In order to address these questions, this collection explores the role of art as activism, the use of social media and technology in creative production and organising, the politics of artmaking, the commodification of culture and the possibility of a creative commons, and the work of artist activists as educators. In addition to offering a variety of new perspectives from researchers and practitioners, it proposes new paths towards interdisciplinary research in this field that combine sociological, anthropological, philosophical and art theory perspectives. It will be of interest to students and scholars interested in creative labour, social movements and political arts practice.
In order to address these questions, this collection explores the role of art as activism, the use of social media and technology in creative production and organising, the politics of artmaking, the commodification of culture and the possibility of a creative commons, and the work of artist activists as educators. In addition to offering a variety of new perspectives from researchers and practitioners, it proposes new paths towards interdisciplinary research in this field that combine sociological, anthropological, philosophical and art theory perspectives. It will be of interest to students and scholars interested in creative labour, social movements and political arts practice.
artWORK: Art, Labour and Activism
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artWORK: Art, Labour and Activism
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Overview
In order to address these questions, this collection explores the role of art as activism, the use of social media and technology in creative production and organising, the politics of artmaking, the commodification of culture and the possibility of a creative commons, and the work of artist activists as educators. In addition to offering a variety of new perspectives from researchers and practitioners, it proposes new paths towards interdisciplinary research in this field that combine sociological, anthropological, philosophical and art theory perspectives. It will be of interest to students and scholars interested in creative labour, social movements and political arts practice.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781786601902 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 11/15/2017 |
| Series: | Protest, Media and Culture |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Jessica Holtaway is a PhD candidate in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Paula Serafini is a Research Associate at CAMEo Research Institute for Cultural and Media Economies, University of Leicester.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Reimaging, Reimagining or Reimagineering
Rebranding Ulster
Sheelagh Colclough and Sarah Feinstein
Since the nineteenth century, culture has increasingly been regarded as a resource, which has accelerated in the post-industrial context as a means to revitalise economically and socially neglected urban spaces (Punter, 2010; Yudice, 2003). Concurrently, increasing civic participation through cultural engagement has become a priority in guiding policy rhetoric in Western Europe for the past thirty years (Bianchini and Parkinson, 1993; Matarasso 1997, 1998). This discursive coalescing has often manifested in a praxis of culture-led regeneration, a marriage of festivalisation and urban reanimation, underpinned by the weighty rhetoric of tourism and foreign investment whilst precariously balanced alongside audience access, inclusion, empowerment and expansion (Sassatelli, 2011; Waitt, 2008). A contingent impact of these efforts is often inscribing a reconceptualisation in the public sphere; the city and its diverse (or divergent) cultures are presented to highlight their existing assets (i.e. reimaged) or their potential utopian benefits (i.e. reimagined). Moreover, the supposed default state of a positive outcome from civic participation is entirely dependent on the culture onto which it is transposed as it must contend with broader contradictions embedded and embodied within that culture, both economic and social (Clark and Carreira da Silva, 2014).
This raises the question of how agency is negotiated among the divergent social and governmental actors and particularly how various agendas are implemented and resisted by arts practitioners themselves. It also raises the issue of what aspects of participatory democracy are constructed and evoked in these manifestations of culture. Additionally, in a post-conflict urban context, there is the issue of how these dynamics affect the development and performance of reimaging, reimagining or reimagineering culture.
The contemporary politics of space in Northern Ireland is in many ways defined by what has been colloquially termed the Troubles. Most often framed as a sectarian or ethno-nationalist conflict that started with the Battle of the Bogside in Derry/Londonderry in 1969 and ended with the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Peace Agreement in 1998, the Troubles can equally be explained as a colonial conflict between British army forces, Northern Ireland state forces (predominantly Protestant), Loyalist paramilitaries (Unionist and predominantly working-class Protestant) and Republican paramilitaries (Irish Nationalist and predominantly working-class Catholic). During this time period, over 1,900 people were interned without trial, 3,600 people were killed, over 10,000 were imprisoned and 40,000 were injured (McKittrick and McVea, 2002). Aside from the militarisation of daily life in the form of checkpoints, barricades and watchtowers, public space became highly regulated and everyday movement patterns highly segregated. Needless to say, foreign investment and tourism were deeply impacted during the Troubles as well. The public culture that developed during this period was as complicated as the political culture it often reflected.
This chapter examines the cultural 'renaissance' of Belfast through the lens of creative practitioners, considering in particular the tensions between the aims and aspirations of local government, traditional indigenous groups and arts professionals. We will explore these dynamics first with a discussion of the arts policy framework developed post-Good Friday Agreement and then through an examination of the transformation of public space as interrogated through the work of artist Sheelagh Colclough. We will then turn towards public culture and the historic and symbolic role of its manifestation to unpack issues of class, collective memory and urban space as embodied by a shared or invented culture in the contemporary urban arts festival Culture Night Belfast. We situate this analysis through the myriad conundrums of the contrasting landscape of traditional community cultural forms and the emergent expressions of contemporary Ulster, asking what function does the labour of the arts serve, in both its production and its reception, to reflect the potential and limits of urban life.
REIMAGING AND REIMAGINING PUBLIC SPACE
In the rush to rebrand the historically troublesome terrain of Ulster with the economic and social benefits of a liberal peace, agencies of governance, such as the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) and other statutory paymasters of the public purse, have attempted to depoliticise the most exigent and inevitably least affluent areas in a number of public art programmes. This has primarily focused on attempts to reconfigure and recast public art forms such as 'gable end' murals away from militaristic sectarian expressions of urban life (e.g. balaclava-wearing combatants wielding machine guns) towards 'more "positive" depictions of the history and contemporary condition of Northern Ireland' (Hill and White, 2012, 72). This is part of a broader agenda to address longstanding social and cultural divisions through reconfiguring and realigning their public expressions to create a 'shared' society, as seen in policies such as the Northern Ireland Executive Office's A Shared Future – Policy and Strategic Framework for Good Relations in Northern Ireland (2005) and Together: Building a United Community Strategy (2013). The overlapping of some of the stated aims of these policies and their implementation through the work of such agencies as the Community Relations Council and ACNI, particularly those evoking the benefit of increasing the 'peace dividend' from tourism and regeneration investment for example, has led to a transformation of collective civic consciousness in terms of shared space, spectacle and sentiment post–Good Friday Agreement (McManus and Carruthers, 2014). However, this has arguably also served to further embed cultural and class divisions between contentious folk celebrations and contemporary cosmopolitanised ones (Carruthers et al., 2003). Moreover, in many cases this has functioned to merely decorate division, as the number of physical barriers between communities (known as peace walls) has actually increased since 1998 (Byrne et al., 2012).
Take, for example, the ACNI's 'Re-Imaging Communities Programme' (2006–2009) that funded 108 community projects under which 'symbols of sectarian aggression and racism in the form of murals, paramilitary memorials, emblems, flags and territorial colours have been removed and/or replaced with imagery that reflects the aspirations of the communities in a more positive manner' and their subsequent programme 'Building Peace Through the Arts: Reimaging Communities' that developed and installed 32 pieces of site-specific public art (Independent Research Solutions, 2009: 115). Both programmes follow policy initiatives on reframing the contested symbolic landscape that pre-date the cease-fire of 1994 and the implementation of the 1998 Peace Agreement. From as early as 1977, there have been initiatives from various government agencies, grassroots community groups and business associations in Northern Ireland to 're-image', if not 're-imagine', public space (Hill and White, 2012). This has not gone entirely uncontested by residents or citizens with some feeling that the state-approved predetermined positivism often delivered by such projects is a type of 'peace washing', which in its haste to deliver incontestable, anodyne imagery denies communities the chance to accept, acknowledge or even examine or openly debate their recent past (Colclough, 2007, 2014; Crowley, 2011). This seems to follow that not only the reimaged projects, but the civic discourses surrounding them, illustrate what the productive labour of arts programming can expose, namely, as Debra Lisle (2006: 29) terms them, social cleavages: 'a variety of competing political struggles: community infighting ... gender ... race ... age ... and economic disparity (a disillusioned working class, increased unemployment, and capital flight)'.
To explore some of these dynamics in greater detail, we would like to focus on two bodies of work produced by Belfast-based artist Sheelagh Colclough: Evaluate (2007) and Re:Evaluate (2014), which led to the birth of The Sheelagh Foundation, a conceptual conceit providing the ongoing mechanism by which to consider the structures, language and multiplicity of meanings provoked by the work she has been involved in as an arts practitioner and administrator in Northern Ireland since 2000. Colclough has facilitated and produced arts programming for a wide variety of organisations, both those who would situate themselves at grassroots level (arts, education and social charities situated in the broad field of community development) and those seen as part of the formal elite (large art institutions, museums, statutory bodies and universities). Her own practice as a contemporary artist often explores the overlooked contradictions she has experienced both within her role as a facilitator and the larger process of community collaboration within arts programmes such as ACNI's Re-Imaging Communities Programme. To do so, she draws on the investigative tools of social research, the lexicon and management theories at the forefront of the 'creative industries' and the 'participatory arts' (and the critiques thereof) and the disciplines of drawing, painting, photography and sculpture.
Evaluate! (the art of forms) an examination of community arts from the inside out (to give it its full title) was an interactive mixed media exhibition with a performative launch, masquerading as a community arts conference, debuting at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast, September 2007. It came about through the growing consciousness in Colclough's work, observing that artists, community workers, funders and the 'engaged participants' often find themselves co-opted and instrumentalised for inoffensive explorations by various agencies and ideologies. In general, she sought to explore these themes through examining and encouraging multiple perspectives; using humour and a sense of the absurd to disarm, challenge and provoke thought in audiences, collaborators and participants about the social structures, postures and histories we inhabit and inherit, as well as our culture's role in shaping them. This exploration produced a counter-narrative to discourses on the affect and effect of engagement with the arts that tend to flatten nuances into a consensus of 'positive outcomes'.
The two exhibitions, Evaluate and Re:Evaluate, took as their locus community and participatory arts, delving past the 'on message' successes and redemptive failures neatly presented in the evaluation reports so often synonymous with publicly funded projects, in order to explore the largely unaired grievances of some of those involved. Evaluate in particular sought to examine some of the differing agendas and outlooks of individuals who had been part of ACNI's emerging Re-Imaging Communities projects. It also engaged with the wider issues of agency and collective freedom of cultural exploration and expression present in the community arts landscape at the time, including the EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland and the Border Region of Ireland (2000–2006), known as the PEACE II Programme. Community arts, recognised as a grassroots movement emerging from civil rights struggles, has a vibrant and rich (as well as longstanding) history in Northern Ireland guided by the core principles of ownership, authorship, access and participation. However, in practice there is a vastly differing spectrum of engagement with the democratic application of those principles between participant groups in the community arts sector and funders of those projects. This is not exceptional to Northern Ireland, as many of these issues have been well documented in similar community art and participatory (or socially engaged) art projects that see both artists and the arts as agents for social, political or economic change (Bishop, 2012; Jacob et al., 1995; Hope, 2015; Mouffe, 2007).
Evaluate comprised of twenty-five confidential recorded interviews with individuals from five key stakeholder groups (funders, arts organisations, artists, community workers and participants) who were asked a range of questions, such as: What is community arts? Is there a difference between it and 'real art'? Do you think too much is asked of community arts? Do you really think it can reconcile, retrain and regenerate our society? What is an artist's role in society? Should communities/individual beneficiaries decide on their own cultural outputs and consumption or should they be guided by their benefactors? Do you think artists working in community arts have as much artistic freedom and or intellectual integrity? Have you ever felt straight-jacketed by funding requirements of community arts projects? and Do you think community arts needs forms? The answers were transcribed and Colclough selected responses from which she created visual interpretations; these mixed media images were then displayed alongside experts from the interviewees' anonymised text.
Some of the questions asked, like some of the images produced, were deliberately provocative and loaded, while others were more reflective of Colclough's concerns at the time. Presenting the text alongside her visual interpretation she felt was important, as she wanted the viewer to interrogate her representation of what was being said; relating to the false construct of evaluation being touted as a neutral or factual representation of reality. For example, one of Evaluate's respondents unpacked the context and a reoccurring theme that many people who had engaged with reimaging (or reimagining) projects experienced:
I think that murals are very difficult – I think that on one level I feel really uncomfortable with this whole thing that's going on at the minute, you know to me it's like sanitising and utter revisionism and it's like war, what war? Those murals are part of our history, of this part of the world and I feel it's really important that they are recorded in some way and then on the other hand people who do live beside them often feel very intimidated by them, it stops people going into those areas, especially Loyalist areas at the moment and that's not right, so something does have to be done ... in the Northern Irish section of an international conference and in a panel discussion there was a woman in the audience from a Republican group who said 'but that's our history and those people and those murals are our heroes and our martyrs' kind of thing, and 'who are you to tell us ... that's our history and we're proud of it and why should we take them down?' And yes, we will do others that aren't threatening or intimidating or whatever, but we want to keep some of those ones as well but they are our history. (Colclough, 2007)
The range of responses Colclough received confirmed her professional experiences in terms of the variety of interpretations of the increasingly monolithic and bureaucratic language of community and participatory arts and the direction public arts programmes seemed to be taking. What was also revealed was the breadth and depth of complexity that initiatives such as ACNI's Re-Imaging Communities Programme obfuscate as much as expose, one respondent commenting:
So I think it's quite fraught with difficulties ... the Arts Council should have been going to communities in the first place rather than presenting them with a fait accompli and they would have come up with a much more imaginative programme like I think even the title – Re-imagining communities – I mean how much more powerful is that than re-imaging, re-imaging implies something that is going to be done to you. ... What does that mean? And how much more powerful would re-imagining have been? And how much more likely to be community led? So I totally think communities should decide their own cultural outputs, yes, even if offensive to the vast majority of people. (Colclough, 2007)
This perception of the Re-Imaging Communities Programme was challenged by others who evoked the implicit and knowingly well-worn mantra of the 'shared utopia' manifesting itself with another familiar Northern Irish trope, that of the voiceless silent majority:
The programme is rooted in communities, this I think has been a bit of a misconception that it's about the government deciding that it's time for you to do something. Yes there's elements of that because we all want to subscribe to this vision, this utopia of a shared future and all that, but unless the community wants to do something I may as well run down that street with a bag full of money in the nip and give it out to whoever comes along, you know. So the groups that I'm meeting along the way, the people that I meet, the personalities are the people who are functioning within their community and who are saying, 'that wee women over there across the road has been on at me for the last 10 years to get rid of that there image', you know, we've talked about it, negotiated around it, spoke to the paramilitary communities, spoke to whoever we wanted to speak to, we now want rid of it, we could just go in with a big pot of paint and paint over it, but we've heard about this Re-Imaging Communities Programme that will connect us with an artist, that will allow us to do something in its place, that the community can then all aspire to, sign up to ... and what have you. (Colclough, 2007)
(Continues…)
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