Interview with Dr Devlin, The Programme Breifing
Having sat with our 'client', the curator of the exhibition, Dr. Liam Devlin, we were given an opportunity to put questions to him about the exhibition and we fully recorded the conversations. The outcome, fully transcribed, is below:
2017 Rotor Events – MA Group Meeting and Project Breifing.
Friday 27th January 2017 12:10pm at the University of Huddersfield
Attendees:-
Dr Rowan Bailey; [RB]
Dr Liam Devlin; [LD] Vann Holtom (Sign-Interpreter)
Rotor MA Exhibition Project Group;
Group A – Website
Chelsea Horan
Grete Tvarkunaite [GT]
Alexandra Oddy [AO]
Graham Hadfield (Scribe) [GH]
Daniel Ainsworth [DH]
Group B - Event
Julie Emary [JE]
Sam Welburn [SW]
Ruth Green [RG]
Niamey Lamont
Adam Summerscales [AS]
Tim Brown [TB]
Hijab Ammar-Khan [HA]
Transcript of an interview with Dr Liam Devlin, Friday 27th January, 2016.
[LD] The exhibition proposed to be staged at Huddersfield gallery will be one that is based entirely in the ‘photographic’ medium. But having said that, it is quite an expanded notion of the photograph as a simple idea; the notion of the photograph: But in reality the exhibition will also employ the moving image, video and gifs. [Gifs are short segments, say a couple of seconds of movement in images, and they sit between the idea of a photograph and a video movie].
[LD] The curatorial framework, and talking in layman's terms, in this the kind of exhibition entitled "discursive documents". The whole idea is to present research that challenges our assumptions of what photography and what a photograph is. That is a challenge towards, what a lot of people think which is "a photograph is a photographic document of something", be it an event, a place, or a person. It tends to be figured on a sense of "that was there" and traditionally that was what a photograph was supposed to do. You can think of the photograph in contemporary culture using the mobile phone as "I am here" through the 'selfie'.
But it tends to rely on its ability to document. Now what I am interested in is how we can utilise contemporary photographic practice which expands the idea of what photographs can be used for, and the experimental space of the gallery, for an art discourse, as a way to situate this practice, as, if you like, a catalyst for debate. So it stops being primarily used as a point of "that was there or I am here" and to start becoming a scenario to “reimagine what is possible”.
[LD] The title of this exhibition is called "Discursive Documents". To facilitate this idea, which is a philosophical construct, and so, if you think of this exhibition as a testing of that idea, and to facilitate that experiment of the idea, Dr Devlin has invited six artists to exhibit.
[LD] The six artists will be exhibiting in pairs. So we have to think in terms of three different themes, and within each theme, there are two artists which make work located within that specific theme. What Dr Devlin wants is to situate the exhibition where ‘you can situate yourself as the audience member between those two pieces of work to help generate the processes and the debate’ of the issues the work seems to explore.
For example the three main issues; that is, the three main criteria are as follows.
[LD] First event Issues; we have Siba Curtis and Alex Andrew Baldea, who both explore the issues of refugees and immigration. Siba Curtis creates portraits of people living in refugee camps in France, but he has complicated the portrait, where he's tried to access the absolute individuality of the people involved, that tends to be termed in this area as stereotypically as masses of people, as conglomerates of people, a huge mass swarming across the border and similar types of language. He wants to get away from that image and engage on an individual basis with the people on a one-to-one level. He was also struck by a story that he read in the newspaper of how one of the emigrants attempted to get into Europe and got into Europe inside a truck carrying talcum powder. [Hydrated magnesium silicate]. He was struck by the terrible paradox of the ease by which resources and goods can travel across borders but people cannot.
And the invisibility of these people, literally, both culturally and socio-economically, and also intentionally made themselves invisible to be able to flee the oppression and war in which they are suffering and what they are trying to get away from.
[LD] Alex Baldea again works with refugees, but he travelled to Austria and he worked with a refugee centre and conducted interviews and made portraits again of the people that he met, but they gave him pictures of what they had made of their own attempts and their own travels across the Middle East and into Europe. (Including some children's drawings as well). So it is if you like, that could be considered as a much more multivocal approach where he is offering the participants an opportunity to present their own point of view, as opposed to him just turning up and taking pictures of them. So that is an issue that I also want to explore and set up. I'm going to talk about how I am going to do that in a short while, and this is what I need help with and this is where we can talk about where you guys will come in.
[LD] The second issue, is much more around photographic representation actually. There are two photographic artists both called Richard coincidently, Richard Mulhearn and Richard Higginbotham.
[LD] Richard Mulhearn is the photographer who is really interested in the public environment, where as individuals we are unconsciously, regulating our own behaviour. We act conventionally without any explicit instructions. There are certain scenarios when which we know in which way to behave. Simple things. You walk on the curb, you don't just wander wildly and blindly across dual carriageways for example. But he is interested in trying to use the photograph to capture, for want of a better word, but also to celebrate, that moment where we subconsciously or unconsciously abdicate from those conventions of behaviours, even just for a split second. Those moments where for example the conventional aspects of society slip away from the normal. And his photographs are deliberately difficult to read, you're never too sure of what is happening in the picture because the whole point about that moment is where certainty is lost, so you no longer are conforming to any kind of rules.
That is set against a similar series of photography (where both Richards will go out into the world with their camera). Richard Higginbotham has made a series of work in Manchester and exclusively within Manchester, but his work is a response to a theoretical context, by a French writer called Michelle De Certeau called "Walking in the City". (Something that Adam Summerscales has already reviewed and read, but his take is very different to yours Adam).
So that text talks about the tension between seeing and knowing and he understands the city is basically an unknowable thing in its complexity. And so Richard has used Manchester as a specific city with a series of images that shouldn't make any sense when they're brought together, but the kinds of images that is used, he encourages the reader to start to make connections between pictures. But what you realise is that you are making the meaning. So the debate that we can have for this practice is much more about the conventions and some of the assumptions that we have around photographic representation for example.
[GT] Question was posed to clarify. "So is it just to clarify photographs of parts of the city which has some lets a historical or social or symbolic or mythical content?".
[LD] No, Richard Mulhearn's are just moments, that is people and those events in may be places. But with Richard Higginbotham's work it is about place; he wandered around Manchester and the place itself, and he wandered around making images with Michel de Certeau's text in mind. And so then the book is like an edit and there is almost always a person in the picture, but not necessarily, but it is very difficult to explain the reason as to why he took each picture. But there's no one reason why he took every 'one' picture: Some pictures he took because he thought it would be a beautiful picture, some pictures he took because there was an interesting moment; you know, some landscape, some are portrait, and so on, but all are on the street. Those are the two straightforward photographic projects; it is just a series of still images that the photographers made, but the rationale of why there were made makes interesting.
[LD] To just put this into philosophical context, de Certeau originally wrote his book by situating himself as standing on top of the world trade buildings, in the 1980s, before the terrorist strike on those buildings. And the easy thing for him to say is that he can ‘read the city’ by seeing the whole of Manhattan from that point, and there is a from that position, an "overview or an authority" as a position: seeing is knowing, where in fact that is a fallacy, which he calls "the erotic's of knowledge", of the erotic's of power of knowledge. In reality, the city is an innumerable mass of singularities or a swarm of singularities which by its very nature is beyond representation. And so Richard Higginbotham has gone to try and photograph the un-representable. It is a poetic approach to the city and how we use photography, and the gaps in between the pictures, as it is about the pictures themselves.
[LD] So on to the third issue; This is more around the notions of femininity, fashion and objectification of the female body, but also to think about how the female body and female desires are communicated through objects. This [exhibition] is by two female artists who are Sarah Eyre and Leila Sailor.
[GT] Question, will the project be involved in the photograph? [LD] No, for example Sarah Eyre is made previous projects using a wig. Just the wig, [false hair]. But both of these artists, [coincidently actually], have moved into gif and moving image.
So Sarah Eyre has moved more into the notion of montage and fragmented the images of these objects that she denotes as of female desire and made these kind of kaleidoscopic little moving gif images.
[LD] Whereas Leila Sailor has produced a series of work called "Dolores", where Dolores is actually a cheap plastic Chinese blow-up doll. She has been working in China for the past six months and she bought this doll and so she has recorded various different iterations of this doll which he has named Dolores as a stand-in, - as a kind of terrible, ...if you like terrible conclusion, of that cheap idea of the woman as a desirable object. She has done this again through gif image where she has slowly inflated and deflated Dolores so that it kind of breaths or appears to breathe. She has printed Dolores kind of side on, onto Perspex and then decapitated Dolores and she wants to install this on a plinth, so it is much more sculptural.
[LD] So we have three very, very different issues to explore. This exhibition has in its base, fascinating work in itself, but [Dr Devlin] has asked the artists to contribute, and to engage in the testing of this idea as three different debates around each issue.
[LD] The dates of each of the exhibition events are an opening to the public on Friday 11th February, that is the actual public opening, but the official opening “event” is on Thursday the 16th February, as a preview open to the public being a couple of days later. This would be between 5 and 7 PM on a Thursday evening.
[LD] Every event is on a Thursday evening.
[LD] Then on Thursday, 2 March we will hold the first event between 2:30 to 5 PM, and I [Dr Devlin] will be providing a number of responders, through invitations, and hoping that each of the artists will be able to attend and give a short talk about their work. However what [he] thinks is more important, is the words of the responders, to respond to the issues and the work, from their perspective. For example and hopefully this is with some clarification, there will be a man who was a refugee who had to smuggle himself into the UK, and he had to bribe the police [in Hungary] to allow him to be placed on a boat to cross the Danube. But, he can respond to the projects in respect of his point of view as somebody who was in that particular situation. He has been here now for a number of years and he has secured his status as a UK citizen.
And then we have a responder as a practitioner that will talk about the relationship between the practice and the work from that perspective. On 2 March. There will be two responders and panel discussion that will be chaired, and we will invite questions from the audience.
[LD] This process will be replicated for the subsequent discussions around photography and we have invited a number of speakers for that on Thursday 23rd March, for the second group, Richard Mulhern and Richard Higginbotham, and their imagery.
[LD] And finally, the third event, and it is worth pointing out that the last teaching week which is April 6th, Thursday at same timings, will be Leila Sailor and Sarah Eyre. This will be with two responders and a panel with invited guests for a panel discussion and chaired discussion open to the floor.
[LD] We can seat between 25 to 30 people in the gallery, and we hope that that will be sufficient to hold the audience.
[LD] Depending on how the work is curated the discussion may be either in the space of in the workshop area near the entrance, however Dr Devlin's suggested it would be nice to do it in the gallery area.
[LD] We need to think about ideas as to how we will engage the audience in thinking about the work when they viewed it in the knowledge that there will be a sit-down session later.
[LD] One of the practical tasks that I [Dr Devlin] would like to do is to help [them] document and to facilitate the debates and the documentation of those debates, video / audio. Therefore to generate material from that [the debates] against the imagery because what I [Dr Devlin] would like us to do with that material is then to potentially produce a publication that reflects upon the results within the debates and what has actually happened. These will be as 'test cases'.
[LD] What I [Dr Devlin] would also like is also a closing event, on Thursday 4th May.
[LD] And this will be run completely by you [the Master’s group] based on the curatorial framework, and something, whether it is from the imagery or material that is generated from the debate, or discussions and even a little audio / visual pieces.
(There was then some unrecorded discussion about the summative assessments for this module which will be on 5 May).
[LD] As part of this closing event, the exhibition will be interpreted by a set of contemporary dancers, as well. There will be dance piece which will be choreographed with various dance workshops and interpreted by a contemporary dancer, called Gerry Turvey, but those workshops are usually held on Saturdays which she does with community groups and she will bring them to the gallery and use the exhibition as-as a talking point. She will then work with a set of dancers who will actually perform an interpretation at the closing night.
[LD] [Dr Devlin emphasised that]... This will be "your event", or your treatment of the material that we collect and the discussions. This looks as though it could be fascinating if we could do some sort of mash-up of opinion and presentation and imagery, and then actually the final event will close the whole relationship with the rotor exhibition which has been going on for over two years. It is unknown whether there is another application for “Rotor”, for funding to be made again!
[RB] So therefore, it has to go out with a Bang!
[GH] It is recognised that the objective of ‘Rotor’ is to help bring the contact of the Gallery out into the community, and vice versa to help bring the public get more in contact with the gallery. Therefore, are we right in thinking that if we make a really good job of this exhibition, and we invite the right people, they can potentially help facilitate further funding, and prove the value of the gallery in Huddersfield to the community?... [LD] Definitely. - The documentation of the events will all assist with this too.
[LD] Beyond the practical activities of making sure that things are recorded, and systems are set up here; physically microphones, cameras, audio equipment et-cetera that is already to go; and that I [Dr Devlin] need help with that, then we will have the material in its raw form. What we want to do with that material is very much up to the discussions that we have; ….such as somebody has mentioned websites as a possibility?
[Dr Devlin [whilst he doesn’t have a copy currently] confirmed that]... a design company had been approached with regards to designing a brochure with the pairings of the artists, to go with the exhibition together with a discussion and debate about the work and the pairings of these artists. It is worthwhile therefore that we think about the website we should have an architecture that facilitates that.
[[GH - With regards to marketing and promotional ideas/literature,] Dr Devlin confirmed that]... the funding is minimal, therefore the budget is not that great and only extends towards the creation and production of this brochure. That is pretty much, “that's it”.
[LD] The brochure is already virtually complete as this must be produced prior to the launch of the exhibition. So therefore we can base an aesthetic for a website from the brochure if we so wish, but we do not need to worry about the website being actually ready for the opening itself.
[Dr Devlin and Dr Bailey agreed that]... the website holds a position of development that is centred upon collecting and archiving material, rather than a need for it to be included as part of the opening itself. We therefore have a little more time to develop the website and its architecture accordingly. [Dr Devlin confirmed that]... It would be too much to ask for the website to be ready prior to the exhibition commencing.
[Dr Bailey]… This therefore presents an opportunity for us to consider generating a response to what is happening at these events, and how we as individuals and taking this idea and the exhibition forward into other spaces.
[GH].. So this archive, not necessarily a website, although this is a good medium, to become a recording repository of discussion, documentation video and photography perhaps. Is it the intention ultimately to make this a public facing website or is it more likely to be an academic exercise to keep within the University?
[LD] We ideally could open it up as wide as possible… [Dr Devlin suggested that]... we could set up here our own scenarios in using the exhibition if we wanted to, as one of the 'Genesis' of this was an exhibition by an artist called Goshka Macuga, who was in the Whitechapel Gallery in London some time ago. - In her exhibition, told in archives, - in a lot of work that she does in exhibiting, and she discovered that the Whitechapel archives where [details of] Picasso's famous Guernica painting [which] was exhibited in the 1930s. The archive showed that the Whitechapel Gallery had tried to get the Guernica painting to come back and be exhibited [there] in subsequent years following to that, but it never happened. Nevertheless, one of the things that came through her research, led her to understand that the Rockefeller family commissioned a tapestry to be made of the Guernica painting, which they then donated to the United Nations in 1985, and so this tapestry, which is a completely life-size replica of Picasso's original Guernica, sat outside the Security Council chambers for many years. There [then] any kinds of interviews that used to happen, after big events at the UN were always conducted in front of this tapestry, and this sort of 'anti-war' poster.
That was until the Americans went to the UN to try to make the case for the invasion of Iraq, and they asked for it to be covered over, because it was too distracting.... - To try and make the case for a pre-emptive war in front of a painting of the crowd, the aerial bombardment.
[LD] So what Goshka Macuga did, was to get the actual tapestry, from the United Nations, and then to put it in the Whitechapel Gallery, but this time [she organised] to put it in front of the blue curtain which was used to cover it up [at the UN headquarters]. She [Goshka] then built a round table in the show [area], with a glass top on, - a Perspex top which had all the archive, all the correspondence from the archive, visible. She then invited anybody who wanted, to book the space to talk about whatever issue they felt was important.
[Dr Devlin] I with others brokered an artists group, and [he] presented his start of [his] PhD to a group of artists [and regretfully, according to DL, got absolutely destroyed by these artists]! So somewhere in the Archive of the Whitechapel is a recording of [Dr Devlin] pleading [his] case!
[LD] ...However, one of the conditions on booking this space was to get recordings and give them to the Whitechapel gallery. Overall though, [he] felt is was a brilliant experience. So [Dr Devlin] I want to further that approach, - that potential.
[JE] Well if I wasn’t worried before, I am now…. [LD] The main objective is in the collection of the materials, there's nothing to worry about!
[GH] – On a scale of what we are organising, do we need to worry about whom we are inviting and who the other participants will be?
[LD] – It would be nice to get help with the public invitations, for example if there was a refugee support group, as there are a number of Refugees in this area stuck in this liminal stasis that are not allowed to work and so on. If we could get them to engage that would be great!... It is not about making a space for consensus, as with debate, it is as much about making a safe space for di-sensus and if we had an argument then…. Why not?
[GH mentioned that he has]... contact with some outside contacts who interface with people who are 'on the margins of society' which could be included? However, these kinds of people are very afraid in having any publicity…. Are you working with the council or other agencies or others?
[LD] No, - at the moment it is just open to the general public, but the line “All proceedings will be recorded” [ and this will be emphasised, as stated in the brouchure] but if we could facilitate more closed groups and vulnerable groups ‘in-house’ or more organised... [Dr Devlin] would be open and happy to have discussions on how to facilitate that.
[Dr Bailey] We should perhaps be thinking firstly about how we are going to co-ordinate ourselves as a group, firstly as 1) the preview as something as a starting point and 2) these three events and everything we need to do to capture these events. Liam is asking what curatorial considerations licencing we might deploy as a group going through this process to take the project beyond the exhibition itself. So it is a bit like, we will be immersed in these activities and how we coordinate ourselves to manage these recordings, but at the same time, we must consider how we might carry it forward individually by suggesting multiple ways of pitching methods, how we may have exhausted out other ideas?
[GH] My feeling is that this work does not stop at the closing event, as there is potentially the opportunity to show the work to some of these other outside groups like the Syrian Refugee groups in the future and that was agreed.
[RB] Dr Devlin mentioned the post production publication. This is going to be based as much on our own experiences as much as the public interpretations – what might that look like? Visitors, the debates generated, what do people argue about, how do we reflect upon that? – It is the aftermath of the affects of this exhibition which will be interesting.
[Dr Devlin]… We might be thinking then perhaps on recording an interview with people who turned up to the event? We might want to write a piece about that to become a piece of the publication? There’s perhaps an aspect to the show that hasn’t been considered and we want to instigate our own discussion, …and so on.
[LD] There are all sorts of thing we can add, for example, like, maybe somebody decides that the dance group has an interesting aspect? So how do we record and do justice to the dance piece?...
[LD} So perhaps we need to get Jerry Turvey in and work with her with this process. She will be doing more of an end impromptu response to this exhibition at the preview piece.
[Dr Bailey], So it is more a kind of organic process, it will be, because you will thrown into this process, then things will take shape at the time which is why I think it is important that this final event in May gives us the breathing space, after which we will have witnessed and documented these three key events, the exhibition will be coming towards something, where I’m sure we’ll understand the direction of the exhibition and the final event.
[Dr Devlin] what is also important is to establish who is in charge of for example, as can the charge of audio or who is gonna be in charge of video, et cetera to make sure that all these kinds of rotors are worked out. Who wants to take charge of the website and so on and who will look after the publication later.
[LD] Realistically the publication will take approximately six months after the exhibition is completed, therefore arguably the presentation of the publication will not necessarily be down to us as masters students, per se. But nevertheless it is in our interests to make sure that we have established a very strong foundation and foothold of articles and archives. In reality, somebody else will probably cure this.
[RB] - This is what we need to negotiate with [Liam], because if the article publication comes into existence after the event and finished our MAs, it is all about how we are authored in the publication. Maybe we create some sort of mockup, we might have the brochure to work at in terms of aesthetic qualities as the brochure will be designed very carefully and well thought out, therefore [Liam] would not appropriate our work without proper discussion.
[RB] Really we should focus now on recording and documenting the archives of this work, and anything that is created beyond that, we will be given full recognition for as a contributing artist.
[GT] As a bigger task for us, on top of the recordings that we make in the gallery, is this as a base for us to write upon the outcomes, as some sort of essay on [what we did] the discussion work and what was the discussion?
[RB] - A written critique piece is totally suited to some students, but for others it may be not about that at all. [Especially] If you’re thinking is about gathering data and recording this event. How you create and curate this work we are making as primary researchers, and put that together [is] where our creative license comes into play. [We] are therefore playing a very active role in editing the post production process, and that could be about written as much as gathering images, moving image, debates, and so on, and how [we /it's] put it together with a closing event which is what it is important. To produce something that is able to show people that have come to the event as a record in summary, but also as a creative treatment.
[A suggestion was made by Adam Summerscales, interpreted by VH], ...Where we may have been able to create a visual record... put on a DVD perhaps, as part of the post productive activities?
[RB] Just think about the end events that we are creating, and maybe what we are thinking about that by way of a publication by way of these events, these are outputs. These are creative outputs [and artefacts].
[Dr Devlin suggested that] we could even record little soundbites, fading in and fading out, something that is a bit more immersive, [which] is an experience, that could be set up... What about the event, can further the debate ...to make something else? ...Maybe little performative pieces a little bit like using a chess board timer, ding you have one minute, to make a performative piece?
[LD] You could have like the artist making comments, and you may have the audience and their views and it becomes a debate as you’re watching it, and this becomes a soundbite id debate as you are looking at it.
[LD] For example if Jerry Turvey is working with the dance groups to interpret the shows through movement, then Dr Devlin suggest that we look at interpreting the movement through new media, and respond to the show curatorially the idea, through the idea.
[GH] Any contribution is good, even making tea! The idea of hospitality, Britain being a hospitable place is very much rooted in this open attitude...
[LD] Suggested that we go and see the work as soon as possible, in order to generate ideas. We have makers within the University and we can take questions from the exhibition to respond with our own work.
[LD] If we think about Christian Bokowski (?) and his use of clothing ...where he can actually respond to the exhibition itself.
[LD] Perhaps it feels a little bit too abstract at the moment because we haven’t seen the space, but once the work has been installed, and the work has arrived which starts next week, and install in the following week, we can start talking about the workspace as the work is going up.
[VH] - Perhaps we could have a times lapse photography activity going on whilst this is being built?
[LD] All of these ideas are worthwhile, and what we do with that material then, certainly we will have material to work with from 2 March, but we will have work ready next week that we can start to build upon. We can quickly start to make experiments, and just try to make things. [Dr Devlin] saw some brilliant views of the Tate shots website and interview with the film maker who just one the award for the Artist [Mondae??] award and is one of the founders of the Black Film Collective, and he said he’s gonna give two pieces of advice for any kind of petitioner, firstly... "Don’t wait and secondly there are no mistakes".
[LD] ... Just take those two things on board there are no mistakes and don’t wait !
[Meeting was then closed at 12:55 approx].