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- Convenor:
-
Roger Sansi Roca
(Universitat de Barcelona)
Send message to Convenor
- Chairs:
-
Jennifer Clarke
(Gray's School of Art, Robert Gordon University)
Jennifer Clarke
- Discussant:
-
Christopher Wright
(University of Manchester)
- Formats:
- Workshops
- Location:
- S301
- Sessions:
- Thursday 12 July, -, -, Friday 13 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Paris
Short Abstract:
Rather than confronting uncertainty, contemporary art events thrive on it: they intend to have transformative social effects by creating unprecedented relations between different social actors. This panel will bring together ethnographies of artistic events, exploring how they manage uncertainty.
Long Abstract:
Contemporary art has shifted from the production of objects to the promotion of events and situations. Many artistic events nowadays intend to have transformative social effects, by creating unprecedented relations between different social actors. More than confronting disquiet and uncertainty, the artistic event thrives on them: contemporary art thrives on chance and serendipity. On the other hand, the promotion of artistic events has become central to cultural policy: the "creativity" and "serendipity" that these events propose to stimulate is described as key to cultural and economic development and innovation; art and culture have become a key economic resource. But paradoxically, by promoting these events, cultural policy institutions force them into the administrative framework of the "project", in which the intentions, methods, and outcomes of the process have to be clearly defined. Artistic practitioners are asked to give certainties on an essentially uncertain practice, define the method of a fundamentally non-methodical practice. What are the outcomes of this encounter between artistic practice and cultural policy? This panel proposes to bring together different ethnographies of artistic practice, by exploring the notion of the artistic event. Anthropological ethnographies of artistic events can give a radically original perspective on these processes and their social outcomes, shedding light on how they are articulated, how the "potentialites" of art to instigate creativity and transform society are managed.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 12 July, 2012, -Paper short abstract:
This paper looks at the changing nature of public performance in relation to the new, privatized African city. I examine the relationship between corporate sponsorship and the making of national audiences in Ghana through artistic events.
Paper long abstract:
This paper looks at the changing nature of public performance in relation to the new, privatized African city. Artistic labor that goes into making performance events is central to how neoliberal Africans imagine their relationship to urban space as well as globalization. I examine the relationship between corporate sponsorship and the making of national audiences in Accra, Ghana through musical/artistic events. I focus on a recent major musical event, the Vodaphone 020 Festival, which was sponsored by a major corporate mobile phone provider though celebrated Ghanaian national and Pan-African imaginaries. It featured African American R&B musicians and local Ghanaian rap artists. This event is significant because it shows how Ghanaian artists play out the contradictions between national/linguistic identification and global Pan-African and corporate aspirations. It also demonstrates the changing nature of artistic labor ways in relation to new digital music production and staging forms that go into producing major public arts events, as well as the tensions between high art and popular tastes. In understanding how artistic value is made in public urban events, this paper explores the tensions inherent in the privatization of the African urban landscape.
Paper short abstract:
Recently, Mauritanian world of plastic arts has seem to change his familiar dynamics and relationships by the introduction of artistic events, consisting on workshops, installations, performances, etc. These events are mostly foster by the initiative of foreign, "postcolonial", presences.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I intend to move the analysis of social and cultural effects produced by the progressive introduction of artistic events to a different, and very particular, non Western artistic context, that of Mauritanian contemporary plastic artists.
Since December 2008, and during regular fieldworks periods, I had the opportunity of assisting to some timid attempts of bringing "new ideas" to the cultural life of the Mauritanian capital city, Nouakchott.
One of the most interesting aspect of these "innovations" is that they almost always come from the initiative of those that can be called "postcolonial" presences, like embassies, cooperation agencies, ONGs, foreign resident artistes, etc., following Western examples.
Until the introduction of different kinds of events, the artistic life of Nouakchott was substantially composed of humble, but regular, painting expositions in different public or private spaces of the city.
When we speak of artistic events we are referring, particularly, to formation and exchange workshops, mural paintings, artistic performances, installations, and auctions too.
Gradually, foreign initiatives began to suggest to local artists some new projects that were usually eagerly accepted.
These still limited new proposals and their realization have consequently begun to transform previous dynamics, roles, and relationships characterizing the Mauritanian world of plastic arts, such as those between artists themselves, between artists and publics or between artists and institutions, etc. We can affirm that contemporary Mauritanian plastic art world is the product of the constant contact between colonial, and actually "postcolonial", presences and local artists.
Paper short abstract:
The urbanization of the city developed areas of domestication of the natural and the uncertain. Hence the appearance of new types of artistic events by which urbanization introduces a degree of freedom. But is that freedom nothing but an extra room in the organization of the city? What role do public and private institutions play on those new types of artistic initiatives?
Paper long abstract:
We can observe the disappearance of public space, that leads to uncertainty (Arendt, 1961).
Hence the emergence of new artistic expressions that appropriate public space in order to create new situations of unpredictability (examples of flash mobs, film screenings in the open air, public performances, ephemeral architecture, etc ...)
Public space revitalizes the social bond (Habermas, 1978). Hence the example of the flashmobs :
This gathering and ephemeral instant of a set of individuals is a tool of transcendence and a way to create new situations of unpredictability, through new contingencies. Through the same way, any public space can be turned into a place of performance art, a place of emancipation, where new social relationships may emerge. Through this shared commitment of art performance new public spaces appear : they offer again the uncertainty in the urban space.
The state takes over some of these public events to minimize their effects and control the unpredictable contingent elements, hence the development of a state funded art.
Example of sponsored events and initiatives :
The "104" art place - which was a successful squat - has become elitist, leading to sterility of the art, the viewer becomes a kinetic in the city. The "Campement Urbain" project cannot find investors, due to the abundance of unpredictable and unexpected elements.
These types of events, when supervised by an institutional logic, sterilize the act of emancipation, because institutions cannot afford to promote the uncertain.
Paper short abstract:
Whilst relational-art revels in an internally constructed volatility, illicit aesthetics encounter precarity in dual form, intrinsically via their veneration of process, extrinsically by their basic transgressive status. Following these practices, this paper aims to explore the efficacy of risk.
Paper long abstract:
Functioning outside of traditional institutional confinement, under the radar of authorization, practices of illicit public ornamentation (more popularly termed 'graffiti' or 'street-art') can come to elide the set politico-aesthetic policies of the state whilst still replicating many of the socially efficacious processes of relational-art. Yet just as they reproduce the consensually motivated sentiments of this form of cultural production, these transgressive images also come to follow the debates between relational-art and what has recently been termed relational-antagonism. Situated within what I see as a Habermasian framework in the former case and a Lyotardian one in the latter, I aim first to outline the key aspects of these ornamental discourses within my paper, delineating the particular visual and political structures they adhere towards. Whilst pursuing quite radically divergent communicative values however, one aiming toward a centrifugal, the other a centripetal aesthetic, I then hope to argue that it is their joint commitment to risk, to process, to practice, that comes to unite them under a more all encompassing, holistic rubric. Providing one works within certain moral (and tacit) prescriptions then, eschewing instrumental gain, embracing ephemerality, uncertainty, embracing an improvisational creativity, an orthopraxic bond is formed which surpasses any distinct aesthetic sensibility. Focusing on the production of these public artefacts, this paper will thus examine the importance of play and risk in the aesthetic process; it will explore not only the latent potential carried within these charged images, but their ability to break down the often misleading division between art and ritual.
Paper short abstract:
Soon after the Polish political transformation a group of artists from the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw invited their British counterparts to work together on a community arts project. The project was conducted in 1990-93 and I investigated the memory of the event.
Paper long abstract:
Soon after the Polish political transformation, at the very beginning of the 1990s, a group of artists from the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, spent every summer in the countryside. One summer they invited their British counterparts to the summer residence and decided to work together on a community arts/cultural animation project - the first one ever undertaken by both groups in conjunction.
In 2010 I came to the village Pierog, where the project was conducted in 1990-93, to investigate the memory of the artistic event.
In my paper I would like to explore the role of materiality in managing the community arts event. I would like to examine the ways in which material objects mediate social agencies of differently situated subjects in a social field. I would like to explore the potential of materiality in creating unexpected relationships between humans but also between human and non-human agents.
Paper short abstract:
Grounded in a study of producing artwork for permanent installation forests, this paper works to recover complex aspects of engaging in environment by looking at what art can do. The origins of anthropology & art are characterised by systematic doubt of ontological distinctions between people and things. Levi-Strauss’ notion of objective chance makes space for transformative potential in things, in an act of recovery.
Paper long abstract:
This paper is grounded in particular practices of producing artwork for 'permanent' installation in Britain's publically-owned forests. It works to recover complex aspects of engaging in environment by looking at what art can do and how artists understand their 'role'. The origins of anthropology and contemporary art are similarly characterised by systematic doubt of an ontological distinction between people and things. Much anthropological work which problematises this relationship in terms of the social significance of art and artefacts has been influenced by Gell's re-articulation of the 'agency' of objects. Levi-Strauss' notion of 'objective chance' makes space for transformative potential in things, in an 'act of recovery'. My suggestion is that art works, itinerant things themselves (cf Ingold, Deleuze & Guattari) mediate these. Marilyn Strathern's extension of "the concept of artefact" to "performance and to event" (Strathern, 1990:40) helps demonstrate how acquiring a time dimension can transform an object into an event, revealing how objects are made up of processes, or, "parliaments of things" (Latour). An artwork, thus framed, is a relational thing at the site of a situated encounter. If Gell fails to provide a theoretical basis for understanding how art can be a mode of action it is because he fails to deal with complexity (Morphy 2009); "the chance encounter that has not been anticipated by those arrangements" (Strathern). This frame has theoretical and methodological implications for anthropological approach to art that emerge here.
Paper short abstract:
My research is about emerging artistic practices, their production processes and social organization. The stress is in "workshop" as place to learn and work together. These work-together processes are grounded in horizontality, collaboration, uncertainty and flexibility as building elements, where process is paradigm.
Paper long abstract:
My proposal consists of an ethnography of an emerging artistic practice in present-day urban societies, the practice developed around artistic and scientific production laboratories: the media-labs. These production centers exist around the world today and they are oriented toward artistic and scientific development, blending creativity, traditionally associated with art, with other domains belonging to the "hard" sciences, creating a new form of socioeconomic production and technological competition.
These labs are part of a complex network of individual and collective agents that form a fuzzy circuit, around which they move in a disorderly fashion, producing a series of heterogeneous links that allow them to experience themselves and construct themselves as a community. They do this by using the new tools of communication and physical coexistence in workshops and shared learning spaces. These work-together dynamics and these processes grounded in horizontality, collaboration, uncertainty and flexibility, as building elements of these new dynamics, make them a fascinating place for the ethnography of art.
Paper short abstract:
An anthropologist’s account of her implication in three artistic events helps to find common ground between art and anthropology in the management of uncertainty: reflexivity may serve as a means of both controlling and enhancing unpredictable processes in the construction of a (scientific and/or artistic) research “project”.
Paper long abstract:
Admittedly, an ethnographic research project, concerning an artistic event, permits to contextualize artistic practices and gain insight to important details of contemporary art production. Nowadays, though, relations between art and anthropology develop in such a way that this kind of project risks intermingling with the artistic project, originally set as its "object" of study.
This paper focuses on three instances in which an anthropologist (i.e. myself), who is also trained as an artist, participated in art projects recently realized in Greece. I grew more and more implicated in art making, first, as an anthropologist doing research on a public art event (part of the 2nd Athens Biennale), then, as a participant in an art project (entitled "What is man?") and finally as the organizer (and artist-participant) of an artistic/anthropological research project (on "Voices").
These experiences have made me realize that the more unpredictable is the process, the more effective turns out to be the project. It seems that uncertainty encourages a reflexive stance (familiar both to anthropologists and to artists), instigating attitudes of both control and "spontaneity". Therefore, in this paper, I wish to discuss the
"administrative framework" of an artistic "project" not so much from an ethnographic perspective focusing on institutional constraints on otherwise "uncertain" artistic practices, but from the point of view of an anthropologist whose discipline takes part, in one way or another, in the construction as well as the deconstruction of institutionalized practices promoting "creativity"(and, thus, uncertainty), both in art and anthropology.
Paper short abstract:
As an ethnography of artistic events that never took place in the public realm they were designed for because of uncertainty, this paper aims to do a survey of methods with which museums are attempting to manage uncertainty by opening display practices to interventions by contemporary artists.
Paper long abstract:
"The content of this painting is invisible; the character and dimension of the content are to be kept permanently secret, known only to the artist." Imants Tillers
Bristling with secrets, the content of anthropology museums provoke some artists in a way that is critical beyond what the institution will accept within its policy, which acts as a representation of its history (rather than its mission). Contradictions between the mission of anthropology museums and their flexibility in allowing contemporary artists to fulfill their aims will be one focus of this paper.
What are the most productive provocations of cultural policy that contemporary art has made and how does uncertainty come to light in those projects? The issue of authorship underlies some of the uncertainty that socially engaged
contemporary art faces. Through the participation of the public, the control of the author is uncertain and open to collaboration. Also, ethnography of artistic events that never took place in the public realm they were designed for because of uncertainty is a rich shadow aspect that will be explored. The way that contemporary art intends to rupture the certainty of museum narratives is the focus of this paper. It aims to do a survey of methods with which museums are attempting to manage uncertainty by opening their practices to interventions by contemporary artists. It takes a range of international event-spaces, including examples such from the British Museum, The Royal British Columbia Museum, and art practices such as Fred Wilson.
Paper short abstract:
I curated a biennial of contemporary art in Ljubljana in 2011, which I dedicated to rethinking how and why did art event experience such a remarkable development in the 20th century and today appears as a privileged medium. I will present an abstract of two months of performing and theorizing.
Paper long abstract:
I curated a biennial of contemporary art in Ljubljana, Slovenia in autumn 2011. I dedicated the whole manifestation to the theme of art event and rethinking how and why did art event experience such a remarkable development in the twentieth century and even today appears as a privileged medium with a broad range of different forms
In the exhibition, as well as in an extensive programme of artistic and theoretical events (http://29gbljubljana.wordpress.com) the questions were asked: Why and how has the event become a suitable vehicle for such different artistic aims, aesthetics, and content? Is the choice of this medium a response to specific impulses and voids in our "desacralized" everyday existence? And what are the potential dangers of this development, especially since it is happening more and more in the completely formalized setting of art institutions, which in recent decades not only house and exhibit contemporary art, but also commission and produce it.
At the conference I will present an abstract of these two months of performing and theorizing; what where the most common conclusions and which topics stayed untouched, no matter how I tried to bring them into discussion.