The agenda for the video-streaming cultural exchange and dialogue now includes the artist Yang Jianping who has recently produced a large scale art work for the Shanghai World Expo. His work is positioned in a key location, beside the entrance and the Chinese Pavilion.
Bearing in mind that art in the cities will be exploring the exchange context of the Expo over the next few months, this is a great opportunity to begin to see how things look.
Here is a movie clip to give a taster of the emerging situation on the Expo site with just two weeks to go before the opening. The city breathes with the - air - water - light - from the Leeds Liverpool Canal
Our friend Paul Domela cannot be with us, but Lewis Biggs will join the dialogue to speak about the context and vision behind last September's Urbanism 09 programme and conference.
The schedule will follow this sequence:
11.00am Introductions Philip Courtenay in Liverpool and Lingmin in Shanghai to introduce the theme of the dialogue on this occasion.
11.00 -11.10 Introduction from Yang Jianping ( Artist) who has recently completed a large scale project in front of the China Pavilion in the World Expo site in Shanghai.
11.10 - 11.20 We will see his work on the video documentation shot on the Expo site.
11.20- 11.30 Invitation to both audiences to ask questions or respond to the presentation.
11.30 - 11.45 Time to look at Urbanism 09 videos.
11.45 - 12.00 Squash Nutrition introduce their approach to the project.
12.00-12.10 Lewis introduce Urbanism 09 relates to the wider issue of art and the city
12.10 - 12. 20 Invitation to both audiences to ask questions or respond to the presentations
12.20 - 12.55
Peter Appleton to introduce the Shangpool project
followed by open dialogue and exchange of ideas for this "work in progress".
Following our last art in the cities live streaming dialogue we have been considering how to deepen our explorations concerning the roles of pubic art in the context of urban and social fabrics.
One type of urban and social situation seems to have moved into the foreground of our thinking. It is a situation that has several significant features, but the obvious fact is probably the most important, a fact that is elemental, and although it is bounded and defined in and by the urban fabric, it is has a powerful transformative quality in itself for many people, it is the natural element, water. The thought connections involved in this process of consideration are simply linked:
Thoughts concerning scale, public art, social fabric: These thoughts were prompted by our dialogue and exchange concerning the larger scale, including the infrastructural scale of the Shanghai Metro development, type of public art project, that in the UK is normally viewed and discussed in the popular media as "public art". For many contemporary artists, designers, architects and curators there is a much bigger picture that includes urban territories that are off centre, marginal and peripheral, but for practical and spatial reasons is where most of us urban inhabitants actually live.
Thoughts concerning contemporary art practices and the spectrum of possibilities for a public art practice: These thoughts were, and are, being prompted by suggestions raised in Shanghai during the dialogue on 02.02.2010. The way the Dream project has, and continues to have, a transformational impact upon a sense of a place, the meaning of a place, the memories of a place, or re-defining a place as a natural or re-covered natural environment, is, as we say, a result! However there are transformational processes that of equal impact but within different terms and different scales, where the fabric of environment is balanced by the need to re-define the social context and experience.
Thoughts about the benefits that come from the live project, projects that are about the experiences that flow from social engagements, and how these types of experience have a quality of transformative potential that is the more powerful because it is ephemeral, of the moment, performative, and connected to the flow of the practices of everyday life. Artists, designers, architects and curatorial teams provide the context for marking and making these moments and memories.
These thoughts easily led to Urbanism 09:
The press release gives a very clear idea of the vision behind the events that took place 16-20 September 2009.
Liverpool Biennial presents Urbanism 09: five days of exhibition, exploration, discussion and celebration along the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, stretching through South Sefton and North Liverpool; a vital green/blue lung in what many mistakenly perceive as an area of urban decay.
The route of the event runs along the canal from St Winefride’s & St Richard’s School (St Winnie’s) on the canalside in Bootle to Bank Hall in Liverpool. Following in the footsteps of Utopians before them, St Winnie’s has been transformed by architects Raumlabor, artist Kerry Morrison and food activists Squash Nutrition into an Urban Arcadia while Danilo Capasso presents Porto Allegro on the canalside at Bank Hall.
In Urbanism 09 Liverpool Biennial presents new commissions by international artists and architects invited to respond to the canal over the past year as well as the exhibition of muf’s Feral Arcadia and the five shortlisted designs for Waterworks, a mobile hub for watersports and environmental education on the canal and part of the groundbreaking Art for Places Sefton community engagement programme.
Visitors can travel from the Promising Land to Porto Allegro with the artists, architects and food acitvists on 17 September 2009, to examine real case studies of creating positive spaces. Talk to the bees, talk to the sky, drink tea in the floating Tea House, paint in the floating studio, explore the Feral Arcadia museum, make chutney in the Squash vegetable garden, take a swan pedalo down the canal and make plans for the Happy City . . . with David Bade, Ben Parry, Kerry Morrison, Squash Nutrition, Raumlabor, Majciej Kurak, Danilo Capasso, Muf Architecture, Public Works and Rob Sweere.
Taking its cue from architect Carolyn Steel’s inspirational book, Hungry City, the Happy City conference on 18 September 2009, in association with Places Matter! the architecture centre for the Northwest, explores alternative ways of planning and redesigning our cities and neighbourhoods, starting with the premise of not simply providing more houses but improving the quality of the spaces between them and the wellbeing of their inhabitants. Speakers include Pete Halsall, CEO of visionary developers, Bio-Regional Quintain, Joost Beunderman Research Associate at Demos, Ian McArthur Regional Director of Groundwork and Michael Palwyn of Exploration Architecture.
The week reaches a climax on Saturday 19 September 2009 in a water-borne parade including an upturned Black Cab, a floating Mint Teahouse and a whole variety of crafts created by artists and residents who live in the neighbourhoods along the canal; giving a whole new meaning to the traditional processional ‘float’.
Art for Places: Sefton Waterworks Project Award ceremony at Urbanism 09 Peter Hatton of TEA(Those Environmental Artists)and e-space lab brings the experience and example of the project Nothing but Flowers commissioned by The Lowry Centre in Manchester to explore the changing urban context of the Manchester Ship Canal.
TEAProcesses and techniques
Each new project involves new negotiations and encounters and selecting methods and media that are appropriate. First we identify the personal, spatial and conceptual parameters of the situation we find ourselves in. These determine how we engage with the place and people. For example, in Boat Trip: Nothing But Flowers the contested margins of the Manchester Ship Canal were explored using on the ground activities and encounters, video, fiction and documentary to construct narratives of various locations along the banks. The device of public boat trips brought together live and mediated, current and remembered experiences of the area. A secondary experience was offered to a wider audience through a publication and CD. Ideas for dialogue?
Propositions for a Happy City As part of Urbanism 09 David Bade talks about projects of the past and present with the propositions for a happy city.
Are there themes to discuss here? Better life?
Better City?
Happy City?
