Public Art and the Word on the Street: A Symposium on Art in the Public Realm
Program, P.1618
- Identifier
- P.1618
- Category
- New Media
- Date
- September 24 – 30, 1998
- Description
- A Symposium on Art in the Public RealmOpen Space, Camosun College, Fine Arts Department and the University of Victoria, Fine Arts Department presented a week long discussion on art in the public realm in conjunction with the exstensive Open Space exhibition of Mowry Baden's recent work entitled A Choreography of the Ordinary: Recent Works 1988-1998. The symposium will attempt to foster critical comparisons and discussions of the wider significance of the artist's investigations inside and outside the gallery space. This investigative relationship between the artist's work and external social structures and systems is a starting point for Robert Hullot-Kentor, a contributing writer to the catalogue, who uses Baden's public sculpture for a broader discussion of sculpture, architecture, and social space. Baden has challenged conventional assumptions about the relationship between sculpture and the viewer by taking the viewer's physical gestures as his medium. In this context, Baden's practice is a model for interactive art. Greg Snider, a Vancouver artist, writer and professor, looks at and discusses the fictional, or unbuilt, public art proposals and works developed by artists through competitions for public art programs, developers and artists' own needs. Public art administrator, Judy Moran of San Francisco discusses the range of public projects developed by the San Francisco Art Commission and other public agencies, another point to be analyzed in this forum for addressing questions about art in the public realm.