Where Are We Now

Public Art is a term that so often falters before it is even spoken. The first word blazes proudly; the second nudges closely up to it, a little nervously. The nerves are catching and now the ‘Public’ finds itself plunged into a cycle of introspection as its definition is sieved into fine grains that disappear before they can be reorganised to our satisfaction. Left with nothing the two terms are empty.
Yet sometimes something happens in the space between them.

Public ( ) Art

Here something can exist in the place these two words can only vaguely point towards.

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Some Of These Places

On 29th April at Jacqueline Donachie’s Speedwork Symposium some of these places were revealed to us. The Symposium was held at House for an Art Lover with an aim to discussing public art commissioning in relation to Donachie’s recent 6-month residency at House for an Art Lover. Chaired by Moira Jeffrey, the morning saw presentations from: Claudia Zeiske of Deveron Arts; Katie Daley-Yates of Situations; and Philip Horst and Daniel Seiple of Sculpturen Park Berlin Zentrum. The afternoon began with a presentation of the project ‘A New Path’ from Jenny Crowe and Sorcha Dallas, followed by Donachie and a discussion panel which included Toby Paterson and Graham Fagen.

Claudia Zeiske spoke in a breathless stream as she attempted to chase the excitement and innovation of Deveron Arts into language. Upon the screen behind her, these figures appeared: 50/50 – half public; half art. The town referred to in the organisation’s slogan ‘the town is the venue’ is Huntly: a 4000 strong market town in the North East of Scotland. This is the public that Deveron Arts exists within. Universal problems and concerns are mirrored in this small town where international and national artists are invited to immerse themselves for three month residencies.

In half an hour Zeiske sped through a wonderful series of projects breathing playfulness and poignancy and fun, while being utterly rooted in the community’s concerns and needs. Amongst others she told us of this: Garry Williams’ Music for Streetfights. The artist (resident in Huntly for spring 2008) responded to drink-fuelled street violence in a loudspeaker-equipped van which turned up to fights in order to play soothing music. Street fights become almost performative when accompanied by Williams’ musical van, as if this humorous element can act as an antidote to the brutal reality of the situation. Rather than collisions, there are meetings. It is in the unintentional or unforeseen where something happens. As Williams waited in his temporarily silent van to be called to a fight, the police were also waiting; often they waited together. Here two worlds met, both concerned with the same issue. Perhaps something unbalanced was balanced by this dialogue, the practicalities of the police and the perspective of Deveron Arts moving together.

After Claudia Zeiske, Katherine Daley-Yates spoke as the programme co-ordinator of Situations – a commissioning and research programme based at the University of the West of England in Bristol. Daley-Yates talked of a recent collaborative project between Heather and Ivan Morison and architect graduate Sash Reading for Victoria Park, Bristol in 2009. This project culminated in the installation of a large wooden structure in the park between Saturday 25 July and Sunday 6 December: The Black Cloud. This is an immense wooden pavilion suggesting itself as a possible shelter or escape from the presumed dystopia of our future. The artists have made similar constructions in the past, looking to different cultures for material and formal inspiration. With painful, poignant titles such as I am sorry. Goodbye these structures that speak of safety negate themselves into beings already lost to us. They talk as escape vehicles that offer an escape of the imagination rather than reality; vehicles that question how we can/will/want to survive.

In this Situations project there were no claims to a 50/50 approach, rather there grew a temporal structure in which ownership or initiative shifted between artist and public. The work spent two years amongst council procedure and fundraising and was in the park for five months. The piece did not develop within the public space as in Deveron Arts, instead it existed primarily as an artistic collaboration until the installation in the park when it entered the public realm. It entered as art; ‘public’ was it’s surrounding, yet it embedded itself within this – embraced it. The organisation and artists were keen to encourage interest and support for the project amongst local residents before the installation and afterwards they removed themselves to an extent, relinquishing ownership to the park-users. Responsibility for the structure was then wholly public. It became functional, a place of movement: a meeting point; point of reference; space to shelter from rain; space to talk and hold events.

Here there is an allowing; to let something happen, rather than determine what is going to happen. It was thought, made, and left; suggestion more than intention. The artists were well aware of their distance from the regular park-users and respected this, just as they respected the feelings of those in the area that the cloud was built within.

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The Unregulation of Space?

Questions grow too much from too little; the questions overpower the work itself. The irony of us sitting in a building named ‘House for an Art Lover’ discussing public art commissioning. Why were we not hearing from those that did not see the work from an artistic perspective? Katherine Daley-Yates mentioned how many wanted The Black Cloud to remain as a permanent fixture in the park, yet also touched briefly on criticisms of the work and its title. However these feelings are filtered through questionnaires and feedback forms rather than the apparently more academic and valuable ‘reviews’. Who should be writing about public art commissions? How can it be possible to allow a response that is not tempered by an artistic perspective replete with a thousand references against which the work reverberates? There must be public art criticism rather than (public) art criticism of the work. If one could have the words and feelings of a park user who came across the massive structure without knowing anything of its concept, creation and duration this would tell us something of the piece. It becomes important to speak above all of what is visible publicly. To allow this to happen is difficult.

Yet it is happening in Deveron Arts within the Huntly Express. This weekly local newspaper is read by the vast majority of Huntly residents and generally half a page is devoted to commentary on the artistic residencies in progress. Sometimes, as in Thierry Geoffroy’s Made in Huntly, this newspaper is also where the work is realised. Here the editor, a resident of Huntly, speaks of the art; the 50/50 approach Claudia emphasised is maintained. The public have space to criticise the work.

In the Berlin Sculpture Park it is also happening. Following Daley-Yates, artist directors Philip Horst and Daniel Seiple described this void unused space in the centre of Berlin which has been adopted as an international site for temporary public commissioning. Part of this approximately five hectare area of land, divided into privately owned sections, was formerly the military zone within the Berlin wall. Artists are invited to work within and through this unique history and explore the complex socio-political relationships of the still fractious area.

Rather than slowly dissolve the work and exhibitions into a dry narrative of budget difficulties, legality issues or disappointments as so often happens when public art commissioning is under discussion, the pair offered an enthusiastic and inspiring presentation of outstanding mischief and excitement. Here they allow research and play as an ongoing investigation into the significance of the land while retaining its identity as a wasteland rather than a cultivated space for site-specific art. There is a mutual revealing: the work reveals the site, the site reveals the work. And amongst all this there is a spirit of vitality and the irrepressible joy of making work. To write about this sculpture park is difficult. I do not want to cover it, muffle it, in words.

And so to talk of the projects which filled my notes with such perceptive and insightful phrases as: this is so good, so so good! A couple of many:

In 2006 when the park was officially appropriated, Philip Horst installed a lightbulb 20 metres above the park which was both turned on and off by one switch. This switch was then passed from flat to flat through the blocks surrounding the park. The community made the decision whether the light was on or off.

In 2007 a security guard was hired by the artists Wiebke Grösch and Frank Metzger to patrol paths in the sculpture park, including the former line of the Berlin Wall. The guard walks the same route daily, each a repetition of the walk before; a monitoring of space where there is nothing to monitor. Playfulness and sobriety meet in this reference to both the park’s history and the privatisation of public space which will inevitably affect the site.

This land which is so many things: dumping ground; dog-walkers’ utility; free parking; vacancy; and sculpture park, offers a shifting dynamic that demands shifting artistic interpretations. These interpretations are also open to interpretation. Seiple and Horst mentioned ‘guerrilla artwork’ appearing in the night amongst the ‘curated’ pieces. Of this they seemed especially pleased, and talked of a catalogue presenting only these interactions. Yes to this. Questioned on how they promote their work, Seiple answered: talk to people. Social engagement is key to this organisation and its concept – particularly regarding the inhabitants of the flats surrounding the park, yet they stressed that they do not feel that they have a responsibility for the people who experience the park. Their responsibility, they stated, was that people can come into this from different points of view; a kind of responsible irresponsibility.

The discussion opened, and this word entered: unregulated. This sculpture park exists in unregulated space. Rather than question why people get involved in unregulated space, Seiple and Horst ask why people get involved in regulated space. Surely in unregulated space there is a dialogue, discourse, or interpretative criticism that is always contemporary and an immediate reaction to the political and social climates of that place. Therefore is unregulated space desirable and the regulated space to be avoided? Can there ever be unregulated space? Perhaps the function of the artist or commissioner is to de-regulate space, or re-regulate it differently.

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On Paradox and Traces

The symposium was an amalgamation of presentations from very different projects. In contrast to Berlin Sculpture Park, A New Path is a highly regulated and tightly controlled research project into the commissioning of permanent and temporary artworks within Glasgow. Revisiting existing artworks, creating a route between them and commissioning new works to be realised within this path, Crowe and Dallas are seemingly re-inventing the city as a gallery.

As the talks drew to a close around Donachie’s residency at House for an Art Lover, questions began to cut deeper into public art commissioning, particularly regarding its legacy. Deveron Arts projects tend towards transient interventions which highlight a specific concern and continue to exist through the exchange of ideas yet are also embodied in the town collection which moves from garage to swimming pool to estate agent to hotel and other spaces in the community. The work also leaves traces of its own, for example the drive-in cinema that is now a fixture of the town grew from Jelka Plateâ’s Mono examining the prevalent Huntly youth boredom which is embodied in the constant orbit of cars round the town. The Black Cloud, however, is now gathering dust someplace and one cannot help but wonder on the imbalance of the public expenditure/public visibility ratio. The debate arises whether work in the public realm should be done first and foremost in civic interest, or whether any civic benefits should be by-products of creating a space in which the work can be realised. This was discussed in reference to a project of Donachie’s in which she cleared out abandoned shopping trolleys from a nearby river with the intention to using the metal in her piece. This question is one step away from “but what is public art” and sure enough, that swiftly followed. Bizarrely it seems to be assumed that it is more likely that an agreement can be reached in the definition of ‘public art’ than just ‘art’. It is puzzling that this term was not mentioned in any of the morning’s presentations and yet what was described upheld it beautifully, however when the words are spoken they break down into a complexity of paradoxes.

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Looking To The Visible, At Last

One must look at the visible; the projects that are happening outwith the circling cycling critique of public art. Projects such as the Berlin Sculpture Park and Deveron Arts exist in the space between the words

Public ( ) art

And hold them together.

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