'Frederick Douglass : Witness To Early Scottish Photography' has been published in one of three forthcoming Common Good Study Resource zines produced by Annette Krauss for her exhibition 'A Matter of Precedents' at the Collective, Edinburgh, 2023. Zine 2 pg 77-87
In 2020 I published two texts on Frederick Douglas and his connections to early Scottish Photography (see https://radar.gsa.ac.uk/8900/ and https://radar.gsa.ac.uk/8899/)
The article commissioned and published by the National Galleries of Scotland has been republished in one of three forthcoming Common Good Study Resource zines for the Collective in Edinburgh, 2023 (May 2023).
In summer 2022, Collective presented three new, distinct artist commissions across the City Observatory site and online.
Using the City Observatory site as a springboard, Collective’s programme considered the hidden histories and untold stories relating to our site and wider cultural history. Bringing together new work by Annette Krauss, Ruth Ewan, and Satellites participant Camara Taylor, our summer programme of solo exhibitions and related events reframed and questioned complex figures, movements and systems whose legacies are woven into our collective cultural memory. All three projects were developed with the artists, in some cases over a number of years, to explore how the legacies of the past can be reconsidered and re-presented to help us re-imagine the present and future.
A Matter of Precedents
Artist, educator, and writer Annette Krauss has been working with Collective over several years on A Matter of Precedents, a research project exploring the ‘common good’. Annette’s collaborative work is dedicated to practices of ‘unlearning’ and ‘commoning’, addressing questions of institutional responsibilities, feminism, and privilege.
A Matter of Precedents examined the City Observatory’s status and designation as a ‘common good asset’ and was developed in dialogue with a number of people involved in Collective’s redevelopment of the site, alongside artists and cultural thinkers. The ‘common good’ is a form of collective property, unique to Scotland, comprising buildings, land, structures, and monuments gifted to the people of a specific area. Categorised as ‘common good’, these items are today managed by local councils and their partners for the good of the people.
Developing on Annette’s long-term research on the commons, A Matter of Precedents considered the specificity and lack of visibility of the Scottish commons, particularly in Edinburgh; and draws on Collective’s journey to the City Observatory as a way to study the (imaginative) potential of the ‘common good’ as a particular legal, historically philanthropic, early capitalist anomaly entangled with colonial histories.
In the face of the increasing pressures of commercialisation and privatisation of public space in our cities, A Matter of Precedents sought to understand the obligations, responsibilities, and restrictions around the use of common good items as opportunities for public agency.
A research resource was presented in Collective’s City Observatory Library, with an online presentation launching in 2023. Materials have been brought together to demystify and expose some of the legal mechanisms and institutional processes around publicly owned items.
The resource includes a map of the common good sites in Edinburgh, based on the 2018/19 and 2020/21 Edinburgh City Council Common Good Registers; and interviews with those involved in Collective’s particular activation of the common good, alongside artists and cultural thinkers who have encountered issues surrounding the common good in their own communities and work.
The three zines act as a record of the project, a sort of reader, and as a resource for further study: holding transcripts of recorded conversations, previously published articles, and two new writings. Much of this gathers in printed form the contributions made for a display in the library at Collective which was in place during the summer, whether that be audio interviews or material added to a Study Board, and those offered as part of public walks that happened in May around common good items. Many of the common good statues and buildings connect to histories and figures whose legacies are connect to colonialism. My work has been included to make connections in space/ time between historical figures, especially Frederick Douglass and the Free Church of Scotland.
