Paris beckons

In a few months, I'll be off to Paris to stay at the Rosamond McCulloch studio at the Cite Internationale des Arts.  The studio was a bequest by the late artist to the Tasmanian School of Art (now Tasmanian College of the Arts) to allow former students to undertake residencies in the oh-so-cultural city.

My time in Paris will be spent examining the dialogue between pre-Modern art and architecture in a number of key buildings, including churches and palaces, in order to expand my existing knowledge on contemporary site-specific art practice.  My PhD thesis, which I submitted in late 2012, examined site-specific art in Australia’s public museums.  One of the aspects of site-specificity that I have become interested in, but for many reasons was unable to pursue in my thesis, is the pre-twentieth century relationship between art and architecture, as well as other models of site-specificity such as Visionary Environments (large scale installations, often defined by the maker’s lack of formal art training, and are thus often associated with Outsider Art).

When theorists define or describe site-specific art, they usually look at art from the 1960s onwards, viewing the art form as a relatively recent trend that followed the art ideals of Modernism.  However, my belief is that we can extend our knowledge on contemporary site-specific art by examining the way in which pre-twentieth century art was usually made for a particular site, purpose, and most importantly, made in dialogue with architecture.  For instance, the altar pieces that we so often see in museums, cut-off from their original environment, were not designed as stand alone artworks, but as an integral part of the church and site.  My intention for Paris is to examine the relationships between altarpiece and museum (such as the Louvre), and in sites such as the Saint Chappelle, altarpiece and church.

The two other models of site-specificity that sit outside the contemporary notion of the term are the before mentioned Visionary Environments, and the studio as museum.  For some reason France has many of the most famous Visionary Environments.  A few of the sites are close to Paris, so I will also do at least one day trip during the residency period.  The ones high on my list Ferdinand Cheval's Palais Idéal (Ideal Palace) in Hauterives, south of Lyon; Adolphe-Julien Fouré’s Les Rochers Sculptés (Sculpted Rocks) in Saint Malo, Brittany; Raymond Isidore’s la Maison de Picassiette in Chartres (an easy day trip from Paris).  These environments are built around existing structures, often using local found materials, and while they are not site-specific in the critical sense of the term, they have an interesting relationship to site.  Similarly, I am interested in examining the relationship between art and environment in Paris’ studio museums, such as the “l’atelier Brancusi” outside the Pompidou museum, which is an exact reproduction of Constantin Brancusi’s studio as dictated by the artist in his will.

My other key aim is to not turn into a blimp thanks to a surplus of eclairs and cheese. Exciting times.

Writing in Cyberspace: have I just plagiarised myself?

I received an email a month ago from a peer-reviewed online artist dictionary in regards to my submission of a local artist’s biography. I had written on this artist as part of my honours thesis, simply because there has been little written on him, despite his prolific art practice and significant contribution to the Australian art scene. I had decided that after honours I’d submit this information to Wikipedia and the dictionary I mentioned earlier, so that there was publicly available information on this wonderful artist.

Wikipedia was to be my downfall.

You see, the dictionary contacted me because they’d noticed that the second paragraph of my biography submission was nearly identical to my Wikipedia entry. They were very nice about it, and said that they (rightly) assumed I was the same author, but asked me to change the second paragraph of the biography and resubmit the entry.

Now, I wrote the Wikipedia and dictionary entries on this artist slightly differently. The dictionary, being peer-reviewed and administered by a university, was more meticulously spell-checked and I had put my ‘academic writing hat’ on especially. The Wikipedia entry, on the other hand, had sub-headings and I viewed it as a bit of a ‘work in progress’, as most Wikipedia entries seem to be. However, as I have a particular style of writing, and a specific knowledge of this artist, there was never any doubt in my mind that these entries were going to be (or indeed, needed to be) very different.

So why is the similarity between the Wikipedia entry and the online dictionary a problem if I am the author of both, even taking into account the fact that Wikipedia is ‘anonymous’? I see now, that perhaps I should have written the Wikipedia entry after the dictionary entry was approved. Hell, I could have cited myself! Perhaps I shouldn’t have put information out on Wikipedia at all. If I ever write anything on this artist (or any other topic that I’ve contributed to on wiki) I could be accused of plagiarising myself, and as a post-graduate student, I have a significant case of ‘plagiarism fear disorder’ already.

Also related, is the content on this blog. When I started hobART, I wrote under my middle name, thinking that I could be more ‘critical’ if I was anonymous (although people guessed it was me anyway). However, in one of the tutorials I was teaching last year, we were discussing web publishing and the death of the book, and I mentioned that I had a blog, for which I published under an alias. I said that I found it very helpful and that some of the content might make it into my PhD. After one of the students (quite rightly) pointed out that I could be accused of plagiarising ‘Emma’s’ writing, the disorder kicked in and I changed my blog to my real name.

As a result of these incidents, I feel quite uneasy about writing on the web. On one hand, I want to add to the pool of human knowledge (particularly as sites like Wikipedia are weighed down in American content), but I also want to have the freedom to publish my thoughts under my own name as well, and not be accused of plagiarising myself.

Has anyone had similar experiences or hold the same fears?

Does this fear prevent you from posting on sites such as Wikipedia?