As part of the ‘Coniston Institute Library‘ project, Grizedale Arts have kindly included my recent article ‘Back to the Future: Grizedale Arts, Use Value and the Work of Art’. Grizedale Arts offered me the opportunity to extend and develop a previous article ‘Use Value and the Little Society’ (which first appeared in Afteral, Issue 30, Summer 2012). This has allowed me to develop some ideas around the kind of work, or labour, that the ‘work of art’ has become and, in doing so, to begin thinking through some of Rancière’s proposals on labour and language (which I have continued to pick up and develop in my paper for the Hildesheim ‘The Uses of Art: History’ Conference).

From January 23^rd – 25^th 2015 the ‘Uses of Art’ AGM took place at Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. Representatives from all ‘L’Internationale’ and associated partners in the ‘Uses of Art’ project met up to discuss progress and to begin developing more concrete plans for the remainder of the ‘Uses of Art’ project.

On 13^th December 2014 ‘Negotiating Institutions’, the second Mediation/Useful Art Education Seminar of the ‘Uses of Art Project’ took place at Tate Liverpool. The key purpose of the seminar was to open up lines of inquiry and discussion – around the perceived need to radically redefine institutions in the management and defence of the common good – by inviting representatives of the L’Internationale Group, Liverpool John Moores University and Tate Liverpool to begin debating the conditions of such an inquiry. Convened by Janna Graham and Elliot Perkins, Negotiating Institutions hoped to be the first of a series of such debates that will lead to the collaborative development and publication of an operational ‘Blueprint for Change’ amongst L’Internationale members and Associate Partners collaborating on The Uses of Art project.

Participant Groups at the ‘Negotiating Institutions’ Seminar Included:

Liverpool John Moores University, Tate Liverpool, Tate Collective and the emerging Family Collective, The Quad Collective, Diásporas críticas PEI, MACBA, , Meet me@MHKA ,Neteorit, Moderna galerija (MG+MSUM), Somateca, Museo Reina Sofía, Van Abbemuseum and MIMA

On December and ‘The Uses of Art: History’ took place at the University of Hildesheim as part of ‘The Uses of Art’ project.

–The uses of art–Flyer_WEB

Paul’s Kimchi Co. Van Abbemuseum

On November 22^nd 2014 ‘Paul’s Kimichi Co.’ (a subsidiary of Static’s ongoing ‘Noodle Bar’) project opened at the Van Abbemuseum as part of the show ‘Confessions of the Imperfect: 1848 – 1989 – today‘ (curated by Steven ten Thije, Alistair Hudson)

It will be interesting to see how Paul’s Kimchi Co. as a hybrid artwork, proposition and active business model manages to survive and/or test the current frameworks for exhibition and display that the Uses of Art project is attempting to re-define.

Alistair Hudson (formerly Dept. Director of Grizedale Arts) has moved to MIMA in Middleborough. Here’s a good link to a recent ‘Arts head’ interview he gave to the Guardian and in which he outlines some of his Museum 3.0 and Uses based approaches to art and reconfiguring institutions. As a longtime collaborator with Alistair, and an admirer of the work he and Adam Sutherland have undertook at Grizedale Arts, I’m personally looking forward to seeing what Alistair can achieve next.

The Van Abbemuseum’s second Exhibition for L’Internationale’s programme of research ‘The Uses of Art’ opens soon (22/11/14). The show’s title ‘Confessions of the Imperfect – 1848 – 1989 – Today’ borrows from Ruskin’s observation about the need to allow for human imperfection in art and craft, and will seek to build on the work already undertaken by Van Abbemuseum in reimagining a future role of the Museum. As co-director of Static I’m particularly looking forward to this show as we have a work in it – a further manifestation of the Noodle Bar project – which we’ll be discussion online in the near future. One of the key issues that will be under discussion over the next few year, aligned to the rubric of the ‘Uses of Art’ project and to my work/research will be the idea of the Museum 3.0. A really useful way of opening up this debate was, I think, provided by Steven ten Thije in his article ‘Hanging, Hanging Over Again and a Hangover’ which was published in the Van Abbemuseum’s Kitchen Blog, One of the potent metaphors that Steven uses is the idea that “Nowadays the importance of the representative function has declined and art has become more of a  skill which we sometimes use and sometimes don’t use, like a sort of idiosyncratic “app” on the smartphone of our citizenship.”