{"id":3,"date":"2009-06-25T14:56:23","date_gmt":"2009-06-25T12:56:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/howtogoon.com\/blog\/?page_id=3"},"modified":"2010-09-16T19:41:53","modified_gmt":"2010-09-16T17:41:53","slug":"godsend","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/howtogoon.com\/index.php\/godsend\/","title":{"rendered":"GODSEND"},"content":{"rendered":"

January 13th<\/strong>
\nI’m taking in part in a DAI<\/a> project curated by Ren\u00e9e Ridgway<\/a> – Negotiating Equity<\/a> plans to \u2018Address the ethics and practice of curatorship as a mode of art production, asserting that these terms of engagement imply rethinking the economic and social conditions of art.\u2019
\nMmmn… I think this is going to be an interesting project. Of the three on offer, I\u2019ve chosen \u2018Negotiating Equity\u2019 because the one I \u2018should\u2019 have been doing \u2013 ie the public space one, was linked up with the Zuidas and I couldn\u2019t bear the prospect of another project spent doing ideological battle. This project seems to include some degree of if not institutional critique, at least institutional unravelling.<\/p>\n

As developments in the last group project I worked on turned into a kind of artists soap-opera, looking back I wished I\u2019d blogged the whole thing from start to finish. That chance is past and gone, but I\u2019m going to blog this project from the start, just in case\u2026.<\/p>\n

But first, before the extended blog, here’s the latest version of my plans<\/p>\n

Jimini Hignett\u2019s proposal for ID-11 \u2013 latest version\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite usually taking a long time mulling over different options for a project \u2013 when heard I\u2019d have an empty apartment to work in for 5 months I knew straight away what I should do: upon receipt of the key to the apartment I would offer it to a family of refugees so that they could live there! Although the most important thing would be that they would feel safe and comfortable in their temporary home, it would be great if they were also keen to participate more actively in the project and perhaps even open the apartment to allow the public to enter and view them in their home as an exhibit – hopefully provoking some debate around art, homelessness, exploitation, etc.<\/p>\n

That was the original proposal\u2026<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, logistically this didn\u2019t work out \u2013 instead of 5 months it was to be two\u2026 probably not worth it for a family of refugees, so, coming across B. a homeless Afro-American woman selling the \u2018Z\u2019 newspaper at the supermarket near my studio, I decided to offer it to her. She was delighted at the idea of a place to herself with free amenities, even if only for 2 months, and says she\u2019ll start saving bits and pieces of household stuff she might need immediately.
\n\"B.<\/p>\n

But then things changed again, instead of a whole apartment with all amenities, it turned into a shared apartment for only a week.
\nB. sensibly, wasn\u2019t interested, but by this time we\u2019d already talked about her being involved in the project, making a video about her life, so rather than search for a Delft homeless person who might just find it worth their while using the place for such a limited period, I thought about another plan with B.
\n\"room603-with-scenery\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Delft means nothing to B., she has never been there and the important things in her life are in Amsterdam, she\u2019d love to have some stuff as memories of her time spent here, particularly as she\u2019s now planning on leaving to go back to the US.
\nHowever, she does agree to come to Delft with me and spend a few hours videoing in the apartment.<\/p>\n

So now the plan has been reduced to this – collaborating with B. videoing her in different locations, talking about her life and her time in the Netherlands, using the block of flats in Delft (which looks remarkably similar to the Bijlmer which she says she recognised from the dream God sent her) as one of those locations. It\u2019s a bit of tenuous link to ID-11 but given the circumstances it makes sense.
\nThat and documentation about the whole process of in the form of a blog\/project-journal.
\nRead More <\/strong>in the Negotiating Equity blog<\/strong><\/a>
\nHere’s a clip from the video: