What Kind of Public Art Would You Make?

February 8, 3 hours 15 minutes spent at Roberto Clemente

I’m still working on a project idea with a simple thesis: If you had all the resources available to you, what kind of public art project would you construct?

I think one must consider first how art projects typically function in urban areas and how we might choose to improve upon or speak to this tradition. Should the project be planned or provide open parameters for spontaneous engagement? Is it a single piece or a guerrilla project that operates as a critique -- for example putting bubble thoughts over characters in commercial billboards.

Should the art involve its audience such as those projects described in Claire Bishop's essay on "relational aesthetics" in which participants give the installation meaning? In class we viewed some examples of relational aesthetics - for instance a piece that featured a two-part installation. In one room, phone booths allowed anyone to make a free call. In the other room, listening devices allowed people to eavesdrop on those calls.

Art such as flash mobs mentioned last week require not only people to view the 'mobs,' but have the added advantage of going viral on YouTube to allow a third layer of participation. What tools should be engaged? YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, blogs – art that speaks to these tools and actually requires going viral in order to be “activated."

So the terms I think to consider are: how many people are involved, is the art a performance or a social experience that brings people together physically or through social media, is the participant a primary or secondary feature of the work, and in what kind of environment should the work operate.

I penciled some general principles last night. They may be too lofty and paradoxical to be practical, but here they are:

--The project would engage participants in the process of the art’s construction and give them a direct connection to it.

--It would take place in an urban landscape – to soften the landscape or make it more livable, inspirational or human.

--Engaging in children is always nice, but I think it also needs to reach adults, to re-activate inner joy. What is the joy? Not happiness, but energy of being alive in the moment; as a disruption from their projected schedules, to take them out of their minds and engage them in the moment. That is why it would need to be in a heavily trafficked area. I don’t know that it needs to be pretty, but it needs to be human. I watched Man on Wire recently, and the power of the tight-roper scaling across the World Trade Center was in that he reduced the grossly impossible down to human dimensions.

--It could be a performance piece, such as David Antin's skypoems, a beautification project or audible experience, such as carillon bells – like a button that plays bells high in a tower. I would want it to be secular in nature, but open to mystification and spirituality in that hope and transformation can be mystical or spiritual.

--It would have to be something that no one would do for profit, yet something that exhibits the intangible value of art that cannot be quantified through monetary exchange.

--It could be something that connects us to our ancient past, yet also instructs in the value of the present and future. Something that instills both nobility as well as lightness; that nobility is in living, that the time is now, and that we are at the same time part of an inheritance -- an unbroken line that we make of it what we can before gradually passing it on. Something that reminds us that we are so much more and less of what we think of ourselves, that we are connected to others in nearby towns and distant nations, and that we must earn greatness. That we are not entitled to anything.

It’s a paradoxical question of honoring our legacy and asserting ourselves.