ABOUT YOU & ME – ME & YOU

Over the years I have been approached on numerous times by art students wanting to interview me for the dissertations. It has usually all been very strait forward. But then on the 4 February 2009, I got an email from a Michele Jackson. This is it: 

Hello Mr. Drummond [Dear Bill], 

My name is Michele Jackson and I am a Fine Art student at the University of Chester. As part of my course work at the university I am forced to participate in a module called Experiential Learning. The requirement for this module usually consists of a student being willfully placed into a form of indentured servitude for a practicing artist over a five week period (11th of May – 12th of June, 2009). As I am a mature student (39) with many years work experience I do not feel I would benefit from this module either personally or creatively within its traditional format. 

I however have another idea. 

I would like to be challenged by the experience and to be pushed creatively; therefore my proposition is to engage in the placement remotely via a virtual space. This of course would be achieved by utilizing the internet, messenger, and e-mail. This would function in a similar manner that the artists within the Fluxus movement utilized in the 1960’s when working in collaboration remotely (re: mail art).

One manner in which the “placement” could function is that at the beginning of each week, the participating artists would individually set a brief/ challenge/ parameter which I would have to create a piece of work resolving and combining their briefs. Given that the artists could potentially set various very different parameters, it would challenge me to resolve these divergent parameters into a cohesive creative response.

At the conclusion of each week the creative response would be e-mailed to the participants or posted on the internet. The participants would then consider the work and then set the next weeks parameters (possibly based upon their response to the work produced).

Throughout this process, all communications would be recorded and documented which would supplement the usual documentation and journal reflection common in the production of a creative work.

This is only one solution to how such a remote interaction might occur as the exact form that the interaction would take would need to be negotiated with the participants. 

While this form of placement does not require a great deal of time from the participants except for myself, this also would not impose or greatly inconvenience any of the working artists willing to participate. The participants could, however take a much more involved role in the process if they chose to. 

In participating in a remote manner with the contributions of more than a singular artist, I feel I stand to benefit the most from this experience. I hope that you would be willing to participate with me virtually in this unique experience and in doing so we may be setting a precedent for future students. This would allow for the possibility of students to have virtual placements with artists located anywhere in the world and with the artists that would be most beneficial to them and their practice.

I would very much like to work specifically with you as an artist as I feel your contributions would be challenging and beneficial to my future practice.

I would like to thank you for your time and here’s hoping that you will be willing to participate in my venture. 

Thank you,
Michele Jackson 

I agreed to take part. The work done between us was both challenging and rewarding. But more importantly for me, Michele Jackson’s take on what I was doing gave me and angle on things that I could have never got from just working on my own or with my regular colleagues.  

From this I got the idea that maybe I should give use two weeks of every year, for a ten year period, to working with another artist, a different one each year. And that this ‘working with another artist’ could be very open to interpretation.  I have no idea how it is going to work or where it may lead, or if after a couple of years I will knock it on the head.

As for Michele Jackson, she put a web site together that documented everything that she and I did. Click on her entry and it will take you directly to it.