Sonata in 13 parts

1. Public ::  2. Traffic ::   3. Power ::
4. Occupying space ::   5. Top down ::   6. Pania ::
7. Culture led regeneration ::   8. Open source ::
9. Dissent ::   10. Safety ::  11. Equilibrium ::
12.Towards an ethical practice ::   13. Praxis ::

1. Public :: The idea of public space as equivalent to the public sphere is not an easy reconciliation with the mediated physical reality of the city. Nevertheless the city is always contested spatially in a form of democracratic agonism that makes the parallel persist. This agonism takes the simple form of individuals and groups physically asserting their right to occupy overlapping zones of space in the city; to exist, to live, to be busy or to remain still.

2. Traffic :: The mediation of public space revolves around the movement of people going about the business of their lives. Town planning is concerned with avoiding any kind of congestion. It creates channels between terminals. Loitering is not encouraged (ask Wellingtonians about Cuba St). Town planning is built on the understanding that there will always be conflicts between individual interests and the general good of the community. However it has always been primarily an exercise in economics, with the specific understanding that an urban arangement of space that is generally accepted as pleasant and convenient is also beneficial to economics. The persistant idealistic confusion between public space as the city defines it and democratic ideals of participation and discussion is played out in public artforms.

3. Power :: Political negotiation is also played out in civic architecture, shared space is subject to a kind of spatial plutocracy, where the values that belong to the most powerful groups are those that form the physical basis and architectural form of public space and the less powerfull compete in marginal ways to have some form of presence in the public (sphere). This is being played out in every city, but a current example is under our noses in Manukau city at the moment as the council does its level best to tidy away messy human detritus and all signs they ever existed with the Bill in front of the house during December that is designed to help with a new and intensified War on Graffitti and the Immoral influence of Sex Workers by conferring extreme powers on council employees. All of the powers of the proposed legislation are aimed at preventing certain kinds of people occupying public space. The Manukau council understands (viscerally if not consciously) that this basic contestation of space is inextricable from democratic process and have taken their requested radical local authority amendments to central government.

4. Occupying space :: An understanding about the realities and dynamics of how relative power is played out in the cities shared places has percolated into public art practices as part of the more general movement of speculative art practices out of the gallery and museums into a broader institutional entity, the city. If a public artform should have a role in establishing discussion on public issues or if it should instead be generally acceptable as being pleasant and convenient is the source of all dissent on the subject. One position is roughly about reinforcement and stability, a sensation of solidity and continuity that is conducive to carrying out sober trade and as an added bonus improves property values. The other position is the acknowledgment that 'public' is a continually redefined social entity that also occupies space. Both perspectives are grounded, specifically sited if you like, by the fact that people live here, and here, and also here.

5. Top down :: Public work that is brought into being because a civic body thinks it is a good idea always runs the ethical risks of oversimplifying who the public is as well as the fundamental misapprehension of the core values that form the basis of the community where it is located. Most NZ public art is too banal to be anything so potent as fascist, but blandness and design homogeneity as a consistent policy position creates a public space that does not allow different perspectives any visibility.

6. Pania :: A monument at its best is some thing that acts as a community focus, that holds the pride and identity of a particular group of people. When people invest something of themselves in shared symbols such as existing monuments these sites then arguably become public art sites; in the sense of shared investment in an idea that is expressed in public space. An example is shown by the outpouring of greif and rage when Pania of the Reef was stolen in Napier, followed by the very swift and decisive judicial processing of the perpetrator to twelve months prison. The theif by way of explanation only said that Pania was a good luck charm, unfortunately for him that kind of luck cannot be taken by force. No offense to Paul Dibble but there was no similar outrage when his large scale bronze was stolen. The question of why one work is a community focus and the other not is a complex one but begins with shared stories and living history.

7. Culture led regeneration :: an argument by Richard Florida that artists have an active role in stimulating first the cultural strength and diversity of cities, and subsequently have an effect on overall community and ultimately economic health by making entreprenuerial activity in business and technology more likely. Florida's theories have often been taken very literally by cities seeking a causal formula for economic development, who rush to create the appearance of an active culture through ambitious built environment projects. But the key point missed in such instances is that 'culture' is not something that can be created to order merely by providing a venue, it can only be collaborated with or fostered. Cultural activity occurs in exchanges between people, not in the appearance of culture created by elegantly designed buildings or plaza's adorned by handsome large scale abstractions in bronze or stone. Instead this conception suggests a key goal and idea for Public Art is participation, as distinct from presentation. The artists and their works are not primarily spectacle, but a social catalysing agent- a possibility for person to person contact.

8. Open source :: an idea taken and adapted from the anti monopoly programming movement that is non heirarchal and is fundamentally participatory in structure because it redefines and refutes the line between privately owned and public resource. The Alma Torch in Paris, which is an exact replica of The Eternal Flame held by the Statue of Liberty, is located outside the Alma tunnel: the site where Diana Spencer and Dodi Fayed were killed. As a direct result of the new emotional significance of the site, the monument that already existed has been adapted to fit a new role. The Alma Torch is an interesting example of the subversion and co-option of an existing top down public art construction into what could be called 'open source' public art activity. Interestingly it remains a monument, with the meaning rather than the form under reinscription (as the added messages are removed as quickly as they are left by a town planning committee that regards unauthorised expressions of feeling as graffitti). Despite the fact the Alma torch is scrubbed and regilded so the new meaning is not visible, there is an optimistic implication that all monuments can be reinscribed at the will of the communities that own them, regardless of what institutions may prefer. The idea that an artist delivers meaning shifts significantly, in a open source model meaning is collaborative, accumulative and negotiable. (These ideas, with different names, have had an evolving presence in art practice since Fluxus, at least, but are in a renaissance in current public art practices following lively artistic and curatorial interest in Barriaud's publication Relational Aesthetics (1998). )

9. Dissent :: Public art outside of institutional frameworks by definition tends to be about minority expression and the contestation of political goals, historically finding expression in a range of intentionally confrontational and destabilising ways. Non institutional forms of disruptive play in urban environments (eg. tagging, postering, billboard modification, stenciling, etc) often have an overt element of disobedience and defiance. These and other subversive interventions when adopted strategically often fail to be recognised as art practices or even as viable political positions and can lapse, unrecognised and ignored, into cynicism and futility...at worst these disobediences incur increasingly extreme institutional wrath and punishment. Unfortunately the increasing conflation between civil disobedience and the frightening and growing category of what is legally regarded as terrorism is now making these practices risky beyond rational proportion. In December 05 the Auckland City Council made a press release welcoming the sentencing of an eighteen year old boy to 9 months prison for tagging, charged with criminal damage.(visit:http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK0512/S00168.htm). The quotes from council staff are ringing with rhetoric about victory in a war, the absurdity of this rhetoric comes into focus when we consider the individual teenage Enemy. The council staff members, by their comments, identify hip hop culture as one face of the enemy, making the pugilistic rhetoric is less absurd but more sinister if we think as they clearly do, that Joshua is part of a dissenting counter culture.I found an article, captioned 'why George Bush is outlawing dissent' on a hip hop website (http://www.daveyd.com/) which would seem to suggest some threads of credibility to the councils paranoaic stance. But was 18yr old Joshua's tagging actually part of an organised political expression of dissent or just teenage vandalism directed at the nearest fence? You cant have it both ways. Either way the wisdom and social justice of the new official line is dubious, for different reasons

10. Safety :: Leaving aside for a moment whether or not homogeneity and tidiness in the city is preferable and whether or not a paint stain has a similar community harm as a drunk driver does; in a wider sense these changes of mood and consequence are on the back of a growing worldwide conservatism and contraction of civil freedoms in the name of the War on Terror. In Sydney there are new laws around detainment without charge and search and seizure as well as one coming into effect in 2006 that will make it a criminal act to leave any object unattended, which has implications for installation, intervention and other forms of inhabiting and being present in public space, however benign in intention. Manukau City's attempted legislation (control of Graffitti act and control of prostitution act), that if adopted would give the council staff unusual powers, could be regarded as a precurser of similar thinking taking hold here. Any and all artists that take dissenting voice seriously as part of the role of a public artist have an increasing possibility of running foul of these proliferating bylaws and get into legal dificulties while continuing to work in this contracting climate. In America artists are being ostracised and jailed for controversial public art projects, including some that should be regarded as peaceful political action, with serious long term ramifications for healthy political dissent. Artists are retreating from public practices, returning to the relatively safe freedom of speech bracketing that the Gallery situation can provide, while simultaneously many galleries and museums are retreating from controversial projects, and so the contraction into conservatism continues.

11. Equilibrium :: The task of formulating an ethical public art practice involves finding a viable path between ideas of permanence and immanence. This negotiation of imperatives remains one of the major questions for the new millenia for all artforms, as the proliferating uncertainty of the times bring a strong collective desire for return to and enclosure within forms of security. This desire makes itself known in art practices that are harmonious in intention, celebratory rather than critical. A balancing desire for an engaged artist citizen is to keep open the doors of discussion, to continue to be critically aware and to remain tolerant to new possibilities and ideas.

12. Towards an ethical practice :: Its possible to draw attention to a dialectic at play, aggregations of duality that occur around familiar binary oppositions that polarise art practices. Just as it is a difficult leap for a civic body to regard any public activity that is inherently 'untidy' as a valid form of community expression, it seems dificult for post object thinking to allow the possibility of return to a materially grounded practice that is not hegemonic or facile. Equally difficult for many critical thinkers to accept that warm inclusive and even spiritual practices can also have critical traction. Where these dualisms meet or perhaps can be transformed in public art practice is in an attention to site, or situation. If site is understood not only as physical but also as social and contextual, then site responsive practice becomes active engagement with what is already there, not formally but contextually. This idea of situated engagement can be relational, social and historical as well as geo-political. Such a practice would not be either too violent or too passive because it would regard the situation as it was and be responsible to it, and to the people who live in it, in an art-conversational way.

13. Praxis :: an actively remedial or connective genre of public art practice taking hold worldwide that understands the growing need for gentleness and humanity and is maintaining an ethical stance as artist citizen without losing critical ability and political sophistication. The kind of practice that also provides a benign and non threatening model for inhabiting public space and looking for connections between people is also an indirect political act, a playfull subversion or antidote to paranoia. These benign presences are a reminder that not all unattended parcels are bombs, not all dissent is violent and conversations with our neighbours need not involve fear suspicion and danger.

Warm regards,
Ali Bramwell.

Links and vectors

Alma torch :: http://www.davidphenry.com/press/Press011.htm
Pania :: http://www.hawkesbay.co.nz/index.php/pania-of-the-reef/
Interventions :: http://www.artbruit.com/interventions/interventions.htm
Kakamoana and the fire hydrants :: http://publicaddress.net/default,randomplay.sm
Praxis :: http://www.twobodies.com/
www.salon.com
NZ Public Art project :: www.terminus05.net.nz
pressure in US :: http://www.capogallerysf.com/
more pressure :: http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/this_just_in/documents/03885837.asp
American artist and writer Professor Steven Kurtz has been fighting federal prosecution for nearly two years on extremely thin charges :: http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/040727.htm