CURATOR SANDRA KRIŽIĆ ROBAN TALKS TO DRAGANA JURIŠIĆ ABOUT HER BOOK YU: THE LOST COUNTRY, AND HOW THE ARTIST’S PERSONAL HISTORY AS AN EXILE DETERMINES HER WORK AND HER PERCEPTION OF THE WORLD.

Sandra Križić Roban: In the last couple of years we have witnessed a surge in the number of publications and research works that deal with the former Yugoslavia. While some focus on the legacy of post-war modernism, and others on the post-1990s period and the social divisions that transpired as a result, there are also a significant number that deal with the writer’s own family history and the pursuit of identity. I want to know about how you came to do it. Why is heritage important to you? What have you found out about yourself during this research, and how did you perceive your own family? Did anything change from the things you already knew?

Dragana Jurišić: I am the child of a Serbian mother and a Croatian father, from Slavonski Brod, a border-town with Bosnia and Herzegovina. Until 1990 I was registered as a Yugoslav. Since Croatia proclaimed its independence I can only register as ‘other’. Yugoslavs have been written out of history. I wondered what happened to 1.5 million Yugoslavs. Where have they disappeared to? I also wanted to deal with the politics of forced amnesia that many independent states of the former Yugoslavia adopted. My memories and emotions about this lost country were very conflicting. I tried to engage with the meaning of identity. Is identity tied to a nation or a place, or can a person build his or her own metaphysical home, one that can’t so easily be annihilated and taken away?

SKR: The need to determine one’s own identity by exploring the past – of one’s family, friends, immediate surroundings, state, and nation – is becoming a global trend. Is it a generational issue? At a time of mass migrations, the uncertainties in the political and the economic realm, what is actually being changed? Is this a case of dealing with personal insecurities or the need to, despite all the instabilities, define one’s personal identity?

DJ: It is a reasonable presumption, in this era of globalisation, that the concept of identity as tied to the nation state, is rendered obsolete and redundant. This, unfortunately, is not the case, and we can see that if we look at what happened in the former Yugoslavia. If the national identity is worth killing for, it must be important! What I found out about myself, through experiencing war and losing my national identity, is that this experience, although traumatic, freed me. I believe that people are not trees; the importance of roots is something I left behind. I also learned that nationalism is the ideology of idiots; it points to a significant lack of confidence in yourself as an individual.

I really admire the work of Dubravka Ugrešić, and when you ask this question I am reminded of something she said in an interview with Svetlana Boym: “The identity policy is a toy; it could be benign, it could be dangerous, it could be liberating, it could be enslaving. When people realise that they were given a cheap toy identity, and that the real problems are somewhere else, maybe they will start to search for ways to be equal, not different. Because perpetuating the trauma of repressed ethnic and other identities produces a thick and manipulative ideological fog”. (Ugrešić, 2002)

SKR: Why have you decided to base your research on Rebecca West’s book? Some of her political statements are questionable and subjective. Are her political views important to you, or just the fact that she ventured on a journey that still provokes interest and serves as a kind of a model?

DJ: I find Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941) extraordinary. It’s a masterpiece of twentieth-century writing. I look at it as a work of art, not as a history book. She said she knew that the country would disappear so she had to write about it (and it did disappear twice since the book’s publication: first in 1941 and then in 1991). Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is a repository of memories, and we all know how factual memories are. Look, for example, at the collective memory of our Yugoslav past and what happened to that?

Yes, I was well aware of some of the exaggerations and inconsistencies in West’s writings. I am also well aware of her politics after the book was published. The key for me is that in this book she never ‘others’ Yugoslavs, unlike the majority of the writers who wrote about it. Some of these writers even used Black Lamb and Grey Falcon as their guide during the conflicts of the 1990s, and still ended up writing patronising and stereotyping publications such as Balkan Ghosts by Robert Kaplan.

YU: The Lost Country is a conceptual artwork in which I present my point of view. It is my personal history. Following the thought that this is a conceptual artwork, I could have invented a story in which Alice in Wonderland came to visit ex-Yugoslavia and documented her fictional journey; it really would not matter. I just chose the book I loved, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. This book provided me with a map to follow.

SKR: Your book begins with a photograph of a girl at the moment of her becoming a Pioneer. Although you belong to a younger generation, who perhaps did not even enter the pioneers, you use this symbolism that probably has a completely different meaning to you than it has to my generation. What motivated you to open your book in this manner?

DJ: Well, actually, the little girl in the photograph is me. I was 16 when the war started so I did experience that whole narrative and symbolism you speak about. I think constructs like national identity, belief systems and core values are bestowed upon us. These are strong currents to swim in and not many people have either the strength or courage to make their own way. I chose this motive as a ‘beginning’ because the photograph was all shades of wrong: it’s blurry, my Pioneer hat is falling off my head and my fist is clenched. I am looking very uncomfortable with the whole scenario.

SKR: You first studied psychology, and later you started studying photography. What is photography to you? Your book ends with a ‘delicate’ scene captured from a plane. Does photography provide assistance in the transition to ‘other’ states, different ways of understanding? Is it a medium that makes research easier and spices it up with bits of reality?

DJ: Photography contains elements such as fleetingness, which allow it to capture that sense of rootlessness and dislocation with relative ease. I consider myself an exile, because the country I refer to as my home does not exist anymore. There is no home to return to. Both exile and photography intensify our perception of the world. In both, the memory is in its underlying core. Both are characterised by melancholy. As Salman Rushdie said, exiles live “more comfortably in images, in ideas, than in places”. (Rushdie, 1992)

Dragana Jurišic works predominantly through the medium of photography and video. Jurišic has won several awards including the Dorothea Lange and Paul Taylor Award’s Special Recognition from Duke University. In 2013 she completed her PhD and presented ‘YU: The Lost Country’, a critically acclaimed touring exhibition and a book. Her work is in many collections including the Irish State Art Collection.

Sandra Križic Roban is a Croatian curator, art historian and critic. She developed a digital archive of conceptual photography projects and is responsible for the programme at the Spot Gallery, Zagreb. Since 2000, she has been the Editor in Chief of the magazine for contemporary visual arts Život umjetnosti. Roban has authored numerous books including ‘At Second Glance: Positions of the Contemporary Croatian Photography’.

Images: Dragana Jurišic, images from YU: The Lost Country; all images courtesy of the artist

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The arts are back in the news. Every change in government and lead up to a new budget brings with it a renewed expression of the sector’s importance and need for support. It would appear that memories are short, as it seems necessary to repeat the same arguments each time and often to find new ways to express them, as the media become more and more hungry for what is new. In reality, our statements are reiterating the same thing.

At present there is an outpouring of support for a raft of new measures concerning meetings, petitions, calls for action and Dáil motions. These latest newsworthy items seek to summarise the big question! Why must the arts constantly battle for existence?

We understand that other sectors of Irish society are under similar attack, but as VAI plays a strong leadership role in the cultural community, we work towards goals which are focused on the many areas that impact individual artists and the arts community as a whole. In my early days as director of VAI, it was a small community of supporters. Over the past few years it has been gratifying to see an increase in activism on behalf of the sector. With a rocky start to our relationship with the National Campaign for the Arts (NCFA), we are now delighted to have opened new communications and actively supply our research on behalf of visual artists. The Social, Economic, and Fiscal Status of the Visual Artist in Ireland and the Payment Guidelines have been particularly helpful in this and have contributed much to support the arguments put forward by VAI, NCFA and other campaign initiatives.

The agenda set forward by NCFA presents clear messages about investment in our culture. This direction has been honed over the years, and we can see much more clarity of vision, which I take as evidence that some progress has been made. In our conversations we have agreed that there are primary issues relevant across the art forms. Presenting on the Payment Guidelines at Theatre Forum and Theatre Northern Ireland’s recent ‘All-Ireland Performing Arts Conference’ in Galway it was interesting to get insight into the parallels between these forms and the visual arts, and we hope it is the beginning of further collaboration work in the area of artists’ rights.

So, as we all gather to encourage, cajole and badger the powers that be on our way of thinking about the arts and artists, we also want to reflect on what we are looking to achieve over the next few years.

Fairness

Equitable Payment for Artists

We have written much on the Payment Guidelines for artists in recent years. Equitable payments are a clearly stated objective in the current Arts Council strategy, and one which they require organisations funded by them to comply with. There has been a significant amount of change. There are organisations that are resistant, but there are others who are on a journey to achieve this. As some have suffered draconian cuts in recent years, their journeys may be longer. So, for a period, we will see a mix of shorter programmes, longer runs, etc. but remain focused on ensuring that this policy will be adopted by funders other than the Arts Council and the local authorities who have already an ethos of paying artists.

There is still much to be done, mainly in communicating the practical application of the guidelines, how to work towards their implementation, and indeed their importance. As stated at APAC16, this is not just something for somebody else to do. This is an action for every person to work towards to ensure that it is central to all work within the visual arts.

The Status of the Artist in Ireland

Ireland must put in place primary legislation that recognises that status of the artist in Irish society. The 1980 UNESCO Recommendation on the Rights of Artists has been a constant source of reference for our work. Both the Recommendation and the Final Declaration have been signed by Ireland. We continue to remind the various governments of their obligations. At the moment the only place in which individual artists are officially recognised is tax legislation. By remedying this, we will see a greater respect for artists in all areas of government. This simple and definitive act will be the seedbed for fair treatment.

Resale Right

In Ireland we are still in a precarious position regarding the Resale Right. Auction houses comply, but other institutions involved with secondary sales make life very difficult unless artists are aware that their works have been sold. There is also an ongoing lobby to do away with this fundamental right.

It has never been more important for us to ensure that government puts forward primary legislation that clearly defines the role of a compulsory collecting society such as IVARO and the obligation for proper timely reporting and payments.

Social Welfare & An Independent Cultural Exchequer

We have also looked in detail at raising further money for the support of a specific social welfare system for artists and other cultural workers, as well as generating an independent cultural exchequer for the arts.

Social welfare has long been problematic and prone to the vagaries of individual officers in dole offices around the country. This is exacerbated by the large majority of artists who are registered as self-employed and therefore not eligible for all state benefits. The clear solution for us is based on logical reasoning. If you give money out then you must have money coming in to cover it. We propose that a fund is set up similar to the Artists’ Social Insurance Fund in Germany. In keeping with their self-employed status, some artists already pay a percentage towards their social protection cover.

1. It is our suggestion that the balance of this payment, i.e. the “employers’ share” is made up of all who ‘exploit’ the arts. This can be in the form of a cultural levy, or perhaps an easier win… in the form or a Tourism Bed Night tax similar to that in existence in many countries around the world. In 2015 Hotels accounted for 17,375,000 bed nights. Guest Houses and B&Bs came to 6,729,000 bed nights (Central Statistics Office). Taking these two figures and proposing a standard 2 Euro per night charge would provide €48,208,000. In France the bed tax is set at €2 per bed night; Italy €1 to €5 depending on the region; Germany either 5% or €1 to €3 per bed night depending on the region. [1]
2. Cultural donation from companies setting up in Ireland.
   As we are often told that the culture of a country is one of the key indicators used when seeking to place work or business geographically, we feel that it is a simple thing to take a tiny percentage (00.15% – 00.25%) as a cultural levy that supports this culture.

Both of these forms of ‘tithe’ are sustainable over the long term and have the potential, in combination with the exploitation tax, to significantly change the cultural sector and society’s perception of their role in supporting the arts.

In terms of the individual artist, this income allows for the creation of an equitable system for statutory health, long term or old age care and pensions, which are currently not automatically a right for artists who may not have sufficient payments in place due to the precarious nature of their work, as well as providing extra money to the state support of the arts.

Access

Artists’ Workspaces

It is not new information that there is a deficit of suitable spaces across Ireland. This has been felt particularly after several spaces closed due to a wide variety of issues such as lease/licence agreements, governance, legacy planning and financial problems. It is an area that we have been concerned about for quite some time and we have been looking at the circumstances required to provide suitable buildings as well as different business and governance models to sustain them.

We are advocating on behalf of workspaces, both old and new, for an increase in the funding allocated to them. We are looking at a variety of models which will all lead to a long term solution rather than knee jerk reactions. Our research has shown that artists believe there is a need for both fully- autonomous, self owned spaces as well as those that are subsidised by public bodies. To test some ideas we have been working closely with members of the Dublin City Arts Office to look at potential and scalable solutions. This includes a project which looks to deliver medium sized, self sustaining and fully autonomous spaces that can be spread across the country and which will not rely on annual funding applications. It has also allowed us to provide support to Dominic Stevens who is developing a live/work model based on the co-operative housing projects that he has previously worked on.

Our most recent research is of particular use, as over 400 visual artists and 42 studio programmes contributed to the survey. Through our international representative body partners we have had discussions on the situation in a wide range of countries and the various support structures required. However, they have all confirmed the lack of recent research, with two exceptions in the United Kingdom. This means that we have been delayed in publishing this research, but hope to remedy this prior to Get Together 2016, which takes place on Friday 26 August in IMMA.

Funding & Resources

In the area of funding and resources, we have clearly stated that government and local government funds for the arts have not been fully exploited. There is evidence that shows monies earmarked for the arts are not being spent. This indicates that there is a clear need for a broad ranging survey across government and local authorities to look at what allocations they have made for programmes such as Per Cent for Art and project funding, and for a central agency to take control of ensuring that these monies are made available to culture.

As arts organisations form a symbiotic relationship with artists, we feel the need to raise a key issue relating to meaningful supports. Synergies have been a key recommendation made by us since the forum in IMMA concerning the amalgamation of the three primary visual arts national institutions. This needs to be introduced across the sector, with the set-up of micro funding that will allow organisations to come together to identify key areas where core funding can be shared. An example of this is in the provision of: financial services and auditing, marketing, building and property maintenance, and legal services. The micro loans would be provided on the basis that the systems set up become self-sustaining through the various organisations providing a percentage towards their upkeep. The benefit is simple: a reduction in the overall costs of organisations, security in knowing that organisations are operating within good governance practices and increasing the promotion of culture in Ireland.

Artists’ Mobility & Promoting Ireland Abroad

When speaking about current structures and funding models, we have suggested a restructuring of the responsibilities of Culture Ireland. We have suggested that it is more effective to return the responsibility for the support of the not-for-profit sector being promoted or applying for funding for going abroad to the Arts Council. Culture Ireland has clearly stated in the past that it gives preference to countries that are of current interest under government policy. The current system makes it difficult for artists to engage with countries that are not of specific interest.

We have suggested that, as Culture Ireland also supports the commercial sector, there may be a different role that they can play by working with state organisations who support businesses promoting themselves outside of Ireland.

1. Supporting all trade missions or initiatives to include a cultural aspect in their delivery. This has proven successful when reading about the benefits that were reaped by the awareness of Riverdance when opening the Chinese market.
2. Allowing the commercial gallery sector access to the standard system of support for Ireland’s trade abroad. This allows them to operate on a commercial bases with the investment placed in them honed to ensure that they have the key skills and supports to exploit opportunities abroad.

Culture, Citizenship & Education

When we open our minds to a full understanding of what it means to support access to culture and all its component areas, we may reel and balk at the overwhelming nature of the project: the full integration of cultural awareness into the lives of the inhabitants of Ireland from cradle to grave. Like all good building projects there are the foundations: the teaching of cultural studies and their placement at all levels of education. We can see how in formal education cultural studies fall off as the points based system already lowers them to an optional, nice to have, extra. We encourage educators to use culture as the glue that brings together creative thought, innovation and practical application. In doing so, we plant the seed for a better citizen who has awareness of the role of culture in society and the need for the development of the creative mind.

Innovation is not just a requirement for industry. Innovation is the key attribute required when looking at how to provide Ireland’s citizens with hope for their future. In the long term, this form of awareness broadens understanding which in turn increases support for the arts through developed knowledge and empathy.

Policy

Culture 2025

The All Party Committee consideration of the Culture 2025 submissions is particularly welcome. As part of an open call for submissions we were among a wide range of cultural organisations who responded. In our very detailed submission we asked for a number of key items that we believe look strategically to the future through a number of initiatives that are both achievable and will be of benefit to the wider sector.

Revenue

We have also looked at the area of income averaging. The precarious nature of artists’ income remains a difficult issue. In terms of Revenue payments, and in keeping with systems already in place for farming and fishing industries, we ask that income averaging is introduced. This will allow artists to take into consideration the lean years as well as the years where they may have a higher income.

Ongoing Government Consultation

We believe dialogue and engagement needs to be ongoing and should use the unique resources of all mandated arts representative bodies. At present, consultations take place on a restricted basis. Combining this with state appointments, we feel that government can learn from local authorities’ use of the Strategic Policy Committee (SPC) model. These SPCs identify the key representative organisations and ask for their input into the appointment of representatives to the committees. This form of inclusion allows for an active, ongoing engagement with the sector and ensures that policies are focused at the core.

Career, Gender & Longevity

The last edition of the VAN covered our most recent report. It is worth mentioning that this informs our annual programme, and along with the many topics covered in this article will inform the events that we have planned for Get Together 2016. We are in full planning mode and details will be announced very soon. Panellists from home and abroad will be asked what specific actions need to take place now for us to make things actively better.

So, to end, advocacy plays a key role in our work. We have seen change and have celebrated many wins along the way. But, the cultural sector and government tend to suffer from short term memory loss. There are times when it appears that the sector is yet again reinventing the wheel. New initiatives bring new blood and new thinking, but we feel that there must be a way for those invested in change to find out what decisions have been made in the past and what existing experience is available. Longevity is not always important, but failing to get a full picture can cause both misunderstanding and significant waste of energy. As always, VAI’s doors are fully open and we hope with this new energy and support that we will see even more responses to our regular calls for action.

[1] To compare, as stated by a recent Irish Times article, “The Arts Council’s recent report on this area has detailed figures for 2012. It shows that private funding amounted to €6.6 million in all, with less than half of this coming from sponsorship. Even for large cultural organisations, which are best placed to draw in funders, sponsorship made up 2.9 per cent of their annual income.”

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DOMINIC STEVENS (DUBLIN SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, DIT) AND SOPHIA MEERE (LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, UCD) DISCUSS THE ‘FIELDWORK LETTERFRACK 2016: ALTER-RURALITY’ CONFERENCE, WHICH THEY RAN 6 – 9 JUNE IN RURAL CONNEMARA.

What starts to happen when artists, architects, landscape architects, farmers, practitioners and researchers from all around Europe meet to discuss rural life? This June, in Letterfrack, Connemara, an event was held to find out. Three Irish universities (University College Dublin, Dublin Institute of Technology and Galway Mayo Institute of Technology) gathered together 65 researchers, practitioners, teachers and advisors, all engaged with rural life and interested in its future, from 30 different organisations and 10 different countries, for exchange of ideas and experience.

“We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books. It is our habit to think outdoors – walking, leaping, climbing, dancing, preferably on lonely mountains or near the sea where even the trails become thoughtful.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)

The primary purpose of this conference was to explore possible futures, opportunities and challenges for rural milieus in twenty-first-century Europe. This meeting of minds had several aims, however, one of them being to cause some kind of convergence between various strands of the design community and the rural community itself. We thought it would be a good start for a group whose ultimate purpose is to imagine viable, productive and lively rural opportunities.

By gathering together attendees with a wide range of experience, and spending each day debating a particular question or theme, we hoped to encourage new dialogues across disciplines. By making the space and taking the time to immerse ourselves in place – walking, talking, thinking, looking, tasting and seeing – we hoped to create an exchange of knowledge and ideas about rural landscapes, lifestyles, production, design and culture, looking at how best to sustain rural places.

Intense exchanges took place in the formal setting of a lecture theatre (3 mornings: 24 plenary presentations, 3 evenings: 9 keynotes), but unlike many academic conferences, the possibilities for informal discussion and exchange also abounded. Lunch, teas and dinner were served in the village’s Ellis Hall, thanks to local chef Derick Healy and his team. Participants spent their afternoons leisurely foraging on the shore, tracing watercourses, visiting farms or simply walking and talking. All were helped by the unexpected sunshine!

Holding this conference in a rural setting was important. Organised as a collaboration between ourselves and Deirdre O’Mahony from GMIT’s Centre for Creative Arts and Media (CCAM), this was the third in a series of events held under the name ‘AlterRurality’. The first was held in Fribourg, Switzerland and the second in London. These events were ARENA projects, an international network that exists to promote research in architecture and allied disciplines across Europe. 

GMIT’s Letterfrack National Centre for Excellence in Furniture Design proved the perfect setting for a conference on rurality, as the village has an extraordinary history of rural development, in which the school buildings play a significant role. 

Thirty-three talks  

The conference kicked off with Pieter Versteegh’s (Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture, ESA Paris) keynote lecture offering an alternative description of rurality in which a provocative list of presumptions are inverted, or as Pieter put it, “viewed through a mirror”.

In addition to invited keynote speakers, 24 papers were chosen for oral presentation, with 24 more made into posters and displayed in Ellis Hall, which is owned by Connemara West. Short presentations succeeded one another in response to specific themes. The sessions and the succession of papers were chosen as counterparts to each other, in order to expand the field of view as far as possible. While some talked of real places and things, others talked of the metaphysical and of transformation. We all talked about time: past, present and future.

Outstanding presentations included that of Dr Ciara Healy (Lecturer in Art, Department of Art, University of Reading) and Adam Stead (visual artist) in a collaborative performance in which correspondence between teacher and student were read aloud. Titled Already the world: A Post-humanist Dialogue, their letters were concerned with ecological and environmental ways of knowing in socio-agricultural and metaphysical modes. With Healy’s help, Stead sought to understand the socio-political and ecological impacts of industrialisation and consumerism on agriculture and rural communities in Britain and Ireland.

In Bows, Buildings and Experimental Archaeology: A Journey from Norway to Dublin Through Bowmaking, Stephen Fox, an experimental archaeologist and PhD student at UCD, described how both questions and answers can arise through making. Fox is an expert in Viking archery and bow making. Having spent the summer of 2015 working in a reconstructed longhouse museum in Lofotr, Norway, he is currently investigating Dublin’s Viking architecture, its raw materials and construction methods through the active building of an authentic type 1 Viking house at UCD’s Centre for Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture.

In the following presentation, Digitally Fabricating Rural Wood Constructions, Professor Urs Hirschberg of TU Graz’s Institute of Architectural Media transcended 1000 years to promote sophisticated digital fabrication technologies, the building of bespoke timber structures in rural areas and, conversely, the showcasing of special timber designs in urban contexts. He demonstrated both the viability of high-tech firms operating from rural locations and the possible revival of craft in the digital age. TU Graz’s IAM works with local industry partners to push the boundaries of timber fabrication, teaching future architects and fabrication factories about the amazing possibilities of the digital tools.

Andrew Freear’s description of Auburn University’s famous design and build programme left us wondering why we can’t all do the same thing! Known for its ethos of recycling, reusing and remaking, Rural Studio provides hands-on educational experience while assisting an underserved population in west Alabama’s Black Belt region. The studio’s philosophy is that everyone, rich or poor, deserves the benefit of good design. Students work within the community to define solutions, fundraise, design and, ultimately, build remarkable buildings. In 25, Rural Studio has built 150 projects and educated more than 600 ‘citizen architects’.

Dr Aine Macken-Walsh, researcher with Teagasc, astounded the audience by her proposition that governmental policies of the past 25 years have largely failed to support Irish farming and fishing families. Funding, she argued, has created a ‘project class’ that has benefitted a few, but been ignored by the majority.

Chinese researcher and PhD scholar at London’s Architectural Association, Jingru Cyan Cheng, suffers no illusions: rurality in China is administratively determined, socially constructed and spatially specified.

Her design research project instrumentalises rural China’s specific administrative, social and spatial conditions to explore rurality as a spatial question. It proposes a spatial framework for China’s rural territory in an attempt to inverse the power of the city.

Three walks

The point of the walks was to be outside, to breathe fresh air and to walk and talk. Aided by unusually low tides and bright sunshine, Rory Keatinge led wonderful walks along the shore, taking us to his secret locations to collect cockles and mussels, before helping us clean and prepare them for dinner. Rory has foraged for food along the coast of Letterfrack since his childhood, a passion that undoubtedly contributed to his choice of profession in fisheries management.

In her booklet The Water Glossary, artist Carol Anne Connolly gathered together Irish terms that describe water, essentially reproducing a descriptive landscape in words sourced from old texts as well as from a diverse range of people including fishermen, farmers, weather forecasters, scholars and poets. Connolly read aloud from her lexicon in the Irish language while we admired the view, the sounds of water and her words.

Michael Gibbons, one of Ireland’s leading field archaeologists and a storyteller, took us on a walk to the far and not so distant past of the hills, pointing out rocks and patterns in the landscape, traces of ancient settlements and tombs that indicate animal enclosures and field systems. He also identified more recent burial grounds and abandoned cottages dating from the Famine.

Located in an extraordinarily beautiful setting overlooking Killary Fjord, we walked across hills on which traditional blackhead horny sheep run as Tom Nee of Killary Sheep Farm described the highs and lows of contemporary farming. His talented dogs demonstrated sheepherding moves while Nee cut turf by hand using the old two-sided spade, or sleán, which cuts through the peat as if it were butter. Tom also talked about the relationship between farming and tourism.

Three Dinners

Immersed in rural matters we indulged ourselves in local food and the eating of communal meals cooked and served daily. Three dinners. Three lunches. Three cream teas of scones and homemade strawberry jam. Connemara lamb, mashed potato and cabbage. Roast chicken. Fish stew. Mussels, cockles gleaned by the beach walkers. Rhubarb crumble. Home-grown watercress. Nettle soup.

Conclusion

‘Fieldwork Letterfrack 2106: AlterRurality3’ built on the experience of two earlier ‘ARENA’ conferences. Held in a rural locality, the event remained intentionally small. It brought together a range of disciplines, teachers, practitioners and researchers from Ireland and beyond, with the aim of encouraging informal debate and exchange across disciplines. It widened participation to include the community voice with the aim of (starting to) overcome the barriers that still separate academia from practice. We believe that this conference is a step in the right direction, and a move towards greater collaboration between the many institutions, practitioners and academics that are engaged in rural life and interested in its future.

Sophia Meeres teaches at UCD. Her research is connected to the transformation of landscapes, the recognition and conservation of rural lands, practices and traditions.

Dominic Stevens is an architect and lecturer in the Dublin School of Architecture DIT whose works and practice is often rurally located.

Images: Attendees at the ‘AlterRurality’ conference; Attendees on one of the walks in Connemara

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JANICE HOUGH OF IMMA INTRODUCES THEIR COLLABORATIVE PROJECT ‘A FAIR LAND’, WITH GRIZEDALE ARTS, BASED IN THE LAKE DISTRICT.

On the first outing to Grizedale Arts in spring of last year, Helen O’Donoghue (Head of Engagement and Learning at IMMA) and I found ourselves driving the entire circumference of the Lake District. After four hours of driving, which should have taken two, we were barely holding it together in the car as darkness fell over the rural pastures of Cumbria. Our failure to locate this peripheral centre led us to discover that there were two Grizedale Arts here. The one we were looking for was in Lawson Park and of course we had followed the prominent signage for the wrong one. After a wrong turn going up the mountain and the squelchy softening of the terrain under the wheels of the car, we reluctantly made the phone call to Adam Sutherland (Director of Grizedale) to assist us back down a dirt track teetering on the edge of a mountain. After this death defying stunt we were warmly welcomed and presented with some of Grizedale’s many culinary delights to help us recover from the ordeal.

Over the following days the splendour and intrigue of Grizedale revealed itself in many ways. The converted farmhouse previously owned by Ruskin is peppered with household items of historical and cultural significance. There is no conventional art on the walls; instead it presents itself through the hand-painted dining table, the fabric on the re-upholstered chairs, the hand-drawn wallpaper located throughout, the filing technique in the library, the crockery, the dressing gowns (with Ruskin references hand sewn onto the back of each) and the pot that pours the tea – the list goes on. The website explains that “the Collection is ‘live’, being periodically augmented with new purchases and commissions, and diminished through inevitable losses and breakages”.

The experience brought me to consider the various ways that we’ve worked with artists at IMMA and how we could expand this remit to channel more of these everyday applications of creativity. Of course, part of Grizedale’s subversive appeal is that losses and breakages are an institutional faux pas. The five curatorial styles used to decorate the house were conceived as a strategic set of rules to ensure that visitors can at least partially relate to an aesthetic within this eclectic environment. As custodian of the Grizedale experience Sutherland could easily pass the day discussing the significance of each item with obvious passion, humour, intelligence and a pinch of irreverence thrown in for good measure.

Stepping outside we came upon a shed where Laurie Provost’s Turner Prize work Wantee (2013) was commissioned with Grizedale and built with the Coniston Youth Club. Lawson Park is dotted with various sheds, including a number of hermit huts, though luckily solitary confinement is not a compulsory elemental experience.

Following a walk/talk on the various challenges and triumphs of farming and growing on this particular terrain, we were promised a trip to the local village of Coniston. In the village we visited the unmanned Honest Shop at the Coniston Institute which is stocked with crafts and products made by locals. It offers a refreshing opportunity for direct trade with the community in contrast to the predictable options populating this tourist haven. We then stepped in to the self sufficient library, which was designed by Liam Gillick, though the books it contains didn’t appear to reflect his influence. A visit to the Ruskin Museum next door to the institute relayed the significant influence Ruskin has had on how Grizedale connects with the wider world through craft, education, creativity and nature. Our immersion in everything Ruskin was interrupted when we came upon the new extension dedicated to the Bluebird K7 and Donald Campbell, throwing up opposing perspectives on how communities opt to prioritise histories – a mashup of hero glamour and social thinker.

The two and a half day trip to Grizedale was the perfect primer to envisage what is coming our way for the summer of 2016 at IMMA. ‘A Fair Land’ will be the culmination of more than a year of discussions, development and research. The aim is to bring together a creative-led society in order to collectively construct various components that represent a village in IMMA’s courtyard, running from 11 to 28 August 2016. Radicalism and reinvention are two prevalent themes running through the programming for ‘A Fair Land’. Sarah Glennie and Adam Sutherland have a history of working together as curators, having realised the fantastically titled ‘Romantic Detachment’ over a decade ago. This was a rural/urban swap that brought the Lake District to PS1 New York, so Adam and Sarah are well versed on the impact, abundant generosity and resonance a project like this can generate for everyone involved, acting as a creative catalyst and fusing friction.

When Grizedale were invited to take up a mammoth residency at IMMA, culminating in this significant presence and activation in the courtyard, there was an alignment of aims. It is the perfect way for the museum and the residency to become part of an alternative system. For IMMA, it’s also a window onto other aspects of culture and creativity which require greater visibility and support through institutions, as well as a chance to recalibrate what can potentially evolve from IMMA’s unique context. In this ambitious project many of the elements of running a residency will become a public gesture. It’s contrasting geographical and cultural perspectives provide the spark and bounce to bring this international collective of artists and creatives together at IMMA with Grizedale.

The village of ‘A Fair Land’ will comprise an extensive straw bale field in which a glut crop of marrows will be grown. We will endeavor to use the crop to its maximum capacity for edible and product-based resources. Designed by Karen Guthrie and Public Works, and constructed under the expert guidance of Eoin Donnelly, this element of the project will utilise straw for both its agricultural and architectural features. The architectural collective Nos Workshop will design a scaffold framework facilitating communal activities such as vending, workshops, a restaurant and talks-based activities. Schools of reinvention will interweave with these active work spaces to facillitate situations where contemporary conditions around living, education and creativity in the everyday can be explored and workshopped. Functional products such as tables, chairs, spoons, bowls, wallpapers, bricks, publications, relaxation areas, workwear and consumables are all currently in development through Grizedale Arts and IMMA’s residency studios to populate, activate and create ‘A Fair Land’.

The list of contributors, developers, makers and thinkers includes Suzanne Lacy, Marcus Coates, Seoidín O’Sullivan, Rhona Byrne, Jonathan Meese, Niamh Riordan, Deirdre O’Mahony, Nós Workshop, Sarah Staton, Tom Watt and Tanad Williams, Michelle Darmody, Samuel Bishop, Ryan Gander, Brenda Kearney, Francesca Ulivi, Karen Guthrie (Somewhere), Sweet Water Foundation, Public Works and many more.

Even within a city you can be on the periphery. As a flagship organisation in Dublin IMMA has a commitment to this project, which brings us back to mediations on how mental and physical space can work, how creativity can be explored and manifested, and how connections can be made with both deliberate and accidental audiences. Instigated as a research project for product development, Deidre O’Mahoney’s play A Village Plot, performed on the front lawn at IMMA, has provided great insight. It’s clearly a project that breaks down barriers, stops people in their tracks and taps into an everyday vernacular that captures the unsuspecting passerby to experience and enjoy art from an angle they may not have previously considered. If this observation is anything to go by, August is likely to be a polemic experience for IMMA and its public. There will be constant daily activities to welcome visitors and groups to connect with the project. Sweet Water Foundation from Chicago are worth looking out for; they are the real life, day to day embodiment of renewal, reinvention and the commodity of creativity.

Closer to the event keep connected via IMMA’s website and social media platforms for updates on the daily schedules for talks, workshops, performances and food events, all coming together and culminating in ‘A Fair Land’. See you there.

Janice Hough, IMMA Residency Programmer

Images: Ambulant Food at ‘A Fair Land’, photo by Ruthless imagery; ‘A Fair Land’ food stamps

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LINDA SHEVLIN DISCUSSES M12’S (USA) WORK WITH ITS FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR, RICHARD SAXTON.

Linda Shevlin: Richard, since spending some time in September 2015 at M12’s base, The Feed Store, in Byers, Colorado, I’ve been curious about your relationship as a collective, not just to your surrounding community, but to the wider rural art community. Has this fixed, rural base intrinsically influenced the projects you undertake or do you harbour more nomadic tendencies in your methodology?

Richard Saxton: The Feed Store is our base of operations in Byers, Colorado. It’s a wonderful old country main street structure, a false front. It is stout and exudes a deep feeling of rootedness. It seems like that building has always been there – whether in our town of Byers or any other small community like it on the American Plains. The Feed Store has been half burned down and rebuilt. It was once a post office, a grocery store, a bank, an auto mechanic’s shop, a pinto bean dry storage facility and a ranch supply shop. Now it’s our office and studio. It’s a nice lineage to be a part of.

It’s a bit like what I talked about in the Decade of Country Hits book about being nomadic and firmly rooted at the same time. Situated in the present, comfortably within the past and future – that’s one way rural space operates for us. It has a deep pull from the root, the earth. Of course, for us and many people, rural space as an idea conjures up a strong relationship with rootedness, but we recognise fully how tentative and temporary that really is since it’s so close to us every day. A space like The Feed Store and absolutely the surrounding landscape (social, cultural, environmental and built) have a big impact on the work we make. It’s also a work in itself of course (The Feed Store), the building being a hub for lots of different modes of collaboration and creative inquiry. We can house groups of up to 15 people there. We run an experiential summer rural arts school, host potlucks, screenings, performances and of course guest artists, curators and researchers like yourself.

Beyond The Feed Store, our home terrain comes out in the many readily available themes of our region: imagery, the color palette, the textures and materials of the region all impact the work. The majority of the regional population, and especially urban folks, have little direct experience with this landscape. I think you can see a lot of the depth of the High Plains region through the projects we’ve taken on.

LS: As a group your output ranges from experiential, one-off social events to social sculptures in gallery contexts. You’ve recently been commissioned to produce new work titled ‘The Breaking Ring’ for the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe and have shown components of other projects in institutional situations too. How do you negotiate your relationship with these institutions in terms of how they represent work produced around rural issues? Do you select institutions who inherently understand M12’s ethos? Or do you think there is scope for a disruption in the programming of the more formal, culturally centred institutions in the form of non-commodified artworks?

RS: We approach our exhibitions and commissioned projects collaboratively. We want to work with people and places that can think beyond pictures on the wall, and who are interested in extending the ideas of M12 as a collaborative experiment to their own spaces. So in the show you’re talking about it was important to work with curators that could ‘programme’ as a material of the project, not as a separate thing –like the art is over here and the programme for the public is over there. It’s all one thing.

I guess my thinking is that, in the end, it’s important for us to work with larger institutions, even if I don’t like it. If the larger cultural narrative goes into the world written by urbanity, elitism and through the cult of personality, there has to be an antidote. Working in rural communities with small budgets, and through connective means, allows us to access a different type of practice. It’s slower, more collaborative, moves with the seasons and has a quieter presence. Those things seem needed to me right now. I see a lot of art or social practice, or my most disliked term, ‘creative place-making’, being done now – it’s a popular thing. Luckily there aren’t too many rural areas this new breed of art/urban planner has infected. But it’s coming. If we roll over and let the real estate developers (who are usually partners of or on the boards of these art institutions) write the narrative, the artists and real community will lose. Art is currently existing as a marketing tool. The system is totally absorbed by capitalism and the commodified system you’re talking about. So I think it’s important for us to work with larger institutions simply to provide that alternative perspective, or antidote, however you prefer.

As of the turn of the century, the world’s population was about 75% rural and 25% urban. In just over 100 years we’ve completely reversed those numbers. That’s a really crazy time/space ratio. The arts are of course highly urban-centric in both funding and practice in the US. And as we continue to move towards these heavy urban-based conversations, I think it’s critical that we keep the rural, land-based, location-based perspective activated.

LS: It’s interesting that you mention the rural/urban population reversal. We’re currently experiencing a major crisis in the housing rental market in our cities. Rent in Dublin is increasing exponentially while basic housing standards are barely being met in many of these properties. I’ve always thought artists are ideal candidates for the bucolic life, as the cost of living is generally lower than in cities, the pull of the commercial world is marginally less prevalent and spaces to work and live are abundant. We have some infrastructural issues, obviously, but with investment in basic services in rural towns I think cultural initiatives and building arts communities could break the cycle of depopulation. Are there any initiatives in the US that support and build communities around the arts in rural locations?

RS: Well, there are, but I don’t really know all that much about them. More often than not I see those types of initiatives in the US breed one of two things. First, either a craft or hobby artist kind of community. It’s usually painters, which is great, all forms are needed. And, you know, a blacksmith shop or the plein air painter and their studio/gallery kind of thing. It’s mostly for the tourists. The second, and I think the more critical type, are the larger, funded ones. I was just talking about this with another writer the other day. We have this monster of a thing now, ‘creative placemaking’ in the US; it’s huge. Funders are all lined up behind it. It seems to make everyone feel good. Artists get seduced by ‘support to make work‘ and ‘help develop small communities or neighbourhoods’. Here’s the catch: nobody is supporting artists to actually own that property so that they can build a sustainable ‘place’. More often than not, the developers have already knocked down whatever culture and place there was before launching their ‘place making’ project.

The whole idea is that artists build the ‘place’. Well, in the early 2000s an artist friend of mine lived in one of these types of artist/place-based buildings and I would visit often. That place was humming with artists and musicians at the time; there was a coffee shop, a bar, and it was gritty. The artists all loved it and fixed up their lofts, and I’m sure made a lot of good work. I recently visited there and you know what there are about 10 artists living there – the ones that have gotten older and can’t move anywhere else. The place is now outrageously expensive and no emerging artist could ever live there. They are now ‘lifestyle lofts’ for the business sector. So, here’s the deal: if you want to support artists and the community, do it. Don’t simply recognise artists as a convenient method for further gentrifying areas. Who paid for the rent, upkeep and bettering of those live/work spaces and the surrounding community for the last 20 years? The artists did. And where are the artists now? Pushed out, some having to go to low-income housing situations without any studios. That’s not place making and it’s not supporting the arts. It’s capitalism and real estate development using the arts as bait.

LS: M12, along with other US rural practitioners, have been gaining national and international recognition for their projects over the last decade or so. You were recently invited by Lucy Lippard to participate in one of a series of panel discussions organised by her during her time in residence at the University of Wyoming Art Department. How did this invitation come about?

Lucy has been a great supporter of our work over the last several years. She is someone who really believes in place and integrity. Kirsten Stoltz, who was our programmer for four years also worked with Lucy on a project about art and climate change, and Kirsten had lived in Santa Fe for years, so they might have gotten to know each other there as well. You know, that whole New Mexico draw is really interesting. That’s a place where I think a lot of people are sensitive to the issues we’re talking about.

Two years ago we participated in a project through the Santa Fe Art Institute. We were looking at wild horse issues in the American West and drawing an arch from the image of the romantic wild horse to the slaughtering of horses for food production, making connections through various means. We made a book and vinyl record about it called An Equine Anthology. You know Lucy’s work is also somewhat about drawing connections through seemingly disparate sources. I imagine inviting all of us was a natural extension of her writing.

LS: Your comments about ‘placemaking’ are really interesting, as public art and projects that involve a level of participation from communities can be misappropriated for this purpose. The expectations and perceived outcomes can often be linked to a notional idea that art can gentrify or drastically change communities. It can, of course, to some degree, but the investment doesn’t always equal the expectation and, as you’ve said, the artist or their livelihood isn’t always fully considered in these transactions.

In some ways change and how art can facilitate change, is tied to the people and place you work with. For us, we’ve worked in a number of different communities and I think all of them have experienced change in some way through the projects we’ve initiated. But, that said, change is something we think of as being constant – rural communities are in so much flux these days – so good change, or bad change, or lasting change, or systematic change, that might be something to explore further.

Too often it seems that as a larger social being we’re moving away from a collective awareness, away from the small, intimate and poetic; away from being a supportive and sustainable species. I think in our projects we are trying to get closer to an idea of elemental awareness that exists outside of the city, both for ourselves and for those who engage with our work. We see our practice as a series of connections, much like an aesthetic network or terminal with many ideas, people and experiences interfacing. Maybe you can get closer to change the further down the road you’re willing to drive.

Richard Saxton is an artist and educator, currently an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the founder and director of the M12 Collective, an interdisciplinary group based on the High Plains in Colorado, USA.

m12studio.org

Images: M12, ‘The Breaking Ring’, Ring Actions, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, USA; The Feed Store, Byers, Colorado

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