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.

Acknowledgements

Our sincere thanks go to our project participants: Bernadette Buckley, John Edwards, Kate Flannery, Lynn Hanna, Marion Howell, Sarah McCarthy, Annetha Mills, Mark Anthony Pearce, Chris Welton. And to our participating artists: Gil Mualem-Doron, Young In Hong, Eelyn Lee, Paula McCloskey and Sam Vardy, Harun Morrison, Benjamin Owen, Matt Stokes, Sophie Warren and Jonathan Mosley.

Credits:

All films copyright Katy Beinart and Lizzie Lloyd except 'It's not about you' copyright Benjamin A. Owen

Photographs and film stills by Katy Beinart and Lizzie Lloyd

Drawings by Lizzie Lloyd

Stills from film Futurist Women by Eelyn Lee are copyright Eelyn Lee

Stills from film Solidarity Line by Warren and Mosley are copyright Warren and Mosley

Stills from documentation of Stone Frigate (LARP) are copyright Matt Stokes

It's Not About You (film) and stills from It's Not About You are copyright Benjamin A. Owen

Body Exchange text work is copyright They are here/Harun Morrison and Helen Walker

Footage/stills of 2 Metre Conversations are copyright Katy Beinart and John Edwards

Acts of Transfer Exhibition at Phoenix Art Space - documentation photos are copyright Bernard G Mills.

We confirm that we have consent to use the material other than our own which is included in this exposition.

Acts of Transfer was made possible by funding from: Arts Council England, the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics at the University of Brighton, Phoenix Art Space, Brighton Centre for Contemporary Art, SEAS, and Towner Gallery (TBC), and the University of the West of England.

A wall of images, texts, maps and shapes scattered.

Project board, part of Acts of Transfer Exhibition at Phoenix Art Space, 2021. Photo by Bernard G Mills. Copyright Bernard G Mills.

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