Thoughts on Eigg
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."
From 'A Tale of Two Cities', by Charles Dickens.
I added this quote to explain the state of play that often takes place in my mind when I think about the trials and tribulations of an arts practice. In particular the array of choices and dilemmas we have in front of us concerning direction and place. I am also referring here to a feeling of being both a part of, and between two cities.
Of course it is possible to live anywhere and submit applications, undertake residencies, and win prizes. But I have always wanted to have art happening around me. All the usual stuff about enjoying other peoples ideas and wanting to be engaged and inspired on a regular basis. For me, that means living and working where artists are, i.e. the cities. When I left Nottingham at the end of 2008, I wanted to make work about a remote Scottish Island community, but I chose to relocate to Glasgow. At that time I coined a term that I hoped to embody; that of the “art nomad”. It referred to my desire to be unrestricted geographically, whilst still desiring to make and engage with relevant contemporary art.
I wondered if this would be only the beginning, and if I could continue to hop about from city to city, creating new personal and professional networks along the way. To engage with my surroundings as well as making work in remote locations, and remaining a meaningful part of everywhere I had previously been. I asked myself “if you turn up in a place where no-one knows you, can expect to carry on as usual treating a career not as a local, but a national or international activity (as so many of us would like to think possible)”? To clarify, I defined “art nomadism” as being both present and not present in two or more places at once; having the benefits of being part of a community and those of being an outsider, perhaps many times over.
I think I used to look at contemporary art hotspots (forgiving the Wi-Fi analogy!) as being strongest in certain places, these being the places to head for. Today I feel that these may be less accessible than they appear at first glance. Being able to move both through and more deeply within a range of these, seems like a more fruitful approach. Perhaps art nomadism is an option for some of us?
All our practices will evolve and grow, contextually, technically, and geographically. It is a natural progression that most of us want to undertake and will see almost all of us at least tryout a stint in other cities; London being the most popular historical choice, and MA’s being the most obvious reason.
I wonder if having been resident here in Glasgow since November 2008, I am still, or ever was nomadic? A box full of travel tickets confirms that I have been in constant motion for my practice, both to and from the tiny Isle of Eigg, all over the UK, and of course to Nottingham on several occasions. On all of these voyages my work has travelled with me, it is portable, as are most people’s practices and of course any artist’s thoughts and ideas. What is not portable is the less easily quantifiable support we receive from those immediately around us. We all need this support, for with it we are engaged, encouraged, and guided in the right direction. I don’t believe you can make good work in permanent isolation.
Most of us travel from one supportive environment to another, allowing divergent escapades to be temporary, even reversible. And it is surprising how much support we receive from our peers that goes relatively unnoticed, probably because our peers and colleagues are often our closest friends.
Is it possible to be a true art nomad and to feel properly supported and engaged? I admit I have spent a lot of the past year getting to know an art community perhaps ten times the size of Nottingham’s, and moving on after just six months or a year would have made the whole activity pointless. If I were to leave now, perhaps the term art-network tourist would suit me better?
Whether or not it is possible to be more productive as an art nomad is also debatable. Since I left Nottingham new opportunities have come my way (I could not have created projecteigg.info living in England, for instance), and no doubt others are no longer open to me because of my new postal address.
It is also important to note that I have been presented with real challenges since arriving in Scotland, both financial and bureaucratic. I have been forced to relearn or translate a great deal about the way I work. I see this as no bad thing. Hopefully I’m growing wiser about the way art communities operate everywhere, with the intention of broadening my own fledgling nomadism. As an unknown in Scotland, I’m far from complacent. Maintaining an art practice whilst busily trying to crack into new networks is exhausting work. It takes a lot of time and is certainly not something to be undertaken willy-nilly.
Upping-sticks and wandering away from a cosy supportive collective, instant access to a familiar network of peers, and at a time when big new things were happening in Nottingham was a leap that many might have questioned. But I am extremely grateful to all those who encouraged me to make it, because strangely, I feel as much a part of Nottingham now as I did when I was a member of Stand Assembly. What is useful is that I also feel like I am a part of the cultural fabric of this city, but Glasgow is larger, “wild” to my eyes, and still being explored. I hope it will be one of many places I will live and work during my career. The original charm of art nomadism, that still makes me want to always have a suitcase packed and ready to go, is that I see it as cumulative and expansive. I would not recommend a self-imposed exile, a castaway far from encouragement or like-minds, but I admire anyone who can be an true art nomad, an artist of two cities, or more.
***
Last month saw the launch of projecteigg.info, the culmination of almost two years of activity with the isle of Eigg, a tiny island community in the Scottish Small Isles.
The website was intended to be an unusual platform for the presentation of both visual and aural artworks. It's design came from a desire to move away from familiar modes of display for documentation. And it was intended that the structure of the site itself would represent what had come out of the research trip, the intervening period, the residency, and the most recent artworks. Constructed in the form of spider diagrams and a tonal gradient between black and white the site uses only shades of grey besides the colour images of the artworks. Due to the range and veracity of the Islander’s opinions (which went on to form the artworks), the intention of the site was to offer as little interpretation upon the outcomes as possible whilst also being reminiscent of analytical diagrams and charts.
Interpretation was an unavoidable activity during the project, as I made artworks based on recorded conversations, popular phrases and island stories. But it was also the source of much animosity amongst islanders. Many of the Eiggach were wary about being quoted on what they said about almost any subject. The treatment of the website was a response to a number of Eigg’s popular phrases, including “People are always asking us questions; we don’t want to be anthropologised” and “Journalists always distort what you say”. In one recorded conversation someone even went as far as- “The word interpretation makes people think ‘wank’, commonly… the word interpretation has been given a bad name… [it’s] often associated with people who’ve not a fucking clue about the place or the history, they’re just people who’ve got the money to come and do some project miles away from anything they know anything about and that’s the way it works…”
Taking on board comments like this, and making them a part of artworks with a broader view, has become a direction that interests me greatly. But it is a relatively new direction. 2008 marked a turning-point in the way I saw myself, my artworks and the geography of contemporary art in the UK. Since my first projects I had found myself making artworks that took me away from the studio more than half of the time. It was a cyclical activity that saw me researching for long periods, setting up meetings and later interviews with those who would help to form the subject matter, creating activities and then wrapping it up in someway. This process took place a number of times on a local or regional level, but failed to really match up to my expectations or desires. I felt it was tactical, a slow climb.
When the Leicester City Gallery offered to help negotiate an exhibition for the second to last project I was to do in the Midlands, I took it to be a natural development of where I wanted my work to go. The 'Gaps in Archaeology Project' was a difficult and once or twice a maddening ordeal. Confused communication between parties involved meant that it almost didn’t happen at all, and none of the artworks were ever shown in the New Walk Museum as had been originally intended. I was forced to adapt, and look further a field for the value I wanted from the work. It was a whole new approach for me. I created interviews and learnt to edit audio recordings, I set up a detailed website to house documentation, and I analysed my new approach in a chapter of a book of essays on materiality*. I managed to adapt this approach to the recent Project Eigg, where interviews were vital in at least two stages of the process, and other than performances on Eigg, the artworks themselves have been exhibited only on the internet; a method of presentation I am still interested in exploring.
The next stage of Project Eigg (for it is an ongoing interest) is a set of lectures and performances that will attempt to examine their own processes, and many of the modes and methods that I employed throughout the project.
The full story of Project Eigg to date is available to read in blog form at:
http://www.publicartscotland.co.uk/blogs/15-The-Eigg-Diary/articles
* Museum Materialities, Chapter 7 "Artefacts Re-made". Edited by Sandra H. Dudley.
Alexander Stevenson is an artist currently based in Glasgow. He was one of the founding members of Stand Assembly Studios in Nottingham back in 2004.
