Insider/Outsider Seminar:
I began Claire Bishop’s book Participation in this seminar with the idea that the theories and opinions expressed would focus more on the role or identity of the artist as an insider or outsider of the communities affected/influenced by their art. I found instead that this book focused much more on the artists’ attempts to involve their audience/viewers more in the artistic process and experience, empowering their viewers to take a more active role in their democracy, political as well as artistic.
I would like to highlight ideas I found provocative in the various essays contained in this volume.
Bishop Introduction/Piper Notes on Funk:
Bishop discusses how many of the artists are trying to “collapse the distinction between performer and audience, professional and amateur, production and reception.” The ultimate goal of this new participatory art is to create a community of viewers who are active, empowered, emancipated and self-determined by providing a more “positive and non-hierarchical social model” that helps to restore the social bond through a “collective elaboration of meaning.” I feel that the strongest example of this elaboration of meaning came through with Adrian Piper’s notes on her Funk project. Education was one of the chief tools used in her exercise. As the audience understood the cultural and historical background, meanings, themes and movements utilized in the dance, they began to participate in the movement and in the dialogue. Alienation was replaced by knowledge and discourse. As a teacher I have found that the real weapon against racism, sexism, intolerance, and hatred is to eradicate ignorance, the glue that holds prejudice, fanaticism, extremism and chauvinism together. I also appreciate her embodied approach to the project as people moved their bodies physically and experienced the event.
Ranciere’s Problems and Transformations:
Jacques Ranciere writes that “it is not a misunderstanding of the existing state of affairs that nurtures the submission of the oppressed, but a lack of confidence in their own capacity to transform it.” Relational art “thus intends to create not only objects but situations and encounters.” I believe that art can empower people, making them more communicative and participatory, because it has always formed a base for dialogue. Only through exchanges with others can we find our voices and learn how to express our beliefs and most importantly learn how to defend them.
Students are afraid of things that are ambiguous. They are interested in a defined ending where all the T’s are crossed and all the I’s are dotted. Public education in Virginia reinforces this definitive view of the world and of learning in general by making their very graduation dependent upon passing a standardized multiple choice test where the answers are either right or wrong. I think that we all recognize how the gray areas are sometimes the most important in the living of life, because all important distinctions in life are subtle, not simplistic. Many are wary of “the fraternity of metaphors” and the multiplicity of meanings found in art. Sometimes art requires one to think and I am very afraid that, as a managed society, we prefer to simply be told the answers and the meanings.
Nancy’s The Inoperative Community:
Jean-Luc Nancy writes that “community is what takes place always through others and for others.” I think of Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift when Ranciere writes that “by offering small services, the artist repairs the weaknesses in the social bond.” I consider my art to be my gift and I find that I have formed many relationships whenever I have shared my gifts with others.
DeBord’s Towards a Situationist International:
I have also observed the addiction to spectacle, identified by Guy Debord in his Situationist movement, in the high school where I work each day. Debord identifies the need to “broaden the non-mediocre portion of life, to reduce its empty moments as much as possible.” He calls for a relational art that will heal the social bond that capitalism has fractured. Debord writes how “the working class’s incapacity to become politicized should likely be sought amidst this abundance of televised baseness.” I am afraid that the spectacle of television really has had a negative effect on the students I interact with each day. The real life shows on T.V. encourage an egotistical lifestyle where the viewer is to be amused by the debasement of others. Women are still used as objectified tools for marketing. Comfort is the drug of choice in our culture, and television is its generic form, cheap and readily available. We see injustices committed, wars waged and people dying from hunger or abuse every day, but we deaden our emotions and senses with 500 channels of mind-numbing entertainment to appease our fractured lives.
I did find myself cringing though when I read Debord’s “the idea of eternity is the basest one a man could conceive of regarding his acts.” I recognize postmodernism’s attraction to temporary art and its reflection of an ever changing society. I also can see how Debord wants to shed the “relics of the past” that he considers destructive to his movement and ideas. Yet I must interject how important tradition is and how its perspective carries great knowledge. I believe that a sense of place is important in overcoming alienation so I don’t think we can affirm temporariness as a basis for meaning and value. If Debord’s displeasure with the notion of eternity is its invitation to leave this world to live in another, then it should be opposed. Eternity as an abstraction is a destructive notion if it separates us from our lives as embodied creatures in a particular time and place. Yet it is a constructive metaphor if it reminds us of two essential characteristics of our identity as historical creatures: first, we can transcend our finite time and place through remembering a past in which we did not and cannot live, understanding a present that is always coming into being and thus never complete, and imagining a future that is yet to be. At the same time, infinity reminds us that our history is finite and contingent: we once were not here and soon we will be gone. Holding these two together means recognizing that each of us gets a small chunk of eternity and thus most live in and act of it fully and responsibly. One must think and live like the Shakers: build houses and barns to last a hundred years and more while being ready to leave this world in the blink of an eye. Just so with art.
Eco’s The Poetics of the Open Work:
Eco reminds us that the community based artist will always need to reflect on the relationship between the contemplation and utilization of art. Is it art if it is too useful? Where is the line between social work and art, ecology and art and religion and art? I will spend some time this semester wrestling with these question because I believe that it is important to be able to name things correctly in order to participate in these important dialogues regarding art and society. We must have an understanding of definitions as a basis for dialogue or we will be talking in circles with no real understanding of what the other is saying.
Kaprow’s Notes on the Elimination of the Audience:
Happenings are still a type of art that I think of as “outside my ordinary.” Allan Kaprow believes that “it is a mark of mutual respect that all persons involved in a Happening be willing and committed participants who have a clear idea what they are to do.” I agree, and I am appalled at Graciela Carnevale’s act of locking people inside a gallery so that they can experience how people feel when they are controlled by others and lose the freedom of their personal movement. How can he simply assume the “responsibility for the consequences and implications” and this justifies his actions? How does this empower his audience?
Bourriard’s Relational Aesthetics:
Nivolas Bourriaud, in his Relational Aesthetics, calls for the creation of an interstice—“a space in social relations which, although it fits more or less harmoniously and openly into the overall system, suggests possibilities for exchanges other than those that prevail within the system.” This is what I am hoping to create in my practicum this semester. The class I have created looks good and acceptable in the course description catalogue but this class is very different from the other more traditional courses because work created will be made throughout the school in small groups where students will be in dialogue with other students and teachers.
Bourriard writes the “general mechanization of social functions is gradually reducing our relational space.” A primordial scream of assent escapes me as I read this passage. The “thumb generation” I call them, those kids that carry phones and ipods which isolates them as they incessantly try to communicate with someone not present. Art is a state of encounter. I am surrounded by people who are not fully present as they seem dependent upon a constant contact with disembodied voices and texts. I believe strongly in embodied learning, creating and living. Piper writes that her dancers felt “less alienated from this aesthetic idiom after having participated in it directly.”
I disagree with Bourriard’s idea that “an exhibition is a privileged place where instant communities like this can be established.” An exhibition does not equal a community. Community takes time, energy, care and communication in a particular place. I find his use of the term community shallow and would prefer he use the word encounters or dialogues instead which can anticipate the dynamics of community but cannot equal them.
Fosters’ Chat Rooms:
I very much appreciated how the book includes an article by Hal Foster that expresses his reservations about collaborative and participatory art. Foster warns that the effects of participatory art can be “more chaotic than communicative.” As I work on my practicum that involves a large number of people, materials and locations, I recognize the need for organization and facilitation. Chaos can lead to alienation and confusion which can only further the disconnection, dislocation and helplessness people suffer. “At times, the death of the author has meant not the birth of the reader, so much as the befuddlement of the viewer.” I make an attempt to include education in my projects whether it is historical, cultural or topical to allow as many people to take part in the conversation or the experience.
As an artist who is interested in the art and culture of things local and vernacular, I agree with his belief that “the everyday now turns out to be a much more fertile terrain than pop culture.” I have always said that the real life happenings of my neighbors are much better than any drama on television. There are great stories shared between and among generations and interesting displays of folk art created in various yards. I am attracted to Outsider Art and the way the vernacular and culture of the artists’ surroundings influence their work.
Foster reminds us of Sartre’s words, “Hell is other people.” I feel this deeply at times when I want to shut myself in my home and lock out the misery, oppression and devastation caused by those other people, the people I love, like, dislike or even hate. All those people who I ultimately can’t or don’t want to live without. I am a social being who lives and works in various communities and publics but I recognize my profound need for privacy, time and space to reflect and re-energize.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Fate or Destiny?
I have a question about homelessness: Is it fate or Destiny? “Deprived of “Knowing their Place,” The homeless are adamantly “out of place” confusing the boundaries maintained by those who think they know their places Their poverty forced into public view, the homeless remind, everyone of the hypocrisy and greed that underlies a city’s structure.” (Lippard,Lucy, The Lure Of the Local, Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society, pg, 218)
As the world continues to turn with all it’s many diverse levels of existent, it is a possibility that we forget that “Place” needs to be established no matter if it fits in the mainstream or not, bare or full, safe or dangerous. By establishing an individual or group “place” we create many different cultures within the mother culture. In reading the chapter, Home In The Weeds in Lippard’s book, I realized on a deeper level or have uncovered another perspective on how cultures are developed within cultures. One way is by creating relationships that identify, loss, gain, frustration or contentment in the way that “place” connects or disconnects them to society. One of the venues that create these sub-cultures of “place” is personal story. Many homeless people and families who are homeless have had the same “ American Dream,” but with a snap of a finger bad luck strike and they get evicted from their home, loose their job, a fire destroys their home, or an illness develops. These misfortunes can happen to anyone at anytime with different outcomes to their relationship to “place.” As I am writing, my purpose is that “Place” is in constant relationship to and connected or disconnected to change, which can be created or destroyed by fate or destiny, Fate meaning chance and destiny meaning choice. I have been deeply moved by the homeless man that rejected my offering of food to him over the garbage can he was looking through in Grande Central Station. I know that there is a thread somewhere that will connect that experience to the film project (Collective) that I am collaborating with my fellow citizens in different communities and geographical locations. One must find a “place” or create a “place” where they can do
.http://thehomelessguy.blogspot.com/
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Prayer Stick
Thanks everyone for your thoughtful posts on my note about art and community. :) I had a wonderful time responding!I wanted to share an art project that our readings, conversations, and my own studies for this semester has inspired. It is a prayer stick, in the tradition of the Hopis (who, interesting, are the people that the Navajos learned to weave from, so it makes sense for me to learn from them too!). I was inspired by the idea of a prayer stick because if you seek to create change in the world, the best place to start is to first make space for constructive change at home.
Here is the story and symbolism behind the stick's creation and the items that became part of the project.
I gathered the stick from a dead small tree near the edge of the forest behind my tapestry studio (a 16-foot diameter yurt), thanking the tree spirits. I am not a carver, so my ornamentation was with fibers (yarns) and found objects. The collection and process of assembling and dedicating the prayer stick was very meditative and mind-clearing.
Prayer sticks are often decorated with feathers. Native Americans (American Indians, First Nation peoples...whichever is your preference) can use any feathers they find, but Euro-Americans are restricted to domestic fowel and game birds. It is actually illegal for me to have, say, a feather from a bald eagle or even a blue jay in my posession. But this morning while we were out moving the animals in the pasture, I found the tail feather of a wild turkey, and that was like a message to me that today was the day for making a prayer stick.
To this feather I added two collected tail feathers from my own heritage breed turkeys--a black one and a white one (both with brown tips). It somehow felt right that the domestic and the wild should be brought together--just as the young white woman was following Native traditions in that moment. Then, sorting through the house, I found some other items to add to the prayer stick for symbolic and real value.
At the top is a round piece of clear glass, held by some thin wire. The glass faces south-eastward, reflecting the light of the sun--the bringer of life and energy and the true time keeper for both Native and agrarian cultures. Then there is a polished stone, also held in wire, which is a symbol of this great blessing--the Earth--on which we all walk and breathe, a place to be nurtured and shared. There also is an arrowhead of polymer clay that I had made back in gradeschool. It is a symbol of my question of what it means for a non-Native artist to produce Native-inspired art. How does one follow this path with respct and constructive conversation amongst cultures? Below is a spiny seed pod, in remembrance of all the hurt inflicted by Euro-Americans over hundreds of years of occupation. And the shell is to remind us of the gifts we have to share with one another. The six butterfly beads (even numbers being sacred to Native cultures) are there because butterflies--like birds--are spirit messengers. the yarns are in the colors of the earth, left to float in the air and twist and braid as they so desire.
And so I dedicated this prayer stick today, planted in the corner of the herb garden by my studio, in the hopes that this study may bring greater cultural reconciliation, even if it is only in a small way. We start by starting at home. :)
Laura
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Initial Screening Form
Hi All,
If anyone is interested in the Initial Screening Form required for public art projects, I would be willing to share process. You can email me and I will forward the information.
Susan
If anyone is interested in the Initial Screening Form required for public art projects, I would be willing to share process. You can email me and I will forward the information.
Susan
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Notes toward a gift economy
Hi folks,
well I tried writing a piece that responded to the idea of art as research, integrating conceptual writing with visual conceptualizing...or something like that. It's in a PDF form, which apparently one cannot upload to this blog directly. So here's a link to the PDF on googledocs. I hope this work. Please someone let me know if it does!
Gift economy
Thanks for all the wonderful posts and responses.
Peace,
Ju-Pong
well I tried writing a piece that responded to the idea of art as research, integrating conceptual writing with visual conceptualizing...or something like that. It's in a PDF form, which apparently one cannot upload to this blog directly. So here's a link to the PDF on googledocs. I hope this work. Please someone let me know if it does!
Gift economy
Thanks for all the wonderful posts and responses.
Peace,
Ju-Pong
Monday, August 17, 2009
Community and Art
Greetings Everyone!
So glad I was able to make the conference call (sorry if some of the noise from strike filtered in through the phone, but we had just finished our last show). As was pointed out in the call, I have literally been "living my art"--serving as the musical director for a Children's Theater's production of "The Music Man" with 57 kids. I was there for auditions before residency, and jumped into week 2 of rehearsals as soon as I got home.
My reading therefore was crammed in between rehearsals (or at any moment when they weren't needing music), but I too was questioning the issue of "how does theater fit into all this?" I also, as I mentioned in the phone call, was wondering how "Participation" fit into the insider/outsider discussion. There were some areas that made sense--like the essay on teaching people to dance to African-American pop music--but other times I was very confused by the readings. It also seemed very urban-directed. I live in a VERY rural area, where things just work differently. (Not sure how to express that better)
The conference call, however, was helpful. It was nice to hear everyone's voices again and how you all were doing and your many projects. And during that call we talked a bit about community (which, interestingly, isn't really discussed by name in the book). Here, in rural areas, community is important because it literally brings people from their own little corners of the woods together for social interaction. For "The Music Man," one of my tasks was to put together a pit orchestra. Well, there isn't an area orchestra I can just invite over to play with us...I have to create one. So I spend literally weeks and weeks calling every musician I know (and everyone they know, and the next person knows, etc.) to find people in the area (who can read music and play well enough) who have the time and interest to play for the children's theater. This year, we had 8 instruments (piano, flute, clarinet, violin, trumpet, trombone, bass, and percussion), and six rehearsals before the show opened. While some of these people are repeat performers from other shows, many were new and had never met the other players. The score is very demanding, with over 60 pieces of music in it, and somehow in six rehearsals this motly band of musicians from high schoolers to band teachers to retirees (one of whom is nearly deaf) forms into a close-knit community with me as the facilitator and director (yes, I really do use a baton!). It's really an amazing process.
Working with the pit orchestra (and 57 kids in the cast!) was a very intense experience. But it always amazes me the outpour of community support that makes these summer productions possible--and the community that forms and then disbands around the theater for these productions. Talk about participation!
My other community activity that I wanted to share is perhaps closer to what was being discussed in "Patricipation." Every Saturday from 8:00 to noon, I work the farmer's market in Cable (a tiny little artsy town about a half hour away). The more I read in "Participation," the more I realized that my presence at the farmer's market was a community involved art piece (as well as a financial arrangement for our farm goods). I'm the first stand off the road, so that means I become the market greeter as well as vendor, welcoming community members and tourists to this community event that celebrates local growers and artists. Sometimes I sing or play music with other visiting artsts, tell stories (especially about our farm), introduce people to Cable's local flavor, give directions (how do I get to?...), and get to know the kinds of people in this community...their food loves...their little ficklenesses over price or color or whatever. You really get to know people at an interesting level, working a farmer's market, and my goodness how they miss you when you're not there! (like when I was gone for residency). So I guess that makes me part of their community too. It also ties into the art as experiment idea that JuPong mentioned. Like--hmmm, I wonder what would happen if I put the snoods on this side of the table and the jams on that side today--and then see how people respond.
I'd like to hear what some of your thoughts are on community and how it impacts your work. I know it may be different, because many of you work in urban areas. Good to talk with you all, keep up the studying. :)
Laura
So glad I was able to make the conference call (sorry if some of the noise from strike filtered in through the phone, but we had just finished our last show). As was pointed out in the call, I have literally been "living my art"--serving as the musical director for a Children's Theater's production of "The Music Man" with 57 kids. I was there for auditions before residency, and jumped into week 2 of rehearsals as soon as I got home.
My reading therefore was crammed in between rehearsals (or at any moment when they weren't needing music), but I too was questioning the issue of "how does theater fit into all this?" I also, as I mentioned in the phone call, was wondering how "Participation" fit into the insider/outsider discussion. There were some areas that made sense--like the essay on teaching people to dance to African-American pop music--but other times I was very confused by the readings. It also seemed very urban-directed. I live in a VERY rural area, where things just work differently. (Not sure how to express that better)
The conference call, however, was helpful. It was nice to hear everyone's voices again and how you all were doing and your many projects. And during that call we talked a bit about community (which, interestingly, isn't really discussed by name in the book). Here, in rural areas, community is important because it literally brings people from their own little corners of the woods together for social interaction. For "The Music Man," one of my tasks was to put together a pit orchestra. Well, there isn't an area orchestra I can just invite over to play with us...I have to create one. So I spend literally weeks and weeks calling every musician I know (and everyone they know, and the next person knows, etc.) to find people in the area (who can read music and play well enough) who have the time and interest to play for the children's theater. This year, we had 8 instruments (piano, flute, clarinet, violin, trumpet, trombone, bass, and percussion), and six rehearsals before the show opened. While some of these people are repeat performers from other shows, many were new and had never met the other players. The score is very demanding, with over 60 pieces of music in it, and somehow in six rehearsals this motly band of musicians from high schoolers to band teachers to retirees (one of whom is nearly deaf) forms into a close-knit community with me as the facilitator and director (yes, I really do use a baton!). It's really an amazing process.
Working with the pit orchestra (and 57 kids in the cast!) was a very intense experience. But it always amazes me the outpour of community support that makes these summer productions possible--and the community that forms and then disbands around the theater for these productions. Talk about participation!
My other community activity that I wanted to share is perhaps closer to what was being discussed in "Patricipation." Every Saturday from 8:00 to noon, I work the farmer's market in Cable (a tiny little artsy town about a half hour away). The more I read in "Participation," the more I realized that my presence at the farmer's market was a community involved art piece (as well as a financial arrangement for our farm goods). I'm the first stand off the road, so that means I become the market greeter as well as vendor, welcoming community members and tourists to this community event that celebrates local growers and artists. Sometimes I sing or play music with other visiting artsts, tell stories (especially about our farm), introduce people to Cable's local flavor, give directions (how do I get to?...), and get to know the kinds of people in this community...their food loves...their little ficklenesses over price or color or whatever. You really get to know people at an interesting level, working a farmer's market, and my goodness how they miss you when you're not there! (like when I was gone for residency). So I guess that makes me part of their community too. It also ties into the art as experiment idea that JuPong mentioned. Like--hmmm, I wonder what would happen if I put the snoods on this side of the table and the jams on that side today--and then see how people respond.
I'd like to hear what some of your thoughts are on community and how it impacts your work. I know it may be different, because many of you work in urban areas. Good to talk with you all, keep up the studying. :)
Laura
Claire Bishop and Joseph Beuys essays
Participation, Documents of Contemporary Art, and Edited by Claire Bishop.
Clair Bishop/ Viewers as Producers
The Brechtian model of theatre offers a relatively passive model of spectatorship, which relies on raising consciousness while still maintaining the fourth wall between performers and audience. I think this style of theatrical communication between community and artist is very effective in empowering the audience to participate by shifting thoughts, opinions, ideas, and feelings.
“The Left-wing German Theorist Walter Benjamin argued that when judging a works politics, we should not look at the artist’s declared sympathies, but at the position that the work occupies in the production relations of it’s time.” (Bishop, Claire, page, 11).
Guy Debord, co-founder of the Situationist International considers the capitalist “spectacle” as a social relationship between images that unite the audience only through separation from one another. Through “spectacle” there are at times big mediated images that stimulate our senses, but separates the audience in the action, thought, and expression of the material being presented. The audience watches and then leaves the theatre.
“ The spectacle is by definition immune from human activity, inaccessible to any projected review of correction. It is the opposite of dialogue. It is the sun that never sets on the empire of modern passivity. (Bishop, Claire, page, 12).
Claire Bishop talks about activation (audience participation), and Debord constructed this same label as “situations”. Debord took Breahtian one-step further by not only awakening critical consciousness as in the Brechtian mode, but also constructing situations that were aimed at producing new social relationships and revealing new social realities.
An important question in bringing participatory art to a place where the work is raising the consciousness, voice and possibly bridging the gap in communities where conflict can become creator and collaborator is: How do we as creative produces bring different cultures together to blend values, tradition, and respect for the diversity of a group? This includes situations between social classes and I want to add diverse cultures within cultures that exist in communities all over the United States.
The Bourgeois society has a reputation thought out history of feeding the separation not only between the Bourgeois and the proletariat in the work force but people and groups in the arts, their lifestyle, and self-identity as a citizens of a communities and society as a whole.
I am Searching for Field Character/1973
Joseph Beuys speaks of shaping history. Who better then to shape history then people from all walks of life, ages, and ethnic background. Beuy is very committed to the belief that every human being is an artist. In a social venue, this empowers people with self-determination and participation in respecting other cultures, which gives the capacity of tolerance and learning from one another. Could this approach of empowering individuals with a sense of creative ownership be what we are lacking in western civilization? Another question I have from reading Beuy’s essay is: How does democracy and capitalism merge?
I think that Participation Art can facilitate, empower and engage a community to strengthen their voices individually and communal, which insures that their choices, their freedom, and their creative citizenship is acknowledged and conflict can become a place of creative process. Integrating the professional artist with the amateur and using everyday activities and objects to blend artistic disciplines becomes an environment for democracy, collaboration and true community.
Yes, we can still have the boundaries that separate art form the public but why not blend the boundaries when it is needed to foster equal representation of all. The real challenge is when to use traditional methods and non-traditional methods in advocating change and aesthetic experiences.
Human Participants Review
Hello friends,
thanks for a great discussion last night. I have many follow-up thoughts that I'll write up later this week, but for now I just wanted to post the resources that were requested. For anyone interested in a kind of dictionary of art jargon, I mentioned
Also requested was documents for the Human Participants Review process, which is a protocol that should be undertaken by folks doing any research project involving potential risk (physical harm or psychological effect) to participants. If your project will not be shared publicly, you don't need to do this. However, if you will take photos or video, or if you're planning to do a survey the results of which will be shared, you will need to do this. I was going to post these on the blog, but I think I would rather just email them to folks who need them. They're also on First Class in an icon called Practicum Resources.
Looking forward to more discussion.
thanks for a great discussion last night. I have many follow-up thoughts that I'll write up later this week, but for now I just wanted to post the resources that were requested. For anyone interested in a kind of dictionary of art jargon, I mentioned
Artwords: A Glossary of Contemporary Art Theory (Hardcover).
by Patin and McLerran. This book is ridiculously expensive new, but I see it on amazon for $27 or so. There's another one similar to this that's older and not so expensive...but I can't think of the name of it right now and can't find it on my shelf.Also requested was documents for the Human Participants Review process, which is a protocol that should be undertaken by folks doing any research project involving potential risk (physical harm or psychological effect) to participants. If your project will not be shared publicly, you don't need to do this. However, if you will take photos or video, or if you're planning to do a survey the results of which will be shared, you will need to do this. I was going to post these on the blog, but I think I would rather just email them to folks who need them. They're also on First Class in an icon called Practicum Resources.
Looking forward to more discussion.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
New Genre Public Art Thoughts
Hello Fellow Peer Seminar-ers,
I'm so sorry that I missed the call this evening. It appears as though some fantastic conversation has started.
I wanted to share with all of you a short essay I wrote about "Culture in Action" piece we read. It brought up a lot of interesting queries for me (as I can tell it did for you as well; based on the blog entries thus far).
Here is the essay. I look forward to your thoughts. I also look forward to being in conversation with you around the thought-provoking entries you've written thus far.
What an interesting juncture point I am at since digesting the theories and practices of community-infused art. I am struggling with questions around the possibilities of true collaboration in situations where you (the artist) are the foreigner. I am struggling with connecting the dots between society and art. I am querying the role of collaborator, delegator, and creator while trying to fuse them in a non-threatening way dring collective creation.
As I read Kwon’s essay on New Genre Public Art, I felt connected to a terminology that truly describes my practice; a process that embodies active exploration (through discourse and improvisation) to create meaningful work that interrogates the purpose of social constructs and barriers of the human experience.
Kwon describes New Genre Public Art as “visual art that uses both traditional and nontraditional media to communicate and interact with a broad and diversified audience about issues directly relevant to their lives – is based on engagement”. (Kwon, 105)
I think as a theatre artist, this kind of blending of social and artistic elements into a piece of work that is meant to promote discourse and understanding is a necessary practice.
I have spent much of my creative life interpreting people’s work in a “traditional” sense. Working in the theatre as an actor/director in very common theatrical venues has hindered (at times) my yearning to engage and communicate directly with the community/audience in which I am serving.
This personal and artistic need to engage in dialogue has encouraged me to branch out to the kind of art I want to make. An artistic practice that is more holistic; one that consistently breaks down the fourth wall and asks the audience to journey along, side by side with me. I want the community/audience to experience the narrative without a spectator separation.
As I contemplate the possibility of this art practice, I am brought back to my inquiry around community connection. Who is the community I wish to serve? What draws me into this collective? As an outsider how do I confront feelings and actions that could possibly inhibit my connection and effectiveness with the group?
One of the interesting points brought up in Kwon’s work was in relation to the “Culture in Action” project. I found it extremely interesting to know that certain artists (such as Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler) were not present with the community that they were serving 100% of the time. They engaged support from Sculpture Chicago to be their “indispensible mediator… during periods of the artists’ absence from Chicago (which was most of the time of their yearlong affiliations with “Culture in Action”)”. (Kwon, 121)
This time of disconnection between the artist and the community in which the collaboration is happening is troublesome. I truly believe that if you are going to create a piece collaboratively with, by, and for a specific community, you must immerse yourself in that community. How can the collective experience continue to resonate and enrich when the lead collaborator is absent from the process. This whole dichotomy seems rather corporate and micro-managementesque to me.
I believe that we have a responsibility to our fellow communities of collaboration; a responsibility that includes us doing more and getting our “hands dirty” throughout the process. How can we expect respect from those parties in which we are querying, identifying, and creating with if we do not spend a majority of our time co-existing?
This brings me to my next question; do we create for ourselves, the community in which we serve, or both? I like to think that we strive to serve both. I think that as artists there is always going to be a piece of ourselves that needs this work; but I also believe that there is a much larger part of us that wants to engage with those who connect with our work.
That is why I create works that (hopefully) encourage open and honest dialogue; conversations that allow us to go down deeper within ourselves to explore how our collective experience can heal and how art can be a living, breathing, co-existence within the human experience.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read.
All the Best,
Fran
I'm so sorry that I missed the call this evening. It appears as though some fantastic conversation has started.
I wanted to share with all of you a short essay I wrote about "Culture in Action" piece we read. It brought up a lot of interesting queries for me (as I can tell it did for you as well; based on the blog entries thus far).
Here is the essay. I look forward to your thoughts. I also look forward to being in conversation with you around the thought-provoking entries you've written thus far.
Reflections and Intersections with “One Place After Another”
What an interesting juncture point I am at since digesting the theories and practices of community-infused art. I am struggling with questions around the possibilities of true collaboration in situations where you (the artist) are the foreigner. I am struggling with connecting the dots between society and art. I am querying the role of collaborator, delegator, and creator while trying to fuse them in a non-threatening way dring collective creation.
As I read Kwon’s essay on New Genre Public Art, I felt connected to a terminology that truly describes my practice; a process that embodies active exploration (through discourse and improvisation) to create meaningful work that interrogates the purpose of social constructs and barriers of the human experience.
Kwon describes New Genre Public Art as “visual art that uses both traditional and nontraditional media to communicate and interact with a broad and diversified audience about issues directly relevant to their lives – is based on engagement”. (Kwon, 105)
I think as a theatre artist, this kind of blending of social and artistic elements into a piece of work that is meant to promote discourse and understanding is a necessary practice.
I have spent much of my creative life interpreting people’s work in a “traditional” sense. Working in the theatre as an actor/director in very common theatrical venues has hindered (at times) my yearning to engage and communicate directly with the community/audience in which I am serving.
This personal and artistic need to engage in dialogue has encouraged me to branch out to the kind of art I want to make. An artistic practice that is more holistic; one that consistently breaks down the fourth wall and asks the audience to journey along, side by side with me. I want the community/audience to experience the narrative without a spectator separation.
As I contemplate the possibility of this art practice, I am brought back to my inquiry around community connection. Who is the community I wish to serve? What draws me into this collective? As an outsider how do I confront feelings and actions that could possibly inhibit my connection and effectiveness with the group?
One of the interesting points brought up in Kwon’s work was in relation to the “Culture in Action” project. I found it extremely interesting to know that certain artists (such as Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler) were not present with the community that they were serving 100% of the time. They engaged support from Sculpture Chicago to be their “indispensible mediator… during periods of the artists’ absence from Chicago (which was most of the time of their yearlong affiliations with “Culture in Action”)”. (Kwon, 121)
This time of disconnection between the artist and the community in which the collaboration is happening is troublesome. I truly believe that if you are going to create a piece collaboratively with, by, and for a specific community, you must immerse yourself in that community. How can the collective experience continue to resonate and enrich when the lead collaborator is absent from the process. This whole dichotomy seems rather corporate and micro-managementesque to me.
I believe that we have a responsibility to our fellow communities of collaboration; a responsibility that includes us doing more and getting our “hands dirty” throughout the process. How can we expect respect from those parties in which we are querying, identifying, and creating with if we do not spend a majority of our time co-existing?
This brings me to my next question; do we create for ourselves, the community in which we serve, or both? I like to think that we strive to serve both. I think that as artists there is always going to be a piece of ourselves that needs this work; but I also believe that there is a much larger part of us that wants to engage with those who connect with our work.
That is why I create works that (hopefully) encourage open and honest dialogue; conversations that allow us to go down deeper within ourselves to explore how our collective experience can heal and how art can be a living, breathing, co-existence within the human experience.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read.
All the Best,
Fran
Hi! This blog is so wonderful to read. Thanks to all of you!
The book I mentioned during the phone call is:
Art Practice As Research/Inquiry in the Visual Arts
by Graeme Sullivan (Graeme is one of my former professors at Teachers College in Art and Art Education and is extremely immersed in developing the new-ish thinking about art and art-making being valid and sometimes stellar! forms of "research". His book is dense in places, naturally but he uses many artists as concrete examples and I personally know one or two of those. Graeme makes art installations out of 'found' materials and places them where people can encounter them where they might not ordinarily expect to see an "art object". He then revels in the idea that the people who encounter these pieces often change them, sometimes even destroying them completely. He follows this up by later revisiting the sites to see what has happened to his "art", and documenting the changes.
When I first learned of his process I had a strong personal reaction of: "I would never let that happen to my art!" and "How can he let his art go like that?" But the point was he did not need to be sole author or producer; he was inviting the participation of others and welcoming it.
The question was asked below: "How do we as individual artists feel about making art that involves the audience in the works? What are the values and drawbacks of this type of art-making both for the artist and the audiences?"
The short answer is, there are many feelings involved, like in any art making.
Firstly in reading the literature for today, I must say, I am very happy to learn that I am avant garde after all. I come from a place that says: "If you are not the avante garde, you are a washed-up, useless artist, so that was very reassuring! I am also reassured we have a name for this art: New Genre Public Art: sounds good to me. :)
My feelings about creating public art have sometimes included feeling ostracized by my "art gallery art friends" whose work hangs on walls and SELLLLLSSSSSSSSS (well sometimes sells anyhow) and I have wondered to myself: "What is wrong with me? Why can't I be more practical?"
On the other hand, unlike Graeme, who I deem to be very unselfish in his public art process, my "new genre public work" in the public domain has always been "purpose-driven (issue driven)". This fact has soothed my sizable artist ego: having had a clear "outcome" in mind, i.e., to get the attention of the viewers and to rouse them to actions (that I have personally pre-determined to be worthy, of course). The downside of this stance is that once you inspire people like that, they keep wanting more inspiration and now you "supply the stuff". And maybe you feel tired, and are wanting some down time, or alone time in the studio.
Somehow I recognized this could get problematic early on and so I sometimes used pen names for my public art work so that I could anonymously inspire people while leaving the name "Triada Samaras" alone for my "real art" (done in private). I needed to create boundaries for myself as I can feel overwhelmed by things sometimes. Plus I am a very private person and I do need my down time.
I didn't want or need "Triada Samaras" the "Artist/Poet" to be solely known for provoking people as much as I wanted people in the community to know an anonymous artist/activist was "out there in the world", caring about things like community issues very deeply and would not "keep quiet".
My very first piece of Public Art was a protest poster and flyers I plastered all over my neighborhood. I was enraged about the coming development called 360 Smith Street across the street from my beautiful house, ruining the center of my beloved neighborhood with its charming narrow streets, trees, and front gardens. This beautiful neighborhood had made living in NYC bearable for me (and many others) for many years, and to see it violated by greedy, uncaring developers intent on selfish profit like this, was utterly unbearable to me. And the local, neighborhood scoundrels (in bed with the developers) were trying to sell the public the idea, as horrible as it was.
In Brooklyn, there are so many, many posters and flyers everywhere. How could I find a way to get noticed? Here I got a bit discouraged. How would I draw in my audience in this cluttered visual culture? What could I do to make people really care to stop and read it? I decided to ask for their comments about the coming development on the poster and they answered. I also used a bit of the NY humor/sarcasm on both the flyer and the poster that we all speak here, as I felt people would appreciate it. And they did. I used a common language we could both understand. This aspect felt very, very exhilarating to me: like a new discovery! I could speak in a way the public could understand. After all the years of isolation as an artist/poet, I was not so different after all. Next came the realization that if we could speak in the same language, then maybe I had found a new way for myself to communicate to the public my "BIG IDEA", the one that is bigger than even the over sized development to me: the idea that: "ART MATTERS".
This, too, happened in time.
When I was finished hanging all the flyers I wrote to someone at a real estate and development blog. Until that night, I had never read a blog or used one, techno-phobe that I had been for years.
Yet, six hours later, "Athena Lloyd Wright: The great grand daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright’s first cousin by marriage" was in the news, and you could do a google search for her.
(Today you still can) WOW!
It turns out that this blogger/journalist I befriended by internet and by chance that night was more than just a little interested: He was VERY interested, as the architect, Robert Scarano, was in the middle of so many scandals in NYC (and still is) and this blogger, Bob Guskind, had been following him. Overdevelopment of Brooklyn was Bob's PASSION, and not just my tiny corner of Brooklyn, but all over Brooklyn there were many stories exactly like mine. In fact Bob's entire blog was devoted to just that.
Thus this little poster/flyer making exercise began all the furious community artist/activist in my life for the next two years until now. How did that feel? Like a lightning strike of sorts. Exhausting. Exhilarating. Scary. Full of electricity. But it made me realized in awe that we artists do have a LOT of potential to "activate" various community situations because we have so many "tricks" under our belt, and with that power comes, of course, the inevitable word, responsibility.
Here is the Gowanus Lounge blog post by Bob Guskind:
From The Gowanus Lounge Blog/Musings and Photos about Life and Real Estate Development in Post-Industrial Brooklyn and New York City
http://gowanuslounge.blogspot.com/2007/05/smith-street-revolt-brewing-over-shiny.html
That building that could rise (link) at Smith Street and Second Place in Carroll Gardens has, um, struck quite a chord in the neighborhood. First, we got an email from our original tipster noting common ownership of the lot at 360 Smith Street where the eight-story Heavy Metal Building designed by architect Robert Scarano would go and of the neighboring school. It also noted that apparently the building has been changed from shiny silver to more of a red brick design. Another email arrived to note that the MTA, above whose stop the building would rise, has apparently signed off on the project.
Then, someone emailed us to note that a large number of flyers had been taped up around the entrance to the Carroll Street subway stop. We stopped by to check on them yesterday evening and found two flyers--one of them reproducing our post from the other day and another calling for neighborhood action to change the plans for the building. Our emailer wrote:
The book I mentioned during the phone call is:
Art Practice As Research/Inquiry in the Visual Arts
by Graeme Sullivan (Graeme is one of my former professors at Teachers College in Art and Art Education and is extremely immersed in developing the new-ish thinking about art and art-making being valid and sometimes stellar! forms of "research". His book is dense in places, naturally but he uses many artists as concrete examples and I personally know one or two of those. Graeme makes art installations out of 'found' materials and places them where people can encounter them where they might not ordinarily expect to see an "art object". He then revels in the idea that the people who encounter these pieces often change them, sometimes even destroying them completely. He follows this up by later revisiting the sites to see what has happened to his "art", and documenting the changes.
When I first learned of his process I had a strong personal reaction of: "I would never let that happen to my art!" and "How can he let his art go like that?" But the point was he did not need to be sole author or producer; he was inviting the participation of others and welcoming it.
The question was asked below: "How do we as individual artists feel about making art that involves the audience in the works? What are the values and drawbacks of this type of art-making both for the artist and the audiences?"
The short answer is, there are many feelings involved, like in any art making.
Firstly in reading the literature for today, I must say, I am very happy to learn that I am avant garde after all. I come from a place that says: "If you are not the avante garde, you are a washed-up, useless artist, so that was very reassuring! I am also reassured we have a name for this art: New Genre Public Art: sounds good to me. :)
My feelings about creating public art have sometimes included feeling ostracized by my "art gallery art friends" whose work hangs on walls and SELLLLLSSSSSSSSS (well sometimes sells anyhow) and I have wondered to myself: "What is wrong with me? Why can't I be more practical?"
On the other hand, unlike Graeme, who I deem to be very unselfish in his public art process, my "new genre public work" in the public domain has always been "purpose-driven (issue driven)". This fact has soothed my sizable artist ego: having had a clear "outcome" in mind, i.e., to get the attention of the viewers and to rouse them to actions (that I have personally pre-determined to be worthy, of course). The downside of this stance is that once you inspire people like that, they keep wanting more inspiration and now you "supply the stuff". And maybe you feel tired, and are wanting some down time, or alone time in the studio.
Somehow I recognized this could get problematic early on and so I sometimes used pen names for my public art work so that I could anonymously inspire people while leaving the name "Triada Samaras" alone for my "real art" (done in private). I needed to create boundaries for myself as I can feel overwhelmed by things sometimes. Plus I am a very private person and I do need my down time.
I didn't want or need "Triada Samaras" the "Artist/Poet" to be solely known for provoking people as much as I wanted people in the community to know an anonymous artist/activist was "out there in the world", caring about things like community issues very deeply and would not "keep quiet".
My very first piece of Public Art was a protest poster and flyers I plastered all over my neighborhood. I was enraged about the coming development called 360 Smith Street across the street from my beautiful house, ruining the center of my beloved neighborhood with its charming narrow streets, trees, and front gardens. This beautiful neighborhood had made living in NYC bearable for me (and many others) for many years, and to see it violated by greedy, uncaring developers intent on selfish profit like this, was utterly unbearable to me. And the local, neighborhood scoundrels (in bed with the developers) were trying to sell the public the idea, as horrible as it was.
In Brooklyn, there are so many, many posters and flyers everywhere. How could I find a way to get noticed? Here I got a bit discouraged. How would I draw in my audience in this cluttered visual culture? What could I do to make people really care to stop and read it? I decided to ask for their comments about the coming development on the poster and they answered. I also used a bit of the NY humor/sarcasm on both the flyer and the poster that we all speak here, as I felt people would appreciate it. And they did. I used a common language we could both understand. This aspect felt very, very exhilarating to me: like a new discovery! I could speak in a way the public could understand. After all the years of isolation as an artist/poet, I was not so different after all. Next came the realization that if we could speak in the same language, then maybe I had found a new way for myself to communicate to the public my "BIG IDEA", the one that is bigger than even the over sized development to me: the idea that: "ART MATTERS".
This, too, happened in time.
When I was finished hanging all the flyers I wrote to someone at a real estate and development blog. Until that night, I had never read a blog or used one, techno-phobe that I had been for years.
Yet, six hours later, "Athena Lloyd Wright: The great grand daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright’s first cousin by marriage" was in the news, and you could do a google search for her.
(Today you still can) WOW!
It turns out that this blogger/journalist I befriended by internet and by chance that night was more than just a little interested: He was VERY interested, as the architect, Robert Scarano, was in the middle of so many scandals in NYC (and still is) and this blogger, Bob Guskind, had been following him. Overdevelopment of Brooklyn was Bob's PASSION, and not just my tiny corner of Brooklyn, but all over Brooklyn there were many stories exactly like mine. In fact Bob's entire blog was devoted to just that.
Thus this little poster/flyer making exercise began all the furious community artist/activist in my life for the next two years until now. How did that feel? Like a lightning strike of sorts. Exhausting. Exhilarating. Scary. Full of electricity. But it made me realized in awe that we artists do have a LOT of potential to "activate" various community situations because we have so many "tricks" under our belt, and with that power comes, of course, the inevitable word, responsibility.
Here is the Gowanus Lounge blog post by Bob Guskind:
From The Gowanus Lounge Blog/Musings and Photos about Life and Real Estate Development in Post-Industrial Brooklyn and New York City
http://gowanuslounge.blogspot.com/2007/05/smith-street-revolt-brewing-over-shiny.html
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Smith Street Revolt Brewing Over Shiny New Building?
That building that could rise (link) at Smith Street and Second Place in Carroll Gardens has, um, struck quite a chord in the neighborhood. First, we got an email from our original tipster noting common ownership of the lot at 360 Smith Street where the eight-story Heavy Metal Building designed by architect Robert Scarano would go and of the neighboring school. It also noted that apparently the building has been changed from shiny silver to more of a red brick design. Another email arrived to note that the MTA, above whose stop the building would rise, has apparently signed off on the project.
Then, someone emailed us to note that a large number of flyers had been taped up around the entrance to the Carroll Street subway stop. We stopped by to check on them yesterday evening and found two flyers--one of them reproducing our post from the other day and another calling for neighborhood action to change the plans for the building. Our emailer wrote:
Tonite I saw flyers all over the subway entrance at smith st and carroll street (entrance where the newstand is).....there is sure to be opposition to this project as it is massive and ugly!...PS the flyer is pretty hilarious :) and is signed by "Athena Lloyd Wright" (the great grand daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright's first cousin by marriage). Below I quote the flyer:The flyer is pictured below. We don't think we've heard the last of this by a longshot.
Yes we all know it’s coming (“progress” in our Beloved Brownstone Brooklyn neighborhoods). But does it have to be massive, over-scaled and disrespectful to our existing scale and style of architecture and to the quality of our environment and way of life??? Hmmmmm
(This is a no-brainer here)…There is a better way! Let’s all work together to find it!
Please Please Please get involved ASAP! Time is of the essence!! There are many options not only one, e.g.:
1) Attend the Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association Meeting June 11 at 7:30 PM at Buddy Scottos’ Funeral Parlor to discuss the 360 Smith Street Building Project.
2) Contact CB 6. Vanessa Twyford is our new CB 6 member. Congratulations Vanessa! (Twyford Realty Court Street). The other massive development project on the table this week: Smith Street between Fifth and Ninth Streets……
3) Blog away! Where? At Gowanus Lounge.com; Curbed.com; Brownstoner.com and several others. Let your views be known
4) Write to the local and daily newpapers
5) Contact your local politicians
6) Drop two thousand flyers by airplane
7) Make the “Manhattanization of Brooklyn into a hit reality TV show
8) Cry (you only get ten minutes, sorry)
9) Invent your own action!
Sincerely yours,
Athena Lloyd Wright
The great grand daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright’s first cousin by marriage
Response to Susan: The Frame work of art
Susan I wanted to first response to the question: How do we as individual artists feel about making art that involves the audience in the work?
I know how I feel and at this time in my life and career I am drawn to involve the audience or community members in the work that is being created. I think it is a personal choice and with those choices are responsibility, new boundaries, and questions that create a dialogue between the community and the creative producer before the creative process begins or the grounding for the creative process to begin. In Participation, Claire Bishops states that there is an-authored tradition that seeks to provoke participants, and a de-authored lineage that aims to embrace collective creativity. (page, 11) I believe are both valid and need to be honored in their own right. I agree with Ju Pong when she says that art needs a frame in which one can see and critique. Depending on what the intent of the project is the outcome will either blur the boundaries between life and art or heighten the boundaries between life and art thus creating a reflection that lives outside of ourselves or stimulating a reflection in which we participate from the inside out. I think we need both in our culture to define, connect, disconnect and reflect in order to create change. I say both connect and disconnect because I am constantly trying to come to a place of balance with duality. I do believe the balance is in and out.
I think we can possibly do both stepping outside of our frame to create a new artistic frame work for the 21st century. Considering the crisis that our culture/society is going through with isolation due to technology, and the I instead of we consciousness, which I think is changing, it might be a great opportunity to facilitate change in community through the creative process.
Culture in Action
The Xerox piece is:
Kwon, Miwon. One Place After another : Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002.
Read Chaper 4: From Site to Community in New Genre Public Art: The Case of “Culture in Action”
Kwon, Miwon. One Place After another : Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002.
Read Chaper 4: From Site to Community in New Genre Public Art: The Case of “Culture in Action”
In looking at the highlights I made in Kwon Miwon's, One Place After, I realize I had an experience yesterday in NY that just might connect art to some of the core issues of our time. "Dealing with some of the most profound issues of our time---toxic waste, race relations, homelessness, aging, gang warfare, and cultural identity--a group of visual artists has developed distinct models for an art whose public strategies of engagement are an important part of its aesthetic language.. We might describe this as "new genre public art".( Miwon,Kwon. page 105).
I was filming a in Grande Central yesterday. Interviewing folks about the art of laundry. Before I started my daughter and I were having lunch. (indian food) There was a couple sitting next to us from Texas. I got up and offered the food that I hadn't eaten to a homeless gentleman looking through the garbage. He gracefully looked at the food and then looked at me and said "no thank you but I will take the very small container of yogurt." The guy sitting next to us was watching the whole real life scene and said, "Wow, I have never seen anything like that. The image of you and the homeless man talking over garbage will always stick in my mind, Turns out he was a film maker. I bring this up because there was a theatrical component to the whole real life scene. Yes, I do think that in ordered to create change art needs to be part of "LivingArt" for art as Allan Kaprow suggests. Public Art sometimes separates us from the changes that need to occur in our society and culture. To much isolation and not enough community gathering could possibly have stopped the creative collaboration between artists and audience. Engaging the artist and audience becomes a ritualized event instead of an event that creates the traditional 4th wall. Now I respect traditional artistic expression being an concert dancer and theatre artist for 15 years. But I also see the deep spiritual need to connect, interact, and communicate in a nontraditional way. I think the "new genre public art" can bring communities together using both traditional and nontraditional means to communicate and express creatively. I think we have become a culture that places not enough respect on the artistic part of human beings thus putting to much pressure and not enough support for the human beings who keep us reflecting, thinking, feeling, sensing and looking through the creative risks they take to create. I speak of artists or as I like to say creativists.
The struggle
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Thank you Britta for beginning the conversation.
The Xerox piece is:
Kwon, Miwon. One Place After another : Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002.
Read Chaper 4: From Site to Community in New Genre Public Art: The Case of “Culture in Action”
Read Chapter 5: The (Un)Sitings of Community
I read Participation and the Xerox piece. Actually, I read the Xeroxed piece first due to the topic, New Genre Public Art. From what I understand NGPA is the all important community component missing from Public Art. The book Participate focuses on the multiple strategies used to engage the community in projects that are socially grounded.
The question posed in the previous communication was “How do we as individual artists feel about making art that involves the audience in the works?”
My immediate response is how can art be created without involvement of the audience? The audiences reception of our art is their basic involvement. This lead me to ask What is the purpose of the arts in the 21st century? ?r Are we to invite the audience into the frame of our work…. Are we to step out of the frame into the audience and unframe our art? What is our purpose since there is now the option to create in the open versus in isolation?
Participation brought up way too many questions.
In the late 20th century and into the 21st century the expansion and outreach of technology has changed the foundation of communication. Art is a communication tool and it too must evolve. The Introduction to Participation states, “In recent decades artists have progressively expanded the boundaries of art as they have sought to engage with an increasingly pluralistic environment.” Walter Benjamin believed that the work of art should actively intervene in and provide a model for allowing viewers to be involved in the processes of production….. the more consumers it is able to turn into producers – the more readers and spectators into collaborators. Joseph Beuys took this concept totally to the left with his core belief that Every Human Being Is An Artist. Most of his works were socially-collaborative pieces. Jacques Ranciere sums it up best when he wrote that art no longer wants to respond to the excess of commodities and signs but to a lack of connections.
To create connections with the audience do we as artist have a responsibility to stretch our practice even when it is terribly uncomfortable? Can we afford to create in isolation, when the need is so great on this planet for connection and communication? Can’t we do both? The author of Participation wrote that the lost of social bond and the duty incumbent on artists to work to repair it are the words on the agenda. I don’t know the answers, but I am spiritually, intellectually, and artistically moved by artists who make the attempt to utilize their art in this manner.
As an artist who creates in the public eye with public interests at heart, my struggle is continually keeping my own voice while incorporating (is that the politically correct word) the community voice in the projects. My other struggle is how to document public community work, now termed New Genre Public Art. I too want to know how do artists feel about making art that involves the audience in the works. The book Participation explored how artists have handle these issues and did provided some answers for me but as you have read the book brought up many questions.
Susan
Thank you Britta for beginning the conversation.
The Xerox piece is:
Kwon, Miwon. One Place After another : Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002.
Read Chaper 4: From Site to Community in New Genre Public Art: The Case of “Culture in Action”
Read Chapter 5: The (Un)Sitings of Community
I read Participation and the Xerox piece. Actually, I read the Xeroxed piece first due to the topic, New Genre Public Art. From what I understand NGPA is the all important community component missing from Public Art. The book Participate focuses on the multiple strategies used to engage the community in projects that are socially grounded.
The question posed in the previous communication was “How do we as individual artists feel about making art that involves the audience in the works?”
My immediate response is how can art be created without involvement of the audience? The audiences reception of our art is their basic involvement. This lead me to ask What is the purpose of the arts in the 21st century? ?r Are we to invite the audience into the frame of our work…. Are we to step out of the frame into the audience and unframe our art? What is our purpose since there is now the option to create in the open versus in isolation?
Participation brought up way too many questions.
In the late 20th century and into the 21st century the expansion and outreach of technology has changed the foundation of communication. Art is a communication tool and it too must evolve. The Introduction to Participation states, “In recent decades artists have progressively expanded the boundaries of art as they have sought to engage with an increasingly pluralistic environment.” Walter Benjamin believed that the work of art should actively intervene in and provide a model for allowing viewers to be involved in the processes of production….. the more consumers it is able to turn into producers – the more readers and spectators into collaborators. Joseph Beuys took this concept totally to the left with his core belief that Every Human Being Is An Artist. Most of his works were socially-collaborative pieces. Jacques Ranciere sums it up best when he wrote that art no longer wants to respond to the excess of commodities and signs but to a lack of connections.
To create connections with the audience do we as artist have a responsibility to stretch our practice even when it is terribly uncomfortable? Can we afford to create in isolation, when the need is so great on this planet for connection and communication? Can’t we do both? The author of Participation wrote that the lost of social bond and the duty incumbent on artists to work to repair it are the words on the agenda. I don’t know the answers, but I am spiritually, intellectually, and artistically moved by artists who make the attempt to utilize their art in this manner.
As an artist who creates in the public eye with public interests at heart, my struggle is continually keeping my own voice while incorporating (is that the politically correct word) the community voice in the projects. My other struggle is how to document public community work, now termed New Genre Public Art. I too want to know how do artists feel about making art that involves the audience in the works. The book Participation explored how artists have handle these issues and did provided some answers for me but as you have read the book brought up many questions.
Susan
Conference call numbers
Hi everybody,
I sent an email a few days ago from the conference set up by IT, giving you all the conference call number. I guess it didn't reach you all. So sorry I haven't seen these emails. I was away at a conference and just checked First Class.
Dial the conference call number, then enter code at the prompt.
Conference call 888-296-6500
Code 587349
Talk with you soon,
Ju-Pong
I sent an email a few days ago from the conference set up by IT, giving you all the conference call number. I guess it didn't reach you all. So sorry I haven't seen these emails. I was away at a conference and just checked First Class.
Dial the conference call number, then enter code at the prompt.
Conference call 888-296-6500
Code 587349
Talk with you soon,
Ju-Pong
getting started
Hi Everyone,
I will get started with some discussion questions.
A disclosure: I haven't got to read everything yet, but have a good start on the Participation book.
Also, I never got the xeroxed piece, so could someone tell me what the page numbers are and the title of the book?
On Participation: This is a collected volume of articles that set up theoretical foundations for the move of art toward community-based interactive works, away from the making of objects.
My questions for discussion are: How do we as individual artists feel about making art that involves the audience in the works? What are the values and drawbacks of this type of art-making both for the artist and the audiences?
I liked what Burger said about how the avant-gardists sought to pull art back into life, integrating it with life, in order to reject and deny the irrelevance of art in its institutionalized form. In Aestheticism, the work's essential content is its separation from life, and its social functionlessness.
Wow. Burger also recognizes that art is essentially in a contradictory position in society. On one hand, to keep it separate from life allows us to keep it perfect, utopian, in a sphere of possibilities. On the other hand, if it is separated and not integrated with life, it is kept outside of realilty and doesn't therefore help change the conditions of life.
This is a marxist dichotomy. My thoughts are that art has become more integrated with life even if it is centered in and around "bourgeois" modes of production and consumption. I think Burger would say that art in its popular form is based on its commodity nature. Even though, I have marxist sympathies, I don't believe it helps us exist well in our world to get caught in such dichotomies.
As an artist, I seek to make art as an escape from the commodified relations that permeate my life. By this I mean: I have to work at a job that is not always fulfilling, thus selling my labor in order to eat. I get caught up in consumerism because sometimes it seems it is a nice reward and relief from the pressures of my life, except for making art and being with people.
As far as what kind of art to make and how to present it, I have done different things: objects, participation events, performances that break the fourth wall and get people to interact. All of these are good, but still don't heal the wounded society, or do they?. Maybe art cannot be expected to heal the world, and can only be a reflection and documentation of what is. I would like art to do more. And, upon reflection of my own words, I think it can help in small ways over time. For instance, creating works that do bring people together, outside of the normative ways of doing things, may create possibilities, new approaches to living, and therefore a more human and kind life. This I would like to work towards.
This takes me to Barthes' piece The Death of the Author (and Eco): They are suggesting that a new approach to art has begun (in the 1960s) that decenters the artist/author, and places the authorship in a collaborative relationship between artist and audience. The Reader is now the creator of the work, because interpretation is in the individual doing the reading/looking. Okay.
I get it. I am a sociologist. And the missing piece here is that these authors are forgetting that any interpretation by any individual also takes place within the social context and is therefore, socially constructed. By this I mean that there will be a type of "norm" of understanding, not wholly defined by the individuals in the room, but by the context of their lives (labor relations, family commitments, what images they engage with everyday, what their gendered self-concepts entail, their social class position and related tastes and approaches to things, etc). So all these sets and sub-sets of interactions and beliefs will inform (determine?) the way they interpret art.
Therefore, should the artist leave the works open, for interpretation by people informed by social norms? Or, should the artist write the works with some delimited possibilities so that readers may come away from the work with something different, that is, if we are able to give something different! I guess I see that as my role as an artist, is to be able to locate the normative patterns of the society and attempt to offer something different.
Britta
I will get started with some discussion questions.
A disclosure: I haven't got to read everything yet, but have a good start on the Participation book.
Also, I never got the xeroxed piece, so could someone tell me what the page numbers are and the title of the book?
On Participation: This is a collected volume of articles that set up theoretical foundations for the move of art toward community-based interactive works, away from the making of objects.
My questions for discussion are: How do we as individual artists feel about making art that involves the audience in the works? What are the values and drawbacks of this type of art-making both for the artist and the audiences?
I liked what Burger said about how the avant-gardists sought to pull art back into life, integrating it with life, in order to reject and deny the irrelevance of art in its institutionalized form. In Aestheticism, the work's essential content is its separation from life, and its social functionlessness.
Wow. Burger also recognizes that art is essentially in a contradictory position in society. On one hand, to keep it separate from life allows us to keep it perfect, utopian, in a sphere of possibilities. On the other hand, if it is separated and not integrated with life, it is kept outside of realilty and doesn't therefore help change the conditions of life.
This is a marxist dichotomy. My thoughts are that art has become more integrated with life even if it is centered in and around "bourgeois" modes of production and consumption. I think Burger would say that art in its popular form is based on its commodity nature. Even though, I have marxist sympathies, I don't believe it helps us exist well in our world to get caught in such dichotomies.
As an artist, I seek to make art as an escape from the commodified relations that permeate my life. By this I mean: I have to work at a job that is not always fulfilling, thus selling my labor in order to eat. I get caught up in consumerism because sometimes it seems it is a nice reward and relief from the pressures of my life, except for making art and being with people.
As far as what kind of art to make and how to present it, I have done different things: objects, participation events, performances that break the fourth wall and get people to interact. All of these are good, but still don't heal the wounded society, or do they?. Maybe art cannot be expected to heal the world, and can only be a reflection and documentation of what is. I would like art to do more. And, upon reflection of my own words, I think it can help in small ways over time. For instance, creating works that do bring people together, outside of the normative ways of doing things, may create possibilities, new approaches to living, and therefore a more human and kind life. This I would like to work towards.
This takes me to Barthes' piece The Death of the Author (and Eco): They are suggesting that a new approach to art has begun (in the 1960s) that decenters the artist/author, and places the authorship in a collaborative relationship between artist and audience. The Reader is now the creator of the work, because interpretation is in the individual doing the reading/looking. Okay.
I get it. I am a sociologist. And the missing piece here is that these authors are forgetting that any interpretation by any individual also takes place within the social context and is therefore, socially constructed. By this I mean that there will be a type of "norm" of understanding, not wholly defined by the individuals in the room, but by the context of their lives (labor relations, family commitments, what images they engage with everyday, what their gendered self-concepts entail, their social class position and related tastes and approaches to things, etc). So all these sets and sub-sets of interactions and beliefs will inform (determine?) the way they interpret art.
Therefore, should the artist leave the works open, for interpretation by people informed by social norms? Or, should the artist write the works with some delimited possibilities so that readers may come away from the work with something different, that is, if we are able to give something different! I guess I see that as my role as an artist, is to be able to locate the normative patterns of the society and attempt to offer something different.
Britta
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