Extremely interesting article! I found myself both agreeing and
disagreeing with it at various points. I've never been a believer that
art should have to be politically correct as a first condition of
existence, and in fact I don't think it's a weakness for art to be
deliberately ambiguous and create a space which people feel obliged to
fill with their own interpretations. There are points where this article
seems to be suggesting that ambiguity isn't good enough - you have to
take sides and state your political position loud and clear - anything
else is a cop-out. On the other hand, I do share a distaste for
"monumental" works of art which are "airlifted" into policitally
sensitive situations in order to borrow a suggestion of "relevance",
without engaging with the people or the issues on the ground. As the
article says, "Ignorant of their own class power and the cultural
capital that oils it, they [Artangel] still want to place art wherever
they choose, even when told quite forcefully why it’s insensitive and
dodgy by those who suffer the material consequences of demolition."
Of course this is a one-sided account of the project and its eventual
collapse, but it does leave you with the distinct impression that
Artangel were simply lazy. They had an off-the-shelf project and they
were looking for a "suitable" space into which they could plonk it, and
it was too much like hard work for them to get in touch with the locals
at the outset, get them on board, and risk having to revise the project
to take account of their views. But the subtext of the article is that
the underlying reason for this failure is that the art/business/local
politics nexus from which organisations such as Artangel draw their
financial support has the long-term effect of gentrifying them and
detaching them from community engagement. No doubt this is an argument
in which Mark and Ruth are both extremely, perhaps even painfully,
interested, as they're so conspicuously trying to tread a different
path, and finding it a financially difficult one.
- Edward
_______________________________________________
NetBehaviour mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
