Laura Oldfield Ford- here is her current project looking at the sites of the London 2012 Olympics (extremely contested land grabbing, expensive developments, compulsory purchase orders, shoving-around of working class population). Including the ‘drift’, a guided tour around key sites.
And a more general page about her work. To give an idea of scale, the yellowish one at the middle bottom row is wall-sized. She also makes a zine. She’s clearly more related to the London context and in another context it could become very anthropological.
Marion von Osten
This text of hers given at the MyCreativity conference isn’t hard to find, re precarity, the term ‘creative industry’.
The ongoing work she has been doing for Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie, Nav’s project on class issues in contemporary art, is ‘I am like that anyway,’ where she initiates a conversation with the staff at various small art institutions about their working conditions. The phrase of the title comes from one worker claiming that while precarious labour in the arts requires obsessiveness, workaholism, she is ‘like that anyway’. She makes a video of them attempting to pose according to this image of Madonna and her ‘crew’ and uses the conversation as a soundtrack. The image is chosen for its reflection on the ‘cool’ status of precarious labour. Interestingly, since she made ‘I am…’ at Gasworks, none of the people featured in the video and conversation work there any more (including me).
Here is an interview of hers with Brian Holmes.
Narda Alvarado
Did the Rijks in 2005. Here is an example of her ‘good/bad/ok’ public project ideas where people were asked to rate her proposals; here are some of her responses when she proposed a memorial as part of the Busan Biennial, and she looked at the ‘gas wars’. The naive style is more of a communication than an aesthetic decision I think.
Less well known now are her actions. One is called Olive Green, where she organised for a line of Bolivian police to interrupt the traffic on a busy highway, form a line, stand there, eat a single cocktail olive, and then walk away. The Bolivian police are very much seen as ‘of the people’ rather than a weapon of the state.
From the Atlantic with Love is a formal ceremony she arranged with the Bolivian Navy to deliver a bucket of sea water from the once-Bolivian coast (Bolivia is now landlocked so the Navy have something of a crisis of identity). The original plan had been to deliver it hand to hand in a ‘when faith can move mountains’ style act of mass goodwill, but she didn’t get the collaboration. So she took it herself.
Micropolitics
Core participants/organisers are from various Goldsmiths (London) departments (visual cultures, philosophy, sociology, etc etc), an open group that meets to discuss texts and collaboratively organise projects. Here is their blog. The Micropolitics Research Group investigates the forces and procedures that entangle artistic production and the flexible subjectivities of its producers into the fabric of late capitalism. They have organised ‘drifts’ , this kind of psychogeographic tour, with Suely Rolnik and Brian Holmes (the visitors later react on what they have seen in a seminar).
Critical Practice
A research cluster based at Chelsea School of Art in London working according to open principles for reflexive, non-market-led artistic practices. This can and does mean an awful lot of things. They organise via wiki, publish all minutes, and for Disclosures they made a ‘ResourceCamp’, a ’sideshow’ session in which participants collaboratively drafted open budget guidelines.
In 2005 they were instrumental in organising Open Congress, an openly-organised conference on Open Source methodologies and cultural practice. Now they are planning Parade for 2010, a conference that will look at the contested notion of ‘public space’ (see the wiki for details).
Celine Condorelli/Support Structure
London-based architectural researcher part of International Festival. Along with artist Gavin Wade she set up Support Structure, a project taking the literal and physical notion of ’support’ alongside its potential applications in the reflexivity of contemporary art. Or something. Here is their website.
More soon.
