AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Studentship Further Information. Art in the Airport: The Production of Public Art at Oslo Airport T2.

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1 AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Studentship Further Information Art in the Airport: The Production of Public Art at Oslo Airport T2. This project is a joint venture between the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Oslo Lufthavn AS (Oslo Airport). The PhD is funded through the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under its Collaborative Doctoral Awards scheme. The project will be co-supervised by Professor Tim Cresswell (Professor in Human Geography at Royal Holloway) and Claire Doherty (Director of the commissioning and publishing organisation, Situations, will act on behalf of Oslo Airport) Project Summary This project reflects a unique opportunity for a doctoral student to follow the process of commissioning public art in an airport. T2 at Oslo International Airport is being built over the next five years to expand the airport's capacity to 28 million passengers a year. An integral part of this process is a large scale commissioning of public art to add to the art that already exists in the airport. Oslo Lufthavn AS have agreed to help support a student who will be given access to the process, including key meetings, architects, artists, planners, managers and curators. The resulting project will be ideally placed to ask key questions about the role of public art, its relation to place, the nature of airports and the interconnection between art and architecture. It will take studies of curatorship and art out of the realm of galleries and museums. It has the capacity to inform practices and policies of both public art commissioning and airport planning and design in the public and private sectors in the UK The project aims to analyse key developments in current practices of curatorship, the production of public art and the development of airport space giving particular emphasis to the role of public art in the construction of place from the perspective of architects, curators and the artists themselves. In so doing the research will enhance academic understanding and public knowledge of the process of commissioning and curating public art; help to develop a critical understanding of the relationship between public art and site/place and assist us in understanding the airport as an important place in 21st Century life. This project will be embedded in literatures on art and place, geographies of architecture and airport geographies and make a major and original contribution to each of them by combining them within one project. In doing so the project will make a higher level contribution of the theorisation of place (and non-place) which is central to cultural geography as well as other arts and humanities disciplines. Key research questions will include: How has public art been used and conceptualised in airports over the past 30 years? What is the role of public art in spaces of mobility (nonplaces)? How do artists collaborate with curators, planners and architects in the production of place? What are the main factors and who are the key agents in the design process of public art in a new mega-project? The access provided by Oslo Lufthavn AS will provide a unique opportunity to explore these questions as a project develops

2 The PhD project has been carefully designed around the projected opening of the new T2 terminal in The planning sessions for the building project and, more importantly, the commissioning process for the art in the airport, will take place over the period of the PhD from /6. At the heart of the methodology is the unique possibility of access to a number of key actors including managers, planners, architects, curators, artists and existing passengers that will produce a multi-dimensional view of the public art commissioning process. The analysis will attempt to identify key organisational and artistic strategies for the airport, identifying points of conflict and negotiation between the needs of airport management, artistic practice and architectural intention. Aims and Objectives The project aims to analyse key developments in current practices of curatorship, the production of public art and the development of airport space giving particular emphasis to the role of public art in the construction of place from the perspective of architects, curators and the artists themselves. Objectives: 1. To enhance academic understanding and public knowledge of the process of commissioning and curating public art. 2. To further develop a critical understanding of the relationship between public art and site/place. 3. To use the process of commissioning public art in T2 to further understand the airport as place. To include an evaluation of the idea of non-place and its relationship to public art. 4. To assess how the role of art in Oslo T2 can be used as a lens to enhance knowledge of the nature of the hub airport as a characteristic space of 21st century life. Research Questions 1) How has public art been used and conceptualised in airports over the past 30 years? 2) What is the role of public art in spaces of mobility (non-places)? 3) How do artists collaborate with curators, planners and architects in the production of place? 4) What are the main factors and who are the key agents in the design process of public art in a new mega-project? 5) How has public art been experienced in the existing terminal space of Oslo? 6) What are the main cultural and social issues that are incorporated into the process of commissioning public art at Oslo Airport? 7) How is the process of commissioning public art at Oslo informed by other public art in other airports and other public spaces? 8) What is the relationship between art and notions of the public in a private pseudopublic space? 9) How does public art become part of the architecture process in a new mega-project? Research Context and Intellectual Framework

3 The proposed research will build upon three principle research areas. 1) Art and Place. Geographers, curators, theorists of art and artists have developed a significant body of work which explores the relationship between art and place. Much early work on this theme in cultural geography involved looking at art for the geographies within it, landscape being a dominant theme. More recently geographers have engaged with the interaction between art and place in contemporary art particularly installation art. A key question is the relationship between artistic practice and the space and place of art. This is particularly true of environmental art and site specific art. While some work focuses on the role of place in generating meaning for art, other work looks at the ways that art can unsettle or subvert place. 2) Geographies of Architecture. There has been a burgeoning literature on geographies of architecture starting as an account of what buildings mean but recently developing approaches that focus on buildings as assemblages (of structural components, networks, plans, techniques people etc.). Recent work has also asked questions of the relationship between buildings and bodies focussing on questions of inhabitation and affect. This project, while focussed on questions of art and place, will also follow the process of producing a major building and assess the interrelationship between art and architecture in that process. 3) Geographies of Airports. There is a long history of transport geographers dealing with airports in quantitative ways. Recent work has seen geographer and theorists in the new mobilities paradigm think about airports as spaces in which bodily movement is managed and surveilled. Other work has been more focussed on the history of airports as architecture and on the different ways in which airports are thought of as nonplaces spaces of transit that lack sociality. One of the main issues facing airport geographies is the difficulty in gaining access to such highly secure environments. While this project is focussed on the production of art in airport space it is unique in having a high level of access to major facets of airport production and management and will contribute to this established literature. This project will be embedded in these literatures on art and place, geographies of architecture and airport geographies and make a major and original contribution to each of them by combining them within one project. In doing so the project will make a higher level contribution of the theorisation of place (and non-place) which is central to cultural geography as well as other arts and humanities disciplines. Proposed Methodology The PhD project has been carefully designed around the projected opening of the new T2 terminal in The planning sessions for the building project and, more importantly, the commissioning process for the art in the airport, will take place over the period of the PhD from /6. At the heart of the methodology is the unique possibility of access to a number of key actors including managers, planners, architects, curators, artists and existing passengers that will produce a multi-dimensional view of the public art

4 commissioning process. The work has been divided into four phases. After an initial induction period, the thesis concentrates in its first year on the historical and comparative context. The desk phase of the research will involve detailed archival work on the history of the existing architecture and public art at Oslo Airport, as well as review of existing published literature on airport space and its relation to public art. This will involve work at archives at the British Library, and RIBA as well as in Oslo. The student will identify and survey significant new airport terminal/public art projects since 1980 in order to provide some comparative examples. Particular attention will be paid to airports that have directly informed the process at Oslo O2 in order to trace the mobility of ideas about public art in airport space. Through interviews with curatorial staff at Oslo as well as analysis of other airports (Copenhagen,Schiphol, Bangalore), the project will identify the key representational strategies of public art in airports. One particular case study, and a focus for comparison will be the art in Copenhagen airport, which was visited by curators involved in Oslo s public art project. One important methodological strand in the thesis will be the comparison of the kinds of public art being commissioned in Oslo with other airport spaces in order to show how the curatorial process is mobile, networked and geographically variable. The second year will be shaped around the process of curating and commissioning art for the new terminal, and will have two main aims: First, the thesis will produce a detailed reading of the kinds of art being commissioned. This will involve a number of strategies, including conventional art iconographic analysis of the projected art, and extensive qualitative interviews with artists, curators, designers, advisers, architects, planner, airport managers and other public stakeholders. The student will be given access to key actors from across these groups for interviews and will also be given access to most key meetings in the curatorial process. The analysis will attempt to identify key organisational and artistic strategies for the airport, identifying points of conflict and negotiation between the needs of airport management, artistic practice and architectural intention. The student will also conduct a survey of the art in the existing terminal and will questionnaire passengers in that terminal to assess the success or otherwise of already exists. This will be supplemented through the use of focus groups, observation of airport use, and detailed interviews about particular aspects of the art. Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London The successful candidate will be based at the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. The Department is well-established as a leading UK centre in its discipline, with a national and international reputation for research of the highest quality. The 2008 UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) again placed the Department in the top tier of Geography departments. Its research environment was singled out as overwhelmingly world class and internationally excellent and reflects its commitment to facilitate research of the highest quality. Within the department, the successful candidate will join the Social and Cultural Geography (SCG) research group, one of four main research groupings. The Group is an international research centre, with a distinctive reputation for fundamental, interdisciplinary geographical research in the arts and humanities as well as the social sciences. SCG includes nine academic members of staff. The Group runs the successful MA

5 in Cultural Geography (Research) and currently supervises over 30 PhD students. It convenes the fortnightly Landscape Surgery meetings that are designed to enable postgraduate students to discuss their research in a supportive environment. Many leading journals in the field are edited by SCG group staff, including the Journal of Historical Geography, History Workshop Journal, Cultural Geographies and Geoforum. The group collaborates with a range of institutions beyond the academy; recent partners include the British Library, the British Museum, the Museum of London, the National Maritime Museum, the Royal Geographical Society, the Science Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Oslo Airport is an exciting addition to this. Oslo Lufthavn AS (Oslo Airport) Oslo Lufthavn AS is not a research organization. It is a major hub airport that processes 14 million passengers a year soon to expand to 28 million. It encourages research collaboration in the design and construction of its new extension T2. Claire Doherty of Situations has been hired as curator for the public art in the extension and she will act as a supervisor for this project. Research training and support To ensure that the successful candidate receives appropriate and relevant preparation and support, his/her training and development needs will be considered as early as the interview stage. The precise details of training support will be established formally at the start of the project by means of a training log, as set out in Royal Holloway s Code of Practice, completed by the academic supervisor in discussion with the student, the nonacademic supervisor and the advisor. The student s needs will be reviewed periodically through a system of supervisory record forms, and the training log will be formally updated at the end of each year. Funding The studentship is funded by the AHRC s Collaborative Doctoral Award scheme. Funding is available on a full-time bases of three years or a part-time basis for five years, and may include both student fees and a maintenance grant. Postgraduate fees at Royal Holloway will be paid by the AHRC. The annual student maintenance grant is worth 16,140 in Oslo Lufthavn AS will provide an additional 1000 annually in addition to 1000 over three years for travel expenses. Candidate specification and eligibility Applicants should have a minimum of a 2:1 degree at undergraduate level in a relevant subject (e.g. Geography; Anthropology; Sociology; Curatorship; Art History; Architecture etc.) and should normally have undergone a recognized programme of research training at Masters level or equivalent in a relevant specialist area (e.g. cultural geography; curatorship; architecture etc.). The successful candidate will, ideally, have a familiarity with geographical approaches to mobility, art and/or architecture and have received some research training in social/cultural research methods. An ability to work both independently, and as part of a team, will be important to the success of the project. Appointment will also depend on the candidate passing the security clearance required by

6 Oslo Lufthavn AS. The successful candidate must satisfy AHRC eligibility requirements, as to both academic standing and residence. UK residency is normally required. EU citizens may also be eligible for fees-only awards. Further details on basic eligibility requirements are available from the AHRC web-site. Application process All candidates must apply on-line to Royal Holloway here where you must submit personal details and those of two referees, and upload a CV and a response to the project proposal, including your suitability, relevant experience and particular interests (two page maximum). Please specify AHRC CDA studentship on Art in the Airport in section E of the form. The deadline for receipt of applications (including two references) is Friday 6 July Interviews will be held at Royal Holloway in mid July. Further enquiries can be made to Professor Tim Cresswell at Royal Holloway (tim.cresswell@rhul.ac.uk).