The Neo-Imperial Function: Final Site
Birmingham - Guangzhou - Birmingham

Gavin Wade invited us to take part in his project Public Structures which is a special project for the Second Guangzhou Triennial BEYOND: an extraordinary space of experimentation for modernization which is curated by Hou Hanru, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Guo Xiaoyan.In collaboration with Dave Beech.

The neo-imperial function is the latest in a series of text works entitled The Functions of Public Art by Hewitt&JordanDave Beech. Previous works in the series are: The Aesthetic Function of Public Art (Venice Biennale 2005); The Economic Function of Public Art; The Function of Public Art for Regeneration; and, The Social Function of Public Art. Each work in the series uses changes in site, scale and form to extend the critical potential of the statement.

The neo-imperial function is a text work in Mandarin. The work is also sequential, comprising of three phases, in two cities, over two months. The project began in Barford Street, Birmingham UK as a text work on a Maiden advertising billboard. The billboard was photographed, this photograph was made into a new poster and displayed in the city of Guangzhou. The Guangzhou poster in its new site was again photographed and exhibited at the Guangzhou Triennial. This image has now been returned to the original site in Birmingham, it is in this way the work occupies the same exchange
mechanisms of production and consumption that occurs in industrial, commercial and cultural relations between the UK and China.
Guangzhou and Birmingham are twinned cities.
The function of public art in these relations is tied to commercial enterprise and the hope of establishing or maintaining an advantage in an economy shaped by  global asymmetries. For this reason the text for the neo-imperial function is meant to be always out of place – not fully at home and therefore not giving advantage clearly to one culture or another.

Site 1: Barford Street, Digbeth, Birmingham UK (7th - 20th November 2005).
Site 2: Guangzhou City & The Second Guangzhou Triennial (18th November -15 January 2006).
Site 3: Barford Street, Digbeth, Birmingham UK (7th - 20th December 2005).

Go to WORK and click on The Neo -imperialist Function to see all three sites together.

This new work is a continuation of a series of text works entitled the Three Functions that discuss the functionality of public art.

Special thanks to Maiden Outdoor Advertising

29 December 2005

Organized by Extramuros, French Embassy, Britsih Council, Escola Superior de Arte e Design das Caldas da Rainha, Casa d'Os Dias Agua

28 November 2005

In collaboration with Dave Beech we have been invited to give a paper, Functions, Functionality and Functionlessness at a conference entitled Public Sphere: Between Contestation and Reconciliation, three day symposium organized by National Association of Art Critics in Yerevan, Armenia. This symposium draws on critical research into concepts of the public sphere and its relation to public space and traditions of the public monument. It also explores the relation of individual and national identities as shaped by cultural environments, and the functions of cultural work in the future development of a democratic public sphere. The symposium is contextualized by the transition, in both eastern and western Europe, to a post-socialist period.

Speakers include: Vardan Azatyan, B+B, Angela Harutyunyan,
Paul Gough, Sophie Gerlach, Nazareth Karoyan, Malcom Miles,
Jane Rendell, Ann Schober and Stephen Wright

The symposium runs from 24th - 27th October 2005

1 November 2005

The Internationaler

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