ARTIST STATEMENT
Fall 2008
Graham Coreil-Allen
The primary investigations I am exploring are urban analysis and history, pedestrian agency, and the negotiable nature of public space. My process for producing art is born out of my experiences in architecture studies, urban planning and anarchist-influenced activism. My architectural and planning backgrounds serve as a foundation for how I select sites, approach audiences/participants, and design projects. Meanwhile, my experiences with radical organizing imbue my work with a strong sense of critical engagement and social responsibility.
My current art practice falls into three main categories: map-making, parade inspired public performance, and intervention in public space. I utilize whatever media and materials that best support my ideas, goals and aesthetics. The themes that I emphasize are inspired by artists and thinkers associated with social critique, pubic space, and intervention. Guy Debord's notions of 'detournement' and Henri Lefebvre's theory on 'social space' provide a foundation for my practice of critical urban analysis and temporarily re-organizing public space for interactive celebration. Drawing from Robert Smithson, I embrace the entropy of my urban surroundings, and critically engage my environment through re-arranging and re-contextualizing architectonic materials. And similar to the actions of Gordon Matta-Clark, I employ unpermitted gestures of directly manipulating architectural sites.
I am constantly consuming and participating in a variety of visual, historical, political and social information regarding the development of my surroundings. From the space between this discursive discourse, and my more poetic observations of my everyday pedestrian practice, I create a variety of maps. Using a combination of digital collage, physical drawing, and adhesive tape installation, I create personalized/political/local maps - a process which allows me to analyze my habitual place-ments, and project absurd/utopian, pedestrian friendly cities.
Parallel to my map-making design and research process, I also produce proposals and promotion materials for my parade-inspired events/performances. With parades and personal performances, I am able to create fun, interactive and spectacular events that both invite community participation and reach a more diverse audience. With such projects, I locate aesthetic value both within the social network of interactions that take place during planning as well as within the final performative experience.
Lastly, I engage in interventionist public art. The primary questions behind these investigations are "What is public art?" and "What is public space?". Through interventions, I aim to transcend the traditional limitations of public space and art venues by selecting non-traditional sites or by approaching traditional public space in unconventional ways. For these projects I re-arrange existing materials on site or set up installations using construction supplies such as paint, stakes, gravel, and tape. With these interventions I ultimately hope to cultivate fresh insights, engaged adventure, and democratic discourse by inviting participants to experience their everyday public realm in new and creative ways.
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