Locating the Producers: Durational Approaches to Public Art
Paul O’Neill & Claire Doherty, eds;
Valiz, Amsterdam. 2011
Locating the Producers was a major three-year curatorial research and public events programme 2006 – 2010, led by Paul O’Neill, which investigated how public art and its curation has begun to recognise the significance of engaging audiences and encouraging research-based outcomes that are responsive to their specific contexts, audiences and locations over time. The culmination of the project was a book-length assessment of different curational methodologies alongside critical reflections on durational projects as counter-spectacles.
Locating the Producers explores how 'durational' processes to public art curating and commissioning have emerged as an alternative to nomadic, itinerant and short-termist approaches in recent years. It provides an in-depth analysis of five durational projects as its starting point: The Blue House, and Beyond, the Netherlands, Trekroner Art Plan, Denmark, and Creative Egremont, and the Edgeware Road Project, United Kingdom.
The authors explore how and why artists and curator-producers are adopting durational approaches to commissioning contemporary art for specific places and how each process conceives of time as part of a cumulative curational practice.” From the press release