Cognition Control
dal 19/10/2002 al 24/11/2002
Segnalato da
19/10/2002
Cognition Control
Institute of Visual Culture, Cambridge
British artist Stephen Willats maintains an extensive archive of original material that documents his innovative and influential work and collective art projects he helped to initiate during the 1960s and '70s.
FROM THE ARCHIVE OF STEPHEN WILLATS
20 October - 24 November 2002
British artist Stephen Willats maintains an extensive archive of original material that documents his innovative and influential work and collective art projects he helped to initiate during the 1960s and '70s. Institute of Visual Culture will present some of this material for the first time, focusing on three seminal projects: 'Centre for Behavioural Art' (1972-73), 'Cognition Control' (1972), and 'West London Social Resource Project' (1972-73). Additionally, a collection of work from the early '60s will be exhibited, including manifestos, drawings, semiological models, and random variable light works.
This archive represents a vital period in British art, when Willats and his colleagues proposed activating the audience as an integral factor in the conceptual formation of a more open-ended and inclusive art practice. Each of these projects shares a common objective to use visual arts practice as a tool for social enquiry and transformation. Their radical intervention in the cultural infrastructure of the time still resonates with, and influences, many artists working today.
Since the 1960s, Willats's projects have centred on the relationships between individuals in society, often focusing on aspects of cognitive behaviour, the ways people encounter one another, how they reach agreement, and how they respond to their environment. Willats combines his rich theoretical knowledge of cybernetics, learning theory, and interactive, self-organising systems with a desire to operate in the fabric of everyday reality. Taking place anywhere from institutional galleries to tennis clubs and inner-city housing estates, his projects challenge the notion of art as a passive activity, transforming it into an agent of social change.
'Cognition Control: From the Archive of Stephen Willats' proposes that the archive is not a closed, inactive repository of knowledge, but rather an open, circulating network of information, a fabric that is defined not by its boundaries, but by its many layers and expanding connective possibilities. The documents and objects marking Willats's activities in the '60s and '70s are exhibited not as relics falsely identified with the past, but as free-floating concepts ready to be re-activated and reapplied in a continuum of past, present and future.
Based in London, Stephen Willats (born 1943) has exhibited widely, both locally and internationally. Recent solo projects include 'Through Your Symbolic World', Victoria Miro Gallery, London, 2002 and 'Changing Everything', South London Art Gallery, 1998. Recent group exhibitions include 'Blast to Frieze: British Art in the Age of Extremes', Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg, 2002 and 'Protest and Survive', Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 2000.
'Cognition Control' is co-curated by Institute of Visual Culture and Emily Pethick. 'Cognition Control' is generously supported by The Henry Moore Foundation.
Opening Hours
Tuesday to Saturday: 10am - 5pm
Sunday: 2.15 - 5pm
Closed on Mondays
Institute of Visual Culture
Cambridge
Fitzwilliam Museum
Trumpington Street
Telephone: +44 (0) 1223 350 533
Facsimilie: +44 (0) 1223 312 188