SUBMISSION

FOREWORD

This paper is a speculative unsolicited response to recent events in the ARTworld in lutruwitaTasmania that have alerted a number of cultural producers to the mindsets that drive these projects. What comes to the attention of many is that public patronage in the arena of public artmaking and cultural production seems to have become distorted and embroiled in politics.

That is, distorted politically and otherwise in ways that leave Communities of Ownership and Interest haplessly standing on the sidelines in their CULTURALlandscapes – relative to their placemaking aspirations and abilities. 

People belong to places and places do not belong to people.

'Places' are not merely spaces waiting for someone to happen along and occupy them or spaces waiting for something to happen in. Cultures transform spaces into 'places' and in turn our cultural realities shape them. 

Likewise, a place's geography in its turn shapes and makes cultures in all their diversity. It has ever been thus.

CULTURAL PRODUCTION IN PUBLIC SPACES AND PLACES

It often happens that an art student will ask their lecturers what they must do to become famous – AKA rich. It's a really silly question because if their lecturer had the remotest idea about getting to be famous they would not be where they are to have such questions put to them. Making 'Art' is a tricky business!

On the other hand lecturers might well be able throw some light on how one might achieve infamy. Here the student should be advised to research art history and very quickly they'll be able to compile a long list of infamous artists. There are many ways to become infamous in the ARTworld. Seek and you will find one or two quite quickly!!

Thomas Kinkade [1] - [2] - [3] the American painter of light, would be an exemplar of an artist who was/is infamous and rich.

It is said that 'art' adores a vacuum. That’s why styles, genres and mediums left for dead by one generation are often revived by subsequent ones. In the 1960s and ’70s public sculpture was contemporary art’s foremost fatality – deader than painting in fact. The ARTcorpse generally took the form of corporate, pseudo-Minimalist PLOPart. It was ignored by the general public who were looking to find 'useful things' in public places and it was despised by the ARTworld. 

However, it wasn't just the the art critics who called this stuff out. As soon as the money expended to install this stuff John Citizen would hit out and often being much harsher in their commentaries.  Indeed many artists Rachel Whiteread , among them, said "I don't want to make plop art — sculpture that just gets plopped down in places. I wouldn't want to litter every corner of the world with my sculpture."

However, it has to be said that it gets quite tricky when it comes to 'placeing' a sculpture, a piece of cultural production, in a CULTURALlandscape. When these works are placed where they are intended, and they are site-specific, they belong to their place and the place belongs to it, and there are stories to do with the place, all belong together, then there is a 'placedness' that interrogates and celebrates 'place'.

Places shape cultures and culture shapes places. 'Reality Hacking', is another thing that emerge in CULTURALlandscapes that uses nonviolent sometimes illegal, other times legal and ambiguous interventions in 'places' . Essentially these interventions are looking to be politically, socially, or culturally subversive. It is deliberative and interventionist, confronting and political, in that it challenges banal perceptions of placedness.

The Swiss artist Peter Regli, invented his own kind of art of mostly anonymous intervention in public spaces. Like 'hackers' in cyberspace, Regli breaks with convention and enters into selected existing spaces to challenge a perception of placedness.  Regli's interventions around the world up until 2007, when his book was published [LINK], his work was only published on the internet [LINK] and it was relatively obscure. Regli' 'hacks' always involved the navigation of the intervention with 'the authorities'.

LINK

Christo and Jeanne-Claude [1] - [2] -[3]  somewhat like Regli worked in kindred ways to do with placedness. Essentially they are placemakers and placemarkers and their interventions, in order to be realised, required sometimes intense and protracted political engagement. The two protagonists here are speculative initiators and they were always the prime movers. Their realised outcomes nonetheless depended upon the local support they were able to muster. Inevitably these people ultimately became collaborators in the realisations and on a case by case basis there are Communities of Ownership and Interest with 'rhizomatic' [1] linkages.

It no surprise that it turns out that one way or another, cultural issues, cultural production, CULTURALlandscaping, and placemaking unavoidably become embroiled in politics. When the initiators are cultural producers who are interrogating social and cultural realities and 'norms', it is an indication that there is a level of inclusiveness in the prevailing political realities linked to places. However, when 'governance' initiates the intervention, the authoritative implication become worrisome and as often as not justifiably so. Indeed, another cultural sensibility and cultural dynamic comes into play.

In Australia arts budgets offer slim pickings to individual cultural producers and groups.  Typically they are spoken of in the lowish $Millions. However, when sports infrastructure is touted politically the budgets are often in the $Billions. Right now in Tasmania this is the case. So when suddenly out of nowhere apparently $1.25Million is found for a GATEway Project and from the very same GOVTdepartment –'State Growth'– that's apparently unable to adequately fund 'THE ARTS"!

Where did this funding - $1.25Mil apparently – come from? Who initiated the project? Who was consulted and when? Quixotic questions maybe, but there does seem to be a windmill or two to point a sharpish lance at! It is more than interesting that Burnie Council who it is presumed should be as pleased as all get out to have this funding spent in its jurisdiction, but apparently it's not so. Seemingly, the good folk of Burnie are not quite as dumb 'culturally', or as VISUALLYilliterate as bureaucracy hubristically assumed.

Actually,  Burnie Council [BCA] here has found itself caught between a rock and a very HARDplace because if they were to decline the project, and apparently, the council is a tad concerned, and might want to. You see, the council will need to find $500K from somewhere if they were to do so. 

Could this possibly be bureaucratic BLACKMAIL perpetrated by bureaucratic CULTURALcavemen, a term coined by Ron Robertson Swann in the1960s – we'll come back to that term and its circumstance later?

GOOGLElink

It's not for nothing that 'governance' dysfunctionalism finds its way into the realms of comedic TV. For the moment let's call it a 'Conspiracy Theory' but it isn't too hard to imagine tasking a hapless bureaucrat to come up with a political sweetener for a place, say GATEway, and them rummaging through their memories for a starting point for their 'hunting and gathering' for THEboss. Bingo, on those trips to Melbourne they recall that city's GATEway ... let's give that a nod – job pretty much done.

Next task, who in Tasmania could deliver one of those GATEways? Do as one does, a GOOGLEsearch and BINGOagain – job done again. Next task, start a selection process in-house to ensure accolades fall where they are due, and send out Expressions of Interest. Looks good, sounds good and off we go with a sweet budget dreamed up on goodness knows what advice, and Bob's your uncle – job done again ... easy peasy.

Meanwhile in Burnie that community is somewhat despairing and despondent, by some accounts, regarding what is being planted in their cultural landscape and are being asked, in the vernacular, to 'suck it up'.Well as it seems to be turning out, Bob isn't your uncle and the assumption that he is, well that seems to be based upon bureaucratic ignorance and way too many assumptions. One does not employ a gynaecologist to perform brain surgery although both are doctors. Likewise one doesn't engage a manager to fix anything even if she/he is a DIY enthusiast – AKA dilettante. 

Administrative functionaries with domain knowledge may well be able, with professional advice, to navigate a course through the complexities relative to placemaking. However, they ought not to attempt complex tasks without professional assistance and especially so when within a concerned community there are 'experts aplenty'. The mechanisms for 'community engagement' are well known, but the downside of transparency and accountability, for whatever reason seemingly is the inhibitor here.

Cutting to the chase in Burnie and several other places, those that Ron Robertson-Swann (RRS) called out in the 1960s as "cultural cavemen' have been operating in 'governance' ever since the days of Melbourne's 'YELLOW PERIL' – LINKS [RRS-YP] - [E-T] – and somehow RRS's "VAULT "(AKA YELLOW PERIL) gets THEnod quiet a lot  – LINK [RRS-YP]. It is clear that yet again it gets THEnod in Burnie and we are not talking about 'plagiarism' or intellectual theft, rather we are talking about CULTURALliteracy and VISUALlanguage. Here RRS is your quintessential VISUALlinguist with a cultural pedigree that reaches right into core of the Western ARTworld's  'modernist' thinking.

When a PLACEmarker gets THEnod it is not unusual albeit that it IS BORROWEDwisdom - its how disciples function. “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” to quote Pablo Picasso – it's also how making is taught under the Japanese master makers ... what one steals and makes it one's own is masterly. So, if RRS's VAULT gets THEnod it is not unlike a Shakespearean character, say Shylock, getting THEnod in another context. Exemplars are exemplars resplendent with all their cultural cargo – some of it morally uplifting other aspects of it dystopian.

 

The Western world has seen some great placemakers – emperors, leaders and entrepreneurs. Augustus, emperor of ancient Rome, who was responsible for shaping the world’s largest city and Joseph Smith of frontier America, who talked of the  “Promised Land” while practising land speculation. Placemaking focusses on visionaries and profiteers who put their stamp on history – and on 'places'. From the Middle East to Europe and North America, with side trips to China we find placemakers shaping 'places' everywhere. The architects, planners, cultural producers  who are curious about their histories and their cultural landscapes, their 'placedness' need to know about their physical, social and cultural geographies. Cultures shape places and places shape culture and it has ever been thus.

However, enter STAGEright the self-serving bureaucratic functionaries and the plot thickens somewhat. For some time the bureaucrats – AKA RRS's 'cultural cavemen' among them – have increasingly become the  euphemistic "tail that wags the dog". That said, within their ranks there are some 'experts' working to keep body and soul together in the light of there being slim pickings 'in the market' elsewhere – albeit way too few. Right now in Tasmania – in Burnie & Launceston somewhat poignantly - where in 'public places'  dilettantes  and CULTURALneanderthals and POSTturtles are creating mayhem  in cultural landscapes.

It is insidious Machiavellian politics when administrative functionaries self-license themselves as TASTEmakers or are cast in that role by their OVERlords. The proverb that goes ... "The proper way is that straight and narrow pathway that inevitably leads to the realm. of mediocrity" is sadly of no real interest to status quo politicians and their bureaucrats.

It is also insidious Machiavellian politics when a Mayor, Launceston's, and apparently a couple of 'supporters', and with the administrative functionaries looking away, and he/they self-licensed themselves as TASTEmakers. It is proof positive that the 'mediocrity proverb' is so sadly being played out in real time. That is so albeit that the reality of it is yet to be painted on the walls. While the STREETart might well be OK it will be there without the Community of Ownership & Interest's  blessing or indeed with them having any part at all in facilitating this intervention in their 'placedness'.  

The TASTEmakers will have done this to them not with them! 

Site Paretson St East  CARpark [LINK]

Mythologically there windmills aplenty in 21st C CULTURALlandscapes to be tilting at. Moreover there are Shakespearean characters aplenty as well to be giving THEnod to. The culturally literate are all too aware of the CHANGEagencies in the CULTURALlandscape post WW 1 & WW 2 that are deserving of THEnod. They tilted their lances at the cultural autocratic imperatives that brought so much dystopian mayhem upon the world. Here we might well look the activities of the Dada and the FLUXUS 'movements' – the latter spawning GREENpolitics in Germany/Europe – see [DD_F].

Thinking about the current current contentious political intervention into Burnie's  CULTURALlandscape one has to wonder why it was that the political  TASTEmakers  gave THEnod to VAULT (AKA YELLOWperil) and even giving a sideways glance to other developments in the ARTworld post WW2. One consideration might well have been SOCIALsculpture given Tasmania's, indeed Burnie's geopolitical cultural positioning internationally.

Social sculpture is a phrase used to describe an expanded concept of art that was invented by the artist and founding member of the German Green Party, Joseph Beuys. Beuys created the term "social sculpture" to embody his understanding of art's potential to transform society. As a work of art, a social sculpture includes human activity that strives to structure and shape society or the environment. The central idea of a social sculptor is an artist who creates structures in society using language, thoughts, actions, and objects. 

All that said, and thinking about Burnie's $1.25 Million 'Gateway Project' along with other politically directed Public Art Projects there is quite a bit to unpick. It has to be said that there are so, so many comedic instances in this realm of the ARTworld in Australia and perhaps more so in Tasmania.

In looking for comedic subject material for a TV Series it is quite understandable that the script writers for a TV Series, say UTOPIA, might mine the goings on in Govt bureaucracies for content. Here we might well imagine a sequence of events in Tasmania's Dept of 'State Growth' that might well have looked like this:

• Govt Minister asks Dept Head for ideas to sweeten the Govt's street credibility in Burnie; and
• Head of Dept calls a UTOPIA style BRAINstorm and underlings go away to ponder the issues; and
• UNDERLINGxyz has a  BRAINfart, possibly after a trip to Melbourne, and suggests that Burnie people  might feel good if they had a GATEWAY like Melbourne's; and
• BINGO the Minister has a project to CHUCKdollars at ... $1.25Mil?: and
• The wheels of progress start to spin furiously at STATE GROWTH'S UTOPIA ; and
• A  concept gets THEnod and a 'provider' is found, briefed, and contracted in the UTOPIANway; and
• Taxpayers money is committed ... quietly: and
• Bob's your uncle, with a happy Minister lurking backstage the project proceeds full steam ahead despite there being a few unhappy campers !

All well and good as that how it is with PARISHpump POLITICS! It is what it is, however there are, as always, some questions hanging in the air the need to be answered. One being, given that Arts Tasmania is within aegis of State Growth, why hasn't the expertise and domain knowledge within that operation been brought to bear? The answer may well be that 'politically' it/they might not have been seen as 'politically reliable' whatever that might mean IF it was factor.

As Salvador Dali (Dadaist & Surrealist) is known to have said ... "A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others" and politically, or even bureaucratically, we cannot be having any of that thank you. However, and as we are trading in cliche, as Pablo Picasso reminds us "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working."

CALDER PLOP

Sadly, it seems that in Burnie the people have been sold a dud and that not because the GATEWAY PROJECT is formally incompetent, rather because it has been, rather will be, PLONKED/PLOPPED [LINK] on their doorstep in the way a cat drops its TROPHYkill after a night out on the loose. No need to eat it, except for the need to demonstrate its ability to kill yet another bird, bandicoot or baby possum. Whatever, it was sacrificed because a cat wasn't kept under control and an opportunity to live a life is lost.

The big lie in all this is that somehow GOOFYart public art projects boost civic pride and bring tourism dollars, when really all they are about is being big with BIGname arts types, et al conspiring to put one over on the public with their money. Sometimes 'goofy' is not really goofy, just unfamiliar. The idea that every human being is an artist is not goofy. Pablo Picasso famously said: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

Like in the SPORTSarena the ARTworld is populated with Heroes and Villains always subjectively assessed. in the world of PUBLICart and STREETart, too there is a whole gamut of heroes and villains. Your hero is my villain and visa versa. It is what it is and has ever been thus ... See FILE [A/H?]

LINK

However, retuning to the Social sculpture idea, once it was deemed to be GOOFYlike – villain like if you like – but if you've ever looked at how Kassel in Germany embraced it, well it turns out that it has been an idea worth spreading with CLIMATEchange finally getting getting social and cultural credibility on the street. It's a SOWNseed that has spread rhizomatically. 

Kassel's 7,000 OAKS [LINK] has indeed spread rhizomatically and the evidence in the Western World and beyond is there to be witnessed. That Joseph Beuys came to be understood as 'shaman' and hero has been mystifying for many. Nevertheless his 7,000 OAKS concept has been ground breaking, PLACEmaking and politically significant. More to the point, Kassel's 7,000 OAKS belong to Kassel's people not to ARTsuperstar cum hero. The people of Kassel realised their 7000 OAKS project themselves, [DIT] they propagated the oaks, they mined the stone, they carried the stone to the town square, they planted the trees and they nurtured the oaks. The 7000 OAKS became a part of their cultural landscape albeit that Joseph Beuys might have led the process Kassel's 'oaks' belong to and in Kassel.

Joseph Beuys ... "A total work of art is only possible in the context of the whole of society. Everyone will be a necessary co-creator of a social architecture, and, so long as anyone cannot participate, the ideal form of democracy has not been reached. Whether people are artists, assemblers of machines or nurses, it is a matter of participating in the whole."

Apropos of nothing much at all, geographically Kassel is approximately as far away on mother Earth from lutruwitaTasmania as one can get without getting closer again.

It is not a new observation that making sense of culture feels a lot like a goldfish trying to make sense of water. Our lives are immersed in it and we can remain mostly unaware of its presence or impact. It's also said that the average attention span for the notoriously ill-focused goldfish is nine seconds. However, the Microsoft people say that we generally lose concentration after eight seconds. That our our cultural realities are subliminal is not so surprising. That we are likely to be unaware of other cultural realities is unfortunate given that inclusive cultural landscaping empowers communities.

CULTURALliteracy and VISUALlanguage competency together are a lot like GOLDFISHwater.  Quintessentially VISUALlinguistics enable diverse sensitivities  and sensibilities to be acknowledged in CULTURALlandscapes. When bureaucratic functionaries seek some sort of 'proper way', a common denominator for that pathway tends to be a straight and narrow path with mediocracy at its end point. It is all so tempting call out these 'functionaries' as cultural cavemen. Again it is what it is albeit that in order to achieve more inclusive cultural landscapes communities might well be more proactive in challenging the common denominators thrust upon them – plopped on their doorstep.

Meanwhile in Burnie  [PML], that community may well be somewhat despairing and despondent, by some accounts, regarding what is being planted in their cultural landscape. Something that they are being asked to do, in the vernacular, is to 'suck it up' .... something that they had no real part in devising ...something that will be 'plonked' on their doorstep .... something that may not easily fit within their cultural realities, their sensibilities, their aspirations. In short their gateway (AKA YELLAgate) is being done to them rather than with them ... see [DTT]

Again, in Launceston, the mayor has adopted the role of TASTmaker and is facilitating the 'plopping' of a couple of murals in a public place by-and-large on his own cognisance. An exemplar of sanctioned transgressive STREETart if you like ... sanctioned soft option WALLscribbling (AKA graffiti?) if you like ... Walking his talk one would expect to see some meaningful community participation in the briefing and implementation process but not a bit of it. Participatory democracy sidelined yet again and it is worrisome in the context of 21st C cultural landscaping. Mind you Mayor Garwood is prepared to give THEnod to some 'scribbling '– See [[PML] 

All that said, it also needs to be said that in Tasmania/Australia this is a political reality and all the 'players' here are being swept along by THEsystem. In a 21st C context representational democracy is failing its constituencies. That is so albeit that in Germany along with other jurisdictions, increasingly direct democratic protocols are in place. It is more than interesting that Joseph Beuys was a co-founder of the German Greens and a prime mover in Germany's push for direct democracy that has led to greater accountability and transparency in governance. This is reflected in Kassel's 7,000 OAKS concept and its realisation.

Just as surely as GOD made little apples the only way open to avoid being criticised is to say nothing, do nothing and make no attempt to be something – its self-evident and self fulfilling. What has been done is done and dusted. What is over is beyond recovery mostly. Life's lessons are always to do with what comes next. Looking back's utility is to do with seeing how far we’ve come in order gain a perspective on how far we need to go yet. It has ever been thus except we might all be advocates for change.

As it turns out there are windmills aplenty to tilt at, nonetheless these imagined enemies sometimes alert us to things that might otherwise escape our attention – the banal, the enlightening, the insidious, unknown dangers, artfulness even.