We are meeting our Shanghai partners in a skype video link at 9.30am in Room ALG15a on Friday 22 March at Chelsea. We will also see if we can begin to structure our groups/teams so that we have as many groups as possible with someone able to do a bit of translation in future meetings of groups/teams. If you can aim to arrive a bit earlier for this meeting, say 9.15am, this would be really helpful, as it would calm my nerves (I always have nerves when I am really keen on a project).
Philip Courtenay
City Square is a collaborative exchange art and design project exploring cultural potential in public space and partnering Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts and Chelsea College of Art & Design, part of CCW at UAL
Thursday, 21 March 2013
Saturday, 16 March 2013
Project Update - Plans discussed at the meeting on 21.03.2013
Thanks to all who came to the meeting
First inter-disciplinary meeting
This meeting was the first opportunity for Fine Art and Interior and Spatial Design students at Chelsea to come together at this the beginning of the project.
Project Teams
The setting up of five interdisciplinary teams comprising students from both courses was agreed, numbers in each team of around six or seven students. Each Chelsea team will work with one of five teams in Shanghai researching the city square sites.
Project Aims and Objectives
The outcomes of this project will include a body of research instigated by each team to support the development of proposals for work to be considered for realization in these two sites and to be presented in May 2013 for debate, discussion and selection. Proposals selected from the Shanghai teams will be realized in the Parade Ground in July 2013, whilst the selected Chelsea proposal will be installed in September 2013. We aim to publish a book that contains the research material, the proposals and that documents the outcomes "in situ".
Concept and Methods
What distinguishes this project concept is that Chelsea students will be coming up with proposals for the Shanghai People's Square context and the SIVA students will making proposals for the Parade Ground at Millbank.
Project Tools, Skype etc
During this meeting it was possible to discuss some detail concerning this first phase of the project. We concentrated on thinking about the way the project will be based on web-based dialogue and shared research using skype tools, the exchange of image and video files, texts etc, to enable our partners in Shanghai to develop ideas for their future interventions on or around the Parade Ground at Millbank, based on a context of research material instigated by their research aims and objectives but collected and presented by the teams at Chelsea. Likewise, our Shanghai partners will enable Chelsea students to build up a research context for Chelsea proposals for the People's Square area adjacent to MOCA.
A beginning
The plan now is to begin to connect groups/teams, sorting out who is in the Chelsea teams and to get a list of skype names/accounts, so that dialogue can begin. Marshall McLuhan says in From Cliche to Archetype, 'when dialogue begins, propaganda ends', and sometimes this can happen. Connected to this notion is this link to www.chinasmack.com that Joey Phinn has provided us with.
Practicalities
A very good suggestion that we should follow through on is to set up a facebook group to help speed communication between us all. Also we need a blog that our partners in Shanghai can access too.
Next Meetings
We have a meeting time planned for 10am in ALG15a on Monday 18 March for anyone who was not able to come to the meeting on Thursday. If you are away, NO PROBLEM. The ISD students are on a study trip to Berlin, which is why we had the original Monday morning meeting time changed,
Meeting On Friday 22 March 9.30am ALG15a
This meeting was arranged as a follow up meeting to last Thursday for as many of the group who can attend. I will try and set up a livestream link so anyone with computer access can see how the meeting goes. Our partners in Shanghai are keen to join us for this meeting, and so they can welcome us to the project personally and virtually, face to face.
First inter-disciplinary meeting
This meeting was the first opportunity for Fine Art and Interior and Spatial Design students at Chelsea to come together at this the beginning of the project.
Project Teams
The setting up of five interdisciplinary teams comprising students from both courses was agreed, numbers in each team of around six or seven students. Each Chelsea team will work with one of five teams in Shanghai researching the city square sites.
Project Aims and Objectives
The outcomes of this project will include a body of research instigated by each team to support the development of proposals for work to be considered for realization in these two sites and to be presented in May 2013 for debate, discussion and selection. Proposals selected from the Shanghai teams will be realized in the Parade Ground in July 2013, whilst the selected Chelsea proposal will be installed in September 2013. We aim to publish a book that contains the research material, the proposals and that documents the outcomes "in situ".
Concept and Methods
What distinguishes this project concept is that Chelsea students will be coming up with proposals for the Shanghai People's Square context and the SIVA students will making proposals for the Parade Ground at Millbank.
Project Tools, Skype etc
During this meeting it was possible to discuss some detail concerning this first phase of the project. We concentrated on thinking about the way the project will be based on web-based dialogue and shared research using skype tools, the exchange of image and video files, texts etc, to enable our partners in Shanghai to develop ideas for their future interventions on or around the Parade Ground at Millbank, based on a context of research material instigated by their research aims and objectives but collected and presented by the teams at Chelsea. Likewise, our Shanghai partners will enable Chelsea students to build up a research context for Chelsea proposals for the People's Square area adjacent to MOCA.
A beginning
The plan now is to begin to connect groups/teams, sorting out who is in the Chelsea teams and to get a list of skype names/accounts, so that dialogue can begin. Marshall McLuhan says in From Cliche to Archetype, 'when dialogue begins, propaganda ends', and sometimes this can happen. Connected to this notion is this link to www.chinasmack.com that Joey Phinn has provided us with.
Practicalities
A very good suggestion that we should follow through on is to set up a facebook group to help speed communication between us all. Also we need a blog that our partners in Shanghai can access too.
Next Meetings
We have a meeting time planned for 10am in ALG15a on Monday 18 March for anyone who was not able to come to the meeting on Thursday. If you are away, NO PROBLEM. The ISD students are on a study trip to Berlin, which is why we had the original Monday morning meeting time changed,
Meeting On Friday 22 March 9.30am ALG15a
This meeting was arranged as a follow up meeting to last Thursday for as many of the group who can attend. I will try and set up a livestream link so anyone with computer access can see how the meeting goes. Our partners in Shanghai are keen to join us for this meeting, and so they can welcome us to the project personally and virtually, face to face.
Friday, 22 February 2013
An Invitation to create work for People's Square Shanghai
City Square
Preface by Philip Courtenay
I never ever thought of visiting China, then a friend, who was also a colleague and an ex-student of Chelsea, and who was born in Shanghai, introduced me to her brother, also an artist, whilst he was visiting relatives here in London. It didn't take long for our conversations to turn toward the subject of art education. Everything I knew then about China was gained from a world of representations, and so when it was suggested that I should visit Shanghai and see for myself how art was studied there, I remembered a phrase from a lecture by Michel Foucault where he said "travel, not books!". Why this phrase stays with me is because all my artistic work of the last 20 years or so has been about efforts to withdraw some of the projections and assumptions we hold concerning the wider world, so that it might be possible to see what the world is actually like! Sounds easy, but it's not! Travel not books is good advice, and definitely helps, but it is working with people in "another place" that has had the most profound impact upon an understanding of what it is we actually do know and what we do not know about another place. This other place is also a zone where many misunderstandings occur. These misunderstandings are inevitable as we meet and exchange ideas, translate, explore (actually, virtually and metaphorically), but sometimes it is these very misunderstandings that can throw up new ideas for creative work. So this is a learning environment where exploration and research is able to spark creative innovation, and a place to make global connections that might have a significant influence on your future careers in art and design. It certainly has for me!
So, since 2002 I have made many visits to Shanghai, and have worked with artists, designers, architects, curators and fellow academics. This invitation arises out of these connections and a particular concern with art and design and what we in the UK might call 'public realm', but in Shanghai might be called 'public art', or 'public culture'. The design of this exchange project is all about creating a space for dialogue to enrich research, and to come up with ideas and proposals, and to select from these ideas and proposals projects to realize and install in two city squares, one here at Millbank, and the other in People's Square (or Park) in Shanghai.
The City Square Project
The City Squares Project is about artistic/design thinking and making and acting to transform or enhance a sense of place within two city squares located at the heart of two world class cities, Shanghai and London. Chelsea students are invited to work on this project with students from SIVA (Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts).
The Project Timeline Page in the tab above sets out the methods and purposes of the project in a sequence of planned stages where Research and the presentation and exchange of research is a major part of the learning experience the project is designed to contain.
The Research Page in the tab above is empty at the moment, but is a place designed to archive research activity and the research outcomes which will take the form of proposals.
The Shanghai - MOCA People's Square Page in the tab above provides a starting point of historical and contemporary context for People's Square to help instigate a "feel" for the place, and also to show that this site for your work is already a place with a global status and right at the heart of a global mega-city. SIVA students will act as researchers for you in exploring this space and its context, in ways that enhance your understanding of the space, and to a degree that allows you to make proposals that really are in tune with the time as well as the place. In this process you will be organizing "research missions" for your SIVA partners.
The London - Parade Ground Millbank Page in the tab above provides a starting point for research that you will be conducting and then exchanging with your SIVA partners in Shanghai in order to help them contextualize their artistic and design thinking about possible "interventions" for our Parade Ground space.
The Public Art at SIVA Page in the tab above is to provide you with some sense of what your partners at SIVA are doing as part of their course. Philip Courtenay was invited to contribute to a project instigated by SIVA in a part of Shanghai known as PuDong. The chosen site for the project was an old Riverside Community called Sanlin. This riverside location formed the focus for a number of public art strategies, in the re-generation of a place that has survived recent urban developments. This project is understood to have been a "ground breaking" project by the Chinese government.
Preface by Philip Courtenay
I never ever thought of visiting China, then a friend, who was also a colleague and an ex-student of Chelsea, and who was born in Shanghai, introduced me to her brother, also an artist, whilst he was visiting relatives here in London. It didn't take long for our conversations to turn toward the subject of art education. Everything I knew then about China was gained from a world of representations, and so when it was suggested that I should visit Shanghai and see for myself how art was studied there, I remembered a phrase from a lecture by Michel Foucault where he said "travel, not books!". Why this phrase stays with me is because all my artistic work of the last 20 years or so has been about efforts to withdraw some of the projections and assumptions we hold concerning the wider world, so that it might be possible to see what the world is actually like! Sounds easy, but it's not! Travel not books is good advice, and definitely helps, but it is working with people in "another place" that has had the most profound impact upon an understanding of what it is we actually do know and what we do not know about another place. This other place is also a zone where many misunderstandings occur. These misunderstandings are inevitable as we meet and exchange ideas, translate, explore (actually, virtually and metaphorically), but sometimes it is these very misunderstandings that can throw up new ideas for creative work. So this is a learning environment where exploration and research is able to spark creative innovation, and a place to make global connections that might have a significant influence on your future careers in art and design. It certainly has for me!
So, since 2002 I have made many visits to Shanghai, and have worked with artists, designers, architects, curators and fellow academics. This invitation arises out of these connections and a particular concern with art and design and what we in the UK might call 'public realm', but in Shanghai might be called 'public art', or 'public culture'. The design of this exchange project is all about creating a space for dialogue to enrich research, and to come up with ideas and proposals, and to select from these ideas and proposals projects to realize and install in two city squares, one here at Millbank, and the other in People's Square (or Park) in Shanghai.
The City Square Project
The City Squares Project is about artistic/design thinking and making and acting to transform or enhance a sense of place within two city squares located at the heart of two world class cities, Shanghai and London. Chelsea students are invited to work on this project with students from SIVA (Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts).
The Project Timeline Page in the tab above sets out the methods and purposes of the project in a sequence of planned stages where Research and the presentation and exchange of research is a major part of the learning experience the project is designed to contain.
The Research Page in the tab above is empty at the moment, but is a place designed to archive research activity and the research outcomes which will take the form of proposals.
The Shanghai - MOCA People's Square Page in the tab above provides a starting point of historical and contemporary context for People's Square to help instigate a "feel" for the place, and also to show that this site for your work is already a place with a global status and right at the heart of a global mega-city. SIVA students will act as researchers for you in exploring this space and its context, in ways that enhance your understanding of the space, and to a degree that allows you to make proposals that really are in tune with the time as well as the place. In this process you will be organizing "research missions" for your SIVA partners.
The London - Parade Ground Millbank Page in the tab above provides a starting point for research that you will be conducting and then exchanging with your SIVA partners in Shanghai in order to help them contextualize their artistic and design thinking about possible "interventions" for our Parade Ground space.
The Public Art at SIVA Page in the tab above is to provide you with some sense of what your partners at SIVA are doing as part of their course. Philip Courtenay was invited to contribute to a project instigated by SIVA in a part of Shanghai known as PuDong. The chosen site for the project was an old Riverside Community called Sanlin. This riverside location formed the focus for a number of public art strategies, in the re-generation of a place that has survived recent urban developments. This project is understood to have been a "ground breaking" project by the Chinese government.
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