The art of the impossible

Arthouse's outgoing director Aileen MacKeogh talks to Karlin Lillington about the centre's first five years and her concerns about its future direction

TO create something from nothing but raw materials and imagination that has always been the role of the artist. By that definition, one of Aileen MacKeogh's greatest achievements must be the creation of Arthouse, the Temple Bar multimedia centre for the arts which hardwires art and technology together.

Bringing Arthouse from concept to reality, MacKeogh has been at its helm for its first five years, but as she prepares to step down as director this summer (while staying on its board), the centre's future direction is not at all clear.

Five years ago, Arthouse was a constantly shifting proposal in the mind of MacKeogh, a sculptor and lecturer at the National College of Art and Design. Nothing else like it existed anywhere, so the slate was clean for creating something completely new, not just for Ireland but internationally. With the backing and initial funding from Temple Bar Properties, MacKeogh went at the job with gusto.

But not without controversy. As it has developed, Arthouse has spawned raging arguments, earned plaudits, been visited by international delegations interested in creating similar set-ups, fascinated artists such as Laurie Anderson and Brian Eno, and been spurned by many in Ireland's own arts community. The government which helped first fund it has ignored it, and the Arts Council still lacks any category under which Arthouse could most usefully apply for funds.

As is often the way with artistic institutions, Arthouse was born out of conflict. Temple Bar Properties wanted to expand its "cultural quarter" concept and was encouraging arts groups to establish centres in the area. A proposal from the Sculptors Society of Ireland (551) received the go-ahead and MacKeogh - who had been on the steering committee considering the proposal and the report made to support it was appointed director for a sculptural cent.

It was envisaged as an exhibition space for experimental multimedia works

Multimedia, she says, was interpreted at the time in its more traditional sense - a collage of various media such as installation art, sculpture and video. But she'd made clear while on the steering committee that she was looking at the term more broadly.

"I had very strong views as to how I would interpret the report and what I felt was necessary, she says. "I didn't think a sculptural centre was the answer to what was surfacing out of the report." Multimedia was becoming an ambiguous term, acquiring associations with technology-infused "new media" or "interactive media".

Using EU and Department of Environment funds, Arthouse was born. It was to be a purpose-built steel and glass centre in the heart of Dublin's Temple Bar, which would encourage artists to work creatively with technology, and would give the public access to exhibits, special events, and a first-floor cybercafe.

"It has no vestige left at all of what the 551 concept would have been," MacKeogh admits, and that has caused much anger within some arts circles. "It was terribly controversial, and the consequences were that for the first couple of years I was just and the concept of Arthouse was just getting completely ignored or bad-mouthed. It's been a long struggle to come to the point we are now, where somehow that's been left aside."

One of MacKeogh's central projects, Artifact, has gradually lured artists to Arthouse. A data-base of 700 artists and an online exhibit of works, Artifact can be searched in numerous ways, and last year at least 99 artists received commissions or appointments or made sales through it.

Queries this year have included an architect's firm, a US university seeking a ceramic artist for an exhibition, two New York gallery owners putting together Irish shows, and a British public relations firm commissioning paintings for a client

Artifact has been a successful project and is now funded by the Arts Council, says MacKeogh, but she is frustrated with general government recalcitrance in supporting the centre it helped to create. Because Arthouse receives no general funding it must scratch together money project by project. Its entire budget for exhibitions this year is

Pounds 10,000 - a sum so small that it effectively excludes Arthouse from bringing any comprehensive exhibition of digital art to Dublin.

For example, last spring it hosted a two-day conference featuring leading international artists in new media. But they could only show their work on slides or on their Web sites. The cost of bringing the exhibition of their works, which is currently at the Barbican in London, would have totalled Pounds 30,000.

After Arthouse's initial year, MacKeogh also had to generate all funding for salaries - now over 20 full and part-time staff - and secured major sponsorship deals with Microsoft and Telecom Eireann.

Among other things, the staff run courses on using the hardware and software tools of interactive media, some offered through FAS schemes. Even then, says MacKeogh, they never know whether the next course will be funded after the current one ends - which makes it hard to budget for other projects.

"What happens is you spend all your time chasing the money instead of constructively helping the artists," she says; and the artists are the creative core of Arthouse. MacKeogh feels the government, while currently in a flurry of activity to create an "information society", has failed to recognise the role of artistic creativity within that society.

She sees Arthouse as "a bridge between technology and art", and as such, an essential player in current social and economic developments within Ireland. She also points to the contribution that challenging art makes to the commercial sector - particularly though advertising.

Surprisingly, though, Arthouse wasn't mentioned among the "flagship" projects envisioned in the recent government report on Ireland and the Information Society, and Arthouse's contributory report wasn't acknowledged either. Yet, she says, various TDs, Ministers and government agencies such as the IDA use Arthouse for launches and bring visiting groups through - presumably because they see the centre as symbolising Ireland's creative embracing of cutting edge technology.

"But it's a shallow acknowledgment because there's no sub-stance behind it, which has to do with policy and funding," she says with some bitterness. "You keep lobbying and lobbying and you hope that you're going to get some breakthrough," she says, picking her words careftilly. "I feel that we are poised on the edge of being able to make a very serious contribution, but that will fall away without, serious government recognition of the role of culture in our society, of the role of the application of technology to our society. I do not, by any means, think it's too late. Nows the time."