I Surrender to You and Loving It

Michael Hansen, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada

This paper discusses Score, an experiment in co-authorship. Score is a series of thirteen paintings, each 61cm x 91cm. Conjoined into a 12-metre-long graphic score, they form a polyptych, a classic form that enables the viewer to build a narrative that a single panel could only imply.

Although the paintings are rooted in abstract expressionism, conceptually Score owes more to 1990s “relational aesthetics”; defined by Nicolas Bourriaud as a movement “…governed by a concern to ‘give everyone their chance’, through forms which do not establish any precedence, a priori, of the producer over the beholder… (no divine right authority), but rather negotiate open relationships with it.”[1] The art is intended not to be passively consumed, but to foster a social experience.

As an installation, Score partners the polyptych with musical instruments: drum kit, electric guitar, electric bass, keyboard, and vocal microphone. It invites participants to translate its sequenced images into an extended performance of music or movement.

Score is a research project using qualitative methodologies. I have distributed sample manuscripts (prints of five conjoined paintings, printed and bound) to musicians of various genres, visual artists, arts writers, curators and critical thinkers, asking each of them to write a response. The object is to develop an epistemological outcome that fosters co-authorship through improvisation, dissolves ownership and intention, and facilitates a space for unrestricted exploration, beholder agency, and community.

[1] Bourriaud, Nicolas, Relational Aesthetics, trans: by Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods, Les presses du réel, Paris 2002, pg. 58.

Mike Hansen is a senior Canadian artist presently a PhD student at The University of Guelph with an MFA from York University. Hansen is known for using sound and noise to develop artworks in various mediums with a focus on participation and co-authoring.

Mike has published several papers revolving around his arts practice and associated research with an emphasis on relational interactions. He is known as an established colourist painter, sound artist and improvisor. His body of work and research explores the visualization of sound and noise. Hansen has exhibited globally in public museums, commercial galleries, and artist-run centres.