#and even that's only because i got so bored invigilating last year that i read the handbook front -> back six times

[hairtusk]

accidently got too good at my job and now i have to invigilate 1:1 mock exams all day tomorrow because i'm the only person who passed the JCQ exam

[carminamasoliver]

So, I’ve not got around to writing for… nearly two months! I guess that means things have been going well. Although work is still unstable, this is an extremely busy period for some of the work I do. I’ve actually not been doing as much content writing as I would have liked because I just haven’t had the time. As for my own creative writing… aside from a few articles from The Norwich Radical, a couple of writing workshops, and copious amounts of notes in my phone, I’ve not been able to give myself any proper writing time.

New goal for September: balance work. Okay, this has been my goal from the beginning, but sometimes it takes you getting near breaking point to realise that you need to reassess things. I’m going to push towards working 3 days a week by simply informing the relevant people that my availability is only Monday-Wednesday, only making an exception to this rule for urgent work, or ad-hoc stuff. Without letting this take over the way it has done the last couple of months.

The additional work I’ve been doing has consisted of making nearly 200 English Language A-Level exam papers, and teaching EFL for two consecutive weeks at two different schools. This is on top of tutoring, so content writing very much took a backseat in this time and was near impossible. On top of that, I found out I was successful in my application for Arts Council Funding! I’d applied in the past, and had two rejected recently for regular She Grrrowls events, so I was very pleased. The news came at a strange time, as I was dealing with the possible loss of 4 years of data as my Mac desktop stopped starting up… a few days of uncertainty and around £900 later, my data was restored and I could resume action on the tour plans, as well as organising a 3 week run at Edinburgh Fringe festival. This meant it was even harder to celebrate the success… which is definitely something I don’t really do anyway. If something goes well, emotionally, I act like it is expected and just move onto the next, never pausing to take-in any kind of accomplishment beyond telling my parents, friends and sharing on social media…

I’ve been working around other events and socialising around all this work, so it means where possible I’ve been getting up between 6.30-7.30am. I also almost forgot that I had spent some of the time prior to exam marking doing exam invigilation at a couple of schools. That was such a challenge for me, because it was very boring. I am used to being constantly active and mentally stimulated and so it was mentally and physically exhausting simply because of the long periods of standing and doing nothing more than looking at the students doing their exams. However, it got me into better habits in terms of waking up early, and I got some exercise in by walking to a local school about half an hour’s walk away.

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I thought by tutoring between 4-7pm, it would be perfect for me to then go to poetry events. However, I realised I’d become lazy and when I didn’t see my Spanish exchange partner, I went home to eat with my parents, or just didn’t want to stay out. I booked to see some shows, and tried to go to as many as possible with friends. I’ve realised that I really much prefer going to things with others. I know that I can go alone, but I feel anxious doing so, and sometimes it’s worth it, but sometimes it’s not. It’s hard to gauge. I went to Penned in the Margins’ summer party and saw friendly faces such as Raymond Antrobus and Nick Murray. I bought a book as a Christmas present (planning early is good). The next night I went with a friend and her new boyf to a memorial night for Frightened Rabbit singer Scott Hutchison and it was beautiful and healing.

Despite being overwhelmed with work, I took a moment to have lunch in the sun in Deptford, before dropping in at the Apples & Snakes office for table space, cherries, and biscuits for National Writing Day. I used some notes from a poet called Jemilea Baako, who was kind enough to send me details of what I missed after I had to leave the BreakBeats Poets Workshop. It felt good to have some time to cool down and write.

One night I went to an event by Octavia, a collective for women of colour, founded by poet Rachel Long. As well as powerful poetry and delicious cocktails, the event turned into a party and I enjoyed it so much I ended up taking the night bus home. I also went to R.A.P. Party at Southbank, organised by Inua Ellams, which had a similar vibe in terms of its impactful words mixed in with rap tracks. Despite two award-winning poets not being there in physical form, it was another incredible evening of absolute fire.

          She Grrrowls has been ticking along, with up and down audiences at regular events. I’m writing this just before the first show at PBH Free Fringe in Edinburgh, trying to keep the nerves at bay with such as late slot: 23:20-00:20 (Banshee Labyrinth). When I return I have less than a week before the first date in the She Grrrowls Autumn 2018 Book Tour! I had an early start today seeing Antosh Wojick’s show How to Keep Time, and have just seen Rosy Carrick’s Passionate Machine. I have a feeling they will both be firm favourites throughout the festival. I can’t believe it’s just the first day. I’m wondering how I’ll cope with these late night shows. I’m seeing one more show before doing a couple of hours of flyering, having put lots of posters up and stocked up on all my food and toiletries. Perhaps staying up to see ‘Beast’ after She Grrrowls at the same venue will make me less tired in comparison the rest of the run?

Having mentioned Antosh’s fringe show, I think it’s also worth a mention of my fellow ex-Roundhouse Kid Glove poet, Sarah Perry. Whilst celebrating my Gran’s 76th birthday in Rye, swimming together in the sea, eating the most delicious Tuscan food, and drinking lots of wine with my family, I read Sarah’s debut novel ‘Let Me Be Like Water’. Being by the coast, grieving in my own way, the book found me at the perfect moment. I highly recommend it, especially if you’re reading by the British coast.

Freelance Reflections #6 So, I've not got around to writing for... nearly two months! I guess that means things have been going well.

[artsinsociety-blog1]

Interview Transcript: Merryn Stanger

Interviewer: Kate Armstrong Interviewee: Merryn Stanger Mode: Skype Date: January 12 2017

Begins: 11:45 January 12, 2017

KA: Thanks for agreeing to this interview Merryn and thanks for making the time to Skype with me

MS: No problem, I have a wine so I’m ready to go..

KA: Okay perfect! Haha, so I’m going to ask you a series of questions influenced by my research. Both the research and this interview are leading up to an exhibition which I already explained you in our previous correspondence,

MS: Yes…

KA: I chose a text as the starting point to my questioning it’s called Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance, don’t know if you know it… but it’s a collection of writings edited by...Judith Rugg and Michèle Sedgwick. It’s actually a course text and I found it really interesting as a whole and later, after you introduce yourself I want to reference an essay by Jane Rendell called CRITICAL SPATIAL PRACTICE: CURATING, EDITING, WRITING... Okay so first, can you give us your elevator pitch - who are you, what do you do?

MS: Ok sure, I’m Merryn, Stanger and last year, or 2 years ago; 2015 I graduated from an Arts Administration Master at COFA in Sydney. Since then I have worked as an invigilator at the COFA Galleries and as a research assistant at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and I was also teaching curatorial techniques at Sydney University for some classes in their Department of Architecture, Design & Planning and I also curated an exhibition for them.

KA: Perfect, thank you - so let’s get started with Jane Rendell and her essay CRITICAL SPATIAL PRACTICE: CURATING, EDITING, WRITING in which she suggests that there is a stigma around multi-model and interdisciplinary exhibitions; she says they can be viewed as ambiguous. This lead to me to question how a curator actually makes sense of or clarifies disparate elements of a show and how or maybe IF your role is making the incoherent, coherent.

MS: Well, and I take this opinion mainly from my studies; the role of the curator isn’t to make things coherent. The curator should be the *mimes quotation marks* invisible hand - there is a theorist whose name I can’t bring to mind, but you can look it up later...

KA: I can look it up after...

MS: yeah, do - well yeah the concept is that the ‘curator’s touch’ should be seen in an exhibition but you should never see the ‘hand’ let’s say. The role isn’t to be didactic but to present an opportunity for the audience to engage and interpret. The curator’s roles isn’t to impose their thoughts on the audience it's to guide them I guess…

KA: Right, so with this idea of non-didactic methods in mind….can you talk a bit about the role of text in exhibitions? Should text be displayed with works or…

MS: Okay, this is a really big debate actually its always the discussion in contemporary curation, how much should you influence or even guide the audience as a curator...I mean it’s kind of what we were just talking about, you have the mid 20th Century curators like Clement Greenburg who were way more prescriptive but the more contemporary trend is for the curator to be heard but not seen like I said before. So it’s the same concept for text, if you’re including an essay of text, even a short amount, it can influence the way the audience reads the artwork. I guess in some cases it’s necessary to include dense text, like wall plates or explanations and other times I think it’s kind of industry habit...okay, an example...When I was working at the Art Gallery of New South Wales the Asian art galleries, you know on the top level at the far end…

KA: Yeah…

MS: well they have really in-depth wall texts and have lots of explanatory text, whereas the 19th Century collection doesn’t have much,

KA: Oh, really?

MS: Yeah yeah, I mean, it’s always a bit like that...

KA: So you’re saying that the AGNSW think that their public know less about Chinese art? I mean they feel they have to aid in the translation process - this is really interesting for our exhibition, because you know as it’s about cultural translations

MS: Oh yeah, of course…

KA: So do you think that's the deal,

MS: What, that people know about 19th century art? Hmmm I think it’s a general assumption that Australians have more knowledge about Western Art…

KA: It is also a value judgment as well as an assumption?

MS: Yeah, perhaps….I mean in school in, curatorial studies we focused a lot on the Western Canon. We did discuss people like Edward Said and Orientalism but there was a general, I don’t know, bias toward Western Art...

KA: But do you think that major schools like COFA focus on the West because in the industry there is an audiences driven demand or institutional demand….or….?

MS: Well, i can only speak for an Australian perspective but yeah, maybe both...but I’d say it is a cultural bias, a general social bias…that maybe isn’t reflected on as much as it should be. But I do think a change is coming, slowly but it’s coming...You know, some of my classmates did a course called Aboriginal Perspectives; I couldn’t get into it as I’d already done too many electives and I wasn’t even allowed to audit it, anyway….now, it’s part of the Post-Grad program as a required subject...

KA: But wait, before it wasn’t?

MS: Haha, yeah...no…

KA: Oh wow, but you did post-colonial studies?

MS: A bit, in the class - wait, let me get something…

(Merryn leaves the interview, returns with a book)

...this is the program of the class, well, it was called ‘Queering the Canon’ but when I’m looking…(flips through book) Yeah, okay it’s more like Gender and Marxism, there is one class on Orientalism...but yeah, anyway it’s kind of lumped in with the other constructs.

KA: Do you think it’s also reflected in the programming that works with gallery shows - like do non-western shows require more didactic programming?

MS: Um….not sure, do you mean to be more politically correct or?

KA: No more like, well I went to see Ben Quilty speak about a piece he created for an Indigenous Artists show at AGNSW and he spoke very didactically and the talk was part of a really extensive educational program...I don’t think you’d see this at a 19th century collection show….?

MS: Hmmmm, I guess different programs are created for specific audiences and perhaps the people going to see your classic representations of the Western Canon are more into classic un-provocative programming, hehe...not sure

KA: Ok cool, well following on from that, talking about adjacent programming, I want to ask you about the exhibition catalogue?

MS: Oh yes, I love exhibition catalogues…

KA: I thought so…

MS: Haha, I have so many!

KA: Oh perfect, so as someone who likes and reads catalogues can you talk a bit about their function?

MS: Well for me, the catalogue is the perfect place for the curator to explain their curatorial premise. You know I was saying about the curator being the invisible hand - you don’t want to impose your ideas on audiences, but the catalogue is almost a separate but connected space where you can really tell the story of the exhibition. I’m always unsatisfied when I go to an exhibition and the catalogue is just, name, title, date of all the works and a picture, it’s such a missed opportunity for the curator to tell their story and have a voice - it should be more informative and subjective…

KA: And is it fair to say it’s almost a legacy of the show and it’s concept…?

MS: Yeah for sure, I mean I collect catalogues and yeah, they become not only like a souvenir but a timeless extension of the exhibition.

KA: Lovely, so they have a real place in the curation of a show

MS: Absolutely

KA: Great, well I’d like to move on to discuss the most recent show you did which is coming back to the idea of interdisciplinary exhibitions...it was for Sydney Uni right?

MS: Yeah, it was a show for Sydney University Department of Architecture and Design and it was held in conjunction with a Design conference put on by a well known guy from the design world, John Alsop...he’s from the Design Computing world, it’s a bad name for what he does I think, because it’s more like wearable tech and gadgets, but um the show was called ‘Web Directions’

KA: ...and it was held in a gallery?

MS: No, no, it was held in a public space in the foyer of the conference and had all sorts of different things in it, lots of apps and there was a drone for farmers to track sheep - that sounds a bit boring but it’s actually really interesting and got lots of funding because you know these farmers in the desert have to use helicopters to track their flocks but this device makes it much easier...But anyway yeah all of the works were around the theme technology for social good, so they had to have an aspect that benefited wider society - like one guy had this cute backpack that worked as an indicator for your bike and was controlled by your iphone, like on the handle bars. Yeah. There were lots of different items - including portfolios and posters.

KA: So there were a lot of variables; various items, lots of different sizes, participation, opportunities for people to linger to read or even watch a video; also the fact that it was in a thoroughfare….I mean, I’m interested in how you controlled the flow, the interaction of people in the space, is it even possible?

MS: I have some really great resources on this that I’ll send you, about how to create space and define the actions of audiences. There is this American theory that in Australia is actually the opposite, it’s that people by nature turn right when entering a gallery space, because by habit they vear right, like on the road or using escalators…

KA: Oh yeah it’s like when you go to Europe and go to pass someone in the street and you habitually step to the left and they step to the right and...haha...you end up crashing

MS: Haha, exactly, yeah you really have to think about the use of space fairly subconsciously actually because well, people using it are everyday people. There are a set of let’s say ‘manners’ or an etiquette that can be followed, like how big text should be and how far away viewers stand from the wall but it’s all developed around human behaviour. Also talking about wall text and the correct number is in the slides i’ll send you but there's also a certain number of words that people are willing to read standing at an exhibition before they tune out...so that's also interesting to note and I guess also where the catalogue in the format of a book becomes useful...we’re used to reading long texts in the pages of a book.

KA: Yeah, that's true.

MS: So yeah there is a lot of human nature and common sense that goes into designing exhibitions

KA: ...and then, how do you, for want of a better word…’control’ viewers, like if you have video and books and texts and spaces that will encourage loitering and other spaces that require traffic flow…

MS: Well first you consider the elements and try to space them accordingly, like separate all the apps and all the films so they are not all together, and then well, you obviously would try to keep thoroughfares clear and the works that require more hang-time in areas of less activity. It’s difficult, I like to work with a working floor plan with multiple options and trial them in the space. It’s best to access the space to see how it operates, for instance I went to visit the foyer when it was both in use and not, to see where people naturally gravitated and what the actual user experience was.

KA: So you mocked up a floor plan or a diagram?

MS: Just a simple floor plan, well a few and then by hand sketched out where things could go.

KA: And if this was a public space, how did you go about security or artworks and tech?

MS: Urgh, security is so difficult, especially when you don’t have resources - for this design show there were so many apps on display we ended up having to sign-out ipad mini’s to the designers who wanted to show their apps and they had to take responsibility for them, they had to hold them the entire time.

KA: Oh wow, so you didn’t have holders? Like at the apple store or something?

MS: No...well the line-up changed so many times that by the time everyone confirmed what they needed it was far too late to work out specific security for the space and the risk was fairly high being a public venue. I mean when I was working at the College of Fine Arts Galleries it was located in the University and they had so many resources to be able to make the specific holders out of that plastic stuff, what is it…?

KA: Plexiglass?

MS: yeah right, so they’d make special holders,

KA: A frame?

MS: ...with yeah a frame over the top and the Ipad behind all screwed in with a hole for the on/off button and the cord plugged in all the time underneath. They made them for all the shows. I think if you’re at a gallery with resources it’s fine but generally it’s difficult and expensive…

KA: Like how expensive?

MS: Well we got quoted $2000 for that Design exhibition and that was before everyone decided to have iPads, so yeah it’s pricey.

KA: Okay well we’re nearing the end of the interview, but I have one more question, a bonus question that’s a little more off-the-beaten-track…

MS: oh good, ok…

KA: I was reading an article on news.artnet.com about the relevence of curators and how there is a trend away from using the work curator; pepole are instead using ‘Exhibition Organisor’ or just ‘Organised by…’ Do you have a comment about this…?

MS: Yeah I do, I actually was discussing this with my boyfriend just the other day, about how the word curating is so grossly overused. You know, you have people who ‘curate’ instagram feeds and community curators and curated collections of things...but you know where the word curator comes from? Fom a Latin word which means to take care of, so it’s a position of custodianship or someone who is the keeper of a collection. I think originally many art collections were held by churches too and so the word also has religious connections, or connotations. It’s not a word that just means organising, so yeah maybe these people are organising exhibitions but gallerists are closer to being curators in the true sense.

KA: So there’s a place for both?

MS: Yeah for sure, but maybe it’s better, Instagram feed organiser, haha…

KA: oh for sure. Well thank you so much for this Merryn, I really appreciate it and your insights have been very useful.

MS: Thanks for asking me!

Ends 12:22 January 12, 2017