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CIRCA 113 article
Cork Caucus: Where do we go
from here?
Lucy Cotter takes a look at Cork Caucus' contents and discontents.
The Concept
Add 'a small powerful political committee' (caucus) to a 'green zone' within society, "removed from raw commerce for the sake of a different civic quality of life" (Fergal Gaynor's definition of culture), and you can start to piece together the rationale behind the Cork Caucus project.1 Its genesis lies in the National Sculpture Factory's envisioning of a major creative and investigative art project for Cork 2005 and subsequent invitation to Charles Esche to put forward a suitable concept. NSF Director Tara Byrne explained that Esche's curatorial interest in 'hospitality' (in the sense of focusing on the artist / artwork / audience relationship) appealed to NSF. As former director of the Rooseum in Malmö and director of the Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, Esche is well-known for bringing the city into the museum and vice versa through a series of experimental, interactive and highly dynamic art (based) projects. This approach forms the backbone of Caucus's definition of art practice. In his curatorial essay, Esche outlined that a key precedent for Caucus was Joseph Beuys' bid to establish the Free International University in Ireland in the 1970s. While conscious of problematic aspects of Beuys' concept, its objective of exploring "the contribution cultural and intellectual life can make to society" became the critical point of departure for Caucus to bring together local and international participants.2
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Left: Catherine David, Lukas Einsele (left) and Smain Laacher (right) at the Aesthetics and Politics seminar, Granary Theatre, Cork; photo Dara McGrath for the National Sculpture Factory /
Centre: Charles Esche and Annie Fletcher at Caucus event, Project, Dublin; photo Dara McGrath for the National Sculpture Factory / Right: Jeremiah Day, Not a delegate presentation, Caucus Centre; photo Dara McGrath for the National Sculpture Factory / Cork Caucus, a National Sculpture Factory event for Cork 2005
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Reluctant to impose a non-home-grown project on Cork, Esche invited art / not art (Fergal Gaynor and David O'Brien / Dobz), a dynamic Cork-based duo, to mediate between the project and the city. Art / not art describe themselves as "an educational, productive and discursive unit committed to the organisation of various inclusive and disparate art projects."3 In fact it was they who had first invited Esche to Cork in relation to the Edinburgh Protoacademy in 2001. Subsequently the project was steered into two main areas - an 'international' contingent consisting of invited international artists and scholars, co-curated by Esche, NSF and Amsterdam-based Irish curator Annie Fletcher, and a 'grassroots' contingent of Irish-based practitioners, led by art / not art. The project would have five phases - research, grassroots activities, a nucleus of events in June - July, a production phase and an aftermath. This structure was generated to allow the gathering together of interested individuals (artists and nonartists) in Ireland, with whom art / not art would begin to set lines of inquiry relevant to proposed summer events. These groups would in turn initiate discussions into which the international contingent would later be invited, closely followed by a production phase involving grassroots and international participants, and a reflection stage for discussion and speculation on the future.
The Project
The project managed to actualise its highly ambitious goal of "bringing international artists and thinkers at the highest level to Cork as physically present interlocutors within the local art scene for a fixed, intensive period."4 Invited participants included such artists as Vito Acconci, Phil Collins, Surasi Kusolwong and Shane Cullen, art groups and interventionists like Bik Van der Pol (Netherlands), Finger (Germany), Static (Britain), D.A.E. (Basque Country), W.H.W. (Croatia), eminent thinkers like Gayatri Spivak, Sarat Maharaj and Chantal Mouffe, and organisations like Kunci (Indonesia), which forges links between social science and humanities, and the International Necronautical Society, which "slides between the worlds of art, fiction, philosophy and media." The Caucus organisers held a public 'recruitment drive' in Cork, as well as making efforts to visit locations around the country, finally gathering a base of thirty-three core participant Irish artists and nonartists including writers, designers, musicians, an architect, a poet, and a doctor. Reading groups were formed in Cork and Dublin, which Byrne described as "fundamental axes of the project, given that many of the summer events would be ideas-driven." Gaynor referred to Shep Steiner's reading group as a "discursive little dynamo," which reflects what seemed to be the limitless depth of this Canadian art historian and theorist's inquiries.
Some compromises had to be made as the time demands of the initial plans on participants and organisers proved unrealistic. Hence the nucleus and production stages were conflated into one three-week period. The final programme consisted of around one hundred events, including a 'discursive picnic', lectures, screenings, city installations, discussions, workshops, recording sessions and a 'critical curating party'. Grassroots artists and nonartists created four large-scale projects and a number of smaller projects and events. Reflecting on the nature of this participation, Gaynor commented that "the core [international] artists of the summer event...oriented their own sense of the occasion of the Caucus to the situation in Cork and their meetings with Cork artists. Inversely, the Cork artists did feel that they had a place within the summer event, and did orientate their projects towards the spirit of the event." A 'Compliments and Complaints Desk' run by 'Ideal State Agency' (Irene Murphy, Collette Lewis and Elinor Rivers), which infiltrated Kusolwong's Bangcork, a three-day installation of a Thai / Irish market in the Bishop Lucey park. Responses by passers-by were typed on the spot and letters forwarded to institutions and individuals, including God, as the occasion required. The 'Invisible Pilots' (Tim Furey and Sheila Mannix) tracked down evidence of civic seating in areas where loitering is no longer permitted, and began a one-day installation of a series of white 'ghost benches', designed and built by two young product designers.
A Caucus Centre, taking over a South Presentation Sisters' primary school in the city centre, provided a site for many of the organised events. It also acted as a welcoming space for informal mingling of interested individuals, complete with free mugs of tea and a room with old sofas and a table full of critical literature to curl up with. The omni-presence of Tara Byrne, Seán Kelly, Elma O'Donovan and interns from NSF, Annie Fletcher and the untiring Gaynor and Dobz cannot be overstated, proving the overwhelming 24 / 7 commitment of the organisers to the project.
The Caucus Experience
My own involvement in the project consisted of sporadic attendance of grassroots meetings and partaking in 'Cork Remote' with Colin Graham, Keri Jones and Denis Crowley. This on-line forum was so short-lived (two evenings) that it left a somewhat token basis for further critical discussion, yet it nevertheless generated a limited but engaged response. I went to Cork about mid-way through the project, and attended some ten events over a four-day period. This included introductory talks, lectures and discussions with Jan Verwoert, Jeremiah Day, Jones, James Elkins, Spivak, Maharaj's workshop in West Cork, and a performance by Haegue Yang. Not least among those events was a dinner for participants with a menu 'curated' by Turkish artist Can Altay, held by Fáilte Ireland, whose collaborative enthusiasm extended to doing art research as preparation. As Jones commented afterwards, "the intense scheduling of the events (from 11 a.m. to approximately 9 p.m. every day), as well as the sheer diversity of the participants' interests, experience and fields of expertise, led to a feeling of 'immersion' in various debates regarding philosophical, cultural and (intra- / extra-) artistic issues of common concern." The kind of critical momentum which this achieved was refreshingly high. Critical threads were picked up and abandoned in discussions within scheduled events, as relevant theoretical and practice-based connections emerged. Given this climate for exchange of ideas and opinions, participants (and almost everyone present participated by the very nature of the project) got to know each other at a level which encouraged further contact after the project beyond networking. More than a few participants changed their flights to stay longer and those whose time was limited expressed their regret almost unanimously, which demonstrates the success of the project in terms of critical dialogue. This was partly due to an atmosphere which acknowledged different levels of critical literacy and engagement and respected the value of practice-based and theoretical bases for dialogue. A few individuals were forthright in acknowledging that some of the content 'went over their head' but were satisfied with their own 'findings' nevertheless. Conversations with a number of participant Irish artists revealed a genuine feeling of expanding personal artistic boundaries, and it is this impact on an individual basis and its potential ripple effect that the Caucus team sees as a success of the project.
Successful as it was in many ways, the project would have benefited greatly by better attendance. The 'public at large' made a paltry response to the Caucus Centre's invitation to "drop in, say hello, meet the participants and sample whatever aspects of the program are of interest to you," despite being kept informed by ongoing newspaper and street-zine coverage.5 One artist asked rather frankly, "Where is everybody?" by which he meant 'the art world at large' - namely staff of Cork and national art institutions, art critics, curators and art historians. This was despite the Project Art Centre's hosting of a talk by Esche and Fletcher and other such signs of support. However, much spadework done by the Caucus team in terms of inviting (art) educational institutions in a number of cities to become involved was fruitless, and in that sense perhaps the writing was already on the wall that a large turn-out could not be expected.6 I don't mean to suggest that events were poorly attended, but rather that the fairly reasonable attendance was largely due to the number of core participants. The majority of events were free of charge and the scheduling, which included weekends and evenings, made Caucus accessible to the most overworked self-funding artist or 'man on the street' to attend. The poor response by the Cork public might have reflected a wider and much-expressed feeling of disconnection with the official Cork 2005 programme, but the lack of appeal of a project which was not oriented towards entertainment per se was surely an important contributing factor.
The absence of individuals from the art world is perhaps more difficult to explain. I wondered whether the discursive demands of the project might have been confrontational for art workers and artists alike. It is also hardly irrelevant that significant attendance of Cork art events by non-Cork-based individuals is not habitual. There appears to be an ongoing need to challenge existing centre / periphery relations. The absence of many core individuals of the Cork art world, of all but one art history student, as well as significant numbers of Cork artists was perhaps more surprising. Dobz was critical of professional notions of Fine Art in the Irish art world, which he felt played a significant part in the absence of both Cork and nationally based individuals. Reflecting on these absences, Byrne commented that the summer period was the most heavily scheduled for Cork 2005 events. However, she also felt that the project was not fully understood by a lot of people and wondered whether NSF had communicated it well enough. She speculated on whether titles like 'Summer School' and 'Public Installations / Interventions' would have made a difference in terms of attendance.
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Top left: Maria Eichorn's outdoor presentation; photo Dara McGrath for the National Sculpture Factory / Cork Caucus, a National Sculpture Factory event for Cork 2005
Top right: Phil Collins, The world won't listen, recording session, The Granary Theatre; photo Dara McGrath for the National Sculpture Factory / Cork Caucus, a National Sculpture Factory event for Cork 2005
Bottom left: Surasi Kusolwong (left) and Shep Steiner (right) in the playground of the Caucus Centre; photo Dara McGrath for the National Sculpture Factory / Cork Caucus, a National Sculpture Factory event for Cork 2005
Bottom right: Surasi Kusolwong: Bangcork, Bishop Lucey Park, Cork; photo Dara McGrath for the National Sculpture Factory / Cork Caucus, a National Sculpture Factory event for Cork 2005
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The Politics
Given that the project was founded on a more inclusive definition of art practice than is predominant in Ireland, it is worth speculating on whether Caucus' wholesale embrace of a socially and politically oriented approach to art practice was a welcome one. The fact is that a 'summer school' title would have been fundamentally at odds with Esche's curatorial concept, and in Dobz's opinion "beneath the ideological ambitions of Caucus as a project." Byrne acknowledged that there were as many takes on 'political' within Caucus as there were curators. Nevertheless, in the fundamental concept of the project, Esche was very definite in enunciating that "a caucus...differs from a workshop in that a workshop is a coming together for production or exchange while a caucus is a coming together in order to make a decision."7 So what was to be decided by Caucus? One issue for Esche was how an event of this kind could "contribute to the reserves of cultural capital of the creative community in Cork." This was echoed by art / not art, who were particularly outspoken in their interests in the promotion of "alternative models of creative practice" with the aim of "leaving a concrete artistic legacy in the city" after the 2005 programme.8 This was partly to curtail the steady stream of creative individuals migrating or emigrating from the city on an ongoing basis. For this reason art / not art had been instrumental in structuring the grassroots / international binary rather than "falsely gloss over the difference in experience and character of Irish and especially local artists and that of the international players." Other major issues for Esche were "how [to] decide the forms of the relationship between what we are engaged in - the territory of visual culture - and political or cultural change as an pre-existing objective" and to "consider the development of the democratic model itself, given that we presume democracy to be underdeveloped" and how Caucus' discussions and material projects could contribute to that development.9
Jones reflected after the project that "there seemed to be a common concern, expressed in the various talks and workshops, with the validity of certain aspects of the art / art-theory institution. In a sense, Cork Caucus seemed to allow participants the space and freedom to step back and discuss shared anxieties about the very nature of their activities as artists and / or critics." Nevertheless, Byrne made an important distinction when she observed that non-Irish participants were far more likely to engage in 'grassroots' political discussions as opposed to more philosophical political enquiry, with the exception of Jones himself, whose presentations included a critique of the political terminology within the marketing of Cork 2005 and a response to the "ethics of discomfort" within his own "discomfortable" presence as a visiting Cork emigrant.
The question of whether Caucus went far enough in investigating its political undercurrents and the political inherent in the project's context needed to be raised. Was Caucus going to explore the underlying relationships between Cork or Irish and European culture - past and present - in historical, political, and cultural terms, given that it was situated within and partly funded by the European Capital of Culture celebrations? Apparently not, despite the presence of thinkers like Spivak, Maharaj, Mouffe, Smaïn Laacher, and Gerald Raunig who have long been engaged with relevant lines of inquiry. I would argue that this had been sidestepped rather than confronted by the structuring of Caucus into 'international' and 'grassroots' without a critical interrogation of the meaning of those terms or thorough investigation of the relationship between the two. A round-table by invited Irish intellectuals and theorists at the research stage, into whose lines of inquiry international thinkers might have been introduced at the nucleus stage might have provided a valuable critical mass, providing the caucus with more decisive critical directions, and the unpacking of a structure, which, although provisional, perhaps proved to be difficult to move beyond.
Spivak knowingly opened her lecture at the Firkin Crane Centre with the challenging but yet unanswered question "On what politics do we caucus?" She pointed out that, in its common nineteenth-century European association, a caucus was always a secret gathering rather than an open political discussion. This diverged from Esche's consideration of a caucus as stemming from the Native American tradition of taking decisions and more specifically in its use by the US Democratic Party as "a form of visual democracy." In fact he specifically hoped to discuss the relationship between art and democratic development within Caucus, partly as a result of discussion in previous workshops in Asia. Nevertheless, when Jeremiah Day rallied against Esche's terminological link between Caucus and American democratic politics and titled his lecture Not a delegate in reaction to the terms 'candidates', 'delegates' and 'constituents', used to describe various degrees of participation within the project, Esche was not there to engage in discussion. Instead art / not art politely explained that the terms were present to be deconstructed. This brings up another challenge within the organisation of Caucus, which was difficult to resolve - namely how to oscillate between Esche's original concept and the critical content which unfolded in the research stage. The critical structure of the initial concept - containing three main themes: States of Emergency, States of Possibility; Communities and Art; and Another FIU?- fell to the wayside as the project developed, but they were not substituted as such, partly I imagine because of the open-ended approach Caucus embraced. Esche could not be physically present at the nucleus stage of Caucus after the initial four days. Nevertheless, beyond Esche's original concept, the co-curatorial collaboration made it difficult to grant that kind of authority to any curator in particular and excessive practical and administrative demands of such an enormous project may have distracted from the necessity of more definite internal agreement on which issues Caucus aimed to come to terms with. Spivak reflected for example on whether the art / non-art coupling at the basis of the Caucus concept might lead the project to "court auto-immunity" and suggested the need to rethink 'non-art' within the project.
A 'Non-Academy' or "meeting ground for divided ways of knowledge" was held on subjects as diverse as nano-technology, co-operativism, spiders, and contemporary economics. During his workshop entitled New non-knowledge strategies for the European Art Academy, Maharaj quoted Spivak's statement "we live in an age of knowledge management" and it was perhaps through this observation that the value of Caucus as a site for knowledge production was most closely alluded to. Maharaj spoke at length on the difference between "instrumentalised knowledge and knowledge reduced for consumption" as opposed to "outside knowledge / non-knowledge," and suggested a role for artists in exploring the potential of non-knowledge as opposed to the Kantian notion of critique. He considered the role of the artist as 'researcher', a possibility which describes how "through one's practice one is inquiring into the world" as opposed to adding an object. In this sense Maharaj felt that "the possibilities of not-knowing are present and available in art practice" in the midst of knowledge overload - and "pathic conversation" - speaking with no communication, to which Caucus offered an antidote, however provisional.
The Aftermath
Reflecting on the immediate outcome of the project, Gaynor commented that
There really is a raised level of activity in Cork at the moment (apart from me and Dobz), and for a while at least a small new culture has formed. The important matter is to foster and advance this. Which is to say, the end of the three weeks should be seen as the initiation of a new phase of the event, not as an opportunity for wrapping up a successful project and overseeing its conversion into prestige cultural property.
This is more than just a sentiment. Gaynor adds that the 'grassroots' (now also called 'the gatherings') will outlive the official 'Caucus' (considered as a funded, administrated project). In this vein art / not art are now working to keep the Caucus centre open until the end of August, before considering possibilities for relocation and long-term existence. WE Construction (Katherine Maguire with stencil artist 'Kong') are still working on a 'psychogeographic walking tour of Cork', which links (often macabre) events to specific sites, starting with a disused toilet on Merchant's Quay. Four grassroots participants, Sarah O'Brien, Sibyl Montague, Helena Lyons and Tim Furey, have collectively negotiated a temporary occupation of a villa in Montenotte, in which they have set up studios and an exhibition / performance space, and there's talk of artist / doctor Antonia O'Keefe making an intervention at the Mercy Hospital.
A public meeting for those who were present at Caucus, and not least those who were not present at Caucus, will be held in November, with details available from the National Sculpture Factory. At the end of any project, information is dissipated by the scattering of participants and the next group or event often starts from scratch again.
The meeting aims to gather together part of that legacy and further investigate some of the critical strands and future possibilities which have emerged through the project. In short, that is when Caucus will make at least some of its 'decisions', but the Caucus team see this as a springboard to much further collaboration and investigation, moving beyond the original key players. The major question at the meeting will be "where do we go from here" and one hopes that the valuable 'knowledge production' of the Caucus project will go very far.
Lucy Cotter is an art critic and lecturer at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam.
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