“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

Artistic research as ‘boudary work’ between the art world and academia articulates in its own way who we are and where we stand. This gives the lie to the idea of art as an autonomous sphere and opens the possibility of a ‘metaphysics of art’ – after its fall.

Henk Borgdorff is a professor of Art Theory and Research at the Amsterdam School of the Arts, and research fellow at the Royal Academy of Art and the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.

Borgdorff is the author of two of the Sensuous Knowledge editions:

• The Debate on Research in the Arts
• Artistic Research within the Fields of Science

The School of Architecture Sint-Lucas is a School with a long standing tradition in designing and has traditionally a strong relationship with the School of Art. It’s main competence is the exploration of conceptual designing. Since four year the School started investing in research developments in line with this tradition.

This contribution will, based on our recent experiences, tackle the theme of the conference following three parallel tracks.

First it is based on examining running PhD projects at our School of Architecture Sint-Lucas and the role of engaging with the broader context in these projects. As a design school our education has always taken into account the current social developments. The broader cultural and social context has always been very important. Recently, this has been taken as one of the main criteria for developing research. Some examples will be given trying to clarify how these engage with the wider community.

Secondly, the paper will explore some finished PhDs (especially where practice and designing did play an important role) and the role of critical reflection in the research process. It will especially try to elaborate on the role of this critical reflection in relation the overall research methodology.  How does theoretical work and critical reflection interact?

Finally it will reflect on and try to capture context, processes of knowledge generation and research output communication. Interest will especially be paid to the question how these projects interact with the world outside the academy. How can we establish connections and raise interest with industry, musea, cultural organization, … It will be reported that research themes have developed collaborations with musea and other organization, creating recognition of the value of our research outside our academic context. Some examples will be touched indicating some difficulties as well as benefits of this interaction.

Moreover, the contribution intends to explore these questions highlighting (aspects of) knowledge production through critical reflection. It will try to explore the role of reflection can play in developing research. Reflecting on experiences and practice can and should interact with and have impact on the more theoretical work. Research by design should be more than developing examples to illustrate theory; the experiences from practice and designing should interact with the research activities in a way that (through reflection processes) designing as an activity creates added value for the final research outcomes and society in general.

Finally, some of the researchers in our School report that their research activities is changing and having impact on their design studio teaching as well as interaction with the cultural sector.

Johan Verbeke, Prof. Dr. / head of School
Sint-Lucas School of Architecture (W&K)

Taking risks is the base and an ever-present element in the ongoing research project Contemporary Circus – transcending boundaries in arts and society.

I have chosen to look at and approach the circus artists as experts in the field of taking risks. I work with seven archetypical circus disciplines, which hold and demand different gradations of risk taking, when being performed and trained. By working with artists with in these disciplines I have panned out seven dimensions that all circus artist use in their discipline, artistry and in relationship to risk;  

1. Trust
2. Everything is possible
3. Presence
4. Failure
5. Cooperation
6. Balance – Equilibrium
7. Entrepreneurship/devotion

These are necessary tools/steps being used in the creation of contemporary circus as well as within the contemporary circus disciplines – equilibre, acrobatics, aerial, object manipulation, clown, pair acrobatics and entrepreneurship. The risks that this art form includes can be found on four levels; physical, artistic, mental and improvisational.

I have further used the seven dimensions looking at the risks that arise in unconventional meetings. Contemporary circus is a platform for the meeting between several different art forms, nationalities and means of expression.

The additional level of my research project is multidisciplinary. Researchers from economy, management, psychology, theatre science and pedagogy are strongly involved. The first aim was to let their work and research angel support my artistic research. But the circus artists’ expertise in risk has inspired these scientists to develop their studies further. New projects have developed working on transferring the knowledge within circus to other fields of science.

Where I am today we work with the seven dimensions and how they are apparent in:
1) The artists and their embodied knowledge
2) The cross-artistic meetings and the artistic process. How do they effect the artistic process and result?
3) How do the dimensions, or can they, affect society?

I would like to discuss the seven circus dimensions in relation to risk further. Can you see more dimensions? Can you relate these seven to your area of expertise and artistic focus?

Tilde Björfors is a Professor at the University Collage of Dance, Sweden.

Links:

www.danshogskolan.se

www.cirkor.se

http://www.cirkor.se/trailer/ (Inside Out)

In my projects the objective is to explore choreographic perspectives focusing on research both in dance, on dance and for dance. Many artistic research projects are focusing the artistic process, while my research as a choreographer take another direction, by choosing to explore and reflect the phenomena focused in the artistic process.

The process then constitutes a research laboratory – rather than its object – where artistic knowledge is developed to capture perspectives that other fields of science do not bring out. In my research projects the choreographic works can be described as an outcome, which at the same time serves as a source for finding further perspectives and approaches.

In the presentation I will focus a choreographic project initiated at the department of robotics at Mälardalen University that includes the development of a custom made electromechanical robot-swan performing a dance solo to an electro acoustic remix of Pjotr Tchaikovsky’s music. To choreograph the robot I wanted to move the dancer by hand. The movement program interface is therefore developed so that it captures and records the joint movements of the skeleton – my physical modelling of the robot body. The objective of the research is to elaborate on how digital technology can deconstruct and reshape corporeality in a staging of ambiguous identities, when dancing through another body – a robot double. Other areas that will be explored are how we code and read the body when the dancer is not human. What makes us experience something as an eye, a palm or genitals? What makes us perceive a gaze, a voice or a body responding to touch? As part of a two folded research outcome, video sequences from the process and a documentation of La Robot-Cygne will be accessible on a DVD connected to a text on the body as a multistable phenomenon.

La Robot-Cygne
Choreography and movement programming: Åsa Unander-Scharin
Dancer: The Robot-Cygne
Music: Carl Unander-Scharin (remix of Pjotr Tchaikovsky)
Robot construction and software development: Prof. Lars Asplund and Alexander Larsson, School of Innovation, Design and Engineering at Mälardalen University

Åsa Unander-Scharin, Choreographer, PhD/ Research fellow
Luleå University of Technology/Dep. Music and media

The epistemological commitment of a researcher in the humanities is two fold: first to ‘flesh out’  a particular system of knowledge (or a web of knowledge systems), and second,  to reflect on the ramifications of power brought into play by the knowledge system (and the research). The commitment of one engaged in Artistic Research is therefore to theorize and negotiate the deployments of power –one’s own and that of others’ in artistic practice and writing.

This presentation will begin with the premise that artistic research, as a speculative pursuit and presentation of power-knowledge, consciously or not, vies for hegemony in the field of public discourse and maintains an anxious and often conflicted relationship to institutions, to the administrative state, and to other competing interest-groups in the public sphere.

I will present a decidedly Darwinian view of Artistic Research, in which it is considered as both a reflexive inquisition into knowledge-power, and a means by which artists tactically take power by actively positioning  themselves in the midst of prevailing social and political discourses. Such centripetal positioning brings with it certain challenges and responsibilities, as artists may become defacto representatives of our respective states, or of other civil society agencies and groups. The paper will consider the tensions that arise between the ‘voice of the artist’, the ‘voice of the researcher’ and the contestation for voice and agency in the social sphere.

I will flesh out these issues using some foundational and recent projects from my own artistic and theoretical production.

As a performance artist, critic and historian practicing for the past twenty years in the Asiapacific region (Singapore, Australia, Malaysia) Europe and the United States, my performances and writings have focused on the discourses of power-knowledge, and the performance of individuals and institutions, especially governments and educational institutions.

Ray Langenbach, Joint Adjunct Professor
Kuvataideakatemia, Helsinki , Theatre Academy Helsinki and Sunway University College, Kuala Lumpur

Ray Langenbach’s (raylangenbach@mac.com). ) performs, exhibits and publishes in the United States, Europe and the Asia Pacific. He writes on Southeast Asian performance, propaganda & visual culture and has co-convened conferences and performance festivals in Asia and Europe. Langenbach holds Professorships at the Finnish Academy of Fine Art,  the Finnish Theatre Academy, and the Department of Performance and Media, Sunway University, Malaysia.

Picture, right: Langenbach Autologous Vampire, 2000 Dresden.  Photo by Gott, Station Flexible X

This inquiry is intended to highlight a number of ethical points of debate, with regards to practice within the field of art & design. Furthermore, it aims to distinguish how design practice and art practice differ in their approach to ethical issues.

On examining the contrast in the disciplines of art and design,  it proposes that engagement with tools such as; scale and texture (these terms are not intended to be used in the same sense that are common among artists and designers, rather they have been extracted from their studio usage and projected into a theoretical framework), are possible means for reflection in design in order to arrive at ethical positions and understandings.
This paper is a joint submission, bringing together the practice of its authors; design and anthropology. As such, the authors have been developing a dialogue between their practices and aiming to bridge the role of design within an ethical framework, whilst reflecting on ethnographic practice, from a similar perspective. This debate has been part of the discussions that have been developed and advanced with the anthropologist George Marcus.
In order to mediate this debate within a context of the discourses addressed, the paper is formed around five conferences attended by the authors. At each conference a number of pertinent issues have been raised, during discussions and debates and the body of this paper refers to these incidents.
Five Conferences, five Dilemmas

In each conference, the question that was raised for the authors was one that challenged the role of criticality with regards to the practice of design and art.
– Art & Anthropology, Oslo–
George Marcus raised the differentiation between the ethical distinctions in art practice and ethnography. In response, Barth & Raein, proposed the theme of Holding Patterns as a tool for mediating between stakeholders in situated practices. Is this a feasible tool for mediation?
Question; Can we map the role of participants in a practice?
– Sensuous Knowledge 5, Bergen –
Ingrid Book og Carina Hedén where questioned by Raein with regards to the ethical dilemmas within their practice and asked about their relationship to their informants.
Question; Can artists and designer create an autonomous position with regards to their informants and if so what could be the ethical consequences of this position?
– Institute for Cultural Research, the Power of Stories, London – Power of the personal, private and public narratives.
Vieda Skultans presented the question that after traumatic upheavals people give great importance to the use of words that may re-present their experiences.
Question; Can we say the same of images that represent us during upheavals and if so who is the author of these images?
– Grafill, Visuelt, Oslo;
Jan Wilkers of the New York based design company KarlssonWilker  presented work carried out by his company. However, during the presentation a number of negative and humiliating comments were made with regards to the clients and users.  This made a number of the attendees rather uncomfortable.
Question; Is it possible to publicly question one’s clients and if so who can represent the missing professional in this scenario?
– Cities Re-imagined 1, Oslo;
Steven Bode presented the work of the artist Dryden Goodwin and then read extracts from his own writing about the artists work. During the presentation a small film was shown during which Goodwin asked a member of the public if he could draw him. The man – a foreigner – is heard (and not seen) responding, while struggling with English, that he is in a “difficult situation” and does not wish to be exhibited. Yet his voice is being distributed in public.
Question;  Who represents and defends the “third voice” in art and design?
…
The paper inquiry will not deal with these questions specifically, but will rather navigate through them in order to present some of the research of the authors in this area.

Maziar Raein & Theo Barth
Førsteamanuensis og studieleder MA design & Førsteamanuensis

Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo (KHiO)
Faculty for Design – MA Design Programme

There are two basic different perspectives on artistic research; on one hand the development of foundations and methodologies of art and design itself and on the other hand artistic work as research methodology. In the latter case we so to speak introduce artistic, i.e. non scientific, methods in various more or less well established areas of research, typically we use artistic ways of working to introduce forms of critical reflection.

The development of foundations and methodologies of art and design itself builds on a long and well-established tradition of improving and changing the techniques and methods of art as well as the programmatic foundations of art practice. The way we address and engage with what we see around us is indirect in this case.

The idea of artistic research as research methodology clearly answers in a more direct sense to the challenge as to how we as artistic researchers, through critical reflection, address and engage with what we see around us. The very idea is somehow to use artistic ways of working to engage in areas outside art itself.

How can artistic research make a meaningful and relevant contribution outside of itself? Is this a question on how to reach outside research itself?

All forms of research have to answer to this challenge by results that make a difference. Physics gave us the atom bomb, but also efficient systems for electrical power distribution. Seemingly esoteric mathematics, highly abstract and immensely difficult to understand, makes a difference everywhere in our lives. Art and design make a difference in our lives.

But where is the borderline between art, artistic work and research in artistic research?

-    If we focus on research is this in any meaningful sense anything else than what has always being going on in research, where critical aesthetics and artistic insight always have played a central role?

I would, for instance, argue that foundational work in science in a certain sense is a form of artistic research and that this is artistic critical reflection that address and engage with what we see around us. Foundational work depends on abilities to express foundational insights.

-    If we, on the other hand, focus on artistic expression is this in any meaningful way anything else than just artistic work?

There is a basic dilemma here:

-    If artistic research means development of the foundations for artistic work, then we leave the outside world to dwell on art itself,
-    If artistic research means using artistic ways of working in research, then we leave art for the outside world, i.e. for other areas of investigations.

Starting with the main conference questions

-    How do we as artistic researchers, through critical reflection, address and engage with what we see around us?
-    How can artistic research make a meaningful and relevant contribution outside of itself? And how can it acknowledge the responsibility of art and research towards the world outside the academy?

I would like to present the dilemma of artistic research, as I see it, by discussing four typical example categories of artistic research. As a starting point, and provocation, for the discussion I will argue that a strong focus on the systematics of the research result is the only reasonable way out of the dilemma.

The examples I will discuss are:

-    Artistic interventions. When is this art and when is it a form of action research?
-    Reflections on artistic processes. When is this art theory and when is it artistic development work?
-    Critical design. When is this artistic research and when is it cultural studies research?
-    The research-studies-art-projects. When is this art and when is it research?

Lars Hallnäs, Professor

The Swedish School of Textiles
University of Borås

Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Division Interaction Design
Chalmers University of Technology

Critical reflection is seen as a defining aspect of artistic research. For teaching and learning reflective practice has similarly become a keyword within the art academy – at least in the UK.  This presentation will first briefly survey how reflection currently manifests as part of teaching and learning in the art school, from BA to PhD.

Within the curriculum structure, fine art courses often have both explicit models for reflective engagement, ranging from learning journals, to self-reflective tutorial forms, to less explicit models where there is an expectation of forms of reflection articulated through a particular contextualisation of practice, or engagement with practice.

These models are generally based on the idea of a singular student/practitioner engaging with their own practice and reflecting on their (learning/research) process. These models of reflection are thus generally focused on learning or research outcomes which can be assessed/evaluated, and which can thus potentially be instrumentalised by an education/research institution.

The kinds of reflective practices undertaken by artists are not always the same as the more generic models found in teaching and learning theory and this is crucial when introducing and evaluating structures for reflection within the art school. This raises questions in terms of relevance and responsibility. Who is the art community primarily responsible to, themselves, or to the (research) community at large? And equally, whom might responsible art research be relevant for, and why? Through looking at the notion of reflection within an art pedagogical context, and the issues of potential instrumentalisation this raises, this presentation intends to explore the underlying issues of instrumentalisation that reflection, as well as expectations of relevance and responsibility, can encounter.

Katrine Hjelde, Associate Lecturer, Chelsea College of Art and Design

1. Subject
Our notion of ‘identity’ and the way we imagine ‘community’ changes through the electronically networking society. We become networking bodies, living plural locations, temporalities and social constructions at the same time. This changes the basis on which we trust each other. What do ‘presence’ and ‘trust’ mean for a networking body?

Meeting place
I research this topic in the domain of networked art: since 1996 I create ‘meeting places’ in which I invite the audience members to experience themselves as ‘networking bodies’.

I design the ‘meeting places’ for the public city spaces. They have been performed in cities worldwide, like Seoul, New York, Moscow, Shanghai, Amsterdam. Here the ‘meeting places’ can be perceived as contemporary, interactive social portraits in a city environment.

The ‘meeting places’ are performances and installations, functioning as artistic ‘social laboratories’. To develop these ‘meeting places’ I analyze and deconstruct social networked forms of meeting. With this material I subsequently reconstruct a ‘meeting place’ in an esthetic and alienating way, with an special design for social interaction; to generate a reflective and critical play zone for the process of memory, projection and identification. The ‘meeting places’ are spatial systems in which the audience from different perspectives spy on, touch and meet each other.

Interactive Media
In each ‘meeting place’ I combine different forms of physical and virtual media, creating smart environments. Physically, every ‘meeting place’ is designed as an inviting,  seducing, visual and tangible environment. Here I invite the audience to experiment and play with wireless social technologies – like combinations of mobile phone, touch devices, video, RFID – to reflect on their individual perception of body, identity, community and alienation.

In TELE_TRUST I show my research project on networked bodies and meetingplaces in an (online) ‘think map’. In this ‘think map’ I include the theoretical, visual and experiential connections of the process, through a network drawings, (spatial) diagrams and text.

In relation to the think map I show my way of working, discuss concepts of interaction, ways to theoretically reflect on audience participation and the relation between the visual diagrams and the reflective text.

To analyze the meeting places, I use the following questions:
- How does the audience participate in these ‘meeting places’?
- Through which method can the interaction be described and reflected upon?
- How does the networking body experience ‘physical, tangible presence’ in the ‘meeting place’?
- What do the notions of ‘private’ and public’ mean for a networking body?
-  What do  ‘presence’, ‘reciprocity’, and ‘trust’ mean for the networking body?

2. The issues that the presentation intends to raise in the discussion.

Now that the use of communication technology has become a normality in our lives, we both physically and socially internalize the use of these technologies.

Subsequently interactive arts using social technologies form an increasing and exciting knowledge area for artists and theorists. Their discourse is intertwined with the discourse on changing parameters for social cohesion and trust in the society at large.

However, interactive artworks appear difficult to describe from an academic point of view. One of the reasons for this might be that in different art related discourses (of for example electronic art, video art, painting, performance art, theatre, social sculpture, etc.) different definitions of ‘interactivity’ are being used.

To get more clarity on this point in a large context, I think a specific knowledge production is needed, through the subjective experience and imagination of the artist, writing and reflecting on his/her own interactive artworks.

In TELE_TRUST I explore this in the following way:
I develop my ‘meeting places’ for and through audience participation. In the process of creating I invite the audience as spectator and user of the ‘meeting place’, so I am able to observe the audience interaction. Furthermore, as a host of the ‘meeting place’, I interact with the audience for reflection on the format of interaction I have designed.
In fact, I define the role of the audience as ‘co-researcher’. The ‘meeting places’ are completed through the audience changing the art work, co-design, participate; and exchanging about it with others. Since the topic is communication, the medium is communication.

In TELE_TRUST the artistic process goes hand in hand with theoretical reflection. In relation to conceptual and theoretical research, I write and reflect on the whole process; combining new insights with my long experience of working in this field.

Development of ‘Meeting places’:  in collaboration with Artist Hermen Maat, and V2_Institute for Unstable Media Rotterdam (NL).

www.lancelmaat.nl

Karen Lancel, Artist, Master of arts, Member of ARTI Research Group (Artistic Research Theory & Innovation) at the Amsterdam School of the Arts (AHK) www.english.ahk.nl/en/research-groups/,
of Professor Henk Borgdorff (Art Theory and Research) and
professor Marijke Hoogenboom (Art Practice and Development).

Amsterdam School of the Arts (AHK)