VARIOUS RESPONSES AND DOCUMENTS:

‘School Trip’- Art Academy at Instal Glasgow

By Lauren Velvick, Islington Mill Art Academy

Last November three members of Islington Mill Art Academy, including myself, travelled North-wards to Glasgow in order to attend, and take part in a series of workshops organised by Glasgow Open School (G.O.S) as part of the tenth annual Instal Festival. Given our status as an alternative art school organisation, and rather academically referential title, I like to consider our visit to be a kind of school trip.

Instal is an experimental music and sound festival, organised by Arika. For this tenth edition of Instal the aim was to present not just a festival of experimental music, but an experimental festival – challenging the conventional structure of a music festival, and exploring the dynamic between audience and performer. Improvisation and the denial of the subjectivity of the artist were central concerns. Nowhere was this explored with more dedication that within the evacuation of the great learning workshops, run by G.O.S. which we had been invited to take part in.

A number of individuals who had been partaking in G.O.S prior to Instal met with Ray Brassier, and Mattin to discuss what form these workshops would take. Ray Brassier is a philosophy faculty member at the American University of Beirut, and an proponent of speculative realism, Whilst Mattin is a musician/sound-artist exploring the anti-capitalist and revolutionary potential of improvisation, who also performed at Instal. They had been looking to the improvisational work of Cornelius Cardew, particularly The Great Learning as performed by The Scratch Orchestra and, as such, the concept of a graphic score was prevalent, along with a somewhat confrontational approach to the notion of a workshop.

Just as Instal as a whole was seeking to interrogate the notion of an experimental music festival, so these workshops denied many of the expectations which the term workshop evokes. An Intense, sometimes unpleasant, and sometimes highly enjoyable experience for the participants, evacuation of the great learning certainly lead us three from the I.M.A.A to question our approach to meeting, learning and making.

At G.O.S HQ when I arrived the participating non-leaders were busy accumulating objects for making noise and could serve as props for the workshop. These were, however, in the end mostly ignored. Setting up the space before any participants arrived we began by arranging chairs into a large circle, the traditional method of seating a group so that theoretically everyone has equal power. However, we soon realized that in such a large group (around 50 participants were signed up to attend) the massive circular space would only intimidate some, and encourage others. With this in mind we rearranged the chairs messily; facing each other, back to back, upside down and every which way around the room. At first participants took chairs and sat amongst each other, however soon the group had organised themselves into the giant oval which we had initially rejected. Some of the participants became frustrated and demanded that ‘something be done!’, others were happy to quietly sit and listen, yet others still actively tried to avoid any action; certain G.O.S-ers notably ‘striking’ when plans and alliances began to form. From the beginning of the very first workshop every single action which was taken by anyone was interrogated, questioned and denied, and the suffocating lack of action which this entailed surely contradicted many expectations of an ‘improv workshop’.

On the first night evacuation of the great learning had failed in almost every respect, if it were to be judged as a traditional workshop; engagement had been nigh on impossible, after all what was there to engage with? Confusion and frustration reigned, and it is doubtful that anybody left feeling creatively empowered. However, in interrogating the notion of ‘a workshop’ and in exploring boundary-less improvisation it was judged to be a success. Those members of the G.O.S who were there, along with Ray and Mattin endeavoured to play a minimal role, denying their subjectivity and status as workshop leaders and arts practitioners.

Travelling to Glasgow and partaking in the workshop prompted us to reflect on our own structures and means of engagement at I.M.A.A. At the Art Academy I would generalise that we tend to favour action, over debate. Taking part in The Glasgow Open school has acted as a catalyst for us to re-address our engagement in debates and ignite more discursive meetings.

A defining factor of G.O.S, though they may not intend this to be the case, is that many of the ‘core members’* are friends. Whilst at Islington Mill our relationships seem to manifest in a seemingly professional way: we work together, we have meetings, but we don’t necessarily spend time together socially. This may be to do with the way in which G.O.S germinated within the Glasgow Art School, and as such attracts many, though not all, attendees of similar ages and lifestyles. Whereas within the Art Academy we have often found our differing lifestyles problematic, with some members working full time, some unemployed, some living in Islington Mill and some living miles away. In fact, a suggestion which arose from our experiences in Glasgow was that we should endeavour to spend more time together socially, in order to function better as a self-supporting collective taking something from our experience of G.O.S to develop our own collective means of action, education and debate.

Lauren Velvick – Islington Mill Art Academy – Feb 2011

* I must apologise here to Glasgow Open School for describing them in this way. The Open School is perhaps best described as a belief, or concept which anybody can partake in at any time, however for the purposes of this article I need to refer to the ‘group’ so mundanely.

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A response to the above:

Thank you for the reflection, much food for thought, Convivial Society and the pains of it’s reconstruction were indeed key tensions in the Instal episode. I am keen to comment on 2 points or more:
One, is the discursive action taken to be adapted or to be observed as a struggle to shed the convention of an event?
Two or more points, perhaps there is no need to apologise in the postscript for this is a snap shot in time of your feelings, I do agree it was a clique and to outsiders we looked to them or Akira for guidance like good studizens frustrated that we were not gettg professional bite sized packages or equitable oomph for our investment of time. ‘run by GOS’ was also the administrative/marketing presumption which demanded accountability from what was not an event about running or determining.

Irresponsible? Sometimes it felt this way but I guess our expectations desires displaced can lead to such rebuttals/ bang and blames. Is one approach more professional than the other? More open or well out of necessity, is learning from one another without the parenthesis of school or structure always so insecure to this age? Is emancipation an illusion? Presuming one party knows more than the other and needs explaining to? (Ranciere) Is it radical one upmanship ( if there is such a term ) to assert purity of whether GOS has germinated from within the institution or is it more important they exist at all?

True the tight bonds of the ‘core’ group do sometimes alienate yet I wonder if in it’s own way is somewhat a model of what a convivial society where trust, openness and autonomous actions with tools made accessible (Illich) of what we are all drawn to, to seeking friends and learning together. Perhaps becoming friends is what we convivial society seeks we are bureaucratically managed livingwise and lifestylewise, guided from choices of true public engagement to private experiences, we need so badly to practice becoming friends -to remember up til the 70s self build homes were our only means until architects sold governments housing units instead of encouraging systems of self build kits and where citizens share resources and negotiate terms of inhabitation, the term professional needs to be addressed for that must surely be a visage from an era of overt managerialism we are resisting, be free to exclude or include for this is our nature we must be careful to avoid bourbonite pride ( Illich) where we tear down oppressors to become oppressors on our own terms.

GOS for all their struggles and complicated being togethers are opening a space where the ties that bind are reexamined and frayed or bound tighter as recovery in the demythologisation of the science of learning and the rediscovery of lost languages is the quest for rehabilitated conversation that is not transactional.

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The Wire responses:

Participants’ thoughts and impressions of Instal 2010 recorded during the week following the event.

All together now:

One by one:

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images mediated by an eye mediated by open school