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Nonee! Every Sunday!
Informed by our interests and research, Archie McIver and I created “Nonee” to establish a group of like-minded artists. The purpose is to aid our personal art practice - during and outside of Nonee - as well as participate in communal art practice at Nonee. The word Nonee derives from a Finnish non-word, spelled Non-ee or Nonni, it is a kind of interjection, a beginning, or an ending, a sort of punctuation, like a comma or semi-colon. It can be spoken as a sound used to carry pitch/emotion, i.e. for exclamation or disappointment.
Nonee punctuates one’s life, week by week. Every Sunday, Nonee meets in the early afternoon at varying locations, with a varying program of activities. We have hosted this weekly artist group every Sunday for at least 2 hours, since January 27th, 2019. That is 14 Nonees to date. In December 2018, we recognised that an artist community was missing from our practice. Nonee exists to found community and profit from its yield. We initially thought of hosting a poetry group, the format has transformed into something we could not have created without retrospection. Our manifesto calls to Beuys, Klee, Hegel, Horney, Jung for guidance."
Written Account from Archie & Mhairi, May 2019.
Start
Process
Ideal
The starting point would be the discussion Archie and I had last year; there we recognised our common interest in pursuing an ideal, though we were equally unsure of how to reach it. We established Nonee as a process headed towards the unchanging ideal of beauty, creation, company, all that exists opposed to emptiness, lack of direction. Nonee was to be a flexible vehicle, changeable and hopefully always improving.
Presently, Archie and I decide a program of activities in advance of each coming Sunday. The group arrives at the location, notified by social media (we only used posters in DJCAD until March, Facebook and Instagram have improved our reach). We carry through activities that were successful, the string of events exists as a conversation carried through and continued every week. This calls to our interest in lineage, development, creation and passing from past to present to future.
It is a matter of teaching others how to walk along thin invisible wires, stretched out in the darkness, trying to penetrate an unknown dimension.’
Paul Klee
Nonee Manifesto
The manifesto will be a working Axiom.
Start – Good will – the acceptance of responsibility, having sisu ( Sisu is a special strength and persistent determination and resolve to continue and overcome in the moment of adversity…an almost magical quality, a combination of stamina, perseverance, courage, and determination held in reserve for hard times.) – action – blind action and responding to material/immaterial properties.
Process - Is walking ‘along thin invisible wires, stretched out in the darkness’, uncertainty, potential failure, form-making. Plasticity. Nonee is the process. Acknowledging the debt we owe to our ancestors, the responsibility we have to our successors to form-re-form sacrifice ourselves for our ancestor’s structures and to develop them for our successors. It is a ritual - Weekly reset - making habit - without fail - punctuating life - helping to see larger structure.
The Ideal is the compass direction, that which moves us ‘forwards’, in any direction, but importantly in A direction. - manifestation of human freedom – beauty according to Hegel, warmth according to Beuys. How pleasant and interesting can this be? (it’s good if it’s unattainable because then we always have an aim)
Nonee is
- A weekly curated creative platform to share practice including poetry literature music performance visual art.
-Accessible: all you need are your faculties, this makes it portable, for a changing location weekly.
-Being taught by people (philosophers, artists, historical figures). Letting people teach us.
-A mindful weekly ritual – punctuating life
-Experimenting with collaborative work, the middle ground or grey area for practice type research: an exploration of ideas through actions
Nonee aims
-To be worthy of teaching.
-To be worthy of what we want/have.
-To teach.
-To teach via experience, and to teach as collaboration, to teach ourselves.
-To celebrate human creation, form-making (beuys). We have an inherent capacity to create ourselves, others, the world we live in.
-To ‘Fill emptiness of reality with human endeavour’ – Paul Klee
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