WORKSHOP #4 - THE SPIRIT OF GRACIOUS LIVING

Jo-Anne Butler & Tara Kennedy
“Gracious Asparagus”, Jo Anne Butler and Tara Kennedy, 2009




...FEW OPPORTUNITIES GENERATE THIS KIND OF DREAM

Workshop Description:

This workshop asks the question “What is the spirit of gracious living anyway?” More particularly the workshop will ask what has “gracious living” meant for the past 10 years and what might it mean in the future.


Along a busy stretch of dual carriageway in South County Dublin glossy hoarding announced a new apartment development. The advertisement images featured a woman with an asparagus tip speared daintily on her fork and the accompanying text made promises such as “few addresses generate this kind of dream’. Today the apartments are part inhabited and part un-finished, and a section of the hoarding still remains, proclaiming “the spirit of gracious living” to the passing traffic.

In 1971 Gordon Cullen in his book The Concise Townscape, wrote “A city is more than the sum of its inhabitants. It has the power to generate a surplus of amenity, which is one reason why people live in towns rather than isolation”. Dublin in the past ten years generated much surplus of amenity and privilege yet that growth has also left us with a legacy of isolation and future ruin. How do we and how can best share the surplus generated by cities? Recent years have spawned both a rash of gated communities and a trend for the collective sense of the co-operative shop and community gardens. This workshop will ask questions about the role of design and cultural production in the context of these very different aspirations for self-sufficiency. “What is the spirit of gracious living anyway?”

The project will be divided into the following components (open to debate, development and change with workshop participants)

  1. Vox pop video and audio survey – asking the question “what is the spirit of gracious living anyway?” Use of basic video and audio editing.
  2. Debate on the possible meanings of “gracious living”
  3. Design and construction of structures to present survey findings including: a makeshift outdoor projector screen (Maybe in style of billboard or flatscreen TV); a structure for audio; a bookcase

nowwhatspirit(at) gmail.com

About the Organisers:

Jo-Anne Butler
graduated from NCAD in 2005, with a degree in Fine Art Sculpture & History of Art & Design. After graduating, she worked with Breaking Ground, the Ballymun Regeneration percent for Art Scheme, while maintaining her own practice. In 2007, she began studying architecture at UCD, and from this, founded Culturstruction with Tara Kennedy
Tara Kennedy
graduated from NCAD in 2005, with a degree in Fine Art Sculpture & History of Art & Design. After graduation, she established a practice working interactively, and often collaboratively in a variety of public art contexts. In 2007, she began studying architecture at UCD and from this, founded Culturstruction with Jo-Anne Butler. This is an exploration of how art can provoke critical debate around architecture, the built environment, and the ways in which meaning and memory are created through buildings and public spaces.