If there is such a practice as public art, and that in itself is debatable . . . . . . . then I argue that public art should be engaged in the production of restless objects and spaces, ones that provoke us, that refuse to give up their meanings easily but instead demand that we question the world around us.
Jane Rendell (Art and Architecture)
‘Hence’, Mary
Jane Jacob says ‘ ‘forms of cultural expression outside the
museum’s sanctioned space are demeaned and devalued (Jacob 1995:51)’.
I am beginning to think that the art that defies the spaces and cultural norms that it is in, is the type of art that can be called what Jane Rendell calls 'critical spatial practice'. That by taking one normal emanation of a public art genre and then bending the rules and creating a hybrid is what is needed to generate a wider dialogue about what permanent public art could be, particularly if it involved local people in its creation. The best way of calling attention to a new dialogue or practice (or an old practice that is no longer practiced much) is to use it to disrupt the norm.
players and genres
To do this we need to look at all of the players in public art, both permanent and not permanent.
So thinking about the players in public art, which players participate in public art - council as commissioners, large buildings that include public art in their design, community arts practice, street art, graffiti artists, taggers and lone wolves who may do independent singular things. Apart from this the other players in placing imagery in our environment are the advertisers and councils.
I would like to put forward an argument that because all of these players regularly use public space to express themselves, then they also have a relationship with one another. There is a world of public art with its surface culture, and then subcultures. With a hierarchy of power which could be seen as being wielded by money and the law. Others might see the hierarchy as an expression of culture, a conservatism or something that organically involved.
But each player in this game has their own weapons or tools in how they might gain space and permanency ( or time) in public space. The weapons might be money, skills, tenacity, materials, community aquisence, acceptance, beauty, politics, and more complex things such as fame and the idea of wealth and well being.
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| The wobbly ven of interconectedness I had this idea of using the ven diagram to explain how everything is interconnected in the world of art in public space. I am calling the different worlds, genres. So we have tagging, graffiti, artists working solo in public space, artists working with communities in public space, community arts artworks, artists comissioned to make permanent artwork in public space, street art, community groups making permanent public artwork in public space and 'other' incidences of art in public space. Many of these genres have things in common which give them a relationship to one another. The other thing that happens is that the relationship might be something which differentiates them but has a causal effect as to how the genre has developed. For example graffitti and permanent public commissions can seem oppositional, one is permissioned, the other not, but in another sense they both have prominent places in public space, AND graffitti has influenced public art comissions in that how to prevent them being graffitied has become one of the considerations of the commisioning and making process. |
Perhaps i can put in here a mapping of the tools and superpowers each one has.
Community arts
In contrast, community-based art is as much about the process of involving people in the making of the work as the finished object itself. Context is also central; this art is situated in more public, accessible and resonant places, geared to a specific audience and a specific time.
(Jan Cohen-Cruz 2002, an introduction to community art and activism)
Owen Kellysays that community art is defined by its approach to creative activity, which 'enjoins both artists and local people . .. To use appropriate art forms as a means of communication and expression....' ( introduction, 1984)
In another sense community arts has developed a particular stance in serving community need. Kelly suggests that community arts activists " operate in areas of deprivation, using the term "deprivation", to onclude financial, cultural or educational deprivation"(introduction, 1984)
In this sense, community art has always been seen as a functional activity, and its function being that which moves it sideways from the traditional meaning of art.
The other aspect of community art, that Kelly feels is very bound up in community art amd which has directed the character of it, is that it is bound up with a need to be funded. Often community art is an extension of the hand of government, council or other welfare organisations, and therefore also bound up (albeit unconsciously) in their politics and needs.
If you map put the powers or tools of each player in public art, perhaps community art has a burden of needing to be funded. It does not have the superpower of being able to fund itself, as street art and aerosol art do..
Owen kelly suggests that community arts developed in the late 1960's and was part of '...the outpouring of apparently radical cultural activity that occured from about 1967 onwards ' which he suggests coalesced into a 'keenly felt desire for world peace and self-detirmination'. 1984,p9)
He also suggests it was part of an idea of equality between people and peopl power, so that the practice of community art could be seen as taking art back into the streets and giving it back to people. He says (p11) that community arts was woven from three strands; a passion for new and liberatory forms of expression, the movement of fine artists out of galleries and into the street and thirdly a move that involved creativity in political action.
Artists who use public space
The era of community art, also saw the intitiatives of artists who made their artwork specifically for and in public space, such as joseph beuys and robert smithson, stuart brisley.
Grafitti
Grafitti, one of the most prolific of public arts is hardly ever permanent because it gets removed. But older peices may be found in places which are difficult and considered needless for authorities to remove. In the sewer pipes are the oldest examples.
its very interesting that grafitti and tagging are made by young people. in a sense it is young people speaking to the community and to each other. A form of communication alongside public art, advertising imagery and text and the vista of the urban environment. it is a powerplay, of dominating space and organising or competing for the gaze of the audience. Think about who has the most space, the corporations who can pay for it. But arguably the taggers and grafitti artists are not far behind because of their persistence of taking this space and the sheer number of them. lurking behind is permanent public art, but it has time on its side. It will be protected for many years, cleaned and maintained, it stays longer than most episodes of advertising and also carries with it the authority of the council. We the public own this, it is ours. We in some ways might accept it and its apparent meaning more readily.
If grafitti art is epeheral and illegal by nature, can we make a permanent permissioned one.
Could we make a permanent public artwork form a material that decomposes.
Could we use a big public art commission, to produce a process-based artwork without designating what the final artwork will look like?
Could we take more risks in processes that might produce something politically incorrect yet be a more authentic expression of culture.
organising a line of artwork cultures in public space,
tagging, aerosol, street art, community public art, comissioned public artworks
and then giving each its usual attributes, such as permanent, ephemeral, mintained, comissioned, organic, intitiated by artist, etc.
could we then change the attributes and make new emanations of each genre that trespassed into the culture of another?
Like a simon starling artwork, can we have one that deconstructs or disintegrates. could it become another form. could it be taken home in peoples pockets and therefore still exist.
could a big comission be discreet?
PRACTICAL IDEAS
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make an artwork, but make it in all genres of art in public space :
ephemeral,
with a community
as a commissioned artwork,
as an illegal intervention artwork
what is the difference between these artworks and the processes of making thema nd the reception ( if you can measure it in some way)
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