mariepierreleroux

[mariepierreleroux]

January 2018

Initial thoughts on end of year MA project:

-this is about my art practice which includes forms of collaboration discussed in the blog entitled Collaboration as Practice (21-01-18): research-led, context-led rather than self-expressive and following a norm, a recipe.

- my practice is performative and open ended. There is no proposal, just an idea. Perhaps the thread which will underpin my end of year project is a conversation with a music composer who considered the idea of collaborating with me. As a contemporary composer, she intended to compose a score which would represent an idealised nature, a kind of pastoral. But the concept of nature within our new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, needs a different frame at the intersection of anthropology, environmental law, ethics, economics, politics and globalisation. Nature bears the marks of our western society's post-carbon epoch, where the limit and the effects of individualism, the signs of its effects in terms of climate change etc., have filtered through. The research which will inform my end of year project needs to examine these signs (scars) and link them to the coming decades. My work in collaboration with others needs to question what is nature and what is environmental justice. We have exploited and disrupted nature but can't control it: earth's habitats and ecosystems are endangered, climate refugees need legal status. The British literary environmentalist Robert Macfarlane recently popularised the idea of a 'generation Anthropocene'. What does it mean to be a species, how does it feel; how much do we know about our human  entanglements with non-humans? The construct of the Anthropocene itself needs unpicking (who designed it and why). What is the legal standing of a river and that of the Unborn?

The installation presented in September 2017 at the School of Art, Birmingham, encapsulated the points above in a way which was considerate to the viewer whilst demanding of them in good balance.

The blue plaque commemorates the passage from the Holocene to the    Anthropocene. The plaque is a metaphor, a way of integrating earth's deep time into our now disrupted concept of historical time. 

The Edwardian deck chair expresses our (western) civilisation's constructs for status, taste, design, ingenious ancestry, although they are punctured by the addition of oars. The rowing deck chair escapes its main cultural function and becomes a precarious vessel in which one could drown.

The book documents a local community and its journey along their river in the Anthropocene. It demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinary work and site specificity as representative of global issues.

How to translate these strongly embodied ideas into another medium?

[mariepierreleroux]

21-01-18 Collaboration as Practice 8

Bibliography

Arnold, D. Art History: A Very Short Introduction. OUP Oxford, 2004.

Arnstein, S. Models of Participation & Empowerment. Version 2 // November 2012 [online]. Available from http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UoaiEHkH8qwJ:www.nonformality.org/wpcontent/uploads/2012/11/Participation_Models_20121118.pdf+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk, accessed 3 January 2018.

Buskirk, M. 2003. The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art. MIT Press [online]. Available from https://sculptureatpratt.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/martha-buskirk-the-  contingent-object-of contemporary-art-1.pdf, accessed 3 January 2018.

Chakrabarty, D.  2009. The Climate of History: Four Theses. Critical Inquiry Vol. 35, No. 2 (Winter 2009), pp. 197-222 [online]. Available from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/596640, accessed 3 January 2018.

de Antonio, E. 1972. Painters Painting. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6jt-oghNXQ 1973 documentary, 1.58.27, accessed 3 January 2018.

Dunseath, J. 2016. Wilsher, Mark. Artist Boss. Wunderkammer Press.

Finbow, A. 2016. 'Suzanne Lacy, Silver Action 2013', case study, Performance At Tate: Into the Space of Art, Tate Research Publication [online]. Available from http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/performance-at-tate/case-studies/suzanne-lacy, accessed 3 January 2018.

Laurenson, P. 2006. 'Authenticity, Change and Loss in the Conservation of Time-Based Media Installations', Tate Papers, no.6, Autumn[online]. Available from http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tatepapers/06/authenticity-change-and-loss-conservation-of-time-based-media-installations, accessed 3 January 2018.

Lippard, L. R., and John Chandler. 1968. “The dematerialization of art.” Art International 12:2 (February Lippard, 1968: 31-36), 31-36 [online]. Available from http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/searchq=cache:g0ZNb3irMAQJ:cast.b-ap.net/wp46content/uploads/sites/8/2011/09/lippardtheDematerializationofArt.pdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk, accessed 3 January 2018.

Make Works. Available from https://make.works/birmingham/industry/print

Mininni, G. et al. 1995. The intralocutor's diatextual frame. Journal of Pragmatics 24 (1995) 471-487.

Nixon, R. 2013. Slow Violence And The Environmentalism Of The Poor. Harvard University Press.

Nochlin, L. 1988. Why Have There Been No Great Woman Artist in Women. Art and Power and Other Essays. Westview Press [online]. Available from http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/searchq=cache:J21ZrtMc4EAJ:www.thinker.com/files/whynogreatwomenartists_4.pdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk, accessed 3 January 2018.

Wall, J. 20006. Depiction Object Event: Hermes lecture (’s Hertogenbosch: Stichting Hermeslezing, 2006). Cited in Van Winkel. 2012, During the Exhibition the Gallery Will Be Closed: footnote 10, p16. Depiction Object Event [online]. Also available from https://lectoratenakvstjoost.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/jeffwall_hermeslecture2006_en.pdf, accessed 3 January 2018.

Van Winkel, C. 2012. During the Exhibition the Gallery Will Be Closed, Contemporary Art and the Paradoxes of Conceptualism. Valiz.

[mariepierreleroux]

21-01-18 Collaboration as Practice

Collaboration is central to my work which is often executed by fabricators, whose contribution I clearly acknowledge. This process of collaboration is described in the 'Collaborative Knowledge' entries on my blog.

Although in the word ‘collaboration’ there is the notion of ‘relation’ and ‘relationship between’, this blog is not about ‘relational art’. RA is the term used to describe a participatory strategy defined by curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud. RA takes place within the symbolic space of a gallery context. My practice is sited along the river Wye and includes processes that are often collaborative and participatory but rarely collective. In my previous entries, 'Collaborative Knowledge', I describe who participants and collaborators are and their respective contribution to my work.

I thought it would be useful to analyse, in more depth, how I view these collaborations. Whether the selection and negotiation with scientists and fabricators are in themselves where my 'practice' lies? What is my relationship to fabricators; is it ‘just’ project management….plus other elements? If it is fabricators who make the object I commission, who is the author of ‘my’ work? How have other artists commissioned fabricators and project managed their work as a mode of operating? How is my own experience situated in relation to other examples of this type of working method in the art world? How can I define my practice?

[mariepierreleroux]

21-01-18 Collaboration as Practice 2

My practice has to depart from the C19 worship of the autonomous artist. I am not a male painter or sculptor, often inspired by a woman-muse in a studio in Paris (see the book, Picasso: The Artist and His Muses, 2016). To put to the test this commonly used conceptual framework, I draw on the results of a survey, restricted to Birmingham (but for two participants), which I sent to 16 fabricators: The 60 Second Survey on Fabricators & Artists Relationships.

  The survey asks fabricators what collaboration is and where does the disparate nature of collaborative practices fit in the Western culture narrative of fine art? How they work together with artists. What is the nature of the power relationship? What do fabricators bring to the artwork? Who is the author? What is an audience’s understanding of how artworks are made? The 60 Second Survey is an adapted version of The Ladder of Participation designed by public policy analyst Sherry Arnstein (1930-1997) and produced by the International Association for Public Participation.

  ‘Collaboration’ is an open-ended and ambiguous concept which in principle encompasses all sorts of interactions. I am going to define this using the five main steps of Arnstein’s ladder: Inform, Consult, Involve, Cooperate and Empower. The quantitative analysis of the survey is appended, the qualitative results follow. The interviewees’ reflections on authorship offer perspectives which contrast with the notion of authorship commonly found in the market place, “which still tends to foreground authorship and the self-expression of the individual artist’s hand” (Dunseath, 2016: 25)

[mariepierreleroux]

21-01-18 Collaboration as Practice 3

Definitions of authorship

In his interview, James Baker a fabricator, an artist and co-founder of Hereford Make, starts with a definition which could apply to both idea led art and to tangible object making, [I] “look at what makes the work unique. And who makes that work unique. That is the author.” James continues with a more modern view can still be seen with Anish Kapoor: "All the pieces are his work but they are made by other people due to him lacking the manufacturing skills to make. But he does have the understanding of manufacturing and the skills to design. He is the author of his work by, in his words, not compromising."

By contrast, Perry Walker, an inventor of public discussion games and co-founder of Talk Shop, says in distinction to inventorship, that authorship implies total production and no delegation of power: "In my mind, to claim authorship I would have had to physically produce the whole game: written the content (cards, instructions, website etc.), designed the game, printed, distributed, organised and facilitated events, collected results, published them."

Multi-authored artworks are defined in a further quotation by James who addresses joint ownership as clearly multi layered: "This does start to touch on the idea of craft where you can have a crafts person make a new visual but an artist can then turn it into something else. At that point it would be joint ownership because only the crafts person could do that process."

Similarly, the comments about multi-authorship by Zoe Robertson, a practitioner, a fabricator, a teacher at Birmingham Jewellery School and co-founder of The Dual Works, question the common romantic constructs of authorship and artistic identity: "We had an intern come to The Dual Works and she wanted to come and work for The Dual Works but I didn’t want that. I’m like, you’re not coming to work for me and working on our projects and then not being recognised. So she came and we did a collaborative project together and then we exhibited that work and I made sure she was a named collaborator on that project (my emphasis). I think it’s important that people who put the time in, I think it’s important that they get mentioned. I really really do."

[mariepierreleroux]

21-01-18 Collaboration as Practice 4

How authorship can evolve in a project

Such evolution is nicely described by Zoe. She worked with artists from other disciplines in a piece of work flockOmania (2017) that she led initially and which evolved over two years into a collaboration: "At first it was [the] Zoe Robertson solo show and now actually, two years later through different iterations and the work we’ve been doing, I actually don’t feel that anymore. I actually think it’s really rude because actually they create the work and the audience who comes and participates in the exhibition, co-curates the work. And there is a group of people that makes the work happen and it’s not about me as a solo person any more. It’s actually about a group of people that are working together and they create that outcome together so everybody is an author in that respect (my emphasis). So as the process has gone on longer, I‘ve become much more uncomfortable about it and said, no, no it’s not me anymore, I’m not on the flyer, it’s us as the group. So that’s been a really really interesting evolution of that process."

Clearly, Zoe’s main concern is not about her individual signature but the delegation of creation as part of the process of making. Decision-making, it seems, is underpinned by values of inclusiveness, reciprocity and pluralism. Zoe talks about “that outcome “which is more layered and richer than going it alone.

Perry’s conception of his role as author implied that it would not be static. It would evolve, from formulating the original idea, to interaction with collaborators since he could not possibly have all the skills needed and had to delegate: “Once I had the grant, I needed a wider range of background and experience than one person could not possibly possess”. Then through to an evolution to greater detachment in the hope that his work will be appropriated:

"You asked about authorship. At times I felt like the parent of the game and that it should be allowed to make its own way in the world once it had ‘grown up’… Irrespective of authorship, anyone could pick up this game idea and run with it. I would be delighted to be plagiarised."

James provides a further example of authors ceding authorship, but for a very different reason: “Furthermore if the item is not made to the artist’s standard, they can disown it because it has been compromised so much that it is no longer theirs”. Professor of art history Martha Buskirk, in The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art, provides another example of such renouncement, by Donald Judd (1928-1994):  A 1990 ad taken out by Donald Judd in Art in America, is an utterly serious repudiation of a work that Judd did not want presented under his name [because Judd did not consent to the work being made]. (Buskirk, 2003: Introduction, unpaginated

[mariepierreleroux]

21-01-18 Collaboration as Practice 5

Multiple authors

Zoe is impatient at the way market mechanisms hide fabricators, and other contributors’ knowledge and skills. The art lies as much in the process of production as in the final object:  “It’s all the different people in the process, isn’t it, to get that art work to that place. So the van driver, the cleaners, the person who puts it up on the wall; all of those are important for me. All the people that work behind the scenes are actually important in those exhibitions. I think I’m just fond of people that have amazing skills. They are the people that really really interest me, you know, and so I want those, that knowledge to be celebrated.”

Zoe wants to celebrate the combined skills and influences of both the individual artist and their collaborators. "I dream that maybe one day that it will be me [in the same position as Anthony Gormley, with a name and market and peer group recognition]. But I‘d want to make sure that they… it may be a collective of people or a group of people that are being celebrated."

Andy Warhol’s enterprise did not hide from view his numerous collaborators and sub-contractors. In Emile de Antonio’s film Painters Painting, Warhol claims multiple authorship and says that Brigid Berlin, a friend and collaborator, executed his last three years’ work (Buskirk, 2013: 73). Yet Warhol had to retract his announcement as the market value of his work was impacted.  Artwork alleged to be made collaboratively was unable to compete with the exclusive object, even though Warhol’s trademark is to withhold any personal touch or any signature.

[mariepierreleroux]

21-01-18 Collaboration as Practice 6

The lone artist?

Zoe acknowledges the lure of the signature: “it’s like a celebrity brand isn’t it; it’s the name of the artist which gives a kind of status I guess… People want to see big names and big shows.” In contrast with this, the benefits of collaboration for Zoe are not only a pragmatic choice, offering shared resources, but also the multi layered quality of the art produced and living by her own ethic: "five people working together can create something fantastic, rather than one person solely on their own. Because it’s tough out there paying a rent and getting yourself out there. And actually a team of people can make it happen and brings in the skills together, most importantly. And you respect people in the group for their skills and knowledge. So everybody can work on their strengths, so you are working with your strengths and not your weaknesses and that’s important."

Zoe’s understanding of art production is broad and encompasses less formalistic practices: “I think there are groups on the periphery where things are happening and working within the sort of social community art sector, things are happening, but I don’t know in the more avant-garde gallery or exhibition.”

Perry contrasts his own business model with that of the art market and the individual’s oeuvre: “the Lord of the Rings board game was developed by Reiner Knizia who has done very well out of it. People don’t buy games to resell and speculate on them, as they might with say an Anish Kapoor piece.”

The market’s focus on the individual seems to be a façade which can confuse even a critical artist practitioner: “Anthony Gormley’s studio is amazing, there are loads of people behind the scene, aren’t there. I remember watching that documentary and thinking, whoa that’s a huge studio; gosh there are so many people there! But I would have never ever realised that. And I’m an artist practitioner myself you know.” (Zoe)

Perry distinguishes between authorship and ‘inventorship’: “I don’t feel like the author [understood to include the toil of realising of the invention, as defined above]. I sort of feel like the inventor, but the act of invention ceased in my mind once I got my first grant because my concept was becoming public. Part of me would have liked the concept never to have become public, so that I could carry on turning it over in my mind, while it stayed pristine, pure. In the end, though, that was outweighed by my desire to see if this concept had a place in the public arena.”

As a conclusion James reasserts the variety of authorship strategies available to artists: “We are used to thinking of artists as being the makers/manufacturer as well, but it does not have to be the same."

Zoe emphasis the limits of a fabricator’s collaboration: “Ultimately as a fabricator you are being paid by the client and need to fulfil the brief!”

[mariepierreleroux]

21-01-18 Collaboration as Practice 7

Conclusion: where does my practice sit in contemporary Western art?

In this blog I seek to understand where my collaborative practice sits. To do so I investigate collaboration in relation to the idea of authorship. In a survey restricted to Birmingham, I raised with fabricators the following points:

- what is the nature of collaboration between artist and fabricators?

- who is the author of the work of art if the artist does not execute the work?

- where does collaborative practice fit in the Western culture narrative of fine art?

- what is an audience’s understanding of how artworks are made?

The 60 Second Survey and further interviews with three fabricators, two of whom are also artists and teachers, and one inventor, examine the nature of collaboration and authorship.

The varied responses uncover a diversity of artistic collaborations. Being the author, i.e. signing the work, does not necessarily point to an art piece made by a single individual. These collaborative practices are fluid rather than confined to a monolithic discourse on the production of art. They expose the discourse about the individual nature of creativity and the self-contained artist.

These conversations also reveal our readiness to accept, as an audience, the myth of the genius, single authorship and production. Is it perhaps our reluctance to open new windows because we are creatures of habit? Or is it for lack of alternative perspectives offered by the art market stakeholders? Is the reason for this lack of alternatives that the cult of individualism – perhaps initially as a reaction to the collective aspects of Fascism and communism – and of consumerism still prevails in the art market? That the reaction against individualism created by the signs of its effects, in terms of climate change etc., has not filtered through?

My current position is best summed by Zoe. To my question, “How about the audience, do they know or do they understand about the role of the team?” Zoe’s response was short: “I think probably not.”

In my collaborative practice, where is my art?

My artwork does not depend on commissions or patrons. It draws on the belief that, to explore our predicaments in the Anthropocene, art “can have a political purpose and can be quite a provocative means of getting ideas across” (Arnold, 2004: 26). 

My practice has precedents in the Western history of art. It is idea led and stems from the interdisciplinary and collaborative practice of Helen Mayer Harrison (b. 1927) and Newton Harrison (b. 1932), Mierle Laderman Ukeles (b. 1939) or Agnes Denes (b. 1931). It uses various kinds of collaboration. I sign my work but I am not autonomous because collaboration is crucial to my work which is multi layered. 

There are two forms of collaboration in my work; one involves participants and the other fabricators.  Participants: I collaborate with my local constituency in Herefordshire partly as a pragmatic choice: I don’t have local knowledge and institutional resources to draw on to produce my work. My practice is about connectedness and includes a form of fieldwork: taking the time to discover and learn about ‘here’ and develop a deep understanding of this region where I am both a foreigner and ‘incomer’. It is also a pleasure to work with people and make visible their ideas about the new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Although participants approve the transcripts of their interviews, ultimately I decide on the aesthetic and ethics of the final piece and on the medium and means to disseminate the work. Who has the power? It is shared between me and the participants since they make the content of the book Red Brook, the diatext (Mininni, 1995: 471-487). Participants add rich layers of meaning to the book which would be lacking if I were sole author. So it is a form of joint authorship. Before turning to fabricators, I want to turn to object making in my work. Selecting materials enables me to critically refine the project and provide information for fabricators’ understanding. My practice involves selecting materials based on their properties: the carbon footprint involved in a process and biodegradability (for a commemorative plaque). I also choose materials or processes based on their ontological and historical meaning in art: embroidered rather than printed canvas to highlight the political presence of woman in the Anthropocene. I have a self-conscious reflective practice and I research the cultural value in a mundane object and displace its meaning into a different context.  A pleasant Brighton beach deckchair of the past, re-contextualised in the Anthropocene, becomes strange. 

Fabricators: Collaboration with fabricators involves more than project management. I approach fabricators based on their skills and access to equipment which I don’t have. However, I also choose fabricators who live locally when they have an innate knowledge or affinity with the theme I am researching. Each can add a specific quality to the project. For example cooperation took place in making the book entitled Red Brook. After an initial meeting with the designers, giving them access to all my potential content, they chose freely from it. While they adapted their own ideas to my vision they also influenced the final title of the book. Authorship is mine but unlike the traditional artist I don’t control everything. The exchange between us was not simply contractual; it included their instinct, a form of empathy which adds layers of meanings to the object.    In sum, my art is multi-layered. It resides in the choice of ideas I wish to communicate, my collaborative practices, and the selection of material processes.

[mariepierreleroux]

Research In Practice, November 2017

This is the cover note I emailed 16 fabricators to explain what The 60 second Survey on Fabricators & Artists Relationships is about:

BCU Masters student seeks your input

Dear Madam, Sir,

I am writing to you because I would really value 60 seconds of your time.

My name is Marie-Pierre Leroux. I am studying at Birmingham City University, Birmingham School of Art, for an MA in Art and Design: Interdisciplinary Practices.

As part of my course I am writing an essay about 'collaboration as practice'. I am collecting data for the essay.

I understand that you are commissioned by artists. I would be very grateful if you could return the completed ‘60 second survey’ (attached) as soon as may be. The idea is to understand the input of the fabricator; can we even speak of collaboration? I will send you the results of my survey in a few weeks.

I look forward to your answer and would like to thank you in anticipation.

Yours sincerely,

Marie-Pierre Leroux

marie-pierre.leroux@mail.bcu.ac.uk

PS: should you have any concerns you can contact my tutor at Birmingham School of Arts and Design, Andrew Gillespie, Programme Leader for the MA Art and Design: Interdisciplinary Practices. Andrew.gillespie@bcu.ac.u

  The fabricators' email addresses were sourced from Make Works Birmingham, a website  produced by Workshop Birmingham. This is what Sean O'Keeffe and Ruth Claxton, the authors of the site, say about Make Works: "By linking local manufacturers, material suppliers and fabricators with the creative sector we hope to make processes more accessible, develop new connections and unlock resources, skills, knowledge and facilities which will encourage and enable more people to prototype, make and manufacture locally."

Following the email shot, I received a 50% response rate. Not bad when compared to an average 10-15% response rate for external surveys like this one. The survey is short and to the point. The addresses on Make Works are suited to the survey, the right audience for the right tool.

The 60 second Survey on Fabricators & Artists Relationships

How did I design this survey as a tool for my research? I adapted a version of Sherry Arnstein’s ladder of participation produced by the International Association for Public Participation.

Not all ‘collaborative processes’ are equal; some collaborative processes affect the production of an artist more than other collaborative processes.

Sherry Arnstein's ladder can be used to help gather data for my Research In Practice essay, entitled the Ambiguity of Collaboration.

The survey had to be vey short. It presented fabricators with a set of 4 letters to chose from to express their opinion about questions asked on what they thought about their level of collaborations with artists. Fabricators wishing to, could write full sentences in a box called Say more about your practice, at the end of the survey. Following this, three fabricators requested phone interviews:

Hereford Make CIC

Talk Shop

Action Graphics

 Here are the letters: Insert the relevant capital letter as your answer in each box below :

N(never);

S(sometimes);

O(often);

A(always)

 The answers will be analysed and used as a starting point for thinking about how much fabricators can or want to influence the artists they work with, or they work for.  I will send the results to participants.

Beyond the contractual transaction between artist and fabricators, what relationship can exist? What do fabricators bring to the artist? Who is the author? What are the artist’s working methods, what are their skills; is it managing project, directing?

The initial reading to give direction to my research includes:

Sherry Arnstein’s ladder of participation adapted from the International Association for Public Participation

Maria Lind, Complications; On Collaboration, Agency and Contemporary Art

Michael Petry, The Art of Not Making: The New Artist/Artisan Relationship

Jenny Dunseath, Mark Wilsher, Artist Boss

Johanna Billing, Maria Lindt, Lars Nilsson, Taking the Matter into Common Hands. On contemporary art and collaborative practice

Dean Kenning, The artist as artist:    http://www.deankenning.com/ArtistAsArtist.html

Mary Jane Jacob, The Studio Reader ON THE SPACE OF ARTISTS http://lib.myilibrary.com/Open.aspx?id=264632&src=0

http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/06/authenticity-change-and-loss-conservation-of-time-based-media-installations

Martha-buskirk-the-contingent-object-of-contemporary-art-1.pdf

[mariepierreleroux]

Research In Practice, November 2017

Research method: I designed a short survey tool and emailed it to 16 fabricators mostly in Birmingham. Following this some fabricators also wishes to be interviewed over the phone. 

Examples include the blank survey, The 60 second Survey on Fabricators & Artists Relationships, and three follow up interviews:

two interviewees are fabricators based in Birmingham and Hereford.

the third interviewee is a game inventor who commissions graphic and web designers as well as content makers (scientists).

[mariepierreleroux]

November 2017

1. For the Research in Practice module I will focus on one aspect of my practice: collaboration.   

In my practice, I won’t devote weeks of learning to acquire technical skills and master processes. I commission other artists/makers to realise my concepts. That's one of the types of collaboration recurrent in my practice. Participants to the project contribute to its content, so I will also focus on this kind of collaboration. The final Installation or object is important but what is even more interesting is not object-centred, it is the process we use to get there. 

How do I view the collaborations with participants and fabricators, given that I am the final decision maker? Can I claim to be the author of my work? Where does my practice sits in the art world? This module gives me the opportunity to interrogate the collaborative processes and my work.

2. Collaboration is central to my work. My practice aims to give us, humans and other interrelated species, a voice. My practice is led by idea and research, it is not about self-expression. My working method is sited, performative and open ended. It develops organically alongside the stories of scientists and participants who live on the river Wye. My work aims to re-present locals’ views and opinions in their own words, far from established discourses about the Anthropocene our new geological epoch. It also aims to connect us humans to water, a commons and a substance vital to life form.

[mariepierreleroux]

November 2017

3. Method of working with participants

One of the methods I use is to collect the voices, the thoughts and knowledge of people who live here, on the Wye. They are participants. I create a context in which participants can take part and contribute to the project. In my work I interview participants about the river Wye in the Anthropocene, our new geological epoch. I select and approach participants who live along the river: river keeper, swimmer etc.

My relationship with participants is based on respect, trust and reciprocity. Establishing these is a process which takes time. So my practice is also about taking time to discover, listen and learn about being “here”, to develop a deep understanding of this region where I am living and where I am both a foreigner and “incomer”.

I learn from participants and they take part in the project’s final form. They are given a voice and also draw knowledge from my project. For example we critically discuss the concepts underpinning the Anthropocene. They approve the final scripted interview but I edit the interviews which can become the element of an installation, such as a printed book or an audio track. 

Ultimately I decide on the aesthetic and ethics of the final piece and on the means to disseminate the work.

Lyn Cobley, a gillie at Ingestone Farm, Herefordshire, February 2017

[mariepierreleroux]

November 2017

4. Method of working with scientists

I use photography and video to collect images of the river Wye and its tributaries.

I also use a kind of fieldwork to test samples of water and record sounds of other forms of life around us: birds, water, wind etc. I consider them to be local participants that I learn from too.

Participating biologists and hydrologists advise me and inform this process.

Richard Fishbourne, the eco-designer who co-ordinates a fly life/ invertebrate survey and monitoring project on the Yazor, Widemarsh and Eign Brooks, small tributaries to the Wye in Hereford, Octobre 2017.

Above and below, hydro-geologist and biologist, sampling for presence of nitrates and oxygen in the Wye at Hereford Sewage Works, November 2016

[mariepierreleroux]

November 2017

7. Where is my practice situated?

In the art market, the cult of the individual is predominant. This pretence obscures the fact that no artist’s work is solitary: from artist Diego Giacometti’s creative proximity to his famous brother Alberto, to the skills, energy and knowledge provided by the assistants of Anthony Caro or Anish Kapoor, David Hockney or Jeremy Deller.

My practice unpicks this idealized image and foregrounds shared dynamics. I do not relinquish authorship and I depend on others’ skills and I am sensitive to their ways of seeing the world. The final work is thus multi-layered and rich in tensions.

[mariepierreleroux]

November 2017

5. Materiality in my practice

My practice also involves object making. I select materials based on the project’s theme and discussions with others, material properties, the carbon footprint involved in sourcing and processing, and biodegradability. For example I select wood rather than plastic because it is in keeping with the political context of the project, the Anthropocene.

I also choose materials or processes based on their ontological and historical meaning in art: embroidered rather than printed canvas to mark the political presence and voice of woman in the Anthropocene. Selecting materials enables me to critically refine the project and provide information for fabricators’ understanding.

Amy Tang, Senior Textile Technician, Embroidery, at BCU, February 2017

[mariepierreleroux]

November 2017

6. Method of working with fabricators

I approach makers based on their skills and access to equipment which I don’t have.  I also chose fabricators who live locally so that they can have an innate knowledge or affinity with the theme I am researching. My relationship with fabricators goes beyond contractual terms, it is a dynamic process as they, the fabricators, translate the project into reality: breaking down the process in a technical manner that I can understand. They provide alternatives and find solutions to problems. I emphasise where and what aspects are important to the piece, for example biodegradability. It’s a dialogue, a kind of dance where we all exchange information and feedback.

In my practice there are several levels of collaboration with fabricators. Each can add a specific quality to the project. For example one of these is cooperation, which took place in making the book entitled Red Brook, where after an initial meeting with designers I gave them access to all materials I had selected as potential content. The designers chose freely among this material, incorporated their own ideas and influenced the final title of the book.  The exchange between us was not simply contractual. It included their instinct, a form of empathy. My role consisted in keeping a good balance between their instinct, my knowledge of the Anthropocene and consider the reader. At the other end of the collaboration spectrum, a ceramicist compromised my blue plaque which came out white because the ceramist had misunderstood my specifications.