A year ago – a white bear from the back of the mind was bear in residence at the Creative Lab at CCA. From here it investigated the crisis stricken free market, that was first put into theory in 1776, by the famous Glasvegian Adam Smith.

The bear returned from this free market with a whole lot of footage, that it believed it would process in only a few months time. Now – a year later, it’s “Diary of a white bear on the fre market” is finally online on it’s website

-  check out the diary on www.thewhitebear.info

Best wishes and many thanks  to CCA and the free market for your hospitality!

Posted by Ulla Hvejsel and the White Bear/creative lab

In July 2011, the white bear went to Glasgow, Scotland to study the free market, (that was invented here in 1776), and it’s claim that cool impersonal money could overcome the problems with the bestial subjectivity within humans. While in Scotland, it filmed it’s experiences and is now making a kind of video diary about them. In this post in it’s diary you can see how the white bear ponders, by the famous Loch Ness, that the cool objective calculations that humanity have strived for for centuries, may actually be the very thing that makes the monster below the surface possible.

watch video: A few Hard facts s for a time that is money

Posted By Ulla Hvejsel and the white bear; artists in residence in CCA Creative Lab – July 2011

In July 2011, a white bear; a beast from the back of the mind, was in residence in CCA’s Creative Lab. In Glasgow, it wanted to study the history and the beastly aspects of the free market, a market tat was apparently invented here in 1776. At the moment the bear is editing a videodiary from this journey, and as it works it’s way through the it’s summer experiences in Glasgow, it will post it’s reflections here. This is the second post from it’s diary, and it is about misunderstandings and not being able to get your idea across the way you intendend it. A problem that the Glaswegian free market pioneer Adam Smith, must have known all too well.

Misunderstandings 1776-2011

by Ulla Hvejsel and The White Bear – artists in residence in the creative lab, July 2011

“it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner,but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”

Adam Smith in “An Enquiry Into the Nature and the Causes of the Wealth of Nations” from 1776

So, what Adam Smith seems to say is, that when it comes to supplying dinner to all of Scotland, humanity isan over-estimated idea and thus, It was not just our humanity, that in 1776 was supposed to make sure that there would be dinner enough for all of Scotland, but rather perhaps each our own self-interested beast. 

Now I am such an inner beast, I am a white bear that has been stuck on minds since 1863, when the Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoyevskij put it there with a cunning mind experiment:

Dostoyevskij proposed, that one should “try and set oneself the task, not to think of a white bear, and the cursed thing would come to mind every minute”. In 2009, however, I took things into my own paws, and managed tocome out of the head I was in and from the 1st-23rd of July 2011, I have been on this historical free market-place called Glasgow, to study this relationship between inner beasts, dinner and the wealth of nations.

On July 22nd, I will take the responsibility of being a dinner-distributing beast very literally and host a farewell-reception where I will share a bite to eat with you. A bite, that is off courseobtained, by adressing myself to the self-interest of local butchers, brewers and bakers.

Sincerely!

The White Bear

While I have been here I have met with professors, vegans, artists, hairdressers, marchers, protestors, radicals, tourists, bloggers and reverends – and when I return to the back of the mind on the 23rd, I will put together a video-diary form my experiences on this free market. If you feel there are some things that need to be said in this diary, and if you would like to say them, please don’t hesitate to contact me, on nottothinkof@thewhitebear.info – You can also check out the website www.thewhitebear.info, for more information about the project.

One day after The Macdonald Sisters performed live at the CCA to a full house Jarvis Cocker opened his BBC radio 6 ‘Sunday Service’ with their track Horo Bhodachain (Horo wee old man). For non Gaelic speakers Cocker�s eerie translation is particularly enlightening.

Here is a link http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00w4gs9/Jarvis_Cockers_Sunday_Service_Jarvis_with_Son_Of_Rambo_Director_Garth_Jennings

An arts community does well in adding clarity to the goings on within places such as the CCA, and whilst shining a more well balanced light on the activities the organisation centres on, this blogging-lark will produce an editorial front for how the Centre for Contemporary Art functions � as a whole!

So, without further ado this is the voice of a Front of House employee � a voice for the men and women dressed in black to blend in with the building�s surroundings. It happens everywhere you go: someone wandering in a gallery or hovering along the line of people awaiting entry to a venue, counting your presence, giving you a smile and handing you a leaflet.

Many of us have done this for some time and, whilst some of us use the form employment in transition from one place to another, others enjoy their well-valued place within the structure of the building as well as the programme! More than a few of us too have other jobs, some of us as artists or art historians, actors, curators and organisers. We construct a rapport with one another through commonality: rather like the realisation of two people liking the same sort of food and being able to talk about the many different ways it can be made. We then often work together in other forms creatively and supportively. It is a network that enables a more engaged form of minimum waged employment. There�s a lot of give and just as much take � right from the directorial top to the multifaceted bottom� but what you have to realise is that the CCA�s architecture is uncannily upside down! And, if it came to point � as front of house staff are there for security too � in the event of a fire we would lead you upstairs if necessary, past the office, and out on to the top of the building. So yes, we function just as much from the bottom as we do from the top!

It’s a creative whole that works through partnerships between individuals that frequent the building as well as the creative businesses hiring the offices, and others that contribute and help fund the CCA programme. We�re all for development � and we�re all standing together in the face of re-adjustments in funding ready to offer more profound ways of accessing our resource giving you more opportunity to engage. Just wait and see what we have planned for the resource area in reception!

And keep informed with the blog here too, over coming weeks there�ll be updates on different the out-of-CCA activities us Front of House people get up to!!

One month into the new year and we’re busy programming away to give you some top notch exhibitions, screenings, performances and events well into 2010 and beyond.� As we can’t always be relied upon to quench the diverse appetites of you, our informed, intellectual audience (flattery will get us everywhere… we hope…), the question that’s always playing on our minds is ‘what would you like to see?’� So, we’d love to hear from you to see what you’re interested in and what you’d like to see later this year at CCA.� Answers on a postcard to…

Just to keep everyone informed, CCA will be closing its doors for the festive season on Christmas Eve at 6pm.� We will then reopen on Tuesday 5 January 2010, from 10am (gallery from 11am as usual).

We would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and thank you for supporting us in 2009 – we look forward to seeing you again in the New Year!

From all at CCA

This week we hope to start clearing a piece of land generously loaned to us by Westthorn Allotments in the east end of Glasgow. The ground is plagued with Japanese hogweed but if we clear it then we have a patch of land the size of six allotments in which we can begin workshops, plant out raised beds and think of raising bees. It’s a big task and though we have some volunteers, courtesy of BTCV, we are looking for more. If you are interested in getting involved then email us through our contact page.