Acts of Transfer: Documentation as Creative Reimagining.

Katy Beinart

This exposition presents parts of a practice-based artistic research project, Acts of Transfer, a collaboration between artist Katy Beinart and writer Lizzie Lloyd (2020–2021). The project consists of a series of ‘chapters’ which revisit artworks from the recent past that involved social engagement or public participation, documenting both the process and outcomes of our returns. Acts of Transfer was interested in what the afterlife of such artworks might be and how they might be meaningfully represented in the future. Each return or ‘chapter’ generates new artwork, while retaining some sense of the original. They include a range of outcomes: excerpts (screenshots, photographs, readings, instructions etc.) from the original artworks made by our participants, as well as our own documentation through photography, drawings, and notes taken during our returns, alongside passages of experimental writing and films. In presenting parts of this project in Acts of Transfer: Documentation as Creative Reimagining, we further explore how documentation might serve as a means to reenact and reimagine the artworks to which we returned. In each case, we consider how aesthetic, emotional, physical, psychological or conceptual transfer might signify to those involved and to future audiences. We expose the complicated relationships that underlie practices that rely on participation, and highlight how meaning develops beyond the immediate duration of such projects. What follows renders these complications tangible, leading to new artworks that are intentionally emergent and fragmented. We look to evoke the effervescent experience of participating, remembering and communicating experiences of social, relational and durational artwork, to hold fast to what is lost and what might be reimagined.

Film by Benjamin A. Owen. Copyright Benjamin A. Owen.

Four people outside the yellow brick building of Mildmay care facility. Some are sitting with microphones and recording equipment nearby

A picture of the glass pane in an internal door of the care home with the words Mildmay written backwards on a paper cut out

A copy of a drawing showing the route map of a walk.

The fabric of this place/ the soulfulness of that

Benjamin Owen completed a 2-year Cubitt Education Community Studios Programme residency in Mildmay, an extra care home in London, in 2018. His relationship with Marion Howell, the Activities Officer of the care home, was pivotal to facilitating the activities that he devised and is a key point of contact between the residents and visiting artists.

I wrote about AcCord: Going Along Without a Body – the work that came out of Benjamin’s residency – at the time. Through AcCord he held a series of workshops and events, inviting improv musicians into Mildmay to play with and alongside the residents. A combination of moving, still and audio footage from these encounters formed parts of conglomerations of performances and installations.

So, here I’m returning to something partly familiar. And yet, to hear Marion’s take on the project offers another perspective again.

B: in terms of the fabric of this place [00:34:07]

B: it would have been kind of soulless, if I’d done it right at the beginning [00:52:15]

B: I don’t think you’d have let me do it. And I don’t think I would have thought of it [00:52:38]

M: we work around the care: care comes first, we then fit in [00:30:39]

We meet, in June 2021, and set up in the car park in front of Mildmay. We listen to Benjamin and Marion discuss the process by which AcCord came about; we’re thinking about the inside of it, rather than the final outcome, and about its legacy for them both. We have questions ready; so does Benjamin on bits of paper like flashcards that he spreads on the table in front of him. He’s also brought along a professional sound technician who listens along with us. Benjamin begins with one of his questions but very soon the structure of the conversation comes loose, trailing between topics: questions are part-answered, anecdotes relayed, and reminiscences shared. Marion offers us a piece of bara brith. Occasionally we interject. Around us residents and care workers come and go; a trolley trundles by; a car pulls up; catering crates are stacked; the sliding doors open and close; nearby traffic rumbles on; daytime TV blares from an open window. The intercom blurts out: ‘Hello? Hello? Do you need help?’; there is no one there. Gradually the circles of their conversation tighten, homing in on the nature of art engagement, the role of artists in social practice and the ethics of participatory art and why it matters.

M: I don't care what the end product is – that sounds really dreadful doesn’t it? – I don't care what the art is, I care about the process much more [00:44:56]

B: making something interesting happen [00:21:10]

M: how much engagement and how much pleasure those residents have [00:45:00]

B: so sometimes more happened and unfolded over that time [00:27:23]

B: I was interested in pushing the understanding of that and trying to work out ways of being that honoured that kind of idea, the social thing [00:51:20]

M: whether they are stimulated, whether they are safe, whether they’re enjoying it. [00:45:24]

B: making something interesting happen [00:21:10]

M: I don’t think it’s that important [00:45:45]

B: but you're obviously after a different thing [00:45:30]

M: that’s what I’m after. [00:45:28]

B: and being sincere [00:51:27]

B: it’s immoral, being an artist here and just using the residents [00:51:34]

M: as props [00:51:35]

B: as props [00:51:36]

B: for your purpose [00:51:39]

B: for me, it’s really important that it’s two way [00:46:57]

M: the artist wants to feel that they’re doing something interesting [00:46:42]

B: otherwise…I find it quite a patronising relationship [00:47:18]

M: It’s not about you [1:17:00]

After our conversation Benjamin developed a new film, It’s not about you (2021), which includes footage from his original artwork, as well as audio extracts from our conversation and stills and video footage from our day together. The film’s multi-layered and overlapping visual and audio textures are sensual echoes of what it means to reflect back on a previous project now, in the present. What surfaces – from the film, and the dislocated, non-chronological extracts from the transcript included here – is a collapsing of time and experiences being flattened and concertinaed and reconfigured. It is awkward, and why shouldn’t it be because working with people is awkward and you don’t always say what you think, and sometimes you say what you think you ought, and sometimes you don’t realise what you thought until afterwards. But somehow, despite these difficulties, there is an overwhelming spirit of accommodation: where Benjamin and Marion accommodate the voices, bodies, rhythms, attentions, moods, interests and feelings of each other and of the residents, allowing themselves the space to partially disagree.

B: I always want it to have another life.

Chapter 9: Some of us were here

Back to Chapter 7: This is power-to