INSTITUTIONS

What’s the problem? Institutions. Institutions are the problem. I remember last year Shannon Stratton took me to task for ending some rant by blanket blaming institutions. I asked her about this again at the end of our interview on 4 August 2022. She told me,

Yeah. I mean, I think I'm always like, thinking about that, like, that I'm, you know, sometimes I'm like, what would I go back to study at University? It's like, what were the things that'd be interested in studying? And I actually think one of the things that I find the most curious is the concept of institution as like a catchall bucket that people can throw, like, a bunch of like awful in, you know? It's just like, whatever I'm pissed about, just goes in this bucket called institution, you know? And without like having any, like, remembering that it's like, oh, like the institution includes me because I work at one. Or like, you know, like, my friend...

I think one of my frustrating things about the, like, institution shit bucket is like a lot of fucking people who need to work have to work in institutions because not everybody gets to be an independent artist or an independent academic or an independent thinker, like, that's not, that's not achievable for like 98% of the population.

And so where do those people work? [WHISPERS] At institutions. You know? And like, they're complicated, working with people's hard... I'm not trying to, like, give a, like, blanket pass institutions. It's mostly just to be like, they're difficult. They're filled with people. They're filled with people, negotiating things all the time. They're so filled with people, negotiating things all the time that I think a lot of the time they've lost the plot.

Like, I'm not giving institutions the pass. I'm not making an excuse for 'em. It's not it. It's just mostly, like, people work there and often artists have to because they need a job. And, or academics or whatever. And they make up, most of the people who work there.

So, it's like, it is, uh, it just ends up being this funny, like blanket thing that we like throw all of our, our crap at, but we like don't even really know what it is, you know? Or like, we don't really know what that means, it just becomes sort of a, like, "That's the blanket term I'll just put on some things that I hate." And you're like, “Okay, can we unpack that a little bit?”

And then some people mean institution when they say, like, a thing's been around for a long time, but I think it's come to mean, like, things that are impenetrable that we hate, you know?

It doesn't really mean things that have been around for a long time and proven their worth. It's more like that thing's been around too long and we hate it and it's like impenetrable. Today that's what I think institution means, I don't know what it will mean next week.[i]

In addition to the multiple archival projects we were introduced to this season, like Black Lunch Table and Bad at Sports, we were also introduced to two collecting archives. I interviewed Dr. Joana Joachim on 7 September 2022, and she spoke to me about Artexte, “… a library, research centre and exhibition space for contemporary art… [whose] unique print and digital document collection holds over 30,000 documents covering the visual arts from 1965 to the present, with an emphasis on the art of Canada and Québec. Over 80% of the acquisitions stem from donations from the visual arts community.”[ii] Having read Dr. Joachim’s statement for Blackity, an exhibition she curated at Artexte in 2021, for which she wrote, “The presence of mind of curators, historians, librarians, and archivists to see the work of Black arts practitioners as valuable and worthy of historical preservation is a crucial piece of this process”[iii]; I asked, “…how can artists access critical writing and archival documentation?”[iv] Dr. Joachim replied by giving a number of really helpful pieces of advice to both artists and art writers, but here I want to highlight when Dr. Joachim recommended people,

… build a personal archive. And now I go into my like, "Well, we have to promote Artexte" speech, but, um, having an artist file at, at a place like Artexte where you, and, and keeping it up to date where, you know, you put in your CV or a list of the exhibitions that you've been part of and, uh, you know, your, your artist statement and any kind of document visual documentation of your work, like, you can just print off photos of your work, right? Having that is a way of building a legacy and having, you know, a place for people to then go and learn about your work and write about your work. Because if there's no information about your work, then people can't write about it. So that's one piece, that's the piece that artists I believe can control to a certain degree.[v]

Like Dr. Joachim wrote, an archive is full of things that curators, historians, librarians, and artists had the presence of mind to save and preserve. If artists and art workers have the presence of mind to build our personal archives and donate materials to donation-based organisations like Artexte and Chicago Artist Files (as mentioned by Jesse Malmed), than we will have been a part of this process, and our materials will be what constitutes the archives.

Not only do we populate institutions, and our work constitutes institutions, but we also create them. I spoke about this on 2 November 2022 with jina valentine who co-founded Black Lunch Table with Heather Hart in 2005. valentine told me,

Heather and I contributed an essay to a book called Out of Place, which was a project conceived of by Zoë Charlton and Tim Doud, who are in Maryland. Um, and our text, it begins with, "Our relationship to the institution has always been fraught." Um, and it is a kind of a meditation on our reliance as artists and non-profit directors, about our position of always relying on some relationship with the institution but being deeply skeptical of institutions, generally. Um, it is an essay that is also a meditation on this idea of hiding in plain sight, so, you're an insurgent in the institution. And it was also a musing on [SIGH] what we were doing, we were building another institution, or are we building an organization, is that different? How do we not, um, replicate the same structures that we're attempting to dismantle?[vi]

How do we not replicate the same structures in the institutions we build that we’re trying to dismantle was a central part of 12ø Collective’s backend project which we didn’t talk about in our interview, but here’s the blurb from the website,

We began backend to share and critically discuss experiences, opinions, and ideas about systemic issues that have a huge impact on artist-led organisations but often go publicly unacknowledged. backend was a series of conversations held in four locations around the U.K. (Liverpool, Glasgow, Wakefield, and London) highlighting the lack of accountability in artist-led organisations. The events were led by facilitators and contributors whose research, work, and life experiences spoke directly to key issues in artist-led organisations, including inequality, structural racism, harassment, accessibility, and transphobia. Each site focused on a specific theme, and the facilitators led discussions on the logistics and processes of how artist-led organisations work, and on actions that artist-led organisations can take to build an infrastructure that holds our community accountable. The aim of these events was to bring people who run, work with, and patron artist-led organisations together to engage in critical introspective conversations, and to collaboratively develop a “code of conduct” to which we can all subscribe and be held accountable.[vii]

  What we did talk about in the interview was how all the members of 12ø Collective (except for me) met one another while studying at Central Saint Martins. I’m currently a part of a collaborative project HAIR CLUB with Suzanne Gold and Michal Lynn Shumate who I met while we all studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. We often meet one another through institutions where we study or work, so how do we not replicate the inequalities that were and are present in these institutions (some of which we helped perpetuate directly or indirectly) in the institutions that we create?

I spoke about this with Cecilia Wee on 30 November 2022 in the context of their work on the 2008 financial crisis. I graduated with my B.A. from Oberlin College in 2008, and immediately saw the promises of what my degree would entitle me to collapse. Speaking about what promises they were made, Wee told me,

… we were still taught that it was definitely gonna happen for us. As in like, you know, working in an arts organization in the U.K. particularly, I guess, let’s say, um, is something that you, you can make a living from. Um, and also pursuing an academic career is something that you can, you can get a job and you will get well paid, and you can look after- you'll be able to look after yourself from that. And so that was what people were kind of like aiming for and thinking about, and you know, that's where, um, that's where education kind of, like, leads you to.

Um, and so, you know, it's- I think that there is a lot of cognitive dissonance. There's massive amounts of cognitive dissonance because people are just like, "No, that's not true. It's still happening. It's fine." And that everyone's in denial about the fact that it is just total collapse, um, because they've sunk so much energy into these things that they just can't get rid of the idea that it's not gonna work out for them.

And, and obviously that kind of, like, creates this whole- it reinforces this individualistic culture because people are just like, “In that case, if you didn't get it, then it's your fault.” Do you know what I mean? Like, “You are the person who failed and I'm fine. And I'm just gonna pull the ladder up after me. Goodbye." [LAUGHS] So, I think what's really interesting about the current times, particularly with like, um, all of the strikes. So, you know, in, in 2019, we've been striking since 2019, obviously, like in the higher education sector. And now obviously because of the cost-of-living crisis, then we see like so many other unions and sectors have come on board with strikes and striking has become, like, you know, there's this renewed energy around it. There's a new kind of, like, vigour and hope around it, which is really brilliant. Um, and we can see that change can be made through this, through collective, like, action and specifically withdrawal of labour.

Um, and you know, I think that even for myself, um, like how you articulate that you're a trade unionist has definitely changed. Um, whereas people used to be a little bit like, "I'm not necessarily gonna talk about it because, you know, it's a political issue (as in a political and divisive issue).”

Um, I think it's become a lot more acceptable, particularly in these times, which is fantastic. And you know, I just wanted to say that like we're currently sitting in the Royal Society of Arts (R.S.A.), who are refusing at this point in time to allow the staff to unionize. So, we have also been writing as members of the R.S.A. to say that actually, you know, there needs to be like, if the staff wants to do this, then they should be able to do this.

Because it's, um, the R.S.A. have also written about like union, like labour laws and all of this sort of stuff, and actually given an award to the I.W.G.B. (Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain), who are the union that the staff want to be part of... Exactly, there you go. So, it's all around us. [LAUGHS] Literally all around us.[viii]

I went to a conference at Wadham College, my college at Oxford University, a couple of months ago in the Spring of 2023. In the discussion after all the papers were presented, there was this one brief moment I remember. Talking about a wide variety of things including the labour union movement in England in the 1970s and the ongoing University College Union (U.C.U.) strikes, we discussed feeling hopeful that things could change because why not? We were the ones in the room at the conference at the College in the University and we were working towards change. And then, like, five minutes later some dude was like, “But we’re not the problem, they are the problem.” Like there is some anonymous paper-pushing conservative “they” over there. Them, the people who maybe were once like “us” but somehow lost their way, their nerve, their energy, their fight. They are the ones who stand in the way.

Like, who are these people? Who are they if not us? We work, study, and commune in institutions. We populate them with our work, and advocate for change within them when they fail us. We co-create institutions/ para-institutions/ alternative institutions, with people who we met inside our old and current institutions. We are the institution, and we are responsible for it.  

Kelly Lloyd

[i] Shannon Stratton, interview by Kelly Lloyd, This Thing We Call Art, 4 August 2022, https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/podcast/shannon-stratton.

[ii] “About Us” Artexte, 29 April 2023, https://artexte.ca/en/about-us/.

[iii] Dr. Joana Joachim, ““BLIPS IN TIME” A CONSTELLATION OF BLACK CANADIAN ARTISTIC TRADITION FROM 1970 ON”, Blackity Catalogue, Artexte, (2021), 9, https://www.artexte.art/en/blackity/curatorial-statement.

[iv] Dr. Joana Joachim, interview by Kelly Lloyd, This Thing We Call Art, 7 September 2022, https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/podcast/dr-joana-joachim.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] jina valentine, interview by Kelly Lloyd, This Thing We Call Art, 2 November 2022, https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/podcast/jina-valentine.

[vii] “backend” 12ø Collective, 29 April 2023, https://www.12ocollective.com/backend.

[viii] Cecilia Wee, interview by Kelly Lloyd, This Thing We Call Art, 30 November 2022, https://www.thisthingwecallart.com/podcast/cecilia-wee.