Practical research processes towards Public Art in the City. The example of new art projects for the Hardau area in Zurich.

“Public Art in the City of Zurich” is an interdisciplinary, cross-institutional, and practice-oriented research project dedicated to exploring public art in the City of Zurich. Till 2007 Zurich had neither a public art concept nor a coherent strategy for contemporary art in public space. Moreover, concepts of art and the public sphere have been undergoing fairly dramatic changes in the past 25 years. Analysing the overall situation, the project on the one hand aimed to achieve reorientation and on the other hand tried to position the issues on a local and international stage.

In a first project phase (2004 – 2007) the research group (steared by the “Institute for Contemporary Arts Reseach”) developped and realised ten art pilot projects as well as an innovative strategy (mission statement) for public art in the City of Zurich. The research outcome was published in 2007 by launching the book “Kunst und Öffentlichkeit” by JRP|Ringier Publishers.

Thanks to the broad survey of the Hardau area the “Institute for Contemporary Arts Research” (IFCAR) was given the commission by the City of Zurich to design a competition for new art projects in a new school building and a new public park in the so called area of Hardau. Being in charge of the whole competition, the Institute designed the remit and selected both local (Sabina Baumann, Nic Hess, Zilla Leutenegger, Julika Rudelius, Loredana Sperini) and international artists (Maja Bajevic, Marko Lulic, Adrian Paci, Ayse Erkmen, Sislej Xhafa) of whom we thought could cope with the task of drafting sustainable and meaningful art projects.

In our perspective artworks in public sphere which create reference to relevant urban factors are of growing social importance. In the Hardau area, factors relating to social space and urban development have turned out to be of particular importance.

We provided the invited artists with any background information that could be helpful in order to develop their project entries for the park and the school. Both of them function as places of encounter and exchange, where cultural diversity and the resulting conflict will become manifest. While the park, used by a heterogeneous group of people, will become a place where diverse values (attitudes to life and everyday behaviour) may come together, the secondary school will be a place where the shared individuation of young students takes place as well. Two sets of issues are relevant to the competition: the coming together of culturally diverse values, and the value shifts during this process of individuation. The aspect of cultural identification thus constitutes a type of pivot between the sets of issues described above.

The jury (various members of the City authority, members of the Institute, artists and architects) has recently taken the decision to commission an art work by Zilla Leutenegger in the school building and one by Sislej Xhafa in the park. At the moment the Institute is closely involved in the realisation of these two art projects which also means conveying the ideas and meanings of the projects to the residents of the Hardau area and the public of Zurich.

During the projects duration the research team had to address various problems in the field of the politics as well as in the communication toward the public. We became aware that the communication with various stakeholers has became crutial for success the whole project. Therefore we developed a customised strategy for the artist‘s needs, as well as for the need of the University and the City of Zurich.

The presentation will include the following parts:

- explain the pilot projects in the Hardau area
- discuss the context of the art in public space with focus on Zurich todays practice
- show the used interdisciplinary research methodologies to gather a dense knowledge about the site and the various contextes
- discuss the competition program and the remit
- show the two selected projects and discuss the decision of the jury
- explain the communication strategy

The discussion will focus on the following questions:

- How can research results be applied to a practical question?
- How can art in public space been supported by a research framework?
- How can artists been involved in a research oriented process in order to develop a) a pilot project and b) to design a significant work of art in a given context (which may be unfamiliar to the artist)?
- How can different research processes been syncronised and the gathered knowledge been bundled towards an artistic outcome?
- How can researchers advise authorities in the process of commissioning art works (competition, communication, public relations, planing processes, documentation etc.)?
- How can the research outcome be transfered to a pragmatic knowledge which can be used further on for similar problems?

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SK6 presentation – Christoph Lang

Christoph Lang
Research associate at the Institute for Contemporary Arts Research.
Zurich University of the Arts, Institute for Contemporary Arts Research