HAPPY HOLIDAYS from CAS!

There are few things that have the potential to be as powerfully divisive as public artwork. Apart from their own, individual artistic agendas, artworks commissioned for the public space serve as a representation of a society’s ideals – what a community deems worthwhile, worth funding, worth seeing on a daily basis. Conflict inevitably arises when communities are not accurately represented, or left out of the discussion entirely, or when the artist’s intention for the work is at odds with the goals of the commissioning body or the desires of a community. These conflicts can be positive, as they signify the continual ability of artwork to provoke and arouse. But as cultural producers, we must question how to best collaborate with and mediate the myriad of actors involved in the public sphere: artists, curators, community members, politicians, architects and urban planners. The below text explores one possible solution – increased understanding, support, and funding for temporary public artworks.

In the below essay, 2017 CAS resident Rachael Rakes discusses the relationship between abstract art and reality. The text is grounded in her ongoing research into how one might begin to repair documentary media’s association with form. By looking at examples of how context and politics are communicated through abstract and formalist art practices, Rakes shows how abstract forms can be used to represent lived experience.

Da vi startet Contemporary Art Stavanger i 2014 var det med et ønske om å etablere og fremme en kritisk diskurs rundt billedkunst i Stavanger-regionen. Dette innebærer også å rette et kritisk blikk på selve kritikken og dens form. Norsk Kulturråd satte kritikken på dagsorden i sin årskonferanse i 2016, og i kjølvannet av denne har vi invitert skribent og kritiker Kristina Ketola Bore til å reflektere over dagens situasjon og fremtidige muligheter. Denne teksten er den første av to tekster som adresserer spørsmål om nye rom for kritikk og kritikerens rolle, og hva en mer deltagende form for kritisk tenkning og kunnskapsproduksjon kan tilby. En påfølgende tekst vil diskutere det optimistiske potensialet denne situasjonen åpner for.