Tag Archive for contemporary

Contemporary Public Art and non-capital Cities (of NW Europe and N America) – A framework for exploration

October 10, 2017 Geoff Bateson Thinking about art and contemporary, Thinking about cities No comments

What follows is seen as a set of lines for thinking along, routes of exploration, rather than chapter headings or specific research topics (although things may end up being both of those at some stage in the future). There are various crossovers between several the elements listed. It is not intended as a description of all the thinking that can be done around topics of contemporary public art and cities, more of a personal guide for activities, readings and exploration.

My focus on contemporary public art (loosely defined) is a way of limiting things by excluding historical monuments and modernist pieces of public sculpture. The option of excluding capital cities is based on the belief that such cities are often unusual, with more in common with each other as a group of global cities than being representative of their nation’s cities. Limiting the geographical focus to north-west Europe and north America is partly based on my personal experience (and ease of travel from a base in Birmingham, UK) and partly because cities in those locations broadly share some sort of underlying culture. If opportunities arise to look at cities in other parts of the world, these will be taken.

This framework-for-thinking has already shaped activities between 2015 and 2017, and will continue to guide activities over the period 2017-2025. Outcomes will include deeper personal understandings of the relevant topics; contact across a network of key intermediaries with personal, occupational or academic interests in public art and cities; as well as various writings and presentations around key themes that emerge.

An early action is to share this framework of ideas with others, as well as scheduling visits to more cities and undertaking more studies. Cities already visited have included 10 UK and 4 US/Canada cities. Proposed visits in 2017-2025 will be to at least 30 further cities (10 UK; 10 US/Canada; 10 mainland European).

Read more

Curating, creative undertakings and exhibiting

October 10, 2017 Geoff Bateson Thinking about art and contemporary No comments

Curating, currently, is used in a whole range of contexts. There have been references to curating an exhibition, an event, a home’s contents, a book or music collection, the totality of an individual’s possessions, a series of meals, a set of public responses and so on.

Pulling elements from this wide range of understandings of ‘curation’, one can list fragments such as:

  • Taking an overview; creating a context
  • Creating a framework – a set of organising principles
  • Bringing components together in various ways
  • Organising with a purpose in mind
  • Simplifying, analysing, removing extraneous things
  • Creating cross-linkages
  • Combining groups of fragments into meaningful compositions
  • Deciding the relative values of various components
  • Creating access routes, adequate signposting
  • Allowing for flexibilities and interpretations
  • Opening up possibilities for learning and insights
  • Deciding on balances between real/physical; explanatory/supporting; and virtual/imaginary aspects
  • Settling on structures and formats of exhibitions/showings of end-products
  • Working with a range of potential contributors and supporters
  • Finalising administrative and administrative elements
  • Letting others know what is intended; what is happening

 

In terms of the creative undertaking that carries the collective label of R:2025, I intend it to include:

  • Curating a set of creative activities that are producing ideas, ways of thinking, written articles, artefacts, seminars and linkages to the work of others – all things that can be gathered together and shown, both in a continuous way and as a culmination in 2025-26,
  • Curating myself, or rather aspects of myself – fragments of my life from 2010 to 2025 (drawing on things before 2010 and potentially signposting things after 2025).

Read more

Contemporary Identity of Individuals: a personal exploration

January 14, 2016 Geoff Bateson Other things of interest, Thinking about people and society No comments

Why is the idea of identity worth exploring? Is contemporary identity any different from any past or common-sense understandings of identity?

What follows is a summary gained from reflecting on my own experiences and studies, up to and including the transition to retirement.

Identity is a complex and strategic notion that sits at the centre of many current events and discussions. Identity appears to be crucial, yet is contentious. Identity defines, differentiates and distinguishes. It is central to our individual being yet, for many people, identity is seen as structured by social processes beyond the individual.

In recent decades, it appears that identity has become more central, as accounts seek to explain events as culturally rooted in individual concerns. Identities, and processes of identifications, have become important again.

Contemporary views of identity sustain a number of puzzles that are worth exploring.

This is the first of a pair of linked articles on identity. It focuses on identity and people, whilst the next article focuses on identity and place. Read more

Thinking about ‘Contemporary’ : a hesitant exploration

February 9, 2015 Geoff Bateson Other things of interest, Thinking about art and contemporary No comments

As with so many useful terms, there is no simple single understanding of ‘contemporary’. It is still being explored and in some ways may never be fully settled on. At the same time, there are some clear lines of sight that help people see a way through.

Contemporary, by its roots, is about time and belonging together. That apparent clarity is immediately one source of difficulty. Its common-sense understanding has contemporary relating to particular things coexisting within this current time period (Contemporary = of the present) but (a) there is a different sense in which anything in the past was contemporary with other things in that same past period. (Everything is contemporary in its own time – so there is nothing especially contemporary about today); and (b) not everything that exists together in the here and now might be judged to be contemporary in its values.

Maybe one answer is to declare that the currently contemporary relates to the now of today and simply ‘is’, as something that cannot be generalised beyond its very fragmented existence. This sees the contemporary as being a highly diverse set of outlooks (more so than things have been in the past with diversity in cultural production, exchange, consumption, materials, meanings. and with little expectation of being able to neatly draw boundaries to contain it. That, in turn, leads back to contemporary being able to encompass everything and anything, so long as it is thought of as contemporary.

This contemporary-as-diversity arises from an understanding that we currently live in a very different kind of world, and that any socially-constructed activity will reflect things that are shaped by a unique set of stronger, broader, different forces. This brings some paradoxes and puzzles: The world (physically and socially) is more connected than ever before but, at the same time, feels more fragmented. There are widespread, almost universal, influences but these play out differently everywhere: Think global; Think local.

This was also true, in its own way, of past eras of expanding trade and industrialisation. There is something particularly new and different in the nature of those same influences, making the contemporary what it is today. What is so specific about the shaping forces of now? What is it within anything contemporary that clearly marks it out as such: as being characteristic of twenty-first century existence rather than of any previous age? Read more