Expansion and development THIS BABY DOLL WILL BE A JUNKIE

The project explores the use of art to affect social change. Specifically, it focuses on representations of female junkies, one of the most vilified marginal groups in society, in an effort to challenge preconceptions, by displaying, in the public domain, events that are generally concealed. THIS BABY DOLL WILL BE A JUNKIE [TBDWBAJ] is an interdisciplinary `community art` intervention incorporating audio-visual portraits of female drug addicts living in Europe. The project consists of several stages: A preparatory stage including consultations with relevant experts; Interviews are conducted with each inmate in the group, to absorb the specific facts of her background. These facts are collated and presented using keywords and a specially prepared `matrix`, thereby distilling a biography devoid of overt emotional content. The participant checks this account and records it on audiotape. Simultaneously with this process, the women produce identical porcelain dolls, which will serve as the `receptacles` for the audiotapes. The audiotapes are inserted into the dolls, each of which is labelled with a name and the project website. The Baby Dolls are displayed for some time in an art institution. Each Baby Doll is then `dropped` at a predetermined location in the public space, somewhere of a certain resonance for those concerned, and abandoned to an unknown fate. The biographies are preserved in the project documentation and online. In each country, the project concludes with an Expert Meeting (recorded and documented) attended by diverse academics, politicians, and other interested parties. Collaboration is a core element of my artistic work at several levels: first, in working with female addicts who are being held in detention facilities; second, in my close cooperation with a wide range of related institutions; third, through programming and debate in the institutional cultural arena; and finally, through my intervention in the public domain. The use of different distribution channels and forms of disclosure in the public domain (online archives, debate) is not only an important vehicle in making my work known to a general public - that is, the members of political society but it also helps to connect target groups that would not otherwise have any contact, and confront them with each other. The debates broach themes such as the quality of democracy in a society whose public space is `purged` of undesirable elements, the relationship between intuitive artistic practice and precise artistic action, and the implications of the knowledge generated by TBDWBAJ for other forms of community art intervention.

As a portrait of a marginalised social group the art and research project Development and Elaboration and: THIS BABY DOLL WILL BE A JUNKIE (TBDWBAJ) challenges people to engage with the phenomenon of outcasts. It presents a wealth of material generated by art projects conducted with female drug addicts in European prisons and treatment facilities, and organises and contextualises the findings. This approach reveals the terms and conditions that are reinforced and perpetuated by social processes, and by foregrounding these in this research seeks to raise awareness that this is clearly an issue and matter of concern to the general public. In texts and images the art research documents the biographic and artistic work with detainees, the correspondence involved, the art interventions in isolated, public, and cultural spaces, as well as the transcripts, reflections on, and the results of exchanges with a wide range of specialists and experts from the disciplines involved1. The intensive cooperation between project leader, research assistant Nina Glockner and visitor Prof. Dr. Elke Bippus on one hand contributed to the rapprochement of art and science and on the other hand brought about a critical examination of the relationship between art practice and art theory. The analysis of the research questions resulted in an elaboration or re-definition of the concept of art. For TBDWBAJ, artistic research in the regular program of a Science Fund meant the expansion and deepening of the general and specific interest in the project, which greatly enhanced the reputation and publicity of this research. The PEEK promotion of the extreme (gender)specific theming of a marginalised society has had a positive effect in many places; the work also convinced Artistic Research sceptics of the value of artistic research. In several TBDWBAJ seminars and readings abroad, the Austrian FWF initiative PEEK was experienced as exemplary. 1 Book: THIS BABY DOLL WILL BE A JUNKIE Report of an Art and Research Project on Addiction and Spaces of Violence Introduction: Peter Weibel Research Associate: Nina Glockner; Editor: Jutta Kaussen; Translation: Gloria & Isaac Custance; Photographs: Luuk Kramer and others; Graphic Design: Studio Joost Grootens/ Joost Grootens, Silke Koeck, Julie da Silva Published as book and e-book at De Gruyter in Edition Angewandte, 2018 Web archive: OUTCAST REGISTRATION Research Associate: Nina Glockner; Editor: Jutta Kaussen; Translation: Gloria & Isaac Custance; Beverley Jackson; Website Design: Thonik, Milena Spaan; Website Development Ru Nacken Published as Web Archive www.outcastregistration.com