This Grief Thing: Where the Conversation is the Projec
Here, Susanne Burns considers the project This Grief Thing. Focusing on the shop, she evaluates the different depths of experience for participants as well as the role of Sam and David as artist/shopkeeper/designer.
“This is our first shop. Before we arrive, we talk about what might happen. We acknowledge that nobody might come. We remind ourselves that we’re first and foremost trying to make grief visible, trying to refuse all the subtle and blunt and careless and well-intentioned and cruel ways it gets silenced and diverted and ignored. We tell ourselves it’s OK if nobody comes. Because even the presence of the project here, in this shopping centre, in this city, in Preston, makes it possible for conversations to start.”
— David Harradine Blog
“I was interested in the project as I had wanted to do something about grief and the sense of loss experienced in this area – dealing with loss – jobs and homes as well as people. The whole town is grieving from the loss of its steel industry. There is a lingering sense of loss of identity with the closure of the steel works. Unemployment is high and the suicide rate is also high in this area. This is now second generation and there is an underlying grief for an industry that is no longer there. I was chatting to one young lad - about 12 years old – and he said ‘There are no jobs for me here.’ There is no ambition and aspiration.”
— David Tuffnell, MBC
The security afforded by three years of funding has supported David and Sam to think deeply about how they make work and why. A general principle that informs what they do is to “create ways for people to come together to think and talk and listen and debate and reflect on the work we make; and for this to be part of the work we make.”
The centrality of conversation is apparent – conversation about an issue in The Talking Shop as part of Men and Girls Dance, conversations with academics and others about what had been observed about human/ animal interaction in Sheep Pig Goat and now conversations about grief. In This Grief Thing, the project is the conversation.
“My approach generates conversations. My theory of grief is essentially a two dimensional model where the horizontal axis comprises the reactions one has to grief and the vertical axis the more conscious coping mechanisms that one puts in place to deal with the reactions. I think David and Sam had a mind to this model when having the conversations in the shops.”
— Dr Linda Machin, Interview February 2019
This Grief Thing is a shop – a space. David and Sam are effectively ‘shopkeepers’ hosting people who come into this space and talk and sometimes buy an item of clothing or other merchandise. They have created a space that people can enter, a safe, ordered and supportive space that gives people permission to express something that is hidden.
“It was a brilliant project – I popped in several times – people were coming in and talking. Men as well as women. People were naturally facilitating conversations with each other and it was lovely to see people interacting in something that was ‘just a shop’ – for me the community aspect was overwhelming. There was a level of regularity as some people came back more than once. It must have been meeting a need.”
— David Tuffnell, MBC
But what does this mean for David and Sam as artists? They are hugely vulnerable. Exposed even. It could be said that the earlier change and refinement of what Fevered Sleep does has now led to the need to catch up with what that means for David and Sam as artists. The projects involve them adopting different roles - yes, they are still ‘directing’ and creating but they are also shopkeepers, animal handlers, even ‘counsellors’ who are having to learn when to make an intervention, to listen and hold space ……..
“This is a space for acknowledgement. This is a space for grief. We witness. We listen. We chat when we need to. We stay quiet when we need to. We hold you. We have a cry and a laugh with you.”
— David Harradine Blog
It raised so many questions for me:
Would it stop being art and simply become a shop selling merchandise associated with grief if neither David or Sam were present?
How do people perceive it?
Do they see David and Sam as artists?
What are their expectations as they come through the door?
Or their thoughts as they look in but decide not to enter?
What is the relationship between the project and the place?
I am comfortable in not being able to answer these questions as they seem to me to form part of the ‘conversation’ taking place throughout the project.
Importantly, we began to question how you evaluate success in a project such as this. There is no audience applause, there are no reviews and no press feedback. You can look at quantitative targets - how many people come in to the shop, how much sales income was generated? – but this tells us very little. The important things are the quality of the interactions, the impact on the individual and the need that is met in that individual. Capturing this is not easy. There are ethical issues and it is crucial that the voice of the ‘participant’ is in the story and yet this is hard to capture. We rely on them wanting to make contact.
“I came into the shop in Middlesbrough and talked to you and your colleague about my daughter. I know you will have a number of people popping in but would just like to say what an amazing idea and it so helped talking to you even though it wasn't for long I went out if the shop and had to come back for a hug. Thank you again.”
— Visitor (Email to David Harradine from visitor to the shop in Middlesborough)
Others began to question whether or not the shop was art:
“TGT as art? In a broad sense, yes. It was close to communities and culture. Would people have left feeling the same if they had seen a play? I don’t think so. If you see something on a stage there is a connection but you might not relate to it directly whereas this was more ‘pure’ – a human interaction and response. FS are not a theatre company. The approach would be different if they were. They went into that space and facilitated conversations. Conversations were the art.”
— David Tuffnell, MBC
It raises questions around reach and depth of engagement. Those who walked into This Grief Thing and had a conversation or bought a card, scarf or a hoodie were having what could be called the primary experience. Direct contact with the experience came about when a friend asked where the hoodie or scarf came from or what it meant. And there is also the indirect experience of the person who this was relayed to in a conversation or when someone across the street saw the hoodie and thought, ‘I like that’. We tend to count the primary experience but are not able to quantify the direct and indirect. This became very clear with this project and led to me asking - perhaps we need to stop worrying about depth of engagement but start instead to think about proximity?
“There is a metaphor – you drop a pebble in a pond and the ripples spread out –that is the artefact. Others will see it, ask about it, be given it. It may provoke further conversations and you won’t know about them. I guess that is the same as a conventional art work hanging on a gallery wall in some ways.”
— Dr Linda Machin, Interview February 2019
In seeking to determine and articulate what is distinctive about the Fevered Sleep approach to participation, we embarked on a journey that reflects the very process of the work being created. We have conversations, we progress our thinking incrementally and challenge one another. This is the start of our conversations about the value and impact of this very special project.
In this ordinary shop in this ordinary place, you brought something extraordinary into being with us. This grief thing. This Grief Thing. Together we made a space for acknowledgement, where we can witness and be witnessed. We made a space to be heard and to hear and to hold and to be held. We made a space where we could talk or where we could wait quietly together for words to come or to not come.
We made a space for grief.
References
Machin, Linda (2017) https://nsmedicalinstitute.co.uk/2017/10/understanding-grief-an-interview-with-linda-machin/
Machin, Linda (2019) Interview with Linda Machin – February 2019 and Evaluation Report
Tuffnell, David (2018) Interview with David Tuffnell, Arts Development Officer, Middlesbrough Council.
David Harradine (2018) https://www.thisgriefthing.com/blog/2018/9/30/a-space-for-grief
