SAT 8 KL 1000-1645. NUART PLUS SEMINAR - DAY 2

Madrid based researcher Javier Abarca has written insightfully on the creeping dominance of the authoritarian neo-liberal Mural scene, rebranded as ‘street art’ festivals, and the dangers that come with it: complicity with city developers and gentrification projects, the instrumentalising of art for tourism, murals as placemaking (or placetaking) the somnambulant street art tour, and growing corporate influence. Curators, organisers and artists alike shrug their shoulders in resigned fashion, “whatcha gonna do?”

Day 2 of the Nuart Plus symposium explores the theme of Place via a critical examination of street art’s role in placemaking, placetaking, placestaking, displacement and more.

10·00–10·10 Welcome and introduction
by Nuart Plus host Dr. Susan Hansen, Middlesex University

10·00–10·50 Art & Belonging: on place, displacement and placelessness
Keynote by Professor Alison Young, University of Melbourne

Street art is often talked about as contributing to a sense of place. Murals projects, festivals, and street artworks are said to foster feelings of belonging, recognition and connection to a place. More than this, street art is increasingly used in place-branding and in commercial transactions. This talk will pose some questions about the implications of the way that street art relates to place and both makes and un-makes spaces of connection and disconnection. It will begin with the use of works by artists such as Rone and Sofles, and the widespread problem of how street art has been used to sell property development as part of the now well-known relationship between art and gentrification. It will move on to consider the place of art in the midst of demolition, displacement and destruction, through consideration of the work of artists such as Ian Strange, Richard Wentworth, Francis Alÿs, and Stanislava Pinchuk, whose works address displacement and eviction, creating art that responds to the loss of place and the destruction of belonging.

10·50–11·10 Comfort break 
 
11·10–11·30 Street Art, Graffiti and the Moral Right of Integrity: can artists oppose the destruction and removal of their works?
Presentation by Dr Enrico Bonadio, University of London

The relatively recent boom of street art and graffiti in many cities around the world animates and brings attention to the debate around their conservation. Can artists within these communities use the legal tools offered by moral rights laws to preserve their art? This talk addresses this issue and, in particular, expands on whether street artists and graffiti writers can rely on moral rights regimes to prevent the destruction or removal of their works. It does so by looking at recent cases, especially in the US, where artists have started lawsuits aimed at preserving their street pieces or anyhow objecting to their erasure.

11·30–11·50 Gentrify This
Presentation by the artist Milu Corrrech (AR)

Milu Correch is an Argentinean artist best known for her large-scale murals that tend to dissect aesthetic and moral certainties. A gifted painter and provocateur, over the past few years she has established herself as one of South America’s leading figurative mural artists.
 
Encouraged by the work and teachings of renowned Argentinian muralists Lean Frizzera and Emy Mariani she began to “think in m2” and upscale the images in her sketchbooks to the size of buildings in 2011.
 
Taking inspiration from literature, film and illustration combined with her own research into local histories, Correch’s narrative-based paintings continue the rich tradition of Latin American muralism. Her “kids on cars” series contained ‘plotlines’ ranging from Classical mythology to Romantic symbolism while her recently body of work explores the brutal history of western Europe’s Witchcraft Trials, which were responsible for the deaths of over 40,000 men and women from the late 16th  to early 18th century.

11·50–12·30 Panel debate: Culture, The Commodity Which Helps Sell All The Others
Discussion led by: Christian Omodeo
Panel: Professor Alison Young, Dr Enrico Bonadio and Milu Correch

This panel discussion will critically reflect on the use of street art in placemaking and placebranding; placetaking and displacement, and on the co-option and commodification of street art, or a street art 'aesthetic', in advertising and for commercial purposes.

12·30–14·30 Lunch and festival opening

14·30–15·00 Dispatchwork
Presentation by the artist Jan Vormann (DE)

Jan Vormann’s global Dispatchwork project uses LEGO bricks to repair damaged walls. He describes the project as “a forum to further develop, piece by piece, a global game together”, one that encourages citizens to take back public space and leave their mark in a playful way. Some of the installations use a handful of toy bricks while others have used up to 20 pounds.

Having started spontaneously patching-up surfaces in Bocchignano, Italy, Vormann has since employed the technique on walls in nearly 40 cities across Europe, Central America, Asia, and the United States. Following his participation in Nuart Festival, Vormann heads to Italy to present a new Dispatchwork at the Venice Architecture Biennal.

“Dispatchwork aims to ignite childhood memories of abstract shapes and vivid colors, towards a global collaboration of persons unknown to each other. A handful of used bricks is all you need to submit a contribution to the project, as long as you don’t mind when the structures slowly ‘dissolve’ or ‘disappear’ back into children’s toyboxes”, he says.

15·00–15·20 A Promise To Remember
Presentation by the artist Jazoo Yang (KR)

Jazoo Yang is interested in the evolution of cities and the nostalgic poetry that emerges from popular neighborhoods demolished at high speed in areas of urban redevelopment.

Architecture plays an important role in Yang’s artistic practice. She is perhaps best known for her Dots series, in which she covers a home set for demolition with her thumbprint. In Korea, the thumbprint – or “Jijang” – has a legal and personally binding power similar to a signature. With just a thumbprint, whole communities are turned over to destruction; people driven to bankruptcy; and just as easily, millions of dollars exchanged. The work is thus a protest against the corruption and apathy in Korea’s housing market.

“Jijang is more like a public expression about promise, contract, pledge or oath,” she says. “Like the seal of Western nobles and royalties, it also means presenting oneself.”

Yang explains: “Alleys, traditional houses, trees and everything that took a long time to embellish are gone in an instant without a trace. The act of imprinting each red Jijang is a promise to remember all of this and a temporal and spatial record.”

For Crossing Borders / Crossing Boundaries, Yang has expanded her Dots Series to incorporate the issue of refugees and migrants in Europe and further beyond. Working with local immigrants, Yang discusses their stories, their histories, their existence as they mark the wall together. These imprints act as a record of this moment whilst remaining entirely silent.

15·20–15·40 Comfort break

15·40–16·00 Time, Space & Memory
Presentation by the artist Said Dokins (MX)

Said Dokins has been actively creating graffiti and street interventions since the 1990’s.Today, his work explores formally, symbolically and philosophically the potentiality of words and letters, which become gestures, traces that overlap creating patterns, textures and narratives; marks that carve sites, drawing boundaries and producing meaning. In this sense, calligraphy and graffiti are a way to understand our relations with language for Dokins - an action that stresses time, space and memory.

16·00–16·45 Panel debate: Place, Loss & Memory
Discussion led by: Professor Alison Young
Panel: Jan Vormann, Jazoo Yang and Said Dokins

This panel will discuss the role of art as memento mori or a means of marking lost places.

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