Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question [1 ed.] 9789048516780, 9789085550655
This book provides further insight into the interrelationships between artwork, public space and beholder. Public art ha
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Public Artopia Copyright © 2012. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.
Art in Public Space in Question
Martin Zebracki
Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
02-02-12 16:11
Copyright © 2012. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.
Public Artopia: Art in Public Space in Question
Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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Copyright © 2012. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.
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Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Copyright © 2012. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.
The research presented in this book and the publication of this book were funded by the Urban and Regional research centre Utrecht (URU) – Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University – in association with The Netherlands Graduate School of Urban and Regional Research (NETHUR). Layout: Martin Zebracki Cover design: Konrad Zebracki Cover illustration: Martin Zebracki, 2009 Maps and graphs: GeoMedia, Utrecht University ISBN 978 90 8555 065 5 e-‐ISBN 978 90 4851 678 0 (pdf) 978 90 4851 679 7 (ePub) e-‐ISBN NUR 900 © M. Zebracki / Pallas Publications, Amsterdam University Press, 2012 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.
Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Public Artopia: Art in Public Space in Question Publiek Kunstbeeld: Kunst in de Openbare Ruimte in Kwestie (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) Proefschrift
Copyright © 2012. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.
ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof. dr. G.J. van der Zwaan, ingevolge het besluit van het college voor promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op vrijdag 23 maart 2012 des middags te 2.30 uur door Martin Marcin Zebracki geboren op 27 september 1984 te Oosterhout (Noord-‐Brabant)
Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Copyright © 2012. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.
Promotor: Prof. dr. R.J.F.M. van der Vaart Co-‐promotor: Dr. I. van Aalst
Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Copyright © 2012. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.
My sincere gratitude goes to Rob van der Vaart and Irina van Aalst, my encouraging supervisors. The tightrope act is over, but not as we know it.
Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Copyright © 2012. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.
For my dearly beloved ones; my parents, brother, sister, boyfriend and family here and there. Thank you, my friends and colleagues. Thank you, academia, my eyrie. Love is the body of my trust. They know – HE knows – that only the arts of love will bring us there in time.
Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Contents
Chapter 1
1
1
3
6
9
9
Introducing geographies of public art: Interrelationships between artwork, public space and beholder 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.4.1 1.4.2 1.4.3 1.4.4 1.5
Relevance, knowledge gap and research aim Background to public-‐art research: a state of the public art Geographies of public art: filling in a new terrain Research question and conceptual issues of public art Practice and publics as beholder contexts of public art Conceptual issues of public art I: ‘public’ vs. ‘private’ Conceptual issues of public art II: art, place and publicness Conceptual issues of public art III: ‘paradigms’ of art and public space Thesis structure and methodologies
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Chapter 2
10 12 15 17
21
Deconstructing public artopia: Situating public-art claims within practice 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.4.1 2.4.2
Abstract Introduction: situating public art Public artopia: theoretical claims, critiques, and implications Methodology Public artopia deconstructed Case studies: some background Actors and claims
21 22 25 29 31 31 34
Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
2.4.3 2.4.4 2.5
Place and claims: flagship versus community art Time and claims: before, during, and after projects Discussion and end points Acknowledgements
Chapter 3
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Does cultural policy matter in public-art production? The Netherlands and Flanders compared, 1945–present Abstract 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.7.1 3.7.2 3.7.3 3.8
Introduction: geographies of public art Cultural planning and policy in post-‐war Western Europe Conceptualizing varieties of governmentality for the Netherlands and Flanders Situating public art within Dutch and Flemish cultural planning and policy Amsterdam and Ghent: policy and sociocultural context of public art Research design Reading the public artscapes of Amsterdam and Ghent The quantities of public-‐art production Visualities of the public artscape Distribution of public art over the city: a comparative tour d’horizon Conclusions: re-‐presenting geographies of public art Acknowledgements
39 41 43 47
49
49 50 52 54 56 58 60 63 63 65 68 73 75
Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Chapter 4
77
Beyond public artopia: Public art as perceived by its publics Abstract 4.1 4.2 4.2.1 4.2.2 4.2.3 4.3 4.3.1 4.3.2 4.4 4.4.1 4.4.2 4.4.3 4.5
77 Introduction 78 The frontiers of previous research 80 Publics as hard candy 80 Theoretical positions on perception 81 Attributes 82 Research design 85 Expectations 85 Methodology 86 Vox populi: results 90 Introduction to case studies 90 and general results Appreciation and personal characteristics 94 Geographical variation 97 Conclusions and discussion 100 Acknowledgements 103
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Chapter 5
Engaging geographies of public art: Indwellers, the ‘Butt Plug Gnome’ and their locale Abstract 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6
Prelude: writing public-‐art research Act 1: indweller, art and spatial engagement Act 2: empiricisms of spatialities Act 3: empiricisms of aesthetics and moralities Act 4: empiricisms of functionalities Epilogue: ‘Butt Plug Gnome’ uncovered with the cloak of charity Acknowledgements
105
105 106 110 112 118 122 128 130
Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Chapter 6
131
Synthesising geographies of public art: Conclusions and discussion 6.1 6.1.1 6.1.2 6.2 6.2.1 6.2.2 6.2.3 6.3
Recapitulation and main findings Introduction Summary of main findings Contributions to research and practice Contributions to the academic debate Methodological contributions Valorisations of research: contributions to practice New research agendas
Publiek kunstbeeld: Kunst in de openbare ruimte in kwestie Nederlandstalige samenvatting van hoofdresultaten (Public artopia: Art in public space in question Dutch summary of main findings)
131 131 133 138 138 142 145 148
151
References
165
180
Vita
Copyright © 2012. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.
Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Public Artopia: Art in Public Space in Question
Chapter 1
Introducing geographies of public art: Interrelationships between artwork, public space and beholder Martin Zebracki
Copyright © 2012. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.
1.1
Relevance, knowledge gap and research aim
Since 1945, public art has been a burgeoning phenomenon in Western cities. The intended roles of art in public space, and of urban visual culture more broadly, have attracted the attention of academic debates that recognise public art as an important societal spectacle. Most studies on public art have been developed from art-‐historical angles and engaged with its iconographic and sheer philosophical context. However, public art encompasses a rich human geographical complexity. Despite this, a human geographical approach to public art is notably lacking in analyses, as also acknowledged by Hall and Smith (2005). Our research aim, therefore, was to provide more insight into ‘geographies of public art’, implying the interrelationships between artwork, public space and people as public art’s beholders. Here, these interrelationships are considered in the light of intentions, production and reception with regard to public art. The rationale of our aim is further explained in the following. Public art is by no means a placeless discourse. Over the years, urban planners and artists have produced diverse claims about what public art brings about for people in particular places and times. Perceived relationships between art and space may be connected with physical-‐aesthetic, economic, social and cultural-‐symbolic aspects of urban life (cf. Miles 1997; Kwon 2004). Artworks can, for instance, be placed in neighbourhoods under the premise of artists that artworks enhance social cohesion and cultural engagement. City planners, for example, may assume that public art in a central urban location advances both cultural and economic regeneration of the city at large. Public art, as such, might
Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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Martin Zebracki
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attract more investors, visitors and residents. In addition to local and intra-‐urban differences in public art, regional and national distinctions in public art may also be expected in view of a variety of institutional and policy contexts as well as differences in sociocultural traditions. Public art differs from place to place, and from individual to individual, as much as it does from context to context. Hence, geographical layers of the regional, local and individual embodiment are pertinent to an understanding of the interrelationships between artwork, public space and beholder. Many axioms about these interrelationships stem from those who produce public artworks and those who are concerned with the enabling institutional and cultural policy contexts of public art. Yet, these axioms have hardly been problematised. In addition, little is known about the relationships between art and public space from the perspective of public art’s ‘consumers’: the publics. The level of socio-‐spatial embodiment of public art is as kaleidoscopic as these very publics, who embody differential repertoires of public art in relation to culture, time, place and space. This study explicitly includes publics’ reception of public art, as public art is in theory and should ideally be meant for these publics. Public art can be a subject, object and/or process. It comprises permanent or temporary artworks, either physical or immaterial, on sites that have open public access and are located outside museums and galleries. Its multifaceted disposition has induced a multidisciplinary debate about its dualistic nature – public vs. private – and the socio-‐spatial features of its publicness and artfulness (cf. Finkelpearl 2001; Kwon 2004). Public art is peculiar in that it integrates space and place as part of the content, which makes the ontological nature of public art geographically complex and polemic. Oddly, there is a serious lack of geographical knowledge of public art. Art in public space is in and of itself situated outside the art-‐historical confines of museums and galleries. Public art is predominantly an urban phenomenon; hence, this thesis’s focus on art in urban public space is a logical derivative of this common observation. Public art logically and potentially becomes adopted as both study object and place of study in a social-‐scientific fashion, as it finds itself in a socio-‐spatial field of force that is as intricate as city life 2
Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Public Artopia: Art in Public Space in Question
itself. Our research is a pioneering endeavour because of its human geographical angle; that is, geographical layers of the regional, the local and individual embodiment were enlisted to gain a better understanding of the geographies of public art. Considering that geography is a ‘borrowing’ discipline – that is, a discipline that looks across its borders – we conceive of it as supportive in finding ways to frame public art in space, time and society. Our study also sought recommendations for public-‐art-‐ led urban planning and policy, which, as such, may also be a helping hand in boosting local governmental and public support for public art. Today, grassroots support is a prevalent desire of many city planners (cf. Rooijendijk 2005), especially because budgetary cuts in the culture and arts sectors have increasingly made topical the raison d’etre of art in public space. Section 1.2 briefly provides the status quaestionis. Section 1.3 discusses the geographies of public art, which we understand as the linkages between artwork, public space and beholder. Section 1.4 formulates the central research question and discusses the main conceptual issues of public art. Section 1.5 concludes with the thesis structure and the methodological framework employed by this study.
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1.2
Background to public-art research: a state of the public art
Scientific research across the humanities and social sciences dissects public art in a multiplicity of ways. The questions about public art arise from various polydisciplinary backgrounds and concern the complexities of public art’s ontological and epistemological nature. Many academics grope in the dark with regard to what public art ‘does’ to people and places in time. There are differing histories of public art. Cartiere and Willis (2008) wonder what exactly marks the onset of public art and the subsequent scientific reflection on it – the Altamira cave paintings or the introduction of government-‐ led public-‐art programmes in Western cities in the second half of the 20th century? (cf. ibid.) The lack of an unequivocal definition of public art has intrinsically complicated the
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subject matter of public art and hence what kind of study may be designated as research on public art. Our purpose here is not to provide an exhaustive review of the multidisciplinary body of literature on public art and its research frameworks. For a sound overview of conceptual and empirical accounts on public art, we refer to the following salient studies performed at the crossroads of the humanities and social sciences: Mitchell (1992), Lacy (1995), Selwood (1995), Miles (1997), Senie and Webster (1998), Finkelpearl (2001), Hall and Robertson (2001), Kwon (2004), Goldstein (2005), Remesar (2005), Hein (2006), Cartiere and Willis (2008), Conard (2008), Knight (2008), Cartiere (2010), and Pollock and Paddison (2010). Instead, we find it relevant to trace our research focus against the background of existing knowledge. Since the upsurge in public art in the Western world in the second half of the 20th century, public-‐art research has mainly been conducted in a formalistic, iconographic fashion inherent in the disciplinary development of art history. Paradoxically, Cartiere and Willis (2008) argue that public art has never received recognition from the fine arts discipline: ‘there seems to be an unspoken consensus in the fine art establishment that public art is synonymous with compromise, dilution, and dependency … While artists may readily accept a public-‐art commission, in general they appear resistant to being identified as a public artist’ (ibid.: 1). As a bitterly pejorative statement, Bussmann et al. (1997: 484) argue that ‘the very designation “public art” suggests a kind of contempt. Do we not in the same way call a prostitute a fille publique, a girl of the streets?’ This negative connotation of public art is typical of the common attitude to public art within art history. ‘Over forty years since public art was coined as term, it has yet to be clearly defined in any art history text’ (Cartiere and Willis 2008: 8), which makes clear that in art history public art is still a suppositious child. Cartiere and Willis (ibid.: 8) nonetheless argue that ‘this [undefinedness of public art] is partially due to the complex relationship between public art, architecture, and urban design’. Public-‐art experts acknowledge the convoluted concept of public art in relation to elements and signs of the built environment (cf. Miles 1997; Kwon 2004; Remesar 2005). For example, public art, in a sense, is usually seen as ‘functionless’ in that it is not conceivably used as such by the 4
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Public Artopia: Art in Public Space in Question
spectator in a way that is comparable to the spectator’s potentially physical, use-‐oriented embodiment of street furniture and architecture. Yet, the lines between public art on the one hand and urban design and architecture on the other are often blurred and contested in academic discourse, seeing that public art may be integrated into the latter or into participatory settings of the built environment. Public art may be seen as an intermediating agency in urban culture and thus as a powerful yet elusive player in spatial politics (cf. Deutsche 1996; Kester 1998). Its existence is often linked to institutional and policy contexts that enable public-‐art initiatives, particularly percent-‐for-‐art regulations (cf. Jansen 1995; Cartiere and Willis 2008; Fazakerley 2008). Whereas artists and art historians generally attach negative connotations to public art, public authorities that commission, design and implement public art have a fairly positive mindset regarding public art: ‘only public-‐art administrators and officials seem willing to use the term public art to describe municipal, county, and state government programs’ (Cartiere and Willis 2008: 1). Some literatures on the shift from art in the art world to art in the public world have recently been developed at the crossroads of the humanities and the social sciences (cf. Senie 2003; Kwon 2004; Hein 2006; Knight 2008), as have literatures on how cities have started to promote the opening up of public spaces to art (cf. Jacobs 1961; Hayden 1998; Finkelpearl 2001; Hall 2003b; DaCosta Kaufmann 2004; Miles and Hall 2005). Public art has only lately received theoretical and empirical attention from a number of art historical, sociological, ethnographic and geographic perspectives that engage with, without conceptually dilating on them here, site-‐specificity (cf. Coles 2000; Kwon 2004; Kaye 2000; Cartiere 2010), socio-‐spatial antagonism (cf. Mitchell 1992; Raven 1993; Deutsche 1996; Senie and Webster 1998) and spatial quality, image and identity (cf. Miles 1997; McCarthy 2006; Fleming 2007; Knight 2008). These three pointers have mainly been conceptualised on the basis of idiosyncratic case studies conducted particularly on permanent but also on temporary public artworks, as found in, for example, Selwood (1995), Finkelpearl (2001) and Matzner (2001), and in a plethora of journal articles – notably, Lees 2001, McCarthy 2006 and Chang 2008; cf. also the issues of the journals Public Art Review (1989-‐), Public
Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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Martin Zebracki
Art Journal (1999-‐2002), Art & the Public Sphere (2011-‐); and the special journal issues on public art in Art Journal (1989, 48(4)) and Social and Cultural Geography (2006, 7(6)). However, academic discussions still tend to shape public-‐ art knowledges mainly in a humanities and particularly art historian and iconographic fashion. What is lacking is a social-‐scientific point of view that seriously engages with the spatiotemporal complexities that are tied up with public art. Public-‐art studies have generally nourished rather than challenged assumed ‘critical’ public-‐art practice. Many axioms are produced about the ‘unique’ specificities of what public art ‘does’ to places and people over time (cf. Phillips 1988; Kwon 2004; Fazakerley 2008), but these are not that problematised within the wider societal, late-‐capitalist context (cf. Deutsche 1996). As argued in Section 1.1, both the academic literature and the practice have primarily taken heed of perspectives of public art that originate from public-‐art experts, professionals, planners and creators, in other words producers of public art. However, both research and practice should also take into account voices from precisely public art’s publics. However, sound apparatuses with which to do so along comparative, systematic, coherent and perhaps longitudinal lines are lacking (cf. Hall and Robertson 2001). This is the background against which we attempt here to provide insight into the geographies of public art.
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1.3
Geographies of public art: filling in a new terrain
As conveyed in Section 1.1, we discern three geographical layers regarding the interrelationships between artwork, public space and beholder: the local, the regional and the concrete level of individual embodiment. These layers are germane to spatiotemporally differentiating intentions, production and reception with regard to public art. The relationships between artwork and public space concern a rather more physical relationship, whereas the relationships between beholder on the one hand and the artwork in relation to public space on the other imply interwoven art and environmental perceptions. 6
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Public Artopia: Art in Public Space in Question
Human geography has also taken some notice of urban planners’ various premises about the roles of art in enhancing the assumed qualities of urban public space. Harvey’s (1989) analysis of postmodernity engendered a dynamic, critical debate about urban visual culture and creative practices as drivers of urban development and regeneration (cf. also Soja 1989). Cosgrove (2005) states that authorities have progressively been putting more emphasis on public art in the form of commissioned sculptures, murals and landscaping, and have acknowledged the societal significance of visual culture, including public art, in advertising and in place promotion. Claims on public art’s role in cities and the community involvement of artists and planners therein have attracted geographical interest, particularly since the ‘renaissance’ of public art in the 1980s (cf. Selwood 1995; Miles 1997; Hall and Robertson 2001; Massey and Rose 2003; Cosgrove 2005). Urban planners’ intentions about public art bring forward assumed scales of impact on the quality of public space. These spatial assumptions are embedded in the nature of local public-‐art production. This broadly ranges from flagship-‐art projects aimed at international profiling and visibility in spaces of flow, such as urban centres and business districts, to community-‐art projects that are concerned with social engagement and cohesion within the context of neighbourhoods (cf. Lacy 1995; Miles 1997; Hall 2003b; Remesar 2005). The underlying intentions of produced public artworks may reflect general local and regional sociocultural mindsets as well as regulations and policy rhetoric as embedded in spatial-‐administrative levels implying local and regional/national governmental and regulatory frameworks, for example environmental planning, arts policy and programmes, cultural memoranda at both the national and the local level, and processes of city marketing and urban renewal. The reception of the produced public artworks at the individual or group or intersubjective level indicates experiences with the roles of art in public space. For instance, one may think that public art could or should be perceived as, for example, aesthetic, decorative, participative, interactive, economically and culturally regenerative, commemorative, and identifying in relation to specific spaces
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Martin Zebracki
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and places (cf. Selwood 1995; Fleming 1997; Hall and Robertson 2001). Since the 1980s, some critical researches on public art have developed from prevailing philosophical positions in cultural studies, including the new cultural geography. These positions are representationalism, interpretativism and deconstructivism (cf. Hall 2003b). All three have generally taken landscape as ‘text’, a notion that, according to Seymour (2000: 214), argues that ‘landscape does not simply mirror or distort “underlying” social relations, but needs to be understood as enmeshed within the processes which shape how the world is organized, experienced and understood, rather than read as its end product’ (cf. also Cosgrove and Daniels 1988). In the different understandings of how different landscapes communicate culture, little is known about the relationships between artwork, public space and beholder within geographical layers at the local, the regional and the individual level. The interrelationships between artwork, public space and beholder are strongly contingent on the nature of particular works of art and their producers and audiences in space and time. For example, the interpretation of space as a public place marker by way of art may depend on the experienced stylistic, interactive and animating repertoire of the artwork itself (cf. Alexander 2003; Fleming 2007). It may also matter who populates the regional and urban demographic space and the specific locality in terms of sex, gender, age, residency, profession, cultural background and interests, frequency of visits and certain activities, and so on (cf. Dewey 1927; Kramer 1994). It also matters for whom the artwork was intended – for that matter, in the case of deliberately intended spectators for public art, Senie (2003: 185) prefers the term ‘audience’ to public or community. And it also matters by whose intentions public art was created within urban and regional policy and the local sociocultural climate (cf. Dewey 1927; Conard 2008; Pollock and Paddison 2010). Furthermore, the reception of public art in relation to its site may also be influenced by the media and the extent to which artists and policy administrators have imposed mental as well as social and spatial restrictions on the accessibility of the artwork (cf. Mitchell 1992; Peto 1993; Deutsche 1996). It is beyond question that the dynamics between artwork, public space and beholder are typified by socio-‐spatial 8
Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Public Artopia: Art in Public Space in Question
particularities. Hence, these dynamics are very complex. Over time and space, these dynamics are relationally situated within intentions, production and reception with regard to public art. We therefore employ the geographies of public art as, in the words of Phillips (2003), ‘a renewable resource’.
1.4
Research question and conceptual issues of public art
Considering our research aim in relation to the previously elaborated geographical concerns about public art, this study was guided by the following central research question: How can the relational dynamics between artwork and public space be spatiotemporally discerned at the levels of public-art practice c.q. production, institutional and cultural policy practice, and public art’s publics?
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1.4.1
Practice and publics as beholder contexts of public art
Regarding those who behold the relationships between artwork and public space, a distinction can be made between the contexts of practice and the publics (cf. Balfe and Wyszomirski 1986; Cornwell 1990; Conard 2008). The context of practice includes artists, individuals or collectives, who usually enjoy artistic liberties, acknowledgement and safekeeping of their artworks. The practitionist context also includes those ‘who are responsible for the promotion of the long-‐term aesthetic welfare of society’ (Balfe and Wyszomirski 1986: 5) and facilitate urban visual culture, that is, commissioning and funding public agencies, administrators, policymakers and planners, cultural professionals, and the like. All these actors usually have explicit intentions regarding the production of public art artworks. In keeping with popular dictionary and academic definitions, here ‘intentions’ means aims that guide actions for formulating, designing, planning and implementing public art (cf. Hall and Robertson 2001; McCarthy 2006). Production implies the process of creating a public artwork of assumed value and its presentation in public space (cf.
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Martin Zebracki
Mitchell 1992; Cartiere and Willis 2008). Practitioners are sometimes engaged in collaborative public-‐art production that involves the targeted audience: the publics. The context of publics encompasses the audience of public art. They are the spectators who theoretically ‘must assent to the funding and [ideally] give community acceptance to the particular works [i.e. the ‘spectacle’] installed in [their] midst’ (Balfe and Wyszomirski 1986: 5). As stressed, this study emphatically enlists the publics’ reception, indicating the process of perceiving public art – namely becoming aware of this phenomenon through the senses and representing and achieving an understanding of it – and receiving public art, that is the extent to which public art is mentally acknowledged. Reception also indicates the state of public art as being perceived and received (cf. Senie 2003; Kwon 2004). To conclude, we as academic researchers can be seen as mediators who explore and reflect on the practice of public art. We are intrinsically committed to public art’s paratexts, so to speak.
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1.4.2 Conceptual issues of public art I: ‘public’ vs. ‘private’
Here, and in subsections 1.4.3 and 1.4.4, we throw more light on the complexity and situatedness of the interrelationships between artwork, public space and beholder. We do so by dealing with and problematising conceptual issues of public art, also with inherent reference to intentions, production and reception. We intrinsically fall back on the conceptual issues throughout our study. Public art’s Janus-‐faced character tries to include the public and exclude the private in both its definition and performance in space. Both the public and the private are dimensions of the political context (cf. Danto 1987) and exist by the grace of each other. Essentially, there is a plenitude of intermediate variations between public and private; as such, they are ‘semi-‐ish’, that is, situated within a conceptual continuum. As an example, in his 3-‐D diagram, Dessouroux (2003: 27) discerns three dimensions of usage of public space and ‘publicness’/‘privateness’ as such: the X-‐axis ranging from permissive to authoritative, which concerns 10
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regularisation; the Y-‐axis ranging from universal to restrained, which concerns access; and the Z-‐axis ranging from public to private, which concerns property. In the light of this, we do not conceive of public and private as binary oppositions or dualisms: ‘not only is consensus about what constitutes the public or public space impossible, it is not even desirable’ (Staeheli and Mitchell 2007: 795). Instead, public/private is a duality that should be situated in a dialectical relationship. Public/private are, just like the term ‘art’, subjectively rendered according to actor, time and place. The dynamism in public-‐art studies has involved various debates and belief systems both between and within disciplines about the public nature of public art. The many definitions range from elementary to complex (cf. Lacy 1995; Hein 1996). As a first example, Massey (1995) sees public space and its visualities like public art as embedded in privileged masculinity. Second, Sharp et al. (2005) state that the privatisation of public space implies that art placed in public space is not public per se. Third, Rendell (2000) argues that the creation of an artwork in a postulated public place often entails a purely subjective, personal and therefore ‘private’ activity, which is especially the case regarding autonomous art as opposed to community art. Fourth, Remesar (2003) argues that there is a medley of ‘contaminated’ forms of public art that could be either formal or informal and licit or illegal, for example advertising that is presented as public art and public artworks that are used as images in advertising (i.e. the commercial appropriation of public art), or sculptures daubed with graffiti, spontaneous façade ornaments and ‘privatised’ monuments like roadside memorials (i.e. the social appropriation/re-‐appropriation of public art). Another ‘contaminated’ form of public art is ‘state-‐capitalist’ public artworks that are subject to societal power relationships, for instance communist sculptures honouring ideological leaders at a particular time (i.e. the political appropriation of public art). So, then, to what extent is there such thing as ‘public’ art? Regarding data collection, this study exclusively considers public artworks that were officially initiated and implemented, or facilitated, by public authorities. ‘Illegal’ public art is not, or is not soundly documented and related to the urban and regional cultural institutional and policy context – which is one of the contextual points of departure
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of our analysis. Yet, we acknowledge that ‘illegal’ public art is of equal importance and interest, and therefore take it as a tacit layer of awareness in the analysis.
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1.4.3 Conceptual issues of public art II: art, place and publicness We define public art in a nominalistic vein; that is, we consider those objects worded and recognised as ‘public art’ within a particular socio-‐spatial peer context. Here, we may refer to Danto’s (1964) philosophy of artworld, which denotes an institutional theory of art. Basically but not simplistically, art is art when an actor says it is according to a certain decisive intersubjective system of assumptions in time and place; when it comes down to it, art implies either permanent or temporary objects or processes created by artists who are recognised as such (cf. Hein 1996). Hence, ‘public art’ is a spatiotemporally dynamic universe of discourse, and as such we take a social-‐constructivist and also poststructuralist approach to grasp public art. Public art is subject to socio-‐spatially changing sets of meanings and power structures, as it is ideologically and politically contested among actors in diverse power hierarchies (cf. Sheikh 2004, and the notions of ‘governmentality’ in Foucault 1991, and of ‘hegemony’ and ‘agonism’ in Mouffe 2008). Public art is no longer ‘a hero on a horse’ (Raven 1993: 1). Public art differs considerably within the continuum between flagship and community art, and such according to place differences. Public art can take many different styles and media of expression, for example figurative and abstract forms, physical sculptures, reliefs, murals, art integrated with architecture, fountains and street furniture, lighting installations, and so forth, and also participatory community practices and various interactive performances like dance, processions and theatre (cf. Mitchell 1992; Fleming 1997; Miles 1997; Kwon 2004; Remesar 2005). Hence, as argued by Hargraves (2001), public art could embrace all possible art disciplines, including visual and applied arts, performance, photography, video, literature and new media. On the basis of Cartiere (2008), Lucie-‐Smith (2003) and Turner (1996), other than ephemeral performances and events, the following general public-‐artwork categories may be 12
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discerned in what we designate as the materialised public artscape: monument, figurative sculpture, abstract sculpture, applied art, façade art, installation, environment and landscape. As ‘public art’ can be read as combining the terms ‘public art’ and ‘public space’, public art also invites us to question ‘public space’. Public space may be seen as ‘a common ground where people carry out the functional activities and rituals that bind a community’ (Casanovas 2005: 20). Staeheli and Mitchell (2006) argue that public space is often equated with the public sphere, which is supposed to have no material form (cf. also Mitchell 1992). We observe that public space, in this case, entails the site or more generally the sphere beyond the spaces and conventions of museums and galleries (cf. Mitchell 1992). These sites are basically freely, openly and often physically accessible to all people in society, irrespective of their sex, gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, physical and mental constitution, geographical origin, or sociocultural positions in terms of education and profession, cultural background and interests, personal activities, etc. Note that the publics’ reception of public art may be idiosyncratically related to a variety of these attributes (cf. Bourdieu 1993 for the relevance of cultural competences in art appreciation). Nevertheless, the accessibility of public art to the various publics at large is conditional, as the authorities responsible for situating works or performances of art in public space assume that the publics will comply with ‘good conduct’. That is to say that public engagement is generally incited to the point of rigid authoritative provisos concerning copyright violation, littering, vandalism and any other aggressive behaviour towards public art (cf. Finkelpearl 2001; Remesar 2005). ‘Public’ also denotes the target group and hence the publics’ beholder context of public art: all individuals in society who consciously or unconsciously experience or ‘consume’ public art. This raises issues of inclusion and exclusion: to whom does public art belong? What publics are unvoiced significant ‘others’? (cf. Sharp et al. 2005). The meanings that beholders attribute to public artworks, and the intrinsic socio-‐spatial differences, are negotiated amongst each other, which Massey and Rose (2003) denote by their concept of ‘social relationality’. The negotiation process, being inherent in the ‘publicness’ of public art, is
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thus manifested in spaces that observably embrace social differences, such as streets, parks, markets, squares and transport stations (ibid.: 6). In respect of social relationality, Lacy (1995) argues that public art should not be considered so much a product as a process of value finding particularly among its publics: it is a set of philosophies, an ethical act, and part of a broader sociocultural agenda. Yet, Tuer (2005) states that public art has traditionally been created with merely minimal dialogue between the targeted audiences and the initiators, planners and creators about the artwork’s theme, content and location. In Tuer’s view, the underlying philosophies of public-‐art production typically suggest wealth, privilege, elitism and arrogance (ibid.). So how ‘public’ is public art? Rendell (2000) indicates that the problem with the public-‐art discourse is that it is too inclined to consider space socially neutral, homogenous, undifferentiated and merely a background for human actions; rather, space is socially constructed (cf. Lefebvre 1991). Accordingly, as stated by Phillips (1988) and Deutsche (1996), the publics should not be contemplated as static, neat, always consensual entities. In her examination of the sociological processes of public-‐art production, Deutsche (1996) therefore contemplates art as being public only when it addresses a specific audience (public art cannot assume the pre-‐existence of a public but must help produce one; Hall 2003a), becomes significant in the life of the audience (according to Rosler (1987), the public must be politically conscious to be actually public and not an audience) and openly intervenes, by for instance criticising political processes of urban change (cf. Rosler 1987). As a final note, Hall (2003a) implicitly makes a plea to relinquish a definitional fetish of public art/public space/public, etc. That is to say, it would be more instructive to debate how public art is produced by socio-‐spatial processes and as such can be construed by the spaces it engages with (ibid.).
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1.4.4 Conceptual issues of public art III: ‘paradigms’ of art and public space Regarding the relationships between art and public space, we abstractly discern five ‘paradigms’ or conceptual directions (Figure 1.1): 1) Art in public space: art just arises within public space. 2) Art of public space: art valuates/revaluates public space. 3) Art as public space: art creates public space. 4) Public space as art: public space embodies art. 5) Art for public space: art represents public space. Each of these paradigms (cf. also Oosterling 2002), which are performative in nature, comprises a continuum of conceptualisations of art and public space. Moreover, they are not mutually exclusive and there is a sixth, configurating paradigm, which to a certain extent constitutes a combination of the five aforementioned paradigms. The schematised paradigms are of service to mentally mapping the interrelationships between the artwork and public space from a particular beholder context. As such, they are helpful in construing dialectics between the artscaping of public space and the landscaping of public art. As inferred from Tuan (1977), public art’s space may be phenomenologically regarded as the broader impalpable and sometimes tacit socio-‐spatial context of place/site; we equate site with place. Place, in its turn, betokens the concrete and haptic, and may be specified à la Cartiere (2010: 34) as follows: ‘place is not merely the categorisation of a specific kind of space, but also a function of personal perspective and individual relationship to space’. This implies reception in terms of a mental representation of space as well as a functional embodiment of place identity (cf. Relph 1976; Tuan 1977). The paradigms convey, in a neologistic sense, a ‘public artextuality’. Public art’s ‘text’ is interpreted by different beholders in different contexts in time, space and place, and as such is socioculturally performed.
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Figure 1.1 Main ‘paradigms’ regarding the interrelationships between art and public space.
Public space, in the view of Lacy (1995), has often been acclaimed in the sphere of intentions as an opportunity to create new exhibition space for art that was previously available only in museums. Rendell (2000) asserts that the production of public art has historically been applied in this restrictive sense, namely to describe public art as permanent sculptural works placed outside the museum or gallery (cf. Figure 1.1, paradigm 1). In this sense, critics like Lacy (1995) and Plagens (1995) call public art’s common reception ‘plop art’: often giant versions of the kind of sculpture one usually finds in museums, but instead have been ‘plopped’ into public space. Yet, Wesseling (2001) indicates that the site-‐ specific art of recent decades has demonstrated how both artists and planners have increasingly been engaging with historical, environmental and social contexts (cf. Figure 1.1, graph 6: paradigms 1 through 5). To conclude, as a corollary of the dynamism in public-‐art practice, public art as an intended and realised product has multifarious dimensions in time and place. As stated, it can be permanent or temporary and site-‐specific or site-‐general, and it can involve a variety of sites – parks, greenbelts, streets, roundabouts, infrastructural places, etc. It is here that the texture of the interrelationships between artwork and public space is experienced, rendered and as such 16
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shaped. This is done over time through public art’s beholder contexts of practice and publics as situated within geographical layers of the regional, local and individual embodiment.
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1.5
Thesis structure and methodologies
As stated, our central research question was: How can the relational dynamics between artwork and public space be spatiotemporally discerned at the levels of public-art practice c.q. production, institutional and cultural policy practice, and public art’s publics? This question guided our grounded starting points, including potential specific expectations, and as such the empirical analyses presented in Chapters 2–5. Chapter 2 (Deconstructing public artopia: Situating public- art claims within practice, which has appeared in Geoforum) particularly covers the level of public-‐art practice or production. This chapter problematises what we term public artopia: the collection of claims in academic literature that express intentions regarding the desired or alleged roles of art in urban public space. This chapter distinguishes this role into the physical-‐aesthetic, economic, social and cultural-‐ symbolic dimensions of public space in relation to two levels of public-‐art projects, namely flagship art and community art. In so doing, the chapter addresses local, intra-‐urban geographical layers of the interrelationships between artwork, public space and beholder. We focused on the recent flagship-‐art project Virtual Museum Zuidas (2001-‐ present) and the community-‐art project Face Your World (2005) in the city of Amsterdam. We selected these two projects primarily because of our regional and urban focus, as explicitly pointed out by the research presented in Chapter 3, a focus we maintained throughout our study for reasons of coherence and consistency. Besides, the practicality of using our native language (Dutch) during the empirical research process yielded vernacular and reflexive advantages. Chapter 2 also introduces Haraway’s (1991) ‘situated knowledges’ (cf. also Rose 1997), which proved to be a sound epistemological and methodological guiding principle in our grounded discourse analysis (cf. Corbin and Strauss 2008) of interviews and documented materials,
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which allowed us to situate public-‐art claims according to actors’ roles, geographical context and time. The intentions and actual production of publicly funded public artworks cannot simply be taken from their enabling and stipulating conditions, namely cultural policy and institutional contexts. Yet, we also adopt the belief that there might also be a ‘public artworld’ (cf. Danto 1964) on its own, irrespective of these policy and institutional contexts. Chapter 3 (Does cultural policy matter in public-art production? The Netherlands and Flanders compared, 1945- present, published in Environment and Planning A) goes deeply into that. In so doing, this chapter deals with public-‐ art practice as situated within institutional and cultural policy contexts as well as with sociocultural praxes. The international comparison presented in Chapter 3 explicitly engages with intra-‐ and inter-‐regional contextualities as well as with regional–local and intra-‐/inter-‐urban connectivities as embedded in the geographical relationships between artwork, public space and beholder over time and place. Public art has been a burgeoning phenomenon in Western Europe since 1945, and cultural policy has produced various intentions underlying the production of public art. The literature has not yet soundly demonstrated the extent to which differences in cultural policy, and implicitly its institutional and socio-‐political context, have affected the production of public artworks over time and space. On the basis of archival research, visual fieldwork, expert interviews and policy analysis, Chapter 3 compares the Netherlands and Flanders, which differ markedly in policy and institutional context, their sociocultural communalities notwithstanding. Amsterdam and Ghent, which can be considered cultural-‐ historic core cities of the regions concerned, serve as case studies (cf. Yin 2008). The selection of these cities was further informed by the differential nature of their public artworks and sociocultural climate. Chapter 4 may be seen as this study’s paradigmatic shift, as it essentially examines the reception of public art by its publics. This shift in focus is also imparted by the chapter’s title: Beyond public artopia: Public art as perceived by its publics (published in GeoJournal). The reception of public art has commonly been framed from the perspectives of its creators and planners. The fundamental purpose of public art is shaped by its very publics, an under-‐researched but 18
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important ‘actorial perspective’. Hence, this chapter, which introduces the geographical layer of individual and intersubjective embodiment, is a substantial endeavour to address the publics’ reception of their interrelationships with artworks and public space. The chapter presents a survey analysis on six public-‐artwork localities in the Netherlands and Flanders (two in Amsterdam, one in Rotterdam, two in Antwerp and one in Ghent). The public artworks concerned represent the diversity of the public artscape of the Netherlands and Flanders since 1945 (cf. Chapter 3). Coming from a quite positivist human geography school at Utrecht University, we use a quantitative approach to publics’ perception to eventually instigate more solid and reflexive research on publics’ engagement with public art. After all, we are aware that ‘whether figurative or abstract, allegorical or representational, public art elicits a range of audience responses impossible to predict’ (Senie 2003: 190). In this sense, despite the enriching general insights produced by this quantitative study, Chapter 4 may be seen as a self-‐ critical entr’acte. There is the feeling that insights into the publics’ reception are still too engrafted in an empirical mosaic of actors, places and times, which should be reflexively and idiosyncratically explored, as performed in the following chapter. Chapter 5 (Engaging geographies of public Art: Indwellers, the ‘Butt Plug Gnome’ and their locale; manuscript pre-‐ approved for publication in Social & Cultural Geography) further scrutinises publics’ reception of public art in a thoroughly grounded and reflexive way. It also elaborates on the geographical layer of individual and intersubjective embodiment inherent in the spatiotemporal interrelationships between artwork, public space and a multiplicity of beholders. The grounded and reflexive approach principally follows from our own notion of ‘geographies of engagement’, and from the situationist epistemology of Haraway (1991). We apply situated knowledges to the experiences of the publics, which makes this chapter complementary to Chapter 2, wherein intentions, production, and planners’ and creators’ experiences with regard to public art hold the limelight. Chapter 4 employs a grounded case study (cf. Yin 2008) on Paul McCarthy’s internationally acclaimed, and because of its alleged sexual nature locally disputed, public artwork Santa
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Claus in the city centre of Rotterdam. The chapter illustrates the sundry publics’ outlooks on this artwork’s spatialities, aesthetics, moralities and functionalities in relation to space and place. It empirically situates documented media views within the way indwellers perceive Santa Claus and its locale in interrelation with themselves. We also open up differential vistas on public-‐art narration in relation to people, time and space, whereby we elaborate on the reflexive idea of ‘social relationality’ (Massey and Rose 2003) by revealing how socio-‐spatial differences in public-‐art experiences are negotiated. As such, this chapter examines how public art, in space or time, is geographically reconstituted through its fundamentally intended publics. In Chapter 6, we recapitulate and reflect on the empirical findings in relation to the central research question. On the basis of our contributions to research and practice, we also critically discuss the geographical interrelationships between artwork, public space and beholder, and provide some implications of our findings for urban planning and policy and further research. All in all, we conceive of our study as a heuristic, conceptual and empirical challenge that is part of our predominantly situationist and reflexive approach to public art. We consider the exploratory and experimental nature of this research epistemic strength of conveyance. That is to say, we employed diverse conceptual and methodological traditions to gain insight into geographical layers of the interrelationships between artwork, public space and beholder. This study as such may be seen as asset to the body of knowledge on geographies of public art. The reader, at this juncture, is warmly invited to embark on the empirical research journey as presented in Chapters 2–5 (bon voyage!). The textual structure, style of writing and spelling differ from chapter to chapter as each corresponds to the individual preferences of the journals to which it is addressed. Nonetheless, a uniform reference style and layout have been adopted throughout this work.
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Chapter 2
Deconstructing public artopia: Situating public-art claims within practice Martin Zebracki, Rob van der Vaart, Irina van Aalst Published in Geoforum, 2010, Volume 41, Issue 5, 786–795
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Abstract
This paper problematises public artopia, in other words the collection of claims in academic literature concerning the allegedly physical-‐aesthetic, economic, social, and cultural-‐ symbolic roles of art in urban public space. On the basis of interviews with public-‐art producers (artists, public officials, investors, and participating residents) in a flagship and a community-‐art project in Amsterdam, we analyse the situatedness of their public-‐art claims according to actors’ roles, geographical context, and time. The research suggests that public-‐art theory and policy suffer from three deficiencies. Theoretical claims about public art and policy discourse feature, first, a failure to recognise different actors’ perspectives: claims fail to locate situated knowledges that are intrinsically (re)constituted by actors’ roles articulating with one another in time and space. Second is the lack of geographical contextuality: claims do not elaborate appropriately on distinct discourses about art projects’ spatial settings. Third is the lack of temporal perspective. Claims neglect the practice of public-‐art realisation: that is, the evolution of claims and claim coalitions over the time horizon of the art projects: preparation, implementation, and evaluation. Keywords: public art, situated knowledges, community art, flagship art, public artopia, public artscape. 21
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2.1
Introduction: situating public art
The term public art designates artworks, either permanent or temporary, commissioned for sites with open public access. These are located outside conventional [museological or private] locations and settings (Miles 1997: 5): city squares, parks, buildings’ exteriors, and infrastructural sites such as railway stations, roundabouts, and airports. Public art is a visual practice in that it integrates, represents, and communicates vision, image, and space. Dynamism in the arts sector has resulted in a multiplication of styles and media of expression in cities’ public spaces; ‘public art is an expanding practice that continues to incorporate every medium and discipline from painting to new media, sculpture to design, architecture to performance’ (Cartiere and Willis 2008: 15). The multifaceted nature of public art has induced a debate about the publicness and the artfulness of public art (Finkelpearl 2001; Kwon 2004). Massey and Rose (2003: 19), for example, believe that ‘for an artwork to be public, negotiation between social differences has to be part of what the artwork does. If negotiation among diverse social identities is not invited, then the artwork is not public’. Chang (2008) believes that in questioning the publicness of art, one must deal with the nature of artistic creativity that he collectively terms ‘“artfulness” and the problem of “ostentatious spatiality”’ (Chang 2008: 1925). He questions the creative role of artists in society by asserting that ‘seldom is art created, commissioned, and installed in public spaces unfettered by utilitarian demands’ (ibid.: 1925). Apart from such discussion about publicness and artfulness, there is also debate about the power and gender dimensions of public art (cf. Deutsche 1996; Rendell 2000; Massey and Rose 2003; Staeheli and Mitchell 2007). So public art is a domain of contested terminology; ‘public art can be read in different ways and its uses to beautify the city or celebrate its reimagineering do not necessarily enjoy universal consensus’ (Sharp et al. 2005: 1001). On that note, academics, artists, social agents, policymakers, and the like are usually not discussing the same subject at all. The aim of this paper is to problematise public artopia: the loose collection of claims in academic literature about the allegedly physical-‐aesthetic, economic, social, and cultural-‐ symbolic roles of art in urban public space, which reflect 22
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public art’s notional, potentially fetishised, and ill-‐defined geographical contextuality. Cosgrove (2005) indicates that claims concerning contemporary art’s role in urban space have attracted a surge of interest from geographers (cf. Miles 1997, 2007; Hall and Robertson 2001; Hall 2003a,b; Massey and Rose 2003; Robertson and Richards 2003; Sharp et al. 2005). Notwithstanding, geographers have scarcely researched the mental representations of public-‐art producers about the roles of public art in urban space, although the empirical studies of Roberts and Marsh (1995), Selwood (1995), Hall (2003a,b) and Sharp et al. (2005) are important exceptions in that respect. Dynamics in public-‐art production discourse are closely connected with spatial rescaling processes as reflected in urban governance (cf. Brenner 2004) and local and regional identity formation (cf. Harvey 1989; Lefebvre 1991; Zukin 1995; Castells 1997). Cities are positioned and defined in changing spatial and sociocultural contexts. Within that purview, urban planners use selection mechanisms for creating and negotiating geographical images and anti-‐images, also by means of public art (cf. Zebracki 2010). Studies on public art or visual culture in general may reveal the geographical discourse of the producers of cultural images. These images also affect the mental representations that users of geographical knowledge, which is inherent in these images, develop about space and place. Hence, public-‐art research could open a wider debate about the differentiated ways in which visual culture is represented by both producers and users of urban imagery. On the basis of findings from interviews with public-‐art producers – artists, public officials, investors, and participating residents – we analyse the situatedness of their public-‐art claims in an attempt to deconstruct public artopia in the context of public-‐art practice. The two case-‐study projects involved are both located in the city of Amsterdam. The first is Virtual Museum Zuidas (Figure 2.1), a city-‐centre flagship-‐art project targeted at international exposure in the booming Zuidas (South Axis), the business district branded the ‘Financial Mile’ (Salet and Majoor 2005: 116). The second case study is on Face Your World (Figure 2.1), a community-‐ art project aimed at enhancing social cohesion in the ethnically-‐diverse neighbourhood of Slotervaart.
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We are interested in situating the public-‐art producers’ personal perceptions of the role of art in urban space, taking into account differentiation in the role and expertise of actors, the types and locations of art projects, and perceptions over time. In so doing, Donna Haraway’s concept of situated knowledges, epistemologically implying ‘feminist objectivity’ (1991: 188), is helpful. This concept provides a conceptual framing mechanism for a ‘partial perspective’ to public-‐art claims, which is not ‘“[from]above, from nowhere, from simplicity”, but from ground level, from somewhere and from complexity’ (Haraway 1991: 195). Barnes (2000: 743) asserts that ‘situated knowledge is embodied in that it is grounded in the physicality of specific human bodies and their artefacts’, hence in public art, too. Our phenomenological challenge is to provide insight into public-‐ art practice and public-‐art producers’ concrete experiences to situate public-‐art claims in actors’ perspectives and geographical as well as temporal dimensions. These situated knowledges are inherent in what we term the public artscape. This scape signifies a social relationality in which meanings of public artworks and intrinsically social differences are negotiated. According to Massey and Rose (2003), this negotiation process defines ‘publicness’, ‘and it therefore happens in spaces where social differences are very often evident: in streets, shops, parks, malls, markets, squares, playgrounds, car parks, stations’ (ibid.: 6). In this paper, we first outline theoretical claims about public art’s roles, including some of the main critiques of such claims. Second, we discuss the methodological issues of our empirical work. Third, we consider the findings on public-‐art claims conveyed within our case-‐study locations (Virtual Museum Zuidas and Face Your World). Fourth, we discuss the implications of this study with regard to public- artopian claims of urban planning.
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Figure 2.1 Localities of Virtual Museum Zuidas (VMZ) and Face Your World (FYW) in the city of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
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2.2
Public artopia: theoretical claims, critiques, and implications
International cross-‐discipline literature on public-‐art policy and practice reveals that planners’ urban ambitions and the corresponding public-‐art policy and practices have changed in Western Europe since 1945, particularly since the 1980s’ ‘renaissance’ of public art (Hall and Robertson 2001). Public art has provided a symbol for revitalising initiatives of European and North American cities (Bovaird 2005). With a repositioning of the role of the state, the commissioning of public art has involved public-‐private partnerships and sometimes the private sector exclusively. Cosgrove (2005) states that public authorities and private parties have both promoted public art in landscaping, commissioned murals and sculptures; they have recognised the significance of visual images, including public art, in advertising, promoting, place selling, and place attachment (Fleming 2007; Knight 2008). New social and economic claims – public art for social cohesion, urban boosterism, and city marketing – have been added to the traditional claims of aesthetics and supporting collective memory embodied in statues, memorials, and so forth. Furthermore, public art and public-‐art policy in cities
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have become more differentiated in terms of assumed scales of impact on the quality of urban space: from flagship-‐art projects designed for international profiling and exposure in spaces of flow such as urban centres and business districts to community-‐art projects focusing on social engagement and social cohesion at the neighbourhood level (cf. Lacy 1995; Miles 1997; Hall 2003a,b; Remesar, 2005). The academic literature features various claims about the contribution made to urban space by public art. According to Hall (2003a), from the 1980s onwards it has been both prominent and controversial in urban upgrading; public art is considered capable of legitimising as well as criticising prevailing urban developments. It has been the subject of contrasting critical literatures from artists, art experts, cultural theorists, urban and cultural geographers, and experts from cognate disciplines (Moody 1990; Policy Studies Institute 1994; Roberts and Marsh 1995; Selwood 1995; Miles 1997, 2003; Hall 2003a; Sharp et al. 2005). The following public-‐art claims are primarily drawn from research by Hall (2003a,b), and are all reflected in the work of Selwood (1995), Miles (1997), Remesar (2003, 2005) and Sharp et al. (2005). a) Physical-aesthetic claims – enhancing aesthetic quality: improving the attractiveness of a place and thereby encouraging more intensive use of a public space; upgrading the visual or aesthetic quality of place, and turning a former anonymous place into a physical reference point (cf. Hein 1996, 2006; Goldstein 2005; Sharp et al. 2005; Rendell 2006). b) Economic claims – enhancing economic activity: attracting and increasing investments in the arts; improving economic regeneration conditions through creating richer visual environments; providing marketing and place-‐promotion opportunities in city marketing; boosting cultural tourism; creating employment for artists, craftspeople, manufacturers, suppliers, and transporters; encouraging public-‐private partnerships; and upscaling land values (cf. Roberts and Marsh 1995; Landry 2000, 2008; Florida 2002, 2008; Fleming 2007). 26
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c) Social claims – enhancing community and social interactions: addressing community needs; eradicating social exclusion; promoting social change by revealing fundamental social contradictions or undermining dominant meanings of urban space; reducing vandalism and increasing safety; and encouraging links between artists and professions that shape the environment, such as planning, landscaping, architecture, design, and engineering (cf. Mitchell 1992; Kramer 1994; Selwood 1995; Deutsche 1996; Baetens and Pil 1998; Finkelpearl 2001; Alexander 2003; Remesar 2003, 2005). d) Cultural-symbolic claims – creating symbolic value: enhancing awareness of local history and identity; promoting national identity; creating stimuli and ideas in situ for other actors in the creative industry; contributing to local distinctiveness; developing civic identity; and creating educational and pedagogical values and benefits (cf. Lacy 1995; Miles 1997; Michalski 1998; Senie and Webster 1998; Bach 2001; Drake 2003; Hall 2003a,b; DaCosta Kaufmann 2004; Kester 2004; Kwon 2004). The aforementioned claims, formulated more precisely as intersubjective public-‐art claim coalitions, are reciprocally connected. For instance, developing civic identity is problematic without a goal to achieve social inclusion. Moreover, the claims are not unchallenged in academic literature. Hall and Robertson (2001) see some fundamental difficulties in them. They perceive a lack of critical intervention in public-‐art practice and, analogously, no sound conceptual apparatus or paradigm to evaluate public-‐art claims. The lack of evaluative instruments leads to a paucity of evaluation and hence little evidence supporting these claims. Selwood (1995: 249-‐250), for instance, asserts that ‘messianic promoters of public art sometimes suggest that the burgeoning of public art outside the gallery may contribute towards the creation of new audiences for art. We found no evidence to support this’. Hall (2002, 2003a,b) argues that it has been normal for artists to review and evaluate their practice in formal or aesthetic terms, but there is no tradition of researching the impact of arts practice on
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urban space. Furthermore, he reasons that there is no tradition of employing social-‐science impact methodologies in the investigation and evaluation of this practice. This lack of evaluation of public art has various reasons: scarcity of funding; widespread and uncritical acceptance of public art; doubts of the relevance of social-‐science criteria in evaluating public art; and the questioning of evaluating public art at all (Hall and Robertson 2001). Various authors have elaborated further on this obvious reluctance to evaluate public art and have identified further reasons and barriers (cf. Matzner, 2001; Reeves, 2002; Remesar, 2003, 2005; Ward Thompson et al., 2005; Fazakerley, 2008). The diverse contexts of the literature about public art hamper critical comparison and the development of strong research tools. According to Phillips (1988), the lack of critical intervention in public-‐art practice can be attributed to the ‘machinery’ of public-‐art production that moderates against challenging, critical or disruptive interventions in urban space, and legitimises current unequal urban developments (cf. Hall and Robertson 2001). Furthermore, given that public art is predominantly theorised within the arts, it is often contemplated within the normal confines of art criticism and not within broader geographical contexts of public space, the disciplinary multivocal nature of public art notwithstanding (cf. Miles 1997). In the arts sector, such a geographical and multidisciplinary approach, in this case a focus on the spatial effects of public art in a physical-‐aesthetic, economic, social and cultural-‐symbolic sense, is rare. Hall and Robertson (2001) believe, moreover, that many public-‐art claims are essentialist. The advocates of public art believe that its intervention in urban space contributes intrinsically to a ‘good’ or ideal city (cf. Deutsche 1996). Such essentialist, homogenised views overlook the contested, unfixed, and socially-‐contingent nature of space and place (Massey 1994). Essentialism is also reflected in the fundamental shortcomings of the technocratic advocacy of public art, for instance in public art as ‘social engineering’, which endeavours to resolve ‘social problems’ (Hall and Robertson 2001). Each of the four claims listed above involves an essentialist view of the public or audience of public art. Alexander (2003) conveys that much of the theory development regarding the effects on society of cultural products – understood to include public art – ignores the fact 28
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Public Artopia: Art in Public Space in Question
that cultural products are consumed by the ‘publics’. The misconception that ideas from the arts are injected directly into their public – the ‘injection model’ – implies this public as passive and uncritical and the cultural products imposed as intrinsically ‘good’ (cf. Alexander 2003). Similarly, Hall (2003b) argues that the public’s experience and its relation to the production of space are neither demonstrated nor addressed. His Lefebvrian critique runs that there are weak theoretical links between the signification (representation), production, and experience of space. Everyday practices and experiences are elemental, since consideration of them contributes to the understanding of the production of meaning in these practices and experiences that deconstruct essentialist reasoning (cf. Lees 2001).
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2.3
Methodology
We have sought to unravel public-‐art claims on the basis of in-‐depth interviews with pertinent actors involved in two recent public-‐art projects in Amsterdam: Virtual Museum Zuidas (VMZ) and Face Your World (FYW). The interviews allowed us to deconstruct public artopia, taking account of variations in actor perspective, spatial settings of the projects, and the expression of claims over the time horizon of the projects. In 2007, we interviewed seven actors from flagship-‐art project VMZ, 10 actors from community-‐art project FYW, and four Dutch experts in public-‐art theory and practice for the purpose of contextualising public-‐art claims. We performed a discourse analysis based on the transcript files of the21 interviews, and relevant (policy) documents, providing project information in terms of general aims, potential past performance, and embeddedness within the broader scope of urban policy. The public-‐art producers interviewed were artists (7), public-‐sector officials (4), investors (3), and participating residents (3). On the basis of a grounded theoretical framework (cf. Glaser 1998), we created discourse-‐topic files from the interview transcripts that we labelled and investigated regarding the situatedness of productionist advocacy. The interviewees were identified by purposive sampling, a technique to establish correspondence between the research questions and the pertinent actors (Cameron 2010). We performed snowball
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sampling (cf. Bryman 2008); our initial contacts with some relevant key informants generated contact with decisive others. Introductory interviews were helpful in teasing out and corroborating the sampling frame. Following notions of situated knowledges (cf. Haraway 1991; Rose 1997), our perspective entailed discerning the partial knowledges of the actors. We mediated between these knowledges, our situated knowledges, and information found in documentary material. The two case studies were – in line with Stake (2000) – significant as ‘opportunities to learn’ about the relationships between productionist claims on the one hand and the social, temporal, and spatial context of these claims on the other. Notwithstanding the ‘nongeneralising knowledges’ (Rose 1997) involved, the particulars of the case studies formed the basis for a careful ‘analytic generalisation’. This is a useful methodology for building theory extending beyond one situation towards other situations (Yin 2008). Accordingly, the selected public-‐ art projects might be considered emblematic cases since they probably involve insights into learning moments experienced in other public-‐art projects (cf. also Ragin’s (1994) retroduction approach). Our methodological focus was therefore not on gauging techniques or statistical representativeness, but on reflexive approaches that provided insight into the geographies of engagement between public art and its producers. We envisage these geographies of engagement as producers’ discursively-‐ constructed field of positioning a particular artwork in a specific public place. Such spatial logic of public-‐art production, which involves a certain degree of location-‐ aware art, pursues to some extent the physical-‐aesthetic, economic, social and/or cultural-‐symbolic dimensions of public-‐art claims as elaborated in Section 2. For a methodical understanding of geographical engagement in public-‐art production, we can think of three discrete public-‐art paradigms that are discerned by Kwon (2004: 60): art-‐in-‐ public-‐places model (focus on ‘art for art’s sake’); art-‐as-‐ public-‐spaces approach (focus on design-‐oriented and environmental art); and art-‐in-‐the-‐public-‐interest model (focus on activist, grassroots art, termed by Lacy (1995) as ‘new genre public art’). See Lacy (1995) and Kwon (2004) for further reference on these paradigms. 30
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During the empirical research, account was taken of the relationship between our personalities and the research process, including interviewees, by situating these personalities within that process: the ‘in-‐betweenness’ (cf. Moss 1993). To enhance credibility and dependability, we incorporated checks for rigour – means of verifying interpretation of interview data and documentary data – by participant checking: that is, by sending the transcript files to the informants for approval and possible annotations and corrections; checking the sources against each other (‘re-‐ search’); cross-‐referencing to potential documentary material; and peer approval. Thus, we allowed for the situated knowledges of the actors interviewed as well as for our intersubjective knowledges.
2.4
Public artopia deconstructed
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2.4.1 Case studies: some background As a flagship-‐art project, Virtual Museum Zuidas (VMZ) exemplifies the involvement of public artworks by renowned artists. The project aims at place branding, national and international exposure, and attracting visitors, firms, and potential residents. As an urban core-‐development project, VMZ shares many characteristics with other flagship-‐art developments (cf. Matarasso, 1997; Hall, 2003a,b). VMZ was started in 2001 at the Amsterdam local authority’s request for the creation of an art climate in the Zuidas business district. The project is funded by the city, the national Art and Public Space Foundation (SKOR), the local Amsterdam Foundation for the Arts (AFK) and by several private actors in the Zuidas area. The total amount of art investment is not clearly documented, but – according to a key informant – amounts to approximately 4500,000 euros. The VMZ investment aims at creating an art climate and thereby a visually-‐distinct areal profile and stylish business and residential environment (Zuidas Programme Council for the Arts 2001). VMZ’s project leaders, a group of artists and public and private actors, intend to integrate public art into architectural development in Zuidas for an indefinite period. The project embraces two principal objectives: ‘high degree 31
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of combined functions’ and ‘high-‐quality public space’ (ibid.: 4). The initial plans incorporate permanent or recurring temporary public art in Zuidas development, architecture, and public space. The project leaders emphasise economic and aesthetic ambitions under the VMZ project’s slogan ‘Building Along With Architecture’ (ibid.: 17, emphasis added). They try to develop strategic vision within an artistic milieu for future Zuidas users. Moreover, they believe that VMZ’s principal objectives could be met by facilitating the development of large-‐scale public cultural services and cultural and arts initiatives of third parties, including artist-‐ in-‐residence schemes (Figure 2.2) (Zuidas Programme Council for the Arts 2001; Boomgaard, 2008). Public art is not being implemented throughout the entire Zuidas area. VMZ seems to have a partiality for noticeable and busy public-‐art locations, aswitness the previous public-‐art projects Landfall (Figure 2.2) and Video Wall (Figure 4.2), on which video art is displayed throughout the day, alternating with recordings of earlier events such as Holland Festival. In contrast with VMZ, the community-‐art project Face Your World (FYW) focused on participatory art of a temporary nature. Social-‐artistic interventions and engagement at the neighbourhood level are the linchpin of community-‐art projects. Such projects are typically situated in residential neighbourhoods and concentrate on community development and social engagement (cf. Dwelly 2001; Hall and Robertson 2001). Participatory projects might involve consultation by artists and local authorities with the public, and public engagement in design and production (cf. Hall and Robertson 2001). The artistic focus in community-‐ specific art projects is on the space being intersubjectively created by the participants (cf. Kwon 2004). FYW shared most of these characteristics. 32
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Figure 2.2 Virtual Museum Zuidas, Amsterdam. Above: VMZ office (background) that also hosts artists-‐in-‐residence. The front building is Platform 21, an international centre for cultural exchange and exhibitions by artists and theoreticians. Below: Landfall (2005), 10 panorama panels scattered throughout the Zuidas from 2005 through 2010. Photographs by Zebracki.
The artist Jeanne van Heeswijk initiated FYW in 2005 in cooperation with the architect Dennis Kaspori. The urban district of Slotervaart, the Amsterdam Foundation for the Arts (AFK), and a housing corporation funded the project. According to a key informant total funding amounted to 350,000 euros. FYW’s aim was to resolve complex socio-‐ physical issues of urban renewal through interactive and participatory public art; neighbourhood participation; practical education; and the ‘potential roles of art in public space’ (Respondent 12, female artist). FYW took place in the context of restructuring the Staalman neighbourhood, an
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ethnically-‐diverse area in the west of Amsterdam. This project entailed the participatory design of a neighbourhood park followed by its implementation. FYW’s initial aims were: the increased social commitment of the residents to their neighbourhood; residents’ enhanced cultural self-‐awareness; and inclusive urban development. Throughout the year of 2005, students from primary and vocational secondary schools and their parents cooperated with the initiators and the Slotervaart planning department. At FYW’s workplace, Urban Lab, students designed the future Staalman Park of about 13,500 m2 with the help of interactive design software (Figure 2.3). The designs were discussed with parents and other local residents. This public process was an integral part of the Urban Lab’s learning environment providing encounter and dialogue (Boomgaard 2005; Van Heeswijk and Kaspori 2006; for further reference on Van Heeswijk’s production of relations, cf. Fotiadi 2009). The artistic quality of FYW – or ‘artfulness’ – was defined within the creational process rather than through the final objects produced. Hence, FYW emphasised ‘space [as] a practiced place’ (De Certeau 1984: 117) with social relations as the matter content rather than representation (cf. Bourriaud’s (2002) notion of relational aesthetics).
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2.4.2 Actors and claims
What are the typical discourses of the various actors? On the basis of the four theoretical claims and empirical literature discussed in Section 2, we expected the artists to stress physical-‐aesthetic and cultural-‐symbolic claims. We thought the public officials would be principally engaged in the socioeconomic goals of public art and that the investors would be primarily economically concerned with the projects. We expected the residents to call up the direct physical dimensions of art’s spatial contribution. 34
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Figure 2.3 Face Your World, Amsterdam. Above: the location of the prospective Staalman Park that was officially opened on 6 July 2011 (photograph taken in 2007). Below: maquette of the Staalman Park, made by primary and first-‐year secondary-‐school students in several virtual and physical design phases. Photographs by Zebracki.
At the beginning of our empirical research, we asked a Dutch public-‐art expert to comment on what was going on behind the scenes. According to him, ‘the reasoning about public art is characterised by wishful thinking, and hence many axioms about its spatial contribution exist … Contemplating and assessing the impact of public art can be quite difficult since it often has a hidden agenda, so the parameters for this assessment are soft’ (Respondent 18, male public-‐art expert). Indeed; a motley crew of public-‐art actors creates a cacophony of voices. This prescience made it harder to map the experiences of the actors interviewed onto the separate theoretical claims. The following empirical insights reveal
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assorted interests and rationales regarding the public-‐art claims, which we set against our expectations. Artists were extremely concerned with the raisons d’être of the projects. Their rhetoric was geared to physical-‐ aesthetic and cultural-‐symbolic aspects, but they also had an eye for the broader social context: ‘participation in Face Your World did not imply drinking coffee and working clay with Moroccans. People had been really participating in this project on a daily basis for six months’ (Respondent 12, female artist). Analogously, another artist reported that ‘people should enjoy visiting the Zuidas area, and in this joy public art should play a decisive role’ (Respondent 3, male artist). Such ‘higher goals’ of social encounter touch on a coexistence between artists and those who are practising and ‘consuming’ place: the publics. Nonetheless, artists did not address these goals without referring to public art’s interplay with economic forces: ‘art will increase the use of public space; the public at large should be attracted to it … All beautiful cities attract investments; companies and people want to settle there’ (Respondent 1, male artist). Ironically, this artist narrowed down the claims within the art sector: ‘this sector is 80% baloney since it chiefly consists of networks of highbrows. One has to be meticulous with public art … The realisation of good art requires good consultation. So let’s say the right art for the right situation and for that purpose the right people have to be swung into action’ (Respondent 1, male artist). This artist both foregrounded and relativised the expedient context – basically dictated by expertise, armamentaria and funds – in which public-‐art producers liaise with one another and thereby produce public-‐art claims, whether solidly corroborated or not. Public officials were concerned socioeconomically with the project’s principles, although some of them had broader visions. For instance, a public official argued that ‘Face Your World was an excellent instrument for urban renewal, including the reduction of vandalism and pollution and promoting mutual understanding between residents, particularly between youth and the elderly. It is essential to create public support for urban-‐renewal operations, and in this respect FYW performed very successfully … Yet, I question the higher social objectives of the leading artist’ (Respondent 17, male public official). 36
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This observation suggests that the respondent challenged exclusive social claims while he embedded FYW’s artistically-‐ intended social sculpture in a neighbourhood-‐based economic context. A cross-‐pollination of claims was also inferred by another local official, who claimed that ‘Virtual Museum Zuidas exhibits a social purpose in that it is aimed at creating a venue for workers, visitors, and future residents. This project turns the Zuidas area into a rendezvous for them … There is an administrative and societal desire for the realisation of an appealing Zuidas with room for a high-‐ quality cultural climate. The best way to do so is the realisation of as many services as possible. Eventually, the Zuidas should become the second lively centre of Amsterdam. Even one of Virtual Museum Zuidas’ spearheads is that it could attract international enterprises’ (Respondent 6, male public official). These responses demonstrate that the settings of public officials’ social-‐constitutive claims were integrated in an economic agenda. Of course, the integral responsibility of local civil servants requires them to account for a broad local policy package including socioeconomic and cultural issues. Investors were directed towards economic and financial issues. They were concerned with material investments so that the environment would become more attractive and make private undertakings more appealing. An investor acknowledged that ‘it seems that both policymakers and residents should be approached with plans addressing the physical dimensions of urban space. Therefore, the trump card of Face Your World was the specific design of the Staalman Park’ (Respondent 16, female investor). By the same token, an investor held the view that ‘the eyes of the general public are on the physical environment up to 10 m above the ground, and public art could make that space intriguing’ (Respondent 2, male investor). A main concern of the investors interviewed was the intricacy of the realisation of public art and they were therefore quite down-‐to-‐earth about public-‐art claims: ‘public art is surrounded with a “not-‐in-‐my-‐frontyard mentality”. It is actually private rather than public; the arts are often conceived of as a private affair with an individual charm … The energy put into public-‐art projects is often disproportionate and unbelievable with regard to the results; it is time-‐consuming and really expensive. There is a tension
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between art and money regarding what makes the Zuidas area go round’ (Respondent 5, male investor). This ‘not-‐in-‐ my-‐frontyard mentality’ conveys that certain recalcitrance rests on investing in and situating public artworks. The investors were seeing public artworks as merit goods that like ‘spatial orphans’ have to manoeuvre themselves into environmental planning. Public art is not functionally ‘adopted’ by this planning characterised by efficient organisation, but is usually exactly the epitome of spatial disorganisation. Hence, we may say that money talks in public-‐art projects, too. It practically eliminates romantic ideals about public art, and the investors’ affectionate engagement with public art does not mean they have faith in it. Participating residents’ claims about FYW were, similar to the investors’, quite pragmatic in nature. The residents were not concerned with the artfulness of the project per se. Their claims were primarily addressing physicalities, as a 10-‐year-‐ old pupil reported: ‘it was very interesting to create our own design of the park and to see the results directly. In the software programme we could walk through the park and along our designs … I think the project was successful, also the party at the end. Then we showed our designs to our parents, and people from the municipality were convinced that the park was important to our neighbourhood. But now we don’t have anywhere to play. If children do not get their own place, they might cause trouble’ (Respondent 9, female resident). The intellectual level of the project was adapted to that of the participants – mostly children and their poorly-‐educated parents. There was no explicit feedback about the execution of the social and cultural-‐symbolic claims of FYW’s initiators. Nonetheless, the participants seemed to consider FYW a successful project: ‘many children have become more aware of what they are doing in the neighbourhood and what this neighbourhood stands for’ (Respondent 9, female resident). A senior resident reiterated these capacities and regarded FYW as a democratic learning process for the entire community: ‘people had more say in our neighbourhood than they were used to. The Dutch Ministry [for Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment] has even awarded a prize for civilian participation to this project!’ (Respondent 11, male resident). 38
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The different actors conveyed common grounds of public-‐ art rhetoric, despite the divergence of cultural background and profession. This can be basically inferred from the common execution of aims, which triggered mutual understanding of public-‐art claims.
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2.4.3 Place and claims: flagship versus community art What are the geographical discourses typical of the flagship-‐ art project (VMZ) on the one hand and the community-‐art project (FYW) on the other? We observed that the difference in socio-‐spatial setting dictated the core claims of the two art projects. We found that the main concerns of VMZ and FYW were urban boosterism and community involvement respectively. Nonetheless, how does empirical detail differentiate both the spatial images that project claims communicate and the spatial logic from which they communicate these images? VMZ is part of the development formula of what is to become a business district of international visibility, at least that is the outlook. VMZ’s project documents explain that this project’s ambition is to achieve the integration of public art into the Zuidas development together with all corporate, housing, and leisure activities. We found that such integration of spatial activities is intended to have a radiating effect on ‘like-‐minded’ places. According to one of the respondents: ‘Virtual Museum Zuidas becomes a cultural simulation of other special city developments all over the world, including La Défense in Paris and Docklands in London. Zuidas’ goal is to develop a new business centre for Amsterdam. The high-‐level art provided by Virtual Museum Zuidas is indispensable for this purpose. Virtual Museum therefore concerns an integral part of the overall Zuidas vision’ (Respondent 1, male artist). Such claims indicate recruiting language that is inherent in VMZ’s strategy, as shown by the establishment of an international biennial event for the benefit of fine arts in Amsterdam and efforts to attract a creative class. FYW, on the other hand, can primarily be understood in the context of social policies typical of deprived urban neighbourhoods. We believe this project’s key notions were
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social empowerment and cohesion: ‘the main objective of Face Your World is active citizenship; the residents should feel they are citizens again’ (Respondent 12, female artist, emphasis added). FYW seemed to instigate and foster local identity formation and thereby regain reflexive thinking about space within a participatory setting. The Urban Lab opened up both a physical and virtual space wherein participants were incited to acquire skills to create mental images of future neighbourhood space, plus to actually represent these images virtually as well as materially. In so doing, we think these skills of representing space surpass FYW’s site of activity, from which we can understand why a community worker cosupervising the project with the leading artist posed that FYW was a model worth emulating in other neighbourhoods. Yet, in her train of thought, we found that a public-‐art project is rather tricky to develop if it is parachuted into a place as, so to speak, a one-‐man band. There should be a synergetic play between the project’s creators and participants and those who are conditioning the project’s spatial radius of action: ‘public art is not considered the common way for decision makers to tackle urban-‐ restructuring processes. Through Jeanne van Heeswijk’s novel way of working on neighbourhood participation, however, the local district was socially involved … Public art as applied in Face Your World is a sound strategy of urban upgrading’ (Respondent 15, female public official). Although the two projects may have agreed core goals regarding spatial impacts, participants differed about how they should be realised. The public-‐art claims were therefore focused on the how rather than the what. For instance, VMZ steers a middle course between realising permanent artworks forming symbolic reference points and temporary artworks that could anticipate a changing art climate. According to the first Vision for Visual Art in the Zuidas, the entire Zuidas area can be considered a lively and continuously-‐changing museum (Zuidas Programme Council for the Arts 2001). However, one participant was sceptical about VMZ’s dynamic ambitions. He regretted that VMZ’s objective was not to preserve a permanent material collection of artworks in urban space: ‘this is making public art susceptible to public critique seeing that people often need a point of reference regarding public art: where is the 40
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artwork in space, and what does it actually symbolise?’ (Respondent 6, male public official). In FYW, participants held different views of the relative importance of the process (social sculpture) versus the product (park) of the spatial intervention. The initiators considered the entire process towards the realisation of the Staalman Park as its objective, but according to one of the pupils, ‘without the park the project would not be complete and would not make the neighbourhood nicer’ (Respondent 10, female resident). In juxtaposition to this, the initiators would also consider the project ‘complete’ if the participants would merely valorise their mental representations of the neighbourhood. The pupil addressed, furthermore, was worried about significant shifts in the demographic structure of the neighbourhood, since that would change its current spirit. In this vein, the pupil spatially appropriated the neighbourhood’s social sphere, as informed by her school principal: ‘Face Your World has created a new public heart for the Staalman neighbourhood. Jeanne van Heeswijk has made the children “accessories” to present themselves in relation to their social and physical environment … The children have become more serious in and conscious of their reasoning about public space’ (Respondent 8, female public official). In that respect, we believe that FYW’s initiators would conceive this project’s achieved spatial reflexivity of the participants as ‘complete’.
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2.4.4 Time and claims: before, during, and after projects
What are the typical discourses in the different phases of VMZ and FYW? And to what extent did actors follow each other’s rhetoric? The realisation of public art takes place in specific settings. Someone takes the initiative; actor groups are formed; proposals are written and approved; a planning procedure is put in place; stakeholders meet and after a time may, or may not, evaluate the process of realisation. The claims’ evolution throughout the public-‐art projects revealed – albeit with hindsight – how the producers experienced their public-‐art claims and potentially renounced them. The issue of public-‐art claims’ temporality is basically concerned
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with three phases: preparation, implementation, and evaluation. During the preparation phases of both projects, claims and goals were formulated as required by funding argumentation. Hence, the initial discourses of both VMZ and FYW were set in a language to mobilise money; the initiators had to be strategic. One of the independent experts interviewed commented that ‘Jeanne van Heeswijk was strong, effectively attracting funding, branding, and persevering in her ideas, and that proved to be successful’ (Respondent 20, male public-‐art expert). During the implementation of the art projects, claims evolved to remain contingent. A local official of VMZ was concerned about bending his basic principles to private initiatives during the project: ‘private parties often start cooperating quite enthusiastically so as to develop or maintain a cultural icon, but subsequently nobody seems to be willing to pay for it. Then the ambitions remain on paper’ (Respondent 6, male public official). In addition, the actors were cautious of the sense of reality of public-‐art claims and they had to balance the organisational-‐financial and legal contexts: ‘the execution of Face Your World was complicated given that there is always less money for art and culture than for bricks’ (Respondent 16, female investor). ‘Public art has to undergo nearly the same weighty and time-‐consuming decision-‐making processes as large urban-‐planning and architectural projects. It is overwhelming, in both material and immaterial terms, for what is needed to execute public-‐art objectives’ (Respondent 1, male artist). Another actor said that ‘it is just the reality of planning and decision-‐making processes that – sometimes in an unexpected or unplanned way – gives a lot of trouble to realise something in public space, especially public art, and thus to substantiate claims’ (Respondent 17, male public official). For example, FYW’s participating pupils anticipated their first secondary-‐school year outside the neighbourhood, yet the park was still not realised owing to complex regulations. ‘There seems to be a general impossibility to realise an object … Public-‐art claims to have everything working against it’ (Respondent 5, male investor). And sometimes statutory preconditions were supposed to be taken into account, which hampered the project’s flow: ‘some important decisions had to be made concerning, for instance, 42
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Public Artopia: Art in Public Space in Question
a ban on taking a dog into Staalman Park … That was quite laborious’ (Respondent 11, male resident). In this respect, the time factor put a slant on public-‐art claims. One of the external experts interviewed argued that ‘sometimes the temptation is strong to open up an area through art and say goodbye to government intervention’ (Respondent 19, male public-‐art expert). The initial project claims, as in the project proposals, were not shared by all over time, which disturbed the harmony of ambitions (belief systems) and fostered shifting and potentially mismatching actor-‐and-‐claim combinations. The projects’ objectives were generally too abstract and the producers interviewed were not clear about their or others’ intentions, expectations, or experiences, as they continued to be throughout the projects. Claims seemed to be remoulded throughout the planning process and did not often surpass the representational, by explaining away: ‘objectives are constantly readjusted in consultation … When you are achieving something different from the initial objectives you may say that the objectives were not right’ (Respondent 12, female artist). The discordance of the expectations could be ascribed to the absence of formal plan evaluations in both VMZ and FYW. Public art is an elusive practice and hard to evaluate. As a result, the projects’ objectives regressed to wishful thinking and window dressing. In addition, constructions of socially-‐ acceptable reasoning about public art and the dilution of public-‐art claims implied intricate claim dynamics. Actors often disagreed; nevertheless, they did not jeopardise the project as a whole, which demonstrates the paradoxical nature of situated knowledges.
2.5
Discussion and end points
This study opened a geographical, multidisciplinary debate about public-‐art claims and the geographies of engagement between public art and its producers. In so doing, it provided insight into the situatedness of the mental representations of public-‐art producers regarding the roles of art in urban public space. Hitherto, such an approach has been overlooked or inchoate in previous research. This work’s empirical localities differed in nature. Where the flagship-‐art
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project VMZ was basically concerned with, in terms of Kwon (2004), an art-‐as-‐public-‐spaces approach, the community-‐art project FYW pertained to an art-‐in-‐the-‐public-‐interest model (cf. Kwon 2004). The public-‐art claims examined as part of these projects resided in a complex, hybrid field of physical-‐ aesthetic, economic, social, and cultural-‐symbolic forces on the basis of which actors’ experiences were situated. Assessing the exclusive role of public art in its contribution to distinguishing attributes of urban space was difficult for the interviewees and for us, as it was to articulate and sustain exclusive claims on such a contribution. Our analysis suggests that in further research on public art and public-‐art policy, academics and policymakers should take into account three deficiencies: 1) A lack of recognition of actors’ perspectives: claims do not locate adequately situated knowledges of actors, which are articulated in space and time. 2) A lack of geographical contextuality: claims do not elaborate appropriately on distinct discourses about art projects’ spatial settings. 3) A lack of temporal perspective: claims neglect the practice of public-‐art realisation, that is the evolution of claims and claim coalitions over the time horizon of the art projects: preparation, implementation, and evaluation. As to be expected from the theoretical framework, these difficulties touch on the two main critiques of public-‐art research: a lack of evaluation of public-‐art claims and the essentialist nature of these claims. The first critique of sound evaluative systematics applied to both case studies. With regard to the second critique, essentialist reasoning needs some empirical differentiation. We stipulate this differentiation throughout our conclusions about the three dimensions addressed above, and with all due deference we are aware of the reflexive rather than representative relevance of our insights gained from the interviewees. This study’s actors’ perspective opened up enlightening vistas to public-‐art practice and its encompassed geographies as experienced by public-‐art producers: artists, public officials, investors, and participating residents. The case studies showed that the producers did not generally consider 44
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the concept, form, symbolism and context of public art as self-‐evident phenomena in urban space. Nevertheless, sometimes they did reveal assumed thoughts about ‘the public’. On an analytic-‐generalising note, this work demonstrated actor-‐typical public-‐art claims. Two discourses of public-‐art producers formed congruous claim coalitions: the physical-‐aesthetic and cultural-‐symbolic discourse of artists, and the socioeconomic discourse of public officials, investors, and participating residents. In finer detail, artists emphasised aesthetic and symbolic claims in a broad package such as FYW’s ‘social sculpture’ (the ‘publics’ as art) and VMZ’s effort to create a physical-‐aesthetic artscape for a new, almost imagined public. Furthermore, artists revived their core idea(l)s and intuition. They did not highlight symbolic claims punctuated with economic vistas that were common among the other actors; note VMZ’s contemplated role as a showpiece and the perceived exemplary function of FYW for other socioeconomic restructuring programmes in the city. Public officials were primarily concerned with socioeconomic urban development, albeit in sincere dialogue with the social needs of the general population. The means, however, are generally inadequate in practice owing to policy priorities. Investors conveyed a socioeconomic relevance of public art by mind and a symbolic layer by heart in stressing the cultural valorisation of art’s economic benefit. Although the investors interviewed often thought of the economic embeddedness of art in space, they seemed to attach credence to the aesthetic added-‐value of public art irrespective of their financial investments in it. The participating residents involved in FYW conceived of art as a window of opportunity to launch spontaneous, prosaic socio-‐ physical matters. In the rhetoric sphere of the residents, little response emerged to the deeper aesthetic and symbolic grandiloquence of artists. All in all, the typologically-‐ constructed narrative of the actors is situated in particularly practised places as elucidated by the following conclusion. The geographical contextuality of this study demonstrated different spatial emphases within the projects’ claims. VMZ was tied up with economic urban upgrading, and FYW with empowering residents in public space’s social sphere. Nevertheless, on closer consideration of the geographical rhetoric, we discerned converging elements. VMZ was clearly related to materialistic rhetoric about space. To some extent,
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this had common ground with FYW’s aim to redefine the aesthetics of space throughout the relations between participants in the context of the creation of the park. Importantly, in contrast with FYW, VMZ did not feature a significant resident public, so in this project the discourse of artistic reification would probably be more dominant than the discourse of social sculpture. We attribute the hybridisation of spatial claims – and the ordering and othering implicated – to the reciprocal influence of the actors involved. In consultation with one another throughout the project, the locational awareness betokened by actors’ claims became valorised in relation to each other. Foremost, VMZ and FYW were both overridingly considered examples for public-‐art led urban upgrading in other spatial settings, international business centres and restructuring neighbourhoods respectively. Such higher ambition of creating an exemplary project did not result in a rhetoric neutralising the localities wherein the projects took place. VMZ and FYW were not seen as ‘products’ that could come about in an isotropic ‘spatial container’. Instead, the projects’ valorisation comprehended reflexive thinking about the inconstant nature of the spatial images that project claims communicate on the one hand and the (potential) appropriation of these images by public space’s users on the other. The multivocality of the public artscape should therefore be borne in mind, also throughout the project, which brings us to the following end point. Considering the temporal perspective of the public-‐art claims, we may conclude that claims were formulated in order to attract funding in the first place. By and large these claims did not erode considerably, even though they were not used within an evaluative reference system. The actors influenced each other’s oratory, either in formal meetings or informal encounters. The mutual influence reinforced claim coalitions over time. Furthermore, public-‐art claims should not be conceptually entangled within the purview of the realisation of these claims. Nevertheless, they have to be put into the perspective of realisation: the stubbornness of public-‐art practice. VMZ took the brunt as regards claims that were slackened by financial setbacks and bureaucratic and legal constraints. This study’s temporal focus made clear that the relationship between discourse and practice is less than a marriage of convenience. Claims might emerge 46
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spontaneously, survive, and either converge or diverge. In the juxtaposition of the theoretical and empirical claims about public art, one must ask: who says what, in which spatial context, and when? Our concluding reflection covers three points. First, public art is a process, wherein art takes up a deliberate position in divergent actors’ conceptualisations of space. Here, as stressed by Selwood (1995), artists as well as other professional groups should be equally capable of serving wider interests. And, indeed, one should challenge the assumption that ‘current public-‐art practice is more likely to be informed by the individual artist’s interests’ (Selwood 1995: 243). Second, the huge distance between public-‐art claims and the realisation of these claims might consequently damage the claims’ credibility. So, claims, funding and the perceived feasibility of the objectives should be committed to paper in a feedback framework and discussed regularly to avoid distorted spatial-‐administrative cooperation and frustrations among actors arising. Third, those who are implementing public art inherently need to make an allowance for the public in all its diversity by engaging it with the geographical situatedness of the project. On the one hand, FYW’s public was institutionally confined to pupils from schools and their parents, who were easy to access. Nevertheless, this accessibility did not redeem the common promise of community-‐art projects to enter into an engagement with the community in and of itself. On the other hand, VMZ’s axiomatic public was primarily embodied by space anticipating all sorts and conditions of newcomers: difficult to pin down. Public art, to all intents and purposes, is there for one fundamental purpose: the publics of the artwork’s intended space.
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude to the respondents, and our colleague Tim Schwanen, the three anonymous reviewers and editor Katie Willis of Geoforum for their valuable comments on a previous version of this article.
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Chapter 3
Does cultural policy matter in public-art production? The Netherlands and Flanders compared, 1945–present Martin Zebracki Published in Environment and Planning A, 2011, Volume 43, Issue 12, 2953–2970
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Abstract
Cultural policy has produced divergent intentions underlying the direction of public art since its advent in Western Europe in 1945. Literature has feebly demonstrated the extent to which differentialities in cultural policy have affected the production of public artworks over time and space. This paper fills this gap as regards Amsterdam and Ghent, cities that are situated in different national institutional contexts. It shows dissimilarity – in that one finds a relatively higher number of public artworks, more spatially dispersed and more diversified public artworks in Amsterdam than in Ghent, which is particularly a result of institutional differences – and similarity between these cities, in terms of initiatives by local communities and arts actors, irrespective of the local policy context. These results provide insight into policy concern with public-‐art production and the everyday practices and cultural traditions that underpin it. Keywords: public art, governmentality, Amsterdam, Ghent, comparative policy analysis, public artscape.
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3.1
Introduction: geographies of public art
Since time immemorial, urban patrimonies have embodied public art, and vice versa. Public art is ‘inescapable’ from urban space (Sharp et al. 2005: 1001). Moreover, budgetary cuts in culture and arts sectors across Western Europe have made topical the raison d’être of art in public space. ‘Public art’ is conceived of as permanent or temporary artworks on sites that have open public access and are located outside museums and galleries. Policymaking is taken as the descriptive context for public-‐art production, as discussed in studies by Selwood (1995), Miles (1997), Senie and Webster (1998), Cartiere and Willis (2008), Chang (2008) and Pollock and Paddison (2010). Nevertheless, the literature has poorly revealed the extent to which cultural policy affects the production of public art over time and space. Cultural policy ‘refers to the institutional supports that channel both aesthetic creativity and collective ways of life … Cultural policy is embodied in systematic, regulatory guides to action that are adopted by organizations to achieve their goals’ (Miller and Yúdice 2002: 1). For a better understanding of the interrelationships between cultural policies and the production of public art, we compared the highly contrasting institutional contexts of the Netherlands and Flanders, which can be identified with ‘strict’ and ‘loose’ planning, respectively (cf. Faludi 2005). We generally found more and a longer tradition of incentive policies for public art in the Netherlands than in Flanders. Does this mean that there are more, and more diverse public artworks in the Netherlands than in Flanders? Our time horizon is the post-‐WWII reconstruction period wherein public art became a burgeoning commemorating phenomenon in cities, as seen in oft-‐politicized monuments (cf. Michalski 1998), to the present, which is dominated by public art that has a strong focus on poly-‐interpretable cultural and environmental codes and site-‐specific awareness as such (cf. Kwon 2004). This transformation of public art can be soundly observed in the cultural-‐historic cities of Amsterdam (755,605 inhabitants, 166 km2 land area; Statistics Netherlands 2009: http://statline.cbs.nl) and Ghent (240,049, 156 km2 land area; National Institute for Statistics 2009: http://statbel.fgov.be), which serve as case-‐study 50
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areas for the Netherlands and Flanders, respectively (Figure 3.1). The cities exhibit a historio-‐cultural leverage that enables both cultural production and its validating institutional structure, and daily practices and cultural traditions of individuals and societal groups (cf. Miles’ (2007) conceptualization of the dialectics of production and reproduction in urban culture whereby cities produce culture and culture reproduces cities). The intensity of the concerted action of these two cultural levels makes the study areas windows on the development of the public artscape in the cities concerned and in the Netherlands and Flanders, respectively. The historicity and heritage of Amsterdam and Ghent remind us of their cultural identity and splendour, as represented by their post-‐1945 public artworks. Both cities feature a rich public artscape with reified elements, namely physical works and ephemeral elements, noteworthily social sculptures, which are community-‐based, participatory art interventions in space. The rationale for selecting these cities is further informed by the differential nature of their public artworks and sociocultural climate. The public artscape is conditioned by both national and local policy, and national and local history, culture and identity. Thus, public art is socio-‐spatially situated within the Zeitgeist. The public artscapes of Amsterdam and Ghent may provide a differential understanding of the governmental and policy context and the sociocultural context wherein public art is produced and reproduced. The internationally oriented city of Amsterdam has experienced a strong managerial professionalization of the arts over time, with a focus on visual culture (cf. Elshout and Van Hemel 1991). Ghent has stressed its own heritage in its historical alignment. Instead of institutionally formalizing the arts landscape, it has pursued a hands-‐on approach, which has set the artist much more on a pedestal in interactive grassroots art settings that are characterized by a traditionally strong appreciation and participatory willingness of residents (cf. Decavele 1992). Hence, in a thorough although delicate way, this study allowed us to compare and contrast the peculiarities of the governmental, policing and sociocultural purviews of public-‐art production in the cities and regions concerned.
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Figure 3.1 Amsterdam and Ghent.
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3.2
Cultural planning and policy in post-war Western Europe
Particularly since the 1980s, cities in Western Europe have increasingly used public art as a keystone in urban-‐ upgrading policy schemes, as public art is considered part of economic and sociocultural urban regeneration (cf. Hall and Robertson 2001; Sharp et al. 2005; Pollock and Paddison 2010; Zebracki et al. 2010). Such policy schemes are usually part of cultural planning (cf. Bianchini 1999; Yúdice 2003), which is not uncontested in academic discourse; for instance, Pollock and Paddison (2010: 354) believe we need ‘a clearer and more robust framework for funding, policy and processes that create a space for the unpredictability of creative process’. Bianchini (1999) discerns three ‘ages’ in Western Europe’s post-‐war cultural planning and policy framework, namely the age of reconstruction (1945-‐1960), the age of participation (1960-‐1980) and the age of city marketing (1980-‐2000). The post-‐2000 period may be considered the 52
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age in which one finds the hybrid policy goals that are inherent in Bianchini’s ages of participation and city marketing (cf. Landry 2008). Looking at post-‐2000 public art in Western Europe, we repeatedly find participatory community-‐art projects at the urban grassroots level. We also see planners attempting to ‘sell’ their cities by building flagship-‐art developments wherein art acts as an economic and social instrument. The aforesaid periods each revealed divergent policy approaches that reflect the socio-‐spatial context and dynamics in intentions to produce art in urban public space. Bianchini’s extended periodization is highly generalized, and there is wide geographical variation in cultural planning across Western Europe. Bianchini and Parkinson (1993: 209) argue that cultural planning ‘rests on a very broad, anthropological definition of “culture” as “a way of life”, and that it integrates the arts into other aspects of local culture and into the texture and routines of daily life in the city’. As such, it cannot be detached from daily practices that to some extent intrinsically internalize institutional modes of thought, which Foucault (1991) labels ‘governmentality’ (cf. also Swyngedouw 2005), and both individuals and collective entities – such as cities and societal groups – perform these modes of thought, think of urban design and steer tastes. Variation in governmentality at the national level influences, but not per se, degrees of cultural autonomy at local and personal levels. Governmentality implies government not only of territory but also of things and people. So, while institutional differences can result in differences in cultural policy and public-‐art production, national and local practices that are immanent in culture, history and identity also meet with expressive response in this policy and production. Cultural planning in Western Europe may be contemplated as a decentred power regime, in which urban localities and their indwellers define their identities and create a visual culture that meets their intentions. Examples are the business agglomerations of La Défense (Paris) and Zuidas (Amsterdam), which were instigated by central government and public-‐private partnerships. Sometimes the genius loci hyperembodies the practices of individuals (e.g. Gaudí sites in Barcelona). All in all, cities are autoregulated cultural environments wherein planning professionals have some freedom regarding goals and practices in cultural
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matters; however, this freedom is institutionally differentiated and inherently affected by embodied practices of groups and individuals that transform thought into things (inferred from Dean 1999; cf. also Foucault 1991).
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3.3
Conceptualizing varieties of governmentality for the Netherlands and Flanders
Dutch and Flemish cultural planning and policy differ in terms of the notion of governmentality. First of all, there is the difference in political involvement in cultural policy. While the Dutch ‘Thorbecke principle’ dictates that the state should not judge science or the arts (cf. Boekman 1939), Flanders features a strong political interference in cultural affairs. This is a result of the original cultural-‐linguistic rationale of the Flemish Movement, which enforced reform of the Belgian state in 1970 and Flemish cultural autonomy a year later (Schramme 2006); from then onwards, Flemish cultural policy was developed (Van der Hoeven 2005). The notable difference in governmentality between the Netherlands and Flanders is that the latter follows a cultural-‐ political approach to the arts, whereas the former is more engaged in stimulating or establishing conditions for the arts infrastructure without attempting to influence the arts content-‐wise (Kuypers 2000; Schramme 2005). The arts sector is institutionalized in both the Netherlands and Flanders but, in the vein of Althusser (1971), the political-‐ ideological directive is much stronger in Flemish art practice. Yet, a communality between these regions is an increasingly more integrated cultural and arts policy (cf. Van der Hoeven 2005). The difference in governmentality is also manifest at the level of local governance – here, in Amsterdam and Ghent. The implementation of or local pressure on cultural dispersal as articulated in national policy has traditionally been stronger in Dutch than in Flemish municipalities. The latter have much more political-‐cultural autonomy from the central government and, hence, are intensely subject to local disruptive influences within the cultural domain. Local governance in the Netherlands is considerably more 54
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restrained by regulations imposed by central and regional governments. Furthermore, there is an institutional contrast as regards the cultural landscape and its embedded financial flows. Although their cultural-‐historical ties are strong, post-‐war Netherlands and Flanders differ in political-‐institutional and socio-‐spatial contexts. The Netherlands has witnessed a mushrooming ‘institutional capitalization’ of the arts over the years. The governmental distance from culture and the arts has resulted in an intermediate layer between politics and cultural practices that comprises independent institutions. This layer has been accompanied by more welfare support and more funds and regulations that also support individual artists, while Flanders has a much ‘thinner’ intermediate institutional landscape because of the lack of governmental distance. Owing to the Flemish political primacy in the cultural domain, the Ministry of Culture does not encourage cultural funds. Recent Dutch and Flemish cultural policy documents, nonetheless, share some topics on the sociopolitical agenda, such as cultural diversity and participation, cultural and economic professionalization, and e-‐culture (Van der Hoeven 2005). There is also a marked contrast in town and country planning tradition, which has resulted in different physicalities of the cultural landscape. The Netherlands has a depoliticized yet austere urban planning culture, wherein social housing and urban renewal have long been given prominent positions. Flanders/Belgium has a politicized planning culture that has virtually no tradition of social housing, and its town and country planning regulations were initiated much later and are less directive. Individual freedom and interest have long been the key in Flemish/Belgian post-‐war laissez-‐faire planning culture, of which unbridled sprawl is considered a consequence (cf. Faludi 2005). Strauven (2001: 115) argues that ‘the contrast [between Dutch and Belgian town and country planning] is overly apparent wherever you cross the border. The landscape, the pattern of building, the paving, the design of public space, the sort of houses and the style they are built in: it’s all different, down to the window frames.’ In sum, the Netherlands and Flanders vary in terms of political regulatory culture, cultural-‐institutional structure
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and spatial planning of the cultural landscape. The question is, to what extent do their public artscapes differ?
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3.4
Situating public art within Dutch and Flemish cultural planning and policy
By relating the concepts of cultural planning and policy to the particular Dutch and Flemish public-‐art contexts, we can make two inferences. Both central governments consider public art ‘merit goods’ and thus hold the view that culture and the arts must be subsidized if they are to survive (cf. Pots 2006), and both have converging and diverging cultural-‐ policy accents and regulations as to public art. Both governments were concerned with welfare issues and cultural dispersal in 1945-‐late 1970s, and to some extent in the early 1980s. In both countries, art/public-‐art commissions provided financial support to artists in periods of recession. Although the Dutch Quid Pro Quo Scheme (a social support system for visual artists) ran from 1949 to 1956 and the Visual Arts Regulation (which allowed artists to produce art for municipalities in exchange for a basic income) from 1956 to 1987 (Oosterbaan Martinius 1990), comparable systematized regulations have been virtually absent from Flanders. The Dutch and Flemish governmental concern with welfare issues and cultural dispersal translated into the creation of a basic cultural infrastructure, which fundamentally implied that the government brought culture to the people. Percent-‐for-‐art regulations were an important instrument in this respect. The Dutch introduced such a regulation in 1951, and were quite strict in terms of public-‐institutional compliance with it. Although Belgium’s regulation of 1947 (Masereel Act) applies to the entire country, it has never been strictly applied (cf. Flemish Government Architect 2006). A salient difference is that while the Dutch regulation relates exclusively to publicly funded buildings, as reflected by works inside public buildings and façade art (cf. Jansen 1995), the Belgian regulation concerns only publicly funded infrastructural sites, many of which are outside the built-‐up area (e.g. massive art objects on roundabouts). However, in 1986 the Flemish Government Architect introduced a 56
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national decree on ‘art integration’ in public buildings. This decree served the ambition of the Architect to promote the ‘artistic quality’ of a basic cultural infrastructure that embraces a genuine coexistence of art with architecture. Since then, artistic quality has been the guiding principle in Flemish cultural policy, as is the case in the Netherlands within the scope of the ‘cultural industry’. On this point, it is important to notice that ‘artistic quality’ is a contested notion and a nominalistic term in and of itself. ‘Artistic quality’ in culture and the arts has been operationalized variously in both regions over time. For instance, in Dutch and Flemish cultural policy of the 1950s and ‘60s, this term and its derivatives signified an awareness of heritage and cultural-‐historical patrimony. In both regions in the 1970s, artistic quality was primarily related to ‘social sculptures’ wherein the artist’s engagement with micro-‐ societies and everyday life occupied centre stage. During the urban renaissance of the 1980s and ‘90s, artistic quality became associated with flagship works by notable international artists in prominent urban public spaces. Physically installing such artworks, and name-‐dropping as such, suited the competitive framework of city marketing, which features a strong relation between cultural policy and urban development (cf. Landry and Bianchini 1995). In both regions, there is now an increasing conception of artistic quality as the integration of art with particularities of its environment, and art plays a significant role in delineating and giving meaning to environmental quality (cf. also Laermans 2002; Van der Hoeven 2005; Pots 2006). Generally speaking, language (policy nomenclature) affects parole (actual practice), as public-‐art project proposals often strategically echo the wordplay and the myriad of criteria and interpretations surrounding the term ‘artistic quality’ as found in arts policies at a particular time. In the 1980s, the underlying idea of the Dutch percent-‐ for-‐art regulation was transformed from ‘decorative furnishing’ into artistic quality. In this context, the Netherlands has experienced more of the aforementioned institutional capitalization of the arts than Flanders, and has a far longer, and stronger tradition of implementing the regulation. In addition, the recent Flemish regulation is not attended to with sufficient engagement and legal consequences for ignoring it (cf. Flemish Government
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Architect 2006). Nevertheless, it becomes clear that both regions aspire to an integrated and integral arts policy, as conveyed by the Flemish Art Decree of 2004 and the Dutch Cultural Memoranda since the beginning of the 1990s. Moreover, both regions aim for knowledge-‐based policy formulation, policy reflexivity and cultural decentralization, while the Dutch government is also calling for a wider scope for cultural-‐political policymaking without infringing the Thorbecke principle. Flanders, which is typified by a culture of memoranda, faces a further professionalization (formation of advisory and assessment councils) and systematization of cultural policy (fixed subsidy structures) as can be found in the Netherlands. And the cultural planning and policy of both have become more bureaucratic and fragmented, notwithstanding attempts to increase transparency (cf. Van der Hoeven 2005; Schramme 2006; cf. also Anciaux 1999; Kuypers 2000; Laermans 2002). In institutional terms of public art, the Dutch Art and Public Space Foundation was established in 1999 to develop art projects in public space and set an example for the ‘good commissioning’ of public artworks and their improvement (http://www.skor.nl). Flanders also performs ‘good commissioning’, markedly driven by the New Patrons Foundation founded in Brussels in 2001 as a continuation of King Boudewijn’s Art at Public Request Campaign, which was a part of Brussels, Cultural Capital of Europe 2000. This foundation is an independent think tank of cultural mediators who can be addressed in any Flemish public-‐art project (http://www.denieuweopdrachtgevers.be). However, the few Dutch/Flemish funds and state regulations that are related to public art are technocratic and more oriented towards buildings than sites.
3.5
Amsterdam and Ghent: policy and sociocultural context of public art
At the local level, we see both difference and dynamism in cultural policy and arrangements for public art. Amsterdam has a longer tradition of local arts policy than Ghent, as witnessed in Amsterdam’s 1949 percent-‐for-‐art regulation (cf. Elshout and Van Hemel 1991), which nearly coincided 58
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with the central government’s percent-‐for-‐art regulation (1951). Ghent has not seen similar local initiatives. Moreover, Amsterdam has a long tradition of local art-‐boosting policies and institutions, while the Municipal Papers of Ghent show that ‘culture’ and ‘the arts’ became embedded policy and institutional terms only in the late 1980s. Ghent has a longer tradition of arts initiatives at the neighbourhood level than Amsterdam. This difference persists, although we find increasing room for such initiatives in Amsterdam over time. Ghent has traditionally exhibited ample private initiatives in urban development. Private associations have often taken the initiative or persuaded public authorities to erect artworks, usually monuments, in public space. An example is the war memorials that, spurred by neighbourhood organizations, appeared in just about every district of Ghent (cf. Decavele 1992). Furthermore, post-‐1990 policy attention to culture and the arts has translated into a kaleidoscopic pallet of cultural institutions in both Amsterdam and Ghent, although in different cadences. Yet, the agencies and funds in these cities that are relevant for shaping the institutional landscape of public art, have both temporary and intrinsic differences in their focus. In line with the 1986 Flemish decree, in 2000 Ghent founded the Art in Public Space cross-‐departmental study group, which endorses ‘good public-‐art commissioning’ – if it meets the group’s long-‐term vision of artistic quality, social engagement and urban-‐developmental relevance (Ghent Department of Arts 2006). This group represents a fault line between Ghent’s former ad-‐hoc and current visionary yet pragmatic public-‐art planning of the kind that has been noticeable in Amsterdam for a good while. Moreover, in 2002 Ghent established the Fund for Art in Public Space Acquisition (annual budget 85,000 euros) (Ghent Department of Arts 2006: 21). Before then, there had been practically no strategic public-‐art fund or vision, merely an ad-‐hoc, residual pattern of public-‐art spending by the city. The essential innovation was the fund’s focus on integrating art in the urban environment, and not merely embellishing buildings. The Amsterdam Fund for the Arts was founded in 1972 (annual budget 600,000 euros). It awards prizes and commissions artists, and since 1995 has been commissioning public-‐art projects (Municipality of Amsterdam 2009: 29-‐30).
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Today, both Amsterdam and Ghent have advisory councils for professional culture and arts, as well as organizations for sociocultural life (City of Ghent 2002, 2008; Municipality of Amsterdam 2009). Hence, we have seen a demonstrable applicability of the aforementioned mega-‐trends of post-‐war cultural planning and policy, as identified by Bianchini, to the governmentalities of the Netherlands and Flanders. Yet, in terms of public-‐art initiatives, there are both disparities and commonalities at the national and local governance levels.
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3.6
Research design
We hypothesized that there are more, and more diverse public artworks in Amsterdam than in Ghent (the ‘how much’), that state-‐commemorative and figurative art (i.e. conventional public art) has dominated Ghent over time (the ‘what’), that the geographical dispersal of public art occurred earlier and more intensively in Amsterdam than in Ghent (the ‘where’), and that Bianchini’s mega-‐trends of post-‐war cultural planning and policy reflect earlier in public-‐art production in the Netherlands/Amsterdam than in Flanders/Ghent (the ‘when’). These hypotheses implied a research focus on the quantities, typologies and situations of public art in time and space. These shapers, as conveyed by the empirical work of Selwood (1995), Senie and Webster (1998) and Zebracki et al. (2010), can be identified as pivotal for public-‐art making – and its representation – in that they provide insight into the fundamental dialectics of art’s spatial production and reproduction in urban visual culture. This culture’s institutional structure and daily practices and traditions produce particular types and a certain intensity of art in specific public places. In turn, public art reproduces urban visual culture and hence produces differential public artscapes in time (cf. also Miles 2007). To verify our hypotheses, we built a dataset of public artworks realized in Amsterdam and Ghent in 1945-‐2009 (the ‘how much’, ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘when’). We collected data between 2007 and 2009 from existing sources and by visual fieldwork (cf. Rose 2001). This was an intricate process, due to a systematic lack of public-‐art documentation and inventories, particularly regarding Flanders/Ghent. We 60
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also used the snowball method (Bryman 2008) to contact public-‐art experts in the Netherlands and Flanders and seventeen representatives of public institutions and city departments in Amsterdam and Ghent, and subsequently conducted semi-‐structured interviews with them. The completeness of the inventories was extensively cross-‐ checked, also during the expert interviews. We used the representatives’ knowledge as a heuristic device to bridge gaps in literature and policy documents, and hence to come to grips with both regional and local policy and the spatiotemporal production context of public art. The final dataset was a result of filtering all inventories on the basis of the criteria stated in the working definitions of public art by Mitchell (1992) and Cartiere (2008). According to Cartiere (ibid.: 15), an artwork is ‘public’ when it is located in a place that is freely accessible or visible to the public, in the public interest, and is maintained for/used by the community and/or publicly funded. Mitchell (1992) adds that a public artwork is initiated or supervised by a public agency. We primarily focused on permanent works, as temporary works are scarcely documented or reflected upon, and hence would have impaired the consistency and reliability of the dataset. However, we introduced temporary works as a contextual layer of analysis. We used interviewees’ knowledge to clarify the particular spatio-‐historical role of temporary works in and their effects on the public artscape in interrelationship with cultural policy, inherent in the institutional context, and with daily practices and cultural traditions that are embedded in local history, culture and identity. A few permanent public artworks in Amsterdam and Ghent have been relocated, sometimes multiple times, yet generally remain in the same district. In such cases, we included the final destination of the artwork in our dataset, and thus omitted artworks that have been removed from public space. Our dataset specifies each artwork’s year of realization, working title, artist(s), artwork category, material(s), current supervisor, street and district, and GPS location. Figure 3.2 presents the public-‐artwork categories, which are based on Turner (1996), Lucie-‐Smith (2003) and Cartiere (2008).
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a) Monument ‘First Steel in Flanders 1967’ (1968) by Luc Goossens, Ghent
d) Applied art Full Colour (2001), coloured bus shelter panels and road fencing by Studio Vollaers Zwart, Amsterdam
e) Façade art The Family (1955) by Nico Onkenhout, Amsterdam
b) Figurative sculpture The Dying Gladiator (1971) by Louis Mast, Ghent f) Installation/Environment/Landscape Spatial Sculpture (1969), sixteen pylons by Ewerdt Hilgemann, Amsterdam
c) Abstract sculpture Joining Forces (2004) by Guy Timmerman, Ghent
Figure 3.2 Visual typology of public artworks in Amsterdam and Ghent, 1945-‐present. Photographs a–c courtesy of the City of Ghent. Photographs d–f courtesy of Remco van Esch.
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3.7
Reading the public artscapes of Amsterdam and Ghent
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3.7.1 The quantities of public-art production In 1945-‐2009, 1,016 public artworks were erected in Amsterdam (16/year on average) and 262 were installed in Ghent (4/year on average). Thus, Amsterdam has about four times as many public artworks than Ghent; it also has a higher density of such artworks (approximately 6/km2 vs. 2/km2; 13/10,000 inhabitants vs. 11/10,000 inhabitants). On the basis of the number of public artworks realized in the discerned policy periods, we find that the climate of incentives and regulations related to culture and the arts makes a difference. This was also indicated by a representative of the Dutch Government Architect: ‘The percent-‐for-‐art regulation has been a valuable apparatus for public art. The Government Architect, one of the country’s biggest commissioners of public art, has set a good example for the public sector to incorporate art in the bigger picture of urban development – although the regulation has not been structurally administered in actual practice.’ (Respondent 9, female) Amsterdam saw the installation of 238 public artworks in 1945-‐1969 (9.5/year), 247 in 1970-‐1984 (16.5/year), 375 in 1985-‐1999 (25/year) and 156 in 2000-‐2009 (15.5/year). The annual figure increased by 264% over the first three policy periods. Yet, in the last period there was a decrease. We had expected an increase, in view of growing policy attention to public art, both in the sense of stimuli from local and national institutions and the broader scope of public-‐art policymaking; and since 2009, there has although been an action-‐plan memorandum for public art in the entire city of Amsterdam, from which the current context and a future boost of public-‐art production in this city can be understood and expected, respectively. An arts and culture policy official of the Amsterdam Department of Social Development commented that:
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‘Before this new policy framework for public art, Amsterdam had no central regulation for it. The aim is to realize integral coherence as to public artworks and promote joint action by the city districts without distracting them from their local responsibilities. Moreover, the memorandum deals with financial management and fosters public-‐art commitments between public and private parties.’ (Respondent 15, female) It is important to notice that the decrease in the last period may be related to the nature and ambition level of the realized public artworks. For instance, the prestigious Virtual Museum Zuidas art project in Amsterdam’s new business district encompasses just a few experimental and fairly large-‐ scale artworks that money-‐wise could have been translated into a dozen conventional public artworks. As for Ghent, it saw the installation of 156 public artworks in 1945-‐1969 (6/year), 26 in 1970-‐1984 (1.5/year), 51 in 1985-‐1999 (3.5/year) and 29 in 2000-‐2009 (3/year). Thus, the level of public-‐art production in Ghent has plummeted since the 1945-‐1969 post-‐war reconstruction period. Only a sixth as many public artworks were realized in the second period, despite the contextual implications of the new cultural autonomy of Flanders and hence of Flemish cultural policy. Public-‐art production increased a little in 1985-‐1999, as a result of the many art-‐integrating projects in Ghent that sprang from the 1986 percent-‐for-‐art regulation and the initiatives of Ghent Art in Public Space. Despite this study group’s long-‐term vision of public art, there was no increase in public artworks in Ghent in 2000-‐2009, but rather a slight decline. This touches on the previous remark about the ambition level of artworks and on the following observed condition: ‘I think that the modest realization of artworks in Ghent’s public space over time is down to the fact that no proper visions have been expressed of public art, particularly over time, in government policy. It seems that public artworks have generally just been planted in the city, no matter what.’ (Respondent 3, male public official) 64
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Furthermore, economic trends override cultural policies as measured by the number of public artworks. In Amsterdam, the economic boom during the policy period 1985-‐1999 resulted in an increased fund implementation capacity for the arts and therefore a considerable increase in the number of public artworks. In Ghent this was the case to a lesser extent, owing to Flanders’ considerably less capitalized and expertise-‐directed cultural infrastructure. Then in 2000-‐ 2009, Amsterdam saw a decrease in the number of public artworks as a result of diminishing public budgets; the arts are hit hard during recessions. A more related competitive climate, understood from the contemporary neoliberal context, tamed the growth in public artworks. The dwindling of public artworks in Ghent in 2000-‐2009 can also be ascribed to more limited budgets and to the meticulous, time-‐consuming way that various public authorities in Ghent deal with the integration into the environment of public art that meets their various criteria of ‘artistic quality’.
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3.7.2 Visualities of the public artscape
The data substantiate our hypothesis that Amsterdam has a more diverse public artscape than Ghent in terms of visual typology (Figure 3.3). Here, we have several observations. Largely due to the political ‘distance’ from culture and the arts, and to the institutional thickness in the Netherlands, there has generally been more stress on diversity and experimentation within public-‐art policy in Amsterdam than in Ghent; thus, there is more diverse public art in Amsterdam.
Figure 3.3
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Until about 1985, monumental art was dominant in Ghent as a result of the strong Flemish state-‐political involvement in cultural affairs, and of private initiatives stirring culture with a capital C, which primarily led to the generation of artworks commemorating local personages and representing urban and regional identity. In other words, Ghent has traditionally put the assumed need for art in public space level with the city’s monumental nature. But Ghent’s focus on monuments has changed significantly since the 2000s: ‘The then-‐mayor of Ghent thought the city centre had too many artworks, especially commemorative ones, and made social motives the vector of public-‐art projects. So, the participation of residents is now favoured in public-‐ art policy.’ (Respondent 5, female public official) Moreover, Amsterdam’s second largest public-‐artwork category in 1945-‐1969 was figurative sculpture, very much in line with the-‐then national policy’s concern with ‘beauty’, usually implying an aesthetic glorification as found in classical sculpture. Applied art has played a considerable role in Amsterdam’s public artscape in all policy periods; this can be ascribed to the Dutch tradition of elaborate urban design wherein public art has also been integrated with street furniture. The same argument applies to the strong presence of environmental artworks and installations in Amsterdam, especially since 1970. These often experimental artworks have followed abstract visual language initiated by the art world, but have met public authorities’ dated ideals of dispersal of ‘high’ culture (often merit goods exhibiting a yawning gulf between their abstraction and contemplated publics) in combination with a great concern about environmental integration. Furthermore, there is a disparity in peak periods of façade art between Amsterdam (1945-‐1969) and Ghent (1985-‐ 1999). We contend that the impact of the percent-‐for-‐art regulation on this particular public-‐art type explains this disparity, as the regulation was oriented towards buildings rather than sites in both the Netherlands and Flanders. In addition, it was introduced in the Netherlands in 1951 (in Amsterdam in 1949) and in Flanders in 1986; note that the Belgian federal regulation of 1947 concerns infrastructural 66
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sites only. The peak in façade art in Amsterdam can be understood from the ‘decorative furnishing’ context of the national and local percent-‐for-‐art regulations, while the upsurge of façade art in Ghent resulted from the Flemish Government Architect’s interpretation of ‘artistic quality’ as the spatio-‐visual dialogue between art and architecture. The comeback of façade art in Amsterdam since 1985, after a relapse in 1970-‐1984, are literally window-‐dressing policy signs of city marketing. In this respect, the Dutch and Flemish governmentalities at regional and local level do matter. We also identified a convergence between the public artscapes of Amsterdam and Ghent over time. As in Amsterdam, within the purview of a more competitive urban art climate, social-‐artistic criteria gained interest in Ghentian policy from 1985, as reflected in the use of these criteria for mainly percent-‐for-‐art steered façade art in 1985-‐1999 and installations from 2000 onwards in particular. Yet, we could not find policy preferences for public-‐art types in Ghent in 1945-‐1984, when entrepreneurs and the social-‐artistic sphere (individual artists, sociocultural associations, etc.) dominated the public artscape through self-‐initiated erections of/donations to public artworks, primarily monuments. Ghent’s contemporary public artscape is characterized by a few experimental bottom-‐up initiatives, for instance the highly-‐praised projects Chambres d’Amis (1986) and Over the Edges (2000) and its follow-‐up Track (2012), which were set in motion by Ghentian laureate Jan Hoet. As one public official related: ‘Ghent has historically enjoyed an active club life. Many statues and commemorative plaques in particular were initiated and placed by associations that, though, were usually placed under local government. Thus, many bottom-‐up initiatives, especially for monuments, were “elevated” in a top-‐down fashion by municipal policy implementation, which is also typical of the city’s current general layout of public art.’ (Respondent 3) Nonetheless, policy or no policy, between 1985 and 2009 we see a more commensurable palette of types of public artworks in both cities. This comparability was partly shaped by an intensified role of the international and also urban art climate as propagator of distinctive public-‐artwork types
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beyond institutional borders. For instance, Jan Hoet conveyed: ‘The international art world before about 1985 had been attached to classical aesthetics, with little room for sincere social experiments. My 1986 project Chambres d’Amis [public-‐art exhibitions in private homes] extorted Ghentians to become more open to social interventions in the urban sphere. Before then, the public was generally quite antagonistic towards public art, and politics were antipathetic to it. The project was a watershed in that it enabled subsequent interventions in Ghent, such as 2000’s enduring Poetry Route on the occasion of Charles V’s 500th birthday.’ (Respondent 7)
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3.7.3 Distribution of public art over the city: a comparative tour d’horizon
The dispersal of public art occurred earlier and was more far-‐reaching in Amsterdam than in Ghent. Amsterdam features a more evenly distributed and more dense pattern of public artworks than Ghent (Figure 3.4). In 1945-‐2009, each Amsterdam city district had 2-‐20% of all realized public artworks, while Ghent’s inner city and core city had about 75% between them. Hence, in comparison with Amsterdam, the city centre of Ghent has been the dominant site of public-‐ art production. During all periods, public art moved along with urban development/redevelopment, particularly in Amsterdam. The advent of the multicultural/migrant district of Amsterdam Southeast (Bijlmer) in the 1970s instigated a burgeoning of public art in that area (Figure 3.5.1). The artworks in Amsterdam Southeast were mainly abstract, environmental pieces or installations, epitomizing the modernity embraced by the policy directive of the ‘mouldable society’. Yet, as expressed by the head of this district’s Centre for Visual Arts: ‘The public artworks in Bijlmer reflect both policy courses and visions of urban development, and societal developments. Bijlmer contributes to Amsterdam’s 68
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public-‐art stock in both ways. This district has also hosted prestigious public-‐art projects, like the Spinoza Festival in 2009. This project was in honour of Spinoza’s philosophy, and included a library on location, a documentation centre on the history of the neighbourhood, particularly on the plane crash of 1992, and public stage performances, which stimulated engagement among residents, visitors and artists. The Centre is important to Bijlmer, as it amasses knowledge, asks critical questions, executes art projects, endeavours to spread public art throughout the neighbourhood, and encourages local residents to participate in cultural and artistic activities.’ (Respondent 17, female) Such multicultural/migrant arts space can also be observed in the so-‐called ‘19th-‐century belt’ surrounding the inner city of Ghent. Saliently, since 2000, Ghent’s Art and Public Space group has prioritized socioculturally underprivileged neighbourhoods in this belt, rather than the conventional, patrimonial city-‐centre sites. And there is now a conscious politics that aims at involving all kinds of city districts in public-‐art production. The former coordinator of this group described a project that illustrates this policy direction: ‘In the Blind Walls project, public art was integrated with urban voids, in the course of which residents acted as project ambassadors. As part of this project, for example, a neighbourhood-‐based artwork was realized in Mariakerke [west Ghent] in 2006. The work is a yellow “surfboard” integrated into the bottom of the pillars under a bridge where youngsters hang out. This work – Yellow Submarine – has provided the youth of this suburban area with a new gathering place.’ (Respondent 4, female) Because the group addressed has representatives of city departments and an artistic think tank, the link between cultural policy and urban development is now much stronger in Ghent. Also Ghent experienced a post-‐war redevelopment of the south of the city, which was accompanied in the first two periods by a fair share of public artworks: in 1945-‐1984, about 15% of the city’s public artworks were installed in this
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.
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suburban district (Figure 3.5.2). They were mostly monuments, figurative sculptures and façade art, which were also fostered by micropolitics, that is, local actors searching for and enacting on urban identity. On the last note, one interviewee related that: ‘The Deaneries [community/neighbourhood organizations] played a key role in the emergence of particularly war memorials throughout practically all Ghent city districts. Associations’ own funds, but also diverse public funds – such as activity, extraordinary and project subsidies – have enabled the creation of artworks of all kinds, including short-‐lived appearances, in a broad spatial range of this city.’ (Respondent 3, public official) In the current period, we see that ‘artistic quality’ has been translated into a subtle coexistence between art and urban architectural development/redevelopment, and into participatory projects in particularly multicultural regeneration areas of both cities (e.g. Old South in Amsterdam and Sluizeken-‐Tolhuis-‐Ham in north-‐central Ghent). Also lately built districts, moreover, have lent themselves to public-‐art interventions and experiments. For instance, residents of Amsterdam’s new (1990s) Zeeburg district signed a petition calling for neighbourhood picnic tables to be provided under the pretext of public art. Furthermore, some artworks have recently been relocated for social and pragmatic spatial reasons: ‘Since the end of the 1990s, Ghent has been repairing artworks that ended up in the municipal arts depository because they had been vandalized in the city centre, and reinstalling them in other neighbourhoods, thus opening up less obvious public space for art and as such unfolding public art for the less obvious public at large.’ (Respondent 5, public official) Comparably, the Dutch government currently instigates public-‐art projects focused on the sociocultural functionality of a place (cf. the national ‘art in the neighbourhood’ programme (http://www.rijksoverheid.nl)). Since 1945, public artworks, chiefly monuments, have generally been over-‐represented in the city centre of Ghent 70
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(inner city: 36%; core city: 37%) (Figure 3.4B). Note here that some artworks have been positioned around the spatial-‐ administrative borders of the city centre, which can be practically counted as the city centre. In Amsterdam, the early percent-‐for-‐art regulations in conjunction with the early urban renewal tradition led to more diffusion of public art than in Ghent, observably from about 1970 onwards. Ghent’s prolonged lack of a public-‐art vision has not resulted in a public-‐art based exploration of districts outside the centre. Amsterdam’s commemorative public artworks (which were mainly erected on historic sites in the city centre, East Watergraafsmeer, Old South and the post-‐war district of Geuzenveld-‐Slotermeer in 1945-‐1984, and to a limited degree in 1985-‐1999) were joined by public artworks in the north and south of the city, mainly in 1970-‐1984, as a result of policy-‐fostered cultural dispersal. In this period, we can also see a modest north-‐south public-‐art ‘march’ in Ghent, which was also related to art integrations in infrastructural developments as part of urban renewal. Cultural dispersal, as articulated in national policy, has traditionally been stronger in Amsterdam than in Ghent, with its firm municipal autonomy. Likewise, public art has not been dispersed over Ghent to the same extent and with the same intensity and density as in Amsterdam.
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Figure 3.4 Overview map of the public artscapes of Amsterdam (A) and Ghent (B), 1945-‐2009.
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Figure 3.5.1 Public artscapes, Amsterdam, 1945-‐2009: 1945-‐1969, 1970-‐1984, 1985-‐1999, 2000-‐2009.
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Figure 3.5.2 Public artscapes, Ghent, 1945-‐2009: 1945-‐1969, 1970-‐1984, 1985-‐1999, 2000-‐2009.
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3.8
Conclusions: re-presenting geographies of public art
Bianchini’s (1999) ages of post-‐war cultural planning and policy hold good for the policy context of public-‐art production in both regions under study, that is the Netherlands and Flanders. Yet, there is some interlocal variation over time and space, which relates to differences in governmentalities and daily practices and cultural traditions (cf. also Faludi 2005; Van der Hoeven 2005). These differences show that the policy and sociocultural context of urban development, and not merely the public-‐art trend, do matter in public-‐art production. However, the variation in public art in terms of quantity, visual typology and geographical distribution, is not as big as policy differences
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might suggest. Apart from the policy context, the autonomous element of ‘initiatives’ in the international art world, civil society and the wider domain of society (private initiatives are traditionally much stronger in Flanders) (‘governance-‐beyond-‐the-‐state’; Swyngedouw 2005; cf. also Foucault’s (1991) notion of ‘governmentality’) has also affected public-‐art production, and hence the morphology of the public artscape. Thus, we have observed a delicate navigating effect of cultural policy in one respect and self-‐ regulation in another respect on public-‐art production in time and space. Here, we formulate three recapitulating end points. First, our research revealed ‘geovisual’ differences in that, with some variation over time, one finds a relatively higher number of public artworks, more spatially dispersed and more diversified public artworks in Amsterdam than in Ghent, whose centre is dominated by monuments. This is mainly attributable to governmentalities – in this case to the richer Dutch incentives policy tradition regarding public-‐art production and to Amsterdam’s stronger cultural dispersal policy. In addition, particularly in Amsterdam, urban renewal and expansion have instigated more and more nonconformist artworks in urban public space, especially in the modernistic Southeast district. Second, there is increasing similarity between Amsterdam and Ghent in their public-‐art initiatives. In both cities, there is a bifurcation within public-‐art practices: centralized flagship-‐art projects on the one hand and temporary interventions and socially engaged processes on the other. Also in some districts of both cities, publicly funded (mainly commemorative) artworks on the streets show the initiative and entrepreneurialism of local communities and arts actors – irrespective of the local policy context, the relevance of public budgets notwithstanding. Thus ‘geovisually’ speaking, although the institutional and policy contexts matter to a great extent in public-‐art production, the public artscape can also be considered a self-‐performing entity in terms of private or grassroots social and arts initiatives. Third, public-‐art planning requires a proper institutional infrastructure to channel both public and private public-‐art initiatives into a creative process that is favourably perceived in spatio-‐organizational and financial terms (cf. also Pollock and Paddison 2010). Public-‐art policy is germane to the 74
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everyday sociocultural practices and traditions of a lively visual urban culture, and vice versa. This should be borne in mind when, noteworthily, cutbacks are made and when urban regulations/deregulations are implemented. Local policy ambitions of, for instance, achieving a geographical balance of public artworks may be counteracted when public-‐art programmes mainly result in only a few centralized prestige projects, which are often aspired to within city-‐marketing frameworks (cf. Landry 2008). Moreover, public-‐art policy should be aware of how the socio-‐spatial dynamics of public art are constructed through public art’s fundamentally intended publics. This issue could be further developed upon by future work (cf. Zebracki 2011, 2012).
Acknowledgements
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We owe a debt of gratitude to the anonymous referees and editor Nigel Thrift for their useful commentary on previous versions of this manuscript. Furthermore, we thank the research assistants for their support and we are grateful to the key informants – including Jeroen Boomgaard, André Capiteyn, Anke D’Haene, Truus Gubbels, Jan Hoet, Tanja Karreman, Katrien Laenen, Jan van Adrichem, and Annet Zondervan – for their valuable information.
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Chapter 4
Beyond public artopia: Public art as perceived by its publics Martin Zebracki Published in GeoJournal, 2011, doi: 10.1007/s10708-‐011-‐9440-‐8
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Abstract Since the upsurge of public art in the 1980s, geographers have been critically analysing creative practices as drivers of urban development and regeneration. They have commonly framed perceptions of art in urban public space from the perspectives of its producers and planners. Yet, the fundamental purpose of public art is shaped by its publics, which comprise a multifaceted audience. Some scholars have held a brief for examining perceptions of public art through its publics, but let things go at that. This paper attempts to address this under-‐researched yet important field by presenting a survey of publics’ perceptions of selected public-‐artwork localities in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Ghent. The publics’ perceptions were generally expressed in platitudes that were neither unreservedly positive nor unreservedly negative. But the distinct localities do show significant differences in publics’ perceived attractiveness of the public-‐artwork locality. These perceptions are further situated within publics’ cognitive, spatial, aesthetic, social and symbolic proximity to both the public artwork and its site. These empirical details provide insight into publics’ engagement with public art in particular places and thereby provide lessons for public-‐art-‐led urban planning. Moreover, this study instigates more solid qualitative research on this specific engagement. Keywords: public art, mental representations, survey, public perception analysis, the Netherlands, Flanders.
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4.1
Introduction
Art in public space dates back to classical antiquity and it has evidently been part and parcel of civil societies and urbanisation processes across the world. Public art is – just like public property, public good and the like – a both geographically and sociohistorically highly dynamic, contested notion in academic literature, and is therefore, not a taken-‐for-‐granted stable and known phenomenon (cf. Mitchell 1992; Kwon 2004). Generally, though, public art is a term that refers to either permanent or temporary artworks, including social and contextual art practices (cf. Lacy 1995; Kwon 2004), which are commissioned for openly accessible locations, that is, outside conventional settings such as museums and galleries (Miles 1997). Public art is peculiar in that it integrates the site as part of the content (Hein 2006), which makes the ontological nature of public art complex and contested (cf. Kwon 2004; Cartiere and Willis 2008). One can basically find as many views on public art as there are subjects in its public. In this paper, we are exactly interested in the perceptions of these ‘publics’. They are inherent in the fundamental purpose of public art. Yet, as acknowledged by Hall (2003b) and Zebracki et al. (2010), the publics have generally been an unjustly neglected unit of analysis in public-‐art research, particularly from a human geographical point of view. These authors argue that perceptions of public art have mainly been framed from the perspectives of its producers and planners. The cultural turn in human geography has taught us that the urban landscape can be read as a text. Its interpretative epistemology has taken a very critical socio-‐political stance to space, place and cultural identity (Duncan et al. 2008), also with regard to public art (Hall and Robertson 2001; Lees 2001). Since the ‘renaissance’ of public art in the 1980s (Hall and Robertson 2001), geographers have critically analysed creative practices as drivers of urban development and regeneration. Urban planners assume that public art and creative environments attract people as integral spheres of experience (cf. also Bianchini and Parkinson 1993; Roberts and Marsh 1995; Sharp et al. 2005; Pollock and Paddison 2010). On this point, a geographical ‘art vocabulary’ (Cant and Morris 2006), being the body of terminology through which 78
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geographers endeavour to understand assorted relationships between art and its environment, is supposed to unravel ‘the complicated, secretively three-‐ (or multi-‐)dimensional and deeply embodied experiences of making and knowing art geographically’ (ibid.: 860). Yet, hitherto we have seen that the ‘grammatics’ of such ‘art vocabulary’ are elusive where the claims on public art are concerned. These claims are primarily brought forth by creators and planners of public art, and they imply a set of assumptions that have hardly any empirical foundations built throughout the publics. In this respect, Zebracki et al. (2010) speak of ‘public artopia’, where public art is a domain and practice of various under-‐ researched claims about what art ‘does’ to people and places. Such claims ‘reflect public art’s notional, potentially fetishised, and ill-‐defined geographical contextuality’ (ibid.: 786). We try to go beyond public artopia by addressing the lived experiences of the publics, namely the users and consumers of public art’s intended space. This paper deals with three questions: Who can be considered the publics of public art? How do the publics perceive public art itself and public art in relation to its site? And to what extent do we see differences in their perceptions of the ‘spatial quality’, or rather attractiveness of the public artwork and its site? These questions are relevant in that, as stressed, both the publics and the site are substantial parts of the content and the intended effects and meanings of the public artwork. Public art, in its spaces of production, writes on the symbolic landscape of cities (Cosgrove and Daniels 1988), while it is read and rewritten by its publics in particularly situated and articulated spaces and times (cf. Haraway 1991). On the basis of surveys at a number of public-‐artwork localities in the Netherlands and Flanders, we endeavour to show the very situatedness of publics’ perceptions of public art. In the following section, we outline previous research on public-‐art perception. The subsequent section attends to our expectations and how we assembled our empirical data, and is followed by a presentation of the empirical findings. This paper concludes with a discussion of the results and their implications for urban policy.
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4.2
The frontiers of previous research
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4.2.1 Publics as hard candy Practically no systematic research has been carried out on the perceptions of public art’s very publics. As within public-‐ art evaluation in general, this bears on reasons of scarcity of funding, the unquestioning and common acceptance of public art, existing doubts about social-‐science criteria in public-‐art evaluation and the ‘so what?’ question of evaluating public art in the first place (Hall and Robertson 2001; Zebracki et al. 2010). For all that, here we try to digest previous research with the aim of conceptualising the notion of ‘publics’ and identifying the attributes of public art and its publics that we consider pertinent to our study. We consciously pluralise public art’s assumed social audience as ‘publics’ (cf. McClellan 2003). Doezema and Hargrove (1977) inform about the multifariousness of the ‘public’ as follows: ‘“public” means “pertaining to the people of a country or locality”; further, “done or made by or on behalf of the community as a whole”, and “open to general observation” … [The] word “public” suggests a wide audience’ (Doezema and Hargrove 1977: 5-‐9). The idiosyncratic nature of public art’s publics is that the bulk of them are undirected observers in the open urban field. This is in sharp contrast with the ‘directed’, namely specific, publics that voluntarily choose to visit and enjoy culture and arts venues. In the vein of Habermas (1991), the wide audience implied by publics does not amount to an epistemological tabula rasa; it cannot simply be neutralised (cf. Staeheli and Mitchell 2007). The concept of ‘publics’ is brittle in that the everyday experiences of the polymorphic publics set up a ‘way of seeing’ that makes them inherently an openly agonistic, critical audience, a Publikum according to Habermas (1991). This Publikum embodies the purpose of public art. Publikum generally means Öffentlichkeit, denoting assorted meanings of ‘(the) public’, ‘public sphere’ or ‘publicity’. And it can be brought out into the open in the political sphere (political realm), literary sphere (world of letters) and/or ‘representative publicness’ (representational 80
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space) (Habermas 1991: xv). Hence, the Publikum signifies and differentiates the publics’ settings of everyday practices and meaning-‐making (cf. De Certeau 1984), and relates to agency-‐oriented, embodied and performative approaches towards the concept of the public realm (cf. Thrift 2008). This paper focuses on the Publikum’s representational space in terms of publics’ perceptions.
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4.2.2 Theoretical positions on perception
Public art is supposed to communicate in a polyinterpretable sense. Thereby, as indicated by Doezema and Hargrove (1977), its success is measured by its ability to soundly convey physical and mental images, namely representations, and elicit responses, which are multifaceted by their very nature. These responses import actions and reactions, and therewithal perceptions in terms of mental reception, detachment or rejection of the public artwork. Over the past decades, there has been a significantly revitalised academic interest among cultural geographers in representations at the theoretical-‐philosophical level on the one hand, and daily perceptions at the empirical level on the other (e.g. Tuan 1977; Hall 1997; Duncan et al. 2008). Since the cultural turn, ‘meaning’ has become vital to the definition of the cultural landscape (Hall 1997). Representational thoughts, focusing on the what, namely landscape as text, have recently been paralleled by non-‐representational reactions, focusing on the how, namely landscape as embodied process of meaning-‐making (cf. Thrift 2008). As various bodies of literature are not discussing the same nomenclature of representation and experience of space and place, it is hard to theorise perception in relation to public art. In her theorisation of public art, Cartiere (2010) notably states that place, as opposed to ‘non-‐place’ (Augé 1995), ‘is not merely the categorisation of a specific kind of space, but also a function of personal perspective and individual relationship to space’ (ibid.: 34), which as such entails both the what and the how: a mental representation and functional embodiment of place identity (cf. Crang 1998 for a further discussion on space and place).
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In this paper, we try to take in both the what and the how of publics’ perceptions of public art. Together, these perceptions shape the ‘public artscape’, which – as defined by Zebracki et al. (2010: 787) – ‘signifies a social relationality wherein meanings of public artworks and intrinsically social differences [inherent in the polymorphic nature of the publics] are negotiated’ (cf. also Massey and Rose 2003). The public artscape can be understood in this sociosymbolic sense, but also in a physical-‐morphological dimension of the urban landscape (cf. Zebracki 2011).
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4.2.3 Attributes
There is little empirical evidence of what attributes are important to public-‐art perception, specifically in terms of perceived attractiveness of the public-‐artwork locality. As an anomaly, Hall and Smith (2005) have formulated a research agenda for revealing urban residents’ responses to public art and the way public art is spaced in the quotidian lives of these residents. Nevertheless, they, and also the analogous attempts by Landry et al. (1996), Matarasso (1996, 1997) and Remesar (2005), provide or indicate attributes neither of the publics nor of the public artwork and its direct environment (i.e. site), which are assumed to be relevant to their suggested research. But we can draw five attributes that are important to our study from only a few public-‐art studies in the field of sociology and cultural studies, and from some contextual studies on perceptions of space and place, which are typical of an environmental psychology approach. The first two attributes are related to personal characteristics of the publics: educational background and familiarity with the public artwork. The publics’ perception of the public artwork and its site varies according to the remaining three attributes: appropriateness (degree of suitability), sociableness (degree of invitingness to meet) and meaningfulness (degree of inciting symbolic interpretations and place memories). First, educational background is relevant to public-‐art perception. In human geographical research on perception, much attention is paid to how the ‘real’ world is directly or indirectly read as an environmental message and filtered through the perceiver’s senses, brain and personality, and 82
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culture, being attitudes, norms and values that are derived from the perceiver’s cultural background and competences (cf. also Golledge and Stimpson 1987). Previous research by Ganzeboom (1982a,b; see information and status theory), Bourdieu (1984) and Blokland (1997) signify that the foremost indicator of the cultural background and competences of the publics is educational background. Second, we may argue that the publics’ familiarity with the public artwork, and their interest in art, matter where their perceptions of public art are concerned. Blokland’s (1997) theorem runs that the publics’ autonomous choice of the extent to which they give culture and the arts a prominent place in their lives, depends on thorough acquaintance with and interest in them. Analogously, from Ganzeboom (1982a,b) we may infer that the publics’ familiarity with the public artwork in relation to its site, guides a certain pronounced intrinsic and extrinsic appreciation of – at least no entire indifference regarding – the public-‐artwork site as a whole (cf. also Selwood 1995; Reeves 2002). Here, it is relevant to know the frequency of visiting or traversing the public-‐artwork locality, as we have inferred from Selwood (1995) and Ward Thompson et al. (2005), one of the few empirical studies on hand as regards perceptions of public art in particular. Third, the perceived match between artwork and place is relevant. Here, the question is begged to what extent the public artwork and its site, i.e. its immediate proximity, are perceived as suitable to each other (cf. also Knight 2002; Kwon 2004). Several broad conceptual studies on perceptions of space and place (e.g. Coeterier 1996; Hooimeijer et al. 2001; Hubbard 1996; Sevenant and Antrop 2009) and the plethora of non-‐theoretically informed public-‐ art evaluations found in city reports, which are often produced from the perspective of planners and public-‐art producers, indicate the centrality of physicalities in perceptions with regard to the appropriateness of spatial elements. Yet, the spatial context of the physicalities is very weakly operationalised in literature and explicated by publics’ perceptions in prior empirical research. On the latter, one of Selwood’s (1995) case studies notably conveys that ‘[public responses] included the assumption that art is manifest in objects per se … it should be attractive, appropriate, inoffensive and give pleasure rather than being
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‘challenging’ or stimulating; it should be figurative rather than abstract or conceptual; its value should be represented by the material from which it is produced – bronze, for instance, rather than fiberglass’ (ibid.: 249). This quote bespeaks that the public responses did not express and articulate the relationship between the artefact and its locality. Fourth, the empirical studies by Massey and Rose (2003) and Sharp et al. (2005) let us gather the attribute of sociableness of public art for our research. Both studies try to understand perceptions of public art from its openness, in terms of being a meeting place. According to Massey and Rose (2003), the collaborative nature of public-‐art projects poses the challenge of negotiating social differences. As in its turn it is often seen as a challenge to urban regeneration (e.g. Sharp et al. 2005), public art may be intending to create inclusive meeting places, assumed to be helpful for negotiating these differences. Is the public-‐artwork locality perceived as more attractive when it is seen as such a venue? Fifth, although the work of Selwood (1995) and Ward Thompson et al. (2005) primarily includes public-‐art perceptions from UK urban-‐policy perspective, they show the importance of public art’s meaningfulness in publics’ engagement with it. Their studies indicate that the perceived attractiveness of the public artwork and its site also seems to rest on the narrative and commemorative power that the public artwork possesses for the beholder. Do people see a deeper meaning in the artwork? And does the artwork arouse memories of the site? If the answer is yes, publics reveal more overall appreciation of the public-‐artwork locality. We conclude that a basal notion of proximity matters in public-‐art perception. Proximity is important, seeing that the closer a person’s cognition, spatial use and familiarity, aesthetic acceptance (in terms of perceived appropriateness), social appropriation and attributed meaning regarding the public artwork and its place, the more the artwork and place will affect him/her, either in a positive or negative way (cf. also the study on residents’ perceptions towards flagship waterfront regeneration in Doucet et al. 2010). It is self-‐evident that the relationships between the proximities constitute an interwoven fabric of perception. 84
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4.3
Research design
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4.3.1 Expectations Our research was guided by various expectations about the perceived attractiveness of the public artwork and its site. Hereby we try to stress the relationships between proximities, which we consider the most important on the basis of literature. First, we expected that those who have higher developed cultural competences and visual literacy as reflected by education level, appreciate the public artwork in situ more positively than their counterparts, i.e. the less educated. This expectation mainly indicates the relevance of publics’ cognitive proximity to, and thus interest in, the public artwork. Second, we assumed a relationship between the frequency of visiting the public artwork’s site and the familiarity with the public artwork. We believed that the publics appreciate the artwork more positively when their frequency of visiting the site has triggered their becoming acquainted with the public artwork. Hence, those who are more familiar with the public artwork are likely to appreciate the artwork more than those who are not familiar with it. This expectation mainly denotes the relevance of publics’ spatial proximity to the public artwork. Last, we formulated expectations about the relations between publics’ cognitive and spatial proximity, and their perceived ‘aesthetic proximity’ – we are aware of the fact that ‘aesthetic’ does not completely cover ‘appropriateness’, but this word is a useful alternative shorthand –, social proximity and symbolic proximity regarding the artwork and its site. In that order, we thought that people who are higher educated and more familiar with the public-‐artwork site are likely to appreciate the public artwork and its site more in three ways: according to their appropriateness to each other; in terms of meeting place, hence translating the artwork into social reference points; and according to the deeper meanings and place memories that the artwork arouses.
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4.3.2 Methodology The nature of this research was exploratory and impressionistic, as there is a considerable lack of parameters of public-‐art perception. We performed case-‐study research (cf. Yin 2008) on 6 contemporary public artworks in Amsterdam and Rotterdam (the Netherlands) and in Antwerp and Ghent (Flanders, Belgium) (Figures 4.1 and 4.2). These artworks, although they are contemporary, deliberately represent six public-‐artwork categories that, as showcased by Zebracki (2011), cover the diversity of public-‐ art production in the Netherlands and Flanders since 1945.
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Figure 4.1 Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Ghent.
From April through June 2009, we conducted 1,111 street surveys proportionally allocated over the six public-‐artwork localities. Herein the surveys offered ‘opportunities to learn’ (Stake 2000) about publics’ first impressions of public art. This empirically grounded approach (Barnes and Hannah 2001) allowed us to build on theoretical templates of public-‐ art perception. Thus, the exemplary case studies enabled us to look theoretically and, in terms of learning moments, beyond our examined situations at other situations, that is, to 86
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make ‘analytic generalisations’ (Yin 2008; cf. also retroduction approach in Ragin 1994). On this note, as the selected localities include the diversity of public artworks in the Netherlands and Flanders since 1945, the research findings also cautiously induce insights into an overall perception of the evolution of public art in this period. In the field, we first observed the users of public space so that we could characterise them in view of survey-‐quota sampling, as no sampling frames were available beforehand (cf. Maisel and Persell 1996). Quota sampling ensured sufficient cases in every cohort and a proportional male-‐ female ratio. We tried to cope with quota sampling’s inevitable limitations in terms of research representativeness and reliability by surveying at different points in time and site conditions. As such, we were enabled to survey sundry, everyday types of the publics. The questionnaire, preceded by pilot studies, covered structured items, including statements on a five-‐point Likert scale. Foremost, the respondents had to give scores on a 0-‐10 attractiveness scale, a commonly applied research scale and instrument in perception research, to the public artwork and its site. The survey also included open questions for describing the work and site. In the initial part of the survey we did not tell the respondents that public art played a part in the research in order to preclude public-‐art biased views at the onset. We employed a quantitative approach to publics’ first impressions of public art, and we used the interpretative practice of hermeneutics (Duncan et al. 2008) in our understanding of the obtained data: ‘the meaning(s) of numbers cannot be separated from the situations they are meant to represent or from the processes that produced them’ (Schwanen and De Jong 2008: 575, emphasis added; cf. also Haraway 1991). Figure 4.2 (pages 88-‐89) Photographic impressions of the selected public-‐artwork localities. Photographs by Zebracki.
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a) Video Wall (2007) by Virtual Museum Zuidas and Foundation Art and Public Space, Amsterdam (cf. map in figure 4.2b)
b) Monument for Antony Winkler Prins (1970) by André Volten, Amsterdam
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c) Sculpture Terrace (1999) by diverse artists, Rotterdam
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d) The Hand (1986) by Henri De Miller, Antwerp
e) Blind Wall (2008, during unveiling) by Michael Lin, Ghent
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f) Merging between Lys and Scheldt River (1999) by Paul Van Gysegem, Ghent (cf. map in figure 4.2e)
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4.4
Vox populi: results
‘There is no better introduction to a population than the people themselves’ (Kearns 1991, quoted in Hay 2004: 80)
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4.4.1 Introduction to case studies and general results The public artworks of empirical investigation were Video Wall, Monument for Antony Winkler Prins, Sculpture Terrace, The Hand, Blind Wall, and Merging between Lys and Scheldt River. Video Wall (2007, official title: Video Screen CasZuidas) is an installation work displaying video art for about 80% of the day; according to its initiators, Virtual Museum Zuidas and Foundation Art and Public Space, it is the only urban screen in the world that does so. Video Wall is located in a central square in the Amsterdam Zuidas business district. By contrast, Monument for Antony Winkler Prins (1970), here abbreviated as Winkler Prins Monument, is a tall, cylindrical, modernistic pillar monument, situated in a small inner-‐city park in Amsterdam. The monument is named after the Dutch writer and vicar Antony Winkler Prins (1817-‐1908), who is mainly known for the Dutch encyclopaedia that is named after him. Sculpture Terrace (1999) is a group of fairly abstract sculptures made by diverse renowned artists. The ‘terrace’ is part of a boulevard strip designated as the cultural axis of Rotterdam. The Hand (1986), the city-‐marketing symbol of Antwerp (Antwerpen – the Dutch spelling of the name – is popularly-‐ etymologically noted for ‘hand throwing’), resembles the urban centrality of Rotterdam’s Sculpture Terrace; it is situated in a lively shopping plaza in Antwerp. Moreover, it is a figurative sculpture that also acts as street furniture: one can literally lie down in the hand. Blind Wall (2008; this artwork, officially untitled, had been embedded in the city of Ghent’s broader project called Blind Walls, 2006–2008) comprises a more intimate locality, as it is a delicate figurative wall painting in an inner-‐city neighbourhood courtyard in Ghent. It depicts a flower-‐patterned motif intended to symbolise Flemish wallpaper, as the artist 90
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Michael Lin informed us at the unveiling of the artwork (note that the surveys were not conducted during the unveiling). Another Ghent-‐based artwork titled Merging between Lys and Scheldt River (1999; here abbreviated as Lys-Scheldt sculpture) is an abstract monument with an integrated fountain. It is located in a traffic junction square adjacent to Ghent’s central public transport station, which is characterised by intense flows of public transport and passers-‐by. Of the publics, 56% lived in the city where the survey took place. About one-‐third of the respondents visit the public-‐artwork site daily, one-‐fifth weekly and the remainder less often. A considerable proportion (77%) said they were familiar with the specific artworks under discussion, and roughly half (46%) said they were familiar with public artworks in the city in general. The publics generally indicated that noticeable peculiarities of the public artworks are shape (28%), size (22%) and their location (13%). Our visual and content analysis of the publics’ perceptions resulted in a general spatial typology of the selected public artworks and their sites, as shown in Table 4.1. This table provides variations in types of public artwork and types of site. Moreover, it conveys the publics’ overall perceptions both of the public artwork and of its site (i.e. direct environment), in a qualitative and a quantitative sense. We formulate four generic findings from Table 4.1. First, the publics’ perceptions were slightly more positive with regard to the site than to the public artwork: the scores average 6.2 for the public artwork and 6.9 for its site. In qualitative terms, the environment of the Lys-Scheldt sculpture in Ghent was broadly seen as attractive in terms of ‘green’ and ‘quiet’ against the backdrop of the central station, whereas the sculpture itself was regarded a misfit. Many respondents indicated that this artwork is aesthetically dreary and hard to decipher. As an anomaly, we also found that the score for Blind Wall was rather more than one point higher than that for the site. This is not surprising, as the mural cheers up a rather downgraded urban area.
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Table 4.1 General spatial typology and publics’ perceptions of the public artwork and its site. Name of public artwork
Type of public artwork
Type of site
Video Wall, Amsterdam
Installation
Business square
Monument for Antony Winkler Prins, Amsterdam Sculpture Terrace, Rotterdam The Hand, Antwerp
Monument/ abstract sculpture
Park square
Abstract sculpture (group) Figurative sculpture/ applied art Facade art
Boulevard strip
Abstract sculpture/ applied art
Station square
Blind Wall, Ghent
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Merging between Lys and Scheldt River, Ghent Average
Plaza in shopping street Neighbour hood courtyard
Publics’ perceptions in keywords and appreciation scores (0-‐10 on perceived overall attractiveness) Public artwork: large, modernistic (5.7) Site: businesslike, modernistic (6.9) Public artwork: high, solid (5.4) Site: open, woody (6.4) Public artworks: wide-‐ ranging, pretty (6.6) Site: green, neat (7.4) Public artwork: big, symbolic (6.2) Site: cosy, busy (7.3) Public artwork: gorgeous, cheerful (7.1) Site: tranquil, green (6.0) Public artwork: gloomy, vague (6.1) Site: green, quiet (7.3) Public artwork: 6.2 Site: 6.9
Men comprised 53% of the sample. The respondents varied in age from 16 to 86 years, with an average age of 36 years. 60% or more of the respondents at each locality indicated the listed perceptual keywords (total N = 1,111). The mean difference among the publics’ appreciation scores is significant for both the public artwork (R2 = 0.09) and its site (R2 = 0.11) at the 0.05 level.
Second, the publics’ appreciation scores differ significantly between localities and artworks (ANOVA, p < 0.05). Notwithstanding, the scores for the attractiveness of both public artworks (6.2) and sites (6.9) are moderate, neither unreservedly positive nor unreservedly negative. They respectively indicate a sufficient to a somewhat satisfactory attractiveness score: 45% considered the artwork ‘beautiful’, 31% did not consider it ‘beautiful’ and 24% were 92
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uncommitted. Moreover, a considerable proportion (45%) genuinely believed that the public artwork contributes to the quality of the site in some way, but a larger group (46%) took no side in this. These figures probably indicate, compared to planners’ and artists’ ambitions, a quite disappointing appreciation of artworks and art-‐context interactions. Furthermore, the appreciation scores do not necessarily match the publics’ qualitative perceptions of artwork and places. This is especially the case regarding the public artworks themselves. The appreciation score for Blind Wall’s site, for example, does not reflect the publics’ positive qualification of this site as ‘tranquil’ and ‘green’. That is to say, the general publics’ perception of this work’s environment paradoxically indicates a higher score than its actual given score, particularly in comparison with the other public-‐artwork localities. Third, the publics’ qualitative perceptions in catchwords denote that the public artworks themselves are predominantly characterised in a physical-‐morphological way (e.g. ‘large’ in the case of Video Wall, and ‘big’ in regard to The Hand). The public artwork’s site is generally also distinguished by physical-‐morphological elements, and by functional aspects such as ‘businesslike’ in the case of Video Wall’s square. On the other hand, we come across terms like ‘cosy’ for The Hand’s plaza and ‘tranquil’ for Blind Wall’s neighbourhood courtyard, which particularly designate the atmosphere of the sites. Fourth, our study revealed that decorative-‐figurative, that is rather more conventional, public artworks were generally perceived more positively than abstract works. These abstract works seemed to trigger interaction with the publics to no avail. The affective perception diagram in Figure 4.3 shows that especially Winkler Prins Monument and Blind Wall stand out in that respect, respectively for being instinctively perceived quite negatively by 39% and quite positively by 75% of the publics in situ. Here, a negative feeling could imply either a total rejection of the artwork or an agreement on its perceived disturbing quality. Nevertheless, we found quite mixed, balanced feelings towards Winkler Prins Monument: 30% of the interviewed publics conveyed a positive feeling towards this artwork. But more or less the same proportion (32%) did not know what to think about it, in other words were neutral (neither positive nor negative).
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Moreover, Sculpture Terrace expresses, like Winkler Prins Monument, a rather elusive visual language, but for this abstract sculpture group we found a considerably more positive picture. It is likely that a more positive appreciation of Sculpture Terrace relates to its ensemble character. That is to say, here the publics based their judgement not on a single object but on a decorative ensemble, artworks lined up along a boulevard strip, from which a higher overall perceived attractiveness can be understood.
Figure 4.3 Publics’ perceptions regarding the statement: I have a positive feeling towards this artwork (significant difference in perception between public-‐artwork localities; V = 0.18, p < 0.05).
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4.4.2 Appreciation and personal characteristics What do the figures look like when we situate them within the afore-‐identified publics’ proximities? First, as regards cognitive proximity, we broadly did not find a significant relationship between the publics’ educational background and the perceived overall attractiveness for both the public artwork and its site: 58% of the primarily indigenous, Dutch-‐ speaking respondents reported to be higher-‐educated, 15% middle-‐educated and 24% lower-‐educated (remaining 3%: other and missing values). On this, differences in education system between the Netherlands and Flanders are taken into account. As depicted by Figure 4.4, we found that, irrespective of educational background, the publics generally attributed more or less the same appreciation scores to the artwork (6) and its site (7). But when we look at the average publics’ general interest in art (5.9 for lower-‐educated, 6.5 for middle-‐educated, 7.1 for higher-‐educated), we see a significant difference between the educational levels 94
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(Bonferroni multiple comparisons post-‐hoc test), something that is apparently not reflected in their appreciation of ‘our’ six artworks and sites.
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Figure 4.4 Publics’ interest in art and appreciation scores for artwork and site according to educational background on a 0-‐10 score scale (significant mean difference in interest in art: R2 = 0.07, p < 0.05; the mean difference in scores for artwork and site are non-‐ significant).
Furthermore, we related the publics’ educational background, and thereby their cognitive proximity to art, to: • their aesthetic appreciation of the ‘match’ between the artwork and site (aesthetic proximity); • the artwork/site attractiveness indicated by the actual use of the artwork/site as meeting place (social proximity); • the degree to which the artwork in situ has ‘meaning’ to the individual (symbolic proximity). As regards the artwork itself, we generally found no significant relationships between the publics’ cognitive proximity and the aesthetic and symbolic proximity. Yet, we noticed that lower-‐educated respondents assessed the artwork more positively in terms of its role as a meeting point (V = 0.10, p < 0.05). Hence, we found that the higher the level of education, the less attachment was shown to the artwork in a social respect. With regard to the artwork’s site, we found a significant relationship of the same nature between educational background and social proximity (V = 0.10, p < 0.05), and between educational background and the
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extent to which the artwork conveys meaning, in positive, neutral or negative terms, about the place where it is situated (V = 0.10, p < 0.05). Here, we could see that the higher a person’s level of education, the more he/she is able to ‘read’ the artwork in relation to the site. Furthermore, we found a significant, moderately strong interrelationship (V = 0.34, p < 0.05) between the publics’ spatial use, reflected by their frequency of visiting the site, and their familiarity with the public artwork. The more often one visits a site, the more familiar one becomes with the public artwork. We also related publics’ familiarity with the artwork locality, in our case regarded as spatial proximity, to their aesthetic, social and symbolic proximity towards the artwork and site. We found that publics who stated they were familiar with the public artwork (and thus were acquainted with the work prior to the survey), are likely to assess the public artwork more positively in terms of its appropriateness to its site, and vice versa, than those who were not familiar with the work (V = 0.16, p < 0.05). Generally, 66% of the respondents agreed with the statement that the public artwork suits the site, while 19% did not. Those who were familiar with the artwork did not necessarily assess the public artwork more positively as a place to meet. Of the respondents, 15% reported to use the public artwork itself as meeting point, and 32% to use the public-‐artwork site as meeting place. We found a significant correlation between spatial proximity to the artwork and social proximity to its site (V = 0.12, p < 0.05). That is to say, the respondents who were familiar with the public artwork conceived of the site as meeting place more than those who were not familiar with it. This finding is quite distinct and should be put into perspective as the artwork could plausibly be taken as a social point of reference of the site. Moreover, it would be improbable to use the artwork as a place to meet without being familiar with it. Furthermore, we found that people who were familiar with the artwork locality assessed both the public artwork and its site more positively in terms of meaning than the unfamiliar publics (respectively V = 0.15, 0.16, p < 0.05). Although the symbolic distance was large, seeing that only a few respondents (11%) could articulate some meaning of the artwork, for one-‐fifth of the respondents the public artwork took on a deeper felt meaning. 96
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4.4.3 Geographical variation We also looked at the individual relationships between educational background (contemplated as cognitive proximity to art) and the aesthetic, social and symbolic proximity to the artwork and site within the public-‐artwork localities. We found only non-‐significant associations, barring the significant cognitive-‐symbolic proximity for Video Wall as such (V = 0.23, p < 0.05). The Wall imparted more meaning to higher-‐educated than lower-‐educated respondents. Regarding the perception of the public artwork’s site, we found significant relationships between cognitive and social proximity for Blind Wall (V = 0.25, p < 0.05) and the Lys- Scheldt sculpture (V = 0.20, p < 0.05). For both sites goes that lower-‐educated people emphasised the value of the public-‐ artwork site more as meeting place than the higher-‐educated respondents. For the individual relationships between publics’ familiarity (considered spatial proximity) and aesthetic, social and symbolic proximity within the public-‐artwork localities, we discerned some significant associations. We noted that people who were familiar with Blind Wall were more likely to find that this work and its site match (V = 0.26, p < 0.05) and to see the artwork itself as a place to meet (V = 0.26, p < 0.05). Those who were familiar with The Hand and Blind Wall logically perceived their sites more as meeting places than those who were unfamiliar with the two artworks (respectively V = 0.22, 0.30, p < 0.05). Moreover, the respondents who were familiar with Winkler Prins Monument, The Hand, Blind Wall and the Lys-Scheldt sculpture, attributed significantly more meaning to the public-‐artwork localities than respondents who were not conversant with these artworks (respectively V = 0.27, 0.24, 0.30, 0.24, p < 0.05). We furthermore found that publics’ aesthetic, social and symbolic proximity to the public-‐artwork locality differed significantly among the localities (Kruskall-‐Wallis test, p < 0.05). Overall findings of some particular statements can, as the final part of this empirical section, provide some further differentiation between the public-‐artwork localities for the three proximities concerned. Figure 4.5 reveals more about the extent to which the publics believed the artwork and its site suit each other,
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which conveys the publics’ aesthetic proximity to the public-‐ artwork locality. The differences in perceptions are significant among the localities. Nevertheless, it is striking that the perceptions in this light are unprecedentedly positive, mainly for Sculpture Terrace (see previous remark about its perceived ensemble character): 81% of the respondents thought that the sculpture group and site go well together. Paradoxically, 49% of the respondents considered sound the match between the abstruse and generally quite negatively assessed Winkler Prins Monument artwork and its wooded surroundings.
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Figure 4.5 Publics’ perceptions regarding the statement: The artwork and site are well matched (significant difference in perception between public-‐artwork localities: V = 0.17, p < 0.05).
Figure 4.6 shows a significant difference in social proximity between the localities. We found that especially The Hand and the Lys-Scheldt sculpture are perceived as meeting points, in sharp contrast with Video Wall and Winkler Prins Monument. The relatively low score for Sculpture Terrace can be understood from its ensemble nature and the principal functionality inherent in this particular site: an urban passageway.
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Figure 4.6 Publics’ perceptions regarding the statement: I use this artwork as a place to meet (significant difference in perception between public-‐artwork localities: V = 0.16, p < 0.05).
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Figure 4.7 signals the publics’ symbolic proximity to the various public-‐artwork localities. It shows the extent to which respondents believed that the artwork arouses memories of its direct environment. There is a significantly modest relationship between the elicited memories and the public-‐artwork localities, although the public artworks’ commemorative triggers seemed to be minor: on average, only about one-‐fifth of the respondents acknowledged that the artwork is producing memories of its vicinity. In their perceived meaningfulness, Blind Wall and Sculpture Terrace took a small lead, together with Winkler Prins Monument, which may be intelligible from its function as monument. And remarkably, The Hand, the city-‐marketing symbol of Antwerp, did not seem to find itself in the mind of the publics that much.
Figure 4.7 Publics’ perceptions regarding the statement: The artwork arouses place memories (significant difference in perception between public-‐artwork localities: V = 0.12, p < 0.05).
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To conclude, the elicited memories were frequently unreservedly positive or negative, and sometimes the open survey field for remarks captured such memories. Saliently, a personal anecdote of a senior woman conveyed the following regarding The Hand: ‘This hand reminds me of the beating I got at home a long time ago. Since the work has been here, it’s given the place a completely new meaning’ (she looked disheartened). By making this open-‐hearted comment, the woman implicitly revealed that the public artwork, regardless of the intentions of its creators and planners, is produced and iteratively reproduced in her very perception of it. In this case, the artwork symbolically surmounted the particular site by becoming situated within this person’s life course. All in all, ars est celare artem (it is art to conceal art), but not as we know it. There is more beyond the object.
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4.5
Conclusions and discussion
This study took on an exploratory, pioneering approach and tried to contribute to the field of cultural geography and in particular geographies of art, an emerging subject, by its overarching look at the ways in which space is creatively impacted on by means of public art, as seen through its publics. We identified a serious knowledge gap in research on public-‐art perception (cf. Hall and Robertson 2001). The novelty of this research lies in its explicit focus on publics shaping public-‐art spaces and representations; hitherto, exactly this ‘receiving end’ of public art has been sidelined or neglected by scholars. We first wondered who the publics are and to what extent we find differences in their perceptions of the attractiveness of public artworks and their sites. We then presented the method of case-‐study research (Yin 2008); we conducted surveys at the sites of six public artworks in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Ghent. Evidently, the surveys incited situated knowledges (cf. Haraway 1991) in that they were open to generate interpretations in different ways by different people in particular space and time frames. As to defining who the publics are – according to whom in a particular place and time and for what reason –, it is important to acknowledge and to keep at the back of our minds that publics in public space are by nature a random hence non-‐directed audience of public art, as they are 100
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generally not intentionally viewing it. When we addressed them to a certain artwork and its surrounding area, they were usually unfeignedly confronted with this and forced to express a view: they must think something about it. These publics may therefore be seen as a reinforced critical audience (cf. Habermas 1991). We have heard a plethora of opinions about public art, and they varied between the aesthetic, social and cultural-‐ symbolic roles of art in interrelation to its site. Sometimes the publics stressed the multiplicity of the examined artworks and their sites; for instance, some conjunctly valued the artwork and its site as such as an aesthetic experience and a meeting place. Nevertheless, on the whole, the publics’ perceptions were expressed in platitudes. Here, it is an understatement to say that the publics did not decide on a critical and evocative attitude to public art. On the contrary, where the artworks are intended and likely to invite a profound discussion about the artworks per se and their relation to the dynamics of the environment, the publics generally came across as moderately engaged in this or at times could not even form an opinion at all, which is a finding provoking some kind of an aha-erlebnis for us. Here, it is interesting to refer to Bourdieu (1984), who conveyed that whether people liked a particular artwork or not was less interesting than whether or not they could hold a view at all. He found that the ones who could not work up a judgement of the aesthetic merits of cultural artefacts – particularly because they often considered themselves not qualified to judge what they knew to be a piece of fine art – were the most interesting results of his research. Another general take-‐out message from our study is that interpreting the relationships between publics’ perceptions of the artwork and their perceptions of the site is very convoluted, as it is hard to disentangle to what extent the perceptions are shaped by the whole (the site itself) and by the part (the artwork in and of itself) (see Arthur Koestler’s concept of holon as referred to by Coeterier 1996). Both the researchers and those being researched squarely faced this issue. Nonetheless, as to the publics’ body of thought, we broadly observed that the appreciation of the site foregrounds their appreciation of the artwork as such. That is to say, sites score more highly on average suggesting that more favourable environments may provide a backdrop for public art which
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affects, to some degree, the extent to which an artwork is appreciated. Furthermore, our results show that the distinct localities do significantly affect, and therefore, situate, the publics’ perceptions. Besides, the publics’ perceptions were mostly more positive with regard to the site than to the public artwork itself, and they were neither unreservedly positive nor unreservedly negative. The publics’ perceptions generally stressed the physicalities of both the public artwork and its environment. And the publics perceived rather more figurative, conventional public artworks more positively than abstract works. The last two findings back up the empirical work by Selwood (1995). Moreover, saliently to say here is that all examined artworks seemed to have led to more or less the same result of public acceptance. The question for further studies could therefore be if the kind of public artwork matters at all or just that it is presented in urban public space. This study tried to gain new insight by developing a geographical ‘art vocabulary’ (Cant and Morris 2006) about publics’ pertinent proximities to art and its environment and the relationships between these proximities, where we have empirically assessed the extent to which assumptions in literature can be borne out. We related the publics’ educational background (cognitive proximity to art) and familiarity with the artwork locality (regarded as spatial proximity) to the extent to which the artwork and site are perceived as suitable for each other (what we term as aesthetic proximity), as a place to meet (social proximity) and as meaningful (symbolic proximity). We found that these proximities differed significantly among the examined localities. Broadly, we did not find a significant relationship between the publics’ educational background and the perceived overall attractiveness of both the public artwork and its site, which contradicts comparable studies by for example Ganzeboom (1982a,b). We observed a significant, moderately strong interrelationship between the publics’ spatial use, reflected by their frequency of visiting the site, and the familiarity with the public artwork. Moreover, we found that publics who indicated they were familiar with the public artwork, and were thus acquainted with the work prior to the survey, assessed the public artwork more 102
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positively in terms of its appropriateness to its site, and vice versa, and in terms of meaningfulness; the latter is to say: what does the artwork, according to the beholder, want to say about the place for which it was planned and what does the place convey about the artwork? Our preliminary, impressionistic snapshots in time and space require further solid contextually-‐based empirical research (cf. Zebracki 2012). The art of similar research ‘lies in ensuring that the measurable does not drive out the immeasurable’ (The Audit Commission 1992, quoted in Matarasso 1996: 15). This deliberate research should situate publics’ perceptions of the reciprocal relationships between particular places and artworks in particular moments, which produces a non-‐generalisable epistemology of this matter (cf. also Haraway 1991). The implication of our study is that we have to recapitulate literature on public-‐art perception more critically where the assumed impact of public art on its very publics is concerned (see notion of public artopia in Zebracki et al. 2010). Professionals who trigger and direct public artworks and public-‐art-‐led planning projects should critically consider the relation of the perceptual differences in the publics to socio-‐spatial differences in existing or intended public-‐art localities. Thus, future research should further unravel lived experiences of public art, that is to say the relationships between different classes of artworks, sites, patrons and publics in space and time, and as such spatiotemporally different registers of public-‐art perception. Such space-‐ and time-‐specific awareness of the sundry publics is essential to public art, as the publics, site as well as the time frame are of paramount importance to the content of public art. In so doing, a more animating future of art in the city becomes a less distant prospect.
Acknowledgements
We should like to thank our students for assisting in surveying, and the respondents for their responses and insights.
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Chapter 5
Engaging geographies of public art: Indwellers, the ‘Butt Plug Gnome’ and their locale Martin Zebracki Forthcoming in Social & Cultural Geography
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Abstract This paper focuses on particularities of indwellers’ perceptions about public art and its locale by drawing on the epistemology of ‘situated knowledges’ (Haraway 1991) and the notion of ‘geographies of engagement’ (Zebracki et al. 2010). We employ the case of Paul McCarthy’s internationally acclaimed public artwork Santa Claus in the centre of Rotterdam to illustrate the sundry outlooks on its spatialities, aesthetics and moralities, and functionalities in relation to place and space. Santa Claus’s alleged sexual nature is highly disputed among local politicians and the local population, which is narratively covered by media sources and inscribed by its popular renaming as the ‘Butt Plug Gnome’. We empirically situate documented media views within the way indwellers perceive Santa Claus and its experienced locale in interrelation with themselves. We try to open up differential vistas on public-‐art narration in relation to people, time and space, whereby we elaborate on the reflexive idea of ‘social relationality’ (Massey and Rose 2003) by revealing how socio-‐spatial differences in public-‐art narration are negotiated. As such, we examine how public art is geographically reconstituted through the publics: those for whom public art is essentially intended yet who have hitherto been neglected actors of analysis in public-‐art research. Keywords: public art, Santa Claus, Butt Plug Gnome, situated knowledges, public narrative analysis, Rotterdam.
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5.1
Prelude: writing public-art research
‘[The] public is undoubtedly desired by the spectator or witness himself. If the solitary reader vaguely experiences the reality of an invisible public, if he is conscious of adhering to a secret society whose password is the work or of cooperating in a culture whose end and means are the work, this consciousness answers to a need within him. … The work […] is detached from its spatiotemporal context. The work is in universal space and time, as though instituting a space and time of its own.’ (Dufrenne 1973: 64 – excerpt presented as poem, cf. Richardson 1992). How can the engaging relationships between art, space and place, and spectator be grasped and, as such, how is public art sociogeographically presented/represented in time and place? We raise this question from the common observation that public art is sine qua non for the urban social order and visual culture (cf. Mitchell 1992; Miles 2007). In a Lefebvrian vein, public art may be seen as ‘a collective mirror, offering each member of society an image of that membership’ (Massey and Rose 2003: 6). Public art is a contested and multifaceted notion (cf. Kwon 2004; Sharp et al. 2005; Zebracki et al. 2010). We consider public art permanent or temporary artistic creations on sites outside conventional museological spaces (e.g. museums and galleries) that have open public access (cf. Miles 1997). A great deal is written about the ontologies of public art in and of itself, for example regarding its publicness, artfulness and nominalism (cf. Deutsche 1996; Hein 1996; Rendell 2000; Finkelpearl 2001; Kwon 2004). Yet, there is little knowledge of public-‐art perception and engagement from the perspective of the publics, those for whom public art is fundamentally intended. This lack is acknowledged by 106
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Hall (2003b) and Zebracki et al. (2010), who argue that perceptions of public art have principally relied on the body of thought of its planners and producers. This paper focuses on publics’ engaging experiences and perceptions regarding art in urban public space and the social and geographical structures wherein these perceptions and experiences function. It provides insight into how space, place and public art are constructed/reconstructed in people’s engagement with them. We do so by employing a case study on Santa Claus (2001), a sculpture located in Eendrachtsplein in the centre of Rotterdam (Figures 5.1 and 5.2), which is the second largest city in the Netherlands and host to one of the largest ports in the world. ‘Santa Claus is a still from the performance art of Paul McCarthy [an American sculptor, b. 1945], which has been placed in the real world by cut and paste’ (Bevers 2008: N.P.). It is considered ‘the bronze king of instant satisfaction, symbol of consumer enjoyment’ (Sculpture International Rotterdam 2006: 91). Because of its tawdry appearance and alleged sexual nature, the sculpture has been dubbed the ‘Butt Plug Gnome’. Santa Claus is, as reflected by its media coverage, one of the most spectacular, talked about and controversial public artworks in the Netherlands, and it acts as a window on the current academic and professional discourse on the socio-‐spatial and socio-‐temporal roles of art in urban public space. In a nutshell, in 2000 Sculpture International Rotterdam (Internationale Beelden Collectie Rotterdam; IBC) advised Rotterdam city council to purchase Santa Claus: ‘This is Holland’, so the argument went (Jan van Adrichem, quoted in de Volkskrant newspaper, 22 September 2005). The council took the proffered advice and in 2002 bought Santa Claus for 280,000 euros, even though the artist feared that his sculpture would be too shocking for public space (ibid.). Three years later, the city’s alderman for culture unveiled the sculpture, heralded by the words ‘Santa Claus is coming to town’, in the inner courtyard of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (AD newspaper, 26 September 2005). This semi-‐ open and contemplated ‘banned’ place was not the location proposed by the IBC. Since its purchase, the notorious sculpture had been subject to a sociopolitical tug-‐of-‐war over its location in the city. Eventually, in 2008, after years of lobbying by a local entrepreneurs’ association, the council
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‘released’ Santa Claus from the courtyard and moved it to its current location in Eendrachtsplein (Figure 5.3).
Figure 5.1 Location of Santa Claus in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
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Figure 5.2 Santa Claus (2001) – the ‘Butt Plug Gnome’ – by Paul McCarthy (1945) in Eendrachtsplein, Rotterdam. The bronze sculpture is 6 metres high and weighs well over 4,000 kilograms. Photograph by Maria Șalaru.
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Figure 5.3 The unveiling of Santa Claus in Eendrachtsplein on the evening of 28 November 2008. During the day, the municipality and Sculpture International Rotterdam had held a party, complete with music, champagne, soup and oliebollen (doughnut balls, which are traditionally eaten at fairs and between Christmas and New Year’s Eve). And as a perhaps sympathetic but slightly ironic gesture, they allowed the presence of a ‘Free Santa’ banner at the unveiling. Photograph courtesy of Leo Roubos.
In 2010-‐2011, we gathered and analysed conversational topics and inherent commonalities and dissimilarities from about a hundred media sources (mainly newspaper articles, but also radio broadcasts, television reports and social media), and from geographically and culturally engaged voices during three focus group discussions and two expert panels (cf. Cameron 2010) with a total of 33 people derived from purposive sampling (cf. ibid.), a nonprobability sampling technique that was inherent in the phenomenological, grounded nature of our research approach (cf. Glaser 1998). The purpose of the focus group discussions was to present/represent, clarify and elaborate the range of thoughts found in the media material, also through mental mapping exercises (cf. Hayden 1995), and to generate topics for in-‐depth interviews – an empowering method to discover narrative knowledge of what is emotionally sensed relevant to the informants’ life courses (cf. Silverman 2010). In 2011, we conducted 21 interviews with people who live or work near Santa Claus. The respondents were
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recruited through both convenient and snowball sampling, whereby the empirical research process ended at an unprompted data saturation point (cf. Bryman 2008). The interactive social context of our conversations was precisely conducive to our purpose. The questions and answers were utilised as both issues and resources, and as such, the conversational topics were adjusted to the naturally occurring data in the ‘speech community’ (cf. Rapley 2004; Silverman 2010). The interviews were transcribed verbatim and participant-‐checked, then discursively analysed in triangulation with the media and focus-‐group analyses to promote the interpretive and reflexive rigour of a dialectical discourse on publics’ public-‐art engagement.
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5.2
Act 1: indweller, art and spatial engagement
Various complex events, structures and processes as well as the behaviour, opinions and experiences of people and ourselves were brought into the community-‐engaged research context. We thus adopted the reflexive feminist epistemological approach of ‘situated knowledges’ (Haraway 1991). This conceptual framing mechanism provides a partial perspective to, in this case, indwellers’ ‘geographies of engagement’ with public art, space and place. Such partiality is not ‘[from] above, from nowhere, from simplicity’, but from ground level, from somewhere and from complexity’ (Haraway 1991: 195). In this sense, situated knowledge is embodied, as ‘it is grounded in the physicality of specific human bodies and their artefacts’ (Barnes 2000: 743), hence also in public art and indwellers’ relational experience, sense, perception and as such engagement regarding public art in its place – the concrete, haptic site – and space, the site’s broader impalpable and sometimes tacit socio-‐spatial context (cf. Tuan 1977 for ontologies of these sensuous-‐ geographical concepts). Here, we regard indwellers as the publics of public art who, as ‘beings-‐in-‐the-‐world’ (cf. Heidegger 1962 [1927]), are inherently using, presenting/representing, present in or related to the site at issue in any acknowledged way. Hence, this indicates their embedded relational being and rhetoric 110
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device towards art, place and space. Thus, indwellers are public art’s intrinsically witting social audience, and seeing the multifarious nature of these indwellers we consciously pluralise them as ‘publics’ (cf. Doezema and Hargrove 1977). Indwellers’ public-‐art experiences and relational rhetoric, implying a discursively constructed field of representing a particular artwork in a specific public place or space, can be seen as ‘geographies of engagement’ (Zebracki et al. 2010). This comprehends a spatial logic involving a certain degree of awareness of public art that pursues, to some extent, a physical-‐aesthetic, economic, social and/or cultural-‐symbolic differential current of thought about place and space (ibid.: 789). The meanings attributed to public artworks by indwellers, and the socio-‐spatial differences in and of themselves, are negotiated amongst each other, which Massey and Rose (2003) indicate by their notion of ‘social relationality’. The negotiation process, being part and parcel of the sphere of the ‘publicness’ of public art, is consequently manifested in spaces, such as streets, parks, markets, squares and stations, which obviously epitomise social differences (ibid.: 6). In this sense, ‘art in public should seek to encourage the sound of contradictory voices’ (Peto 1992: 43). We conceptualise such space of ‘publicness’ as locale, ‘the setting for social relations’ (Morris and Cant 2006: 866; cf. Cresswell 2004). In this case, a locale essentially aggregates the spatial scenery of the public artwork – the public artscape (cf. Zebracki 2011) – with indwellers’ sociocultural open events and narratives that coexist with and co-‐constitute, and hence ‘wrap up’, this public artscape, being an interconnected physical-‐morphological, sociocultural and symbolic entity (cf. ibid.). In short, such ‘space is a practiced place’ (de Certeau 1984: 117), which is a notion that touches on Kwon’s (2004) phenomenological understanding of artistic engagement with site-‐specificity. Here, people’s sense of place (cf. Cresswell 2004) – their emotional and symbolic designation and attachment regarding place and its inhabiting artwork – is assumed to be vigorous, at least to some extent, when they practise that place subjectively in interrelation with the artwork and others. Such geographical engagement with public art is intrinsically and concurrently evoked by the extent to which the artwork incarnates elements and
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identities of site-‐specificness, or site-‐connectedness or site-‐ meaningfulness (cf. Kaye 2000; Rogoff 2000). Geographical engagement with public art is further invited by what Peto (1992) terms ‘mediation’, a continuous practice of solicitude with regard to the documentation of a public artwork, the introduction of a work to its publics and the way a public artwork is brought under discussion. According to Peto (ibid.: 42), ‘these factors greatly influence a work’s reception’. Regarding the perceptual and power interrelationships between indweller, public artwork, place and space, Massey and Rose (2003: 17-‐18) argue that it is not merely the spectator that determines a particular artwork in its particular place and space. They pointedly acknowledge that the public artwork has, to some extent, an agency of its own that partly produces socio-‐spatial particularities and differences, and hold that each artwork possesses its own ‘unique range of resources’, like colour, shape, composition, text, volume and dynamism, which offer ‘a range of potentialities’ with which each indweller engages idiosyncratically as different people ‘are working with different elements from the same object’s repertoire of resources’. The effects and affects of particularities of art in place and space are therefore a consequence of the engaging interrelationships between indweller and artwork, which thus requires situated knowledges of social relationality. On this point, an epistemic constraint is that, as argued by Massey and Rose (ibid.: 18): ‘The possibilities for multiple interpretations by different audiences are not endless because the potentialities of an artwork are not. The limits of an artwork’s potentialities place limits on its effects [and affects] with an audience’.
5.3
Act 2: empiricisms of spatialities
The most striking discursive aspects of indwellers’ engagement with Santa Claus and its locale concerned three spatialities: the spatial proportions of the artwork and the site; the spatial positioning of the artwork in its place; and the spatial balance between the artwork and its environment. 112
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Notably, the perceived spatial features of Santa Claus were often put in relation to potential other locations for it: ‘This is a good location, because the sculpture grabs more attention here than it would at the locations proposed by the municipality – the statue catches the eye as it’s surrounded by ample space.’ (Respondent 17, focus group, female, cultural studies student) This student – like many other focus group participants, including non-‐immediate residents – dwelt especially on issues of the spatial conspicuousness of the sculpture in the greater picture of the urban fabric. This bird’s-‐eye, rather more abstract view may be strikingly juxtaposed to how many immediate residents were engaged with microlocational facets of the sculpture, plausibly and perhaps intrinsically because of their specific visual literacy and sociocultural familiarity regarding the locale in the course of time. A few focus group participants explicitly addressed their felt direct local implications of the sculpture’s situation in a relatively small square: ‘The sculpture is slightly set aside and it seems that the square’s space is reduced. Moreover, the work does not get involved in the street scene.’ (Respondent 19, focus group, male, geography student) Some participants also provided insight into and passed judgements on the appropriateness of Santa Claus to Eendrachtsplein from a spatially differentiated perspective: ‘I think Santa Claus is totally unsuitable for its location. The ratio of the sculpture to the square is disproportional. From a distance, it can hardly be seen through the superfluity of other objects. And closer up, it’s too overawing and difficult to register. Santa Claus is now a helpless giant who cannot move to and fro in Lilliput.’ (Respondent 6, focus group, female, human geographer) In the experienced reciprocity between the artwork, the site and people, we heard various ambivalent voices about particular spatial properties as identity makers, primarily about connotative degrees of big vs. small, distant vs. nearby
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and full vs. void. Where the respondent above emphasised the massive sculpture in a too small-‐scale and object-‐rich, hence full, place, only a few people, mainly local workers and residents, argued the diametrically opposite within their spatial encounters: ‘I have to say I really like this sculpture; it’s so big, it strikes me. I also like the idea that so many people make a song and dance about it. The Butt Plug Gnome is exactly the identity of this square; it’s the boss of this place.’ (Respondent 32, male, local worker) Here, it is important to acknowledge that various people expressed opinions about the spatial properties involved in their interrelations with the artwork and the place on the basis of other people’s ideas about it, whereby viewpoints and common understandings aired in public were of great importance. Notwithstanding, opinions have changed over time, also within a rather more psychologised space: ‘By hook or by crook, that story and all that rumpus magnified that sculpture in my fantasy. Once it got here, I thought ‘what a small statue’. It wasn’t so bad after all. It’s funny how the way things work.’ (Respondent 46, male, long-‐term resident) Furthermore, several immediate indwellers focused on the trivial sociopolitical context of Santa Claus’s positioning in Eendrachtsplein. They also stressed the intersubjectively constructed sphere of socio-‐spatial contingencies that has shaped the predominantly local acceptance of the sculpture in this place, for example: ‘I think the city council thought, like: “Oh gee, what are we going to do now?” So let’s put it here. Thus, on sympathetic grounds the artwork doesn’t fit in here at best, but people have basically accepted the confluence of events.’ (Respondent 32, male, local worker) In the social acceptance of the sculpture’s spatial path and its current location, an extremely important and decisive role was played from 2005 through 2008 by the ‘Butt Plug Gnome lobbyists’, namely Anke Griffioen – the ‘captain’ of the 114
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Nieuwe Binnenweg entrepreneurs’ association – and her Rotterdam-‐based artistic friend, Jeanne Hogenboom (Respondents 50 and 51, respectively; Figure 5.4 and Figure 5.5). They endeavoured to employ Santa Claus as a marketing tool for the Nieuwe Binnenweg shopping area, a continuation of Eendrachtsplein that the entrepreneurs’ association had given a SoHo-‐like name: Downtown Rotterdam. In Act 4, we elaborate further on Santa Claus’s local marketing-‐tool function. These lobbyists created their own ‘buttplugarian’ dominion ‘from the base, our supporters’ (Respondent 50). Their microlocational impact, although typically impromptu, on Santa Claus and the spatial configurations of Eendrachtsplein proved to be telling. Griffioen: ‘One day a public works engineer turned up and, because the council realised we’d keep on to the bitter end, called Jeanne to ask where to place the sculpture – and we’d thought that those kinds of things had already been thought out and discussed over and over again. Not. … It was us who decided the location and the precise positioning of Santa Claus.’ (Respondent 50, female, shopkeeper)
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Figure 5.4 ‘Butt Plug Gnome lobbyists’, Jeanne Hogenboom (left) and Anke Griffioen (middle), wearing Father Christmas outfits and talking with Ivo Opstelten, former mayor of Rotterdam, during the unveiling of Santa Claus in the inner courtyard of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen on 26 September 2005. Photograph courtesy of Jeanne Hogenboom and Anke Griffioen.
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Figure 5.5 Anke Griffioen: ‘We wrote to local representatives to convince them that Santa Claus belongs in our neighbourhood, and we launched some frolicsome actions. We distributed about a hundred garden gnomes to shopkeepers and asked them to make a gnome display window. That provoked a lot of response, witness the newspapers’ (Respondent 50, female, shopkeeper). Photograph courtesy of Jeanne Hogenboom and Anke Griffioen.
In placing Santa Claus in an alternative location, many focus group participants contrived a totally new, hypothetical spatial ordering with oft-‐desired more spacious and green space, which is likewise centrally situated in the city (cf. Figure 5.6). On the other hand, a few respondents expressly took the spectatorial and spatial peculiarities of Santa Claus in se as well as the everyday socio-‐spatial reality of the city as reference point. A councilman of the right-‐wing Liveable Rotterdam party: ‘As the sculpture features a front and a back side, it’s unsuitable for being placed centrally in a square; ideally, square statues are beheld from many angles, so-‐called mannerist sculpture … Instead, Santa Claus, placed at the head of Wilhelmina Pier across from Hotel New York [the former Holland-‐America line], would not only be a wink at New York but also an obstinate statue of liberty for 116
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everyone arriving at the port of Rotterdam.’ (Molenaar 2008: 2, 6)
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In terms of a conceivable alternative artwork for Eendrachtsplein, primarily long-‐term residents emphatically elaborated on the site-‐specificity of a different art space. Some specified an artist who makes a work according to the peculiarities of the destined place, where the artwork itself is not supposed per se to narratively connect to the (hi)stories regarding the place and its people, but to connect to particular stylistic attributes in situ, which provides a bridge to Act 3: ‘You need to show a favourable reaction to the present, to your city. And you shouldn’t just be on the lookout for something at random. I wouldn’t have minded seeing something of that space – think, for instance, of the white and that tinge of classicalness that the buildings give the square – becoming enhanced by an artwork. I have in mind some modernistic figure. And someone, preferably a local, should be invited to make that work for the square exclusively.’ (Respondent 37, female, long-‐term resident)
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Figure 5.6 Map of an imaginary alternative locale for Santa Claus (Respondent 18, focus group, female, geography student). M indicates a metro station. Redrawn and translated.
5.4
Act 3: empiricisms of aesthetics and moralities
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‘A sculpture like this would better fit into a modern architectural style. Then it wouldn’t clash badly like it does here, where the artwork, in its blackness and postmodernity, brings out the contrast with the classical nineteenth-‐century facades [this part of Rotterdam was not bombed during WW II]. Unity of style is important, which is not the case now.’ (Respondent 42, male, long-‐ term resident) In reasoning about an alternative, more apposite locality for Santa Claus, a considerable range of people showed a preference for a modernistically coherent as well as ‘decent’ space, one that should not exclusively involve an ‘adult-‐ tailored’ site (cf. Figure 5.6), which contradicts the regularly 118
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experienced child-‐unfriendly complexion of Santa Claus in its present place. Likewise, the discursive dimensions generally foregrounded a plethora of ambiguous physical and emblematic interpretations of Santa Claus in relation to its locale and people; notably, ugly/beautiful, decent/offensive, risqué/conservative, religious/secular, Christmas tree/butt plug, illusion/reality and elite/mass culture. They primarily touched on issues of style and taste and principles of goodness/rightness or badness/wrongness. The psychologies and connotations associated with these dualisms were primarily negative, although the majority of the documented sources frequently parroted each other’s argumentative gist. It is remarkable that, first, the work’s alleged sexual pretext and its perceived indelicacy and impropriety and violation of the public order prevailed. Second, money talked within often-‐heard negative statements about the artwork’s sociopolitical context and the specific scabrous contents of the artwork in a place deemed prominent. The following are a selection of salient heated public opinions: Wim Boevink: ‘Who wants 4.5 tonnes of bronze gnome in his street that says “Up yours” all day long?’ (Trouw newspaper, 4 December 2008) Leonard Geluk, chairman of the Christian Democratic Appeal party: ‘It should just be the most natural thing in the world to walk with your children across a square without encountering such an obscene work of art.’ (Rotterdams Dagblad newspaper, 5 March 2003) ‘One man who lives opposite the sculpture has had special curtains made so that he doesn’t have to look at it. He’s dead set against it.’ (Respondent 42, male, long-‐term resident) ‘This is beyond me! I’m almost 70 and when I look out the window I have to see that thing.’ (Long-‐term resident, quoted in Trouw newspaper, 10 September 2005) ‘I’ve been keeping a more open mind about it. I initially thought it was disgusting, and I felt really ashamed of it. I’m a member of a Christian student union here in
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Eendrachtsplein. At the time, the union’s members bombarded the chairperson with questions about why he hadn’t taken action against this sculpture. Our persuasion does not want a figure symbolising worldly licentiousness right outside the door … Many residents are negative, but I believe this general negative attitude actually binds people together.’ (Respondent 39, male dorm student, immediate resident)
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‘ES57’ posted a picture of Santa Claus on an Internet forum along with the comment: ‘Butt Plug Gnome: left-‐ wing dreams, wasted tax money.’ (FOK!, 23 September 2008) One long-‐term resident said that Santa Claus made a vicious attack on her, and strongly disapproved of the rationales for situating the sculpture in Rotterdam’s public space, as well as of the sculpture’s neglect of the socio-‐spatial idiosyncrasies of both the city and Eendrachtsplein: ‘Rotterdam believes that it lends credit to its contemplated importance by purchasing and placing this controversial statue. I think this is an egocentric policy decision, instead of a more spiritually informed one that gives you food for thought about humanity and what people do here every day … This sculpture and the related decisions are definitely minuses.’ (Respondent 37, female, long-‐term resident) Santa Claus has, however, received a warm welcome from various observant spectators and especially art lovers and experts, who principally praise this work’s intended critical glance at consumer society. Some mused further about it: ‘Santa Claus’s anti-‐capitalist message makes it a Communist figure’ (Respondent 47, male, long-‐term resident). They commonly emphasised the contemplated intrinsic stylistic and symbolic values and meanings of Santa Claus as legitimisation for its hypothesised and designated location. As Jan van Adrichem, art historian and member of Sculpture International Rotterdam (Santa Claus’s commissioner), commented: 120
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‘The sculpture’s monumentality and bronze paraphrase the nineteenth-‐century sculpture of the bourgeoisie. At the same time, the image refers to mass culture by Santa Claus in garden-‐gnome idiom and its quite loose relation to a well-‐know sex aid. The sculpture is as complex as big city life itself.’ (de Volkskrant newspaper, 22 September 2005) Particularly our interviews with local residents and workers indicated the moral crux whether Santa Claus has overleapt itself in its fundamentally expected interconnection with both its place and its publics. Many implicitly addressed the exclusion of these publics – and their demographic and socioeconomic diversities – from the public-‐art making process, and as such invited the question whether Santa Claus is genuinely ‘public’: ‘I associate this neighbourhood with migrants and social underclasses, at least such was the case in my youth. If that’s still so, the sculpture would deepen the gulf between the elite and populists. Moreover, I don’t think this sculpture is pretty, so there’s no proper location for it anywhere.’ (Respondent 8, focus group, male, human geographer) A number of residents experienced social indifference regarding stylistic features of Santa Claus, which disarmed the meaning of the artwork in and of itself and therewith of its setting: ‘I learnt about its supposed meaning from the newspaper. But you’d have to be very good at solving rebuses if you stood in front of the sculpture and said “That’s an outcry against consumer society”. … Wherever that sculpture is, it’s so alien, so fremdkörperlich, it induces something in any case. Yet the reaction is often that one secludes oneself with an air of indifference. There are already so many negative stimuli in the city that I wonder whether the artwork pursues its aim to make people genuinely think about this work in this place.’ (Respondent 47, male, long-‐term resident)
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Quite a few people acknowledged that it would take some time to become used to Santa Claus in its current place. Nevertheless, its patron, Sculpture International Rotterdam, does not exclude future relocations of, or a city tour for, Santa Claus, as it believes in this sculpture’s locational transience as a narrative power and a device of social reception: ‘If residents knew that an artwork, however shocking it is, would stay in their neighbourhood only temporarily, it’d make a lot of difference to their degree of acceptance of the artwork.’ (de Volkskrant newspaper, 28 September 2007) Moreover, in terms of mentally negotiating another artwork for Eendrachtsplein, many people, especially local residents, imagined a rather more either classical and directly recognisable site-‐specific artwork, or participatory-‐based ‘social sculpture’ that is grassroots and microlocational in nature: ‘Public art has to romance; it has to tell a story and convey feeling. For instance, I’m pleased with the modern tile artwork in the metro station under here. Neighbourhood residents were offered the opportunity to write their personal text on a tile.’ (Respondent 39, male, immediate resident) Copyright © 2012. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.
5.5
Act 4: empiricisms of functionalities
We descried that people’s narratives about the artwork’s suitability to its place was also dominated by local social, economic and symbolic peculiarities denoting differential spatial functionalities of Santa Claus. These narratives incited a more general debate about a transcending understanding of the assorted roles of art and art making in the city. Regarding the functional embodiments of Santa Claus, one respondent made the following general distinction between idea and matter: ‘There’s the concept of Santa Claus – who represents companionableness, warm-‐heartedness, gifts and family – 122
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and this Santa Claus sculpture, which is intended to provoke and unlock emotions.’ (Respondent 1, focus group, female, human geographer)
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An interviewee (Respondent 47, male, long-‐term resident) who was particularly occupied with suchlike distinction, unfolded how Santa Claus can be envisaged as a functional embodiment of its locale in relation to international popular cultural traditions. By showing miniatures of Santa Claus and Saint Nicholas (Figure 5.7), he indicated the commonalities in visual language and related popular culture between these two legendary patrons. Noteworthily, Christmas is often considered an epitome of Americanisation and globalisation, while in the Netherlands Saint Nicholas’ Eve is historically a much more important gift-‐giving festival than Christmas Day. The interviewee incorporated these feasts’ associated prevalent cultural-‐symbolic values of passively and excessively giving and finding satisfaction as explanatory reference for why the sculpture Santa Claus, a figure forcefully embodied by the American Dream, has been situated in a glocalised, busy shopping street in Rotterdam. Given this sculpture’s couleur locale, it intrinsically has a deliberate function of sheer provocation: ‘As Santa Claus is supposed to be an indictment of consumer society, I think its location acquires great significance. The sculpture belongs not to a museum but to public space, and this shopping street is its domain par excellence.’ (Respondent 2, focus group, female, human geographer)
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Figure 5.7 Santa Claus as functional embodiment of its locale. By showing miniatures of Saint Nicholas (on the right) and Santa Claus, Respondent 47 (male, long-‐term resident) situated these legendary patrons within a comparative cultural-‐historical iconography. Photograph by Zebracki.
Nonetheless, several people criticised the site-‐generality and therefore the ‘sterility’ of the artwork, as it could be placed in any consumerist place in Western society. In this sense, they did not consider site-‐specificity, being a local sociohistorical link, a conditio sine qua non of Santa Claus’s spatial functionality. Yet many elaborated upon Santa Claus’s current place as the proper socio-‐spatial context of its assumed provocative function. ‘Eendrachtsplein in fact marks the transition from the museum district to the shopping district’ (Respondent 26, focus group, female, geography teacher); some asserted that the sculpture and its message do not escape one’s notice at this particular crossing point. Various respondents suggested an alternative location for Santa Claus that would enhance its provoking function, namely a more intensively hectic, consumerist space (cf. also Figure 5.6). Here, some took the existing socio-‐spatial reality as point of departure: 124
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‘Eendrachtsplein is near Binnenwegplein. I envision the sculpture in that latter place, directly across from all those miserable chain stores. There, it would raise its voice in protest and be a type of advertising image for consumption.’ (Respondent 33, female, long-‐term resident) Many respondents underscored the socially diverse composition of Santa Claus’s spectators in Eendrachtsplein, which instigates a negotiation of the roles and meanings of the artwork in relation to its particular place. This is why some believed that the functionalities of the experienced kaleidoscopic Eendrachtsplein and the functionality of the sculpture match well: ‘Eendrachtsplein is in some respects an innocuous locality, a place much frequented by all sorts of people – public transport passengers, hipsters, residents, businessmen, students, clubbers, and so on, both young and old … Many strata of society have a chance to dwell upon this sculpture, about which presumably everyone holds an opinion.’ (Respondent 13, focus group, female, cultural studies student) This respondent argued that the sculpture fits in well with its socially dynamic setting, although others indicated a more tranquil and green environment as an important amenity function for Santa Claus: ‘A woodsy scenery would be more fairylike. After all, it is a gnome figure’ (Respondent 48, female, immediate resident). Some observed that Santa Claus in Eendrachtsplein has a strong purpose to invite a whole range of social appropriations, including photo-‐taking and tactile engagements with the sculpture (Figure 5.8), which a few residents experienced without respite: ‘The sculpture practically produces a kind of Petrus effect, which I really like about the work in this place. It’s not that people actually kiss the gnome’s feet, but they, especially children, often seat themselves on them, particularly on sunny days. And people are always taking snapshots. The gnome becomes a pampered child.’ (Respondent 33, female, long-‐term resident)
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Figure 5.8 Left: spectators in the background appropriating Santa Claus for photographic scenery (cf. also Figure 5.2); right: people using the sculpture’s foot as an opportunity to play. Photographs by Maria Șalaru.
In this sense, many considered Santa Claus a tourist draw. It has also been used as a promotional reference point: ‘They decorate this sculpture during various frivolous campaigns and demonstrations’ (ibid.), for example promoting sports events or safe-‐sex practice or anti-‐malaria campaigns. The oft-‐positive, playful reception of the artwork particularly by visitors has helped some immediate indwellers to think more affirmatively about it. For some retailers in the neighbourhood, this sculpture has also become commercially interesting: ‘Many tourists get a map from the information office indicating the statue, and they may well think, “Okay, let’s see that artwork”. And when they get here, they might also think: “Oh, look, a dress shop. Let’s go inside”.’ (Respondent 38, male, shopkeeper) This shopkeeper also thought that whether tourists come by does not affect residents that much. He believed that the sculpture simply gets in their way. Several respondents, however, argued that the landmark function of Santa Claus makes the square a place to meet friends and acquaintances: ‘The sculpture really attracts attention if you’ve never been here before. Of course, you can’t miss it, certainly when you walk from the station. It almost looks you 126
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straight in the eye.’ (Respondent 49, female, immediate resident) One resident commented that the landmark function, and hence its conspicuousness, is perceived to a rather greater extent by ‘outsiders’: ‘A tourist wanders the city totally differently, much more consciously I think, whereas someone who’s familiar with the city no longer sees some ‘obvious’ things. You recognise and know them, but you no longer really see them.’ (Respondent 49, female, immediate resident). Even so, many ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ conceived of Santa Claus as ‘the new Zadkine [figurehead] of Rotterdam’ (Respondent 50, female, shopkeeper), which belongs to the city of Rotterdam’s desired image of ‘Rotterdam Dares’. Within this purview, certain ‘insiders’ had explicitly used Santa Claus as a negotiating object for latent political agendas at the urban level: ‘These kinds of matters immediately become part of the infighting in this city between the populists, shall we say, and the traditional city government.’ (Respondent 47, male, long-‐term resident) In thinking about a ‘buttplugtopian’ space, some argued that it should be more a passageway in nature, which implies that Santa Claus does not compel a place to stay and hence does not contribute that much to the square’s social meaning: ‘Let’s say that this work is a splurge that you see at once. You can take a snap of or steal a glance at it, and in so doing you get the picture. The artwork is not something that becomes richer the longer you observe it. So, it’s not a must to have benches round it.’ (Respondent 40, male, immediate resident) To conclude, various people believe that the permanency of the artwork now claims the entire place. Considering the oft-‐ contemplated social function of Eendrachtsplein, a number of residents would have preferred more, and more room for ephemeral social events like street performances and
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markets to a fixed public artwork as the distinctive morphology of Eendrachtsplein: ‘I’d have preferred no artwork in this place. The weekly market with vegetables and books does it for me’ (Respondent 43, female, long-‐term resident).
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5.6
Epilogue: ‘Butt Plug Gnome’ uncovered with the cloak of charity
The nature of our research, which was based on the epistemic principle of situated knowledges (cf. Haraway 1991), was impressionistic and grounded (cf. Glaser 1998). Our implied inductive approach set out and contributed to the ‘state of the public art’ by obtaining idiosyncratic data that allow public-‐art narration theory to build on publics’ engagement with public art and space and place, which in its turn might provide insights into learning moments observed in other public-‐art case studies (cf. retroduction approach in Ragin 1994). Thus, the particularities of our study served as ‘opportunities to learn’ (Stake 2000) about indweller– artwork–place–space interrelationships more generally (cf. Zebracki et al.’s (2010) idea of ‘geographies of engagement’), and therewith theory may be fed back as well as built beyond one particular situation (cf. ‘analytic generalisation’ in Yin 2008). Our study identified two main trains of indwellers’ unprompted and subtle thought. First, about the locale from the perspective of the artwork, indicating the negotiation of the place, namely the ‘where’ of Santa Claus. This also related to both existing and imagined spaces, which additionally addressed spatial scales of ‘otherness’, mainly a ‘passageway-‐ like’, ‘green’, ‘modern’ or ‘decent’ environment. Second, thought about the artwork from the perspective of the locale, implying the negotiation of the artwork, that is, the ‘what’ thereof. This stirred up relationally translated alternatives to Santa Claus, above all a ‘monumental’ or ‘directly recognisable’ sculpture. Here, indwellers’ voices about place and space were primarily coloured by socially negotiated experiences and ideas about the artwork in and of itself (cf. Massey’s and Rose’s (2003) conception of ‘social relationality’). In this, the potentialities of Santa Claus placed 128
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limits on mental matrices of experienced scales and degrees of spatialities, moralities and aesthetics, and functionalities of the artwork in relation to its locale. Furthermore, the documented and empirical narrated material revealed that there was a plenitude of cathartic negativities – primarily about Santa Claus’s oft-‐contemplated kitschy appearance and heterodox impropriety and indecency for public space – yet also of ambiguities as regards physicalities and emblematic renditions of Santa Claus in relation to its place, space and people. Moreover, in their geographical engagement with Santa Claus, it was salient that many indwellers fetishised the permanency of the alleged ‘butt plug’, being the main metonymic and associative trigger to reflect, by way of mental-‐mapping exercises, on the spatial proportions of the artwork, the spatial positioning of the artwork in its place, and the spatial and stylistic balance, viz. the match/mismatch between the artwork and its environment. To some extent, the negotiation process of the socio-‐ spatial differences regarding Santa Claus and its locale invited an abstract, discursively mental state of non- differentiation wherein the artwork surmounted the physical-‐aesthetic boundaries of itself, whereby it auto-‐ transformed into the locale (cf. Cresswell 2004) as such; in this paratextual sense, in recapitulating Dufrenne (1973: 64), the artwork became a simulacrum-‐like agency ‘instituting a space and time of its own’. Here, the scale of Santa Claus’s functional embodiment of the site – principally its role as marketing and entrepreneurial tool for the neighbourhood, its spatial-‐symbolic reference including landmark function (e.g. tourist draw) and site-‐distinctiveness and site-‐ specificness (cf. Kwon 2004), and its role of inciting social and tactile engagements with urban public space – seemed to be of paramount importance for understanding indwellers’ engagement with public art and its locale. Their narratives especially about the artwork’s suitability to its place and space was dominated by local social, economic and symbolic peculiarities that betokened differential spatial functionalities of Santa Claus. We discerned, to boot, that the spatial and cultural-‐ cognitive proximity of indwellers seemed to matter to particularities of their engagement with public art and its locale. Remarkably, long-‐term residents in particular were
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usually engaged with microlocational and site-‐specific facets of the sculpture, plausibly due to their specific visual literacy as well as sociocultural familiarity with the singularities of the locale in the course of time. Culturally engaged indwellers were also rather more aware of the artwork’s codes and its related general critique of consumer society with regard to its precise location at the eventful crossroads of the contemplated consumer and cultural axes of the city of Rotterdam. Yet, such realm of esoteric knowledge of geographies of public art is exactly a matter that was the ‘butt’ of much criticism from the arts world itself: ‘The symbolic value of Santa Claus is not understood “on the streets” … Symbols perform meaningfully only within their own codes. It has become unacceptable that artists are merely looking for a form of provocation, because it leaves open the question of societal accountability.’ (Bruinsma 2006: 60) To conclude, the different engaging geographies of public art predominantly accentuated a variety of aspects of spatialities and functionalities of the locale in relation to the appropriateness – being the aesthetics and moralities – of the artwork. The empirical-‐analytical pointers of spatialities, aesthetics and moralities, and functionalities are intrinsically intertwined at this relational systematics. Future research may further elaborate on how these main tripartite pointers of an engaging geographies of public art are socio-‐spatially constructed and reconstructed within mental and visceral negotiations of both the place and the artwork.
Acknowledgements
We thank the experts, focus-‐group participants and interviewees for their fruitful insights.
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Chapter 6
Synthesising geographies of public art: Conclusions and discussion Martin Zebracki
6.1
Recapitulation and main findings
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6.1.1 Introduction In the second half of the 20th century, public art became increasingly entrenched in the urban fabric of Western Europe. Urban planners and artists have now produced various claims about what public art ‘does’ to people in certain places and times. There are many axioms about the physical-‐aesthetic, economic, social and cultural-‐symbolic roles of art in public space. These axioms about the relationships between art and public space mainly originate from those who produce public artworks as such or are involved in public art’s enabling institutional and cultural policy contexts. So far, however, these axioms have hardly been problematised, and little is known about the relationships between art and public space from the perspective of public art’s publics. Because in essence public art is and should ideally be intended for these publics, it is important to focus on their perceptions and engagement regarding public art. Here, the level of socio-‐spatial embodiment of public art is as variegated as these very publics. Moreover, most studies on public art have been developed from art-‐historical approaches that highlight its iconographic and sheer philosophical context. Notwithstanding the profound insights provided by these studies, there has been a notable absence of a geographical approach to public art. Art in public space is in and of itself situated outside the art-‐historical confines of museums and galleries. As it finds itself in a socio-‐spatial field of force that is as intricate as city life itself, public art
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logically and potentially becomes adopted as both study object and place of study in a social-‐scientific fashion. We tackled this issue by exploring public art from a human geographical angle; that is, we called into play geographical layers of the regional, the local and individual embodiment in order to gain a better understanding of public art. Public art differs from place to place and from individual to individual, as much as it differs from context to context. Regional, local and personal differences in relation to public art can be observed due to different institutional and cultural policy contexts and diverse sociocultural traditions. All in all, we have endeavoured to provide more insight into the interrelationships between artwork, public space and beholder. In order to fulfil this research aim, this study addressed the following central research question: How can the relational dynamics between artwork and public space be spatiotemporally discerned at the levels of public-art practice c.q. production, institutional and cultural policy practice, and public art’s publics? This thesis comprises four peer-‐reviewed, published or forthcoming articles in international geography journals. These articles are presented in Chapters 2 to 5, respectively. Chapter 2 covers the level of public-‐art practice or production. Chapter 3 deals with public-‐art practice as situated within institutional and cultural policy contexts, and also takes sociocultural praxes into account. Chapters 4 and 5 scrutinise the relationships between artwork and public space from the perspectives of public art’s publics. In the following, we first discuss the main empirical research findings per chapter and as such answer the central research question. This stand-‐alone recapitulation of our research findings is further synthesised by critical reflections on these findings in terms of scientific and methodological contributions, including research limitations, and in terms of this study’s contributions to practice. The chapter concludes with agendas for further research. 132
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6.1.2 Summary of main findings In Chapter 2, we coined the term ‘public artopia’ to describe the collection of claims in academic literature about the alleged roles of public art that manifest themselves in physical-‐aesthetic, economic, social and cultural-‐symbolic dimensions of urban public space. We analysed the situatedness of the claims made by public-‐art producers – that is, artists, public officials, investors and participating/producing residents – according to the actors’ specific roles, the geographical context of public art and public art’s time frame, namely from preparation to realisation. To this end, we interviewed public-‐art producers involved in flagship art and community art – a distinction that is generally made in public art (cf. Lacy 1995; Miles 1997; Hall 2003a,b; Remesar 2005) – at both the local geographical level and the level of individual embodiment, The flagship artwork is Virtual Museum Zuidas (VMZ) (2001-‐present), a city-‐centre project aimed at increasing the international exposure of the booming financial district of Amsterdam Zuidas (South Axis). The community-‐art project was Face Your World (FYW) (2005), which was intended to enhance social cohesion in the ethnically diverse neighbourhood of Slotervaart, Amsterdam. Regarding both VMZ and FYW, two general discourses of public-‐art producers formed congruous claim coalitions: the physical-‐aesthetic and cultural-‐symbolic discourse of artists, and the socioeconomic discourse of public officials, investors and participating residents. VMZ and FYW clearly had different aims: whereas VMZ was mainly concerned with economic urban upgrading, FYW strived to empower residents in public space’s social sphere. Leaving aside their differences in socio-‐spatial scope, both projects implied reflexive thinking about the inconstant nature of the spatial images that project claims communicate on the one hand and the potential appropriation of these images by public space’s users on the other. In the juxtaposition of theoretical and empirical claims about public art, our concluding research findings are vocal about three serious concerns related to public-‐art claims in both theory and practice. First, public-‐art producers’ claims fail to recognise different actors’ perspectives: their claims fail to locate the
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‘situated knowledges’ (cf. Haraway 1991) that are intrinsically constituted or reconstituted by actors’ roles that articulate with one another in time and space. Second, public-‐ art claims generally lack geographical contextuality: the claims do not elaborate appropriately on distinct discourses about public-‐art projects’ spatial settings and the inherent relationships between art and public space. Third, public-‐art claims lack a temporal perspective: these claims commonly disregard the practice of public-‐art realisation; that is, they do not take into account the evolution of claims and claim coalitions over public-‐art projects’ time horizons, which consist of preparation, implementation and evaluation. Our analysis suggests that academics and policymakers should take these deficiencies into account. Chapter 3 focused on the institutional and cultural policy contexts of public art as situated within the geographical layers of the national/regional and local. Cultural policy, embedded in the institutional context, has produced several intentions that have underlain the direction of public-‐art production since its advent in Western Europe in 1945. We could not derive from the literature the extent to which differences in cultural policy have affected the production of public artworks over time and space. We therefore tried to gain more knowledge of this matter. To do so, we focused on Amsterdam and Ghent, cities that are situated in quite different national institutional and policy contexts. We built a dataset of public artworks realised in these cities in 1945-‐2009, which indicates the ‘how much’, ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘when’ of public art. There is some interlocal variation between these cities over time and space, which is related to differences in governmentality (cf. Foucault 1991) and daily practices and cultural traditions (cf. Faludi 2005; van der Hoeven 2005). First, our study shows dissimilarity in the public artscapes of these cities, which is particularly a result of differences in institutional contexts. The differences particularly show that the policy and sociocultural context of urban development, and not merely the public-‐art trend, do matter in public-‐art production. Compared to Ghent, one finds in Amsterdam a relatively higher number of public artworks, more spatially dispersed public artworks and more diversified public artworks. This is mainly attributable to differences in governmentalities; in this case to the richer Dutch incentives 134
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policy tradition with regard to public-‐art production and to Amsterdam’s stronger spatial cultural dispersal policy. Additionally, particularly in Amsterdam, urban renewal and expansion have instigated more and more nonconformist artworks in urban public space, especially in the modernistic Southeast district of Amsterdam. Second, our analysis reveals similarities between the public artscapes of Amsterdam and Ghent irrespective of the local and national policy context: the variation in public artscapes in terms of quantity, visual typology and geographical distribution is not as great as policy differences might suggest. Apart from the policy context, in both Amsterdam and Ghent, the autonomous element of initiatives in the international art world, civil society and the wider domain of society (i.e. triggers from local communities and arts actors) has also affected public-‐art production and as such the morphology of the relationships between art and public space (cf. ‘governance-‐beyond-‐the-‐state’ in Swyngedouw 2005). Remarkably, one can find in both cities a bifurcation within public-‐art practices: centralised flagship-‐art projects on the one hand and temporary interventions and socially engaged processes on the other. We have, in sum, observed a delicate navigating effect of the institutional and inherent cultural policy contexts in one respect and self-‐regulation in another respect on public-‐art production in time and space. Chapter 4 represents a fundamental shift in perspective from producers to ‘consumers’ of public art and as such towards the ‘receiving end’ at the individual level of socio-‐ spatial embodiment. Some scholars, like Hall and Smith (2005), argue in favour of examining perceptions of public art through its essentially intended publics, but concurrently maintain the status quo. As an exploratory, impressionistic experiment, this chapter presents public-‐artwork localities that have acted as locales for case studies (Yin 2008) on publics’ perceptions concerning the relationships between artworks, public space and themselves. The six public artworks concerned are Video Wall (2007) and Monument for Antony Winkler Prins (1970) in Amsterdam, Sculpture Terrace (1999) in Rotterdam, The Hand (1986) in Antwerp, and Blind Wall (2008) and Merging between Lys and Scheldt River (1999) in Ghent.
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These artworks, although they are contemporary, deliberately represent six public-‐artwork categories that, as indicated in Chapter 3, cover the diversity of public artworks produced in the Netherlands and Flanders since 1945. The case studies included 1,111 street surveys, proportionally allocated over the six public-‐artwork localities, which offered ‘opportunities to learn’ (Stake 2000) about publics’ first impressions of public art. Here it is important to bring in our observation that publics in public space are by nature a random hence non-‐directed audience of public art. After all, they are generally not intentionally viewing it in their mundane routines; publics generally do not purposively visit public art and do not purchase admission tickets. Thus, when we directed their attention to a certain artwork and its surrounding area, they were usually unfeignedly confronted with this and forced to express a view. Therefore these publics may be seen as a reinforced critical audience (cf. Habermas 1991). The case studies show that publics’ perceptions of public art were generally expressed in platitudes that were neither unreservedly positive nor unreservedly negative. The publics’ perceptions were generally more positive about the site than the public artwork; that is, the appreciation of the site foregrounds publics’ appreciation of the artwork as such. Thus, as sites tend to score higher than the artworks, the finding suggests that more favourable environments may provide a backcloth for public art that affects, to some degree, the extent to which an artwork is appreciated. The publics’ perceptions, moreover, generally stressed the physicalities of both the public artwork and its environment. And rather more figurative, conventional public-‐art pieces had more appeal for the publics than abstract works. Furthermore, we related the publics’ educational background (cognitive proximity to art) and familiarity with the artwork locality (regarded as spatial proximity) – hence, cognitive and spatial proximity imply personal attributes of the publics – to their aesthetic appreciation of the ‘match’ between the artwork and the site (regarded as aesthetic proximity), to the artwork/site attractiveness indicated by the actual use of the artwork/site as meeting place (social proximity), and to the extent to which the artwork in situ has meaning for the publics (symbolic proximity). We found that 136
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these proximities differed significantly among the public-‐ artwork localities we examined. Saliently, we have revealed that publics who indicated they were familiar with the public artwork, assessed the public artwork more positively in terms of meaningfulness and its appropriateness to its site, and vice versa. The preceding quantitative empirical insights instigate more solid, reflexive and idiosyncratic research on publics’ engagement with art and public space, which is taken up in the ensuing chapter. Chapter 5 focuses on publics’ engagement with one artwork in one place; as such, it engages further with the individual level of socio-‐spatial embodiment. Drawing on the epistemology of situated knowledges (Haraway 1991) and our developed notion of ‘geographies of engagement’, we employed an exemplary case study on Paul McCarthy’s internationally acclaimed public artwork Santa Claus (2001), which is located in a central square in Rotterdam. This sculpture’s alleged sexual undertone, which has given it its epithet of ‘Butt Plug Gnome’, has been highly disputed among local politicians and the local population, as narratively reflected by media sources. This study empirically situated the documented, often negative and ambiguous media views within the way indwellers perceive Santa Claus in interrelation with its locale and themselves. Here, we contemplate indwellers as public art’s publics who, as ‘beings-‐in-‐the-‐world’ (cf. Heidegger 1962 [1927]), are inherently using, presenting/representing, present in or related to the site at issue in any acknowledged way, which hence indicates their embedded relational being and rhetoric device towards art, place and space. The different geographies of indwellers’ engagement with public art predominantly accentuated various aspects of spatialities and functionalities of the locale in relation to the appropriateness – being the aesthetics and moralities – of the artwork. The spatial and cultural-‐cognitive proximity of indwellers seemed to matter to their engagement. Plausibly due to their visual literacy and familiarity with the locale, particularly long-‐term residents were engaged with micro-‐ locational and site-‐specific facets of the sculpture. Culturally engaged indwellers were also rather more aware of Santa Claus’s codes and its related general critique of consumer
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society, considering its precise location at the crossroads of Rotterdam’s contemplated consumer and cultural axes. Overall, indwellers demonstrated that they were engaged with the spatial proportions of the artwork, the spatial positioning of the artwork in its place, and the spatial and stylistic balance, namely the match/mismatch between the artwork and its environment. Therein, it was salient that many indwellers fetishised the permanency of the artwork and particularly the alleged ‘butt plug’, being their main metonymic trigger to reflect on the artwork in relation to its site. Moreover, indwellers’ voices about place and space were primarily coloured by socially negotiated perceptions about the artwork (cf. the notion of ‘social relationality’ in Massey and Rose 2003). They have likewise mentally negotiated the place – viz. the ‘where’ of Santa Claus – and the artwork as such, namely the ‘what’ of public art. Here, the potentialities of Santa Claus have placed limits on indwellers’ mental images of the ‘where’ and the ‘what’. Proposed alternative spaces were, for example, ‘passageway-‐like’, ‘green’, ‘modern’ or ‘decent’, and suggested alternative artworks in the square concerned were above all ‘monumental’ or ‘directly recognisable’ in relation to the place. To conclude, the negotiation process of the socio-‐spatial differences associated with Santa Claus and public space to some extent invited an abstract, discursively mental state of non-differentiation wherein the artwork surmounted the physical-‐aesthetic boundaries of itself, whereby it auto-‐ transformed into public space in and of itself.
6.2
Contributions to research and practice
6.2.1 Contributions to the academic debate The empirical analyses have provided more insight into the spatiotemporal interrelationships between artwork, public space and beholder. In so doing, they have contributed to the geographical body of knowledge of public art. The interrelationships between artwork and public space are shaped in geographical layers of the regional, the local and individual embodiment. These interrelationships consist of and could be moulded within physical-‐aesthetic, economic, 138
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social and/or cultural-‐symbolic dimensions of space. Moreover, the interrelationships between artwork and public space are basically beheld by public-‐art producers and policymakers on the one hand and public art’s publics on the other. As such, situated knowledges (cf. Haraway 1991) of public art may be discerned and developed in relation to people, time and space, as we have done in this study. At this juncture, these knowledges can be critically reflected upon by engaging with conceptual issues related to geographies of public art as presented in Chapter 1 and with the broader debate in cultural geography, upon which light has not been explicitly thrown in this study. In line with Schein (2008: 18), the broader cultural geographical debate may be seen as fostered by five foci: cultural practices and their relation to power; culture’s socio-‐political context; culture as object of study and culture as location of critical political involvement; the exposition and reconcilement of the division of knowledge in culture; and a moral evaluation of modern society. The empirical analyses show that public art is a domain of contested terminology and accordingly there is no denominator of beholders’ belief systems about the relationships between art and public space. Core to our argument is that these relationships are situated within actors, time and space per se. The paradigms ‘art in public space’, ‘art of public space’, ‘art as public space’, ‘public space as art’ and ‘art for public space’, as discerned in Chapter 1, recur in any public artwork as beheld in geographical layers of the regional, the local and individual embodiment. An artwork may, according to intersubjective discourse, simply arise within public space without taking this space as a sincere point of reference (e.g. Monument for Antony Winkler Prins, Amsterdam; Sculpture Terrace, Rotterdam), or public art precisely conveys peculiarities of social public space and vice versa (e.g. Face Your World, Amsterdam; The Hand, Antwerp). An artwork, moreover, could become public space as such (e.g. Santa Claus, Rotterdam) or public space could become an artwork in and of itself (e.g. Virtual Museum Zuidas, Amsterdam). Here we add a layer to the art-‐space paradigms by calling up a critical question for debate: by whom and for whom are public art’s spaces produced and reproduced in space and time?
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On the one hand, the relationships between art and public space epitomise the mental images of beholders, which have been constituted in certain sociocultural contexts over time and space. On the other hand, the relationships between art and public space are reified. The socio-‐political context and inherent power structures between policymakers, planners, artists and publics may enable the creation of artefacts for public space from particular standpoints about what public art ‘does’ to people in specific spaces and times, which also raises issues about the site-‐specificity of public artworks (cf. Kwon 2004). Power and control over public art are also intrinsically related to capital holdings: those who pay for public art often define it, but is that a ‘good’ thing in all cases? How ‘public’ is public art when it is defined irrespective of its local audiences? And to what extent is the way paved to the socio-‐ spatial inclusion and exclusion of certain publics in public-‐art practice? (cf. Sharp et al. 2005). The mental and reified elements of the public artscape reveal configurations of knowledges of those who produce public art and those for whom public art is produced within urban development/redevelopment. In this sense, public art should be mainly regarded not as a product as such but as, according to Lacy (1995), a process of value finding, a set of philosophies and an ethical pact as embedded in broader sociocultural agendas. Public art is not by any manner or means value-‐free. The relationships between artwork and public space are essentially normative and inherently socio-‐ political (cf. Deutsche 1996). We may then argue that the slant of socio-‐politicalness – in this case, the negotiation of socio-‐spatial differences (cf. Massey and Rose 2003) – defines a certain publicness of art in space. In this sense, public art also tacitly or explicitly represents broader societal developments and institutional, policy and sociocultural mindsets. The repositioning of regions and cities in a neoliberal context has implied both a sociocultural and moral reassessment of space and place identity (cf. Soja 1989; Castells 1997), and here of public art in particular. Changing regulatory frameworks and related governmentalities (cf. Foucault 1991) as well as changing sociocultural values and mindsets have led to changing public-‐art ambitions, ranging from, for example, welfare support, cultural guardianship 140
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and cultural participation, to the sheer embellishment of public space, state commemorating signage, and flaunting and window-‐dressing practices as part of regionally competitive city-‐marketing frameworks (cf. Jansen 1995; Selwood 1995; Hein 1996; Miles 1997; Michalski 1998; Bach 2001; Fleming 2007; Landry 2008). As interplay with these ambitions, public-‐art actions have historically also been nourished at the level of individual and intersubjective embodiment, that is to say by grassroots sociocultural and arts initiatives, as embedded within ‘new genre public art’ (cf. Lacy 1995) that emphasises the hands-‐on relationships between audiences and public space. To conclude, we may critically rethink the topical discourse on neoliberalism through the windows of public art (cf. also Mitchell 1992; Deutsche 1996). Configurations of public and private parties have brought about ambitions of public art in the wake of competing for capital flows, investors, visitors, workers and residents. Competitive and eminent ambitions are not unproblematic, as their related instrumental thought and corporate agendas could divert public art, as contrivance, to its own use. For example, prevailing prestige art could displace other roles of art in the city, such as public art for socio-‐spatial cohesion and cultural participation, and may communicate over the heads and everyday experiences of the publics. This may lead to an overall impoverishment of the diversity of the public artscape and its sociocultural development potential, as well as to an unsympathetic reaction and dwindling support for public art by its mundane publics.
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6.2.2 Methodological contributions ‘Les geographies solennelles des limites humaines …’ Paul Éluard, Les Yeux Fertiles (1936), translation of quote: ‘The solemn geographies of human limits’, in Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space 1994 [1969/1958]: 211.
‘Pour avancer je tourne sur moi-même Cyclone par l’immobile habité. Mais au-dedans, plus de frontières!’ Jean Tardieu, Le Témoin Invisible (1943), translation of quote: ‘In order to advance, I walk the treadmill of myself – Cyclone inhabited by immobility. – But within, no more boundaries!’, in Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
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1994 [1969/1958]: 214.
The research approaches we adopted are, like public art, not value-‐free. To a certain extent, our own values and beliefs as well as those of this research’s interpretative community – namely the supervising team, journal referees and editors, and the informants and respondents – influenced the choice of topics, cases, informants and spatiotemporal focus point. Our values and beliefs also guided the conduct of the study and hence our interpretation of the results. However, the merits of this study should be judged on qualitative criteria of credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability (cf. Hay 2004). On this, critical reflexivity (cf. Winchester 2004) is inherent in public-‐ art research, and is part and parcel of this study’s epistemic and methodological principle of situated knowledges (cf. Haraway 1991). Such reflexivity implicates self-‐conscious scrutiny of the researcher and the social-‐constructionist nature of the research, which implies an anti-‐realist approach that does not conceal the researcher’s role in interpreting socio-‐spatial reality (cf. Bryman 2008). Thus, this anti-‐realist approach means acknowledging rather than denying our social position as researchers; the research interactions and the collected information are utterly socially contingent (cf. Winchester 2004; cf. also the notion of ‘in-‐ betweenness’ in Moss 1993). As a methodological meta-‐reflection, we believe that the diversity of qualitative and quantitative methodologies and techniques that we employed can be seen as an asset of this study. In our multi-‐methodological approach, we tacitly 142
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problematised the often dualistic use of ‘quantitative’ and ‘qualitative’ research as they are intrinsically interrelated: numbers cannot speak for themselves, and interpretations do count. The research approaches were varied according to geographical layers of the regional, the local and individual embodiment, and as such the approaches complemented each other well. Based on the principle of situated knowledges, our balanced mix of methodologies intrinsically took into account the heterogeneous experiences and discourses of actors involved throughout the particularities of these geographical layers over time. To deconstruct public-‐art claims produced by public art’s producers at the local as well as the embodiment level (cf. Chapter 2), we performed interviews as part of a case-‐study approach that took account of variations in actor perspective, the public-‐art project’s spatial settings and the expression of claims over the projects’ time horizon. As part of discourse analysis, we analytically generalised our study in terms of grounded theory building beyond particulars of one situation towards other situations (cf. ‘analytic generalisation’ in Yin 2008). That is to say, we contemplated the examined public-‐ art projects as emblematic cases that could offer learning moments experienced in other public-‐art projects. Hence, in a sense, these cases have been made commensurable with other public-‐art cases. Cases, as argued by Dunn (2004), are examples of more general socio-‐spatial processes and structures that can be theorised throughout cases. Dunn also argues that the selection of cases – of which informants, respondents and participants are intrinsic elements – combines purpose and serendipity, where he stresses the added value of researching cases with which the researcher is socioculturally and vernacularly acquainted (cf. Dunn 2004); hence our focus on the Netherlands and Flanders. Furthermore, we situated public-‐art practice within institutional and cultural policy contexts and sociocultural practices (cf. Chapter 3). In light of our comparative national/regional and local approach, this was a rather more classic geographical analysis, namely of the Netherlands/Amsterdam vs. Flanders/Ghent. We not only conducted interviews with key informants, and thereby started at the level of individual socio-‐spatial embodiment in order to get to grips with regional as well as local contexts
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and practices, but also substantiated our argument in a rather quantitative sense. We used existing sources and visual fieldwork to build a dataset of public artworks realised in Amsterdam and Ghent in 1945-‐2009 that included the ‘how much’, ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘when’ of these artworks. We were aware that a more classic geographical analysis like this might provide insights into phenomena that could not be revealed to the same extent and in the same manner by a sheer qualitative examination. At the level of socio-‐spatial embodiment, we further pursued a quantitative approach in our analysis of publics’ perceptions regarding their relation to public art and its site (cf. Chapter 4). We conducted street surveys in order to disentangle publics’ first impressions of public art in a sound way. These surveys induced situated knowledges in that they were open to different interpretations by different people in particular space and time frames. Epistemologically, it was hard to tease out to what extent publics’ perceptions were shaped by the whole – viz. the site itself – and by the part, namely the artwork as such (see Arthur Koestler’s concept of holon, as referred to by Coeterier 1996). We therefore sketched the methodological challenge to refine the impressionistic findings by further solid, contextually-‐based qualitative research, which we took up in our final empirical analysis on publics’ perceptions of the ‘Butt Plug Gnome’ in relation to place, space and themselves (cf. Chapter 5). In the final analysis, we first tried to unravel conversational topics from media sources, focus group discussions and expert panels by way of purposive (i.e. nonprobability) sampling techniques immanent in the phenomenological, grounded nature of the research (cf. Glaser 1998). We then used convenience and snowball sampling (cf. Bryman 2008) to recruit interviewees from among people who worked and/or lived near the sculpture. The interviews were an empowering methodology in that we unravelled narrative knowledge of what is emotionally sensed as relevant to peoples’ life courses (cf. Silverman 2010). We found the interactive social context of the conversations extremely powerful, as the questions and answers were applied as both issues and resources, and in so doing the conversational topics were tailored to the naturally occurring data in the ‘speech community’ (cf. Rapley 2004; Silverman 2010). The in-‐depth analysis on the ‘Butt Plug 144
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Gnome’ at the level of individual embodiment has soundly situated indwellers’ experiences of the reciprocal relationships between actual and imagined places, spaces and artworks in particular moments. This has produced a non-‐generalisable epistemology of publics’ perceptions of public art that may be further developed in future studies (cf. Section 6.3). All in all, a methodological non-‐experimental one-‐ sidedness would counteract the assembling strength of the multi-‐methodological approach adopted by this research – notwithstanding the methodological and technical limitations related to the construction of datasets and the robustness of interpretations throughout the study.
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6.2.3 Valorisations of research: contributions to practice
Cultural practices lead to many investments being made in public art, for example in percent-‐for-‐art programmes, so one can argue that public art has a strong societal relevance. The underlying intentions of public art – which originate from artists, planners and policymakers – convey what public art ‘does’ and means to people in space and time. The main concern that arose from our study is that cultural planning and policy unsatisfactorily incorporate free rein for the multiple experiences of users of public space. The publics’ experiences are germane to how distinctive features of art in public space are and should be stressed – think of public art for embellishment, social cohesion, cultural empowerment and participation, international profiling, etc. Saliently, much room is given to prestigious artists who often do not have much ground in common with residents. Is this the way cities want to cope with the social world of the diverse publics of public art? We believe that considerably more agency should be given to those for whom public art is fundamentally intended, namely the publics, in all shapes, forms and colours. These publics should also be enabled to take the helm in public-‐art production – power to the people. We therefore firmly suggest that public-‐art policy, and its broader institutional and urban and regional policy context, as well as the culture and arts sector, should be aware of how public art’s socio-‐spatial dynamics are constructed through
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its intended publics; after all, it is their tax money that pays for public art. We deem it necessary that public-‐art-‐led urban planning at least provide its publics with feelings of engagement, plus, desirably, actual socio-‐spatial involvement so as to also boost local public support for public art. Notwithstanding, the particular location and the function of the public artwork matter in the extent to which ‘power’ is, could and should be given to the publics. For instance, in some prominent metropolitan locales that have a vast number of passers-‐by, such as in the case of the ‘Butt Plug Gnome’ in Rotterdam, the intention of public art’s producers could exactly be to start a wide public debate about place, art, form, meaning, etc., whereas some artworks of monumental scale on less prominent urban sites may serve planners’ goal to merely beautify the environment. Yet it is important to hear the voices of public art’s publics irrespective of the ‘good intentions’ of its creators and planners. On this, creating room for those publics to have also a voice in the public-‐art process is not an elementary but a very delicate task; here we recall Hippocrates’ maxim: ars longa, vita brevis. Space-‐ and time-‐specific awareness of public art in itself and its diverse publics is pertinent to public art. On a rather more instrumental and pragmatic level, an implication of this study for public-‐art practice is the recognition and suggestion that public-‐art-‐led planning requires a proper institutional and intrinsically socio-‐ political infrastructure to channel public, community and individual public-‐art initiatives into socio-‐spatial creative processes. Public-‐art policy is, to a considerable extent, material to the everyday sociocultural practices and traditions of a lively visual urban culture, and vice versa. This should be kept in mind when, notably, cutbacks are made and when planners implement regional and urban regulations/deregulations. Also, public-‐art claims, the related funding and the perceived plausibility of the claims should be committed to paper within a feedback framework and discussed regularly among the involved actors in order to avoid distorted spatial-‐administrative cooperation and frustration between these actors. Moreover, we believe that cultural practices should foster the spatial and typological diversity of public art ‘from within’ and discourage one-‐dimensional rhetoric and 146
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implementation of public art. The course of the public artscape in time and space is charted by cultural policy, bottom-‐up initiatives and the international art world. This complex whole should be used as an on-‐going renewable resource. For instance, one should not merely think in terms of public artworks, desirably produced by ‘big names’, that are abstracted from quotidian places used by the common man. Instead, those who are intending and producing public art should carefully take stock of the richness of various particular experiences of space and place from the producer, policy and art worlds as well as those from public art’s ‘consumers’. Therefrom, one may attribute roles and functions to art in public space and let public art come into being along these situated lines. Contrarily, a priori public-‐art initiatives that as such do not scrutinise the particularities of the relationships between art, space and people in situ, stand a chance of impeding socio-‐spatial accountability and justification – unless disturbing the socio-‐spatial order is the contemplated ultimate intention. Here, we may refer to the textbook example of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc, a 27-‐metre long, 3.5-‐metre high curving black wall of raw steel that was installed at Federal Plaza in New York in 1981. Many publics, particularly office workers at Federal Plaza, protested strongly against the object. It was commonly considered a monstrosity and people experienced the work as an obstacle to their progress when crossing the plaza. The artist attested that his work was site-‐specific and that removing it from its site would imply destroying it – which is what happened in 1989, after the jury of a public hearing ordered its removal (cf. Weyergraf-‐Serra and Buskirk 1991). Kwon (2004) argues that the removal of Tilted Arc bespoke the reclaiming of public space by its publics; in this sense, we argue that the disappearance of Tilted Arc manifested itself as a public artwork in and of itself. What is more, the example of Tilted Arc makes clear that public art is in an erratic societal field of force far beyond the art-‐historical confines of museums and galleries. Everything being taken into account, this research promotes more refined public-‐art-‐led practices that genuinely engage with and practically incorporate the varying perspectives of all actors involved – that is, artists, policymakers, planners and publics within geographical
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layers of the regional, the local and individual embodiment – from public-‐art’s planning phase throughout its implementation and ‘afterworld’. In so doing, wider interests would be served. All the involved actors, the publics in particular, the locale as well as the time frame are of paramount importance to land-‐use-‐based initiatives of public art, which might let us look into futures of art in the city at the harmonious crossroads of pragmatism and imagination.
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6.3
New research agendas
Further research should be constructed through the tenet of reflexivity, which is intrinsic in situated knowledges. Specifically regarding the interrelationships between art and public space, future research should acknowledge and further develop the perspectives of different actors (artists, policymakers, planners and publics), different geographical contexts (the regional, the local and the level of individual embodiment) and different temporal perspectives (from planning and design, through production to placement and formal and public evaluation of public art). On this, perspectives of public art’s publics should be further engaged in. Public-‐art research should foster the reflexive approach by situating publics’ perceptions of the reciprocal relationships between particular artworks and particular places in particular moments, which hence produces a non-‐ generalisable epistemology of this matter. In all, new research, applying reflexive and experimental methodologies, should further disentangle the lived experiences of public art, viz. the interrelationships between different classes of artworks, sites, patrons and particularly publics in space and time. In so doing, spatiotemporally different registers of public-‐art perception can be thoroughgoingly developed. And, as such, more insight could be gained into how engaging geographies of public art are socio-‐spatially constructed and reconstructed within beholders’ mental and visceral negotiations of both the artwork and public space. Within the purview of the previous broader research agenda, we now formulate a concluding set of points of interest that designate concrete directions in which new 148
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research agendas on geographies of public art could be elaborated. In our study, we primarily focused on permanent and formally erected public artworks, especially within the scope of our comparative study on the Netherlands/Amsterdam and Flanders/Ghent. In order to gain a more holistic insight into people’s experiences of particularly the public artscape and more broadly the sign language of urban space, it is important that future studies broaden the research field by explicitly including temporary and informal, spontaneously emerging artworks in the analysis, for example graffiti – which are often considered ‘illegal’ by public officials –, participatory community performances and grassroots arts initiatives. In addition, it is also interesting to comparatively address people’s ambiguous experiences about art in relation to space. These ambiguities, including ambivalences, may be associated with altering affects triggered by the ever-‐ changing presence of certain objects and subjects and by changing weather conditions like varying light intensities and precipitation. How do people, for instance, experience an artwork in a backstreet amongst the presence of a few loitering teens on a rainy night? And how do people perceive exactly the same artwork amongst a shopping crowd in broad sunny daylight? Here, a longitudinal study that employs reflexive methods, taking a gender perspective into account too, may provide a sound indication of changes in public-‐art perceptions of different publics over time. As said, the study of the public artscape could be thematically broadened by focusing on transient and informal forms of public art. It can also be spatially broadened by expanding the focus on urban space to an outlook on how public art is related to other spaces such as rural areas and virtual and augmented realms, all of which involve public communities. Furthermore, the focus may also be extended to an examination through other gazes, such as that of the tourist, migrant and the economic context. For instance, to what extent is public art in certain spaces geared towards tourists, and what does this mean to public-‐art perceptions and the geographical development of the public artscape? To what extent does the presence of a large migrant population lead to cultural diversifications of public art and its socio-‐spatial
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aims and to an invigoration of urban life as such? How does the spatiotemporal public artscape produce images of ‘us’ and ‘them’? We may also wonder how city planners and developers evaluate their investments in public art and what the socioeconomic value of public art implies in the contemporary spirit of the age as reflected by, for instance, percent-‐for-‐art regulations. How can the relationships between urban regeneration, the creation of public art and the creation of jobs in societal culture be conceptualised? How do spatio-‐economic developments coevolve with public-‐ art production? The current neoliberal context urges us to think about the critical meaning of public art for the image of urban visual culture and urban identity in societal parlance. By whom and for whom and from which rationales is public art made in time and space? How are certain people either included in or excluded from particular ‘public’ spaces over time, and why? At the current juncture, we may ask to what extent the socio-‐ spatial processes of inclusion and exclusion by way of public art are intentional or subliminally immanent within institutional and policy contexts and related political power regimes. How may socio-‐spatial politics of public art be construed? What are the socio-‐spatial lines of public art in times of recession and poverty? To what extent could a critique of a neoliberal impoverishment of the public artscape of cities and regions be developed? To what extent could polarising shifts in the development of the public artscape be discerned? For instance, to what degree are prestige artworks within the scope of city marketing privileged by urban planners as compared to art in neighbourhoods that is aimed at social cohesion and cultural empowerment? Does this lead to a problematic partitioning of social and symbolic spaces in urban culture? To what degree does the implementation of public art produce and reproduce and as such create, maintain and deepen dominant spaces of injustice? And how can the balance be geographically redressed by public art itself? Asking questions is as important as answering them. 150
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Publiek kunstbeeld: Kunst in de openbare ruimte in kwestie
Nederlandstalige samenvatting van hoofdresultaten
(Public artopia: Art in public space in question Dutch summary of main findings) Martin Zebracki
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Kunst zinnig? Kunst als ruimtelijke ontordening Het is vaak tegen de bierkaai vechten om een kunstwerk, hetzij permanent of tijdelijk, te realiseren op straat. Menig kunstenaar, vooral degene die uitsluitend vertrouwd is met een museale kunsttraditie, voelt zich in de openbare ruimte niet zelden gevangen in een eenmansorkest. Van hem wordt verwacht gehoor te geven aan het geharrewar van planners, bewoners, bezoekers, bedrijven en eenieder die meent de ruimtelijke regie over de directe leefomgeving in handen te hebben, en mede via kunst te sturen. Gelijktijdig verwacht men dat de kunstenaar met zijn werk niet enkel en alleen zijn eigen kunstenaarsbestaan bevredigt, maar het engagement aangaat met ruimtegebruikers en met een gespierde taal iets over de omgeving zegt. En juist over deze zeggingskracht en daarmee ruimtelijke (ver)beeldingskracht kunnen de betrokken actoren – zowel ‘producenten’ als ‘consumenten’ van publieke kunst – hevig met elkaar in de clinch liggen. Iedereen heeft wat te zeggen over kunst op straat. ‘Verspil ons belastinggeld niet!’ (Karin van Es, paranimf) is een loze maar geen ongehoorde kreet die met schering en inslag wordt geslaakt door bewoners. Mensen kunnen zich genepen en onbegrepen voelen door de wijze waarop kunst via een dikwijls elitair achterhoedegevecht op straat wordt geparachuteerd. Vooral als die kunst zich met onmogelijk te decoderen postmoderne culturele codes opdringt aan een
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voorondersteld publiek – of zelfs vermeend op te voeden goegemeente. Onbekend maakt soms onbemind. Veelal resulteert de controverse over publieke kunst in een kakofonie waar geen touw aan vast te knopen valt. Maar die controverse beklemtoont eens te meer dat kunst als verstoring van de ruimtelijke orde kan worden gezien: kunst vleit zich geheel terecht met de gedachte ruimtelijke conventies te vieren. In tegenstelling tot de ‘functieloze’ rol van publieke kunst in de met efficiëntie doorspekte ruimtelijke ordening, staat kunst functierijk in dienst van de ‘ruimtelijke ontordening’. Deze kan op een Kantiaans-‐ ironische manier worden beschreven als een ‘doelmatigheid zonder doel’. Kunst in de ruimtelijke openbaarheid is intrigerend. Vergeleken met enig ander stedelijk object of proces is het doorgaans niet zoals het betaamt. Bij publieke kunst belooft alles een stochastische belevingsvariabele te zijn. In 2009 werd Paul McCarthy’s Air Pressure neergelaten in de (overigens semi-‐openbare) Botanische Tuinen van de Universiteit Utrecht. Dit op een steenworp afstand van het kantoor van de onderzoeker, die had opgemerkt dat menig toeschouwer flabbergasted was door de kolossale, ‘meer-‐ dan-‐menselijke’ opblaasbare ketchupflessen, dildo’s, varkens en drollen (zie onderstaande foto’s). Dat publieke kunst louter – in de woorden van de Rotterdamse kunstfilosoof Awee Prins (2002) – ‘een sukkel op een sokkel’ behelst, is niet meer.
Paul McCarthy’s Air Pressure (2009) in de Botanische Tuinen van de Universiteit Utrecht, De Uithof. Deze expositie was een cadeau van de Gemeente Utrecht aan de Universiteit Utrecht ter ere van het 370-‐jarig bestaan van deze universiteit. Foto’s door Zebracki.
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Rationale van de studie In de tweede helft van de 20ste eeuw is publieke kunst meer en meer verankerd in het stedelijk weefsel van westerse steden. Stedelijke planners, bestuurders en kunstenaars wijzen op de verschillende fysiek-‐esthetische, economische, sociale en cultureel-‐symbolische rollen van kunst in de openbare ruimte. Zo zou publieke kunst de esthetische kwaliteit van de ruimte verbeteren, economische activiteit en werkgelegenheid stimuleren, cultureel toerisme aanmoedigen, sociale interacties bevorderen, de identiteit van een plek verrijken, en het bewustzijn versterken met betrekking tot culturele karakteristieken en de lokale geschiedenis. Er worden dus claims gelegd op wat publieke kunst ‘doet’ voor mensen op bepaalde plekken en in bepaalde tijden. Tot dusver zijn de axioma’s over publieke kunst amper geproblematiseerd. Bovendien is weinig bekend over de relaties tussen kunst en de openbare ruimte vanuit het perspectief van de publieken: de bewoners in een wijk, de consumenten in een winkelcentrum, de bezoekers en voorbijgangers in een binnenstad etc. Kunst in de openbare ruimte is immers bedoeld voor deze publieken. Het is dus van belang de aandacht te richten op hun percepties en engagement met publieke kunst. Hierbij is het de vraag of de ruimtelijke beleving van publieke kunst zo gevarieerd is als haar publieken. Studies over publieke kunst zijn tot dusver voornamelijk ontwikkeld vanuit kunsthistorische benaderingen die de nadruk leggen op haar iconografische en filosofische context. Deze studies leveren diepe inzichten op. Maar een geografisch perspectief op publieke kunst ontbreekt nogal in deze benaderingen tot op heden. Helemaal begrijpelijk is dat niet, want kunst in de openbare ruimte is gelegen buiten musea en galerijen. Aangezien publieke kunst zich bevindt in een sociaalruimtelijk krachtenveld dat zo complex is als het stadsleven zelf, kan het in een sociaalwetenschappelijke traditie worden gezien als relevant studieobject. Voor een beter begrip van publieke kunst hanteren wij een geografische benadering die een analytisch onderscheid maakt tussen regionale en lokale schaalniveaus en het individuele niveau van ruimtelijke beleving c.q. belichaming.
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Publieke kunst verschilt van plek tot plek, van individu tot individu en per institutionele en culturele context. Al met al probeert dit onderzoek meer inzicht te verschaffen in de relaties tussen kunstwerk, openbare ruimte en toeschouwer. De centrale onderzoeksvraag luidt: hoe gaat men om met de relatie tussen kunstwerk en openbare ruimte op het niveau van (a) de publieke kunstpraktijk c.q. -productie; (b) instituties en cultuurbeleid; en (c) de publieken? Deze dissertatie bestaat uit vier internationaal gejureerde artikelen die zijn gepresenteerd in hoofdstukken 2 tot en met 5. Hoofdstuk 2 handelt voornamelijk over de publieke kunstpraktijk c.q. -‐productie. Hoofdstuk 3 bespreekt de praktijk van publieke kunst zoals gesitueerd in institutionele en cultuurbeleidscontexten. Zowel hoofdstuk 4 als hoofdstuk 5 nemen de relaties tussen kunstwerk en openbare ruimte onder de loep vanuit het perspectief van de publieken. Deze samenvatting biedt een impressie van de hoofdresultaten. In het navolgende bespreken we de voornaamste empirische onderzoeksresultaten per en beantwoorden we de centrale hoofdstuk onderzoeksvraag. We verwijzen de lezer naar het (Engelstalige) hoofdstuk 6 voor een nadere kritische reflectie op deze resultaten in termen van wetenschappelijke en methodologische bijdragen, inclusief onderzoeksbeperkingen. Tevens wordt in dit 6e hoofdstuk de betekenis van deze studie voor de praktijk benadrukt en de agenda voor verder onderzoek geformuleerd.
Het publiek kunstbeeld kritisch beschouwd
Hoofdstuk 2 draagt de titel Publieke kunst kritisch beschouwd: Hoe verhouden claims op publieke kunst zich tot de praktijk? [Deconstructing public artopia: Situating public-art claims within practice] – gepubliceerd in Geoforum. Met publiek kunstbeeld bedoelen we de verzameling van verwachtingen c.q. claims, zoals gereflecteerd in academische literatuur, over de vermeende rollen van kunst in de openbare ruimte in fysiek-‐esthetisch, economisch, sociaal en cultureel-‐ symbolisch opzicht. In dit hoofdstuk analyseren we claims die zijn ‘geproduceerd’ door producenten van publieke kunst, in dit geval kunstenaars, bestuurders, beleidsmakers, 154
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investeerders en participerende c.q. producerende bewoners. We situeren deze claims op basis van de specifieke rollen van de actoren betrokken bij het publieke kunstproject, de geografische context van publieke kunst, en de temporele dimensie c.q. fasen in de ontwikkeling van het project (van voorbereiding tot realisatie van publieke kunst). Met dit doel in gedachten hebben we lokale producenten van publieke kunst geïnterviewd die betrokken zijn bij zogenaamde vlaggenschip-‐ of paradekunst enerzijds en gemeenschapskunst anderzijds. Deze tweedeling in publieke kunst wordt veel gemaakt in de literatuur (zie bijvoorbeeld Lacy 1995; Miles 1997; Hall 2003a,b; Remesar 2005). De onderzochte kunstwerken zijn Virtuele Museum Zuidas (VMZ) (figuur 2.2) en Face Your World (FYW) (figuur 2.3). VMZ (2001-‐heden) is een vlaggenschipproject in de Zuidas, het zakencentrum van Amsterdam. Dit project is gericht op internationale allure en uitstraling. FYW (2005), aan de andere kant, was een gemeenschapsproject in Slotervaart – een etnisch diverse buurt in Amsterdam – en had als doel om sociale cohesie te bevorderen. Het discours van producenten over publieke kunst vertoonde twee overeenstemmende narratieven in het geval van zowel VMZ als FYW. De kunstenaars, enerzijds, benadrukten de fysiek-‐esthetische en cultureel-‐symbolische aspecten van publieke kunst. Het narratief van bestuurders, beleidsmakers, investeerders en participerende c.q. producerende bewoners was voornamelijk sociaaleconomisch gekleurd. Het was evident dat VMZ en FYW verschillende doelen hadden. Waar VMZ vooral was gericht op economische regeneratie van de stad, was FYW vooral geëngageerd met sociale en culturele empowerment van lokale bewoners. VMZ en FYW lieten dus verschillen zien in sociaalruimtelijke reikwijdte. Onze onderzoeksresultaten duiden op drie kritieken over publieke kunstclaims in de theorie alsook in de praktijk. Ten eerste slagen producenten van publieke kunst er niet voldoende in om perspectieven van verschillende actoren te (ond)erkennen. Ze lokaliseren onvoldoende de ‘gesitueerde kennis’ (zie Haraway 1991) die intrinsiek wordt gevormd binnen veranderlijke rollen van verschillende actoren in tijd en ruimte. Ten tweede houden gangbare verwachtingen over publieke kunst nauwelijks rekening met de geografische
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context. De claims besteden weinig zorg aan de specifieke relaties tussen kunst en openbare ruimte bij publieke kunstprojecten. Ten derde veronachtzaamt de gangbare aanspraak op publieke kunst haar realisatiepraktijk. Dat wil zeggen dat de claims de evolutie van ‘discourscoalities’ over publieke kunst ontoereikend in aanmerking nemen. In het discours over publieke kunst is het belangrijk om haar (iteratieve) tijdshorizon kritisch in ogenschouw te nemen, dus vanaf de voorbereiding, implementatie tot de eventuele evaluatie.
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Relevantie van cultuurbeleid voor publieke kunstproductie
De titel van hoofdstuk 3 is: Doet cultuurbeleid ertoe in de productie van publieke kunst? Een vergelijking tussen Nederland en Vlaanderen, 1945-heden [Does cultural policy matter in public-art production? The Netherlands and Flanders compared, 1945-present] – gepubliceerd in Environment and Planning A. Dit hoofdstuk stelt institutionele en cultuurbeleidscontexten van publieke kunst centraal op nationaal, regionaal en lokaal schaalniveau. Cultuurbeleid is verankerd in de institutionele context. Het heeft veranderende intenties c.q. beleidsnadrukken gekend die ten grondslag liggen aan de koers van publieke kunst vanaf haar opmars in West-‐Europa in de tweede helft van de 20ste eeuw. Uit de literatuur is niet duidelijk geworden in welke mate verschillen in cultuurbeleid de productie van publieke kunstwerken in tijd en ruimte hebben beïnvloed. We trachten deze leemte te vullen op basis van empirisch onderzoek in Amsterdam en Gent, waarbij we zowel de lokale als nationale institutionele en beleidscontexten vergelijkend hebben geanalyseerd. We hebben een dataset opgebouwd van openbare kunstwerken gerealiseerd in Amsterdam en Gent tussen 1945 en 2009. Tot op zekere hoogte is er variatie tussen deze steden in tijd en ruimte, die verklaard kan worden door verschillen in governmentality (zie Foucault 1991) en culturele tradities (zie Faludi 2005; Van der Hoeven 2005). De ongelijkheid in publieke kunstlandschappen van onze onderzoekssteden is voornamelijk een resultante van 156
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verschillen in de institutionele context. Vergeleken met Gent zijn in Amsterdam relatief meer publieke kunstwerken gerealiseerd, is er meer diversiteit in vorm en typologie en zijn de werken meer ruimtelijk verspreid (figuren 3.4, 3.5.1 en 3.5.2). Dit is voornamelijk toe te schrijven aan verschillen in governmentalities. Nederland kent een rijkere traditie van stimuleringsbeleid inzake publieke kunstproductie dan België/Vlaanderen, en Amsterdam heeft een sterker ruimtelijk cultureel spreidingsbeleid dan Gent. Bovendien hebben stedelijke vernieuwing en uitbreiding vooral in Amsterdam aangezet tot meer en meer non-‐conformistische kunstwerken in de stedelijke openbare ruimte, in het bijzonder in het modernistische Amsterdam-‐Zuidoost (Bijlmer). Naast verschillen in kwantiteit, visuele typologie en geografische spreiding legt onze analyse overeenkomsten bloot tussen de publieke kunstlandschappen van beide steden. Hierbij spelen zowel in Amsterdam als Gent het autonome element van initiatieven in de internationale kunstwereld, het maatschappelijk middenveld en het breder maatschappelijk domein een rol in de productie van publieke kunst (zie ‘bestuur-‐voorbij-‐de-‐staat’ in Swyngedouw 2005). De rol van lokale gemeenschappen, zoals wijkorganisaties, en actoren, zoals charitatieve fondsen in kunst en cultuur, is hierbij van groot belang. De autonome initiatieven bepalen mede de morfologie van de relaties tussen kunst en openbare ruimte. We hebben dus geobserveerd dat er in de publieke kunstproductie een delicate ‘effectbalans’ bestaat tussen zelfregulatie en de institutionele cultuurbeleidscontexten. Hierbij valt bovendien op dat we in beide steden, zoals in de theorie, een tweedeling in publieke kunstpraktijken aantreffen: centrale prestigeprojecten enerzijds en tijdelijke interventies en sociaal geëngageerde projecten anderzijds.
Beleving van publieke kunst door haar publieken
De kern van publieke kunst: Publieke kunst volgens haar toeschouwers [Beyond public artopia: Public art as perceived by its publics] – gepubliceerd in GeoJournal – is het thema van hoofdstuk 4. In dit hoofdstuk verschuift de aandacht
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nadrukkelijk van het perspectief van kunstproducenten naar de ‘consumenten’-‐zijde van publieke kunst. Sommige auteurs als Hall en Smith (2005) houden weliswaar een pleidooi voor het onderzoeken van percepties van publieke kunst via haar publiek, maar laten het bij die constatering. Dit hoofdstuk presenteert een exploratief, impressionistisch experiment. Er komen publieke kunstlocaties aan bod die hebben gefungeerd als casussen, waarbij we de percepties van publieken i.c. passanten hebben onderzocht ten aanzien van de relaties tussen kunstwerk, openbare ruimte en henzelf. De zes kunstwerken zijn Video Wall (2007) en Monument voor Antony Winkler Prins (1970) in Amsterdam, Beeldenterras (1999) in Rotterdam, De Hand (1986) in Antwerpen, en Blinde Muur (2008) en Samenvloeiing van de Leie en de Schelde (1999) in Gent (figuur 4.2). Deze contemporaine kunstwerken representeren de zes publieke kunstcategorieën die de diversiteit bestrijken van geproduceerde publieke kunstwerken in Nederland en Vlaanderen sinds 1945, te weten (in willekeurige volgorde): (1) monumentale kunst, (2) figuratieve sculptuur, (3) abstracte sculptuur, (4) toegepaste kunst, (5) gevelkunst, en (6) installatie-‐, omgevings-‐ en landschapskunst (zie ook hoofdstuk 3). Er zijn 1.111 straatenquêtes afgenomen die gelijkmatig over de zes locaties zijn verdeeld en inzicht geven in de eerste indrukken van toeschouwers over kunst in de openbare ruimte. De bezoekers, toeschouwers en passanten zijn van nature willekeurig en ongericht: ze hebben in hun dagelijkse praktijken immers vaak niet het voornemen om publieke kunst doelbewust te bezichtigen en kopen ook geen ‘toegangsbewijs’. Dus wanneer we hun aandacht tijdens het afnemen van de enquête richtten op een bepaald kunstwerk en zijn omgeving, werden ze er doorgaans voor het eerst bewust mee geconfronteerd en tevens gedwongen er een denkbeeld over te vormen. De ondervraagden mogen daarom, à la Habermas (1991), worden beschouwd als ‘gewapende’ kritieke toeschouwers. Deze studie laat zien dat de eerste reactie van publieken noch onverdeeld positief noch onverdeeld negatief waren. De locatie werd meestal positiever gewaardeerd dan het kunstwerk zelf. Dat wil zeggen dat de appreciatie van de locatie vaak voorafging aan de waardering van het 158
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kunstwerk op zichzelf. Verder benadrukten de toeschouwers over het algemeen de fysieke kenmerken – zoals materiaal, omvang en vorm – van het openbare kunstwerk. Bovendien bleken figuratieve, conventionele publieke kunstwerken meer aantrekkingskracht te hebben dan abstracte werken. Voorts hebben we de educatieve achtergrond van de publieken (de zogeheten ‘cognitieve nabijheid’ tot publieke kunst) en hun bekendheid met de publieke kunstlocatie (gezien als ‘ruimtelijke nabijheid’) gerelateerd aan (a) de esthetische waardering van het kunstwerk ten opzichte van de locatie (‘esthetische nabijheid’), (b) in hoeverre het kunstwerk en zijn plek als ontmoetingsplaats worden gezien (‘sociale nabijheid’), en (c) de mate waarin het kunstwerk in situ betekenis heeft voor de toeschouwer (‘symbolische nabijheid’). We constateerden dat deze ‘nabijheden’ significant verschilden tussen de onderzochte publieke kunstlocaties. Het was daarenboven opvallend dat ondervraagden die bekend waren met het kunstwerk, het werk positiever waardeerden qua betekenisrijkheid en esthetische geschiktheid voor de plek dan mensen zonder deze bekendheid. De voorgaande algemene kwantitatieve empirische inzichten vragen ter aanvulling om meer solide, reflexief en idiosyncratisch onderzoek ten aanzien van het engagement van publieken met kunst en de openbare ruimte. Een dergelijke gevalsstudie wordt gepresenteerd in hoofdstuk 5.
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Geografie van publiek engagement met publieke kunst
Hoofdstuk 5 gaat om Engagement met publieke kunst: Bewoners, ‘Kabouter Buttplug’ en hun plek [Engaging geographies of public art: Indwellers, the ‘Butt Plug Gnome’ and their locale] – te verschijnen in Social & Cultural Geography. Dit hoofdstuk richt zich op het engagement van publieken met één kunstwerk op één plek. Zodoende laat dit hoofdstuk zich empirisch nader in met het zogeheten individuele niveau van sociaalruimtelijke beleving c.q. belichaming. Puttend uit de epistemologie van ‘gesitueerde kennis’ (Haraway 1991) en de door ons ontwikkelde idee van ‘geografieën van engagement’ (i.c. mate van bewustzijn van
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en betrokkenheid bij kunst in de openbare ruimte vanuit fysiek-‐esthetisch, economisch, sociaal en cultureel-‐ symbolisch perspectief), hebben we een gevalsstudie gemaakt van Paul McCarthy’s internationaal geprezen publieke kunstwerk Santa Claus (2001) (figuur 5.2). Dit betreft een sculptuur die sinds 2008 staat op het Eendrachtsplein, een plaats in het centrum van de stad Rotterdam. De seksuele ondertoon van dit beeld heeft geleid tot haar minder vleiende alledaagse benaming ‘Kabouter Buttplug’. Dit kunstwerk was/is nogal omstreden onder lokale politici en bewoners, zoals bleek in talrijke bijdragen aan kranten en andere media. Deze studie plaatst de gedocumenteerde, veelal negatieve en ambigue mediabeelden naast ervaringen van bewoners over Santa Claus. Hier beschouwen we de bewoners als de publieken van publieke kunst. Als ‘wezens-‐ in-‐de-‐wereld’ (zie Heidegger 1962 [1927]) – vergelijk de jaarringen die inherent zijn aan een boom – hebben ze een intrinsieke onbewuste en bewuste binding met de plek. De mensen accentueerden verscheidene aspecten van ruimtelijkheden en functionaliteiten van de locatie in relatie tot de geschiktheid – zijnde de esthetiek en moraal – van het kunstwerk. De ruimtelijke en cultureel-‐cognitieve nabijheid van bewoners bleek sterk van belang te zijn voor hun engagement met Santa Claus. Met name de bewoners die al langer in de wijk leefden toonden interesse voor plaatsspecifieke facetten van de sculptuur. Dit was aannemelijk gezien hun bekendheid met de locatie en de ‘visuele geletterdheid’ die sommigen toonden. Cultureel geëngageerde bewoners waren zich redelijk bewust van de culturele codes van Santa Claus en de aanverwante algemene kritiek op de consumptiemaatschappij. Het werk staat uitgerekend op een locatie die een krachtmeting is tussen de Rotterdamse consumptie-‐as (winkelgebied) en cultuuras (museumgebied). Enkele ‘vaste’ bewoners vroegen zich weliswaar af of de moderne, monolithische sculptuur wel past bij, naar verluidt, de verfijnde historische architectuur van de plek en haar intiem karakter. Sommige bewoners zagen liever dat de huidige ‘weggedrukte’ historische straatklok haar centrale positie op het plein opnieuw innam. Over het geheel genomen toonden de bewoners binding met het kunstwerk en de plek. Ze uitten engagement met de 160
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Public Artopia: Art in Public Space in Question
ruimtelijke verhoudingen van het kunstwerk, de ruimtelijke positionering van het kunstwerk op zijn plek, en de ruimtelijke en stilistische balans, te weten de (wan)verhouding tussen het kunstwerk en zijn omgeving. Daarbij was een saillant detail dat veel bewoners gefixeerd waren op de permanentie van de sculptuur en bij uitstek op de vermeende ‘buttplug’. Deze ‘buttplug’ vormde als het ware een stimulans om op associatieve wijze te reflecteren op het kunstwerk in relatie tot zijn locatie. Zo zei een bewoner: ‘Dat verhaal en al dat tumult [over de veronderstelde buttplug] blies dat beeld op in mijn fantasie. Maar toen het hier eenmaal kwam, dacht ik: wat een klein beeld’ (respondent 46, man). Tot slot was de toon van bewoners over ruimte en plek primair gekleurd door ‘sociaal onderhandelde’ en daarme gerelativeerde percepties van het kunstwerk (zie de idee van ‘sociale relationaliteit’ in Massey en Rose 2003). We constateerden dat bewoners de plek van Santa Claus mentaal hadden ‘onderhandeld’ met het kunstwerk. Als voorgestelde alternatieve ruimten voor Santa Claus kozen de bewoners onder meer voor ‘passageachtig’, ‘groen’, ‘modern’ of ‘zedelijk gepast’. En geprefereerde alternatieve kunstwerken voor het plein zouden bovenal ‘monumentaal’ of ‘direct herkenbaar’ in relatie tot de (historiciteit van de) plek dienen te zijn.
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Bijdragen en nader onderzoek
Dit exploratieve onderzoek heeft meer inzicht verschaft in de relaties tussen kunst en openbare ruimte vanuit de perspectieven van verschillende actoren (kunstenaars, beleidsmakers, planners – al met al producenten – en toeschouwers), verschillende geografische en institutionele contexten (nationaal, regionaal, lokaal en individueel schaalniveau) en verschillende tijdsdimensies (van planning en design tot productie, plaatsing en eventuele evaluatie van publieke kunst) (cf. ‘gesitueerde kennis’, Haraway 1991). Dit onderzoek heeft bijgedragen aan geografische kennis over kunst in fysiek-‐esthetische, economische, sociale en cultureel-‐symbolische dimensies van de openbare ruimte. Verder raadt dit onderzoek aan dat beleidsmakers, in het kader van maatschappelijke verantwoordelijkheid,
161
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‘gesitueerde kennis’ van publieke kunst in relatie tot mensen, tijd en ruimte inzetten teneinde publiek engagement te bevorderen. Gebaseerd op het epistemologisch principe van ‘gesitueerde kennis’ varieerden de onderzoeksbenaderingen naargelang geografische lagen op nationaal, regionaal, lokaal en individueel schaalniveau. Dit hield in dat er sprake was van een complementaire mix van kwalitatieve en kwantitatieve methoden en technieken, die de heterogene ervaringen en discoursen van actoren in tijdruimtelijke contexten situeerde. Onze multimethodologische benadering problematiseert overigens het veelvuldig dualistisch gebruik van ‘kwantitatief’ tegenover ‘kwalitatief’ onderzoek. Kwantitatief en kwalitatief onderzoek zijn intrinsiek aan elkaar gekoppeld: cijfers ‘spreken’ niet voor zich en interpretaties ‘tellen mee’, en andersom. Gedurende het onderzoek kleefden er weliswaar methodologische en technische beperkingen aan de constructie van datasets en de robuustheid van empirische interpretaties. Publiek kunstonderzoek zou een reflexieve benadering nader kunnen voeden via verder experimenteel engagement met de beleving van publieke kunst door haar publieken. Een diepgaande situering van hun ‘levende’ ervaringen binnen de relaties tussen specifieke kunstwerken en specifieke plekken op specifieke momenten, zou een verfijnde en waardevolle non-‐generaliseerbare epistemologie produceren van de mentale matrijs van toeschouwers in ruimte, tijd en sociale context. Op deze plaats willen we een aantal concrete onderzoeksagenda’s formuleren. Ons onderzoek betrof voornamelijk formele en permanente publieke kunst. Voor een meer holistische analyse zou toekomstig onderzoek ook het accent kunnen leggen op informele, tijdelijke en spontaan ontstane kunstwerken. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan participatieve performances in buurten, en aan graffiti die door overheden vaak als ‘illegaal’ wordt gezien. Naast deze thematische verbreding zou het interessant zijn om de ruimtelijke focus te verruimen in vervolgonderzoek. Hoe verhoudt publieke kunst zich bijvoorbeeld tot de ‘rurale’ ruimte? Recentelijk zijn de hybride relaties tussen fysieke en virtuele ruimtelijke dimensies meer onder de aandacht van geografen gekomen. Hoe kunnen bijvoorbeeld de geografische implicaties van augmented reality (‘toegevoegde realiteit’) worden 162
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beschouwd? Nieuw onderzoek zou ook nadruk kunnen leggen op ambigue ervaringen van kunst in de openbare ruimte. Persoonlijke ervaringen van publieke kunst kunnen veranderen naargelang weersomstandigheden en de aanwezigheid van bepaalde dingen en personen. Een longitudinaal perspectief zou daarbij meer inzicht kunnen geven in de relationele belevingsdynamiek tussen toeschouwer, kunstwerk en openbare ruimte. Geografische studies naar publieke kunst zouden bovendien kunnen worden ontwikkeld door de bril van gender, de toerist en de migrant. Hoe wordt het publieke kunstlandschap door deze brillen gezien? En hoe (re)produceert dit publieke kunstlandschap beelden van ‘wij’ en ‘zij’ in tijd en ruimte? Verder spoort de huidige neoliberale context aan om na te denken over de kritische betekenis van publieke kunst in stedelijke visuele cultuur. Door wie en voor wie en volgens welke grondgedachten wordt kunst voor bepaalde ruimten door de tijd heen gecreëerd? Hoe evalueren overheden, planners en ontwikkelaars hun investeringen in publieke kunst? Wat is volgens hen de sociaaleconomische waarde van verscheidene vormen van publieke kunst? Zo zijn er percentageregelingen voor kunst bij gebouwen en infrastructurele projecten. Hoe worden specifieke mensen ingesloten in of uitgesloten van bepaalde ‘publieke’ plekken, en waarom? In hoeverre prefereren stadsplanners bijvoorbeeld centrale prestigekunst binnen het bestek van citymarketing boven buurtkunst die doelen omtrent sociale cohesie en culturele empowerment nastreeft? Al met al is de geografie van publieke kunst een interessant complex dat nader onderzoek verdient.
Dankwoord
Het schrijven van een leesbaar aperçu voor het grotere Nederlandstalige publiek was geen peulenschil. Dank in dezen gaat uit naar mijn collegae Irina van Aalst, Rob van der Vaart en Ben de Pater. Zij zijn mijn inspiratoren van het eerste uur, evenals Marca Wolfensberger, de roerganger van het geografisch honoursonderwijs in Nederland. Onder haar hoede zette ik me zo’n tien jaar geleden op het spoor van ‘kunstgeografie’. Deze dissertatie is niet het eindstation.
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Massey, D. and Rose, G. (2003) Personal Views: Public Art Research Project. Milton Keynes: The Open University. Matarasso, F. (1996) Defining Values. Evaluating Arts Programmes. Stroud: Comedia. Matarasso, F. (1997) Use or Ornament? The Social Impact of Participation in the Arts. Stroud: Comedia. Matzner, F. (ed.) Public Art: A Reader. Ostfildern-‐Ruit: Hatje Cantz. McCarthy, J. (2006) Regeneration of cultural quarters: public art for place image or place identity?, Journal of Urban Design 11(2): 243–262. McClellan, A. (ed.) (2003) Art and Its Publics. Museum Studies at the Millennium. Oxford: Blackwell. Michalski, S. (1998) Public Monuments. Art in Political Bondage, 1870–1997. London: Reaktion Books. Miles, M. (1997) Art, Space and the City: Public Art and Urban Futures. London: Routledge. Miles, M. (ed.) (2003) Cultures and Settlements: Advances in Art and Urban Futures. Bristol: Intellect. Miles, M. (2007) Cities and Cultures. London: Routledge. Miles, M. and Hall, T. (2005) Interventions: Advances in Art and Urban Futures Volume 4. Bristol: Intellect. Miller, T. and Yúdice, G. (2002) Cultural Policy. London: Sage. Mitchell, W. (ed.) (1992) Art and the Public Sphere. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Molenaar, A. (2008) Een kabouter als vrijheidsbeeld. Notitie voorstel plaatsing Santa Claus – McCarthy [A gnome as statue of liberty. Memorandum on placement of Santa Claus – [Paul] McCarthy], Memo, Liveable Rotterdam, Rotterdam. Moody, E. (1990) Introduction, in Public Art Forum (ed.) Public Art Report. London: Public Art Forum, pp. 2–3. Morris, N. and Cant, S. (2006) Engaging with place: artists, site-‐specificity and the Hebden Bridge Sculpture Trail, Social & Cultural Geography 7(6): 863-‐888. Moss, P. (1993) Focus: feminism as method, The Canadian Geographer 37(1): 48–49. Mouffe, C. (2008) Public spaces and democratic politics, in Boomgaard, J. (ed.) Highrise – Common Ground. Art and the Amsterdam Zuidas Area. Amsterdam: Valiz, pp. 135– 156. Municipality of Amsterdam (2009) Buitenkunst. Beleidskader Kunst in de Openbare Ruimte Amsterdam 2009–2015
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Rotterdams Dagblad (2003) ‘Aanstootgevende kabouter’ in stadscentrum ongewenst [‘Offensive gnome’ in city centre undesirable], Rotterdams Dagblad, 5 March. Salet, W. and Majoor, S. (2005) Amsterdam Zuidas European Space. Rotterdam: 010. Schein, R. (2008) Cultural traditions, in Duncan, J., Johnson, N. and Schein, R. (eds) (2008) A Companion to Cultural Geography. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 11–23. Schramme, A. (2006) Gewikt en gewogen. Cultuurnota & Kunstendecreet [Weighing the pros and cons. Cultural memorandum & arts decree], Boekman 76 (summer): 32– 39. Schwanen, T. and De Jong, T. (2008) Exploring the juggling of responsibilities with space-‐time accessibility analysis, Urban Geography 29(6): 556–580. Sculpture International Rotterdam (2006) From Zadkine to McCarthy. A Guide to the Rotterdam International Sculpture Collection. Rotterdam: Stichting Centrum Beeldende Kunst. Selwood, S. (1995) The Benefits of Public Art. The Polemics of Permanent Art in Public Places. London: Policy Studies Institute. Senie, H. (2003) Reframing public art: audience use, interpretation, and appreciation, in McClellan, A. (ed.) Art and Its Publics. Museum Studies at the Millennium. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 185–200. Senie, H. and Webster, S. (eds) (1998) Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context, and Controversy. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. Sevenant, M. and Antrop, M. (2009) Cognitive attributes and aesthetic preferences in assessment and differentiation of landscapes, Journal of Environmental Management 90(9): 2889–2899. Seymour, S. (2000) Historical geographies of landscape, in Graham, B. and Nash, C. (eds) Modern Historical Geographies. Harlow: Longman, pp. 193–217. Sharp, J., Pollock, V. and Paddison, R. (2005) Just art for a just city: public art and social inclusion in urban regeneration, Urban Studies 42(5/6): 1001–1023. Sheikh, S. (2004) In the place of the public sphere? Or, the world in fragments, http://republicart.net/disc/publicum/sheikh03_en.pdf (accessed 30 September 2011). 176
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Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Martin Zebracki
Vita
Copyright © 2012. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.
Martin Zebracki (1984) holds an honours BSc degree (Cum Laude) and an MSc degree by Research (Summa Cum Laude) in Human Geography and Urban and Regional Planning, which he obtained from Utrecht University in 2005 and 2007, respectively. In 2006, Zebracki attended graduate research courses in geography and Photograph by Konrad Zebracki. art history at the University of Florida. He was teaching assistant in Human Geography at Utrecht University and in Social Statistics at the University of Florida. From 2007 through 2011, Zebracki conducted PhD research on the interrelationships between art, public space and people at Utrecht University. During this research, he supervised the theses of various honours Bachelor and Master’s students, in whom he endeavoured to instil enthusiasm for conducting multidisciplinary research. In 2007-‐2011, Zebracki also gave diverse courses and lectures in cultural geography at Utrecht University and the international Utrecht Summer School. Moreover, he has contributed to several international conferences in terms of presentations and special sessions. Zebracki is currently lecturer and researcher in the Cultural Geography Group at Wageningen University and academic adviser at University College Utrecht, an international honours college. He holds several academic reviewing and editing positions and has published sundry academic and professional articles in the field of cultural geography. His current research interests revolve around space and place, public art, representation, identity, power, gender, sexuality, and embodiment. Personal website: http://www.zebracki.com 180
Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia : Art in Public Space in Question, Amsterdam University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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