Thinking of the Outside New art and the city of Bristol 2 3 Thinking of the © 2005 University of the West of England, Outside Bristol Legible City, Arnolfini, Picture This, the artists and authors. Introduction All rights reserved Jonathan Banks, New art Professor Paul Gough Published by University of the West of England and and Josephine Lanyon 4 Bristol Legible City in association with Arnolfini Edited by Claire Doherty and the Context Editorial assistance by Lucy Badrocke Thinking about Thinking Designed by Thirteen www.thirteen.co.uk Claire Doherty 7 All photography by Jamie Woodley, unless city of otherwise stated. Medieval Bristol and its Town Gates and Walls All opinions expressed within this publication are those Jon Brett 16 of the authors and not necessarily of the publishers. Bristol Commissions British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A catalogue Nathan Coley 22 record for this book is available from the British Library. Phil Collins 38 Kathleen Herbert 56 ISBN 1 86043 3774 Susan Hiller 74 Silke Otto-Knapp 88 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be João Penalva 104 reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, Responses photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior Drawings by Joff Winterhart 122 permission of the publishers. Information Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders, Map 131 but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers Contributors 132 will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the Credits 133 first opportunity. Audio CD Arnolfini the louder you scream, [email protected] the faster we go back www.arnolfini.org.uk Bristol Legible City [email protected] www.bristollegiblecity.info Picture This [email protected] www.picture-this.org.uk Cover Nathan Coley, Situations Iceman, 2005 (detail) Courtesy the artist [email protected] and Haunch of www.situations.org.uk Venison, London 4 Thinking of the Outside 5 “ The form of the city, alas, changes more quickly than a mortal’s heart.” Charles Baudelaire Introduction Critical responses to new artworks are By combining the knowledge and often caught between the premature skills of these programmes, Thinking indulgence of an exhibition catalogue of the Outside set out to create new and the brevity of a review. When opportunities for artists to respond to commissioning contemporary art in a the city, to produce works that might city like Bristol, it seems only right to move, surprise and delight their potential consider the impact of the individual audiences in unexpected places. works in context and the exhibition in hindsight. We are immensely grateful to the artists, organisations and individuals that This book offers an opportunity to see brought this project to fruition. The six behind the scenes of this scattered-site projects have already begun to travel to exhibition, to follow the development other locations: Regent’s Park, London; of the commissions from proposals to Austin, Texas; Tirana, Albania — creating finished artworks and to read responses new contexts for the works far from their to the works. starting point in Bristol. In 2003 Bristol Legible City, Picture This Jonathan Banks and the Situations programme at the Senior Public Art Officer, Bristol School of Art, Media and Design Bristol City Council formed a unique partnership to deliver six new temporary artworks for the city. Professor Paul Gough All three partners are dedicated to the Dean, Bristol School of Art, engagement of new audiences with Media and Design, University contemporary art and artists. of the West of England Bristol Legible City is led by Bristol City Josephine Lanyon Council and is a programme of identity, Director, Picture This transportation, information and public art projects that seeks to improve people’s understanding, experience and access to all parts of Bristol. Picture This is a moving image projects agency that commissions contemporary visual artworks and produces exhibitions, publications and touring initiatives. The Situations programme investigates the significance of place and context in contemporary art by commissioning new work for Bristol within a dynamic context of international lectures, conferences and publishing. Situations also forms part of PLaCe — a visual arts research centre into issues of place, location and context at the Bristol School of Art, Media and Design. 6 Thinking of the Outside 7 Thinking about Context Thinking “ Fiction consists not in showing the invisible, but in showing the extent to which the Claire invisibility of the visible is invisible.” Michel Foucault, The Thought from Outside, Doherty 19661 “ As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know, there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” Donald Rumsfeld, Department of Defense News Briefing, 20022 I didn’t want to start with the title. Exhibition The brief from the City Centre Projects and titles have a tendency to act as the decoys of Urban Design Unit at Bristol City Council the contemporary art field, instrumentalising art was to develop a new series of temporary art through a prefabricated conceit. Perhaps that’s commissions in response to Bristol’s medieval one of the reasons (albeit unintentional) for the gates and walls, which were important physical, dispatching of our project title from the front of economic and cultural landmarks in the city. this book to the spine — an aside to the primary The commissions were to form part of Bristol importance of the art and the experiences that Legible City, a navigation and arts programme, the occasion of this exhibition brought about in established in 1996, comprising projects the summer of 2005. and initiatives designed to improve people’s understanding and experience of Bristol. There But really, there’s no getting around the fact that was a considerable fund available, a desire to Michel Foucault’s description of the tensions do something ambitious and distinct and it was between ‘thinking of’ and ‘thinking from’ the agreed that the City Gates commissions would outside was a starting point for this project.3 be curated as the ‘action research’ component And it was also Foucault’s ‘Rumsfeldesque’ of Situations, a research programme at Bristol characterisation of fiction (quoted above) that School of Art, Media and Design dedicated to came to mind during initial discussions on the City the significance of place and context in Gates commissions in summer 2003. contemporary art. Context — Claire Doherty 9 Castle Park and Bristol city centre, 2005 Photo: Visual Technology, Bristol City Council Given the common ground between the two Throughout those early discussions about the City programmes, the value of an open brief for Gates commissions, I was reminded (by Foucault’s selected artists was acknowledged early on in notion of ‘thinking of the outside’ and Kwon’s discussions. This would allow for deviation from assertion of the potential artistic merit of being ‘out a literal interpretation of the historic city gates. of place’) that the art which has bothered me and We sketched out some of the historical and consequently which I consider to be of value, has contemporary implications of city gateways and invariably been that which resists a sense of being walls; the organisation of urban space, for example; in the right place. It might dismantle the apparatus the construction of civic identity and civic pride; of civic promotion, play with navigational systems, the polarisation of outsiders and insiders or the and even construct fictions. Art’s purpose, in my processes by which formal and informal histories opinion, lies less in its capacity to ‘reveal’ a city’s of place are created. Despite these good intentions, past or present, but in its capacity to reveal the however, I was somewhat apprehensive about ways in which the city conceals its past or present our endeavour. and what that means for a wider context. The commissioning of contemporary art works in Foucault’s phrase ‘Thinking of the Outside’ gave response to the past is wrought with problems. us a starting point from which to think about the Nostalgic indulgence in the specifics of place implications of the city gates and walls from a rarely leads, in my opinion, to significant artworks. contemporary perspective. It suggested to me and Rather it seems to result in creative interpretations, my colleagues at Bristol City Council, Jonathan which, whilst often engaging and informative, seek Banks and Jon Brett, and Projects Assistant, to memorialise rather than to activate, to represent Carolyn Black, all sorts of questions about our rather than respond. Foucault was right. Art in its history and contemporary lives in Bristol — a most potent form, like fiction, is an endeavour of sense of longing for staying and leaving (and veiling, rather than unveiling: a query rather than the spaces in-between) implicated in Bristol’s an explanation. It seeks not to reveal the invisible, geographical position at the western edge of but to show the extent of invisibility. England and Europe; its development as a city through a series of clusters of social groupings; Research during the first two years of the the tension between a parochial sensibility and a Situations programme has focused around the cosmopolitan, outward-looking ambition. ‘Thinking writings of Miwon Kwon, who in her significant of the Outside’ even seemed to suggest the desire study One Place After Another: Site-Specific to engage with the urban environment beyond Art and Locational Identity, has argued that one the spaces of the art institution. But the phrase might theorise the avant-garde struggle as a also reminded me that this was an opportunity to kind of spatial politics, “to pressure the definition engender new ideas, to do some new thinking.