Aesthetics and ethics of working in public art: a summary.

The hunch behind Working in Public is that art now exists in the public sphere in unprecedented ways. Working in Public aims therefore to open up greater uncertainty in what we think art is and to provoke more thoughtful and creative responses to what it might become. In understanding how and why artists currently work in public we may begin to understand the nature of the public sphere itself as it is in the process of being creatively and critically formed. In developing the programme, we are not interested in creating a normative model of public art practice. It seems more appropriate to attempt to arrive at a sense of quality through a conscious and active process of debating what quality means. Through Working in Public we are building a rigorous understanding what actually happens in practice; what tensions and contradictions arise when artists intervene in the public sphere; what if any, is the impact of the work on the imagination and on our capacity to think and act differently

Practice-led research and improvisation in post modern culture.

docARTES is an international inter-university doctoral programme for practice-based research in musical arts, designed for musician-researchers. This was an invited Orpheus lecture for the Crossing Borders programme in 2016

The artist as leader: constructing a national network to support research into the creative competencies of the artist as cultural leader.

This case study describes how the author is constructing a national network to support research to encourage and enable artists as future leaders

Redistributing power? A poetics of participation in contemporary arts.

Imagine a man standing in a covered market place. Other stallholders around him sell fruit and vegetables, clothes and household goods. However, he is undertaking an altogether different kind of exchange. He offers to insure the shoppers and other stallholders in the market place against the loss of mystery in contemporary life. He invites members of the public to contribute their personal examples of mystery in exchange for an insurance certificate and a jar of two pence coins. He receives a rich and unexpected range of experiences from lost keys to a possessed mobile phone. The Insurance Stall, 21 – 23 November 2006 is the first part of a four-part project, The Preston Market Mystery Project (2006 – 8) by the artist John Newling. Three full days of running the Insurance Stall from dawn to dusk in Preston Market in November 2006 resulted in the collection of 280 mysteries: Mystery, as a kind of truth that is incomprehensible to reason, is familiar to us. Many of us have been in, or observed, situations when something inexplicable has occurred. An object goes missing, never to be found or the cause of odd sounds in the house is never discovered. There are hundreds of small events that seem to be beyond our understanding. Other incidents of mystery are miraculous in their form. The recovery, against reason, from a terrible illness; the happenstance of circumstances that prevent an awful incident; an extraordinary event in nature, the like of which has never been experienced before, all are witness to mystery in the world. In the second part of the project, Voicing Mysteries March 2007, Newling read out the mysteries one by one from a spot-lit golden lectern in the same market place assembled at the key five entrances into the market. The readings took place after market hours beginning at twilight and demarcating a threshold 'where our dreams and thoughts coalesce'. It continued deep into the night. In this way, the private thoughts and experiences of individuals willing to take part in this work in its preliminary stages were gifted back, ceremoniously, within a public space in the form of a public proclamation. In part three the following June, The Knowledge Meal, individuals whose contributions stood out were invited to a formal, beautifully produced meal. Again, this was held in the market place and after hours. The exchange had been prepared carefully through correspondence beforehand between the 40 individuals about the peculiarities of their mysteries. The public was encouraged to view the whole ritual

Recontextualizing Schooling Within an Inuit Community

Inuit community members in Baffin Island are learning to manage formal schooling, and at the same time modifying that institution so that it reflects their own community context. Yet finding the right fit between schooling and a new cultural context presents a challenge. Many Inuit find problematical the new values schooling introduces into the community. This article proceeds from the assumption that the practices and values of formal schooling historically have been superimposed upon already existing indigenous institutions, which, in many cases, remain invisible to “southern” educators. The concept “formal schooling” as used here is not restricted to classroom values and practices, but denotes the whole schooling system and extends to include the system’s many roles and varied content. Les membres de la communauté inuite de l’île de Baffin apprennent à gérer les pro- grammes scolaires officiels tout en leur apportant des modifications relevant du contexte communautaire. La recherche du juste équilibre entre les programmes d’études officiels et un nouveau contexte culturel constitue toutefois un défi. L’école introduit de nouvelles valeurs que de nombreux membres de la communauté estiment problématiques. L’auteure pose comme hypothèse que les pratiques et les valeurs de l’école officielle sont depuis toujours surimposées à des institutions autochtones déjà existantes qui, dans de nombreux cas, demeurent invisibles aux éducateurs “du Sud.” Ici, le concept d’“école officielle” ne se limite pas aux valeurs et pratiques rattachées à la classe, mais englobe l’ensemble du système scolaire, notamment les nombreux rôles et les contenus divers de ce système.

What is it possible to know?

In his 1978 movie Manhattan, Woody Allen's character, lying on a coach in his apartment after a break up of a relationship, records his thoughts on life: 'An idea for a short story about people in Manhattan who are constantly creating these neurotic problems for themselves to keep them from dealing with more terrifying unsolvable problems about the universe... ...to be optimistic Why is life worth living? That's a very good question. Well, there are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. Like what? Okay, for me, I would say, Groucho Marx, to name one thing and Willie Mays, and the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, and Louie Armstrong's recording of 'Potato Head Blues,' Swedish movies, naturally, 'Sentimental Education' by Flaubert, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, those incredible apples and pears by C{acute}ezanne, the crabs at Sam Wo's, Tracy's face...' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxLUWUhmBAM By exploring what he really cares about, Allen comes to a personal insight about whom he really loves. (an aside - he really really does not deserve Tracy whom he treats abominably...) But lets return to the point and explore the possible resonance of this clip with artistic research and the core questions of this keynote: What can be known through art/ artistic research? How do we set about posing good questions? It goes without saying perhaps that artistic research should focus on what we really care about. At least I think we can agree that artistic research should not be concerned with concocting neurotic problems that keep us from dealing with what is important. In fact I will argue that our way of knowing as artists is increasingly being called upon to address 'the more terrifying unsolvable problems of the universe' though we may use different words to describe precisely what these are