Public Art

Ever since the translated version of Mapping the Terrain was published in Taiwan, the New Genre Public Art has become known as a new pattern of art, deriving both discourses and practices. After governmental constructive involvements and Community Empowerment, it has developed not only western horizontal transplantation but also local significance. This article focuses on the two-year plan "Environmental Art Movement at Plum Tree Creek", which links to the ecological system of Plum Tree Creek to present artistic significance. Criticisms of new genre public all will also be used to discuss how the problems of new genre public art can be solved through this movement.

2004年《量繪形貌》一書的翻譯出版開始，「新類型公共藝術」在臺灣開始以一個新的藝術型態被認知，發生實踐與論述，在臺灣公家單位的積極介入，接續了社區總體營造之發展延伸，發展出不僅是西方橫向論述移植而發展出地方的意義。本文以2010年國家文化藝術基金會視覺藝術策展類補助的二年計畫《樹梅坑溪環境藝術行動》為研究對象，連結以樹梅坑溪為軸的周邊生態，從中討論新類型公共藝術的展示問題，如何輻射出藝術內涵，並且從幾項對新類型公共藝術的批判出發，觀察樹梅坑溪環境藝術行動處理新類型公共藝術問題的方式。

What Lies Beyond the Darkness investigates how a creative sound and land-based art practice can position humans as an active part of any given ecological system; equal to ‘other’ natural and non-human co-habitants. This practice-based research aims to discover how to frame or heighten natural environments to facilitate a focused mode of listening and perceiving that can encourage audiences to emotionally respond to an environment. This will be achieved through the use of; existing natural environments such as nature reserves, public parks, and national parks; aesthetic interventions including outlined paths, mirrored partitions, sheer partitions, and contemplative signage; written guides; and audience surveying. This research contributes to a community of practice including sound and land artists that consider investigations into and creative work regarding environmental conservation and rehabilitation a major and timely concern.

Sailing the Islands of São Paulo was an enquiry into São Paulo's fragmented urban space through an on-foot exploration. The project aimed at revealing unseen lines of fracture or tension in the continuity of the urban matter. The exploration took place in the context of the 10th São Paulo Architecture Biennale in November 2013. The 10th São Paulo Architecture Biennale proposed a reflection on the making and using of the contemporary city. Arquipélagos Urbanos invited all those interested to approach the city through the practice of walking as a tool to discover and reflect on urban transformations. Experiences such as the Transurbance practised by the Stalker collective in the marginal spaces of Italian cities show that when the urban space is confronted on foot, cities reveal themselves as uncharted and unpredictable territories. Within this uncharted territory, the practice of walking functions as a twofold method of direct exploration and place-making. The project focused on this very method as a way to deal with several questions regarding São Paulo today, such as bottom-up appropriation of public space, urban mobility, and the balance between planned and unplanned development. Methodology The project was designed in order to allow for the individual contributions to nurture interaction between the participants and provide multiple research perspectives to the subject matter. We used two forms of movement in space, which we called navigation and exploration. They both relied on walking understood as a form of investigation and not merely as a goal. The navigation mode consisted in walking as a group point-to-point. It happened mostly in silence to keep concentration and pace, and to allow for the use of individual observational skills. Once an island of urban matter had been reached, on the other hand, the group entered exploration mode. Some of these island stops had been designated in advance, some were recognised as the project unfolded. During exploration mode, the participants explored the area and collected documents according to the thematic cell they had been assigned to. In both modes the group behaved as a social structure, an ephemeral, yet coherent organism. We developed the project methodology preemptively, and we could count on the collaboration of Marie-Anne Lerjen, a Swiss researcher in urban walking, who provided important feedback and advice drawn from her multi-year experience in the subject.

Street art  to jeden z fenomenów współczesnej sztuki. Uwodzi rozmachem, oryginalnością, jest wyrazem nieskrępowanej wyobraźni i nieograniczonej pomysłowości twórców. Łamie konwencje, niesie ze sobą posmak rebelii, pewnej nielegalności, czy wręcz zakazanego owocu. Zaskakuje formą i często pojawia się w najmniej oczekiwanych miejscach. Jako zjawisko dynamiczne wciąż jeszcze jest słabo opisany – niniejszy album stanowi próbę wypełnienia tej luki. Autorka w pasjonujący sposób opowiada o rozwoju sztuki w przestrzeni publicznej – od malowideł w jaskiniach naszych prehistorycznych przodków po  czasy, w których żyjemy. Prezentuje najważniejsze nurty i jej twórców – nie tylko tych najsłynniejszych, jak Banksy i Basquiat. Prowadzi czytelnika przez ulice miast (w Polsce i na świecie), zwracając uwagę na najciekawsze przejawy tej fascynującej dziedziny sztuki: murale polityczne, reklamowe, artystyczne, zaangażowane społecznie, a także pomniki, instalacje, plakaty, szablony itp. Poświęca także uwagę graffiti, z którym szeroko rozumiany street art jest związany. / z noty wydawcy

This chapter revisits Socialist visual legacy and its contemporary appropriation in public art through investigating the public art project "Dinghaiqiao Mutual-Aid Society." Launched by a self-organized group in a historical working-class neighborhood in Shanghai, it is a collectively run facility for learning, reflecting, and creatively working together, among others. By exploring ways of gathering and producing art/knowledge, this project pursues interaction, assistance, and cooperation among neighbors under the principle of "mutual aid", a concept adopted as one of the strategies of Socialist "mass line," which was the political, organizational, and leadership method developed by Mao Zedong. Through analyzing how the group appropriates "mass line," the chapter argues that mutual aid as an artistic strategy enables the project to promote the power of the mass in public spaces, reactivate the Socialist legacies, and provide a different perspective to think about participation in contemporary public art.

Przysługujący widmom wywrotowy, niemalże rewolucyjny potencjał został odsunięty oraz zagubiony poprzez pozbycie się tej kontrowersyjnej kategorii z terytorium metafizyki i zbyt pośpieszne odesłanie jej do przestrzeni badań nad literaturą, sprowadzając ją jedynie do roli użytecznego, bezpiecznego narzędzia interpretacji.

Książka Andrzeja Marca odzyskuje niepokojący charakter widmontologii i ponownie wprowadza widma do myśli metafizycznej. Czym nawiedzona i przeniknięta jest tradycyjna metafizyka, co właściwie ją dręczy, nie daje spokoju oraz nieustannie podmywa jej stabilność?

Kategoria widma Derridy posłużyła Marcowi przede wszystkim do rozważań nad charakterem współczesności i przeobrażeń, jakie dokonały się w obrębie myśli ponowoczesnej. Współczesna kultura, zdaniem Marca, stała się miejscem powstawania widm, nieustannie powracających z przeszłości. Uznając, że nie jesteśmy już w stanie tworzyć utopijnych wizji przyszłości, autor stara się zdać sprawę z widmowego charakteru współczesnej kultury, analizując m. in. strategie vintage, retro, nurt no future w kulturze lat 70. czy nurt fantastyki naukowej w literaturze.

Placing of an art piece seems to be as important as it’s content. In the course of the last century geographers, anthropologists, artists and philosophers became aware of the notion of space and its influence on people. Place has become universally positive, while space has got negative connotations.

Goodbye Roosevelt. Vita e morte di una statua È ormai certo: il memoriale equestre del Presidente americano Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) verrà rimosso dallo scalone antistante lʼAmerican Museum of Natural History (AMNH) di New York, visitato da quasi cinque milioni di persone ogni anno. La notizia non giunge inattesa

THE TURN المنعرج presents artistic interventions that emerged in the wake of the Arab Revolution. They are committed to collaborative action and direct engagement in relation to the prevailing social climate. They are ambitious art projects that aim to have a transformative impact on society and envision – together with the citizens of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Syria – scenarios and solutions for a better future.

There is unarguable that the street has become the natural space of recent art. This is especially remarkable in a country like Spain where, since the Spanish Revolution (Madrid, May 15, 2011, the so-called 15-M) and the emergence of new left wing and horizontally-organized parties, citizen’s direct intervention and participations on the public sphere–arts or politics- seems to be the norm.
Thus, for the last decade Spanish cities have witnessed phenomena of citizen’s empowerment through actions such as: both metaphorical and actual occupation of empty spaces, demolition of public fences and, above all, proliferation of street art and official signs intervention. This later has given birth to a sort of urban palimpsest of graphic layers from the spontaneous scribble to the most sophisticated examples of urban art by art practitioners, receptors or the city authorities that contest these phenomena by either replicating, completing or erasing them.
In short, the city has become an experimental art laboratory that entails not only marginal art manifestations but also illegal interventions by artist who are, at the same time, exhibited in galleries and museums thus questioning both the concept of commodification, the public (make public) and ultimately the social role of art.

Writings SUPERFLEX, One Two Three Swing!, Tate Modern, Londra 2017-2018 Nell'arco di sei mesi, da ottobre 2017 ad aprile 2018, è stato possibile dondolarsi liberamente all'interno della Tate Modern. Il clou dell'installazione One Two Three Swing!, progettata dal collettivo di artisti danesi SUPERFLEX e sponsorizzata da Hyundai, era una serie di altalene a tre posti sospese ad un sistema di tubi metallici di colore arancio. Parte integrante dell'opera era la continua produzione di nuove altalene che, partendo dalla Sala delle turbine, hanno colonizzato gli spazi adiacenti alla galleria. Dietro la parvenza di un divertimento spensierato si celava l'intento artistico di mobilitare l'energia collettiva per resistere alla legge di gravità. L'idea dei SUPERFLEX è esplicita: "One Two Three Swing! sfida l'apatia della società verso la crisi politica, ambientale ed economica della nostra epoca" (1).

The project is a personal exploration of public art in Vancouver consisting of an essay and a DVD comprising three documentaries. Each episode refers to a different question in the paper: What is public art? What is its relationship to where it is situated? What is the process by which it is commissioned in a civic public art program? Artists, curators, and bureaucrats involved in the commission and installation of public art in Vancouver are interviewed; one project's construction is followed to completion. Public art, whether civic or private-sector funded, can be defined as much by its relationship to a site as by its various categorizations, e.g. place-specific, site-specific. Offering local identity, opportunities for dialogue, and creative interpretations of a city's history and culture, Vancouver's public art contends with several challenges, e.g. available land, the value placed on views. Temporary installations and ephemeral art events can resolve some contentious issues.

Como sabemos, hay muchas vertientes desde las que podríamos aproximarnos al ámbito de la creación sonora en el territorio urbano. Estas varían en función del objetivo que se persigue, de la estructura que adoptan para alcanzarlo como también de las estrategias y métodos que ponen en juego. Es imposible y probablemente poco realista trazar divisiones exactas entre tales vertientes o crear compartimentos estancos para cada una de ellas. Hay, no obstante, ciertos rasgos que las diferencian y que las empujan hacia determinados ámbitos. Por un lado podríamos señalar prácticas que trabajan el diseño sonoro de espacios urbanos y arquitectónicos, tratando de crear una relación fluida entre el conjunto de construcciones estáticas y los perfiles dinámicos de las personas que los habitan, usan o transitan. Por otro lado hay en curso un amplio número de investigaciones y trayectorias artísticas que toman como punto de partida la fonografía para desarrollar aproximaciones al entorno urbano social trabajando la identidad de los espacios, la memoria aural de los mismos o la crítica relacionada con los sistemas de poder. Asimismo podríamos señalar instalaciones sonoras que surgen en el espacio público con la intención de mejorarlo o de crear una situación acústica más agradable y por tanto quizá más estética, como también con la intención de dinamizarlo y crear una situación casi lúdica en relación con los usuarios con los que interacciona. En todas estas vertientes se aprecia un interés común por tratar el sonido de una forma artísticamente depurada y cuidada, siendo de este modo el sonido el medio y el fin mismo de la obra en la mayoría de los casos. Todas ellas trabajan además el reconocimiento de la escucha en el entorno público como una posibilidad para trascender los límites físicos y situarnos como audiencia en un espacio más flexible de interpretación del contexto urbano.

Divided into two parts, this essay intends to make, in the first one, the state of the art of Portuguese Neo-Baroque Sculpture, through the bibliographic investigation already carried out. The second part is dedicated to the analysis of works of art and sculptors identified as belonging to this sculptural production, situated between the French eighteenth-century academic tradition and modern twentieth-century synthesis.

Two years ago I began teaching a critical theory seminar at the State University of New York in New Paltz that focused on re-envisioning the role of craft in contemporary society. The Art Department at SUNY New Paltz has a long-standing tradition of excellence, especially in the craft disciplines, and so it should have come as no surprise to encounter graduate students who actively interrogated the texts that we had selected. They were quick to point out that although many of the texts we read contained interesting ideas, they were often mired in an oppositional logic that attempted to either defend the discipline of craft against perceived enemies, or to usurp the seemingly more privileged role of fine art. While these debates served as an important backdrop for our inquiry, we had in mind a more evocative question: What unique potentials existed within the fuzzy boundaries of the craft disciplines? As critical craft practitioners we desired to see the topography of our disciplines expand while, at the same time, becoming more self-reflexive and relevant. There is much craft scholarship focusing on historical origins, the author's intentionality or the signification of an object; our questions lead in a different direction. What are the affective potentials of the objects and their embedded relations? How can craft be used? What can craft do? For us these questions have deep aesthetic, political and material repercussions that should be taken up by makers.

PhD dissertation: This dissertation examines how mass magazines framed American abstraction for a broad public during the years following the Second World War.  While art historians have devoted much attention to Abstract Expressionism’s place within the New York art establishment and its international promotion, the presentation of this and other art to the American public has been largely overlooked.  Most Americans who did not frequent museums and galleries or read art journals would have experienced art primarily in mass magazines such as Life, Time, Look, Newsweek, and The Saturday Evening Post.  This dissertation investigates how such magazines defined modern art and its role in postwar American culture for millions of readers.

During the late 1940s mass magazines portrayed modern art as a culturally divisive issue in articles that ridiculed abstraction, describing it as a mediocre European derivation that required no skill and questioning whether it was art at all or actually a highbrow hoax on middle America.  As American abstraction gained support from art institutions and markets in the 1950s, magazines depicted modern art as a commonplace consumer object, a stylistic choice that demonstrated both the consumer’s personality and capitalist freedom.  By the end of the decade, mass magazines characterized Abstract Expressionism as the embodiment of American freedom and individualism, the leading international style, and an asset in the cultural Cold War.  Yet letters to the editors reveal that readers were still not convinced of the value of abstract art.  These mass magazine representations of abstract painting and readers’ responses to it constructed both a vision of postwar American culture and a middle American public for it.

Većina stručnjaka koji se bave javnim spomenicima, bez obzira radili oni u konzervatorskim službama, na fakultetima ili Institutu za povijest umjetnosti, bez obzira bili oni povjesničari umjetnosti ili arhitekti, složno je u stavu da sadašnji način odabira i postavljanja spomenika ili spomen obilježja nije održiv.
Javni prostor definira i kulturni identitet određenog mjesta i svaka intervencija u javni prostor mijenja njegovu prirodu, načine korištenja i komuniciranja građana. Posljednjih nekoliko godina, javni prostor postao je poligon za realiziranje ideja moćnika iz gradskih uprava, bez provođenja javnih natječaja.
Koncept podizanja spomenika u javnom prostoru, isključivo u smislu iskazivanja počasti određenoj ličnosti ili događaju, razvijene nacije su prevladale i već desetljećima sve su rjeđe intervencije u prostoru na taj „klasičan“ način. Ta „stroga“ ozbiljnost javnog prostora zamijenjena je umjetničkim i dizajnerskim intervencijama u javnom prostoru, svime što se može podvesti pod pojam „public art“. Takav pristup donosi daleko više vedrine, lakoće, boja i raznovrsnih oblika u prostor. Prostori u koje se na taj način intervenira stječu nove vizualne kvalitete, stvaraju se nova žarišne točke okupljanja, omogućava se i drugačija komunikacija korisnika tog prostora.
Intervencije u javni prostor su izrazito kompleksne, bez obzira radilo se o spomenicima, javnoj rasvjeti ili o klupama u parku. Svaki javni prostor ima svoje karakteristike, svoje posebnosti koje treba poštivati i nije moguće samo tako „naguravati“ kojekakve oblike i misliti da će to biti prihvaćeno, bez stručnog povjerenstva i javnog natječaja, odnosno, bez suvisle zakonske regulative.
U posljednja dva desetljeća Hrvatsku su obilježila brojna rušenja, oštećivanja i krađe javnih spomenika, a potom postavljanje različitih spomenika i spomen obilježja uglavnom niske ili upitne kvalitete. Iako izgleda da imamo i više nego dovoljno zakonskih regulativa, dugotrajnost problema vezanih uz spomenike i umjetnička djela u javnom prostoru govore u prilog tome da bez nove zakonske podloge neće biti moguće donositi kvalitetnije i odgovornije odluke temeljene na stručnim procjenama. Sadašnja praksa pokazuje da bez zakonske regulative, „diktat ulice“ i interesnih grupacija bliskih gradonačelnicima i političkim moćnicima, određuju (ne)kvalitetu spomen obilježja i svih ostalih intervencija u prostoru. Odraz nekulture u Hrvatskoj očituje se u nedostatku svijesti o značaju, vrijednostima i osjetljivosti javnih prostora, nedostatku brige o mjestima koja građanima predstavljaju „dnevne boravke“ na otvorenom, jer sve što se postavi u javnom prostoru, čak i najmanja intervencija, određuje identitet ulice, trga ili parka. Sveukupna razina kvalitete uređenja naših javnih prostora govori o uređenosti države i o kulturi naroda.

Turnstile is a digital artwork that translates the traces of pedestrians on a public square into a virtual geometric architecture. On the front wall of the Schadowstraße underground station in Düsseldorf, visitors can observe pedestrians within this generative architecture on an LED wall. The installation can be seen as the outcome of an artistic research process investigating swarm behaviour as a manifestation of collective togetherness.

The Hungarian art collector Dénes Deák (1931–1993) offered a significant part of his collection to Székesfehérvár in 1986: paintings and sculptures of 20th century Hungarian artists (City Gallery – Deák Collection). Due to personal changes in the leadership of the city, collaboration between Deák and Székesfehérvár became more straightforward and friendly during the change of regime. In 1990, Deák set up a foundation for Székesfehérvár and in 1991 he envisioned donating a mobile sculpture to be constructed in a public square, to the city. Deák saw in the genre of the mobile the possibility of shaping social space. His first candidate for the mobile was not the neo-avantgarde István Harasztÿ (born in 1934); he wanted to commission Katalin Hetey (1924–2010) to create the work. Hetey emigrated in 1957 and settled down in Paris; her art is related to the concept of organic expression. Harasztÿ, who had been relegated by the state power to the ‘forbidden’ category of artists since 1972, interpreted the commission as the liberation of his art. He was requested to create the mobile in 1991 and the sculpture was inaugurated on 2nd October 1993. The artwork, later named Deák Dénes Fountain can therefore be perceived as the rehabilitation of the artist, since it was also his inaugural work presented to the Academy (Széchenyi Academy of Letters and Arts). As the sculpture is in many ways embedded in the period of the change of regime, it can be defined as the representation of the change of regime. It is a piece of work which was in the background, yet whose close relation to the change of the political system is unquestionable. It can therefore be considered on par with other symbolic artworks associated with the change of regime in Hungary.

Die Annahme, dass der öffentliche Raum Kunst für die breite Bevölkerung zugänglicher machen würde, hält einem detaillierten Blick auf das Thema nicht lange stand. In der internationalen Forschungslandschaft bekommt die Verknüpfung von Kunst im öffentlichen Raum und sozialer Inklusion schon seit einigen Jahren starke Aufmerksamkeit, in Wien wurden dahingehend aber noch wenige empirische Studien getätigt. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es also, zunächst – anhand der Paradigmenziehung von Miwon Kwon – den historischen Wandel öffentlicher Kunst darzulegen, um in diesem Kontext schließlich auf die Hierarchisierung von Stadt und Raum einzugehen. Dabei soll eruiert werden, inwiefern Kunst im öffentlichen Raum in spätkapitalistischen Städten entweder als bloßes Konsummittel oder als Möglichkeit zur Steigerung von sozialer Inklusion fungieren kann. Anhand der Raumtheorien von Henri Lefebvre und Pierre Bourdieu und durch qualitative Interviews, werden schließlich Kunst im öffentlichen Raum produzierende Initiativen Wiens auf ihre Strategien sozialer Inklusion analysiert. Es wird gezeigt, dass die Ausbreitung des Angebots in die peripheren Bezirke und die Ausformulierung expliziter Angebote für die jeweiligen Zielgruppen, die wichtigsten Ansätze dafür sind. Die Ausprägungen dieser Strategien unterscheiden sich schlussendlich durch die Größe und Reichweite der einzelnen Initiativen.

The assumption that public space would make art more accessible to the general public does not withstand a closer look. In the international research landscape, the link between public art and social inclusion has been receiving strong attention for several years, but in Vienna only a few empirical studies have been carried out in this regard. The goal of this work is therefore to initially – on the basis of Miwon Kwon's paradigms – present the historical change in public art in order to finally address the hierarchization of city and space in this context. The aim is to determine to what extent public art can function either as a mere means of consumption or as a way of increasing social inclusion in late capitalist cities. Based on the spatial theories of Henri Lefebvre and Pierre Bourdieu and by means of qualitative interviews, Vienna’s public art producing initiatives are finally analyzed for their strategies of social inclusion. It is shown that the expansion into the peripheral districts and the formulation of explicit offers for the respective audience are their most important approaches. The characteristics

Report from the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, vol. 20, no. 2/3, Summer 2000. Examines the controversy about the Brooklyn Museum's "Sensations" show and rejects claims that the art enjoys a First Amendment right to be shown in a public museum, but instead argues that challenging art can serve deliberative democracy

The creation of murals at the Papunya School in 1971 is cited as the event that inaugurated the Western Desert painting movement. The truth of this claim is in fact more complex, confounding and consequential. This essay will demonstrate that few outside the Papunya community saw the murals in situ, and that the mythic status now enjoyed by these icons has been constructed post factum. The subject of one of the murals, the local Honey Ant Dreaming, and the broader social and ontological context in which it was created will be examined. It will show how the Honey Ant Mural played into a dynamic shift in intercultural relations that was already underway. Rather than being a singular monument, the Honey Ant mural signals a more substantive challenge to the infrastructure of the assimilation era.

The subject of the largest mural, the tunnels and chambers of the Honey Ant site leading to Papunya, make visible the songlines and kinship networks that connect Aboriginal people and country—these are the unseen verities that govern life in Central Australia. The authority of men previously relegated to duties as manual workers, became apparent as they painted resonant icons in a pedagogical setting. The customary power of these settlement workers was manifest through the depth of their relationship to the images they created. Already an artist and provocateur, Kaapa Tjampitjinpa was critical to this process—it was he who negotiated the form of the Honey Ant mural with local custodians and school authorities alike. Kaapa’s achievement was to give tangible form to the totemic landscape on which the colonial edifice was sited.

Abstract: While we accept that digital devices are interwoven in our daily life, the concepts of disassociation can be addressed and possibly replaced with fresh meanings gained from new experiences of interrelatedness to nature. To explore the hypothesis of human, technology, and nature interconnectedness (the HTN Triad Relationship), LocoMotoArt, an independently powered creative field system, was used for conducting media arts research in natural settings. Although such a proposition contradicts, or disrupts, cultural assumptions that nature and technology are incompatible, it is argued that rearticulated forms of engagement by way of the artistic application of technologically mediated experiences “in situ” shifts perception of the separation between nature and technology to one of sensed interconnectedness. The experience of new media in natural settings can be changed from being a contemplative one to one that is a living experience, a story alive, perhaps even biologically, within and without us. A new role for mobile digital technology is established beyond social networking, computing, information gathering, and gaming, because cognitive and social benefits of interacting with nature also occur.

Work dedicated to the phenomenon of public art, tracing back the reasons and ways of its ‘conversion’ from a tool of aesthetization of local surrounding to specific artistic practice, that plays the role of activator of community by unpopular methods (stirring of discussion, initiation of conflict). Tactically these methods are tools of constructing the public space of community – a basis of functioning the public sphere as principle, factor and indicator of civil society. This section is devoted to one of the methodological devices of such activation, or, as Mivon Kwon noted, ‘specification of community’, that is based on the process of actualization by the practices of the public art of a reminder of community – social memory (2003). Prior to start consideration of this artistic strategy, it will be sensibly to analyze the very phenomenon of social memory and issues of ethic of responsibility connected with it.

The Manifesto of Possibilities is a statement of beliefs, concerns and recommendations about the commissioning of public art in urban environments. It has been developed from research by Cameron Cartiere and Sophie Hope and is a knowledge transfer mechanism that aims to inspire reflection, discussion and cohesive action for all those involved in commissioning public art.

Produced for FALL/OUT programme, curated by Pluck Projects (Sarah Kelleher and Rachel Warriner), at Cork Midsummer Festival 2021. Five artworks — by Jessica Akerman, Pádraig Spillane, Anne Ffrench, David Mathuna & Andrew McSweeney, and Vicki Davis — were selected, with this catalogue consisting of individual textual responses to each.

Individual essay titles:
+ Pattern Recognition; response to Jessica Akerman's Cork Caryatids
+ Hyperaesthetics; response to Pádraig Spillane's Define Silver Lining
+ Time's Inhuman Nature; response to Anne Ffrench's To Hold Still
+ Cosmic Systems; response to David Mathúna & Andrew McSweene's As Above, So Below
+ A Machine, Just Like Me; response to Vicki Davis' Meatàn

The Ruhr region was an important mining and indus-trial production area for almost 150 years between 19th and 20th centuries due to the rich coal sources under the area between Ruhr and Lippe rivers. During inten-sive mining and production periods, the landscape of the Ruhr changed drastically and perpetually so to be described as an industrial landscape. Besides the indus-trial structures, slag heaps constituted a significant ele-ment of this industrial landscape as manmade mounds on the formerly flat surface. After the decline of indus-tries in the region, the industrial landscape of the Ruhr aimed to be transformed through a special framework of projects named IBA Emscher Park. Dealing primar-ily with ecological issues, IBA projects aimed at revers-ing the ecological, aesthetic, and social abuse of the landscape, including a special treatment for slag heaps. As demonstrated here with three cases, which are Rhei-nelbe slag heap with Himmelstreppe, Batenbrock slag heap with Tetraed...

Baharestan art festival, which was held in Vali-Asr Street in Tehran in March and April 2016 on the pretext of starting the Iranian New Year (Nowruz), has widely attracted the attention of artists and other people. This article attempts to examine the role of this urban art festival and similar festivals in placemaking and the improvement of the quality of urban spaces considering the potential and capabilities of these areas in the city. According to the prepared questionnaire, some questions were asked of respondents randomly selected from citizens with different demographic information about their comments on different aspects of the artworks presented in the festival. The results of statistical analysis of the questionnaire showed how this festival and similar events act as effective agents in development of placemaking and creation of common scenes using urban arts. Results revealed three key findings. First, the artworks of the festival were able to bring New Year's perceptions with Iranian value attributes to the respondents' minds. Second, the artworks were intended to make the public space lively. Third, this project had potential to act as a medium to spread positive messages among the citizens. According to the results, this festival and similar urban art projects can further be considered as a new form of Iranian contemporary public art.

Os viadutos constituem um dos equipamentos contemporâneos mais representativos da profunda alteração que os transportes motorizados impuseram ao cenário citadino, traduzindo uma ideia de mobilidade urbana que, independentemente das questões que hoje se levantam sobre a sua validade e eficiência, caracterizam de forma indelével a paisagem das cidades. Em Lisboa conhecem-se vários, alguns dos quais revestidos por azulejos que, de diferentes modos, exploram a integração destes equipamentos nos espaços onde foram edificados. O presente artigo centra-se, precisamente, nesta questão, procurando perceber de que forma as intervenções cerâmicas em viadutos contribuem para a requalificação da paisagem urbana da capital. /// Even considering the issues related with its efficiency, the flyovers are one of the urban equipment that most features the cities landscape, expressing an idea of urban mobility which results from the changes imposed by the motor transportations during the last decades. In Lisbon there are many flyovers, some of them “decorated” with azulejos that, in different forms, try to integrate these structures into their surrounding spaces. This article aims to focus precisely on this issue, trying to understand how the ceramic interventions contribute to the requalification of the city’s landscape.

Documenting a residential, socially-engaged project in the Karoo town of Laingsburg, facilitated by Kathryn Smith and Verna Jooste (2010/11) and produced by Visual Art students from Stellenbosch University and members of the local community.

A series of temporary and permanent artistic responses to the legacies and memorial practices of the 1981 Laingsburg Flood were produced, retrieving and presenting alternative and undocumented experiences of an event which remains South Africa's greatest natural disaster.

Initially commissioned as a single memorial artwork by the local municipality, the project was selected as part of the major National Lottery-supported initiative,  2010 REASONS TO LIVE IN A SMALL TOWN, led by the Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA), which allowed us to engage more fully with the community as a whole, over a meaningful period of time.

This paper develops a pragmatist definition of street art acknowledging its essential subversiveness, while drawing implications at the level of street art’s political and social function. By developing an insight from Irvine (2012), the paper argues that street artworks turn inside out accepted norms of visibility in public spaces. Street artists challenge those norms by deploying carnivalesque strategies such as irony and misappropriation (Scott 1990). In this sense, street art is art intrinsically challenging dominant hierarchies of visibility through the use of carnivalesque strategies. By opposing advertising’s dominion over the city walls, they reclaim – one street at a time – the possibility of expressing themselves in public for those generally excluded.

Elke Smodics-Kuscher und Nora Sternfeld
trafo.K
Flic Flac* – Feministische Materialien für den Kunstunterricht.

Mit Flic Flac* versuchen Elke Smodics-Kuscher und Nora Sternfeld vom Büro trafo.K sich den Kodierungen, Fallstricken und Widersprüchen zu stellen, die eine Beschäftigung mit Feminismen im Unterricht mit sich bringen. Ziel der Materialien ist es, feministische Ansätze und künstlerischer Strategien im Hinblick auf die Ent­wicklung eigener Handlungsformen vorzustellen. Künstler_innen produzieren Wissens­formen und Handlungsräume, die sich bestehenden Machtverhältnissen und Normierungen widersetzen. Die Auseinandersetzung mit Sprache sowie mit künstlerischen Arbeiten und Strategien wird durch DIY-Vorschläge für den Unterricht ergänzt, die vielleicht Lust machen, selbst zu handeln.

Die feministischen Materialien beinhalten:
• DIY Handlungsanweisungen, die zu einer Beschäftigung mit den künstlerischen Arbeiten und feministischen Strategien einladen.
• ein Glossar, das eine Auseinandersetzung über Sprache und Definitionen ermöglicht (Text: Persson Perry Baumgartinger, Illustrationen: Evi Scheller).
• eine Sammlung künstlerischer Arbeiten mit Fragen für den Unterricht.

* Flic Flac bezeichnet die Akrobatik, die es ermöglicht, die Dinge auf den Kopf zu stellen und wieder auf den Beinen zu landen.