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ON CONTEXT AND MEANING
ÒThe purpose of art is to reveal how much more interesting life is.Ò Robert Filliou
ÒPerhaps the limitations of the ivory gallery and the pages of art magazines are stunting the growth
of an art that dreams of striding fearlessly into the streets, into the unknown, to meet and mingle with othersÕ lives.Ò The announced theme of the SCCA-Prague competition for the exhibition ÒArtwork in Public SpacesÒ met with a wide response from both the older and the younger generation of artists. Altogether we received more than eighty projects. In the past there was little opportunity in this country for artistic expression of this kind and the younger generation especially is interested in seeking new ways of communication in contemporary society. Thus the pre-pared exhibition will be the first platform for their work. While in the Western world Òpublic artÒ has attained its own established status (there are many institutions dedicated to announcing competitions and commissioning artworks in public places, and a certain percentage of national budgets supports activities in this field), our exhibition extends beyond the scope of this definition of Òpublic art.Ò These are not Òcommissioned artworksÒ whose primary function is to revitalize urban areas but rather they represent a kind of probe into the transforming image of Czech society (and indeed, society in general), into the possibilities of communication within its frame. They also represent an endeavor to cross the boundaries of this frame. A number of projects are thus more closely related to the so-called Ònew genre public artÒ as it was described by Suzanne Lacy in her book Mapping the Terrain1: while the term Òpublic artÒ has been used over the last twenty-five years to label sculptures and installations occupying public spaces, the Ònew genre public artÒ denotes that kind of art which moves away from strictly defined categories, opening itself to a new territory and thus opening itself up to an experimental level. One might mention in this respect some of the projects by young artists such as Broìka, Hidden Art Unit KÕd, Gavlovskù, Kintera, KopÞiva, Foundation People to Visual Art - Visual Art to People, SADO, Zet and others. By their very nature, the projects by these artists are not definite statements but instead intend to formulate questions and present these questions to the public. They aim to reactivate the interconnection of culture and society and thus confirm that art comes into being in the first place because of an audience, and not because of institutions. In this way the exhibition aims to provoke a public debate and thus becomes a political act in its own right. To quote Lacy again: Ò...new genre public art is not based on the typology of materials, spaces, or artistic media, but rather on concepts of audience, relationship, communication, and political intention.Ò2 Since the 1960Õs many artists and art theoreticians have spoken out critically against the gallery and museum exhibition practice whose institutionalized stereotypes and fixed Òaesthetic technologiesÒ (OÕDoherty)3 of presentation contributed to a large extent to the growing gap between the art world and the public. ÒHermetically sealed-offÒ gallery spaces, with their sterile white walls as if limiting the radius of art speech, have challenged many artists, as is demonstrated by happenings, action art, land art, process art, and ecological art for example. The endeavor to re-establish a connection and communication between the artist and the surrounding world through his / her work has also found its expression in site-specific works. On this point one might mention analogous trends in contemporary theater and dance, which emphasize the close relationship between the artist and the environment.An artwork in public space is therefore one of the outcomes of these tendencies. It is no longer a self-contained autonomous piece of art, which constituted the basis of the paradigm of modernist aesthetics, but an attempt at crossing the border where the isolated contemporary artistic expression and everyday life meet. It moves intentionally into a new socio-cultural context and its position in a concrete space and time conditions and informs its meaning. What we encounter then is a new type of the so-called Òsituational aestheticsÒ (Foster)4 in which the concrete position of an artwork and its appeal to the viewer is the main objective of the artistÕs message. The audience has, however, changed profoundly: they are no longer visitors to the gallery, who come of their own volition expecting some kind of aesthetic experience but, according to the type of work, the audience in this case are occasional passers-by, readers of newspapers or TV viewers. We might suggest that in such an aesthetic experience a substantial role is assumed by the moment of surprise. It is just this very moment that renders us an opportunity to create distance from codified cultural mechanisms produced by our society, and to heighten awareness of the Òcultural tranceÒ we live in. Several projects may serve as appropriate examples of this new type of aesthetic experience, namely, those that deliberately step into the spheres that create and sustain our cultural trance. The sphere of public broadcasting for example is approached by Hlóìe, VaËkov‡, Kondo, Pavl’k in their Project of Popular Projection with its theme of stupidity, communication, sex, techno, concentration, dreams, and madness; the same sphere is entered in the project GRA KOM by Cihl‡Þov‡, Û‡dov‡ and Vargov‡. Both projects are a kind of direct interference with the information flow. Other examples may be cited: Kole‹kov‡Õs photographical series in the womenÕs magazine Elle; and the daily press project by the ArtistsÕ association Headless Rider. The public domain of streets and towns has been seized by our commercial society to such an extent that everyday we inevitably move within a visual chaos of aggressive messages and appeals. If the artist is to enter this chaos, he / she can no longer create independent aesthetic objects but instead must create active interferences with an already existing context. In this way the artist takes on the role of a manipulator of signs of the system itself. Perhaps the best example of this is KinteraÕs useless appliances in shop windows and the ironically subversive commercials by Kotzmannov‡, Polcar and Mikul‡ät’k. In all cases, along with the transforming role of the artist, the changing role of the viewer becomes evident: instead of contemplation of an art work there is a claim to its active reading. This change suggests that the investigation into the meaning of ÒpublicÒ and of ÒspaceÒ becomes a mutual adventure of the artist and the viewer and their immediate dialogue in the space rediscovered for communication. In essence, the art work in public space is inevitably highly contextual, being a kind of open structure, the content of which is both built upon and read only on the grounds of the following relationship: artwork - position - recipient. The artistÕs act of establishing a dialogue with the environment also involves his / her admission of its decisive importance in our own lives, which do not exist as isolated entities but are shaped by oneÕs interaction with the world. Likewise, the meaning does not exist independently, yet what gives it meaning is actually the process of the forming and transforming relationship. Only this relationship then is the meaning itself. The artwork is this relationship - it is what the artist does with the others.
KateÞina Pavl’‹kov‡ Notes:
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