[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 126, Issue 15

[hello at alanabartol.com]

Johannes, you raise such interesting questions about my work and I wanted the opportunity to respond. 
 
I bring up the notion of the monstrous because many people the work (usually the photographs), speak about Ghillie as a kind of “monster”. For many, she recalls “Swamp Thing”, “Green Man” and other nature spirit figures that can be found across cultures, speaking to the universality of “nature spirits” and trickster figures. In Scottish folklore, Ghillie Dhu (or Gille Dubh) was a timid yet wild male faerie. I do find it interesting that in conversation about the work, even when I refer to Ghillie as female (and people understand that I am in the suit), they continue to refer to her as male, perhaps speaking to the power of male archetypes in Western culture such as “the monster”.
 
There are two photographers I work with in Windsor to document the un-camouflagings. We often discuss what types of actions might occur and sometimes we stage shots but there is a lot of room for improvisation and most of it is unknown until we are out in the world. I use the word “performance” but I don’t know that it is always the most appropriate term. Often there is no audience, just the photographer and the non-human life surrounding us. I don’t feel as though I am performing but responding. In order to fully immerse myself in my surroundings, I have to forget about what my body looks like and disregard the camera. The street planter was an exception. Restless Precinct was quite different. I was a collaboration with the youth and the site. The work was framed as a “performance/intervention” into the site and appeared more theatrical which I attribute to the site. Moving among fragments of columns and sculptures removed from downtown Toronto and re-located to the park, I worked with the youth and a theatre performer to develop movements that reflected our research, knowledge and experiences of the site. Research into the park revealed that there had been a military base in the park where women were trained as radio operators during World War I and the military connection took on a whole new meaning, revealing a past that many people, including the City employees I spoke with, were not aware of. I have continued to conduct research and have received many images, a written text and other documents on the history of this training site.
 
I often use humour as a device to explore difficult topics, which allows the military association to fade but not completely disappear. For example, in the video piece we see Ghillie sitting in a forest area the way a sniper might in battle. She has set up a decoy of sticks, so that we might imagine she is waiting in battle. The context is somewhat revealed when the motorcyclists (they are on mini motorcycles) zoom past along the trail. The moment disrupted, Ghillie simply gets up and walks out of the frame. Also, this was not staged but I did plan to sit in a spot where I thought the motorcyclists might pass by.
 
I don’t want to take up too much space here but wanted to address the question regarding the “social work” aspect of my work. Perhaps some of this speaks to the questions Amanda was considering when thinking about other forms of knowledge that can be created through art. I have clear distinctions between projects that are co-creative and those that are not. The process, ethical considerations and authorship are very different with my collaborative and community-engaged works. Often an ongoing series will have aspects of both as with Forms of Awareness, which I consider a performance-based and public artwork, though the Restless Precinct project was a collaborative, community-engaged work.
 
I have not read Jackson’s book but it is on my list. “Education for Socially Engaged Art” http://pablohelguera.net/2011/11/education-for-socially-engaged-art-2011, by Pablo Helguera has been helpful in providing a framework for understanding the complex issues to consider in this practice. In it, he writes about the function of socially engaged art:
 
“Socially engaged art functions by attaching itself to subjects and problems that normally belong to other disciplines, moving them temporarily into a space of ambiguity. It is this temporary snatching away of subjects into the realm of art-making that beings new insights to a particular problem or condition and in term makes it visible to other disciplines.”
 
Like Helguera, I believe artists working in socially-engaged or community-engaged art practices can act with communities to make “the invisible” visible in a distinctive way. It should be made clear that artists are not social workers and are not there to “solve” problems or to take on the role of a social worker. Through this work, artists have the opportunity to reveal issues and histories that are relevant to communities and engage people in a process of art-making that can allow collaborators to draw in their own interests, skills and experiences. Through the process of creation, new forms of knowledge are produced and people are able to communicate in new ways. This article also raises some interesting points: http://isreview.org/issue/90/critique-social-practice-art
 
There is so much more to say on this topic but I want to return the focus to the featured artists this week. As I think through these questions in relation to my own work, I am wondering each of you consider your audience (both human and plant)? The role gardening is also interesting to think about....how has it shaped our knowledge of plants. Gardening has had a strong influence on my latest project with Amanda, The Deep Earth Treatment Centre, which considers 'life in the soil' and its connections to human health and bodies.

Thank you all for your contributions and I look forward to more discussion!


Alana


-----Original Message-----
From: empyre-request at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2015 10:00pm
To: empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
Subject: empyre Digest, Vol 126, Issue 15


----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------

dear all 

just wanting to thank Jo Simalaya for his patient and graceful replies to my skeptical questions. 
The comment on the ritual performance respect you show your plant actors impressed me, and of course 
I later had a lot more irreverent questions about the interactive scenarios you set up and the sonifications (of "voices" 
and incantations related to cultural memory or trauma) you program, but the week went by so fast, and I 
am now feeling quite dis/tracted to think about Alana's camouflage performances and �un-camouflagings�. 
Amazing stuff we hear about here. 

In your last post, Alana, you raise so many issues that I find very provocative to think about (first you describe your 
experience of the mimicry or the being in the camouflage make up; interestingly you echo the "extraterrestrial" idea 
that Murat brought up last week and which I didn't quite get; but you actually say you "appear to be a plant/human hybrid, 
an otherworldly monster but I am still very much human and of this world" -- 

why would you bring up the notion of the monstrous? how does this relate to the gender assumptions about the military camouflage, and how does the 
military association fade when you perform? 
who do you perform to? with? (the environment?) 
do you have someone follow you and "document" the work? how closely? is there a theatrical impetus in what you stage? 

Near the end you change the subject a little; and having worked in abandoned industrial area that was on the one hand 
transformed (by capital; reinvestment and infrastructural modification), on the other hand left to itself (rewilding, there actually 
is now an "Urwald" near the old coal-mine where I held my summer laboratory for ten years, and that "Urwald" has now become a attraction to many 
(humans; performance artists), I am interested in this matter of the industrial reserve; and what it's reserved for. 

so when you speak of research into, and interventions into, public space, and then when I reflect on the 
questions your work might raise, I could not help it but be reminded of some of the insights and provocations offered by 
Shannon Jackson's book, "Social Work: performing art, supporting publics" (New York: Routledge, 2011) -- 
well, yes, perhaps would you like to comment on the notion of "social work" in your work? (the striking example that 
Jackson discusses so well in her last chapter is Paul Chan's collaboration with New Orleans communities after Katrina flooding 
of the city, when Chan began to "see" Beckett's not growing tree, and the waiting for Godot not coming, and the collapse of 
help systems, supports, the racialized disaster, the perverse DIY strategies cooked up, etc.... 

Do we notice when trees aren�t there? 
Oh yes, we do. 


with regards 
Johannes Birringer