WELCOME TO THE INVIGORATE FORUM

This forum is designed to act as a catalyst to discussion and to document our artist led research process into the ongoing importance of artist led culture. There are a number of reasons why the concerns of this project necessitate an engagement with processes of communication and the sharing of information.

This project concerned as it is with alternative models of organisation is focused on an experimental and ethical stance that emphasises collective output over individualised output. It is therefore necessary to reflect these ideas in our curatorial process and to open the production of the critical context around the project up to those interested in participating; this can be done through a forum.

'Invigorate' has been organised with an awareness of being at a particular point in terms of the cultural life of Cornwall. Recent artists collaborations have provided an alternative space for work to be seen and understood in relation to. However there is still a need to create opportunities and spaces for research driven processes and to encourage reflection and critique. This forum can function to nurture discourse as part of an artist led collaborative process.
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Seminars are perceived in a number of ways; as learning opportunities, as a process of discussion, even of indoctrination. Symposiums connote very particular power relations around the passing of knowledge from the specialist to the audience. We want to counter these traditional dynamics as we explore how and why artists' collaborations are interesting and to reflect this in our projects content and form. Knowledge has always been associated with conventions of power, institutions, pedagogy, ethics and politics. Consequently modes of passing knowledge have to be examined by reflective practice. We are interested in raising this kind of political awareness, it is political because it proposes open knowledge production as an alternative to the privatisation of information and proposes ourselves, our communities as capable, through cooperation, of supplying the expertise required to educate each other. The projects communal nature questions the established emphasis on individual artistic and/ or curatorial authorship and suggests collectivity as a strategy of empowerment. For this reason it is important that a multitude of voices contribute to the creation of this project through this forum as a testament to the power of collective production.


In order to provoke thought in preparation for the debate that will follow the key speakers presentations we have put together a list of questions to outline the kind of things we have been thinking, talking, writing and making work about. Please use these questions to generate discussion.

if you would like to propose some of your own questions please email your suggestions to:

discussion@artdept.org .uk

  

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