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What is public? What constitutes publicness?

Call for Papers:
The second issue of the Art & the Public Sphere invites contributions which particularly address the question of how we might define ‘public’. Conventional and historical understandings of ‘public art’ have focused on spatial and locational contexts for practices, production and critical reception. Other defining factors of art and the public sphere have concentrated on its funding or accessibility. If we reject ‘public realm’ and ‘public space’ as flawed ways of identifying what is public about public art, then there is a need to interrogate the idea of the public itself, in all its multiple forms and guises.

If public is the key to public art, then we need to ask how publics are formed and maintained, what threatens them, where they can be found, how can publics be animated and served. What is (or constitutes) a public or publics? Can a public be distinguished from a mass, a market, a nation, a crowd, a community? How is it different from the commons? Are there transitory and temporary publics or should these not be articulated as publics at all? What is the social, cultural and political relationship between the individual and the collective of individuals which becomes a public? Is a public necessarily engaged in dialogue with itself, or is a public an audience to the monologue of those who speak?

Art & the Public Sphere provides a new platform for academics, artists, curators, art historians and theorists, whose working practices are broadly concerned with contemporary art’s relation to the public sphere. Art & the Public Sphere also presents a crucial examination of contemporary art’s link to the public realm, offering an engaged and responsive forum in which to debate the newly emerging series of developments within contemporary thinking, society and international art practice. Art & the Public Sphere invites contributions and interdisciplinary articles, which confront orthodoxies, propagate debate and reflect on art’s role in contributing to the public sphere. We encourage fresh approaches to research arising from practice, theory, philosophy and politics, and welcome contributions from new and established researchers, scholars, practitioners and professionals.

Contributions:
Full research papers and longer articles should be 6,000-8,000 words. They should include original research or propose new methods/ideas that are clearly and thoroughly presented and argued. Shorter research papers, from 2,000-3,000 words, exploring specific issues and raising questions (or putting a position for debate and response) are also welcome. Experimental approaches to writing and criticism, and visual essays/contributions are invited.

Our reviews section includes public art commissioning and contexts, curatorial projects, exhibitions, publications/books, architecture/planning, performance/events, symposia/conferences/debates and artworks. Please send proposals, suggestions and submissions to the Reviews Editor, Paul O’Neill (pauloneillp[at]aol.com).

Articles, to include a 250 word (max.) abstract, should be sent to the Principal Editor, Mel Jordan (mel[at]hewittandjordan.com), who will also respond to preliminary enquiries about suggested contributions to the journal. Please do not send images until your article has been accepted. All images to be at least 300dpi.

The final date for all submissions for the second issue is: Friday 17 June 2011

http://www.criticalnetwork.co.uk/displayopportunities.php?id=324

Living Room 2011 – An Auckland City Council Public Art Event

"Living Room" is a key annual public art event for Auckland City, which aims to bring high quality art to the streets of the CBD over a weeklong period. Living Room has been running for four years and has evolved and grown over that time. The event takes place in variety of public spaces, and includes a range of visual and performing arts projects – both static and moving. The Living Room 2011 programme will have strong performative aspects, and include performances, performative installations, ephemeral art projects, and video programming.

We are currently seeking expressions of interest from curators to develop and curate the Living Room 2011 programme. Council also appoints a project manager as part of the Living Room team who will work closely with the curator, and will manage the delivery of the event.

Our ideal candidate for curator will have a proven track record of innovative curatorial practice, be Auckland based, and be able to work as part of a high performing team to deliver an outstanding event.

The deadline for expressions of interest is Friday 30 July 2010, 5pm

For more information visit the Auckland City Council website.

Welcome to July's Pick 'N Mix!

- This report on a curatorial summit at the Banff Centre for the Arts appears to have slipped past my radar when it first came out, but thankfully Leah Sandals (the author of the report) mentioned it again recently. Trade Secrets: Swapping Curatorial Confidences was a summit held in late 2008 with eminent curators in the field, including Matthew Higgs, Mark Mayer, Richard Flood, Sabine Breitwieser and many more. At one point in the report, Sandals quotes Barbican curator Francesco Manacorda, saying he was "very frightened about many curatorial projects having as an audience colleagues only. [...] very often in curating, people disregard one of the two final clients of the curator—the public or the artist" -- a concern I agree with and touched on in my "For What and For Whom?" essay.

- If you're keen to participate in debates and discussions, LabforCulture is producing three online discussions that are sure to provide stimulating platforms for exchange. "Converging Pathways to New Knowledge" promises to unpick some juicy topics on knowledge sharing in the cultural domain through live online debates taking place on the 7th, 8th, and 13th of July. While you're browsing their site, if you are also a cultural blogger, why not add yourself to their growing map?

- Jerry Saltz describes "the curator problem" in a recent article. The "problem" as he sees it is illustrated in the exhibitions curated by Birnbaum at the Venice Biennale, which in Saltz's words are "full of the reflexive conceptualism that artists everywhere now produce because other artists everywhere produce it (and because curators curate it). Almost all of this art comments on art, institutions or modernism. Basically, curators seem to love video, text, explanations, things that are "about" something, art that references Warhol or Prince, or that makes sense; they seem to hate painting, things that don’t make sense or that involve overt materiality, physicality, color or strangeness." This call for further risk-taking by Saltz is consistent with his other campaigns and appeals to curators. There is a long but fascinating account of his encounter with Ann Temkin, Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA available online which also presses for diversification and risk-taking: "MoMA desperately needs this to play with its collection. [...] Beuys, Nauman, and Hesse are all bona fide top-dogs; the A-list as art history. I love them all but curators have to take more chances and not just default to the same artists. Other artists were working at extremely high levels in the late 1960s." I admire Saltz's integrity -- not only is he consistent in his arguments, but I think it's a rare art critic that would go out with a high-ranking curator for the sole purpose of having a serious collegial debate -- and Temkin is to be commended too, for taking Saltz up on his invitation.

- On a personal note, I'm quite busy converting my Master's thesis on the voice, performance and technology into a book. Despite that, plus my regular job, plus a bit of summer holiday too, I hope to soon post some (long-overdue, and sitting at 99% completion) interviews and book reviews. Stay tuned!