From mid January to mid February, Making a Living (MAL) will be ‘in residence’ on the Longhouse blog. MAL is an independent group of arts professionals currently active across the UK who are researching and campaigning on issues of art and labour.

MAL’s shared principles:
MAL is a group of individuals.
MAL is not always a united front.
MAL is currently a volunteer initiative.
MAL is not a careers advice service.
MAL does not have all the answers.
MAL encourages debate, independent research, solidarity and disagreement.
MAL hosts public meetings that are open to anyone to attend.
MAL ‘members’ are not expected to commit to any MAL meetings, research or campaigning. They have an option to opt in or out of specific campaigns.
MAL is self-organised by its ‘members’.

Individual members of MAL will be writing critical responses to events and activities relating to art and labour they are attending during January and February including Art: What is the use? At the Whitechapel Gallery, the Arts Against the Cuts Long Weekend at Camberwell College of Art and The Amateurist Network meeting at E:vent Gallery.

MAL will also use the blog to post position statements, articulate demands and create links to relevant resources. MAL aim to solicit feedback and gather anecdotal evidence from people working in the arts of cases of exploitation and experiences of labour by posing questions that prompt feedback and discussion on the Longhouse blog.

MAL look forward to meeting you in the blog!

To contact MAL directly or to join their mailing list email: makingaliving[at]live.co.uk

public works is an artists and architects collective based in East London, and current members are artists Kathrin Böhm and Polly Brannan, and architects Andreas Lang and Torange Khonsari. Our work takes place in the public, with a focus on how public space is shaped by the very different activities and interests that are inherent to a site. Our work takes place in form of art and/or architecture commissions, self-initiated projects, talks and discussions, and publications and fanzines. See public works projects.

For this blog we want concentrate on activities that are strongly networked, and we want to unroll a bit why and how and with whom these networks are being started and maintained. We will publish
- announcements for events
- descriptions and histories of those networks
- weblinks
- and what we think are interesting essays and publications.

Throughout October we will be active in a number of network activities, such as
Friday Sessions
The International Village Shop (pan-national)
The Hackney Wick Curiosity Shop (Hackney Wick, London)
RHYZOM (pan-european)
Concrete Geometries Research Cluster at the AA (educational).

We will describe all of those in more detail soon,
With best regards for now
Kathrin and Andreas

Folk Float, by public works: a mobile local archive for Creative Egremont, commissioned by Grizedale Arts.

Kiki makes vibrant sculptural work based on the idea of utopia and escapism, heavily influenced by kitsch and its tacky and ironic qualities. The techicolour surreal world she creates appears emerging in everyday surroundings, reaching out into the mundane world.

She won the Mueller Copper Svulpture Prize in 2008, and has participated in exhibitions around Birmingham and Walsall.

www.kikifoster.co.uk

Since 2006 she has been investigating the importance of biodiversity in cities for wildlife and for people.

http://www.liverpoolwastelands.blogspot.com/
http://www.100cauliflowers.com/
http://www.els.salford.ac.uk/urbannature/salford/people/morrison.htm
http://scratchthesurfacedigalittledeeper.wordpress.com/category/daily-activity/page/2/
http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/WildandProductive.pdf

For instance, the installation ‘Deep Relaxation’ turns the gallery into an ambient wonderland. Using Walkmans and New Age relaxation tapes, the space is draped with loops of audio tape stretching from floor to ceiling. Audio from the moving tape is played through speakers, layering the nature sounds together. The actual result is an un-ambient cacophony of various animal noises and New Age music, far from a spiritual experience, the piece may remind the viewer of technological advancements, cultural wastage and fads.

Katy Beinart is an interdisciplinary artist whose work examines themes of history, identity and place. Her practice is research based and site-specific, often evolving through a participatory process. She trained as an architect, and is interested in readings of both built and natural environments

www.axisweb.org/artist/katybeinart

Winnett often builds works out of the familiar and the historical using cultural artefacts, souvenirs and images which signify place and identity. He creates interventions which respond to the character of a specific location using the medium most suited to each context including sculpture, installation, collage, video and performance. It is the tensions and relationships between the local and the global and their interplay with historic notions of cultural identity which drives his practice most.

Winnett has also worked as a public art project manager and workshop leader.

Artist Statement:

Aaron Head is an artist who uses anything and everything at his disposal. His work has a distinct ‘folk’ or ‘DIY’ sensibility. Like many things ‘folk’ or anecdotal it attempts to use it’s colloquial tongue to tell tales of bigger truths and grand ideas. His work is often influenced by literature and film, exploring how these popular narratives colour and mediate everyday life. His current practice explores the forces of the constant against the temporary. It is about the belief of ‘time as a never ending cycle’ versus a belief in ‘time as a linear process of progress’. This belief in progress, whether it is religious or secular, is a theme under constant scrutiny in Head’s work. Human ambition is treated with equal measures of awe and humour. parody and pastiche are used in order to highlight the everyday oddities that furnish our cultures. Alongside this is an aesthetic and dramatic sensibility that empathises with endeavours of human idealism. Ultimately Head’s work is underlined with a sense of absurdity and fallibility, but it recognises the beauty in trying.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I am fascinated by the psychological, spiritual and social diversity of everyday life. I’m captivated by the theme of celebration as people come together through family, ritual, communal rites of passage, social bonding and journeying.

Much of my current work is achieved through participant observation. I work in photography, film and installation participatory projects with a wide range of venues and collaborators. I am fascinated by how we build our sense of personal history from the experiences we collect and store and investigate ways in which a sense of community can be strengthened through art making. My responses take various forms including performative lectures and presentations.

I am passionate about inspiring participants to open themselves up to becoming a cohesive group through the potentiality of unexpected interactions and adventures, with a strong emphasis on intergenerational work.

To find out more about these click on the links below:

Stoke-on-Trent PAD

Interrogation: Walsall

Talking City Com:mission

Artist Statement:

Investigating transforming environments, objects and their characteristics into new alignments forms the basis of my work. What happens when familiar environments and objects adopt other functions and characteristics? What happens when a hybrid is made? Where will it leave the new environment, the new object? What will happen to its familiar rules, its familiar history? What has caused this transformation?

Has it stemmed from our consciousness; our desire to change; our desire to find the ideal? Does this come from our boredom with where this thought of consciousness came from?

We will always seek the ideal, whether this is in our next holiday, job or home we will always seek something more; our struggle to be satisfied is eternal. We live under the fear of loneliness, nothingness and boredom. We are constantly prolonging the actual, because our imagination succeeds us and we believe that we can make the unthinkable happen. What happens when we explore our personal aspirations, passions, dreams and desires and how they collide with mundane situations or environments?

We get a cross between the imaginable and the actual. We get something that is unfamiliar, a strange, poetic, ambiguous transformation. We also get something that doesn’t live up to our imagination; we get something that has failed our aspirations; something that is not quite right; something that doesn’t quite work. We have set ourselves up for failure.