Mixing Business and Pleasure: Performance of an Artist

Bergen/Bergen Academy of Art and Design
Rom8

Many artists have become ‘mini curators’ within a greater curatorship. Consequently some artists collect artifacts and become ‘pointers’ to interesting phenomena’. Is it possible that an artwork's research activity can have a meaningful life and role in the world before it enters the museum, so that it has a deeper and more connected story?
Alan Murray has a simple and pragmatic approach to art making; ‘knowledge is only meaningful when coupled with action’. Indeed by doing things himself and temporarily disengaging the abstract, he hopes to shed new light on seemingly simple matters. In 1991 he made a series of works with household steam iron instruction manuals challenging industry to make better manuals.

Art that positions itself in an applied arena can develop meaningful research that, by its hybrid nature, reflects on both the applied and the artistic.

Furthermore it may be possible for the artist to be designer to be user, based on overlapping interests in materials, technologies and practices. When a practitioner works in another profession they become, by definition, an amateur. Historically obsessive amateurs have been the creative force that has begun and fuelled revolution (eg. the Lunar Society of Birmingham). Engineers are looking to bring a creative and playful element to their practice alongside standardisation and exploitation. Artistic research can show the way.