Interview, Part I: In the Public Eye

December 13th, 2008 at 04:47pm Christopher Jagers

Interview by Christopher Jagers (CEO, SlideRoom) with Jay Sullivan, Professor of Sculpture and Chair, Division of Art: Meadows School of the Arts. This interview will be posted in two parts: 1) In the Public Eye and 2) Behind the scenes.

Part I: In the Public Eye

CJ: When I first asked you to do an interview with you about “Public Art,” what did you immediately begin  thinking about?

JS: I first thought of Foucault’s idea of Heterotopias: spaces within a space, where a certain kind of special activity can take place, both within and also slightly outside of society. Classic examples of this are hospitals, insane asylums or graveyards. These are places where society can have safe conversations about things that they don’t want to deal with all the time or everywhere. Ironically, when I think about Public Art, I think about the Percent for Art Project and this notion that we seek to beautify train stations, airports and other things. There is a heterotopic feel about that.  On one hand, it is defining certain structures (usually municipal) as being public in a way that other spaces (like major street intersections) are not.  For instance, if I put a big sculpture at a major street intersection, I could get into more trouble (aesthetic) than if I put the same piece of sculpture in a train station—the spaces are “public” in different ways and we expect different things to happen there.

Of course, work like Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc” violated all this … it went into a public place which was owned by the government, a super public space.  Yet, it did some things within that plaza that attacked pre-existing boundaries of that being a public space normally appropriate for such works.

CJ: How do these ideas relate to the administrative process of choosing a project?

JS: I have had a chance to be on a few Public Art review panels, and its very interesting to hear the discussion of the jurors who represent the community. And it is also interesting to see what is given as the agenda for pieces because these things are always supposed to address the community.  Projects are supposed to be responsive to the place, but at the same time they are encapsulated in a way that can be easily ignored or marginalized. And when a piece is easy to “bracket off” visually,  it becomes difficult to address the community.  A thing may be there, but it becomes ancillary to the space itself.

Of course, art has always occupied a special place that is different from ordinary objects … so it’s always a negotiation. A negotiation with the public about goals, the role of the piece and which spaces are potentially available for art versus other public spaces which are viewed are more private.  In the early stages, but even later, the artist doesn’t have too much say in all this, which is difficult–the panel is in some sense “guessing”  who would be best.

CJ: How do you know what the public wants?

Values are always imposed by the specific city and situations. We don’t live enough within a designed infrastructure to have a true discussion about it.  So, in each case a value has been proposed as an assumption of what the public wants, and it is usually imposed from outside.  My tendency is to prefer a much more heavily designed environment (art, architecture, etc)–but even in so-called “un-designed” environments a tremendous amount can be read from and discerned from a the existing patterns of habitation.

CJ: Can you tell me more about what having a more “heavily designed” environment would involve?

The primary factor is architecture working towards a larger civic plan. The only “real” public art that we have is Architecture.  And I believe there are very few great architects, people who think about architecture beyond its own walls. Buildings have an effect far beyond the extent of the building, but unfortunately each new building often becomes an assault on or passable acceptance of the current values that are already there.  Another question that is often overlooked in civic planning is how one can order “time,” spaces that are slow versus spaces that fast.
CJ: Besides Architecture, do you think of Public Art as having various categories?

1) Figurative Object.  An object that inhabits a figure size space.  And, if it is literally figurative (containing a subject) it has to potential to distort space in a way that person distorts space.  Just as you can ignore bodies in a crowd, an individual also has the potential to draw extra attention to themselves and cause a ripple. So, if you are going to commission this type of object, you need to consider what kind of larger effect it will have.

2) Environmental.  The obvious and most famous practitioner of this is Robert Irwin.  He pays attention to large environmental questions, which he calls the “circumstantiality” of a site, and then defines whatever he does in terms of how he wants to fall within (or effect) those circumstances.  Sometimes these works can be quite transparent and hard to see or know “what they are”.

3) “Found” Object.  These are objects that are a kind of low architecture that never had an intention of an art use, but because of disuse, misuse, or lack of understanding, they now can  be seen to function as a public art object.    My favorite example of this in Dallas is in the cemetery by City Hall.  There is this huge strange brick tumulus, that looks like a minimalist sculpture that is falling apart.  Its hard to know what it is, and yet it exerts an incredible presence.  These “found” things could be natural or man made formations that are discovered and made more “present” by how the designer accommodates these things.

4) Site Design. You might call these collective projects, and I think these are the hardest to do well.  You are talking about something that is collected over time, negotiates competing interests and all of that. And Americans can have a hard time with this type of work which involves a larger collective, because of the attitude, “don’t mess with my space.” I think that will change as things get more dense, but those are issues older societies (like Europe) are better at dealing with.

CJ: I have to ask you about 9/11 and how there seems to be very little progress.  What do you think about that mess?

When you look at 9/11 and our inability to figure out what to build on the site … it is essentially because of an overwhelming amount of competing interests that society has trouble negotiating. In cases like this, art can’t just be a monument or aspect of personal expression.  It must take on all of the surrounding design-relationships and functions.  Then you have to educate people to those, instead of thinking about art as being privileged, individualistic and outside of society.  Its not individualistic, it is social and spatial.

(Part II of this interview will touch on Public Art administration, budgets, community relationships and the economic value of of artists).

• Public Art Network and Best Practice Guidlines (from Arts Watch) (0)
• Interview, Part II: Behind the Scenes (0)
• Would you stop and listen? Or would you walk by too? (4)