Draft:

We've been invited to speak at a symposium on May 27th called 'Issues in Curating and Contemporary Art Practice and Performance' and thought you might find it an interesting day out.

Please see enclosed press for details.

We hope to see you there.

All the best,
Sam and Lynn
4. E-mail-
Address book

5. Press info - symposium

'unrealised projects', driven by curiosity and active interpretation, credits the cerebral and vulnerable state of creative and intellectual engagement by creating an un-hierarchical context for projects and concepts to feed off of each other.

We're asking artists/designers/curators/writers to submit their own unfinished or unrealised ideas towards this literal, visual, ongoing and growing web based project.

6. Outline:

1.introduce ourselves as artists
2.communicate that we've been asked here today through a project that uses curatorial strategies. explain that we are going to describe passed projects as a means to describe our politic and ways of working and how we came to engage with curatorial strategies

We're first going to talk about a few other projects, talking through our politic and ways of working as a means to explain how and why we came to conceive Unrealised Projects. We'll talk about how the project works and how it's been interpreted by the other artists involved and how using curatorial strategies have been appropriate for us as artists for our means and how this reflects the way in which the idea of the curator is shifting.

i.why give to a gallery?
1.Ways of thinking/approach:
a.facilitate service, work through existing gallery structure. Function and use.
b.illustrate system based around cultural and economic elements of gift giving.
c.Create a visually non-dominant work where the emphasis is in framing and contextualization of idea. This also relates to ideas of authorship.
d.Use of local information and personal contact and discussions with gallery directors.
2.technical elements that make up project
a.Discussion/Q and A/research as a means to gather content and as a means to understand the implications of how the location works. The space is run by artists and is an active social centre for that reason.
3.conceptual elements:
a.Harking from 70's conceptual text works

ii.Playlist -introduce work including per huttner, lisa and her development in work, gavin wade, curatorial diy opened space for
1.what/ways of thinking
a.active and engaging work that used a similar tactic and use within the space. Facilitate the ease of the stranger into the space as a means to make it their own. Wanted something that anyone can engage with not as pacifier but as way to create social link between strangers of the space and gallery attendants and work. Implication that anyone can be a curator, to make an active work in a curatorial diy, we wanted to work with this implication. Wanted something simple so that people would want to interact, to create something that was expansive and engaging and one size fits all and popularist set of instructions. Wanted it to function, not creating set of hoops for participant to jump through, but simple act they would choose to follow. The portrature element allows that curator of the day even greater ownership of what could have been a potentially daunting engagement. Playlist archive then is a very quiet visual reference to the action. Where does the artwork lie after the fact if not in documentation. We built in this visibility from the beginning. Through enlisting the use of an archive, we built in an element that acknowledged the potentiality of the work not being activated. Where all works had this potential we built in an element that tangibly registered this use.

3.Segway through potentiality into unrealised projects. Then talk about how these existing elements, strategies and ways of working have naturally led to our using curatorial strategies.

4.Unrealised Projects
1.ways of thinking
b.Applying a structure that is open to interpretation.
c.Social, engaging, dialogue based vehicle as a means to create further content.
d.Recognition of potentiality within creative production, the process as opposed to form or finite end.
e.Issues of authorship.
f.Non-hierarchical positioning of ideas. Highlighting the excesses of artistic production, which is anti to capitalist efficiency of production.
g.Examining the difference between the written/spoken/material = focus on idea over visual representation.
h.Creation of networks of those who are interested in this specific area.
i.Using alternative strategies to create a more sustainable system of cultural production.
j.Ideas based economy.

2. How project is used:
a.Artists talk with their own about practice critically, use us as sounding board for ideas which lack final execution. The artists then engage with the idea of presenting their own unrealised work, which creates a lot of contradictions in terms of creating successful work.
b.Actually engage in dialogue with each artist, asking for involvement, talking to artists about specific practice and how the idea of the unrealised might be activated.
c.Waystation for artists for left over ideas, can act as a release for artists, an in between space in which to present bits of good research or pieces of works that do not fit into final product appropriately. Gems that are holistic pieces of artistic production, but don't necessarily fit in.
1. Heidi Stokes
d. Acts as inspiration for artists to use practice in experimental ways.
1. Mike and Paul.
e. Recognition of unrealised/realised conundrum (once consigned to paper or even externalised through conversation the work can be interpreted as realised). Each artist defines those parameters.
1. Mike and Paul
2. David Crichley
f. The interpretation of failure as a useful tool for creative in terms of the work not having been completed, but successful as a useful piece of theory and text.
1. Lisa Lefeuvre

3.Current curatorial context:
a. current curatorial trends - our practice mirrors these strategies. Why? Globalization/portability/diy culture/ management and the immediacy of the flow of information has changed/shift of emphasis on art structure and diy culture of artist managing their own careers and not having to rely on the dealer and gallery and consumer as strictly as before, new curatorial strategies open up and even become the focus of production. New models that function in the art world.

4. Definition:
a. Political: (relationship to other existing structures/ policy making/an organizational process or principle effecting authority/status/etc (the politics of decision))