Community Archives & ARI REMIX | A Brief Reflection on a ‘Living Archives’ as Internet Artwork
That Space, artist studios with clerestory above, Charlotte Street, Brisbane 1985. Previously a light industrial warehouse built in c.1911, and potentially heritage listed just prior to demolition in 1988 | The term
clerestory is an architectural term
In architecture, a clerestory is typically a high section of wall that contains windows above eye-level. Its purpose is to admit light, fresh air, or both. A necessity in subtropical Brisbane Queensland light industrial warehouse spaces.
Paul Andrew is a queer artist researcher, senior media artist, video artist, zinester and artist curator with experience in social practice, site-generated ephemeral practice, creative archival assemblage and media art making using remix, bricolage, collage and scavenger techniques. These techniques allow for a making process encompassing enduring hybridisations.
Paul has actively participated in artist-run communities of practice throughout the 1978 to Now period including: The Northside Creative Artist’s Association (Qld), Mervyn Moriarty School of Art, Brisbane School of Art (Qld), Artworker’s Union Queensland, Queensland Artworker’s Alliance (QAA), F. Art (Art Zine), That Contemporary Art Space, That Annexe, Axis Art Projects AU/USA (Art eXtremists International Syndicate), 2B: The Garage USA, [Bureau] Artspace, Breathing Concrete, Bitumen River Gallery, TAG (Tropical Artists Guild), First Draft, Sydney Super 8 Filmmakers, Sydney Intermedia Network (SIN), Queer TV, Metro Screen, DLux Media Arts, Epicormia Collective ‘The Reauthoring Impulse”, The Soylent Spot ARI, Next Door ARI, Tripla ARI/IT, Circadian Visions/AU. Since the 1970s the artist has continued to make queer conceptual film performances and art actions with family, friends, lovers, colleagues and strangers, often in an experimental Super 8mm film to HD video cultural form. Alongside their ongoing living archives internet artwork ariremix.com.au they are currently working on a reflective series of conceptual video art work installations titled: Queer Life Writing 1964 to Now
My current research builds on my current site of creative practice presented as an ongoing ‘living archives’ initiative titled: the ARI Remix + Extra Zine Project 1970 to Now, a digitally driven project which emphasises Queensland and Australian artist-run culture and heritage. Conceptualised as an expanded internet artwork the project is intentionally community-based, collaborative and participatory in design. It is made entirely possible by collaborative collecting approaches and digitally-driven storytelling efforts. My aim is to provide a lo-fi networked, accessible and socially useful example of a creative archival assemblage about artist-run culture and heritage.
Paul Andrew
Artist, DIY coordinator, artist facilitator of memory work.
COMMUNITY ARCHIVES | SAFE SPACES
Many of the types of community archives that we are increasingly encountering
have grown up, not just because technology now facilitates such organizing, documenting,
and re/presentation of communities, but as augmenting, oppositional or counter-archives that
are striving to secure a place and a voice in contemporary society and a future where what
they wish to remember is remembered, and what they wish to change is changed.
Community-based archives and other heritage activity often represent what we can
also characterise as archival or heritage activism, which sees history-production as a participative practice, a form of Do It Yourself cultural and political activity which
engages with and promotes a ‘useful’ past as a form of social movement activism.
See: Gilliland, A., & Flinn, A. (2013, October). Community archives: What are we really talking about. In Retrieved from CIRN Prato Community Informatics Conference.
The community-based archive can also be a space of safety and autonomy, in which
the collections not only act as a resource for research but also as the context and
backdrop for social activities, political organisation, emotional responses in a space
belonging to the community independent and separate from hostile or prejudiced
external forces. Many users of community-based organisations including archives
speak of the importance and security of having a safe space controlled and maintained
by the community (Cvetkovich 2003).
See: Cvetkovich, A. (2003). An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public
Cultures. Durham: Duke UP
Internet art is art that is made on and for the internet, also known as net art. It encompasses various sub-genres of computer-based art including browser art and software art.
The term is used to describe a process of making art using a computer in some form or other, whether to download imagery that is then exhibited online, or to build programs that create the artwork.
Net art emerged in the 1990s when artists found that the internet was a useful tool to promote their art uninhibited by political, social or cultural constraints. For this reason it has been heralded as subversive, deftly transcending geographical and cultural boundaries and defiantly targeting nepotism, materialism and aesthetic conformity. Sites like MySpace and YouTube have become forums for art, enabling artists to exhibit their work without the endorsement of an institution.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/i/internet-art
For author Ceci Moss among others, affordances of Web 2.0 technologies, largely participatory and contributive in orientation through social media, smart phones, and faster bandwidth, today internet art is no longer determined solely by its existence on the web; rather, contemporary artists are making more art about informational culture using various methods of both online and offline means.
See for example,
Expanded Internet Art: Twenty-First-Century Artistic Practice and the Informational Milieu
Moss, C. (2019). Expanded Internet Art: Twenty-First-Century Artistic Practice and the Informational Milieu. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
Currents, community-based trends and creative trends in archival thinking and understanding and an archival multiverse of archival cultural forms provided a useful contextual starting point for doing ARI REMIX.
Australian ARI Living Archives – Queensland Artist-Run Heritage 1970 to NOW
Public group | ·
837 members
THE ARI REMIX LIVING ARCHIVES
& SOCIAL MEMORY PROJECT
(2011-2026)
“ ‘Living’ means present, on-going, continuing, unfinished, open-ended.” (Hall, 2001)
A Polyvocal Memory of Australian Artist-Run Culture and Heritage “Work in Progress”
LOCAL COLOUR, COMMUNITY, LGBTQIA+, INCLUSION, PARTICIPATION, COMMUNITY ARCHIVING, CULTURAL JUSTICE, STORYTELLING, INQUIRY, ADVOCACY
CIRCUS OZ LIVING ARCHIVE
The Circus Oz Living Archive collection comprises around 1000 Circus Oz videos taken from the 1970s to the present.
The Circus Oz Living Archive was an experimental research project built to take advantage of the latest web technology in 2009. The system was updated in 2014.
Living Archives: Enhancing the role of the public archive by performing memory, open data access, and participatory design
Living Archives Project
About the Project
Living Archives is a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and run by Malmö University. The official title of the project is Living Archives: Enhancing the role of the public archive by performing memory, open data access, and participatory design. The Living Archives project runs until 2017 and is lead by Prof. Susan Kozel, Malmö University.
Living Archives addresses the challenges facing the digitized society through (1) the phenomena of public cultural heritage archives that increasingly are being digitized, and (2) the practices of archiving that are dramatically being transformed because of networked technologies.
EPHEMERAL TRACES
ARI REMIX
A GROUP EXHIBITION STARTING POINT | University of Queensland Art Museum 2016
Ephemeral Traces
Brisbane’s Artist-Run Scene in the 1980s
2 April 2016 – 26 June 2016
ephemeral traces provides the first comprehensive analysis of artist-run practice in Brisbane during the final decade of the conservative Joh Bjelke-Petersen government. The exhibition focuses on the scene that developed around five key spaces that operated in Brisbane from 1982 to 1988: One Flat, A Room, That Space, The Observatory, and John Mills National.
Drawing on artworks, documentation and ephemera, the exhibition provides a contextual account of this progressive artist-run activity, examining collective projects, publications and the spaces themselves, as well as organisations such as the Artworkers Union and Queensland Artworkers Alliance. A counterpoint to Michele Helmrich’s earlier exhibition Return to sender (UQ Art Museum, 2012), which focused on the artists who left Queensland during the Bjelke-Petersen era, this exhibition is about the artists who stayed.
Curator: Peter Anderson
Jeanelle Hurst
Highrise Wallpaper 1988
Documentation of the project ‘InterFace 88: City as a work of art’, Brisbane.
Collection of Jeanelle Hurst. Reproduced courtesy of the artist.
VERSIONS ZINE
COMMUNITIES & COUNTER ARCHIVES
Over the past decade, archives have been blowing up in the world. And not because of those highly flammable nitrate prints, recently seen burning down the (art) house in Quentin Tarantino’s delirious WWII history-fuck, Inglourious Basterds. No, at a time when “access,” “platforms,” and “content” are the hot keywords, archives have accrued a new set of meanings and significance. The 21st century is an on-demand, database-dependent culture, where any image one’s heart desires is, we assume, a Google search away. Moreover, the Web 2.0 transforms once-passive users into active scavengers, as blogs, streaming video sites, and social media tools require an endless flow of extant material to comment upon, remix, and mash-up.
Likewise, international contemporary art is in the grips of an archive fever. In recent years, more and more artists have been messing with/in the archives, opening up dynamic possibilities for counter-archival practice. In this formulation, the “counter-archive” represents an incomplete and unstable repository, an entity to be contested and expanded through clandestine acts, a space of impermanence and play. Taken as an action, the term entails mischief and imagination, challenging the record of official history. Employed as an artistic strategy it pushes our archival impulse into new territories, encouraging critique and material alteration/fabrication, and emboldening anarchivism. To counter-archive is to counter-act, to rewrite, to animate over. Consider it a take-and-give thing… a negotiation. Against the un-Commons.
See:http://INCITE » Introduction to Issue #2: Counter-Archive
Introduction to Issue #2: Counter-Archive
Cache Rules Everything Around Me
By Brett Kashmere
IMAGE: Photo: Adjusting Margins, wall-based and window-based installation exhibition collaboration exploring posters as types of community archives with Paul Andrew and Joanna Kambourian. Outer Space 2022. ARI REMIX + EXTRA ZINE at OUTER SPACE OPEN DAY | ENTER OUTER SPACE | WHEN: 11:00am – 7:00pm Saturday 8 October 2022
Photo: Paul Andrew
Archives Often Aren’t in the Hands of Their Own Communities. Here’s Why We Need to Support Self-Sustaining Models.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world-archives/lisa-darms-op-ed-community-sustained-archives-2279463
The histories of artists, movements, markets, and activism are told through archives (things like letters, emails, notebooks, posters, photo documentation, and other primary sources). When those materials aren’t preserved, we get historical narratives that are partial or distorted.
ARCHIVES IN BUILT ENVIRONMENTS
Victorian Pride Centre, 79-81 Fitzroy Street, St Kilda.
https://pallasprojects.org/project/the-future-is-self-organisedlimerick-city-gallery-of-art
The Future is Self-Organised is an exhibition looking at artist-led practice and the role and contribution of artist- run spaces to contemporary art, culture and society.
https://pallasprojects.org/project/the-future-is-self-organisedlimerick-city-gallery-of-art
Asia Art Archive is a nonprofit organisation based in Hong Kong which focuses on documenting the recent history of contemporary art in Asia within an international context. AAA incorporates material that members of local art communities find relevant to the field, and provides educational and public programming.
https://www.facebook.com/brisbanevisualartsadvocacy
https://cabinet.qld.gov.au/documents/2010/Mar/Public%20Art%20Fund%20art%20place/Attachments/art-place-final.pdf
CONCEPT EMERGING FROM QUEENSLAND ARTWORKERS ALLIANCE :
ART BUILT IN | A-BI – Future Potential towards reuptake, remix, reinterpretation.
A PROVOCATION/ WHAT IF?;
ART, ARIs, ARCHIVES, SOCIAL HOUSING FOR ARTISTS BUILT IN | AAAS BUILT IN
PUBLIC ART POLICY QUEENSLAND
The Art Built-in policy was launched in 1999. It advocated that public art should be an integrated element of capital developments.
Younger, J. J. A. (2011). Critically engaged Permanent Public Art in the context of Art Built-in (1999-2006) (Doctoral dissertation, UNSW Sydney).
As stated prior, AB-i was introduced by the Queensland Government in 1999 where two percent of the budget of any new Government building over $250,000 was to be expended on public art. In an era of decreasing public funding for the arts, the new AB-i, State Government arts policy offered a major new source of income coupled with creative and professional development opportunities for Queensland artists to work with architects to integrate art into the built environment. Significantly, the underlying principle of AB-i was to provide employment for artists whilst improving the built environment. Under the heading ‘Benefits’, the policy referred to artist employment amongst general urban planning and regional identity philosophies as one of its intended outcomes:
Outcomes delivered under the Art Built-in policy will enhance the public amenity of government buildings and public spaces and directly benefit building users and the general public. Public art will contribute to the quality of public and leisure environments and to regional cultural identity. Benefits will also include an increase in job opportunities for artists [my italics] and cultural industry personnel and in associated industries such as manufacturing.[1]
It is important to add, that this was not just rhetoric. In the Media Statement dated 10 March 2005, which accompanied the launch of the independent evaluation of AB-i, the Minister for Education and the Arts, at that time, Anna Bligh (who is now the elected Premier) is quoted as saying:
Since 1999, 970 jobs have been generated for artists and cultural workers under Art Built-in with almost $10 million spent on public art commissions.[2]
By May 2007:
… 1234 jobs (commissioning contracts) have been created for Queensland artists and artsworkers, with a total Art Built-in commitment of $24.5 million for artists, designers and artsworkers throughout the State. Over $14.5M is completed and $10.17M is active.[3]
These figures are testimony to the Queensland State Government’s genuine support for employment in the Queensland arts industry. As is discussed in Chapter 2, Queensland’s economic support for public art in its AB-i era has been greater than other Australian states.
When it came to vocal attacks on public art in Queensland, the voice of the art world was most often heard. In this thesis I contend that public art is generally seen by the art world as an inferior form of artistic practice constrained conceptually by its democratic ‘dumbing down’ for the public context.[4] At the commencement of this thesis it was my concern that if the policy was seen to be unsuccessful, it could possibly be phased out—thereby losing creative opportunities and a vital source of financial income for Queensland artists.[5] At the beginning of 2003 the policy had been in existence for 4 years and I began to believe AB-i was in a precarious position if it was seen to please neither the art world nor the ‘cultured public’, let alone the potentially outraged ‘taxpayer’.
[1] Queensland Government, ‘Art Built-in Policy Statement’, downloadable pdf, Queensland Government, http://www.arts.qld.gov.au/publicartagency (accessed 10 February 2004), 1999a, p. 5.
[2] Anna Bligh quoted in ‘Queenslanders to Have Their Say on Public Art Policy, Art Built-in Evaluation Media Statement’, dated 10 March, 2005 circulated email attachment, Brisbane: Queensland Government, p. 1.
[3] This information was provided by the Public Art Agency, 15 May 2007. The Keniger Report published later in 2007 does not include figures that are in advance of these.
[4] Rex Butler, p. 4.
[5] Indeed at the close of 2007, AB-i was phased out by the State Government and replaced by a new public art model, art + place.
Art+Place
Public Art Policy, Queensland, Australia
Introduction
In 1991, the incoming State Government for Queensland in Australia undertook a major review of the arts and released a watershed policy document, ‘Queensland: A State for the Arts 1991’. The document affirmed a major commitment to support art and artists, and public art. Eight years later, the State Government had determined to put in place a program to foster the development of public art. The Art Built-in policy was launched in 1999. It advocated that public art should be an integrated element of capital developments. After Art Built-in had been in operation for six years, there was a call to evaluate the policy. The Government engaged the Government Architect and Head of Architecture at the University of Queensland, Professor Michael Keniger, to undertake the evaluation in 2005-06. The Keniger report found that the Art Built-in program had made a significant contribution but had some structural and administrative issues and should be continued with an increased resource base. However, concurrently there had been a Treasury review of Arts Queensland, the host agency for the Public Art Agency that ran the Art Built-in program, and the Government determined that Arts Built-in would be replaced in 2007 by the art+place program which endeavoured to reconfigure those aspects which had been problematic.
Art Built-in Policy, 1999-2007
The Art Built-in policy came into effect in July 1999. The basis of the Art Built-in program was allocated funding of 2% for public art within all State Government capital works building budgets over A$250,000 (excluding engineering and road works). The Government required that this 2% should be allocated to integrated art and design. Overall, the aim of the policy was to generate positive economic outcomes for artists and arts workers, to enhance public buildings and to maximise the quality, experience and understanding of Queensland’s public domain in both the built and natural environment through the integration of art and cultural expertise. The preferred approach was integrating art and design into the public domain by involving artists in project development teams at the outset of capital works planning and delivery.
A new Public Art Agency was established in Brisbane to support implementation of the Art Built-in policy and advocate for public art. The Public Art Agency had a proactive role in analysing the Government’s Capital Works Budget Statement each year and providing to each department a list of projects to which Art Built-in might apply. It then would provide a public art project manager to support the capital project team and artist throughout the whole process.
The Art Built-in policy set out the principles and benefits of the Arts Built-in approach. The associated guidelines gave a detailed description of how the policy would be applied in practical terms, covering project initiation, development and implementation. Public art was defined as contemporary art practice outside the traditional gallery or museum system, including commissioned permanent or temporary site specific work, functional items, purchase of existing works for public siting, and the provision of community cultural facilities or events that contribute to the animation of public spaces.
The Art Built-in Toolkit, published in 2000, provided resources to support the policy and guidelines. It gave practical information, checklists, questionnaires, sample artists’ briefs and contracts for each stage of the process from planning, consultation and research, to project management and procurement.
Follow this link to download the Art Built-in policy and guidelines (2004)
Follow this link to download the Art Built-in Toolkit (2000).
Art Built-in Policy Evaluation, 2005-2006
In 2005, Prof Michael Keniger, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), University of Queensland and Government Architect, was commissioned by the State Government to evaluate of Art Built-in. The evaluation was to look at the success of the policy overall, the effectiveness of the guidelines, toolkit and procedures, the administration of the policy and role of the Public Art Agency, to compare the policy with other pubic programmes nationally and internationally and to make recommendations on the future direction of Art Built-in.
Key findings were that the policy had helped position public art as a vital contributor to the public realm and had established a wider awareness of public art in the community. It was well regarded for its achievements and considered a nationally significant policy. On the negative side, there was wide criticism of the quality of public art achieved under the policy. Much of this was put down to the relatively inflexible way in which the policy was implemented and the demanding and bureaucratic nature of the implementation processes which took attention away from the art itself. There was also was a lack of consistency in its application across government departments.
The recommendations included that the policy should be retained and strengthened, that it should become more flexible in approach, that a global budget based on the capital works programme should be created to enable forward planning, and that funds should be pooled to allow greater flexibility. The definition of public art should become broader to embrace education projects and with more emphasis on performance work and temporary installation work. A Government Curator should be appointed to work with a Curatorial Panel to ensure quality.
Coincidentally and separately, Arts Queensland was reviewed whilst the evaluation was underway, after which the Public Art Agency was left ‘in a vestigial state’.
Follow this link to download the Keniger Evaluation Report, 2006.
art+place (2007 to present)
The art+place Queensland Public Art Fund was established by the Cabinet of Queensland State Government in 2007. It was established with A$12 million for new public art projects in Queensland for the three financial years 2007 – 2010.
Public art is no longer included in each of the Government’s capital projects. The fund is open to application by Queensland Government departments and agencies, local government councils, not-for-profit arts and cultural organisations, arts and cultural festivals and private developers. A curatorial panel of experts have been appointed to advise the Government on the expenditure of the fund, and a Government Curator was appointed to support the program and manage the Panel.
Like Art Built-in, the art+place policy advocates the integration of art and design into the public domain, in order to create meaningful work with a direct relationship to the local environment. The preferred approach to public art commissioning is to include artists in project development as early as possible in the planning and delivery of projects. The fund will support large and small scale projects of both permanent and temporary art works and has the capacity to purchase of existing works of art. Applicants submit an Expression of Interest which is considered against established criteria by the Government Curator and Curatorial Panel.
Please note that the Art Built-in Toolkit (provided for downloaded above) is now rather outdated. There are plans to produce a new updated version for the art+place program by 2011
Follow this link to the Arts Queensland public art funding page
Follow this link to download the art+place policy 2007-2010
Follow this link to download the art+place guidelines
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING 🙂
HEADER IMAGE 1. [ABOVE]: Collage as starting point, collage as counter archive: A digital collage I made from artists’ ephemera in my collection to start a social media and heritage open group about Queensland/Australian artist-run activity and their cultural heritage in November 2011 accessed below, and Header Image 2, Photo of That Space studios situated in a light industrial warehouse reactivated into an artist-run space at the end of 1984: