A Presentation in two parts; Part A and Part B
Part A - Stucturing the aesthetics for my presentation, February 4th

An outline of how I practically intend to deliver Part A of the presentation - The Art

Witnesses are sitting on chairs. I am seated within a ‘medical screen’ that is recognisable as such and yet has been ‘altered’ [as described below]. The room is darkened and I use a penlight torch to read from my text [leaving light traces of the reading/index showing through the fabric of the screen].

There are several reason’s that ‘qualify’ my being visually hidden. Some of these are; the psychoactive medication I take that is designed to ‘block’ sensation, the medical reports that defined me as having a ‘history of mental illness’, the problematics of charisma and performance, the discomfort for witnesses in seeing my anxiety and my discomfort in being seen, the way in which I hid from my counsellor and the way in which sound and light can present a different way of ‘perceiving’ corporeal subjectivity.

I use the medical screen, among other things, as a protective barrier that will minimise the discomfort that seeing anxiety can bring to both viewer and to viewed. This discomfort is of the real and so I cannot erase it or mask it and yet suffering as spectacle is disturbing. Pain and anxiety will inevitably emerge through my voice but I do not intend for it to be so disturbing that it could be perceived as being confrontational. The work is formed of paradoxes; the inside/outside of both myself and the screen being presented, offering a proximity to people within the distancing bounds of learning, ethics, and art, and the private and public both being put to use.
Self-critical reflection upon painful experiences can clarify understanding and generate learning. In presenting my painful experiences I am asking others’ to actively share in them, to consider how lots of seemingly discontinuous and unconnected experiences find themselves in the other. This requires a ‘letting-go-of...’ which is a great deal to ask of anyone and especially of people who do not know me. It is risky for everyone involved. I do not seek any form of consensus of opinion, nor a binding sym/em-pathy. What is done is gone, but the pain is there for us to work with in our unique encounter. I’m using the context of the presentation to engage with the contradictions of the environment and its constraints. Every thing is of value in this place at this particular time.

And yet using an item such as a medical screen as a ‘prop’ is difficult. It is already heavily laden with associations that could be terrifying and traumatic for wit(h)nesses1, and as such could easily distract from the work that is being presented. To use such an object could be seen as the artist trying to manipulate the environment and therefore abusing power relations. ‘The terrifying associations; the appearance of the medical screen, so affectively laden, and possibly mistaken for being manipulative, confronting the audience with the object itself’2.

So there is a need to diffuse the look of the screen, to offset the effects of what could happen, to offer some protection for both witnesses and artist. For example the ‘hospital fabric’ that is ‘normally’ on such screens has been replaced [on two sides] with thin cotton canvas fabric which will allow the torch light to show through. There are obvious associations here with painting and stretched canvases, and representations of body fluid in art; Emin - pissy sheets, Chadwick - piss flowers, Serrano - piss christ, Du-Champ - urinal and so on. One side of the canvas on the screen is stained with watery paint in ‘two hues’, between body fluid and paint. A watery cerulean blue has first been applied [poured from a jug] that could perhaps be the blue liquid often seen on television to represent body fluids in ‘tena lady’ or sanitary towel advertisements. The second colour is a watery dark red that might indicate a ‘reality’ body fluid, but not overtly. Watered bleach has also been poured into the canvas, removing much of the pigment from the fabric. Bleach and dettol have also been applied to the canvas gently with cotton wool... [dabbing a sore for my child... cleaning her face]. I have also rubbed debris [charcoal and dirt from a garden fire] onto the fabric in places [dirt/cleanliness]. The canvas could perhaps be a ‘painterly’ canvas, a slide screen, a hospital bed-sheet or elusive? All fabrics and elements have been secured onto the frames using medical tools; safety pins, gauze, ties.

And so, side 1 - the original hospital fabric loaned from Christine in the sewing room at Pinderfields Hospital and a referent towards the deregulation of the national health service. Side 2 - canvas seeped with liquids, Side 3 - gauze fabric wrapped around the frame horizontally with psycho’s conclusion of ‘me’ pasted on, together with my immediate response to reading his interpretation via three photographic images, and, side 4 - exam question pasted on in a step repeat down one half of a canvas vertical scroll with space for viewers to write comments on in response to the questions presented. The inside of the screen is developing into a cosy home for me. A little space, into which I have hung a pocket for my papers, spare batteries, my torch, cassette tape, and my flyers for the performance in a plaster container suspended in a ‘sling’. I used to similarly prepare as a tutor, using cardboard boxes into which I would organise each classes work. This internal space will become externalised as I myself shall in part B of the presentation.

At the conclusion of Part A I simply leave the confines of the screen, turn the lights on, turn the screen inside out and extend it horizontally, and then join with people in the audience [move chairs comfy] - sit with ‘them’ and get on with Part B which constitutes (unstructured) discussion, feedback and critique.

What do I hope for from this presentation? I hope that it will generate considerate and concentrated responses from those who attend. I seek to open channels through which our stories can touch each other not only at the event but at other times afterwards, such as through the internet site. There can be no demand for any response from anyone, responses can only be invited.

References
1. ‘Working-Through’, A Conversation between Craigie Horsfield and Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, pp.45.
2. Dr Alison Rowley, supervisory session 12, 5 December, 2002.


Diaries prior to my presentation of February 4th, dated from 27/01/03

Its Mercredi [27 Jan] already, and I’ve just sat down to this.

Its Jeudi [30 Jan] now and I want to write. Feel numb. Its too much [prospect of presenting] but I’ve got to get my arse into gear. Avoidance is no good and time is precious. I avoid the real struggles and start to over-elaborate on the practical props. Well it’s now that I’ve got to use the knowledge of prior experience and act!

Vendredi [31 Jan] Over excited, shaky, uptight. Just came down from a practice in the loft. Its fucking freezing up there. Lots to iron out... torch, papers, tape. It all requires dexterity and I don’t have the space in the screen. Need to work on it. I’m a bit of a danger to myself right now. Very hazy. Sleepy sickness. Can’t lay down for feeling of needing to sleep... sleep, shutdown, thats all I want.

Lundi [3 Feb] Fuck me where does time go? I’m totally buzzing with fear. Practiced, but not happy. Screen working, but text leaves me cold. Its political not poetic. I want both. I need to feel it. I remember Alison telling my to try using my diaries. I go back and get caught up in remembering, like snapshots. I’m not liking it. Anyway, I inserts excerpts into my text. Now its happening, I feel it. But is it too raw for people. Oh dear... always summat. Need to crack on, got to work on internet site. Need to edit more, I’m too shaky, too excitable, can’t control. Really off it. Am I so mental. So busy, need to think. Got to go buy some bread, I want to think. Its about others, I want to focus on Part B but Part A matters too. Seeking comfort, physical and mental, busy all the time but avoiding what is essential... a struggle with this work. Don’t want to go out, don’t want visitors, need calm. Numbed through the realisation of what I’ve put myself forward to do and full of doubts as to why I intend to do it. I need to remind myself that it is not about me. I acknowledge that I hope to use the people who attend the event, just as I hope that they in turn will use me in an exchange of mutually beneficial relations.


Transcript for presentation of February 4th [Notes to myself in brackets]

Title: ‘...PRACTICE IN RESEARCH IN PRACTICE IN RESEARCH...’

Welcome. This presentation began before the event and it will continue afterwards. It is a presentation-event delivered in two parts. In the ‘event’ that follows the ‘presentation’ I shall be making a cassette recording of our discussion [for research purposes] and I shall leave my ‘hide’ and come and join with you. Before we begin I’d like to offer a caution, that so-called bad language is used [in context] at times during the presentation.
[TORCH OFF]
Part A
Professor F said to me recently (after hearing me ask a question at a research session) ‘thought it was you back there, scared to speak and wanting everyone to know it’1. Professor F’s right. But I’d like to add that I’m unable to masquerade the fact that I’m afraid to speak. So whether or not I want people to know it is not the primary point.
[TORCH OFF]
Most of us are anxious about speaking in public and our anxieties emerge and are managed in an infinite variety of ways. I am unable to manage my anxieties very well and so it seems reasonable to ask, ‘why do you put yourself through it?’
[TORCH OFF]
My response is that I do it because I have something to communicate and alternative pedagogy in an aesthetic field is the method available to me through which to do it. If I don’t do it, then the issues that I need to communicate would not be articulated [which would be unpleasant for me] and would also prevent the issues I want to raise from being acknowledged.
[TORCH OFF]
Telling you about me is my way of taking us into a story that is of concern to us [as artists, educators and educated].
[TORCH OFF]
I began this project by making connections between the managerial ethos that determines conditions of labour for workers in the further education sector and attempts by educationalists to devise art assessment strategies at further education level. That is, between the managerial failure to objectify, measure and control art education and the failure of managerial strategies to objectify, measure and control staff and students in art educational institutions.
[TORCH OFF]
This research has developed in response to my experiences as a full-time lecturer in further education between 1991 and 1999. Incorporation, the process of centralisation, took place during this time. Further education became incorporated into central government control and professional codes and standards [and new contracts], were introduced into the work place which damaged me, my students and my colleagues.
[TORCH OFF]
16th October 1996
I’m finding this so difficult to handle. I’ve got to let go of my ‘perfectionist’ attitude X says, and only prioritise the most urgent of jobs. I have to prioritise being a curriculum leader and not a tutor. But being given two new courses, one with two years, all to teach simultaneously in the same room, with no prep in place, a few weeks into term because all the staff have walked out, is not an addition its a full-time job in itself! For X to say ‘I can’t manage either, we’re all in the same state’ is not the support I’m seeking.
[TORCH OFF]
I was becoming ill from the undemocratic and autocratic managerial systems that dictated my workload and constant, unsupported, changes in procedure. As my administrative burdens increased I was torn from that aspect of my job which held purpose for me...working with, and for, my students. To my employers my focus was ‘all-wrong’. To my employers the primary focus for their contemporary learning institution was; recruitment, retention, achievement and progression, especially on paper.
[TORCH OFF]
3rd March 1998
I’m really concerned about maintaining my income. Other people [allegedly] throw sickies to catch up but I’m not prepared to do that. There are a number of things I have to do that I simply can’t fit in and its worrying me... portfolios, ucas interviews, gpa units, development, access, reports, refrences, the intrantet site, planning the show. I don’t know what to do. I want to tell my line managers but I’ve done that already. They deflected it back at me as poor time management. They came to observe me but could find no problems... [still working efficiently and beyond the call of duty]. I complained again. Not only can’t I do these jobs, but I’m also trying to prevent the relentless onslaught of further demands. I don’t know what to do and I’m worried about my income because if I complain again I’ll be in trouble. I’ve asked to be demoted and I’m awaiting an official response.
[TORCH OFF]
Over the past decade in further education class ‘contact’ hours have been halved, staff workloads have increased and art students must adhere to rigidly defined performance criteria. There is also a shortage of teachers and stress related illnesses are common throughout the education sector.
[TORCH OFF]
When I started teaching my work may have been called professional and yet procedures were slack and we were desperate for resources. As workers though, there was access to our subjectivity and substance to our efforts. The lack of control, trust, and independence given to workers in the knowledge industry of today does not allow for any such notions. It is as though the commodity culture that has spawned the emergence of the Buy One Get One Free, and 100% Extra Free superstore offers, has been enthusiastically applied to the workloads of teaching staff also.
[TORCH OFF]
22nd October 1998
I was given all my teaching in the photography area. Seven new courses, all with no prep in place, no unit descriptors, no ‘nowt. And two weeks to prepare for them with an inspection looming. Only one member of staff remaining. X is on sick leave and X + X have both left through stress. Can’t sleep, I’m desperate.
[TORCH OFF]
The photographer, artist and educator, Jo Spence has said ‘...[P]rofessionalism encourages the use of codes of conduct, and standards of excellence, which are not seen by the participants as being political. In the main these are not perpetuated by coercion, but by professional consent, and can become more extreme according to the political climate’2. We are the ones who are encouraged to monitor ourselves and each other. There is little room for unity in the current climate of mistrust.
[TORCH OFF]
Managerial strategies in any domain require two specific elements in order to be considered successful; control and measure. Workers need subjecting to these strategies so that productivity levels can be monitored and increased... art learning and teaching needs to be measured so that student targets relating to retention, achievement and progression can be seen to be being met.
[TORCH OFF]
[Play Tape for 5 mins, ex-colleague talking about assessments/students, tape ends on ‘...and that doesn’t leave any time for the students at all’]3.
[TORCH OFF]
12th January 1999
I probably dropped off to sleep about 2 ’O Clock last night. Worrying about contacting the health & safety executive and not being able to prep.
[TORCH OFF]
The Conservative government and then the New Labour government of 1997 (onwards), determinedly sought to control and measure both workers and art assessments in the further education sector. Mergers and restructuring time and again, have gone some way towards managing the 'problems' posed by workers however, less success has been had with regards to the question of, 'how to assess art education?'
[TORCH OFF]
A question on a health and safety examination paper can request a specifically agreed correct answer in a direct manner.TORCH AWAY [Project health and safety question slide onto sheet]. This presents straightforward learning outcomes for examiners, which is useful for those who seek immediate and definitive measures. But with regards to art education the issue of assessment becomes specifically problematic.
[TORCH OFF]
21st January 1999
A curriculum area meeting. The manager says ‘enrol them, [the students], for the Trojan project and the internet module, after they complete. Guaranteed 100% completion and success rates’. I laugh. He’s serious.
[TORCH OFF]
The difficulties were made particularly apparent with the introduction of General National Vocational Qualifications in Art and Design. GNVQ's were piloted in 1995/96, in response to the call for a more academic art qualification, that might be considered equivalent to A Levels by universities, (thereby helping the campaign to 'widen participation'). A seminar introducing GNVQ’s to educators was held in London. The two areas present at the event were business studies and art and design. The speaker began by specifying why these two subject areas had been brought together. ‘Business studies is our most popular programme and art and design is our most difficult’ he said. They were therefore being related through difference.
[TORCH OFF]
An attempt was made to reconcile some of these differences and the accreditation body announced that examination test papers were to be included in the GNVQ learning programme. They were an unwelcome addition to a vocational course for students and an additional administrative burden for staff. Little regard was held by either as to the 'value' of such tests. This was because the questions were self-contradictory and confusing and regardless, the tests could be re-sat time and again (at a price) until passed.
[TORCH OFF]
I offer an example TORCH AWAY [Show viewers pen question slide on sheet] of an exam question from the GNVQ 2D Visual Language paper, September 1997.
[TORCH OFF]
The question asks, 'What BEST describes the marks made with this pencil?’ The instructions given to students on the front of this paper state 'Each question has FOUR possible answers; a, b, c and d. Only ONE is correct'.
[TORCH OFF]
But surely the marks that the drawing implement shown might make are dependent on a range of factors? For example the pressure being applied by the person holding it, their desire and concept and, whether the 'pencil' is blunt or sharp? The 'one correct' answer is somewhere among the choices given; even black shading, dark-textured shadows, lines of variable thickness, or, very fine lines.
[TORCH OFF]
There cannot be 'only one correct answer' to this question or to the others like it. [Show viewers Oppenheim and textile question slides on sheet]. They present the rather desperate struggle that examiners have in trying to objectively measure learning in art education. As a result the questions asked need to follow a more ambiguous format, relying upon semi-auxiliary verbs. For example, 'What BEST describes...?', or, 'Which medium is MOST LIKELY to...?'
[TORCH OFF]
I liken the inherent resistance of art education to objective measure to the subjective resistances that emerge from humanity when people are oppressively objectified, through tactics such as coercion, and, divide and rule, supported by continual surveillance and monitoring techniques. Both could be described as paradoxical shapes without edges being forced into angular spaces. The shaping forces are political and yet the fact that both do offer resistance is worthy of investigation. This is especially so in relation to the globally dominant mainstream culture of today, that determines resistance as being a hopeless cause.
[TORCH OFF]
24th January 1999
I’m so down. Headache, neckache, sick... I’m going to the doctors. Can’t sleep. Its so huge going through with a complaint. I can’t believe its gone so far. No joy left.
[TORCH OFF]
26th January 1999
I’ve felt increasingly shameful that I’m giving in to stress. The pain from knowng that the students won’t be catered for... the pain of separating from such good relationships... the feeling that I’m letting them down, the feeling that I’m letting my good name and record down, and all for simply wanting to be given a fair workload.
[TORCH OFF]
May 1999 Psychiatrist’s report
‘The picture here is of a woman with a past history of psychiatric illness, who over the past three years, has been under increasing pressure at work. Over this time she has developed symptoms, of a moderately severe depressive illness, with marked agitation and obsessional ruminations. Her past experiences, particularly including her childhood, have resulted in her having great difficulties in asserting herself, and has meant that she has tended to give in to pressures, particularly from dominant males. This has resulted in her becoming increasingly angry, but also feeling very impotent, and frustrated with the conditions that she experienced at work over the past three years. She has undoubtedly been trauamatised by these experiences and she needs some specific counselling. This work is likely to take several months. Longer-term she needs to do some psychotherapeutic work helping her to deal with her childhood experiences”4.
[TORCH OFF]
Week 13 of counselling 1999
A really strange session. I dragged myself in, most sullenly and wouldn’t co-operate. Said I didn’t want to be there. We talked about work and I tried to stress that I had tried everything with managers. He said I need to go back to work with my own rules. They don’t have them so I should impose them [such as work to rule]. I said I’d done that and after seeing the work pile up for two weeks I’d ended up going on sick... stressed if you do, stressed if you don’t He asked if my animosity towards him was due to the long break and the fact that he chooses when he will see me. I said not [but I do think there’s a bit of that] and that it was probably due to the turbulent emotions that the sessions generate. He searched for the specificity of these emotions and I ducked and hid as usual.
[TORCH OFF]
LIGHTS ON, SET TAPE TO RECORD RESPONSES, TURN SCREEN INSIDE OUT

References
1. Professor F, The University of Leeds Old Mining Building hallway, 27 November, 2002.
2. Jo Spence, Cultural Sniping: The Art of Transgression, (London: Routledge, 1997), pp.40.
3. Anonymous speaking about experiences on cassette tape, August 2002.
4. Clinical Psychiatric Report, May 13 1999, Personal Communication.

Part B of presentation - Discussion, Feedback and Critique
Following my emergence from the medical screen I join with those present to begin work in a learning and teaching relationship. There is no individual allocation of either learner or teacher position as all roles will be played out during the discussions that take place. There are many questions raised through the presentation but it is not my intention to offer specific questions to people. I am hoping that instead, questions will be drawn out of our encounter. The setting for an encounter cannot be neutral and neither can be the presence of the teacher/artist. My aim (in Part A of my presentation) is to generate a specific environment for an encounter between people in a frame that is open to critique and questioning. My aim is not to argue my case but to offer my case through art practice and to invite responses to it. My case seeks to acknowledge the immeasurable and the intangible and is structured by doing it, therefore, any outcomes cannot be predicted, only hoped and worked-for.


Diaries following presentation of February 4th

After February 4th. Receptive to good advice...
I’m having to rush to write this text [9/2/03]. I’m totally focused on the next presentation-event [on the 12th Feb.] but I do need to write down the event of Feb. 4th, especially as it has already become ‘something else’ in my memories.
And so, five days later, these are my memories...

I would like to mention the group first, including Alison my supervisor. I need to give thanks to Alison for allowing me this opportunity to present my work and to everyone who attended for being receptive to my work in a friendly, tolerant and critical manner.

This is the feeling that I have after the event. It is calm, moving and thankful. My learning has been huge as usual, and hoped-for responses from others were generated. The people who attended the event shaped my work-to-come on February 12th in ways that could not have been foreseen.

The delivery of my work did shift in the manner that I had wanted/worked for it to shift, because it was more considerate and responsible towards the humanity of others which in turn lessened the opportunity for collision's to occur. This was a vital progression that I needed to make in order to generate the hoped-for responses from people who attended. How do I know that I progressed with this? Because some people accepted my invitation to respond and their responses were responses that were both hoped-for and unpredictable.

There were seven people in attendance at the event on Feb. 4th and of those seven people everybody spoke offering feedback, critique and their own experiences. One of the people present drew onto my medical screen and another person sent me an email two days following the event. One day following the event I accidentally met with another person who attended. She told me that both herself and others were moved by the event and that she had been thinking about it since. During the event an image had come to her and she may draw the image and send it to me, which of course I hope she will do, but there is no pressure to do so.

And so. Some of the responses are visible, some are invisible, all are immeasurable and uncontrollable. There is also the matter of individual memory recordings of the event which will go forever unknown, unless offered. How this may all figure statistically I neither know nor care, because that is not my research concern. I am not aiming to present any particular critical pedagogic methodology as a potential norm. Some critical pedagogies will make emancipatory or revolutionary claims that are not only machismo, but that also seek to remove learning and teaching from the realms of everyday life.

Each time that I present my work, excess, is whittled away. And each time that this excess is removed, understanding the meaning of the work becomes more problematic. As the props. disappear, and the texts are edited, the need to unpick what I am trying to do becomes both more urgent and necessary and also more difficult.


Material responses to my presentation of February 4th

I was offered valuable feedback from people that has helped to shape alterations in my work. I shall first list some of the comments that I received. These were not recorded verbatim [for I failed to press ‘record’ on the cassette player]. I do not identify those who I quote. These comments are followed by an email and an image.

‘It needs to be longer or shorter. Either make it unpleasantly long for people or make it shorter’
‘I liked the diary/political mix’
‘Do the formalism’
‘Interact with the screen’
‘The back is like a Rauschenburg painting’
‘The discussion [part b] is the encounter. When will you let people know that?’
‘I found that moving because I have experienced similar, although different things’
‘When you read the [doctor’s] report I saw the image of a woman’
‘Can I draw on the screen?’
‘I would have liked to have sat on the floor’
‘Why did you arrange the chairs in a semicircle?’
‘Why don’t you do it more theatrically?’
‘Is it art therapy?’
‘There need to be clearer connections between the medical issues and the screen’

Unusually, (with regards to how I normally feel following a presentation of my work) I felt very calm following Feb. 4th presentation-event. I am aware that I can expect a more adversarial gathering at the research seminar on Feb. 12th and yet this cannot detract from my wonderful, connecting, learning experiences of Feb. 4th.


abcdfcdefgg

Image drawn onto screenbcdef efb cd efggE-mail received following my presentation
Click for larger version.cdefbcdb e f cd e fg Click for larger version.

Top