Public Art and Democracy
Friday, September 26 and Saturday, September 27
The conference is occasioned by the confluence of four important events affecting the Twin Cities: Speaking of Home, artist Nancy Ann Coyne's photographic public artwork exploring the meaning of home, acculturation, and alienation for new Americans in the Twin Cities; the thirtieth anniversary of Forecast Public Art, a Twin Cities-based non-profit organization; the need for conversations about public engagement with the political process which will doubtless arise in the wake of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions; and the Minnesota Sesquicentennial.
Four panels throughout the day, examine the topic of public space and artistic intervention into it. The conference will raise questions regarding the politics of access to space and issues of free speech and it will bring together political scientists, artists, architects and designers, activists and arts administrators to discuss such questions as: What makes a public space public? How can public art instigate civic discourse? How can artists and designers working within constraints create more meaningful public spaces?
Cosponsored by the College of Design and the Department of Art. Funding provided by McKnight Events and Initiatives.
Participants
Schedule
Friday, September 26
Macy's Skyroom, 12th floor, 700 Nicollet Mall
5:30-6:30 p.m.: Reception
6:30 p.m. Keynote Address by Suzanne Lacy
Saturday, September 27
275 Nicholson Hall, University of Minnesota East Bank CampusConference on Public Art & Democracy
Introduction
9:00-9:15 Ann Waltner and Tom Fisher
Saturday morning sessions: Public/Private Space
9:15-10:30 Session I: Privatizing Public Space: Skyways, Malls, and Plazas (Jennifer Yoos, Kristine Miller and Vincent James)
Kristine Miller
Jennifer Yoos
Miller and Yoos talk with Vincent James and take questions
10:45-12:15 Session II: Social Space: Designing for Civic Dialogues (Margaret Kohn, Dara Strolovitch, Sonja Kuftinec)
Margaret Kohn
Sonja Kuftinec
Dara Strolovitch talks about the Republican National Convention and all three take questions
Saturday lunchtime
12:15-1:30: A discussion on arts activities at the two political conventions, led by Marlina Gonzalez from Intermedia Arts speaking on the UnConvention. (Video of this talk is unfortunately unavailable due to technical difficulties)
Lunch will be provided to those who register in advance at ias@umn.edu or (612) 626-5054.
Saturday afternoon sessions: Artistic Interventions in Public Space
1:45-3:15 Session III: Public Art as Activism and the Limits of Free Expression (Suzanne Lacy, Jack Becker, Eiko Otake, Ananya Chatterjea )
Jack Becker
Suzanne Lacy
Eiko Otake
Ananya Chatterjea
Question and Answer Session
3:30-5:00 Session IV: Photography in Public (George Slade, Nancy Ann Coyne, Wing Young Huie)
Nancy Ann Coyne
Wing Young Huie
George Slade
Question and Answer Session
Conference wrap-up
5:15-6:15 Conversation with Tom Fisher and Gail Dubrow
6:30-8:30 Dinner Break
Post Conference Performance
8:30-10:00 Daak: Call To Action by Ananya Dance Company
Barbara Barker Center for Dance
Please note: Seating is by general admission and is limited. Doors will open for conference attendees only at 8 p.m. At 8:15 the general public will be admitted. We cannot guarantee seating for conference attendees after 8:15 p.m.
Symposium Participants
Ananya Dance Theatre is a company of women artists of color, diverse in age, race, nationality, and sexual orientation, but uniformly committed to artistic excellence and passionate articulation of our dreams, hopes, and desires. Ananya Dance Theatre is known for its blending of excellent artistry and high production values with community-building and social change work. Uniquely, it is also noted for seamless blending together the sculpturesque forms, strong footwork, and emotional articulation of the Odissi classical style, the purity of line and breath release of yoga, the efficiency and awareness of the power within human body of Indian martial arts traditions such as Kalarippayattu, the abstract theatrical potential of Indian ritual practices, and the urgent energy of street theater.
Jack Becker is founder and Director of Forecast Public Art. In 1989, Becker established the Public Art Affairs grant program for Minnesota artists and Public Art Review, the only national journal devoted to the field (www.publicartreview.org). Becker has served as a public-art consultant since 1994. In 2007 he received an Award of Excellence from Americans for the Arts for his contribution to the public-art field. Becker has written and lectured extensively around the United States.
Ananya Chatterjea is a professor in the Department of Theater Arts and Dance at the University of Minnesota and Director of the Dance Program. She is the founder and director of the Ananya Dance Theatre and a convener of the Performance and Social Justice Collaborative at the IAS.
Nancy Ann Coyne is a photographer and public artist. Coyne has lived and worked in the United States, Europe, Israel, and the Republic of Georgia as a photographer, consultant, and independent scholar. She has received numerous fellowships and grants for her photography and video projects, and her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries. A recent exhibit, Archiving Memory, consisted of photographs printed on scrim hung in the windows of the Anderson Library on the U of MN campus. She has been a visiting scholar/artist at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Her recent awards include the 2007 SEGD Merit Award and 2006 MACtac worldwide award.
Gail Dubrow is the Dean of the Graduate School at the U of MN and a public historian. She is the author of Sento at Sixth and Main (Smithsonian, 2004) and co-editor of Restoring Women’s History through Historic Preservation (Johns Hopkins, 2002).
Thomas Fisher is a professor and Dean of the College of Design (U of MN). Fisher has published extensively in the area of architecture and has recently completed a book title Architectural Design and Ethics for the Architectural Press.
Marlina Gonzalez is programs manager of Intermedia Arts and coordinator for the UnConvention. Intermedia Arts began in 1973 as a group of student media activists, University Community Video, and over the last three decades has grown, becoming a multidisciplinary, internationally-recognized center for innovative cultural programs rooted in teh Minneapolis communtiy. The UnConvention is a non-partisan collective of citizens who have come together to create a forum in which to promote the democratic and free exchange of ideas on important issues. It exists as a counterpoint to the highly scripted and predetermined nature of the contemporary presidential nomination process and convention.
Wing Young Huie is an award-winning photographer who has received international attention for his many projects that document the changing cultural landscape of his home state Minnesota. His best-known work is Lake Street USA, which in the summer and fall of 2000 transformed six miles of a well-known Minneapolis thoroughfare into one of the most remarkable public art projects in recent memory.Wing's most recent project, 9 Months in America: An Ethnocentric Tour, presents a post 9/11 America; a place where Asians, particularly Chinese, happen to be in the majority. This ambitious, cross-country odyssey frames the complexity, nuance, appropriation, humor, contradictions, and surprises of American life in our time.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune named Wing "Artist of the Year" in 2000. His three published books are Frogtown: Photogaphs and Conversation in an Urban Neighborhood (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1996), Lake Street USA (Ruminator Books, 2001), and Looking for Asian America: An Ethnocentric Tour, (University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
Vincent James and Jennifer Yoos are prominent Twin Cities architects (VJAA) who are working on a book on skyways. Vincent James Associates Architects has received ten national design awards within the past eight years, including six Progressive Architecture Awards and two National American Institute of Architects Honor Awards. Four of these awards recognize the quality of built projects and of material craft, and six honor ideas in architecture that are progressive and innovative. In 2001, the firm also received the Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
VJAA has been recognized for its work on innovative and responsive environmental projects and has completed a number of projects that focus on sustainability as a core part of their design. They use strategies for daylighting, energy reduction, and land conservation as ways to design better buildings that are more integrated with the landscape, more sensitive to human comfort, and more responsive to seasonal changes.
Margaret Kohn teaches political science at the University of Toronto and is the author of Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space (Routledge, 2004).
Sonja Kuftinec is a professor in the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance at the U of MN. She is currently finishing a book on community theater and political process in the Balkans and the Middle East.
Suzanne Lacy is Chair of the new MFA: Public Practices at Otis College of Art and Design and an internationally known artist. One of her best-known works to date is The Crystal Quilt (Minneapolis, 1987) a performance with 430 older women, broadcast live on Public Television. During the nineties she worked with teams of artists and youth to create an ambitious series of performances, workshops, and installations on youth and public policy, documented by videos, local and national news broadcasts, and an NBC program. Her work has been funded through numerous local and national foundations, including the National Endowment for the Arts and The Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Surdna, and Nathan Cummings Foundations.
Kristine Miller is a professor in the College of Design at the U of MN. She is the author of Designs on the Public: The Private Lives of New York’s Public Spaces (Routledge, 2007).
Eiko Otake is a member of the Center for Creative Research and part of the dance performance duo Eiko & Koma. Eiko & Koma have created dance and video performances for over three decades, and received a MacArthur "genius" fellowship in 1996.
George Slade is an historian of photography and was artistic director and chief curator of the Minnesota Center for Photography until the organization closed at the end of July of 2008. He has directed the McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowships for Photographers Program since 1998. He is currently an adjunct assistant curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts overseeing the installation and presentation of the Museum of Modern Art’s major traveling retrospective of Lee Friedlander’s photography, and is preparing a book of observations about photographs from the Minnesota Historical Society archives.
Dara Strolovitch is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the U of MN. She is the author of Affirmative Advocacy: Race, Class, and Gender in Interest Group Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2007). She is currently working on a project examining the ways in which the public engages with the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.
Ann Waltner is Director of the Institute for Advanced Study and a professor of History (U of MN). As director of the Institute, Waltner has worked on such public art projects as “Arts and Diaspora” and Still Present Pasts. A historian of sixteenth-century China, she has a particular interest in how the arts and politics have interacted with one another in public life in Asia.