I repeat a few things from the previous post here but I thought it was worth getting this outline of the project into one document. Any comments or suggestions are most welcome.

Serial Space Interviews

Project Overview

The recent demise of the visual arts degree at the University of Western Sydney has brought to the fore the need to document the history of the program. This process is already well underway thanks to the work of ex-lecturer Terry Hayes who has documented many aspects of his twenty plus years of teaching at UWS. From the 15^th to the 28^th of February I will be working at Serial Space (33 Wellington St, Chippendale) to expand on Terry’s archive by conducting interviews with ex-UWS students, staff members and members of the broader art community who have a close interest in the teaching and art practice that took place at UWS over the years.

Extracts from these interviews will be made available online along with elements of Terry Hayes’ archive. The idea is to build an online repository that combines personal reflection with various forms of documentation to help to develop a clearer picture of the art and teaching that emerged from UWS, as well as giving us a better sense of what has been lost with the closure of the program.

As well as producing this online archive my aim is also to produce broadcast quality video recordings of the interviews so that they may later form part of a documentary that would trace the development and ultimate demise of the visual arts at UWS.

Legal

Given the fact that these interviews will be publicly released it is, strictly speaking, a legal requirement for interviewees to sign a document in which they agree to release their contribution. While I’ll be asking people to sign a standard release form, my plan is to then make the interviews, (and any resulting documentary), available through an “attribution and share-alike” creative commons license (for more information on this license visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/au/ ). This will mean that your contributions to the archive will be freely available, under the creative commons framework, to anyone who wishes to continue to build on the interviews and archive.

Focus of the Interviews

The following is a breakdown of some of the questions that interest me in conducting these interviews. These lists are by no means complete but I did want to give you a general idea about where I’m heading with some of my questions.

Ex-students

            -Your memories of one of the projects in Terry’s archive (see below)

            -Formative moments in your arts education

            -Memorable works produced by your fellow students while at UWS

            -The context surrounding the creation of your grad show works

            -Your favorite works produced by other students the year you graduated

            -How your grad show work is reflected in your current art-making

            -The influence your education has had on your post-art-school experience

As part of his archive Terry has created a record of all the projects that he developed during his time at UWS. These projects are generally non-medium-specific conceptual starting points for the creative process and, with only a few exceptions, were never repeated. Almost all students who did first year foundation studies at UWS will have made work for at least one of these projects. So prior to the interview I will be asking you what year you did foundation studies so that I can send you a copy of the project that you responded to. These projects will then be posted online along with edited excerpts from your memories and reflections on the process of making art in response to that particular project.

Ex-staff members

            -The ideas that guided your approach to teaching at UWS

-How those ideas might have been influenced by formative experiences in your own arts education

-How you own ideas about teaching related to the broader structure of the visual arts program at UWS

-Your approach to developing projects and course material

-Particularly memorable projects

-The most satisfying aspects of teaching at UWS

-Your take on the events that led to the closure of the program (if this is something that you want to discuss)

Gallery Directors, Curators, Arts Professionals

            -Your relationship to the visual arts program at UWS

            -What motivated your interest in the program

-What you saw as being the strengths of the program

-Memorable works from any UWS grad shows that you may have attended

-Your thoughts on the closure of the program

Structure of the Online Archive

At this stage the most likely form for the archive is a wiki. I’m envisioning two main sections; Projects and Grad Shows.  Both sections will allow ex-students to upload text, audio, video and images of the works they produced for particular projects or grad shows. The interviews I’m planning here will also feed into and enrich both sections of the archive. The projects section will involve building on Terry’s archive by providing a space for ex-students and staff members to add projects and share their experiences and documentation. The projects section will also go beyond those who attended UWS by being open to contributions from anyone who is interested in responding to particular projects. The grad shows section will allow ex-students to upload documentation of the works they produced during their graduating year. Ex-students might also post links to works that they have produced since they graduated that in some expand on the works they produced for their grad show. 

Not all content on the wiki will be editable. In fact once content has been placed in the correct section of the archive we should be able to lock it off. This will hopefully reduce the administrative burden of having to deal with vandals and spammers and also help to encourage people to post with the knowledge that their contributions won’t be destroyed.

The recent demise of the fine arts degree at the University of Western Sydney has brought to the fore the need to document the history of the program. At the moment I’m seeing this imperative also as an opportunity to develop the OSAS into something more substantial than what we have produced to date. The idea is to develop this space into dynamic archive of UWS teaching and student experience. This archive will include: projects that were given to students at UWS (see below), interviews with students discussing how they responded to those projects and interviews with staff in which they give us an insight into their teaching methodologies and philosophies. But as the title of the post suggests, (and in keeping with the original purpose of this website) I am also envisioning this as a space where the archive, (and the teaching and student experience it contains), can live on and take new forms. This means providing a space for new responses to the projects posted here from ex-students and anyone else who is moved to create something out of the materials they find here. Within the OSAS website these responses could be in any form this technology allows (written, audio, video etc.).

To give you a sense of how this might proceed I have posted below one of the projects developed by ex-UWS lecturer Terry Hayes. Before I get on to the project its worth mentioning and acknowledging the fantastic contribution that Terry has made to arts education during his teaching career and also his generosity in sharing some of his personal archive with us, thanks Terry. As part of his archive Terry has created a record of all the projects that he developed during his time at UWS. These projects are generally non-medium-specific conceptual starting points for the creative process and, with only a few exceptions, were never repeated. Almost all students who did first year foundation studies at UWS will have made work for at least one of these projects. So just to reiterate the plan for the archive and the development of the OSAS is to provide a space for ex-students to share their experiences in responding to this type of project while also allowing for new responses from anyone who is interested. So here’s one of Terry Hayes’ projects:

Don’t Project

Year:   1997

Level: First Years, Autumn Semester 1

Unit:    33062 Foundation Studies 1

Duration:       4 days

Dates: May 19, 26, June 2, 16

Origin

This project was code named ‘The Muster’ and concluded the sequence of projects and workshops offered during the semester.

Premise

Adopting the same strategy of all participating staff contributing material from a commonly agreed upon topic. I thought it would be strategically interesting to operate through a set of directives all in the negative that collectively would indicate what the participants were not allowed to do. This idea arose from the most frequent criticisms generally levelled at work produced in foundation studies: usually attempts at discouraging predictable outcomes, the well-trammelled routes followed by the less creatively dextrous, falling prey to clichés of various kinds, or relied upon standard markers of art practice often well-worn and banal.

The conceit of indicating what they were not to do, was also in part prompted by the amusing title of the Foundation Staff show “No Angels, No Trumpets” (April ‘93) (Itself borrowed anecdotally from Jim Turner, a Sculpture Lecturer from Wimbledon School of Art, when he once related, in reference to the dilemma of what to title a work, following on from the question: “Are there any Angels or Trumpets in the painting?” the answer being in the negative, the retort then being: “Well call it ‘No Angels, No Trumpets!” I liked the contra-indicative nature of the title: its unhelpfulness in providing any insight into the work in question, if anything confusing the reception with Baroque overtones.

Whilst I was the prime instigator of the “Don’t” project, the sheet issued contained no injunctions of mine, as already there quickly arose a surplus from among those submitted by the others in the team, further inundation was not helpful.

From my notes at the time the ‘don’ts’ I was intrigued to contribute centred around what would normally be considered ‘characteristic’ and thus familiar. The encouragement to adopt an alien persona: A postman? A plumber? A cartoon character? An identity that was not their own and to make something they could not relate to or necessarily explain, so that when asked the question: ‘What are you doing?’ the appropriate response would be ‘I have no idea’. Familiar patterns of recognition and ownership (this is my work) could be undermined and destabilised through this process and create the propensity for ‘things’ that were ‘unrecognisable’ and perhaps more intriguing because of their uncertain status.

Secondly John Kaldor has donated his collection to AGNSW. About ten years ago I went to a huge dinner to celebrate John Kaldor giving his collection to the MCA. I’m confused, how many tax deductions can you get for one collection?

I’ve been wringing my hands about the UWS cuts and closures for long enough and I’m sick of it. I’ve decided that precarity is a condition for action - so in the spirit of public intellectualism and Pierre Bourdieu I’ve decided to pull my finger out and start jumping up and down.

I urge readers to follow! Join the e-list at least, and spread the word among colleagues and friends.

all the best

mayhem
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I’m writing to invite you to be part of an exciting initiative by a group of artists, researchers, teaching staff, academics, community groups and gallery managers. Concerned at the recent cutbacks to the performing and visual arts departments at UWS, we are forming a broad alliance to draw attention to the need for expansion of arts education in the most economically and culturally dynamic areas in Australia.

We are working together to:

A) Promote public awareness of the enormous amount of cultural activity that is occurring across Western Sydney and the need for this to be supported by a Federal commitment to tertiary arts education.

B) Promote public awareness of the significant role that the visual and Performing arts Departments at the University of Western Sydney has played in the cultural life of Western Sydney and further afield.

C) Promote public awareness of the links between University Art Education and the cultural life of the community.

D) Promote public awareness that maintaining and developing a vibrant tertiary education strategy for the arts in Western Sydney is a pertinent issue for all members of the arts, education, and government sectors.

We believe, that given the current political climate of cutbacks to tertiary education more broadly, this issue is not only relevant to staff or students at UWS, but to wider members of the Australian community. We also believe that given information about this issue, that most Australians would take an active interest in the preservation and development of University based Arts Education in Western Sydney. Members of our alliance have already met informally in order to organise an art exhibition and other events around this issue and we could like to expand our activities on order to form a broader alliance that can collaborate on creating and promoting a vision for Arts Education that will reflect the dynamism and diversity of Western Sydney.

We are holding a meeting
NEXT TUESDAY 26th JUNE at 2pm,
and we would like you to attend, and invite other people who you feel are concerned about this issue.

Since we are a community based alliance, we have been generously offered the premises of ICE: Information and Cultural Exchange, in which to hold out meeting. We hope that the meeting will generate some strategies for organising a public campaign around this issue, including drafting a letter to politicians, but also planning a media campaign to promote the significance of cultural activity and arts education in Western Sydney.

If you are not able to attend this meeting, then please lend us your support, in one of the following ways:

a) Joining our email list - and offering your suggestions and input.

b) Agree to be a signatory to our petition.

c) Notifying your friends/colleagues about the alliance

d) Participating in The Promoter Presents: Serial Boxes show at Mori Gallery.

More information about this issue is on the SAVE UWS ARTS blog, and the address is: http://saveuwsarts.blogspot.com/

Our meeting will be: Tuesday 26th June at 2pm Information and Cultural Exchange AMWU Building Ground Level 133 Parramatta Road Granville NSW T: +61(2) 9897 5744

the art exhibition will open on Wednesday 4th July at 6-8pm Mori Gallery 168 Day Street, Sydney Ph: 9283 2903

More information about this project, please email: autonomouspromoter@yahoo.com.au or ring Sari Kivinen on: 04 2172 8195.

if you have any questions or suggestions about the above, please don’t hesitate to get in contact.

Also, the If You See Something Say Something project organised by Keg de Souza and Zanny Begg hosted some DIY workshops with international groups Etcetera and Contra File, as well as a Tour of Beauty by SquatSpace, which is in itself a pedagogical art project (combining education and art in the one fun package!)

Down at Sydney on Cleveland St, Surry Hills, regular “infotainment” nights are hosted where an artist will give a talk or powerpoint presentation about some aspect of their work, or after a trip to some interesting place overseas. These are informal, chatty, and intimate.
Finally, with the Teaching and Learning Cinema, Louise Curham and I are interested in hosting experimental film screenings in an atmosphere of open discussion (rather than passive spectacle.)

Look forward to hearing of more autonomous activities out there!

This is from the Wooster Collective and it’s my excuse for putting all my energy into my adaptivereuse blog and not writing much here recently. I promise to do more this year.

I started my undergraduate studies at UWS in 1998. I was fresh out of high school and had decided over the summer that studying art was a more attractive proposition than continuing my full time work as a waiter (best decision i ever made). On my first day at uni we were given a “project” which was to take the form of a response to the idea of “the presence of absence”. There was an Ives Klein retrospective on at the MCA at the time and as part of their presentation of this idea to us the lecturers decided that it would be good to tell us that when Klein died he was cremated and that his ashes were dyed his trademark IKB. They even went to the extent of creating a slide that they told us was the ashes in a museum in Europe. If this was a test to find out who amongst us fresh faced first years would actually bother to check the information that they fed us in that first presentation then i have to admit that i failed. In fact I think I was probably one of the last ones to find out that the blue ashes thing was an invention.

The “presence of absence” project set the tone for the study units which basically involved us responding to an idea in whichever medium we saw fit. beyond that there was the study of impressionism for our art history unit and an electronic arts unit. after a splattering of video, digital imaging and sound in first semester we were asked to choose one of the three in second semester, i choose sound largly due to the most excellent teaching of Chris Fortescue, aside from my high school english teacher i am yet to meet anyone who can manage the dynamics of a group discussion as good as Chris. He was able to balance the two most important aspects of this task, making everyone feel like the contribution is worthwhile and keeping the discussion focussed. Apart from that he helped in the education of our ears in providing us with a smorgasboard of sound art/experimental music to listen to each class.

Over the course of that year i emulated a range of modernist approaches to art making including pollock inspired drip paintings, Naumanesc video performance, abstract photography and nob-turning adventures in sound. i also recieved my first exposure to what i would later come to recognise as art-school cliches such as the classic “driving” or “smoking” videos.

Second year highlights included the realisation that instead of studying art history i could do a philosophy or cultural studies subject. As it turned out the introduction to cultural studies was the one that fitted in nicely with my other units, so from there i began to understand the world as structured by gender, ethnicity, age, sexuality etc. At the time this seemed to me to be far more relivant than knowing the title, date, place information for some of the key images of impressionism. Excessive marijuana consumption also led to some half-arsed acessments and the lovely Deborah Porch telling me at an appropriate moment that the work that i pinned on the wall on the morning of the group crit didn’t cut it. It was the kick in the arse that i needed and it added the ingredient of motivation into the mix created by Terry Hayes’ Beckett inspired experimental writing unit that put me on the path to a series of projects which continues to this day.

In third year there was more nob turning, more writing and more cultural studies. So while most of my friends were taking shit-loads of ecstacy I ate one or two pills and wrote a marxist-influenced critique of the situations that surround the sale and consumption of the drug. For me this was the cool thing about the way those cultural studies units were taught at UWS. The emphasis was squarely on providing you with ways of interpreting and analysing your surroundings.

The first semester of third year also brought a healthy coming together of UWS and SCA students initiated by Mikala Dwyer this was the occasion for the afore mentioned nob turning as well as the perfect excuse to paint myself white in the shopfront window of Newspace while being blasted by a soundtrack provided by Vicky Brown and Koji Ryui.

Coming after a classic “i’m gonna die” senario with magic mushrooms this was a particularly intense experience which had earth shaking implications that continued right up until the end of the year. reality was pretty thin in those days and it was a kind of thinness that left me with all sorts of doubts and fears. while in some ways those experiences were an affirmation that a lot of what the buddhists say about illusion is true, it took me a while to come to terms with such a hefty presence of absence. By the end of the year I’d managed to anchor myself a little more firmly in this world and finished third year with some solid work, (at the time i was definately quite thankful for the solidity of it).

UWS

NAS

COFA

SCA

Alternatively you can register to post on this blog by clicking here, or you can post your experience in the comments section below and it will get sorted into the wiki. also check out the save UWS Fine Arts Blog here.