:: ONE DAY SCULPTURE ::

This online reader and reading list is conceived as a primer for engaging with the One Day Sculpture series and international symposium. The key texts, available either as downloadable PDFs or read-only online documents, offer introductory approaches to some of the ideas and permutations of the works and series and are grouped under a series of key issues and questions, which will also be examined and explored in the International Symposium.

Engagement

What are the terms of engagement for art works presented temporarily outside a conventional museum or gallery context? How do we understand engagement to operate for unannounced works and what is at stake for the artist, commissioner and audience? Can we differentiate any longer between participation, collaboration and passive engagement and if so, what are the ethical and aesthetic ramifications of those distinctions?

Mark Hutchinson, ‘Four Stages of Public Art’, Third Text, Vol. 16, Issue 4, 2002: 429-438. [PDF, 164KB]

Mary Jane Jacob, ‘Cultural Gifting’, in Bik Van der Pol - with love from the kitchen (Rotterdam: NAI Publishers, 2005). [PDF, 67KB]

Claire Bishop, ‘The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents’ in Artforum, February 2006: 179-185; Grant Kester’s response to Bishop and Bishop’s response to Kester, in Artforum, May 2006. [PDF, 61KB]

Place and Space

What do we understand by the terms place, site and context in relation to the imagining, production, presentation and critical interpretation of new art works? How do artworks create and contest place identity? What new forms of critical spatial practice are emerging? What other terminologies beyond site-specific or place-based, might help to define the responsive and productive nature of contemporary art in place?

Doreen Massey, ‘A Global Sense of Place’, orig. pub. Marxism Today. June 1991: 24-29. [PDF, 216KB]

Arjun Appadurai, ‘The Right to Participate in the Work of the Imagination’, TransUrbanism, 2002. Interview with Arjun Appadurai by Arjen Mulder. [PDF, 1.73MB]

Jane Rendell, ‘Space, Place, and Site in Critical Spatial Arts Practice’ in Cameron Cartiere and Shelly Willis, eds., The Practice of Public Art (London: Routledge, 2008) 32-55. [PDF, 1.72MB]

Unmonumental

Can temporary sculptural works have as great an impact on the social imagination as permanent monuments? If so, how do we understand memory to operate? Is the commissioning of temporary artworks simply a symptom of a consumerist event culture and if so, are longer-term durational models of greater significance to our culture?

Benjamin Buchloh, ‘Michael Asher and the Conclusion of Modernist Sculpture’, 1980-3. First published in Penser l’art contemporain: Rapports et documents de la Biennale de Paris, vol. 3 (Paris, 1980). First English version in Performance: Texts and Documents, ed. Chantal Pontbriand (Montreal: Parachute, 1981), pp.55-64. Extract scanned from Benjamin Buchloh, Neo-avantgarde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975, Cambridge, Mass., and London: MIT Press, 2000: 12-20. [PDF, 577KB]

Critical Art Ensemble, ‘Nine Theses Against Monuments’ in Pavel Buchler and Nikos Papastergiadis, eds., Random Access 2: Ambient fears. (London: River Orams Press,1996) 22-30. [PDF, 792KB]

Terry Smith, ‘Contemporary Art and Contemporaneity’. Critical Inquiry, 32, 2006: 681-707. [PDF, 119KB]

Curatorial approaches

In light of the performative, multi-faceted, participatory and dispersed nature of persistent forms of contemporary art and the imperatives of cultural tourism, what new forms of curatorial models are emerging? Is there a danger that artists and their work are becoming instrumentalised through the culturally specific and socially remedial imperatives of a curatorial framework? What lessons can be learned from the relationships between short-term (biennial, triennial and scattered-site exhibitions) and longer-term cumulative projects and programmes.

Hou Hanru, ‘Towards a New Locality’ in Barbara Vanderlinden and Elena Filipovic. eds. The Manifesta decade: debates on contemporary art exhibitions and biennials in post-wall Europe (Cambridge, MA: Roomade/MIT Press, 2006) 57-59, 61-62. [PDF, 883KB]

Kate Bush, ‘Provisional Authority’ and Tim Griffin ‘Framing the Question’ in Artforum, XLVI, 1 (September 2007).

[PDF, 50KB]

Claire Doherty, ‘Art in the Life of the City: London Stories' Keynote Lecture, Graduate School of Art and Design, Harvard University, 17th April 2008. [PDF, 524KB]