The Practice of Public Art

A page with a few publications about theory and practice of public art.
1) Book: No Room to Move: Radical Art and the Regenerate City
2) Book: The Practice of Public Art
3) Publication : Open

1) No Room to Move: Radical Art and the Regenerate City

Copied from: mute

As the Creative City model for urban regeneration founders on the rocks of the recession, and the New Labour public art commissioning frenzy it triggered recedes, Anthony Iles and Josephine Berry Slater take stock of an era of highly instrumentalised public art making. Focusing on artists and consultants who have engaged critically with the exclusionary politics of urban regeneration, their analysis locates such practice within a schematic history of urban development’s neoliberal mode. Breaking down into a report and collection of interviews, this investigation consistently focuses on the possibility and forms of critical public art within a regime that fetishises ‘creativity’ whilst systematically destroying the preconditions for it in its pursuit of capital accumulation. How, they ask, is critical art shaped by its interaction with this aspect of biopolitical governance?

Content:

1. No Room to Move: Radical Art and the Regenerate City
2. Interview with Alberto Duman
3. Interview with Freee
4. Interview with Nils Norman
5. Interview with Laura Oldfield Ford
6. Interview with Roman Vasseur

subject: Art | Cultural Industries | New Enclosures | Patronage | Site-Specific | Socially Engaged

2) The Practice of Public Art

A recent anthology about the fine art discipline of public art. A very good resource for theory, practice and history, although many essays are about the United States.

Cartiere, C. and Willis, S. (2008). The practice of public art. London: Routledge.

A Public art definition  (p15) or working definition: “there are recognised directions within public art practice that serve to define the field:
Public art is art outside of museums and galleries and must fit within at least one of the following categories:
1. in a place accessible or visible to the public: in public
2. concerned with or affecting the community or individuals: public interest
3. maintained for or used by the community or individuals: public place
4. paid for by the public: publicly funded”

I would consider the University grounds a semi-public place, but taken that aside, the SoundUnit ticks 4 boxes!

3) Open

Cahier on Art and the Public Domain

A critical platform for discussions of theory and practice:
Published by SKOR, a Dutch organisation which develops and realises art projects in public space.
Some articles are online available:

http://www.skor.nl/set-635-en.html

“Open is a cahier that reflects upon contemporary public space from a cultural perspective. Through a thematic investigation into the changing conditions of public space and through new ideas relating to this space, Open aims to make a structural contribution to the development of theories about these subjects and to function as a platform for reflection on socio-cultural and artistic practices.

Open wants to create and stimulate autonomous and experimental ideas concerning art and the public domain. Theme issues have featured such subjects as security, memory, visibility, sound, tolerance, hybrid space, cultural freedom, the rise of informal media, art as a public issue and manufacturability. In addition to essays and more project-related texts, Open also includes book reviews and interviews with artists and theorists.”

Pavilions and Biennales

In my proposal statement I mentioned that I wanted to create a sort of pavilion. I saw this in terms of a satellite, as something that is on the periphery of something else but is at the same time dependent on  it. A site somewhere between the ‘artworld’ and the rest of the universe. A place where artists can experiment with what it means to bring your work out into the open, the public sphere. The physical and organisational context behind the exhibited work are a vital ingredient in our experience of art. Today it is easy to publicise your work on the internet but how does it relate to the physical world?

Lets take a leap in scale and have a look at the biennale as an exhibition platform. Biennales are an exhibition format that bring many satellites, many pavilions from a global artworld, together in what is perceived to be a centre of culture. These centres, usually the big cities, become exposed to the vibrant new ideas from the outside, the underground or sub-cultures. They transform, modify and integrate these new ideas into the mainstream. At the same time the satellites take something from the mainstream back home. A cross pollination or is it a way to manure the field, to stay in an agricultural analogy. Today the internet plays a vital role in bringing these events together, and to distribute its content and experiences. It is the multilayered aspect of the digital and tactile experience that makes art today what it is.

Have a look at a current biennale:

—-

Amsterdam Biennale 2009

Because it wasn’t there before… http://www.mediamatic.net/page/97484

The Amsterdam Biennale 2009 presents the underground art scene from all over the world. More than thirty international curators from the Mediamatic network provide their view of contemporary art in their city.

The Biennale is an exhibition in progress. At the opening, the 16th of October at 20.00 hrs, the pavilions of Kabul, Naples, Amsterdam, Melbourne, Belgrade, Tallinn and Brooklyn will be on show. Till 13th of December every week new city pavilions will be built. So during that period, there will be an opening every week.

16 Oct 2009 13 Dec 2009

Mediamatic Bank Mediamatic Bank Vijzelstraat 68 1017 HL Amsterdam, +31206389901 www.mediamatic.net (view on map)

By

 

Mediamatic Foundation Mediamatic Foundation

Audience interaction?

Last week I gave a talk at the University. One of the questions and reoccurring themes is about the way this sculpture will be used.

The site of the sculpture at the left side of the entrance to the Art Dep. building is a place where students hang out it its nice weather. I wanted to keep that open use and extend it to create a place where people can also make something public, present something. A sculpture that can also be seen as a pavilion, but without the roof.

I was influenced by the notion of the Thing,  (Ting or Ding). The Oxford Dictionary gives a range of senses: “Origin: Old English, of Germanic origin (…). Early senses included ‘meeting’ and ‘matter’, ‘concern’, as well as ‘inanimate objects’.” The Thing in the old sense refered to the concerns that would bring people together because it devides them. An archaic meeting to discuss and decide. Today variations of this word are still used for the places where these meetings are or where held. For instance Tynwald Hill in the Isle of Man. There are also examples of places where these meetings where held under significant trees. [See Latour, B., & Weibel, P. (Eds.). (2005). Making Things Public, Atmospheres of Democracy. Karlsruhe: ZKM Centre for Art and Media. Chapter 4.]

My idea was then to use the notion of a special place where people would gather to make things public, as an ‘artwork’. In this case I am not extenting the rol of the artist towards curation but towards architecture.

The question for the owner, the University, is then how is it going to be managed? I hope the use will evolve organically, not only from the visual art, but also from dance, theatre and poetry performance. Meetings of any (unforseen) kind.

The question for the students is then to come up with ideas. While its not build yet this blog could be used to drop in your ideas.

The notion of the ting also relates to the notion of the public sphere:

The public sphere is an area in social life where people can get together and freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action. It is “a discursive space in which individuals and groups congregate to discuss matters of mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common judgment.”^[1] The public sphere can be seen as “a theater in modern societies in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk”^[2] and “a realm of social life in which public opinion can be formed”.^[3]

The public sphere mediates between the “private sphere” and the “Sphere of Public Authority”,^[4] “The private sphere comprised civil society in the narrower sense, that is to say, the realm of commodity exchange and of social labor.”^[5] Whereas the “Sphere of Public Authority” dealt with the State, or realm of the police, and the ruling class.^[5] The public sphere crossed over both these realms and “Through the vehicle of public opinion it put the state in touch with the needs of society.”^[6] “This area is conceptually distinct from the state: it [is] a site for the production and circulation of discourses that can in principle be critical of the state.”^[7] The public sphere ‘is also distinct from the official economy; it is not an arena of market relations but rather one of discursive relations, a theater for debating and deliberating rather than for buying and selling.”^[7] These distinctions between “state apparatuses, economic markets, and democratic associations…are essential to democratic theory.”^[8] The people themselves came to see the public sphere as a regulatory institution against the authority of the state.^[9] The study of the public sphere centers on the idea of participatory democracy, and how public opinion becomes political action.

The basic belief in public sphere theory is that political action is steered by the public sphere, and that the only legitimate governments are those that listen to the public sphere.^[10] “Democratic governance rests on the capacity of and opportunity for citizens to engage in enlightened debate”.^[11] Much of the debate over the public sphere involves what is the basic theoretical structure of the public sphere, how information is deliberated in the public sphere, and what influence the public sphere has over society.

source: Wikipedia and see also: Habermas, Jürgen (1962, English Translation 1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-58108-6.