Some thinking behind cabin exchange 20/20

With a view towards questioning methods, approaches and techniques of researching we invite you to begin to investigate the three areas in Glasgow - Dennistoun, Tradeston and Pollockshaws.
These different settings provide a broad range of environments determined by fascinating histories,land use and community dynamics.

The idea for the research of the areas is to inform the selection of the sites for the cabins (10ft by 8ft storage containers) within the three areas in Glasgow.
The site selection and also the call out for proposals for the cabins will be on the 9^th of Dec.

a few images of the three recce days see blogs for more.
 

Some suggestions of research approach:

The recce days on the 2nd, 3rd & 4th were a great success and we learnt a lot, met and made exchanges with various people and all the other kind spirits of Glasgow. However this was just an introduction to the areas, we more than recommend people to go and visit the areas again.

Use whatever means possible to research the local designated area.  Be it visual (drawing, video, photographic, autographic, etc), aural (sound recordings, interview, live), textual (lists, poems descriptions) or physical (walk, wonder, climb dance,) we urge you to use as creative and oblique an approach as the imagination conjures.

Collect? Record? Transcribe? Document? The research approach can be systematic, formulaic, process-based, and scientific or on the other hand a more instinctive or arbitrary reaction. What ever.

Where do you want the cabins sited?

What sort of approach and documentation constitutes being ‘informative’ in light of choosing a site for the cabin? And what are your reasons for that site?

Why blog?

We are interested in what kind of information network can be formed from your collated research and varying approaches. With this in mind and in order to make the process practical and assessable to everyone we have set up a blog for each area on this website.  The blogs have the capability of being used as a creative hub in which you can upload images, text, video, audio and create topics for comments and discussion.

If you want to join the blog email us at: cabinexchange@yahoo.co.uk titling you email ‘join blog’ and we will send you an invite and step by step instructions how top use it.

Why is all this important?

We hope the process of researching the sites will encourage more comprehensive interaction and exchange with the local surrounding, both environment and communities of these spaces so that two or three months down the line People’s proposals will reflect the contexts and challenges that the sites offer. This will mean people’s considerations will hopefully be more informed, (avoiding the classic ‘turd in the plaza’ approach to making and sighting public art where work is deposited without any regard for its surroundings)

And even if entering as a ‘foreigner’ or ‘outsider’ to these places where people’s lives exist, we can take into account and be sensitive toward a whole range of issues. Our other concerns lie in the longetivity of impact of any of these ideas and projects, with a look to future repercussions we might affect and mindful of the futility of developing and having any impact if a sites fate is already set in stone by council/corporate regeneration plans.

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Jennifer Hermanovich text:

Cabin Exchange has come along way since its beginnings in 2002. The committee who are now five strong *, devised a lengthier time scale for the 2006 project, Cabin Exchange 20:20.

This project initially sees a round of three day-long recce’s, involving members of Cabin Exchange, lecturers from the GSA, students and working artists.

Three months stand between this introduction and the arrival of the storage containers.  In the first month, exact sites are decided upon and approved by the council. Thereafter, artists will have time to consider each area, engage with the communities, dig into the history, observe trades, business, politics and landscape. The task then; to design an artistic cabin venture attuning to the dynamics of the urban surroundings, with a heightened awareness of community needs, prejudices and structures that exist therein.

All proposals will be considered by the committee in response to the nature and idiosyncrasy of specific sites, and with a sensitive and involved understanding of whom the cabin (and the artworks) will affect.

Any collated information or ideas during these early stages is easily uploaded onto the cabin exchange website, allowing for a very transparent, easy way of corresponding and networking between all involved parties, and all three locations. 

These accessible methods should engage more artists into the direct process of what can be described as community engaged environmental art. To bring art out from hidden studios and galleries into the public domain, it can be seen, experienced, and participated in, raw and uninhibited. This gives the local communities the chance to become involved with research, informed making, and collaboration, on their own turf.                             

* Charlie Bosanquet, Nick Carlin, Will Foster, Beth Hamer, Stephen Jakub.