Through the Archives

The following is from an article written for the fo(A)rm journal, issue#5 on autonomy (2006) that talks about the history of the Berwick with insights from Berwickians old and new...

Through the Archives
The Berwick Research Institute (BRI) is an artist-run non-profit in Boston
that offers studio space and residencies for artists working in non-traditional
media, in addition to sponsoring noise and experimental music
events, public art projects, and other events around the Boston area.
Overseen by a small staff of volunteers and a board of local artists
and organizers, the Berwick has undergone various transformations
in its 5 year history.

One summer night in 2005, we approached members to contribute to an article for FO A RM 5.We gathered at the Berwick Studios to sort through five years of photos, audio recordings,
posters, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera from the Berwick archive. Each participant was asked to select an object
that they felt spoke to the individual autonomies at work within the art collective.

We received responses in the form of audio interviews, critical analyses, and written memoirs, which were then woven into a
historical narrative by Meg Rotzel, Executive Director of the Berwick.

– Susan Sakash and Dan Hirsch, editors

Berwickian: Andi Sutton, co-curator of Public Art Satellite
Program Item: Berwick Reception Book
Artist: Meg Rotzel
Year: 2000
Medium: hand-bound book with photocopies, contact paper, and years’ worth of comments, email addresses, and show records.

We named our 1,800 square foot space the Berwick Research Institute after the
warehouse we occupied—the Berwick Cake Factory, “home of the whoopee pie.”We added “Research Institute” to the name because we wanted to acknowledge our collective interest in experimentation and process - the unfinished-ness we felt within our individual projects and the work we produced for others.  We liked the idea that we could be a laboratory working towards something useful and inventive.

Berwickian: Maire Elliott, Founding Member, Board
Item: Black & white photograph from the Calvin
Johnson and Ted Leo show (and the Secret Rooftop
Pool)
Artist: Ian
Year: 2000
Medium: photography
I remember the names of everyone in that pool.
Many are still around. It’s the photo that’s missing...

We spent a good portion of our early months figuring out various operating structures to accommodate an open call process for production, and a totally unfunded programmatic structure, other than donations at the door. Working in committee, we tried our hands at non-profit governance, celebrating administrative victories like the creation of our board’s by-laws. We also became proficient in knitting and crocheting to keep warm during endless meetings in our unheated studio.

Hand-crocheted item by Katya Gorker, Founding Member, Board

Three years after the Berwick
opened its doors to artists and audiences, the City of Boston’s Inspectional Services Department (ISD) noticed us, and shut down the building for being in violation of various
codes.

We started an Artist-in-Research Residency and steered all of our efforts into supporting art
that needs time, spaces and a critical audience to complete. This program gave rise to a whole new collection of Berwick-sponsored projects.

AIR artists were chosen by a jury and were provided a studio, stipend, and eight
weeks to work on a project under the auspices of the Berwick’s full attention.
We were looking for artists who were working in contemporary media and
responding to the world around them.

All of these changes and adaptations - transitioning from performance venue to
a studio and residency program, overhauling our organizational structure - took
a lot of effort from a group of artists who had come together as young people
with diverse interests and ideas.These last five years have been productive.We
have learned that collaboration can be difficult, funding is scarce, space is tenuous,
and we can all get tired. Regardless, with our attention shifting from pure
production, Berwickians have become involved in the worlds of temporary public
art, education, and cultural policy, initiatives on housing for artists, state and
local arts organizations, and arts funding agencies.We recognize that, with each
new venture, the Berwick is redefining its relationship to the city and its many
interrelated parts.

The idea of autonomy is something tenuous and a little strange in the context of
an arts organization as collaborative as the Berwick.We are not a gallery, a museum,
a school or an event hall.Nor are we a commercially-driven institution,and
we harbor no aspirations to become one.We are a non-profit that receives
small grants of public money, a group of collaborators and thinkers with
a facility for ideas, making objects or staging performances. Our artists have ranged from orchestras to designers, chefs and architects to dancers, publishers and robot builders, curators to arts administrators. How can these practices be autonomous?


Berwickian: Vaughn Bell,AIR Artist
Item: Excerpt from AIR Report
Artist:Vaughn Bell
Year: 2004
Medium: text, biosphere

The biosphere was not self-sufficient. While
self-contained, it needed an influx of water and care from the outside. I was this channel,
this tether, and I also attempted to present others with the chance to act as caretaker. My act of caring for the biosphere was reciprocal as it also cared for me. As another living body, this green space presented both opportunity and responsibility for its maker and viewer.

Enclosed and sheltered by its own skin, the biosphere was both separate from and dependent on its urban infrastructure, and
entirely dependent upon my own activities of maintenance. At the same time, within the small landscape were processes beyond human control. Brought into a foreign location, the species contained in the biosphere continued on with their own patterns of growth and decay. One day I would see that lichens had grown over a patch of moss; another day that a patch was dying,yet I could not see the changes as they took place.

Berwickians: Carolyn Lambert and Fereshteh Toosi,AIR artists
Item: Excerpt from AIR Report
Artist: Carolyn Lambert
and Fereshteh Toosi
Year: 2004
Medium:text & tea bag

Activities initiated by Berwick AIR residents Carolyn Lambert and Fereshteh Toosi for their project “Tea Party” during June and July 2004 coincided with the Democratic National Convention and addressed the excited and tense atmosphere of Boston at that time. Many activities were performed in costume as members of the Tea Party.

On two occasions, we attended protests organized by the National Lawyers
Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union in response to the Massachusetts
Bay Transportation Authority’s decision to begin bag searches and other security measures on Boston’s public transportation system. At these
political rallies, we distributed custom-designed bags of SecuriTea, “a homegrown blend of the finest fear and intimidation from the District of
Columbia.” These tea bags included the serving suggestion: “Drink this tea when you feel any unwanted symptoms resulting from the ‘war on
terror.’ These include anxiety, agoraphobia, paranoia, and overwhelming feelings of suspicion.”

Our programs have been most successful when the artist and the Berwick community
mutually challenge one another to catalyze new initiatives for both our
individual artists and our organization.We have attempted to carry that spirit of
innovation into our fundraising practices, resulting in one of our most popular
events ever, the Revolving Dinner Party.

Berwickian: Natalie Vinski, Secretary of the Board
Item: Screen-printed map
Artist:Andrew Leonard
Year: 2004
Medium: ink, found manila file folder

This map documents the route of the Berwick’s Revolving Dinner, an annual
fundraising event that was first held in September of 2004. Four groups of 12
guests were led on foot through a circuit of four homes in the Jamaica Plain
neighborhood of Boston. Each house was designed to provide its own distinctive experience comprised of three main elements: art, food, and dialogue.

Berwick Artists in Research contributed to the aesthetic experience of each
home via a site-specific installation and/or performance. Other artists,
Berwickians, and friends offered their homes as stops along the way or volunteered
their services as chefs,walking guides, and performers.