Contents Open 14 Art as a Public Issue

Open 14
Art as a Public Issue
How Art and Its Institutions Can Reinvent the Public Dimension

The public sphere is an ideological construct that must be constantly reinvented and redefined. The impact of neoliberal forces is compelling even art and its institutions to reinvent, reformulate or re-legitimize their public dimension and involvement. For both art and art institutions, after all, still manifest themselves at the sufferance of the public, the audience. They cannot avoid re-examining what is public and why, who the audience is and where it is situated, and how they wish to relate to it. Do they dare become part of ‘the political’, or do they let themselves become instruments of market players and party politics?

Jorinde Seijdel
Editorial
Online artikel

Chantal Mouffe
Art and Democracy
Art as an Agonistic Intervention in Public Space

The Belgian political philosopher Chantal Mouffe defines the public space as a battleground on which different hegemonic projects are confronted, without any possibility of final reconciliation. According to Mouffe, critical artistic practices can play an important role in subverting the dominant hegemony in this so-called ‘agonistic’ model of public space, visualizing that which is repressed and destroyed by the consensus of post-political democracy.

Nina Möntmann
Playing the Wild Child
Art Institutions in a Situation of Changed Public Interest
Online article

German curator and art theoretician Nina Möntmann believes that small art institutions, because of their subversive potential, offer possibilities to escape the pressure of having to attract a mass public. By experimenting with interaction between diverse interest groups and by creating international platforms, they can break away from dominant corporate strategies and redefine their public significance.

Simon Sheikh
Publics and Post-Publics
The Production of the Social

According to Simon Sheikh, the erosion of the nation-state has led to a post-public situation, in which the public sphere of ‘the public’ can no longer be specifically located. The answer is not a nostalgic return to outmoded notions of the public and its spaces, but an analysis of the relations between publicness, consumption and production, culminating in new public formations where action can be taken.

Sven Lütticken
Exhibiting Cult Value
On Sacred Spaces as Public Spaces and Vice Versa
Online article

Using as a point of reference the window that Gerhard Richter designed for Cologne Cathedral and works by Thomas Struth, Lidwien van de Ven and De Rijke/De Rooy, Sven Lütticken analyses concepts such as ‘sacralization’ and ‘profanity’. Delving into the shifting and interlocking import of institutions like the cathedral, the museum and the mosque, Lütticken lends nuance to prevailing views on art and public space.

Sjoerd van Tuinen
From Theatrum Mundi to Experimentum Mundi
A Constructivist Perspective on Public Intimacy

Philosopher Sjoerd van Tuinen calls for a perspective on publicness he derives from Peter Sloterdijk and his ‘critical awareness of atmospheres’. In this, intimacy is not seen as something obscene that excludes public interaction, but rather as something that actually needs to be taken seriously on a public level. For the visual arts this implies balancing exercises between observation and participation: a socializing art that is not made for an audience but instead creates an audience.

Jan Verwoert
Lying Freely to the Public
And Other, Maybe Better, Ways to Survive
Online article

More and more often, artists, critics and intermediaries are expected to know whom they are addressing. Critic Jan Verwoert holds an ardent plea for a practice in which the public is anonymous. Only if we don’t know who our audience is do we become curious, can meaningful encounters take place and communities be formed.

Column

16Beaver
Down By Numbers
Online article

Interview

Florian Waldvogel
The Snowman
Interview with Kasper König

Art critic and curator Florian Waldvogel asks Kasper König about his experiences with ‘Skulptur Projekte Münster’, which König has organized from 1977 to 2007. This interview outlines a glimpse of the changing relationship of art, public space and the urban environment. What impact does art have on publicness and public space and how can it influence our view of these?

Artist Contribution

Bik Van der Pol
Art Is either Plagiarism or Revolution, or: Something Is definitely Going to Happen Here

There was once a plan to build a Museum of Revolution in the Park of Friendship in Belgrade: but only the foundations were ever laid. As part of the Differentiated Neighbourhoods project, initiated by Zoran Eric, curator of the Centre of Visual Culture of the Museum of Modern Art in Belgrade, the artists Bik Van der Pol researched this area. They developed a film scenario that imbues the location with meaning and questions art, the museum, revolution, the public and the way the media work. Their contribution to Open stems from this project.

BAVO
How Much Politics Can Art Take?
Online article

BAVO, a collaboration of architects/philosophers Gideon Booie and Matthies Pauwels, conducts research in the political realm of art, architecture and planning. According to them, art that aims to be politically relevant has reached an impasse. To break through this impasse, they call on artists to link radical artistic activism with radical political activism. Only then might art that engages with politics genuinely ‘make a difference’.

Maria Hlavajova
From Emergency to Emergence
Notes on Citizens and Subjects by Aernout Mik

In 2007, Maria Hlavajova was the curator of the Dutch Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. She worked with visual artist Aernout Mik, who compiled the three-part video-installation Citizens and Subjects for the Biennale.1 Their collaboration led to a number of reflections on the relationship between art and society, and on terms such as communality and nationalism in relation to Mik’s work.

Max Bruinsma
//Autonomous Community Art in Private-Public Space
Max Bruinsma in Conversation with Jeroen Boomgaard and Tom van Gestel//
Online article

What role is there for art to play in a public space that is increasingly marked by public-private partnerships and in which public interests are more than ever mixed with economical and security concerns? A conversation with Jeroen Boomgaard, lecturer on Art in Public Space of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, and Tom van Gestel, artistic leader of SKOR.

Bookreviews

Frederik Le Roy and Kathleen Vandeputte
Jacques Rancière, Het esthetische denken, Amsterdam, Valiz, 2007, ISBN 978-90-78088-14-1, € 12.50; Solange de Boer (ed.), Grensganger tussen disciplines. Over Jacques Rancière, Amsterdam, Valiz, 2007, ISBN 978-90-78088-15-8, € 12.50; set of two books, ISBN 978-90-78088-16-5, € 20

Eva Fotiadi
BAVO (eds.), Cultural Activism Today. The Art of Over-Identification, Rotterdam, Episode Publishers, 2007, ISBN 978-90-5973-061-8, € 21.50

Wouter Davidts
BAVO (eds.), Urban Politics Now: Re-Imagining Democracy in the Neoliberal City, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam 2007, ISBN 978-90-5662-616-7, € 22.50

lse van Rijn
Margriet Schavemaker and Mischka Rakier (eds.), Right about Now. Art & Theory since the 1990s, Amsterdam, Valiz, 2007, ISBN 978-90-78088-17-2, 180 pp., € 19.50

Jorinde Seijdel
Camiel van Winkel, De mythe van het kunstenaarschap, Fonds BKVB, Amsterdam, 2007, 96 pp., ISBN 978-90-76936-19-2, € 15

Ilse van Rijn
Jeroen Boomgaard (ed.), Highrise – Common Ground: Art and the Amsterdam Zuidas Area, Amsterdam, Valiz, 2008, ISBN 978-90-78088-18-9, 240 pp., € 19.50