New Season - Temporary Projects

by Ruth Barker, 24 May 2010

Hello!

And welcome to the new PAR+RS Summer Season. Over the next few months we’ll be looking at Temporary Projects, in all their many forms and varieties.

The pros and cons of the temporary were first discussed on PAR+RS last year, when Ginny Hutchison’s Seven Sunsets project began a debate that featured on the Blog- Since that time the question of how the question of duration might effect artworks developed for public space has come up again and again, in projects such as The Black Cloud (Situations, Bristol), which was discussed at the recent SpeedWork Symposium.

With the rise and rise of art festivals and biennials (Scotland alone has Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art, Coast, and The Edinburgh Art Festival to name but three) we’ve seen temporary projects in unusual locations enter the mainstream of contemporary curatorial practice. The successes of the growing ranks of graffiti, interventionist, and street artists have also opened our eyes to the possibilities of works that are made for public space and then ‘abandoned’ to the whims of weather, civic obliteration, and public intervention. Shifts in commissioning strategies have also done much to encourage engagement with works that simply aren’t meant to last forever, but whose legacy must depend on the experience of a single moment, day, or season.

We’ve been asking artists, commissioners and other to share their experiences of temporary projects – the problems and the regrets as well as the times of triumph and illumination. We’ve got a whole host of fascinating insights lined up over the next few months, as the conversation will unfold throughout the summer. And don’t forget its not too late to join in the conversation! If the articles here incite you to rage or inspire you to generosity we want to hear about it. Email the editor if you want to contribute, or share your comments on line. We can’t wait to hear from you.

In our first batch of articles for you, we have Kirsty Innes of the Irvine Bay Regeneration Company, discussing beach front commissioning in Opera houses, raindrops and fishing boats – inspiring pupils’ designs on the future…

Most exciting of all, we’ve been working on our first ever PAR+RS commissioned artwork – a public performance / action by artist Shelly Nadashi, which we just can’t wait to share with you! We’ll be revealing the work in the coming weeks, so keep a close eye on the site to read much more on this soon…

For now though, I’ll leave you with a phrase I heard on the radio. A woman, talking about a short story she’d read, opined the following. “Its brevity doesn’t matter” she told her interviewer “so long as its resonance remains.” Wise words, perhaps?

More later,
R.