Working with Diverse Audiences - The Home Visit

One of the most interesting things to have happened whilst working with diverse audiences has been establishing 'The Home Visit'. I noticed that in recent years some of our regulars were finding it increasingly hard to attend Second Sight this was due to ill health or having to rely on friends and family members to travel with them to the gallery. Speaking to these participants on the phone they expressed a number of time show disappointed they were to be missing out. It occurred to me why not come to them instead? 

Aim – To pilot and evaluate the home visit Second Sight. To give participants who are restricted in getting to the gallery the opportunity to engage with the ideas around a current exhibition through description of the work, discussion and object handling in their own homes.

 The first home visit was for regular Connie French who had been unable to attend the Second Sight for 'Gathering' by Melanie Manchot. There were a number of practical considerations to think about for example Health and Saftey, Liability, remembering biscuits! But also interms of the quality of experience and how this could differ from attending the actual workshop. The exhibition itself would be audio described, just as it is in the workshop, the main concern was be the lack of a group disscussion which is central to Second Sight. And so when volunteers Katie, Hattie and I went to visit Connie we made sure we were all involved in the disscussion, not wanting to make Connie feel she was being put on the spot or 'interviewed', we also brought with us the feedback and comments from gallery visiters both the general public and cokmments made by people during the second sight workshops and integrated these into our conversation.

Home Visit Plan

Everyone - Arrival and Introductions 10 mins

Naomi – ‘Audio’ Description of ‘Gathering’ films

Naomi – Object handling, of things that relate into themes within ‘Gathering’

Naomi – Introduce discussion by raising a series of questions on themes within ‘Gathering’

Everyone – Discussion, this can include us saying how other people (general visitors, second sight participants, our own thoughts) responded to the exhibition.

Everyone - Evaluation with Connie ask Connie how the visit was for her, how it can be improved, if it is something she would want again.

On the whole the first home visit was a success, with positive feedback from all parties. It was very interesting observing how the discussion went, I was more vigilante in this non gallery context of the line between sharing stories and views in response to the exhibition and just having a nice chat. Though more aware of this possibility in the comfort of Connie's home we were satisfied that we had stayed on the right side of that line, thanks to Connie's previous experience of participating in Second Sight and the structured plan we kept to for the visit.

Since this initial visit two more have taken place, with the final one led by Katie and Hattie in Glady's Residential Home.

I think this format could be expanded upon, though I think our existing relationship and shared trust with Connie and Gladys helps them to become a natural transition. I am unsure of how well it would work (Or if it should) with new individuals or groups as I think things should always start, where possible within the gallery based Second Sight Workshop sharing views with others experiencing the exhibition for the first time too. Connie has had both a home visit and trips to the gallery for Second Sight this year, it means she is always able to be involved ad can contribute, and with workshops only taking place 3 times a year this is very important.

Bronwyn Platten Guest Speaker for Working with Diverse Audiences Nov 2012

Since 1985, Bronwyn Platten has worked extensively on creative projects with diverse community groups including people with multiple disabilities and psychiatric illnesses. From 2003-08, she was employed by NHS Trusts as an artist, curator and project manager.

In her work in arts in healthcare she is especially interested in researching the value of multi-sensory creative interventions and interdisciplinary research in the field of person centred care. Bronwyn has been awarded her doctorate in 2012 from The University of Salford for, Mouths and Meaning, a collaborative multi-sensory arts in healthcare research project which explores the experience of embodiment for people who have been affected by an eating disorder.
Bronwyn Platten is an Australian artist, based in the United Kingdom since 2001. She is interested in creatively exploring the influences of sexuality, identity and gender upon perceptions of body image and experiences of embodiment.
www.bronwynplatten.com
www.imaginalregions.co.uk

Here Bronwyn gives a summary of the talk she gave us at Fabrica...

Talk for Fabrica Gallery, Brighton November 19/11/12
Naomi Kendrick in conjunction with Fabrica invited me to present on my approach as a contemporary visual artist in reflection upon the way that I work with diverse audiences.
I first met Naomi when I took part in her “What is a multi-sensory intervention?” at the Manchester Art Gallery in 2009. Her own work in this area has been influential in my own recent research to engage people who have been affected by an eating disorder. My talk that I describe below, sought to summarise some of motivations for working with others along with the relevance of utilizing a multi-sensory approach in healthcare contexts. As well, I was hoping to articulate some of the challenges, benefits and insights that appear particular for artists working with potentially vulnerable people.

The talk at Fabrica began with a screening of Untitled 2011 a film made with Sarah Coggrave and filmed and edited by Insa Langhorst. You can see the film by going to this link:

http://vimeo.com/18043765

I followed the short screening with some examples of artworks that I have made with other people during my work in community settings and in arts in health contexts. 

In my work with others, I am especially interested to support people to share their own stories and experiences particularly for people who may not have had the opportunity to do so, or feel that their voice may not be listened to. One of the examples that I showed, were photographs of Bruce Rodenrys’s pages from his photo albums. The photographs were shown as part of the 1998 Biennale of Sydney. Bruce is someone that I have worked with for over twelve years. He has an intellectual disability, speaks only a few words and at the time was resident in an institution that provided supported care. The photographs of his work are unusual, in that would not be the kind of artworks that are easily accessed by the mainstream art world given that Bruce lives in relative isolation. Bruce would perhaps fit the definition of an ‘outsider’ artist. I described how the project between us – my facilitation of his work and its inclusion in a significant exhibition and gallery – the Museum of Contemporary Art articulates something of the ethical dilemmas associated with working with vulnerable people.

My intention at the time was to simply document selected pages from Bruce’s albums. I had his approval to do this and felt that people would find it interesting to see the way in which he collates his interests and passions and in so doing communicates to others his perception of the world.  From my observation his interests in no particular order include: buildings; bodies; faces; objects; fatness; drink can collecting, and belly buttons. What also struck me, was by way of its visible absence, Bruce critiques the current obsession with thinness. In fact, after viewing his photo albums, in my experience the world can appear profoundly anorectic.

I described the dilemma that I faced in establishing this project. As I said earlier, I had hoped that the reproduction of the pages would offer insights for viewers as to different ways of being in the world. Perhaps too, the photographs may break down some of the experiences of social marginalisation that people with an intellectual disability face via the opportunity for shared communication. However, with art there is always many ways to interpret the work and its meaning. Comments from the viewing public included expressions of interest in Bruce’s pages from his photo albums. Whilst I was careful to include Bruce there were also assumptions that I was taking advantage – furthering my career via my work with him and other artists with a disability. In the talk I explained how influential this experience had been for me in terms of taking subsequently more care in art projects with vulnerable people to articulate clearly the nature of the shared involvement. Furthermore I recognised the need to foresee and address any potential ethical ambiguities and issues of copyright and informed consent that may arise.

From here I discussed a little more about my work with people in various social contexts, work with people with special needs or intellectual disabilities, and also in healthcare where I have worked as a curator, artist and project manager for NHS trusts in Aberdeen and Manchester.

In reflecting on my work as an artist, arts worker with communities and artist and curator in healthcare settings I have become more and more interested in artists’ abilities to engage directly with embodied experience of illness. For instance I mentioned Jo Spence (1934-1992) who explored and documented via photography her experience of treatment for cancer.  I perceive that such awareness and expertise is commonly been left out the medical knowledge of bodies and illness. As an artist who as an adolescent and young adult who had encountered an eating disorder, I was aware of the very engaging artworks that have been created by artists to negotiate lived experience of eating and embodiment in relation to an eating disorder. I mentioned the work of Janine Antoni, whom in her work Gnaw from 1992 chewed on vast blocks of lard and chocolate, collected the spat out chewed lumps and reshaped them as commodities such as I noticed that while the arts are regularly evidenced as a way to improve the built environs of the hospital or as creative participatory methods for patients towards improving wellbeing it is less familiar to use art to explore the experience of illness to directly to inform understanding of those who treat illness.

In 2008 I was awarded a bursary to undertake doctoral research in arts in healthcare as part of HaCIRIC – Health and Care Infrastructure Research and Innovation Centre, School of The Built Environment, The University of Salford. My research sought to bring together my previous experience in community engagement, the NHS, with my own interest in exploring embodiment via arts based practice. I called the research project Mouths and Meaning. My interest in mouths was initially inspired by my own encounter with anorexia nervosa and bulimia. While I had undergone therapeutic treatment, my own embodied experiences were left unexamined. Embarking on a career as an artist, I found ways to explore and express my experience of eating disorders through consciously connecting my own embodiment to my then lived experience of the world. The interwoven nature of identity and embodiment is something that is often taken for granted, but not so for someone recovering from an eating disorder. For every aspect of bodily experience is affected by the illness and in turn, transforms the nature of daily life and social relationships. For me, my mouth was inextricably linked to the experience of my eating disorders and to my recovery. Mouths and Meaning grew out of the desire to investigate with others whether my own experiences and insights provided a model for engaging the mouth differently, and if so, in what ways.

Here I showed some earlier works that convey my own experience of exploring embodiment in relationship to my mouth, food and eating. The pictured work The Kissing Table, 1993 explores the mouth as symbolic and pleasure-filled and as liminal. For the mouth is both connected to the interior and exterior of the body, is both inside and outside, the mouth incorporates the outside to the inside but it also expels what is inside - outside. Our mouths have multiple roles in sensing tastes determines edible pleasures and disgust while being actively involved in acts of social communication – talking, kissing, sharing food, or alternatively not speaking, or not eating.

I provide a summary of Mouths and Meaning as a research project below:

Mouths and Meaning uses a multisensory, inclusive and interdisciplinary approach to creatively explore experiences of food, eating and embodiment by those who have been affected by an eating disorder.

I introduced some of the reasons as to why I was interested to explore experience of eating disorders particularly via a multi-sensory participatory approach.

There is no single cause contributing to the onset of an eating disorder – yet embodiment of those affected is largely understood as a preoccupation with body shape.

By the term embodiment I mean the ways in which all of our experiences, our daily lives are sensed, interpreted and communicated in and through our bodies. Susie Orbach describes how our bodies have become sites of anxiety, we now work on our bodies utilising exercise regimes, diets and or surgical procedures, in ways that we hope will make us feel better about ourselves. She makes a ‘plea to rethink the body in such a way that we can both take it for granted and enjoy it.’ (Orbach, 2009:145). How to do this was something my research sought to explore.

At the beginning of my research I was also fortunate to be invited to attend Naomi Kendrick’s ‘What is a sensory intervention?’ 2009, the Manchester Art Gallery. Naomi’s work and research in the area of multi-sensory participatory practice has been inspirational for me. Naomi’s approach offers some effective, interesting and fun ways to invite others to engage across all the senses.

Multi-sensory practice, I saw as resonant with the ways I had been intuitively through my own practice being exploring my personal experience of embodiment. I hoped that others could who had been affected by an eating disorder, could be supported through such a creative approach to consider bodily experiences beyond just viewing their body as an object predominantly via appearance and body shape. My challenge with Mouths and Meaning was to find ways to shift from the common preoccupations with visual appearances of the body towards representing people’s lived experiences of their embodiment. I also hoped that perhaps a multi-sensory arts based research project such as Mouths and Meaning could support people to engage the senses more equally and in so doing connect with their bodies more deeply and holistically.

As the process of embodiment is of its nature an intensely personal experience, I sought to design and facilitate experiential multisensory workshops that could optimize that aspect for the participants. For instance senses such as touch and taste locate sensory experience inside the interior body while vision tends to be considered as a distant sense. As example, when we look – we look with our eyes ‘out’ from our bodies. So perhaps then it is of now surprise that it is easier to describe bodies via the eyes than the more internalised and taken for granted senses and harder to replicate senses such as touch and taste. Multi-sensory experiences were initially developed in my studio, and involved practices I adapted from earlier artworks to draw the interior of my mouth. I experimented with doing drawings of my interior mouth with my eyes open and then with them closed. I even tried drawing the interior of my mouth using my computer mouse. My interest was to seek to represent my own particular relationship/ feeling/ quality of my mouth as sensed internally.

Wanting to invite others to explore their own relationship to their mouths and to make Mouths and Meaning a holistic engagement of the senses and embodiment, I included perceptual activities: the slow drinking of a cup of water and a series of movements of the tongue that I had learnt and used successfully to release jaw tension. These quiet and slow sensings, that engaged the interior of the mouth became a precursor to the mouth drawing activity. I showed some images that people had created of drawing the interior of their mouths with their eyes closed. Over 300 people have now taken part in the workshops. However no one has been identified in terms of whether they have had an eating disorder or any challenges with food. Rather the workshop has formed an aid for people to consider their embodiment in different ways such as is possible via connecting with the inside of one’s body via the interior mouth. People were encouraged to consider the experience in any way that they wished.

From here I described the longer-term co-collaboration with Sarah Coggrave with whom I worked with for over a year as part of the Mouths and Meaning project. Sarah, who when we first met in 2009 was then in recovery from an eating disorder. She has held a long-term interest in art and indeed shortly after we started working together began an art foundation course and is currently doing a BA in Visual Arts. The first part of the process of our shared working together involved exploring a range of multi-sensory experiences that we selected together including drawing with our eyes closed while listening to favourite pieces of music, experimenting with sound making and recording, visiting a sweet shop and making sculptures out of sweets. Here is our first collaborative artwork.

One of the activities we undertook together was based on one I undertook as a child and recreated as part of my PhD exploration. It involved mixing soil and water together in a metal bucket and stirring in personally selected items of food, plant materials and discarded found things such as eggshells and coffee grounds from the compost heap. I recognise something important in the ways that when as children we engage in experiments with the materials of the environment around us. Play forms an important part of how we learn about the material and sensorial nature of our own bodily being and about being in the world. Perhaps even as adults this taken for granted way of being in its multi-sensory spontaneity can be useful to reconsider a different kind of embodiment – one closer to Orbach’s sense of the body as something we can take pleasure in but also take for granted too. I also suggest that the pleasure of play, of having fun and exploring mulit-sensorial experiences could be highly valuable to consider a more holistic approach to the treatment of eating disorders. Particularly as a way to acknowledge unspoken, material and bodily aspects of the day-to-day experience of living with an eating disorder.

I had described to Sarah the nature of the potion/ mixture making process as I had undertaken it as a child as well as other artworks that I had made as an artist. Sarah suggested that she would be keen to explore the mixture making activity too. We ended up filming our shared exploration in a favourite landscape of Sarah’s. This is the film that I showed at the beginning of the talk (see link above). I recognise this playful experience as early ‘cooking’ and also as a multi-sensory pleasure but also as something dark and mysterious. Sarah expressed that the process allowed us to explore in non-judgemental ways without the requirement that anything be created as result. Also that for Sarah, the process linked her to nature and to the natural environment.

Finally, I showed the major filmed performance work that Sarah and I created together, Untitled (The Party) 2011. Sarah had the idea of recreating her experience of a childhood party. I had had a vision of applying whipped cream from a piping bag to a women’s head so that it formed a circle round her head like a halo. I also envisioned filling my own shoes with whipped cream and put my feet into them. Sarah expressed the desire to do this too – only she wanted to wear Wellington boots. We combined our varying visions and shared engagement including a short sound improvisation by me at the beginning of the film. In the performance we have a food fight, dance together to music, draw with food and have a lot of fun and laughs.

Rather than try and analyse this performance in depth, or any of the works that have been created as part of Mouths and Meaning I read out some of the comments that viewers of the exhibition elicited either via the gallery comments book, by written letter or online blogs.

“I am a scientist – What is the message?”

“A surprisingly moving experience for me
- very physical I thought I might be sick and also had to fight not to cry.
It has made me think about the meaning of (my) life – thank you ( I think!)”

‘Sarah and Platten have overturned the received wisdom … and illustrated the potential therapeutic value of adjusting to a rather different focus when attempting to understand and support those in our communities who battle daily with varying degrees of eating disorder.’

(Dr. J Morgan, Community Psychiatrist involved in the treatment of people with an eating disorder)

I also read out a discussion that I discovered on Mumsnet about Mouths and Meaning and some of the featured works. The discussion was really compelling as some of the women who made comments were really liberated by their experiences of perceiving the artwork while others were disgusted and sickened. Given that these women were either currently negotiating an eating disorder or in recovery, their varying comments underline how there is no ‘right’ approach to representing the experience of an eating disorder. Each experience is distinct for each individual. Also, the varying comments explain just how sensitive people affected by an eating disorder are to material distinctions and the nature of food and its incorporation into the body. Undoubtedly, multi-sensory approaches are invaluable towards gathering understanding of people’s individual lived experiences of embodiment. However, it is really important that such approaches are established with care and insight and respect for all those involved.

Following the presentation there was time for questions and comments.

One comment that was raised that was really pertinent relates to the interconnection of with the processes of Mouths and Meaning as a form of therapy. In reply I explained how I am not a therapist and cannot claim to be one. To do so would be unethical. Nor do I wish to take on this role. I am aware that being an artist can be a way of allowing others to engage more openly and perhaps more equally than is possible with someone who’s role is defined by being a therapist. However, such processes as those involved in Mouths and Meaning as well as Naomi Kendrick’s work in multi-sensory participatory processes perhaps straddle across art and art as a form a therapy. As comments raised by the audience at Fabrica suggest, engaging in art practice can also afford therapeutic benefits while not necessarily intending to be therapy. I am interested to question and further understand the distinctions and commonalities that exist between art and art as form of therapy.

Other comments from the audience stressed the very intimate nature of the collaboration. One person proposed that for Sarah and myself to have engaged in such a close and prolonged collaboration that we would really have had to trust each other. This is an aspect of our shared collaborative work that Sarah and I wholeheartedly agree with. We are planning to write an account together that records the development of our mutual and individual experiences that has informed our collaborative approach. I reflected that I feel I have been able to trust Sarah implicitly which is something that has been established through the way we not only have shared all the decisions but also have been able to question and include each other in our decision making. Also, and I think this is important – we share ownership of the collaborative works we have created together and the associated knowledge we have developed. To this end we have contractual agreements that identify our joint ownership of our collaborative art works.

For further information my work and the research project and exhibition Mouths and Meaning Go to:

www.bronwynplatten.com

Working with Diverse Audiences 2012 Overview

The working with Diverse Audiences programme, like all events at Fabrica are planned in response to the galleries current exhibition. Here is a selection of documentation from the Second Sight and A Multi Sensory Approach workshops through out the year, and the exhibitions that inspired them.

 Spring 
' I see infinite distance between any point and another' by the Otolith Group Etel Adnan's highly influential writings, in French, English and Arabic have been read around the world. Her recent book, Sea and Fog evokes the sea as a metaphor for power, exploring the nature of the individual spirit and the individual spiritedness of the natural world.

The Otolith Group‘s new film is made largely in Adnan’s Paris apartment, and centres on a reading of her poem, Sea (2011), which draws upon philosophy to meditate on matter and anti-matter. The sound of Adnan’s voice, and the quiet but ever present ambient noise in her apartment, create a film with a powerful, meditative atmosphere, that speaks of the mobility of thought and the movement of the ocean.

Sea, draws upon the powers of philosophy to pursue the continuous mutation of matter into velocity. If poetry can be understood as a study in constraint, I See Infinite Distance Between Any Point and Another can be understood as an experiment in concentration that speaks of the mobility of thought and the movement of the ocean.

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Daniel Yanez Gonzalez

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Daniel Yanez Gonzalez

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Daniel Yanez Gonzalez

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Daniel Yanez Gonzalez

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Daniel Yanez Gonzalez

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Daniel Yanez Gonzalez

A Multi Sensory Approach Workshop. Photo Naomi Kendrick

A Multi Sensory Approach Workshop. Photo Naomi Kendrick

A Multi Sensory Approach Workshop. Photo Naomi Kendrick

A Multi Sensory Approach Workshop. Photo Naomi Kendrick

Summer
The summer exhibition was Cluster by Lewes-based artist Annemarie O’Sullivan. Annemarie is a basket maker and though she had worked on larger forms before, working at Fabrica gave her the opportunity to work on an unprecedented scale. The result was spectacular with her woven forms seeming to have grown into the architecture of the gallery itself.

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Daniel Yanez Gonzalez

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Andrew Brooks

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Daniel Yanez Gonzalez

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Daniel Yanez Gonzalez

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Daniel Yanez Gonzalez

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Daniel Yanez Gonzalez

Winter
The year closed with an exhibition in collaboration, again with Photoworks, for the Brighton Photo Biennial. The Beautiful Horizon was the culmination of a 17-year project between three artists and ’street children’ living on the streets of Belo Horizonte a city in Brazil. Providing the participants with an opportunity to make themselves visible and over such a prolonged period to give them a sense of their own history, the exhibition was a powerful look into a world that is hidden and that some would like to make disappear.

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Daniel Yanez Gonzalez

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Daniel Yanez Gonzalez

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Daniel Yanez Gonzalez

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Daniel Yanez Gonzalez

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Daniel Yanez Gonzalez

Second Sight Workshop. Photo Daniel Yanez Gonzalez

Working with Diverse Audiences - April 2012 Timetable

Working with Diverse Audiences

Fabrica presents a series of practice sharing events for artists and other professionals working with the arts in health, social care, education and gallery settings. 

Jointly devised by Liz Whitehead, a Co-director of Fabrica gallery, and artist Naomi Kendrick, the programme sets out to explore various approaches to working with diverse audiences, using the contemporary visual arts.

The programme draws directly on Naomi’s research into and practice of a multisensory approach to engaging with people about contemporary art.  It also draws on the perspectives of other artists, researchers, social care and health professionals, to articulate the challenges and opportunities particular to these contexts – both for artists and participants.

Working with Diverse Audiences comprises workshops, professional presentations and peer critique sessions. It is aimed at giving participants a rounded learning experience, and encouraging best practice.

APRIL 2012 TIMETABLE

Saturday 21 April, 9.30pm-1.30pm - A Multi-sensory Approach. £5 including lunch. (Takes place at Friends Meeting House) This half-day workshop is designed as a practical introduction to Naomi’s multi-sensory method, why this method is useful for working with a diverse group and as a way of encouraging participants to think more directly and personally about the many ways an exhibition can be interpreted and explored.

Monday 23 April, 1.30-3pm and Tuesday 24 November, 1.30-3pm - Second Sight. Free entry.

Second Sight workshops are regular events in Fabrica’s education programme – two events take place per exhibition.  Led by Naomi Kendrick, the workshops explore the current exhibition through an audio described tour, and through sound, touch, smell, and group discussion.

We invite professionals to join these workshops like any other participant, and after the workshop there will be a chance to take part in a short discussion about their experience of the workshop.

Monday 23 April, 7-9pm - Professional Practice Presentation – Lucinda Jarrett. Free entry. 

Lucinda Jarrett is artistic director of Rosetta Life. She founded the organisation in 1997 in order to challenge our contemporary representation of illness and to enable people who are facing death to participate more fully in cultural life. Lucinda worked in television for five years as associate television producer for French, American and British broadcasters, before founding Rosetta Life. She is a published writer and poet, has a strong track record of delivering theatre within healthcare settings, and has worked with independent dancers and is a founder member of the Living Body alliance, a network of movement practitioners working in End of Life Care. She is currently holder of a Wellcome Trust Clore Leadership Fellowship exploring arts as a tool for advocacy and public engagement.

Tuesday 24 November 5-7pm - Working With Diverse Audiences Peer Critique. £5 (including refreshments). These sessions are for those who have attended at least one Second Sight workshop and/or A Multisensory Approach workshop. The sessions provide a space for discussion about participants’ current practice and working environment, and as a way of participants generating ideas to be taken forward.

For further information, or to book for any of the events contact clare.hankinson@fabrica.org.uk or phone 01273 778646

www.fabrica.org.uk

Working with Diverse Audiences - November 2011

A Multi Sensory Approach Workshop

The Working with Diverse Audiences programme explores ways of working with diverse audiences through direct participation in existing and specially developed workshops, reflection and discussion around and sharing best practice. In November Fabrica's exhibition 'Gathering' by Melanie Manchot showed two films 'Celebration' http://www.fvu.co.uk/projects/details/celebration and 'Walk'. During the programme's workshops Second Sight and A Multi Sensory Approach we explored (through discussion, sensory exploration and making) themes relating to Melanie's work, such as how we gather as a community, artists working in a participatory way with the public, how do we behave in public spaces.

Guest Speaker Talk

Our Guest speaker Dr Amanda Ravetz a visual anthropologist who uses video to explore creativity, improvisation and play gave us a thought provoking insight into her working methods, and some of the fascinating people she has worked with to create her films. Click here to see Amanda's Post about her talk Amanda's Talk

Peer Critique

The Peer Critique, was attended by a mix of mid and early career arts professionals, some of whom were working with Fabrica through an exchange with CEMEA (Centre for education methods France). Our in depth discussions ranged from practical points around working within community settings and how to maintain motivation and keep ideas fresh within the constraints those situations can apply, to more philosophical questions around how, as people, we communicate and the importance of listening. 

A Multi Sensory Approach Workshop

Introductions/Bonding

Watching 'Celebration' by Melanie Manchot

Sensory exploration of the exhibition through object handling

Response to discussion about the exhibition through collaborative making

Response to discussion about the exhibition through collaborative making

Response to discussion about the exhibition through collaborative making

End Disscussion

Response to discussion about the exhibition through collaborative making

Photography by Eva Kalpadaki

Second Sight Workshops

Exploring themes within Melanie Manchot's work through object handling and disscussion

Second Sight's audience of participants has increased a great deal recently, which is beneficial to the group as there are more voices involved in each disscussion. In order to insure all those voices have the opportunity to be heard however it was nessessary to divide the group into two. This also provides regular Second Sight Volunteers with the oporunity to lead a group into disscussion, while I work with the other group. Comparing and contrasting the conclusions each group came to about the exhibition afterwards  adds another layer to the debate.  

Two of Second Sights regular and long standing participants, Connie and Gladys have been unable to attend the last two Second Sight workshops. It is becoming increasingly difficult for them to get to the Gallery as they often rely on a friend or family memeber to accompany them on the journey, where as before they came independently in taxi's. As both Connie and Gladys have expressed how much they miss coming to the workshops, I thought it logical that we would go to them, Connie and Gladys agreed. Therefore in March myself and two regular Second Sight volunteers will be trialing a home visit workshop, we will visit Connie and Gladys in thier respective homes and talk to them about the exhibition they have missed. This will be an interesting challenge, how do you give poeple an experience of a work when it is not in the same room? How do you disscuss the work in depthly without the views of so many others in the group contributing? Can the same meaningful (gallery based) experience be achieved?

Audio description of the exhibition 'Gathering' by Melanie Manchot

Group discussion about 'Gathering'

Group discussion about 'Gathering'

Group discussion about 'Gathering'

Photography by Daniel Yanez Gonzalez - Irun

A Potential Participant...

Grandma

My Godmother Jill has started attending Second Sight workshops since her retirement, which has been fantastic. She has told me she enjoys coming and I am reminded each time she does of questions raised about contemporary art, over roast dinners throughout the years, and the subsequent discussions (both enlightening and challenging) we have had around the work of artists that have featured heavily in the press. It is conversations like these in earlier years that are, in part, why I am working in an area that involves interpretation of contemporary art. My Grandma is another person who has similarly sparked these discussions in the past though unlike Jill this has not developed into visiting museums and galleries. Being of a similar age to many of Second Sight's participants I asked Grandma how she felt about opportunities to experience art that are available to her.

N - Do you attend activities such as talks, workshops or tours in galleries or museums?
G - No

N - Do you visit galleries and museums as a general visitor to have a look around?
G - No

N - Why not?
G - I have been to the local museum in Emsworth, but only once as I never know when it is open. I don't go down to (galleries/museums in) Portsmouth because of mobility issues and parking.

N- What would make a trip to a gallery or museum more likely for you?
G - Knowing what the activities are and if I am capable of doing them, I'm not clever enough to paint and I can't anyway because of arthritis in my hands, I can't even knit. Where do they advertise things? Ive never seen anything. I listen to the radio, read a national newspaper and watch t.v. Advertising on local radio might be good!

N - If you were going to visit what would your expectations be?
G - I don't have any expectations in particular, I don't know what they would offer, I'd expect to just go in and see the paintings and leave, and think it baffles me why they (the artists) do that.

N - What would you like to get out of it?
G - I would like to understand what was in the minds of the artist when they painted what they did.

N - Do you have an similar experiences to visiting a museum and gallery, something creative from the past that you enjoyed?
G - I went to West Dean College for two weekends in my 50's, I went with two friends and we stayed there. There were different classes going on all the time, I made a container for flowers, and a ring in the jewelry class - I'm not interested in walking around galleries to look at pictures I don't understand!

(I then presented Grandma with a hypothetical gallery visit that I thought would appeal to her interests, that would remove accessibility issues and draw on her positive experience of going to the college with friends.)

N- If a gallery approached the conservative club (where she goes to do flower arranging and has lunch with friends) and invited you to a contemporary photography exhibition about Margaret Thatcher, and they said they would provide a mini bus for you and your friends and tea and biscuits, would you be interested in going?

G - Yes I would!

This was an interesting interview, there were quite a few familiar points that I have heard from other older people regarding visiting galleries and museums. Access and transport are crucial, and so is advertising in the right way. Equally important, and I would venture perhaps overlooked, is transparency. What sort of work will be in the exhibition? What will I be expected to do in the activity? Can I bring friends, will there be others there? Am I expected to know about this type of art?

This all contributes to the barrier I come across the most when talking to participants or potential participants and was touched upon by Grandma when she talked about not expecting to understand the work, or how the artist came up with the idea, and 'not being clever enough to paint'.
Rather than an expectation of what the museum or gallery will offer them through this visit, it seems there is a feeling from the individual that they have to understand art, to 'get it' and that the expectation is somehow on them. And yet outside of these spaces my Grandma will debate the night away with me, discussing some of the very same issues that have come up during Second Sight workshops, War, Politics, Aging, Community....only in Second Sight those discussions benefited from multiple voices and were generated by a provocative art work. I know that as she has got older and her friends have passed away, Grandma often misses the opportunity to talk to other people about the things she is interested in and feels passionate about.

During this interview there were several points that question museums and galleries attempting to increase their audience to include people like Grandma when it appears she has no interest, engaging with art is not compulsory after all.

Then I return to Grandma's reasons for not wanting to go, practical, fixable things and more complexly a fear of the unknown around art. The barrier here is not a disinterest in specific exhibitions, discussion or a social situation. I am convinced, knowing Grandma personally, that if visiting a museum or gallery was normalized to her, as straightforward as popping to the shop, and as open as picking up a new book and talking to me about it's contents, then she would go, and I suspect go again, as Grandma has a lot to say.

Working with Diverse Audiences Nov 2011 - Dr Amanda Ravetz Guest Speaker Talk

Artist Peter Goode (on screen during Amanda's Talk)

 A Kind of Making – A talk at Fabrica Gallery
Amanda Ravetz

I began the talk by showing a twenty minute film I made in 1996. Peter’s Stone God is about the artist Peter Goode. It begins with a scene of Peter carving a length of wood found in the canal – the only sounds are of him carving. Over the course of a couple of minutes, we witness his tactile relationship with the emerging form. This is followed by a scene of Peter in his living room talking about his journey over the past 12 years which has involved trying to read and write. He says he is severely dyslexic and that nothing he has tried (group classes, writing groups etc.) has worked. He adds that a couple of people have said to him ‘you wouldn’t be like you are [an artist] if you could read and write’, but he says he considers this a copout – why can’t he be like everyone else? It must be that he doesn’t try hard enough, he adds.

As the film unfolds we see Peter’s developing relationship with the carving which he calls The Guardian. We also find out about his poetry  which we see being scribed for him by a friend who reads his letters out to him including one to say that a poem is being published in a collection; towards the end of the film we see Peter at a Christmas party with other writers where he struggles to read one of his poems aloud.

The film ends with an insight into Peter’s emotions on completing the sculpture. He reflects on their journey together. The poem Stone God is read again (as a voiceover) by someone who read it at his request at the Christmas Party.

This was the first film I made during the MA in Visual Anthropology which I completed at the University of Manchester. In some ways it is a funny film to choose to show at a public talk as technically its very poor  quality, having been made on a VHS analogue editing system, at the beginning the course. But I showed because it lays out many of the issues that are still central in my work.

I asked the audience (of about 15 people) to respond to the film – what had they thought and felt while watching it? There were lots of mixed and interesting comments. Then I explained that I see the film as emblematic of themes I always come back to:

- making,  as this relates to physical materials, to relationships b/w people and the environment, and to the craft of video;

- a certain kind of filmmaking, observational cinema - which I and others consider especially attuned to the senses; but which also raises questions, dilemmas, issues about power and authorship and about relationships between those being videoed, filmmaker and  audiences;

- experiences of reverie, play, and improvisation that I find are sometimes induced by experiences of making. 

Video and making
Peter’s God focused on material making – that was what I was interested in finding out about and drawn to.

In the next part of the talk I said more about observational cinema and how I came to think of it also as a kind of making,  It involves following rather than  directing or recreating scenes, and it relies on close relationships with the  protagonists, a particular kind of attention to ways of being in the world – to material as well as other relationships; long takes. Observational Cinema (OC) follows a Bazanian aesthetic and philosophy meaning its not about dissecting reality or producing meaning through  cuts and juxtapositions – montage – but about a continuous practice, about responding in the moment, while also having an understanding of social and political context. (for more on this see Observational Cinema: anthropology, film and the exploration of social life by Anna Grimshaw and myself (Indiana 2009).

The Bracewells

In some respects observational cinema relates closely to participant observation – the central method of a certain kind of anthropology which is immersive, durational, qualitative, developed through relationships with people at the same time as paying attention to cultural differences, political structures, dissonant information and so on. The approach places emphasis on the body of the filmmaker and the senses – how you move, proximity and distance, sound, visual appearances and touch are all relevant when using a medium that is indexical, that records your movements as well as those of your subject. This is not to say text cannot do these things, or that film cannot be used in ways that suppress these qualities, but they have a kind of primacy in this strand of filmmaking. 

Next I talked about how I continued at U of M after the masters with a PhD in Anthropology  with visual media. My fieldwork was in Todmorden, where I was living and involved 3 sites – a factory, a farm and a housing estate.

My PhD film The Bracewells, was shot in 1998 and edited in 2000.

Click here to see 'The Bracewells' http://vimeo.com/33465829

I found out through this film and the fieldwork I did immediately before it on a housing estate that OC is suited to some, but not all, situations and this gave me an important way of understanding more about my research questions.

It turned out that OC was well suited to the research I was doing with farmers – a number of things about it that fitted with their sensory practices and knowledge. It was possible to use the approach in a way tuned to the senses. For example, what I was doing with the camera was not dissimilar from what the Bracewell’s were doing themselves – movement, rhythm, touch, smell, looking and listening were central to their daily work. So my use of OC allowed me to stay close to these rhythms.

This did not mean I wasn’t on the look out for larger social ad political contexts in which they were doing this kind of work. For example there was a kind of bureaucratic knowledge they were increasingly being asked to use at this time of BSE. These two kinds of knowledge not always comfortable together – in a scene when a woman from MAFF comes to do a spot check you can see difficulty.

Making the Bracewells helped me see that my  preferred filmmaking was about achieving a shared presence in an environment; and the making involved in  editing was about maintaining a semblance of this in the finished film – though shared presence in a way that doesn’t eliminate difference, but makes it possible to relate across difference.

But just before this, I’d been on housing estate and had a really different experience there of trying to use OC which showed me that this approach is not appropriate to all situations. In particular I found that in this environment the  camera was viewed  overwhelmingly as a mode of surveillance.

Here is an extract from my fieldnotes:

Art and craft. T and D watched football video while I played with Ts daughter R outside. Later art and craft parents and toddlers. Everyone tense and R and K fighting. S is not here today and I didn’t have the camera pointed at them or on at this point, but felt tension between censoring reality and not wanting to record things that expose or objectify T and C. or things that will make them vulnerable to outside criticism – they’ve had their children taken away and T is working towards getting R back fulltime. First of a number of difficult issues that came up about video today .

A lot of filming happened during this time and of all different kinds  - participatory, OC, and the girls filming things they wanted to – often one another - because much of the time I was driving them to different places – shopping, court, social services, relatives and so on, and of course I couldn’t film at the same time. But I was unwilling to use this material in the end because it I thought it was objectifying. Instead I wrote about the estate.

Extract from thesis

We all leave Cheryl's and set off down the snicket. It’s a sultry day. Just now, lying in
Cheryl's doorway, Cath remarked on the white clouds delicately suspended in the sky and for a few moments there was a stillness and calm amongst us. Now, as I follow Tina and Cath, Deanna, Vron, Mat and Anne along the path the muscles in my stomach tighten again.

Tina is drunk and noisy. She swaggers along, laying claim to the Avvie even though she has been banned from here by the conditions of her bail. I struggle momentarily with the desire to take the downhill road that leads to my house, but instead I follow the others into Tina's dad's house. Sitting in the small front room Mat draws attention to his sister Rachel who appears on the road above us. She is a thin, wiry nine year old wearing a short skirt, tottering on black patent shoes with 2 inch heels. She comes down the path, into the living room and springs catlike on to Deanna's knee. Tina is eating an egg sandwich she has just made in the kitchen and tells Rachel to leave the room as she isn't invited. Rachel taunts Tina back and soon they are chasing each other round the cramped room. For a moment or two the fight is a perfectly
choreographed performance but Tina is easily riled and tells Rachel angrily to ‘f’ off.

Rachel flies at her, arms and legs flailing, her nine year old body making little impact. Cheryl sits a little uneasily smiling, her eyes worried, betraying the unspoken feeling that Tina bullies all of us and that it is only this child who stands up to her. Tina opens the back door and pushes the child out, locking it behind her and laughing loudly.

'She'll come round the front now' says Vron. 'What's she like, little bitch!' her voice thick with maternal pride.

The front door rattles as Rachel tries to force her way through, then reappearing again at the back she is both laughing and crying and Tina swings open the window, barely missing her head and throws the egg sandwich in her face. The child moves like lightening, darting up the path, temporarily out of range. By now we are all on our feet. Tina fetches a raw egg from the kitchen and goes into the back garden with it hidden behind her back 'Rachel, come here darling, come here babes'. We laugh: the small girl holding her own, determined not to give up. As Rachel's frustration and humiliation reach a frenzy she begins to sob and then, between admonishments that she is soft to cry and she'll get a good belting if she does, Vron and Tina cuddle and comfort her. As we leave the house and head towards the town centre, Rachel asks Tina if she can stay at her house tonight and Tina lifts her up and tells her she can.

Through these two different ways of working I understood that the filmmaking I’m happiest with has potential in it for what you could call continuous practice –things unfold through the making, and you follow idea through that process, not knowing exactly what outcome will be.  Explicit or verbally articulated thought and understanding sometime occur afterwards – or another way to put it would be thinking through making rather than a practice where you think as a way of making –where you plot the course something will take before doing it through e.g. theory or drawn plans or shooting script.

But I also saw that this wasn’t always most appropriate method for some kinds of circumstances.

I think there is need to reflect on the kind of approaches you are comfortable with and whether you might want to challenge those – what other methods there might be, why you are attached to some over others, how you might extend yourself.

Beautiful Colour

Reverie, play and making
Moving closer to present I showed  a film I’d made in 2009-10 called Beautiful Colour.

This took me back to a theme evident in Peter’s Stone God  – making – but in Beautiful Colour I was more consciously interested in the relationship between making, play and reverie.

 Click here to see 'Beautiful Colour'

Thinking back to what we are comfortable with – the thing I did differently in this film was to place far more conscious limitations on what and how I filmed – to only film in Ian Partridge’s part of studio, not to try and explain  what happened outside that space, but to leave that to the viewer’s imagination. I wanted to focus on the place where Ian has some real autonomy.

In terms of ethical considerations and access. I made this film with my sister who was the producer and who works with Ian. Permission for the filming was given on Ian’s behalf by his advocates who felt that it would benefit him as an artist.  There were issues about other clients at the artbarn where the film was made not getting in frame as we had no permissions for them to appear. Again the method was to stay close, to think about continuity in editing, not to ask Ian things or interview him but to try and enter into the space of making with him. 

I learnt a great deal from making this film – about play -- open play rather than purposeful play.  It encouraged me to begin to draw again after twenty or more years of doing very little. Other people often say that seeing Ian work makes them want to paint – it makes it seem within reach, more possible.

Ian was not very interested in the film – he saw it when it was finished and also attended a screening of it at the BigScreen in Norwich.  But it has had some positive benefits for him – I showed the film to Bryony Bond the curator of a big exhibition of outsider art at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester and she realized after viewing it that she had work by Ian in the Musley Kinsgrove collection. As a result she decided to show Ian’s work along with the film at the exhibition.

Videoing Ian led to the last film I showed which was made in India and is called Entry . Ian’s playfulness as an artist helped me see possibility of doing this more proactively as a filmmaker.

Entry

Click here to see 'Entry' http://vimeo.com/19328902

Entry was made during a month-long residency at Arts Reverie, an artist’s house in Ahmedabad that brings Indian makers and international artists together in various exchange programmes. Arts Reverie is located in one of approximately 600 ‘pols’ found on the east side of the city of Ahmedabad. Pols are high density neighbourhoods that were once homogeneous communities associated with different castes but are today increasingly diverse.
The project team consisted of three UK researchers - Cj, Amanda and the artist Steven Dixon (principal investigator); and two Indian researchers  - the artist Lokesh Ghai, who took the role of project manager (and who was also collaborating with Steve on a separate project for the AIAF), and Palak Chitaliya who had consulted with local people about environmental conditions on previous occasions and had good relationships with people living in Dhal ni Pol. Our attempts to get to know people were helped by the timing of our visit which coincided with Navratri (8), a festival of nine nights, which is celebrated in part through dancing each night, something we enjoyed joining in with.

The film came about through Cj wanting to find visual stories with which to decorate chai ceramics and me wanting to find a way to further my work on reverie and play. Through various discussions we arrived at an idea for an event which would take place over one day – a doorway would be set up in a public space and people would be invited to interact with it while I recorded material from a fixed point and Cj took photographic portraits. 

We set up the doorway outside his house, in the street, on the auspicious day of Dussehra (the festival that ends Navratri.

On my last night when having screened the film, someone who had taken a large part in the filming was angry that I had not given him a dvd with everything I had filmed on it, rather than just giving him the edited film. I had been unable to fit all the material onto one dvd in time and the material has since been supplied, but this moment revealed how at this point of leaving, we were or seemed to be appropriating something. We know that ownership is a big issue in research and in ‘socially-engaged’ art and its something that Cj and I have written about at more length in a book called Collaboration Through Craft that is coming out with Berg in 2013. I also have to ask myself whether the way I make films allows an audience to move beyond seeing the people in the film as stereotypes, fixed entities, or as objects, so to not close thought down or misinform audiences in ways that are damaging to people or situations who the films represent.

Conclusion
The talk concluded by revisiting the question of making – the 3 kinds of making mentioned at the start -  material making, film making especially regarding relationships; and reverie and play as states associated with making. What joins them together for me is the possibly of connection and even some kind of dissolution between self and other, self and world.

So film as a kind of making, for me is about fluidity and movement where I can hopefully stop looking at myself and look at world – MacDougall puts it like this “simply to look, and look carefully, is a way of knowing that is different from thinking. This not necessarily a matter of greater concentration, for often the more we concentrate, the more we only see ourselves. Concentration is not the same as being attentive and free of distractions…paying attention is not a matter of projecting oneself onto things-in-themselves but of freeing one’s consciousness to perceive them (from The Corporeal Image. (2006: 7).