Name: AUE London Launch Q&A by galandlockwood
Duration: 19 min 29 s
Description: Artists' Union England London Launch 14/05/2014 Q&A.

Artists' Union England London Launch 14/05/2014 Q&A. 

AUE London Launch Q&A

Lucie Galand and Robbie Lockwood, artists based in London. 

Work Project

In 2011 we began a long-term project on Work. We half jokingly called it an AltPhd and see it taking place over a period roughly corresponding to a part time Phd. Whilst acknowledging that the relations between art, politics and education are intertwined, we agree with Claire Bishop’s analysis of Paul Chan’s Waiting For Godot In New Orleans (2007), that it is necessary to define the boundaries between the areas where possible, ‘the dual nature of arts politics’ (Bishop 2012, 250-255), instead of conflating every act as potential art or every art as potential politics etc. The project will include works of art, activism and research. These distinct fields will inform each other, they will be porous, but distinct nonetheless. As Gregory Bateson was fond of saying, separating things off from one another requires a certain degree of violence to the whole business, but it’s just too difficult to think of everything at once. 

We began by making a distinction between art that explores and art that politically opposes. Explorative art for us prioritises the aesthetic and sociological field, asking what work means for people: so far this has included sound and images of work places and interviews. The oppositional we see as activism: working with community activist groups, producing art about radical politics, finding ways to disseminate the work as activism etc. This has included working with local activists Hackney Unites Unemployed Workers Project and an ongoing sound/image work about the Haymarket Affair. 
