Public Art
November 10, 2008 nerulean
Okay guys! As per the meeting today I’m putting up a series of posts here to collate information on people’s case studies. If you can bear it, comment in each of them and hopefully we’ll get some discussion going and find links between our case studies for use in the presentation. Make sure you check down the page, there are quite a few of these!
So: Public Art, our overriding theme.
How would you define Public Art?
How does your case study tie into the theme of Public Art?
Is there any theory we have studied that particularly ties your case study to the theme of Public Art particularly?
In my opinion, poetry slam is a great example of public art. Without paying anything to be involved, people can perform their own poetry to a receptive audience, and the audience can engage with the work of local poets directly, broadening their experience of poetry and seeing it at work in their own community.
It’s an incredibly accessible format (check out my post on accessibility for more details) which means that just about anyone can get involved regardless of their age, gender or walk of life. It needs very little funding – most slams operate in venues they have access too free of charge by agreement with the owner, usually because the owner has an investment or interest in poetry and the arts himself – and draws the whole community together.
Unlike Alex’s Cape Farewell project, poetry slam seems to tick all the boxes of successful public art. I find it interesting that I should be saying that about something that has no relation whatsoever to any sort of government funding body, at least until recently when poetry slams have been appearing sponsored by local councils – perhaps that’s one way for the government to improve its contribution to public arts, by finding formats that already work and giving them support to grow in popularity. On the other hand, most of the government-involved slams I’ve found have had a specific agenda, such as encouraging young people from ethnic minorities to talk about their experiences and ideas of identity, which I think damages the inclusive aspect of poetry slam in general.
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1. Alex&hellip | November 11, 2008 at 5:31 pm
I would say that Cape Farewell ties into our central theme of ‘public art’ because it is available to the public at the Southbank Centre and because it is a direct response to a people-made crisis affecting other people, but along this vein, it is not in fact a community project. Only certain people can go and experience the melting ice caps and respond creatively within these boundaries. Cape Farewell is about drawing in affluent people from the West rather than the people directly affected by global warming at the moment. Therefore, this raises the questions- is the project innately selfish? Does it truly benefit the public in the way it intended to? How can regular people contribute creatively as a part of the project? Where do donations go?
2. Sanny&hellip | November 11, 2008 at 7:53 pm
I totally agree that public art is not always a community project. The funding for museums and galleries often comes from the wealthy and this forms a selected group who are able to dictate what art the public see. x
3. Rachael&hellip | November 12, 2008 at 1:16 am
Miranda July’s Learning to Love You More. The website is set out as a series of tasks that have been proposed. people have then completed tasks and sent in either written or photographic descriptions of their work. (tasks include things like ‘take a picture of your parents kissing’ or ‘make an encouraging banner and hang it where you or anyone else may need encouragment’) i would class this as public art – on internet so available to all and also releasing a book. ALSO the work would NOT EXIST if it were not for the public completing the art and sending in to the website.
4. helena&hellip | December 12, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Thought it was interesting that Adam brought up tv shows such as strictly come dancing and x factor as public art. I.e singing/ dancing are art forms and the public really do contribute – as contestants and as voters. Millions contribute. I think it’s amazing that we missed this! Perhaps we don’t consider these shows to be public art. If you look at all the examples we cited, they are all quite high brow, niche, experimental events – and they are not well known by the public as a whole, but by a select part of the public. And they are not nearly as successful as the aforementioned tv shows.