FEEDBACK TO JA! ASSOCIATION AND KAJSA DAHLBERG

Hi everyone,

I have been thinking during the project of issues that have arisen during ‘the name of this association shall be Transmission’ project. And I think a broader qualification of issues personal and political: in relation to how Transmission operates, what conditions it operates under in relation to funders and how it is determined by its members, deserves further examination. As I see some problems in terms of focusing in on certain areas of these without looking at the bigger picture.

Working at Transmission, is chiefly running a gallery, but also being an artist.
Working with other artists who run a gallery, running a gallery for artists who belong to an organisation. Running a gallery that belongs to an organisation of artists and developing ways of sustaining other kinds of activity, relationships to organisations, interest from other art professionals and artists to that organisation and gallery.

As an artist this is a peculiar trajectory that inevitably feeds back into the knowledge and development of myself as an artist, my relationship to the field in which I have chosen to work and the other people that I come into contact with as a consequence. It explains and requires a crash course in the simultaneous realisation of the demands and expectations of individuals and a collective. Ideas circulate from and through the regular activities of the gallery, the membership and those that come to visit the gallery. And as the committee changes and as different members come and go, different sensibilities, priorities and agendas are proposed, agreed on, forgotten, held in mind and executed.

Travelling to other places it is clear that a lot of people in the art world know about Transmission and if so are at least partly aware of its place in the production and dissemination of Scottish contemporary art and if they have visited Glasgow is usually one of the places they come to, to find out about artists and art activity. This is because in the period before the existence of commercial contemporary galleries that is 10 to 15 years ago till now and in the last 10 years with the increase of commercial and other artist-run activity, Transmission has and still serves as a critical platform for the dissemination of ideas surrounding artistic production beyond the simple displaying of artworks in a gallery space.

This description of my relationship to Transmission and its activities demonstrates a few things

- The determination of art activity in Glasgow as belonging to Glasgow and Scotland
is largely defined by funding criteria of promoting artworks on a local and national level that operates in marked contrast to the non- Scottish population making art here. Not to say that non-Scottish artists don’t choose to move here and stay but this stands in contrast to a changing number of people who don’t or more particularly can’t stay because of immigration laws. And identifies the motives of the Scottish Arts Council to brand artistic activity despite the origins of the artist, or the content of the work. Under a current if shaky Nationalist Government, this has only become stronger. Culture Minister Linda Fabiani was asked recently if she thought that the proposed change to funding under the Creative Scotland Act (something designed to categorically redefine art activity within the larger creative industries to compete on a business development model with other cultural industries for that funding) was a way for the Scottish Government to have more control over the works selected for funding. She ironically replied, “Only if.” (Since writing this Linda Fabiani has been suspended in her position as Culture minister and the proposed Bill has been delayed-again.)

- Notions of diversity and representation have been co-opted into neo-liberal funding agendas in Scotland and the UK for the last ten years now as a way of resourcing the arts as a healing balm, particularly in areas of deprivation, like large areas of Glasgow, and here community arts are thriving. The Commonwealth Games, five years away, is already representing a panacaea of regeneration via social inclusion. The unquestioned shoe-horning of artistic activity into a broader social agenda has succeeded in increasing the pool of cash designated to Culture and Sports by the City Council: which in the form of Culture and Sport Glasgow the departmental funders for the city (now in effect a private company that with an over-determined emphasis on art as a potential leisure/ tourist facility for the citizens and tourists of Glasgow and business opportunity to investors) is offering culture funding at the cost of representing Glasgow under a sports-orientated post-colonialist banner. This is clearly a means of accessing the revenue explicitly for artistic activity, to advertise the Commonwealth Games. And here as in other places in the UK: any attempt to question this is to question the grounds for development or investment in general.
And in a sense, to see Transmission’s constitution is to see how much it is required as a means of communicating a complicity of form to the funding strategies and other socio-political agendas by these, its two main funders.
For example a brief look at the galleries activities above demonstrates the extent to which these can be determined from a professional development and business model perspective- an argument furthered by Darren Rhymes in his letter and in its 25 years Transmission long predates the more recent revaluation of voluntary labour within the arts as a business strategy.

- The necessity for Transmission to operate a Equal Opportunities Policy is necessary to demonstrate a social contract of equality and the acknowledgement of human rights laws in the choosing of artists on the grounds of their individual merits, regardless of race, gender, class or sexuality. To apply these definitions as determining the character of the constitution and by implication to the programming of the gallery is to ignore the efforts currently undertaken by the committee to attempt to challenge hegemonic issues of representation in the arts and to acknowledge the unprobelmatised relationships that exist between artist- run and commercial, represented and non-represented artists, dissemination and assimilation by so called dominant and non-dominant artistic forms and definitions of gender, sexuality and class as issues which serve to define artists in socio-political framework that may over-determine these issues in relation to their overall artistic value. I agree fundamentally in an effort to develop mechanisms for examining and acting on power relations and discrimination in the art industry at large but I don’t agree that an organisation can legislate within another organisation without undermining its own authority. Who moderates the relationship between JA! and its host organisation. Once the two organisations are legally bound- who is determining whose actions and for what period of time? While for me this raises interesting issues by questioning ethical modes and adopting critical and reformist models; I don’t see how in this instance other than agreeing that we share the same aims that the model proposed for the constitution could ever work.

- Altering the constitution of Transmission would create a legal document that would be unsustainable and would serve a gallery that was nearly impossible to programme for. In advance of programming a committee would need information (above and beyond what is discernible from an artist’s practice, or written information about that artist) on the nationality, race, gender, sexuality and class of that artist. And these artists would be required to adapt their own means of identification into the strategies of representation defined by Transmission on a constitutional level.
While there are strands of the programme that are for Scotland and Internationally based artists, this is often clearly stated in an artist’s biography and assumes less as to how someone identifies themselves. It also permits that an artist is more than their demographic representation.

As to the movement of the constitutional amendment and following discussion I think its worth elaborating on a few points, as the minutes won’t nearly make up for what I think we recall ourselves and the breadth of discussion.

The model for proposing and opposing the motion in a typical debating style results in an antagonistic outcome where either side is forced to defend their motion. In the event of the AGM I feel this got somewhat out of hand with the chair stepping down to represent an opposition to the motion and the proceedings becoming more and more baroque and confused with amendments to amendments, and quite heated debate. I feel that if the issue had been given more time i.e. each person spoke for 10 minutes and then there was a discussion and a simple vote and there was a less competitive edge this may have leant more decorum and range to the discussion.

This said those that attend the AGM are usually amongst the most vocal and experienced within the membership in relation to the gallery’s running and history and most have experience in the arts in Scotland and immediately reacted to the problems inherent to changing the constitution so significantly and immediately questioned the differential between a reformist agenda, an item that has been raised as part of an exhibition at the gallery (its long term consequences) and the specific quality and character of the constitution in relation to the gallery’s activities. This immediately raised the question of how those proposing the motion had become members and it was clear the knowledge that it had been done in the days before the AGM made people quite hostile, although subsequently there were many who expressed interest in the overall project and were interested in the methods and formal qualities of the project, as such. With hindsight, I feel it would definitely have been more effective and better received as a motion if all might have been able to be present. It was questioned inevitably as to how much notice a significant amendment should be granted and although the project did attempt various ways of doing this- the blog, the newsletter the first letter while admittedly there was a problem with the final amendment not going out by mail- this is something that should be re-addressed were there a next time.

All in all I feel this was an extremely profitable situation for the membership and the committee. It is never possible for any one person to know the entire history and mechanisms of Transmission but posing a question as to how the gallery identifies, regulates and functions and how this relates generally to this artistic activity in general has produced some interesting results. I feel that researching the particularities of the constitution and evaluating the more contentious elements really helped to separate out my own initial judgement from the organisation’s legal and funding obligations and historical precedents for this kind of artistic activity.

I am happy to continue developing these discussions with JA! However I would like to discuss the programme more analytically. And look at what we are doing in relation to the JA! Constitution as well as ways in which we would need to adapt JA’s aims to Transmission’s specific functioning, further to the discussions we had in the gallery and recent developments.


CONAL MC STRAVICK