Like the Irish Museum of Modern Art, late last year Project Arts Centre found itself at the centre of public attention for all the wrong reasons. The decision of artistic director Kathy McArdle not to renew the contract of the centre's visual arts director, Valerie Connor, and to do away with her post, mobilised an unprecedented level of opposition and criticism in the arts community at large.
Given that McArdle's background was largely in theatre, there was a stingingly personal tone to accusations that Project was down-grading the visual arts. The implication was that she didn't know or care about the visual arts.
Things did not get better with the initial non-appearance of a visual arts programme for the current year. There was also speculation about the reasons for resignations at the centre. It seemed as if the turbulence of the dispute had thrown Project into disarray. In the meantime, discussions with Connor led to an amicable parting of the ways, and this year's visual arts programme has got into gear. This far down the line, McArdle's overall strategy for Project, and the part that the visual arts strand plays in it, is perhaps becoming a little clearer, but it has certainly been a bumpy ride.
There is, however, no sign of that in her demeanour, which begs to be described as upbeat and enthusiastic. In person, these qualities threaten to overwhelm you. The sheer energetic intensity of her presence belies her slight physique.
She admits to being surprised at the vehement critical response. "Surprised, but not enormously surprised to the extent that it revealed something you already knew, that a large number of people have a sense of ownership and identity with Project. People were understandably anxious and angry that what is a key space, a crucial space, might be lost to them. What Project represents is the centrality of the idea of being guided by artists and their imperatives."
The implication in some of the criticism that she had no interest in the visual arts was, she acknowledges, wounding. "Initially you're hurt by that. OK, I don't have a degree or an MA in visual art studies, but I have a sensibility and an awareness that's been formed over a long time. Martin Drury (of The Ark) was saying recently that people don't really understand what an artistic director is. It comes back to the idea of an artistic director being responsible for a number of areas. You're using creative material - including people, ideas, money, whatever - to shape key cultural questions. I would hope I have a broad overview, a commitment to different kinds of art and artists."
She proved that, she feels, in her heartfelt support for events initiated by Connor. To use her lack of formal visual arts background against her suggests, she argues, a proprietorial attitude to the visual arts, and could be seen as being symptomatic of "the commodification of art practice and connoisseurship".
In any case, Project has now appointed a Curator of the Visual Arts, Grant Watson, who has a curatorial MA from Goldsmiths College in London and an interest in art beyond the customary boundaries, geographical as much as aesthetic.
Visual Arts programming, McArdle emphasises, will be undertaken by a programming team. This is not because she wants to diminish or dilute visual arts in terms of the overall programme, she points out, but rather it relates to her long-term view that Project "has a huge diversity of commitment" and should be moving toward a concern with "art that is not art form specific, but relates to the grey areas in between".
Those areas are by nature hard to define. She speaks of a hybrid involving "talk, discussion and performance". The first year of her tenure as director is "a testing ground when you begin to map out your territory. Each piece of the programme should be making some piece of your overall ideological stance apparent to the public".
A year hence, she reckons, "everything at Project will be partly a critical event in the sense of being a critical investigation into cultural life." Her repeated emphasis on the importance of discussion and debate reveals the rationale behind her creation of an innovative new position late last year, curator of talks and critical events, and the appointment of Tim Brennan to the post.
The recent week-long "think-tank", Seven Days for New Thinking, embracing such issues as the global anti-capitalist movement, disability and the arts, and developments in art on the net, is exactly what she had in mind in terms of generating discussion. "It was about taking a look at the world around Project, how to create a climate in the culture around you that will generate discourse."
One area that is obviously close to her heart is the emergence - or lack thereof - of new writing for theatre. It is, she agrees, something that must involve Project. "In fact we've spent the last couple of weeks having a series of conversations with writers about a playwright-in-residence programme. I would say that something that came up again and again was the impression, or the perception that Irish theatre is in crisis."
The Project residency will provide a writer with an income - that is, "enough to live on" - for two years. "We will offer that residency to someone who wants to create a space to reflect on their own work. We're not saying they have to write anything. Or they might use the two years to write a book of poems. If that's what happens, that's what happens.
"We should be supporting the arts in a concrete way, but also in such a way that the relationship is not just about delivering predictable outcomes to the public." Commodification is a recurrent theme of her conversation.
"Project is not about commodities. If you look at the crisis in theatre, that has to do with the level of commodification in contemporary culture, the emphasis on consumption. People come to the theatre expecting to consume a product rather than experience something. We want to know what is going to happen to us before we pay our money. It's becoming harder and harder to find an uncommodified space, and Project has to be about not seeing the artwork as a product but as an active process, on a whole lot of levels - not just intellectual, but on a physical, visceral level. The question is how you set about creating that uncommodifiable experience." While she has been inundated with ideas and proposals, the vast majority reside within the conventional artistic model of production and consumption.
'For example, you find that people say that they are against the conception of the gallery as a White Cube, but you find they are essentially just reacting to that model. When it comes to theatre you find that, rather than offering something substantially different from a production at the Abbey or the Gate, you're actually talking about something similar, but with fewer resources.
"Often when you probe something, it's not as radical as it seems at first glance. It's not enough that work has a radical intention, it has to represent a shift in the dominant paradigm. And that won't happen unless we're looking at who engages with, and why they engage with art forms ..."
There are dangers in acceding to the tyranny of the new as well, though, as she acknowledges, and, beyond the rhetoric, it is difficult to envisage exactly what form her ideal, in-between, neither chalk nor cheese, radical artwork might be. Her argument is that Project shouldn't prescribe or pre-define it, but should frame a space within which it might - and it's always might - occur.
"For me, Project needs to act like a catalytic force." She agrees that novelty is no guarantee of relevance. "You don't want to get caught up with fashion. Fiona Shaw has this great phrase about work that has the necessity of the new, and that's what you want. I was talking to Grant [Watson] about this in terms of visual art. It could be that a radical thing to do now is to take a look at what is happening in painting, which everyone was saying is dead not that long ago, because old forms reinvent themselves, so you have to be wary of fashion." She refers back to the Seven Days think-tank.
Roman Berka, a curator from Vienna, spoke of wanting the museum to be like "a power station, a producer of new energy. I know that everyone here at Project works bloody hard, and when eventually people come to look back at my time here I hope they'll be able to say that Project introduced some new energy into the city, some transformative energy."
