10/10/2016

MAWATRES (JUAN PABLO ORDÚÑEZ)


The Question: How (from your experience and perspective) do artistic practices create public sphere?

In order to answer the question I need to provide a minimum of contextualization to the idea of the public sphere and consider it as that margin of dialogue, or consensus, which is developed by means of active subjects. It does not mean that everything that happens in the common space is the public sphere, but instead what emerges on the basis of the debate or interactions that take place here. An empty city does not generate the public sphere, instead the content generated by the citizens or active subjects is where the real public sphere is located.

Based on that idea, I think that art as a science or a method of research generates the public sphere. If we understand that this is exclusively debate, anything can create the public sphere. Talking about football on Monday morning, for example, but its interest would be very superficial. Art, due to its complexity and to the broad range of ideas that work at the level of sociology, research, the humanities or language, greatly contributes to constructing the public sphere simply through the debate it arouses. Some of these debates might be poor, referring to monetary value for example. Those debates can generate the public sphere at a level that is perhaps similar to football on Monday. Going deeper into the matter, art (above all today) has the capacity to tell the story of what is happening at the social, political, aesthetic or philosophical level. If art is dedicated to narrating all of this, then in that way it is constructing the public sphere.

We increasingly see more relation between art and other fields, especially with all of the humanities, but also between art and science, art and medicine or art and sports. All of this means that art is a foundation with an increasing presence in all the fields of the social and in this way of course it generates the public sphere, because it is present in everything in some implicit way. A big company asked a photographer for a market study to find out whether cameras in phones were going to be successful. They commissioned this task to an artist as an example that art is very present in all fields.

I think that art is a motor for generating things that are later implemented in other fields, and as a whole they construct the public sphere. It forms part of the advance of thought and the construction of society. From a very basic terrain, the fact that a 14-year-old boy or girl takes out a skateboard or a can of spray paint and paints in his or her neighbourhood is generating the public sphere. So is the neighbour who sees her through the window and the next day goes up to her mother and says “look what your daughter has done”. The genesis of the whole public sphere is in those debates that emerge in the most everyday affairs.
10/10/2016

MARINA GRZINIC

10/10/2016

LOURDES FERNÁNDEZ


The Question: How (from your experience and perspective) do artistic practices create public sphere?

(…)“In what way do artistic practices contribute to creating the public sphere?” Rather than creating it, I think they transform it. The great value of art is the capacity to transform people and to see reality with another gaze. That is what is most interesting from my point of view and is why I have dedicated myself to it. Although rather than constructing, it is a question of transforming; obviously, when there is a transformation something new is constructed. So for that reason I think that artistic practices are vital in the public sphere. Understanding that the public sphere refers to this whole shared, virtual and real maelstrom. (…) I think that at the present time there is a bidirectional influence in the Azkuna Zentroa. (…) And I believe that it is precisely in that bidirectional encounter where the capacity to unite and practice art is found. I think that is what we are working for, but the fact is it’s not easy, not at all easy.
10/10/2016

LOS TORREZNOS


The Question: How (from your experience and perspective) do artistic practices create public sphere?

Let us suppose that the point of view and experience are given. What is interesting is that this part of the question is in brackets. We will take it that that is the body of the person speaking and the brackets are its exterior configuration. We will also take it that we understand artistic practices in all their complexity and variety. What is perhaps a little more complex is the term “the public sphere”, and that is perhaps where artistic practices could have something to say. If the sphere resembles something like this (he holds up an object in the shape of a sphere), absolutely smooth, something well-finished, one could face the problem of slipping and not managing to hold on well. Perhaps what the sphere is proposing is a fall, that is, an impossibility of holding on. And also a certain obstacle to being able to get inside, because as it is something so homogeneous and so complete, it is sometimes hard to find a way in. So, the first question that is posed to the artist is: why not a public cube instead of a public sphere? Or rather than a public cube, why not a public pyramid? The public pyramid has connotations of other ages, other times in history, which could pose a problem as there is a referent that is too important behind it. So, the artist could say: perhaps instead of a public sphere there could be a public hexahedron – and why not a dodecahedron? A dodecahedron would be even better than even a tridecahedron or a tetradecahedron. A public dodecahedron could make more sense because it has edges and we could perhaps hold onto the edges. And it has faces where we could perhaps stay. Or places that we could perhaps point to and that might in some way serve as points of references. It would be a place that would not be the same all the time, where there would be different parts, where there would be positions where some could be on one side and others on another. The public dodecahedron could be a starting point for understanding the extent to which art could help to reconsider what we understand as public.

Artistic practices contribute to generating the public sphere – although I have the impression that this is a question of small spheres. Like ping-pong balls.

A big social diameter is not covered, instead each practice enters into contact with quite small areas of reality. To the extent that there are more small groups, communities, circles. To the extent that more is produced (experiences, practices, artistic projects), it would be possible to cover greater zones of social reality.

In general, the scope of artistic works is in itself limited… but it must have a public intention and it can make a defence of the public from a political point of view.

It’s not always like that, but without doubt it can be like that.
10/10/2016

LE PARODY


The Question: How (from your experience and perspective) do artistic practices create public sphere?

I believe that all artistic practice is public because art is a form of communication and in all communication both sending and receiving by someone is fundamental. As soon as there is a public, something is being built. The separation between the private sphere and the public sphere seems to me something specific to our era, it is a somewhat artificial construction provided by how we live socially today. Precisely in art one can see that communication is the same whether it is for a small group of familiar people or for a bigger group of unknown people. Perhaps that is one of art’s particularities in constructing social fabric or relationships: that it does not differentiate so much between one sphere and another. Reflecting on the public and private spheres, we identify very specific ways of communication that are associated to each of them: the private is more affective and the public is almost exclusively discursive. In that sense, art occurs in another dimension that is between the affective and the discursive, and it is indispensable for the construction of social networks.

It is as a musician that I experience art. Music has this highly pleasurable scenic part, concerts, in which this communication is made very evident because it is perhaps less rigid than what can be found in the theatre, the cinema or other scenic arts. The public can have a more active role: it moves, dances, sings, talks… At a concert one can clearly see how something is happening that is constructive in itself: people get together in a place around a common interest and relate to it. It is not an isolated act, but instead transforms and involves people. That is something key, and can be extrapolated to the other arts. Even when it is not a case of direct communication, when you make a disc and someone listens to it at home, you are also involved in constructing a link. That is what art causes in me, not only as a musician but also as a receiver. They are moments of very pure and disinterested pleasure. It is not discourse, it is not affect, it is an exchange that flows in a different way and makes me communicate with people; it causes a movement in me.

There is a difference between art and entertainment. Artistic experiences are very constitutive experiences for me. It is not a case of going to a place so that they tell you something and then going home to get on with your things. Art transforms, and I believe that that is something fundamental for the creation of what is public, or what is social (if we do not want to differentiate public from private).

Subir