Connecting Art and Anthropology Workshop

Wednesday 2.30 pm

Presentation to all seminar participants

Chris Wright

OK, in the group thing we initially considered various things, they could've involved going out or being outside somehow, but we decided that what we wanted to do was to shift the space we'd originally started out with, in a way that would make it – you could find your way around it, but it would also be disorientating. So that we would shift things – in one sense we shifted things radically in another sense we've not shifted much at all. So you all came in and didn't particularly notice much had changed, you [to Daniel] just sat down at your computer – maybe it was just an early morning thing.

Daniel Peltz

After I… it took me a while to recognise.

Chris Wright

And after that, I mean very quickly people went to their seats and sat in the same spaces they'd sat in for the first two days. Some people shifted but other people sat in their seats. We wondered what people would do coming back into that space. And then we decided we would – at first we thought we might rewrite the brief or use the brief as a kind of obstacle or an obstruction that we would tackle directly or re-write it, or reword it or something and then we thought what we'd do was take all your notebooks and subtly rework those. We didn't have all of them and yours [Lucien] was a blank so we just had to put something on it. So we just had to alter things in some ways. So the idea was to just shift it – partly I think what we were thinking about was that bringing the art and anthropology together involves a slight shift of things, so things are both recognisable and slightly unrecognisable. Would that be a fair summary?

Erika Tan

Yeah, but I also thought that it was something like the distinction between us going and doing the brief thing, and actually it felt like we'd already been doing it – we had already been doing it, because there was something in the way Amanda had actually orchestrated the three days of the seminar that was her way of creating social interaction and social relationships and creating dialogue, so actually the brief part of it seemed to be a more artificial construction, and then realising that actually it's a contrived situation anyway; this is a very unusual situation, and the space in which things happen, dialogues happen. For me it was about making a distinction between the different activities and then realising that the initial activity had been taking place already, in a very thought through way -orchestrated, space, schedule, timing. It had been very designed and so thinking about how we had all used the space unconsciously and trying to make it a conscious space that we were having these dialogues in, for me that was how I read it.

Liesbeth Bik

And for me, first I think we were sort of stumbling and struggling with the brief itself and discussing among each other, and at one point addressing it to you, Amanda, until we relocated you.

Amanda Ravetz

I moved. I had to actually move my seat. I was sitting on one side and the other four were sitting on the other side, things were being addressed to me and I was trying to explain and …

Liesbeth Bik

And it was also that you get used somehow to a situation that's been there, so you are the boss as somebody said earlier this afternoon and you wrote the brief, so we were addressing it to Amanda. But in a way that was not really fair or productive even because we were sitting in this group and Amanda was part of this group, so she had to shift somehow in a different way to get the most out of that setting.

Amanda Ravetz

So I moved my seat and it was actually after this that we had this moment of having gone through lots and lots of different possibilities of what we might do and then through almost talking past each other at a certain moment this idea arose and it just felt like that was the thing to go for, to do.

Liesbeth Bik

But also the brief had become so much part of the structure itself, the brief is part of - there is the invitation, the programme, the food, the different time segments etc and of course also the whole setting of the space is also part of how we move about, like you said - already after the first day almost nobody moved from their chair. Slight changes more or less, but very quickly everybody was settled in a place. Which we thought, well if we turn it around what would happen, how would the behaviour of people be disorientated or distorted somehow, would people be able to find their stuff this morning? No not. Because it was very funny, you [Soumhya] moved in and said "where's my cardigan?"

Soumhya Venkatesan

It was actually in my room all along.

Liesbeth Bik

Actually, I suspected.

Rosalind Nashashibi

Things of mine should have been here which weren't because I couldn't remember if I'd left my things here or not.

Liesbeth Bik

No, but it was very funny, your orientation. You know you moved in and you said, "where's my … somebody has very efficiently displaced my cardigan." You said "I put it there" and then I said "Is it this one?" because there was a grey one, and you said "no, it's dark grey". And then you went off and you then came in. It was like a theatre play somehow. Also you were looking at the spot you were supposed to have left it, not "I left it on the couch but when the chair was nearer the window!" but "I left it there near the window".

Lesley Young

I think we also felt as if we weren't meant to look, like you know, like we weren't meant to peek through the curtain. At a certain point it became impossible not to come in, and find what we needed but it did feel like we were intruding.

Paul Rooney

It was partly about kind … for us we decided this dialogue or conversation was enough. Maybe that was the object, so we just thought ...

Rosalind Nashashibi

The one you had? In the group?

Paul Rooney

Yeah, in the group together. And it was just a way of carrying that conversation on but by doing a physical thing. To see what would happen within this context, but then the actual stuff of how we did it was something else.

Rosalind Nashashibi

What about this table or is it just natural?

Liesbeth Bik

Now it's just a natural mess.

Amanda Ravetz

Basically we ended up doing a shift like that [motions with hands]. We meant to do a mirror image but we got muddled up.

Liesbeth Bik

So here was the screening space and then the tables and so on. And then first - yesterday we thought of maybe only moving this corner and turning it around on itself. But then this morning we came and thought shall we do the whole room, and we were like yeah, ok we'll do the whole room. So then we were discussing yesterday we will do a mirror image and we logically chose to use the projector and the 16 mm camera that were here as the axis. And then we were figuring out, how would you create a mirror image separately from text that cannot be mirrored literally you know, all this kind of things and then at some point Erika you said "no a mirror image is not like this … no a mirror image is …", so that's what we did and we also found …

It's a flipped thing it's not a mirror so everything …

Rosalind Nashashibi

I have problems with spatial awareness anyway and it brings all that to mind so when you were just having that exchange about how somebody said its actually like this I was like "ah is it this?" We all know what a mirror does, but I can easily be persuaded that it's a 180. I mean that was what happened to me when I came in.

Liesbeth Bik

We didn't do what we were supposed to do.

Rosalind Nashashibi

It's just interesting being disoriented, I mean putting your body in a different position. I mean I was fixated on perhaps where my things were rather than perhaps going to the opposite place because I was alarmed about not knowing how to understand the spatial placement and then of course I couldn't remember what I'd left anyway, I was imagining …

Liesbeth Bik

We were also curious about the memory of the body because here would be a gap towards that door which maybe we used until yesterday you know, so the logical route was here and today people still went on this route, so they really pressed themselves against the wall, most people did. So it's this kind of how do you take a space and then how you inhabit it and then how you move in it and then if it changes then you still, like an animal you go …

Daniel Peltz

It's interesting thinking about like a brief, a structure, that attempts to structure your interaction and like this isn't … two things I noticed, one when I was trying to do the internet in the Hebden House office, there's a little book that has all Amanda's instructions to them on how to prepare the space and actually it specifies exactly the number of chairs and the type of chairs and the number of tables and the type of table but it doesn't say anything about the orientation. And it's interesting what I noticed when I realised the space had changed was that the masses were approximately equal, like Amanda had created these two spaces that were supposed to promote different kinds of interaction but structurally there was something very similar about them, in terms of weight there was something very similar.

Soumhya Venkatesan

I just assumed that the super efficient Hebden staff had decided that this wasn't the way things ought to be - and had, like breakfast times and lunch times - it was just wrong therefore it had to be corrected straight away.

Jos van der Pol

So what did you do? Did you simply sit here and observe what people were doing?

Liesbeth Bik

No, I sat here and observed, because first we thought we will record everything and we will have a free morning and go out you know, but then this recording thing started blinking so then I noticed there was only one more minute and then I thought well ok I'll make myself invisible on the couch and pretend I'm doing something else and write down what the people say, so, but then you know it was maybe not such a good day to do it because everybody was somewhere else, so then I felt comfortable enough to go for a walk.

Mary Bouquet

So at what point did you remove the notebooks?

Amanda Ravetz

In the evening when everyone was sitting around, you were around here, you were working in that room and here, moving between there and here, and the other group were in the chapel, so we just took the notebooks a few at a time.

Rosalind Nashashibi

What the notebook went over night, all night?

Erika Tan

No, no we put them back immediately.

Mary Bouquet

I couldn't find mine.

Amanda Ravetz

Because it looked so different. When I showed it to you this morning you said "no that's not mine". And I had to pull up the front sheet and say, "is it yours?"

Soumhya Venkatesan

So what did you do with the ones you took?

Liesbeth Bik

Finished them, commented on them.

Chris Wright

We photocopied the front page and then reworked the front page. And stuck it back on.

[…]

Erika Tan

Is this anyone's? It's the first day [with notes on ] Erika Tan and Mary?

Lucien Taylor

How is this not a mirror image, more or less?

Amanda Ravetz

It would be a mirror image if it was like this …

Chris Wright

Where the screen is and the printer next to it so where you were looking at it was … working on the basis.

Jos van der Pol

Our [Bik van der Pol's ] first collaborative work was a mirror.

Bryony Bond

I really liked having my notebook messed with, I really liked it.