Collaboration

Again this morning I got stuck into making. I now have 80 sheets of paper for the rebeccastrainoscope with this project has become known as. It is beginning to come together and there seems to be many things to talk about around it:

• Performance and participation
• Destroying and creating
• Removing history and replacing it
• The self reflexive nature of the work
• Process and Production
• Kinesthetic understanding
• Obsessive actions
• Modular construction
• and probably some more

As I work and talk about what I am doing with the other artists here I feel that many strands of my work are coming together in this work. I have always been interested in the (hi)story of the materials I use and using this as the reference point for whatever I produce. I'm thinking about Winged, The Fine Art of rejection/Selection and Born and Bread in particular.

These projects or 'scores' (I'm steeling this word from Ernest Truely who stole it of Marnina Abramavic) have this common action of requesting specific material from communities as a starting point for making the work. The existence of the work depends of the participation of others. It's risky leaving it up to people to decide whether you go ahead with your plans. Who has the power and who serves? The artist is serving the community by creating something with their materials/action or the community is serving the artist by contributing? The artist requests and the community choose whether to respond. With a request rather than an order the artist approaches without power so it would seem that the power to control the work is in the hands of the community.

But how would it be if the community did not respond? There is the unsaid threat that the artist has the power to disclose their decision not to participate to the wider public and putting the community into a situation where they have to defend their lack of participation. It is strange that the requests I have made thus far have always resulted in a positive contribution from my colaborators. By contributing to the work there is a sense of ownership in the work which changes its value from something connected to an individual to something that is made up of parts and therefore it reflects the community in it's composition.





When I came to Polymer this time I had resolved not to perform, but on arrival I was informed that I was billed as a performer so I should do something. In the end I did what I know and made use of my live audience as participants, contributors and collaborators to the construction of the work. This stage where the viewer entered involved the handing over of my collection of materials. To anyone else it was junk but to me every piece of paper was a document of my personal history for the past few years. Without the attachment to my material I reached out to the viewer to assist me in destroying my past.

It is funny that I have collected this paper for so long, transported it for Leeds to Dorset and still I have not confronted it. Only in the presence of strangers awaiting art was I able to step up to the task and create a sense of confidence in the value of the next stage in the life of this material. Is this why I must spend so long creating this almost impossible object that documents the event?

I was very happy to hear today that I will have some students going me for a lesson in mass production tomorrow. Everything has been prepared and I have come to terms with the inconsistent nature of the Cyanotype process. I feel liberated to share the process with the students and request of them that they contribute their labour under my instruction to create this piece of work. I expect the whole process will open up an interesting dialogue about what it is to attempt mass production on a human scale. When a process becomes a set of instructions that anyone could carry out. In some way we are becoming a machine, factory workers....