Approaches to Fieldwork; Overt Research

The Overt Research approach is an example of incidental practice (see below). It was developed as a response to the context of scientific and technological vision and the landscapes and infrastructures that have emerged in relation to this, and provided different forms of access to researchers and the public to sites in the UK that were otherwise hidden in plain sight.

The initial project was developed in 2008-9, and can be understood through three phases. The first stage is a method of investigation that uses openly available digital information and published materials about sites of interest. This material is supplemented by expertise offered from a wide range of collaborators who may have knowledge of a site or its history. We include information that might be accessible to the public, but not in circulation – including from academic research or activists and urban explorers.

Secondly, we undertook fieldwork, visiting sites, counter mapping both the corporate and military complex in plain sight.  To do this, we worked in the field documenting these sites in person. We approach sites openly, identify ourselves, and follow legal advice at the time.

Our fieldwork as a physical investigation revealed how scientific and related sites appeared to or are presented to the public, hidden in plain sight from unwanted attention. Whilst uncovering gaps between the physical and the digital realm, this work challenged the publics knowledge of these sites and places, and the infrastructures of power that go unnoticed in everyday life.

Finally, we published this material, either as documentation online, in exhibitions displays or through a process of archiving and making available entire activists archives of site of specific interest. 

We included in this approach a radical form of educational engagement, in which we undertake a form of spatiotemporal excursion. We named these ‘Critical Excursions’. These were organised bus tours that take the public to visit sites in a curated form – including formerly classified video and moving image materials being played en route . Our last tour was in 2012, with Experimental Ruins, which was sponsored by National Lottery, Museum of London, and covered in Art Monthly in the article ‘A Letter from the M25’. 

The Overt Research Project was initiated by Neal White with Steve Rowell (Center for Land Use Interpretation) and Lisa Haskel, all of Office of Experiments. It was supported by our associate at UCL, Prof Gail Davies (now Exeter), and was co-curated with Arts Catalyst’ Nicola Triscott, Helen Sloan of SCAN and The John Hansard Gallery.  The first phase was carried out with some support from Bournemouth University. A Field Guide to the South West, Project Database covered the first stage of the project (to 2012).

Office of Experiments has since developed a number of projects that use incidental practice, if not overt research methods, More information can be found in the Projects archive. Our work within this specific area has responded to changes in context, in particular in relation to documenting infrastructure etc and protest, that mark the heating up of the Cold War,  since we started in 2008-9.

Overt Research / Fieldwork is a form of incidental practice that was developed as a method for exploring contemporary sites that have operated within and across the techno-scientific and military-industrial complex.

Incidental practice was a socially engaged process developed by Artist Placement Group (1966-89), where an artist can become incidental to society, or in which ‘the context is half the work’. Office of Experiments is in itself an example of this idea, and was for some time based at Flat Time House (2006-7), the former home and archive of John Latham, co-founder of APG in Peckham. Neal White was a member of O+I / APG and is co-founder of the Incidental Unit.