Searching for Art's New Publics

Description

Drawing on contributions from practicing artists, writers, curators, and academics, Searching for Art’s New Publics explores the ways in which artists seek to involve, create and engage with new and diverse audiences—from passers-by encountering and participating in the work unexpectedly, to professionals from other disciplines and members of particular communities who bring their own agendas to the work. Bridging the gap between practice and theory, this exciting book touches on issues of relational aesthetics, but also offers an illustrated artist-based approach. Searching for Art’s New Publics will appeal to students studying fine art (especially those with an interest in cross-disciplinary work and public art) and those studying curating.

Preface – Tammy Bedford

Introduction – Jeni Walwin

Keynote Essay: Don’t Look Now! Art after the Viewer and beyond Participation – Dave Beech

PART I: Participation: Open or Closed 

Chapter 1: The Anatomy of a Participatory Project – Sally O’Reilly

Chapter 2: Interview with Artist Chris Evans – Will Bradley

Chapter 3: Case Study One: Adam Dant’s Operation Owl Club – Helen Sumpter

Chapter 4: Who Speaks? Who Listens? Het Reservaat and Critical Friends –Sophie Hope

Chapter 5: Tell Me Your Story: An Interview with Artist Harrell Fletcher – Marisa Sánchez

Part II: Sonic Openness 

Chapter 6: Open Sounds: On the Track of the Dissolving Audience – David Briers

Chapter 7: Eagles are the Best: Juneau Projects in Conversation – Ben Sadler and Phil Duckworth

Chapter 8: Case Study Two: Melanie Pappenheim in Reading – Helen Sumpter

Part III: The Emancipation of the Spectator: The Viewer Completes the Circuit

Chapter 9: Headless in Hirschhorn’s Classroom – Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield

Chapter 10: Linked – Graeme Miller

Chapter 11: London Fieldworks: Polaria and Little Earth – Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson

Part IV: The Art Object Reaches Out: Dissolves, Embraces

Chapter 12: A Fair Event: Considering an Action by Nina Beier – Vincent Honoré

Chapter 13: Case Study Three: Gillian Wearing – Family History – Helen Sumpter

Chapter 14: An Audience with… – Adam Sutherland

Chapter 15: Bata-ville: We Are Not Afraid of the Future – Nina Pope with contributions from Mike Ostler

Chapter 16: Co-productive Exhibition-making – Paul O’Neill

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Arts visuels
• ART
• Cultural Studies
• General
• General officer
• Index of urban studies articles

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 27 avril 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841503943
• Langue: English

Extrait

Searching for Art s New Publics
Searching for Art s New Publics
Edited by Jeni Walwin
First published in the UK in 2010 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2010 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2010 Intellect Ltd, the artists and authors
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover photo: Gillian Wearing, Family History, 2006, Installation view, Forbury Hotel Apartments, commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and Artists in the City in association with Ikon Gallery.
Cover designer: Holly Rose Copy-editor: Rebecca Vaughan-Williams Picture researcher: Laura Eldret Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire
ISBN 978-1-84150-311-0 / EISBN 978-1-84150-394-3
Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
Tammy Bedford
Introduction
Jeni Walwin
Keynote Essay: Don t Look Now! Art after the Viewer and beyond Participation
Dave Beech
PART I: Participation: Open or Closed
Chapter 1: The Anatomy of a Participatory Project
Sally O Reilly
Chapter 2: Interview with Artist Chris Evans
Will Bradley
Chapter 3: Case Study One: Adam Dant s Operation Owl Club
Helen Sumpter
Chapter 4: Who Speaks? Who Listens? Het Reservaat and Critical Friends
Sophie Hope
Chapter 5: Tell Me Your Story: An Interview with Artist Harrell Fletcher
Marisa S nchez
Part II: Sonic Openness
Chapter 6: Open Sounds: On the Track of the Dissolving Audience
David Briers
Chapter 7: Eagles are the Best: Juneau Projects in Conversation
Ben Sadler and Phil Duckworth
Chapter 8: Case Study Two: Melanie Pappenheim in Reading
Helen Sumpter
Part III: The Emancipation of the Spectator: The Viewer Completes the Circuit
Chapter 9: Headless in Hirschhorn s Classroom
Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield
Chapter 10: LINKED
Graeme Miller
Chapter 11: London Fieldworks: Polaria and Little Earth
Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson
Part IV: The Art Object Reaches Out: Dissolves, Embraces
Chapter 12: A Fair Event: Considering an Action by Nina Beier
Vincent Honor
Chapter 13: Case Study Three: Gillian Wearing - Family History
Helen Sumpter
Chapter 14: An Audience with
Adam Sutherland
Chapter 15: Bata-ville: We Are Not Afraid of the Future
Nina Pope with contributions from Mike Ostler
Chapter 16: Co-productive Exhibition-making
Paul O Neill
Contributors Biographies
Index
Credits
Acknowledgements
I am particularly grateful to all the artists, curators, writers and academics who have contributed material to this book. Many of them gave presentations at the Searching for the Spectator: Art for New Publics symposium at the University of Reading in the autumn of 2007 and they have subsequently reworked their material for this publication. Others have created new texts especially for the book and I appreciate the time and commitment that they all have devoted to the project. I would especially like to thank Alun Rowlands, artist, curator and course leader in the Department of Fine Art at the University of Reading. Early conversations with him and a subsequent collaboration with the University led to the symposium event and this substantially influenced the development of the publication. I am grateful for all the work that Kerry Duggan contributed to the early stages of this project. I would like to thank Dave Beech for his involvement and his proposal for the shorter, snappier title. Enormous thanks go to Laura Eldret for her unstinting work on the picture editing and research. It has been a pleasure working with the publishing team at Intellect, in particular thanks go to Sam King for her early support to the project and to Melanie Marshall who has managed the production stages. The greatest thanks are extended to Tammy Bedford, Arts Manager at Reading Borough Council, who has encouraged the project at every step on the way and without whose unswerving support none of this would have been possible.
Jeni Walwin
The publication has been supported financially by Reading Borough Council, through their Artists in the City programme; by Arts Council England South East; and by the Henry Moore Foundation.
Preface
R eading Borough Council has been active in commissioning artists to work in the public realm for many years and was one of the first UK local authorities to adopt a Percent for Art policy. Our understanding of the contribution that artists can make to the places in which we live, work and play has developed over time and has grown out of the experience of working on a wide and diverse range of commissions, some of which are included as case studies in this publication.
Artists in the City, Reading s relaunched public art strategy and programme, represents an approach to working with artists which encourages a creative collaboration with commissioners. There are many reasons why local authorities, developers and others involve artists in the public realm. High-quality public spaces, imaginative regeneration schemes, creating a sense of place and identity - these are aims often shared by those responsible for delivering the contexts in which artists will work. But what lies behind all of this is the people who use and interact with the public realm, whether as residents, consumers, employees or simply passers-by.
As a local authority our interest in commissioning artists is the contribution they can make to people s experiences of Reading. How that happens will depend on the context of each project. Some projects set out to actively promote public engagement and participation through the process and/or outcome. Other projects will require a more exploratory approach in which the element of public engagement may not be immediately obvious. But the involvement of an artist will have made a difference, and that is the legacy of any commission.
We still have much to learn. Our involvement in the Searching for the Spectator symposium and this subsequent publication has been to share our experience of working with artists in public contexts, but equally importantly to explore these issues further through the contributions of artists, curators and writers on other national and international projects.
Tammy Bedford Arts Manager, Reading Borough Council, 2009
Introduction
Jeni Walwin
T his is a book which looks at the blurring of distinction between an artwork and its public - that fine line between creator and spectator, maker and viewer, artist and audience. Within the Artists in the City programme in Reading we have for some time been concerned with the impact that a work in the public domain may have on the public whose domain it is. Conventional approaches to making work for public space focus on the physical site and the historical and sociological context for the work. Direct engagement with the public is usually planned as a separate and discrete exercise - either in the build up to the work, through that highly suspect device, consultation, or during and after its installation through related workshop and introductory activity that will offer access, understanding and engagement.
Meanwhile artists who have never considered themselves to be public artists in that sense, and whose practice is commonly associated with gallery viewing, have been exploring new ways of working which challenge traditional boundaries and confront the complex relationship between artist, environment and spectator. For these artists, contributions from members of the public have become an integral and influencing factor within their practice. This book examines how and why some artists open up their working method to embrace the involvement of non-art communities, allowing the final form and content of a work to be shaped to a great extent by someone other than themselves.
The public in this instance can be defined in many different ways. They may be passers-by encountering and participating in the work unexpectedly, or they may be professionals from other disciplines invited to perform a specific role or they may be members of a particular community bringing their own local or political agenda to the project. Whoever they are and however they might contribute, this way of working establishes quite a different form of interaction from that experienced by the community arts movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, where process was paramount and the professional artist usually invisible. The divide between community arts practice and contemporary art activity at the time was immense.
Writers and academics have alerted us to the narrowing of this divide in recent years. Nicolas Bourriaud and Claire Bishop have written eloquently on the subject and Dave Beech in his keynote essay here responds to their texts and proposes a way forward, setting the scene politically. Beech unpicks the terminology commonly associated with this way of working - participation, collaboration, interaction - with reference to recent developments in art theory. Sally O Reilly uses Beech s terminology as the starting point for her investigation of the Granville Cube - a public works project on a West London housing estate. Other contributors consider how far it is possible for the public to become both viewers and subjects of the work, while resisting the possibility of becoming objectified by artists for the benefit of their art.
The original ideas for this publication grew out of a symposium on the subject held at the University of Reading in 2007. All of those who gave presentations that day have edited, rewritten or re-presented their material in order to make it more relevant to book form. In addition further contributions have be