This project was a commission from a-n The Artist’s Information Company as part of the Year of the Artist. There was no brief and I felt that the subject of the project could be the commissioners themselves. Because of the nature of what a-n do — networking, providing information to artists — I got interested in how they organise themselves as a company and decided to take them on a bespoke team-building weekend.
I was interested in how an artist’s ideas might dovetail with those of the team builders, how similar were their activities? This project was somewhat ironic although the intended humour in the project failed because the people taking part were put through a genuinely nerve racking experience. The responsibility of the artist came under close scrutiny, not for the first time; when the art approaches the real, metaphor starts to melt too close to the fire.
The weekend consisted of traditional tasks and activities – quadbikes, archery and film-making , where I commissioned a script about the a-n staff that they then acted, and an ‘interesting lecture’ by Neil Chapman. The weekend was packed with activities and with hindsight it was a scary conjunction of being an artwork and of working with people who got really affected by it. The paintballing , which was accompanied by an Ennico Morricone soundtrack on loudspeakers, was particularly contentious. There was the issue of who was responsible for the psychological aspects of the weekend – me, the director of a-n, or the individuals? I experimented with documenting the weekend by commissioning a writer to observe and notate the entire weekend’s activities and this text was then published and distributed with a-n Magazine as a free supplement.
Date
2001
Media
Live event
[a-n-n-a] magazine supplement
Video
Photographs
Aknowledgements
‘Year of the Artist’ National Media Residency with [a-n] The Artists’ Information Company, Newcastle.
Northern Arts (Arts Council England)
The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead.
[a-n] team
Helen Barwick, Catherine Bertola, Fran Bird, Matthew Blackman, Sarah Burn, Louise Coysh, Clare Edwards, Rebecca Farley, Susan Jones, Gillian Nicol, Richard Padwick, Stephen Palmer, Maureen Royal
Team Building
Reivers Development and Ultraventure: Dave Routledge, Libby Vere, Paul Hodgson, Doug Finlayson
Emily Druiff – Yoga Session
a-n -n-a magazine
Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre – Observational Writing, Neil Chapman – Performance lecture and Writing, Hannah Firth – proofing, Scottish Country Press, Design For Print, Ripe Design Consultancy
and
B+B:Sarah Carrington and Sophie Hope, Bellingham Taxis, David Butler, Libby and Edward Charlton, Louise Coysh, Julie Crawshaw, Em Druiff, Paul Hodgson, Susan Jones, Vicki Lewis, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, Gillian Nicol, The Riverdale Hotel, Adam Sutherland, Lucy Wilson
Archive
Pdfs of [a-n-n-a] magazine including whole text
35 mm colour transparencies
a-n.co.uk Su Jones explores Anna Best’s 2001 National Media residency for Year of the Artist here at a-n The Artists’ Information Company.
Anna Best’s National Media residency for Year of the Artist was initiated and hosted by [a-n] THE ARTISTS INFORMATION COMPANY, with her invited proposal selected by staff and artists working at the company. Her project explored the company’s vision as an information provider and facilitator of artists through Away-Weekend, a ‘confidential’ live event, publication of [a-n-n-a] MAGAZINE, circulated with the September 2001 issue of [a-n] MAGAZINE and the Team Build seminar.
In inviting proposals for the residency, the company’s brief said the aim was: “To make use of our production and distribution processes and to investigate and communicate the processes and contemporary applications of visual art practice to a wide audience”.
Proposals were invited from “artists or artist-collaborations for new projects which challenge perceptions and stretch the boundaries of traditional web and paper publishing, or which make creative use of the infrastructures and delivery mechanisms available”.
Working approach – Anna Best’s work involves diverse strategies of process and production, including conversational research, documentary media, video, websites and printed matter, and the organisation of large-scale events. Work often explores issues that are highly local and specific to place and time.
Influenced by the writings of Allan Kaprow and others, it is informed by ongoing dialogues with contemporaries including Neil Chapman, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, Ella Gibbs, Amy Plant and Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie.
Her process often involves other people. “It is close to the process of making friends and conversation is the prevalent medium. I am open to what others bring to a piece of work, and yet I want to take complete responsibility for it. I feel I can then proceed from having nothing to lose and take bigger risks.”
Her projects present social interaction and communication as tools that raise questions and present musings on a subject that is invisible but omnipresent during the project. “Making art is a way of exploring things rather than stating something already known”.
Away weekend – Writing about the residency in [a-n] MAGAZINE, Lucy Wilson described how Anna Best tries to approach each commission: “as a collaboration with the institution, trying not to be an employee, but to form an arena or new territory between artist and institution. The procedure of negotiating a position in an organisation for a short period of time is fascinating, ambiguous and sometimes difficult”.
For Away-Weekend, Anna Best employed Northumberland management training company Reivers and Ultraventure to create a customised team-building activity weekend for the staff at [a-n] THE ARTISTS INFORMATION COMPANY. It involved a combination of tasks (Piranha and Jam-Ex), including paintballing and others she introduced. These were commissioned from other artists to contribute skills that they would not normally consider part of their art practice.
Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre (also a writer) took the role of scribe, writing down all she saw, briefed to ‘perform like a CCTV camera’; Neil Chapman (also a lecturer in cultural theory) was invited to deliver an ‘interesting lecture’; Laura Trevail wrote a film script; and Em Druiff (EmCo) led a yoga session. Anna took the role of liaising with Reivers and directing the event.
Although some preliminary research conversations had taken place with the company’s staff, the weekend was arranged as a complete surprise.
Challenging roles – Anna Best’s practice challenges the perceived role of the viewer, asking them to participate in production of the work. She questions the assumed role of a participant, asking how much they might actively contribute and how much they might be directed. Working with other people on different levels Anna Best composes a time-based structure and raises questions, rather than creating a tangible product.
In Away-Weekend, [a-n] staff were both medium and audience. Alongside them, she considered people’s reactions and interactions to the problem-solving exercises set by management training company Reivers as part of the event. The event was confidential so each person became audience and was aware of being voyeur and witness. Literally isolated in a rural place, the event was like a capsule of knowledge that should go no further.
In each project, Anna Best questions her potential role as facilitator, collaborator and director: “Sometimes I collaborate with other people for the support it provides, sometimes from a desire to engage new ways of thinking. I like ideas that fly out of the blue or come from a chat. I am not interested in interpreting or representing other people”. Each project raises new issues and concerns around the artist’s ethical position in relationship to other people.
In Away-Weekend, she invited participants to confront their fears about doing activities that may not be fun. She rejected popular notions that art activities should provide participants with entertainment, or solutions to problematic situations. One member of [a-n]’s staff described the event as: “opening a can of worms”.
”[a-n-n-a MAGAZINE”] – Utilising the design of [a-n] MAGAZINE, [a-n-n-a] MAGAZINE aimed to present the intimacy of Away-Weekend to the wider audience of subscribers. This was a contradictory task, exploring problems around exhibition and display and exposure, particularly relevant in the light of Big Brother et al.
The writing done by Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre as ‘chief’ silent witness was a proposal to deal with this contradiction. It was edited into a sixteen-page supplement conceived as a ‘maverick’ edition of [a-n] MAGAZINE. The small number of images included were drawn from discussions with staff about potential exposure and confidentiality issues.
[a-n-n-a] MAGAZINE was distributed to subscribers with the September [a-n] MAGAZINE and to selected retail outlets.
Team Build – The idea of further dissemination, discussion and review evolved from a proposal for an exhibition into a weekend seminar for fifty people. The weekend was developed with curatorial team B+B, who are concerned about providing a space for discourse and reflection during the artist’s process. Held in the autumn of 2001, Team Build was hosted and facilitated by Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead.
Participants came from the realm of socially-engaged practice and included curators, administrators and artists. The event was structured in consultation with team builder Suzy Adderly, who applied to it concepts of non-hierarchical group communication.
A programme of workshops and discussions run by artists addressed the recent history and contemporary context for socially-engaged practice, and examined preconceptions about the roles of artists, participants and audiences in such work.
a-n links: Artists Stories, Engaged Practice, Public Art, Residency, Socially Engaged Practice, Time and Space