Public Interfaces, Aarhus, 2011

Just returning from the 'Public Interface' conference @ Aarhus, Denmark. The conference quite small but really interesting. We arrived early to geometric fields of snow, rather than the pouring rain in London. I met Magda Tyzlik-Carver on the plane, who is doing her PHD @ Plymouth and teaching @ Falmouth University, it was really good to hear how my old arts school has changed to an unimaginable size, missed her talk though, which was a shame.

My presentation went ok, i didn't read from scripts but merely talked about the idea's and the work, Landscape-Portrait, afterward Geoff Cox, one of the joint organisers and my second supervisor, mentioned that the talk was more articulate than the draft text I had submitted for the conference, which made me laugh.

Anthony Iles from Mute presented a book that he and Josephine Berry Slater have just completed 'No Room to Move' about the situation in regard to culture led generation in this moment of economic collapse. Really interesting and relevant to my research as well as my experience in Burnley, where I and civc architects produced a series of public art proposals,

The following mornings presentation by Robert Jackson, a really interesting investigation of speculative realism, a subject that i have tried many times to grasp, Rob showed some good example artworks


Florian Slotawa, Hotel Europa, Prag, Zimmer 402, Nacht zum 8. Juni 1998, Gelatin silver print, Courtesy Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf

which helped the audience into an appreciation of the issues at play, his blog can be found here

There was also a presentation by Nina Gram concerning the use of i-phones as a staging device for our experiences of the city. I found this, with the example of Rider Spoke by Bast Theory really frustrating, a case of form over content, especially when considering Blast Theories co-option by the makers of the digital devices they used in the work, as I understand Nina she was also troubled by the work, which kinda begs the question, why use it ?

This theme of using the tools and materials in a non critical way extended to Brett Blooms work as 'Temporary Services'. Whilst being completely on board in terms of the avowed aims of the project, which related to lots of ideas i've been having about an archive of really good bad public art, including briefs, artist statements, budget etc, ;Temporary Services' means of research seem to replicate the same quality of justification that work critiqued, just from a ideologically diverse view point.

What I did appreciate though was the level of critique being located at a bureaucratic level, not just at the level of the artists, - who apparently came to hate 'temp services' this in contrast to Malcolm Miles presentation where his jouclar critique of Anthony Gormleys work, One & Other, in Trafalgar square seemed at times like a personal vendetta, surely this critique should usefully be at the level of the system that underpins Gormley, there are lots of mini Gormleys lining up to replace him, he is very much a tool in the ideological rhetoric of currently political thinking, which I guess was Miles' point, that this notion of universal nationhood is no longer possible.