Open Frequency
Open Frequency is a curated online programme presenting new developments in contemporary art. Selected artists are nominated by key curators, writers and artists from across the UK. Recently profiled Scotland-based artists include Katy Dove, Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan, Camilla Low, Toby Paterson and Hayley Tompkins.
Open Frequency is a programme area of Axis, the arts council funded leading online resource for the contemporary art community.
For Glasgow based Danish artist Eva Merz it is life that is the art. Ordinary people's life, whether shop keepers, street skaters, homeless people or council estate dwellers.
"Her methodology is signified by participant observation, approaches that were inhabited by our classic anthropologists. Employing a range of methods, like informal interviews, direct observation, collective discussions, analyses of personal documents, self-analysis, and life-histories, her research strategies aim to gain a close familiarity with the individuals that she is working with. Not unlike the likes of Evans Pritchard among the Nuer, or even the great urban anthropologists Franz Boas, she fully immerses herself into other people's lives and their environment over an extended period of time.
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But then during the process some kind of utopian idea kicks in and she gives their lives a twist. She puts shop owners on podiums, gets street skaters to form pressure groups, gives homeless people a voice in Waterstone's or organises a Valentines Day in the run-down council estate.
It is not a charitable approach of feeling sorry for people, but one of showing respect of people's life, no matter where or what they are. Her artistic output is multi-facetted, often canningly designed, with attention to distribution and detail. |
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A kind of underground action, where everything becomes part of it: the letters to the council, the drinks with the people, the carefully made books.
'Respect real people', says a sticker – reminding me of some former GDR slogan campaign - distributed all over Aberdeen as a reaction to the council's policy against homeless people. And it is the respect what distinguishes her from others. The respect of people's life that drives her to photograph skate barriers as phallic symbols, organise buffets with street dwellers and cover NO BALL GAMES signs with love hearts to lighten up the Aberdonian February grey."
Claudia Zeiske, 2007
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NEW SOCIAL ART SCHOOL
It all started with a group of skateboarders and an artist interrogating political decision-making behind some barriers erected on a favourite skate spot in the city-centre of Aberdeen. |
The group, which became known as Aberdeen Street Skaters, made action, artwork and PR, communicated and associated with the city council, and effectively made changes. It was an example of successful collaborative arts practice rooted in the reality of a local community. This cooperation with non-professional artists presented a broad but meaningful method of collaborative arts practice. It made great sense to continue working with a variety of people in an open environment for collective, informal learning in various artistic projects.
New Social Art School is obviously not a typical art school; we have got no specific location, no teachers in the traditional sense, no curriculum and no money. What we have is a small group of collaborators with diverse cultural and professional backgrounds. With individual skills, knowledge and ideas people contribute on various levels, and the collaborations are strengthened through the relationships which develop in the process.
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Projects are inspired and informed by local politics, often social issues, that we have something to say about. The work progresses naturally through research, discussion and dialogue with people rather than being preconceived by artistic notions or job arrangements.
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New Social Art School should be seen as a 'movement', striving against the standardisation of the art world and its restrictive models for understanding, producing, circulating and consuming art.
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We intend to communicate issues of common interest directly to the public, and through collective creativity we hope we can encourage others to take part in the social and political debate and thus renew participation in and understanding of the arts. |
The specialised arts audience can always see the work later, and theorists enclose it in a contemporary art context - or not. New Social Art School should, in time, be defined by the work through which it manifests itself. It's all about people, places and politics...
Eva Merz, Alejandra Rodriguez-Remedi and Monika Vykoukal, Aberdeen 2007
'It is the citizens who create and develop culture in the community. This culture should be supported, not obstructed by the authorities. Always remember - never forget!' Aberdeen Street Skaters Manifesto, 2004
Biography
Eva Merz (b. 1966, Denmark) is based in Glasgow and is the founder of Aberdeen Street Skaters and New Social Art School, co-founder of UrbanNovember, and a member of the Deveron board of management, Huntly, Scotland.
She grew up in Denmark and trained as an advertising designer before studying art in Norway and later working in a drug-rehab collective. In 1992 she moved to Copanhagen where she studied photography (Fatamorgana, Danish School of Photographic Art).
Coming to Scotland in 2003 for a short residency at Huntly, Merz began a new practice of interviewing people, publishing the interviews, making public events and gaining media attention. After moving to Aberdeen she became involved in communities of different people, amongst them skateboarders, street beggars and homeless people. First she founded Aberdeen Street Skaters, an organization of skaters and young artists. New Social Art School grew out of this initial collaboration. In 2007 Merz moved to Glasgow. | |