Whats next for Stead Bureau, apart from a new book in the make, counseling and writing for various nominations and festivals, and the development of workshops geared towards the GCC countries and their specific needs and constraints? Research! Thanks to the generous support of Stroom Den Haag, I can now set apart time to develop the organizational structure of Stead Bureau, and its public manifestations. Contemporary photography, in being reduced to a marketable commodity (often by presenting it as a product with a good story to buy into), is voided of its potential as a gathering place for those with a stake in any of the topics, issues, lines of thinking that coalesce in the work. By affixing the roles played by each party (within the context of a galllery) to purely economical ones, each loses its power to engage in meaningful encounters of any other kind than in terms of financial power relations. Not just the photographers, but also collectors have expressed feeling uncomfortable about this, in so far as the latter are played for their purchasing power, and not for whatever else they can bring to the table. In the end, everyone feels they somehow go home empty handed, despite money having changed hands. I feel other scenarios are possible, and vastly more exciting. What keeps me awake at night is the question how contemporary photography can realize its potential and ambitions beyond the confines where it shelters now, awkwardly so. How can it become this locus where people who otherwise might never meet, can come together and reinvent their respective roles, empowering them anew? How to instigate conversations, across and beyond the territory that comes with the gallery and the art world? Or, to speak with TripleCanopy: how can I meaningfully conjoin the methods by which a public is constituted and made visible within print and digital culture? Part of the research involves setting up conversations with a number of people of whom I think they can contribute towards the new road map for Stead Bureau. These I will share in an edited version on the Stead Bureau facebook page and on my blog, Mrs. Deane, where comments are free and welcome.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Jan 2014 01:42:40 +0000
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