Art, Archives

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Art, Archives and Publics
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On Documentation?

• Where does the urge to document and archive
• come from?
• (Lack) of sense of place and history
• Need for validation of cultural / social
  practice
• Trans/Formation of Identities
• Archives as mirrors of ourselves

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Art Practice Recording Circulation Documentat
ion Validating Archive Memory Public(s) Influ
ence History/ies Identity/ies Civil Society
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Interface Research Centre

• Established in 2004 through major successful
  funding bid (SPUR II)
• Major initiative in AD in the UK with 21 members
  of research staff and dedicated research
  facilities
• Based on distinct areas of excellence in research
  activities of School of Art and Design - Textiles
  Fine Art

UU, Belfast campus refurbishment, 2006
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Research Aims

• Focused Exploration of key processes in
  innovative research practice in Art and Design
• 1 inherited models of practice and categories
  of value
• 2 impact of digital media and new technologies
  of production, distribution and mediation of art
  and design
• Situated in context of wider social/economic/polit
  ical arena of Northern Ireland and globally the
  glocal

Interface _at_Corporation Street - Archive
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Research Objectives

• Trans- and Interdisciplinary research and
  postgraduate provision
• New partnerships and forms of collaborations and
  practice in Art and Design
• Development of new ways of thinking and working
  at local, national and transnational level
• Prototyping, testing and evaluating of new models
  of practice
• Cross-border dimensions in the Irish context
• Outcomes with international reach
• Building of critical mass in Art and Design
  research

Alistair MacLennan
Dr. Kate Wells
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Research Strands - Art and its
Locations - Fabric Forward - Customisation
and Construction - Hybrid Textile
Configurations
Platforma
Trish Belford
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Art and its Locations Research Foci

• Art
• in Contested Spaces
• Art
• and Documentation

Willie Doherty
Workshop, 2006
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Interface Resources

• Dedicated researchers / archivist
• Research and thinking space
• PhD research opportunities
• Provision of MA Art in Public
• Opportunities to network and collaborate
• Image and sound production, post-production
• and display equipment
• Storage space
• Technical and clerical support staff

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Interface Activities
Connecting Prototyping Facilitating Testing
Discussing Documenting Negotiating Archiving
Speculating Disseminating Experimenting Eval
uating
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Documentation and Archiving

• Critical dialogue performance, interventionist,
  
• process-oriented practices
• Narratives related to contestations and
  conflicts
• Creative processes, (audio-) visual work and
  curatorial
• interventions
• Inquiry into local archives and community-based
  
• memory (ARE, Catalyst, Beat Initiative, Duchas)
• Strategies for documenting and re/materialising
  -
• Generating Public Pedagogies
• Securing Memory - Producing Publics

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I confess that I was thereArt, Archives and
Location

• A programmed series of events in December 2006
• Inquiry into archives related to creative
  practice
• Artpool, Budapest Trace Archive, Cardiff
  North-West
• Visual Arts Archive, Derry Peter Haining,
  Dundee
• Focus on Artists interventions in repositories
  of
• records and the re/materialisation of archives

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Public Art Strategy for West Belfast (PAS)

• DSD commissioned consultancy
• West Belfast and the Greater Shankill area
• Aims
• Public Art Trail
• Connection to City Centre and Laganside
• Links to existing public art projects
• Visibility of West Belfast and Greater Shankill
  area to
• promote tourism and economic regeneration

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Deliverables of PAS

• Community participation methodology
• Stakeholder audit
• Map and audit of existing public art
• Map and audit of other relevant projects
• Strategic map of potential sites for public art
• Survey of potential funders
• Review of key documents and policies
• Seminar on Public Art
• Report

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PAS Process

• Forms of documentation
• Strategies of re/presentation and positioning
• Power relations and vested interests
• Pragmatics/ Public(s)
• Trust building with communities
• Media format - authority and authenticity
• Oral accounts - episodic memory / memory of fear
• Maps - factual memory
• Reports / minutes - procedural memory

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Creative Transformations

• AHRC funded workshop and networking project
• PI Prof. Ruth Morrow
• Community oriented creative processes
• Conversations on determination, risk, failure,
  and
• unquantifiable success
• Documentation/ Validation of marginalised
• practices

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Performing the ArchiveProviding Interrogative
Moments

• AHRC funded Doctoral Research Training Provision
• Collaboration with University of Sunderland
• in association with Locus, Public Art Agency
  Newcastle
• upon Tyne
• Series of workshops and colloquia between
  November
• 2006 October 2007
• Related book and online learning resource
• Arkive City www.interface.ulster.ac.uk/arkiveci
  ty

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Art out of the Ordinary

• Collaborative project with CityArts Dublin
• Folk Memory and material culture
• Related to Loraine Leesons exhibition Art of
  Change
• Two seminars, public interventions,
• Planned publication