On 30^th June 2023 ‘Economics the Blockbuster – It’s not Business as Usual’ opened at The Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester https://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/ as Part of the Manchester International Festival 2023 https://factoryinternational.org/about/manchester-international-festival/mif23/.

Showcasing 10 examples of projects by artists, collectives and art organisations, the exhibition intends to demonstrate uses of art as ‘real world economic systems’. 

Economics the Blockbuster originally initiated by Alistair Hudson during his time as Director of both Manchester Art Gallery and The Whitworth Art Gallery, built upon the work undertaken by Hudson as he sought to reshape and reimagine The Whitworth Art Gallery as a primarily useful of ‘constitute’ space. As part of my role as The Whitworth Art Gallery’s Writer and Researcher in Residence (from 2019 – 2023) I had the privilege of working with Staff, Constituents and affiliates of The Whitworth as part of an exhibition steering group led by Poppy Bowers (then Interim Head of Exhibitions at the Whitworth). Also, the online research platform I proposed in 2018 (Decentrailsing Political Economies) was intended to run alongside the long-term development of this project.

For me, what was always most important about this exhibition was not the exhibition itself, but the use of the exhibition format as a means for a museum (in this case The Whitworth Art Gallery) to begin to rethink and remake itself as a different kind of institution through a collaborative, inclusive and constituent approach. Key to this, and also from my perspective, was to host an exhibition that was not simply ‘about’ economics, or one that sought to illustrate, illuminate or ‘make accessible’ the idea of economics as we now know it to be. Instead, Economics the Blockbuster was, for me, always about making an invitation to be curious about what economics actually is (or, rather, what economics are) as a complex system of relationships – use, making, community – that cannot simply be reduced to the instrumentalising idea of simply ‘money’.

From 23rd to 26^th June I had the good fortune to be able to re-visit and re-connect with the Van Abbemuseum after an almost four year absence. I was fabulous to see my old friends Charles Esche and Steven ten Thije again and to also have an opportunity to attend some of the classes for the 2023 iteration of the Decolonial Summer School ‘Realling Eaerth: Decoloniality and Demodernity’ and to attend the opening of ‘Tanah Merdeka’, an incredible exhibition of work by the collective Taring Padi at FramerFramed in Amsterdam (and a big thanks also to Alexander Supartono for pointing out the YNWA Liverpool FC reference in one of their incredible paintings).

The ‘Tablecloth as Toolkit’ was a new commission for the Horizon Garden exhibition at Ty Pawb. Produced by artist Owen Griffiths and AAU activist/curator Alessandra Saviotti, the ‘Tablecloth as Toolkit’ offers an opportunity for a group of people, drawn together from different backgrounds, to talk through key themes and issues. After a meal together, and using a series of prompts, which are provided on the napkins, the meals hosts (Grffiths and Saviotti) ask the guests to talk about ideas and inspirations that are important to them. In doing so, guests are encouraged to think together, connect and discuss how they might begin to plan and effect real world long term change.

On April 6^th 2023 I was invited in my capacity as an Advisory Board member for Ty Pawb to join and engage in one of these shared meals, I was able to contribute to a group discussion about how Ty Pawb, via the ongoing development of its roof top garden, might best join up with, and contribute too, a developing network of growing projects in the North Wales and Wrexham region

 though mutually and served as an important way to activate dialogue within the exhibition came about as part of an ongoing process of developing a community growing space on the roof of Ty Pawb. Through this process Ty Pawb has become part of a network of community growing projects in the region.

In addition to our hosts Owen Griffiths and Alexandra Saviotti, other invited guests included: Ian Bancroft – Chief Executive, Wrexham Council, Councillor Hugh Jones – Lead member for Environment, with responsibility for Ty Pawb and City of Culture, Marja Bonada – Freelance artist and gardener, lead artist for development of the roof garden at Ty Pawb with KIM Inspire, Morag Colquhoun – artist and environmentalist, exhibited as part of Horizon Garden, Andrew Collings – Horticulturalist and food growing advisor, Katherine Saxby – Founder of Incredible Edibles Wrexham, and Complementary Healthcare Provider and Christopher Hall – Director Incredible Edibles Wrexham.

The idea that the group concluded with would be the ambition to meet again for a meal in three years time and to see how ideas, actions and ambitions have progressed.

On March 10th 2023 I took part in the final planning sessions for the exhibition ‘Economics the Blockbuster – It’s not Business as Usual‘ scheduled to open at The Whitworth Art Gallery on 30th June 2023.

In February 2022 a joint article ‘Hacking education: Arte Útil as an educational methodology to foster change in curriculum planning’, written between myself and my long term colleague and collaborator Alessandra Saviotti. At the time of writing, I was also acting as Lead Supervisor for Alessandra’s PhD by Practice. The article was published online as part of the ‘Art & the Public Sphere’ Journal (Volume 11 Number 1). There is a pdf version of this article on the Writing Tab of this website).

ABSTRACT

Artworks operating at the intersection of art and education often attempt to chal-lenge dominant education systems in suggesting alternative pedagogical models that could function outside the official academic realm, proposing radical changes to the latter. However, the lack of continuity of alternative education models imple-mented by artists and curators within universities’ art and design departments fails to provide a longer-term change. This article stems from our research on the usological turn, a recent shift from spectatorship to usership according to which artists and curators tend to create art projects which situate themselves as part of a broader usership. Using an autoethnographic approach, we will analyse how the principles of the art group Arte Útil intersects with the undercommons. Hence, we explore how they apply an alternative method, through participatory curriculum planning, as a tool for change within the institution of education.

On the 27^th January 2023 the exhibition ‘Horizon Garden’ opened at Ty Pawb in Wrexham, North Wales

According to Jo March, Creative Director of Ty Pawb, “the intention of ‘Horizon Garden’ was to provide a working and constituent example of how exhibitions don’t need to be ‘end points’ – resolved presentations where we share what we, the institution, have concluded”. Instead, for Marsh, “the exhibition can be one moment for dialogue, sharing, dreaming, planning and reflecting, within a long trajectory….in this instance around community growing as a response to shared urgencies of climate emergency, social isolation, loneliness and food poverty.”

In November 2023 Sven Lütticken emailed me to say that, after several years of hard work the ‘Art and Autonomy Reader’ had finally been published by Afterall

My article ‘Social Autonomy and the Use Value of Art’, originally published in ‘Afterall’, Autumn/Winter 2016 (and available as a pdf on the Writing tab of this website) is reprinted in Part Two of the book ‘Useful Art’, alongside articles and writings by John Ruskin, Karl Marx, William Morris, Oscar Wilde, Upton Sinclair, Nul Group, Gustav Metzger, Gullaume Bijl and Jean Baudrillard.

As well as this republication I also have a credit for drafting portions of part two (many thanks Sven).

On 17^th November 2022 I took part in the final Drawing Workshop for Economics the Blockbuster took place at The Whitworth Art Gallery. Over the last two years, a series of these workshops have been run by Kathrine Böhm and Kuba Szreder as a means to help think through the key themes and issues that Economics the Blockbuster will engage with. They have also provided a means by which staff and constituents of the Whitworth Art Gallery can work more directly with the development and production of the exhibition itself.

From September 4^th to 14^th Alistair Hudson and I were invited by Barto Bartolomeus to take part in a series of workshops/talks/seminars and idea exchanges with Yamaguchi Centre for Media Art (YCAM) in Japan.

The purpose of the Research Visit was to work with Staff at YCAM around issues of Constituency and to develop strategies for making the Museum a place in which local, national and international publics can interact effectively in the co-production of content, commissioning and impactful project development. Key to this was to hear from and work with a range of local constituents, as well as a range of more community focused arts agencies, and to begin developing plans for the development of ground up and local initiatives that would enable local people to work with YCAM in addressing local issues of housing, education, economy and health.

After a series of visits, consultations and seminars, the Research Exchange concluded with a series of public presentations and discussions – YCAM OpenLab 2022 Programme 1

Amongst the Arts Agencies we were able to visit and consult with were:

Toge Village, Naoko Horiuchi & Roger McDonalds at AIT Arts Initiative Tokyo, Fumihiko Sumitomo Tokyo University of the Arts Music Department / Daigaku Kikan / Sumitomo Lab, Toshunji Zen Buddhism temple (who had collaborated with YCAM for a public program in 2021), Yamaguchi Elderly Care Centre, Maiko Kaku (Waccaya Organic Shop), VIVISTOP,Naoko Horiuchi (AIT/Dear Me) and Yuki Someya (Reciprocal Units within Art and Urbanism)

On the 20^th and 21^st of August 2022 I took part in two Association of Arte Útil Seminars which were held as part of the INSTAR (Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt)

https://instar.org/index-en.html

contribution to Documenta 15. Both Seminars took place in the INSTAR Square in the Documenta Halle. https://documenta-fifteen.de/en/

On Saturday 20^th August the Seminar ‘Is There Such a Thing as a Usological Turn’, chaired by The Van Abbemuseum’s Nick Aikens, looked at the concept of usership as a means of practicing by artists who set out to make work that is to be activated rather than looked at. Seminar participants, including Muhannad Al Ulaby; Tania Bruguera; Fernando Garcia Dory (who attended online), Annie Fletcher and Stephen Wright were asked to consider how such practices welcome use, misuse, transformation and repurposing and, also, how such practice might challenge old categories such as ownership, authorship, spectatorship, and intellectual property rights.

The link to the INSTAR YouTube recording of this session can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPXg13RGHVs

On Sunday 21^st August I chaired the second session ‘Towards an Archaeology of Art Útil’ which allowed Tania Bruguera, Alistair Hudson, Alessandra Saviotti and myself to unpack how the online archive of the Association of Arte Útil has become an expanding and collective resource, or tool – one that can be freely used and activated by anybody who is interested in the increasingly complex intersections that are opening up between and across art and social change.

As such the Seminar also offered a space to discuss and consider how the Archive of the Association of Arte Útil (which now numbers more than 300 case studies) might provide tactics, historical perspectives – and way of rethinking relationships between theory and practice – for those who might wish to use art as a means of counter-neoliberal change. The Seminar also considered how this archive functions as a means to connect/reconnect diverse geographical and transdisciplinary ‘users’ in ways that might help the process of re-mapping our uses of art as a tool for social change.

The link to the INSTAR YouTube recording of this session can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ase5kRz1tQk&t=244s