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SITAC Schedule
Thursday, January 23
Urban Aesthetics
How does urban culture manifest itself in contemporary artistic practices? In what way are artistic interventions negotiated or legitimized in public spaces? How do citizens interpret or appropriate the artistic proposals occupying public space? How many cities are reflected in the artistic practices covering public space in the same city? The answers to these questions call for an interdisciplinary effort permitting us to consider the fragmented or intertwined map with, at times, indistinct forms, of the present cities. The varied temporary or permanent, static or mobile, artistic interventions have changed our way of seeing art or the city itself. The saturation of advertisements promoting the consumption of products and services, the unrestricted construction of monuments and buildings of doubtful aesthetic taste, the graffiti and transplanted works of art occupying the public space are matters evidencing the complexity of urban aesthetics.
How does visual pollution affect life in the city? How can we control the invasion of intruders which pass through the massive communication media or through cyberspace to install themselves in private space? A study of cultural development trends in the cities and of the uses of the spaces measured reveals a diversity of multicultural scenarios, where the goals of reforms and transformations include the creation of institutional spaces and structures which favor and promote necessary and desirable community living. These same resources apply today as strategies for the launching of marketing in international spheres, to convert cities into the sites of highly important events such as the biennials, fairs, festivals, carnivals or Olympic Games. In the course of these adjustment processes, there are numerous public administration initiatives aimed toward consolidating the integration, the security and the well-being of the citizens. And these initiatives do not pertain exclusively to the public administration. Community associations, private institutions and individuals also participate in their consolidation to ensure their quality.
Nonetheless, it should be remembered that cities are also the symbols of tension between cultural integration and the differentiation processes involved in resistance to any kind of homogenization. Combined with this, the diversification of cultural offer or of symbolic goods gives rise to new cultural differences between the communities of which the population consists. Convergences, coexistences and contrasts have a bearing on the forms of appropriation and treatment of the patrimony to indicate to us traces of belonging in the formation of imaginary multiples. Crucibles of cultural exchange, diversity and creativity, change and innovation in the city mark the evolution of cultural spaces and activities in behavior patterns not easy to capture in a unilateral vision.
Friday, January 24
Public spaces
The creation and maintenance of public spaces shared as the result of a policy, have been revealed as a still unfulfilled commitment in many cities. This disturbing situation gives rise to our queries on public policies and the evaluation of aesthetic productions or cultural projects in their political dimension. Those who should guarantee the vitality of the debate and the public dialogues conditioning collective creativity, cultural vitality and the transformation of the city, often face uncertainties, an absence of laws, rules and projects to meet present and future challenges. More than once, this vacuum in organization of the public space has led to the triumph of absurdities which disfigure urban aesthetics. Since no legislation exists to protect these spaces, different forms of invasion and exploitation masking impunity or speculation, proliferate. By contrast, the dynamism of a public sphere, expressed by the creativity of public spaces, is the meeting place for interchange, interaction and relationships representing disciplines and criteria which orient individual and collective options, in such a way that debates on the changing limits between public and private, or the continual redefinition of general interests and responsibilities with regard to patrimony and collective services, become essential. A critical space in permanent evolution, the public space is also vulnerable in the face of the power and ideologies it represents.
Saturday, January 25
Policies for Public Art?
This encounter gives us an opportunity to examine the handling of public art projects and all implying their greater or lesser integration in the urban communities. It is not a question of taking art from the galleries and museums to transfer it to plazas, parks and streets, nor it is a matter of giving the city a face lift. It is a priority to prepare strategies for dialogue with the populace in order to awaken their interest and consciousness, and to achieve their greater participation in selecting the works of art to occupy the public space. This dialogue should include an orientation of the public favoring accessible information and the opening of criteria for evaluation and identification with the surrounding artistic manifestations. In order to facilitate constructive criticism to promote a better administration, both of the public spaces and of cultural institutions, let us begin by reviewing projects, experiences and results in order to analyze the procedures and consequences which, in one way or another, affect the human and aesthetic dimension of urban space.
The absence of urbanization projects involving transdisciplinary teams has led to highhandedness and dangers with which we have been forced to coexist. Celebrations, monuments and with no fixed vocation, everything being improvised at the caprice of a unilateral decision, to leave some cities without planning and patched by incoherencies. These measures, contrary to democracy, and to investments which represent benefits for a cityís inhabitants, result in increased tension, violence and insecurity.
Globalization has promoted similarities between many cities, with the spreading of the transnational companies located at airports and terminals, on the Internet, shopping centers and advertising support for mass communication media. This expansion involves a series of attributes resulting in illusions of similarity, when in fact great differences exist which set local conditions apart. The complexity of urban realities lead us to question ourselves as to the nature of the policies of projection and representation of the city, which challenge the risks of exoticism and anachronisms.
Ery Camara, Director de SITAC http://www.pac.org.mx/sitac.html
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