Connecting Art and Anthropology Workshop

The group met in the small training room. The discussion quickly turned to differences in the language used by artists and anthropologists, soon becoming a critique of the conception and structure of the workshop and the workshop brief.

Tuesday 4.00pm

Chris Wright

I had lots of ideas of possible things to produce. Shall we just go round the table?

Liesbeth Bik

I had no ideas.

Amanda Ravetz

Nor me.

Erika Tan

(laughs) Neither did I. So I'm happy to hear your ideas.

Amanda Ravetz

Your ideas might spark our ideas. Did you have an idea Paul?

Paul Rooney

Only one.

Chris Wright

Let's start with you then Paul.

Paul Rooney

It's just as a starting point. I can't … thinking about the way I work, I need a place. It's not even a person relating to the place. It's some kind of context, a building or ...I can only start if I have that. And it might be nothing to do with that location at the end. But it's a sort of physical point.

Chris Wright

Ok, well in terms of an actual…rather than a process, I had some ideas about what it might look like as a thing. One was a manifesto, not about art and anthropology, but just a manifesto as a way of working. A bit like the Dogma thing, but not as proscribed, not as dogmatic as the Dogma thing. The other thing was kind of a set of exercises, which might be a set of exercises that we would like … if we didn't have time to do now, there might be things that given a week we would like to do jointly, so that we might decide to take a place and all do something about that place. It could be a set of ways of seeing things.

Liesbeth Bik

Which is connected to Paul's idea because the location could be one of the exercises.

Chris Wright

Perhaps one of the exercises would be for us all to describe something in different formats - words, sounds, still or moving images, either an imaginary thing or a real place, but I'm not sure about time constraints.

Amanda Ravetz

So, for example we could all take place like the chapel and describe it?

Liesbeth Bik

If we go back. What I think is interesting is that you need a place to start, to describe thinking somehow which is what I would need also but we could perhaps combine it, one of the exercises could be to imagine a place and we could describe this place together you know, and still I'm quite sure everybody would have a different place in mind and start from that, kind of construct a place that you are looking at.

Amanda Ravetz

I didn't quite get that.

Liesbeth Bik

For example instead of taking the chapel to look at or the pub down the road, or something else very concrete, instead of that, describe a place that we would like to look at and then take the description as the place.

Amanda Ravetz

So for example describe a pub and then go there?

Liesbeth Bik

Describe a pub and then the description is the place. We can also go there to check it out…

Erika Tan

The place to me seems to be the Internet, because whatever it is we do, whatever we say, that is where it [the outcome from the workshop] will eventually end up.

Amanda Ravetz

If we took any one of those ideas, would the dialogue be what happens between us as we try to do that?

Paul Rooney

The way we constructed a place?

Amanda Ravetz

So say we took a place and described it, would the art and anthropology dialogue be - how we do it and what we see about each other emerging?

Paul Rooney

I suppose it depends on the means we choose to use to construct it. Chris, you were suggesting we do if differently, so that we did it individually rather than pooling our ideas.

Amanda Ravetz

So these different versions would be laid out equally and represent our different approaches?

Liesbeth Bik

I have to say that the different use of language here is so funny. That you call it a 'dialogue' or 'working' and I would say 'thinking' or 'hanging out'. There is a big difference in uses of language, the preciseness or impreciseness of language. I always refrain from saying 'I'm working'. Yes, of course at the end you say 'this is a work.'

Erika Tan

So in that case could we just go for a walk to the pub?

Liesbeth Bik

Yes, probably in one field you would call it working, you could also perceive of it as something constructive, something that's also leading to something, probably, but not necessarily. And working for me always has an aim, somehow.

Amanda Ravetz

But maybe you're picking up on me taking things apart in order to understand the art and anthropology thing rather than saying thinking, walking, hanging out; implicit in those are the things that I've just felt it necessary to pull out and separate in order to put them back together again.

Chris Wright

I'm in favour of not doing that, not separating them out, but a set of things we might jointly agree upon and that would be interesting starting points. One of the things I thought was to do something from memory. To do something from memory.

Liesbeth Bik

To do something or to describe something?

Chris Wright

To have some sort of representation of a memory. If that was performance in terms of things here we would have to document it somehow.

Amanda Ravetz

Representation? But wouldn't it be a memory? That word 'representation' – artists use it as well – it says this isn't…it, in the present. There is something authentic and something copied. But you said the web is the place that everything comes back to?

Erika Tan

When I see something like this brief - I jump to the end. We are doing this for something, something is going to go on the Internet and that's shaping how we can do it. In terms of a methodology or an approach quite often I start at the end and I work backwards. I constrain myself - whether that's good or bad - in terms of what's conceivable in the time limit.

Paul Rooney

I suppose in terms of choice in this situation there's no choice, it will be on the Connecting Anthropology and Art website, whereas when you're working, you can choose what's best for it.

Amanda Ravetz

Although we could choose to make something that doesn't go on the Internet and put something on the web about it in some way. But you're not saying that, you're saying use the fact that it's going on the web in some way?

Erika Tan

Potentially. Actually, I'm confused by this, I'm finding something really uncomfortable about this. About how to work together in such an artificial situation and how we bring our methodologies to it. I don't feel I have methodologies I can bring to this, in this time-frame, in this scope. But one part of me is thinking 'yes', what is it on the web, maybe something that exists in real time on the web that's about dialogue or something.

Amanda Ravetz

Is it worth … personally I would be really interested to talk about what's uncomfortable about that, because it was such a struggle for me to try and imagine what might work for everybody in this situation.

Erika Tan

You see I'm very comfortable to go with other people's suggestions as starting points, to go with them and see what happens.

Amanda Ravetz

In a way it seems quite important though. I've given you something that doesn't fit and that's part of what we are looking at I guess.

Erika Tan

Maybe it's something that Paul mentioned earlier about thinking time. And I work very slowly and so potentially it's about the nature of being thrown into a situation where there's an outcome expected quite soon and there's just a discomfort with that. I don't feel comfortable to try and I don't want to be here resisting doing something.

Amanda Ravetz

I suppose it's just … we're not making work.

Paul Rooney

Exactly, it's not going to be an outcome in the way we normally know it, but there is the unfamiliarity of the situation. And whether you can speed things up that much.

Amanda Ravetz

Chris, do you recognise that?

Chris Wright

No! Having been to quite a lot of conferences, and I've been to a few recently that have been disappointing … you go to this big AAA [Association of American Anthropologists] thing in America and there's 5000 anthropologists all speaking for 20 minutes and that's it! I came away having had some conversations with people that were quite useful, but you think, if there was a conference going on somewhere else, what would I want to see as an outcome and what would I not want to see. What I would want to see is a set of very concise statements that I either disagreed with or found very useful. I think in terms of my reticence – last night we all went out in the woods and we could go to the pub but I suppose I'm agreeing with you we might not have the time to do that in a physical place.

Amanda Ravetz

Would it not fit in with this being something like research or practice…I don't really understand the notion of practice I don't think, but hanging out with art students they're always doing something and then you get pushed into having some kind of outcome by an exhibition or whatever - doesn't it fit into that?

Erika Tan

I think it's the thing about social relations – that I'm usually leading the investigation and the interest and I'm doing that. And here I'm feeling that I'm not doing that, that it's the group doing that. And the group isn't of my putting together and it isn't made from my connections I've made with the individuals in the group, and so I'm not central to it so it's de-stabilising not to be the centre of it.

Amanda Ravetz

So it's not your impetus, your motivation?

Erika Tan

Yes, I'm aware it's coming from the group dynamics, it's working with a groups.

Paul Rooney

There's more responsibility to the group project. There is responsibility to your own practice but its less urgent in some ways when it comes to the final outcome. It's more relaxed.

Liesbeth Bik

It's your way.

It has to do with this leading aspect I think. You go somewhere, you are invited to go somewhere and you try to find an angle and may be it will take another six months before everything falls together. But you have to decide. You ask yourself it is too banal, too direct? There are all these things that go on in your mind.

Paul Rooney

But I think that there might be something in there that might be quite good to consider as a focus in a way. But not too referential. But maybe that's too much from the artist's perspective?

Amanda Ravetz

But you see in a way, anthropologists like to follow. So in a way I'm more comfortable if I'm eliciting other people's opinions … maybe we all just want somebody else to do the leading?

Erika Tan

Part of me is thinking that what we've been doing where we all have slots – and I don't necessarily think this is a great idea - we all have 15 mins slots to do something with or lead the group in some way or another. So we have five different responses to what this event is. But there is something about being able to go off and have an independence that I find myself seeking. Otherwise I'm quite happy to go with our suggestion. But if I'm supposed to come up with something for the group that is responsible to the group dynamics I'd far rather say "I'm allowed ten minutes and in that ten minutes I'll do my thing." Rather than sway the whole group to my …

Chris Wright

It sounds like this might be a key moment of difference actually. It sounds like the artists are saying "we want to work on our own, have our direction and be responsible to ourselves" and the anthropologists are saying "we're quite happy to work as a group and share that responsibility as a group."

Erika Tan

I'm happy to work as a group as well.

Amanda Ravetz

But that doesn't seem to fit with what I've understood people's practice to be.

Liesbeth Bik

What you describe as not knowing this group who you didn't choose to work with which is always the same at the start of a workshop, usually you decide what would be the inverse and you push everyone to the inverse and then everything can happen, you know. But here we are all caught in this insecure moment, that wobbly moment, what's interesting enough to follow, what lead shall we follow. And this also reminds me of this thing of resistance also. I don't know if you saw the film The Five Obstructions (2003)? There's a combination of resistance and excitement about what has been found. Lars von Trier and his teacher, Jorgen Leth, who made this black and white film The Perfect Human (1967), that is very stiff and linear somehow. The perfect man does daily actions he combs his hair, shaves and gradually during The Five Obstructions you get an insight of what this film is. And these two men, von Trier and Leth are sitting drinking good wine and Lars von Trier is giving his former teacher commissions, a challenge to remake his super product.

Chris Wright

What's revealed through it is that they have this relationship that they really do know each other because Lars von Trier sets all these things that he knows are going to be the worst possible things. So you make this fantastic film in the 1960s that's renowned and now you've got to remake it as an animation and it works out that its a fantastic process, that by having these restrictions placed on him, Leth produces an equally incredible body of work.

Amanda Ravetz

This idea of a 'wobbly moment' really interests me, I don't know if that's what you were meaning Paul, but working with that, seeing what really is transgressive or difficult to do. Something about that wobble. To stay in that wobbling place.

Liesbeth Bik

Yes, that could be the task to stay in that wobbling moment instead of grasping for the lifeboats.

Chris Wright

What about coming up with some obstructions.

Amanda Ravetz

Or, is that too … I thought that and then I thought 'is that my way of grasping a lifeboat'?

Erika Tan

I think it's the language of this brief that makes it seem like we need to grab the lifeboat rather than explore the wobbly moment. "A workable structure to achieve ..."

Amanda Ravetz

(Laughs)

I'm embarrassed.

Erika Tan

But this is part of it isn't it? And I know for me seeing that language is "oh shit" What's 'a workable structure', 'To achieve the above', what's the above. Well the above is a dialogue, but if it's a dialogue, let's have the dialogue! How could I achieve the dialogue, I need to have the structure to make the dialogue happen but …

Amanda Ravetz

We could rewrite the brief. I'm interested in how if you were in this situation you might have written something like that – or wouldn't you have written something at all?

Erika Tan

You see, I think what you're doing here is - I see your presence here as a key presence, and maybe that's different for the different groups because you're actually in the room with us. Even how we talk, we're kind of talking to you and you're writing that down, and you're commenting but I don't feel you're participating in the same way we are. And so I think, in the back of my mind, I'm trying to second-guess what you're trying to do with this and at the same time you're not leading us. And that's strange for me because perhaps if I'd done this I'd own the process a little bit more. And invite people in. Which you have done, you have invited people in to your gig in a way, and in a way you're trying to efface yourself at the same time. And there's this discussion "why are we here?" And, why are we here? I mean I have to ask "why are we here" to you Amanda. So if you're asking me what I'd be doing, I'd potentially be thinking what am I really interested in getting out of this, and if it is about people having dialogue then how would I be creating spaces for them to be having dialogues. And actually you've done lots of that already. You've taken us up on the hill and we've had some lovely dinners and we've had some alcohol and there's been all sorts of different ways in which you've created that. So it almost feels…perhaps I'm feeling - really this is very artificial because what was already happening was what was really important.

Amanda Ravetz

Let's tear it up then!

Paul Rooney

In terms of what I am here for, and what is useful for me is really about what's happened today, getting an idea about what people do, where they come from, how they approach things. Maybe that's a dialogue but it's just really sharing projects. So this process, I'm not really sure what I need to provide or what I can get out of this process or this dialogue or the object we would create. But you were interested in a rewriting?

Amanda Ravetz

Well… I'm feeling pretty wobbly. Because on the phone, people have said to me when I've said "I'm doing this workshop, have you any ideas?" - I think you, Erika, said to me on the phone "you need to lead, you need to come up with something". And I've tried to do that and the brief is the result! But I don't have a clear idea of what the outcome is, maybe because the way I'm used to working as I said is to insert myself into other people's social relations, and use myself – in an incredibly crude way – to try and find out about them, so its very much a process of following. And it's partly my personality – stuff to do with me aside from the anthropology thing maybe. But there is this desire to hand it back. I'm not sure what to do about that right now, if I were to take more of a lead I'm not sure who or what it would serve because I'm concerned that …it's to do with this thing of not knowing until you've found it somewhere else. Finding it in the world rather than conceiving of it and then acting upon that idea.

Erika Tan

This is a very contrived situation.

Chris Wright

Would it be an idea, if we all said – I think I've been pretty clear about what would be useful to me to take out of here and use. Is it worthwhile if we all think about what that might be? It might not be a thing, it might just be that we've all had a dialogue.

Liesbeth Bik

I came out of curiosity when I got your email and we, Bik van Der Pol, were discussing it and we thought it might be interesting finally to be around the table with different artists and anthropologists who stretch your own awareness of where you are. Because so often your work is pinpointed as socially engaged, public art, too intellectual… There are these corners where you can be and me and Jos always try to drag it out of there, to skip the corners somehow. We felt in the context of all these different people here, who you don't know, but you get some kind of idea through CVs, to extend your language and awareness of what you do but also of what other people do. And I think the way we have all presented different pieces of work, but not only work – I thought it was a golden moment to also present other people's stuff, or an object that has just been found, I think that's loaded with other sorts of things. That's really a great idea because it cuts us loose of everyone's personal preferences, so it creates an open space and for me already there's that as a thing. And I think that maybe also that's why I began to talk about The Five Obstructions because that is somehow taking a way around. It seems as if that's maybe making it more difficult, making it about something else, but its actually not, it's just a feeling for – it's a trick and it's an intensive and useful trick. And for me, when I get home, if this were the only thing to come out of it, I would be totally satisfied. As when I go to an exhibition and see one good work.

Amanda Ravetz

I like the idea of doing something around the idea of Obstructions. I don't know how. Or being challenged and finding ways of challenging each other. I think you're right it is artificial.

Erika Tan

I don't mean that as a negative.

Amanda Ravetz

No, I think its better to say what situation we are in and do something and then see and say it has been a failure or it hasn't and that's still something.

Liesbeth Bik

We can fail.

Amanda Ravetz

Yeah.

Chris Wright

We could have a set of challenges that artists would set anthropologists and vice versa. For someone who hadn't been at this event, that would be a useful thing for them to then look at and think through. Partly my concern – and maybe yours as well Amanda is that we've all got all sorts of things out of this, but if we want to share that with people who aren't here or with people with a similar set of interests, how do we do that?

Paul Rooney

In a way I suppose we could do a compressed version of that notion of choosing an object. That could be the obstruction. But it could be that rather than us individually choosing we have to get together as a group and agree on something that we all have to engage with. The way that we engage with it reveals a bit more about ourselves or the way that we work that's part of what's been useful already. And it's only a glimpse of the methods and the approaches that people have, but it's a kind of hint at least. Or we could have somebody else choose it, that we're all going to have difficulty with in some way.

Liesbeth Bik

I was also breaking my head a little bit about these differences or sameness about artists and anthropologists and there are differences of course but there are also differences between artists and artists, and I was thinking also about your question why did you come and I also asked the question "why are we here?" and it reminded me of the book I am reading The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq and it's really interesting. It's about a person who becomes a clone of himself and then somewhere in the middle of the book it becomes clear why all these other clones tell about their life – you know its just a story about life – so the reason why we are here, I was thinking about it yesterday also, it says in that book the reason why we are here is to observe, to report, to think, to investigate, to report more, to record, etc. etc. So it begins with Daniel 1 and goes up to Daniel 25, so why we are here on this planet is to report. And looking back on art and anthropology, you know, why are we here: we are here to report to look, to live, to make mistakes. Then maybe it's too arrogant to say, but then maybe the next generations will learn something, our children will learn something. Or maybe not. It doesn't matter. You know its these kind of things and we do it all in our separate different ways, my way is different from yours. Sometimes I think we are so contaminated by the [conversation indiscernible]

Erika Tan

I was interested as the conversation was going round the room it felt like that game Consequences where you start with part of a body. You fold it over and pass it around and somebody adds something to complete the body.

Chris Wright

Again my thoughts are very concrete things. We could do a list of things. We could do a sort of course outline. If we all had to teach one session on a course what would you teach, what would you look at? Or we could do ... one of those things I go back and read a lot is that Encyclopaedia Acephalica – the George Bataille thing that are just words but they’re not actually – it's a sort of counter thing - you have a word and then it's what's actually wrong about that word.

Amanda Ravetz

Like 'working' or the other words that haven't done it for people.

Chris Wright

Yeah, and actually address that language.

Amanda Ravetz

We could try out different things I guess.

Paul Rooney

I quite like the idea of this brief as an object.

Amanda Ravetz

So actually that is the 'obstruction'.

Paul Rooney

So we could actually investigate this.

Amanda Ravetz

I'd be interested in that.

Paul Rooney

I like the idea of thinking about possibilities, rather than an idea for something that could happen, rather than a low level version of what we do. A proposal. Something that we might do rather than try to do something.

Amanda Ravetz

So not a bad copy of what you would usually do?

Erika Tan

So rewrite this brief?

Paul Rooney

Just respond to it as a…

Amanda Ravetz

Like you were saying, treat it as an obstruction - you said choose an object we would all find difficult, which is that and then…

Paul Rooney

But not necessarily remaking it.

Amanda Ravetz

Not making it how it should be?

Erika Tan

No, aren't you talking about two different things?

Paul Rooney

Try to deal with it as starting point for what would potentially be a piece of work but maybe as the idea of this – a brief that is difficult, rather than the specifics of what its asking us to do.

Liesbeth Bik

But you don't mean treating this AS an object?

Amanda Ravetz

But if we went with the idea that came up previously it would be that we each took this brief as an object that was different and we each had our own response to it and then we ended with up wth five responses to this obstruction.

Chris Wright

Which could mean turning it into a paper plane and throwing it out of the window and documenting that or it could be …

Amanda Ravetz

I like that because when I was doing this I thought I don't really know what to do but if I put something up then at least somebody can shoot it down

Erika Tan

With a gun.

Amanda Ravetz

And that's what you've picked up on Erika. It's a membrane between us.

Erika Tan

But it is also the thing. You've done the thing for us.

Amanda Ravetz

So in a way we don't have to do anything else.

Erika Tan

Well, you have done it! By giving us this A4 piece of paper.

Amanda Ravetz

I've done what?

Erika Tan

You have made the space in which the dialogue is happening.

Amanda Ravetz

Is this a description of what has already happened?

Erika Tan

No, no no. We're trying to come up with a plan, but you've given us the plan already.

Paul Rooney

You were saying in some ways that this is the dialogue in some ways it's the work that we're describing. We don't have to make stuff, we're already being obstructed by this thing.

Erika Tan

I like the idea of us using this one thing.

Amanda Ravetz

In the way we said before?

Erika Tan

Yeah.

Amanda Ravetz

But you're also saying that it's had an effect, that it's done something here?

Liesbeth Bik

Well really it can still go in any direction. I like the idea of thinking that this piece of resistance as the object itself. And kind of step back again and look at it and think about it. You can think about it as paper, you think about it as folds. You can think about it text. You can dive into the text. There's different ways of approaching it and then there's different ways of reworking it. But taking it as the object is already the work. It's happening.

Chris Wright

And does that mean we'd all work on it individually?

Liesbeth Bik

We can decide on that. On each other's idea of dialogue.

Paul Rooney

Chris, you were saying about something that would be useful to people outside and give sense of people's different approaches which in some ways is more defined than some blob or more amorphous thing.

Liesbeth Bik

There's so much potential in this text.

Amanda Ravetz

Suddenly!

Liesbeth Bik

We're going to have a dialogue on the subject of growing

Amanda Ravetz

(Laughs)

Erika Tan

Amanda, why do you use the word to 'create' a dialogue and not to 'have' a dialogue?

Amanda Ravetz

I don't know. I suppose I was trying to get hold of this idea of not sitting around in a room talking anymore - which is exactly what we're doing, which is funny. I think of having a dialogue as - what you do when you go to conferences and you don't have much of a dialogue, it's quite hard to get beyond casual chitchat unless its someone you already know or something has touched you and you find a way to talk about it. So it does sound very artificial but … I don't know how to answer this. It's just all my assumptions piled into this text and I'm not sure how to unpack them. 'Create' - we're creative people, you are, you are artists, lets make something that I can't imagine on my own that isn't part of my everyday experience which is more like "hello Chris let's talk about that paper we both read on art". Something beyond what I'm normally able to do in this situation. So it becomes 'create' because I don't know where it's coming from.

Paul Rooney

The idea we are talking about is less interesting for you, it's not necessarily about collaboration.

Amanda Ravetz

What, you mean this idea we've come up with now? It is interesting to me. It's a bit scary, doing it alone. Maybe doing it as a group is partly hiding and not being sure.

Erika Tan

Could you have said, I'm going to dump you into groups. Just go off and do something and record it somehow or other?

Amanda Ravetz

Yes, I thought about that. Lesley and I had conversations where she said "what will we do in these groups? I can't quite picture it", and part of me thought, well, by that time, we will have looked at each others work, seen objects, people will know, it doesn't matter, they'll do something. But another part of me was saying 'you have to be clear about what you want out of this'. It's been a competing …

Liesbeth Bik

Well it's an instruction in a way, the things that have been put in here, but there's also a lot of noise, and if you take it out, it becomes much more clear. If you say "to create a dialogue on the subject of growing/revealing /challenging … social relationships, I think, OK, we can leave that. Then " to make use of working strategies and methods as a means of doing this" leave out the rest. And then "to develop a workable structure to do this" leave out the rest. Create a viable 'item', 'object' or documented process" Point 2 can be left out becomes it doubles somehow. " Groups need to find ways to document the development of the dialogue."

[The brief]

Amanda Ravetz

It still sounds very clunky though, like you say, "viable' …

Liesbeth Bik

Well, you can polish it more, but for me there's so much there that I think, hmmm, you know examples, and it's not so necessary that it's a text you know we can find that ourselves. Whatever it will be the medium will be adjusted to that somehow.

Amanda Ravetz

So you think there's a lot of noise but there's something that could be usefully said?

Liesbeth Bik

It can be used as a generator to do things.

Amanda Ravetz

It's not an obstruction anymore?

Erika Tan

Because you're starting to reshape it and own it and navigate a way through it and picking out things that for you are noise. And I think that's what we do with briefs in a way as artists, we read things and then we make them into what we want to read!

Amanda Ravetz

So you would be faced with something like this sometimes?

Liesbeth Bik

Yes, it's a conflict, but it's not necessarily a critique on the text but how you can work with it somehow. If you follow the suggestion that this brief is the object, then you look at it and you look at it again. And you really have to start digging out what you like or what you don't like and that's also a good reason to take it up.

Paul Rooney

Are you saying that this could be focused?

Liesbeth Bik

I think its already focused in Aim 1 –

"To create a dialogue – or a means of having a dialogue - addressing the subject 'growing/revealing/challenging (etc.etc.) social relationships in practice'.

Amanda Ravetz

So being asked to "create a dialogue on the subject of growing/revealing /challenging… social relationships …"

Erika Tan

We are already doing that – growing relationships!

Amanda Ravetz

Are you saying that ironically?

Erika Tan

Nothing I'm saying here is ironic or a criticism of you, I'm just openly struggling with – and enjoying – the dialogue. And I'm not sure if we're still angling to do something because we're already doing it.

Amanda Ravetz

We are doing it and I didn't think that people would read this as completely transparent and just go off and do something. What's happened isn't that unexpected. I didn't think people would go off and act on it without having to grapple with that in some way.

Paul Rooney

I suppose it just serves the purpose as an initial obstruction. That just starts off the discussion I suppose. On the title you could have just had 'discussion'. But there is this other thing of the object or evidence of something that's happened. And maybe that's one of the things that's stressful. It means that you can't just relax.

Amanda Ravetz

But I thought it could just be this report with the words crossed out that you don't like – that's what I meant by outcome. By outcome I don't mean a piece of work. But is even the former stressful?

Paul Rooney

Maybe just the way we responded to it is as a brief and it mentions items and so on. One tends not to worry about any outcome or the outcome can be informal.

Amanda Ravetz

People could decide to resist that, or not to have any outcome. There would be some kind of documentation of that. I mean if you put 'rules' you're invoking the possibility of people breaking the rules.

Chris Wright

I'd still be keen on hearing if you had to have something that would be useful to yourself what would that be? Would it just be to have the conversation and not need anything to come back to?

Liesbeth Bik

No, I think I would see this as the start of something, a real action. I would go to the pub and talk to whoever was there and challenge them to …

Amanda Ravetz

And that would be a reflection on this, a way of critiquing the brief?

Liesbeth Bik

No, not the brief but something that's challenging you

Amanda Ravetz

Is that what you're planning to do? Create a dialogue on the subject of growth, in the pub?!

Liesbeth Bik

It could be fun!

Erika Tan

I think today the idea of trying to stage my three screen piece of work, and get an audience in the space and be able to record the dialogue that might happen and to be able to film that from outside for me was a way of getting something from this, from the situation of having these different sorts of voices in one space at one time responding very directly to something that's my work but of footage that's not my original making. And to take that away. Using that as setting up a space, again in a way a dialogue that can take place, but not necessarily. I mean making this diverse group of people an audience again, which is what we've been doing all along, but that's something I'm keen on doing that's about me going away with something tangible. But coming back to this thing I feel I could cross out everything except Aim 1. And I find I create almost a list of the ways I would create dialogue, or I would create social relations. So yes, the pub might be one place and I could do without all the rest of that. Scenarios, developing series of scenarios that allow those dialogues to take place.

Amanda Ravetz

But isn't the first thing you talked about – isn't that something you could do and we could be the people in the room having the dialogue about your work? And that would be completely fulfilling …

Erika Tan

Maybe this has made us very self conscious about the exercise and maybe if we'd gone outside and just tried to re-cable all the audio visual up all the equipment, do something with that, re-stage the whole way we've been showing all of our work, just a very practical thing, that is doing the thing we're being asked, not to sit around and talk about it, but that is actually doing it. And that's perhaps the difference between performing it – the performativity of it versus the analysis of how it might happen.

Amanda Ravetz

But for me this hasn't been a cul-de-sac.

Chris Wright

I can think of a series of scenarios in which an artist opens the door for an anthropologist or an anthropologist passes an artist a cup of tea, mundane things that stand in for other things. Or an artist and an anthropologist appreciate a flower together, on the one hand daft but on the other a performance, an action.

Paul Rooney

Everybody who's here, from what I've heard, there's things I could potentially talk to them about that I'm very interested in, but because of the group thing I suppose it has to be more of a general project and I think of it as this context where we are here and having to grapple with that and it's, this brief is a nice place to start, it sort of represents it, and potentially I'm interested in engaging with that, but it's an individual thing.

Amanda Ravetz

I don't see that as not collaborative because, we're all bouncing ideas of each other and if there are different things we want to do, we've helped each other work out what we want to do. I don't think collaboration means we all have to do something together. So if you want to talk to particular people that could be the thing you do, you just go off and pursue those conversations.

Paul Rooney

But I'm thinking about the relationship between anthropology and art crossing over and that has to be shown in some way. Or as you say it could be just through what I propose and do.

Amanda Ravetz

Or it could be …

Chris Wright

We could have a conversation around four words and you could record it and transcribe it and it means we don't have to do anything other than what we're doing now which is have a dialogue.

Amanda Ravetz

Yes, but I think people are saying there are things they'd like to do but they are worried it doesn't fulfil what I am asking them to do but I'm saying it does. It's what I wanted to happen. It could have worked better if I'd just said go off, here's some equipment and maybe we'd be doing things by now rather than talking about it.

Erika Tan

We are doing stuff!

Amanda Ravetz

Yeah, that's another of my assumptions.

Liesbeth Bik

We're hanging out? And talking to you. I'd be curious to hear what you would like to do.

Amanda Ravetz

I'd like you tell me what to do.

Liesbeth Bik

If we take that model I could tell you what to do but you could also tell another person what to do.

Amanda Ravetz

Yeah.

Liesbeth Bik

Because somehow there is the writer of this piece and we are constantly talking to you and you are talking back and this brief written by you is somehow all the time in the middle. It should be, we cannot change that, but we are not one plus four we are five.

Amanda Ravetz

You're all sitting on that side and I'm sitting on this side.

Liesbeth Bik

Yes, the dynamics are interesting

Amanda Ravetz

How can we change that?

Liesbeth Bik

We can break it.

Amanda Ravetz

I'm going to move over there then, not on the end, in the middle.

Erika Tan

Maybe we should put someone else there to answer the questions.

Amanda Ravetz

No-one wants to [take up that position]!

Erika Tan

Go on Chris – a glimmer of interest! You've come up with lots of tangible suggestions. No-ones said lets do it. And I was saying, in a way you could have a go and do something, and I believe that, so I'm happy to say, what was that idea Chris? I'll come and do it with you because that may take us somewhere else. Or equally we could all go with the idea of each doing something with this. Together or singularly. And it just depends on whether we are happy here and we want to say this is it, or if we want to throw ourselves into another way of doing it that will have some outcome. I'm open to re-doing this brief, or flipping a coin, let chance, randomness …

Chris Wright

It sounds like for all of us part of the process of starting to work is to start with something else whether in the form of a brief, a physical place, a rock in a museum, or as an anthropologist, a housing estate and your relationship to that and part of the thing we've had to start with here is this brief.

Erika Tan

It sounds so much like work by committee, like a studio group, sitting around and talking about what should be done.

Amanda Ravetz

What was your idea about linking up the equipment?

Erika Tan

Just off the top of my head I the idea of doing, being active, placing that as the primary thing.

Paul Rooney

The idea of disrupting the system?

Erika Tan

No, that was your idea!

Amanda Ravetz

When did you say that? This afternoon?

Paul Rooney

No, that's what I thought Erika's idea was, making little changes to the wiring.

Erika Tan

It's also what I can see from where I'm sitting, the cables.

Amanda Ravetz

But I thought you meant somehow restaging what had been the presentations or something about them, I don't know if you'd think about then filming that but just sort of restaging that in some way?

Erika Tan

No, but that's a good idea too.

Liesbeth Bik

Filming it?

Erika Tan

Yeah.

Amanda Ravetz

But without the people around it or something, I don't know.

Liesbeth Bik

Recording the dialogue.

Paul Rooney

Of what?

Liesbeth Bik

Restaging etc.

Amanda Ravetz

Us re-performing it? That was something that came into my mind when Erika said about the presentations, because Liesbeth said the presentations of the object was one thing you'd take away as worthwhile and I thought maybe you were saying restaging it, making some kind of adjustment.

Erika Tan

I wasn't saying that but that sounds interesting. It's really interesting the idea of restaging, its got lots of issues, appropriating what happened. The way that was set up was very – well - whilst it was contrived, the way in which everyone participated was very … I would say there was something very - I don't know how to put it - but there was a very genuine point of contact. Whereas this isn't, this is the contrived bit this is where we are all trying to figure out what we're doing, but it's almost like to go back to that, which is what I think happens a lot in a lot of people's practices, is you go back to the event and you reconsider it and you reformulate it and you take it away from and potentially give it back to and I find that process quite interesting

Amanda Ravetz

You 'take it away from'..?

Erika Tan

Taking it away from is sort of owning it, and owning it is potentially mediating it through ourselves so it's no longer the same thing.

Liesbeth Bik

And it works like that huh? We came in here and the tables were like that and the screen was like that and as soon as bits and pieces of guys moved in and lots of cables and equipment and you know four or five started to connect them and try it and how to do it, and then we are here in this set up which is the stage and the screen and Daniel behind having the buttons somehow and we also happily leave that to him and so things are laid out as they should be and it's all very practical and so on. So take it back to the zero point somehow and try and reconfigure, re-set that. And maybe not copy it but reconsider what we dare or how it should be etc etc. It's also a negotiation of space somehow and I think its quite interesting because something else will come out of it – or maybe the same will come out of it. I would be interested in what it creates you know if you artificially, totally disband and then build up again.

Chris Wright

Would that mean that part of that process could include what we were talking about in terms of reworking this? We rework that space and we rework that brief to something that …

Liesbeth Bik

We haven't done it yet so we are …

Amanda Ravetz

It would be a reworking of the brief in a way, to turn it into something that wasn't so contrived … it would implicitly be a reworking of the brief.

Erika Tan

And yet to put those two things as opposites isn't necessarily it either, one isn't necessarily less or more contrived.

Amanda Ravetz

I suppose I just meant this [the brief] could be part of it but it needn't be explicit

Erika Tan

Maybe we've bypassed this [the brief] already?

Liesbeth Bik

Yeah it is somehow still there but it's another appearance of the same thing.

Amanda Ravetz

What have we actually got with which we could do this? We've got photographs that Adrian's taken.

Paul Rooney

Can you clarify what this could be? Because originally I was thinking it's not about restaging what actually happened, or imaginatively distorting the past in some way, it's about starting afresh.

Amanda Ravetz

Is it about re-visiting that moment, that set up, however we work out a way to do that? Filming it or in some other way. I was just thinking what materials have we got – our own memories, forms of documentation, we've got the space itself that is now vacated.

Liesbeth Bik

I wouldn't rethink the presentations themselves but more the way things are set-up and organised, so that everyone who comes in fresh knows that this is the space and things have been re-presented and it becomes very clear. And the implicit meaning of the space is already there. And it was built up. We have all seen part of it being built up. Parts of it were there already and parts of it were not. And it would be interesting to go back to that moment before that.

Amanda Ravetz

So we would be putting the space … the space would be speaking of what has happened there?

Paul Rooney

Going back to before then …

Amanda Ravetz

Literally that means taking everything off the tables?

Liesbeth Bik

Piling up the tables, pulling out all the cables, stacking up the machines. Starting again.

Erika Tan

I like the idea of doing a mirror opposite.

Liesbeth Bik

Something like that. But it also makes you think about what is this space for presentation. What is the space where we all know the meaning of what should or would happen. Not even particularly this one but you enter somewhere even if you're not supposed to be presenting, and you know what it is for and I think its disrupting it somehow. Not that we should not know anymore what this kind of space should be for, it's a kind of …

Erika Tan

Yeah because it's based already on lots of assumptions and presumptions. And practical things that are quite easily hidden. And there may be some people here who don't realise why the screen is up at one end. And yet if you're a screen-based practitioner you want to find the darkest point in the room. So you don't put it at the door. So there are certain kinds of knowledge and understanding that I wonder 'actually how shared are they?' For me that's interesting.

Liesbeth Bik

And mirroring it makes it clearer. And not only clear but maybe reveals other things. And you put things here and people have to come past things in order to get to it somehow. Bodies have to move differently.

Amanda Ravetz

Does mirroring it mean making another one on the other side as a mirror image, or turning the whole thing round?

Erika Tan

And kind of relying on a process of memory but also a new practicality. A new practical way of having to deal with the situation. But also I like the idea that having done that, firstly it's an exercise for us, and becomes very experiential, but secondly for the other people, it's a kind of othering of them suddenly to the situation, because we've taken control and charge of this situation ourselves, and present them with a new experience of something that is both familiar and unfamiliar.

Liesbeth Bik

What I also think is interesting in a situation like this in a few days, you very quickly have your own place. And everybody's respecting this, sort of, more or less. And I think it's quite interesting how it develops. Very quickly, immediately actually.

Amanda Ravetz

When we first arrived we had asked Lyn to put the tables up this end because they've got the double curtains there and they have got the pull down screen, and the tables weren't in a horse shoe they were in a rectangle so there were tables at the end as well, and even though I use video, Lesley had to point out to me that we needed to reconfigure the tables, open them out. We almost got into a stressed out state about how to organise that space because there didn't seem to be enough space to get down the sides and people would be very close to the screen and at some point I said we should leave this and come back to it, but it was quite tense somehow. So I think what I mean is when you say take it back, take it back to when?

Liesbeth Bik

Before an order was there, a clear meaning.

Amanda Ravetz

Where do you think the moment of clear meaning happened? Was it when Lesley and I arrived or was it when all of you arrived?

Erika Tan

Hmm, well your point zero was different from my point zero because you were there earlier than me.

Liesbeth Bik

I would imagine a stage even before that, because this space was not used for presentations or it could be but maybe not.

Amanda Ravetz

Well, they've got a screen.

Erika Tan

And prior to that was a Sunday school? But there's also something about the activity of doing it that's potentially important, that allows us to have that conversation through the physicality of doing.

Amanda Ravetz

Yes, that's exactly what this [the brief] was trying to make happen!

Liesbeth Bik

It's like a reverse and then a jump cut.

Amanda Ravetz

I think I can only understand this by doing it too because I'm only half sure what it is we are talking about.

Paul Rooney

Maybe it's best that exactly what we do is not that clear.

Erika Tan

And that is something we've all talked about, the indeterminacy of the end product. When we all approach work it seems there's a certain amount of that. And its through the doing that things become clearer or you make decisions. We allow ourselves the opportunity of doing it. (laughs) We probably don't need to do it because we've talked about it now.

Amanda Ravetz

I need to do it.

Chris Wright

I can see two versions, one in which we in a sense sabotage the space which is there. So we reconnect the AV things up in different ways. One is where we disassemble that space so it's a blank space. Another is where we do that but rearrange it in a way we think would be more useful. Maybe you find out what that is by physically thinking it through in that space. Or we could reorganise it if we take the chairs out into the wood. Organise a dialogue space out in the wood.

Erika Tan

I like the specificity of it though. There's something about the attempt to recreate it in its entirety and in its detail but with a shift of some sort that allows you to recognise what it really is that acts both in terms of physically trying to do it, the actual physicality of trying to recreate this, but also the statement at the end. An experience at the end of having made, created

Chris Wright

A kind of taking apart and putting back together.

Amanda Ravetz

If you turned it around as it is but turned it around, that doubling would produce that effect. It would affect you as you came in in that way.

Liesbeth Bik

I think so because you would walk up to the back of the stage like in a theatre.

Amanda Ravetz

What occurs to me is needing to document it precisely now in order to reconstruct it.

Erika Tan

Or we could think about a way to use – you know what does document it mean, our memory, there's five of us. Some things are set up there as systems. And the system is also an aesthetic. So are we following the system or the aesthetics? Do we use a simulated version of the notebooks or do we have a simulated – do we have things stand in for or do they need to be real.

Amanda Ravetz

Those are decisions to be made by trying it out – or some of them.

Erika Tan

We don't have to go out there at all we can create a scale model!

Paul Rooney

There are lots of different ideas. Does this mean we need to choose one of them and collaborate on one of those?

Amanda Ravetz

It sounds like that's what's happening to me, all doing it together. How do you feel about that?

Paul Rooney

For me any of the ideas are interesting but particularly the one of shifting everything potentially, with a slight alteration. Just some way people will recognise the space but that there's something not quite right about it and will be affected by it. But do you not worry that it's not particularly – that it's making an artwork rather than involving anthropological …?

Amanda Ravetz

I think if we do it together – we are doing it by talking about it. It seemed to be that I didn't understand what Erika had said and she expanded or bounced back off my misunderstanding – I don't know, I think we are all feeding into it. But also as we do it we will have these moments of 'is it like this or is it like that?'

Chris Wright

We can arrange the cable more aesthetically, into a pattern or a word.

Amanda Ravetz

The process seems to be there's a "hmm, hmm", or a discomfort and then there's a moment when things seem to fall apart or to fit for people and then it doesn't seem to matter what it … I haven't been thinking of this is an artwork or not, I've got engrossed enough in what we were doing to stop fretting about whether it was a dialogue or an artwork.

Liesbeth Bik

It depends also in what space you take it. This effort to create and recreate and pinpoint something is something else, I would say, than the making of an artwork. Maybe the being of an artwork or the being of anthropological research. It becomes that when you put it in that section, maybe not necessarily the gallery space, of the book or the publication. These spaces also overlap and it is the space we agree on then, and we agree on this effort in whatever way we record it, one word or one text or a film or … if we then decide we now take that to this space, which is not necessarily a coded art space or a coded anthropological space, and we decide, then it becomes an artwork or anthropology.

Amanda Ravetz

And I think also because we've all shared that space, that also makes it feel like a continuation of what we've been doing out there, in a particular way.

Paul Rooney

So it could be a task. It doesn't matter if it's this or something else?

Amanda Ravetz

It doesn't feel so much like a task as something we want to do together. It doesn't so much matter why or what, just that we want to do it together.

Chris Wright

Well I think that's an agreement isn't it?

Amanda Ravetz

Could be time for a glass of wine?

Erika Tan

No, go on Chris, another ten ideas!

Chris Wright

No, even if we don't quite know what form it takes, we'll deal with that space.

Amanda Ravetz

It makes sense.

Chris Wright

And whether that means dismantling the space, or mirroring it or the cables, we'll work that out perhaps through doing it. We could think about whether to document it or how we might document it. It seems to have satisfied your idea of having a place or a physical …

Paul Rooney

It's about this context as well, so it's interesting.

Chris Wright

So I suggest rather than refining the idea any further we agree.

Liesbeth Bik

Before sneaking off, because I have another idea.

Chris Wright

Tell us your other idea.

Liesbeth Bik

I thought why don't we take over the kitchen and cook tomorrow.

Amanda Ravetz

That's great! We could do two things, we could do this one tonight.

Liesbeth Bik

Take over the kitchen.

Chris Wright

I have this clear sense of anthropologists and artists doing some mundane task together as this collaborative, cooperative thing. I can see it being a bit Paul Mc Carthy-ish!

Erika Tan

I wonder what the chef would think.

Amanda Ravetz

And the people we would be feeding.

Erika Tan

If it was a weekend and guests were here.

Amanda Ravetz

We'd do it for Laughing Gravy [the restaurant at the Birchcliffe centre].

Erika Tan

Real restaurant visitors.

Liesbeth Bik

We can make an exception and invite the whole village. It's the same kind of thing somehow. We could also weed the garden.

Erika Tan

Although for me there is something about that particular room. It refers to – it comes back to the word dialogue. And this word dialogue keeps coming up in fine art practice all the time. What do we mean? Spoken dialogue, between different materials, between an artwork and an audience? There are so many different kinds of dialogue and the way this word is used is now interrogated, particularly in this and what have we been doing here, if not doing that dialogue and so it feels that that space is a primary site of what this is about.

Chris Wright

We also have the potential of using the sound from the three days if we wanted to, may be in an empty space.

Erika Tan

I'd be interested in, because I had an idea of my piece of work in here, perhaps I won't do that but to perhaps do some filming from outside and have the sound inside recorded as we're doing it.

Liesbeth Bik

To film it from the outside?

Erika Tan

Yeah. Being outside this hub of dialogue.

Paul Rooney

Do we also have to do this report?

Erika Tan

It says here…

Amanda Ravetz

Still referring to the brief to find out what we should and shouldn't do?

Erika Tan

I grew up in Singapore, I'm a very good girl!

Amanda Ravetz

It's a trace or residue – it could be four words. It's not that it doesn't matter but it shouldn't be a constraining factor.

Amanda Ravetz

When do you think it's going to work for us to begin?

Chris Wright

Should we check with other groups to see what they want to do in there?

Amanda Ravetz

I don't think we should check; isn't the idea it has some kind of affect?

Liesbeth Bik

Seven. Before they get up.

Amanda Ravetz

Oh yes. In an hour?

Liesbeth Bik

Well, six then.

Amanda Ravetz

We have got tonight.

Erika Tan

I like the surprise element, we'll have to be very quiet.

Liesbeth Bik

Upstairs nobody will hear.

[discussion about Ade getting up to photograph the space]

Chris Wright

In that sense we could do odd enactments in the space

Erika Tan

Mimic

Chris Wright

Mimic things photographed by Ade.

Amanda Ravetz

Does anybody want a glass of wine?

Erika Tan

Seems a bit self-congratulatory! From an hour ago!

Liesbeth Bik

If we want to do it all we have to get up at six.

Chris Wright

Maybe we just have to do some small thing like stand on the chairs.

Paul Rooney

For Ade to photograph?

Liesbeth Bik

The only art attitude we have to adopt is to keep this quiet until tomorrow.

Paul Rooney

So we've got the commitment?

Liesbeth Bik

Yes, so somehow what came out from this couple of hours, for different reasons, everyone thought that might be interesting, fun. We could also miss dinner. I think, hmm that's great. And still tomorrow at seven to think that's great. I like also this specific thing, ok this is how we do it, when we do it, we get the photographer in, its orchestration somehow. It's a construction. And to do it quickly just now, when the others have dinner, it's kind of a different uploading of ourselves somehow.

Paul Rooney

The tighter thing could be interesting also. Were you saying that would be different to having a longer period?

Liesbeth Bik

If we were to it tonight while the others have dinner, you kind of upload yourself differently you know, to go immediately from this session into that. But with this I think you create a very specific moment. And maybe say ok exactly an hour and from the dot of seven to eight. Get the photographer ready and there's that to be done somehow. There's different possibilities. Now, we could all skip dinner then the surprise effect would still be there. But to go from this discussion into that it's a different thing. I feel more excited to get up at seven, it's a bit like Santa Claus.

Amanda Ravetz

I like the idea of getting up tomorrow. And practically its easier because [to do it now] we would have to miss our dinner and Adrian would have to miss his dinner and people would know we were missing because there's too many of us. They would know there was something going on and they might come and look for us.

Erika Tan

So already another element is coming in. Secrecy, surprise. Quite interesting. I'm up for early morning with a time limit.

Liesbeth Bik

We thought it would be interesting to have this time limit instead of going on.

Erika Tan

And you had a time limit as well, you were up against time as well. You were under pressure although it was thought through.

Amanda Ravetz

It was just what it was under those conditions.

Erika Tan

Are you up for getting up early?

Chris Wright

Yeah! My mind is filling with pranksterous things to do.

Erika Tan

I wasn't thinking of this as a prank you know, I was thinking of it as a really serious exercise in reconstruction!

Chris Wright

I like the idea of rearranging the space as if we were going to start – we could do it in a subtle way or we could do it in a way like we could place objects on the table that people have to encounter or rearrange the cabling say,

Erika Tan

I fancy going to the notebook photographs that Ade's got and reorganising some of the text that people have written. Alter them.

Amanda Ravetz

Digitally? And then reprint them?

Erika Tan

Place them on top of the notebook, so that whilst there's a communal response there's also an individual response to the appropriation.

Paul Rooney

Is there going to be a point where everybody is sitting around again?

Amanda Ravetz

It's undecided. Tomorrow's presentations were going to be in the chapel, but it's cold in there and nobody wants to re-set up the equipment – apart from us now - so if people want to use the screening facilities then they are here.

Erika Tan

I was wondering as well, do we admit to the action and do we explain the action or are we doing it as well for the potential experience?

Paul Rooney

It says 'presenting responses'

Amanda Ravetz

Coming back together and saying what you've done – in some way.

Erika Tan

If people use the space that …

Amanda Ravetz

That could be it. We don't have to present it, it does that itself.

Liesbeth Bik

This Italian artist who, a friend of ours, was invited for an exhibition in Rome and his piece was called "something really must have happened here". It was a group show where all the other artists came in the three days before the opening to install their work as he did and he installed it in the way that he didn't go to bed, so he didn't make something, he stayed awake and was there at the opening and he had definitely changed a little bit outside and certainly on the inside. He documented it like a photographic thing standing there at the opening. I like these things where there are slight changes. Like Michael Asher, he took out these windows of the clock tower in New York and there is a book of photos and slowly slowly you realise it is the window he took out but gradually reading it its not so clear, really interesting how you are guided through text and images, and you imagine how it was.

Paul Rooney

Interesting also in relation to the final outcome, the website, because it won't be – I mean Adrian could represent it in some way I suppose - but we wont be able to capture the oddness.

Chris Wright

I like the idea of altering the text on people's notebooks.

Amanda Ravetz

They were photographed.

Chris Wright

If we put them on the tables and make them look like notebooks we won't have enough notebooks

Liesbeth Bik

Imagine where they will sit.

Amanda Ravetz

Could it be an idea to get Adrian to do a shot now of the space and then afterwards and just have those?

Erika Tan

If we are going to do a report - it's proscriptive to think we might all have a response to that but if you work collaboratively there's the thing you've made but all the different perspectives on that.

Liesbeth Bik

Five different reports on the same thing.

Amanda Ravetz

If we want to do the notebooks, we need to do that tonight.

Erika Tan

Easiest thing is to photocopy and then change them manually.

Chris Wright

Underline the words to make a different sense, whatever.