Overview of Business-Facing Arts Audience Research

This report is a review of public-domain research conducted specifically in order to inform arts organisations about their audiences. The research covered is driven by the demands of the arts industry to understand its audiences and to develop and broaden audiences for the arts. The report includes links to key publications and research organisations, and an overview of the key offerings

The Brussels Convention:a still born child?

Whether status of Brussels Convention as international treaty rather than EU treaty limits its potential and effectiveness

International business encounters organized crime:the case of trafficking in human beings

With increasing globalization, transnational crime in general, and human trafficking in particular, a design of new legal framework is required in order to effectively operationalize interstate law enforcement operations and prosecutions. The development of a transnational criminal legal framework—or frameworks—can build on pre-existing transnational economic frameworks. There is also the need to extend the application of domestic law beyond national borders to influence transnational corporate behavior. Regulations based on reflexive law are one possible approach. Teubner’s idea of reflexive law has been informing developments in this area. This approach uses traditional national law to inform corporate governance strategies in order to achieve effects on the market. A few jurisdictions have already adopted measures modeled on this approach to tackle human trafficking and slavery-like conditions in global supply chains. Weaknesses in the approaches adopted by the UK and the State of California have already been identified. If strengthened, this approach could be adopted in more jurisdictions—including the EU—and also to combat more areas of transnational crime—such as money laundering. This paper will examine the resulting challenges using human trafficking as a case study

A lick: the performances of Angela Bartram

This short essay discusses the performances of artist Angela Bartram whose practice involves interactions with animals which often evoke revulsion in audiences

Art and money: experience destruction exposure

In no other area of human activity is the relationship between production and money as perverse as in the art world. The peculiarity of this relationship may be responsible for the appreciative failure of much of contemporary art and in particular conceptual art. If value is attached to ‘intrinsic’ qualities of an object it would be hard to justify the high prices attached to contemporary artwork. This however raises interesting questions as to the extent to which it is possible to separate economic from other values in art. There have been numerous attempts to break the link between art and money - Roger Fry’s Omega Workshop experiment, offered participants a guaranteed minimum income to free them from economic pressure. Commencing with Art and Commerce in 1926 Fry explored this relationship in a series of publication. In 1971, the Art Workers’ Coalition produced a statement of demands which asked for a small measure of what Fry had offered artist fifty years earlier. In the 1960s and 70s, there was a proliferation of highly politicized work challenging the art/commerce relationship, focusing on the dematerialisation of the artwork as a decommodification strategy. In this paper I will explore these strategies, concentrating mainly on the work of three artist:- Lygia Clark, whose ephemeral artwork, made of easily available cheap material, questioned notions of value and the interaction between the object, the spectator and the artist: Hans Haacke whose 1971 exhibition highlighting the hidden relationship between the art world and commerce, was cancelled by the Guggenheim for fear of offending the museum’s patrons: and the auto destructive work of Gustav Metzger. I will analyze the success or failure of the strategies employed by these artists in light of the art world’s tendency to turn anything into a commodity

Ephemeral art: telling stories to the dead

Abstract: The endurance of the form of storytelling and the compulsion to tell them suggests that telling stories is not merely an entertainment, an optional extra which we can chose to engage with or not, but a fundamental aspect of being. We tell stories to construct and maintain our world. When our sense of reality is damaged through traumatic experiences we attempt to repair our relationship with the world through the repeated telling of our stories. These stories are not just a means of telling but also an attempt to understand. Stories are performed and performative; they do not leave us unchanged but can in fact motivate us to act. They are not merely about things that have happened, but are about significant events that change us. Through our stories we demonstrate that we have not only had experiences but that those experiences have become part of one’s knowledge. In this essay O’ Neill will explore the potential of objects to tell a story, the object that is both the subject of the story and the form of telling. Two ephemeral art works will be considered: Domain of Formlessness (2006) by British artist Alec Shepley and Time and Mrs Tiber (1977) by Canadian artist Liz Magor. Both works embody the process of decay and tell a story of existence overshadowed by the knowledge of certain death and the telling of the story as a means of confronting that knowledge. The ephemeral art object tells a story in circumstances when there are no words, when we have nothing left to say

Death, art and mortality awareness: images of the dead in contemporary art

‘Death, Art and Mortality Awareness: Images of the dead in contemporary art’ Death, Dying and Disposal Conference, Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University, 2009. Dr. Mary O' Neill University of Lincoln.ac.uk [email protected] The knowledge of love and death can make us whole, it can complete us, or it can overwhelm us. We develop elaborate frameworks and rituals to contain this knowledge, to quieten its voice and to render it manageable. But at times it violently confronts us and we know it in a new way, too urgent, too immediate and physical to be pushed aside. This paper will discuss works of art that represent the moment when information about the death becomes knowledge of death and present the site of knowing - the dead body - not to frighten or shock but to share the knowledge that life experiences offer. Focusing on the work of Thai artist Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook and the exhibition Life before Death which showed the work of Journalist Beate Lakotta and photographer Walter Schels, this paper will explore the risk that the dominant themes in discussions of contemporary art works which show the dead - issues of consent and possible distress to viewers - may be, in Zygmaunt Bauman's terms, overdoing ethics. Ethical concerns can be used in the service not only of death denial but more particularly of the avoidance of the painful emotions inherent in love, bereavement and loss. This suggests a way of viewing the works discussed which goes beyond conceiving of them as what Julia Kristeva calls the abject and which sees mortality awareness as part of love and life