Monday 17 December 2007

The Keepers - POLSKI


The Keepers are the 'Curatorial Practice' installation group on the m.a course. Apply named the keepers, as it means curators. The group consists of myself, Kate Pennington-Wilson and Faye Khan. For our curatorial brief we have to hold an instillation/event. So we have collaborated with a local artist Alicja Rogalaska. Together we have formulated a street intervention with the use of projection. The project has been named 'Polski'.
Our blog site is called the Keepers tricks
On this we have charted our progress from start to finish of the project. This project holds allot of relevance to the subject of new media art. experimenting with 'new media' technologies has enable Alicja to perform this intervention, but more importantly , I feel, we have stepped away from the conventions of the four white wall gallery space.

The installation on a physical platform is an excellent example of new media within installation art. It can be called an act of street art as we are using the technique of art intervention. As we have already sort the permissions of local council and authority, it is by no means an illicit intervention, but I do feel the platform of projection onto passers-by should open up debate in numerous amount of areas.
Firstly it may be that the unexpected audience may not want to be in anyway a part of the art. This may due to them not fully understand what we are doing, but it may also imply an unwillingness to get involved with anything other than their own personal space. Could this be relevant to interpret a majority of people in the UK that just want to look away and get on?
There may be audiences that see the installation from a far and want to enquire about the art, try to understand and interpret why this is taking place and find out what it means. It is also a consideration that this could be reflected on a majority of people that don’t just let things pass them, that feels it is for their better well being to try and understand the movement and growth of modern society.
This project could be seen as an intervention of personal graffiti. Projecting directly onto people, there personal space and their physical being could very crudely be violated by implementing this idealism onto them without permission or initial explanation of the cause. One can only assume this is exactly what it feels like to be a victim of labelling and judgement.
The style of this intervention could be perceived as using gorilla tactics. The plan of turning up in a high street with a projector and slide show full of words that people may not understand will no doubt cause a reaction. However for those that see this installation as a threat, there will be some who admire and condone the implementation of labelling onto those who want to look away or walk by. It may be stepping away from the intention of Alicja’s subtle approach to the mechanisms of labelling, but I feel the down right cheekiness of this project speaks for itself.