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80 recently designed an exhibition of work by the ceramicist Magdalene Odundo. Mr Craig-Martin discussed the ways in which modern technology had made it possible to create very large artworks on a temporary basis, most of which are only possible because of their impermanence. “It seems to me that the idea of a public work that’s temporary sits perfectly with our time. It makes more sense to me that we make work with a life of a certain period,” he said, suggesting that impermanence was part of our contemporary condition. Oliver Beer discussed one of his latest projects, which will open at the Met Breuer in New York this summer. It consists of an orchestra composed of different pots from the museum’s ceramics collection, all “singing” at their resonantfrequency. “For me it’s interesting that a work might be private for a time, but if it survives, it becomes public by definition,” he said. “The 6,000-year-old vessel that I will be working with has had 200 generations of owners. And that for me is one of the most public experiences.” Mr Beer’s artworks blur the distinction between the public and the private, the monumental and the intimate, an idea that chimed with Ms Moussavi’s understanding of her own art and craft. “If you look at a building like the Pantheon, we do not think that we are looking at art or a mere building, it’s architecture at its highest level, which serves a practical purpose while also having an artistic dimension.” It is the divorce between art and architecture, Ms Moussavi suggested, that prompted the idea of public art, often as a way of having to compensate for bad architecture. “Does working in the public domain shift the responsibility of artists?” Mr Marlow asked of Mr Shawky, whose work includes video, performance and storytelling, and focuses on societies in transition, especially in the Middle East, where they are developing at speed.