A jury panel representing diverse interest and expertise will review submissions. The following criteria will be used:
• Strength, creativity, and originality of design.
• Appropriateness: aesthetic content and appropriateness for display on public property.
• Ability to work with photographer or provide camera-ready artwork within given timeline.
• Strength of the artist’s proposal and portfolio [resume, & past work].
Can we get some actually innovative stuff up there? How about a sound installation? (joking - I don't think you should really apply with that.) Everyone should apply with work that pushes the "appropriateness for display on public property" guideline! True, your chances for an award may suffer, but it's time to send signals to the city (or the DDD) that artists need THEM to step up to the plate and take chances local contemporary art, not just blue dogs (their ubiquity being the main thing I hold against them.) I mean, look at Chicago, they have a giant video installation that spits water in Millenium Park! (yeah yeah, maintenance costs, vandalism, but I can dream, right? I'm so happy with those Louise Bourgeouis eyebenches watching over federal court - do they really have to leave after 2 years?)
7 comments:
I find it interesting that "Katrina-themed subject matter will not be accepted." OK, it gets tiresome at times, but are we not still affected? Does it not color many of our decisions? How many artists have lost all of their work, how many are still working to get their studios fully functioning again? Head-in-the-sand attitudes got us into this pickle in the first place.
Cynthia Scott
I had to go back and read closely to find that directive, it's fairly buried in there!
It's confusing that they would not consider work that fits within their categories and is also Katrina-themed, especially if the artwork is also educational or casts awareness in a positive light. I agree, if we ignore our compromised geography, there's going to be a repeat - there's been many of them already!
Pardon me here, but I wonder if the more appropriate question in this context is not "Why shouldn't artists still grapple in their work with the struggles they face post-K?" but, instead, "How might bus riders, many of whom struggle every day both with the aftermath of the floods and with issues that cannot be encompassed within that one instance of spatial injustice, be somehow impacted by art that speaks to such a potent example as the great floods of 2005?".
That is to say, of course, that both questions are critical, and should not be mutually exclusive. In this instance, it's really just one question, isn't it?
And, Courtney, why no sound installation for bus shelters? Ha! I agree with you that this RFP is not the appropriate venue. But
some architects recently approached Open Sound to do a joint venture for bus shelter sound installation, and we applied for DesCours. Not betting on it, but it could be interesting, no?
Jacob, thanks for reframing the question.
yes! artists can easily forget in these cases that there is a specific audience to be addressed.
I can't wait for the bus shelter sound installation! perfect to partner with Open Sound!
Kudos Brancasi, Kudos All.
One must consider when analyzing the criteria the RTA has defined for this project is what are the RTA trying to accomplish? This is MARKETING, folks, under the guise of "art", and the head of marketing would be doing a poor job if she didn't have a handle on how that should set the parameters of what they want in their kiosks. Of course the project certainly has the capacity to be artful marketing but it's a marketing ploy nonetheless. Context is everything. Why should the RTA care about "artist's experiences"? Why should they want something "negative" attached to their image? They want to give folks who ride the bus some pleasure, some relief, something colorful perhaps, a distraction from the reality of having to wait for a dirty unairconditioned hardly running bus in the first place. The people I ride the RTA with don't care about my Katrina story - we ARE "the Katrina story" & the RTA knows this. Savvy marketing ploy on the RTA's behalf - I wonder how much of the commission will cover a straight up salary/fee for the winning submission?
Beyond the context of this specific call for submissions there's another dialog tho that Cynthia's comment points to - which is the phenomena of people on the outside telling people on the inside how they should act. We live in a culture that thinks that 'denial' equals 'progress/healing/recovery' and is scared to face messy things for fear of losing control we never really had in the first place. It's absurd and in my mind this is where the creative process comes in. I think artists have the capacity (responsibility?) to deconstruct this, question it, to pursue "the other alternative" with our practices. I think this is how Cynthia's question answers itself.
It'll be an interesting day when what happened here (and is still happening, because like it or not this city is STILL in the liminal space "b'w the trauma happening & the traumatized thing solidly BEING the next thing it's going to be") is genuinely processed and so far out of our consciousness that people in Gentilly or Holy Cross or on the bus from Lakeview don't need to talk about their "Katrina experiences". It'll be an interesting day when everyone who moved here "because of Katrina" goes back home or becomes so entrenched with life here that New Orleans becomes home. In the meantime NOBODY has the right to tell survivors that they should be dealing/healing in a certain proscribed way. If one thinks of this experience as "our body" common-sense declares that nobody has the right to enforce laws that limit my personal freedom as they manifest in/on my body. That's anti-choice, just flat out repression.
But I believe that this is where "how the levee breaks inform what so & so is as an artist" plays out - on the level of psychological, spiritual, & emotional honesty & freedom. Technique is only half the game after all. But since when are artists supposed to be accepted, since when are they supposed to be given free rein to say things that their culture already agrees with?
If we want to own our stories/our bodies/our history/our NOW we have to not expect the world to get it. Why should they? Do we even "get it"? This is the job, this is the work we signed on for, isn't it? As an artist who accepts that it's impossible to build & use a time machine to take us back to 10 minutes before the levees broke to take us back decades to their design and conception to insure that they would be made right & maintained all this time - well we can't be afraid to do or say "unpopular/hard/brave things".
But we can't expect the RTA to want to fund that! That would just be kooky -
I mostly agree here. But I want to pick up on something you said, Elizabeth, and ask a new question.
"We live in a culture that thinks that 'denial' equals 'progress/healing/recovery' and is scared to face messy things for fear of losing control we never really had in the first place. It's absurd and in my mind this is where the creative process comes in. I think artists have the capacity (responsibility?) to deconstruct this, question it, to pursue "the other alternative" with our practices."
I wonder what people think about what I increasingly see from certain segments of the art community here that very much want to define themselves as part of the "recovery" process. When I visualize your (Elizabeth's) definition of the artist, I envisage someone deliberately thrusting their heels into a moving ground. Yet, arts communities are currently being defined (by some) as a catalyst for change and progress (one might even say denial). I'm not against the idea of artists as innovators, necessarily. But if artists hold the answer to improved economic development, education, etc., then who is responsible for casting a critical eye to "progress," other than academics, who will cast that critical eye in hindsight?
I don't mean to overstate the role of the artist, but I believe the notion of the artist as "outsider" is becoming passé, as the idea of the arts as spur for "redevelopment" becomes more and more in vogue.
Uh-oh.
"Passe?" "In vogue?"
Sounds more like Project Runway than unfettered expression to me.
Cynthia
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