News & Events
'Speaking Matters' :: art, the public and its problems: can we (really) learn from experience? Thursday 28/05/2009
19-05-2009
This workshop will examine the recurrence of certain problematics in discussions about placing contemporary art in, and producing contemporary for, the public realm. The workshop will seek to identify new ways forward in practice and debate around art and the public realm. It seeks to address two key thematics framed through the following questions:
- what can we learn from previous projects and programmes?
- are we learning?
- how might we learn more?
- why bother?
- who needs it?
- is public culture already being produced elsewhere through, for example, new technologies and other informal collectivities - in 'convivial' spaces beyond 'official' and 'institutional' culture?
This event takes place on: Thursday 28/5/09 @ 14:00 - 18:00 in: GradCAM Seminar Room, Johns Street, D8.
Speakers include:
- Kerstin Bergendal (Denmark)
- Aisling Prior (Ireland)
- Jonathan Banks (UK)
- Mick Wilson (Ireland)
This event builds upon earlier discussions realised through the Graduate School and developed by colleagues working across the sector. An important recent contribution to this debate was the earlier 'speaking matters' event with Simon Sheikh - 'The Public' Thursday 19/3/09
about the speakers:
kerstin bergendal
Kerstin Bergendal is a Copenhagen-based visual artist, curator and writer whose practice consistently focuses on new ways of practicing art and employing artistic knowledge in contemporary society. Her works deals with a primary focus on existing - or possible - public and semipublic 'commons.'
Her projects are created for specific chosen locations, but grow organically out of a combination of interventionist strategies, a conscious use of a relatively long duration engagement and the establishment of an active involvement from locals and/or other professionals. Each project, presented in the form of models or prototypes, thus constitutes a "translation" of a complex temporary local process, into fully viable proposals for local change. See for example.
http://www.nordjyllandskunstmuseum.dk
http://www.layerskulptur.dk/pages/layer4.html
Kerstin Bergendal also engages in artist-run initiatives, such as the now 20 year old nomadic platform for site-specific strategies - TAPKO, and the artist run OVERGADEN, which she directed from 1993-2001 in collaboration with Simon Sheikh and turned into an Institute of Contemporary Art. Since
2001 she heads the realisation of her own proposal for New Art for New Urban Areas - Art Plan Trekroner. She is currently a member of the Committee for Art in Public Realm of the National Foundation of the Arts in Denmark.
aisling prior
Aisling Prior is an independent curator. She was the founder director of the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris and of the Galway Film Centre, and the director of the Sculptors’ Society of Ireland (VAI) where she presented new commissioning models and opportunities. As a freelance curator she worked with several public bodies, implementing less prescriptive approaches to commissioning artists. She was the founding curator/director of Breaking Ground, in Ballymun (01-’08).
www.breakingground.ie and is currently curating two commissions for Dublin City Council and Visual Arts Curator for the Kilkenny Arts Festival 2009.)
johnathan banks
Johnathan Banks is Chief Executive of IXIA, the internationally rec ognised public art think tank. IXIA provides guidance on the role of art in the public realm. Through its activities IXIA identifies and challenges restrictive practices which result in limited and missed opportunities for artists working in the public realm. IXIA works with artists, policy makers and implementers within the public and private sectors. Johnathan Banks leads IXIA's wide range of initiatives including the work IXIA does to carry out research, support events and deliver training, and commission new writing and publications.
book a place: mick.wilson@gradcam.ie
