Institute for the Development and Exploration of Art
The
ICA, London, 9 May - 17 June
Starting with the question What should be happening at the ICA?
I.D.E.A.London is the culmination and continuation of research
exploring current institutional conditions within the arts. Collaborating
with artists and other practitioners, we will be ‘squatting’ the ICA.
Placed within the institution, yet remaining autonomous, I.D.E.A.London
aims to explore and intervene in the institutional strategies of the
ICA, by generating visual and textual critical discourse, developed around
three main subjects:
The Spaces for Artistic Production and Showcase
What is the ideal space for displaying creative production? Can there be
one single space in a time when the possibilities of alternative spaces
are rendering the traditional white cube redundant? Or is this modern
state of art viewing placing the traditional art institution back on the
map, creating more demand for direct contact with the experience within
the familiar setting of the local gallery or the less familiar abandoned
warehouse? When does the space become “installation art”? The virtual
space and printed page allows for easy travel into new artistic
territories, but can the true nature of the experience cross territorial
lines and offer an adequate experience on relationship between artist and
viewer or is the nature of current practice one where the viewer isn't
even necessary?
We
will consider, through artistic production and discussion, what the
possibilities are of working as an institution within an institution,
whose reputation is determined and securely positioned in the contemporary
art world. We will question, what affect this has on contact with the
public and how the space determines the public the institution reaches.
Reflecting on our role as a floating institution within the ICA, we will
challenge notions of the nomadic organisation asking whether the
capability to extend outside the commercial confines creates a complexity,
which leaves the viewing public outside.
The Artist Organisation
This
area frames artistic practice that involves self-organised and initiated
structures and strategies of support and development of alternative
cultural modes.
One of
the curatorial aims of the institute is to make places and spaces for
artists to produce. Therefore this strand of investigation allows us to
work with artists who use curatorial practice, structures and social
processes as their medium. By collaborating and directly engaging in the
production of current artistic practice, artists have been invited to take
over or use I.D.E.A.London. Based within the institution, the
relationships and structures already present within the ICA will be
explored and questioned. Creative thinkers and producers will be
discussing and initiating work on the issues thrown up by the invitation
to participate in a parasitic project such as I.D.E.A.London at the
ICA.
The inherent complications and
conversations that occur will be consistently
documented and conceptual
questions about the nature of institutions
and the structures they support or ignore can be entered
into. More questions than answers are likely to be proffered and the
nature of this curatorial project, authorial ownership and intellectual
property are all areas that will be revisited, questioned and expanded
upon. This theme allows the process of curation to become the outcome of
the project.
Cross-City Curatorial and Artistic Discourse
The
extended exploration of idiosyncratic alternatives to the institutional
models of exhibition is a common practice both of artists and curators.
Considering this, I.D.E.A.London aims to investigate if the
declining interest in rigid structures of permanent exhibition spaces
reflects a crisis of the institution itself and how this can be
transcended.
One
of the successful aspects of off -site projects is the convergence between
context and content of work and I.D.E.A.London will examine the
potential of this in the context of London, by ask creative practitioners
to consider how this relationship should function within an institution.
Art institutions tend to position their strategies according to a specific
community, but how can art institutions create and keep their own identity
within the context of accelerated hybridisation of society that unsettles
the cultural identities of communities? Should curators and artists think
global and act local or vice versa, when developing their discourse?
With present-day artistic and curatorial practices inflected by the
extra-cultural discourses of the political or the social, tending to focus
on meaning making within this frame over aesthetic experience,
I.D.E.A.London will ask if current artistic production is the result
of free subjective choice or rather a consequence of the inherent demands
in art institutions, informed by social and economical agents. In this
context, where should be the place of those artists and curators who
undermine the processes of representation and commodification of art?
As
an extend, how can I.D.E.A.London form a critic of the institution
in its wider cultural, social, political and economical context? And
finally, how can this project propose a transferable model of a long term
‘change’ within art institutions?
Participants include: Sarah Andrew, Kathrin Böhm and Andreas Lang
(Public Works), Hugo Canoilas, Benoit Maire, Adrian Shaw, Reuben Henry,
Thomas Kratz, Lia and Dan Perjovschi, Bob and Roberta Smith/LCCA, Alex
Zika, Random Artists, Charles Esche,
Sam Ely & Lynn
Harris,
Katie Holten,
Jill Magid, Drabble+Sachs, Art Lab, Daniel Griffiths, James Lingwood,
Space Hijackers
I.D.E.A.London
will be a continuously evolving, spontaneous project and is open to new
ideas for collaboration during its squat.
I.D.E.A.London
ICA
The
Mall
London SW1Y 5AH
0044(0)7967 526 670
idealondon@gold.ac.uk
www.idealondon.co.uk
I.D.E.A.London
is a curatorial project by MA Curating Goldsmiths and it emerges from a
series of seminars with the Exhibitions Department of ICA.
