'Citizen Ship' and the public sphere

30th November 2017

'Freee' in conversation with Professor Johnny Golding in MK art gallery

“Activist art is a term used to describe art that is grounded in the act of ‘doing’ and addresses political or social issues”- Tate Modern. I believe that Art Politics is an on- going movement that expresses a clear message, supported by strong and passionate frustration. “The public sphere is an area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion, influence political action”- Soules, Marshall. "Jürgen Habermas. Public Sphere. Moreover, the ideas that the pieces hold need to be relatable to the public audience and be able to produce a reaction from them- whether this is emotional, physiological, or psychological. This is the first step to what I believe art should achieve when interacting with their viewers, in order for them to respond, question and understand what they can do practically to create social change.

I attended an art discussion led by Professor Johnny Golding (a senior tutor in Contemporary Art Practice and Director of the International Centre for Fine Art Research at Birmingham School of Art), and Professor Mel Jordan (Head of Programme for Contemporary Art Practice and Reader in Art and the Public Sphere), who talked about the new City Club commission Citizen Ship- a travelling kiosk that engaged with audiences and communities across Milton Keynes during the summer of 2017. This art piece was directed, produced and organised by Professor Golding and members of Freee and this discussion expanded upon the motives and reflects upon their experience of working in Milton Keynes.

City Club: Citizen Ship at Art in the Park July 2017 (Devine,C. . (2017). City Club)

Johnny Golding is internationally renowned for her philosophy enactments, installations, and sound- scape exhibitions. Her research aims to uncover the entangled dimensionalities of Radical Matter, an intra- disciplinary arena of art, philosophy, sciences, the logics of sense, meta- mathematics and modern physics. Whilst Mel Jordan works collectively with other members of Freee, where they make artworks combining the mechanisms of advertising, political protest and merchandise with text art, photography and public works with the spatial techniques of installation art and performance. Freee emphasises the importance of the public sphere where their work is critically engaged with the history of public art and socially engaged art, speech act theory and theories of the art’s social influence.

City Club Freee art collective (Mel Jordan and others) collaborated with the architectural practice Modern Architecture to produce a new mobile artwork Citizen Ship, which would be located in five areas around Milton Keynes. The portable pavilion was inspired by Milton Keynes’ bus shelters to ‘collect opinions’ and encourage the public to generate conversations through which new slogans for badges, vinyl, ribbons and posters will be created and then displayed on the pavilion.

The now modern, Citizen Ship was originally inspired by artwork in built-in advertising sites of the shelters to display works of art and were placed across all different parts of London. There, the creators realised that they had designed a fragmented art gallery throughout London where the public realm regularly integrated into everyday life. At the time (1993), advertising had become increasingly creative and artistic, and many of the artists who produced these, played a part in making work that was highly ambiguous and maintained its true value as art. The advertisements were exhibited in a public sphere, which allowed its viewers (who were mostly not art connoisseurs), to be comfortable in the presence of a piece with a strong message.

The psychological characteristics of the bus shelter interested the Freee art creators as an environment of transition but also a designated place for strangers of the public to join together. The people occupying this space carry a strange disinterestedness in the sense that they would rather not be there. They are only there because they are waiting for the bus that will take them home or to wherever they would rather be, so being in that spot of anticipation, waiting for a bus, was an interesting situation where people might not only encounter art, but may not have any choice but to view the art on their own, while they wait for transport. The infrastructure of the bus sparked a new idea as a public space because they are enclosures, which are open on one side, and hence have ambiguous boundaries. But a bus stop can be a place of sentiment. For example, suburban kids loiter around them, and they have been the locations of countless romantic gestures. In addition, they are important places, which potentially allow for a kind of public-ness in form of discussion or a debate- whether about football, sex, fashion or politics. However, these days with the increasing enhances in technology through the Internet and smartphones, public spaces such as these have become potential sites for the collective production and consumption of information such as social media, news, emails etc. So it would be challenging to encourage potential public viewers of art to look up from their devices and be vaguely interested in messages around them (whilst impatiently waiting for a bus). Bus- stops needed an added direct interest for their viewers, whilst not being restricted by time (stopping a bus on time) and stronger than the distraction of mobile devices. This is what led to the research into kiosks.

Design for Citizen Ship (Devine,C. . (2017). City Club)

Kiosks also inspired the Citizen Ship piece, because Kiosks were an example of the architecture of social transition. They address passerbys (the signage of kiosks can be seen from relatively far away and aims to draw them towards the kiosk with its products) as potential customers. Likewise, advertising aims to convert readers and viewers into consumers, the kiosk and its signage hopes to change the direction of your walk through the street, and insert a specific desire for you (“Come here, buy this!) The creators experimented with ways to invert the transformation implied by advertising (not converting readers into consumers, but occupying advertising spaces with political slogans to invite consumers to become critical readers). Furthermore, the kiosk architecture and the activities that take place in and around kiosks aimed to convert passer-by’s into crucial members of a public sphere. Citizen Ship considers how kiosks can function as temporary meeting points in the public realm in which the passer-by can exchange dialogue and opinions, whilst developing political ideas. Moreover, it attempts to create consumers and produces of ideas and opinions without a commercial exchange.

“We want to think about the role of viewers in a temporal sense in that we believe that passer-by’s can be simultaneously Hecklers, Witnesses, Signatories, Advocates, Spokespersons, Publishers, Badge-wearers, Distributors, Marchers, Recruits, Promise- makers, Co-conspirators, Accomplices; we all go from one mode of being public to another”- Professor Mel Jordan.

Citizen Ship expresses a clear message, which encourages the public to lean towards curiosity rather than anger, or aggressively forcing opinions towards the public. The ideas that Citizen ship are relatable to the public, in a sense that the public is in charge of creating opinions and speaking out to a listening public. This is empowering. Citizen Ship encourages team- work, leadership and communication, which was especially attractive to young adults and some children to give them a voice, build courage and to not feel they are silenced by society.

Credit to:

Freee in conversation with Professor Johnny Golding

Thursday 2 November / 7pm / Free

Tate. (Date Unknown). ACTIVIST ART. Available: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/activist-art. Last accessed 20th Nov 2017.

Soules, Marshall. "Jürgen Habermas. (Date Unknown). Public sphere.Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_sphere#cite_note-1. Last accessed 20th Nov 2017.

Devine,C. (2017). Sounds & Words. Available: http://www.mkgallery.org/education/projectspace/sounds_and_words/. Last accessed 21st Nov 2017.

Devine,C. . (2017). City Club: Citizen Ship at Art in the Park. Available: http://www.mkgallery.org/channel/play/city_club_citizen_ship_at_art_in_the_park. Last accessed 21st Nov 2017.