Careless Talk Costs Nothing. Part of Situation Leeds 07, Leeds Met Studio Gallery, 1st - 27th May, 2007.
Press release:
Black Dogs have been invited to occupy the Leeds Met Gallery during Situation Leeds 07. Here the public can gain access to traditional sources of information including festival guides and maps to inform their own decision as to what art they want to enter their lives. If however they wish to explore the festival informed by the forced second-hand opinions of public volunteers, then they can step up to "Careless Talk".
In Careless Talk Costs Nothing collective art opinion and wisdom is yours for the taking through the simple navigation of DVD menus. View potentially familiar faces explaining in varying detail their responses to scarce information about the numerous projects that make up the festival programme. What do you like the sound of? Who do you trust? What can you understand? All the answers to these questions and more will require the deepest consideration in preparation for your bespoke experience of Situation Leeds 07. Black Dogs have further assisted the information seeker by installing a spinning random artwork decision maker. Simply spin, sit back and enjoy the indicated artwork description then go and see the real thing or decide that perhaps you had better have another go.
Is he on drugs? No, worse - he’s on art.
Reflections on Careless Talk Costs Nothing
by Andy Abbott, 2007.
How it came about
For the Situation Leeds 07 art in the public realm festival Black Dogs (a Leeds-based artist collective) were approached by Moira Innes (curator of the Leeds Metropolitan University Gallery) to make work that would act as the information hub for the festival. The work would respond to the circumstance that the majority of the visitors of the festival would not be in a position to visit or experience all the artworks due to the quantity of artworks in the festival and their distance from one another. The purpose of the hub therefore was to provide information that would help inform the visitors’ selection process, through the creation of a personalised itinerary.
Initial ideas included an airport-style departure lounge installation, games of guess-who and speed-dating style exercises that would generate a tailored list of artworks for the participant to experience based on taste, monetary and time-based resources and random chance. Through our discussions it became clear that the ‘random-chance’ had the most potential to meet our interests.
After discussing potentials that included filling the gallery with balloons that visitors popped to obtain their list of designated artworks, and wheels of fortune we began to think through additional ideas that would sit in between the ‘true’ information provided by the festival guide and the entirely random choices generated by these games. We envisaged a series of monitors of talking heads describing each of the artworks in the festival as if they were viewing or experiencing the artwork in real time. Clearly there were a few logistical boundaries to overcome not least of which was that at that time none of the artworks existed or were in site.
Drawing on our past experience as ‘fictionalisers’ of artworks (See Black Dogs ‘Massive Tiny Art Shanty’ for Generator in Dundee (2006) where the group auctioned off miniature card artworks ‘commissioned or made’ by celebrities and artists including Michelangelo Pistoletto, Patrick Stewart and Ricky off of Kaiser Chief’s brother to raise money for a homeless charity, all of which were cobbled together by 3 members of the group on the train journey up to Dundee and whilst setting up the installation) it was decided that we were capable of making these talking heads videos by improvising around what little information existed about the projects at that time (little other than the barest outlines or initial ideas submitted as early proposals for the festival).
In an extra display of opportunism we also realised that it wasn’t strictly necessary for us to appear in the films as we could draw upon the large resource of willing participants in Leeds to provide the commentary for the videos, vastly reducing our own brain-effort and increasing the variety of faces in the films.
What was planned
Our first step towards creating the film was to organise an evening where we could invite friends of Black Dogs (many of whom we have worked with in our open submission exhibitions at the Brudenell Social Club) to a designated space (pub) to inform them of the project and film the commentaries. It was also decided to put out an open call through Leeds Visual Art Forum on the off chance that this may result in a wider demographic of art fans.
We were of the opinion that the backdrop of a pub and the accompanying drunkenness of the participants would better reveal the non-seriousness of the films and the questionable validity of the opinions therein.
This event would result in a number of people of differing backgrounds coming to a pub in Leeds and happily improvising reactions to semi-fictional art projects that could be used as quasi-information to accompany the guides and random artwork generators of the information hub.
What we did Part 1.
An unanticipated concentration of art activity in Leeds meant that the night we had chosen for the filming of commentaries fell on the same night as two gallery openings (42 New Briggate and theartmarket). To accommodate ourselves we shifted the filming to a city centre pub (The Reliance) and the time of filming to a post-opening kick off of 9pm.
This change of circumstances meant that many of the ‘volunteers’ for the films were drunk (which for us was in keeping with our plans) and that there was little opportunity to fully explain the nature of the filming (which due to the improvised feel we wanted to capture was also fine). We set up a camera in the back room of the pub and began to invite participants to take part in the films.
The information we used as descriptions for the projects in the festival was taken from the original proposals sent to the festival programme group (of which Andy Abbott was a member) and ranged from one sentence to two paragraphs. Many of the projects had changed or developed vastly even by this time so the information was little other than a vague pointer in the general direction of the projects and in many cases was completely wrong. This scant information was shown to the participant (or participants – some felt more comfortable responding to projects in couples) for the time it took for them to quickly read through it before being prompted to talk with the following instructions.
“We want you to imagine that you have just experienced the artwork outlined by the information provided. Imagine that you have been to see it, or have been a member of the audience that has experienced it – you are coming away from it now. (start filming) Our first question is how did it make you feel? (wait for response to finish) Secondly, what did it remind you of art-wise? (wait for response to finish) And finally, what do you think the artist was trying to convey?” (wait for response to finish then end filming)
It is worth mentioning that no less than three members of the group conducted the filming and interviewing, and in most cases there was an audience of the interviewee’s friends or the participants who were next in line. A request for additional information was normally met by members of Black Dogs with a shrug of shoulders or “Whatever you think it might be” or a repetition of the original information.
The expected and unexpected
We expected the filming to be enjoyable and relaxed, maybe messy but mostly well humoured. It became immediately obvious that the experience wasn’t fun for people. If anything it was tense and confusing with much awkward laughter, responses of “I don’t know” and suspicious eyebrow-raising. The point was immediately raised by a neutral party with knowledge of the project that if we didn’t tell participants what we were going to use the footage for then “they are just going to assume we were taking the piss out of them”.
This created a brief dilemma as, although the tensions arising were clearly the result of how much we were (not) revealing about the project, the responses that we were getting were much richer and more honest than the potentially hammy or generic staged responses that a complete revelation of the project’s intentions may have elicited.
Supporting this decision to keep the intentions for the footage ambiguous is the role of the ‘open work’ in Black Dogs activity. Through our experience of past ‘participatory events’ a scripted form of interactivity is little more than a forcing of individuals through a production line of processes; by revealing the end of the story the number of variables in the immediate experience are reduced. We are keen to keep the interpretation of our activity as open as possible to ensure the unpredictability of the engagement, even if this engagement is uncomfortable. We want the field of play to be open enough to intersect the minefield. We want participants, not line-fed actors or spoon-fed assistants.
Optimistically, it could be interpreted that these interviews revealed something about the insecurities and frictions inherent in the experience and reflection on art. Whereas art reception and the subsequent voicing of opinion is idealistically regarded as a subjective (and therefore democratic) experience, recording immediate responses to scant information revealed that even improvised aesthetic responses are restricted by notions of ‘correct’ knowledge and ‘appropriate’ past-experience.
Of course, for us this presents a pertinent opportunity to dissect the truths and principles of the Artworld – When do you ever know the totality of a work? When are you ever going to be able to give anything but an improvised opinion on a work, even as the artist? When are you ever going to make a truly informed statement about a work devoid of the potentials to upset someone or make you look like a tit?
What we did Part 2
Despite these questionable self-justifications, for the second session of interviews we decided to make more of an effort to reveal the purpose, and to reinforce the positive aspects of the process we were asking people to be involved in. As much as we’d like to attribute the discomfort of the task at the collective hand of the participants to Artworld inconsistencies, the exploitation of our positions as secretive authors of an unknown work were predominantly the cause.
Compounding this need for transparency was a desire to not be seen as purposively offensive or mischievous as this would cheapen the work. The artists in Leeds generally know each other and we had placed ourselves in a position where, if we were to use our footage insensitively, we could play one off the other like drunken politicians. Similarly, Moira Innes raised concerns that if the project lacked any informative content it would amount to a negative contribution to the festival and thus reflect badly on the LMUG. Thirdly, the fact that we were using information provided unwittingly by contributors to the festival to effectively promote/de-promote their work was an issue that required some explanation.
By way of an explanation we can return to the notion of transparency, a Black Dogs favourite. By utilising preliminary and unfinished or raw material we were making an attempt to reveal the stages of the art festival development to the audience that only experiences a single stage in its development. By asking people to respond to scant sentences or ephemeral gestures towards a work and then to place those responses in the context of the ‘finished’ or ‘complete’ festival, we hoped to reveal that at some point the art festival only exists as sentences on a spreadsheet, in the same way that afterwards it will exist as photos and texts. In actual fact, the festival exists in these pre and post-forms for a great deal more time than it does as a fully formed ‘living’ organism. If you want to know what a festival is then find the minutes to the meetings.
We took these evaluations into account at the next opportunity for interviews to form ‘Careless talk..” which came about at another gallery opening, this time at the LMUG. The alterations we made to the process where subtle but significant. Firstly we filmed earlier on in the evening to capture more sobriety (sadly the exhibition’s sponsorship from Belgian power-beer Duvel worked against this strategy), and secondly we altered the delivery of the information to participants to inform them more of the purpose of the filming and to give them more time to process the little information provided. We also stressed the positive nature of the fictitious artworks they had experienced.
This resulted in more relaxed and entertaining commentaries for the most part, with a smaller dose of paranoid confusion. The participants were people we generally knew less (and for whom our reputation as naughty and arrogant artworld rejecters may not have applied), and there were generally less people in the ‘audience’ for the interviews.
Critical accommodation
Conversely, the greater demographic of students (specifically final-year Fine Art students at Leeds Met Uni) brought in a late cloud of scepticism and confused critique on the project rivalled only by the satirical drivel of a Nathan Barley episode. Despite the Duvel-fuelled misdirected questioning and sub-subversive participative attempts a few salient points were retrieved from the car crash of half-formed and half-read ideas of young men anxiously anticipating their initiation into the smoggy climate of an unknown and clearly threatening Artworld.
One of these points was that the reception of our interviewing technique was still tainted by the fear that we could abuse our position as authors. The main issue causing discomfort for these interviewees was clearly to do with being filmed with knowledge that anything said could be edited and manipulated at will. In the ever-expanding universe of art, the potential use of footage could be anything making it more threatening than interviews for radio, newspapers or news programmes where you (may think you) know roughly what the purpose or form of the end product will be. With art there are infinite terrible potentials.
The distrust of these participants and the anxiety the unknown intention of our actions created to us seemed out of place and unwarranted. It brought up issues surrounding the way we are viewed by others in Leeds. Does Black Dogs’ reputation as cynical Artworld antagonists precede any activity we’re involved in? If so, then why doesn’t our reputation as supporters of DIY activity in Leeds? Over the course of these interview sessions we were surprised to have to keep on reiterating ‘what use would it be to us to make everyone look stupid? What would that achieve?“
The most interesting thing for me personally was how, when put on the spot, the majority of people will immediately try to unpick and understand any information provided, no matter how scant, rather than make any use of it. This is a phenomena I have been party to in other situations including think-tanks, seminars, conferences etc. There is what seems to be a universal desire to understand fully before making any action and that without the full information there is conflict and unease. This is of course common sense but also a habit people are unwilling or unable to break out of even in a context that has been explained as purely experimental and inconsequential.
If the project at this point suggests anything I hope that it is that art criticism and the ‘knowledge’ that surrounds it is only ever based on interpretations, half-truths, hidden processes and unclear ends. Nicolas Bourriaud has written in Relational Aesthetics that the social use-value of both the exhibition and the experience of art that sets it apart it from the experience of film or theatre is the potential for the dialogue or reflection that occurs in series with the encounter of the work.
“Careless talk..” has revealed that these conversations for the main part are full of uncertainties and insecurities and that we could project that the dialogue that takes place in front of an artwork is often as much to do with reinforcement of one's own opinion as it is an expression of it. If art galleries were places where it was known that ‘all conversations in front of artworks will be recorded for the purposes of customer service’ they would be as silent as monasteries.
