On Making, Making it and Making a Scene1 Within certain circles, one must be introduced to fashionable society through means of presentation, a formal ‘coming-out’, which announces one’s entry into a given scene. Débutante – from the French term débuter: to begin, to lead off in the game, to make one’s debut. The debut appearance is traditionally taken as the declaration of a young lady’s eligibility in marital terms, or, elsewhere, the arrival of a new product to market. Like many other rites of passage, the process of initiation is controlled through carefully constructed social protocol and unspoken etiquette. Each new initiate comes recommended by some distinguished committee, sponsored by society’s elite. Behaviour must be closely guarded for one wouldn't want to make a scene, cause embarrassment or create unwelcome stir. Rite of passage, crossing of a threshold: a ritual process or ceremony in which the initiate transitions from one social state to another, to take their newly allocated place within the established social hierarchy. For social anthropologist Victor Turner, the rite of passage involves a tripartite model of: 1) Separation (exit) – a detachment from or leaving behind of an earlier position within the social structure; 2) Transition (limen or margin) – a period and area of ambiguity, ‘no longer classified and not yet classified’; 3) Reincorporation (re-entry) – the return to a ‘relatively stable state’.2 To a certain extent, the event of graduation might be conceived as one such rite of passage, where the student exits the realm and restrictions of the university to navigate their way into the world beyond. However, it is not just a case of the initiate becoming established as an artist by simply finding a foothold within the existing artistic milieu. Rather, an (art) education has the capacity to function in more critical terms. For Turner, universities should be understood as ‘liminoid’ settings or as an ‘antistructure’ capable of generating alternative ways of being and thinking to the mainstream or habitual norm. While the liminal experience often reinforces and works with existing social hierarchies, Turner argues that, ‘liminoid phenomena … are often parts of social critiques or even revolutionary manifestos… exposing the injustices, inefficiencies, and immoralities of the mainstream economic and political structure.’3 Rather than being easily – unquestionably – assimilated into the existing social order then, the critical subject produced through a liminoid experience has the capacity to conceive things differently or invite change – they have a transformative potential. It is this questioning that a fine art course arguably hopes to nurture. For the graduating art student, while the art world could be imagined as a stratified, single-track social structure – vertically oriented like a ladder where the new initiate dutifully accepts their status on the bottom rung – there is also potential for conceiving alternative models. Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the artistic landscape in Nottingham was very different to the one that exists today – artist-led spaces such as Backlit, One Thoresby Street and Primary did not exist, and Nottingham Contemporary was not yet on the map. While the city had an established reputation for performance and live art, and had been the centre for the activities of the original Midland Group, the energy and influence of such projects was perceived by graduating art students to be on the wane.4

There was no established scene as such for an emerging artist to enter into. Under such circumstances, the tendency for graduates from regional art schools has often been one of flight, the centripetal force of the London art scene a lure too difficult to resist. Yet

 

 

against this trend art graduates from Nottingham Trent University started to stick around, make a scene. Make a scene – to cause a stir or commotion; make a show (of oneself); create a fuss, disturb the status quo. Jan Verwoert notes how the ‘making of a scene’ is a ‘decisive moment, it is the most decisive of all moments because it is the moment when things come to be decided not just for the moment but for the future.’5 He elaborates that the ‘making of the scene disrupts the present moment, it… stops things from continuing in the way they otherwise would have done.’6 It is perhaps in this sense that the ‘making of a scene’ contains the potential of both rupture and affirmation: a breaking with the past, invocation of the yet-to-come. Fifteen years ago – in the absence of today’s professional practice training for art students – the decision to stick around in Nottingham to ‘make a scene’ was perhaps based more on audacity (with a dash of naivety) than strategy, a DIY philosophy based on refusing to conform to the options offered, the choices available to hand. When the artist-collective Reactor began in the early 2000s, it seemed to express the desire to somehow bypass the existing models of practice, to test the unexpected. Do something differently. Have high expectations; don’t curb to those of others. Self-organise. Be resourceful – seek out that which comes for free. Cultivate a different economy – exchange generosity, trade favours. Ask or you don't get. Seize opportunities but know which ones to pass, which to resist. Take what you do seriously, but don't take yourself too seriously. The ambition of such projects seemed less about ‘getting on’, ‘moving up’ or ‘making it’ in terms of the existing art world, but rather one of relishing and extending the unruly potential of being ‘outside’ or peripheral – even a touch antagonistic or resistant – to conventional frameworks. Desirable unbelonging – a critical position, which, as theorist Irit Rogoff states, involves an ‘active, daily disassociation in the attempt to clear the ground for something else to emerge.’7 Unbelonging – like the ‘no longer and not yet’ condition of the initiate described by Turner as being ‘betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, conventions.’8 There is a quality of unruliness about the figure of the initiate, exempted or excluded as they are from certain laws and logic. There can be advantage in not quite knowing the rules, or rather not quite playing the game: not establishing oneself too quickly, operating on the periphery, working at the edge.9 While there was/is admittedly something rather disruptive, unsettling and wilfully awkward about the Reactor project, they also created a precedent, setting up the germinal conditions for other things to follow. At the same time (turn of the millennium), a new focus within the fine art course at Nottingham Trent University emerged (influenced by burgeoning artist-led activity elsewhere in the UK), which explicitly encouraged art students to collaborate on off-site projects in the city to ‘make something happen’. In the coming years, the establishment of the studio group Stand Assembly (2004) and the linked artist-led gallery Moot (2005) indicated a pivotal moment and changing attitude among fine art graduates – they were making a scene. For these emerging artists, the artistic scene in their city did not already exist, rather it had to be created. To make a scene – cause to exist, to constitute or bring about. Assembling of individuals, shaping of the situation in order to establish, enact. Make the scene – (slang) to put in an appearance, to participate in a specified activity. The absence or lack of a critical context generated a sense of urgency, necessity. Create your own context. Make your own conditions. Cultivate a critical mass. Since Stand

 

 

Assembly and Moot set up space, almost every year a group of emerging artists graduating from the fine art course have stayed in Nottingham to form new collectives and project spaces (including Tether, Backlit, Sixes and Sevens, Refectory, Trade, The Cutting Room, Death of a Mauve Bat, Gonzo Unit, Triple OG, Hutt Collective), establishing a strong sense of artist-led activity in the city. In London, this activity would probably remain invisible. However, in a small city such as Nottingham each artist-led project plays a key role in the shifting and changing artistic ecology. In a sense, the city’s artistic ecology is indeed the proverbial ‘small pond’ where big and little fish share the same habitat; inhabit the same waters. This social proximity between art graduates and established artists-curators creates a level of visibility for emergent practices not possible in larger cities, resulting arguably in cross-generational collaborations, exhibitions and projects such as EM 15, the first East Midlands pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2015), which included work by recent graduates. In fact, it is not so much that the art scene’s stratification is compressed in a small city like Nottingham, but rather that the high level of artist-led activity has given rise to a more lateral, horizontal and associative – less vertical and competitive – model.10 Artist-led spaces invariably link with other artist-led spaces, often bypassing the capital-centric tendency of the art market towards the cultivation of an international network.11 Moreover, since artist-led activity emerges from a shared ethos based on establishing the conditions for practice – rather than simply establishing one’s own practice – there is something of an intolerance or suspicion around the kinds of strategic networking that one might encounter elsewhere within the art world. Yes, competition exists, but in a mode perhaps more akin to sparring, a mutual desire to push one another’s practice. Post-industrial cities such as Nottingham (especially during recession times) provide a plethora of ex-factories, redundant schools, derelict office blocks, empty shops and open wasteland with potential for activation as artist-led projects or temporary exhibition spaces.12 While artistic activity is known to anticipate gentrification, the lack of significant capital outside of the capital means the process is often slow. The window of opportunity between one venture collapsing and another’s start could be years, decades even. It is in this gap that artists often operate, transforming spaces through hard graft. Admittedly, it is cheaper to live in Nottingham than larger cities, however the cost of living and availability of space is not always about affordability – of covering one’s costs – but rather more a matter of affordance, creating the conditions for certain ways of being and doing. If you need less money to live, you can work less to earn, having more time for art practice. Moreover, access to cheap space can give rise to a receptivity to and willingness for taking risks, for speculation and experiment, for simply trying something out. Setting out as an emerging artist is not just about the making of art but also the making and shaping of a life. What is the nature of the life that you want to have? Inevitably, artist-led projects come and go and some remain, maybe even grow-up a little. Indeed, we all grow older. Here then, the issue shifts from how to make a scene towards how to sustain one. It is sometimes easy to lose one’s sense of history – what is remembered and what is forgotten is often left to chance.13 Who remains invisible – the stalwart advocates, the receptive landlords, those individual artists whose names were never archived. There is a danger of endlessly starting over. How then, to create

 

 

longevity or legacy? How to avoid the pitfalls of plateauing, the risk of burnout? Moreover, the context is now different to that which gave rise to Nottingham’s contemporary artistic scene. There is now an established scene to join, not only one to be made. But made and re-made it must continue to be, for without the insurgent energies of the new generation, any scene risks becoming stagnant. The current political (and educational) climate and its financial pressures present new challenges for the emerging artist – who will need to be more resilient, more resourceful, more wily in order to stay around, survive and succeed. Yet, perhaps the basic conditions for practice still apply. Focus on making, rather than making it. Make time; make do; make believe; make light of; make light work of; make the most of. Make up one’s own mind. Make one’s (own) way. Make tracks; make sail, make waves. Make a difference. Make an entrance (however small). Make ends meet. Make a virtue of necessity. Make a day of doing, but make haste slowly. Make some fun, for all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Make great play of, but don’t just make the right noises. Don’t just be on the make. That inroad or advance made is often at another’s expense. Remember, as you make your bed so must you lie. Heed that empty vessels often make the most sound; that one swallow does not a summer make; that hope deferred makes the heart sick. So, make a go of it. Make oneself conspicuous: make mischief; make the dust fly. Make heads swim. Make hair stand on end. Make conversation. Make friends not enemies, for many hands make light work. Make common cause. Make something out of nothing. Make it worthwhile. Make no apologies. Do what makes you tick. Make the scene. Make a scene. Emma Cocker 1 In developing this text I had conversations with – and would like to thank – NTU alumni: Matt Chesney (Director of Backlit); Niki Russell (artist, Programme Curator at Primary, co-founder of Reactor), Candice Jacobs (artist, co-founder of Moot and One Thoresby Street), Tom Godfrey (director of TG, resident gallery at Primary, co-founder of Moot), Joe Rowley (artist, co-founder of Hutt Collective, resident gallery at Primary), as well as current fine art students (participating as studio-assistants in Summer Lodge, a two-week residency in the NTU fine art studios – www.summerlodge.org). 2 Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure, Aldine Transaction, New Brunswick and London, 2009/1969, p. 95. 3 Turner, From Ritual to Theatre, The Human Seriousness of Play, PAJ Publications, New York, 1982, pp. 54–55. 4 The Midland Group (of Artists) was one was the most significant organisations involved in the presentation of new art in Nottingham and the East Midlands (1943–1987). 5 Jan Verwoert, ‘Oh No, Not Now, Not Again! Notes on Making a Scene – A Montage of Theoretical Scenarios’, in Making a Scene, Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2009, Berlin, p. 21. 6 Verwoert, 2009, p. 21, 7 Irit Rogoff, ‘Without: A conversation Interview’, Art Journal, Fall, Vol. 60, No. 3 pp. 34–41. 8 Turner 2009/1969, p. 95. 9 There is arguably something about Nottingham’s ‘midland’ geography – between or betwixt North and South – that lends itself to the ambiguities of Turner’s liminal model. 10 The hosting of the New Contemporaries’ open submission exhibition by artist-led spaces – Backlit, One Thoresby Street Primary – offers an exciting meeting point between different art-world models. 11 This is not to say that artist-led spaces are disengaged from or even antagonistic to the commercial scene; various artists’ projects in Nottingham have developed commercial direction for their practices and participate in international art fairs. 12 For example, see www.wasteland-twinning.net.

 

 

13 Against this tendency, the New Midland Group is a partnership between Backlit, One Thoresby Street and Primary that – among other things – examines and extends the legacy of the Midland Group, creating sustainability for artist-led activity in the city. Emma Cocker is a writer-artist and Reader in Fine Art, Nottingham Trent University. Her writing has been published in Failure (Whitechapel/MIT, 2010); Stillness in a Mobile World (Routledge, 2011); Liminal Landscapes (Routledge, 2012); Hyperdrawing: Beyond the Lines of Contemporary Art (I.B. Tauris, 2012), Drawing a Hypothesis: Figures of Thought (Springer, 2011); On Not Knowing: How Artists Think (Black Dog Publishing, 2013) and as a forthcoming collection The Yes of the No (Site Gallery, 2015).