Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
Leeds Beckett University
Here We Are: series of activities with Patricia Azevedo (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil) exploring and utilizing ‘foreigners’ Privilege’
In 2009 Clare Charnley and Professor Patricia Azevedo, of Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil, were awarded £10,250 under the Brazil-UK Artists Links Programme, funded by the British Council and The Arts Council of England. This enabled Charnley to continue to develop her exploration of language, territory and power relations across cultures through artistic practice. ‘Here we are’ involved the public in attempts to give material form to a series of encounters, games and stories to do with the act of communication itself.
The body of work (photographs, video and audio work made in collaboration with Azevedo) originated with the observation that foreigners are sometimes allowed special privileges. They can blunder into situations the locals avoid. They can open up embarrassing topics, innocently asking the kind of questions that are usually left unvoiced. Sometimes these questions elicit surprisingly frank responses; the visitor is perceived to have a charming naivety that can generate reciprocal goodwill or openness in those that witness it. In short, this breaking of behavioural norms can free up creative space.
‘Here we are’ explores this “special privilege” as a research tool. Working in ‘each other’s’ country, each artist opened up discussions with local people about their preconceptions, guesses, expectations and myths about those within their country, but outside their immediate group and habits. Speech was recorded on small portable units that were then used to generate further discussion - a sort of discursive loop. ‘Here we are’ implicated the artists in the process of opinion-swapping in a way that articulates and challenges their own suppositions.
‘Foreigners privilege’ was further developed during Charnley and Azevedo’s residency in rural Portugal in 2012, funded by Binaural/Nodar. This project concentrated on sound alone, exploring voice/timbre/tonality and invented sound as a site of creative interaction.
