Transcripts for Day 3

Group 1

Presentation of Group 1's response to the brief

Mary Bouquet

We decided to go looking for an idea rather than sitting around talking about it. When we started out yesterday we went looking for an idea. This is a diagram of what we ended up doing. We'd heard lots of stories about Hebden Bridge being a well, lesbian place. This is what happened in our feet. We met an Irishman, you could tell by his teeth. He was directing traffic because a house had collapsed. We asked the Irishman if we could take a picture of him. We asked him about an idea and we asked if we could go back tomorrow and he said "no". We went on down the road and around the bend. As we were coming towards the bend we could see this warm place. We went in there and there were two men and they were very talkative. Gareth and his silent mate. We went on to Brian's - and you know that bit as well. On the way back down, we had talked this through and through and we decided that if we were to look at this as anthropologists you might have a kind of scheme of schizmogenesis [the process of disconnection and separation – ed.] in Hebden Bridge with the female flow going down the hill and a male flow going up the hill. That's how we saw the gendered landscape so it's a very embodied situated analysis, if you would like to have look at our diagram, that was the anthropological take on things.

But we were also busy with art, so we decided to take three characters: an Irish brick layer; a fiddler or tinkerer; and then we had a wannabe architect; those are our three characters with which we could make a triptych and the title of the triptych is How do you recognise an Irishman? It's obviously by his teeth, and we were looking into walking as theorising and the structure of it as an art piece. We go from a figure, very grey, marginal; and then to Gareth. We decided he was a bachelor and as you can see all our characters are very male and this is why we think all the males had congregated at the top of the hill. Gareth was very busy with machines. He was talking cars and factory conditions. We moved on to our real destination, Brian the wannabe architect. He's marginal, he's proud and embarrassed and involved in all kinds of shady practices. That's the gist of what we were doing.

Methodologically we got walking. Think of the artist Richard Long: the walk is a way of entering into embodied dialogue. We encounter people with a proposition; we don't make a secret of this. We meet a stray anthropologist [Anna Grimshaw] who tells us ideas fall out of the sky. An Irishman [resident 1] points us in the right direction, he says "no", he was important to us for saying "no". Then there's Brian's reconstruction [resident 3]. Brian knows where we are coming from. Our methodological route that took us to both art and anthropology was something of a parachuting disposition, as when British artists get small grants to work with communities.

Though momentary, these three individuals served as prisms refracting an entire cultural and social hierarchy.

Amanda Ravetz

Would it be paranoid of me to take this as a critique of the brief?

Lucien Taylor

The self-parody is an auto-derisive mockery of our own pretensions. Its not about the brief.

Mary Bouquet

Did we live up to the brief?

Amanda Ravetz

Did the brief live up to your expectations?

Chris Wright

How did you arrive at that decision – because what we did in our group was to spend quite a lot of time working out how to think about the relationships.

Mary Bouquet

We got jumpy legs.

Soumhya Venkatesan

What's so special about the teeth?

Mary Bouquet

We were thinking about the characters we encountered. He had very brown teeth and these are the teeth, I heard from an anthropologist who did fieldwork in Birmingham a long time ago, that these would be the teeth of an Irish labourer.

Rosalind Nashashibi

At the risk of stating the obvious, you do seem to have classified people very much by class, and ethnicity, and in a way that can be seen as parodying the discipline. But also, can that parody not be seen as a way of dodging your own active participation or responsibility of being part of that, is that something you've already discussed for example?

Lucien Taylor

It's not just parody, it's a form of allegorisation. You stop being interested in somebody as a human being.

Rosalind Nashashibi

As a way of making an understanding of something that's happened, putting something into a slot?

Mary Bouquet

We just reacted to everybody we came across. Our feet reacted.

Rosalind Nashashibi

But you wrote a piece about it. The other group were asking for more information about how you work.

Amanda Ravetz

We had a conversation about the film you showed, Rosalind. About what bothered me about second half of it. And we talked about how it was not an aesthetic I was used to. Then Liesbeth talked about it as delineating certain different rules through breaking them. And after our conversation, I thought I could engage with the film more. We talked about making a film within the genre I am used to and what it might mean to make that same formal shift. And there were moments here where I felt that could happen in the film you've just shown to accompany your dialogue, having conversations next to diggers – things that worked beyond parody. But a lot of the time I felt uncomfortable with a level of parody of something I feel is problematic, but which I feel deeply attached to …

Bryony Bond

We went out on a walk; then Mary found a way she could structure this through British classification. I was happy having a chat with people. It was interesting to me to see it as speed anthropology and then filling in the gaps. It was the structuring of this experience that became interesting to me.

Lucien Taylor

It's also interesting that Jos with his exteriority, was an ethnographer extraordinaire.

Daniel Peltz

The meaning of it for myself is perhaps to think about how undermining the authority of our own fields could be a valuable way of communicating something, but what's missing for me, is that you've undermined the authority of your fields by making ridiculous claims, based on meaningless and insufficient data and things like your walk up and down the hill can only be understood through that lens. I look at that diagram and say, what are you saying in the inverse, what is it you want to say? I'd be interested to take the claims towards meaning that are coming primarily from language. I mean if you just said we saw a woman coming down the hill, so we decided that women come down the hill, people would say that's not very interesting. But you couched it in a certain language, so it's a parody of the way language tends to make claims to meanings that are not all that significant. But what is it you are saying by undermining your authority? I didn't quite get that from the project.

Mary Bouquet

Well, one of the things that we heard when we went for our first walk on the first evening to buy some wine, was that Hebden Bridge is the place where lesbians hang out, so we had already picked that up, were processing it somewhere. So we were thinking, if that's the case, where have all the men gone? And how did they get there and who was going where and was it down the hill or up the hill, so in a way if you're doing speed anthropology you have to take what's given to you and that was one of the givens on the first evening. And then Bryony got on the internet and she found the male equivalent of the Vagina Monologues and it's not that, but it's a kind of backing up frame.

Bryony Bond

It's the first programme on the Hebden Bridge radio which is the only thing you can access here, A Cock and Bull Story. Which is Hebden Bridge locals, but that was …

Mary Bouquet

We were working fast and trying to think how could you possibly approach this in five minutes or hours? You could start to think of it as a place because we chose to go for a walk, it seems very reasonable to use the frame of landscape and then something has to happen, in a landscape.

Daniel Peltz

So it wasn't meant to be a parody? It was really meant to … like the outcomes of it, to be representative of something – my understanding of parody is off-base from your intentions?

Mary Bouquet

You could see it as that, but you could also see it as … I mean schizmogenesis is certainly a very serious concept within anthropology.

Daniel Peltz

It sounds serious.

Mary Bouquet

You've never heard of it?

Rosalind Nashashibi

I thought you said schizmojealousies!

Mary Bouquet

1936. Bateson, Mead, Naven in the Sepik New Guinea.

Daniel Peltz

It's not productive in a response session if just one person gives too much feedback because I think "oh I've never heard of schizmogenisis. Perhaps that's my weakness in this". But I don't think it is, it has no bearing on what I'm saying about the work. But maybe someone else can speak?

Chris Wright

What was apparent from our perspective last night, was that you went out very quickly. You seem to have made that decision very quickly. But was the parody that if something very serious had happened… you were throwing yourself, becoming dependent on what had happened out there, because you were reliant on something happening? Was that the parody?

David Chapman

The parody idea, in the sense of that diagram, which gave some sort of structure, is seen as a parody of anthropology as opposed to an art practice, which uses some of the forms of anthropology and is very free and loose with them. And actually, having a structure based on some anthropological concept and then fictionalising the spaces in between, based on just a small amount of information picked up. How we could read in our own knowledges of the environment, this part of the world, mixed economies you get in northern agricultural areas? So the interview you get with Gareth [resident 2], we were there for about 25 minutes, we got information on medical, industrial, religious practices of 1950s. We had a solid narrative round his life and also of that space and so you can't do a serious piece, but you could sketch in the basic structures and fictionalise those. Lots of artists go into areas looking at pseudo-anthroplogical stuff and creating bits which fill in the gaps, so instead of a parody of anthropology, as opposed to using a couple of concepts to go with a walk with, it's more of a psycho geography rather than anthropology perhaps – rather necessarily being …rather than a flippant and pessimistic take on the brief.

Anna Grimshaw

I wonder as a group what you feel you learned by undertaking this exercise?

David Chapman

One quick thing. I like the way the diagram brought it into flows, relations and movements etc so that very quickly we had a whole series of methods that allowed those relationships to emerge. For me that was quite interesting that there was a way of thinking about things that was quite different from an historical model.

Amanda Ravetz

If we thought about this as a residue…I think I asked you for a viable item, a residue. We are responding to it as an audience, but I've a concern that we are missing what it is a residue of, and getting too hung up on the thing itself.

Rosalind Nashashibi

Maybe we've been critiquing it too much rather than talking about it as an experience?

Amanda Ravetz

This wasn't…the idea was to have a dialogue wherever that happens; and you've been doing that and we're doing it here now.

Chris Wright

The surprising thing was that Jos was a good ethnographer.

Jos van der Pol

I'll change professions.

Chris Wright

So you could say there was a learning outcome …

Soumhya Venkatesan

I suppose having watched it, Amanda's question 'was this a critique of the brief', didn't seem an unreasonable question to me. People had gone out, had a walk and conversations about how it might be productive. You came back and thought we've got to do something with this stuff and that's what we ended up seeing. For me, initially, when people I work with were invoked in that way, I was surprised and somewhat pissed off. You know, they are not just walking around begging, its more complicated than that, and that's why I read it as parody. Then the whole thing of how people were picked up and discarded quite quickly.

Jos van der Pol

It's also the guy we talked to about death and asbestos – he talked in a really open manner.

Rosalind Nashashibi

It's remarkable what you find – a collapsed house and …

Amanda Ravetz

That's one of the things it left me with. Somebody's need to talk and your need to talk is enough –

Rosalind Nashashibi

Maybe it's the people's need to talk?

Amanda Ravetz

That's what I mean, it's taken up very readily and it raises questions about what you do with that.

Rosalind Nashashibi

I mean the people doing the walking.

Soumhya Venkatesan

Which is why I think coming back to the brief …

Amanda Ravetz

Which would be a critique of the brief itself, that it was it too directive.

Mary Bouquet

I thought it was great. It was a very rich thing to go up the road and in an upfront way say 'we're looking for an idea'. And the fact that people would engage with that in a very natural kind of way and tell you things was quite a kind of revelation to me in a way. And to see all the elements that were involved that were pointers in different ways. And of course we couldn't do anything thorough with it, but we could stitch it together. We havn't talked about the interaction between using the material visually and trying to say 'this is how you could begin to place it using certain kinds of anthropological concepts'. It comes out too parodical if you only work on it for a limited time.

Daniel Peltz

That representation you just gave recounting your fieldwork experience was so much more meaningful to me than how you presented it before, in part because of the way you presented it almost laughing. I mean, there was really no way to read it other than as parody. Maybe it was a joy in the types of materials … and this schema was almost laughable and effaced all the humanity you were talking about in the richness of this walk having turned it into a schema.

Mary Bouquet

We encountered a 'stray anthropologist' walking down the hill. I take your point completely, we had so much fun putting the thing together; you're right, it's a performance when you come to a group and have to present the work. It's a performance and I take responsibility and fail at that level.

Liesbeth Bik

Well, I'm not so sure. I think we step over the initial question that was brought in the film product. And that was going out and looking for an idea. And you might like, or not, the parodic effect, or the satire or the clumsiness or the superfluous dealing with characters. But I think the main question was going out asking people - or it could be a sheep - for an idea. And I think it's really strong. Then you end up in Alice of Wonderland kind of scene, rolling, rolling. Of course there are some insults in place and unfortunate accidents, but what you get in this walk, totally by coincidence, wrapping it up in package of an idea, is quite nice. I don't understand the irritation around it. I think we also are allowed and should have some self-irony about ourselves. We should have some irony about what we do as human beings.

David Chapman

The idea of parachuting came in because in some ways it could be seen as equally parodic of arts practice – and throwing something up in the air and provoking some engagement, and a group of people who had never worked together before – and to see what came up. It was very enjoyable and ideas crossed a divide…this is my camp and so on, weaving that together in some form.

Rosalind Nashashibi

I understand both points of view and it's very delicate because it touches on classism and racism throughout it – and it just really depends how you play that. And I really understand it goes on all the time and perhaps it's inbred into anthropology; but the way it came out about Muslim beggars did feel unfortunate and particularly the wannabe architect who was framed as a 'wannabe'. I think that has to be done in a knowing way. Within a small group it can be done in sympathy but in a larger group it can be harder.

Daniel Peltz

Structurally I appreciate the gesture and the metaphor of a gesture, going out looking for an idea as a parody of how we all work, a parody of an openness when taken to an extreme. I find that structure really interesting. Where the irritation comes in, is with our investment in this dialogue; coming out of our group meetings and feeling like I'm merging with the patience of the anthropologists and the sitting back and thinking of it as this really beautiful long duration piece of time based art; and then seeing this, makes me think "oh no, this is what happens? So art and anthropology come together and everything goes to crumb, applying schema and missing the whole point of the social interaction …"

Amanda Ravetz

It's clear that what happened in the group, and how the group experienced it, and how some of us have experienced it now… its different from what some of us have reacted to here - something has shifted. In our group we had a wobbly moment – we wondered how do we do this? What is useful about this wobbly moment? Lets not jump into the lifeboats. That's what I'm feeling now. I don't want you to go away thinking "oh I failed…"

Chris Wright

Has anyone seen a film called Passing Girl: Riverside by Kwame Braun? It's a fairly badly shot video, and at the time he just shot it and looking back afterwards the girl in the procession, she looks really pissed off and angry and the whole film is about taking this one moment. He takes this one moment – it's then him exploring that and you keep going back to that, so it is critiquing some of the things, perhaps like you were interested in critiquing.

Soumhya Venkatesan

Can I say one thing? I think partly my shock at having Muslim beggars referred to reflects my … I'm not just out of hand saying no-one should have said it, but I feel anxious about writing about, so I want to make that clear.

Jos van der Pol

Its also part of the editing – things are not in correct place at moment and of course the one who is editing can take it out.

Daniel Peltz

I thought that was a really interesting moment and in our group seeing how things were filtered back and forth, I related it more to this event and it seemed a really productive way …

Rosalind Nashashibi

But its also to do with current sensitivities and the fact I suppose that its easier to remember Muslim beggars than the Tamil Indian beggars, so I suppose its more complex.

Soumhya Venkatesan

I was making a personal statement, I wasn't thinking it's about Islamicist phobia.

Amanda Ravetz

We need to move on, so thank you.

Chris Wright

Do we have to go to chapel?

Rosalind Nashashibi

You might want to have a warming drink before we go there.

[people move away from the space]

Liesbeth Bik

It's like when you watch satire on TV.

Mary Bouquet

Well that was a weird experience.

Liesbeth Bik

It's not a 'work'. It's not art, it's not a piece of anthropology. It's also asking about the whole investigation, as a form, somehow, which I think is very interesting.

Day 3 group presentations to workshop
Day 3 group presentations to workshop
Day 3 group presentations to workshop
Day 3 group presentations to workshop
Day 3 group presentations to workshop
Day 3 group presentations to workshop
Day 3 group presentations to workshop
Day 3 group presentations to workshop
Day 3 group presentations to workshop
Day 3 group presentations to workshop
Day 3 group presentations to workshop
Day 3 group presentations to workshop
Day 3 group presentations to workshop
Day 3 group presentations to workshop
Day 3 group presentations to workshop