ICA warns staff it could close by May. Institute could fall victim to recession with costs needing a £1m trim. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/jan/23/ica-closure-threat
Ivan Pope wrote some interesting comments about this, I have copied the text from Facebook.... marc Ivan Pope: How we show art and what we make of it. The thought that the ICA might have to close (it only got 1.2 million quid from the Arts Council to avoid that) has brought out the usual defenders of any institution that we have come to know, if not love, over our art consuming lifetime. I always wondered what the ICA was really for, outside the insider cliques who patronise it. Sure, it has a bar and a bookshop, but neither have been much cop for a decade or two now. I've been there and done that. I've done live art with Loophole Cinema in the theatre, my 1993 internet magazine, The World Wide Web Newsletter, was sold in the bookshop and, most notably, I invented the internet cafe with a weekend event, Cybercafe, as part of their Towards the Aesthetics of the Future series back in the nineties. Sure, the ICA used to be adventurous. Maybe. It's fairly clear that closing down the Live Art and New Media departments might just have stripped out the potential for reinvention. But who am I to know. But hearing people defend the ICA on the grounds of the bar, bookshop and cinema just reminds me how far we've removed ourselves from anything adventurous in the production and showing of art in our key institutions. I ask myself: what is the ICA for? Or more interestingly, how do they make curatorial decisions. What are they trying to achieve. What is the aim, apart from desperation to remain solvent. All our main galleries are like this - obscure to the wider public, playing some sort of game where validity within the artworld is more important than engaging in a public conversation or reinventing the role of art itself. I think it's about time some of our venerable institutions went to the wall. Maybe this can clear the air and release some cash for more interesting organisations to take the whole thing forward. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
