public art lecture

Simplified aspects

you’re asked to do something on the margin: you don’t get the main space, you’re put in the corner. Vito Acconci

Essentialising communities (Miwon Kwon)

Confining art to set agendas

Artist as Ethnographer (Hal Foster/ Miwon Kwon)

Exploitation of participants. Grant Kestler / Miwon Kwon

Education and improvement over solidarity

Censorship Claire Doherty

How does public art confront darker or more painful complicated considerations and not miss opportunities to act in solidarity? Grant Kester

Whose history is represented?

The lure of the local (Lucy Lippard) nostalgic versions of place.

Gentrification, displacement, cleaning up and the drive for marketing of place - Malcolm Miles/ Roselyn Deutche/ Rebecca Solnit/ Ed Soja

“Certainly site-specific art can lead to the unearthing of repressed histories, provide support for greater visibility of marginalized groups and issues, and initiate the

re(dis)covery of 'minor' places so far ignored by the dominant culture. But inasmuch as the current socio-economic order thrives on the (artificial) production and the (mass)

consumption of difference (for difference’s sake), the siting of art in 'real' places can also be a means to extract the social and historical dimensions out of places to variously serve the thematic drive of an artist, satisfy institutional demographic profiles, or fulfill the fiscal

needs of a city.”  

Miwon Kwon  “ One Place After Another”

"when you are asked to do a public art project, you're asked to do something that's peripheral to the building designed by the architect; you're asked to do

something on the margin; you don't get the main space, you're put in the corner. And sometimes it's worse than that; we've been working a long time on a project where architects are saying things like, "well, we need some art overlay here." So the artist is asked to provide something like paint, or wall paper, or a carpet.

Or sometimes not even that; some architects- maybe understandably- want their walls and floors to be left alone, untampered with; so, what they want is floating

art, maybe an 'art float' separate from their walls, from their floor. As a public artist, your're asked to do something extra, something unnecessary. The ticket counters have been designed, the transfer corridors have been designed, all of the airport that's actually needed and usable has already been designed by the architect; yet the city has a One Percent for Art law, so art has to come in at the last minute, like a deux ex machina, like an architect's nightmare.".........There

shouldn't be a separate field called public art, there should be only architecture and landscape architecture projects, that everyone - including so-called artists

can apply for.

From an Interview with Vito Acconci on Art Architecture, Arvada, and Storefront in Tom Finklepearl's Dialogues in Public Art, pp175. MIT press, 2000.

“Public art excludes no media, materials, or process. It can require years of planning, consultation and approval to develop, or it can occur spontaneously

and unsanctioned. It can be momentary or lasting. It can at once excavate the past and envision the future. With a broadening of the conception of public, it can happen at almost any time, with anyone, and virtually anywhere…even in

galleries and museums and other private settings. Public art is always art.”   Patricia C. Philips

Public art operates in the terrain between the private and the political, the term public may apply to any process or forum of mediation between the individuals and the social structure in which the individual exists. A negotiation between the articulation of personal and collective identity, art which engages with the notion of the public might begin to question or activate the subject and the subjective response to these relative notions of publicness, history, community, identity and meaning. Making the activity of personal and community identity formation public, creating spaces or structures where the private might interact with respond to and articulate the formation of identity within the public realm.

Seamus Nolan 2008 Public art operates in the terrain between the private and the political, the term public may apply to any process or forum of mediation between the individuals and the social structure in which the individual exists.

Seamus Nolan 2008

Levels of Engagement / Types of Practice

Artists who make work with little/no involvement of others (technical specialists)

Artists who invite participation

Artists who embed themselves within the social fabric of a city or place.

Artists who work from a collaborative basis – effecting a kind of social sculpture.

Artists who act as investigators/ researchers/ anthropologists observing, mapping or tracking aspects of place or communities.

http://www.dublindocklands.ie/index.jsp?pID=94&nID=105&aID=424

http://www.spireofdublin.com/

http://www.irish-architecture.com/buildings_ireland/dublin/northcity/oconnell_street/spire_competition/introduction.html

One off commissions Ad hoc – sporadic – un-systemised developed in association – building, memorial, public demand, landmark and place-making, problematic.

(the spire, memorial in Merrrion square, gifted – Norma Smurfit, budgets fail to match ambition, public engagement and place making

http://trespass-trespass.blogspot.com/

http://culturstruction.wordpress.com/

http://www.michellebrowne.net/

http://bodiesandbuildings.blogspot.com/2008/10/three-1-excerpts-from-film.html

Artists Driven

Grass roots – ground-up Research based –mobile and practice building. not dependent on engagement or systems of support Poorly funded “DIY” type response to existing structures

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/cominfo/arts/groundup/index.html

http://incontext.southdublin.ie/

http://www.wicklow.ie/Apps/WicklowBeta/Arts/Overview.aspx

Programmatic The accumulation of per-cent for art monies, Potential for a range of briefs, across art from, potential of good project

support , Can be time-based and allow for a number of staggered Collation of monies can raise expectations of “results” based outcomes Considerations and ethical concerns related to place and community

Critical Contexts – International

To create an international correspondence section for the website withorganisations, artists, curators and policy makers

Vagabond Reviews has been commissioned by PublicArt.ie to revisit researchwhich they were commissioned to undertake by DCC and the Open SpacesProgramme.

Teddy Cruz of Estudio Teddy Cruz and Associate Professor in Public Culture and Urbanism in the Visual Arts Department at UCSD in San Diego. We would like to include Teddy Cruz because of his uncommon emphasis on the notion of architectural practice as a question of interrogating the political economy of a particular territory, in his case the border area between San Diego and Tijuana. http://visarts.ucsd.edu/node/view/491/321

1. http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/4072/venice-architecture-biennale-08-estudio-teddy-cruz.html

2. 2. Raqs Media Collective based in Delhi at Sarai, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies which they co-founded in 2000. Raqs are particularly good at a sort of inter-disciplinary and poetic critique of the urban and evoking the idea of the global city.

3. http://www.raqsmediacollective.net/4.

3. STROOM, because you mentioned them as of interest to you and we thought we should have at least 1 good European example of an organization speaking to art and urbanism in our repertoire,Another possibility here is the Foundation for Art and Public Space (SKOR) in Amsterdam. This is an example of a public art institution that develops art projects in relation to public spaces. They are also responsible for the impressive, a journal reflecting on contemporary public space.

5. http://www.stroom.nl/index_en.php 6. http://www.skor.nl/set-actueel-nl.html

Practical Information

This section provides practical information on Funding and the Commissioning Process.It also contains a section of artists' experiences recorded on video and advice on specific elements relating to practice.

Advice

Dermot Bolger – Making a Proposal Jim Mansfield – Architecture, Sculpture and EngineeringAnnette Moloney – Commissioner's PerspectiveAlan Phelan – Advice for Visual ArtistsAisling Prior – Commissioner's /Curator's PerspectiveRuairí Ó'Cuív – Commissioner's PerspectiveIan Wilson – Making a Proposal

Practical Information

Experiences:Video interviews with artists, commissioners and curatorsspeaking about their personalperspective of working on public art commissions.

Contributors include:Gary Coyle, John Byrne, Michelle Browne, PatriciaMcKenna, Theresa Nanigian,Pamela Wells, Deirdre O'Mahony, Aisling Prior, SeanTaylor

Critical ContextsIncludes new writing, existing texts and adapted essays

Including Texts from:Claire Bishop – Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics

– The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its DiscontentsDragan Klaic – Artistic Intervention Affirm Public SpaceGemma Tipton – Mapping MemoriesMegs Morley - UntitledAlice Lyons – For Whom_Commissioning?Ailbhe Murphy Nathalie Weadick – What are we?Jessica Foley – The Social Jacques Ranciere – Aesthetic Separation, Aesthetic CommunitySimon Sheikh – In the Place of the Public SpherePatricia C Philips – The Aesthetics of WitnessingClare Doherty – Where Have all the Penguins Gone: Curating the Wrong Place

Critical Contexts – Featured Projects

Critical Contexts – Featured Projects

Critical Contexts – Featured Projects

Insights – Google Maps

Mapping in different ways Public Art in Ireland

Claire Nidecker (Map Maker in Residence for PublicArt.ie)Developing the Google Maps section of the website which will include:Mapping N7 / M7 – Dublin to Portlaoise, 10 - 12 artworks Music and Music/Visual Arts, 6 – 8 artworks/projects nationwideUNIT or Cavan Re-Imagined and Happenings, 6 – 8 artworks/projects(Curated selection) 'Shore', 6 artworks and Photography and Film, 6 artworks

Glossary

Providing explanations of frequently used words, phrases and terms

Steering group: A steering group is a committee of people appointed to represent the concerns of a commission. The role of the steering group is to guide a commission through from the initial briefing stage,selection through to the realisation of the project.

Insights – YouTube Nominated Videos

http://www.create-exchange.ie/archive/?keywords=list_all

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vcrdOP6X_s&feature=channel_page

Paul McAree’s nominationHotel Ballymun