Dundee Day 2

by Ruth Barker, 16 Oct 2010

Hello,

This is going to be another whopper. Apologies for the length. I do think it’s useful though, and I’ve had some good feedback, which has convinced me to carry on.

The day was again good, with a broad range of presentations. My only real disappointment was that we lost the time for questions in the morning. We had an extended Q&A in the afternoon, but sometimes it’s really good to be able to put that immediate point right after a speaker has finished. Ah well, you can’t have everything!

Our chair for the day, Alastair Snow had a totally different style to Moira on Day One, and was far quicker to get involved in the debate himself, which was interesting to see.

Anyway, lots of notes to post, so I’ll just get on with it. As always, apologies for any bias, misunderstandings, errors, omissions or typos. Any mistakes are my own rather than the speakers.

Chair: Alastair Snow – Director Alastair Snow Associates + Projects
Speakers:
Clive Gillman – Director of DCA
Peter McCaughey – Artist
Diarmaid Lawlor – Head of Urbanism at Architecture + Design Scotland
Lucy Byatt – Head of National Programmes at the Contemporary Art Society.

Introduction by Alastair Snow:
We are speaking from Scotland, not always about Scotland. context – Scottish Arts Council changeover to Creative Scotland. Creative Scotland aspires to be a ‘leader in the field’. To be so, must therefore endeavour to commission, test, advise, support new work. Are structures in place for it to do so?
Wittgenstein – a limit to what can be said. Therefore, instead we must show, and do, and feel.
Pavel Buchler (paraphrased) – ‘artists don’t make art, they make artworks. Artists make things in the world, and we call those things ‘art’’
Emphasised the breadth of the audience for the day, reminding us that in the room were housing specialists, planners, architects and urbanists, as well as artists, designers, commissioners and local authority officers. Ambitious mix! All of whom hoped to participate in the day. Housing officers in particular mentioned as being ‘experts in public space’, who might be rising to the challenges of the recession by focussing on investments in places, rather than new buildings.

Clive Gilman
ABSTRACT
Clive Gillman has worked as an artist producing artworks for the public domain as well as being professionally engaged with cultural policy in both a local and national context. For this presentation Clive will explore some ideas and some illustrations of what the factors might be that contribute to the success (or otherwise) of art projects in the public domain. He will look at current cultural policy in Scotland and, drawing on personal and institutional experiences of specific projects in Scotland and England, he will address the many, often conflicting, elements that contribute to making art happen successfully in public places and spaces.

Clive positions himself as an artist, even though he sometimes feels like (and has to act like) a chief executive. But important to hold onto self-definition as an artist – why? Because being an artist might be a privilege? Because it might be a vanity?! Allows to ‘Refresh my soul’.

Ref to PAR+RS Feature: Ray McKenzie – How Not To Commission.

Nice phrase: ‘I do have notes, but usually I prefer to busk.’

Image of Russian Futurist’s Manifesto. ‘A Slap in the Face for Public Taste.’

Difficulty inherent in received ideas of public taste – a taste that is usually assumed to be conservative and unambitious. We may feel instinctively that such assumptions are incorrect but we still have to navigate the fact that some people see themselves as the (usually unelected) guardians or protectors of that public taste.

Projects from FACT.
Rafael Lozano Hemmer – Body Movies Relational Architecture.
Public spectacle. Spotlight on 20m high screen. When people stood between the light and the screen they cast a shadow. A computer programme then projected images of other people into the shape of this shadow (the images were selected base solely on shape-matching. Trace of your own self, filled by someone else. It’s you, but not-you. ‘it’s a ‘hair on the back of your neck’ piece.’

Tenant Spin 1999.
Oldest tower block in Liverpool was scheduled for demolition. The tenants had established their own space in which to hold self-devised projects, events and activities – some of which might be ‘cultural’ while other were practical, or social. Artists’ group Superflex facilitated a series of regular 1 hour internet broadcasts, though which tenants could converse, soapbox, play music, act, speak, etc. Architects spoke about future plans, also artists projects, Will Self, David Puttnam, new music etc.
Became very popular. When the towerblock was demolished (interestingly, still discussed as a success even though it did not prevent the demolition. Is this a difference between art and activism?) the residents took the project with them, Took ownership over it. The project has become viral and has kept going. Landlords now build the infrastructure needed for the broadcasts into their buildings. The principle of self-broadcast has become integrated into social housing.
Significantly, many of the residents were aged 50+, and other cultural projects had focussed on their age, or on the tenants pasts or memories. Superflex encouraged looking towards / commenting on / shaping the future. But the project must keep rejuvenating, because previous participants / contributors have now died.
Note that Glasgow artist Allan Dunn was involved. Ex Environmental Art Dept. at GSA.
[OK, so artists catalyse an action that others adopt and then claim as their own. (Where) do we cease defining that action as part of the artists’ artwork? Is this important?]

Metroscopes. Work by Clive.
New media as a medium opens a space and offers a notion there’s a new domain to be explored. The two main challenges of that new domain might be: 1) how we can link it to the public realm, coupled with 2) the practical fragility of the technology itself.
Five masts were installed in a public square. They were linked to a computer that searches the internet for phrases that begin with the words “Liverpool is…”; “Odessa is…”; “Shanghai is…” “Köln is…” “Dublin is…” The sourced phrase, from ‘Liverpool is’ up until the next full stop, is then displayed on the mast. Becomes a changing social map, social expectation. Was built in hope rather than in expectation that the work could be sustained, but it is still functioning. Problems may arise later because the original technology was not top end, and so it will (at some future point) fail. Specifically, the computer’s memory is getting full of all the sourced sentences.
Ideas of permanence.

‘In discussing public art we must remain clear that there are (and have been) two distinct approaches. It is sometimes assumed that an idea of morality and a ‘public service ethic’ underpins all public art practice, and that there is a fundamental difference between public art practice and gallery practice – the latter of which does not share these ethical concerns; while the former is divorced from the ‘art canon’. This perceived difference was legitimised by Nicholas Bourriaud in Relational Aesthetics (1998), which emphasised the relational quality of artworks in the public realm. ‘Community art’, which was once cursed, was now gilded.
‘Relational Aesthetics was searching for a rationale through which we could discuss public work, but deeper analysis does not support it. There are deep contradictions. There is, in much of the post Relational Aesthetics discourse surrounding public art an assumed truth that public artworks share notions of morality and ethics. But there is a raft of practice that should not be ignored or passed over, which shares an aesthetic with some ‘relational’ projects yet does not share these projects’ values.’

Many works fail both as acts of empowerment, and as acts of art.

‘We (artists, the artworld) eat things up and turn them into art. But sometimes we eat and eat and do not appreciate the very fragile and subtle nature of the things we consume.’

Suzanne Lacy – there is no quick fix to the big problems.

Tramway Conference ‘Common Work’ 2007. At this conference it was possible to see the divergence between two kinds of practices – distinctly different, but discussed in the same terms on the same platform. Some artists were generating community engagement processes and were invested in them for their own sake. Other artists were using community engagement as a texture for their work – this kind of work described as ‘medium-based practices that are not providing values’, but are firmly rooted in ‘art’.

This is not a value based distinction, but we need to be clear about which type of practice we are talking about, in which case. ‘Not all public art is a response to engagement. Public art can happen without a community, and without the ethic of partnership.’

2005 DCA commissions. Our Surroundings.
Meeting Place In The Garden, after Partick Geddes. Apolonija SuSterSic. (Interesting review here)
On a patch of empty ground near the waterfront in Dundee, land was turfed and a greenhouse erected. The work was conversation-based, focussing around facilitating discussion about proposals for waterfront redevelopment plans. Despite fears, the greenhouse (quite an exposed site) was not destroyed, perhaps because of engagement processes that had been implemented. The work engaged with those who used the space and only existed (as art) once people began to participate. A document of people’s contributions was drawn up and given to the waterfront scheme’s Director of Planning – ‘a profound gesture’. (Whether this document has been influential may be doubted).

Project funded by Scottish Arts council Lottery fund. Other recent SAC funds – Public Art Fund, Inspire fund, Inspiring Communities – also influential support for projects in the public realm. Many of the projects funded reflect the presence of the interventionist ethic described above.
Example of projects funded in 2009 through the Public Art Fund Dundenance; NVA Cardross; The Common Guild’s collaboration with the Lighthouse to develop a public pavilion in a Glasgow park; Project BluePrint; North Edinburgh Arts Public Art Project; The Glasgow Womens’ Library’s Making Space for Women project; Deveron Arts; and Big Things on the Beach.
Many of these seem to be informed by notions of ‘the community’ as much as (if not more than) notions of art.‘Is there, in these projects, a desire to create great art?’

Recent workshop in Stornaway discussed the future of lottery funding. Example of Inspire fund, a recent scheme to support the development arts projects that met ideals for public engagement. There was very high take up of the funds – projects like Stirling Empower, Big Man Walking, Starcatchers, Arts Extreme in Aberdeen, Central Station in Glasgow, Mirrie Dancers in Shetland, etc etc.
Projects informed by a desire for community engagement that is pursued with commitment and integrity – but not informed by a vision of/for art. Article in The Scotsman newspaper questioning awards made through Inspire fund called the fund an example of ‘capricious decision-making’.

But it’s difficult to argue against the principles of engagement. The different parts of this set of relationships are not reconciled however, and because of this we can and should continue to unpick them. Comment that one result of these processes is that investments are made in projects that don’t have the infrastructure to deliver. Funders then have to invest in systems of bureaucracy to ensure that these projects get off the ground.

Strategic document – public art as a solution to a perceived problem with a planning process.

Rhetoric of Placemaking – a phrase too often used and too seldom understood. Misplaced intention. Andrew Dixon, new head of Creative Scotland has a background in placemaking from his previous role in Newcastle [Nb as previous head of NewcastleGateshead Initiative. Prediction that Creative Scotland will increasingly prioritise placemaking as a strategy. ‘We’re still looking for a rhetoric that will allow us to deliver an ethic.’

Project for Public Spaces, US based initiative that is generating (or popularising) the quasi-religious language of placemaking. ‘This is the new creed’ an unpromblematised set of ‘slogans’ which is itself problematic. [see: Public Art an Introduction’]

Example of a tender invitation released for the delivery of Routes and Clusters’ operational plan. The requirements were in a language of procurement, not a language of art. Gulf of expectations. The process removes momentum. Becomes bathetic. Anticlimax.

Rochdale – Drake Street Observatory.
Clive invited to develop a new media work for a street that a new tram-line was being routed down. Discovered that there was no public consultation process, and, when tried to talk to residents, found that the best approach was to say he was an artist – was quickly welcomed. Produced a website that put people at the centre of their world. A temporary project that was supporting people’s\voices. The commissioners were also happy with the outcomes.

Eg also of Neville Rae’s website about Public Art of Cumbernauld. Long term durational involvement in a place. Contrasted with: Andy Scott, Arria. Dubbed ‘The Angel of the Nauld’
‘The prism of the spectacle.’ Media significance of the Angel of the North – has become a benchmark also in the literal sense of measuring. Size as a measure of significance.

Eg of people misunderstanding public works, acquistition above sensitivity or understanding. Holocaust memorial in Harrisburg, US. Stainless steel core representing the star of David with, spiralling around it, core 10 steel spikes representing Nazism. The core 10 steel would rust and decay, leaving the stainless steel shiny and intact. But people didn’t like the rust. So the commissioners had the core 10 steel removed and replaced with stainless. The artist is now suing the commissioners.

Eg of Robert Markey sneakers – huge painted sneakers sited on the street, celebrating the city’s links with dance. Artist had painted a pole dancer on the sole of the sneaker – acknowledging the fact that the pole dancers were the city’s only professional dancers. But the commissioners didn’t like it so they painted it over. Artist was very philosophical about it ‘leaving the sole black as a reminder.’
Difficulty of ‘what the community want.’

Eg “Villa Victoria, Liverpool.”
Terrifying reminder of the conflicts between engaged practice and ideas of morality.

Peter McCaughey
ABSTRACT: Peter McCaughey will draw upon his various roles as artist, lecturer in Sculpture and Environmental Art at Glasgow School of Art and the Director of Wave, a nano arts organisation working in the field of art and public realm. One of his current positions through Wave is as Creative Advisor to Glasgow Housing Association (GHA). This appointment was described as an invitation to assist the GHA to think differently about itself.
McCaughey, working with arts consultant Ben Spencer, is encouraging GHA to support a network of art commissions that address the variety of site typologies and a significant range of the tactical and strategic approaches taken by GHA in its day to day work. Peter will talk about the challenges of engaging with a large organisation which has no specific arts remit but which has a clear aspiration to be an active partner within the regeneration of the city.
He is interested in how artists can re route and re-invent the way that things operate within functioning systems. The talk is a double challenge: to organisations to foster new relationships to art; and to artists to develop new tools to deal with and value these opportunities.

Starts by putting a bell on the table – Know your own strengths and weaknesses! Ring when I’m out of time.

‘Importance of work that is not invited, not asked for. Work that invited itself in.’ Art as Top Cat manipulating the city.

You have to know your audience. Who’s here? Show of hands for:
Artists
Arts Workers
Policy Makers
Educators
Managers

Mark Lombardi drawing about mapping systems and the relationships between things. But the problem with conferences and consultations is that often the scintillating colours of people’s opinions and ideas are stirred together, only to end up as a muddy-coloured mix. Our conversation has to be built around this moment, this present.

Image of Economic Value of Public Art is the Increase the Value of Private Property.

Notes about practice:
maintains many different roles:
- Artist in residence at Glasgow Housing Association with Ben Spencer, Artists Placement Group model of the ‘incidental person, being paid to be present (within a system, amongst other people in that system);
Also
- part time tutor in sculpture / environmental art dept at Glasgow School of Art.
And
- runs Wave, small public art company. Wave generates income, which funds Particle – Peter’s more personal projects. Wave also employs / involves other artists / specialists at times. Note that while arts in the public realm usually work alone, all other specialists work in teams.

Sculpture and Environmental art ‘Mapping Project’. Introductory project to get students to engage with (or just see) the city in a different way. Students throw a dart at a map of Glasgow, and then go the point selected by the dart, and work from there.
Turn specifics into ambiguities.
Begin in the middle.
Don’t be dominated by what you think you know.
Ethics, points of intersection between people: very difficult to negotiate with all the subtleness needed. Maybe we shouldn’t bother! There’s a temptation to retreat to the studio. But we’re here to speak about the rise and rise of public art and so we should resist that urge.
‘I am an acolyte and an advocate for public art; because I think it’s so important.’

Looking at the city as a space – reference to Mark Boyle’s work.

Every year sets the students an exercise where they sit in a garage studio-space, with the roller shutter down. Peter raises the roller shutter, and the students watch the city through the revealed view for a set amount of time. Then the shutter comes down again.
One year ‘out of boredom’, Peter went round to the front of the street, removed his clothes, ran naked across the point where the students were viewing, then put his clothes back on and came back round nonchalantly, to where the students were still watching. When asked to describe what they had seen, out of a group of 15 only 2 accurately ‘saw’ what had happened – that Peter had run past naked. Others failed to see or mis-saw what had happened – to the extent of one student believing that they had seen a car accident.

Reference to the symposium States of Play: Art and Culture in Scotland Today (took place in Gilmorehill Centre, Glasgow on 09/10/10). During the time for questions, Peter asked Christine Borland, who had been presenting, what might be the value of relational engagements. Christine answered that the value lies in helping others (medical specialists, in her case) to tolerate ambiguity. Value of retaining doubt. Peter argues that we need a society that can tolerate doubt and ambiguity.

Thought experiments. In its broadest sense, thought experimentation is the process of employing imaginary situations to help us understand the way things really are. Used in lots of other fields, but not used in art. Not taught in artschools. Why?
Munster sculpture Park: Gabriel Orozco proposal for a working Ferris wheel half buried under the ground. Proposal refused, as too dangerous. Maurizio Cattelan responded by hiring a children’s book illustrator and a writer to write the fiction of the Ferris wheel – to write the Ferris wheel into the past. ‘The Wheel of Misfortune.’

Phrase – ‘the web of the room’ referring to the interconnectedness of all the people present. Brokering the spaces between us. We need better tools.

Problem with Clive’s call for ‘great art’. This is a default position. There is no fixed criteria for great art. Perhaps there is no great art? What might great art be, or not be? There is nothing to chase.
‘I’m a relational creature. I cannot separate art from its relational structures, from its stories, and its people.’

Discovered that GHA is an aspirational place. Many officers come from GHA homes. There is an honourable investment in making places better. Aim to map out different ways in which artists might become part of GHA’s processes. Multiple spaces / opportunities for artists.

George Kelly, in 1964ish promoted the ‘as if’ position as a way to move towards knowledge. Constructive alternativism. Loosen our constructions.

Artists are often not interested enough in what artwork does. John Cage – meaning lies in meaninglessness. We need to think more about what work does.

Liam Gillick – “The middle ground, the compromise, is what interests me most.” Peter’s 1993 work at the Queen Elizabeth Square flats [see slide 85.] was outrageous in its difficulty. Lots of compromises had to be made, there were lots of quick revisions and changes that had to be made. There was a death onsite – there were huge decisions that had to be taken. But we imagine that great art comes from control. That control equals integrity. But this is just a convention. It’s a wonderful cornerstone but there are other models. Maybe we should think about models in which the word ‘art’ might disappear. Partnerships. Compromise. Ref to the naming of art row between Grant Kester and Clare Bishop. We could make ourselves free by loosening some terms, and asking how do we attribute value.
Kosuth quote “What is it that might be art, that is not art?” Some processes that we go through as artists are not themselves artworks – they remain just processes. But they are still valuable because they are still processes.

Placemaking will happen whether we like it or not. We have an invitation to be there and we should take up that invitation. These meetings are full of people (usually men) who are making decisions about our spaces. Who gave them the right? Who decided that those people would be the ones to take the decisions? Where are all the other people who might have an opinion? The poets, the writers, the anthropologists, the others?

If you identify a convention, ask it a question. Take nothing for granted. For example – instrumentalism is often assumed to be negative. Why? Aren’t instruments important? And can’t they shape things?
‘These are nascent thoughts. These are questions that are happening right now because of the projects I’ve involved in right at this moment.’
Fighting with ideas of existing critique. Don’t trust your instincts. We should be more disinterested. But the downside is that when one remains in doubt, it can depoliticise us. We can find it hard to take sides with certainty. We become adaptors. So there has to be a balance. But still we cannot take things for granted. Dialectics is useful but it is based on logic, which in only a tiny part of the world.

Alastair Snow: Ken Walpole has stated that mixed use economies are the most successful type of public realm economy because of the fact of the mixture of different people doing different things. Something intangible is gained from proximity.

Diamaid Lawlor.
ABSTRACT: Policy planning, places, public art
This presentation will explore the concept of public-ness in Scottish placemaking, particularly in the context of the reform of the planning system. Using case studies, the presentation will look at the role of public art in the context of physical planning policies which seek to promote the creation of ‘places where people want to be’. This exploration will look at processes of re-imagining and managing existing public spaces, processes of temporarily using derelict space as a public resource and processes of promoting cultural entrepreneurship to inform organic processes of regeneration in a city neighbourhood. Using these observations, the presentation will conclude with a discussion as to the possible opportunities of public art in physical place policy, and how these policies might enable or inhibit the commissioning of public art.

Complexity of the public sector. Many conflicting and complex relationships. The story of the boom – example of personal experience in Dublin. In 1994 much of the city was in a state of dereliction, but within 7 years there was a massive upsurge in building, and within 10 years there was a radical reinvention of the city – expansion in finance, construction, waterfront development, and a wholesale change in people’s relationships to the city.
And now it’s all gone. We’re at ‘the finish’. That massive expansion won’t happen again. Art and design in Scotland is now looking at itself at a moment of ‘finish’. That paradigm of expansion is gone. We must scenario the future. The finish is relative: finishes are also beginnings.

The economies of Urbanism. Eg: learning traditionally happens in a building: a school. But is the school necessary? The outcome should not be the building of a school – the outcome should be learning. The building is incidental. After all – places teach. If we spend time in the city itself, we can see the ways that people do things. We can learn from the city.
Are we too stuck on process? Do we emphasis outcomes enough? Is it right to build buildings and expect (or hope) that they will be filled by processes and people?

Public art
Public policy
The interesting thing is public.
No one ever owns the public good. We are only ever custodians of it.

In all this talk of cuts and spending review and the big society, we have to ask what is the public outcome? 1943 – Simone Weil in The Need For Roots, asked ‘What kind of place shall we have?’
’what is required if men and women are to feel at home in society and recover their full society?’

‘what is most particular, is most general.’ What said that?
The everyday public domain.

Policy should know that you cannot divorce professional responsibility from human responsibility.
The relations that make people people have changed since Victorian times. But have we acknowledged that?
’I disagree with beautification as an outcome.’
What are the contradictions?
CABE talks about ‘great architecture’. Where is the greatness? We have images of ‘great’ buildings but where are the people?
‘Place’ as relational. ‘Place’ as locally constituted. People participate in multiple places simultaneously.

Indy Johar Everyday as an aim. Scotland has many small places: the everyday is important.
Marc Auge – Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity Places are about stories, histories, identities, relations. Photo of Whitby, a group of people at the top of a hill, looking back out over the town. One man is looking down on the houses, the buildings. But one man is on his back, looking at the sky, looking out. He’s utterly relaxed, comfortable in ordinariness. Whatever this feeling is, it’s desirable.

Globally connected, locally situated. Diverse contemporary relations. Victoria station, London – public dancing that started and stopped apparently spontaneously. What is the publicness of this action? What is the connectedness? Is publicness a kind of connectedness?
Ecologies of tolerance: we need to think about ecosystems rather than answers. Tolerance allows extraordinary things to happen in simple ways (at simple moments). Communities of interest – in the twenty first century these communities have speeded up.

Three keys ideas / qualities:
Authenticity: (of stories, of leadership): It’s important that authenticity can be ugly and difficult. It’s about noticing, recognising part of the world.
Public Space: democratic exchange. Ethics and knowledge: public knowledge / private knowledge. We shouldn’t be dependant on one nor the other exclusively. Democratic knowledge combines both.
Distinctiveness: physical, functional, and intangible distinctiveness. Functional distinctiveness is not dependant on architecture. Intangible distinctiveness arises from the capability of people.

Council of Economic Advisers
December 2008.
Recommendation 14.
“too much development in Scotland is a missed opportunity and of mediocre or indifferent quality […] the ultimate test of an effective planning system is the maintenance and creation of places where people want to be. We need to rise to that challenge.”
These are territories to be taken on by people. By us.

The Climate Change Act of 2009 is a sustainable economic growth strategy. But we must always ask the why. For what outcomes? When someone says that we must reduce emissions we have to ask: to enable what?

Place and scale. Purpose: Place and Policy contexts.
Dundee local plan is currently being developed. There’s enough policy already – it’s about what we do with it. The Scottish Government’s spending is set to fall dramatically over the next 15 years. But we can ask ‘what is the money this being spent, being spent for?’ we should stop thinking about what is not (the cuts). We must think instead about what is, and about what we want. We have to focus on outcomes. Make it happen.
‘We have to stop thinking about schools, and start thinking about learning.’

Lucy Byatt
ABSTRACT: There is a sort of art that emerges from public art policies and strategies, from the availability of funds through section 106’s, from marketing plans and audience development agendas. It is a sort of art that is pushed and pulled, ‘briefed’ out of shape by committees of stakeholders, and funders, of ‘user groups’ and health and safety experts. These sorts of processes, more often than not, produces art of considerable physical size and cost yet of very little consequence. Yet policies and strategies are an inevitability; required to ensure legitimacy and momentum? Public art policies though, seem to live in a world of their own, unconnected to the other pressing matters of developing healthy cultural ecologies within our towns and cities, connected more to the limitations of planning regulations or linked to the confines of community development initiatives. There has never been a more important moment to act in partnership and in a more joined up strategic way. Byatt has been a commissioner and a consultant and has also been on the ‘other side’ the client – she finds that, in all these roles she would always prefer to work with artists who are not just engaged with production of certainty or spectacularity; resorting to formulas to avoid risk is never the solution. We can rest assured that what we regard as success now, will have been someone’s great and considerable risk at some stage. To illustrate this presentation she will use examples of projects that she has commissioned and more recent projects that are being initiated through the Contemporary Art Society.

What are the public benefits of public art? Eg of Banksy exhibition in Bristol which raised revenue for the council through all the parking fine collected from visitors who underestimated the length of the queues to get in.

Policy makers are guilty because of promises they made in the boomtime: connection to the very idea (principle) of regeneration. Big money is a thing of the past.

’I’m going to start my presentation from the end, and then go back to the beginning.’

“The Contemporary Art Society’:http://www.contemporaryartsociety.org/ is an old organisation. Legacy of 100 years. Membership of 64 public collections. Idea of patronage. One new commission (funded by a patron) for Graves Art Gallery: Museums Sheffield: Katerina Sedà, Czech artist who only works with her own community. Trust. Artist has said that her way of working is ‘like a criminal investigation.’
Action as an act.
Actors. Sedà speaks about character traits ‘I can recognise other Czechs in the street.’
The bus stop story (catalyst for Sedà’s practice): waiting for a bus with a group of people she didn’t know. The weather turned bad and a scarf was blown by the wind. At the same moment a branch snapped and a man coughed. At that moment of synchronicity somehow these two separate happenings became conflated in a miraculous link or joining into the image of a profile in the landscape. The people of the place’s people became lodged in the landscape.
BUT story is fraught with fantasy – romantic idea of where we came from.

1994 worked with Julia Radcliffe on Visual Arts Project in Glasgow. Was introduced to the world of public art. People making big decisions about public space. The projects undertaken by VAP came from a very particular social, economic, cultural context:
- Gallery of Modern Art was being run by Julian Spalding.
- Culture of international exchange
- Bunch of very successful recent graduates from GSA.
- Inspirational talk by John Latham – introduced idea of the incidental person.
- And there were a lot of empty buildings – towerblocks coming down.

‘The situation was porous. One was able to inhabit it.’

Ref to local activists who held hands in front of bulldozers. How to introduce them to artists?
1999 Year of Architecture and Design. Started with slow processes followed by a rush to the finish line. Power relationships change during the course of a project.
Got artists involved with housing association. Established a space. Residency based structure. Brokering relationships between artists and other specialists. Not a showing / exhibiting space, but a talking, kitchen space. Non-office. Non-beaurocratic. Did not start with the intention of becoming a public art ‘agency’ (but perhaps it did?)

In architecture, arguably function is more important than aesthetics.

‘we have to pursue endless negotiation to ensure that we’re not being overly romantic.’

‘The Millenium Hut’, designed by Studio Kap Architects in collaboration with Claire Barclay. Was it naive? Was a product of the boomtime. Intention to provide a ‘community store’ for equipment for gardening etc.

Royston Road. Project provided room to tackle something that hadn’t been able to tackle in 1999. Architects had looked at plans, not at the place. This meant that that they couldn’t look at use. more info

Jenny Brownrigg project, worked with women reading romantic fiction. Book club. Writing project – seven years on it’s still running.

Importance of ‘event’. Importance of the moment. Moments of celebration. Human moments. Meals, performances, coming together. interactions punctuated by theatre. Hosting. Roots interactions into places, and roots memories into places.
Projects ‘driven from the place’.
Royston is still very deprived. ‘Without the community’s pushing for it, we wouldn’t have gone in.’ It had to be something rooted. Relationship of call and response, where the artist is responding to an exchange.

The company was in need of funds, so took on a more ‘corporate’ project, for which the client wanted an ‘Angel of the North’ type outcome. Loch Lomond Shores project 2001. Worked with Jenny Crowe to develop Bird Station by Mary Redmond. Mary needed a lot of persuading to take the project on, but the end result was successful. Many artists daunted by the prospect of undertaking work in the public realm. They find the processes combative, and it doesn’t appeal. Example of missed opportunities where artists who might produce fantastic work never engage with the possibility. [Press coverage ]

Project in The Pier Arts Centre, Orkney.
Hannah Rickards, Thunder 2004.
Complex soundwork in which an audio recording of a clap of thunder was stretched out, and a group of 6 musicians was invited to score and then play the resulting sound. This musical version was then compressed back to the duration of the original clap of thunder. Rickards is clear that the ‘work’ is the resulting sound, but the complex series of relationships that surround that single outcome are also important to consider. Issues of trust, specialism, expertise, and event. The performative cycle that was involved in making the work happen expands and enriches the work.

Why are public art policies always about adding stuff to places? We have to change the way we think. There’s no money left. We have to think about Section 106s, and patronage – both individual and corporate. We are the brokers of our cultural ecologies. We need to think strategically about what is public. Studio and street are part of the same economic network, and we have to understand better the ways in which they are related. We cannot think about ‘public art’ in isolation – doing so will ghettoise it. Thinking about public art in the broadest terms possible will lead to different kinds of people being able to become involved in it. In the last few years artists roles have continued to expand – they now become project managers etc. Roles change. We must be flexible.

Spike Island example of an arts centre becoming part of a city’s ecology. 600 people now have a front door key – far more than ever before. Example from Warsaw of Edward Krasinski’s studio, in a flat on the 11th floor of an apartment block. Place of exchange and debate, hosting, and meeting. Very vibrant, important part of the art community’s ecology. After the artist’s death, complex conversation about whether (and how) to keep or preserve the flat. As a functional space? As a monument? etc. Decided to preserve the core of the space exactly as it had been left, but to use the balconies around the flat to continue to exhibit, and so allow the place to stay ‘alive’ and evolving. Artists can still stay there, and so the ecology of hosting continues. The apartment block is still otherwise residential – Lucy had to ask the neighbours where to go, when she first visited. The flat is not part of any masterplan – instead it’s part of life. This is important. It retains meaning. Contrasted with eg Bilbao, a kind of non-place, divorced from place, ‘_where culture spins away from us.’_ Some works (image of figurative sculpture of a guy on the street) create agonies of questions. They can only exist because they are deeply rooted locally. Idea of trust.

Anecdote about Douglas Gordon’s Empire sign. Originally a VAP commission for the wall outside the Mitre Bar in Glasgow, but subsequently had to be relocated just around the corner to Tontine Lane [Nb. I think because the building whose wall it was attached to was sold]. Has become a Glasgow art-landmark. But when the work was first proposed it was turned down for planning permission. Then by sheer chance Lucy sat next to a relevant planner on a plane. They talked for the whole flight, but never mentioned Empire. And when the planning application was resubmitted, it passed. Proximity is important. Exposure to ideas, even in a gentle way, is important, and can change people’s minds.

Eg of Royston Rd project. One of the trees planted by Graham (see Dundee Day 1 entry) was claimed by some members of the community as a memorial to an individual who was associated with one of Glasgow’s football clubs. The tree was festooned with scarves, flags etc and became a target for opposing members of the community. The tree was attacked and even chopped down, but it was then replanted – again by the community – and has since grown and flourished. Realities of public work: friction; meaning; eruption.

Panel Discussion
Apologies if I’ve missed any contributions, and for the missing names.

The question framing Day 2 was put to each of the panellists in turn by chair Alastair Snow: Is public policy fit for the purpose of commissioning public art?

Diarmaid: Yes it is. Policy already enables us to do what we need – it isn’t the fault of policy is we don’t already do that. Move towards having less policy, not more. In the current climate we’re unlikely to have any new policies brought in, apart from ones dealing explicitly with eg climate change. Think about policy that’s already there. We need to be proactive in constructing our own contexts.

Clive: I don’t know. Policies are about management of resources. People can subvert policies. If policy is confused, then it becomes a problem. But it’s always the people on the ground who actually do things. Put trust in people, rather than policies.

Lucy: If we are to have policies for public art, those policies must be flexible, specific, and reinvented for every context. We need to couple broad principles with the capacity for reinvention. If we think in terms of brokership we have to ask two fundamental questions: who is the broker?; and who are the partners being brokered?

Peter: We have to be inventive. We have to take the bones of what already exists and build up from there. As an example, when commissions are developed, why is not enough allocated to the maintenance of permanent work? Maintenance is a work’s life – it’s everything that happens once it’s out in the world. What if we took the budget for a work’s production as £X, and then its maintenance as 5 x £X ? That £5X could pay for an artist to stick around once the work was finished, and to keep thinking about the work – to adapt, change, or decommission it.

Jackie Donachie: Arts Strategies are often not tied to arts budgets. Recently worked on a project when an existing strategy had led to nothing but paper. The money that had been spent on that paper document could have been better spent on paying for an artist’s presence – a bum on a seat during meetings. Because artists are good at asking Why? And they’re very skilled.

Alastair: Arts Officer can be conduit. Are there any Arts Officers here?

Liz Conacher: There’s not much integration between the parties.

Alastair: What would help that?

Liz: we need better communication across departments. More partnership working. We need more ways to educate people who’ve not got an arts background as to what art is able to achieve.

Alastair: how easy is it for you to be proactive and commission?

Liz: budgets are small, and the arts budget is a tiny fraction of the overall budget. Small team with small resources. There’s a recognition that art is needed, but it’s still being ‘inserted’ at the very end of a process.

Sally Thompson: Works for Aberdeenshire Council and NHS Gramprian. Mentioned BREEAM environmental assessment method. There’s a public perception of art as a luxury, public bodies have to be seen to be careful about how they’re spending money. Have to balance responsibilities and priorities. Importance of remembering that art doesn’t have to be ‘things’.

Diamaid: have to balance people’s desire to be involved with the value of their involvement. Not enough just to want to be involved – there has to be a value form that involvement. Every project must involve magic and logic. We need to see as well as measure.

Jackie: But there are good examples of successful projects where you can trace ‘added value’. Example of employee absenteeism decreasing when people have a nice building to go to work in.

Sally: Capital budgets vs. revenue budgets. The two are not integrated.

Peter: Jackie is an active citizen within her community. Expand the language of the remit that we give ourselves. We are transdisciplinary. Use knowledge in different ways; use different languages. GHA use a statistical analysis tool to qualify the unquantifiable – for example to put a ‘worth’ to voluntary work.

Damien Killeen: Big Things on the beach has given people confidence to say what they want.

Alastair: Idea of citizenship?

Damien: Education is influential. Trust. Empowering.

Alastair: Deveron Arts – The Town in the Venue.

Merlyn Riggs: In many Deveron projects, the work done leading up to (and around) an event = highly important. The processes as important as the outcome.

Alastair: Deveron Arts’ town rebranding project Room to Roam.

Sally: was soccuessful because Room to Roam was chosen by – and now adopted by – the community.

Graham Fagen: Are Spike Island, or DCA, public art projects?

Lucy: Yes. Spike in the City programme. Source of activity within the city. Had previously been a sense of powerlessness.

Rocca Gutteridge (to Lucy): But there wasn’t a wholly positive response to the changes you introduced at Spike. Could you talk about that?

Lucy: People have a sense of nostalgia – has sympathy with that. Individuals move on, but sometimes still want to maintain a connection to an organisation they were involved in previously. You can’t keep things the same forever. Contexts change, and organisations have to change with them.

Clive: No. DCA is not a public art project. Because there’s no such thing as ‘public art’. There’s just art that happens in different places. There’s no such thing as ‘public’ wither. Hugely interlocking systems of communities. DCA move in and out of those communities as it’s appropriate.

Ross Sinclair (to Peter): ‘As an artist I think of myself as a responsible individual, but I’m stil pissed off when you talk about artists ‘retreating to the studio.’ Why shouldn’t I go to my studio and make work? Why should I spend my time going to meetings?’

Clive: Art that comes out of policies is not always good art. ‘I long for direct action’.

Ross: ‘But we’re still only talking about one model. I can’t work for free any more. I’ve got responsibilities – a family.’

Lucy: Not all the time spent in engagement is a chore – some experiences are great.

Peter: Ross would be a great presence at those tables that he doesn’t want to be at, with people who don’t want him to be there.

Diarmaid: But it’s a crucial point. We shouldn’t feel obliged to take on every role that there is. We need to think about ecologies of people, who have different skills and who might be acting in different ways.

Juliet Dean: from PACE. Many projects emerge in an ad hoc way through change conversations and contacts. There is no infrastructure, no formalised communication.

Peter: Sometimes ad hoc is good. Sometimes it’s all we’ve got. Chance conversations can lead to a ripple effect. But how can we get the right people to come to these events (like Mapping the Future) so that they have the chance to see great projects?

Sally: example of CABE project at Peterhead – sans facon. Often due to one person in the right place at the right time. Serendipity. We have to educate the most senior people who will actually be taking the decisions. ‘I’m an advocate. Every day.’

Jonathon Baxter: Are we interested in accessing or in challenging policy?

Clive: Policy balances direct action. Without policy we would have anarchy, which is not productive. Policy has to understand what’s going on in the field, but perhaps it also has to lag behind a little. The policy can’t lead. Problems come when the policy actually blocks things from happening.

Peter: Different methodologies at different times. Inconsistent. Is this good or not? ‘I’ve become more political, and that’s surprised me.’ ‘Deftly working within a system.’ Richard Wentworth: Artists and con-men both wilfully disrupt systems. Importance of raising consciousness. But Variant magazine’s criticisms of Creative Scotland are making it hard for Creative Scotland to progress. Old question – do you work within the system, or do you challenge it from the outside?

Jonathan: I don’t know enough about Creative Scotland to be able to answer that.

Peter: That’s deadly.

Lucy: we are all wincing with uncertainty because of the spending review. But knowing is always better than not knowing. It’s hard to develop leadership in a climate of uncertainty. Vision should not be tied to funding. We should be vigorous and firey! The tail of funding must not wag the dog of art. We must not be funding led.

Diarmaid: Why try to map the cosmos when you can say clearly who you are, instead? Policy follows trends on the ground. When you formalise activity, sometimes you freeze or inhibit it.

As always, use the comment button below to send your thoughts, corrections, irritations. I’ll be back next week with the final installment.