COMMUNITY ARTS & PUBLIC INTERACTION

SUN.13 AUGUST 3PM -7PM THE NECESSARY STAGE MARINE PARADE CC


The Necessary Stage is holding a forum as part of the Marine Parade Theatre
Festival / Contemporary Visual Arts Show, " Imagined Boundaries --
Encounters With New Model Communities".

The purpose of the forum is to bring together practitioners, observers and
administrators who deal with questions of "community art" and "public
interaction". The target audience are members of the arts community itself
-- practitioners, educators, observers, administrators and committed arts
audiences.

The format of the forum will be like a moderated conversation between
several speakers. There will be a designated moderator, as well as a
designated "commentator". We hope to have several speakers participate.
While the "New Model Communities" art exhibition is not central to the
forum, it may be a starting point for some of the speakers.

Invited Participants Are
* Adeline Kwok -- Assistant Director of Arts Education NAC
* Alvin Tan -- Artistsic Director TNS
* Chua Beng Huat -- Professor of Sociology NUS
* Venka Purushotamam -- Lecturer Art Theory/Art Administrations LaSalle SIA
   College of Art
* Susie Lingham -- Visual Artist, Writer, Lecturer LaSalle SIA College of Art
* Pavarthi Nayar -- Arts Correspondance Buisiness Times
* CJ Wee Wan-ling -- Professor English Language NIE/Art& Cultural Politics
  Writer
* Lim Cheng Tju -- Educator RJC [History & Art] Writer on Art, Popular
Culture &
  Politics
* Lucy Davis -- Associate Artist TNS, Curator, Writer on Art & Cultural
Politics
* Lee Weng Choy -- Art Critic, Writer, Co-Artistic Director of the Substation


The forum will be split up into two sessions.

The first session will focus on the problems and politics of how "we" -- as
artists, practitioners and administrators -- define communities and
publics. The aim of the first session is to analyse some of the structures
behind how "we" imagine and construct various communities and publics. For
instance, an arts administrator or marketing executive may look at the
audience mainly in terms of certain demographics, e.g. age, income,
language, etc. A theatre company may wish to empower a certain community by
representing it in a play. And a group of visual artists may feel that
their exhibition only makes sense when a public interacts with it. In each
instance there are certain presumptions about "audience", "community" and
"public interaction". So what does it mean to install some objects in a
non-art space and then to document the responses of passer-bys, some
curious, some disinterested? -- how does that constitute interaction? And
how does representation or recognition by a theatre group empower a
community? -- how might this representation, inadvertently, domesticate and
disempower? As for marketing and administration, what exactly does market
research tell us about audiences and the public? What does it not tell us?

Whereas the first session seeks to examine the presumptions underlying the
artist's and administrator's encounter with the community and public, the
emphasis of the second session is on the participation, interaction,
reception and feedback from various communities and publics themselves.
Where session one concerns aims and intentions, session two is concerned
with sharing knowledge gained from practical project experiences with
various communities.

For further enquiries

Contact TNS 440 8115 <necessary@p...>
Lucy Davis  467 6033 <lucydavis77@h...>


Lucy Davis  Visual Artist
Communications/International Development Studies
Roskilde University Denmark
-----------------

Contact Singapore:
Lucy Davis & Lee Weng Choy
77 Farrer Drive
10-03 Sommerville Park
Singapore 259282