martyn coutts

This is the second of four documents I am writing about the project Visible City, a Made by Melbourne Fringe project in 2010. I was the initial concept designer and along with Emily Sexton the director/curator of the work.

These pieces are not designed to be anything but my own reflection on the project and I am not speaking on behalf of anyone else. The four pieces will focus on four key areas raised by the work.

These are;

1. The work.
2. The audience.
3. The space.
4. The documentation.

The Audience.

There was a forum during Visible City that involved artist Jason Maling in which he almost despairingly challenged the idea that art was important, to paraphrase him (badly) “perhaps art is a subculture and we should stop pretending it is for everyone”. Following on from there I wonder – does art need a large audience in order for it to matter? Does art need an audience that is not a regular art-savvy audience for it to have relevance? (In this (link) see a rather spirited defence of the cultural realm, by one member of the audience Joseph Priestly that night took umbrage to Jason’s stance.)

If we as artists are performing to ourselves, our friends, our family and some hangers on – then perhaps this work should not be funded. If the work is only for this small coterie of supporters then it becomes insular – an in joke, a discussion amongst like minded peoples. But perhaps art always been like this? A few select art lovers, philanthropists and the community…it feels comfortable and possibly sycophantic…

Is this the reason why artists develop practices outside of the gallery and the theatre? Perhaps they want more reach, they want to feel as though they are making a difference or they are looking for something more real – an authenticity. To connect with some ‘real’ people. And so out they went. Outside.

In the terms of Visible City this was a deliberate action on the part of the architects of the work, Melbourne Fringe engaged a group of nationally recognised artists who are well versed in participatory art practices to cajole members of the public into being part of works on the streets. These works (not all of them, but a lot) asked of the public to be complicit in the ‘building of a moment’ on the streets of the CBD of Melbourne.

So if these ‘real’ interactions are happening then why does Jason feel like this? if the role of the public is so embedded in what these practitioners do then why the problem? Again, i return to badly paraphrasing Jason’s rant – ‘nobody cares! nobody really does care what you are doing”. If this is true if the people you are making the work for (in this case the general public) don’t care, then why are you doing it?

In a recent interview with Roarawar Feartata for lala Craig Peade discussed a work he made in Frankston in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. He said that the type of people that would stop and talk to you were usually nutters, lonely people, artists or the curious.

The first question asked by a punter to a participatory artwork is usually “what’s this?” As soon as you answer with “It’s an artwork’ or ‘it’s a performance” then the curiousity rapidly diminishes.

We are (especially in Melbourne) now used to the ‘weirdness’ of artists especially on the streets of the CBD so it can easily be sidelined. For art-goers, they will push past this strangeness seeing an opportunity for a new experience. However for the Australian public who sees art as an elitest venture (thankyou John Howard and your culture wars) meant to bamboozle and deliberately make you feel stupid – then they will brush this off and move on.

Of course these are broad sweeping generalisations and I have seen the exact opposite operating in projects even inside Visible City. But on the whole for every person that is engaged in an artwork like this there will be at least ten who show indifference or even downright hostility.

So if the general public doesn’t want us there as artists – why are we there? what makes us think we have the right to invade shared space like this?

Inside Visible City one of the first things that was spoken about was Sarah Rodigari’s claim that “I have nothing to offer the general public”. She genuinely had come to the conclusion that the arrogance of believing that you have something to say to challenge, entertain or move complete strangers in pubic space is deluded.

To take this a step further and expand the idea – Visible City artist Sally Ann McIntyre talked not just of ‘the general public’ as a concept but rather that there was no one singular body called “general public’ that instead you were dealing with ‘general publics‘ which is an acknowledgement of the complexity of the audience.

Furthermore when dealing with terminology – the word ‘audience’ for this sort of work does not do it justice, it speaks of a passivity and denies the public’s role in the creation of it. But what word instead? viewer? collaborator? When even the very terminology that deals with the people interacting with the artwork is being challenged it shows how complex the task of making participatory artwork is.

How much knowledge do the general publics need when they encounter these artworks becomes an important question for their understanding of the experience (sometimes the unknowing may be as important, as Jason says – “don’t tell them its art”).

For some of the works for Visible City there were people who heard about the work through the various marketing channels and are aware of the context it sits in. For passersby it was not altogether clear what they were entering into. For a work like “today another vessel was found” it was unsure what it was – was this a piece of activism? For UJOC – street performance? For the work Better – some kids fucking around? PUDS – Community dancing?

The work known as Height Wall contained a surprisingly amount of subtle interaction between artist Ingrid Voorendt and the passerby. And this little dance became the work – the meeting of eyes, the showing of the chalk, the decision yes or no, the gentle coaxing into an event of recording height on a wall…

So for this work as an example where does the core of this work sit? and with whom? is this a work for the audience that got their height recorded or was this for the passersby that saw the actions OR was this just for the artist and the documenter? Each person who had their height recorded became an incremental part of the overall work, but for them the experience of the work was a 30 second interaction with Ingrid.

It is impossible to measure the value of this experience, but perhaps this is exactly its beauty, it is not graphable, it doesn’t have any KPI’s.

If you sit in a theatre for a full theatrical work this entitles you to a certain experience that is clear and codified – you buy a ticket, you buy a wine, you sit in a chair, the lights go down, you see a show, the lights come up, you leave.

For a work like Height Wall there are no tickets, nowhere to sit, no lights, no show and no certainty when the experience is over. Public work like that in Visible City not only defies definition but also challenges the standard operation of a monetised art exchange.

The general publics expect that there will be some sort of transaction for people who are on the street that are doing something other than transiting through it; a flyer is handed out – someone takes it (see Lara Thom’s work); a mobile phone contract salesman pulls you over – you listen or walk on; a beggar, or street performer asks for money – you give it or you don’t.

What then if there was someone on the street who didn’t want anything? if the mode of exchange was more complex than that – or it didn’t make immediate sense?

Perhaps the reason for these artists engaging a stranger is to offer nothing OR give something away without any gain at all? As small a gesture as this seems – this is tantamount to a revolution in a space that is so highly corporatised and regulated.

After much critique of the role of audience in Visible City, it would be remiss of me to not say that at many times the people of these ‘general publics’ were surprising – giving up personal insights which they really had no reason to, joining in on actions that they would not normally have done. Perhaps they were surprised that someone asked them to, that they were given permission to be free in public space. Perhaps we have become a society in the western world that no longer asks questions of each other and waits for an answer in public.

The challenge for Live Art, indeed for any artform is to continue to question its own relevance and to ask what role the audience plays in the works they make. I believe that Live Art, participatory practice and the like has the capacity to answer these questions with great rigour and creativity.

After all, ideas are much more interesting if they are shared with friends.