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Public space; Public issues; Urban planning and public art (English summary)
Mónika Bálint
During the IBZ workshop one of the workgroups (its subject was defi ned as ‘Public art and urban planning’) was focusing on works of art which come to being in a course of interrelations . Even if they can be connected to international and historical discourses, their existence is very sensitive to their physical, social and political surroundings.
The artists, whose aim is to refl ect on and intervene in urban planning processes, have to define the conditions of their action. They have to constantly question their own goals and expectations and the expectations of their possible partners and opponents. During their work they have to initiate different dialogues. We examined art projects as communicative processes.
’To create an art oriented urban event includes the acceptance of the city’s council as well as readiness of the inhabitants to be shocked and prepared for change in letting the artists spread out into the most unexpected places of everyday, tolerating whatever may come up while knowing full well that art is not always a promise of happiness and that the success of the event will fi nally be a matter of chance.’ (Peter Herbstreuth)
The evaluation of such artist initiatives, context and community based art projects cannot be done without reference to some important texts in art theory. In the article entitled ‘Grant, Claire et al.’, some important texts on socially engaged art are discussed, projects that are collaborative and invite communities to participate in an artistic process. This artistic process is on many occasions based on social communication, discourse and dialogues. These texts are introduced in the course of a polemic that has been going on in the past years between their authors. The two main fi gures of this discourse are Grant H. Kester and Claire Bishop. Geographically distant, they research similar issues in contemporary art. Although their subjects of interest are close to each other, the defi nitions and terms they prefer are different, and they refer to the traditions of these art projects from different angles.
Grant H. Kester is an artist, art historian and curator. His fields of research are, among others , socially-engaged art practice, the visual culture of the American reform movements and political art. He received a BFA in photography from the Maryland Institute, College of Art and an MA and PhD from the Visual and Cultural Studies program at the University of Rochester. Between 1990 and 1996 he was editor of Afterimage, a visual and media arts journal published by the Visual Studies Workshop. These days he is Associate Professor in Art History at the University of California, Visual Arts Department.
Claire Bishop is a critic and art historian. She is Assistant Professor in the Department of History of Art at Warwick University. She is also Visiting Professor in the Curating Contemporary Art department at the Royal College of Art, London, and has taught at the University of Essex and at Tate Modern. She was art critic for the LondonEvening Standard (2000-2002) and regularly contributes to art magazines, including Artforum, October, and Tate Etc.
The polemic between the two started with a now frequently cited text of Claire Bishop on socially engaged art, The Social Turn, published in Artforum in 2006. An important premise to this article is Grant H. Kester’s book, Conversation Pieces, which is also introduced in this article. This remarkable book - subtitled Community and Communication in Art - was published in 2004. The angle of his selection is defined as follows: ’There are (…) a number of contemporary artists and art collectives that have defi ned their practice precisely around the facilitation of dialogue among diverse communities. Parting from the traditions of object making , these artists have adopted a performative, process-based approach. They are ‘context providers’ rather than ‘content providers’, in the words of British artist Peter Dunn, whose work involves the creative orchestration of collaborative encounters and conversations, well beyond the institutional confi nes of the gallery or museum.’
Bishop in her article criticises Kester and other art historians, especially curators, of being too obsessed with discussing these artworks from a moral stance, mainly examining the position of the artist and the process of his actions, rather than making an aesthetic assessment.
The reader Participation on participation in art, edited by Bishop, is also introduced in this article . This book provides a detailed description of Bishop’s view on socially engaged art and participatory art projects in addition to being a very important source for theoretical texts on this subject.
Bibliography:
Bishop, Claire: The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents. Artforum International . 2006/2.
Bishop, Claire (ed.): Participation. Whitechapel, MIT Press. London, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2006.
Doherty, Claire (ed.): Contemporary Art: From Studio to Situation. Black Dog Publishing . London, 2004.
Kester, Grant H.: Conversation Pieces, Community and Communication in Art. University of California Press. San Diego, 2004 .
Kester, Grant H.: Another turn. Artforum International. 2006/5.
LeisureArts, Claire Bishop - Aesthetic/Ethical - Critical Modalities.
See: http://leisurearts.blogspot.com/2006/04/claire-bishop-aestheticethical.html
Roche, Jennifer: Socially Engaged Art, Critics and Discontents: An Interview with Claire Bishop. Community Arts Network . July 2006.
See: http ://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefi les /2006/07/socially_engage.php
