The invitation to participate in Performing Worlds allowed the public unpacking of Tracy & Edwin’s archive and the celebration of 15 years of artistic collaboration.
The conviction that making art is about process more than product, about building social and intellectual capital and opening up new sites of inquiry, underpins Tracy & Edwin’s belief in art as a social political agent.
By publicly unpacking their archive, in 2012 they explored and celebrated their shared 15-year creative history, revealing traces of research and investigation while opening up their practice to a broad range of audiences. Key aspects and issues informed conversations – collaboration, the relationship between art practice, research and education, creating new connections between different platforms, co-locating the public and the private, the changing role of art, cultural recycling – evolving around ongoing interests in loss, conflict, the construction of ideologies and identities.
Running counter to the norm of the artists’ work as matter contextualised by historians, critics and theoreticians, in this case Tracy & Edwin’s own insights into the extensive range and impact of their activities and projects lead to a work that developed in situ. Combined with visual documentation of the presentation of their projects in a range of sites over the period, their voices and renewed visual framing were shared through observations, reflections and encounters.
Hannah Maclure Centre, University of Abertay, Dundee, Scotland, 2012.
Part of Performing Worlds curated Jonathan Baxter (D’AIR).