Image by Banksy, London street stencil artist (from artofthestate blog) More of Banksy at his site.
Further to the renewed interest in the Situationists and their contribution to methods pertinent to the circumstances facing artists now, is a post by Shawn Micallef, on Spacing Wire, a Toronto urban issues site, about his experiences wandering the city of Dublin. Although not writing specifically about art, he makes a link between Joyce's litterary work and the idea of the dérive.
"I was told to look out for the feet and arrows above, as they are there to evoke Leopold Bloom wandering around the city in Ulysses."
Spacing Wire also has a sample of Toronto urban intervention art.
More "walking" projects can be found on the Walking in Place site including
A PERIPATETIC INVESTIGATION OF PLACE
It seems at this time that there is a great deal of interest by artists, particularly in New York, with the art of lived-space and of reclaiming the "commons" through live interventions. Creative Time has a long history of projects of this kind. Example are two projects scheduled for the near future, Situational Drive: Complexities of Public Sphere Engagement (Conference), and Six Actions for New York City, including work by Spartacus Chetwynd who is currently showing at Artspace in Sydney.
A meeting to talk over aspects of the June 16th wander in Gosford, will be held soon.
3 comments:
Ummm…. Situationist work…can be good fun, only if the idea is well executed. This type of play through semiotics, time and space can alter the perception of the participant, however, if you miss the mark, it has the potential to come across as a pretentious exercise. I’m slightly tempted to engage with this project, however, I suffer from flashbacks: the LCD text displays comes to mind, a guy with a bucket on his head, and empty spaces in a café, ……Actually, there’s a thought…wouldn’t it be great to set up a series of “portals” in Gosford CBD, (tap into string theory), and create a series of dimensions that connect with Gosford’s past, or project an empty future. Surely, there has to be tunnels and drains under Gosford, to explore. Oh well, just a thought.
Can you be really playing (even seriously), if you are worrying about hitting the mark?
And if one has ambitious pretensions, it might be a problem to be having negative flashbacks to a scene one was not in. A bit like discovering false repressed memories.
I remember a cartoon about a man who had been saved from drowning, saying “My whole life flashed in front of my eyes, and I wasn’t in it.”
Your ‘just a few thoughts’ are interesting, and you will be pleased to know that similar concepts have been in a process of negotiation and development for almost a year. More will be announced soon.
I'm laughing ed, I'm always playing, I just need to be careful, with whom I play with.
Within the realms of Public Art, yes, you do need to be concerned with hitting the mark. This isn't "art as therapy". My interest is in Public Art and communication, which offers a varied perception, for the audience, or participants. To do this well, the audience / participants, need to be able to read or (understand) the message that is being conveyed, - to really appreciate it, and absorb the content. The Public needs clues into how to read contemporary art practice. Jumping into a “Dada” realm, without considering a response is naïve. That genre of practice is extremely ambiguous, your audience/ participants are from the Central Coast, lead them with the language, and then they will understand the sophistication of the work.
It's great to see these ideas being tossed around, and that's the main point. Good luck with the project, it will be interesting to see how it goes.
(As for false repressed memories, well, if I wasn't a player, I wouldn’t have learnt the danger in that!.)
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