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andrew banister, dr. barnardo, david blamey, nicholas bolton, will bradley, jemima & dolly brown, pavel buchler, cornford & cross, adam dant, mark dickenson, chris evans, martin fletcher, matthew luck galpin, margarita gluzberg, andrew grassie, duncan hamilton, matthew higgs, doris kroth, leeds 13, duncan mclaren, hayley newman, tom o'sullivan & joanne tatham, cath pearson, helen robertson, alun rowlands, giorgio sadotti, ken stanton, fergal stapleton, matthew thompson, padraig timoney, sarah tripp, jamie wagg, christopher warmington, simon warren, denise webber, ian whittlesea, caroline woodley.

AR: Lets begin at the beginning. The first time I heard about dot was when I got a letter in March 1999. It described a yearlong cumulative project. This invitation offered the use of the 'facilities of the project: duration, site, postal address, telephone number, e-mail etc. as a means for the production and /or dissemination of an artwork.' How did this all start? What was the origin of dot?

EP: I wanted to do something vague, something that would take its own shape and continually refine its terms. I do this with other work, but it is easy for me to work provisionally upon things I make alone. I wanted to see if I could precipitate a project, including a large number of other artists that would (maybe) establish its own sense as it went along. This interested me because it seemed somewhat antithetical to the taxonomical/thematising strategies of conventional curatorial practice.The conditions of dot were mainly precipitated by material necessity: a small amount of space, a manageable commitment of time/duration etc. My plan was to adopt these 'accidental' terms, and offer them to other artists to use. Because these terms were determined by a quite rudimentary set of actual and economic factors (the conditions of my studio, the time I am able to spend there...) they did not amount to a great deal of sense, or rather they didn't incite particular & controlled uses. I did my best to sustain this dumbness: in offering the project to other artists I attempted to say as little as possible about what I imagined the uses might be. I wanted to see what would happen.

MD: You have described a set of accidental parameters in which dot existed, the operation sounds like it was very much a one-man band. If the actuality of working alone and without public funding, determined dots physical dimensions (size of studio), and its public accessibility (spare time to open) did these conditions also effect or determine which artists were invited to make use of the facilities?

E.P: I wanted to avoid making choices about artists - I was a little uncomfortable about the contingent responsibilities. It would be disingenuous to claim that I didn't exert choice, but I suppose I softened this procedure up by being as casual as possible about it. In the same way that the terms of the project were determined by my own working conditions, the initial scope of the participants was largely dependant upon pre-existing social and working relationships. I asked friends; other artists working in the yard; artists I was in shows with; artists I met through teaching etc. Once the project got underway this scope expanded; and relied less upon my own circles of movement. The material that was accumulating at the project increasingly began to lend it a particular shape, and in so doing incited its own interest and audience. It also precipitated requests and suggestions for participation: visitors would often respond to the material by referencing their own practices or the work of other artists (e.g. Dick Hogg suggested Chris Warmington). I followed up all such suggestions and requests. In this way, as the project proceeded, its initiating terms were gradually reconfigured by the contributions. (I observed and facilitated these affects with some relief).

A.R: The contributions you received represented a diversity of activities, agencies and collaborations. They have vying strategies that share social and political approaches towards broader notions of the production and dissemination of artwork. Chris Evans' 'The UK Arts Board Agency', which actively intercedes, mediates and bids to funding bodies, on behalf of artists, offers its service from within the archive. Adam Dant has deposited a number of 'The Donald Parsnips Daily Journal' that he was distributing between 1996-200. Cornford & Cross and Martin Fletcher offer a 'Problem Solving Agency' and a 'Home Fitness Gym' respectively. This tertiary sector praxis is adequately housed within the soft system of catalogue storage alongside Christopher Warmington's neurosis-filled career folders, Dave Beech's torturing of artists and Andrew Grassie's '100 recently discovered and previously unknown shapes'. It would seem from the material collected that the project developed into a variously public, active, operational and informal archive albeit open within your spare time.

E.P: Although the conditions that determined the constraints for dot were somewhat outside of any control, I did privately consider what responses they might be likely to incite. One of the possibilities I was particularly interested in, was the employment of the facilities provided by dot, in order to document/allow access to ongoing artworks conducted via some kind of social interaction. A number of the pieces you mentioned did use dot to this end.

A.R: It seems quite apt that you describe dot as a project. A project, in my mind, is defined as being an independent construction indicating a separate chronology and set of subjective conditions. The term project stands for that inevitable deficiency, denoting only the intention of a scheme that, long term, meanders from revision to revision. At various times Arthur R. Rose has been considered as a project space in line with this definition. I think it has endeavoured to be a support system that discerns patterns, offered alternative models, posed questions, made suggestions and strived to make exhibitions more than the sum of the parts. It is quite apparent that dot was, itself, implicit in addressing similar structures by which we personally engage and recognize art. As a project it was almost governed by the rules outlined by some of the work and activities it housed. In arriving at what may be loosely described as an archive did you seek other exterior models as examples? Perhaps, I'm thinking here of Marcel Broodthaer's mutating museum operating from within the confines of his apartment. Although different in intention to dot and Snowballing his Musee d'Art Siecle also fractured any self-evident taxonomy and hierarchy. And, similarly to dot, which closed on one evening and reopened as Snowballing the very next day, Broodthaers fictional museum decamped and moved to an alternative space (transporting its guests by bus) within 24 hours. This morphology and mobility conflates the site of production with that of reception and as a model sidles up alongside informal, evolving and temporal activities offering them a platform. How did you see the transition from the durational dot to the itinerant Snowballing?

E.P: My use of the word 'project' was deliberate. Your own expansion upon this term sums up why, very effectively; and my only qualification of this would be that dot was probably a less scholarly project than that of Arthur R Rose as you describe it. Maybe again this characteristic can be traced to the differing conditions of the projects - I worked as a sole coordinator. There was little opportunity for the kind of discussion and accountability that collaboration supports and requires.I think that the material activity of realising dot was one that postponed summative analysis. It did involve a lot of mundane organisational discussion with individual artists, and of course such discussions frequently examine and determine issues crucial to the production & reception of the work. But this attention was always at a level of detail, and I certainly never felt able to critically survey the project. I always felt that it would be an important thing to do, but later on, maybe retrospectively. This delay was not only precipitated my role as sole organiser, but was also led by the form and extent of the project. It was quite difficult to think about in its entirety. I actually found it difficult to remember all the works involved in the project at the same time. I think that this was part of the pleasure of the archive for me, that it could not sustain an (visual) aspect or survey; there could be no sovereign and rationalising observation. I knew the material quite well, but experiencing it always depended upon a series of sequential encounters. For a visitor, I imagine that this condition must have been exaggerated, in as much as it might be difficult to encounter all the works within a visit, let alone recall them. I hope that the organisational structure of the archive did not proxy for such an overview, although I cannot be sure that it did not. I tried to keep the archive very soft as a rationalising system.

I adopted it to organise the material for access, which it just about managed to do, but I think it did also warp, adapt, and at points fail in attempting to encompass the diverse inclusions. Your reference to Broodthaers is very relevant to this, inasmuch as the mischief he makes with the taxonomy of the Museum is a very clear precedent. The temporality of the Musee d'Art Siecle as an activity is also important, and does help me think through the transition of the dot project into the snowballing document. I have seen elements of the Musee... on display in various Museums and they are always odd to witness. The incorporation of these artefacts whose subject is the museum, into the museum is a bit morbid/comic. They seem as opaque as village stocks: the cartoon-trace of some heated event. (I should have thought more about this before.)

Snowballing is a retrospective document of dot. Amongst other things it offered an opportunity for the kind of reflection that the practice of dot had postponed. However the altered conditions that permitted this critical aspect in turn altered the material. It did not seem so interesting then.

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