The project was the result of a commission by Arts Council England to do a piece of work connected to their series of symposia called Interrupt. Free Lunch came from a desire to resource the part of artists’ practice that seems to be unfundable — the part that has nothing to do with specific research and outcomes, a time and space where you don’t know exactly what you are doing or what you are thinking.
Free Lunch made time for people to meet. It was a way to acknowledge those dialogues that may go on intermittently for years between two people and to nurture the particularly intangible and evasive language of conversation. Arts Council England’s brief was very open, it needn’t necessarily be an art piece, and I wanted to do something quite separate from the conferences and that set up and way of communicating ideas, something based on the premise that to have a conversation with one other person is, in a sense, more valuable than going to a big conference with fifty people. I set up meetings between people who expressed interest in talking to someone else in a similar or related field and recorded their conversations, as a way of catching the thoughts that come up and pass in dialogue. I curated some of the lunches, I took part in others, and some were more like blind dates. The transcripts were put on the website, and e-2 developed a way for the reader to be able to link ideas between the transcripts for the Copyart.net website (www.copyart.net).
Date
2002
Aknowledgements
Arts Council England commission for ‘Interrupt Symposia’
This issue of ENGAGE journal (15) has been informed by Interrupt: artists in socially-engaged practice, a series of five symposia initiated in 2002 by the visual arts department at Arts Council England. It considers the impact of participatory art practice on the artistic direction and culture of art institutions. Articles examine the issue of participation in light of the social inclusion agenda and discuss the implications for the artist, the curator and the gallery.
free lunchers
Apolonija Sustersic
Barbara Stevini
Carmen Moersch
Martina Siegwolf
Eva Sturm
Yogi & Boo Boo
Nuran Demir
Nadi Gueler
Ahmet Polat
Mine kaylan
Rowena Seddon
Quentin Seddon
Martin Wooster
Neil Chapman
Suzy Adderley
Anne Bean
Adrian Ward at Signwave
Peter Edwards at e-2
Irini-Mirena Papadimitriou
Archive
- Photos from Suzy and Anne’s lunch
- Audio and transcript – evaluation conversation with Nina Pope
- Audio – minidisk recordings of free lunches
- an edition of free lunch biros
- Interrupt: artists in socially engaged practice, ACE
- Art of Encounter, Engage 15 publication