Thanks Johannes for your very considered response.

I've just got back to my hotel from ANAT's excellent Super Human symposium
in Melbourne - and am negotiating a flu my self - but will try to address
some of the important questions you raise.

> "collaboration" - with hospital patients" on what
> exactly? how do you collaborate with subjects of health treatment or
> rehabilitation, when it comes to exhibition framed as art or related to art
> practice of exhibiting?
> how what constitutes such collaboration in such cases where, as George
> implied, patients or subjects housed/treated within a hospital are the
> collaborates and not (only or exclusively) the medical scientists, what are
the 
> ethics involved, the organizational frameworks of such work that is set in
> (hmmm, non-conventional) environments,


With the Heart Library Project I try to frame audience engagement in terms
of invitation and the offering of stories to an evolving collection
(library)- rather than 'authoring' as such - a space to exchange experiences
and ideas of embodiment. 'Collaboration' is too strong a word - given that I
as the designer have laid out the terms of the interaction, but certainly I
believe its important to honour the ownership people may feel for their
contributions (people can have their drawings returned to them after the
exhibition if they wish).


From the start, when Caitlin Newton-Broad and I conceptualised this project
in 2007 - we deliberately set out to temporarily collapse distinctions
between patients, family and staff, to support an experience of bodies,
*temporarily* unencumbered by these social and institutional labels, to
create a physical and psychological shelter that could offer some respite
from these labels and (sometimes very important) expectations.

In my face to face on-site interactions - I continue to emphasise that this
is not a work 'for sick people' as such - its very important that the work
should be accessible to anyone motivated to participate  - regardless of
their body status within the medical framework. This alters the
instrumentality of the work significantly. One of the aims of the project
was to support embodied self-representations that acknowledge the existence
of subjectivities that go beyond the labels we operate under within these
institutions - be that as health care workers, visitors or patients/clients.

> Then, for me at least, there is also the question of
> critical response to the exhibition setting, since in George's case the work
> (The Heart Library) was exhbited after all and thus needed to follow some
> criteria, formal and aesthetic, or "relational-aesthetic" or participatory,
> which are moving slowly to the forefront or were pushed there by recenrt
> discussions on the sell out of "participatory" arts ideology. (i am refering
> to Claire Bishop's critique of "collaboration" and relational aesthetics) (see
> Bishop, "Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics" or her "The Social Turn:
> Collaboration and its discontents,² Artforum, 2005 -
> http://12k.com/forum/index.php?topic=1125.0)

I'll need to read this essay properly before I can comment (hopefully this
week) - but am aware of some of her arguments via an excellent essay by the
artist Lucas Ihlein
http://www.lucazoid.com/bilateral/bilateral-blogging-essay-about-bilateral-k
ellerberrin-now-available/
also cited in a very interesting post by Randal Szott of Leisure Arts:
http://leisurearts.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

But definitely  - the choice of venue was driven by a desire to engage with
a broader population beyond various professional cliques - and to work in a
context in which people where already engaged in a lot of thinking/feeling
*very deeply* about issues of embodiment, physiology, mortality etc.
Its the quality of thinking/feeling that attracted me to working with this
population/audience.

When its shown in a hospital, I see my audience for this work as two-part:
the primary (the population of the public hospital (which potentially
includes a very wide slice of society, that can include arts professionals
if they are sick!), and secondary - the art world, and interactive
art/design worlds that I earn some income from as a casual tutor, exhibiting
artist and grant recipient.

Both are vital (they overlap too) - the later strategically, and
economically/professionally, and the the former conceptually and
vocationally, as someone who still believes in the capacity of art and other
forms of aesthetic engagement to add meaning and value to the lives of
people living and working beyond professional art cliques, many of whom I'd
have no way of engaging with in my gallery-based projects.

I'm very sensitive to the potential of this work becoming a mere spectacle
of 'worthy, socially engaged work' that can be marketed to arts producers
and funding bodies, whilst failing miserably to engage with the primary
audience, but honestly - its the depth and sincerity of individual on-site
engagements with the work, that sustains my commitment to this particular
field. 

> 
> We had an exhibition at Brunel's Beldam art gallery, at the beginning of 2009,
> which had been first done at the hospital where the collaboration took place,
> then it moved into this (university/educational) art context and further on
> into others;  a book was published, a DVD made:   the work:  "Transplant" - a
> collaborative installation by photographer Tim Wainwright and sound artist
> John Wynne based on their residency at Harefield Hospital  ( in a lung and
> organ transplant unit) .
Mmm - when I present this in a gallery again - I'd be inclined to search for
a way to foreground the contributions of the gallery-visitors, and include
contributions from the (exotic other) hospital participants as one strand of
responses amongst many (perhaps not even Identifying them as such - but just
saying that *some* of these contributions have come from a hospital setting.
 
> The exhibition is a large-scale photographic sound installation, showing
> patients waiting for transplant or after surgery, sounding their lives and the
> machinery of  treatment....in the ICU/trauma unit..........  and when i got
> invited to a public panel dicsussion, one of the subjects (survivor of lung
> transplant) and one of the doctors participated along with the artists and the
> respondents (a sociologist and myself, a choreographer/media artist).

Yes - this sounds problematic - especially if its secondary audience assumes
greater importance than the original audience. How much more interesting it
would have been, to recontextualise the hospital materials with a restaging
of the research project PROCESS in the university context - recording and
displaying photos and stories of academics awaiting for departmental funding
transplants, choreographing staff struggling through unfair dismissal,
sexual harassment or work place bullying claims etc... Imagine all those
photos of brave dignified faces, those inspiring struggles and victories
against all the odds, the saintly legal teams etc. Alas - few of us would
consent to such representation for fear of how they'd compromise our
professional standing - so we save that for our 'research subjects'.

> That such work speaks in many ways, i have no doubts; that it might blow you
> away, i don't doubt;and i wonder, George, whether you felt your impact had to
> do with education, healing, therapy, social bonding, sensual play, imaginative
> exploration of body and health etc?

I see all the above as intrinsic to a concept of aesthetics in an expanded
field, right-living, Social Sculpture etc. What I need next from a funding,
policy and professional research perspective - are some tools and resources
to help me assess, evaluate and quantify these goals/claims for the benefit
of the people who decide how and if this work is to be financed on an
ongoing basis. 
> 
> exploitative of the subjects and disingenious to a certain extent, riding
> "arts residency" on the coattails of "community projects" requiring
> ameliorative positive impact markers).

Fortunately (or not) my hosts - St. Vincent's Public Hospital, and their
Campus Arts Committee required no such assessments or markers - they have
been running the arts programme voluntarily for over 12 years, based on a
shared belief in, and appreciation of the benefits that art continues to
provide to the hospital population as a whole - refreshingly hands-on,
no-bullshit, 'just do it' approach, but contingent on the goodwill and
generosity of all involved (artists included - who receive no fee for their
contribution, except for the possibility of sales, of which the hospital
requires no share of). They are on the whole - a very pragmatic, and
human-centred organization in contrast to the business-driven models in
place in many other hospitals in Australia - many current and former staff
do attest to this.

Its exactly when you do start to frame the works as "being for sick people"
that these impact markers become significant and highly problematic - and
this work is still very much in progress as far as public arts/health policy
and funding goes. ..And subject to a lot of disagreement as to the most
appropriate model to use i.e. Medical, or social markers. There is a lot of
great work going on in the area of arts therapy in health settings - and
many of these practitioners struggle with these demands.

From my perspective what's needed is a way of valuing the social capital
that art and cultural projects can and do help develop - any leads?
> 
> Where do you see the sites of your exhibition, George  (community centers,
> schools, public places? commercial spaces/ private spaces?)
Ideally a mix, if if I'm to sustain my practice economically, though that's
very dependent on the whims/agendas of state funding policy or private
benefactors.

> and how do we approach the question of value of research, criteria of ethics
> or aesthetics? criteria of science method, artistic method?  promotional
> value/advertising?
That's HUGE! For one thing - as far as socially engaged critical arts
practice and research goes - as a society we really need methods for
understanding and *valuing* how processes of research, aesthetics, and
learning unfold in *everyday living*, across specific sections of a society
(including, and beyond academia) - ethnography seems a logical starting
point - but I imagine economics (in a more expanded form), and social
ecology is fundamental to this too (since we are talking here about values).

But its now 3:45am! - and my chest congestion is getting the better of me...


> respectfully, 
> 
> Johannes
> 

Thanks Johannes,

George