GRAFT: Us and Them

By Cathryn Jiggens
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GRAFT is a ‘creative complex’ for people engaged in arts activity in and around Newcastle that began in March 2003. NewcastleGRAFT is the yahoo e-group, our main communication tool, which members use to generate opportunities to meet and to share information. The content and location of any meetings is entirely open and in principle anyone on the list can initiate a meeting. In practice I find that I initiate most meetings and events. I hope that over time other members of the group will feel comfortable to take the lead and I constantly ‘tinker’ with the group to try to make this happen. So far we have (amongst other things) met several times to show work, congregated in a café to read out something we have written, played a game with visiting artists from London and met in a pub just to socialise.

There are now 54 people on the list, anywhere between 2 and 12 people attend meetings that I try to arrange either weekly or fortnightly, though this frequency falls away quite often when I have too much work on hence my desire to spread responsibility. I would like list members to use the e-group as a ‘pool’ of human resource to which they might contribute and from which they might draw. I hope to generate a greater sense of (and more inclusive access to) an energetic and supportive arts community. I have an idea of an arts social scene not centred on (though including) preview nights, lectures, conferences and pubs. I enjoy all of these events but not if they are the only arena in which to meet other artists, such a limited range of engagement accidently excludes many and allows little room for surprise and the unexpected.

I seek a more varied and less predictable way of engaging with other creative people in the area. I want to see and discuss work in progress with other artists, not just see its end result in an exhibition. I would like not to have to join the ramblers association to go walking with a group - perhaps a GRAFT discussion on ‘us and them’ whilst walking along Hadrian's Wall? I want to work within the arts scene on issues that concern me such as human rights abuses, to integrate this into my art practice instead of seeking it beyond. I have made early tentative approaches to Chinese human rights campaigners with thoughts of a ChinaGRAFT to communicate with ‘dissident’ Chinese artists imprisoned or under threat for their activities. I hope that in time GRAFT will release the energy for such ventures combining critical and positive action.

Sometimes though the thought of what I would like to achieve is overwhelming and a few artists meeting in a café seems so at odds with my aspirations. GRAFT seems to exist in an awkward tension between being and not being – at some meetings all of the above seems entirely possible, at other times it seems to just dissolve into the ether. Maintaining the energy to keep things going can be difficult. I seek inspiration from other artists groups and welcome contact and visits from anyone who exploring anything similar – whatever stage of enquiry has been reached. The visiting artists that GRAFT received from London may I hope grow into a wider informal ‘exchange’ scheme – I am making a return visit to a housing co-operative in London in a few weeks time.

So to the theme of us and them – this caught my eye, as it seems to encapsulate many decisive moments in the evolution of GRAFT. Along the route I have reached several us and them boundaries – blockages within my own psyche, that of the group and the wider Newcastle arts scene. I have found myself joyfully dissolving a boundary only to find myself in a new space that is perhaps just a little too spacious – what I mean (fear) is that a group without boundaries can cease to be anything at all. I find myself drawing a series of ever increasing (or expanding) circles until I wonder that perhaps the line is so thin that it has just dissolved.

Us and them 1 – cliques:
This is a small but significant problem, the nature of cliques. Some people attend meetings frequently; others come hardly or not at all. It is human nature to gravitate towards someone that you know in a group, to use them as an anchor point for cosy conversation. When new members come along for the first time this inclination can give the impression of a ‘clique’. I thought about having a rule of everybody introducing themselves at the beginning of every meeting, or to have a written constitution outlining basic standards of respect and inclusiveness. Instead I rely on goodwill and try to foster a welcoming atmosphere at meetings and through the e-group whilst allowing that this may not succeed.

This reflects the realisation that I need at times to ‘let go’ of GRAFT – for my own sanity and because it is more interesting to do so. GRAFT seems to operate at the edge of system disintegration. I am trying at present to open out to this as a pre-condition of the spontaneous self organisation that (paradoxically) I seek; this has made it tricky to apply for funding and GRAFT so far is unfunded. The Arts Council has been verbally very supportive but I find that each time I begin the application form the conditions (of GRAFT) have changed by the time that I reach the end. Sometimes I wonder if I am simply avoiding admitting to poor organisational skills and what GRAFT might be in the hands of someone more focused? This leads me to -

Us and them 2 - me and the rest of the group:
I am not naturally a very extrovert person. I have gone through sleepless nights worrying about how many people will turn up to a meeting and whether it will be alright. Sometimes I am reminded of the night before my seventh, eighth, tenth (etc) birthday party and the feeling that the events of the next 24hrs will determine my social standing in the playground for the year to come. I am gradually learning to let go of this fear. I seem to bob up and down – surfacing as ‘me’ in a sea of ‘them’ when I worry that things aren’t going well thinking that they need to change; sinking blissfully back down when things just seem to ‘click’ and I can fade back into the wallpaper again. I aim to be a social catalyst (this was what someone called me, I felt very happy) - I tend though to veer between (occasionally) dictatorship and (more often) indecisiveness. It’s a learning curve I tell myself.

Us and them 3 - ‘establishment’ and ‘non establishment’:
This is a tricky one. Mostly (though not totally) the group consists of early career artists. I would like to have a far broader ‘bandwidth’ of participation from ‘Sunday’ painters through to the director of the Baltic or other art institutions.

Some people who are not ‘established’ or don’t have a career in art have said to me that they cannot join because they are ‘not a real artist’. I tell them that this group is totally for them. If the commercial artworld and galleries are the only context for art we loose so much diversity simply because people cannot find a supportive context for their work. One of my favourite paintings is by an elderly aunt, it is of the Virgin Mary - you will never see it in an art gallery but it is beautiful. I would like to be able to support through GRAFT a broad range of creative endeavour - I find that creative life is enriched when one can observe and open out beyond conditioning, the habitual and boundaries.

Looking to other end of this spectrum I find many people in the ‘establishment’ supportive of the GRAFT venture and theoretically willing to sign up. To make this an actuality I will invite ‘prominent individuals’ on the arts scene to join the list when I feel confident to do so. I imagine the director of a major arts institution sharing coffee with an undergraduate, all those dehumanising hierarchical boundaries simply dissolving away. At worst two people might have the opportunity to communicate in a way highly unlikely to happen without GRAFT - what they then do with this opportunity (if it ever occurs!) is up to them.

Here though with this us and them arises once again the fear of being overwhelmed exploited so well by the popular press in relation to asylum seekers: if all of these people actually joined would GRAFT become so big as to be inoperable, meaningless even? The sheer volume of people on the list can inhibit conversation within it, the silence of the audience becomes oppressive: like a lecture hall full of people the majority of people in such a venue will chose not to put up their hand and speak. I keep meetings running along hoping that as time passes and the extent of the group becomes more familiar and comfortable then members will take more ‘risks’ and initiate activity.

Us and them 3a:
On this note I encounter many of my own boundaries. I observe the enthusiasm with which I promote the group to some people and my unthinking reticence in other situations. For instance I chatted briefly with a lady of about 70 in an art shop who was in the second year of her BA the other day. As I walked away I wondered why I had not told her about GRAFT when I had mentioned it only seconds earlier to the woman who owns the shop and is an MFA graduate. The same with my neighbour’s friend who maybe has a bit of a drink problem and sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable. He likes to paint and has put some pictures of his work to look at through my letterbox, I must phone him soon…

Us and them 4 - artists and writers, poets, musicians, dancers…:
By accident of my networks and background all of the talk so far has been of artists. I take part in a writing group and find that conversations with poets are as interesting as they are with artists, so wouldn’t it be great if they were in the group too? I imagine writers, musicians, artists and dancers discussing their latest work and wouldn’t it be a great party…so far there is three writers on the list. I have chosen the term ‘creative complex’ to describe the group so as not to exclude people from other disciplines. In practice though my networks and language do not encourage many beyond the visual arts scene to join. Again I wonder about the ‘economies’ of scale – would the energies of GRAFT grow or simply dissipate as its borders increase?

Us and them 5 - ‘creative’ and…?
I use the term ‘creative complex’ to describe GRAFT, so as to encompass people from other creative disciplines. The ‘them’ though inherent within this ‘us’ implies that the rest of the world is not creative! I have had one person already be offended by this term (a computer programmer) though I did point out that I would love to have him in the group, he declined. His point though was a valid one. On the one hand I use this term to try to define a group but as much as I value my practice I do rebel at the implication of a special creativity possessed only by artists. Whilst I believe that through the arts we engage in something that is unique and as such should be valued, it is true also that creativity manifests itself in many ways beyond this sphere - I full acknowledge and believe this to be so. The problem then is that if I follow this to its logical conclusion, GRAFT simply becomes the whole of Newcastle on a yahoo e-group. I find this an interesting thought but rely on my remaining us and them boundaries to not immediately 'make it so'.

Cathryn Jiggens
Cathryn's practice encompasses video, live art, network management, creative and critical writing. 2003 projects include artwork on the metro system in Newcastle, a radio play and published short story in Mslexia.