Judgement Day

We had our meeting with Anna and Stephen to go through our proposal this morning.

They gave us some artists names to research about viewer interaction (Gillian Wearing, Chris Burden, Marina Abramovic) and were told we needed to come up with strategies for a lack of engagement (which made me feel better about my previous apprehension of the confession booth).

Anna thought that we weren't being ambitious enough which I think came as a surprise to all of us. She thought we should use both spaces that we had been looking at as galleries in order to explore ideas in a 'White Cube' and perhaps help to create a contrast within the exhibition. (Perhaps have a collective installation in the downstairs space and individual spaces upstairs.) I think we were all a bit concerned with filling two spaces with only six pieces of work. I understand that galleries need white space to provide the viewers with some 'rest' space, but I'm still not sure how'd we'd manage with both spaces. Although I feel that it's a challenge we should undertake as Anna seemed quite convinced that we'd be able to manage.

Stephen mentioned that we need to generate an ambience with our curation rather than trying to discover it ready made so I think we really need to get onto making the works so that we can play around with the curation in order to find a way that works best.

The use of candles has not been allowed due to the fire hazard (which I was expecting, and rather relieved to hear.) While a single candle that is being supervised could be used, I think we all realised it was a little unnecessary.

We discussed the possibility of restricting access to one viewer at a time, and began to talk about theatrical interaction ( told to look at Tinho Segal). I think this will be a bit of a challenge to find a professional and effective way to carry this out, but if we manage it I think it will really add to the feel of the show.

They liked the idea of a contract which scared me a little. We need to research  about what a contract entails and what route we want to take with it and were told to look at the Milgrim Experiment for ideas of permission. I just worry about what we will do if people decline the contract and so end up with no viewers. From a personal point of view, I think it would put me off. They liked the idea of the ‘confession box’, but we need to think of its design which much like the contract is going to be difficult to find a way for it to be successful.

We discussed the necessity of creating some sort of room design (floor plans, models etc) and agreed to preview each other’s work to ensure that sizing, presentation and order of each piece can be taken into account when putting the exhibition together.

I feel a lot more confident about my ideas for my individual piece of work now as well, as do I think we all, so hopefully we'll have them all completed soon so we can start to sort out an arrangement.