Marsha Bradfield

This tripartite account reflects on the patainstiutional approach of Critical Practice Research Cluster, which is comprised of artists, designers, curators, researchers and others hosted by Chelsea College of Arts. We consider the cluster’s self-organisation by way of three metonyms, exploring the significance of jig, foam and yield. We reflect on this as longstanding members of Critical Practice and three of many co-convenors of #TransActing: A Market of Values. This bustling flea market-like event comprised ‘stalls’ that featured artists, designers, theorists, philosophers, civil-society groups, ecologists, enthusiasts, experts, activists and others. Together with a milling crowd, stallholders creatively explored existing structures of evaluation and actively produced new ones. The jigs arose through the intersection of various vectors, principally the need to make ‘stalls’ to host the market, they evolved into the physical protocols which produced assemblies from disparate individuals, materials and coordinated their interactions into collaborative communities. Jigs are relational machines. ‘Foam’ is a rereading of Peter Sloterdijk’s ‘thought image’ which calls for an attention when describing contemporary social space. If jigs produce specific temporary institutions, how are these institutions composed? CP’s form of organisation encourages decisions, processes and production to be accessible and transparent, yet, a ‘foamy’ approach recognises that every act of inclusion, even within open institutions, necessitates exclusion elsewhere. The final section of this account explores the Critical Practice market’s value against the rampant corporatization of life as we know it. ‘Yield’ features here as metonymic of the give-and-take distinguishing CP’s mixed economy. It is through giving way to the demands and possibilities of co-authorship that the bounty of this way of working is produced. Together, jig, foam and yield indicate some of the ways that Critical Practice has sustained its organisational reproduction, honing the methods, protocols, structures, techniques, processes, qualities and more that set the cluster apart. We have a longstanding interest - more than a decade - in public goods, spaces, services and knowledge, and a track record of producing original participatory events. Critical Practice seeks to avoid the passive reproduction of art and uncritical cultural production. Our research, projects, exhibitions, publications and funding, our very constitution and administration, are legitimate subjects of critical enquiry. All art is organised, so we try to be sensitive to issues of governance. Governance emerges whenever there is a deliberate organisation of interactions between people. We are striving to be an 'open' organisation and we post all agendas, minutes, budget and decision-making processes online for public scrutiny.