22–23–24 March 2012
Bilbao/ Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain)
Organized by ENPAP (European Network of Public Art Producers)
Registration is now open.
More info: www.e-n-p-a-p.net
Contact: [email protected]
Going Public – Telling it as it is? is a three-day symposium aimed at exploring storytelling as a mode for the production and reception of public art. It features a series of lecture performances and artist commissions spread throughout the city of Bilbao, and is accompanied by a closed network meeting in Vitoria-Gasteiz that draws together selected professionals in the field.
In public space, many aspects that constitute the working, meaning and experience of an art work cannot be foreseen. In the first and second hand testimonies that specific or accidental audiences give of their encounters with a public art project, the work develops a life of its own. Storytelling has always been crucial to and can be employed as a methodology for the creation and interpretation of art in public spaces, in continuous dialogue with an ever changing context and local history.
Through a series of performative lectures, Going Public – Telling it as it is? explores stories and storytelling as a methodological approach in relation to art in the public domain. The speakers recount or stage a story about an encounter with an art project. Meanwhile, other artists are invited to locate their story in the city of Bilbao and local media. A city conceived not only through its spatial and social meaning but, in reference to the so-called Bilbao/Guggenheim effect, from a more symbolic perspective, situating Bilbao as an image and model. With the aim of complexifying the notion of public space and unlocking the operations that construct that public sphere, the city appears as a physical place, a social space, and a mediatised construction.
The ENPAP Caucus is a closed network meeting where the pilot phase of the network, in which a series of comparative study sessions has taken place, will be shared and evaluated with fellow organizations that are active in the field of art and the public domain. Another subject for this expert meeting will be future network formation.
Submission fee: 40 EUR (Students, under 18s and unemployed: 20 EUR)
Admittance includes: Symposium 22-23 March + symposium booklet + coffee, lunch, dinner + party
ENPAP – The European Network of Public Art Producers was formed in 2009 and unites six art organizations that share an affinity for expanding the notion of public art. Its main aim is to raise criticality in public art commissioning practice through promoting knowledge exchange, development of new working methods and establishing common vocabulary for new forms of production and public engagement in contemporary art.
ENPAP is supported by: The EU Culture Programme, 2012 Euskadi, Diputación Foral de Bizkaia, The City Hall of Bilbao, Donostia 2016, The Foundation for the Culture of the Future, The Swedish Arts Council, Stockholm Arts Council, IASPIS, SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain and The Romanian Cultural Institute.
The programme in Bilbao and Vitoria-Gasteiz is made possible through the collaboration with BizBAK UPV/EHU, ARTIUM museum, Museo de Reproducciones (Bilbao), Teatro Arriaga, Berria, El Correo, and Basque Television (EITB).
Symposium Programme
22 March, Locating the Story in the City, Bilbao.
Interventions by Martha Rosler (USA) and Phil Collins (UK) in local newspapers
Arriaga Square and Theatre
11:00–18:00 “We could have had it all” by Itziar Barrio (ES/USA)
12:00 and 17:30 Special projection with artist Itziar Barrio in person (ES/USA)
Shop window of a closed video store
13:00 and 19:00 “Boom” by Alex Reynolds (UK/ES)
Museo de Reproducciones
20:30 Welcome dinner
22:30 Video screening of “ElectroClass” by María Ruido (ES) on the local TV, ETB3
23 March, Performative Lectures
BizBAK UPV/EHU, Bilbao
11.30-12:00 Registration and coffee and pintxos
12:00-12.30 Asier Mendizabal (ES)
12.30-13:00 Falke Pisano (NL) & Francesco Pedraglio (IT)
13.00-13:30 Olof Olsson (SE)
13:30-15:00 Lunch
15:30-16:00 Goldin + Senneby (SE)
16:30-17:00 Patricia Esquivias (VE/ES)
17:00-17:30 Asli Cavusoglu (TR)
Expanded stories
Pabellón6 ZAWP Bilbao
20:00 Dinner for speakers and participants
21:00 Performance by Jeleton (ES)
21:30 Performance by OJO (USA)
22:30 Concert by Institut Fatima (DE/ES)
23:30 Begoña + La Jawara Dj-s (ES)
24 March, ENPAP Caucus, Discussing a Future Network
ARTIUM museum, Vitoria-Gasteiz
Stella d’Ailly (Mossutställningar, SE), Alicia Miller (Visual Arts Consultant, UK), Claire Doherty (Situations, UK) and Tati Freeke-Suwarganda (SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain, NL).
A closed meeting for invited professionals working in the field of art in the public realm.
ENPAP partners
BAC-Baltic Art Center, Visby/ Sweden
consonni, Bilbao/ Spain
Mossutställningar, Stockholm/ Sweden
Situations, University of the West of England, Bristol/ United Kingdom
SKOR | Foundation Art and Public Domain, Amsterdam/ The Netherlands
Vector Association, Iasi/ Romania
BAC is a production office and work place for artists, curators and contemporary art writers. It is a flexible organization that runs a variety of different production- and residency programmers placing the artistic process at the centre of its activities. Instead of BAC formulating a fixed temporal, economical or spatial framework for artistic production, each artist is invited to formulate the conditions for their working process in dialogue with the organization. Lately BAC has realised productions with Victor Alimpiev and Ana Torf, and most recently with Fiona Tan. (www.balticartcenter.com)
consonni is a producer of art projects based in Bilbao. Since 1997, it has been inviting artists to develop projects that do not take the form of an art object displayed in an exhibition space. Matthieu Laurette, Hinrich Sachs, Andrea Fraser, Sergio Prego, Ibon Aranberri, Itziar Okariz, Saioa Olmo, Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum and more are developing projects with consonni which borrow tools from the contemporary world to produce art projects in a wide variety of formats to subvert, criticise or simply analyse the society that surrounds them. (www.consonni.org)
Mossutställningar widens the possibilities for artistic productions outside the traditional institutional framework to create unexpected meetings between art, audience and place. In 2009 Mossutställningar started two networks: the Initiative to Create a European Network of Public Art Producers (ENPAP) and a Nordic Network of Public Art Producers with their own independent programmes. (www.mossutstallningar.com)
Situations is a visual arts commissioning programme based at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK with an international reputation for world class commissioning and research. The programme combines commissioning of ground-breaking and remarkable artworks outside conventional art contexts such as One Day Sculpture, Heather and Ivan Morison’s The Black Cloud and permanent artworks such as Ruth Claxton’s And My Eyes Danced part of Wonders of Weston. From the start, the programme’s guiding principles were to combine the ambition of a commissioning agency model with the critical rigiour of an academic research centre. Over the last three-years we have published pinoneering reasearch and publications such as Locating the Producers: Durational Approaches to Public Art (Valiz), Situation (MIT Press/Whitechapel Art Gallery) part of the documents of contemporary art series, produced curatorial strategies such as Slow Space for Bjorvika Oslo Harbour and delivered professional development seminars on the production of public artworks with ixia the UK national think tank for public art.
In 2012 Situations will deliver Alex Hartley’s Nowhereisland a large-scale island originating from the Arctic that will journey around the south west region of England, stopping at ports and harbours as a visiting ‘island nation’. To find out more and to become a citizen of this new nation visit www.nowhereisland.org.
SKOR | Foundation Art and Public Domain is an internationally operating art institution based in Amsterdam, which advises, develops and creates art projects in relation to the public domain. SKOR mediates between artists, commissioners and the general public by forming alliances and partnerships with art institutions, public and private institutions such as municipalities, central and provincial governments, healthcare and educational institutions, project developers and architectural offices. Through its projects, SKOR reacts to socio-political changes in society and new developments in contemporary art, urban design and landscape architecture. Its public programme provides a context for its projects and seeks to connect current debates about art and the public domain. (www.skor.nl).
Vector is a non-for-profit association of artists, art critics and curators, based in Iasi, Romania. Since 1997 Vector has been producing the Periferic Biennial, publishing Vector Magazine, commissioning public projects, and hosting residencies. Importantly, Vector Association engages the city of Iasi itself as a participant in this process—as visiting artists are encouraged to use the city as a resource of production of their work. Starting with the last year, Vector has initiated an offsite working methodology that has already included the exhibition project Critical Point and the publication Vector-critical research in context at Frieze Projects, in the frame of Frieze Art Fair 2010 (London, UK), as well as a second chapter of the project at the Western Front (Vancouver BC). (www.periferic.org)
