ArchiCulture Cafe number NINE

This week's lecture was about public art and its influence on cultural and public activity. The examples presented were predominantly from Brisbane as the discussed Art Built-in Policy is a Queensland government policy. The promise by the policy writers that "The Art Built-in Policy will position Queensland as an innovative, progressive and culturally active state" presents the word culture used in a context where it refers to the arts-aspects of Australian contemporary culture. In this context, 'cultural' is used to define the arts as they appear to the public of Queensland as well as the wider population of Australia. But this use of the terms culture and cultural could be justified when considering the suggestion that a great deal of the representation of a particular culture's identity could be held in that culture's performative and visual arts.
When I was studying art and art history, it was often stated that artists are social commentators who translate the practices of their culture back to the public through the lens of their formulated opinion. If an artist makes an artwork which is to be displayed publicly and which comments positively on the culture of the site in which it is placed, it is suggested that outsiders and onlookers are more likely to respond positively to that site.
Not only outsiders and onlookers but local people could benefit from such an installation. As mentioned in the lecture, a piece of public art would ameliorate the area in which it is placed in a number of ways. Most of these ways were of benefit to the larger macro environment such as economy, employment rates and tourism. But on a smaller level, benefits could be as simple as making the workplace of local individuals more aesthetically pleasing and therefore less depressing.
In addition to the micro-level benefits of lifting workplace depression, it was stated in the lecture that public art provides jobs for artists and artsworkers. During the second (and my last) year of my art degree, the concern of becoming a poor, part-time-worker-part-time-artist was commonplace. The passion for art was not diminished for most by this looming probability but the preference, of course, was to work for art and with art on the whole. If public art, then, is providing jobs for artists, and artists could be described as social commentators, the cycle has the potential to have perpetual and very positive results.
The cyclical nature of this relationship between artists and public art is reminiscent for me of the cyclical nature of culture and architecture. Public art is the product of the work of an individual (the artist) and because it has come from that individual it represents a part of their identity. But because it is part of a public environment, it also influences the outside people who interact with, move past and look at it. Similarly to this, architecture is the product of the work of an individual (the architect) and because it has come from that individual is represents a part of their identity. But because it is part of a public environment, as well as being able to be inhabited or worked in, it also influences the lives and experiences of outside people.