Artist studios hold massive untapped potential for audience development through social and collaborative forms of technology. Alternative production methods are currently influencing the exhibition and distribution of art; does this challenge traditional forms of studio provision and can new considerations of the studio benefit the sector in London and the UK.
In May and July 2014, we held two roundtables convened by Professor Janis Jefferies, Associate Pro Warden Creative and Culture Industries, Goldsmiths, University of London and chaired by Dr Brian Condon of the Centre for Creative Collaboration. We invited participants from a wide variety of practice backgrounds – artists and curators of different levels of experience and career stages and those involved in the provision of different types of studio and workspaces.
‘Art after the Internet’ was inspired by You Are Here: Art After the Internet (Kholeif, 2014), a major publication to critically explore both the effects and affects that the Internet has had on contemporary artistic practices. Responding to an era that has increasingly chosen to dub itself as ‘post-internet’, this collective text traces a potted narrative exploring the relationship of the Internet to art practices from the early millennium to the present day. The book further positions itself as a provocation on the current state of cultural production, relying on first-person accounts from artists, writers and curators as the primary source material. Whilst the book raises urgent questions about how we negotiate the formal, aesthetic and conceptual relationship of art and its effects after the ubiquitous rise of the Internet, our 2 roundtables focused on artists’ studios, their histories and values as well as collaborative forms of technology. We all face the daunting question of how art has changed and is changing, and will change –in the digital age we now inhabit, and what how that public space might look.
The roundtables provided an opportunity for practitioners to consider how to work together to add public value through insight into the provision of contemporary forms of creative, interdisciplinary workspace, whilst creating and supporting artistic and technological collaborations. This is the start of a long-term research programme to influence business models in the studio-providing sector and ultimately provide methods and means for providing new collaborative forms of workspace in London.
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