Manifesto Introduction
From BuildingculturesWiki
These are my introductory notes to the Manifesto of Possibilities workshop on 15 February 2007, Birkbeck College.
The following issues, questions and statements came up during the last Building Cultures events in May 2006. We can use these ideas as starting points for today.
The images and quotes will run parallel to my talk and may not relate directly to what I’m saying but you can make your own connections. There are so many projects and experiences of public art (in its widest possible understanding) that I wanted to talk about but that’s for you to do today, so these are just some food for thought. I will also show two documents during the lunch – Simon Poulter’s This is England and documentation about Tower Songs.
Contents |
Changing roles of public art
Histories
- Acknowledging histories of public art and the importance of revisiting, rewriting, navigating and making visible these histories and changes in approaches and understandings of public art. ([Tristram Hunt launched a campaign in the Guardian last year for a monument to commemorate a radical event, rather than regal and military history, such as the race riots of 1919 in Cardiff or the Chartists’ rally of 1848 in Kennington Park)
Types
- Acknowledging the diverse politics, economics and practices of public art. For example, working to a brief, self initiated actions, self-funded, well funded, artist led, participants led, as facilitation, as activism, following instructions, subverting instructions. Often, processes of public art incorporate many of these approaches at different moments.
Time-scales
- The after effects of both temporary and permanent public art.
- How long is ‘long-term’ or ‘permanent’?
- Constant processes of learning, unlearning and relearning
Shifts in practice
- How have the responsibilities of the artists changed towards a sense of responsibility to art and to social change?
- In the context of public art being commissioned in areas of regeneration, there is a shift away from public sculpture to more socially engaged ways of working: [quote anonymous: ‘Developers know they need to involve art projects. They have to think about the social side because that will affect sales. Developers have been doing research into other developments internationally where art plays a part. Using money to work with communities and artists is better value than commissioning a sculpture. Most developers understand that now.’]
Instead of Whiteread’s displacement of void by solid, of brick by concrete, they explore the map, the architect’s model, the formalities of slide presentations, the performance of surveillance and the re-evocation of film by video., Simon Pope in his special section on ‘(un)regenerate art’ in Mute, winter / Spring 2005, page 63.
Today, a new generation of artists are actively engaging with this unappetising postmodern ‘tradition’. Seeking to interrogate, critique or complicate the familiar rituals of public and community art, artists play the roles of urban ethnographers, activists, social historians and even social workers. Social engagement and psychogeographic immersion in the minutiae of the local grows so deep, so richly detailed, that some lose sight of the bigger processes in which artists interventions take place. As social housing is sold off, services cut down, rents raised and actually existing communities displaced, art can seem like the worst kind of beautification, the smoke screen for acts of not so creative destruction, Simon Pope in his special section on ‘(un)regenerate art’ in Mute, Winter / Spring 2005, p. 52.
Public art and urban renewal, regeneration, gentrification
Understanding the context
Art is not about making static things, abstract sculptures etc; through gentrification artists’ power to revalorise devalued space by their physical presence in an area becomes their key contribution to ‘inner city renaissance’. Simon Pope in his special section on ‘(un)regenerate art’ in Mute, Winter / Spring 2005, p. 52.
- Public art commissioning is inherently part of the gentrification process
- Official commissions of public art as part of the ‘regeneration process’ are complicit in pushing out existing cultural activity.
- Importance of understanding diverse notions of ‘community’
- Urban renewal / regeneration is market led
- Art is commissioned in ‘regeneration areas’ for economic gain.
- Who benefits from the economic and / or social benefits of regeneration and the public art that is part of it?
- Public art as community consultation
- Public art as branding
- Who is it that gets involved in consultation or in a public art processes? What are their motivations? Looking at the details of each situation.
(Quote Tom McCartney who had been the arts manager of a Percent for art scheme on the Gorbals Estate in Glasgow, late 1990’s? He stated (during the The Great Artistic Metropolis conference, Nov 2005) that one of the reasons art was commissioned in that context was because it “added a lot of value to the value of the properties … art makes money, we increased the values in properties, they sell better’)
What do we do with this understanding?
- We have to decide in each case what our position is to public art selling houses – who are the beneficiaries of this process and does this tally with our notions of social justice and social responsibility? Or is this not as important to you as your artistic responsibility?
- Are our actions helping or hindering processes of real social change rather than superficial gestures? Are we complicit in imposing an idea of regeneration which has already been decided?
- Understanding creative surplus: who supplies it and who enjoys it?
- Who gets to commission public art?
- Work out our position in relation to the community we are working in/with (do you consider yourself to be a part of it?).
- Finding opportunities for solidarity and working towards a common cause
- The focus here is not on the reclamation of art’s role, rather the wider social injustices.
- How can you employ your status as professional artist paid to work in this context to reveal some of these injustices?
- By accepting commissions we can do something to reveal and deal with these hypocrisies.
- Recognising and re-injecting existing pride in an area rather than imposing an idea of how we think a people or place should be.
- [NB: Re:Visioning Black urbanism research programme – Goldsmiths Centre for Urban and Community Research]
The public art ‘profession’
Labels
- The label ‘artist’ -– using it when it suits us; not focusing on it but not dropping it either because by using it we can challenge old ideas of ‘art’ and ‘artist’
- Is there a contradiction between demanding recognition for the professional, well-paid public artist and a sense of anxiety with this labelling in the context of regeneration that requires efficient public artists to ease processes of gentrification.
Team-work
- Working as part of a team (with architects, planners etc). [Refer to PROJECT evaluation findings, May 2006: ‘Engagement of an artist from an early stage in a development project, in good circumstances, brings about a positive change of mindset and working practice among the other professionals’ and ‘When artists are working in a development milieu and expected to contribute their professional expertise and creativity, they should be engaged on the same terms as the other professionals involved’]
The open brief
- APG – Artists’ Placement Group and O+I – Organisation and Imagination. In 1980, based on their previous work in placing artists within various organisations, Barbara Steveni and John Latham outlined their principles for an effective form of association of artists with organisaitonal structures. Their guidelines were, to paraphrase:
- That context is half the work
- That the medium of art is not so much the object but the process
- That the proper contribution of art to society is art (APG is not concerned therefore to seek emplyment for artists, but is run in the belief that society is starved of an important ingredient then creative people are kept outside the working parts of governments, organisaitons and institutions).
- That the status of artists within organisations must necessarily be in line with other professional persons engaged with the organisaiton
- That the status of the artist within the organisation is independent, bound by invitation rather than by instructions from authority within the organisations, department, company, to those of the long-term objectives of the whole society
- That the position of the artist within an organisation should facilitate a form of cross-referencing between departments.
- Overlaps with the US Open Letter. What can we take from this today?
Criteria for selection
- Who gets the commissions?
- Do ‘local’ artists ever get the commissions?
Contracts
- Symmetrical contracts [refer to Open Letter] and the importance of being able to negotiate the terms of the contract (having the support to do so).
Fees
- Do the fees reflect the time spent?
- Who gets paid? Who is volunteering? What are the ethics of this? When do participants turn into consultants?
Ownership
- Who owns the copyright of the work?
- How do these issues change and shift when the artist is not the sole author of the work?
Evaluation
- How can an evaluation be productive, not just tokenistic?
- Where, when and for how long does evaluation occur?
- How do we avoid evaluation adding another layer of bureaucracy?
- The professionalism of art / evaluation offers potential channels for change and ‘serious negotiation’ – it can be a tool for change
- Evaluation as a process of educating people (including the commissioners) about what art can be; as a way of challenging preconceptions
- Evaluation as a way of documenting the complexity of experiences of public art
- Who is being evaluated?
- Importance of evaluating the commissioners and funders of the evaluation as well as the public art.
- Importance of the independence of the evaluation.
- Evaluation as activism (going public)
- Contributing to the process of justifying art’s value, reclaiming meanings
- Exploring and understanding the ethics of finance. What are the different relationships to funding? (eg. taking the money and running; surviving without public or private funding; alternative incomes)
Public art as a negotiating power
Concerns:
- Wanting to be efficient whilst resisting definitions and categories
- Aestheticisation of politics, art and activism
- Your critique / evaluation is not listened to, or is misinterpreted and not taken seriously
Opportunities
- Reclaiming, reappropriating and redistribution (of ‘surplus’)
- Maintaining conflict and tensions
- Political art is about taking sides
- Questioning the support that is assured as a given
- Integrity and compromise
- Generational thinking
- Surprise – being useful but not in the way you set out to be
- Funding art that is critical
- Belief in the potency of art is demonstrated by acts of censorship, suppression but also in exposing the so-called ‘failures’, the refusals and times when negotiations break down.
