Monday, 23 February 2009

Jean Cameron, Producer of Glasgow International (Gi)

Jean Cameron, Produce of Gi, discusses Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art.

Notes:

• Difference between 'festival' and '
biennale'

• Relationship between producer, curator, artist and audience

Bourriaud: "art is the thing upon and around which subjectivity can reform itself, the way that several light spots are brought together to form a beam and light up a single point." Fluidity and interconnection of audiences and contexts of exhibition and dissemination.

• Who are the people who are seeing your work, who is disseminating your work? What is the profile of who is seeing your work presently and who would you like to see your work?

• Age, transport, disposable income, reading tastes, friends, gender, professional involvement in the arts,

• Audiences: Collector/buyer; financial issues of finding links to dealers and galleries, thinking of that process cooperatively in terms of artist's network, artist-led gallery, etc.

• Issues:
DIY, commercial galleries, sales commission, context of showing work, integrity of work, what is the first consideration of making the work? Who is buying? What's the market? Which dealer, gallery, agent? What is their reach? Local, sustainable, authentic art scene?

• Glasgow art market, scene developed out a recessional culture, post-industrial landscape, not dependent on market, studios, spaces, education, artists' collectives such as Transmission, dealers picking up on what is interesting there ... now Glasgow has three commercial galleries dealing with contemporary art (e.g. Modern Institute).

• York already captures large international audiences but not for art. Comparison to Leeds: largest per
capita income without a serious commercial gallery.

• audiences: anyone who can provide opportunity just to show work, more important that work is seen than bought. Different forms of capital (cultural, social, economic, political), developing symbolic capital of reputation.

• audiences: someone who appreciates the work, developing relationships, widest possible audience for the work, public collections as well as private collections, making things the artist wants to make,
'selling the artist rather than the art'?

• strategies around presentations: proactive / reactive.

• audiences: work gets written about, appearing in publications, discussed, considered ...

• potential use of blog as space of critical writing, critical debate

• audiences: academic, professional, intellectual audience (wanting the work to be seen, discussed, considered ... ) - does the work exist in a context of research primarily?

• development, critique - sustain, advance and develop the work ... 

• which of these audiences actually exist here in York and to what extent?

• self-referential frame of reference: what about wider publics? children, education, publicly sited work, festivals

• models of commissions, residence, public funding

why is the work being made?

• future of private market, commodity culture, white cube and gagosian redundancies / cutbacks.

• expectation / anticipation of publics ... 

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Presentation on Gi

2005-2006: First annual outings of festival around Glasgow Art Fair, supported by funders, etc

Funders:

Culture and Sport Glasgow
Glasgow City Council
Glasgow City Marketing Bureau
Event Scotland
Scottish Arts Council
Scottish Enterprise

imperatives around economic impact, cultural tourism: complexity of negotiating imperatives but yet wide cross-referencing of provision and support.

Glasgow will be host of 2014 Commonwealth Games

Gi 2008: audience evaluation and break down, majority of under 45s.

global context over 200 contemporary art biennales across the globe compared with 4 or 5 twenty years ago.

commissioned programme of local and international work; encouraging and co-ordinating the contributions of Glasgow's visual arts organisations and artists; providing the basis from which to develop an artistically driven education/outreach activity and periphery programme that is coherent within the overall festival. 

collaborations and co-operations; additional space; 'open submission' channel for 2010

open submission announced mid-April; curatorial theme for 2010: past, present, future

keywords: equality, intelligence, (re) discovery, good times

examples of event-based work from previous festival:


web strategy: Gi is public for 2 weeks every 24 months. Web is particularly important as a presence. need to curate form and content. issues of documentation - not of work itself but of atmosphere and social context (not trying to use web as gallery) - use of youtube channels and myspace, making links, association, not trying

page of proposal, biography and link but not online gallery. web is about people looking for you and so other methods are needed to bring your work toward wider audience who don't know you are there. Flyers and maps, hard copy pointers towards url.

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