The Artist and Power

This is an excerpt from “Leading Through Practice,” a research paper by Anne Douglas and Chris Fremantle, published online in March 2007 by a-n The Artists Information Company. The full paper is an in-process presentation of the research gathered during the Artist as Leader program, which aims to understand artists' influence on shaping the role of creativity in culture, focusing on the concept of leadership. Say the researchers: “It opens up a new trajectory of thinking about leadership that is not predominantly management-based, in which the role of artist operating within the public realm is scrutinized for what it can reveal about creativity in general.” The editors of the paper invited four contributions — Linda Frye Burnham, Reiko Goto, Francis McKee and Tim Nunn — to demonstrate a range of perspectives. This excerpt looks at artists and the concept of power. The Artist as Leader is a project of On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University, all of Aberdeen, Scotland; Cultural Enterprise Office, Scotland; and Performing Arts Labs, London. The full paper is available as a downloadable .pdf file (154k). (Note: In this instance, CAN has retained the editorial style of the original paper.) –Eds.

Artists who accept the relevance of leading through practice seem to have an ambivalent relationship with power. The leadership discourse in business is becoming more self-critical but still favours heroic or celebrity models: Leaders have been referred to as idols (The Economist, 2002), heroes (Bennis, 1997; Collins, 2000; Raelin, 2003; Shelton, 1996); saviours (Khurana 2002); warriors and magicians (Tallman, 2003) and omnipotent and omniscient demi-gods (Gabriel, 1997; Noer, 1994)” (Morris, Brotheridge and Urbanski, 2005).

These models stand in stark contrast to the qualities that Linda Frye Burnham has discovered over thirty-five years of writing and publishing community art practice. A good artist-leader is “a cultural animator building and participating in community life”. he or she is an analyst able to “read situations rapidly and accurately” (Arlene Goldbard) thereby acknowledging expertise in people about their lives. he or she is a collaborator who “motivates others to share a vision” (Lee Ann Norman), a connector, an organiser, a revolutionary, a good negotiator, an entrepreneur and a lover (John Malpede). Such approaches are consistent with emerging perspectives on leadership, particularly associated with the Lancaster Leadership Centre[15], which stress that followership is an indispensable part of the leadership equation, and which questions many traditional top down practices.

Frye Burnham observes:

When an artist seeks to lead others in making art, it is often in a spirit of social change: to help heal a community after a trauma, reach across a divide, bring generations closer together.

In abandoning the heroic concept of leader, or the primacy of ‘author as sole creator’, we prioritise a different set of skills and competencies. We look to the artist to think strategically and go beyond the ‘brief’. Bob Last, film producer and entrepreneur, commented on the importance of intellectual ambition in art,

In my mind there is some sort of misunderstanding of what it is to be an artist that leads to … the thought that self-effacing practice, or objects, or a lack of ambition to influence is in itself a heroic refusal or worthy thing… [That] is some strange and conflicted construction of the artist’s role against the popular.[16]

Bob Last suggested an interesting example of leading through practice. he focuses on individuals in the film industry whose roles do not gain the headlines. he highlighted Thelma Schoonmaker who regularly works with Martin Scorsese. Last commented that Schoonmaker is able to intuitively retain a map of multiple and overlapping rhythms over ninety minutes, and that this is one of the key characteristics of Scorsese’s films.

Last goes on to focus on one of the contradictions at the heart of any discussion about the power of art to enable us to see the world differently.

An artist’s practice provides leadership in terms of constantly re-examining the world. The problem that dogs this sense of leadership is perhaps that it is not the case that the majority of people want a life where we are constantly re-examining what that life means. [17]

Artist/Organisations

One of the most important historical examples of artists seeking to influence policy is the Artists’ Placement group (APG). APG was established by John Latham and Barbara Steveni in the late 1960s and continued through into the early 1980s. APG was a radical social experiment engaging artists in non-art situations, and it moved the art towards a different power base where artists were not just embellishing. Their value as artists was palpable within the day-to-day business of various organisations.

APG marks out a territory in which the artist was given maximum freedom to engender creativity at any level of non-artistic organisations, often investing creativity where it was least expected. Grant Kester’s analysis of APG places emphasis on the durational aspects of this work. John Latham explained the value of the artist in organisational contexts as lying precisely in their capacity to think through the long-term implications of actions within timescales that were far greater and more complex that the short-term expedient problem-solving of the market. APG placed artists within British Steel, the Scottish Office, the Department of health in London, and the Department of the Environment in Birmingham. These placements resulted in a variety of ‘works’, but the true legacy lies in the opening up of expectation in and around the role of the artist. Although at times highly contentious, APG’s programme led to an official memorandum from the British Civil Services in 1972 encouraging government agencies to involve artists in their activities.

APG, radical in its time, has in many ways established one model for how artists might work within organisations. This model has the potential to invert the conventional relationship between the artist and organisational power, but its application in real terms is problematic. Artists are rarely salaried (though within the APg programme they were). In practice this excludes them from certain sorts of processes. Rob Laycock, who has recently taken over as Director of helix Arts[18], noted precisely this point[19]. Artists are effectively excluded from certain networking and training programmes aimed at supporting emerging leaders. These programmes are aimed at the long-term good of society, and largely rely on participants being sponsored by their employers. This exclusion points to the gap between the rhetoric of creative industries and the realities of practice in the field.

Where artists develop a successful project that could iterate or grow and extend, they are often faced with becoming the managers at the expense of their own artistic practice. Laycock is employed to lead and manage helix Arts. he is also a practising artist. he acknowledged that although he brings a great deal of creativity to his role as Director, his practice as artist is consciously separated from his practice as manager/ leader. The fact that an artist within an organisation is faced with such choices indicates that there is a tension between artistic conventions and leadership conventions. In other cases this constitutes a dilemma.

Paul Carter was the lead artist in the Edge FM project. This project was one of five in the first phase of On the Edge, developed in partnership with the Museum of Scottish Lighthouses (2001-4). Edge FM involved a group of young people from Fraserburgh working with Carter over a two-month period to create a radio station. They developed the branding, applied for a short-term community license, interviewed inhabitants of Fraserburgh on their perceptions of Fraserburgh as ‘home’, recorded material and developed a broadcast. In this and in other projects, Carter clearly demonstrated leading through his practice. Carter understood that the role of the artist lay in mobilising young people to form self-organising groups that then gave those young people the power to address issues that affected their circumstances. he understood that it was not the role of the artist to sustain and lead the groups as might be found in conventional youth work models. his intervention was consciously time limited and also consciously linked with radio as a medium.

Being a tool, [radio’s] use can change, the messages it carries can change. … Edge FM, as an art project, has a legacy in the continuing discussions and arguments about the culture of Fraserburgh and the position young Brochers[20] have within culture.[21] (Carter 2004)

Carter’s insistence on intervening creatively as a temporary, time-limited action contrasts in some aspects with the long-term commitment that Suzanne Lacy has made to developing work with the community of Oakland California over ten years (1990-2000).

Lacy views scale and long-term commitment as crucial to her approach.

Each project grew out of youth concerns expressed in the prior [project], and each positioned youth in leadership roles. Taking place over ten years of increasing hostility toward youth of colour in urban cities, the projects… feature efforts by hundreds to capture the imagination of thousands, in an effort to demystify ‘youth’. Taken together, these projects on public education, pregnancy and health care, public policy, police abuse, and youth participation in civic life represent a sustained and developed exploration of the practice and theory of community-based public art.[22]

Through the act of departure, Carter places the energy of the experience within the lives of the participants. The artist is ephemeral and redundant once the task of mobilising the energy of the young people is complete. In staying, Lacy consolidates and grows awareness of the issues through the sheer duration and scale of the numbers of people who are reached and their power to effect change. Both seek to transfer the power of leadership to the young people and away from the artist.

Anne Douglas is Reader in Art and Public Pedagogy and Director of On The Edge Research. She is based at Gray's School of Art, The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. As an artist researcher she is interested in the role of the artist in social change both as a theoretical/historical inquiry as well as a creative endeavour. Web: http://www.ontheedgeresearch.org

Chris Fremantle is a cultural historian. He is a research associate with On The Edge Research, and also works with Platform. He is a freelance producer in the visual arts. Previously he was director of the Scottish Sculpture Workshop. His interests are focused on the practice of curating, and the practices of artists engaging with and revealing social and ecological change. Web: http://www.chris.fremantle.org

On The Edge Research a team of artists and researchers conducting practice-led research, developing a space between the field of practice and the academic to support shared learning and public pedagogy. Based in Scotland, On The Edge is increasingly working within a national and international network of artists, writers and policy researchers. Web: http://www.ontheedgeresearch.org

Footnotes

[15] The Lancaster Leadership Centre is one of the UK's top centres for research and teaching in the field of leadership studies. It is located within the Lancaster University Management School, which has scored a 5* in there last three consecutive RAEs. A prestigious new journal, Leadership, has been launched by two of the Centre's main professors. Professor Tourish is on the journal's editorial board, is co-editing a special edition of the journal on Communication and Leadership, and has published with one of its two editors, Professor David Collinson. he has also presented a research seminar at the Centre.

[16] Bob Last interviewed by Chris Fremantle and Tim Nunn, 31 October 2006, Glasgow.

[17] Ibid, 2006.

[18] www.helixarts.com

[19] Robert Laycock interview by Anne Douglas and Chris Fremantle, 24 november 2006, newcastle.

[20] Brocher – someone who comes from or lives in Fraserburgh.

[21] Carter, Paul, Edge FM, On The Edge Research, 2004.

[22] Lacy, Suzanne, Imperfect Art: Working in Public: A case study of a ten-year project in Oakland, California, book proposal, 2006.

Original CAN/API publication: November 2007