ATR-IR-SEC in water

Commoning is a practice of building different ways of being in the world which unfold and emerge in what ever spaces are available. The concept of space in time becomes important for understanding how commons can continue to exist, and how new commons can continue to emerge in contemporary society. Commoning is a spatial practice, evidenced in the etymological and ontological connection to natural commons historically a shared physical location or resource (see Chapter one). Communities and practices that occurred on natural commons were supported and formed by the specific characteristics of the space. When these spaces were appropriated for private property, the loss resulted in the reconstitution of not just the landscape but also the peoples who previously had access.

In our contemporary society, most space that is not privately owned is state owned.¹⁷ This eliminates common space; the third category of space which is neither private nor public. Lieven de Cauter writes that we have become unfamiliar with occupying spaces that is neither private nor public as the remnants of common space are scarce.¹⁸ Thus the concept of commoning creates a way of understanding the importance of the spatial situated-ness without necessarily drawing the conclusion that without being tethered to a specific location the commoning activity vanishes. De Cauter explains that the universal commons are available for use but not appropriation, whereas the sharing practices of a society or network are appropriated and transformed through use. He calls for ‘acts of commoning, of re-appropriation of the commons’

where practices of use produce spatial commons and ‘common places.’¹⁹ The spaces that are made into commons by everyday people are both created and maintained by use, as they themselves are also created and maintained by their practices (as described in Chapter one).

Conflict occurs once pressure is applied to a shared space that has been occupied in parafunctional ways to conform to the rules of property. De Cauter points out that a paradox of commoning is that it is immediately threatened as soon as attention is focused on it. Once it becomes re-conceptualised as potential property that must be either protected or profited from, immediately the debate begins to shapes the form it will take. For this reason, de Cauter believes that there should be no political controls in commons. For commons to exist they need to be ‘defended against economisation but also politicisation.’²⁰ He proposes that by conceiving of commons as space in time, they are able to continue to emerge in various ways particular to their temporal social and spatial conditions. Commons now manifest as moments in time, often temporary and fleeting but not always. They are made by a multitude of activities that can no longer just be identified as a social structure and culture specific to a territory.

Social and public creative works cannot exist independently from their context because, as Papastergiadis observes ‘what works in one setting will literally not work automatically in another setting.’²¹ He points out that negotiating the spaces in which art is experienced, is a key component of the work. The space is not neutral backdrop but instead is in dynamic relation with the work. As both the space and the creative activity condition one another, the relations between the space and the activity are co-produced and cannot be separated out from each other.

The spatial co-production is furthered by the involvement of the audience. For Papastergiadis the confluence of creative work, participants and space makes ‘a malleable stage upon which the work is not only presented, but also within which it is completed.’²²

Spatial creative practices already shape into public and private space when it makes incursions into spaces reserved for alternate purposes. Over the last few decades, art practices have increasingly moved out of museums to work with atmospheres, relations, and concepts instead of material objects. This migration from museums to urban and social spaces has been motivated for some creative practices by attitudes that can be understood as commoning; resisting commodification, encouraging social relations, and developing through shared activities. Different practices (some examples that are discussed throughout this research are the projects supported by Situation, the work of Bianca Hester, SenseLab and Raumlabor) can model specific techniques for furthering commoning in the existing urban fabric even when they do not necessarily see themselves as engaged in commoning. role of the state (political sphere) and capitalism

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As discussed in the introduction to this Chapter, the site where projects occur, and/or the spatial characteristics of the environment it is within, all provide particular constraints that can be construed as enabling. Considering the qualities of site and space as enabling for creative work is a model that can be extended to practices of commoning within public spaces. Rather than feeling dis-empowered by a lack of suitable spaces for an activity, the view can be inverted and spaces already firmly occupied by capitalism can be reconceived as providing constraints that instigate or enable a response. This view is supported by David Harvey who asserts the necessity of actively remaking the city.²³ He proposes that commoning in the urban environment should be ‘progressive forces of cultural production and transformation that can seek to appropriate and undermine the forces of capital, rather than the other way round.²⁴ When this is applied to creative practice it re-orients the outlook of both creative practice towards conceiving constraints as enabling, and the excess of commodified spaces producing abundance and opportunity rather than spatial scarcity, ultimately empowering activities of occupation and appropriation.

The spatial arrangements of shops afford a standing invitation to enter, enacting a transformation on the person entering from passer-by to consumer. The shopfront location extended on my interest in reusing commercial space – an interest that began with inhabiting and exhibiting in industrial spaces, and then publishing in an area claimed by commercial magazines (as described in Chapters one and two. The use of commercial space for creative practice is discussed further in the subsequent Chapter.) Reusing an unoccupied shop front for Consumed was an enquiry into spatial variations that could produce other transformations: a passer-by into an audience, the audience into a producer, the individual into a collective. For a passer-by, the storefront window is a casually encountered space of display, designed to capture attention, and offers an invitation for acquisition. Sylvia Lavin notes that Keisler’s description of the ‘plane of negotiation’ inherent in storefronts is:

analogous to how weather fronts are understood today as the plane of negotiation between different atmospheric densities and principle cause of meteorological phenomena.

This presents an opportunity to produce new kinds of urban happenings that might begin or be catalysed by the plane itself but that have their consequence elsewhere, out there.²⁵ This process is not aiming for civic transformation by activating abandoned commercial spaces.

Raumlabor develop social and spatial projects (such as Spacebuster discussed in Section 2.1) that negotiate how to activate spaces or communities without triggering displacement through gentrification. They focus on instigating an inclusive and imbricating process of being within an existing urban environment and simultaneously co-producing alternate ones; a form of spatial dreaming that seems at once convincing and entirely illogical.

23 David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (New York:

Verso, 2012).

24 Ibid., 112.

25 Sylvia Lavin, Kissing Architecture (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 2011), 89.

Fig 4.10 Emma Van Leest at 4pm. Fig 4.11 Van Leest testing how light could animate her paper cut-outs at 9pm.

4.2 PRODUCERS

Understanding the roles of producer and consumer was a dilemma that came into focus through Consumed in ways that were not necessarily clear at the time. Later, through a better understanding of how commoning values mutual management and production, it became more evident that the concern about these roles in creative work was indicative of the existing (but not yet acknowledged) affiliation with the precepts of commoning. The design of the space underlined this enquiry by making two distinct areas, one for production and one for display or consumption. Designing and organising the event meant the job description appeared to be that of a ‘producer’. When the audience participated in making the work, intentionally or not, they also became producers. The inverse of producing, ‘consuming’ was also not easily defined.

The project title, Consumed, alluded to both the consuming nature of intense involvement in a creative process and commercial acquisitiveness.

As creative practice has become more place and time based, the role of the curator has also changed. Claire Doherty observes that this shift fully appeared around 2005 when ‘the curator emerged as the linchpin in negotiations between artist and space’²⁶ and was actively involved in the production of the work. Doherty takes this role herself but is also trying to propose a broader understanding of the methodological processes of contemporary curatorial practices that are both context specific and concerned with duration. She sees herself as aligned with other ‘place making’²⁷ curators whose curatorial approach develops new understandings of place in time. Since One Day Sculpture Doherty has made more explicit her role as a cultural producer of public works that encourage the experimental arts and the formation of communities and new ways of interacting with the world. She believes that being a cultural producer is a form of curation that speaks to the processes of ‘selecting, shaping and managing an idea.’²⁸ The similarities in our approaches and interests, particularly finding One Day Sculpture shortly after I completed Consumed, encouraged me to try using her nomenclature, 'cultural producer', to define my role when I sought to explain what exactly comprised my practice. This title never felt appropriate and it was the continuing discomfort that made me want to find out why I was loath to claim that I was a ‘producer’.

O’Neill and Doherty identify how charismatic agency is significant to commissioning work in that it can gather and focus funding and opportunity.²⁹ They see this as essential to the development of the work, but they note that there are often ‘multiple charismatic agents’ within any project. That observation identified the root of my unease in claiming to be the producer of an event. However, O’Neill and Doherty have a sightly different view as the scale of the works they undertake means that political support is necessary and they believe this is more easily gathered if it is focussed through a specific ‘curator or producer.’³⁰ To satisfy the various stipulations required by external involvement and backing, the creative structures must necessarily be tighter and so also more predictable. Doherty continues to balance this while still privileging open and unscripted works³¹ but making the projects palatable to political support means they inevitably are structured on some level to result in ‘deliverables’, even if these are intangible.

The systems that I instigated in Consumed so frequently moved into realms I did not anticipate, and became something other than what I had designed for, that it felt disingenuous to claim I was ‘producing,’ when in reality it was more analogous with the subjective and reactive processes of ‘gonzo journalism.’³² This indicates a slippage, or openness to being within the project, influenced by the subjective experiences. The effect of this is that, both intentionally and accidentally, I shift from being the ‘producer’, to becoming a participant, to making work myself. This is an intersubjective and imbricated occupation, more aligned with de Certeau’s tactician whom he describes as involved in ‘a way of thinking invested in a way of acting, an art of combination which cannot be dissociated from an art of using.’³³ It is through the slippage between roles that I find myself within the event, involved alongside others, in ways that are various and emergent.

26 Paul O’Neill and Claire Doherty, “Locating the Producers: Durational Approaches to Public Art,”

in Locating the Producers:

An End to the Beginning a Beginning to the End, eds. Paul O’Neill and Claire Doherty (Amsterdam: Valiz

28 Rachel Elliot-Jones, “Critical Charisma: Situations,” in Conversation with Claire Doherty, The Assemble Papers June 3 (2016).

29 O’Neill and Doherty,

“Locating the Producers,” 8.

30 Political support could be described as coming from the institution of the university and the perception of the seriousness of doing a PhD, however in reality I felt like the institution was more focussed on actively undermining my approach and research with the ethics approval process.

31For example in the Sanctum project in Bristol anyone interested was invited to perform in back-to-back performances. There was a program for the event however this was kept private so the audience would not know what to expect or self-select based own existing preferences.

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The assumptions that I entered the project Consumed with, particularly around the roles of producer and consumer entailed and how they could be redressed, became tangled and difficult to decipher during the project. Over the extended time frame of this research, continued attempts to uncover the underlying concerns I have with these roles eventually resolved. Modern society has effectively separated many aspects of life that were once naturally more integrated; family from community, labour from leisure, consumption from production, leading to increased disjunctions and a more fractured sense of self. A core characteristic of commoning is a rejection of these kinds of strict demarcations. The intermingled and entangled characteristics of the projects overall, reflect my larger issue with contemporary acceptance of the segregation of life.

4.3 INDIVIDUAL CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT