Artist Residency/LCC

After looking at APG in class, it gave me the idea of proposing a residency at LCC. This is also inspired by my high school where they would invite artists over and have a space on campus, the artists would then teach, host workshops and more importantly create work. These residency is very long, not just weeks or a month or two but sometimes even years. There is a focus on living, and cohabitating in the space together.

Bringing back to my idea, I think it would be great if I can do that as a long-term project until the current campus closes and LCC move across the street. The project would be about documenting the last 3-4 years of the site, writings, photos, field recordings, etc. Not in a documentary way, but a depiction rather. Focusing on the space and how it hosts everyone that comes here to learn and the staff. An ethnography of a building at its end of service. This reminds me of Levi-Strauss and his structuralist approach, through indirect descriptions of things like objects and tools, projects a bigger picture of the whole culture of a tribe or a society, and more importantly reflect the author himself.

This sounds kind of academic in the sound studies context with Crisap in mind especially. But I think this opens up a bigger conversation about how sound practices live among other art practices. I want this project to be the exact opposite of academia, I want this to be completely personal, factual but sentimental. Can doing fieldwork and field recordings (although inside a building) avoid being rationalised or theorised? Can the act itself even though serve as practice-based research, not be reduced and consolidated into academic writing? This brings in books like Ocean of Sound and the work of David Toop. I want this project to be about connecting art practice with lives, to be a very day-to-day thing, not imposing or to have a hierarchy between the observer and the subject.

I will start doing this after Spring Break as the second project for the Portfolio Unit, to do it for a month. See if it works, or if I enjoy it. I think this could be developed into a very interesting and important project for me and the College, let’s see. I think in the end I can publish a book and it might be good.