hi all,

apologies that the CRUMB list has been so scattershot during this  
shortest month of the year with a few too many general announcements  
for our liking. everyone seems quite busy and some great  
opportunities abound!

it's now March but we haven't heard from all of the peeps we invited  
to talk about the process of curating lab and time-based residencies,  
and also about the theme of how artists are responding to the  
pressing concerns of the environment. so i'd like to summarize the  
chit-chat so far and allow this discussion to continue into March,  
and mutate however it like.

i initially asked three (long-winded) questions:

1. "what are the necessary conditions for weaving people together  
(technological or otherwise)... [during] a time-limited residency in  
a specific environmental and geographic place?"

2. "how do you manage the successful delivery of projects if the  
artist can only be onsite 8 days before the project launch or has to  
leave the day after, or you only get access to the presenting venue  
two days before the opening? How do you bring people up to speed,  
both those local and those coming in from afar?"

3. "how can you respond to place when you are in a new place, with  
new people, seeking to work together in a limited time-period,  
mindful of existing relationships and histories and geographical  
constraints to create something meaningful and lasting?"

Artist Dominic Smith commented that his public engagement project  
depended on "the temperament of the local people" and indicated that  
a receptive audience can change the pace or speed at which a project  
can develop in its specific site. convincing people to participate  
takes longer in some social sites than others i suppose. Curator  
Mercedes Vicente added that often in "big hubs" "everyone is too busy  
and overwhelmed" implying that siting work in smaller communities  
garners more rapid and open participation.

curator/artist Melinda Rackham noted that she had deliberately placed  
herself "as an awkward novice in an environment where people are  
making highly resolved work for  exhibition and publishing outcomes"  
but that she was enjoying making her project social, playful, and  
online, as it was a refreshing change from "the usual road blocks [of  
a gallery installation] like connectivity, noise, light,  
misinformation etc." Her caveat however: "two weeks is not long  
enough in a self directed and self organsied residency, especially  
when you come from another country and must do both the physical,  
time, and cultural acclimatizing as well as gather materials and set  
up spaces be they physical or virtual."

Theorist and artist Sally Jane Norman noted the importance in a  
residency situation of local 'guides' of sorts to "carefully open up  
spaces where difference can be articulated and perhaps resolved, of  
creating social protocols in which we can develop trust and  
interaction." While at times for us at SCANZ this was a part of the  
Maori welcome ceremonies, at other times, as Sally Jane pointed out,  
it was more about people taking on particular roles: the curator at  
the gallery, the artist with the students in their workshop, "A kind  
of unspoken maieutics or midwifery."

SCANZ organiser Ian Clothier wrote that being "involved at important  
boundary moments such as beginnings [provides] an important space of  
acknowledgement and inclusion, from which to build further interaction."

Writer Danny Butt wrote that it was a struggle to balance the  
'autonomy of the artist' in a residency situation with the pre- 
existing commitments to local partners, collaborators, and  
participants from the previous residency, a bit like being the eldest  
in the family: "it is to be spoilt, but also to be especially  
obligated." Danny also wrote of the "indigenous cultural perspective  
that sees the geography of the place one is in as an ancestor and the  
future simultaneously" which has special resonance when working with  
new media art which is somehow always seeking out the future of  
practice.

Danny also pointed to something which I have described as a  
'sourdough model' for curating new media art (see the chapter in the  
book just out from Univ California Press edited by Christiane Paul),  
when curators are involved in the artistic production and  
dissemination of the work: the possibility within collaborations (or  
indeed residencies) to adopt time-scales for the realisation of a  
single work, which can then be used later, in a different time-scale  
for the propagation of other works: "The success of this ... might  
then become the basis for another ... project which could be  
replicated or extended elsewhere." Danny cleverly pointed out the  
tensions this model evokes in the location in which it is situated,  
and i'd urge you to (re)read his post to get at that.

Since asking those questions and receiving these posts in reply, i  
have paddled/floated down the Whanganui River in NZ aboard an  
enormously long waka (canoe), designed for 25+ paddlers, staying at  
maraes and other sites of interest, completely unplugged and off- 
grid. my companions were artists (photographers, videographers,  
writers, painters, technologists, educators) and we took the occasion  
of getting to know one another (and one another's paddling styles and  
snoring habits) to discuss, in a slow-flow way, questions of  
collaboration, technology, and the good, the bad and the ugly of each  
day. we often had no choice but to respond to our environment  
(pouring rain, sloshing mud, sandflies, rapids), which evened us all  
out somehow, and were both glad and sad at the journey's time-limited  
nature. so far the "results" are a photo album on a server, and  
extended email chatter about future collaborations, possible outputs,  
and the next time. Angus Leech, from the Banff New Media Institute,  
also has a treasure trove of audio recordings and photographs, geo- 
tagged with GPS coordinates, for later use. however, for me, i think  
the slow-flow journey proved that you don't need a lab, you don't  
need a lot of tools and technology to foster collaboration and to get  
people thinking about place. (you do need a teapot, a warm  
comfortable place to sleep at night, lots of sourdough bread or  
gluten free alternative and flapjack, or what we called 'liquid  
biscuits' to keep everyone going.)

i was reminded of the joint residency that artists Saul Albert and i  
had in newcastle at ISIS arts some summers ago. i think we had a  
month's time together founding the Faculty of Taxonomy and still now  
Saul is working on the results of that productive time spent thinking  
and talking (the idea for his project with "The People Speak" called  
"Who Wants To Be..." was sparked from some of our word-game playing  
and voting systems held around a table with nothing more  
technological than visitors to the studio, paper, pencil, pots of tea).

i welcome posts from others about the necessary conditions for  
weaving people together (technological or otherwise)... [during] a  
time-limited residency in a specific environmental and geographic  
place, and the stories of the successes and failures - what has  
worked and what hasn't - which could be useful to other media arts  
curators developing residencies and geographically-specific  
commissions and projects.

sarah