Short paper given as part of the event 'Public Space /Professional Space' at the British Pavilion during the Venice Biennale, on Friday 10 June 2005. The event explored the competing demands on the art world - on the one hand provide venues for artists and their professional colleagues – and on the other to engage the wider public: the panel and speakers were invited to respond by exploring whether these are complementary or incompatible demands?
Invited Speakers: Stephen Beddoe, ARTQUEST; Emma Cocker, educator/academic; Declan McGonagle
Invited panel members include: Laura Ford, artist; Marjorie Althorpe Guyton, Arts Council England; Elpeda Hadzi, artist; Kirse Junge-Stevnsborg, exhibitions curator, Dunkers Kulturhus, Sweden; Elizabeth Anne McGregor, director, Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia; Paul Stone, a-n commissioning editor, UK
'My intent is to ask what we mean by these terms professional and public, these indefinable, amorphous spaces and definitions? Is it possible to homogenise the range of professional interests that might make up the art sector? Can the diversity of individuals forming a global audience for the arts, be contained within the single definition of ‘public’? I propose to look at the possibility of co-existing perspectives and agendas; and to reflect upon the tensions within the model of the public/professional binary opposition ... Certainly there are competing demands on the art world, however these demands are neither simply complementary or incompatible but contradictory, complex, confusing, problematic, and perhaps rightly so. Both professional and public realms are contained by rules and bureaucracy; codes of practice and behaviour; particular languages and expectations. Like advocates of certain interdisciplinary practices, I believe in the importance of stepping out of these zones at times to have a look around, and engage in wider conversations; to create, as W.J.T Mitchell might argue (though speaking in relation to visual culture) turbulence, disturbance, and moments of indiscipline, uncertainty, or even spaces for “un-professionalism"'
