Open Council Abstract

This thesis presents an investigation into the potential of a self-institution to provide alternative institutional framing devices to contextualise critical art practice.

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This is pursued via a theoretical framework that brings critical art and improvisation studies together with the aim of developing critical art strategies in the context of neo-liberalism and in relation to wider transformations in critical theory which have contributed to a rethinking of critique in non-oppositional terms.

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The research addresses interrelated problems found in the contemporary art discourses of institutional critique and participation which involve the need to overcome rigid binary thinking with respect to issues of authorship, aesthetics and community in art practice.

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These problems are brought into dialogue with jazz derived improvisation studies, an area in which similar issues are at stake.

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Addressing this in practice the method of self-institution is employed as a vehicle for experimentation with ideas of non-oppositional critique and of improvisatory art practice in which issues of authorship and aesthetics become transformed.

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The resulting Open Council project achieves a conflation of strategies of fiction and art practice through the creation of a fictional local authority institution which, with improvisation as its operational methodology, emphasises the importance of art practice to operate temporally through the continuous linking of works/events which together create a specific interpretative framework in which critical practice can be presented.

 

The thesis charts how this was achieved in practice by conceptualising the method of self-institution itself as an improvisatory process which perpetuates itself by responding to the impulses provided by the contemporary city environment.