LUST, IN TRANSLATION - effervescent social alchemy

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Success, author Leil Lowndes sums up the formula for seduction: start with a solid scientific base of what stimulates attraction, gather information about your ...
LUST, IN TRANSLATION: Seduction, and Socially-Engaged Arts Practice Eloise Malone If there’s one thing that is bound to cause anxiety amongst people who work with children and young people, it’s a socially-engaged arts project which makes films about sex inspired by a range of historical objects from ancient dildos to a Victorian “orgasmatron” used by doctors on hysterical ladies. From the dangers of producing something unappetising to a wider audience or enraging the redtop readers, to the safeguarding issues of filming work about sex without anyone feeling vulnerable but without avoiding the issue - all the while ensuring not a single young person was left having to personally defend their art work or opinion in future years, and making sure everyone left the project feeling more skilled and self-confident – Effervescent’s pilot film project Lust in Translation was a bold bedfellow in the ménage a trois that was our commissioners’ fear of public moral outrage on one side, and our own fear of failure to deliver the goods on the other. We’ve done it now, in partnership with Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery and The Wellcome Collection, and it turned out well – so well, in fact, that we are currently developing an extended version of it with the University of Exeter’s School of Medical History to rigorously test the impact of socially-engaged museum and art curating on wellbeing for some of the region’s most vulnerable young people. Back in 2009 and 2010, Professor Kate Fisher and Doctor Rebecca Langlands of the University of Exeter secured funding to work with young people through sexually-themed objects. They shared the funding with a number of museums in the south west region, including Plymouth Museum and Art Gallery, and Effervescent took forward the brief to work intergenerationally with isolated older and young people in partnership with curators and outreach professionals from the museum. So, with our films now being used as a teaching aid in secondary school PSHE classes, and therefore deemed palatable even to the most risk-averse, I thought it might be a good time to risk a potentially heated debate by suggesting that high quality socially-engaged arts practice is a little like dating and seduction. This isn’t a pastiche – I’m genuinely serious here. And I do understand that the moment a practitioner starts talking about sex and young people in the same article people tend to get a little nervous. What I’m absolutely and definitely not advocating here is seducing your client group. What I am suggesting is that the arts sector could do more to absorb learning from other academic disciplines, which would enable them to be more effective at supporting people in engaged arts contexts. Learning from social psychologists’ research into love and seduction can give arts practitioners a translation framework for an engaged practice which seeks to create in participants all the features of a functional relationship: feeling respected and wanted, being part of something strong and enduring, balancing being supported with giving support, and feeling genuinely that they are a wonderful and unique person with a place in the universe. In her handy book, How To Make Anyone Fall in Love With You – 85 Proven Techniques for Success, author Leil Lowndes sums up the formula for seduction: start with a solid scientific base of what stimulates attraction, gather information about your intended love-interest, employ sophisticated communication techniques to meet conscious and subconscious needs, and trust in the process. © Eloise Malone for Effervescent Social Alchemy 2013 www.eff.org.uk

She makes the case that – within a safe environment – being found wonderfully interesting, being genuinely heard, receiving huge amounts of attention and having someone enjoy what you have to offer is an intoxicatingly exciting experience. Imagine that you’re an isolated young person who has failed to thrive in school - you feel you have nothing that anyone wants from you, and you have few strategies to cope with all that life throws at you. Imagine being noticed, having your ideas genuinely engaged with, being considered a good person again, and being thought of as a crucial part of a team trying to achieve something extraordinary. This is what socially-engaged arts practices seek to offer for participants who are isolated and vulnerable. Three core practices lie at the basis of therapist and educator Carl Roger’s core conditions for helpful practice: be authentic and real, trust and prize the people you work with, listen actively and empathise with them. Just these core conditions alone, well-executed, can be helpful in themselves. How much more so when taken in to the thrilling practice of creating extraordinary art work and offering it to those audiences who most need to witness it? Leil Lowndes talks about PEA – Phenylethylamine – an organic compound similar to adrenaline, which the body releases when you start to fall in love. She advocates taking potential loveinterests on thrilling adventures on a first date – the excitement and thrill kick-starts a real sense of bonding and belonging. Similarly, socially-engaged arts practice, seeking to work in collaboration to create something genuinely unique and extraordinary, puts client groups and artists in a similar position of courting danger by going through a journey which can be fun, silly, challenging and really puts your reputation on the line every time – a risk for young people who have their own credibility to maintain with family and friends, and a risk for the artists whose career operates in a reputational economy. Dr Timothy Perper, in his book Sex Signals: The Biology of Love talks about the crucial stage of dating when couples reach a point of synchronisation – a place where they are in physical synchrony and start mirroring each other. It’s a state in which each person feels genuinely heard, valued and captivating for the other person. In our practice, we use a number of group games and exercises to begin a similar process so that everyone in the room feels that their contribution is heard, valued, enjoyed and mirrored. Later on, in creating the world and framework for our piece of co-created art, we all start mirroring and reinforcing those early ideas so that they become the centre of our co-created universe. Arts Council England is currently working with Shared Intelligence, a London-based consultancy firm, on researching the features of high quality practice with children and young people. Consultant Ben Lee recently asked me how arts organisations like ours can convince vulnerable and previously disappointed young people to attend and to engage when they’ve spent so much time before being “processed”, rejected, disappointed, and dropping out of mainstream opportunities. I told him it’s about this creative seduction – socially-engaged artists deliberately create an environment in which young people or participant groups feel that we prize them, and they’re captivated by that. Using this knowledge of how people become passionate and excited by their own previously hidden creative power and insight, means that our clients’ voluntary attendance on projects, which can last from 5 days to six months, stays steadily in the 90 – 100% range, project after project. Part of the skill- and values-sets behind synchronisation in socially-engaged arts practice is grounded in reciprocity and listening: an artist can’t go in and “impose” their arts practice in this model, it’s about going and being with people within an arts process framework which you gently but firmly hold. In the seduction model, the artist is there to prize and tease out what’s wonderful about the client or client group, and reflect that back to them through reciprocity rather than dominance and control. My friend Ben Dunks, Director of Attik Dance, often talks about how he works in © Eloise Malone for Effervescent Social Alchemy 2013 www.eff.org.uk

the studio with young people – it’s not about teaching them choreography, it’s about supporting them to redefine themselves and find out who they are through creative process and skills development which is as much cognitive as physical. However, we work in a sector where a lot of the predominant model is still based on the practitioner as the transmitter or giver, and the client as receiver. This leads me in to what – even after a year of discussing sex with young people and older folk – still feels like an embarrassing discussion of the mechanics of sex versus the emotional and intellectually engaged act that we might call “making love.” In discussion with young people over that year, we talked at length about how sticking it in and out a bit until you’re finished – doing what looks like the right sort of thing – is completely different to a trusting experience of being with someone fully, a place where you can be emotionally present and feel free to be playful but congruent. Either can be what someone is looking for, but I’m going to argue that sociallyengaged arts done well is like making love with someone committed to you with whom you’re building a future, whereas socially-engaged work done poorly is like having sex with an enthusiastic beginner who has seen some porn and is now emulating it– there’s a lot of thrusting and doing what looks right; it’s kind of physically interesting and enjoyable at the time (one would hope); but there’s little technique and you can feel a bit used at the end - or at least there’s very little long-term psychological benefit or anything to build on. One of the difficulties we come up against over and over again at Effervescent is the commissioner who has had a bad experience. They’ve hired an artist to do some sociallyengaged work but the artist or organisation doesn’t have that long-term commitment to a way of working. Client groups end up having an interesting time but with few long-term outcomes, commissioners end up without the outcomes they were looking for. Everyone is a little bit dissatisfied and ends up feeling a bit manipulated, and commissioners can be put off what could have been a powerful intervention. The situation can be exacerbated by the world of mainstream contemporary art, which tends to regard socially-engaged practices as The Art That Dare Not Speak its Name. Rather akin to the iconic man of the 70s who doesn’t give a hoot about sexual technique or where to find a Gspot, there is still a dominant mode that we socially-engaged specialists can often encounter – a mode which says that the beefcake of an artist with an art world reputation need not know about technique with vulnerable people; they just need to do their thing with the group’s seeming involvement or at least acquiescence, then figuratively roll over and go to sleep. The artistic issue is cleaned and sanitised by labelling it as “done by the community”, and placed out of sight. So its all about a solid scientific base, a curiosity and interest in your client group, and trust in your collaborative process. It’s about the long-term trusting lover model as opposed to the short-term socially-engaged Lothario looking to get their artistic rocks off with a client group. Socially-engaged Lotherios haven’t built up years of technique, they don’t have a deep and meaningful commitment to their client group or to collaborative practice, and they may give their clients a romping good time but that immediate gratification is unlikely to lead to a long-term stable glow of feeling valued and part of something that can see you through the bad times in life. What I’ve taken for myself from researching the psychology of romance and seduction is the biochemical impact artists can generate through risk and excitement within a framework of empathy. The work is about harnessing social psychology, it’s about being real and prizing everyone in the room; creating a process as candle-lit mirror in which every participant can see themselves in a new and beautiful light; making that client group and everyone in it feel like the centre of my universe whilst I’m with them; and being authentic in my own practice and how I engage with people as myself, not in the guise of the pornstar-artist doing the community arts turn.

© Eloise Malone for Effervescent Social Alchemy 2013 www.eff.org.uk

Want to comment? Talk to us in our blog section on Effervescent’s website Effervescent Social Alchemy is an arts organisation that transforms people, places and spaces so they become extraordinary, connected, resilient, and beautiful. @EffervescentUK Lust in Translation is a project by Effervescent and Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery, working with City College Plymouth, Age Concern, and Plymouth Youth Service. Eloise Malone is an artist and consultant based in Cornwall UK. She is CEO of Effervescent. @EloiseMalone

© Eloise Malone for Effervescent Social Alchemy 2013 www.eff.org.uk