Kari - interviewed by Madison

Kari Robertson (1988), is a multidisciplinary visual artist currently based in Rotterdam. In the following conversation with Madison Bycroft, curator at the N.Town Contemporary Art Centre, she discusses her upcoming show in the annex gallery space.

Madison: So as you know I’ve got you here today to talk to you a little about your upcoming show, which I am very excited about. Firstly could you give me a generalized intro about what to expect from the exhibition?

Kari: Sure, so basically this is a collaborative project between myself and Hannes Hellstrom with whom I’ve been working for over a year now. The work will be a loose exhibition including a lot of events, all staged within the small gallery space in the CAC. In this project we are exploring themes of ‘affective labour’ (emotional/ immaterial labour based around relations and communication rather than production of objects), the developmental disability autism and care in contemporary society. So I guess you could say it’s not so much a classic art show as a conscious look outwards at other things in the world - the political or sociological - through the canon of art. Hannes, despite coming from an art background (we graduated from Glasgow School of Art together in 2011) does not currently consider himself an artist. He is doing a nursing degree at the moment and has a personal/political practice based on care. We therefore bring different methodology and intention when we work together, challenging each others assumptions. Much of the work is experiential or event-based, so we are looking for genuinely active participation from an audience rather than just passive reception.

M: So the exhibition will comprise of several elements, can you talk about what these components are?

K: Yes, there will be multiple elements. The gallery will be utilized as a resource space which will be open to the public during gallery opening hours (10am – 5pm Tuesday to Saturday). There will be comfortable seating, low level lighting, tea and coffee will be available, a small library of books related to the subjects we are exploring and computers where a youtube channel of autistic self-advocates upload their own videos. There will also be an accumulation of documentation from the events which are taking place throughout the project, and a program of these events (also available on the CAC website). These include workshops, talks and screenings. Our hope is that the resource and events function in a useful and diverse way to a large demographic of different people, we are keen to emphasize that all are welcome!

M: Will you also be personally giving a talk?

K: Yes, I am. I will be delivering a performative lecture/ screening on an alternative reading of the film Rain Man (1988), this will be happening on the evening of the 2nd of May, at 7pm I believe.

M: These are all big questions you are looking at, I wonder if we could just take one workshop and talk specifically about how these ideas manifest within the framework?

K: Well one example of a workshop we will be holding is a moving and handling workshop. This is a type of basic or primary training for nurses and carers in how to move the bodies of those who are incapacitated, for example to move someone from a wheelchair onto a hospital bed. We are interested in how this kind of important training standardizes or formalizes the parameters of empathy. During this training participants are required to play the part of both care-giver and patient and so experience both a position of vulnerability and total trust and one of power and responsibility.

M: Would ‘empathy’ be an example of affective labour?

K: Definitely. There has been a lot of theorizing around affective labour in contemporary political philosophy. I suppose Hannes and myself are particularly interested in how emotional or affective devices such as empathy that used to be understood to exist outside of the economic structure, now are directly mobilized by capital and therefore become instrumentalised. One example of a more traditional job that utilizes affective capacities would be nursing or teaching. We are also interested in a more contemporary model; a huge range of jobs now involve just relating to other human beings, such as call centre work, sales, and public relations. This creates a different hierarchy between laboring human beings, making subjectivity more primary to their ability to perform. This reasoning led us to looking at non-neurotypical subjectivities, such as autism which is one of the primary focuses of our research. We are interested in how we can explore or reflect upon our current situation outside of a typically academic framework and open up this process to anyone who wants to be involved.

M: Can I ask why you focused on autism specifically?

K: Yes, of course. Well Hannes and I both have a relationship to autism through close personal relationships with autistic people. We then both volunteered for an organization called Equal Say who train volunteer advocates and pair them up with clients with learning disabilities who are struggling with some aspects of their life. We spent a lot of time discussing how the world is organised so that it is easier for some types of brains than others and these loose conversations led to a body of research together. Autism seems to be the buzzword condition right now (like schizophrenia was in the 1980s thanks to Deleuze and Guattari). Hannes and myself starting thinking about pathologising allegories for social and economic conditions and how those living with the reality of these conditions can meanwhile be forgotten or instrumentalised.

M: Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me today, I look forward to seeing more of you in the CAC over April and May.

K: Thanks a lot, please come join us for some events everyone or even just come down for a cup of tea and to check out the space!