Public acts (2015-2019) [multi-component output with contextualising information]
- Submitting institution
-
Bath Spa University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 3350
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Preston Bus Station / Harris Museum, Preston, England. Dynamix Skatepark, Gateshead, England and other locations.
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of first exhibition
- -
- Year of first exhibition
- 2015
- URL
-
https://doi.org/10.17870/bathspa.c.5025578
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Public Acts comprises 2 public performative projects: Conductor |8 Movements co-commissioned by In Certain Places and Harris Museum & Art Gallery in 2019, to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Brutalist Preston Bus Station, and Tombstone (let’s get over this) , commissioned by the Crafts Council as part of the touring Acts of Making Festival in 2015. Exploring ways to alter perceptions of our daily interactions in urban
spaces, and initiate a celebratory engagement with skills either unacknowledged or at the periphery of society, Harrison asks the following 2 questions:
1. Might our functional and recreational interactions in public spaces be reconsidered as poetic and performative acts through choreographed intervention?
2.How could an expanded definition of live performance bring about a re-engagement with urban spaces and sub-cultures?
Conductor was a live 60 minute choreographed intervention in the life of Preston Bus Station. With staff and passengers integral to the performance, 32 buses and their skilled drivers conducted slow movements across the forecourt, accompanied by a commissioned electronic soundtrack, created in response to Harrison’s schematic drawings. Conductor was exhibited as a multi screen video in Brutal and Beautifu l at the Harris Museum and Art Gallery 2019.
Forging the uncelebrated skills of monumental masonry with those of the skateboarder, whose craft is often prohibited in municipal urban spaces, Tombstone offered the opportunity for skateboarders to become makers, in the grinding of stone benches, specially made by local gravestone masons, as a form of social sculpture. This is ongoing as the benches remain in situ. Tombstone is cited in Plymouth Principles 2016 on Public Art as a model for new kinds of cultural experiences in the public realm.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
