Lois Keidan & Daniel Brine | NRLA Platform 2003
There was a time when you could count the number of platforms for emergent practitioners in Britain on one finger. It was called The National Review of Live Art.
The NRLA remains the pre-eminent British platform in that it aspires to be, quite literally, a national review of emergent Live Art from across the country. But by the time the NRLA 2003 selection process began in April 2002, there were more than fifteen freestanding platform events on offer. Support for artists at the outset of a professional practice have come a long way in the last decade or so and the impact on the vitality of the Live Art sector is demonstrable.
The platform scene across Britain and Ireland, from which this year's NRLA selection process has been drawn, is a healthy mix of artist led and institutional initiatives. Partly inspired by a Northern Arts funded delegation to the NRLA 2002, the 00000001 platform at the Waygood Gallery in Newcastle (October) was organised by a loose grouping of regional artists, curators, educators and activists. Vain Live Art (June) was a site and venue based event set up by two local artists to get things going in Oxford. Tonight Mathew I Am at the Arnolfini in Bristol (April) was produced by the artist network LAFSW and Colchesters Live Art Platform (October) was a regional event put together by the new informal Live Art East grouping. The annual East End Collaborations platform in London (September) is a joint initiative between Queen Mary, University of London and the Live Art Development Agency. Nottinghams annual eXpo (October) is a wing of the NOW festival and Dublins Get Up (October) a new feature of the Dublin Fringe Festival. Warwick Arts Centres Space Invaders (June), Chapters Experimentica (October) and the Green Rooms Emergency (October) are all firm fixtures in each venues calendar.
Some of these events are platforms pure and simple - one off events in their own right showcasing new artists or new work. However most form part of a bigger picture of regionally based artists' support structures and are as much about a continuing process of professional development. And it is this sense of continuity, this recognition that support structures and development initiatives are an ongoing process, which has proved to be essential to the health and wealth of the Live Art sector.
The sector has always had mixed opinions about the value of platforms with some feeling they represent a battery farm attitude to a curatorial practice or quick fix solutions for failures of funding (or, even worse, Popstars-style auditions for the NRLA). If platforms are approached as cheap and easy options then, inevitably, they have little value. But if platforms are considered as part of that bigger picture then they begin to take on a different kind of meaning. For many, ourselves included, platforms are a vital part of the mix.
For graduates and emergent artists, platforms can serve as a safe transition into a professional arts practice: a halfway house as Lois Weaver of Queen Mary would say. For graduates platforms can provide a relevant and real context to present work that has been developed within the fairly cushioned confines of Higher Education. For artists coming to Live Art from other directions, they are contexts to try out new ideas amongst empathetic artists and audiences. And beyond space to actually present work to a willing public, platforms are an opportunity for artists to meet peers, make contacts, develop networks, engage with critical feedback, get a sense of how things work and begin the lifelong process of refining a practice.
On the other side of the experience, platforms are an equally invaluable opportunity for promoters and audiences and the like: providing a critical mass of new voices and new ideas. Platforms are a chance to see the work of emerging practitioners, to consider the kinds of ideas and practices a younger generation are engaging with and to listen and learn from their aspirations.
Platforms are a vital part of the mix but they are only the beginning of an artistic and professional development process and as much care and attention needs to be paid to post-platform artists lives if they are to make a real difference. Many of the platforms involved in this years NRLA selection are, as we have said, part of a continuing process of local, regional and national support; ingredients in a complex mix of commissioning programmes, curatorial frameworks, critical debates, networking opportunities or professional development initiatives. And sustained provision for artists through programmes and projects such as Arnolfini's Breathing Space, Green Room's Method Lab and the NRLA's commissioning policy continues to have a demonstrable impact on the vitality of the Live Art sector.
Platforms are only part of the mix, but they are also dangerously easy thats easy to run, easy to fund and easy to get away with. No matter which way you look at it, its less difficult to raise public, or even private, sector funds for a platform style initiative than for pretty much anything else. For an arts funding system that, despite its best intentions, still doesnt quite know what to do with Live Art, the notion of a showcase for new artists will always fit neatly into some box or other. We must all be wary of allowing platforms to become the be and end all of Live Art policy and provision. Live Art is often, wrongly, perceived in some circles as the domain of the young and we must resist the systems tendency to privilege platform level support over provision for artists at other points of the spectrum.
The system must be continually encouraged to look at the evidence of complex professional development strategies and to respond to the needs of artists as they shift and change over an evolving professional career. Platforms are a vital part of the mix, but the system must look at them and beyond them in equal measure.