Rose Arscott

From Rose:

These are just a few thoughts. Not properly collected thoughts but simply things that came to mind while reading the Suzanne Lacy.

There were a few questions that continually popped into my head while reading Lacy’s writing. For one what makes public art public? What makes public art interactive? Is interactivity simply the audiences involvement in the art’s creation or can its definition be stretched to it being the audiences influence on the creation of the art?

Is public art inherently interactive? The public is complicit in the art’s existence and purpose making them automatically a part of it. Therefore the interactivity in public art is a given.

In the section Information Revealed: Artist as Reporter that begins on p.175 Lacy mentions framing. “Intentional framing is inherently political…what will be seen is what the artist will have seen.” This reminded me of an article that Susan Sontag wrote for The New Yorker called Looking at War.  I couldn’t help but be reminded of Sontag’s points on regulations of framing that governments will put on war photographers and reporters in order to fit what they think is appropriate for the public to see in the frame of journalism. This thing of choosing what the audience will and will not see is a political statement and choice regardless of whether you want it that way.