Is Art in Society too “baroque? Is to too collusive? Is the new Total Arts Movement a new impulse for much needed avant garde art in society?
I am taking four days out from the Edinburgh Fringe to bring my own solo show to this artistic inquiry over four days in Nancy in France at ICN and hosted in the stunning creative building that includes ICN Creative Business School.
AOMO stands for the Art of Management and Organisation but this is an arts event, and business for me is more about the busyness that arose out of the industrial revolution and the technologising of physical living. This is not about “management” in a narrow sense. For me this is the great inquiry into how we individually and collectively “manage”, “cope” or even thrive in our pereceived and experienced reality we call “Life.”
New Total Arts for Sustainable Futures. That is the theme for AOMO 24. More here.
So, this is my journal which doesn’t even hope to cover eveything but to reflect on personally significant snippets from a rich happening.
And it began with the departure. Away from being the editor and founder of FringeReview, thanks to the principles of Self-organisation, I can escape (or even flee) Edinburgh Fringe 2024 and come to AOMO.
I arrive and check into a rather beautiful Air BnB which I share with my friend Pier Ibbotson. He opts for the twin room, I for the double.
A good place to retreat to and rest after what are always an intensemix of talksl, workshops, performances, exhibitions and experiments. AOMO for me has always embodied a total arts mindset.
And ICN – a rather unique house of learning…
The crowd, the community, the collective arts-based inquiry begins. Do we need a Total Arts approach to creating sustainable futures?
Day 1: 3-5pm – I participate in the session “How Radical Can Hope Be?” led by Casals-Hill. (Need the first name!). Some important research was shared in this interactive session. The session leader has been working with younger people and exploring whether hope can be raised in younger people when they are facilitated through the experience of a piece of art such as a book or a movie. So many teenage books offer dystopian views of the world, but can hope be raised in a helpful and nourishing way, if younger people are given voice and focused on hopeful elements lying inherent and fllow in dystopian films, such as The Hunger Games. After an online poll, the work focuses on builfing a shared definition of hope, watching a film such as The Hunger Games, group discussion, developing word clouds for the film (such as via Mentimeter), compaing different views arising before reacging a finalising place where perhaps individual and collective hope as been awakened or raised via this facilitated encounter with dytopian art.
We wrote our own thoughts about hope…
A fascinating and important session. Perhaps there is scope to link this further to faith and also to ensure encounters with art, using this process, ensure that true and rich diversity is reflected in the choice of heroes encounterd and not just Western stereotypes.
There was plenty of discussion. I am left with plenty of questions:
Is there an ethics of hope?
What happens if the climate generation lose all hope for the future?
How can we facilitate hope raising across all generations in a rigorous and non “preachy” way?
This younger generation, born in 2000 is now the “Climate Generation” and this process may well contribute to the question: How do we awaken hopefulness in that generation?
“Hope is thing with feathers… but you can write with feathers!” Emily Dickinson.
Results of the plenary “O” Map Trinity session led by Catherine Barron…
For me with was a very esoteric session. The style was directive but there was an intensity to the use of different colours which signify different archetypal aspects of the human being and life more widely. The creation of what became a collective artwork was intriguing. If you want to know more, you can buy the book!
Dinner on the first night was outdoors under cover in the warm of the evening with jazz and some rather lovely food., and plenty of conversation…
A conversation with Piers Ibbotson focused on what I will call Sustainability Darkness. We have been meeting as an AOMO community since the start of 2000 and have we actually just been a talking shop or have we made a telling impact? How can AOMO actually be avante garde? A question to take forward.
Early day 2 and I spend three hours sesstinh up my solo show, the Debrief, scuppering my plans to attend other sessions. We can’t get into the space until mid-morning and then there is a full power cut in the area so no lights or sound. We nearly cancel but with a few minutes to go the power is restored and the show goes on. The after-show discussion went deep and responses push me in the right ways.
Is the making and performance of the show of more personal therapeutic value than the content of the show itself (much of which is AI-generated)? Why have I not performed this show more? Should certain parts of the show I edited be seen through?
Steven Taylor: What you fear, that is where you should go. Strong reactions, helpful reactions and challenge. The show went very well from a performance point of view and, despite the tears and long life milk in the tea on stage, I actually enjoyed it. Great theatre space to perform in.
Then into a conversation about the future of AOMO itself and its accompanying journal, Organisational Aesthetics, led by Steven Taylor who is stepping back from editing and leadership.
It ranged widely, and became a broader conversation about the role academic journals play in the world today. They are clearly important for academics to justify the budget for attending AOMO.
But the modern journal needs to be more organic and dynamic. Is there a new generation ready to continue the journal (and the conference)?
In the evening we head to the museum in Nancy that is actually a house, housing a stunning art deco and art nouveau collection of furniture, paintings and other artefacts.
There was a guided tour but I would rather have just wandered around in silence.
You should never provide a live commentary to human wonder. Plenty of simple french food – from saucisson to fromage and further intense conversation and plenty of humour and catchup.
And then the poetry slam which really brought the participants together and the different groups, the pairs and the “many” became, at least for a few minutes “one”. I was glad it was really a poetry “share” and not a competitive slam which is more usual at AOMO. In the fading light, a precious, shared experience. Someone said ” Not THIS is really total arts!”
More to come!
