SEMINAR NOTES 1-3 : WEBSITES

Seminar notes – 1-3

Preparatory notes for students

We will be looking at websites, and online mailing services to gather information and particular examples of press releases; the kinds of projects that are currently distributed and advertised not only online but through various channels, such as invitation cards, and social networks/ communities. www.e-artnow.org and www.e-flux.com will be examined to gauge the currency and rhetoric of an art project as an enterprise. We will consider the alternative, critical and transgressive models discussed in 1 and 2 sessions against these commercial evidences of the industrialisation and scale of market operations. The seminar will also consider the exhibition space as info-centre, or archive and platform for debate Discussion will be encouraged in preparation of text explications / presentations in the following week.





student group at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in collaboration with Leeds Metropolitan University internet project and transmitted events










Points to consider for catalogue essays and proposal of projects

1. The work of Guy Debord and George Maciunas represent attitudes that define Situationism and Fluxus. Where do these intersect, and where do they differ?

2. The movement from Lettrism to Situationism occurs in the mid 1950s. What might be determined as originary motives in each movement, and how did these manifest themselves as a politics of the aesthetic?

3. The origin of Situationsim is complex, drawing on many historical models into effective contemporary conditions. What can be nominated as key moments and what events can be exemplified as representing the period of activity?

4. What are the inheritances of the work of John Cage and the work of Black Mountain College in 1950s/60s?

5. Can trajectories be drawn from the early modern period, Dada, Schwitters’ Merz, through Fluxus and Situationsim to the present? If so, how do they form the antagonist debates of the contemporary museum and the domestic space?

6. How does public manifestation and event in the contemporary field differ from sanctioned ‘public art’? What arguments can be upheld in regard to independent curating and the ‘group’ as an alternative exhibition form, operating without state funding? How does state funding enter the ‘independent’ artists and curator into the framework of the art market?

7. Has Situationism been influential on the way a museum structures its public programmes? In what ways?

8. What are the ‘new agendas’ of public art and are the criteria of commissions at odds with the intervention of control spaces that marked the Fluxus and Situationist ideology?

9. What examples of groups of artists can be described that move Fluxus into the present as initiatives? What differentiates the ‘artist-run space’ from dealer led galleries and the ideology of the ‘white cube’ ? Can the ‘White Cube’ absorb the artists-run space? Give examples.

10. The binary relation ‘art/life’ might define the work of artists and their institutions’ interface with the public as a change from a studio base and the ‘artists’ as sole owner of her work. The experimental space comes into play. Entertainment triangulates this relationship and motivates art and media culture. What ramifications of this third aspect now mark an end to the avant-garde model?

11. Simon Ford has written that Situationism ostensibly marked an end, rather than a beginning. Do you agree with this?

12. Are ‘art fairs’ and ‘biennales’ representative of the new projects that derive from Flux/Situation? Do the institutions of art destroy the fabric of intent of independent work if inclusive in the market? What is marginalised in this process?
13. What relationship does ‘punk’ have, if any, to the Situationist International?

14. The dematerialisation of the art – object, as argued by Lucy Leopard, has some resonance with the thinking that accompanies 1960s and 1970s projects by diverse artists, as also providing a rationale that links Fluxus to conceptual art and what is considered also now academic. What post conceptual strategies can be nominated and offer examples as curatorial ones?

15. Magazines provide articles and create archives of a kind of documentation not offered by the exclusivity of the catalogue essay. In the 70's and 80's, very little had been published on public art. Few, if any books, and no magazines were devoted to it. Herve Bechy, "Les Dossiers de l'Art Public" magazine continues now as a web site www.art-public.com. What can be gathered as public art, if much of the work of performance that it entails, disappears? What remits do museums and public art institutions, like Art Angel Trust offer, and what do they disguise? www.davidharding.net/publicart/

16. Can an archive be considered as a work of art? From Duchamp to Maciunas and beyond the archive stands in as art, and rests between hermetic and communicative, or commemorative tendencies. Can some examples be offered and compared?

17. How does a public archive work?

18. What can protect artists from being coopted into the power hegemony of art and the institution, as Foucault has written of ‘micro-politics’ in diffusion of central agencies. How does the work of philosophers, like Alain Badiou, condition the work of artists ?

19. What kind of cinematic works may be assigned to Situationism and Fluxus?

20. The proposal, as an architecture that counters the ‘plan’ [ Cedric Proice] may be a conceptual realisation. What does Constant’s ‘New Babylon’ do to architecture that allies it with Situationsim, and how does art/architecture unfold as public space and event?