Away from end product or genre: a protocol as artistic language: evolving a critical framework for contemporary visual art practice in the public (or social) realm, 2000-2003.

Bourne, Stéfanie

Abstract

For contemporary visual art to be visible and exist as art in peer networks it usually depends upon its transformation into objects. Can we define and test out an alternative visibility more adequate to a production that is 'an act of supplying'? I propose a method to help us understand the artwork, not as a one-off object, but as 'an experience of supply', through the construction of a specific artistic protocol. Process based works "in socius" do not exist beyond the moment of the experience and are currently diffused, shoe-horned into classic representation (exhibition of traces, documentation of the experience). This research proposes to consider the reciprocal engagement, between artist and people, as a two-way creative exchange. Here, the 'code of conduct' proposed is not a checklist for peers but offers new points of learning about process-based works, to understand the ethical relationship enabling discursive artwork to be presented at its moment of presentation. The term 'provision' expresses an attitude and a production. It connects with my own practice Vernacular (1999-2005, site-specific projects in Europe) and those of other selected artists. These reflect my emergent understanding of 'provision' as a 'code of conduct' to make art, in tandem with a literature review, and cross-referenced through questionnaires (involving artists, writers, curators, and key stakeholders in the projects) and an e-mail correspondence with an artists' project 'Building Underwood'. This research strengthens three aspects of the same phenomenon, 'service', 'provision' and 'protocol', enabling other practitioners to explore and sustain critical practice in the social realm. Although saturated in commercial meanings and having no resonance to peers or collaborators, the notion of 'provision' benefits the practice by making visible the discursive action and inhabits a mode of diffusion at the heart of the experience rather than in an object or in postproduction.

Citation

BOURNE, S. 2007. Away from end product or genre: a protocol as artistic language: evolving a critcal framework for contemporary visual art practice in the public (or social) realm, 2000-2003. Robert Gordon University, PhD thesis. Hosted on OpenAIR [online]. Available from: https://doi.org/10.48526/rgu-wt-1437838

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Sep 3, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 3, 2021
• Keywords: Practice based research; Practice research; Artistic research; Art and society; Artistic value
• Public URL: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/1437838
• Award Date: Jun 30, 2007