other sights

The Future is Floating 2

A con­ver­sa­tion between Claire Doherty and Lorna Brown

Founder and Direc­tor Claire Doherty dis­cusses the ori­gins and the future of Sit­u­a­tions, a com­mis­sion­ing and research pro­gram based at the Uni­ver­sity of West Eng­land in Bris­tol and their cur­rent project, Nowhereis­land, a large-scale pub­lic art project con­ceived by artist Alex Hart­ley and com­mis­sioned as part of the UK Cul­tural Olympiad 2012. This island, orig­i­nat­ing from the Arc­tic, will jour­ney around the south west region of Eng­land this sum­mer, stop­ping at ports and har­bours as a vis­it­ing ‘island nation’. Accom­pa­nied by its land based Embassy, its six-week jour­ney will fin­ish in Bris­tol on the 9th Sep­tem­ber 2012. The pub­lic is invited to learn more, become a cit­i­zen, and track the new nation’s progress here.

Claire Doherty is a cura­tor and writer who inves­ti­gates new and uncon­ven­tional mod­els of cura­to­r­ial prac­tice. Sit­u­a­tions com­mis­sions artists’ projects, often out­side con­ven­tional gallery or museum set­tings, with an empha­sis on new forms of pub­lic engage­ment which span inter­na­tional bound­aries. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Lit­mus Research Ini­tia­tive at Massey Uni­ver­sity and a vast net­work of cura­tors and insti­tu­tions, Doherty co-directed One Day Sculp­ture with David Cross, a diverse series of twenty com­mis­sioned, 24-hour tem­po­rary pub­lic art­works across New Zealand. Doherty is a Vis­it­ing Lec­turer in Curat­ing Con­tem­po­rary Art at the Royal Col­lege of Art in Lon­don and Senior Research Fel­low at the Uni­ver­sity of West Eng­land in Bris­tol, UK. Doherty lec­tures and pub­lishes inter­na­tion­ally. She is edi­tor of Con­tem­po­rary Art: From Stu­dio to Sit­u­a­tion; (Black Dog Pub­lish­ing, 2004); Doc­u­ments of Con­tem­po­rary Art: Situation(Whitechapel/ MIT Press, 2009), and co-editor with David Cross of One Day Sculp­ture (Ker­ber, 2009), with Paul O’Neill, Locat­ing the Pro­duc­ers: Dura­tional Approaches to Pub­lic Art (Valiz, 2011) and with Ger­rie van Noord, Heather and Ivan Mori­son: Falling into Place (Book Works, 2009).

Lorna Brown is an artist, writer, inde­pen­dent cura­tor and found­ing mem­ber of Other Sights and par­tic­i­pant in the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Office.

This con­ver­sa­tion is the final install­ment of “The Sit­u­a­tion is This: Speak­ers Series 2011” and a bridge to “The Future is Float­ing”, a series of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Office events that will take place in var­i­ous loca­tions around Van­cou­ver dur­ing 2012.

We are grate­ful to our Speaker Series part­ner the Lan­gara Col­lege Cen­tre for Art in Pub­lic Spaces and project fun­ders the City of Van­cou­ver 125 and the Pub­lic Art Program.

About The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Office:

Late last year, Other Sights formed a Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Office, and we have been talk­ing and think­ing about how The Future is Float­ing in so many ways. Whether it’s melt­ing ice caps, waves of social unrest, list­ing economies or just a gen­eral sink­ing feel­ing, the future is uncer­tain, and flu­idly so. In wav­ing or drown­ing, we pro­pose a series of events that focus our atten­tions, invite new ideas and put us in touch, whether face to face or ear to ear.

This pod­cast is launched on the anniver­sary of the 2010 erup­tion of the Ice­landic vol­cano Eyjaf­jal­la­jökull, whose free-floating ash cloud cov­ered much of North­ern Europe, caus­ing 6 days of air travel dis­rup­tions across the con­ti­nent. The ground­ing of Euro­pean flights avoided about 344×106 kg of CO2 emis­sions per day, while the vol­cano emit­ted about 150×106 kg of CO2 per day.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load (Dura­tion: 50:58 — 70.0MB)