Artists/Organisatons

Data Wall:
AESD: Agency for Economy and Space Development:
Maziar Afrassiabi, Shahin Afrassiabi,
Sam Basu, John Colenbrander,
with thanks to Julian Meinold and
Piers O'Hanlon
NIS: New International School: Matthew Stock
Treignac Projet: Sam Basu,
Elizabeth Murray.

The Real:
Phyllida Barlow, Tom Burr,
Anne Damer, Karin Ruggaber,
Audrey Reynolds, Fergal Stapleton,
Brian Wall, Martin Westwood.

Oysters Ain't:
Karen Ay, Vanya Balogh,
Fiona Banner, Richard Bartle,
David Batchelor, Rob Beckett,
Simon Bill, Hartmut Bohm,
Jake & Dinos Chapman,
Cedric Christie, Steve Claydon,
Clem Crosby, Cullinan+Richards,
Penelope Curtis, Arnaud Desjardin,
Valerie Driscoll, Richard Ducker,
Garth Evans, Urs Fischer,
FREEE ( Dave Beech, Andy Hewitt &
Mel Jordan), John Gibbons,
Tom Gidley, Paul Gildea,
Katherine Gili, Andrea Giulivi,
Stewart Gough, Naum Gabo,
Robin Greenwood, Brian Griffiths,
Zoe Griffiths, Nicola Hicks,
Peter Hide, Flore Nove-Josserand,
Helene Kazan, Michael Kidner,
Philip King, Simon Liddiment,
Ed Lipski, Colin Lowe,
Sarah Lucas, Christina Mackie,
Rebecca Johnson Marshall,
Bruce McLean, Haroon Mirza,
Cathy de Monchaux, Henry Moore,
Zadoc Nava, Paul Neagu,
Lawson Oyekan, Eduardo Paolozzi
, Nicholas Pope, Richard Priestley,
Michael Sandle, Paul Sakoilsky,
Celia Scott, Dallas Seitz,
Meg Shirayama, Jane Simpson,
Anthony Smart, Bob & Roberta Smith,
Richard Smith, Steve Smith,
Sarah Staton, Dan Stevens,
Simon Stringer, Michael Stubbs,
Gavin Turk, Jessica Voorsanger,
Gary Webb, Richard Wentworth,
Keith Wilson, Mark Woods,
Richard Woods, Lars Wolter,
Christian Wulffen.

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LOCATION:

Almond Building,
The Biscuit Factory,
Drummond Road,
Bermondsey,
London
SE16 4DG.
[Map]

NEAREST STATION:

Bermondsey

OPENING HOURS:

26 April - 31 May

Wed - Sun 12 - 6 pm

FREE ADMISSION

CONTACT

Adam Thomas

Tara Cranswick

AESD, what is it and why?

The artist stepping into her studio will have the notion that through her work she can change her world. What she makes will make it impossible for the world to be the same again.

I read somewhere recently that a new research based practice has been emerging in the past decade. I think what the writers meant was that what drives this new practice is an interest in the social space as material as opposed to say the figure or domestic life. If this is what the writers meant then what is new about this ‘new practice’? It amounts to only a change of focus. The production of objects and images as ciphers and indexes of reality go on as befits an economy of defer-ral.

We asked ourselves the following question: How would the objects and images be affected if the conditions in which they emerge change?

To answer this question it became evident that a collaborative process needed to be put in place and given form.

What if it’s not art?

The biggest problem in our time is that grand unifying narratives turned out to be naïve. What we were left with seems equally problematic. We are interested nei-ther in an absolute space nor in a relative or relational space.

It seems that the new word is definitely ‘Practice’. It can encompass much wider agendas than ‘Art’ could in the past. There are now artists who work very close to disciplines that seemed incompatible in the distant past. It would be hard to tell the difference if it wasn’t for the fact that they present their work in galleries and not on television for example. Art is anything you want it to be though there are rules that cannot be transgressed. Openness of outcome is one of these rules. The artwork has to be inconclusive or work around the possibility of closure to allow the viewers to bring their own experience to it. Statements are shown to be didactic or ambiguous once brought under the category of art. This has often been mistaken for the viewers taking presented elements and making up any meaning they like. It’s not the same thing. In the one, intention and management of significatory layers lead to dialogue where difference is recognized, in the other meaningful gestures paradoxically create relativity and confusion.

Enough of this. AESD is a collaborative organ. This means that we discuss al-most everything. But we live in different cities so we are dependent on new tech-nologies to be able to work together. It also means that data is the material we work with, texts and images. We would like to go further and work with the stuff data is made of. In the process something happens to the material, which is not that different from working with say bricks or paint. However, we don’t aim to build. On the contrary, our aim is to reconfigure the flow of data in order to un-dermine its informational character, to materialize a new relationship with the social body. What does all this data do? We didn’t set out to work with data. This came out of an interest in spatial con-figurations; in thinking that this was the definition that brought many aspects of the social space into focus. We needed new concepts or needed to reconfigure old concepts to adapt to our new way of working. We were drawn further and further into a new and unfamiliar space that is predominantly conditioned by new tech-nologies. Our conclusion that ‘real space’ was only an extension of data now seems inevitable.