Not here, right now/right here, not now: unfolding the context in Alana Jelinek's This Is Not Art

Abstract

In this article I aim to unfold the main argument in Alana Jelinek's This Is Not Art into contiguous territories, located within the contemporary reality of urban development and the post-Olympic cultural landscape in London. Faced with the emergence and increasing production of artistic activities known as ‘creative placemaking’, and the enmeshed relationships between the continuing evacuation of social housing estates and the presence of artists as temporary occupants/practitioners in these interim spaces, a stark but necessary question is suggested: what is art doing in London at this moment in time? In asking this question, I am mindful of the precious distinction recently drawn by Angela Dimitrakaki, who suggests that we should differentiate between ‘the artwork’ as the output of artistic production, and the outcome of ‘art’ as a way of production. The production relations as ‘outcomes’ that we examine in this article are those of the forces engaged in the production of physical and social urban space in London today in which ‘art as outcome’ is a central component. I identify this as the ‘aesthetic dividend’, understood as the added value to privileged narratives of urban development inscribed both into planning authorities' scenarios and private developers' marketing strategies, and served by an array of specific artistic activities and their perception as ‘creative placemaking’. Dimitrakaki's propositions will also be important in the central section of the article, when they will be drawn as important resources into the analysis of Mike Nelson's/Artangel's unrealized artwork for the decanted Heygate Estate in Elephant & Castle, South London.

Notes on contributor

Alberto Duman is an artist, lecturer and independent researcher whose core interests are located in the urban and the everyday.

He has had exhibitions and taught in UK and abroad, published in book, journals and magazines and presented events and he's currently running the BA Fine Art module ‘Art Practice in the Community’ at Middlesex University.

In 2012 he contributed to the publication ‘Art of Dissent’ co-edited by Hilary Powell and Isaac Marrero-Guillamon, with the photo essay ‘AdiZones: rewriting the 2012 Olympic legacy as permanent branding’, and led the event ‘Regeneration Games’ at the FreeWord Centre in London.

Between 2012 and 2014 he published papers and articles in: ‘The Wick’ Newspaper, The Occupied Times, City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, the UCL Urban Lab Pamphleteer n.2, Architectural Review.

In 2013 and 2014 he led the Bartlett DPU Summerlab ‘Localising Legacies’. A publication from the whole series of UCL Summerlab 2013 containing an article on East London can be read here.

He is currently working with the DIG Collective in a space in Hackney awaiting demolition.

Notes

1. http://www.fizzyliving.com/.

2. For the most significant emerging entity in this field, see CREATE (http://createlondon.org), which has been recently awarded Arts Council funding as part of their National Portfolio Organization and develops cultural engagement strategies for private-public housing developments, often in collaboration with the Barbican. See http://createlondon.org/event/hitchcocks-east-end in Walthamstow with Hill Residential Ltd and LB Waltham Forest and http://createlondon.org/event/ram-place-fashion-market in Hackney with Manhattan Loft Corporations and LB of Hackney.

3. One of the most awe-inspiring in its field is called ‘Citizen Relations’ (formerly Citizen Brando). On its blog, we read: ‘We know how to get people talking. We believe we understand conversation better than any other consumer PR agency around. And, if you understand conversation, you understand how to change opinions, influence decisions and, ultimately, sell’ (http://uk.citizenrelations.com/creating-people-powered-conversations/#.U9tkNeN_sTY). Under its previous company name, Citizen Brando was also one of the partners in the failed interim space ‘Industrious’, ceremoniously opened in Canning Town on the site of the future Hallsville Quarter in 2012 through the London Mayor's Meanwhile Spaces and unceremoniously closed (read unofficially bankrupt) in 2013.

4. For a more sober look at the City of London, I would suggest you book a place on the next Occupy Tours (http://occupytours.org). These are uniquely revealing guided walks organized by Occupy London. Places are free.

5. The pamphlet can be downloaded from three different sites, including http://justspace.org.uk/2014/06/19/staying-put-an-anti-gentrification-handbook-for-council-estates-in-london/.

6. CREATE's mission, for example, is stated as follows: ‘Create exists to explore the ways artists can contribute to the lives of people in cities. We help artists to connect more closely with communities through an ambitious programme of projects’. This mission is, however, predicated by direct alliances and alignment with regeneration plans such as the Fashion Hub in Hackney Central, discussed later on in this article. Who ‘community’ refers to in these cases, and how existing communities actively antagonizing Council plans are ‘connected with’, remains to be seen.

7. For a much more specific, first-hand and extensive account of these events, you can read Christopher Jones’ article ‘Pyramid Dead – The Artangel of History’ on Mute magazine online (http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/pyramid-dead-artangel-history-sdfootnote11sym). Also of note is the ample space given on Southwark Notes website to the literature describing crucial moments in the well-documented history of Art and Gentrification, brought about by direct involvement of artists at the core of the Heygate Estate activities of resistance and militant research (http://southwarknotes.wordpress.com/art-and-regeneration/writing-on-art-and-gentrification/). Christopher Jones is a member of the Ultra-Red collective (http://www.ultrared.org/mission.html).

8. Particularly instructive and revealing in the last few weeks have been the cringingly humorous stories related to the re-imaging of Elephant & Castle through a new sculptural commission apparently approved by the Council: http://southwarknotes.wordpress.com/. Sadly, the trite and dumb tendency of producing iconic works cueing the name place with cheap sculptural embodiments of that same name is a rich vein for the crass and populist area of creative placemaking. The Bull Ring in Birmingham has a bull; Elephant & Castle has a rebranded elephant on top of the castle. Whatever might be planned for Barking I fear the worst…

9. Christopher Jones, of 56a Infoshop (http:www.56a.org.uk) and author of the article ‘Artangel of History’ in Mute Magazine previously cited here, has now sent for the third time specific Freedom of Information requests related to these events to Southwark Council, and a partially successful reply can be seen here: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/further_request_re_southwark_cou#incoming-552784.

10. The real location for the footage of Fight Club's ‘anti public-art action’ was a mix between the Water Court at California Plaza, 350 S. Grand Ave (where the fountain exists but no spherical public art does) blended in the film's imaginary with the distinctive work ‘North, East, South and West’, a series of geometric sculptures by Michael Heizer located in Downtown Los Angeles, at 444 S. Flower St.

11. There is a relevant cultural narrative to be noticed here. Foreign mainstream lager beer brands started to penetrate the UK drinking market in London in the 1980s through acquisitions by main drinking giants keen to broaden the UK market. This was done with a young audience in mind clearly to dislodge the traditional drinking habits of ale and bitter and at the same time to project a more sanguine and popular image than the class pretensions of ‘wine bars’. The success of its presence in the 1980s and 1990s was largely due to their washing the artworld with Beck's Bier to the point of image overlap. Beck's became the art beer of the 1990s and the backbone of the Young British Artists and others, including Artangel. Nowadays, lager is mainstream fodder in large supermarkets and corner shops alike, and the cultural association between art and drinking cultures is that of local micro-breweries producing pale ales, bitters and other traditional brews. In the process, the ‘lager lout image’ of the 1990s has been exorcized through a class shift and the young sophisticated drinker/art audience recognizes local provision of this expensive habit as a sign of cultural distinction and, by inference, gentrification. Double the pint cost and they will come.

12. Richard Wentworth in conversation with James Lingwood and Michael Morris, Artangel directors, as part of the events organized in conjunction with his commission ‘Black Maria’, 3 April 2013.

13. Also see ‘Staying Put: An Anti-gentrification Booklet for Council Estates in London’, cited earlier. Loretta Lees has also co-authored with Claire Melhuish of UCL ‘Urban Lab’, one of the most authoritative and comprehensive papers on arts-led regeneration in the UK (Lees and Melhuish 2013).

14. It is significant to note that the latest project of Manhattan Loft Corporation is the Manhattan Loft Gardens, a 42-storey tower in the middle of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. In the fly-through CGI for this development, the tagline ‘sculpting a community’ appears as one of the guiding principles of designing the building. Perhaps the long-lasting association of Handelsman with Artangel has produced a transfer of skills between his business and artistic qualities of ‘sculpture’, associated with the rather unsavoury idea of a community created by a single-handed artistic action. See the Manhattan Loft Gardens CGI video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egp66ajrgmo.