Introduction to D/R
During ‘Deconstruction/Reconstruction’, 14 artists lived, worked and slept in a gallery for 100 hours, deconstructing and reconstructing each other’s works. It consisted in putting a system in place for artists to experiment on creativity processes: the Deconstruction process, which is the formal and conceptual analysis of an art piece/performance. And the Reconstruction process: the collective production of new works based on this analysis. The event employed strategies of inter-artist cultural recycling, whereby groups were formed to respond to the work of another artists work from within the show. The event itself, as well the individual experiments within it, also followed this structure, creating connections between the works and between different practices and practitioners. These connections called into question whether the work was mutating, being transcribed, translated, or recycled. . It also created a blurring of identity leading to a dissolution of authorship and a convergence of the activities. Ideally, the artists were looking for a state where ‘play’ between the component of the event (the artist/the performance, the past/the future) was kept as open as possible, whereby there is an ongoing unresolved state between ‘Deconstruction’ and ‘Reconstruction’, neither and both of these at the same time.
Audiences respond to the raw immediacy of this type of approach, and can understand that it is the continual unfolding of collaborative possibilities, that does indeed provide a haven where risks and experiments can be taken each day, rather safely reproducing ‘dead’ art.
DEconstruction/REconstruction artists:
Invited artists: Anna Chocola, Eileen Gannon, Liz Murray, Thomas Michalak, Victoria Melody.
protoPLAY artists: Bea Pentney, Grant Newman, Harry Neve, Magnus Williams, Orion Maxted, Pablo Perez, Richard Pryn, Rick Leach, Steven Grainger.
