Tutorial Record 1

Amanda Beech, 21/2/08

As this was the first tutorial session on the course it served as an initial diagnostic session with Amanda to identify key concerns in my written and curatorial practice, as well as providing an opportunity to raise any initial issues about the course structure and project outlines. I created a PowerPoint presentation with slides that relate to my recent studies and some forthcoming events at Grey Area, as well as three saved html pages to illustrate recent website updates that support my practice. It quickly became apparent that this quantity of material illustrated a degree of over-planning, as the 30min slot only really allowed enough time for primary issues to be flagged and discussed. I went through a list of key events and concerns to introduce the direction of my research to date, as well as making Amanda aware of my forthcoming visit to Berlin for the Transmediale Festival and the difficulty I had with trying to attend Student Rep training due to poor communication on the college’s part over a cancelled training date at Camberwell College.

I spoke about my various projects at Grey Area, including Paige Perkins’ padded cell installation (The Elect), and a forthcoming talk by Barry Barker and Peter Seddon on their curatorial intervention at the Muse de Beaux Arts in Nimes (Tête-à-Tête) in which they projected digital animations alongside a canonical Delaroche painting. I raised my concerns on the nature of utilising Grey Area during the course, as I don’t want the gallery to become my default setting as a venue and act as a limiter to my ambition by always providing me with an immediate solution or ‘stock phrasing’. Although Grey Area is a fantastic resource to have and use I only want to use it when it is appropriate to do so and when the space really resonates with the project/exhibition. As the space needs to maintain an output I realise that I may have to bring others in who can curate certain shows and thereby free up some of my time to focus on projects that compliment and manifest my areas of research. As the course progresses I imagine that it will become increasingly apparent that I will need to bring in guest curators and share more of the responsibility in the day to day running of the space in order to give this course the time that is required.

Having presented examples of my recent films and performances at the start of the course, Amanda remarked on my interest in theatricality and the Burlesque, and asked how these elements in my own artistic practice may inform my approach to curating. The ludicrous nature of language’s often haphazard deployment, evolution, and ‘meaning’ has a significant presence in my practice and the emergence of an interest in the ‘real’, artifice, and systems of ‘belief’. Anton Artauld’s ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ and Anti-realist thought in the form of Michael Dummett’s ‘Realism’ (1963) are potential avenues for further research in this area, and perhaps should be considered in relation to the theatrical nature of my approach to hanging, promotion, design, and staging of spectacles. I will expand my reading on Slavoj Žižek to encompas ‘On Belief’, and will also look at Simon Critchley’s ‘On Humour’ (2002) and ‘Very Little…Almost Nothing’ (1997) with the intention of looking at banality, farce, and simulation.

I briefly discussed my research into analogy as a curatorial process and how I have drawn material form Thiery De Duve’s ‘Kant After Duchamp’. I will also look at Jaques Derrida’s ‘Signature Event Context’ (1997) and Deleuze’s Essays Critical and Clinical (1997) for further views on Structuralist and Post-Structuralist thought. It is my intention to apply for a Phd at a London college (perhaps Chelsea) when this course has been completed so I have been actively seeking out information on the the various deadlines for research applications and AHRC funding bids. Hopefully this course will act as pre-Phd study and provide me with a platform to test the assumptions that I have made in my area of research to date and to open them up to further debate and re-appraisal.