Syndicate: Report from the Luxsqua

["lisa haskel" <lisa@lisa.demon.co.uk>]

[From 12 to 17 July, Rachel Baker and Heath Bunting of irational.org
took up residence at London's Lux gallery.  

Several events took place each day and evening of the week.  There
were practical workshops such as introductions to Perl/CGI, media
streaming and desktop digital video, plus presentations of projects by
irational.org and discussions led by associates on related themes and
initiatives.  

In a major departure for the Lux, the machines from the education
resource were moved into the gallery - available to all-comers -
on-line and set up for digitial video, sound editing and HTML.  Books,
magazines and the Lux's comfy leather sofas helped transform the
gallery into an active space and gathering point for existing and new
irational friends.

The residency was initiated and organised by Lina D. Russell,
Education Officer at the Lux and  a media artist, in association with
the Lux Gallery curator Gregor Muir.

On the final day of the residency Lina (LDR), Heath (HB) and Rachel
(RB) gathered with me (LH) to reflect on the achievments and
implications of the weeks activities]


Hoxton, London, 17 July 1999

LH: The Lux Gallery has been looking a bit messy this week, so I
wondered if you could tell me what's been going on.

RB: We called it the 'Luxsquat', and the people who are squatting it
are irational.org. We were invited to do this by Lina, the idea being
that we could open the gallery for a week, and encourage people to
come and play.  We were given a certain number of computers, with full
internet access.  Also we've been giving workshops, presentations and
some talks.

LH:  What is irational, and to what extent is a project like the
Luxsquat part of what irational is and does?

HB:  Irational is, we call it,  an on-line art collective which
consists of five core members, with several other regular associates.
Recently we have been trying to work more closely together with other
people, and doing residencies is one way of doing that.  so its been
good to work with Rachel :-)

RB:  We don't actually have a studio or a base to work out of, and the
irational.org members are globally dispersed, so we are very dependent
on media-lab type situations, whether they are big institutions or
little independent spaces.  So it is in our interest to develop and
support these places in some way so that we can use them like oases as
we are roaming around.

LH: Lina, has what's happened during the week surprised you?

LR: In certain ways, yes. I think its probably made the people at the
Lux question what we are there for, and its made people wonder whether
working with networked media is something that the Lux does well and
is capable of doing.  Its a move in a very different direction for the
Lux, but I think it could trigger a whole new direction for
programming the gallery, and also education work, and the kind of
people that is actually attracting.  I think its a very healthy thing
for the Lux.

LH: What about the people that you've met during the week.  How do you
see irationals role in the contact with those people?

RB: We are a kind of model, a design for a mode of being.  We are
trying to develop a model of how to work in a free-floating, mobile
way, in a collaborative way. Its an experimental model that we often
share with people and encourage them to take up. We show and
demonstrate how it can work, and reveal the possibilities.  As for the
people that came along, it was quite surprising who and how many.  The
people that came to the workshops had quite a specific reason to come.
Often they had an avenue they were pursuing in their own work and
needed some more expertise. So for example, at the Perl/CGI workshop
people had some specific projects that needed some specific pointers,
bits of advice and programming.  As for the presentations, like the
irational.org online tookit presentation, I think people were exposed
to a method and way of working that they hadn't seen before.  So the
methodology is kind of educational, amongst other things... social,
and interventionist.

HB:  I was surprised.  Why do people come?

RB: A question was put to us last night at the talk with Erik Davis
-'Is our work about providing a service, or is it for our own
inspiration?'  For us its a kind of mixture of both.  We have a kind
of problem-solving approach. We start with our own set of problems,
and maybe share them with whoever has a similar set of problems. We
try and solve them creatively, to have some fun at it.  They could be
financial problems, or social problems or political problems.

LH:  In some ways that you could say that what you are doing with
these workshops is kind of training on the cheap.  But in another way
you could say that this is training or education with a very specific
ethic behind it. Lina;  I wondered if you would like to say something
about that, in relation to the education and training work that you do
generally as part of the Lux programme.

LDR:  Well, I always try to make s distinction between workshops and
courses.  This to me is a lot more specific. I think that this kind of
stuff is what we should be doing more of.  The courses we have to do,
we are committed to doing them.

LH: Could you remind me of the costs of  the courses?

LDR:  The cheapest is 50 pounds for a day, and the most expensive,
something like the media illusions one is about 220 pounds or 270
pounds for two days.  We are not subsidised for courses. I have to pay
my tutors well, or else they would not teach here, and I ask them to
do a lot of preparatory work.  Workshops are much more about finding
out what the people that come to them want, more organic.  Its not
about: this is what we have to offer, here we go, its more about
chatting, more two-way process. Its different, and I think there is a
real need to do more of this kind of stuff, you could see, the
workshops were all packed.  I would like to be able to offer more of
this kind of stuff.

LH:   Heath, you have done quite a lot of work with various kinds of
institutions.  Has this week helped you think through how institutions
might take up this way of working? Is this something that you would
like to see more of? 

HB: I'm always saying about places like the Lux, that any institution
has a duty to broaden themselves out.  So that things that things that
they should without question be offering are things like free email,
free web space, free internet access - that kind of stuff.  They
should have that in place already.  All those machines are in the
building and are idle most of the time. Its like social management,
really.  And I know that Lina has been working on this very hard, and
I think it has been Rachel's intention also to open things up a bit,
to be a model.

RB: Yes. I wanted to get involved very specifically to open it up,
because for the Lux has been pretty inaccessible.  Maybe thats a kind
of psychological thing, but I haven't felt that I have been able to
interface with the Lux at all.  So for me it has been really good. 
Backspace have also have been doing residencies, I think this
residency thing is quite appropriate.

LDR:  At the beginning, I was really really keen to do this. 
irational and some friends were very enthusiastic, but a lot of people
weren't.  I never got a sense that people really wanted this to
happen, apart from the people in this room.  There was glimmers of
interest occasionally, but not enough to sit down and really plan it
well. With something like this, you have to be very specific, this is
what we are doing, this is when we are doing it.

RB:  There was some resistance, definitely.  

HB:  Yes, a lot of people, other artists, said no.  They said, well,
the Lux has money, they should support us, not the other way around.

RB:  Yes, people said, well not directly but implied, that the Lux is
an institution, it should support us in our own terms and on our own
ground.  Its not our job to do this for them.  

RB:  Yes, people said, well not directly but implied, that the Lux is
a privileged institution, even represents something we are opposed to,
it should support us in our own terms and on our own ground.  Its not
our job to do this for them.  Which is fair enough, but probably too
simplistic. We were dealing with Lina, she was our interface with the
Lux institution and she has an interventionist sensibility that we
liked.

HB: I think that the programme could have been structured in a
slightly different way, and if there had been a bit more money some
other things could have happened.  We could have brought a few more
people in because its been quite a lot of work for me and Rachel,
everyday, doing one or two workshops or presentations.

RB: It was quite a lot more work than I thought, and it was good
having people like Toni, Lisa and Armin coming in to do discussions.
We needed more people. We don't like to work too hard.

LH:  Lina, given all that, can you imagine that this kind of programme
can coexist with the more traditional media art gallery programme that
the gallery is doing?

LDR: I think its really complicated.  My initial instinct is to go for
this kind of model and try and develop it further, but I do think its
complicated, especially in the case of the Lux where you are trying to
work with different cultures.  You are trying to work with film-makers
and video-makers: I'm not trying to be separatist about it, but I
think that people working with different media you do have different
cultures and different expectations.  We are working in a building
where on one side you have a gallery and on the other side you have
avid suits and silicon graphics machines.  Sometimes I think the Lux
is trying to do too much, and I think that different people within the
Lux have different agendas.   But as always, it comes down to funding.
It depends if someone can fundraise for something like this.  We have
done this on a ridiculous budget, and I don't think that thats
something that can be an on-going thing.   I find myself relying on
friends and colleagues too much.   I don't think that the Lux should
expect people to spend their time and effort for nothing.  But all
that said, yes, I think that it can develop a programme like this.

RB:  I don't think its always about money. You can find mutually
beneficial arrangements.  There is always something that the Lux can
give, or that others can give. It doesn't always have to be a
financial deal. 

HB:  For instance, if the Lux had said Ok you can do a workshop a week
and we will offer free email access for the artists community in
London for five years then we would say yes to that.

LDR: You see, that is the precise model that I would like to hear. 
Because I do not know how to offer that as an individual, but maybe it
is something that is possible.  I can come up with my own ideas but I
need other people to come up with theirs.  For instance, I had been
thinking, we have an Avid, you could use the Avid, but I know that you
don't use that. I would need to know what we have that you can use.  I
can't know what some small organisation needs. I need them to come to
me.  I would really like to work with artists and groups on proposals
and so on, it shouldn't always have to come from the Lux. 

LH: But you also have to be empowered within the institution to be
able to do that. Do you think that the management structure of the Lux
can cope with that kind of barter economy?

LDR: I think that it has to. It just has to change. Its like what we
were talking about at the Interfund workshop. It has to. It can't be
just:  money equals equipment.  It has to open its doors otherwise the
equipment will sit there unused, like it does a lot of the time. Some
people use it, but not all the people that want to can.  It doesn't
work.

LH:  It seems that one of the things that this residency has done is
bridged some of that gap between expert-ism and access.

LDR: Yes, but also you have audience expectations.  At the Lux people
come to the cinema, they see film and they go home.  They go to the
gallery to see a show. So some of the time people would come in when
there wasn't much going on, when we weren't in the middle of a
workshop, maybe you were checking your mail or I was plugging
something in over at the other side of the room, and people would say
what going on?  so I would say: well: whatever you make of it,
whatever you want, but its very difficult.  Either people walk in with
a very active attitude: like people might walk into backspace with an
attitude which is like I'm coming in here to *do* something. People
come to the Lux, still, with this attitude that I am coming to *see*
something. Its something that's confused a lot of people. I don't
think its bad at all, its just something that we have to work out for
ourselves.  
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