Art,Cold War Diplomacy and Commonwealth: Australian and Canadian Art at the Tate Gallery 1962–1964

This article analyses the formation, presentation and reception of two seminal exhibitions: Australian Painting: Colonial, Impressionist, Contemporary (1962–1963) and Canadian Painting 1939–1963 (1964). The presentation of these exhibitions at London’s Tate Gallery reflected the institution’s support for “old dominion” Commonwealth members. The exhibitions also highlight the differing visions of the Canadian and Australian governments concerning the relationship between art, diplomacy and politics during the Cold War. In Canada, Vincent Massey (Governor General 1952–1959) played a key role in ensuring that all forms of Canadian art were promoted internationally. Massey wanted to connect with the European and American avant-garde and to be part of a multiracial Commonwealth. This contrasted with the rather “old-fashioned” views of the Australian prime minister, Robert Menzies, and the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board. They supported a Commonwealth dominated by the “white dominions” and the initial exhibition plan for Australian Painting recalled previous British Empire art shows. The British response to the Canadian and Australian exhibitions is also discussed. British critics preferred the nationally identifiable “exotic” art found in Australian art to the transnational forms of international abstraction in Canadian art. Eventually, Australia “caught up” with Canadian cultural policy following the establishment of the Australia Council.     

Hearing the voice of Donbas: art and literature as forms of cultural protest during war

This paper analyzes literary, visual, and street art works of writers and artists from Eastern Ukraine produced during 2014. Two Donetsk artists, Serhii Zakharov and Anzhela Dzherikh, and two Luhansk writers, Serhii Zhadan and Olena Stepova, play with the myth of the proletarian Donbas, on the one hand, and debunk the popular perception of Donbas people as being in consent with the politics of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, on the other. They explore familiar tropes and images of Donbas and use guerrilla tactics (shock effects, provocativeness, and deception) to initiate public reaction to the war. Their works are united by their search for a shared communication space and direct access to the audience on occupied territories. These artists challenge the accepted perception of Donbas as a free but uncivilized space and participate in the creation of a new Donbas text. The interaction between politics, art, and activism makes their voices and vision powerful and infectious and can help achieve civic consolidation in Donbas.     

艺术设计协同育人平台的建设与实践:以广东省外语艺术职业学院为例

针对广东省高职教育发展战略和珠三角文化创意产业需求,广东省外语艺术职业学院围绕提高创新能力这一核心目标,在艺术设计专业群进行试点,创建了艺术设计协同育人平台,经过探索与实践,提出了协同育人平台建设的路径与策略。     

Authorship,Authenticity, and Intellectual Property in Australian Aboriginal Art

This article analyzes research and legal cases about authorship, authenticity, and intellectual property in Aboriginal art. The concepts of Aboriginality, authenticity, and ownership are used to show the complexities of Aboriginal law, legal copyright, and the moral rights framework. The clan ownership of Dreaming makes Aboriginal artists' relationship different to other artists' individual ownership of their work. Research on this topic by members of the Faculty of Business and Law unit of the Centre for Leisure Management Research at Deakin University was undertaken for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. This article provides significant contextual analyses of major issues leading to Commonwealth Government inquiries and legislation in Australia during 2006-8.     

应对数字艺术公共安全隐患的立法策略研究

当下数字艺术的产生和迅速崛起从根本上改变了原子艺术长期以来建构起来的艺术生态和艺术秩序,引发了某些引起人们重大关切的公共安全问题,其中突出的有网瘾问题、网络文化低俗化问题、数字谣言问题以及数字艺术知识产权保护问题等。这些问题不同于原子艺术公共安全隐患发生学上的外生性、随机性和个别性,而是呈现为内生性、公共性、流行性和危害性特征。一条比较可行的防控策略是在对数字艺术实施事前立法规范的同时,对数字艺术公共安全机制同步实施事后追溯监管。此外,加强数字艺术公共安全性及其应对机制的科研攻关和科普宣传,尽快提高全社会对数字艺术特殊规律及其公共安全性的认识和了解也是当务之急。     

Swampwalls: dark matter and the lumpen army of art

Dominant notions of contemporary art are being overturned not by some radical avant-garde theory or movement, but instead by an “uprising” from within the confines of the “art factory,” as well as by newly embodied instances of informal everyday creativity that high culture has long overlooked. Theorists Negt and Kluge might have described this insurrection as the partial unblocking of a counter-public or proletarian sphere: a realm of fragmented identities and working class fantasy generated in response to the alienating conditions of capitalism. A more specific cultural interpretation suggests this mutiny from within and assault from below is the irrepressible brightening of “creative dark matter:” that marginalized and systematically underdeveloped aggregate of creative productivity, which nonetheless reproduces the material and symbolic economy of high culture. The results are explosive, or at least potentially so as this long, pent-up shadow archive spills out into the once forbidden dwelling place of mainstream law and order and high cultural privilege. Meanwhile, a new wave of socially engaged art is thriving on the margins of the art world. Like an enormous production warehouse this “post-public” creativity is developing sustainable farming, reenacting historical labor demonstrations, providing public services lost to decades of deregulatory economic policy, and initiating local bartering systems and environmental cleanups. Its vitality is something Joseph Beuys could have only dream about. And not surprisingly even this “autonomous” and “Interventionist” art is selectively becoming part of the mainstream culture industry through what Gilles Deleuze describes as an “apparatus of capture.” Nevertheless, one result of this new confrontation reveals this vibrant imaginary “from below” is pushing artistic production, pushing also discourse, pedagogy and cultural institutions into radically re-thinking definitions and possibilities not only involving the possibilities of contemporary avant-garde art practices, but also about the very nature of creativity, democracy, and political agency more broadly.     

Now wash your hands: uncommissioned art and gender

Examining the urban arts in the UK, in their paint and fibre-based alternatives, this article aims to account for the differences in contemporary dealings with graffiti and yarn-bombing (kniffiti). The intersectional complications of gender, race, age and class, as they have come to bear on the visual arts, as well as the historical power structures that have determined the classification of crime, and of art, are offered as possible rationales for present-day handling of ‘deviance’ in the form of urban art. It seems that urban knitting has blind-sighted both social conventions and legal principles in a way that exposes the arbitrary nature of both.     

加强高职院校文化艺术教育的若干思考

切实加强大学生文化艺术教育,是全面推进素质教育、促进大学生全面发展和健康成长的重要途径。本文在简要分析高职院校文化艺术教育现状的基础上,论述了高职院校开展文化艺术教育的作用和意义,进而提出了加强高职院校文化艺术教育的策略。     

‘The dead are coming’: acts of citizenship at Europe’s borders

This article combines the research agenda of the acts of citizenship literature with reflections on emancipatory theatre. I examine the Centre for Political Beauty’s activity-based artwork ‘The dead are coming’ which problematizes the cruelties of the European border regime in symbolically charged spaces in the German public. Focusing particularly on the roles available to ‘actors’ and ‘spectators’, and the directionality of the message conveyed through the artwork, I examine how the performance subverts the ‘sites’ and ‘scales’ of citizenship. My analysis indicates that the artwork’s subversive potential emerges not only from the political vision conveyed by the artist collective, but also from the way in which others become involved in the performance. Acts of political beauty thus most extensively challenge instituted citizenship’s orientalist anchoring, reverse status-based role allocations and subvert the structural violence of borders when the performance enables the enactment of novel forms of political agency and solidarity.