Perhaps no other artistic institution in Ireland - apart from the Abbey Theatre - has been as encumbered with controversy as Arthouse, the self-described "multimedia centre for the arts" in Temple Bar. As a new artistic director (the third in eight years) and a new chief executive step into their roles this month, Arthouse remains a puzzle to many, including artists and those working commercially in new media. Why was it created, what is it supposed to be, what does it do, who should lead it, and where is it going? And what is "multimedia" anyway?
"That's a good question, because it's a question I had, too," says new artistic director Tim Brennan. Sporting a 1960s-style mop of coppery hair and a moustache that make him look like a renegade from Paul Revere and the Raiders, Brennan is affable and understated.
"Rather than for me to define what multimedia is right now and set off from there, whether it's multiple media, or digital art, or electronic art, or new media - and I actually think it does matter how you define it - I would think the initial matter now is to clarify, or clarify through debate, what the term means."
To do this, Arthouse has an ambitious artistic programme for 2000 that will culminate in an international conference and possibly an annual prize. The programme, designed to both build on Arthouse's past directions while drawing in new audiences and new artists, signals the intent of Brennan, a multiple media artist and academic from Goldsmith's College in London, and new chief executive Eileen Pearson, who most recently project-managed The Whoseday Book and spent seven years as managing director of Magill magazine.
Brennan's musings over the term "multimedia" might sound pedantic or uncertain, but he's thoughtful and serious and clearly sees the journey towards an answer as an opportunity for artistic exploration, not artistic prescription. And the question is hardly frivolous - it actually underlies the core controversy over Arthouse. The original interpretation of the word in 1992 by Arthouse's first director, sculptor and academic Aileen McKeogh, created fissures that remain unbridged in Ireland's artistic community.
The purpose-built, Government and EU-funded centre was supposed to be home for the Sculpture Society of Ireland, but McKeogh opted for the emerging, digital definition of multimedia, steering the centre straight into the then-strange waters of computer-generated art. In the process, she and Arthouse became the target of bitter and acrimonious criticism. Arthouse has never been able to shed fully the anger and resentment of some artists and organisations.
Early mistrust has fuelled years of rumours and accusations. Most recently, a magazine item noted the centre had failed to file company returns since its inception (although accounts were submitted for 1997 and 1998 last summer). Yet Arthouse receives a laughably small Arts Council grant compared to other national governments' funding for similar centres, such as Ars Electronica in Austria, or the Banff Centre for the Arts new media facility in Canada. Ironically, Arthouse predated such centres and served as a model for them, and is admired by many outside of Ireland, including experimental luminaries such as Brian Eno and Laurie Anderson. Yet, shamefully, the centre has never been supported adequately as the flagship technoartistic venture it was supposed to be, although the Government nonetheless uses it regularly to impress visiting technology company dignitaries.
Arthouse received £130,000 last year and in 1998, a near doubling of its 1997 funding (when only £10,000 was earmarked for exhibitions). About half its grant normally goes on exhibitions, and the remainder last year covered 16 per cent of the revenue Arthouse needs annually to operate, according to a spokeswoman. Arthouse had 75,000 visitors last year, who came to see exhibitions, take classes in digital media, or visit Arthouse's first-floor Internet cafe.
They've asked for more this year, to back a programme that will include two exhibitions of new work by 30 Irish and UK artists, an exhibition on the relationship between cinema, the media and contemporary art, a three-day programme by seminal performance artist Stuart Brinsley, and projects from artists in residence that will include one called MP3, inspired by the online, openly available music files called MP3s, and another entitled "Quiet!", a "year-long exploration into electronic music and sound". Topping it off - fingers crossed - will be an international conference to which Brennan hopes to attract artists, technologists and theorists, and which would finally give Arthouse the international profile it has lacked.
Brennan says he wants to move away from the club-oriented, performance or workshop-style projects favoured by previous director Niall Sweeney, mainly because he feels Arthouse saw "a good block" of such events. After some years in the Brit Art-drenched UK landscape, he says he also is wary of "the emphasis of the opening night as a party; and no one going on to see the exhibition in the days afterwards".
Both Brennan and Pearson acknowledge they do not expect to fund their new programme through Arts Council funds. Instead, Pearson intends to do what Arthouse has never done very successfully to date: lure private sector funding. Their principle targets are some of the real wealth-generators in the current economy: technology companies. "I think that would be a good marriage," says Pearson, who founded and ran a successful software localisation company. Adds Brennan: "They are the kind of companies that produce the nuts and bolts that help us go where we're going."
Assuming funding and donations of equipment come in, Arthouse also needs to attract artists. While Artifact, Arthouse's online database of 850 Irish artists, has successfully encouraged artists to get their work visible online, fewer have explored working in digital media themselves. Brennan, who is English, is very interested in younger Irish artists, many of whom he met through his involvement in the British art scene. In talking to Irish artists about Arthouse, he says: "It didn't seem like it was a good place for contemporary artists to be at and I thought, well, it should be."
Partly, this is the legacy of earlier mistrust arising out of Arthouse's history, and partly due to alienation with technology. "I think that the traditional artistic community felt threatened," says Brennan. "It's a little bit how painting felt when photography arrived."
Perhaps as a consequence, digital work by Irish artists has often been criticised for being timid and constricted. Brennan, who has taught curating and works in a wide range of media himself, admits there's been "a lot of very tentative work" work that in conception is "incredibly dynamic" but often whimpers in execution.
Partly, this is because artists haven't worked in digital media long enough, he says, or because the works they create aren't "obvious enough". Additionally, he says, many artists are faced with a debate over whether they are "artists on the Net, or Net artists", using Internet technologies to create art, or, as artists, producing particularly nice Web pages. "I think now we're seeing some resolution to that debate," he says. "Artists are becoming stronger and taking on the idea of the browser," as a central element in a work. Public acceptance of the Net has "speeded up the process of practice" for artists. Now, he feels, there's a good range of work by contemporary Irish artists to champion.
"I guess being new here, and new to the country, I'm actually very interested in practice in Ireland - to bring in, dust down and provide a platform for that work," he says. That's where his search for a definition of multimedia will start. Where it will end, who knows - just don't expect it to be either precise or conventional, since Brennan clearly intends to see Arthouse's own lack of definition as an abiding strength.
"This is a place that's very unconventional compared to other art galleries. In fact, it's not a gallery at all," he says. "It's unbound from certain types of convention. Or, freed up to decide what conventions it wants to adhere to."
