Untidy, Unwieldy, Unphotogenic:

the nonvirtuoso artist and non-spectacular (live) artworks

Rachel Dobbs

MA Contemporary Art Practice and Dissemination

Dissertation
(40 Credits)
June 2010

Dartington Campus
University College Falmouth

i
Text copyright (c) Rachel Dobbs 2010
Rachel Dobbs has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this
work in accordance with the Copyright, Design & Patents Act 1988.
Images on pages 14, 32 and 57 are included under fair use rules, and
copyright of these images remains with their respective authors.

First published in the UK in 2010 under a Creative Commons Attribution-

Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Full details of the terms of this license can be found on

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk
and in an appendix to this document.

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Abstract
My research aims to investigate and better understand the points at
which artworks meet an audience. It is firmly rooted in the collaborative
practice I have shared with Hannah Jones (under the guise of LOW
PROFILE) for the past seven and a half years. Through our ‘practice’ we
produce, ‘write’ and ‘disseminate’ predominantly live and ephemeral
works (including live performance/artworks, associated ephemera like
bookworks and lo-fi publications, ‘merchandise’, videos, installations,
sound pieces etc). This dissertation draws on both the findings from my
collaborative practice and my individual academic investigations. This
dissertation aims to establish provisional terms like nonvirtuoso, untidy,
unwieldy and unphotogenic that have become important in ‘writing’
around the ‘practice’ and ‘dissemination’ of my collaborative practice, and
therefore vital to its vocabulary.

This paper questions the position of artist-as-genius, its relationship to

Guy Debord’s notion of ‘spectacle’ and the capitalist economic system
(with its inherent notions of the division of labour, commodity etc.) within
which it operates. It asks the reader to consider the possibility of a
position of artist-as-nonvirtuoso and the implications (for artists,
audiences and others involved in the wider discourse of the systems of
circulation of artworks) of such a shift in power dynamics with relation to
‘practice’ and ‘dissemination’. These ideas are examined with reference to
the work of artists including Marina Abramovic, Harrell Fletcher & Miranda
July, and Kerri Reid and how these examples relate to the theories of
Christopher Collier, Hal Foster, Jaques Rancière, Michel deCerteau and
Michael Sheringham, amongst others.

iii
 Contents

Copyright Statement i
Abstract iii
Contents iv
List of Tables and Illustrations v
Acknowledgements vi
Authors’ Declaration vii
A note to the reader ix

Introduction 1
Section 1: 3
Section 2: 13
Section 3: 21
Section 4: 29
Section 5: 41
Conclusion 53

Appendices 55
References and Works Cited 59

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 List of Tables and Illustrations
Figure 1 – Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present ................... 14
Figure 2 - Learning To Love You More, Assignment #16............. 32
Figure 3 – Knotted Handkerchief ............................................ 53
Figure 4 - Learning To Love You More, Assignment #16............. 57

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Acknowledgements
This study was financed with the aid of an AHRC bursary and support
from Plymouth College of Art.

I feel it is important to acknowledge that this dissertation is not simply

the effort of an individual operating alone. My research has been greatly
informed by conversations with peers, colleagues and tutors. I really
value the opportunities you all give me to say things out loud – thank
you all, especially my companion on the MACAPD course Cara Davies and
my dedicated tutors Mark Leahy and Joanne ‘Bob’ Whalley .

I would also like to thank the institutions that have hosted and supported
the production of LOW PROFILE’s work in the last two years, namely The
Royal Standard (Liverpool), Plymouth Arts Centre, Arnolfini (Bristol),
Plymouth College of Art and Dartington College of Arts (University
College Falmouth). The opportunities provided to us by these institutions
(and the trust they put in us) allow Hannah and I to take risks with our
practice that lead to new and exciting practical, theoretical and strategic
discoveries.

As ever, I am more indebted to my collaborator Hannah Jones than any

monetary tab or arrangement of words could ever suggest. Thank you
Hannah, for a continuous supply of gold dust and the encouragement to
never, never, never, never, never give up – it would be scary to stop.

vi
Authors’ Declaration
Although, as noted above, the roots of this investigation come from
the collaborative practice I share with Hannah Jones (under the guise
of LOW PROFILE), the writing and academic investigation that follows
is my own, individual research.

vii
A note to the reader

As a document, the dissertation is divided into five sections and

accompanied by two different types of ‘appendix’. One, found at the
end of the main document, A Very Incomplete Lexicon of LOW
PROFILE (2009) is the piece of writing that laid a path for the main
document itself. The other ‘appendix’ takes the form of four small
individually bound bookworks. These introduce the terms Untidy,
Unwieldy and Unphotogenic (which are referred to throughout the
main document), alongside a foreword on the prefix Un-. These
bookworks should act as floating footnotes to the main document,
appended or attached but not necessarily bound into the fixed order
of the document.

The main document and ‘appendices’ make use of texts that look like
dictionary definitions. These are specially authored for the context of
this dissertation and are derived from the Encarta® World English
Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation and Dictionary.com. Minor
adjustments may have been made to the ordering of senses, with
some senses of the words omitted and examples altered.

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Introduction

LOW PROFILE are Hannah Jones and Rachel Dobbs. We have been
working together since 2003 to make live art, performances and
associated ephemera. An archive of our work is available on http://we-
are-low-profile.com
In our work as LOW PROFILE, we are drawn to tasks which
are unfeasibly large, seemingly ridiculous and on the edges
of sense and nonsense. Our concerns are human scale, they
are based on the specific, particular fixations and everyday
details of our lives – in an attempt to reclaim things that
would otherwise be overlooked or forgotten about; things
that are over used, over familiar and over played.
(LOW PROFILE, 2009)

Much of the work I am involved in making (as one half of LOW PROFILE)
is ‘bound up in the impossibility of language, in the inability we feel when
trying to express ourselves to others, in the difficulty of saying things out
loud, in the words getting mixed up, in the awkward stutters and
silences’ (LOW PROFILE, 2009). This dysfunctionality draws attention to
the space between us (as human beings) while simultaneously allowing
us (as practitioners) to set up situations where the potential of words,
communication and meaning can be explored and considered - situations
where something like the title of a generic love song has the potential to
be a confession, a desperate plea, an apology, a declaration, a beginning
and a goodbye (LOW PROFILE, 2010 a). Our intention, through our
collaborative practice, is to develop a vocabulary (linguistic, aesthetic or
otherwise) that enables us to communicate ‘what we do’ and ‘how we
think about the world’ (in our practice/writing/dissemination) effectively
and efficiently. It displays an ongoing investment in ‘borrowing’ other
people’s words/texts that we ‘find’ in the world. These are texts/words
that are only ever provisionally ‘ours’, texts that aim to recuperate and
reclaim the overlooked, and texts that are appropriated, makeshift,
homemade and which ‘stand-in’ temporarily for something else.

Over the last number of years, our research has been concerned with the
timely and persistent themes of survival and preparedness, alongside the
perceived need for protection from others, the unknown and ourselves –

1
playing with the shifts in scale of events like emergencies - the
emergency of the lost keys or the emergency of a broken heart to the
emergency of the crashing aircraft or the emergency of the world falling
apart. In recent times, we have realised that ours is a ‘quietly political’
practice, with its own implicit gender politics.

Issues arising from our practice consistently lead our (individual and
collaborative) research activities, and in recent years this has taken the
form of a number of investigations into the dissemination of our work and
the ‘space’ in which it meets an audience. The questions addressed in
this dissertation explore issues arising from our practice as LOW
PROFILE, informed by our experiences of making/showing/disseminating
artwork in a professional arena. It is my hope that this writing will, in
turn, inform the generation of artworks (and creative strategies) and help
us to consider the theoretical background and implications of our position
as artists.

This dissertation is written in tandem with a practical project (the newly

developed web-based project ‘HAVE YOU SEEN OUR WORK?’1) that aims
to undertake a close (theoretical and practical) examination of the spaces
in which the audience meets the artwork (face-to-face, through
documentation, through accounts of ‘what went on’, through associated
ephemera etc) and continues to address the question “How do you
document, re-present or disseminate live artwork that is non-spectacular,
untidy, unwieldy and unphotogenic?”

1
HAVE YOU SEEN OUR WORK? (HYSOW) is part of our ongoing attempts to find inventive
and ‘useful’ ways to document and disseminate our artwork. HYSOW is an online, on-
going compendium of material, bits & pieces and stuff that people who are not us (LOW
PROFILE) are making (have made/have pledged to make) in response to having ‘seen our
work’. The project can be viewed at www.have-you-seen-our-work.co.uk (LOW PROFILE,
2010 b) 

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Section 1:

On the position of nonvirtuoso, artist-as-genius,

‘spectacular displays of art’, pluralism, equality of
intelligences, mediating spectacle, non-spectacular
artworks, the ‘spectacle’ and prioritising of
‘appearance’.

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 [non-vur-choo-oh-soh]
non·vir·tu·o·so n
prefix meaning “not”, freely used as an English
formative, usually with a simple negative force as
implying mere negation or absence of something
(rather than the opposite or reverse of it, as often
expressed by un-): nonadherence;
noninterference; nonpayment; nonprofessional.

vir·tu·o·so n
1. exceptional performer: a musician who shows
exceptional ability, technique, or artistry
2. talented person: somebody who shows
exceptional technique or ability in something
3. connoisseur: somebody who is knowledgeable
and cultivated in appreciating the fine arts
(from Italian virtuoso, late Latin virtuosus, Latin
virtus = skill, manliness, excellence)

Q: How do you become a virtuoso?

A: Practice, practice, practice.

(Dobbs, 2009:10)

The position of nonvirtuoso is an attempt to negate the notion of artist as

genius – this mythical figure whose individual talent and skill is
mysterious or impenetrable, marking and re-enforcing a vast separation
between them and their audience. The aim of this virtuoso/expert is to
dazzle, to master, to control or exert power over, to conquer, to ‘own’
and to overcome.

In the live situations Hannah and I (LOW PROFILE) set up, we are
interested in tactics that emphasize the commonalities we share with
those who come to view what we present, rather than tactics that

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subjugate with a didactic approach. This is not to suggest that there is no
distance or difference between those who share the space/time of the
performance (the work is all about those differences) but instead about
assuming and reinforcing what Jacques Rancière would call an ‘equality of
intelligences’ (Rancière; 2007: 275). We are not presenting ourselves as
amateurs, as unprofessional or unskillful but instead suggesting an
alternative or different measure of ‘skill’. (Dobbs, 2009: 10-11)

In his essay Open Exhibitions and the Actualisation of Selection,

Christopher Collier argues that by virtue of being named (or naming their
activities) as such, ‘artists’ become a specialised group, bound up in a
situation Collier refers to as the perpetuation of ‘the myth of
specialisation and commodity’ (Collier, 2010: unpaginated).

The Romantic myth of artistic uniqueness and genius is one

strongly encouraged by a capitalism and an art market that
seeks to deny a universality of creativity and to promote
artistic activity as a specialised and restricted phenomenon
and hence to retain what Benjamin labeled the 'aura' of the
work of art. Art must be the work of the specialised genius,
a sacrosanct calling, insists capitalism with the complicity of
much of the art world.
(Collier, 2010: unpaginated)

This ‘necessity’ for the artist to occupy the position of virtuoso or genius,
in Collier’s words, ‘a highly focused, single-minded individual (complete
with style and signature)’ (Collier, 2010: unpaginated) is key to
restricting supply and maintaining the artwork’s position as ‘as a trade-
worthy commodity and an entrenchment of social position’ or ‘status
indicator’ (Collier, 2010: unpaginated). Therefore, to function successfully
in a capitalist economic system, it is in the interest of both artist and art-
market/art-world to embed, maintain and protect this position. For this
reason, it may seem somewhat out-of-step for an artist to seek to
position her/himself as ‘nonvirtuoso’.

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Collier continues:
The idea of genius as force external to social conditions is
reliant upon an implicit transcendence that is masculinist2 in
its inherently patriarchal and logocentric3 conception. It is a
myth constructed to enshrine the aura and an elitist
separatism on behalf of the artist. The masses may look, be
dazzled and disorientated by the spectacular display of art,
but may not own and certainly not create 'serious' art.
(Collier, 2010: unpaginated)

The reiteration of the dichotomy of professional vs amateur serves to

strengthen the division of labour, increasing the specialisation of specific,
circumscribed tasks and roles (those of artist and audience, for example)
and furthering the process of alienation4. By accepting this position of
‘genius’ or ‘virtuoso’, as artists, we therefore become complicit in
‘building-in positions of inequality, privilege or hierarchy into the
situations/artworks we create’ (Dobbs, 2010:2). If artists recognize that

2
In her entry Feminist Perspectives on Power, Amy Allen discusses the significant strand
of feminist theorizing that seeks to reposition understandings of power, away from a
focus on ‘power as domination’ towards ‘a reconceptualization of power as a capacity or
ability, specifically, the capacity to empower or transform oneself and others’ (citing Luce
Irigaray, Hélène Cixous, Jean Baker Miller and Virginia Held amongst others)(Allen, 2005:
unpaginated). Throughout my writing, I will make the case with reference to this
positioning ‘not as power-over but as power-to’ (Allen, 2005: unpaginated). However, I
am not interested in drawing gender-specific generalisations (ones that seek to reduce
the lived experience into unhelpful binary oppositions), preferring an attempt towards
gender-blindness, as I believe that people of any gender/identity are equally capable of
playing out all shades of the roles/’ways of operating’ that I reference and suggest.

3
With reference to Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology (Derrida, 1976), Chris Barker
writes: ‘By ‘logocentrism’, Derrida means the reliance on fixed, a priori transcendental
meanings. That is, universal meanings, concepts and forms of logic which exist within
human reason before any other kinds of thinking occurs, for example a universal
conception of reason or beauty.’ (Barker, 2005:73, original emphasis retained). The term
‘logocentrism’ builds on the Greek logos, meaning words, reason or spirit.

4 These terms are used with relation to Karl Marx’s analysis of the dynamics of capitalism
- a mode of production based on the division between those who own the means of
production (the private ownership of the means of production) and those who must sell
their labour in order to survive. In An Introduction To Cultural Studies, Chris Barker
explains: ‘Capitalism aims to make a profit and does so by extracting surplus value from
workers. That is, the value of the labour taken to produce a product, which becomes the
property of the bourgeoisie [those who own the means of production – mills, factories,
multinational companies etc], is less than the worker receives for it. The realization of
surplus value in monetary form is achieved by the selling of goods (which have both ‘use
value’ and ‘exchange value’) as commodities. The surface appearance of goods sold in the
marketplace obscures the origins of those commodities in an exploitative relationship
which Marx calls commodity fetishism. Further, the fact that workers are faced with the
products of their own labour now separated from them constitutes alienation.’ (Barker,
2005:13) 

6
‘equality is not a goal to be attained but a point of departure, a
supposition to be maintained in all circumstances’ (Rancière, 1991: 138)
and do not seek to neutralise (the possibly destabilising threat of) Joseph
Beuys’s statement5 “EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST” [original
emphasis retained] (Beuys, 1974: 48) with its ‘implied critique of
specialising professionalism’ (Collier, 2010: unpaginated), the position of
‘genius’ or ‘virtuoso’ artist becomes untenable.

Collier describes professionalism as ‘constituted by deliberate

exclusionary tactics, jargon and the manufacture of a discourse that you
must speak within or have no voice’ (Collier, 2010: unpaginated). The
position of nonvirtuoso artist is about ‘de-professionalising’ (in terms of
an attempt at reversing the process of alienation involved in increased
economic specialisation) and an ‘Untidying’ of roles, but it is not
synonymous with the position of amateur – somebody with limited skill
in, or knowledge of, an activity. In fact, it is also an attempt to counter
criticisms like Hal Foster’s description of artist as dilettante6 (Foster,
1985:16). Instead, I would like to put forward the idea of the nonvirtuoso
as an artist who takes a (critically aware) position contrary to the
dominant ideology, from within the system.

In the essay Against Pluralism, Hal Foster calls for artists to analyse more
critically their position within hybrid, ephemeral, site-specific and textual

5
In the context of Beuys’s formulation of the concept of ‘Social Sculpture/Social
Architecture’, which encourages ‘self-determination and participation in the cultural
sphere (freedom); in the structuring of laws (democracy); and in the sphere of economics
(socialism)’ (Beuys, 1974: 48), Beuys’s statement ‘EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST’
(Beuys, 1974: 48, capitals in the original) calls for every living person to recognise the
inherent agency of ‘his [or her] active thinking, his [or her] active feeling, his [or her]
active will’ or ‘individual productive potency (creativity)’ (Beuys, 1974: 48). In this way,
rather than appealing to all individuals to make what we might refer to as ‘artworks’
(commodities like paintings, sculptures etc), Beuys is instead referring to every person’s
role in ‘becom[ing] a creator, a sculptor or architect of the social organism’, which he
states is ‘A WORK OF ART’ (Beuys, 1974: 48, capitals in the original).

6 Foster writes: ‘Many artists borrow promiscuously from both historical and modern art.
But these references rarely engage the source – let alone the present – deeply. And the
typical artist if often “foot-loose in time, culture and metaphor”: a dilettante because he
thinks that, as he entertains the past, he is beyond the exigency of the present; a dunce
because he assumes a delusion; and a dangling man because historical moment – our
present problematic – is lost.’ (Foster, 1985:16) 

7
practices, ‘allowed for’ by late-modernism’s ‘aestheticism of the non- or
antiartistic’ (Foster, 1985:14). Special attention should be paid in a
(contemporary) pluralist context where ‘old avatars like the original artist
and the authentic masterwork’ (Foster, 1985:17) seem to have been
dismissed. Foster makes the case for how pluralism has come to serve
‘the status quo of our society of consumption’ by ‘repressive
desublimation’ (Foster cites Herbert Marcuse) (Foster, 1985:17) – a
system that permits some degree of subversive activity, expression or
the satisfaction of instinctual urges and strips them of their power
through this implicit tolerance (an ‘anything goes’ attitude). He talks
about how tactics employed during the 1960s and 70s that privileged ‘the
perverse and the marginal’ had become (by the mid 1980s) all but
conventional ‘as “alternative” spaces were rendered institutional’ (Foster,
1985:14). Foster states that the pluralist situation has fostered ‘an
“institutional theory” of art – namely, that art is what institutional
authority (e.g. the museum) says it is’ (Foster, 1985:14) and that ‘as
pluralism is without criteria of its own, old values are revived, ones
necessary to a market based on taste and connoisseurship, such as the
unique, the visionary, the genius, the masterpiece.’ (Foster, 1985:17).
Foster’s warnings present a specific difficulty for the potential of the
position of artist as nonvirtuoso. One needs to be acutely aware of the
tendency for a pluralist context to engulf (‘alternative’ or non-
mainstream) tactics, practices or approaches and of the tendency for one
set of ‘norms’ or positions of privilege or hierarchy to quickly (and
quietly) be replaced by another, or for any oppositional stance to be co-
opted by the status quo.

The position of artist as nonvirtuoso, however, necessitates a little re-

writing of the rules. It would shift importance away from artists being
judged by how well they enact the role of ‘genius artist’ and/or how well
they limit supply and support the perpetuation of ‘the myth of
specialisation and commodity’ (Collier, 2010:unpaginated) towards a
position where artists play a key role in orchestrating situations that
recognise ‘that "interpreting the world" is already a means of
transforming it, of reconfiguring it’ (Rancière, 2007:277). Rancière’s

8
allusion here towards ‘interpreting the world’ references Marx’s assertion
that ‘[…] philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways—
the point however is to change it’ (Marx and Engels, 1845:Thesis 11).
This, in turn, informs Beuys’s call for the dismantling of the contemporary
social system (Beuys, 1974: 48) in favour of one where every living
person recognises (and is recognised for) the inherent agency of ‘his [or
her] active thinking, his [or her] active feeling, his [or her] active will’ or
‘individual productive potency (creativity)’ (Beuys, 1974: 48). It would
then follow that the nonvirtuoso artist’s practice7 needs to actively
recognise, promote and re-instate an ‘equality of intelligences’ (Rancière;
2007: 275) – where those who make/show artworks (and those who
come in contact with this ‘work’) assume equality as ‘a point of
departure’ (Rancière, 1991: 138) rather than being complicit in the
continuation of strategies that seeks to reinforce the opposing positions
of genius artist and ‘the masses’.

In his essay The Emancipated Spectator, Jacques Rancière calls for ‘a

mediating spectacle’ (Rancière, 2007: 278) as a means to bring artists
and audiences together in a situation that recognises and/or emphasises
their equality rather than simply re-enforcing binaries that imply
privileged positions and opposition like activity vs passivity, knowing vs
looking, expert vs amateur. This is not, however, a call for artists to
enforce a visible type of participation ‘on’ spectators (i.e. to make them
‘do’ something). Rancière asks, ‘Why identify the fact of being seated
motionless with inactivity, if not by the presupposition of a radical gap
between activity and inactivity?’ (Rancière, 2007:277). Instead, he
proposes that:
Spectatorship is not a passivity that must be turned into
activity. It is our normal situation. We learn and teach, we
act and know, as spectators who link what they see with
what they have seen and told, done and dreamed. There is

7 ‘practice’ here refers to the expanded notion of an artist’s activities (not simply the
production of ‘artwork’), drawing on Marx’s notion that ‘All social life is essentially
practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in
human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.’ (Marx and Engels, 1845:Thesis
8) 

9
 no privileged medium, just as there is no privileged starting
point.
(Rancière, 2007:279)

Rancière calls for a situation where the artist no longer wants ‘to do
things to’ the audience (to ‘make them’ feel or act in particular ways) and
the spectator no longer wants to be ‘done to’ (Dobbs, 2010:4). As a
nonvirtuoso, the aim of the artist would no longer be to ‘dazzle’ or
‘disorientate’, to ‘master’, control or ‘own’ the situation. Their main
concern ceases to be the production of what Collier calls ‘the spectacular
display of art’ (Collier, 2010:unpaginated). Their artistry would instead
need to be deployed in another way. Rancière suggests that for ‘an
equality of intelligences’ to be recognised in the artist-audience
relationship, it is necessary that all parties can refer to a ‘mediating
spectacle’ (Rancière, 2007:278) – an in-between thing, something that
simultaneously links and separates artist and spectator and is in some
way foreign to both. I would argue that the creation, selection, curation,
appropriation or orchestration of this ‘mediating spectacle’ is the artwork
(the most important thing for the artist to ‘author’) – and that this
process of creation, selection, curation, appropriation or orchestration is
the ‘skill’ that an artist can use to attend to (and as a result, draw
attention to) their concerns (Dobbs, 2010:4).

With reference to live artworks in particular, employing a ‘mediating

spectacle’ leads to a shifting of ‘the focus’ of the work (the work’s
‘centre’) away from the bodies of the artists (becoming more
Unphotogenic) and away from the expectation to ‘perform’, to
demonstrate exceptional ability in wielding those bodies or the
requirement for artists to set up simply aesthetic situations. This
possibility for ‘non-spectacular displays of art’ [my term, building on
Collier’s] might be of particular use to the nonvirtuoso artist, providing a

10
strategy with which to resist the slickness or ‘gloss’8 that marks
contemporary art works as ‘trade-worthy commodit[ies]’ or ‘status
indicator[s]’ (Collier, 2010:unpaginated).

This notion of the non-spectacular artwork or ‘non-spectacular displays of

art’ is an attempt to counteract that which is simply visually impressive,
dramatic, or something that is designed to be looked at/gazed upon –
what Hal Foster might term ‘an art of sheer style concerned only with
“look”’ (Foster, 1983:90). In Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord calls
for what Claire Bishop paraphrases as ‘participatory events using
experimental behaviour to break the spectacular bind of capitalism’
(Bishop, 2006:96). Debord critiques the spectacle as that which says
‘nothing more than “that which appears is good, that which is good
appears”’ (Debord, 1967:Thesis 12) and ‘inherits all the weaknesses of
the Western philosophical project which undertook to comprehend
activity in terms of the categories of seeing’ (Debord, 1967:Thesis 19).
He warns repeatedly against the degradation of ‘concrete life’ (Debord,
1967:Thesis 19) that follows the non-critical and passive acceptance of
‘the spectacle’, the prioritising of ‘appearance’ and involvement in
activities that unthinkingly bolster the spectacle’s self-presentation ‘as
something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible’ (Debord,
1967:Thesis 12):
In societies where modern conditions of production prevail,
all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of
spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved
away into a representation. […] The spectacle is not a
collection of images, but a social relation among people,
mediated by images. […] Considered in its own terms, the
spectacle is affirmation of appearance and affirmation of all
human life, namely social life, as mere appearance.[…] The
spectacle, as a tendency to make one see the world by
means of various specialized mediations […] naturally finds

8 In the essay Contemporary Art and Spectacle, Hal Foster cites Fredric Jameson’s text
On Diva (1982) when discussing seduction and the spectacle: ‘Now to be seduced is to be
at once lured and excluded by a false image of perfection […] but this “cult of the glossy
image” goes beyond seduction, as Fredric Jameson has noted: “The silence of affect in
postmodernism is doubled with a new gratification in surfaces and accompanied by a
whole new ground tone in which the pathos of high modernism has been inverted into a
strange new exhilaration, the high, the intensité.” (Foster, 1983:90) 

11
 vision to be the privileged human sense which the sense of
touch was for other epochs [...] But the spectacle is not
identifiable with mere gazing, even combined with hearing.
It is that which escapes the activity of men, that which
escapes reconsideration and correction by their work. It is
the opposite of dialogue.
(Debord, 1967:Thesis 1, 4, 10, 18)

In this way, Debord’s ‘spectacle’ and Collier’s ‘spectacular displays of art’

both thrive on an attitude of a ‘monopoly of appearance’ (Debord, 1967:
Thesis 12), which is suggestive of a particular largeness, greatness or
‘might’ associated with visibility. Again, this attitude, when considered
alongside the embedding of ‘artistic uniqueness and genius’ (Collier,
2010: unpaginated) (unwittingly, perhaps) reinforces implied positions of
power and disempowerment. The spectacular suggests a one-way,
didactic relationship – rather than one that embraces, recognizes, or
even allows for, an ‘equality of intelligences’ (Rancière; 2007: 275). In
light of this, the nonvirtuoso artist’s task may be to author something
other than ‘appearance’, or to set up situations where ‘appearance’ is not
the primary concern. It follows that we should examine further the
notions of spectacular and non-spectacular displays of art.

12
Section 2:

On the body as site of resistance?, Marina

Abramović: The Artist Is Present, artist’s presence
as commodity, alternative spaces rendered
institutional, franchising of performance work, and
ensuring photogenicness.

13
In the essay What is Live Art?, the Live Art Development Agency cite the
influence, on contemporary live art practices, of ‘late 20th century
Performance Art methodologies where fine artists, in a rejection of
objects and markets, turned to their body as the site and material of
their practice’ (LADA, 2009:unpaginated). Similarly in ‘TV Perfect’,
Joshua Sofaer points out how an embrace of the ephemeral nature of live
practices is used (and/or seen) as a political strategy: ‘Many artists have
chosen to make live work because they have become disillusioned with
the way in which the art-market has commodified object based practices
as investments’ (Sofaer, 2001: unpaginated). I would question, however,
how useful or successful the substitution of ‘artist’s body’ in place of
‘artwork’ is in resisting commodification.

Figure 1. photograph of Marina Abramović’s

performance The Artist Is Present installed at MoMA,
New York (Walker, 2010)

14
Taking MoMA New York’s blockbuster exhibition Marina Abramović: The
Artist Is Present9 (2010) as an example, it could be argued that the artist
and institution work together to ensure the artist appears as ‘a highly
focused, single-minded individual (complete with style and signature)’
(Collier, 2010: unpaginated). This entrenchment of the position of artist-
as-genius is key to ensuring the artist’s body itself, its representations
and the artist’s daily ‘presence’ as part of the exhibition become ‘a trade-
worthy commodity and an entrenchment of social position’ or potential
‘status indicator’ (Collier, 2010: unpaginated). In fact, Hari Kunzru goes
as far as to describe the context of exchanges between artist and
audience as ‘primarily economic’ (Kunzru, 2010: unpaginated, original
emphasis retained)10. With tickets for museum entrance retailing at $20
each, and potential for sales of the accompanying publication11 at $50, a
DVD documenting Abramović’s series Seven Easy Pieces for $40 (Item #
84529, 2010) and a specially produced multiple12 entitled Energy Blanket

9
Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present (2010) was a ‘career retrospective’ exhibition
including sanctioned re-performances of a selection of Abramović’s works by specially
trained performers and showing of a new (two and a half month long) durational live work
entitled ‘The Artist Is Present’. In this piece, Abramović sits behind a small table almost
motionless and silent, each day during museum opening hours for the duration of the
exhibition. An empty chair invites a member of the public to sit, facing the artist and
engage in silent eye contact for as long as they want, or as long as they can. The table
was removed after it had been used by another artist, to make an (unwelcome)
intervention into the situation. Documentation of exhibition available on
http://www.moma.org/abramovic (accessed 1 June 2010)

10  In his review for Mute magazine, Hari Kunzru writes: ‘I visited the show twice, once at
the private view, and for the last two hours of the final day's performance, so I never saw
an ‘ordinary' day of the run. On the opening night, Abramovic sat at her table and began
her eye-work. It was like watching the queen receive artworld courtiers. The artist's
presence was functioning (as you'd expect, given the location and the crowd) within the
matrix of specular contemporary celebrity. Whatever exchange was taking place between
the artist and the participants was affected by that context. It felt primarily economic.
This was the Abramovic who would, during the run, appear in the New York Times Home
and Garden section, discussing the expensive (and somehow disappointingly
conventional) minimalist interior design of her Soho loft and upstate weekend house […].
Nevertheless her silence and stillness lent the event an echo of the masque, a kind of
specularity associated with Renaissance European monarchy, in which proximity to the
body (and gaze) of Elizabeth I or Louis XIV was an indicator of status, and yet took place
within stagings (presence-chambers, or in the case of court masque as a dramatic form,
literal sets) in which only the gaze of the monarch afforded a perfect, total view. On this
night, Abramovic was the sole giver of light, fame, patronage.’ (Kunzru, 2010:
unpaginated) 

11
Klaus Biesenbach (2010) Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, New York: MoMA

12
Energy Blanket (2010) is described as a ‘soft white blanket to be used for magnet
therapy’ that features ‘the artist's printed sketch of the human body with fourteen
strategically placed "X's"’ (Item# 84703, 2010: unpaginated)

15
(2010) for $460 (Item# 84703, 2010), what (in this case) may have
begun as a transgressive practice has now become a very profitable one
(becoming marketable or having the potential to generate profit or
earnings). This could be a (contemporary) case in point for Hal Foster’s
reading of situations where tactics employed by artists during the 1960s
and 70s (in this case body and performance art), that privileged ‘the
perverse and the marginal’, have become all but conventional, as what
were previously ‘alternative’ spaces (including the artist’s own body) are
‘rendered institutional’ (Foster, 1985:14).

What is put forward as ‘an endeavor to transmit the presence of the artist
and make her historical performances accessible to a larger audience’
(MoMa, 2010 a: unpaginated)13 results in (or is facilitated by) the
strategic franchising of the performance work. This process of granting
the exclusive right to perform an action (or acquire a benefit) and to
permit or deny others the right to perform the same action (or to acquire
the same benefit) is a prevalent global capitalist business model14.
Abramović sanctions these re-performances of her body of work (a type
of commercial licensing) and is keenly involved (as franchisor) in
providing training/advisory services to the franchisees15- the institution
that hosts the exhibition and those who act as surrogate bodies for hers
(and her ex-collaborator Ulay’s, in the case of the work ‘on show’ at
MoMA). These activities could be seen as serving to reinforce Abramović‘s
authorship/ownership over the work (and a desire to ‘control’ or ‘master’
the live situation), re-drawing the focus onto her ‘genius’, even when she
is no longer physically present in the live situation.

13
The exhibition statement states: ‘In an endeavor to transmit the presence of the artist
and make her historical performances accessible to a larger audience, the exhibition
includes the first live re-performances of Abramović’s works by other people ever to be
undertaken in a museum setting. In addition, a new, original work performed by
Abramović will mark the longest duration of time that she has performed a single solo
piece.’ (MoMA, 2010 a: unpaginated)
14
This is exemplified in well known franchise brands like Subway, McDonalds or Dunkin
Donuts. See The British Franchise Association’s website for a clear overview of this type
of business agreement (British Franchise Association, 2010: unpaginated).
15
See MoMA (2010 b) Marina Abramović: "Cleaning the House" workshop [video] for
examples of Abramović’s rigorous training regime.

16
The documentation of the set-up created in the live work The Artist Is
Present (2010) could also be read as demonstrating a particular concern
with ‘appearance’. In photographs and videos of the performance space,
four sets of double large stage/flood lights and their diffusers dominate,
with the cables supplying them with electricity reiterating the controlled
boundaries of the work’s ‘stage’ (initially marked out with white tape).
These lights serve partly to ‘block out’ the crowd16, but also ensure that
Marco Anelli (at the behest of Abramović and MoMA)17 can photograph
each of the sitters and the artist throughout the passage of the
exhibition. In these photographs, referred to as ‘portraits’ (Anelli, 2010),
Abramović is wearing heavy make-up and there seems to be a deliberate
attempt to achieve a consistency of images/imagery (of both the artist
and the sitters)18. The performance space also caters to the need for
another type of consistency. In a space (the Marron Atrium) that is lit
predominantly by natural light19, the four lighting rigs serve to balance
out extremes of light and dark, allowing the space and the performance it
‘contains’ to remain photogenic at all times, and from all angles. As the

16
In a review of the performance, Carolina Miranda writes: ‘When I finally sat down
before Abramovic, the bright lights blocked out the crowd, the hall's boisterous chatter
seemed to recede into the background, and time became elastic. (I have no idea how
long I was there.) Sitting before me was a tired, fragile woman on the outset of what will
likely be a very arduous task. And for the first time in two days, I had absolutely no
trouble focusing.’ (Miranda, 2010: unpaginated)
17
Shannon Darrough, Senior Media Developer for MoMA, states that ‘The artist has asked
photographer Marco Anelli to take portraits of every visitor who participates in the piece.’
(Darrough, 2010: unpaginated). These portraits were regularly uploaded to MoMA’s Flickr
account and published online. See also Joe Holmes’ Flickr set, where he photographs (and
publishes the resulting images of) Anelli taking sanctioned photographs of Abramović’s
piece. The commentary that follows (as comments on the photographs) gives an example
of the kind of meta-narrative that builds around the piece, the desire by audience
members to take photographs in the space and the way in which this activity is ‘policed’
by the museum’s guards. (Holmes, 2010: unpaginated)
 
18
With reference to Marco Anelli’s photographs (Anelli, 2010), one can identify patterns
in the composition of the images – e.g. the faces of sitters occupy the same area/space in
the frame of each photograph, photographed from the same angle etc.. When the artist is
photographed, it is (usually) with a different framing to the sitters - we see her from mid-
torso up, face-on, staring directly (but as though in a trance) at the camera’s lens,
(almost) always with an uninterrupted grey background. 
19
This detail was established in conversation with Neil Rose (2 June 2010) who visited
the performance work at MoMA in April 2010.

17
number of videos on YouTube20 or photos on Flickr21 (and other
photo/video sharing sites) of this piece attest, visitors to the performance
space now expect to take (and publish) their own videos/photographs of
performance events. No longer can an artist/institution realistically
control who can publish images of the live work. I would argue that this
is one of the reasons for the artist’s heightened resolve to ‘control’ the
performance space. If it is to remain visually impressive for an extended
period (and become an event that is memorable for the appearance it
creates), the performance needs to be photogenic from all angles (and in
this case, ‘in the round’ and from above due to the architecture of the
space) and well lit at all times, so that even the unsanctioned
photos/videos look good. In this case, the performance situation is
devised (at least in part) to the scope of the camera’s lens and in footage
of the exhibition’s installation Abramović herself is seen checking the
space through a camera’s viewfinder (MoMA, 2010 c), to see if it is, what
Joshua Sofaer refers to as, ‘TV perfect’ (Sofaer, 2001:unpaginated).
Although visitors are explicitly warned not take photographs of the event,
I would also like to suggest that its set-up, the socio-political context in
which the piece is shown, and what Hari Kunzru calls ‘the quasi-religious
hysteria that grew up around Abramović during its run’ (Kunzru, 2010:
unpaginated) could all be seen to implicitly encourage the taking of these
photographs.

This perceived preoccupation with the impressive visual accomplishment

of the work, its appearance (in the live moment and associated
documents) and the production of ‘spectacular displays of art’ (Collier,
2010: unpaginated), all serve to foreground the artist’s ‘presence’ (which
has now been invested with Benjamin’s 'aura' of the work of art), making
it the centre of attention in the work (body-centric, but also genius-

20
On 1 June 2010, 46 YouTube videos use the exact phrase "the artist is present" in their
title, 70 are revealed by the search "Marina Abramovic" + “MoMA”.
21
On 1 June 2010, 229 images were tagged with the very specific ‘theartistispresent’ tag
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/theartistispresent/), including more than one of the
“No Photography” sign itself (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sixteen-miles/4422516538/),
607 images tagged ‘marina abramovic’ etc
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/marinaabramovic/)

18
centric or ‘aura’-centric). In these ways, the artwork itself operates very
successfully in the system of capitalist exchange dominant within the art
eco-system, but it does mean the artist’s position is far from that of the
nonvirtuoso. The title ‘The Artist Is Present’ signals with clarity the focus
of this piece and that which is held in highest regard – THE ARTIST. The
structure of the artwork (the way in which it is set up), its didactic nature
and the positioning of artist and audience, intentionally or unintentionally
reiterate (and build-in) positions of hierarchy, privilege and inequality.
The work does, however, raise many interesting questions - revealing in
the meta-narratives that surround it (informal conversations, blogging,
reviews, news coverage etc.) what Kunzru terms ‘the local culture of
kultur-industrial Manhattan’ (Kunzru, 2010: unpaginated). He suggests
that the taking into account of these ‘ripples’ offers a level of institutional
critique (or at least provokes thought) ‘about the artist as celebrity, the
meaning of participation, and the way in which art functions (or wishes to
function) in this not-so secular society as a source of transcendence’
(Kunzru, 2010: unpaginated, original emphasis retained). Again, I feel
this relates strongly to Debord’s notion of spectacle. If the space of the
artwork is ‘dominated’, ‘owned’ and ‘controlled’ by the artist (their body,
their genius and their ‘aura’), then the other people in the space bolster
this position simply by being there. Looking, gazing, staring, watching,
seeing and being seen are the privileged actions.

For in spectacle the “desire of contemporary masses to bring

things ‘closer’ spatially and humanly” – to overcome estrangement
– is falsely fulfilled precisely because what is offered is the very
opposite of community, the very instrument of alienation: the
commodity. (Again the double-bind of spectacle as both a
symptomatic effect of reification and its supposed antidote.) In this
way spectacle represents “the point at which aesthetic appearance
becomes a function of the character of the commodity”22; indeed,
in spectacle the lost aura of art, of tradition, of community is
replaced with the “aura” of the commodity
(Foster, 1983: 92)

The stated aim of the exhibition - ‘an endeavor to transmit the presence
of the artist and make her historical performances accessible to a larger

22
Foster cites Theodor Adorno’s In Search of Wagner here (Adorno, 1981: 90)

19
audience’ (MoMA, 2010 a: unpaginated) - is achieved by giving ‘the
masses’ closer access to an historical body of work through physically
collecting together (and exhibiting) documentation/recordings of work,
alongside first-hand, spatial access to the re-performed/franchised works
and the ability for members of the public to share the performance space
with the artist. However, these attempts to ‘overcome estrangement’
(Foster, 1983: 92) may be ‘falsely fulfilled precisely because what is
offered is the very opposite of community, the very instrument of
alienation: the commodity.’ In the process, the artist’s body, ‘presence’,
genius, traces (documents/recordings), style (through the franchising of
performances), signature (literally, in the case of the multiples that
accompany the exhibition) and ‘aura’ have all been successfully
commodified. From this particular example, it could be deduced that
none of these elements are capable of, or display a particular desire for,
resistance to what Foster refers as ‘this transformation, this passage of
art through the condition of spectacle’ (Foster, 1983:92).

20
Section 3:

On what the practical implications of maintaining

and invoking a low profile might be for
performance, competence and know-how (rather
than know-it-all), situational aesthetics and
institutional critique, nonvirtuoso as a type of
‘othering’ and the threat of ‘invisibility’.

21
Larry Lynch writes (with reference to our practice as LOW PROFILE):
The name itself may offer a way-in: the term ‘Low Profile’
implies a sense of reduced visibility and a move to resist
public notice. Such positioning seems at odds with the idea
of performance or performing – at least in the ways these
things are traditionally understood. The production and
presentation of live spectacle and the desire for the
performer(s) to be the focus, watched, scrutinised even, are
common enough tenets of much performance practice,
particularly that which occurs within the theatrical
mainstream. Why might a group who define themselves
unreservedly as performers doing performance seek,
through the force of their name, to frame their output with
such explicit reference to contrary directives? And what
might the practical implications of maintaining and invoking
a low profile be for performance?
(Lynch, 2008: 23)

Our interest (as LOW PROFILE) in making/showing work is not about

flourish (grand gestures, embellishment, showy-ness), competition (the
goal of outperforming others or of winning something) or achieving a
mastery of the performance space. We (LP) are not ‘at home’ on the
stage, or with performing – the ‘on stage’ is other to us. This position
allows us to develop (and acknowledge/encourage the development of)
what Michel deCerteau would call ‘ways of operating’ (de Certeau:
1984:xix)23. (Dobbs, 2009:11)
What they [LOW PROFILE] have sought to reject from this
[anti-theatrical performance rooted in a fine art] tradition is
its tendency to prioritise the notion of a skilfully-wrought,
singular and successful work. It is this aspect of Fine Art
practice that jars most acutely with Jones and Dobbs and
also, thereby, with their desire as Low Profile to enable the
work to respond to the dynamics and demands of everyday
lived experience.
(Lynch, 2008: 24)

Rather than adopting a sleight of hand (or playing at being experts), we

are interested in drawing attention to our non-interest in creating

23
Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1984) offers an account of ‘everyday’
resistance and, as Chris Barker points out, is widely referenced in the field of
‘consumption-orientated cultural studies’ (Barker, 2005: 46). Barker goes on to discuss
how the book ‘conceptualiz[es] the resistive practices of everyday life as always already
in the space of power. For de Certeau, as with Foucault (1980), there are no ‘margins’
outside of power from which to lay an assault on it or from which to claim authenticity’
(Barker, 2005:345)

22
something that is ‘a work of art’ (masterpiece/ masterwork) or what
Collier refers to as ‘spectacular displays of art’ - savouring our work’s
Unwieldiness (if ‘wielding’ holds a connotation of the use of force, power
or authority). In an arena (art and performance) traditionally
concerned/obsessed with greatness, solo-genius, virtuosity, display of
skill/talent/connoisseurship (Dobbs, 2009:11), our (LP) approach signals
a conscious desire to resist slickness, ‘gloss’, expectations of technical
competence and the ‘skilfully-wrought, singular and successful work’
(Lynch, 2008: 24).

In relation to the position of the nonvirtuoso, it may be useful to talk

about operating with competence rather than ‘skill’. Competence
suggests a person’s internalized knowledge of the rules of a language
that enables them to speak and understand it, or the ability to do
something well or to a required standard. This would imply a proficiency,
a perceptiveness or savvy - know-how (rather than the falsehood of
know-it-all). The competent nonvirtuoso would then operate in a way
that is credible, effective, capable and applicable to the context – rather
than reliant on a current (accepted or shared) understanding of what the
descriptors ‘good’, ‘the best’ or ‘exceptional’ mean in the technical terms
of a certain field (Dobbs, 2009:11-12). This notion of competency also
further differentiates the nonvirtuoso from the amateur (a person with
limited skill in, or knowledge of, an activity).

Citing artists’ practice like Martha Rosler, Sherrie Levine, Barbra Kruger,
Jenny Holzer and Krzysztof Wodcizko, Hal Foster discusses the kind of
competence which these artists display in dealing with the context in
which they make/show work:

[…] each treats the public space, social representation or

artistic language in which he or she intervenes as both
target and weapon. This shift in practice entails a shift in
position: the artist becomes manipulator of signs more than
a producer of art objects, and the viewer an active reader of
messages rather than a passive contemplator of the
aesthetic or consumer of the spectacular. This shift is not
new […] yet it remains strategic if only because even today
few are able to accept the status of art as social sign

23
 entangled with other signs in systems productive of value,
power and prestige.
(Foster, 1982:100)

Foster acknowledges that the way for the ‘situational aesthetics of this
art – its special attention to site, address and audiences’ (100) was
prepared by the institutional critique of artists and writers like Daniel
Buren, Hans Haacke, Dan Graham and Joseph Kosuth and their focuses
‘primarily on the institutional frame, and secondarily on the economic
logic, of the modern art object […] [seeking] to reveal the ways in which
the production and reception of art are institutionally predetermined,
recuperated, used’ (101). However, he critiques these practices as self-
limiting - attending ‘only’ to the institutional frame. He argues that they
sustain existing (or given) forms of art by referencing them in form and
through the use of museum as exhibition space (e.g. this leads to Buren’s
work being easily classified as/read in relation to traditional ‘painting’)
and the tendency to present ‘the exhibitional limits of art as socially
indiscriminate and sexually indifferent’ (as a result of the work’s
‘scientificity’) (103). He also points out that the works ‘cannot fully
account for the systems of circulation in which the art work is involved
after exhibition – the processes by which it becomes a discriminatory
sign.’ (103) and finally, that ‘the work [becomes] less an attack on the
separation of cultural and social practice than another example of it and
the artist less a deconstructive delineator of the institution than its
“expert”’ (103)24.

Foster warns against artists becoming complacent with their perceived

‘expertise’ (in institutional critique), encouraging instead a kind of
constant insecurity (the need to continuously build and draw on a
proficiency, perceptiveness or know-how), rather than relaxing into the
position of ‘expert’ (know-it-all):
Yet, by the same token, this art cannot afford to take the
demonstrations of institutional critique for granted. For
without specific attention to its own institution this critical

24 Foster also acknowledges that ‘Such criticisms come after the fact, however, and are
less failings of this practice than insights developed from it by later artists.’ (Foster,
1982:103) 

24
 practice, even now well received in the gallery/museum
nexus, will be recuperated as yet another avant-gardist
exercise, a mere manipulation rather than an active
transformation of social signs.
(Foster, 1982:107)

It follows that the position of nonvirtuoso may also need to act a kind of
‘othering’, although this is not to suggest that the nonvirtuoso holds the
position of ‘outsider’ to the dominant system and/or mainstream values.
Returning to de Certeau’s writing, the nonvirtuoso artist needs to (and by
virtue of their destabilised position, can) employ a tactical competence
from within the identified dominant system and discourse:
The place of the tactic belongs to the other. A tactic
insinuates itself into the other’s place, fragmentarily, without
being able to keep it at a distance. It has at its disposal no
base where it can capitalise on its advantages, prepare its
expansions, and secure independence with respect to
circumstances.
(de Certeau:1984:xix)

Just as Foster identifies the possibility/necessity for artists to infiltrate -

‘Like a dye in the bloodstream, the work of these artists does delineate
the circulation systems of art, but it also operates within its terms’
(Foster, 1982:106) - the tactical ways in which nonvirtuoso artists
operate must also demonstrate a keen critical and analytical
understanding of the context in which they operate.

At this point it may be important to consider the consequences of these

rule changes. What are the consequences of an implied ‘sense of reduced
visibility and a move to resist public notice’ (Lynch, 2008: 23), the
decentering25 of the artist (negating the notion of artist as genius), and
the disruption of the ‘spectacular display’ of 'serious' art at which ‘[t]he

25
 ‘Decentering - A "centred identity" is one in which the individual social actor has a clear
and unequivocal sense of who and what they are. By extension, a "decentred identity" is
one in which the individual experiences varying levels of confusion over who and what
they are. In short, a decentred society is one in which social expectations (norms) are
increasingly unfocused, unclear and, of course, open to frequent manipulation and
change. For post-modernists, "decentring" is an inevitable consequence of the decline of
metanarratives, precisely because the "old belief systems" that gave people a strong
sense of identity (religion, communism and so forth) gradually fall into disrepute and
disuse, as, indeed, do belief systems based around clear concepts of class, gender, age,
ethnicity and location’. (Decentering, 2010)

25
masses may look, be dazzled and disorientated by […] but may not own
and certainly not create’ (Collier, 2010: unpaginated)?
Christopher Collier warns:
This is where we arrive at the heart of the problem, 'serious'
art as defined by whom? It is in my view the aristo-
capitalist dominated discourse that demands and
perpetuates the myth of specialisation and commodity.
Works that do not fit within the given parameters of this
discourse are denied a voice, are quite literally invisible.
(Collier, 2010: unpaginated)

Collier’s viewpoint would suggest that nonvirtuoso artists involved in

making/showing nonspectacular artworks are in danger of being denied a
voice, muting themselves (a self-censoring) or writing themselves out of
the discourse through lack of desire to conform to its values. Returning to
this point, he states, ‘If our intervention takes place outside of the
legitimised situational context, outside of the dominant power discourse,
it fails, it has no voice, it is invisible and is lost to us’ (Collier, 2010:
unpaginated). This threat of ‘invisibility’ (becoming impossible to see) is
by no means the same as a desire for the ‘nonspectacular’ (becoming
impossible to take-in in one glance). This ‘invisibility’ recognises the
power relations inherent in the arts eco-system26, and the ‘pre-accepted
situational conditions’ (Collier, 2010: unpaginated) under which ‘the
utterance [the artwork], even in a legitimate and agreed format has no
effect, no voice, as it comes from the wrong person, in the wrong
situational context’ and that ‘the format of the work is largely irrelevant
to its having a voice, what matters is the context in which it appears, the
CV, the professionalism of its originator’ (Collier, 2010: unpaginated). It
refers to the situation of curators, programmers and influential private
collectors, those who administer publicly or privately funded institutions,

26
 See Morris Hargreaves McIntyre Diagram 1: The Art Eco-System Model, (Compiled with
findings from research commissioned by Arts Council England. Diagram by Gerry Morris)
from p4 Emilia Telese (2007) ‘Trade Off: Markets for Art in the UK’ in Artists Information
Company, The (2007) Trade Off, Newcastle: a-n The Artists Information Company (also
published online at : www.a-n.co.uk/trade-off) (accessed 15 May 2010) 

26
publishers etc (even in a post-Web 2.0/prosumer context27) as
gatekeepers of legitimate cultural ‘visibility’ – as Collier put it:
It is the editing discourse that remains, the search engine,
the ideology that hails us, the curatorial selection panel and
myriad other filtering, selecting devices that sieve down the
infinite mass of the virtual, the amorphous sea of culture,
and filter it into that which is seen, is heard, is made
apparent.
[…]
It is the editor (or editing systems) and not the producer
that holds the true power. These means of selection, not
the means of production is what we truly need to have our
voices heard, our gestures liberated.
(Collier, 2010: unpaginated)

If the dominant discourse is angled towards the spectacular, choosing to

work in non-spectacular way could lead to artists pushing themselves
onto ‘the outside’ of what is considered ‘good art’ and rendering
themselves invisible and voiceless. To avoid this situation, the
nonvirtuoso artist would then need to develop a tactical competence and
deep understanding of how to operate with reference to these ‘editing
systems’.
If we don't want to end up on the cutting room floor, to not
make it into the salon, if we want our voice to be heard, to

27
The terms ‘Web 2.0’ and ‘prosumers’ (producer-consumers) are interrelated. The
archive of first Web 2.0 conference (co-moderated by Tim O'Reilly & John Battelle (San
Francisco, 5-7 October 2004)) site sets out the notion of "Web as Platform" - alluding to
the shift from static, read-only webpages and browser applications, towards sites that
allow users to do more than just retrieve information. Battelle and O’Reilly argued that
the activities of users generating content (in the form of ideas, text, videos, or pictures)
via web-based and web-built applications could be ‘harnessed’ to create value
(Battelle/O’Reilly, 2004:upaginated). The term Web 2.0 is used to refer to online sites
that demonstrate an ‘architecture of participation’ (O’Reilly, 2005: unpaginated), like
social networks, blogs, wikis and media sharing sites – where users participate in content
creation and, by doing so, add value to the applications used. Unlike desktop applications,
the applications that facilitate these Web 2.0 sites are often free at the point of use and
are in ‘perpetual beta’ – small tweaks and new developments or features are constantly
released and introduced ‘quietly’, rather than requiring whole new ‘versions’ to be
installed or ‘learned’ by users.

Collier writes: ‘Surely it can be argued that if ideology is accepted to be ubiquitous, the
spectacle omnipresent, then culture too is everywhere and so are the voices that
constitute it as 'writers' or 'readers', or both. In the era of web 2.0 a new phenomenon
has been observed in which the individual everywhere collectively began to appropriate
the creative imperative from professionals. Bloggers could become critics, Youtube users
could set up their own television channel, marketing of events became free and simple,
people became simultaneous producers and consumers, became a new cultural
classification – 'prosumers' and not professionals. This far-reaching cultural change could
not fail to have an impact beyond the web (but to speak of such a realm within the West
today seems increasingly anachronistic).’ (Collier, 2010: unpaginated)

27
 have the right to name our own ship, then we each need to
become acutely aware of the editing process, wherever it
occurs and to consider therefore how this is inflecting our
opinions and shaping our knowledge.
(Collier, 2010: unpaginated)

In much the same way that Hal Foster’s initial references (Daniel Buren,
Hans Haacke, Dan Graham, Joseph Kosuth etc) undertook the
‘displacement of art by its own support, by its own spectacle’ (Foster,
1982:105) and the work of the later wave of feminist-informed artists
(Martha Rosler, Sherrie Levine, Barbra Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Krzysztof
Wodcizko etc) displays a powerful reflexivity in the ways in which it
‘considers the discourses – of high art and mass culture, of sexual politics
and cultural power – with which it is engaged’ (Foster, 1982:107),
contemporary artists today who choose a nonvirtuoso/non-spectacular
approach may need to identify strategies for bringing their work back
‘into the fold’, re-framing or ensuring it passes the ‘edit’, without
becoming fully ‘recuperated’, consumed, absorbed or enveloped by the
market dominated systems in which it circulates28.

28
In his essay, Subversive Signs, Hall Foster writes: ‘Jenny Holzer’s is a “situationist”
strategy: in a variety of signs she presents opinions, credos, anecdotes in a way which
both manifests the domination active in everyday discourse and confounds it by sheer
anarchic display. In this way the work of such artists seeks to disorient the law, to call
language into crisis. This is what ideology cannot afford, for it tends to operate in
language that denies its status as such: stereotypical language.’ (Foster, 1982:107).
Later in the same essay, but this time with reference to the practice of artist Barbara
Kruger, Foster writes: ‘This finally is the interest of her work: the reflexivity with which it
considers the discourses – of high art and mass culture, of sexual politics and cultural
power – with which it is engaged. Though it may often seem insufficiently specific, it is
this reflexivity which allows her work to circulate, and not to be totally recuperated: “I will
not become what I mean to you”.’ (Foster, 1982:115)

28
Section 4:

On projects and project-ness, Learning To Love You

More (Assignment # 16), tactical competence,
myopia and near-sightedness, repetition and a
different sort of attention, caring ‘for’ and ‘about’,
(in)completeness, ‘provisional points of focus’, and
artists operating (simultaneously) within and
without the spaces and institutional frameworks of
the art-world.

29
In the essay Configuring the Everyday, Michael Sheringham introduces
the term ‘project’ (Sheringham, 2007:141-147) with which to discuss a
particular type of artwork or artistic endeavour/undertaking. This modus
operandi is identifiable in the practices of artists like Sophie Calle (one of
Sheringham’s references), instruction pieces/event scores (exemplified in
the work of Yoko Ono, John Cage and Fluxus), and also may prove a
useful way to interrogate Harrell Fletcher & Miranda July’s ‘project’
Learning To Love You More (LTLYM), and even more specifically
Assignment # 16: Make a paper replica of your bed (see Appendix 2 for
description and illustration). I would like to suggest that this work
demonstrates the possibility of the position of nonvirtuoso artist, with
Fletcher & July operating as (in the words of Andrea Grover) ‘artists
[that] are less interested in sole authorship and visibility--they are
phantom captains29--and more in distributed creativity, gift economies,
and other models that disrupt how we think about and assign value to
art’ (Grover: 2006). I feel this work also demonstrates a tactical
competence and deep understanding of how to operate with reference to
the ‘editing systems’ that form and inform notions of legitimacy and
value in art (Collier, 2010), alongside identifiable ‘strategies for bringing
their work back ‘into the fold’, re-framing or ensuring it passes the ‘edit’,
without becoming fully ‘recuperated’, consumed, absorbed or enveloped
by the market dominated systems in which it circulates’ (quoted from
Section 3, above).

LTLYM sets up a ‘mediating spectacle’ (Rancière; 2007:278) – an in-

between thing, something that simultaneously links and separates artist
and spectator and remains, in some way, foreign to both – and a space
that allows for a process of observation, comparison, repetition, telling
and verification. Fletcher & July carefully construct the ‘space’ of the
artwork (Sheringham’s ‘project’) and the project acts as a kind of open-

29
Andrea Grover’s footnote explains: ‘“Phantom Captain” is a chapter in R. Buckminster
Fuller's first book, Nine Chains to the Moon (Fuller’s metaphor that if all of humankind
stood on each others’ shoulders we could complete nine chains to the moon). He used the
term to describe a sort of ghost in the machine concept of consciousness, and implied
that all phantom captains are telepathically connected, especially when their actions are
extended through the shared use of machines’. (Grover, 2006: unpaginated) 

30
ended ‘framework’ with which the artists attend to (and, in turn, may
focus the attention of others on) their concerns.

Sheringham identifies ‘project’-ness as defined by a set of ‘ad hoc,

provisional yet rule-bound actions’ (Sheringham, 2007:144), ‘self-
imposed ordinances’ (146), specifications or ‘rules of the game’ (146).
These may often be ‘codified as a set of instructions’ (146) invoking both
a mental postulation and a range of actions conducive to the realization
of the instruction/s (144). These specifications, however, as Sheringham
points out, are ‘often ironic because their precision accompanies a strong
sense of the gratuitous’ (146) – these are playful rules, intent on
challenging orthodoxy, taking an ‘ironic attitude to both systematic
knowledge and utilitarian attitudes’ (144) and to some degree debunking
‘scientificity’ (147). Attention is diverted or redirected from ‘a goal’ (pre-
determined outcomes, achievement and conclusions) towards ‘the
present’, a process-ing, and a concern for ‘practices and the differences
they make’ (144).

In this way, the artist is involved in setting up ‘the rules of the game’ but
does not know what the exact outcomes will be. In LTLYM, Fletcher &
July, work as architects of this ‘project’.
The project is a frame, but nothing that comes to fill that
frame can be said to complete or realise the project, which
always remains open and unfinished. Yet within its
framework a shift, essentially a shift in attention, takes
place. […] In this sense we can see at work in the project
the interface of alienation and appropriation that is central
to thinking about the everyday.
(Sheringham, 2007:147)

Sheringham states: ‘Projects often succeed in making visible what is

already there, not hidden but lying on the surface’ (146) – these
frameworks facilitate dramatic (temporary) shifts in focus, notability and
scale, from the macro to the micro – allowing for (and requiring) a
‘progressive “tuning in” to a particular level of existence, a new mode of
attention that is responsive to the uneventful, to what is initially hidden
by habit.’ (146).

31
Participants involved in making paper replicas of their beds for
Assignment # 16 (and those who read their subsequent reports on the
website) become entangled in what Sheringham calls ‘a characteristic
myopia of the project’ (147). The myopia that Sheringham refers to – a
short-sightedness or near-sightedness where distant objects cannot be
seen sharply, and instead, close-by objects are brought into keen focus –
seems (to me) to be a positive rather than a negative. I would suggest
that it does not refer to the thoughtlessness that is alluded to by the
word ‘short-sighted’, but instead to the value of paying attention to the
things that are close at hand - the things that might usually be
overlooked. The neutralizing of what Sheringham terms ‘the teleology of
continuous narrative’ (146) (the studying of actions in relation to their
ends or utility, relating to the perceived need for actions/activities to be
‘practical’ or ‘useful’) allows me, as a viewer, to concentrate on specifics
and to examine up-close without the pressure to take up a far-sighted
perspective. While I click through these images, one after another, I am
excused from the necessity of distance, wisdom or anticipating what will
come next.

Figure 2. Selected contributions to Learning To Love You More,

Assignment #16 – from left to right: Reports from Anne Farrell
(Perth, AUSTRALIA), Grazyna (Düsseldorf, GERMANY), Mel Witt
(Victoria, British Columbia CANADA)
(Fletcher & July, 2001-2009)

As I prepare to write this, I return to the webpage that gathers together

the reports for Assignment #16. There are 91 individual responses. As a
casual viewer, one may not make a concerted effort to look at each of

32
the responses – and as with any artwork, each viewer will determine
their own level of engagement. There is something intensely ‘boring’
about the process of clicking though all 91 of these responses. However,
there is a tension between the monotony and the variety of these
responses, the repetitiveness of the activities of the participants (and in
turn the repetitive nature of viewing their subsequent reports). There is
something simultaneously surprising and unsurprising about this
experience. I am struck by an unexpected uniformity, a sameness and a
commonality of experience demonstrated in the individual contributions
from people on different sides of the world – the beds are the ‘same’
shape, they are made up of the ‘same’ components, and yet, no two are
the same.

Sheringham recognises repetition, repetitive actions and procedures as

common characteristics, often central to a ‘project’, serving to focus
attention on minute variations – ‘Repetition fosters a different sort of
attention by numbing customary activities’ (146). Readers of the title of
the assignment (the ‘project’ within a ‘project’) are invited to undertake a
series of actions (to “Make a paper replica of your bed”) that would
discretely disrupt their daily routine. This may take the form of a ‘mental
postulation’ (144) (as one would approach an instruction piece like Yoko
Ono’s event score30 that instructs readers to “Drill a hole in the sky”) or
to physically involve themselves in the manual, repetitive ‘making’
activity of carrying out the assignment. Viewers who become
participants, engaged in the repetitive activity of making a paper replica
of their bed (mentally or manually) are required to attend to this
distinctive detail of their everyday life - their own bed. While I view the
reports, I cannot ignore thoughts of my own bed, its (previously
underconsidered) minute detail, what characteristics it shares with the

30 Yoko Ono (1961) PAINTING FOR THE SKIES

Drill a hole in the sky.

Cut out a paper the same size
as the hole.
Burn the paper.
The sky should be pure blue. (Ono, 1961)

33
beds presented in the reports and what is missing from these
creations/recreations, distinguishing them from ‘mine’.
Before I know it, the project has succeeded in ‘making visible what is
already there, not hidden but lying on the surface.’ (147). I also become
absorbed in thinking about beds other than my own – Tracey Emin’s
bed31 on display in the old GLC building that housed the Saatchi
collection, the image of a photograph of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s ‘empty’
bed32 installed on a New York billboard, the beds in the hotel rooms
stacked by Adam Dade & Sonya Hanney33 or the bed I lay awkwardly on
with Oreet Ashery’s alter-ego Marcus Fisher upstairs in the Arnolfini in
Bristol34.

By diverting attention from a goal to the carrying out of a

repeated, preordained programme, the project creates its
own intermediate spatio-temporal zone. […]The project
brings us into proximity with something that might have
seemed familiar, but which we now acknowledge more
fully.
(Sheringham, 2007:147)

As I sit typing this, not even looking at the reports anymore, I am fully
immersed in the ‘spatio-temporal zone’ created by this project. Now, it is
all I can do just NOT to think of beds, not just ‘my’ bed, but all beds and
an abstract concept of ‘the bed’ – these functional, practical, mundane
things that designate some kind of ownership of space (even in other
people’s houses your bed for the night is ‘yours’) – the first things we
claim when we go on summer camp or enter the Big Brother house. I
think about the bed as a charged site of intimate encounters – sex,
death, the vulnerability of sleep, the privacy of crying into your pillow,
bedtime stories and being tucked it, sharing beds top-to-toe, pillow talk,
wetting the bed, the bed as a possible site of abuse, masturbation,

31 Tracey Emin (1998) My Bed, Mattress, linens, pillows, objects, 79 x 211 x 234 cm 

32 Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1992) Untitled, billboard poster installed in twenty-four locations

throughout New York City, dimensions vary 

33 Adam Dade and Sonya Hanney (2002) Stacked Hotel Room, Paperback, full colour, 32

pages 

34 Oreet Ashery (2003) Say Cheese, One-to-one performance and resulting photographic

documentation, dimensions vary 

34
dreams, exhaustion, illness, childbirth, convalescence and recovery. I
think about beds I have woken up in the morning after the night before.
I think about the wordplay elicited by the artists’ choice of words and
other possible resonances with the idea of “making your own bed” –
something that in many households would signal the first steps into
adulthood and taking responsibility for yourself. I think of the idiom
“You’ve made your bed, now lie in it” – a turn of phrase said to (or by)
someone very familiar, reminding the hearer that we each must bear the
consequences of our actions and decisions made.

With all of these Untidy references becoming part of my experience of the

work as a viewer/reader, has the repetitive nature of what I am
presented with ‘numbed’ my ‘customary activities’ as a viewer, fostering
(as Sheringham suggests) ‘a different sort of attention’ (146: my
emphasis)? If I was to try to write about (or interrogate) this work, it
would be difficult to make judgments in traditional formal terms about
the artwork (the ‘project’) that Fletcher & July have developed here –
formal descriptors of its qualities, its surface, tone, texture, composition,
movement, shape, line, colour etc seem to have little relevance. It would
also be misguided to begin to critique the paper beds (produced by
participants) using these cognates of ‘skill’.
The elements of irony or play suggests that the project
involves parodic simulation, that ‘scientificity’ is being
debunked to some degree, that collecting data is less
important than the process of gathering. Yet the
gratuitousness that neutralizes scientific enquiry also
redirects attention.
(Sheringham, 2007:146)

The ‘results’ of the assignment (the ‘actual’ paper beds that reside with
the participants) are almost a decoy, red herring, or MacGuffin35 - rather
than being the centre of the artwork, these ‘results’ are simply an
element that catches attention (a temporary point of focus). This
temporary point of focus drives the highlighting of ‘process’, the ‘making’
(again, engaging mentally or manually) and, in turn, an intense ‘caring

35
The term MacGuffin (often used in relation to the films of Alfred Hitchcock, but in film
discourses more widely) describes ‘a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or
drives the plot of a work of fiction’ (MacGuffin, 2010: unpaginated)

35
for’ (and ‘about’) overlooked or overfamiliar elements of our everyday
lives. I feel the purpose of the assignment is not to arrive at an outcome
(a finished paper bed) but instead to begin a process in the mind/body of
the viewer, a recuperative redirection of attention towards something
relatively ‘uncared for’ – as Sheringham says above, that the process of
gathering is more important than the data collected. This points to one of
the specifics of Sheringham’s notion of ‘project’ – the aim of the artist
working in this way is not the production of commodities (or Collier’s
‘spectacular displays of art’), however, the process may often generate
things, objects or ‘stuff’, almost as by-products, either as part of the
process of ‘gathering’ or as part of the communicative activity of display.
Throughout LTLYM, the use of the word ‘Assignment’ by the artists gives
the activity a kind of purposefulness. This ironic framing and play on
what Sheringham calls ‘scientificity’ double-codes36 (Hutcheon, 1988:97)
the gratuitousness of the ‘project’ (its unnecessary-ness or unjustifiable-
ness) and its suggestions of completeness/wholeness (if an assignment is
essentially something that could be completed). This double-coding
means that the viewer’s activity of ‘attending to’, the subject onto which
their attention is focused, and the documents of previous ‘attending tos’
are given value, made important or notable (and worthy of intense
scrutiny) while they are simultaneously reinforced as particularly
‘everyday’, repetitive and mundane.

Through the shifts in attention - the dragging of other things from

outside (from daily life) into the frame of the project, the possible
confusion over what the ‘centre’ (or real focus) of the work might be and
the blind alleys, MacGuffins, detours or decoys - the ‘project’ displays a
high degree of Untidiness. That is, if we take Untidy to mean something
that is not neat; not straightforward; maybe with parts where they
shouldn’t be; something that is capable of, or has the tendency to, get
bigger, become larger, develop and spread out. While the format of the
project alludes to ‘tidiness’ (with its use of orderly categories, numbered

36
‘doubly coded in political terms: it both legitimizes and subverts what it parodies’
(Hutcheon, 1988: 97)

36
lists, exacting instructions etc) and each assignment in itself displays a
certain ‘completeness’ and compactness (a tidiness that correlates with
the SMART mnemonic - where tasks are Specific, Measurable, Attainable,
Relevant, and Timed37), this ‘tidiness’ could also be seen as double-
coded. On one hand, the assignment is straightforward, as it simply asks
people to make a paper replica of their bed. Its untidiness and
sophistication arises from its position as part of a larger, less
straightforward ‘project’. As Sherringham recognises, ‘nothing that comes
to fill that frame can be said to complete or realise the project, which
always remains open and unfinished’ (Sheringham, 2007: 147). No one
person’s (artist, viewer, contributor or other participant) actions or
responses ‘complete’ or ‘finish’ the project or any individual assignment.
There is no definitive version, no right answer. Each of the contributions
stands alongside all of the others (in a situation that clearly displays an
assumption of Rancière’s ‘equality of intelligences’), with equal weight
and part to play in building a kind of collaborative definition of what a
bed might ‘be’ (or even mean). This knowledge is arrived at through a
process of observation, comparison, repetition, telling and verification by
all involved (artist, viewer, contributor or other participant) – it is not
transmitted didactically from artist to audience.

This openness and unfinishedness signals something that is capable of, or

has the tendency to, get bigger, become larger, develop and spread out
(Untidiness). This may signal another of the specific qualities of

37
SMART – a mnemonic used in the discourse of project management – developed/coined
in the 1980s, referred to frequently throughout the 1990s and 2000s (also see the
Wikipedia entry for various mutations of the SMART acronym) (SMART, 2010:
unpaginated)

Specific clear and well defined

Measurable know if the goal is obtainable and how far away from completion it is,
know when it has been achieved, results-focussed
Attainable feasible, within the availability of resources, knowledge and time
Relevant something that must fit with you, be within your control, that you can
complete
Timed enough time to achieve the goal, not too much time

37
Sheringham’s notion of ‘project’ – an artist’s project whose openness or
‘unfinishedness’ negates the possibility of the ‘skillfully-wrought, singular
and successful work’ (Lynch, 2008:24) that may, conversely, circulate
successfully (be communicated/ disseminated/ come into contact with) as
a series of discreet or compact-seeming parts or elements.

With an artwork like Learning to Love You More (and possibly with other
works that would fit into Sheringham’s category of ‘project’), it is hard to
define the ‘centre’ of the work, just as it is to try to identify its edges. Of
course, the framework of the project and its ‘physical’ perimeter (as
designated by the screen-space of the project’s website) offers one kind
of ‘edge’ or boundary (that which is ‘outside’ of this space could be
deemed ‘not the artwork’), and each of the ‘assignments’ could be seen
as a self-contained, neat, tidy or straightforward ‘piece’ in their own
right. The artists’ choice of an online format for this work may also
acknowledge, allow for, and encourage this confusion of, or lack of desire
for, a ‘centre’. In the chapter Hypertext and De-centering, George
Landow writes:
As readers move through a web or network of texts, they
continually shift the center -- and hence the focus or
organizing principle -- of their investigation and experience.
Hypertext, in other words, provides an infinitely re-
centerable system whose provisional point of focus depends
upon the reader, who becomes a truly active reader in yet
another sense.
(Landow: 1992:11)

This ability to navigate, to choose one’s ‘provisional point of focus’ means

that (by virtue of the work’s format) any reader of the work makes ‘his or
her own interests the de facto organizing principle (or center) for the
investigation at the moment’ (Landow: 1992:11). I would argue that this
notion of a user-defined, provisional and moveable centre, ‘point of focus’
or ‘organising principle’ echoes, mirrors and draws attention to the shifts
in ‘notability’ and ‘importance’ that the work is about. Each ‘assignment’
calls on readers and participants to shift the focus of their attention (if
only for a short period of time) towards something that may otherwise be
overlooked or forgotten about (whether this is the freckles on your arm
as in Assignment # 9: Draw a constellation from someone’s freckles, or

38
what your family think you do all day as in Assignment # 35. Ask your
family to describe what you do) – the micro details of daily life that are
so often deemed unimportant, trivial, mundane or ‘meaningless’ in the
face of macro issues or grand narratives.

Encouraging banners made out of paper (Assignment # 63: Make an

encouraging banner), a taxi driver from Hartford, Connecticut
(Assignment #21: Sculpt a bust of Steve) or a small replica of an
Australian woman’s bed (Assignment #16), are provisionally elevated in
status, or experience a temporary/momentary shift in ‘scale’. When these
details (a subject matter that may be deemed ‘peripheral’) are invested
with the concentrated care and attention the assignments demand (the
myopia/close examination required by the ‘project’) from participants,
and become the centre of my world for those few minutes, I realise that
what we (as human beings) spend our time, energy or effort on grows
and becomes more important. The process of viewing this work (and the
processes involved in its creation) reminds me that these shifts in
‘notability’ and ‘importance’ mirror current/contemporary phenomenon,
drawing on the sense of decentering expressed in Webster’s New World
College Dictionary – ‘to cause to undergo a shift away from what has
been its traditional center, focus, orientation, or emphasis’ (Decenter,
2010). This constant re-writing/re-negotiation of what is ‘important’,
worthy of note or attention is ‘made visible’ by this project and its
demonstrations of care for the ‘stuff’ from the world in which it was
created.

Learning To Love You More and Sheringham’s term ‘project’ both signal
strategies for artists to operate (simultaneously) within and without the
spaces and institutional frameworks of the art-world. The LTLYM website,
artefacts (responses to assignments) and a subsequent printed
publication have been shown inside ‘legitimate’ art institutions while
continuing their lives outside of these spaces. The strategic framing of
the activities of all participants in this work (the artists, viewers,
contributors etc) ensures that it passes the ‘edit’, without becoming fully
‘recuperated’, consumed, absorbed or enveloped by the market

39
dominated systems in which they circulate. By taking a position as
nonvirtuosos, Fletcher & July make and disseminate an effective and
quietly political ‘artwork’ that attends strongly to their interest in the
potential of everyday actions, ‘practices and the differences they make’
(Sheringham, 2007:144).

This points to a key possibility of Sheringham’s notion of ‘project’

becoming a tactical vehicle for artists interested in (to paraphrase Hal
Foster) ‘consider[ing] the discourses – of high art and mass culture, of
sexual [and other identity-centric] politics and cultural power – with
which [they are] engaged’ and the ‘displacement of art by its own
support, by its own spectacle’ (Foster, 1982:105) while resisting
becoming fully ‘recuperated’ by the market dominated systems in which
it circulates. The ‘project’, as a term that may help to describe, explain or
hint at both a generative process/practice (or deCerteau’s ‘ways of
operating’ (de Certeau: 1984:xix)) AND a mode of communicative
display, foregrounding a continuous re-negotiation of the provisional and
the authoratitive. It makes reference to the ‘editing systems’ that form
and inform notions of legitimacy and value in art, while at the same time
engaging in the instability of notions of notability, importance, status,
traditional centre, focus, orientation, or emphasis that run through the
discourses of mass culture, identity-centric politics and cultural power.
The frame of the ‘project’ allows that which it contains to circulate both
‘within’ the artworld (to be considered in that frame) and to remain part
of daily life. It does not mimic the modernist gesture of the ‘readymade’
(an everyday object put on a plinth and ‘becoming’ art – removed from
mass culture and elevated to high art) or the postmodernist ‘already-
made’ (Abigail Solomon-Godeau cited in Hutcheon, 2002:89)
(appropriated from everyday life and re-purposed complete with artist’s
signature) but something that draws attention to the process of what is
‘made’ (mentally and manually) by each of us (artist and non-artist alike)
on a daily basis. Rather than spectacularizing (commodifying) everyday
actions/situations/things (turning them into something to be ‘looked at’
or consumed), the ‘project’ provides a frame where ‘care’ and ‘attention’
come to the fore.

40
Section 5:

On ‘care’ and ‘attention’, www.kerrireid.com,

redefining ‘uselessness’, insistence and
doggedness, ‘quiet politics’, modesty, the
relationship between commodity and spectacle,
holding in high regard things ‘of little or no
consideration’, accounting for the rhizomatic,
longitudinal process and trajectory of artists’
practice, and considering ‘the systems of
circulation in which the art work is involved after
exhibition’.

41
If ‘care’ and ‘attention’ are then identified as key competencies for the
nonvirtuoso artist, it becomes important to discuss these in relation to
artists’ practice and the development of ‘non-spectacular displays of art’.

In two ‘unbound parts’ (Walker, 2008: abstract) of his dissertation

Reading Careful Arrangements, Nathan Walker sets out ‘two’ (a couple,
double or pair – not in binary contrast to each other) attempts at ‘a
comprehensive discussion of the possibilities for using the word “care” as
a term to describe, explain and hint at methods of making in arts
practice’ (Walker, 2008: 25 & 30) through ‘a detailed arrangement of its
current definitions both etymologically, culturally and historically’
(Walker, 2008: 25 & 30). These explore possible roots of the word ‘care’,
one ‘from the Germanic Chara meaning ‘grief’ or ‘lament’ and Charon
‘grieve’ […] relat[ing] to grief, suffering, sorrow and trouble’ (Walker,
2008: 25) and the other (denied by the Oxford English Dictionary) from
the Latin word ‘Cura meaning ‘attention’, ‘concern’, ‘caution’, ‘anxiety’
and ‘management’. Relating to curator – the overseer’ (Walker, 2008: 30
citing Oxford English Dictionary, 1933). Walker goes on to discuss these
‘two’ possibilities in relation to the work of artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
I would like to borrow Walker’s use of the word ‘care’ (and from his
discussion of Gonzalez-Torres’s work) to further explore and discuss the
notion of the nonvirtuoso artist, with reference to the work of Kerri Reid.
Care is also used to indicate serious (or grave) attention, the
‘charging of the mind with anything’ […] ‘Care’ can be kept,
taken, or had. We can have ‘care’ over something or
someone (the protection or guidance/guardian of a child).
[…] ‘care’ can also control us, we can be ‘in care’, ‘taken into
care’ […] If we are troubled it is because we care. Care is
also an object, the matter of care, concern, a ‘kind of stuff’.
[…] If we trouble ourselves over something it is to do with
care, we can take care, which may mean we are careful, or
perhaps we can not [,] to mean that we are care-less. Care
is to provide, to have thought, concern over. (Oxford English
Dictionary, 1933)

(Walker, 2008: 25)

Kerri Reid is a Canadian artist, whose projects are collected together on

her website www.kerrireid.com. Her work demonstrates a long-term

42
commitment to, and a ‘care’ for, discarded (hu)(man)made objects she
finds (by chance) on the street. These objects are often ‘broken’ (in need
of repair), dismissed by their previous owners as ‘write-offs’ (an asset
that is deemed cheaper to replace than to repair). The focuses of her
attention are not just abandoned objects (literally ‘sidelined’, no longer
involved in society, seen as useless), but also those made to be
discarded (like the sweet wrappers in Copies of a Gum Wrapper (2009)
or fortune cookie ‘fortunes’ in Your Hard Work Will Soon Pay Off (2009))
and unwanted by-products (‘The Burden of Objects’ Dust, #1-7 (2009)).

Reid’s subjects could often be described as ‘inexpensive’ (a Walmart bowl

or a pair of Ikea chairs, costing relatively little in comparison with other
things in the same class) but as Jesse Birch’s curatorial statement to the
exhibition Working Back claims ‘Reid draws attention to the abstract
nature of contemporary value systems’ (Birch, 2007:unpaginated). By
taking discarded, damaged, ‘useless’ or insignificant utilitarian objects
(products of our late-capitalist society) as starting points, Reid
undertakes a process that she describes as ‘[…] restorative in nature,
either by actually fixing the object, or by symbolically restoring its value
in its broken form by making broken copies of it, or both’ (Reid, 2008:
unpaginated). The results of this process (elaborate, ‘careful’, hand
worked replicas) bear the traces of her careful consideration (detailed
examination/scrutiny) of the objects - their physical make up, the
processes involved in their initial production, their introduction into
systems of exchange and subsequent falls from grace (loss of status,
respect, or prestige). ‘Care’ is displayed as both a physical activity and a
cerebral one. By investing these objects with her time and attention, Reid
calls for a re-consideration of the manual effort involved in their creation
(both the ‘originals’ and the ‘copies’) and an expanded notion of what it
might mean to ‘care’ about/for that which we encounter in our daily lives.

On the website, Reid does not make grand claims for her work (the
website lacks even the familiar self-congratulatory artist’s statement),
favouring instead a straightforward, almost deadpan presentation. Works
are listed by title and each work is presented as a series of photographs

43
(usually installation shots and close ups/details, some also include hand-
drawn faxes) and a short descriptive text. As I click through to the
different pages of the site, I notice that these texts are littered with
repeated phrases like “It had a Walmart tag on its base, so I sent
Walmart a fax to see if they could tell me anything about where it was
made and if it could be fixed, but I didn’t hear back from them.” (Broken
Walmart Bowl (2007)) and “I tried to sell one of my broken copies on
eBay, and someone “watched” it, but no one bid on it.” (Broken Teapot
(2007)). I find this insistence admirable - insisting that these things (the
actual objects, and the wider systems of exchange in which they are
involved) are important, significant and worthy of attention, and the
vehement assertion (or demand) that these things should not simply be
overlooked. While viewing this body of work (as collected together on the
website), I can identify this implicit and explicit repetition and re-iteration
as running throughout Reid’s practice. It becomes a type of doggedness -
a characteristic persistent determination that develops and increases with
time. For me, this doggedness signals that Reid’s is not just a passing or
superficial interest (or indeed an interest in the superficial) in the
subjects of her work. Instead, it is much more bound up with ‘care’, and
specifically with Walker’s notion of ‘care’ as something that would
‘indicate serious (or grave) attention, the ‘charging of the mind with
[some]thing’’ (Walker, 2008: 25). In this way, the repetitive and
‘reproductive’ actions Reid is engaged in have much in common with
Gertrude Stein’s statement ‘There is no such thing as repetition. Only
insistence.’ (Stein, 1935), while also referencing, and commenting, on
the effects of the mechanical processes described in Walter Benjamin’s
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Benjamin, 1936).

While Reid’s presentation and dissemination of her ‘projects’ (to refer

again to both Sherringham’s term and the descriptive term Reid herself
uses on the website) is ‘serious’, it is not without humour. The play
between significance and insignificance runs throughout the work, in her
choice of subject matter and in the way she chooses to frame/present the
‘documents’ of her projects (the ‘works’ in all their forms). There is also
an absurdity embedded in her actions. Why would anyone go to the

44
trouble of knitting a wool-blend argyle patterned sock to match one they
found on the street, only to leave the completed pair in a thrift store?
Why would anyone spend their time meticulously copying out the pattern
of a chewing gum wrapper only to have their work trodden on by careless
gallery visitors38? Why would anyone make detailed pencil drawings of a
discarded chair leg and fax them to numerous furniture manufacturers
who are unlikely to reply?

Because they care, possibly?

So, with regard to Reid’s work, and its demonstrations of ‘care’ - a

manual ‘caring for’ (the rescuing and looking after of objects); an
analytical ‘care’ (the close and mindful examination of these objects and
the contexts in which they find themselves); a recuperative ‘care’ (the
repairing and restoring of these objects); alongside a mental ‘caring
about’ (troubling oneself over something, displaying a concern for) and a
cerebral ‘care’ (an intellectual analysis, recuperation and concern for,
rather than an emotional one) - what are the possibilities of ‘care’39 to
become a ‘useful’ methodology40 for artists? Could it provide a term that
may help to describe, explain or hint at both a generative
process/practice (again, referencing de Certeau’s ‘ways of operating’ (de
Certeau: 1984:xix)) AND a mode of communicative display?

For me, one of the key qualities of Reid’s work lies in the subtlety of her
approach. This allows for a ‘quiet politics’ to enter into her work, and its
reception. Her straightforward approach (she really is ‘just’ finding things
on the street, spending time and physical effort recuperating them and

38
Video documentation of this happening (the piece Copies of a Gum Wrapper
(2009) installed as part of the exhibition Air Conditioned Jungle) is available online as
part of a video report by ArtStars* TV (Bailey et al, 2009)

39
‘using the word “care” as a term to describe, explain and hint at methods of making in
arts practice’ (Walker, 2008: 25)

40
I refer here to a particular usefulness – what Marx terms a ‘social use value’ (Marx:
1867) -‘Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is
useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and
therefore creates no value.’ (Marx: 1867, Vol. I, end of Section 1)

45
then publicly displaying the results and details of the process in art
galleries, on eBay, on street corners, on her website) means that her
work cannot easily be dismissed as overtly ‘political’ or ‘activist’ and
reinforces her position as artist-as-nonvirtuoso.
As for my reasons for working with useless objects, that
goes back to my interest in the arbitration of values,
specifically under the terms and conditions of capitalism. I
was thinking of reification and how we seem to take our
cues for how we treat people from our relationships with
objects, and my reaction to that condition is to suggest that
if that’s the case then maybe we should start treating even
the most mundane objects with a great deal of care. So
broken objects are, for me, analogous to the people who
aren’t seen as valuable in our society — people who don’t
produce or consume “enough”.
(Reid, 2008: unpaginated)

Like Fletcher & July’s project Learning To Love You More, by operating
both within the institutions of the art-world and outside of these
contexts, Reid’s work makes reference not only to the ‘editing systems’
that form and inform notions of legitimacy and value in art (Collier,
2010), but also poses questions about how this ‘arbitration of values’
might operate in the wider discourses of mass culture, identity-centric
politics and cultural power.

Much in the same way that ‘making and doing things’ (Bryan-Wilson,
2007: 145) are taken seriously by the artists, participants and readers of
LTLYM and become ‘by no means insignificant acts’ (Bryan-Wilson, 2007:
145), Reid sets the tone for us (as readers of the work) to push
ourselves, to think deeply and to take ourselves (and the objects around
us) seriously - she leads by example. I would argue that this work does
not display the creeping ‘faux irony’ (claiming ironic intent, when actually
one agrees with that which is being made fun of), ‘post-ironic’
approaches (the ‘knowing’ adoption of craft techniques as ‘kitsch’ etc), or
a kind of Socratic irony (a means of ‘discussing a subject by claiming
ignorance of it, forcing those present to make propositions which may
then be queried’ (Chambers, 1999)) found in the work of artists like

46
Grayson Perry41. Reid’s work has a certain modesty about it - not
pretentious or showy, ‘small’ (like a modest income), showing restraint or
a lack of desire to offend (like modest clothing) etc.), it is moderate (not
extreme, not strong or violent) and displays a type of austerity (a careful
‘making the best of’ of resources, self-imposed thrift, discipline,
plainness, avoiding waste, ‘efficiency’). It asks us (as viewers/readers) to
consider our own relationship to these qualities and/or values - many of
which may seem outmoded or out of step with a late-capitalist
consumerist society42, which is criticised for/identified by its reliance on
over-consumption and excessive production of short-lived or disposable
items.

I would like to suggest that these qualities also relate strongly to the
notion of ‘non-spectacular artworks’ - where ‘non-spectacular’ signals
something that becomes impossible to take-in in one glance – work that
could also be described/examined through its varying levels of
Untidiness, Unwieldiness and Unphotogenicness. Reid’s practice combines
(and brings to the fore) the relationship between commodity and
spectacle. As Hal Foster points out:
In the commodity and spectacle all traces of productive
labour and material support are erased; they fascinate us
because they exclude us, place us in the passive position of
the dreamer, spectator, consumer.
(Foster, 1983:82)

When I encounter Reid’s ‘projects’ as a viewer/reader, I am called on to

engage my own vast Untidy and Unwieldy relationship with objects,
commodities, systems of exchange, notions of ‘value’ and disposability,
the ‘the terms and conditions of capitalism’ (Reid, 2008) and my own

41 Grayson Perry was the 2003 winner of the Turner Prize and is known for his subversive
use of the iconography of pottery, producing ceramic vases that have classical forms but
usually depict subject matter (including sado-masochism and child abuse) that is at odds
with the expectation created by their ‘attractive’ or ’traditional’ appearance. See The
Saatchi Gallery website for examples of work, biography and interviews (Grayson Perry,
2010: unpaginated) 

42 What Fredric Jameson describes as ‘the frantic economic urgency of producing fresh
waves of ever more novel-seeming goods (from clothing to aeroplanes), at ever greater
rates of turnover’ (Jameson, 1991: chapter 1) in Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of
Late Capitalism. 

47
daily actions. Her insistence on the ‘traces of productive labour and
material’ bring them back into focus (rather than wrapping them up in
‘spectacle’), to the point where I can no longer ignore them.

Of course, present in the work, there is also the ‘misguided’ nature of this
carefulness (Reid’s activities are not economically viable or ‘efficient’ in a
late-capitalist society, and the pieces she seeks to ‘sell’ on eBay attract
no bidders), or, at times the seeming ridiculousness of the directions in
which this ‘care’ is guided43. Reid’s practice seems to redefine what is
deemed to be ‘necessary’ and ‘unnecessary’ – as though playing by
another set of rules and redefining our ideas around ‘uselessness’ (in
relation to human labour as well as utilitarian objects). By giving, taking,
having and providing ‘care’, by holding in high regard things ‘of little or
no consideration’, by bestowing a level of respect on that which she
‘cares about’ and by (simply) attending to a series of objects, the focus of
Reid’s practice is not her virtuosity, her genius or the gap between her
actions and those of the audience of this work. Her actions (in the
authoring, ‘making’ and dissemination of this work) do not set out ‘to
dazzle, to master, to control or exert power over, to conquer, to ‘own’
and to overcome’ or ‘subjugate with a didactic approach’ (Dobbs, 2009:
10). Instead Reid’s tactical competence in ‘attending to’ and ‘caring for’
her Untidy subject matter, in turn, draws our ‘attention’ to her concerns
(through these objects and all the Untidy, Unwieldy and Unphotogenic
references they drag with them).

Like Learning To Love You More, Kerri Reid’s practice (the ‘artworks’
produced and the way in which the practice is developed and
disseminated) could be usefully situated with reference to Sheringham’s
notion of the ‘project’. It becomes important (as a viewer) to consider the

43 For example, in the piece Eight of Hearts (2009), where the artist found a single
discarded ‘Eight of Hearts’ playing card on the street and made a hand-drawn deck of
cards to complete the set. 

48
full trajectory of this practice, rather than to view ‘pieces’ in isolation.
Again, another of Gertrude Stein’s statement ‘Just how much my work is
known to you I do not know. I feel that perhaps it would be just as well
to tell the whole of it’ (Stein, 1926) seems to ring true for Reid’s work as
well.

In his essay Open Exhibitions and the Actualisation of Selection,

Christopher Collier makes the case for recognising that, to pose a
challenge to ‘the aristo-capitalist dominated discourse that demands and
perpetuates the myth of specialisation and commodity’ (Collier, 2010:
unpaginated), we should place a higher value on the rhizomatic,
longitudinal process and trajectory of artists’ practice - resisting the
‘skilfully-wrought, singular and successful work’ (Lynch, 2008: 24) in
favour of a ‘formative’ [Collier’s term, drawing on the difference between
summative and formative assessment in pedagogical practice] system of
judgement. With reference to the Deleuzian sense44 of ‘nomadism’,
Collier states ‘It is not the positions or points on a journey that matter,
rather the trajectory as a whole, as a singularity’ (Collier, 2010:
unpaginated). Recognising that there is an alternative to ‘the
summative’, that which Collier sees as ‘essentially a product of a cultural
model that uses market logic as its methodology of deciding value
(usually economic value)’ (Collier, 2010: unpaginated) implies a need for
artistic strategies and methodologies that are not interested in singular,
‘tidy’, finished works (or those that attempt to ‘encapsulate’, close down
or make clear their edges) but instead those that may resemble
Sheringham’s ‘projects’ – not product-orientated, but project-orientated
work.

44
Collier cites: ‘The nomad is not the same as the migrant; for the migrant goes
principally from one point to another, even if the second point is uncertain, unforseen, or
not well localized. But the nomad goes from point to point only as a consequence and as
a factual necessity; in principle points for him are relays along a trajectory.’ (Deleuze and
Guattari, A Thousand Plateaux, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi, 380)
 

49
This need for an approach ‘that accounts for process and trajectory’
(Collier, 2010: unpaginated) seems to resonate with Reid’s own
approach. She is keen that her work is seen less as a series of individual
‘pieces’ and more as a creative ‘whole’:
But it sometimes seems as though these attempts need to
be situated within the context of my whole project for that
shift in values to take place. So if I just showed one of my
replicas of, say, a broken teacup, it might be of interest in a
variety of ways, but I think the effort to insist on its value
could easily get lost. The “whole art object” is, for me, the
entire body of work, from my initial encounter with the
broken object, to my continued material engagement with
the object in my studio, and finally to my re-insertion of the
object into the larger world(s) of objects, be it in the gallery,
the curbside economy, and/or on eBay. […] if shown in the
context of all the other work I’ve done with the objects, I
think my gesture makes more sense and can be read as
sincere, albeit absurd.
(Reid, 2008: unpaginated)

In this way, Reid demonstrates how a methodological use of ‘care’ also

extends to concerns with how this ‘whole art object’ (this practice that
relies in part on repetition, reiteration and insistence for the creation of
meaning) reaches an audience. Achieving this type of ‘competence’ (with
reference to the position of nonvirtuoso artist and their display of know-
how rather than know-it-all) requires, again, a commitment to closely
examining (an analytical ‘care’), and internalising the rules of, the
language of the critical/curatorial spaces of the artworld. This ‘care’ for
(mental concern ‘about’ and cerebral intellectual analysis ‘of’) the often
overlooked micro-politics of these ‘spaces’, enables artists like Reid to
understand and speak this ‘language’ (structure) with fluency and
agency.45

In Reading Careful Arrangements, Walker discusses the artist Felix

Gonzalez-Torres’s placing of his work Untitled (1989) (a textual self
portrait consisting initially of a list of seven ‘entries’ and seven dates) in
the co-ownership of two arts institutions (with the knowledge of his

45
‘Agency’, here, refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently, make free
choices, or choices that make a difference (Barker, 2005: 381). In contrast ‘structure’,
refers to recurrent patterned arrangements, rules or conventions, that appear to influence
or limit choices and opportunities for individuals (Barker, 2005: 392).

50
impending death). These institutions take on the responsibility for
maintaining and conserving this work by ‘adding and subtracting events
and their dates’ (Walker, 2008:33 citing Gonzalez-Torres, 1989 in Ault,
2006: 304) to/from Gonzalez-Torres’s initial list. This purposeful handing
over of ‘care’ to two institutions (rather than into the hands of one
individual ‘owner’), repositions the artist’s role in relationship to the
dominant art discourse. The uncomfortable critical and curatorial position
of the work itself then serves to question notions of ownership and
control, negating the possibility of a ‘singular’, finished piece of ‘virtuosic’
or ‘spectacular’ artwork. Rather than exchanging goods for payment, it is
the ‘care’ demonstrated by the artist that is transferred to the institution
rather than simply the ‘ownership’ of a commodity. This means that
those involved in showing/maintaining the artwork (in ‘caring for’ it) not
only have to ‘rethink their buying and selling and loaning policy’ (Walker,
2008:34) (the requirement to ‘attend to ‘ or ‘care about’ the implications
of the dominant system of exchange) but also to continue Gonzalez-
Torres’s role as ‘careful artist’ in making decisions about how the work
continues to grow (in form and content), its many possible ‘futures’ (a
play on the chronology/self-portrait alluded to in the piece itself) and how
it meets an audience46.

Gonzalez-Torres’s approach (like that of Fletcher & July with LTLYM and
Kerri Reid) exemplifies a position that carefully considers, not just the
production and showing of artworks, but also an insistence (a particular
care and attention) that carries through into ‘the systems of circulation in
which the art work is involved after exhibition’ (Foster, 1982:103). The
structure, form, content, subject matter and role of the artist in this work
seek to continue to resist and disrupt ‘the processes by which it becomes
a discriminatory sign’ (Foster, 1982:103). The way in which it is
‘authored’ and the term and conditions with which it enters a market-
dominated system make it more difficult to become fully ‘recuperated’
(over-powered) by that system.

46 Walker discusses the care Gonzalez-Torres demonstrated by the lengths he went to, to
ensure the involvement of ‘those who watch over the art, daily’ in its care-filled/careful
interpretation/presentation to an audience (Walker, 2008:31-32) 

51
In may then follow that developing a deep understanding of (and a
tactical competence of how to operate within) the points at which people
come into contact with an artist’s practice (at the time AND beyond one’s
hands-on involvement as ‘artist’) becomes THE crucial element for the
nonvirtuoso artist who wishes to prevent the ‘mediating spectacle’ from
simply becoming ‘spectacle’ (which represents for Debord, Foster and
others):
[…] the very nadir of capitalist reification: with “capital
accumulated to such a degree that it becomes an image”
(Debord), social process becomes utterly opaque and
ideological domination assured
(Foster, 1983: 83)

52
 In Conclusion
Figure 3. Knotted Handkerchief
(Dobbs, 2010 b)

53
Having developed the position of artist-as-nonvirtuoso (through this
paper), as an attempt to step away from opposing positions/binaries like
artist vs audience (and especially ‘genius artist’ vs ‘the masses’), it
becomes clear that the position throws up a number of cues for artists
involved in contemporary practice and critical discourses. Although the
position of nonvirtuoso implies a dissatisfaction with dominant systems of
exchange that reinforce and build-in positions of inequality, privilege or
hierarchy in the artist/audience relationship, ‘artist-as-nonvirtuoso’ is not
an anti-art (or anti-skill) statement. It recognises the potential for artists
to take a critically aware position contrary to the dominant ideology, from
within the system. I suggest that, by employing a tactical competence
and displaying skills in care and attention, rather than seeking to dazzle,
disorientate, master or ‘own’ the situations they author, artists can
destabilise the notions of ‘artistic uniqueness and genius’ (Collier, 2010:
unpaginated) that are embedded in, and crucial to, a capitalist system.

This requires that artists (and others working in the arts eco-system)
develop a deep understanding of all of the points at which people come
into contact with an artist’s practice – considering the full trajectory of an
arts practice, from conception, through authoring, making/showing and
disseminating work, to the ‘re-insertion of the object into the larger
world(s) of objects’ (Reid, 2008: unpaginated) and the various
systems/economies of exchange that involves. For my own practice (as
one half of LOW PROFILE), the identification, exploration and ‘naming’ of
this new positioning will serve as a reminder (a knot in the hanky, if you
will) of the importance of retaining a kind of constant insecurity (the
need to continuously build and draw on a proficiency, perceptiveness or
know-how), rather than relaxing into the position of ‘expert’ (know-it-
all).

54
 Appendices

Appendix 1 56
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share
Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License

Appendix 2 57
Learning to Love You More [illustration and description]

Appendix 3 bound into front cover

Un- [floating footnote]

Appendix 4 bound into front cover

Untidy [floating footnote]

Appendix 5 bound into front cover

Unwieldy [floating footnote]

Appendix 6 bound into front cover

Unphotogenic [floating footnote]

Appendix 7 bound into back cover

Dobbs, Rachel (2009) A Very Incomplete Lexicon of LOW PROFILE

55
Appendix 1
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0
UK: England & Wales License
Full details of the terms of this license can also be found on
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk

You are free:

• to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
• to make derivative works

Under the following conditions:

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including how the creator wishes to be attributed for re-use. You
can use the HTML here to cite the work. Doing so will also include
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well.
• Non-Commercial — You may not use this work for commercial
purposes.
• Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work,
you may distribute the resulting work only under a licence identical
to this one.

With the understanding that:

• Waiver — Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get

permission from the copyright holder.
• Other Rights — In no way are any of the following rights affected
by the license:
o Your fair dealing or fair use rights;
o The author's moral rights;
o Rights other persons may have either in the work itself or in
how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights.
• Notice — For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to
others the licence terms of this work.

56
Appendix 2

Learning to Love You More: Assignment #16

Make a paper replica of your bed

Using paper, cardboard, coloured pencils, glue and/or tape, make

replicas of your sheets, blankets, comforters, pillows and anything else
that comprises your bed. Then assemble them the way you assemble
your bed. The completed bed should be roughly the length of a pencil.
Take special care to reproduce the patterns on the fabric and any stains
or other irregularities.

Take one photograph of the bedding elements laid out separately, and
another photograph of the assembled bed.

(Miranda July & Harrell Fletcher)

Figure 4. Example of a contribution to Learning To

Love You More, Assignment #16: Make a paper replica of
your bed – Report by: Jason Harmon (Montevallo, Alabama,
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA) (Fletcher & July, 2001-2009)

57
‘Learning to Love You More is both a web site and series of non-web
presentations comprised of work made by the general public in response
to assignments given by artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher. […]
Participants accept an assignment, complete it by following the simple
but specific instructions, send in the required report (photograph, text,
video, etc), and see their work posted online’ (Fletcher & July, 2010).
When the project closed to new reports in May 200947, there were 70
different assignments and over 8000 different people had participated48,
from all over the world. Participant's documentation (the submitted
reports), range from the quickly achieved (see #70: Say Goodbye)
through to more elaborate and time-consuming responses to
assignments (e.g. #4: Start a lecture series)

47
http://www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/index.php
48
http://www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/hello/index.php

58
 References and Works Cited
Abramović, Marina (2010) The Artist Is Present [exhibition and performance],
Museum Of Modern Art, New York, 14 March – 31 May 2010, documentation and
related material, [online] Available at: http://www.moma.org/abramovic
(Accessed 1 June 2010)

Adorno, Theodor W (1981) In Search of Wagner, trans Rodney Livingstone,

London: NLB

Allen, Amy (2005) ‘Feminist Perspectives on Power’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.),

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), [online] Available
at: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/feminist-power (Accessed
8 June 2010)

Anelli, Marco (2010) Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present – Portraits, Flickr
photo set [online] Available at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/themuseumofmodernart/sets/7215762374148682
4/ (Accessed 1 June 2010)

Ashery Oreet (2003) Say Cheese, one-to-one performance and resulting

photographic documentation, dimensions vary, Inbetween Time Festival 2003,
Arnolfni, Bristol UK

Ault, J (2006) Felix Gonzalez-Torres. New York, Germany: Steidl Publishers

Bailey, Jeremy, Ryan Edwards and Nadja Sayej (2009) ArtStars* 14 - Air
Conditioned Jungle [video] [online] Available at :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdn--iiok0s (Accessed 10 May 2010)

Barker, Chris (2005) Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. London: Sage

Battelle, John & Tim O’Reilly (2004) Web 2.0 Conference Overview: the Web as
Platform [online] Available at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040602111547/http://web2con.com, (Accessed 2
June 2010)

Benjamin, Walter (1936) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical

Reproduction’, reprinted in Arendt, H (ed) (1973) Illuminations, trans H Zohn,
London: NLB, pp 217-242 [online] Available at:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm
(Accessed 21 June 2010)

Beuys, Joseph (1974) ‘I am searching for field character’ in Caroline Tisdall

(ed)(1974) Art into Society, Society into Art, London: ICA, p48.

Birch, Jesse (2007) exhibition statement, Working Back, BELKIN SATELITTE: 555
Hamilton Street, Vancouver (CA), 1 September - 30 September 2007 [online]
Available at: http://www.belkin.ubc.ca/satellite/working-back (Accessed 17 May
2010)

Bishop, Claire (ed) (2006) Participation, London: Whitechapel

Bryan-Wilson, Julia (2007) ‘A Modest Collective: Many People Doing Simple
Things Well’ in Fletcher, Harrell & July, Miranda (2007) Learning To Love You
More, London: Prestel Publishing pp 144 -146

59
British Franchise Association (2010) What is Franchising? [online] Available at:
http://www.thebfa.org/whatis.asp (Accessed 26 June 2010)

Brown, Andrew and Wetherell, Mole (2007) Trial: A study of the devising process
in Reckless Sleepers’ ‘Sleepers’ ‘Schrödinger’s Box’, Plymouth: University of
Plymouth Press

de Certeau, Michel (1984) trans Steven Rendall, The Practice Of Everyday

Life, London: University of California Press

Collier, Christopher (2010) Open Exhibitions and the Actualisation of Selection: A

Conceptual Essay in Three Parts, (published as part of ‘Open Talk’ dialogue for
Worchester Open), [online] Available at:
http://www.worcesteropen.co.uk/biog.asp?refID=30 (Accessed 14 May 2010)

Dade, Adam and Sonya Hanney (2002) Stacked Hotel Room, Paperback, full
colour, 32 pages, Briminghma: Ikon Gallery

Darrough, Shannon (2010) Marina Abramović: A Gallery of Portraits, 30 April

2010 [online] Available at:
http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2010/04/30/marina-abramovic-a-
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