Wednesday 24 March 2010

lastbookinthecityassessments


The Last Book

the assessments at Camberwell went well with some exciting work to look forward to – the final show looms with talk of room organisation already in the air. got back to hear that i have been accepted/chosen to be a part of the series of Talking City’ Com:missions and that the installation of The Last Book is now in the foyer of the Zentral Bibliothek of Zurich. the talking city idea is an attempt to do something quick and immediate.
the application letter is below –

I am drawn to this projects immediacy. I have been making work within the public realm for some time. This work often involves extensive public consultation with user groups and steak holders, negotiations with engineers and planners alongside acknowledging health and safety, maintenance and various design procedures and codes. This process alongside the timescale – usually taking up to a year to come to fruition steers the work to be of a certain kind.
The work I leave behind has a certain degree of authority because of the process’s and structures that it evolves from. It would be interesting to make work without the support of these systems, to see if the work I create has integrity from both a conceptual and aesthetic position and if it can stand ‘alone’ without the joint crutches of consultation and bureaucracy.
I work at Norwich University College of the Arts and enjoy my job there but I think the rest of Norwich asks itself - What’s an art college for? What is an art education? What do we do in that building?
I would like to make an intervention where the private becomes public. Both the college becoming public within the city and the individuals experience within the college. I think the root of students work at this moment in time can be monitored by their relation to the research they are engaged in. I would like to spend the day making visible the books taken out by students from NUCA library to the general public of Norwich.
This intervention would present the range of interests and activities undertaken by the students to the wider audience of the city and the different courses within the University.
I would do this by taking the electronic output from both the self service and desk service and writing on chalk boards on the street the titles of these books.I believe this would develop a connection between the city and the university and a wider discussion about the role of the arts student.