Abstract :
Ideas of social responsibility and exploring art’s
place in society are widespread and prevalent.
Access, community, participation, empowerment
are words that appear with increasing
frequency within disparate discourses. From
Glasgow’s successful bid to be UK City of
Architecture and Design 1999, [1] to lottery
guidelines [2] and policy research [3], there
appears to be a preoccupation with such terminology.
However, does this demonstrate a true
desire to find a point of mediation between
discourses, between one place or one group and
another? Do projects establish sustainability in
the relationships that are built up between apparently
disparate elements or are these terms
linked mainly to high profile events that intervene,
then move on, leaving people with little
more than a memory of the encounter? This
paper proposes that in order to shift the topography
of art practice – the where, how and on
whose terms it occurs – spaces and forms of
mediation have to reconstruct the very sub structure
on which they are founded.
