back issue

Artangel
Angels of our time
 
 
Catherine Wilson
 
 
Visitors to Circular Quay, Sydney, in mid-2005 may remember an intriguing video installation by Kutlug Ataman entitled Küba in one of the passenger ferry terminals. Within an enormous warehouse space, viewers were invited to listen to stories emanating from television monitors narrated by forty individuals from Istanbul's Küba community. The Küba neighbourhood emerged as an enclave of safety in the late 1960s during a politically volatile era in Turkey. Today it continues as a very diverse residential community, united in its contempt of state authority. Michael Morris, co-director of the art commissioning body Artangel, explained how the installation Küba worked on a deeply immersive level, the power of the piece enhanced by the contrast between the vast installation space and the viewing position from domestic armchairs. 'It felt as if you were actually in the home of the person who was telling you the story, but you listened to the story in the context of all the other babble in the room.'  The complex, enveloping visual and auditory environment was a carefully woven synthesis of narrative content, the inherent conditions of the location and the video medium.
 
Küba was co-produced by Artangel, London, in collaboration with five other international arts organisations, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.  It is a recent example of the work of Artangel, which for over fifteen years has explored the relationship between artist, commissioning organisation and audience, and emphasised the viewer's experience and influence.
James Lingwood and Michael Morris, co-directors since 1991, reminisce about a time in the 1980s and 1990s when artists could chart a significantly unexplored territory between established museums and galleries, and more conventional public art opportunities. For Lingwood:
 
There is a huge space in the middle where we think a lot of the most interesting, challenging work of our time can be realised, which most arts organisations or set-ups are not very well equipped to engage with. Artangel is really about trying to stake out this space in between.
 
 
Artangel's commitment to new ways of collaborating with artists and the production of powerful new creative ideas has not occurred in isolation. It has been part of a wider, profound shift in the expectations both artists and audiences have of contemporary art. By the 1990s artists working across visual and performing arts were starting to collaborate and experiment with complex multidisciplinary approaches. Theatre artist Robert Wilson embarked on his first commission in Britain, H.G., 1985, with long-term collaborator Hans-Peter Kuhn and film production designer Michael Howell. H.G. was performed in the then disused Clink Street Vaults in south-east London in 1995. Formerly the site of one of a medieval prison, the vaults were transformed by lights and sound into a challenging journey through a deserted underground world.
 
Another significant early work, which demonstrated the changing ambitions of visual artists, was Rachel Whiteread's well-known and controversial work House, the result of a collaboration with Artangel in October 1993. Whiteread's ambition, to cast the last of a series of nineteenth-century terraced houses in London's East End before their complete demolition, heralded not only the end of an era but also considerable public debate about this new form of modern memorial.
 
The very core of Artangel's purpose is as a commissioning organisation, but in many ways it is also a production company and a brand. Commissioning occurs within an open-ended and patient framework, where visual artists, filmmakers, writers, composers, choreographers and performers are invited to engage with an existing idea, or with the immense possibilities of the unknown. Artangel perceives the relationship between artist and organisation as a form of chemistry, embracing uncertainty, entertaining all possible avenues of exploration. It confronts the element of change as an opportunity to incorporate another dimension to the work. Once an idea is identified, the artist's proposal is developed before Artangel moves into production mode. Generating the necessary resources and acquiring teams of individuals can take years. Although the range of ideas Artangel will consider is extremely broad, it is primarily interested in facilitating forms of expression that bring both the artist and audience into challenging, innovative encounters with specific places. By inviting artists to respond to such conditions, Artangel produces an experiential moment that attempts to engage the widest possible audience in questioning the world around them. As a 'brand', Artangel can be understood as the name behind a particular type of experience, rather than as an institution.
 
Creating complex environments 'where people feel they're “in”, they're part of, they inhabit, and it inhabits them' could not be achieved without an extensive cross-disciplinary and multimedia approach.  Artangel has built a substantial reputation for working across all forms of the visual and performing arts, as well as in film, television, radio and the internet. To enable the organisation to further investigate possibilities with broadcast media, and further explore the potential of artists working with the moving image, Morris and Lingwood established their own company, Artangel Media, in 2000.
 
Artangel's commitment to multifaceted projects, resulting in more than one creative outcome, is evident in Towards a promised land, an 'Interaction' project launched in May 2005.  This is a large-scale photographic project in the town of Margate that involved internationally renowned photographer Wendy Ewald working with a group of children from diverse backgrounds. A series of thirty-five banner-sized photographic portraits of the children - all of whom had experienced migration, relocation or exile - was produced by Ewald and displayed along the Margate sea wall. 

 Towards a promised land culminated in September 2006 in a series of live events based on the Exodus story led by film director Penny Woolcock, as well as in a Channel 4 film, The Margate Exodus.  These productions were undertaken in collaboration with local Margate residents, who took prominent active roles, as well as key artists such as sculptor Antony Gormley and songwriters Brian Eno and Scott Walker.
 
Artangel also assisted London-based writer Sukhdev Sandhu to explore the possibilities of the internet. In collaboration with international sound artist, Scanner, and a website designer, Sandhu produced Night haunts, 2006, a nocturnal journal about London after dark. As Sandhu journeys through the myriad, shadow-filled byways of London, observing and discoursing with night cleaners, security guards and exorcists, successive chapters of his journal appear on a specially created website.  By utilising technology and sound, the activity of reading a journal has been transformed into an emotionally and intellectually engaging experience.
 
Jem Finer's Longplayer is one of the most challenging works
attempted to date. With the support of a diverse team of creative collaborators, Finer experimented with generative forms of music and developed the idea of a 1000-year musical composition.  As a result, Longplayer was launched on 1 January 2000, a haunting, resonating auditory experience that seduces the visitor into contemplating the inevitability of time, notions of mortality and the timescale of a millennium. It can be heard today at public listening posts at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London, Rufford Park in Nottinghamshire, the Bibliotheca in Alexandria in Egypt and the Powerhouse in Brisbane. The problem of ensuring that Longplayer continually evolves as a piece of music until 31 December 2999 is currently being addressed by the Longplayer Trust.
 
As for future plans, The Jerwood Artangel Open was announced in June 2006. This is a major £1 million commissioning initiative which invites UK-based emerging artists of all disciplines to propose projects that address specific sites across Britain. For Morris and Lingwood, 'it is important to construct a particularly enabling situation, which is an opportunity for artists, but it's also an opportunity for us to get excited by artists we might not otherwise have found our way towards'. 
 
www.artangel.org.uk