ok Beryl and Rob want war stories....I can't resist.....however these are
from the artists perspective...

re. artists preparedness - as an artist...there are SO many times when i've
faxed information to galleries 6 months in advance - insisted on agreements
that all my tech requirements (including lots of alternative options etc)
should be agreed before I agree to do the show...and still I turn up at the
venue, and nothing is there, and then tends to then arrive in dribs and
drabs over the course of the installation period although when you arrive
everyone swears it'll be there the following day(!)....and the installation
ends up being squidged into 2 days instead of the 5 or so that were
requested etc etc (and then of course you get overtired and upset and then
you get labelled 'difficult' which is really upsetting as actually you feel
that you are bending over backwards to be easy especially since you've now
been put in the unenviable position of knowing the only way the work will
go up is if you stay up 48 hours on the trot)....I now travel with rescue
remedy (healthier than smoking and not as inelegant as nailbiting)

I always ask for try outs or earlier hire of equipment etc to test ahead of
time. This is always  the first thing cut from the budget, even though
everyone agrees it is necessary. Fortunately I now have a lot of my own
equipment so this is less of a problem.

I always leave what effectively amounts to a working manual for any
complicated piece - and insist on running through the work with gallery
invigilators etc before I leave (I also make any tech support requirements
quite clear at the contract stage)....but it is amazing how many people -
who happily click away on their own PC's - seem incapable of switching
something on or off (or for that matter just checking on it) once a day.
Now a lot of my work is networked I can check it from home...and let the
gallery know when to flick a switch - sometimes when I'm literally
thousands of miles away and they are sitting in the same room (!!!!)...I do
keep switch flicking to a bare minumum, but with something like
realencoder, someone has to press 'start' (although actually I think I
could organise that remotely next time and even do that from home)!!!

of course if one makes neatly packaged work, then this is a lot more
straightforward for galleries, dealers and collectors...and this suits the
work of some artists very well (and also helps them become collectable and
therefore collected)...however if as an artist one is more interested in
the edges, or exploring less charted terrain, or just plain investigating
and ploughing fresh turf... then doubtless there will always be issues of
supporting the more ground breaking, less packageable entities - and when
one is working with networked works, neat modular packages simply won't
happen (not least as one is working with a different infra - or intra -
structure - wherever one ends up installing (ISDN, T1, ADSL et al).

one war story:
a few years ago ...a big commission for a new space in a museum which was
to be up for 12 months ...a planned 2 week install ...I arrived to find the
electricians had been given the date of my opening as the deadline ffor
them to wire the space(!)...I installed the piece by torchlight working my
way around the electricians scaffold towers - one extension cable and a lot
of guesswork...

and another:
arriving to find the pavement being dug up by roadworkers on the day of the
opening of one of my street projections (no-ones fault actually but a
nightmare nevertheless)

a particularly gruelling war story (and this is before my internetworks):
one exhibition I was in about 5 years ago (I'm not going to mention any
specifics, but some people will know!)...I was invited to do 6
installations over 8 sites in the city - some in the museum, some in public
spaces as part of a big video survey show - one of the installations was an
entirely new piece of work - I had prepared a detailed schedule which was a
very tight 10 days for all the work, but realistic if the equipment that
the gallery had promised had arrived when I arrived.  The equipment turned
up the day before the opening...the work was literally thrown up...it
looked terrible...and the new work was installed in 2 hours flat during the
press view.  But the worst of it was for me, that whilst earlier in the
week the museum director had been apologetic etc, and I had been very
polite if anxious....by the end of the week he wouldn't look me in the
eye....somehow his embarassment had become so extreme that he couldn't face
me - which was for me far more upsetting than all the traumas of getting
the work up in an absurd amount of time, not to mention the upset that in a
big group show the work really wasn't as it should have been...

Its true sometimes I'm not as well prepared as I might be - choosing often
to respond to the particular space or situation that i find myself
in....but in fact the flexible approach is a godsend, as I know however
well organised I think I am before any installation, I know there will
always be a wall that will fall down (3 installations ago) or a network
that won't be installed until an hour before the opening or a case where
all the computers turn up on time - but without any monitors, or a day when
everything is going too well, so I end up creating the drama by breaking
something/blowing something up myself (by accident) etc etc etc

I've come to enjoy the problem solving and accompanying adrenalin rush as
part of the work...but at the end of the day it tends to be the artist -
not the gallery - who looks bad if the work isn't as it should be...