Thinking of Art and Generosity
Lorena Rivero De Beer
The Case of The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home
The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home is based in L6, a working class and noticeably deprived area of Liverpool. They function as a constant reminder that things can be different, that we need to hold strong in our positions, that resistance and dissent are very urgent qualities to develop as an artistic community. So what are they?
The Institute is a family (two adults and three kids), a living art project run out of a council property bedroom in Everton, Liverpool. The Institute is interested in discussing homemade aesthetics, private versus public, the familial, class and money matters. Besides the act of nurturing other artists by giving them a space to discuss critically and create work, they also give them some financial support. The Institute’s running budget for this year is 10% of the family’s combined annual net income (i.e. two lectureship salaries, some freelance work, tax credits and child benefit). This budget provides a nominal fee for invited artists, cultural activists and speakers to cover their expenses. The Institute is committed to financial transparency and all events are free for audiences. It was originally set up to coincide with the Liverpool 08 European Capital of Culture. It is a space for dissenting the Capitalism of Culture.
I will explore the character of the Institute’s giving nature by looking at their practice and some of my experiences with them. This giving nature is rooted in their aim to generate dialogue and make visible the nature of the current social structures, which necessarily implies to dissent with the Culture of Capitalism. In between other things we could think of the Institute as an art project on how to share with others in an informed and socially progressive way, that is, a way of sharing that is fully aware of not being patronising, abusive or a diversion of something else; that empowers equally the one who gives and the one who receives. This is closely linked with the Institute’s ability to generate experiences that do not exist as separate from the context where they take place. This kind of practice is almost absent within the Culture of Capitalism, most of the time we see ‘acts of generosity’ taking place within an individual/institutional space in which there is a lack of financial transparency and the underlying ideologies are not accessible to the people who benefit from such generosity. That is, they offer a restricted experience that will give the greatest credit to the individual/institution that created it.
So how does the Institute manage to share in an open dialogical way? One of the most important elements is that they are in control over the mediation interfaces. This is based on a threefold decision they made: to support the project using the income from their wages, to use the family home as their space, and to have as the main themes of their work critical thinking and transparency. Another fundamental element is that their form of sharing acknowledges (through its transparency) the need from the person who is exercising it. That is, that the act of giving is not altruistic but based on the desire for something. In their case they not only want to give a space to artists and activists to think about freedom and social justice, but they want to experience meaningful encounters in their home, to give their kids the possibility to experience an alternative education outside their school, to not alienate their family life from their artistic project, to observe closely and challenge one of the main structures of capitalism, the patriarchal family, to enjoy, and so on and so forth. And what are the effects that the Institute has in the artistic community? One of the most inspiring aspects of the Institute is made apparent when one observes the deep subjective effect that dissenting and sharing with transparency has for the people who had the chance to experience it. I will exemplify this by briefly introducing my experience as a participant in one of the events run by the Institute last year, DIY5. (DIY 5 was a Live Art Development Agency initiative developed in collaboration with Arnolfini and Theatre Bristol; Artsadmin; Colchester Arts Centre; Fierce Earth, North East; New Work Network and China Plate; and Nuffield Theatre and LANWest. It offers short professional development projects run by artists for artists. This project in particular was supported by Nuffield Theatre). The institute named their DIY5 ‘First Retreat and then Advance!!’ They offered a residency to a group of artists for the period of two weekends. It took place against the backdrop of Liverpool 08, Capital of Culture.
The project’s aim was to collectively map Liverpool 08, explore the city’s high and low points, discuss one’s own capitalistic subjectivity, spend £500, listen to one another and provide some cultural interventions. The base for the event was The Institute.
As a participant of the ‘First Retreat and then Advance!!’ I found the project exceptional in its ability to include us in a full experience and not just specific elements of it. At that time I was in the process of relocating from London to Liverpool and I was in the early stages of discovering the city; its people and structures. I found that the residency was a fantastic introduction that enabled me to see Liverpool as a pool of creative dissenting opportunities rather than as a culturally deprived area in comparison with London.
But beyond the great experience of discussion and intervening in the city what I felt as an insightful challenge that made the experience really engaging at a political and subjective level was the fact that we were meeting in their family home, sharing their intimate spaces, learning to enter in dialogue with a full family that functioned as a collective, challenging our expectations of what an artistic encounter is, of what a family is, of what is internal and what is external. A context which enables them to create a non-didactic pedagogy, in which we learned mostly by the opportunity to experience something different; that added a greater depth to the nature of our discussion about culture. We felt empowered by the freedom that existed within the sophisticated and open structure of the Institute itself and that was extrapolated to our ability to understand and intervene the city. After the residency and even though I was a new comer I felt a great sense of agency over the city and over my role within it. This has led me to want to develop further the experience. This year I am running a DIY 6 training in Liverpool, ‘Exercises to Activate the Political Imagination of the City Wanderer.’ This, I hope, reflects how the nature of the creative experience generated by the Institute is to expand...
‘A moment of freedom' (September 2008) Janice Harding
Courtesy the artist and The Institute of Art and Dissent at Home.
Created as part of a DIY 5 residency.
