations in the present, and situations learned from the past. It is a form of social, and historical rationalisation; what have we done? and where are we going?

The unavoidable condition of this new approach will be the adoption of a category absolutely foreign to many artists, critics, curators, gallery directors and general audiences, who seem so uneasy in this current transition period – it is the category of the other, of the outside world and of the non-compliant. There is a responsibility to ‘everydayness’ within pragmatic art that suggests the necessary use and conscription of familiar items in our lives. For it is our lives and responsibilities and perceptions that this art questions. Yet is does not question from afar, it questions through the articulation of very stuff from which the world around it is comprised.

40 ‘This type of art creates a new inter-subjective universe’

We have established in this chapter, in the exploration of the elusive everyday, that the predominant aesthetic features found in all pragmatic artworks are those of our immediate environment. These forms and systems that occupy and surround us, are often the ones that, due to their familiarity will often go critically and creatively unconsidered by many.

The scope for quotidian work is vast and far-reaching. Our mythology now stems from our everyday objects. (Something French semiologist and writer Roland Barthes introduced and wrote extensively about in ‘Mythologies’ from 1954 to 1957). The ultimate expression of our culture’s economy, its manufacturing, symbolic orders, and political nuances, are of course all linked to industry. Most objects reach us in our homes after they have been produced and refined by machines. The type of work examined in this thesis re-introduces the power of the individual mind within the everyday mass and the individual hand, quite literally (and also symbolically) multitasking and diversifying.

The artist appears by force of intelligence and by hand, to re-configure and reassemble the realities of the world. The quotidian superstructure governing and permeating all, is still modernist and heavily and totally industrialised.

The co-efficient is the very fluid mechanism that connects the meaning of the successful pragmatist artwork back into our daily lives and minds. By highlighting and directly presenting the familiar back to us, artists avoid the danger of aesthetic and formal alienation in the work, with nothing removed, or

40 Victor Misiano (pg 31) op-cit, pg 79 this thesis

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otherworldly. Co-efficient and relational art is pragmatically and firmly planted in our world. It is realist, readymade, reconfigured and re-presented, and concerned with what we are creating collectively.41

The everyday ‘is’ the summation of what we produce collectively. It is a concrete manifestation of our shared experience and ultimately of what we all create on a daily basis.

IMAGE APPENDIX

Chapter 1: Everyday Engagements

All images in this thesis are taken from the ongoing artwork The Migratory Projects Archive 2002-Ongoing Compiled by the Author for educational use in conjunction with the Carrier vehicle

P309 Twins / Pollocks 33526-44099, Camper shoe Catalogue 2005

P312 Perfectly Normal Luxury 1999, Heger & Dejanov, Plan B, De Appel NL, Catalogue 2000 Gallery Closed for the Holidays 1999, Swetlana Heger & Plamen Dejanov, Documents sur l’Art, Les Presses Du Reel 2000

P315 Traffic, Jacques Tati 1971

P316 Traffic, Jacques Tati 1971

The Red Desert 1964 Michelangelo Antonioni, Chatman Seymour and Duncan Paul (2004), Michelangelo Antonioni, The Investigation, Taschen

P318 Mon Oncle 1958 Jacques Tati (DVD stills) Migratory Projects Archive 2006

P319 Plenty Objects of Luxury 1997,Swetlana Heger and Plamen Dejanov.

P326 Breakdown (2001) Michael Landy, www.artangel.org.uk

P329 Surface habitat for appliance 1997, Clay Ketter, Everyday catalogue 11th Biennale of Sydney 1998

Big Billy Bob 1995, Clay Ketter, Against design Catalogue 2000 (Institute of contemporary art University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

41 For further reading on art as social activity. See also Pierre Bourdieu. The work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu highlights the arts as a strongly social activity. In the Rules of Art 1992, he analyses the conditions for the production and reception of a work of art. He argues that analysing and understanding the social conditions in which artworks are produced intensifies and heightens our aesthetic experience and does the opposite of destroying it. He argues that uncovering the social conditions that surround the genesis of a work of art, strengthen and complement our ability to become attached to it and thus fulfilled.

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P330 Wallpaper ™, magazine Covers 2000-2004 Authors Collection.

P333 Secret Strikes 2005, Alicia Framis, Annet Gelink Gallery exhibition statement. Authors Archive.

P335 Modern Times 1936 (Stills) Charlie Chaplin. www.filmforum.org

P337 L’eclisse 1962 Michelangelo Antonioni, Chatman Seymour and Duncan Paul (2004), Michelangelo Antonioni, The Investigation, Taschen

P340 Building a Nation / The village of wounded knee (1973), Indian reservation South Dakota. Defending Land from Police. Photo Michelle Vignes (artist Jimmie Durham on roof)

P341 and 345 Airstream ™ postcards Wally Byam Company 1960’s, Collection of the Author

P354 Shoot 1971, Chris Burden, www.tate.org.uk Apparitions 1993-95, Matthieu Laurette, from www.laurette.net

P355 Pig roast 1971, Gordon Matta-Clark Splitting 1974 Gordon Matta-Clark Gordon Matta-Clark, Survey by Thomas Crow, essays by Judith Russi Kirshner and Christian Kravagna, edited by Corinne Diserens, Paidon press (Monograph) 2003

P364 Breakdown (2001) Michael Landy www.artangel.org.uk

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CONCLUSION

Feedback Noise and the Empty Lion Cage

CONCLUSIONS AND FEEDBACK LOOPS

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Dialogic Pragmatic Praxis

What we find in the work of the artists drawn together in this thesis is that it is totally impossible and nearsighted to attempt any separation of their work from its social backdrop. From the earliest examples of Marcel Duchamp, Gordon Matta Clark, George Maciunas and Yoko Ono through to Anne Hawkes, Matthieu Laurette, Atelier van Lieshout, Andrea Zittel, and on to Christoph Büchel, we see how these artists predominantly question and readily conscript many procedures learned from other areas outside the traditional scope of art. These artists draw from design, film, economic study, social situations, mass media, retail and the world of industry, using any available form in the production of their work.

It is true, that one can find conceptual art, dematerialist art, pop art, and even Junk art influences here, and will to reveal the supposedly invisible structures of the dominant ideological machinery and apparatus in operation at the time of their work’s production. These artists attempt the deconstruction of the systems of representation and the very things that we often take for granted.

No metaphors, no allusions, no metonymy

The most vital and interesting work of today differs from previous generations, in that it refuses metonym, it refuses to be taken as a ‘stand in’ for something else, it refuses to be a representation of something more real than itself. This art is the thing itself. No metaphors, no allusions, no metonymy.

Previously in recent art history the context of exhibition constituted a medium for conceptual artists. Yet today it has become the very place for production itself. Think of Jens Haaning’s Weapon Production 1995, Middleburg Summer 1996. Rirkrit Tirivanjia’s, mechanics workshop in Das Social Capital 1998, and his cooking nights and demonstrations One revolution per minute 1993-96 and Tomorrow is another day 1997 and my own continuous Sauna, Trailer Garden and Carrier projects to name but a few examples.

The very socious1 of art is now the major foundation for artists focus today. The sociometry of how art works and operates within society is of great interest and given absolutely equal importance parallel with the production of objects. All the channels that distribute and disseminate information, forming our ideas and instilling our aesthetic sensibilities are under question. The producers, consumers and disseminators of our world have now become the subjects for this generation.

1 A fluid Latin term meaning, associations, partners, allies, sharing, leagues, confederate

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The art institution and the gallery in its traditional role are simply just a part of the greater ensemble that constitutes public and philosophical public space now. Also the parameters of these ‘set ups’ are under the process of deconstruction and reconfiguration through the work of a new wave of artists.

Naturally, there is much resistance to the diversified and irregular notions of artistic ideas today. Art’s many varied forms and the processes involved that bring contemporary artistic practice to fruition today are difficult for many people to handle. As long as old models of thought and worn out references continue to be used, new innovative forms of artistic practices will remain alien and unusual and be seen as disrupting the status quo.

Anti-Art Antithesis

One thing that needs to be firmly pointed out is that contemporary pragmatic art is not an anti-art movement. If anything it is an affirmation of art as a more vital and essential aspect of political, social and healthy cultural life. It may debase and question many of the accepted givens within traditional art practices, it may overthrow many of the naturalised ideals of what art’s role is, it may request a lot from art in the twenty first century and place much more responsibility on artists shoulders. This responsibility is not a bad thing.

Resistances toward the avant-garde, always through further critique, reveal themselves to be anti eclectic in discourse and nearly always somehow fall back onto a desire to maintain a structure of adherence and compliance. We find these discourses in conversations and in reviews where conclusions always seem to hark back to previous approximate examples and by gone days.

This method of retro-relation is of no great use now, as more often than not it attempts to locate and ascribe the ideas of contemporary art back in the past. It uses history as a form of governance rather as a device or a tool, like any other. It declares that ‘nothing is new’, that ‘everything has been done’. But, it is no longer a question of newness, this is totally arbitrary and of little interest. The goal now is more to be ‘relevant’, and to be useful. The idea of relevance has replaced the emptiness and pretence in trying to simply do new things. We must now begin to adapt our thinking with an awareness of all the dynamics in play in the contemporary world and also within the very conception of art.

Today, we are lucky as artists. The recent history of art, largely from the 60’s and 70’s was about redefining art, dematerialising work and venturing outside the museum and gallery parameters. Today we can learn from what the artists were doing then. We must also recognise that the parameters in which we work today, have also changed and are vastly different now. The reasons behind the formation of this sort of work are not to do with the struggle for validation, but are more to do with factors of ideological and aesthetic changes, as well as the integration and examination of new cultural phenomena. The urgency and

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force behind this work comes from an awareness of the shifts in the parameters that inform our expectations, or overturn the very idea of what art can and is supposed to do, how it is supposed to look, and what it is supposed to comment on.

Pragmatic art is born from ideologies that were created during shifts in the awareness of our changing environment, from huge cultural and social upheavals (wars, economic depressions, enlightenments, industrialisation, mass migration, the digital revolution). It is created amongst a culture of high capitalist mass production and amongst the uncertainties inexorably attached to the increasing global diaspora of peoples and goods, caused by ever shifting borders, controlling economic super states and populations higher in numbers than ever in the world’s history. Our culture promotes the production, total accruement and ownership of goods and commodity fetishism on a scale we have never previously experienced.

Today’s artists are exposed to more information at rates more rapid and constant than ever in history. We have a greater awareness now of more permutations of any event than ever before due to the development of global media technologies and the proliferation of personal hand held recording devices and personal computers (satellites, Internet, wi-fi, broadband and all forms of transportable digital media).

Today’s art is born and formed within a self-actualised cultural movement of accountability.

Parallel to our increasingly turbo technological world, we find various international movements and ideological concerns for more intimate, more personal interactions and more direct control of the world around us. We desire a reality of greater contact and quality in a world of automation and digital transactions where things are increasingly generalised, unassured and objectified.

The organic movement, global justice, grass roots, do-it-yourself culture, permaculture, growing ecological pragmatism and the ideals of cultural and institutional transparency are all paradigms that have emerged parallel to the recent developments in scientific technologies and Information technologies throughout the last three decades. The idea and reality of more individual control is now placed centrally at the core of these ‘other’ movements. And with the individual comes new inflections of languages, changes and permutations of social, aesthetic and ideological possibilities. A new praedial2 concern is in the air, coupled very closely with growing desires for a more free hand connection to the world. These movements are not anti technological, they simply desire, request and display a more responsible, sustainable and equitable use of our advancing technological, industrial and communicative systems.

2 Adjective, Middle English, from Medieval Latin means - Attached to, bound to, or arising from the land or relating to land associated with farming; agrarian issues

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Previous generations did not have the same culture as us, with the same dynamics and anxieties, fantasies, romantic notions, and ideals that we have. They did not inherit our world, and they in themselves cannot make it better. That is up to us. Within the adherences of previous utopian Modernist ideologies and discourses, we find the desire to create and maintain a culture marked out in such a way that all of its products are tidily arranged and clearly identified, easy to define, easy to handle and contain.

Our worldview today is dystopian yet pragmatic. We have centuries of mistakes and atrocities to draw upon, as well as glean the very best aspects from historically successful strategies and systems. The drive now is to re -draw, adapt, combine, re-construct, and work out the best-adapted situations, as well as, make them actual and concrete.

We can now see in hindsight, that Modernism is directly aligned and synonymous with the aggressive mass consumption of fossil fuels. It is a movement based directly on combustion and continued exhaustion of natural resources. We now have a different set of parameters today. We know that resources are finitely exhaustible yet in turn to solve this problem our creativity and resourcefulness need not be.

Today’s Avant-Garde

The avant-garde today is not simply reactionary, iconoclastic or transgressive, but aims to be beneficial and useful. It aims to invoke greater inclusion and highlight more aesthetic variation and socially driven diversities that result in greater, less selfish, more tolerant, and more sustainable long term outcomes.

In the persistent modernist view, still in operation and very much alive in the arena of the everyday. There is the attitude that the history of art and culture is comprised of a linear narrative in which each aspect of art can be clearly defined and discovered by its relation to those works that preceded it.

This idea that history must ‘make sense’ and always be organised in a linear clearly narrative fashion, no longer really works. This linearity is now torn and swept sideways, and in all directions and also back into itself. Search engines work by linking and connecting all associative inputs, revealing all variables of meaning as they search. The sum total of these vast and internationally networked scanning devices is the display of all ‘tools’ and knowledge associated and available in the present, and all for use.

For a time, artists believed they were free from history treating it as only a sort of entertainment. The early eighties produced an odd array of irresponsible artists, where everything seemed to have the same weight and meaning for them, everything was flattening out. It was just before the internet arrived.

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Artists during this period simply struggled with the logic of bric-a-brac, and of making sense of the collage3. Many artists seemed indifferent to the content of their work (Jeff Koons, Mark Kostabi, Julian Schnabel). This led to the initial notion of the artist as a kind of nomad, a figure just drifting searching and circulating, hunting and looking for forms, things to grab and collect as they perused all periods of history, looking for references to carry away. Yet in the process of this gathering, only simple collections were made. Everything was presented as equivalent and of the same value, and it almost seemed hollow.

The highly distinctive and the insignificant were mixed with the good and bad, the beautiful placed with the ugly. In light of this, Art became like a collection of hollow shallow forms and ideas, things were cut off from their meanings in favour of raising the cult of the artist scavenger. Post-Modernism.

For Jean Francois Lyotard in 1993, felt that post-modern eclecticism ultimately diverted artists from the question of what is unpresentable. If artists were to give in to the eclecticism of consumption, they would simply be shirking their critical duties.4

Nicolas Bourriaud in Post Production (2002), argues,

‘Can’t this eclecticism, this banalising and consuming eclecticism that preaches cynical indifference toward history and erases the political implications of the avant-gardes, be contrasted with something other than Greenberg’s Darwinian vision of art’? 5

He continues to offer a key: ‘To understand this dilemma we must establish processes and practices that allow us to pass from a consumer culture to a culture of activity, from a passiveness toward available signs, to practices of accountability.’ 6 For Nicolas Bourriaud, every individual, especially artists (as they are the ones he describes as being evolved amongst signs) must take on the responsibility for all forms they produce and their social functioning.

‘The emergence of a civic consumption, a collective awareness of inhuman working conditions in the production of athletic shoes, or the ecological ravages occasioned by various sorts of industrial activity is

3 Postmodernism , best described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, simulacrum and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (Sept 30th 2005) 4 See Jean Françoise Lyotard, The post modern explained, University of Minnesota press, Minneapolis 1993 5 Nicolas Bourriaud, Post Production 2002, pg 86 6 Nicolas Bourriaud, as above, pg 86

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each an integral part of this notion of accountability. Boycotts, detournement and piracy belong to this

culture of activity’. 7

‘To rewrite modernity is the historical task of this early twenty-first century: not to start at zero or find oneself encumbered by the store house of history, but to inventory and select, to use and download’. 8

The more widely available mass popular encounter of rewriting modernity started in the innovative and polemical films of Fritz Lang, ‘Metropolis’ 1927, Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Modern Times’ 1936, Michelangelo Antonioni’s ‘L’Eclisse’ 1962, ‘The Red Desert’ 1964, and ‘Zabriskie Point’ 1970 and the critical comedy of Jacque Tati, ‘Mon Oncle’ 1958, ‘Playtime’ 1967 and ‘Traffic’ 1971.

These filmmakers illustrated the ideals, anxieties and experiences of being within modernism. The iconoclasm found in their films implemented a critical cynicism. Common to these filmmakers is the use and critique of modernist aesthetics and architectural, psychological and industrial systems. Artists now (beyond illustration) are creating advocacies and affirmations of the importance of maintaining individual activity and resistances in the face of mass production.

Today all elements and images of our existing world are usable and able to be modified. No public image should now benefit from impunity. Many formal ethical and moral battles are underway concerning the legality and copyrights of the use of forms and images at large in the world today. Artists are now also at the forefront of that debate, for art represents, or rather exists in its most powerful forms, as a counter power to the mass images and ideologies that attempt to control us and deposit highly dubious, complicit and exploitative ideas into our heads.

Tensions in Representation

There is a tension over representation, a battle if you will, that sets the official image of reality and art against each other. The official reality is relayed by the media and advertising discourse. The image of reality is set by the ideology of consumption and social competition and the promise of idyllic existence through greater consumption and wealth. We are lead to believe that the total use and support of the greater system in all its permutations will pay off. We are all taught to go along with it. We must be seen to socialise within it and be seen to be taking part.

7 Nicolas Bourriaud, Post Production 2002, pg 86 8 Nicolas Bourriaud, as above 2002, pg 87

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‘In our daily lives we come across frictions, representations, and forms that sustain this collective imaginary utopia whose contents are dictated by power. Art puts us in the presence of counter images and forms that question existing social forms’.9

In the light (and darkness) of the growing abstractions brought about by huge faceless companies and our daily transactions in relation to these structures, we see and learn that communications are not often open, direct and sustainable. (Try maintaining continuity with single individuals working in these companies, if ever in dispute over malpractices or deceits). Daily interventions are more and more duplicitous and life can seem more unreal, distant, frustrating and disconnected.

Artists reactivate connections, via use of images, ideas and formats that produce habitations. They do this via processes now of ‘pirating’ forms, circumventing established orders, and conscripting strategies, ideas and aesthetics from beyond art’s normal parameters. This is done via processes of ‘downloading’ and ‘uploading’ variable realities into the world. Sampling, modifying, remaking, migrating forms and feeding modified forms back into our culture is a condition born out of a need for direct re-engagement and the desire for more individual control.

These above methods are forms of orchestration, for individuality, for difference and the crucial accuracy of presentation that allows for clearer understanding. These orchestrations are pro-active actions against passivity and are against any exclusionist mono-cultural formations.

Art is a form of using the world like any other, but the difference is that art presents an endless negotiation between the points of view in the world. Art can propose scenarios that relay a number of possibilities all at once. Right now the most progressive artists are proposing that we judge their outputs in terms of the relations they produce and the contexts that are highlighted and which they have inhabited.

Art in one form or another produces relationships with the world that shift, deepen or enhance our understandings of it. The co-efficient, the pragmatic and the relational in art all make our time and space actual and material, and present us with concrete manifestations that enable us to deconstruct, reveal and better adapt the world in sustainable, truthful and rewarding ways.

These forms of art practices, now present us with alternative manifestations to the previously defined notions of art that drift along so readily and unquestioned in the majority of our public and private institutions.

9 Nicolas Bourriaud, Post Production 2002, pg 88

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Gaps in Knowledge

In focusing on the gap in Nicolas Bourriaud’s relational art research I have been able to reveal the attributes and similarities of the genus of this type of work to be wholly pragmatic.

I have provided and examined a pragmatic arts genealogy, its influences and its links and quantified its presence in current and advancing forms. In my studio practice I have demonstrated its methods, its aesthetic diversity and philosophical agility as well as contributed work and ideas that have not previously been brought together in any cohesive and usable form. This thesis in part, also constitutes the crucial lineage and history of Pragmatic Art.

I have observed that the pragmatic in art is unquestionably designed dialogically, in that the contemporary pragmatic artwork carries on a continual dialogue with other works of art, literature, design and other creative methods and authors. It does not merely answer, correct, silence, or extend a previous work, but informs and is continually informed by previous and often parallel, cross flowing and co-existent works. It is, by its very openness in communication with multiple works yet not merely as a matter of influence as the dialogue extends in many directions.

My findings indicate that the description of this type of artwork is wholly interchangeable with notions of the co-efficient and the relational in art. These words are forms of the same idea and all are meant to implement a certain flexible dynamic and fluid polemic. It may be true to say that they are of the same seed and pre-figuration of each other.

Yet in concluding my research I have found that by far the most clear, accurate and user friendly description in philosophy and intent and aspiration is to address and define these modes of working as unequivocally pragmatic

The coefficient and the relational are expansive and intentionally linking words very relevant to the understanding of the dynamics of this type of art – yet I would go so far as to say that they are indeed the inflections and constituent sub-categories of the broader form of a new egalitarian pragmatic paradigm in art.

We have established that the everyday is the only form of inter-subjective reality that we share, it is something that we all collectively make up and construct on a daily basis – from our micro gestures to our macro large scale accomplishments.

Migration Theory

I would also summarize from this thesis that Migration experience whether enforced or by choice provides a direct situation of encounter that transposes one sense of everyday quotidian reality into another. With

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this shift in reality a new dynamic objectivity emerges that is informed only by means of the advantage of being able to distinguish and contrast more subjective comparisons. Subjective comparisons being the ones made from various familiarities that are known in one system and then compared and experienced in another. This enables one to get a sense and understanding of systems rapidly because one simply ‘has to’ within the realities of surviving after a migration experience. One has to be able to rapidly read a culture. Therefore its cultural syntax and constituent parts are first and foremost what the migrant must strive to understand and address. Individual cultural migration provides the advantage of being able to compare and contrast and see aesthetic differences, and more importantly ‘feel’ and experience differences in taste, aesthetics and by extension understand any cultural anxieties.

I believe the migrant through the process of re-locating within different cultures determines how much things can, should or should not change around them and how far they feel they should assimilate and to what degree they can improve or diversify a given system.

I believe these perceptions and determinations that occur, crucially from the desire to survive within given cultural systems, form the drive to modify, prosper and produce better and broader systems of operation to be inherent to the migrant individual.

In the arts, I would point out that a high percentage of practitioners many of which have contributed to the focus of this thesis, Marcel Duchamp, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Gustav Metzger, Ernst Ellemunter, Nisit O Charern, Anne Hawkes, Rirkrit Tiravanijia, Victor Grippo, Gordon Matta Clark, Andrea Zittel and myself Andrew Sunley Smith have all undergone migration processes through choice or cultural and political escape. The artists above have endured the difficulties of the transformative experience and have all created situations of expanded possibilities in their respective fields.

Naturally the migrant experience does not necessarily denote an instant radicalism, this would be extravagant to assume, but my findings do indicate that this idea is more than merely speculative. My thesis has raised a common point that in being able to clearly see and compare cultural aspects of variable everyday experiences and aesthetic formations, the migrant by necessity develops an objective and inter- subjective lucidity that is I think impossible to attain from ‘within’ a single culture. Travel itself cannot provide the same experience, as it is merely fleeting and wholly transitory: whereas, migration is a lived and embedded continuous experience.

On reflection I believe that the migrant artist has played an undeniably significant part in the transformation of our very ideas of art’s capacity to expand its own role and significance toward greater aesthetic experiences.

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Challenging Boundaries

New forms of co-dependant relations with the world and with creative institutions aim to challenge to the overall framing of artistic works today. These new challenges are about the perception of the realms and boundaries of art production. When these new relations are in tune, they aim to challenge traditional formulations of art production and by extension they present challenges that provide new information and expand generally accepted parameters in order to update and refresh more exhausted cultural and aesthetic systems.

Like the migrant entering into new situations pragmatism is the migrant’s most essential and profound strategy for progress.

It seems that pragmatic art, in part, is not only a manifestation of positive counter-cultural and altruistic notions, but is also a form of counter merchandise that reveals the working processes in a way that openly declares all of the social dynamics and interactions necessary in its production and exhibition.

The difficulty of representation and how to collate all the variables within this type of work is indeed a difficult and open question. How do collections and galleries cater for this kind of work? How is it best documented? How do funding bodies operate when the outcome of the art may possibly be a set of relations and events and perhaps not exclusively located in a static object?

The collector of my work may encounter difficulties in trying to collect a system of related parts; the work may, by its very nature present many conservation issues. Collectors of a Rirkrit Tiravanijia, Carsten Holler or Matthieu Laurette, predominantly may only acquire a duration or a term, perhaps even a videocassette, DVD or series of stills approximating a specific project. One cannot physically collect or sell a social event or a process.

It is simply up to us, as artists, academics, teachers, technicians, curators, directors and conservators, to quantify these practices and to work it out here and now.

CHRISTOPH BÜCHEL

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In the same way as I have located my own art practice as a conclusion to my research, I would like also to posit the work of the very latest example of a new pragmatic artist whose work I have observed and experienced to directly display the ideas contained in this thesis. Also, in the encounter of this artists work there is a demonstration of my notion of an ensuing period of highly intense and pragmatic feedback art. The Swiss artist Christoph Büchel works in a wide variety of media, including film, printed materials, sculpture, textiles, detritus, and huge scale found objects, from burnt out buses to whole buildings. The chosen buildings are notably always spaces related to mass production for example factories and warehouses. He often appropriates mass media sources such as the Internet, printed political pamphlets, newspapers and an array of everyday household objects. The undercurrent in his work is informed by an explicit political awareness of the movement of people and the related cultural and political conflict zones. He often reveals and highlights very subtle yet aggressive forms of propaganda in an era so predominantly mediated by war and destruction. At every turn in a show by Büchel one encounters a profound sense of unease and amazement at the very objects and situations created in our world.

Büchel’s installations are very complex, vast, dense and highly forceful. An audience attending a Büchel show needs to participate in scenarios that are sometimes physically demanding and psychologically unsettling. Crawling through cramped dusty underground tunnels, interlinking spaces, squeezing into claustrophobic chambers and encountering frequent dead-ends and bombardments of imagery. Objects that he uses are always from the quotidian and juxtaposed in such a manner as to induce feelings of heightened self-consciousness, panic, dread, anxiety and paranoia. He manages to mix the personal and intimately idiosyncratic side of pedestrian consumer existence within the vastly impersonal mass- produced repetition of aggressive, objective and advanced situations of deterioration and entropy caused by capitalism.

Museum displays, bombed objects, diet books, pornography, half eaten food stuffs, plants, prayer mats, manuscripts, constructed cloistered spaces, mass dwellings, missiles, dirty washing, ashtrays, freight containers, white goods, forensic materials, work benches rubble and washing machines form part of his material lexicon

He uses strategies that simultaneously explore the unstable relationships between security, internment, the printed press, and hand written notes and documents of varied communication. In his installations he places visitors in the often brutally contradictory roles of victim and voyeur.

In Büchel's 2005 installation 'Hole' at the Kunsthalle Basel 10, viewers are forced through small rooms connected by constricted passageways and small ladders. Inside these fraught spaces, televisions bleat unsettling encounters of suicide caught via surveillance cameras. Oppressive and raw spaces eventually

10 Sept 18. 2005 – Dec 31st 2005

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open out into a tented space where an actual bombed and burnt out bus appears to have been left for audience scrutiny and direct encounter of the reality of the aftermath of this familiar object of leisure’s very destruction.

Experiencing such charged and overwhelming spaces is usually a solitary task due to the conjoining tunnels only being large enough for one person to crawl through at any one time. The artist’s control of the private encounter seems to indicate and assure the effect of the awareness of broader cultural collective tensions and traumas as being located and unearthed always in the individual. Of note is that Büchel has totally removed any sense that one is viewing his work in a gallery. There are no information labels, no safety barriers, the lighting is always common everyday fluorescence or whatever is available. All notions of artifice are removed.

Büchel creates highly intense pragmatic and iconoclastic situations repeatedly manipulating and exploiting the perceived power of the aesthetic, social and legal contract, subverting the relationship between artist and audience while insisting on a more active and ultimately political role for both.

The experience and affect of his installation work is one of consciously overloading as if forcing culture back into itself, to look at itself, to understand the cause and affect of what we collectively produce. Büchel is a highly pragmatic artist with an extremely steadfast cultural feedback strategy in operation.

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Hole, Basel Kunsthalle, 2005, Christoph Büchel

This example of the recent work of Christoph Büchel and the strategies and conceptual ideologies located in my PhD research work, are simply the clearest and most concrete and relevant examples that best illustrate and reveal the veracity of my research.

This type of pragmatic art, comprising simultaneously of co-efficient, post-productive and relational strategies deals not only with information from historic and contemporary references drawn exclusively from quotidian areas that I have highlighted in this thesis, but above all it posits ‘actual experiences’ in

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culture that declare a very new, vital, relevant profoundly combined, articulate and refreshingly responsible form of art.

The combined creative factors examined and highlighted in my thesis are what differentiates this type of work from any previous historical movement of art and also further enables a better understanding of the ideologies and creative strategies found in a number of artists and creative practitioner’s today. My research provides the critical and dialogic evidence that extends and provides a clearer and more accurate intellectual model than the information that was collated by Nicolas Bourriaud in 1996. Outside of his work, there was simply no information or critical discourse available to define and articulate contemporary co-efficient, and as I have asserted ‘Pragmatic’ art practices.

Consequentially there has remained a huge gap in contemporary knowledge specific to the study of pragmatic art and indeed any other forms of art that are even closely related to Bourriaud’s initial Ideas. Nicolas Bourriaud drew his own conclusions, staking out and developing his career upon a number of artists that he saw doing something much further and more vital than was being provided by the dominant forms and philosophies that were around him. Whilst he was defining the first seeds of the last decade’s most significant changes in art in Europe, he neglected many key themes, that for me are major tenets in the art I have encountered and researched not only in Europe, but also in Japan, America, the Middle East the United Kingdom and importantly further south of the equator in Australia.

The Lion is Loose.

The American situational comedian Andy Kaufman11 with his friend and co-writer Bob Zmuda, used to play a favourite trick on outings in zoos. Zmuda would beg Andy not to do it.

11 American entertainer (b1949-d 1984). Actor and performance artist. Kaufman is often described as a comedian yet he did not like this description as he often said that he did not engage in comedy, as it was traditionally understood. Kaufman did not tell jokes but referred to himself as more a song and dance man. He is remembered for elaborate pranks and for causing situations that often pushed the boundaries of people’s tolerances.

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Andy Kaufman would begin screaming at the top of his lungs and then start running, they would both end up zig zagging between crowds, running terrified, flailing their arms around, through the lane ways and enclosures, screaming,

‘THE LION IS OUT! THE LION IS LOOSE! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES’!!!

To paraphrase, Bob Zmuda’s recounts,

‘People would start running everywhere screaming and wailing, children would be crying in the confusion, old people just shocked and panicking, it was really bad and we’d run out of the zoo gates, out of breath and in stitches, but it was really funny’.

‘Andy always loved it, he thought it a real situation that really made peoples days! It made them feel ‘alive’ and made things really memorable. It was really pretty wild and it was one of his favourites, scarring the wits out of those nice little American families’ 12

Even today there are those who choose to remain passive and indifferent to changes and continually ignore the burgeoning issues that reveal themselves as most vital and topical in our contemporary world, continually refusing to change or adopt new behavioural patterns that may allow for new cultural formations and ideas that attempt to instigate more enriching and engaging sustainable disciplines. Pragmatism ultimately calls for activation and engagement with the world on all possible fronts. Pragmatic art attempts a reconfiguration of art’s purpose and value to the world. Always learning through doing, its aesthetics are continually accrued and in a truly analogous Darwinian13 sense, evolutional always formed by an inherent capacity to deviate and persistently adapt.

12 The life and mind of Andy Kaufman, Lost in the funhouse, Bill Zehme, 2000 13 Charles Darwin (1809 –1882) English Naturalist and author of 1859 publication Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection that now forms the basis of modern scientific genetic determinism

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Yet as Nicolas Bourriaud poignantly summarises in his first introduction to his concept of relational aesthetics,

‘Of course some artists don’t give a damn, and reproduce, as such, the relations of alienation, thus fuelling their petty trade in signs. But present day art is also striving to produce situations of exchange and relational space times. It is the counter-merchandise. It conceals neither the work process, nor the social relations which allowed its production and ultimately, it does not reproduce the world that it has been taught’ 14

When I asked Nicolas in 2005 just prior to my PhD exhibition if he was aware of, or had read any American Pragmatism, he said that he hadn’t, and warmly defended,

‘It becomes impossible to read everything, but I would like to read more on pragmatism’.15

IMAGE APPENDIX

Chapter 6: Conclusion and Feedback Loops All images in this thesis are taken from the ongoing artwork The Migratory Projects Archive 2002-Ongoing Compiled by the Author for educational use in conjunction with the Carrier vehicle

P385 ‘Hole’ 2005 Christoph Büchel, Installation shots, Kunsthalle Basel Images Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth London, and Kunsthalle Basel 2005

14 Nicolas Bourriaud, ‘An introduction to Relational Aesthetics’, Traffic, CAPC, Musee d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, 1995 15 Nicolas Bourriaud, conversing with the author at Fatimas Lebanese restaurant, July 9th, 2005, Surry Hills Sydney Australia.

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