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Cabin Exchange November 14-20 2003 Glasgow (various venues) Cabin Exchange, the idea of Glasgow School of Art students Will Foster and Stephen Jacob, is now in its second year. For one week in November the city is host to an independently organised ‘international’ mini-review of contemporary art. Bypassing the conventional institutional channels however, the more than forty participating artists utilise one of several portacabins – located at prominent public sites across town – as temporary installation and performance spaces. Each is allotted a morning, afternoon or evening slot in which to execute his or her own specially commissioned piece. In most cases this tight schedule has precluded that artists at least maintain a physical presence on site while their work is on display. As such the notion of ‘exchange’ as the field of potential discourse between artist and bystander provides one critical context for the project as a whole. Another would be the perhaps more literal interpretation of the title as alluding to the relay of a standardised unit of space from artist to artist across disciplines and geographical districts, and the ongoing reconstitution of said unit as it continuously changes hands. It ought to be made clear from the start that most of the artists represented here are not currently established in any meaningful sense of the word. It would be impossible, not to say unfair, to address within the editorial constraints of this review a representative proportion of these as part of an even-handed critique. Instead, my own impressions of three works are here put forward in a critical overview of the event itself. Almost exclusively involving art school students and alumni, Cabin Exchange is perhaps best seen as an extension of the GSA ‘Activities Week’ with which it runs concurrent. The portacabin-as-vehicle-for-art-school-subversion is perhaps however, a notion unlikely to elicit public sympathy at first glance. The defiantly anti-concept GUN SHOP by Kristian Bust was a case in point. The idea here was for the artist to build (dummy) firearms to order from scrap materials provided by members of the public. To this end several elaborate demonstration models had been prepared, apparently to widespread ambivalence. There were no orders on the books when I came by around closing, just a pile of junk and some tough kids looking on. I thought it was a shame. The ‘shop’ idea was at least a practical and accessible use of the space. It was a genuine attempt to engage (possibly provoke) the public that probably only failed for lack of enthusiasm on a miserably cold and rainy day. Mimi Jepzer and Zoe Downen’s God is a Lobster was on the other hand a much more persuasive case for public indifference. The title - a reference to philosophers Gille Deleuze and Felix Guitarri’s epic of post-structuralist convolution Mille Plateaux - set the tone straight away. In the event it turned out to be (intentionally or not) perhaps the baldest possible interpretation of a deliberately loaded statement. This involved its two subjects dressing as lobsters, making and consuming lobster bisque, and afterwards staging a pillow fight. It might have been intended as an old- fashioned comment on bourgeois ignorance and it might not. The whole thing seemed contrived however to obfuscate rather than engage and the use of the cabin as an anonymous performance space was particularly uninspired. It struck me as one-dimensional in every respect. Salvation was at hand however. Pavement Astronomer by Julieanna Capes used the spent chewing gum on the pavements around the cabin as bearings for an improvised map of gutterbound, chalk-outlined star constellations. Stars were named for the visitors to the cabin, each of whom helped in the plotting of the map before dedicating their star in a logbook. Whimsy perhaps, but this piece attracted by far the most interest of any of the works I saw. The human allocation of the galaxy through the naming of constellations, stars and planets was used here to question the more nebulous concept of intellectual property. It inverted the infinite depth of time and space to the flatness of the pavement, collapsing the romance of the Milky Way in its wake. I think Cabin Exchange is a good idea, and one that should be allowed to develop. Its success this year has been chiefly in lodging itself in the public consciousness. More cabins and more established names next year can only raise the profile of the event further. The message should remain the same however: contemporary practice can still relate to the world outside the box. Neil Brogan 2004. |