Rock, Paper, Scissors : A Reflection

We, as Rock, Paper, Scissors made the decision to initiate a paper conversation with the students of Freedom College, based on some of the existing comments and expressions we saw on our first visit to the school. These expressions involved students of Freedom College writing on the pieces of paper that demarcate spaces within the school. We were not sure how our idea would be received, so we executed our Invitation to Play with an expectant excitement.

We feel that our mode of working is relevant to Freedom College itself, as the idea was a response to existing paper expressions. Conversations are a valid, although less common, way of making art that is becoming more and more prominent in contemporary art. (check out : http://youngartistsinconversation.co.uk/about )

Our idea for the Invitation to Play was received with much more enthusiasm that we initially anticipated – and we had to quickly expand our initial number of pages to accommodate for the interest we experienced. The students were eager to express themselves using their own words and handwriting styles, and came back to see what we had added in our own comments.

This excitement continued for the first week, but has since simmered down a large amount. The students have become reluctant to add their thoughts and comments while we are in the room, so we need to make some changes to make the project relevant and exciting again

We are planning to use much larger pieces of paper to make the conversation, or paper exchange, much more coherent. We are planning on asking questions that relate to our art practices to start a deeper conversation. We are also hoping to place these large pieces of paper in a more public area of the school, so that all the students have access to the paper exchange – especially when we are not there. We are also considering a different form of a paper exchange, the letter. We are considering how the written word is an integral part of the education system in South Africa, and how the use of the letter as a medium engages with the public space of a school in quite an intimate and private moment.

Being students at WITS, our ideas about what art ‘is’ have already been challenged in our two and a half years within the institution. We did not really relinquish any preconceived ideas and disciplines because we let those go way back in first year. We did give up control in that we let the space inform us as to what kind of project to make, since we wanted to #seethespace before we made any concrete decisions about what we wanted to do. We had little control over what students chose to contribute to our project, and in that sense we had to let our idea grow according to what the students wished to see.

Our goal moving forward is to make the project that we have started much deeper on a conceptual level. We hope to do this by asking much deeper and more complicated questions that relate to both of our reflective Fine Art practices. Talia is currently exploring ephemeral art, and the idea of an ephemeral memorial –And how art can perhaps mean something entirely different when it is not a permanent object. Dominique is exploring her own journey within vegetarianism – and is interested in the physical nature of animals and the moral and ethical questions that surround our food choices.

We are looking forward to expanding our project into a deeper territory of conceptual engagement. We also hope that the changes are met with as much excitement and enthusiasm as our initial idea.

The cause, or motivation behind the project was the desire to both give and receive something meaningful from the students. We wanted to engage with the students, but were unsure how to do so. We are strangers coming into the space, and we wanted to engage with something that was already there, and engage with an existing discourse. We were very reluctant to force ourselves and our ideas onto the space and the students – because this would have been arrogant and superficial.

We are using the medium of our paper exchange, or paper conversation to have the kinds of conversations that we were thinking about, in a less interaction based way. We were also interested in the visual aesthetic and the ideas surrounding the traces of thought and written words that were created through the creative exchange.  We are also interested in how writing seems to be an integral part of the education system, as well as being a means of expression of students outside of the classroom.

We think the methods are appropriate because they are not intruding in any way in the activity or presence of the students. The intervention is subtler than it seems, because it directly engages with the existing presence of paper conversations in the school without begging for attention. Dialogue through paper is an integral part of the education system, and we wanted to access that because both of our practices are very research heavy – and strongly feature hand-written ideas as well as hand-writing as a part of our process.

We are collaborating with most of the other groups that exist in our collective. Pansies share a space with us, and plant drawings have been featured in the paper exchange.  We have given ‘interviews’ to Freedom Waves and Late 4 Class. We also plan to directly include each group within Chalkboard Exchange as part of our future paper exchanges through letters. We have not defined any specific ‘terms of engagement’ with our fellow collaborators. Instead we work together based on similar ideas and what makes sense for the projects to do together. We are giving and taking ideas in order for all of the projects to grow.

The idea of ‘ownership’ is something that we are finding difficult to come to terms with. We (currently) plan to turn the paper traces of our exchange into a book or some sort of publication. We will give a copy of this to the Freedom College Library, and each keep a copy for ourselves. If ownership is based on the creators, then the owners will essentially be the students of Freedom College. This may change as the project grows and evolves.

The limits of the work are space and engagement, which is something we plan to address in order for our project to progress. The interest in our project is dwindling, so we plan to change it up to re-generate interest. We also plan to move our project outside of the ‘studio’ space – because of the limited access.

Our paper exchanges have contributed to Chalkboard Exchange as a concept, as our idea was based on the idea of exchange between ourselves and the students of Freedom College. We hope that our future engagements will contribute to Chalkboard Exchange as a whole.

The aesthetic lifespan of the project will (hopefully) last as long as the book of traces does. I think that the ethical lifespan will last as long as our engagement with Freedom College does.

Our project engages with the Medu Art Ensemble newsletters that were made available to us. These newsletters feature poetry, music and self-expression in a paper format – much like our project does. The main difference is that the responses to our project are more direct, and the traces can be seen in the authors handwriting.

We don’t really see the whole project, as it exists now, continuing after our engagement with Freedom College. This is mostly because the project is so heavily dependent on the students, as well as the logistics involved. The dialogue could definitely continue on a digital space – in the form of the blog and other forms of digital communication. We will probably take some aspects of the project and transfer them into our own respective art practices, and beyond into other projects. Nothing is immortal, and we don’t see the point of continuing a project unnecessarily beyond its intended lifespan.

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