Self–Organisation

On August 22^nd I attended a day-long symposium called ‘Public Art and Self-Organisation’. Hosted by public art think tank Ixia, and hosted at Enclave, (an alternative art space in Deptford, East London), the day was mostly attended by artists and art managers of one kind or another. The day was convened by artist curator Paul O’Neill, and featured engaging talks by digital artist Anthony Gross (Enclave), urban artist Jeanne van Heeswijk (Netherlands), curator Varri Claffey (Dublin), consultant and academic Sophie Hope (London). The theme of the day was pertinent to the both the decline in public funding for public art as well as the growing role of artists in urban redevelopment.

One might ask why, in the last three years of arts funding cuts, public art has been hit far harder than the established institutions of fine art. It's partly because, ironically, Public art’s revenue base is broader – local authorities, property developers, construction companies, architects, cultural organizations, local health authorities, and so on. They have all faced austerity. Also, public art is mostly project-based, hence its easier not to commission more projects than to discontinue funding an organisation. Public-urban artists are a mobile, flexible, low-paid labour force, with few fixed capital assets. Public art is not a heavily institutionalised sector of contemporary art, and, despite its central aim of public engagement and its profound civic visibility, it has always been marginal to art world and cultural sector priorities.

Public art, however, is no longer (merely) ‘public art’ in the sense in which we used the term 20 years ago. It now attracts a panoply of mainstream contemporary artists, urban activists, political artists and new media artists, all who see the social sphere as a crucial platform for ideas and cultural engagement. This seminar featured discussions on the politics of art funding, the development of cultural policy models out of engaged cultural production, the roles of artists in developing new urban spaces and alternative forms of urban regeneration.

The theme of ‘self-organisation’ was elusive, as most artistic production is self-organised in all kinds of ways. In this symposium the term ‘self-organisation’ functioned as a marker for both self-initiation and self-direction outside the usual models of project management, cultural sector patronage and local authority commissioning that hitherto have been the conditions of creative practice for most urban-public artists. There is a sense in which self-organisation is an alter-ego of business entrepreneurialism, in another sense it refers to some new means of using art as a social enterprise. In this seminar, it is resolutely anti-capitalist, participatory, pluralist and avoids the ideological territory of major cultural institutions. It is leadership without management and decision-making that works through dialogue with a gathered community of interlocutors, usually the inhabitants of the urban spaces that are the site for the art.

Questions I came away with: First, as Anthony Gross himself said, imagine ALL public funding of the arts being withdrawn: What then are we capable of doing alone, on existing resources? It’s an important preliminary thought-experiment for a subject of this kind. Second, in relation to myself as a critic, researcher (‘intermediary’?), is self-organisation necessarily artist-led? Perhaps Universities have a role in this. The category of ‘artist’ has in any case become tenuous and needs revision for the emerging complexities of the urban-public sphere. If we are to develop the means of effective creative self-organisation for urban-public spaces, how can these ‘means’ be formalized as models of practice (without becoming formulae, or artistic tropes)? How can we synthesize curatorship, project management and artistic production in ways that address the growing need for autonomy in an ever restrictive social order? We need to re-work the research pioneered in advanced management and organisation studies within the context of public-urban projects, developing an entrepreneurialism that is not simply derived from business models. More urgently perhaps is the need for new ways of occupying and renovating urban spaces without the patronage of local authority-led urban regeneration.

See:
Ixia public art think tank: http://ixia-info.com/
The Enclave: http://enclaveprojects.com/
The Old Police Station: http://www.theoldpolicestation.org/

Jonathan Vickery : 12 Sep 2012 17:57 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem