The starting point was a symposium held at London (May 2003) at Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, London Metropolitan University. The symposium was called "What work does the artwork do"? and offered a contextualisation for work by Art & Language. The following pages are from the pamphlet distributed prior to and during the symposium.
The introductory pages explain the symposium and booklet:
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| page 1 |
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| page 2 |
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| page 3 |
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| page 4 |
I enjoyed making notes on the booket. The process of so doing made me think about the ways in which theory, particularly theory which sets out to theorise about art, can itself be something like an artwork (by which I partly mean can be opaque, and objectified, rather than transparent and entirely object-directed). In particular, making notes made me think about the ways in which note making on theoretical texts (a fairly common activity, though one which has perhaps been overlooked) can have a density and an appearance, as well as being about the content (what the notes are trying to say). Part of the appeal of notes on text is, I think, to do with the ways in which relationships of power and authorship are hinted at. I also liked the way the text, through the note-making response, generated more work.
Here's the pages for the Art & Language piece, with my notes on it:
(The
rest of this explantation, below, is heavily indebted to a document written by Matthew Rowe in 2008)
A
follow-up conference, “What Work does the Artwork Do II”, took place in 2005 at
Guildhall, London. It included a
performance, by myself, Matthew Rowe and Nicholas Morgan, based upon the
transcript of a discussion with Art & Language from the 2003 event. The performance at the Guildhall event consisted
of a reading of the transcript with a substitution throughout of the word ‘symposium’
with the word ‘artwork’. As Matthew
explains: “the piece investigated the idea of presenting an artwork in the
guise of a symposium talk, which, if (mis-)taken as functioning as a symposium
talk, explored the work that symposia did, and which sought out differences and
commonalities between this and the work artworks do. Thus, different messages
about the same issues could be taken from the work depending on whether one
concentrated on the form of presentation, the context of presentation or the
content presented” (Rowe 2008, p. 1).
The
transcript (before substitutions) can be found [HERE]. There are some hand-written notes on it.
Why
Art Has A History (2006) was a way of continuing to look at the relationships between
art and academia, at the ways in which theory can be artwork, and at the ways
in which information is presented and
interpreted in artworks, amongst other things.
The
process of making this piece was somewhat complicated. First, we (Julia Moore, Matthew Rowe and
Nicholas Morgan) returned to the 2003 symposium booklet, particularly the Art
& Language text. We took it in turns to write comments on the pages printed
in one of the booklets. Each set of
comments was written in a different colour and with a different sized pen. The resulting 6 A5 pages of text were
photocopied in black and white and enlarged to A2. These were then reduced to
give a border (similar in size to the borders in the original booklet) of white
around text. On 5th June
2006, the 3 A2 sheets were hung at eye-level, side-by-side in the sequential
order of the original text, on the walls
in the Unit 6 Gallery at London Metropolitan University. The exhibition also included an invitation to
take part and an explanation of how to
do so, information about the show , an account of the progress of the
exhibition over its course, the original source text and coloured felt-tipped
pens.
On
each of the first 3 days of the exhibition, the sheets were displayed for the 3
hours for which the exhibition was open, and visitors who wanted to used the pens to make marks or write upon the
sheets. At the end of each day, the sheets were taken down and photocopied in
black and white, reduced in size and re-photocopied to leave a substantial
margin around the text. Hence, they included the original Art & Language
text, comments by Morgan, Rowe and Moore, and comments by exhibition visitors. These
new copies were then displayed the next day.
On 6th June there were two sets of 3 sheets on display, those
from 5th and the new photocopies. Visitors were asked to mark the
new photocopies, not the ones from the 5th. On the 7th June there were 3 sets
of sheets, and on 8th four sets. On each of the days 6th
to 8th June the sets of sheets were located in such a way that
visitors had to pass by the sheets from
the earlier days in sequence.
Photos
from the event can be found here
Matthew’s
explanation and analysis of the event can be found [HERE]
