The strands of this activity include the creation of functional objects in the art school workshops, attending lectures in courses I am not enrolled in, reading books recommended by others (and not for their direct relationship to this programme), student journalism and analogue photography as a means to interact with other students. Sometimes non-normative, they are not directly oppositional. A key motivation for these activities has been the desire to work in a way that encourages other students’ awareness of their agency and choice. The objects and documents presented here for examination are offered as evidence of exchanges that are conceived as artworks, not as artworks in themselves.

The deadpan, low-resolution snapshots record spatial-temporal moments at the University. This is to shift the focus towards present experiences as opposed to focusing on the future and the accomplishment of a degree. These photos are shared with my peers and other students familiar with the photographs’ contexts. They are a means to social interaction, with the activity that is intended as a work for those outside of this exchange.

The table and knife were made in the wood and metal workshops at Elam. 

The process of making these objects as well as personal engagement with the technicians became an important aspect to this activity. Knife-making workshops are set up at Elam as an exercise to become familiar with the machinery and techniques used in the workshops. The idea of constructing non-art things is that they intentionally have a lack of relevance to any standard honours art project. Thus they emphasize the prescribed nature of this course, and stand as tokens of my experiences with the technicians in these workshops.

I attended lectures for the two University of Auckland courses, Sociology 221 Everyday Life in New Zealand and Theology 205 Religion and Violence. As I was not enrolled in these courses, this became a way of engaging with information that was neither instrumental to my degree nor for the attainment of a desirable GPA. Accessing material of different kinds that are less predictable has been a central theme of my year’s work, and is also another way to think about agency in relation to my position as a student. I do so in the role of an artist, my interest being in completing the process as a conceptual artwork.

A major undertaking has been the composition of a series of articles for the University’s student magazine Craccum. This represents a different form of social exchange to the snapshot photography. Several articles have been based on asking selected students questions on topics of wellness and lifestyle (such as “What is your morning routine?” or “what is in your bag today?”). I am interested in these journalistic genres, and in particular the double-edged quality of the demand for self-care alongside eroding work/life balance. The work focuses not only on the completion of the article but also the interaction I had with students being interviewed. 

My conceptual engagement is particularly evident in a personal response made to an article submitted to Craccum. Ten students were asked what their favorite book was that they had read from any of the libraries located on campus. I took my own advice in committing to read all the books in the list created, just as I would hope a student might in the position of reading this article. The act of reading a disparate range of books based on the different interests of the individuals involved, highlights the notion of being constrained by time in any programme to only do readings that are relevant to one’s work. The gesture again refers back to the usual constraints of this course in particular.