Gordon Douglas & Ash Reid:
Centre for Changing Hands
Since May 2018, CCA Glasgow has been working with performance artist Gordon Douglas towards a ‘performative audit’ of their open-source policy, a programming model that offers free and temporary public use of many of the organisation’s spaces and facilities. As part of this audit, Douglas is collaborating with artist Ash Reid on developing public and internal events around access, accountability and power within the organisation’s architecture of hospitality.
In light of the most recent Glasgow School of Art fire, CCA found itself situated in the resulting exclusion cordon, disallowing access to the site for four and a half months. As an organisation that is structured around its ability to host, CCA was forced to postpone, cancel or relocate many of its events and projects. The open-source programme was most affected by this, and became a significant moment to think through the organisation’s capacity to provide for its local artistic community. Kunsthal Gent has invited Alex Misick, CCA’s programme co-ordinator, to bring a displaced project to Ghent as a first experiment into how the Kunsthal can host other organisations.
Drawing from the historic role of the Caermersklooster as a refuge, Douglas and Reid have developed work that draws from their concerns with the privatisation of temporary occupying space, noise and hierarchies of use. The artists use the courtyards of the Kunsthal as sites to carry out the ongoing exercise Centre for Changing Hands, borrowing existing garden signage to host poetry on the nature of weeding. Douglas and Reid also present I ❤ CCA, documentation from their recent performance at CCA’s re-opening party in December 2018.
I ❤ CCA
2018 – 19
Video, 14min 20sec
Centre for Changing Hands
2019
Performance
Gordon Douglas is a performance artist based in Glasgow, Scotland. His research into collaborative practices has seen him jointly conceive of projects with practitioners from arts and non-arts backgrounds. A lot of his work exists in the dynamic between collaborators: the kinds of performance required to maintain togetherness; the social contracts we submit to when joining groups; and the nuanced and problematic relationships we mask when we say we’re ‘collaborating’. In the past, this has included: working closely within future-proofing strategies at The NewBridge Project, and Travelling Gallery; programming and facilitating performance art courses at Edinburgh College, and Hospitalfield, Arbroath (with Cicely Farrer); devising and performing an off-season pantomime of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ with community members of Albatross Artists’ Studios and Community Theatre; and producing an events series that focus on the habits we inherit through close quarters at Platform, Easterhouse. He is currently working with CCA Glasgow on a performative audit of their open-source policy.
Ash Reid is a London-based artist whose performance-based practice reflects her own experiences in support work and organising. Recent projects have looked at cognitive behaviour therapy techniques and role-playing game structures, performed through ongoing communication with others, publicly and in private. In recent years, Reid has been an invited speaker and reading group host for LUX Scotland in Glasgow and Hospitalfield, Arbroath; performed at Wysing Art Centre music festival in collaboration with musician Liene Rozite; worked with the group Pond Scum for events at IMT Gallery and the Vestry Museum in London; and performed at Tectonics festival in Glasgow, curated by composer Ilan Volkov and presented by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Reid was a voluntary member of the Cinenova working group, a feminist film distributor in London, and from 2018 until 2021, she is undertaking research into the collection as an MPhil/PhD candidate at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Gordon Douglas & Ash Reid:
Centre for Changing Hands
