Hello, all:

Sorry to jump in late... but I guess it's time for me to weigh in as a
public art program director.  Here is my perspective on the situation (big
picture to small....)

I, like many people in my field, chose to be involved in public art because
it's an opportunity to promote dialogue about the public realm, democracy,
etc. etc.  I do not see public artwork as permanent, I certainly don't see
it as a commodity to be exchanged or valued because of its monetary worth,
and I mostly see the role of art in public places as something meant to
promote dialogue.  

That being said, I do not believe that public art should be commissioned as
permanent, whether it is designed to be placed in a building or public place
(most of which are designed to last no more than 30-40 years)or it is
commissioned for short-term display.  It's my view that artworks should have
a fixed long-or short-term lifespan and that they should be re-evaluated at
the end of the lifespan.  If they are judged to have a future (in situ or
somewhere else) AND the artist wishes them to have a longer life, then
discussion should begin about how to facilitate that.   Better still, the
longer-term disposition of the artwork should be part of the contractual
process.

Everything degrades, whether it is bronze, steel, wood or media.  Many
famous artworks no longer exist as a result of war, politics, weather or a
variety of other factors. That's life.  Nothing lasts and perhaps it is not
meant to.  Many of the heritage artworks that we have just happen to be the
ones that survived.  The majority of human artifacts have disappeared and,
thank goodness, will continue to do so.  Otherwise we would all be choking
in society's waste.  

Concerning media works, though, the question is what was the artist's
intent?  If the agreement about the lifespan of the work is unclear at the
beginning, it is assumed that the intent is that the work should last
forever and, with laws such as the Visual Artists Rights Act and similar
laws enforced through the Geneva Convention, it implies that the
owner/public entity is responsible for maintaining the work in perpetuity.
That is simply infeasible.  For starters, many artists work is based on an
exploration of the medium not its message (apologies to Marshall McLuhan).
So if, for example, an artist was exploring the joys of the early Xerox
machine and using, say, his own face as the subject, once the image
disappears, recreating it in another medium is not the point.  The Xerox
print was the point.  The same thing would go for, say, Nam Jun Paik's work
or, more to the point, Dan Flavin's work.  Dan Flavin specified that when
the fluorescent bulbs he worked with ceased to be manufactured, his artworks
should disappear.  Apparantly he did not specify this loudly enough since
museums and collectors all over are now re-manufacturing dead technology to
maintain the value of his work (or, more benignly, to share it with future
generations.)

Where does that leave artists and "the public."  My recommendation is that
a) administrators should involve artists in decisions about the lifespan of
their works and also how the works should be documented and presented to
future generations and b) artists should make their intentions clear, design
their work simply, and make contingency plans (like a will) about what
should happen to their work if technologies change.  

I took the job in San Jose's public art program because the airport's master
plan specified temporary changing artworks. I am hoping that we will be able
to support a variety of new ideas without worrying if they will last
forever.  We hired the Gorbet+Banerjee team to help us develop a framework
that would allow to accommodate that.  I hope that we will be able to
pioneer a program that allows artists to experiment with new ideas; state
their intentions of how the work will be documented for posterity; then
allows us to move on with commissioning other artwork.

City of San José, Office of Cultural Affairs
365 S. Market St.
San José, CA 95113
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tel:  408.277.5144 ext. 27
fax:  408.277.3160
 
www.sanjoseculture.org/pub_art
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Polaine [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Monday, July 17, 2006 11:16 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] Permanence and public art - re-use?

Matt, all good points.

I agree that it may be a matter of choice for the artists but  
frequently the conversation is more about what curators and  
archivists would like than the work itself. I also *do* think plenty  
of new media artists are naive (probably less so now, so 'have been'  
might be a better phrase) about the ephemeral nature of their work  
and technology it is produced/stored/displayed on.

My experience has been that work *dates* when it relies on the 'new'  
part of new technology to create an impression or prop up the work.  
Some great old new media works have fairly worn out and dated  
technology but the intent, idea and experience still shines through.  
Plenty of new new media works were frankly awful from the outset and  
date very quickly indeed (even within the space of time it takes make  
and install the work).

But of course changing the mindset of public art commissioning would  
be a step forward. The problem is that when someone in that position  
wants to commission work it often seems the commissioner is as  
equally keen to leave their mark as the artist may (or may not be).  
When we engage in hand wringing about the work's future or ability to  
be preserved, we buy into the same bronze soldier-on-a-horse mindset.

What's interesting, for me, about that last point and Janet Zweig's  
piece is that it displays a (sustainable) designer's mindset than an  
artists and in fact we've been talking about designing works here a  
great deal. As someone who has ranged along that designer-artist  
continuum I have become very used to the fact that most of the new  
media design work I have done doesn't exist beyond screenshots  
anymore. Any dot-com-bombers portfolio is pretty much the same.

Best,

Andy



On Jul 17, 2006, at 11:28 PM, Matt Gorbet wrote:

> I certainly agree that there are works that should be ephemeral, and
> artists should have the option to choose this for their work if they
> like.  But surely this can't be a 'given' for the entire genre of  
> media
> and technology-based artwork?  Or rather, if it is, we must  
> investigate
> the practical boundaries of this - where do works that *can* be
> preserved diverge from those that cannot?  for what kind of work must
> technological obsolescence/breakdown be a given?
>
> What if the artist doesn't have that ephemerality as part of their
> intent?  (are they simply being naive?)  And is it possible for
> time-limited works to be reasonably commissioned at all in a public  
> art
> model?  How do we change that public art model (which tends to think
> very much along the lines of architecture in terms of permanence)?
>
> My feeling is that the piece's future life should be thought of as  
> much
> as part of the piece as are the dimensions, materials, and form -  
> and as
> such they should be determined and designed by the artist, subject to
> the constraints of the Public Art opportunity.  So it is important  
> that
> they are able to design a realistic and practical future for their
> piece.
>
> I'd also say that interaction offers great opportunities for designing
> change into the piece.  A great example of a piece that's designed to
> change over time in response to the public interacting with it (though
> not a media art piece) is Janet Zweig's piece for the water treatment
> centre: http://www.janetzweig.com/public/08.html
>
> <M>
>
>
> On Mon, 17 Jul 2006 20:55:30 +0200, "Andy Polaine"  
> <[log in to unmask]>
> said:
>> I know it seems a fairly heretical thing to say in this forum, but
>> why the obsessiveness about archiving and preserving? Plenty of works
>> "pass over" into to the technological/cultural graveyard (almost
>> certainly more than manage to be 'archived').
>>
>> That seems to me to be quite okay and natural that they should have a
>> life-span that befits the technological era they were developed in.
>> Many interactive works are almost completely about the experience of
>> interaction in any case, and you can't archive that (outside of your
>> own head). Even writing about the work and documenting it doesn't
>> replace the experience, interesting as that documentation may be as
>> Rosie mentioned.
>>
>> It's rather a more Zen and playful point of view I suppose, but I am
>> reminded that some of the masters of Haiku let their best verses
>> float out to sea rather than let their egos become too attached to
>> them. Plenty of wonderful experiences, interactive art-based or
>> otherwise, are fleeting and that's part of the joy of them.
>>
>> I know the riposte to this is most likely all about preserving
>> culture and enabling future scholarship, etc. but, really, sometimes
>> it's okay to let these things go. Think ice-sculptures instead of  
>> stone.
>>
>> I say this not just to be contrary (okay, that too) but because
>> otherwise the debate gets really bogged down in the how instead of
>> the why.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Andy
>>
>> ----------------------------------
>> Andy Polaine
>> Senior Lecturer, COFA, UNSW
>> Convenor, Omnium Creative Network
>> ----------------------------------