Civic Aesthetics Unleashed - Discussion at Siobhan Davies Studios - London Southwark

Flore Nové-Josserand has piloted a discussion titled "Civic Aesthetics Unleashed" between choreographer Susanne Thomas, art consultant Vivien Lovell, and visual artist Lothar Götz, about their experience of introducing art into public spaces.

I had to book by telephone, and I was agreeably surprised, it felt as if the receptionist was "part of the family". It was my first visit at Siobhan Davies Studios. The building grown out of a collaboration between choreographer Siobhan Davies and architect Sarah Wigglesworth that has lasted ten years, with extensive consultations with Southwark planning department, English Heritage, local residents, the school and its governors. The dance studio on the roof is both a serene, reassuring and stimulating space, well isolated from urban noise and allowing to focus on work, but at the same time the all building including the dance studio feels well connected to London, its culture and lifestyle. Read more about the building refurbishment and the construction details here.

We had to take our shoes off outside the dance studio, and a person sat on my right started stretching. It was organised as a discussion from the beginning to the end. It was quite interactive, but it would have been cool to show some videos and photographs of the art works they were taking as examples, at the same time.

Vivien Lovell, founder of Modus Operandi and a member of the Royal Academy Forum for Architecture and Art, was a particularly articulated speaker to answer questions. I first thought she was the choreographer because of her way to stand, but no, I was wrong. She explained their best critics come from the architectural profession, as public art can be very difficult to apprehend for art critics, it is often more complex and there are more parameters and risk taking than in a controlled environment such as a theatre or an art gallery.
"There are two categories of artists, the ones who embrace all those parameters and the context, and the ones who don't".
There are a lot of risk assessments to do. She is also amused by what is acceptable behaviour or not in the public space. As her work is financed by clients she has no time for education, but explained she was actually doing a great deal for education.

Choreographer Susanne Thomas, from Seven Sisters Group, gave me the impression to be a strong, well earthed and positive woman. I do believe she is brilliant to communicate with communities and councils, and sort out difficult issues to make things happen. She said curators can rarely equal her to do this job, because she is the one who believes the most in the project. One of her best achievement was Trainstation, a show in Waterloo station. The public had not been informed before.
"I didn't want to come with a placard - This is contemporary dance" . For people it wasn't clear what was going on in the station as they became part of the piece. She mentioned the excitement of the proximity with the performers.
With her work, "You see immediately what works and what doesn't".
About education, "There is no need to educate the audience but a need to educate commissioners".
At some point, she became didactic in her discourse, and explained there are now different categories of public art: site responsive work, site generating work, experiential theatre such as Punchdrunk, and different types of spaces: generic spaces such as train stations, specific-identity spaces. Concerning works developed with the community, there are different types of project: WITH or IN the community. It may be hard to liaise with communities, as there are not always representants within those communities. She started to work with I-pod as well, (co-relation between pre-recorded and real time).

Painter Lothar Götz said his work has not always been well represented in the press, and sometimes completely ignored. His colorful murals are designed depending on the activity in the space (how crowded it is), the distance and the angle from where you see them, the rythms in the constructive systems, and he likes to highlight irregularities that might otherwise go unnoticed. He also made a hut in the middle of a market for old people. The shop keepers were unhappy because they think old people spend less money, but old people were delighted with the project.

As a public artist, you may be ignored by the art critics, but you get a response from people who are not from the Art world.


Thierry Bidet - Art & Architecture - 25/10/09




.