‘Else-where’ : essays in art, architecture, and cultural production 2002-2011

“Else-where”: Essays in Art, Architecture, and Cultural Production 2002–2011 is a synoptic survey of the representational values given to art, architecture, and cultural production at the closing of the twentieth century and the opening of the twenty-first. Written primarily as a critique of what is suppressed in architecture and what is disclosed in art, the essays are informed by the passage out of post-structuralism and its disciplinary analogues toward the Real (denoted over the course of the studies as the “Real-Irreal,” or “Else-where”). The essays collected in “Else-where” cross various disciplines (inclusive of landscape architecture, architecture, and visual art) to develop a nuanced critique of a renascent formal regard and elective exit from nihilism in art and architecture that is also an invocation of the highest coordinates given to the arts – that is, formal ontology as speculative intelligence itself, or the return of the universal as utopian thought “here-and-now.”

(Re)producing power-knowledge-desire : young women and discourses of identity

This study focuses on three young women in their final year of school using data gathered during a year-long process of individual conversational interviews, the contents of which were largely determined by their interests. Three themes arise from critical incidents during this year - the debutante ball, teenage pregnancy and dieting. These themes are used to focus wide ranging explorations of what it is to be a young woman at this particular time. The broader cultural production of discursive positions available to, and developed by, these young women as part of their identity formation is discussed. Methodological issues concerning power relationships between research participants are also the focus of critical attention. It is considered that young women's bodies and bodily practices are central to understanding the processes involved in their identity formation. It is in this context that the focus turns to bodies that matter. In contemporary Western cultures 'adolescent bodies' could be said to matter 'too much' in the sense that they are increasingly the focus for disciplinary practices in institutions such as schooling, the church, the family, health care, health promotion and the media. This disciplining is legitimised because adolescence is socially constructed as a 'becoming'. In this case it is a matter of 'becoming woman'; a sort of apprenticeship which allows for knowledgeable others to provide not only guidance and nurturance, but discipline. Using insights gained from feminist poststructuralist theory and cultural feminism this thesis argues that the discourses and practices generated within and across institutions, which are normalised by their institutional base, are gender differentiated. The focus is on young women's embodied subjectivity and how the discourses and practices they engage with and in work to construct an ideal feminine body-subject. The discursive production of a gendered identity has a considerable impact on young women's health and their health-related behaviours. This is explored specifically in the thesis in relation to sexuality and the cultural production of the 'ideal' female body. It is argued that health education and health promotion strategies which are designed to influence young women's health related behaviours, need to consider the forms of power, knowledge and desire produced through young women's active engagement with institutionalised discourses of identity if they are to have an ongoing impact

Taking a critical approach to arts management

This paper argues that the task of ans management entails a critical engagement with the discourses of management. The promulgation of economic rationalism across the arts and cultural sector is identified in the context of the general deployment of economic criteria to judge the success of diverse organisations. In particular, the notion of tile creative industries, concerned with commercial cultural production, and its impact on the arts sector is highlighted as a dominant discursive practice. The paper makes the case that the task of the arts manager must be to argue for the cultural value of the arts, and take a critical approach to the dominant discourses that currently define the field. Finally, it is argued that one of the key challenges for the future of arts management is to also take a critical approach to the conventional discourses of arts marketing in order to deliver a new focus on audience engagement.

Defining national identity? Visiting the architectural spaces of the Museum of Scotland

National Cultures construct identities by producing meanings about the nation with which we can identify, meanings which are contained in the stories which are told about it, memories which connect its present within its past, and images which are constructed of it. A museum, the repository of a nation’s culture, which connects the past to the present through recounting stories about the artefacts of past cultures is clearly significant in representing the culture of a nation.

This paper explores the architectural spaces of the new Museum of Scotland, which opened in Edinburgh in November 1998. The museum has opened at a crucial time in Scottish history. The Scottish cultural renaissance is manifested in the increase in cultural production and call for Scottish cultural institutions. Parallel to this renaissance are political developments with the re-creation of a Scottish Parliament in 1999. When the idea of ‘Scotland’ is itself in a state of flux, the stories of the nation told in the museum, which attempt to give a sense of location, a connection between the individual and the nation are especially important.

Thus, issues of identity and ‘self’ are crucially important in understanding the contemporary museum. Within this, the relations between the production of these narratives and their consumption by the public are little understood. The majority of studies have concentrated, although not exclusively, on the production of museum displays, primarily with the "politics and poetics" of display. This paper analyses the relationship between producer and consumer within the Museum of Scotland, attempting to reconnect the forces of production and consumption. In doing so, it focuses primarily on the differing conceptions of the ability of the Museum to be able to narrate the nation.

Based on interviews both with museum staff and with visitors to the museum, it argues that an understanding of the relationship between the museum and Scottish national identity can only be considered through an understanding of the tension between the producers’ intentions and the way in which consumers conceptualise the museum as a space for "telling the nation".

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s multiplatform projects : industrial logics of children’s content provision in the digital television era

This paper traces the development of children’s multiplatform commissioning at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in the context of the digitalisation of Australian television. Whilst recent scholarship has focussed on ‘post-broadcast’ or ‘second-shift’ industrial practices, designed to engage view(s)ers with proprietary media brands, less attention has been focussed on children’s and young adults’ television in a public service context. Further, although multiplatform projects in the United States and Britain have been the subject of considerable analysis, less work has attempted to contextualise cultural production in smaller media markets. The paper explores two recent multiplatform projects through textual analysis, empirical research (consisting of interviews with key industry personnel) and an investigation of recent policy documents. The authors argue that the ABC’s mixed diet of children’s programming, featuring an educative or social developmental agenda, is complemented by its appeals to audience ‘participation’, with the Corporation maintaining public service values alongside the need to expand audience reach and the legitimacy of its brand. It finds that the ABC’s historical platform infrastructure, across radio, television and online, have allowed it to move beyond a market failure model to exploit multiplatform synergies competitively in the distribution of Australian children’s content to audiences on-demand.

Creative economy strategies for regional cities: the case of Geelong, Australia

Creative economy approaches to regional development are gaining increased favor from policy makers as there is a shift towards a more wholistic approach to development. By fostering a creative economy a region may benefit not only in purely economic terms, but also become more enriched socially and culturally. Using the regional city of Geelong as a case in focus, the presentation will explore strategies that both harness existing creative capacity through the arts and cultural production and also to further expand and intergeate creative enterprise into the local economy. As regional centers like Geelong continue to grow the need to ensure appropriate development that is both sustainable and enriching to improve residents quality of life becomes paramount.

Not-I/Thou : the other subject of art and architecture

Not-I/Thou: The Other Subject of Art and Architecture is a series of essays delineating the gray areas and black zones in present-day cultural production. Part One is an implicit critique of neoliberal capitalism and its assault on the humanities through the pseudo-scientific and pseudo-empirical biases of academic and professional disciplines, while Part Two returns to apparent lost causes in the historical development of modernity and post-modernity, particularly the recourse to artistic production as both a form of mnemonics and periodic (and renascent) avant-garde agitation. In-between these twin systems of taking the measure of things, Art and Architecture, as forms of speculative intellectual capital, emerge from the shadow-lands of half-conscious and half-unconscious forces to become gestures toward a type of knowledge that has no utilitarian or generic agency. Defying the tendencies of such discourses to fall prey to instrumental orders that effectively neuter the inherent radical agenda of both, Art and Architecture are represented in this series of essays as noetic apparatuses, operating at the edge of authorized systems of knowledge, quietly and secretly validating and valorizing the shadowy and recondite, collective and personal operations of intellect in service to no particular end.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire : Cantrills Filmnotes as Prestige Machine

This examination of the gaps and ambiguities linked to Cantrills Filmnotes (CF), an Australian publication on experimental film, offers a case study on the production and ownership of Pierre Bourdieu’s 'cultural capital' in film art at the margins, witnessed first-hand. CF emerged at the intersection between the street and the academy, spanning that period from the 70s till its abandonment in 2000 during which, it is argued here, it migrated from the former to the latter. This examination surveils, in retrospect, for whose benefit was the magazine's accumulation of power, status and prestige exercised, in whose service was it exacted? CF’s manifesto-like editorial rhetoric was often directed at perceived shortcomings of those institutions servicing film art in Australia. What is revealed when such a critical eye focuses on the production of Cantrills Filmnotes (CF) itself? CF's cultural production has a further dimension of both taking on and taking place inside a colonial mind-set, a cultural cringe often the subject of editorial commentary, elucidating a practice residing at the geographic margins of a marginal arts practice. The founders and editors of CF, the married couple Corinne and Arthur Cantrill both suffered and benefited from CF’s impact on this international field of art production.

Materiality, language and the prduction of knowledge art, subjectivity and Indigenous ontology

If ontology concerns theories of being, and epistemology theories of knowing, how might we bring the two together to account for movements between being and knowing that constitute cultural production? something occurs or lies behind language and meaning that must be acknowledged if we are to arrive at an explanation. In this essay, I examine some key ideas that emerge from the work of Julia Kristeva, as well as those of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari on sensation and affect, to demonstrate how ontology and epistemology are inextricably entwined in knowledge production.1 Kristeva’s perspective of creative practice not only aligns with the new materialist acknowledgement of the agency of matter, but, in contrast to Deleuze and Guattari, it also affirms the dimension of human or subjective agency that is implicated in cultural production.

Abjection, affect and othering through art

In keeping within a new materialist approach, this paper involves a transversal encounter with, Kristeva’s thinking on abjection. She says of abjection, that it is a primer of culture, because as a process it is fundamental to the constitution of identity and the renewal of meaning through an expansion of language. Here, I will argue that abjection is also a primer of affect and is the operation through which affects are given valency: either negative or positive, which in turn articulate modalities of othering as oscillations between the empathetic and ethical, or repellent and adversarial derived from an instinctual movement towards what is enabling and away from that which present threst or danger to the organism. I argue further, that it is the notion of jouissance and positive affect that distinguishes Kristeva’s account of cultural production from other thinkers such as Freud, and that this has significant implications for understanding the dynamics of othering or the kinds of relationality made possible through language.

Ubby's underdogs: a transformative vision of Australian community

In Black Words White Page (2004), his seminal study of Aboriginal cultural production in Australia, Adam Shoemaker notes that ‘when Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s first collection of poetry appeared in print in 1964, a new phase of cultural communication began in Australia’ (2004, p. 5). The ‘new phase’ to which Shoemaker refers pertains to the many plays, collections of poetry and novels by Aboriginal authors published between 1964 and 1988 and directed to Australian and international audiences. Flying under the radar of scholarly attention, Aboriginal authors and artists also produced significant numbers of children’s books during this time, including Wilf Reeves and Olga Miller’s The Legends of Moonie Jarl, published by Jacaranda Press in 1964 (see O’Conor 2007), Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s Stradbroke Dreamtime (1972), and the picture books of Dick Roughsey and many other Aboriginal authors and artists (see Bradford 2001, pp. 159-90).

Co-production of service experiences: insights from the cultural sector

Purpose: The increased involvement of customers in their experience is a reality for all service organisations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the way organisations collaborate with customers to facilitate consumption of cultural experiences through the lens of co-production. Although organisations are typically an integral part of the co-production process, co-production is typically considered from a consumer angle. Aligned with the service ecosystem perspective and value-in-cultural context, this research aims to provide greater insight into the processes and resources that institutions apply to co-produce experiences with consumers and the drivers and inhibitors of such processes. Design/methodology/approach: Case study research with three exemplar organisations, using in-depth interviews with key informants was used to investigate the processes organisations follow in co-producing the service experience with customers, as well as the drivers and inhibitors of organisational co-production of the service experience in the cultural sector. Findings: The findings illuminate that cultural organisations are co-producing the service experience with their customers, as revealed through a number of key processes: inviting customers to actively participate in the experience, engaging customers and supporting customers in the co-production of the experience. Increasingly demanding consumers and a changing competitive landscape are strong external drivers of co-production. Visionary leadership and consumer-focussed employees are internal factors impelling organisations to co-produce experiences with consumers. A strong curatorial orientation, complex organisational structure, employee attitude and capability gaps and funding constraints are impediments towards organisations co-producing experiences with consumers. Originality/value: This paper addresses a gap in Service-Dominant logic theory, arts/cultural marketing and broader services marketing literature by proposing a broadened conceptualisation of co-production of the service experience. This conceptualisation can be used as a platform to derive strategic imperatives for managers of service organisations. The findings highlight the key practices and resources that are central to organisations co-producing experience with customers. In this way, greater understanding of institutional logics and practices that underpin experience co-production emerges.

UNESCO and cultural heritage practice in Australia in the 1950s: The international touring exhibition Australian Aboriginal Culture, 1948-55

This article investigates aspects of the production, dissemination and consumption of UNESCO’s first international touring exhibition, Australian Aboriginal Culture, in order to explore the relationship between UNESCO and Australia in the development of a key cultural heritage program. It argues that the exhibition indicates a national and international spirit of universalism that attempted to address crosscultural ignorance in a period of post-war optimism.

Valuing the arts : theorising and realising cultural capital in an Australian city

For those who make and admire artistic works, there is no question of their value. However, for others interested in economic development, the value of the arts is often more tangential, contested and questionable. While the post-modern world of consumption and spectacle suggests to some academics and governments that the arts and cultural industries are the way of the future, others remain sceptical about their social and economic value. This is a theoretical as well as a practical issue this paper explores by offering a reconceptualisation of Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital as a way of re-assessing the value of the arts. The paper then applies this framework to quantify and qualify the value of the arts in one regional city in Australia – Geelong in Victoria – focusing on the work of two artists. The aim is to describe the interconnected processes by which the arts generate cultural capital in the form of confidence, image, individual well-being, social cohesion and economic viability. The analysis also highlights the ongoing power relations which prescribe artistic production, circulation and valuation. The implications of such a rethinking and application go well beyond one city and region to other places grappling with the relationship between artistic production and urban well being. By focusing on the broad-ranging process by which artistic value is created for individuals, groups, professionals, communities and governments, a model becomes available for other places to use in realising their cultural capital.