Richard writes at great length in his work about the effect of clustering, particularly in understanding why the mega-region is a seminal concept of the urban age. Clustering is vital at the micro-level as well. In Christian Norberg-Schulz’s Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, he makes the argument that space and place create the context for gathering and that it’s only through gathering that things like culture and representative art can begin to happen.
My experience as a journalist and DJ echo his observations. When I first began to interview the artists that I grew up listening to, the thing that impressed upon me most was how interconnected their communities were – particularly the hip hop artists from the New York area. We couldn’t understand it properly as kids listening to the music from a distance, but from visiting New York and talking to these artists you begin to understand what the neighborhoods meant to cultural production. Before they were legends, they were kids who liked music or dancing or art, and lived down the street from each other, so they got together to do it.
Although artists formed separate groups professionally, before they were in the public eye they all went record shopping in the same places, hung out in the same clubs, painted on the same walls, bounced ideas off of each other, and shared a sense of community that was defined very much by the urban terrain upon which it was cultivated. As a DJ in a city that is pretty arts-intensive, I can see the parallels in my own environment. There are places where we go and cluster and as artists we get together to just hang out and exchange ideas.
I say all of that to underscore this: I was at an art gallery the other day and I saw a call for public art from the city along with a submission form. A street that traverses Little Italy is being torn up and repaired, and the BIA is taking proposals for designs on some of the the buildings/space before the street reopens. Having worked in an art gallery for a couple of years, it occurred to me that this was not the first time I had seen a form like this and, while artists do frequent galleries, that there might be more effective places to put these forms. A street intersecting the road under repair has become a locust for young creative business enterprise centered around the arts. Young artists forming co-ops and running cafés, or specialty fashion stores where creative people came to do their thing. In the week as I went about my business in and out of these places and checked around, there were no forms to be found.
It made me wonder – are cities aware of their creative geographies? Do they know where their artists cluster? If they need to address them, do cities have any real on-the-ground information, or do they guess at places like art galleries when the artists are hanging out right across the street?
And now, as always, some music.
September 9th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
This is a fantastic post. I don’t believe that cities are keenly aware of their creative geographies. Yes, artists gather together and share ideas and they can often be found in the “expected” places like cafes and book shops. But being an artist is also a very solitary life for some – these people might not necessarily frequent the regular spots that people assume draw artists of all sorts. Calls for artists should be wider and louder to encourage the under-the-radar or even the shy creatives to join in, make their mark, contribute.
September 10th, 2008 at 3:08 am
Great post! I can think of different places that match with your ideas.
September 10th, 2008 at 3:26 am
Yes, but was the form actually calling for artists to design the space (art in the public realm), or was it calling for artists to work with the public to design the space (public art)?
Do you know for a fact that the forms weren’t distributed also to schools, youth clubs, skate parks?
Public art has come a long way since “commission artist to produce a statue”. In fact, the USA is a world leader in challenging and involved public art that uses artists to work with an identified “public” to create “art” that could be anything from music, performance, installation, to the ubiquitous statue of local heritage. Have a butcher’s at a book called “The Art of Placemaking” by Ronald Lee Fleming (Herrald).
I’m a planner in the UK. We’re involved in several public art projects. When I first started five years ago, the commissions basically ran along the lines of “developer is in town. Planning policies says developer must pay for public art. There is no definition of public art, but assumed to be a statue. Planners decide what the art is to be. Developer, to save time and costs, pays for engineer to install public art. Local Authority says thank you. Much fanfare”. Now that’s progressed to something like “Developer is in town. Planning policies say developer must pay for public art. Still no definition of public art, but assumed to be a statue. Planners commission artists who must work with an already-decided “public” (always a school class) to come up with what the art should be based on the public’s involvement. Local Authority says thank you. Much criticism from public who want the money spent on swimming pools”.
So: progress of some sort. As I see it the problems are:
Planners are not trained as artists, nor even to be creative, yet they feel qualified to make decisions about art.
Artists don’t want their creativity to be constrained by “the public” whom they view to be philistine.
“The public” has a misconception that “art” is painting and sculpture and that artists are layabouts who don’t pay tax and public money should be spent on parks and swimming pools.
If art is seen as a means to an end (e.g. solving an environmental, social or economic problem) rather than an end in itself, and if planners stop making decisions in advance that constrain and restrict the “art” and artist (i.e. by specifying that they want a statue, or that they want the artist to work with primary school pupils etc) then we could start seeing more meaningful involvement with a wider audience as Kwende is suggesting, and more meaningful art that does something to change the common misconception that art is bourgeois frippery.
September 10th, 2008 at 8:20 am
How would you represent creative geographies? I guess you would search them out via media and virtual networks.
It is easier to do this comparing city to city…as Richard has done…but not so easy within the urban topography. But, I’ve noticed that many of the places where creative people converge is at the liminal areas between distinct neighborhoods or subareas of the city. These are the creative seams of the city, where folks encounter a convergence of cultural/class/ethnic groups.
At the national scale, Eric Wilhem, “idea lab” generator and one of Technology Review’s 35 young innovators, noted the distinct advantages SF and Boston provide for innovation networks.
Wilhem brings such information to light by putting DIY projects online (www.instructables.com), believing information sharing, show and telling, is the key to nurturing innovation. It’d be interesting to map these networks geographically…would visually representing such a topography attract even more creatives?
September 11th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Great comments folks!
Elizabeth – I agree that there are artists who feel less compelled to cluster. It’s interesting to think about what role they play in the system with regards to the arts profile of their city. Broader calls might bring about opportunity for entry into their “core” arts community.
Manuederra – Thanks for your comment. Name, names!!
Daniel Carrins – Appreciate the well deliberated response. The form was a call for public art – I wasn’t able to check all of the skate parks and schools and youth clubs, but I did check in the ones that I go to and I didn’t see any. I certainly wasn’t trying to cast any stones – There would have to be rigorous research and analysis to do anything like that, but the conversation is interesting to have nonetheless.
The “swimming-pool-gambit” you present about public art is definitely one that I’ve spent my time thinking about as well, and I appreciate the way in which you’ve laid the weight of the discourse evenly on the side of the artists and the community.
Obviously the ratio varies depending on the demographic profile of the community and the artistic profile of the artists within it, but the point you’re motioning towards definitely agrees with my research: public art is more functional than it is aesthetic – it’s more of an innovation than it is decoration.
As places experience time and change both physically and demographically, public art tends to tell the stories that last. At the way things were and the way things are going to be rub up against each-other, the community risks loosing valuable sites of conciliation by simply erecting swimming pools, and the artists risk loosing support by refusing to consider the community.
Eric – Thanks for your comment too man, though I actually disagree with you! It might be just as easy to do at the local level with minimal technology. As I said in my post, I’ve always been impressed by how few degrees of separation that there are between nodes in the arts community within a city. Mapping out social systems and then layering geographic information might not be as difficult as you think.
I think that the visual topography would help us in at least be able to begin to look for patterns and synthesize further inquiries. Good idea!!
September 13th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Absolutely on target. I’d add that we need to look at different media & types of creatives. Hip Hop artists, baroque musicians, sculptors, writers and performance artists don’t automatically hang out together and they aren’t all 25 to 35. Shops in arts districts are a good start, but how about natural food stores & food co-ps, art supply & musical instrument stores, bookstores, bicycle shops, and other places where people mingle.
And unlikely sites. We’ve been taking Argentine Tango lessons in a coffeehouse.
And for God’s sake a website!
A last thought. Did the call limit itself to permanent installations? In Portland’s new South Waterfront district the developers have paid a conceptual artist to organize a series of performances and temporary installations, in addition to the usual sculptures, etc.
September 14th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Hey Michael – appreciate the look.
I’m definitely with you on your site selections. It’s important that when cities are looking for art, that they focus on the way in options that the built environment offers its artists and the paths that their artistic practices might lead them to find in that environment. As you noted, with different arts mean different paths but it’s all the same city, and within it there sites where paths cross. Where are these nexuses?
Also it’s worth mentioning that while it’s true that for the most part artists spend tend to differentiate between their time spent living and creating (or working) less severely than others, the ratio of time spent living/creating art to presenting art is definitely in the favor of the former. The search for these points of crossing might be better served by not focussing on where artists show their work (ie. galleries et al) but in the places where they live.
I’m not sure if the call limited itself to permanent installations. I actually ended up giving all of the forms that I had away. I’m definitely into the idea of performances and temporary installations. Things are fluid these days – so too can be our art!