Ok, I’ll shut up about the length of posts – I had
thought keeping it short might focus the discussion –
you know, the kind of thing you can get on a blog.

As to the rest of it:

 I’ve long found appeal in these arguments about
artists doing things differently – or at least
superficial appeal – and they’re useful for spruiking
my own activities. The stepping stone theme is
familiar– I think I bored a lot of people silly with
it when I first started Briefcase – proposing instead
a model that was an end in itself.
(If anyone’s still interested here’s a link to an
article I did in 2001, The Artists are to Blame,
originally published in Lisa’s Uniglory and Log in NZ.
http://www.artspective.com/discussion/)
Why wouldn’t I love the idea of artists doing
activities that don’t follow museum models – it so
suits the Briefcase – which as an ARI is so unlike a
gallery or a museum that I’d prefer to call it a
hobby. It’s all active engagement, participation,
ephemera, presence of the artist, people who don’t
usually go to galleries, challenging conventional
structures etc etc… Given that it has to roam I can
even claim that putting it in a museum can only hinder
it, not help it. So I bang on with this sort of stuff
– but you know what, I can’t back it up. The case
doesn’t really escape the museum – just flirts with
that (im)possibility.  From the moment it first popped
its lid the case presupposed the museum. As we all do.

So, the continuum I’m talking about is nothing to do
with hierarchies – let alone an endorsement of them –
rather I see the exhibition landscape as kind of flat.
Maybe it’s just that I don’t find myself thinking any
differently about this location than any other – it’s
the usual matter of considering the premises and
utilising them. -or that the differences between
museums and smaller institutions like ARIs seem less
significant than the similarities. (In the
circumstances of this show it’s perhaps in our
interest to emphasise the differences.)
I keep the case going because it can be casual and
direct (as Liz says of these things). That’s all.
simon
(Apologies for delay on this – it was a valentine’s
day post but it never turned up on the site)

=====
briefm...@yahoo.com.au
SIMON BARNEY 0402 210 046

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http://au.movies.yahoo.com

I know what you mean that there are strong similarities between the
artist run and museum models, as well as some differences.  And it's
important that we keep that in mind, I suppose, in order not to get
carried away with ourselves and what we're doing.  Or in order not to
become too idealistic about one model or the other.

I've been thinking that perhaps it's easier to think of these things
less in terms of the models that are already existing (artist-run,
government-funded, private galleries, museums) and more in terms of the
way individual artists utilise them, as a mode of expression.

For me, it's not important to challenge pre-existing or dominant models
for the sake of it, (or for the sake of some greater cause), but more
to be able to do what satisfies me as a mode of expression.  When I ran
a gallery in my house, I was aware that doing so would bring a
different form of notoriety (for want of a better word) to my practice
than to not do so, it was one reason for opening the gallery in the
first place(equally as much as to give people a chance to show their
work cheaply, provide a space for community development, and all the
other reasons).  If I'm going to be honest about my motives, I can't
deny that there is something to be gained from running a gallery space
(or a magazine or anything else) when it comes to one's activities as
an artist, or 'career'.

And while 'career' is a horrible word to use when it comes to art, in
another way it's our career that is our art.  I see art objects(I've
touched on this in previous posts) as almost secondary to the artist
and their persona - the context of the artist, the artist's actions.
Like when I look at a glossy art magazine, I find I'm much more drawn
to looking at ads for galleries and projects and seeing who's doing
what, and where, than to reading the articles or reviews.

What I'm saying is that while there are community- or art-focussed
reasons and outcomes from working independently of official
organisations, these outcomes are almost a side effect of such
activity. It is the impact on one's 'career' that is maybe most
important, because in this day and age our career is really our art.
For this reason it's important that we work with career-impacting
activities with a sense of creativity and self expression.  Like we all
do.

(I think that's what I was trying to say.  Maybe it's come out sounding
a bit egotistical?  I didn't mean it to).

Whatever happened to this post from Liz? She raised an interesting
question when she mentioned her interest in artists' actions as
against their objects. That's been left behind and the
discussion has instead gone up semantic creek without a paddle. I
don't get it. If we don't want to suggest art is 'above' any
other activity why use tosser words like 'practice'? Job or career
is good enough for anyone else. But then again given so much artistic
activity these days involves dry, repetitious and worthy tasks, perhaps
'practice' makes the perfect word. At least in theory. Like
'Dental Practice'.
I always thought 'practice' owed it's nineties popularity to
artists' dreary desire to be 'taken seriously', and best of all,
regarded as professionals. Generally it seems to be used by those who
want to get their money from teaching jobs and grants. People who want
to sell things often prefer career. Same diff.  After all there's
plenty of careerist practice and not a few practicing for a career.
Of course, I prefer 'calling', which gets even more brownie points
for idealism and allows me, just like a contemporary priest when asked
about my activities, to say 'I couldn't help but do it'.
And what's wrong with art being unknowable? Far from suggesting a
snotty transcendence doesn't that just make it like the rest of the
culture where questions like "How good is gav and wuz's
relationship?' or "Is Australia a right wing country' or
'Should Princess Mary have stayed in Tasmania?' can rarely be
answered with any certainty.
There seems to be a consensus in this discussion that actions and
context (artist-run) make the work different. Briefcase has always
been about doing things it's own way, about the context as much as the
object. So Liz's take on persona and on the c-word rather than the
object seems agreeable to me. Or am I getting sentimental? Because
I've also noticed that egotistical shitheads can make objects I love.

Let's see, (again from berlin)
i would say
art would be what emerges out of doing it (art)
a practice is the way you are doing the doing and the reclamation of
being the one that defines what you are doing as art
calling would be to give away this possibility in order to have a voice
that would be calling you and therefore speaking for you
(i would call that psychoanalysis - to give away your voice)
performativity would be that it has to be done again and again to be art
and for having a choice between whether objects or egoistic assholes are
produced
i think the world produces both without asking
and there is a liking in the art world as it is constituted now for both
even when i am neither object oriented nor keen on superficial elitists
but again then it needs practice and performativity and not just dissent

sincerely yours
ariane

Ariane -  I didn't want to get back into the definitions - except to
say that I don't really use the word 'calling'. But I like your idea of
being the one who defines what you are doing as art. If I got it right
you finished your earlier post by saying it can't be art if it is made
within a field of authority? But the discussion on this site would
suggest that this is precisely the slippery area. Because we're
attempting in the same moment to operate both within and outside this
field. (In practice this seems an issue for intervention, not
resolution.)
 I hope the dilemma or choice I suggested was between assholes with
objects AND Liz's suggestion of a kind of life/art persona or activity.

Also - if translation is a problem  why not post in German and/or
English? Most of the stuff so far is from Sydney and it seems
reasonable that artists in Berlin might equally get their own exchange
going.

That might be an interesting idea, to publish a discussion in German along
with the English bits.  It might be more real somehow?  Although we won't be
able to understand it.

I feel a little lost with where the discussion's currently at.  I think it's
at the point where we're looking at what it is to be an artist outside of
the field of 'art', while trying not to get too bogged down in words and
their definitions, is that right?

And then have we reached a point where we're drawing a line between the
making of objects as an artistic practice, versus not making objects as an
artistic practice?  I have a feeling we have, but I might be wrong.  I don't
know if these two positions are necessarily opposed to each other, but I
know it's something I struggle with as an artist myself.

But then that brings me to a point that I think Ariane was making, which is
that we should just do it - that is, you just do your art, and that's what
your art is.  Am I right that this is what you were saying?

oh,
is this going to be published ? i didnt know.
Actually the people from berlin, there is only one german (jole) all of
us are otherwise not germans so
i dont know if we should start another language, when we actually
communicate most of the time in english.

i was not thinking about: just do it, when i was writing about
performativity
i was writing about that it has to be done again and again in order to
exist.
There is no fixed art practice if it is not performatively redone, there
are only documents.
and this is, why i dont accept a division between within, or outside the
common art world.
there wouldn't be any if its not restaged by people and if whoever lets
whomever restage a undesirable field and even only by pointing out to
it, which is already recognition, he or she is responsible for the
existence of this field.

As an example:
It is nice if people want to buy art and put it into storages, living
rooms or whatsoever, i dont object, lets call them collectors, does this
have anything to do with art, no, it has something to do with, society,
boredom, lack of possibilities, distribution of money, childhood of
people concerned, if you like digging into sociology it might even
become interesting for artists, but at the end it is more linked to
consumption patterns, their evolution, their necessity, it emerged out
of this field, not out of the art field, so let economists restage it, i
would never discuss it as a part of the art scene.
let alone stare at it as if it was something "within" meanwhile what i
would do, which genuinely evolves out of a discussion about how, why and
if art, should be something "outside" the art scene, ??? it's
underground ???
a prolongation of these terminology even stated by people concerned and
living in it, is simply unbearable. It doesn't even matter if someone
thinks this in private, it is just purey necessary to never state it
openly, accept it.
museums exist because artist do things, if people would stop doing art,
there wouldn't be any museums anymore, even if all of the art work
existed but it would become meaningless, nobody would know, what the
hell these objects were.
This is, as i guess everyone knows the performative aspect of it.
And when artists evolved into non-object practices museums changed and
also the way of how old art was exhibited and so forth.
At the moment society (at least here) looks as if most of the other
fields get more closed down in terms of exclusiveness, goethe while
being a poet had the possibility of discovering some bone and being an
geologist, when he got bored in his old age and liked to take walks.
We are not even allowed to become something in "softer" fields, like
history, sociology. In the contrary a lot of people that are more
researchers than exhibiters are pushed into the art field because
restrictions dont allow them to be working, in a estimated way, that
also is linked to self-esteem in any other field. See all of the people
working with data, internet, history, town planning, ...., I think it is
nice that with art there still exists a field that can somehow integrate
interested people, interested in their and other living circumstances.
And i think, or as far as i am concerned just open it up as broad as
possible.
But i also estimate critical art ensembles efforts to open up science
for artists, by showing that also there, people cook with water, and
that it's relatively easy to come up with state of the art scientific
solutions by just thinking.
and i would also further the idea that we should become the townplanners
and historicists of the future if our main aim in doing things lies in
these fields, even when it is for us the field of art where we can at
the moment only produce into (ok old situationists standpoint but i
support it)-
whatever we are doing shouldn't just be about leaving only
object-traces, including a silent d'accord that they will be ok in museums.
so far
i dont think that has anything to do with just do it.