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:

the caravan gallery

catherine yass - 'high wire'

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.

MA Fine Arts / Practice and Dissemination / Brief for ongoing development of work:

You should now be developing and testing a nascent body of practice-based work that conceives of dissemination as a key consideration from the outset.

The exhibitions-in-progress you are developing for Composition & Reflection are clearly part of this addressing as they do the curating of the work in a potential public domain.

Begin using the practiceanddissemination.blogspot.com blog website to upload documentation of your works and working process and to exchange ideas and information around key texts, ideas, etc.

Simplicity

I agree with Colin's blog that the Antony Gormley site is simple and therefore visually and practically easy to navigate. Stylistically personally I am drawn to clear, uncluttered sites.

The following site http://www.collabarts.org/ I think fits this aesthetic. I like the fact that they use the image of the animal as a navigation tool and I also think that the way the information is sectioned is useful. It does not incorporate a blog however or an external posting site. This however would be something to consider in terms of managing content and might not be such a bad idea to exclude blog access from outside users.

The following site http://www.dance-tech.net/profile/dancetechTV is a more complicated but still visually appealing site. i have chosen it as it incorporates a lot of video which is something which I feel is important, particularly to disseminate more performance based work. The site uses images of users which I am not so keen on but I do like the resource/book tips to the right of the screen. This might be an interesting way of presenting our 'feed' words already present/listed on the right of our blog.

The following http://www.soundalibi.co.uk/ is another site from a film maker that I have just finished a collaboration with. The site again in terms of visuals is clean, again does not have the specific content that we would want but this will be determined by our group. One thing to consider is Quicktime. Lot's of the video here are quicktime but our university does not seem to be compatible. Maybe we need to consider software compatibility/access so as many people can access without having to download new software. This tends to put people off.

This site http://www.newworknetwork.org.uk/ is great for networking, building communities so there is perhaps something in the purpose of this site and its effectiveness that we can look at. However I feel that the homepage is confusing and overloaded with information.

Hope these are useful.

Victoria

read this book

Designing Web Usability, Jakob Nielson, New Riders Publishing, 2000, ISBN1-562050810-x
Nielson is an acknowledged master of web design and I have learnt a lot from reading his stuff.

what's next and the web brief

Dear All,

Further to my comment yesterday, here is a timeline draft we should try to keep to be able to finish this project in time. Of course some details might change, but roughly, this is what we will do.

Although the content of the website can be developed by you during and between meetings (with assistance from me and Roddy), the technical development of the website would require collaboration with an expert from outside the university who understands our needs and can develop a website that is tailored to meet these needs. To solve this problem, I have approached artist Justin McKeown (at the moment Visiting Lecturer in Fine Art) who is willing to be involved as both artistic advisor and web designer. Although I will support this collaboration from my own fellowship budget with some money, it is quite a big job for Justin, so the most important thing is to make sure we get further funding from the Faculty.

On the basis of the rough idea that we have developed so far, the time we have for meetings and work on this module, the time we have to develop the degree show and the time we need for further financial support, I propose the following timeline for work (it is just information for you and subject for changes)

1. By the end of this week everybody send their ideas, questions regarding the website to this blog that Roddy and I will incorporate in the document about the project
2. Next week Roddy presents the project plan to the Faculty and ask for further financial support for Justin's involvement
3. Once we have a proposal from the Faculty for Justin the group meets (Monday, 23 February) to finalise the web brief (based on how much money and time we have) that we send to Justin (to be sent to him by 24 February)
4. Justin will need approximately a month to develop the fisrt draft of the website based on our brief, so in the meantime the group meets on 9 March and then on 23 March to overview content development and to discuss plans with degree show. We use this blog to keep in touch between meetings.
5. Once Justin is ready with the first draft (hopefully at the end of March) we arrange a two-day meeting / workshop (outside of scheduled class) to discuss his draft and possible amendments + to have a workshop when you would learn the skills to be able to upload content on the website. We need to confirm these dates later, but I am hoping to do it before the Easter break or
4. Justin then finalise website while practitioners start uploading content. Contact by email.
5. From the Easter break you could develop the website individually and we would meet from time to time to overview process and to develop the degree show (this I think would need to be extra meetings outside of the module)
6. November 2009 - MA degree show and website launch (public event)


Also, to help you with thinking about the document (web brief) we need to put together very promptly, here is the list of things what we would need to talk about on Monday. Until then I would be grateful if you could send your notes to this blog.
This list is from: http://www.smileycat.com/miaow/archives/000226.php
with some comments.

1. Summary
Provide a brief overview of the whole project.

The first half of my comment yesterday was the first draft of the overview, feel free to suggest amendments.

2. Current Situation
Describe the current situation:
what is not working
what needs to be improved
what is working
Why the project is needed
what is hoped to be achieved.

Again, I will try to write this part up, but would need input from you, so please just write some notes after each point and send it back to me. I think in this part we should talk about why we are doing this project, so try to think about possibilities and problems you have at the moment with disseminating your work.


2. Proposal
Describe the project in more detail:
What is needed to be done?
Target Audiences
Who is the project targeted at?
Are there any specific characteristics that these audiences have?


3. Goals
What are the main goals of the project?
What do we want to achieve in the present?
What are the long term possibilities?

4. Requirements
Are there any specific requirements that must be incorporated?
I think here we should talk about any types of content we definitely want in the website (like hyperlinks, videos etc.), also about aesthetic decisions, possibility to use the site from outside (when you will not have YSJ accounts any more) etc.


5. Promotion / Communication Plan
How will this project be promoted and communicated?
How will we maintain the website?

6. Timing
What is the deadline for the project?
Are there any milestones that must be met?

7. Project Sponsor
Who is the main sponsor and who will be signing-off the project?

8. Stakeholders
Who is involved in the project from an oversight and team perspective?

Judit

website critique: Antony Gormley

http://www.antonygormley.com/

website critique: John Newling

http://www.john-newling.com/

Please leave comments on what we should learn from this site in terms of developing our own project.