Beyond Angels, Elephants, good intentions and red-nose rebellion

I attended the 'Beyond Angels, Elephants, good intentions and red-nose rebellion' conference in Bristol today, as I understood it the reason for the conference was to think about the next step forward, in light of the current political climate. Some fairly well known but interesting work was presented by Sally Tallan from the Serpentine, Mark Ball from LIFT, Andrea Schlieker, chaired by Paul O'Neill. Of real interest was the work, or more importantly the ambition of projects curated by Briggitte van der Sande, who joins an elite club of curators who have designated seemingly successful projects as failures, in spite of the pristine, context free presentation aesthetic of Powerpoint.

Whilst enjoying the conference I also think that it failed to address the malaise which already existed within public arts and which will/has been exacerbated via the current economic and political climate. In fact I would argue that presenting work in this pristine manner is part of the problem, the collaborators upon whom these projects depend are all but absent, which, in part, impacts upon the discipline and rigor of public art practices, further contributing to Public Arts not being taken seriously by the mainstream art establishment; something alluded to by Louise Owen in her talk about publics.

Furthermore, in using the same methodology to present collaborative, socially engaged works, such as you would to present gallery works (yet simultaneously not showing these works in a gallery, as is the case with the Serpentine) much of the discursive nature of public arts is lost.

This position was typified by the breakout session about 'regeneration and planning', where Gillian Fearnyough listed a set of public realm bodies and agency to whom public art practitioners could appeal for funding: yet anyone who has worked in this sector for any amount of time will know, these agency in the main - developers, planners etc - were reluctant to enter into meaningful collaboration when funding was plentiful, now there isn't any funding one is minded to ask what is the point ? It strikes me that one role of a critical public art practice in these so called 'austere' times is to act as critical buffer against all this talk of 'place making' and the 'bespoke' architectural features of developers, not negate the hard won experiences of the last ten years in allowing a co-option by a conservative agenda. We don't need permission from these agencies to make work, especially when there is little being offered by these agencies.

Maybe it's time to adopt a different methodology, perhaps from digital network practices, whereby P2P or collectivism invokes a much less hierarchical model of production than one that's either in hawk to the art market, such as is exhibited at the Folkestone Triennial or one that operates, in the worst case scenario, as a creative contractor within a 'place making' team of professionals.