Rebecca French and Andrew Mottershead lecture

Within the week that the two visiting artists were here and organizing a campus wide participatory show, they had a lecture about their work and their bigger projects. They explained their processes, how they planned, how much was left up to chance, and what they've learned from it all. Rebecca French and Andrew Mottershead create art that specifically explores ideas of identity, social ritual and the everyday public and private realms in which they are played out. Through participatory works, they subvert sites and engage people complicitly in the creative act. As Art Monthly states, "For once it is art that actually achieves the popular ideal of raising your awareness of everyday life." They have traveled all around the world to set up specific situations though things never go as planned. They will stay at a place for their bigger projects usually for a month or two and build relationships with the people there. They explained how much apart of it that the community really is and how much they're really trusting that they'll do their part. After experiencing a small scale of it for myself, I can see the relationships it can easily build and how much it grows a community together. In London, they had each guest pick up a card out of a deck that had many silly tasks written on that the guests had to perfom and then place the card where they performed it. For example, if a guest had to stare at someone's shoes while talking to them and then place the card on the table where they had performed the task. It gets people to interact together and to enjoy and be aware of the social norms and cultural realms we are existing in together.