A slow-growing list of references and projects about public art, public space, monuments, place-specific practices and research.
A to Z
Archive of Destruction was established by curator Jes Fernie in association with Flat Time House (London, UK) as "a story-telling platform that brings together narratives around destruction and public art. It is made up of suspect categories, barely believable tales, and life-affirming strangeness. Spanning a hundred years and many continents, it tells cumulative stories of vulnerability, interference, rage, fear, boredom and love."
Art Inside Out is a nomadic institution for artist-in-residence in all art forms and genres. Artists are invited to explore the possibilities for their own art practices, as well as delve into new collaborations. Art Inside Out is operated by Region Halland in Sweden, and collaborates with the municipalities of Kungsbacka, Varberg, Falkenberg, Hylte, Halmstad, and Laholm.
Monument Lab is a non-profit art and history studio based in Philadelphia, USA. They envision "a society where monuments are dynamic and defined by their meaning, not by their hardened immovable and untouchable status. To illuminate how symbols are connected to systems of power and public memory, we engage critically with our inherited monument landscape and work joyfully with artists, organizations, and movements to imagine the next generation of monuments."
Nya Småland New Småland is an inter-regional and international contemporary art project based in Sweden "initiated and is driven by a curatorial group, four art institutions, three regions and a university. New Småland is an attempt to formulate long-term relationships, encourage experimentation and create conditions for critical and cultural sustainability. This idea is based on the view that all art institutions and actors in the three regions, irrelevant of economic or institutional conditions, are equally important resources and nodes of knowledge."
Project Anywhere is a partnership between the Centre of Visual Art (University of Melbourne) and Parsons School of Art, Media and Technology (Parsons School of Design, The New School). It offers "a global exhibition program for art at the outermost limits of location-specificity. Using a peer review model instead of a curator, Project Anywhere provides artists and artistic researchers working outside traditional exhibition systems with peer-validation, community support, and global dissemination of their work."
PUBLICS is a curatorial agency with a dedicated library, event space and reading room in Vallila Helsinki. The agency explores a “work together” institutional model with multiple overlapping objectives, thematic strands and collaborations. PUBLICS is a constellation of practices, projects and proposes the term “Public” as always plural—as a concept; as a group of people (imagined, actualized or real); and as a contested spatio-temporal location/discourse in the world. The on-going project strands of PUBLICS are: PUBLICS Library; PUBLICS Talks; PUBLICS Events and Performances; PUBLICS YOUTH and PUBLICS Parahosting.
Råängen is "a platform for discussion about what happens on Lund Cathedral’s land in Brunnshög, an area on the north-east edge of Lund, in southern Sweden. Brunnshög is on the threshold of an ambitious development which will significantly change the character of the area over the next thirty years. Our aim is to rethink the way that towns are developed by introducing an arts programme that will become a tool for conversation, critical debate and engagement before any building work begins."
Situations (2002–2018) was an arts organisation based in Bristol, UK "dedicated to producing and commissioning remarkable arts projects in the public realm and unconventional locations. Our work began with the site, situation, people, circumstance, history, or untold story of a place, taking us to many different cities, towns and villages across the UK and overseas."
SixtyEight Art Institute is a non-profit, independent organisation for contemporary art, located in central Copenhagen, Denmark. They describe themselves as "an intimate space, both in terms of the way audiences meet with art and the ideas it generates, and in the way the Institute works closely with partners and focuses on co-productions. The Institute supports cross-regional and cross-institutional models for knowledge and resource-sharing and cultural production, in order to help advance the role of the arts and their intersection with science, technology, literature, and philosophy."
Spaced operates as part of International Art Space (IAS) in Western Australia. It was established in 1998 by a team comprising two farmers, Tony York and Donna Dransfield, and two arts professionals from Perth, artist Rodney Glick and writer/curator Marco Marcon. "Until 2009 IAS operations were mainly carried out in and around the small town of Kellerberrin, in the Western Australian Wheatbelt. In 2009 IAS relocated to Perth to launch spaced, an innovative expansion of our operations to a wide range of locations and communities across Western Australia and beyond."
Toppled Monuments Archive describe their project as "an artist and activist-run digital archive of toppled colonialist, imperialist, racist and sexist monuments. Here you will find the monuments that are pushed into lakes, set on fire, pulled down by rope and rolled down the street by the people. We are a radical international collective that has come together to create the most comprehensive, accessible, open source online platform of recorded toppled monuments."