The book focuses on art as an activity that might be unannounced, might be clandestine, in some sense it might be private, and nevertheless it takes place in shared spaces and wants to generate and participate in public debate. In recent times, amidst a backdrop of right-wing populist and separatist politics, Collectivity, Solidarity, Interdependence have emerged as important but contested terms, the key questions perhaps centering on the struggle for Unity, Antagonism and the individuated subject in a single 'body'. The book focuses on the work of Ben Cain, and invites contributions from other writers and artists in order to broadly explore a form of a socially-minded practice that involves seemingly private activity in physical public space. We are familiar with the idea of the digital public space of the Internet echo-chamber, but what happens when we apply that same idea to actions that take place in physical public space? The book is intended as an object, an object with a concept that's based on how, what, and with whom or even with what the work communicates - How does the author communicate the idea of private work and public work in his practice? And in what ways might that work act as a platform for subsequent work to be undertaken by others? Even when working in the public realm, and even while the work appears heavily invested in mobilising public dialogue and activating public space, there's sometimes an uncertainty as to whether the work actually wants to engage with the social aspect of that the space. The work's dual character of being both outward-facing and inward-facing is a thread that runs through this book, and the wider significance of this dichotomy -isolated private actions that appear to reach out to others in public space- connects to broader questions about public space as the increasingly contested site for the potential of transformative experience, shared collective experience, and political action when those public spaces are marked by excessive regulations, cultures of fear, and commercial interests. The book is co-edited by and features writing from Zagreb-based curator Davorka Vučić-Perić, published by Vizura Aperta Croatia, and will be designed by Croatian award-winning design studio Oaza.
An imaginary studio takes up temporary residence in order to figure out what it wants to do and how it wants to behave. A studio or workroom which is made accessible to all comers, where artistic or creative work can be viewed and created collaboratively.An Open Studio is intended to foster creativity and encourage experimentation in an atmosphere of cultural exchange, conversation, encouragement, and freedom of expression. In the modern era, Open Studios originated in the salons of 17th Century Paris such as the Hôtel de Rambouillet and the gatherings of intellectuals and artists hosted by Madame de Scudéry. Much later, during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the concept of the Open Studio took the form of public poetry exchanges (most notably those of the Beat Poets events that were the forerunners of modern poetry slams, the 'happenings' of Andy Warhol's The Factory (culminating in the multimedia open-floor parties known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable and the experimental jamborees of the French literary group Oulipo). In the 21st Century, the Open Studio (often taking the form of a virtual or web location) focuses on the creative act of making and sharing, in a flexible space equipped with a range of contemporary media and multimedia. Artists and non-artists come together in a social act of collaboration, the only entry requirements being an inquisitive nature, a curiosity about new and traditional media, and a lack of inhibition about creating in a semi-public space. (Wikipedia) Absent-minded exercise In the course of absentmindedly running a finger along a surface, and in so doing measuring heat or sensing texture, one might be thought to be 'being affected by' environment, space, material; and at the same time and with the same finger one might inadvertently clean the same surface while also leaving a trace of oil from your skin thereby impacting upon, or affecting, that same environment. Is this some form of micro-relationship? How might this moment of simultaneously affecting and being affected by -both equally active states- be recorded and amplified? Minute but nevertheless tangible and vital forms of affect may be unsolicited, involuntary – perhaps this is a form of disinterested or passive affect? In fields of art making where 'participatory practice' implies the audience's 'active' role in producing, for example the production of a subject (the audience themselves?), there's an increasingly pressing need to qualify the nature of that productivity.This need arises out of a more general demand for our (i.e. a viewer, client, consumer, user, operator, producer, or all of these at once) productive engagement with an infinite variety of fields where people come into contact with other matter, data, people, objects, and subjects. So one question might be about the nature of the active and/or productive relationship between people and things, people and people, and people and materials. Do those relationship generate capital or exchangeable data, and can that data be monetarized? And anyway who's doing the acting? When does that relationship generate a space of self- or community-realisation, which in turn might have a capacity to liberate or make powerful, or promise 'mutual-support' as an outcome, for example? When people are consumers are encouraged to recognise themselves as consumers who should present themselves as products, who really benefits from all that productivity? With the omnipresence of 'activity' and 'interactivity', and the time for work-time both expanding and becoming denser, passivity becomes more attractive. The attraction lies in its potential to offer rest, down-time, but also a space for undetermined speculation, a space for potential itself. 'Active engagement' used to imply political assertion, partaking in the production of society, investment in change, perhaps even caring for things, people and ideas regardless of whether or not they impact directly upon ones own life. How do we consolidate those positive associations with 'action' on the one hand with a desire for passivity on the other? However activity and passivity aren't mutually exclusive terms, just like subject/object and author/audience. It might well be that in some cases being passive, refusing to act, constitutes, conversely, a form of activity, and vice versa.When tireless activity, self-exploitative working patterns, and the constant assertion of our own subject-hood might seem to define our contemporary landscape, then recognising passivity as vital, generating spaces for passivity, and choosing when or how to adopt a passive position might be increasingly necessary.The question of who can actually afford to practice passivity might then follow, but that stands alongside the question of who can't. 'In the era of biopower, what bodies are meant to produce is essentially their own economically productive lives – integrally self-converting into human capital. Life itself has become integrally capital- intensive' (Massumi, Politics of Affect). The effects of excessively competitive and self-exploitative patterns of work arguably take root in the body. Immaterial or cognitive labour materializes, if anywhere, in or on the body, e.g. skin, eyes, limbs, joints, nerves, hair. Functioning as something of an antidote to a backdrop of ever-present activity or productivity, in Technologies of the Self Foucault talks about learning how to effectively take care of oneself, and in discussing this form of care, he quotes Marcus Aurelius, 'I did little work, and that to no purpose'. So small-scale, seemingly purposeless work, or perhaps work that is done when we're not at work or not really working at all is upheld as being valuable, and seems to be equivalent to a kind of 'taking care'. Perhaps this 'little work of no purpose' can also be associated with a form of passivity? There are three areas that I'm linking here - the active and passive nature of 'affect', signs of contemporary work on the body, and a notion of caring for oneself and others. I want to consider the ways in which these areas might be co-dependent.
Dubrovnik Biennial doesn't seek to reproduce a typical Biennial form which relies on the patronage of large institutions and support from local government in return for delivering a safe and convenient Biennial PR package. Following two years of people around the world responding to Covid through investing in grassroots, community-based, self-organized initiatives, we should be able to understand that Biennials can be done differently, that they can managed and realised in the margins using relatively humble resources. We're not talking about geographical margins, but rather margins in terms of economical or institutional status. Of course another large-scale conventional Biennial would be easy to establish in Dubrovnik. Although Dubrovnik apparently has minimal interest in culture according to the percentage of income that's invested in art, it's a very rich city with plenty of incredible interior and exterior venues, and it's easy to navigate. Such a Biennial could happily come and go without leaving much in terms of social or political trace. A 'conventional' Biennial would no doubt positively affect the cultural and economic landscape, but we're proposing something far more progressive. We're approaching the idea of a Biennial from a different position - extensive, discursive, embedded, networked, educational, inclusive, non-spectacular. We want the question of what a Biennial might be and what it might 'do' to be explored within the local community. We envisage a low-key, long-term series of events and workshops as the prologue to something that we might call an exhibition, an exhibition that takes place biannually. In this case 'exhibition' is a broad term, expansive, permissive and promiscuous. Workshops have already began! So far discussions seem to have focused on the contemporary value of art and relationship between art and exclusivity. We plan to make a small publication which documents the questions that workshop participants posed in relation the idea of a Dubrovnik Biennial. In the spirit of bypassing bureaucratic restrictions and formal infrastructure and at the same time exposing the discursive nature of our approach, these questions were originally formed as hand-made posters to be publicly distributed around the city. Further workshops are scheduled.
