‘Small City Becomes Huge: Artist as Negotiator’, Art Papers, Vol. 37 Issue 2, March/April 2013

PDF – Joanne Laws – ‘Small City Becomes Huge – Artist as Negotiator’ Art Papers March April 2013
“We are from the past, but we echo and reverberate in the present. What a responsibility!… We, you and I, must remember everything. We must especially remember those things we never knew.”
Jimmie Durham
A Certain Lack of Coherence (London: Kala Press, 1993)
In keeping with the issue’s thematic inquiry (which considers the vital engagement between art-making, design practice and the built environment), this review of ‘Contours of the Commons’ – C.C.A Derry-Londonderry (Sept/Oct 2012) examines the city as a site for contemporary and historical artistic intervention, integrating Terry Smith’s ‘architecture of aftermath’ and Jimmie Durham’s ‘carpentry of ambivalence’ as frameworks for memory.