Thanks a lot Ruth for reacting, here is some of the follow-up - a bit more concrete :) of my Art Agency "research" (at the end I make a link between agency art inter and intra )
Hi all readers Agency Art seems to be a difficult term: too much bad feelings go with the word (NSA) ; too similar sounding to Art Agency, and so triggers thoughts about commerce. Still I want to persevere. It's also an empowering word, referring to Butler, ANT theory and, for me Karen Barad. Let me try, while forgetting a bit all the theoretical implications, to describe a few projects, I would like to put under this hat and also mention some I don't think are part of it. I consider the following being interesting examples of Agency Art : * All the work by *Deufert&Plischke;* an artistic duo, who adhere to the radical notion that *choreography* can build society, not merely illustrate it. Theatre takes place only insofar as it can be knit together by everyone – artists and spectators – in the moment of performance. The artistic ego is erased and the work written collectively. Choreography becomes a social activity, not determined by aesthetic principles, but by existential and philosophical concepts such as war and peace, freedom and truth. It unfolds as a landscape of choice and commitment for all, where the political is inherent to the act of theatre, and where art is defended as necessary excess. http://deufertandplischke.net/who-we-are *Keywords*: collectively, horizontal / refuse hierarchy, a knitting together of artists and performers in the moment of the performance, erasure of the artistic ego, community, immediacy, practice * The latest work by *LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner** HEWILLNOTDIVIDE.US <http://HEWILLNOTDIVIDE.US>*. This is a participatory live-streamed performance, open to all outside the Museum of the Moving Image in New York. A mantra "HE WILL NOT DIVIDE US" acts as a show of resistance or insistence, opposition or optimism, guided by the spirit of each individual participant and the community. After 21 days the museum abandoned the project: http://www.movingimage.us/exhibitions/2017/01/20/detail/hewillnotdivide-us/ *Keywords*: participatory, community, individual, public space, politics * *Building Conversation* by *Lotte van den Berg;* a director and theatre maker. In *Building Conversation* she uses collective improvisation to make joint creations. It's about exploring, together with everybody who wants to join in, how we talk and how we could talk with each other. Van den Berg wants the participants to look at conversing and themselves in conversation in a different way and so make a space in which alternative scenarios for reality are possible. http://www.buildingconversation.nl/en/ *Keywords*: temporary meeting place, the ordinary, participation, on location, improvisation, coming together, rehearsing alternatives, re-hijacking therapy, exercise our relations to others, our social (in)capacity, explore rituals, being together, practice - : Some performances seem to be a bit staged. * The *Deep listening* practice of *Pauline Oliveros* "Deep Listening" fosters creative innovation across boundaries and across abilities, among artists and audience, musicians and non-musicians, healers and the physically or cognitively challenged, and children of all ages. The Roots of the Moment: https://www.academia.edu/199371/Interactive_Music *Keywords*: healing, practice, enactment, responding, improvisation, ritual, including environmental conditions, attentional strategies, instructions - : A lot of times the public is a listener only. * The *Poietic Generator* by *Olivier Auber* is a contemplative social network game. It allows everybody, all together regardless of his/her language, culture and educational background, to participate in real time in the process of self-organization at work in the continuous emergence of a global picture. http://poietic-generator.net/?page_id=31 Keywords: open to all, collective, game, participation, apparatus, choice making, temporal behavioural phenomena * *Lingua Ignota* (2009 -?) by *Samantha Gorman*. In this project a poem was converted back and forth between English and blissymbolics over three rounds of translation and negotiating consensus by diverse participants. “Lingua Ignota is about a collaboratively authored transference of lexical meaning between language systems.“ I wrote a bit more about this project here http://e-stranger.tumblr.com/post/156539652196/by-deciphering-the-texts-body-you-become-its *Keywords*: protocol, apparatus, collaboratively authored - : the transference is collectively authored, not the project, the experiment * *Walking Practices * by *Ienke **kastelein* Ultimately we wish to practice a way or 'new habit' of walking as a way of being nor outside or inside but opening a new space across them, and doing so in common (not just an individual contemplative practice). http://www.ienkekastelein.nl/index-projecten.html *Keywords*: participation, changing rules, choices, practice, connecting, the unexpected, public space, response, share - : It is staged Of course there are lot of other works I consider Agency Art: First of all *Darren O'Donnell*'s social theater works and his book *Social Acupuncture*, which argues for an aesthetics of civic engagement, and *Miranda July*'s work *Somebody*, where text messages are delivered by a real person, the receiver might not know. But also *Félix González-Torres* *Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)* (1991) a 175 pound-pile of candy, from which visitors are encouraged to take samples, *Marina Abramović*: *The Artist Is Present* and *512 hours*, where the public became the performing body, *Yoko Ono*'s *Cut piece*, *Gego*'s work on networks and space and a lot of *Lygia Clark*'s multi-sensory participative work. I choose examples from fine art, dance, theatre, music, performance, digital art and electronic poetry, which shows that Agency Art is beyond these disciplines. It's not an extra one, it's not a new sect, in fact it's not even interesting to look at it that way. Let it be more a point of view, an anchor point from where to think critically about artistic practices. Why didn't I include the relational aesthetic artists? Why not for instance Rirkit Ttiravanija who initiates ways to enable the public to be a part of the art-making process? Maybe because the public can't make real choices in his work, which is more like a staged environment, which needs these people to make it alive, but not really gives them any agency, they are not challenged to make choices besides being there or not being there. I think some works by *Eduardo Kac* like *Darker than Night* and *Teleporting an Unknown State* 1994/96 would also apply. And what about Conversational Robots? *Eliza* once was of a great influence on how I regarded conversation. There are certainly some bio-art works that I should consider. I am interested – if you know some good examples, please let me know. Live-coding could also be included, especially when not done alone. And I would also like to include Burak Arikan's applet called Mypocket, if he made it available to all. Live cinema (for instance the *cinéma émotive* of Marie Laure Cazin, who uses spectator's brainwaves to make a live montage of a film, and Roderick Coover and Scott Rettberg's *The Interrogations Project*; a navigational VR film), sofar has the inconvenience that the agency is restricted to one participant. (btw the same is true for most online hypertextual works). Keywords: *collectively made, horizontal / refusing hierarchy, a knitting together of artists and performers in the moment of the event, erasure of the artistic ego, community, immediacy, practice, changing rules, choices, connecting, accepting the unexpected, public space, response, share, protocol, apparatus, collaboratively authored, open to all, collective, temporal behavioural phenomena, healing, enactment, improvisation, including environmental conditions, attentional strategies, instructions, temporary meeting place, embracing the ordinary, on location, coming together, rehearsing alternatives, re-hijacking therapy, exercise our relations to others, our social (in)capacity, explore rituals, being together, participatory, individual, politics* *"Agency Art is art that makes it clear to the receiver via his or her body what is at stake, where opportunities for action lie, and which virtual behaviours he or she can actualize. It demonstrates how choices work, and how to create patterns that retain their coherence while you remain part of them and transform when you move within their field of action."* Agency Art is made of interaction, but should be constructed, looked at with intra-active glasses. Barad : Agency is not held, it is not a property of persons or things; rather, agency is an enactment, a matter of possibilities for reconfiguring entanglements. So agency is not about choice in any liberal humanist sense; rather, it is about the possibilities and accountability entailed in reconfiguring material-discursive apparatuses of bodily production, including the boundary articulations and exclusions that are marked by those practices. First of all, agency is about response-ability, about the possibilities of mutual response, which is not to deny, but to attend to power imbalances. Agency is about possibilities for worldly re-configurings. So agency is not something possessed by humans, or non-humans for that matter. It is an enactment. And it enlists, if you will, “non-humans” as well as “humans.” Interview with Karen Barad by Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin, June 6, 2009. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/o/ohp/11515701.0001.001/1:4.3/--new-materialism-interviews-cartographies?rgn=div2;view=fulltext All the best Annie ps very much interested in holes, errors, gaps in this ... On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 9:39 AM, ruth catlow <ruth.cat...@furtherfield.org> wrote: > Hi Annie, > > I appreciate both this and your previous post on Agency Art > <https://aabrahams.wordpress.com/2017/01/26/agency-art/>very much. I have > yet to properly read the two articles you shared. You asked in your > previous email, why Agency Art had not gained more traction. At first scan > I think that the practices of Agency Art are full of riches but the name > has unfortunate connotations in relation to commercial culture - if you > search the term online it returns pages of links to advertising agencies. > > I especially appreciate how Barad's intra-action offers a new way to think > about how new groups and exclusions are established and reveals how > difference get made and unmade. It also suggests to me that we can take the > effect on viewers/audiences as part of the materials of the work (in this > way it moves on the thinking suggested by 'Agency Art' which separates the > artistic intention from the effect). > > Also very timely, > > I will spend more time with this stuff Annie. > > Thank you > > Ruth > > > On 13/02/17 09:55, Annie Abrahams wrote: > > Hi netbehaviourists, > > *Interaction was the word I used 20 years ago when I talked about my work > in hypertext. Today I need other words: one word, I already wrote about it > in my last post, is Agency Art. Another might be Intra-action. This word > could be usefull to analyze my works of collaborative performance art, > where it is not really clear what is causing what, where the agency is – > not between clearly distinguisable entities, but coming from within a > whole, where server conditions, individual computers, webcam and sound > devices, as well as the voices and images of the co-performers, local light > conditions and family situations are all entangled in what Barad would call > the phenomenon.* > From https://aabrahams.wordpress.com/2017/02/06/inter-intra-action-eng/ > > I am not done with these yet. Somewhere soon hopefully something more > concrete on Agency Art and maybe Bohrian Apparatusses. > > All the best > Annie > > > -- > > *I like the concept of Agency Art because it doesn’t take any technology > or medium as it’s starting point, but puts what these make possible in the > foreground.* > https://aabrahams.wordpress.com/2017/01/26/agency-art/ > > J’aime beaucoup la notion d'*Agency Art*, parce que elle ne prend pas un > medium, ou une technologie comme point de départ, mais met en avant ce que > celles-ci rendent possible. > https://aabrahams.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/inter-intra-action-fr/ > > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing > listNetBehaviour@netbehaviour.orghttp://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > > > > -- > Co-founder Co-director > Furtherfield > > www.furtherfield.org > > +44 (0) 77370 02879 > > Bitcoin Address 197BBaXa6M9PtHhhNTQkuHh1pVJA8RrJ2i > > Furtherfield is the UK's leading organisation for art shows, labs, & > debates > around critical questions in art and technology, since 1997 > > Furtherfield is a Not-for-Profit Company limited by Guarantee > registered in England and Wales under the Company No.7005205. > Registered business address: Ballard Newman, Apex House, Grand Arcade, > Tally Ho Corner, London N12 0EH. > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > -- *I like the concept of Agency Art because it doesn’t take any technology or medium as it’s starting point, but puts what these make possible in the foreground.* https://aabrahams.wordpress.com/2017/01/26/agency-art/ J’aime beaucoup la notion d'*Agency Art*, parce que elle ne prend pas un medium, ou une technologie comme point de départ, mais met en avant ce que celles-ci rendent possible. https://aabrahams.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/inter-intra-action-fr/
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