ESS BECK // Audio + Visual Art
Your Action is Required
From 10-18 of March 2018 I undertook a residency at the Inter Arts Center Malmø (University of Lund). The concept I had formed for this residency was called "Your Action Is Required" and is a continuation and reworking of my x-hour woman format, which was born from my "24-hour woman" performance.
During my residency I examined the value of process in relation and opposition to contemporary Danish cultural politics (and neoliberal socio-performance ideals) and the general institutionalisation of arts.
I explored how we as citizens and artists understand and live with (and despite) concepts such as productivity, waste, failure, artistic ingenuity, stamina and communication and how we navigate these as structural systems in our society.
With the residency I aimed to produce material towards a product that can be released and listened to. This was done to frame the project by creating a pre-determined outcome format and to also foster conversations on the "residency" as a concept, and how these have become a significant source of income for many artists, yet, potentially restraining or defining artistic process and liberty as a consequence of the institutionalization of artistic production.
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For this project I used a process-oriented methodology where the process of creation becomes the product itself. Meaning: the product formulates itself and will be subject to ongoing shaping and molding based on what the process allows for. From using this method I found myself further titling my praxis further as "Actualism".
To aid this exploration, I used public online "self-monitoring" and performance, to outline a creative space within the temporal confinements, and "suspend" the creative stakes.
This was in praxis done by streaming each of my seven work days, online on youtube.