What art have I seen?
Slave City by the Atelier Van Lieshout and I Dig, I Look Down by Mithu Sen
What art have I seen?
Robert Morris at Monika Spruth Philomene Magers
I remember seeing work at the Fattoria di Celle that were quite like these, using encaustic. The felt Stars and Stripes surmounted by Eagles are deeply political. The work fit into rooms like altars in side chapels. The textures are a bit like ornate classical picture frames, but the textures are made of the remains of machinery and war, and the impressions of hands punching and ripping at the material.
What art have I seen?
What am I reading
The World of Perception, Maurice Merleau Ponty, Routledge Classics 2008
What art have I seen?
Centre international d’art et du paysage de l’île de Vassivière
Some images at Flickr
Vassiviere is listed on the ISC‘s web site as one of the few sculpture parks in France. It describes itself variously as ‘a centre for art and nature’, ‘art and the counryside’, and ‘a centre for land art’. It has a few internationally known artists (Goldsworthy, Pistoletto and the Kabakovs) and many French artists; I found a work by Brad Goldberg, who collaborated on Place of Origin, and work by Roland Cognet who had worked at SSW and seems to have had a one person show at Vassiviere,
This place is interesting; having come about as a result of a major hydro-electric scheme, it conceptually raises issues of our relationship to our environment and our tendency to manipulate it in order to extract benefit. It has real character, but it suffers from neither owning its history, nor clearly adressing its apparent mission.
It has a mixed bag of sculptures that make up the park – some the result of a sculpture symposium in the early 80s. More recent and jokey post modern works are also incorporated. The gallery seems to work in partnership with some high profile institutions like the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The building by Aldo Rossi is striking.
But there is a lack of clarity – there are cornerstone international works, but I couldn’t discern a curatorial strategy. Likewise I guess that the works by French artists are significant, but I didn’t get a sense of a collection of work of significant French sculptors (or artists working in three dimensions on an outdoor scale). This would be a good project in itself.
The work by Samakh is a good response to a natural event, but the replanting of an area of forest to promote biodiversity is not radical.
Thinking about the work of Littoral in particular, but also of PLATFORM, and others involved in dialogic practices, there are so many ways in which this amazing place could speak of itself. Funnily enough it is Goldsworthy who draws attention to the drowned land, but for instance the larger ecological landscape is not drawn out.
But as it stands it clearly has a history of being a centre for sculpture during the second half of the 20th century, and is trying to redefine itself. Using the gallery to do this is OK, but in the end it remains in conflict with the permanently sited work which speaks of a previous project.
What art have I seen?
Communication Suite at the Wolfson Medical Building, University of Glasgow
New site specific work by Christine Borland (who also curated the exhibition), Aileen Campbell, Alan Currall, Alastair McLennan, Kirsty Stansfield, and Clara Ursitti, complimented by work by Abramovitc/Ulay, Breda Beban, Mark Dion and Douglas Gordon.
What art have I seen?
Patricia Cain’s exhibition Drawing Construction at the Lillie Gallery in Milngavie
What art have I seen?
South By South West – Maclaurin Galleries, Ayr, and Dick Institute, Kilmarnock
What am I re-reading?
The Ends Of Our Tethers: 13 Stories by Alistair Gray, Canongate Books, Edinburgh, 2003
What art have I seen?
Psycho Buildings: Artists take on Architecture at the Southbank Centre, London
I also saw some stuff at the Tate including Nahnou Together Now and a great display on drawing with Landy, Tyson, Emin, etc along with work from the collection.
What am I reading?
Atoms of Delight: an anthology of Scottish haiku and short poems, Edited by Alec Finlay, Pocketbooks, 2000
Distance & Proximity, Thomas A Clark, Pocketbooks, 2000
Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom
Greenhouse Britain: (2006-2008). I had the pleasure and honour to work with Helen Mayer Harrison, Newton Harrison and David Haley, . The project developed new thinking about the impact of climate change on the island of Britain.
Producing and Project Managing > Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom
What art have I seen?
The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, Portrack House, Dumfries, by Maggie Keswick and Charles Jencks
What am I reading?
Ekow Eshun’s Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England and Africa, (Penguin, 2006) lent to me by Anne Douglas.
“When I eventually bought a copy of his book I realized how prophetic DuBois had been. Mannered tones aside, The Souls of Black Folk could have been written at the end of the twentieth century instead of its dawn. With his description of double consciousness, Dubois became the first writer to articulate the sensibility of black people born into the white world. He was also the first to argue that, far from being a drawback, our dual gaze was a blessing. It meant that we regarded life with an acuity white people could never muster. We watched for the bigotry cloaked in humour and the hesitations of speech that betrayed hostility. We used double consciousness to survive, and ultimately thrive, in the white world.”
p. 214-215
“The images had faded over time, so that, on one plate, only a pair of eyes was visible.”
p. 123
What art have I seen?
Alison Watt‘s exhibition Phantom following her two year residency at the National Gallery
Short video on Guardian website.
What art have I seen?
Ally Wallace‘s Multi-Module at Scotland Street School Museum
Multi Module (2008)
and
Jacki Parry’s The Towers of Babel at the Maclaurin Galleries, Ayr
What art have I seen?
Art About‘s WHAT HAPPENED HERE. I went into the Carnegie Library in Ayr on Friday afternoon and the entrance hall was covered in pictures with hand written comments. Very different from the Ayr Photographic Society’s annual exhibition in the Reference Section. This was clearly improvised and ad hoc. Rachel and Pamela have taken a selection of views of Ayr and photocopied them adding a question under the picture “What Happened Here?” You can add your name and contact details at the bottom.
Walking around the entrance hall people from Ayr have talked about where they have had ice cream and sun burn, where they have fights and kisses. Some talk about the historical significance of sites.
This is preparatory to some planned ‘public art’ event to take place during the Burns an’ a’ that Festival in May. Its interesting because I had just seen the Caravan Club at GI in Glasgow, with their post cards of various graffiti written and derelict sites around the UK. Rachel and Pamela approach is interesting because they are building an audience for the Festival work by getting people involved at this stage. More later.
What art have I seen?
Gavin Renwick‘s Home Office at the Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee.
Gavin invited me to participate in the last discussion in the series.
What am I reading?
Participation, Ed. Claire Bishop, Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press, 2007
What art have I seen?
Donald Urquhart’s Invisible Ideas
at the City Arts Centre Edinburgh
Larry Brilliant
“I used to teach my students that their schemes wouldn’t be successful until two things happened: that they would be able to run without you, and that you knew the names of the grandchildren of the people you started the project with: that’s because it takes a generation.”
Quoted in The Guardian 2 February 2008
Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty threatened
Some of the many histories of Spiral Jetty
One
20 years ago a massive campaign led by Nancy Holt, and supported by cultural activists across the world, saved Spiral Jetty from a plans to pump oil from under the Great Salt Lake. Arguing that Spiral Jetty and its context were of international importance, a swift and successful international action was mounted. The UN declared Spiral Jetty a World Heritage Site, putting it in the same category as Machu Pichu and the Great Pyramid of Giza. On the back of this campaign, the Dia Foundation secured donations in excess of $1 billion. With this funding they were able to secure land around all the major Land Art sites – De Maria’s Lightning Field, Heizer’s Double Negative and Holt’s Sun Tunnels. They joined these parcels up to create Entropy Park which now forms a complete ring around the State of Utah. Arguments continue to rage amongst art historians and critical theorists.
Two
20 years ago a spoof email and web site initiated one of those brief flurries that characterised the early 21st century internet. The email suggested that Spiral Jetty was endangered by a proposed energy development which would involve pumping oil from beneath the Salt Lake. Although it did not come from Nancy Holt, it intimated her involvement in a campaign. The net result was that Jonathan Jemming, a Planning Official in Utah State, received approximately 1,500 emails within a one week period. These emails, from artists and academics, museum directors and critical theorists, were in turn abusive, erudite, impenetrable, passionate, and in every case objected to a planning application that did not exist. In fact Jonathan Jemming had never heard of Robert Smithson or Spiral Jetty. Meantime arguments raged amongst art historians and critical theorists.
Three
20 years ago, despite protests by Nancy Holt and others, they started pumping oil from under the Great Salt Lake in Utah, near Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. Unfortunately no one realised that, due to a lack of maintenance, pressure would build up in the underground pipes and explode on July 20th 2033. The blast made a crater nearly a kilometre across and caused a tidal wave to travel across the lake. No one was killed. Spiral Jetty ceased to exist. This caused outrage in the art world. The Dia Foundation secured donations of $1 billion to reconstruct the work as well as undisclosed damages from the ExMoBphell conglomerate operating the installation. In the past 5 years no work has been done to reconstruct Spiral Jetty. The Dia Foundation have bought additional parcels of land encompassing the whole of the crater and its surroundings. They have designated this Entropy Park. Arguments continue to rage amongst art historians and critical theorists.
What have I been doing recently?
Deutsche Telekom AG Q1 2007 Earnings Call Transcript
Mr. Chris Fremantle from Morgan Stanley, may you ask your question please?
Chris Fremantle – Morgan Stanley
Yes, thanks very much. Two questions. First of all, for Dr. Eick, on what he just said about the unions, could you just clarify that you’re able also to make the reductions in wages without the union’s approval. And also, whether or not you’ve considered taking a different tack, which would be to offer generous redundancy terms rather than reduced wages to the Telekom workers?
And then secondly a question really for Mr. Obermann, on the mobile side, not as much as the (inaudible) but also on the mobile side, there appeared to be a cost problem. In (inaudible), the margins are only two percentage points higher than E Plus, a company which is just over a third of the size.
And obviously in the UK the margin fell nine percentage points versus Q4, even though the net ads were similar. What is your perspective on the costs issues within T-Mobile and how those are going to be addressed?
What art have I seen?
Keith Tyson at Haunch of Venison
A Breath of Fresh Air: Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden and Douglas Percy Bliss at the Fine Art Society
Jeff Wall at White Cube
What art have I seen
Half-Life by NVA and the National Theatre of Scotland
What am I reading?
The Paradox of Plenty, T L Karl University of California Press, 1997
As I understand it so far, the resource curse is an articulation of the problems faced by those parts of the developing world apparently blessed by an abundance of raw materials – in particular oil. In these parts of the world, the Niger Delta being a good example, the population consistently suffers.
Terry Lynn Karl’s The Paradox of Plenty articulates a chain of consequences taking the oil boom of 1973-74 as a starting point. This runs (very roughly) as follows:
1. Context – Oil is property of State – results in lack of distinction between State political role and State economic role.
2. Context – Oil sector is unpredictable – prices fluctuate.
3. Price of petroleum quadruples and then doubles again in 1979-80.
4. Action – This results in a massive increase in government expenditure attempting to make a ‘great leap forward’ – ambitious and expensive, state financed and focused on industrial development.
5. Thinking – Reserves are understood to be limited and its necessary to move quickly.
6. Thinking – Assumption that value of oil would appreciate if left in ground.
7. Action – Increased foreign borrowing to facilitate the ‘great leap forward’.(by 1980 key capital deficient oil exporters combined debt $100 billion, rising to $275 billion in 1994).
8. Consequences – Expands jurisdiction of State including into industrial production.
9. Consequences – Increases private sector investment funded by increased credit and money supply.
10. Consequences – Wage levels increase beyond increase in productivity
11. Consequences – Influx of foreign workers and other demographic changes including urbanisation.
12. Consequences – Massive imports of luxury goods – domestic production cannot keep up with demand.
13. Consequences – Improved public welfare – middle class grows quickly.
14. Context – Skewed relationship between the regulatory, extractive and distributive functions of the State. Spending has become the primary mechanism of Stateness, as money increasingly us substituted for authority. There is a consistent lack of development of a tax regime and fiscal relationship with the public.
15. Consequences – economy overheats, State expenditure surpasses oil revenues (example the combined current accounts of the cluster of ‘capital deficient oil exporters’ went from 1974 $24 billion surplus to 1978 $14 billion deficit).
16. Consequences – Budget deficits.
17. Consequences – Exchange rates appreciate – currencies are overvalued on the basis of the oil sector. Cheapens imports, undermines local production, leads to dependency.
18. Consequences – Public sector becomes inefficient through overloaded infrastructure. Macro industrial projects overrun, are postponed and cancelled.
19. Consequences – Inflation although high is not as high as other developing countries.
20. Action – To counteract increased reliance on imported food, price controls and import restrictions on, in particular, the agricultural sector.
21. Action – Increased subsidy for low income groups and unprofitable firms.
22. Thinking – Politically impossible to reduce subsidy on economic downturn.
Corruption, one of the persistent issues, occurs because of the tendency to use the buy support using the resource rather than winning it through the achievement of programmes benefiting the population.
What is interesting about the ‘resource curse’ is that it is clearly created by the developed world’s massive demand for, in particular, oil, and other specific raw materials. This has one obvious and one more discrete consequence.
The obvious consequence is that it directly links our actions in the UK and other developed countries with the state of affairs in, for instance the Niger Delta. They would not be ‘cursed’ if we did not have an unlimited appetite for their raw materials.
The second and slightly more discrete aspect of the linkage is that the exploitation of resources in places like the Niger Delta by international corporations is wholly directed towards the efficient extraction and transportation of those resources away. The resource curse basically means that corporations in the developed world only operate in places like the Niger Delta in order to extract oil and ship it to customers in the ‘West’. They have no customers, and therefore no concern with the populations in places like the Delta. All the skilled staff, all the shareholders – all their key publics – are elsewhere. Inevitably therefore anyone who isn’t a customer doesn’t exist.
Nature and purpose of art
“You see in this country for instance (Britain) writers are not involved in the sort of things I’m doing, because it’s a much more settled society, writers write to entertain, they raise questions of individual existence, the angst of the individual. But for a Nigerian writer in my position you can’t go into that. Literature has to be combative, you cannot have art for art’s sake. The art must do something to transform the lives of a community, of a nation, and for that reason you see literature has a different purpose altogether in that sort of society – completely different from here….
And a writer doesn’t earn money in Nigeria, because although you have a 100 million people, most of them cannot read and write there, so literature has a different purpose. So here I am, I’ve written 22 books, I’ve produced 150 episodes of a T.V. programme which everybody enjoys, but I’m poor!
But that is of no interest to me. What is of interest to me is that my art should be able to alter the lives of a large number of people, of a whole community, of an entire country, so that my literature has to be completely different, the stories I tell must have a different sort of purpose from the artist in the western world. And it’s not now an ego trip, it is serious, it is politics, it is economics, it’s everything, and art in that instance becomes so meaningful, both to the artist and to the consumers of that art.”
Ken Saro-Wiwa from ‘Without Walls’ Interview
What am I reading?
Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People, Heinemann
“As I stood in one corner of the vast tumult waiting for the arrival of the Minister I felt intense bitterness welling up in my mouth. Here were silly, ignorant villagers dancing themselves lame and waiting to blow off their gunpowder in honour of one of those who had started the country off down the slopes of inflation. I wished for a miracle, for a voice of thunder, to hush this ridiculous festival and tell the poor contemptible people one or two truths. But of course it would be quite useless. They were not only ignorant but cynical. ” p2
The economics and geopolitics of the abolition
The wider historical context of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade by Hakim Adi and published on Pambazuka
This essay provides and alternative analysis for the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in 1807 It addresses the role of Africans and working class people, and re-describes the history highlighting economic and geopolitical motivations of the ruling classes in Britain.
Sol LeWitt
born September 9, 1928; died April 8, 2007
Sol Lewitt at MassMOCA until 2033
Collaboration
Oren Lieberman, at a dinner during Wendy Gunn’s Making Places workshops in 2002-03, offered an interesting analysis of collaboration. I was reminded of this and encouraged to actually note it down by Tony Beckwith (from Gunpowder Park) phoning up and asking me to remind him about it – I had offered Oren’s thought up during the Bright Sparks Seminar (9 March 2007).
So back to the point, Oren’s analysis of collaboration. He said there is Multi-disciplinary practice. This might be characterised by a group of different disciplines (architects, engineers, planners, perhaps even artists, sitting around a table, each addressing their area of responsibility within a project. Having them round the table is useful, but collaboration is functional. Then you have Interdisciplinary practice. I would understand this to be when the people around that table are interested in understanding each others roles, skills and tasks. I might further suggest that they draw on each others roles skills and tasks through interest. Finally Oren offered Transdisciplinary practice – when people change roles and start doing each other’s jobs. I would offer Michael Singer and Linea Glatt’s 27th Avenue Waste Transfer Station project in Phoenix Arizona as an example – as I understand it they had been employed as artists to decorate the building, found their were decorating a basically bad building and persuaded the commissioner to allow them to redesign the building as a public space which in the documentation, looks like the hanging gardens of Babylon (case study at publicartonline).
The first thing to say about Oren’s analysis is that it is not an increasing scale of good: Trans- is not better than Inter- which is not better than Multi-. They are different. Trans- is more difficult than Inter- which is more difficult than Multi-.
Given that they are more difficult, and probably in the context of any form of collaboration, we need to think about how to achieve collaboration. To achieve collaboration you cannot start around a table in an office. You can only do it by constructing shared experiences, relevant to the project and characterised by conviviality.
Here I would point at John Maine’s tactics at the beginning of Place of Origin (for more on this project follow this link). He insisted that we (himself, Brad Goldberg and Glen Onwin and myself) go on a road trip. We went to Lewis, via Clava Cairns and Assynt. Ostensibly we went to look at the interpretation centre at Callanish, but in fact we went to get to know each other and to develop a shared visual language. Interestingly, though John and I had been to Kemnay Quarry on a number of occasions, this road trip happened before either Brad or Glen saw the site. I suspect the result was that when they saw the site, at the end of the road trip, we all had a shared experience to interrogate it from. What was averted was each artist arriving at the site and immediately going into a singular “what do I do here?” and instead, what occurred was “what do we do here?”. I think this latter point may be very important – it certainly resulted in an amazing collaboration over 10 years.
Reading
Left Shift: Radical Art in 1970s Britain
John A Walker
I B Tauris & Co Ltd, 2001
Reading
Great Western Salt Works: Essays on the Meaning of Post-Formalist Art
Jack Burnham
George Braziller, New York, 1974
And
The Aesthetics of Intelligent Systems
J. W. Burnham
(found on AAAARG)
Working in Public
Working in Public:
Art, Practice and Policy
This On The Edge (OTE) Seminar programme taking place during 2007 (I am a member of the Steering Group for the project) aims to develop a new level of thinking in relation to art practices that work within social and cultural spheres of public life. At the heart of the programme is a significant, long term case study – the Oaklands Projects, California (1990-2000) developed by Suzanne Lacy (an internationally renowned artist). The series will focus on the issue of what quality means by connecting the experience of Oaklands to recent work and critical thinking.
Each event is hosted by a different venue in Scotland and consists of an evening public lecture followed by a morning seminar discussion. The programme is part of a significant development of research and learning in the visual arts as they relate to the public sphere.
Aesthetics and Ethics of Working in Public
Suzanne Lacy and Grant Kester
27 March, 18:00 – 20:30 & 28 March, 9:30 – 12:00
The Foyer Boardroom, 18 Marywell Street, Aberdeen
Tel: 01224 224250
Representation and Power
Suzanne Lacy and Tom Trevor
22 May, 18:00 – 20:30 & 23 May, 9:30 – 12:00
Centre for Contemporary Art, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow
Tel: 0141 352 4900
Quality and Imperfection
Suzanne Lacy and Simon Sheikh
19 June, 18:00 – 20:30 & 20 June, 9:30 – 12:00
UHI Executive Office, Ness Walk, Inverness
Tel: 01463 717 091
Public Dissemination Event: Cultural Rights and Entitlement
The core group presentation and exhibition with the support of
seminar presenters (September, TBD)
Booking is essential for each event
For more information: www.workinginpublicseminars.org
On The Edge Research,
Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University, Garthdee Road, Aberdeen, AB10 7QD, UK
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