Art and Activism
Thread during: Art and Activism
CRUMB discussion list, April 2006.
Following are edited excerpts from the New Media Curating discussion list . They have been spellchecked, edited, and arranged in order to follow a particular thread of debate. The full postings can be seen and searched via the web site.
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Ele Carpenter June 2006
This document includes the following threads:
- Activist art
- Art and Activism
Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2006 23:27:01 +0100
From: Ele Carpenter
Subject: Art and Activism
Hello Everyone,
This months’ topic is Art and Activism.
Self-organisation, direct action, collaboration and social networks have long been the characteristics of activism and socially engaged art practice. They are now the characteristics of much new media art, within the public realm of the web, and interdisciplinary practice. But the spheres of discourse still remain distinct.
I’d like to start the discussion by asking: How can curators and art-activists help facilitate a more inclusive dialogue?
Just to give you a bit of background - I’m doing PhD research with CRUMB into the relationship between politicised socially engaged art and new media art; and have been a long time lurker on the list. In 2005 I curated RISK: Creative Action in Political Culture at the CCA, Glasgow. See www.riskproject.org.uk which included the RISK Academy Media Lab for art-activists.
Best,
Ele Carpenter
Invited Respondents:
Saul Albert and Michael Weinkove, Artists, London
‘Let The People Speak’
http://theps.net
http://talkeoke.com
Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett, London, Furtherfield, HTTP Gallery.
www.furtherfield.org
Minerva Cuevas-Mexico, (MEX).
Artist, member of Espora.org and Irational.org. Her political practice is based on technical and cultural projects, her artistic work responds to specific social contexts worldwide.
http://www.espora.org
http://www.irational.org/mvc
http://www.minervacuevas.org
Leigh French, co-editor, Variant magazine: Glasgow / Belfast. (UK)
Free magazine concentrating on social, political and cultural issues.
http://www.variant.org.uk
Geert Lovink (NL/AUS), media theorist, net critic and writer.
Member of Adilkno collective (Cracking the Movement, The Media Archive); Co-founder of Internet projects The Digital City, Nettime, Fibreculture and Incommunicado; Director of the Institute of Network Cultures (www.networkcultures.org); Professor at Interactive Media (Hogeschool van Amsterdam); Associate professor at the Media & Culture department, University of Amsterdam. Fellow at Wissenschaftkolleg, Berlin Institute for Advanced Study, 2005-6. Web archive: www.laudanum.net/geert
Aisling O’Beirn, Artist, Belfast, Northern Ireland
www.aislingobeirn.fsnet.co.uk
Virtual Urban, collaborative web project with Marjetica Potrc www.potrc.org/vu
Kate Rich, Artist, UK
Bureau for Inverse Technology, Feral Trade
http://sparror.cubecinema.com/feraltrade/
http://www.bureauit.org/
Nato Thompson, Curator, USA.
Curator, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA), Curated ‘The Interventionists’ exhibition 2004-5. Co-ed with Gregory Sholette, ‘The Interventionists: Users Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life’ 2004.
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 11:03:18 +0100
From: Ele Carpenter
Subject: Art and Activism
I'd also like to welcome invited respondent Shaina Anad, an artist who use video and televised media. Currently in Delhi starting a residency using cheap surveillance equipment and RF to create an open circuit interface, the 'creative use' of which Shaina will be exploring over the next month with the people of Khirkee village, New Delhi.
Best,
Ele
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 14:20:54 +0200
From: Geert Lovink
Subject: Re: Art and Activism
>How can curators and art-activists help facilitate a more inclusive dialogue?
Thanks, Ele.
Preventing political correctness would be a first step. Art needs autonomous space to question. The last thing we need is to treat the museum/gallery/exhibition space as a 'megaphone' for political campaigns. There are much better, and effective other channels if you want to reach audiences with your message. So, the dialogue would be used to create common ground for experimentation.
What is needed is an open aesthetics to overcome the current visual poverty of activist messages. By that I mean a tradition in which new programs and languages are being created while the current practices are being investigated. What we need are more temporary labs where networked, audio-visual vocabularies can be developed. This is where curators and activists can meet as such endeavour can be in the interest of both.
Geert
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 09:18:09 -0400
From: Camille Turner
Subject: Re: Art and Activism
Hi,
Camille Turner here from Toronto, Canada. I am an artist/curator/cultural producer involved in socially engaged media. I work both within the grassroots and within the gallery system. a project i have been involved with from its beginning three years ago is the container project directed by mongrel member Mervin Jarman. it is a media lab in a 40 foot shipping container in a rural village in jamaica. three artists including myself returned a couple of days ago from a month-long residency we spent working with participants of the project. Jennifer Lafontaine and myself facilitated a digital storytelling project and Jim Ruxton created an interactive sensor system to allow participants to control video using dance. http://www.year01.com/containerproject/blog.html
I think it’s important to bring these projects into galleries. I don't think of it as "political correctness" but I think it should be the mandate of especially public institutions to create an interface with a wide range of practices including these outside-the-box street level practices and as a curator, my job is to provide the link between the work that takes place on the street and the various publics and communities.
Camille
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 09:30:56 -0500
From: Randall Packer
Subject: Re: Art and Activism
If as you suggest art can serve as a mediational tool, a catalyst for dialogue, a platform for exchange (and change), then creative means need to be explored to engage those who are involved with socio-political issues outside of artistic circles. For example, here in Washington, DC, where political dialogue rarely involves input from the arts, and where the artistic community is surprisingly disengaged from contemporary political events, we are establishing a critical dialogue between the Art Department and the School of International Services at American University where I teach media art. Last week we invited a representative from the cultural division at the State Department to discuss the role of the artist in society and ways in which countries engage art as a communications tool. I am not so naive as to suggest we are going to change the policies of the US Government, particularly the current administration, but it is my hope to establish dialogue that extends beyond the boundaries of the art world, and furthermore, establishes a conduit between politically engaged artists, curators, critics and representatives in government / international relations, where the front lines of cultural policy operate and endlessly fail.
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 09:54:57 -0400
From: Seth Thompson
Subject: Re: Art and Activism
I think that if artists and curators wish to act as conduit for social change they must be aware of the language that they are using and the audience they are addressing. If they proceed with a language of discourse that is inaccessible to their target audience, then their efforts are futile.
Seth Thompson
Wigged Productions
http://www.wigged.net
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 10:59:23 -0400
From: Robert Labossiere
Subject: Re: Art and Activism
The artist-run centre YYZ Artists' Outlet in Toronto recently held an exhibition called Art + Activism, curated by Kym Preusse. Our website doesn't allow me to give you the exact page URL but if you dig a little you will find info about it at: http://www.yyzartistsoutlet.org/exhibitions.asp?language=en
use the drop down box for ARCHIVES > 2006 Art + Activism is the last show listed (the 1st one scheduled in 2006)
I work at YYZ but not on exhibitions so my observations here are "casual"...
I was surprised how the show drew a whole different audience into the gallery. Activists, hactivists, politico's, union people; it was really interesting for us, being more used to the "usual suspects:" artists, critics, teachers, students, people gallery hopping...
No small part of the success of the exhibition was due to the diversity of the program, which included screenings and workshops, and the partners involved, Interaccess, a Toronto media arts centre, and the Canadian Auto Workers Union. There was something different going on every week and the press was very responsive with several articles about public performances or other aspects of the program.
About the issue of the autonomous space of art, with few exceptions, the work in this exhibition did not pivot on that, most were more like documentation of works that are "active" in other contexts. The gallery operated more like a museum in this respect. Similarly, screenings and workshops did not operate in the "neutral zone" of critical reflection typical of art galleries and art discourse, but were made for and attended by activists who are artists and artists who are activists.
Our 'zine, a 16 pp. tabloid newspaper, acts as a kind of catalogue for the exhibition. Request a free copy by emailing [log in to unmask] YYZINE: VOLUME 6, ISSUE 1 (on Art + Activism)
Robert Labossiere
Managing Editor
YYZBOOKS
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2006 10:44:32 +0100
From: Aisling O' Beirn
Subject: Introduction and How can curators and art-activists help facilitate a more inclusive dialogue?
Hi all and thanks Ele,
Aisling O' Beirn, artist based in Belfast here. I’m just introducing myself and following the list at the minute. For background I am involved in Flaxart Studios an artist run organisation, www.flaxartstudios.org
We host an International residency program which gives artists a period of up to 2 months to live and work in Belfast. For us this is a way of facilitating dialogue at a grass roots level, allowing people to get to know the city and some of the debates it poses as they research or develop work (in whatever media).
We are organising a series of 3 seminars for the Autumn (Ele will be partaking) which will cover a range of topics from talking about Activism, to discussions on Redevelopment to debates on Memory and Trauma.
The participants will contribute in a variety of ways such as developing projects using various media through the residency program to partaking in discussions or delivering talks. Anyway the idea is to get discussions and links going across various media and participants. The hope is that these will continue to develop long after the specific events.
I see involvement in this type of activity as an integral part of my own practice. Anyway look forward to seeing future posts.
Thanks
Aisling
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2006 15:09:38 +0200
From: Ana L. Valdés
Subject: Art and Activism
Hi,
I am a Latin-american writer and activist (spent four years in jail for political reasons), living in exile in Sweden since the end of the 70:s. My colleague the Swedish visual artist Cecilia Parsberg, http://this.is/Parsberg and I, drive since some years back a network called Equator. http://this.is/Equator The network has been operating in South Africa, Balkans, South America and now Palestine.
The border between my writings, Cecilias films and photos and our work inbedded in the local communities and working with them has been erased and we were transformed, as our roles were transformed as well.
The possibility or ability today of work in border zones, the ones Hakim Bey call "no zones", give us a tool to recuperate protagonism and make parallel paths to the market and to the mainstream institutions.
Instead of reproduce the pattern artist/creator at the service of the market and adapting his or her works to what the market demand we make own projects, leaving traces in the memory and on the sand.
In April 2002 we were among the first civilians to go into the refugee camp of Jenin, which had been reduced to crumbs with Apache helicopters and bulldozers. We climbed the mountain for five hours in a landscape full of mines, carrying our "tools", a camera, a tape-recorder, books and pencils. We were there for three days, photographing and writing and making interviews. The result is a website, a film, pictures, but the deep result was a change of our perception about what's Art, what's documentary, what's activism: http://this.is/Jenin
People asked me why I was there and I told them, "because I am a survivor, as you, and we, the survivors, must be witness and document, to teach generations to come to don't make the same mistakes."
Now I am working with a project called Crusading, trying to establish an arena to discuss Politics, Art and Activism from a common arena, the Art: http://www.crusading.se
But it's still a compromise and a challenge, we show our work, we publish our
texts, we must pay rent and travel expenses, how to do that honestly and fairly, without being alibis for the system we say we struggle against?
(We were part of the festival. Art and Activism, curated by Adrian van Egmond at the Cornish School of Arts in Seattle, we have been showing our work in Cuba, Tokyo, Montevideo, Jerusalem).
Sincerely
Ana L. Valdés
Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2006 19:28:58 -0400
From: Murphy
Subject: Re: Art and Activism
On Apr 3, 2006, at 8:20 AM, Geert Lovink wrote:
>”Preventing political correctness would be a first step. Art needs autonomous space to >question. The last thing we need is to treat the museum/gallery/exhibition space as a >'megaphone' for political campaigns. There are much better, and effective other >channels if you want to reach audiences with your message. So, the dialogue would be >used to create common ground for experimentation.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres said: "We don't need a gallery space to find out something we read in the news"
http://www.creativetime.org/programs/archive/2000/Torres/torres/storr.html
Although Felix makes a number of good points about art and activism the reader should keep in mind that this interview is from the early '90s and read within the context of ACT UP and AIDS activism and the de-funding of the NEA by congress in the US. The announcement was made the other day that his work will represent t he US at the next Venice Biennale so it seems his view is now the "official" view on the subject to be exported to the rest of the world. I wonder if, had he lived to see the Bush 2 administration, he'd still be so passive in his tactics.
Geert wrote:
>What is needed is an open aesthetics to overcome the current visual poverty of activist >messages. By that I mean a tradition in which new programs and languages are being >created while the current practices are being investigated. What we need are more >temporary labs where networked, audio-visual vocabularies can be developed. This is >where curators and activists can meet as such endeavour can be in the interest of >both.
"Open aesthetics" as in open source? Interesting thought though I'm not sure whether it would "enrich activist messages". What we need are intelligent artists making intelligent art talking to intelligent curators rather than honing their marketing skills and forming flash mob collectives. But I'm all for more temporary labs as a meeting ground –
- hey, isn't that what THE THING is?
Robbin Murphy
THE THING, Inc.
Date: Sat, 8 Apr 2006 12:32:30 +0100
From: Ele Carpenter
Subject: Re: Art and Activism
Hi Everyone,
Thanks for posting such interesting projects and ideas. We are covering a wide range of work here - and it's difficult to make generalisations; but I'd like to suggest that most projects have a core commitment to process (social, political, creative, dialogic, networked, media development). Artists have not left "the round table"... for political resolve as Tom Chambers suggests, but are engaging with this process "as the intellectual and creative act called ART."
But is socially engaged art necessarily political? Where do the two meet?: Does one lead to the other, or prevent the other?
How do Ana Valdés' or Mongrel's projects lead to shifts in understanding the relationship between politics and culture?
How does the technology they use operate socially / politically?
I agree with Geert that art shouldn't be instrumentalised for activist use, but maybe art shouldn't be instrumentalised for art's use... so that the idea of 'open aesthetics' has to work both ways? As a curator I am aware of the care needed to keep the integrity of the work across a number of contexts. We need to be wary of art aestheticising political issues/experiences without context or process, which usually happens with didactic Political Art, and creeps into Eco-poetics. But this de-contextualisng also occurs when certain aspects of artwork are selected for publication in the media, or presentation in a gallery exhibition. In this way it is possible that Felix Gonzalez-Torres' work will be instrumentalised as an example of US Freedom in the same way that Condoleezza Rice expressed her happiness that people in Blackburn, UK were protesting against her (something I read in the news not in a gallery). Perhaps it will be another 15 years before the American Pavilion at Venice presents a coherent proposal by the Yes Men to close down the WTO, and another 30 years before someone finds a way of deconstructing the instrumentalisation of art to represent the idea of a nation state.
Some artists have been exploring how to instrumentalise their own work; partly because they want it to have a clear function and partly because they don't want others (activists, NGO's, govt) to instrumentalise it for them. (Perhaps this is similar to the strategy of the creative commons: opening up the work, before someone else locks it down?) Can anyone give examples of this?
No-one here is talking about Political Art which is didactic, prescriptive, single issue etc. And there are enough 'gallery' artists parodying this strategy (Mark Titchner for example) to render it politically redundant. Exhibitions like 'RISK: Creative Action in
Political Culture' (CCA 2005 www.riskproject.org.uk) and 'The Interventionists' (Mass MoCA, 2004-5) highlight artists who are working in overtly politicised ways, but art not making single issue Political Art. But in Europe the activists are being left behind...
so that IndyMedia simply replicates a mainstream approach to media, and programmers are making wonderful open source tactical tools that no-one is using.
Is this lack of joined-up thinking specific to European artists and activists?
Or is it just a very slow process?
Ele
Also my interview with Greg Sholette with additional comments from Nato Thompson can be found at:
http://riskacademy.omweb.org/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid;=6
Date: Sat, 8 Apr 2006 17:00:16 -0400
From: Murphy
Subject: Re: Art and Activism
On Apr 8, 2006, at 7:32 AM, Ele Carpenter wrote:
>In this way it is possible that Felix Gonzalez-Torres' work will be instrumentalised as >an example of US Freedom in the same way that Condoleezza Rice expressed her >happiness that people in Blackburn, UK were protesting against her (something I read >in the news not in a gallery). Perhaps it will be another 15 years before the American >Pavilion at Venice presents a coherent proposal by the Yes Men to close down the >WTO, and another 30 years before someone finds a way of deconstructing the >instrumentalisation of art to represent the idea of a nation state.
My problem with choosing Felix Gonzalas-Torres to represent the US in Venice is that I considered him a designer, not an artist and I still do. At most he was Gordon Matta-Clark lite. Matta-Clark was, in my opinion, the most important US artist in the twentieth century because the work he did still resonates in projects like THE THING. Felix's work resonates in the pocketbook of his dealer, Andrea Rosen.
Robbin Murphy
Report from Liverpool:
On 11/04/2006, at 12:38 PM
Trebor Scholz wrote:
In Liverpool two weeks ago, a conference revolved around media art curating. … Art-Place-Technology was… just one block away from Condoleezza Rice's temporary residence. The tumult of the protesters caused by the visit of the US Secretary of State made up the background sound to some of the event.
http://www.a-r-c.org.uk/liverpool/ocs/programme.php
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4862846.stm
Date: Sat, 8 Apr 2006 14:27:11 +0200
From: Ana L. Valdés
Subject: Re: Art and Activism
I think it's interesting to discuss how the role of the intellectual has changed and developed along the centuries. Rome's and Greek writers were also politically active, criticizing and mocking the power and trying to establish rules of behaviour, ethics and morals. Cicero, Demosthenes, Diogenes, Aristotle, Plato: they wrote and taught things aimed to create values and transmit cultural patterns, the memes we still use today.
The Catholic Church intellectual's, starting with Paulus, continuing with Origenes, Agustinus, Bernard and others, tied the bands between the political power and the ecclesial power and tried to establish a society very similar to a theocracy where the Pope and the Emperor and the Kings were God-sent and their right to rule blessed. The Crusades (an Art and Politic project I am working on now, www.crusading.se, were the expansion of the conception to the world, in the name of God. Agustinus wrote about the Holy War and legitimatised the right to fight in the name of God and of the One Church. Martin Luther made the Reform and the role of the priests and the scholars changed, Erasmus and the Renaissance shook the grounds of the Middle Age's political conceptions and a new class, the bourgeoisie, started it's political and philosophical ascent. The artists and intellectuals in Russia were a part of the state, their plight and duties were connected with the needs of the state to establish new values. The "engaged intellectual" as Jean Paul Sartre defined himself, saw his or her role as social and political, someone emphatic listening to the voices of the poor and of the oppressed, making themselves a loudspeaker.
All Art is engaged or political, the engagement doesn't need to be implicit in the artist or writer's intentions but the results are beyond that. The challenge, for me personally, is to be in a permanent "alert" and be aware in difficult situations can Art and Literature are maybe not enough, but they act in a level of emotions and feelings which are also important to deal with.
I think I wrote in one of my former posts I was jailed by political reasons when I was very young. I was only 19 years old and was beginning to write, had published some stories and won a lyric award. For me life without books and literature was impossible. In jail the Uruguayan military burned all our books, sent by our relatives and families. 2,000 books were burned. We (200 women of different ages and professions, we, the youngest, 19, 21, 25, the oldest in their 70) started to memorize books and tell the others about the books. We did as Ray Bradbury describe in his novel Fahrenheit 451, we became books, we told books, we read books from our memory. And the literature created in these conditions was as powerful and as mighty as the literature transmitted by the oral traditions of our elders. It was a "low key" use of the technology, we didn't have papers or pencils or books but we were storytellers and the telling of the stories gave us a real feeling of belonging.
When I was in Jenin, some years ago (http://this.is/Jenin), we started also to collect the stories of the people. It was their stories who made themselves a part of a continuity, all Diaspora have their own myths and we, artists, writers and intellectuals, are making the literary and cultural memes who transmit to the new generations patterns and shapes.
Ana
Date: 8 April 2006 23:05:04 BST
From: Ele Carpenter
Subject: Art and Activism
[off list by error]
Ana,
You describe all art as political - or does it simply become politicised when it is legislated against?
I'm not sure that the intellectual role of socio-aesthetic mapping is enough. We have to find ways of putting ideas into practice. How can we set up systems of production and distribution of art, ideas, communications that are as independent as possible?
I agree that the telling of stories, whose stories are told, and how they are recorded and presented is of critical importance.
Simon Pope is developing a project in Birmingham called 'Charade' which anticipates the absence of paper books and recorded music, and re-enacts the scene in Fahrenheit 451 that you describe. It's an open access project where anyone can sign up.
http://www.charade.org.uk
It's presented in such a pink and bubbly style it's hard to imagine the violence required to make the 'charade' a cultural / political necessity.
It's also interesting to look at Aisling O'Beirn's site-specific story projects, culminating in 'Small Urban Inventory', a collection of stories and urban myths about Belfast in Northern Ireland, and other cities. See the documentation of Site Specific, Gallery and Urban Myths sections of her website: www.aislingobeirn.fsnet.co.uk
Like many stories, they often reveal more truth than fiction about the politics of movement and meaning in a city. Walid Ra'ad has perfected this with the Atlas Group archive of videos and documentation of the history and culture of the Lebanon.
Can people recommend web-based projects that have similar strategies?
I'll be offline for a couple of days now,
Ele
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 15:48:15 +0100
From: Leon
Subject: Re: Art and Activism
It is with some trepidation that I contribute to this discussion But it has spurred me to think about this discussion topic with some consideration.
I hope my observations are too obvious but your subject matter provoked some self examination that I needed to explain this to myself...
Activism -"the use of direct, often confrontational action, such as a demonstration or strike, in opposition to or support of a cause."
There are probably too many contributing factors to take into account when discussing the rise of the term art activism. Changes in attitudes, media and technology always impact subsequent cultural output. Even the notion of culture is in flux under the repercussions of recent globalization.
In a information heavy world where war, religious and social divides are felt all the more keenly due to an ever quickening communication system. It is not surprising that art can no longer remain in the aloof self-referential terrain it has occupied in the past.
Historically art has constantly confronted itself and its audience in the pursuit of the new. From the dynamics of the gaze, of enactment and participation, the artist has been involved in a constant process of breaking the conventions of previous movements and styles. Each epoch has had its own technologies that have shaped its art, politics and religion. These have been interdependently employed evolving the practice of its activists which feed back into this cyclic cultural process.
This era's concerns are no doubt influencing the practice of those engaged in its activism. Today's new technologies, that of a globalized digital communication network offers new tactics and strategies to be employed in interpersonal exchange. Is it any wonder that the concerns of collective action seem to be a foremost on the minds of artists today? This escalation of the radical proposes new medias and locations for art, switching the focus in the way art is located, perceived and experienced.
Perhaps previous formulas of theory heavy presentation have alienated audiences. Headline driven media outrage at the absurdity of modern practice polarizes public attitudes further. At a time when blockbuster painting exhibitions draw huge numbers and media attention, modern art appears sidelined, a elitist clique chatting to its self.
An aesthetic poverty has created a schism in the appreciation of it, by a public divided by education. By the appropriation of the language of other forms of cultural activism eg. Political. Art asks for a re-evaluation of its wider worth. Under the banner art activism art finds a purpose outside of the gallery, a purpose of action, one with a community function, broadening of its audience and participation, away from the laboratory setting of the white cube. This pervasive participation involves directly the public in the execution of the work.
The broad range of current practice being associated with this genre only shows that there are many opinions on how an artist today generates a dialogue with a wider audience and under which context. Whatever the methods, a dialogue with the public around issues that they hold relevant in a language they understand seems to be recurrent. The code employed in fine art criticism often only presenting itself in the funding proposals written to facilitate them.
In a wider arena than could have been imagined definitions become stretched, boundaries blurred and new terminologies coined. If the emperor's new clothes of post--modern art have taught us anything, it is that the naming of something as art is enough to generate a dialogue between those involved with in its production.
It is not obvious at this time whether the definition of art activism will be an important one, and join other theoretical definitions of art practice that have been made over the years. What is clear is as art aligns itself with methodologies associated with political motivations it may become increasingly difficult to resolve the conflicts between new criteria of worthiness or public function and that of its previous artistic considerations.
The path forward seems a tricky one with a balancing act between ethics of merging areas of cultural activism resulting in inevitable recriminations between camps on message style and focus.
What can be agreed on is that there is a growing number of people politicized outside of conventional political circles eager to be heard in which ever way they can.
My own practice under the name of c6 should be explained in some way
C6's role of provocateur is instrumental in the functioning of the dynamics between the audience and themselves. The methodologies of agitprop marketing generate interaction to and from the street, web or gallery to the work being presented.
Without a political mandate c6's choice of apolitical themes and medias are delivered via community based media interventions drawing attention to the links between the gallery and various other spaces. Systems of collective output elicited from simple pop media techniques result in a realization of the interactive dynamics rather than the pre defined conceptual framework.
Leon
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 12:02:09 +0530
From: Shaina Anand
Subject: Re: Art and Activism
Hi,
Ele and Monica, thanks for inviting me into this discussion and apologies for being absent all week. I I have been reading with interest and very directly relate to Geert Lovink’s first point about political correctness and Ele's questions about commitment to process and use of technology. I have been doing self-organised public media interventions over the past year and a half. Each one responded to a unique set of givens and power structures, the first one being a workshop for students of art and design, and the other, a featured work in a curated exhibition. Right now, I am negotiating another; that of artist residency in a studio...
I look forward to being around and sharing some of this project with the list.
Shaina
Shaina Anand is a filmmaker and media artist. She lives in Mumbai. www.chitrakarkhana.net
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 13:11:45 -0500
From: Ryan Griffis
Subject: Re: Art and Activism
Ele Carpenter wrote:
>Some artists have been exploring how to instrumentalise their own work […]
I'm wondering what people make of some of the recent "major" art world discourse that has definite ties to this discussion. What of Claire Bishop's critique of "relational aesthetics" for example. In a recent Artforum article, Bishop holds up the work of artists like Thomas Hirschhorn (continuing from her earlier "Antagonism & Relational Aesthetics") against collaborations like Oda Projesi. While Bishop's supposed point is to critique the de facto moral privileging of "collaborative" practice, her argument sounds oddly reminiscent of Michael Fried's "Art & Objecthood" - an earlier text she even mentions in "Antagonisms..." Of course, who cares if some art critic wants to identify current collaborative/relational aesthetics as parallel to late 60s theatrical minimalism? Only, she makes some politically valuable critiques of Bourriaud and relational practice. Where she ends up is entirely conservative - making it an Adorno-esque argument between a more-or-less autonomous aesthetic (that can handle contradiction) and one mired in utility and ethics - but the initial question is pretty right on, I think. To bad, she doesn't seem to have access to the numerous other collaboratives/collectives that present other options (CAE, IAA, Raqs, xurban, etc). I know, it's about the market function of "critical writing..."
I think there is a kind of rebuttal and different direction offered by Warren Sack's ideas of an "aesthetics of governance" http://hybrid.ucsc.edu/SocialComputingLab/publications.php which he presented at CAA this past February. What's interesting is to consider the value of an aesthetic based on organization as a counter to either Bourriaud or Bishop's arguments. But then there's the problem of ethics...
What do people make of the question of "ethics"?
I've always had problems with ethics as a discipline and unit of measure. It's a formalization of morals based on abstractions that obstructs talking about politics (with a lowercase "p"). But an "aesthetics of governance" may, at least, move us past the "tool kit" aesthetic that presents the solution as a new utility belt. This is one of the more unfortunate things to come out of the tactical media paradigm, IMHO... the idea that we can design our way out of political problems. Isn't that the dogma of progress we already inherit?
But is the notion of governance so different? Is it still about designing a format/platform that will somehow necessitate/constitute change? And what are the alternatives?
Just some quick thoughts/questions...
Thanks for the discussion.
Best,
Ryan
LINK WITH BLUESHIPS THREAD
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 12:18:05 +0200
From: Interactionfield
Subject: Re: [iDC] Curating New Media Art
In response to:
Amanda McDonald Crowley:
I also pointed to examples of projects where artists don't make "works" per se, but rather make "frameworks" for others to contribute…
Here a project where curators make a framework for curators: The mobile Studios a nomadic platform with an editorial, talk and live Studio that temporarily possess the urban public spaces. It was just starting yesterday its journey through East Europe. I guess the white cubes wont stay white for a long time....
This evening in the TALK STUDIO: 6pm "New Exhibition formats" mixed-media-events moderated by Stevan Vukovic
http://www.mobile-studios.org/
Just a comment to the boats, they can also become also very exclusive, I could not afford to take part in the Boat trip of ISEA and had to be satisfied with the events in Helsinki...
On the other hand it can also use the advantage of not being too accessible, to state a more activist project:
http://www.womenonwaves.org
Maybe it would be interesting to discuss the role of mobility in activism. Are temporary interventions still an important tool in modern activism? More and more Art projects invent mobile tools to temporarily invade the public sphere like guerilla style screenings etc:
BeamMobile
http://www.debates.nl/journald27b.html?520+522+2263
SMS Guerilla Projector
http://www.studiotroika.co.uk/sms-guerrilla-projector.htm
Life: a user's manual http://www.ubermatic.org/life/ tv control http://tv.citycrimecontrol.net/
Bike against bush
http://www.bikesagainstbush.com
Just a few...
Mirjam
Mirjam Struppek
Interactionfield
Urban Media Research, Berlin
http://www.interactionfield.de
http://www.urbanscreens.org
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 13:26:20 +0100
From: Beryl Graham
Subject: Re: Art and Activism
Dear List,
This is a possibly rash attempt to link Amanda's recent post back to this month's theme of art and activism: I've just been writing about interaction in Rafael Lozano Hemmer's work, and ended up with a trio of quotes about interaction from fields other than new media. It seems that those from an activist/socially engaged history, are actually rather good at being accurate about exactly how participative a work is (for example, participative within a "framework" as Amanda cites). The problem is that new media folk are not always aware of useful activist structures, and that those from the fine art field, and from the activist field, are largely unaware of new media art. Would you agree?
“I entirely understand the effects of social interaction. I think people responded a great deal to each other, rather than to the objects, to their relationship to the latter or to the awareness of their own physical processes. That is, they made up group games, competed, acted out their aggressions, showed off, etc.” Letter from Tate curator Michael Compton to artist Robert Morris, 13 May 1971, quoted by Steve Dietz [i]
“Homi K. Bhabha, in an essay from the Conversations at the Castle project in Atlanta, writes of “conversational art,” and Tom Finkelpearl refers to “dialogue-based public art.” … The concept of a dialogical art practice is derived from the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, who argued that the work of art can be viewed as a kind of conversation – a locus of differing meanings, interpretations, and points of view.” Grant Kester [ii]
“The individual tendencies of participatory art - the playful and/or didactic, the "pastoral" and the "sociological" - have at least one thing in common: the background of institutional criticism, the criticism of the socially exclusionary character of the institution of art, which they counter with "inclusionary" practices. For all of them, "participation" means more than just expanding the circle of recipients. The form of participation and the participants themselves become constitutive factors of content, method and aesthetic aspects.” Christian Kravagna [iii]
Refs:
[i] Dietz, Steve (2004) “Was it all Robert Morris’s fault?” Yproductions: WebWalkAbout (December 19). Available from URL:
http://www.yproductions.com/WebWalkAbout/archives/000612.html
[ii] Kester, Grant (2004) Conversation Pieces. Berkeley: University of California Press. p.10.
[iii] Kravagna, Christian (1998) “Working on the Community: Models of Participatory Practice.” republicart. Available from URL: http://www.republicart.net/disc/aap/kravagna01_en.htm
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 14:21:59 -0400
From: Murphy
Subject: Re: Art and Activism
Someone posted a link to the video "De-regulation: Kutlug Ataman and Irit Rogoff in conversation" on THE THING and I found it touched on many of the subjects of the Liverpool conference and the current thread. I started out taking notes and ended up transcribing the whole thing, which I posted in the comment section below the post. Now I'm off to spend the Easter weekend gardening and "looking elsewhere".
http://post.thing.net/node/805
Robbin Murphy
THE THING, Inc.
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 12:28:42 +0200
From: Geert Lovink
Subject: Strategising Tactical Media
Ele Carpenter sent the following theses [off list]:
“Strategising Tactical Media Immersion in tactical media tools and antics has enabled some artists and activists to work together for a while – but the fundamental differences are too great for real collaboration: activists continue to mimic the mainstream whilst artists produce unused tools. Is it possible to work towards longer-term strategic visions? What do you think is missing from the discourse and the practice that can help bridge the gap? Where is the cultural shift needed for political change coming from?
Is new media the political imaginary for art?
New media practice and theory charts the evolution of free communication networks and tools. The development model of open source has its roots in self-organisation; creative commons is a realization of the principle of the freedom of information. Why is it that the visual arts is only beginning to take the socio-political imaginary of self organization seriously through the model of open source?
Does the ‘coolness’ of technology and the wealth of new media theory give credibility to social networks as art, that the ‘woolliness’ of socially engaged art failed? Or does new media’s ability to side step the art market, and government agendas enable it to practice what it preaches?
Or to put it another way – is new media the new avant-garde that enables artists and activists to work together? And if so where is it going?”
Ele
Geert:
My response would be the following: Tactical media cannot (and maybe should not) be looked upon outside of the realm of social struggle, movements and political issues. This is the problem discussing the problematic relationship between artists and activists as an isolated topic. Yes, it's all true what Ele writes. But it also changes in concrete situations.
The problem of outdated and self-referential museums and the art world in general is, in the end, not a problem of activists and the general public but of these institutions themselves. You either care about issues and society or you don't. If you do, you engage and get involved, show solidarity. If you don't you're just yet another closed castle or boring office. Who cares?
Ele is right in that concepts do not travel that easily from one context to the next. We can see grand parallels. But they may as well remain parallel universes. Zizek's latest book deals with this issue.
Yes, the art world is lagging behind. So does the aesthetics of activists. Instead of claiming who is the most avant-garde, these days the discussion seems to be: who is the most behind? Only Generation Zero seems to be the perfect cool informed. Those in their early twenties, the rest can be written off. I don't mind this view.
New media is a ghetto, as is activism, likewise the MySpace youngsters. But do not give up hope. There are times that people break out, create unexpected alliances and coalitions and make things happen. The alchemy of this is rather mysterious. There is no recipe. Lenin had some but I am not a Leninist. One strategy would to keep on trying and utilize the tools that we all have. Ignoring the Zeitgeist is important. We have to mind less about newspapers, watch less TV and Web and perhaps do more stuff that we really find really interesting. Stop keeping up with the Cool Johnson’s. Maybe you already do this.
Best,
Geert
OBITUARIES
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 22:07:30 +0100
From: Sarah Cook
Subject: Re: Art and Activism
I hope this isn't too much of a tangent either, but I'd be curious to keep an eye on how obituaries of some of the great performance/action/happening-related artists are written -- will we be re-framing their work in relation to current/growing [?] acceptance of activist / community / collaborative practices in the history of art or the place of art in networked/media saturated culture? I feel unqualified to say.
Rest in peace Allan Kaprow (Ian Breakwell, John Latham, Dick Higgins...) http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/arts/design/10kaprow.html
Sarah
In response to Leon, 10 Apr 2006
> Historically art has constantly confronted itself and its audience in the pursuit of the >new. From the dynamics of the gaze, of enactment and participation, the artist has >been involved in a constant process of breaking the conventions of previous >movements and styles. […]
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 23:23:29 -0400
From: Judith Rodenbeck
Subject: Re: Art and Activism
The obits of Kaprow have been lame, esp. the one from his practically-hometown paper, the San Jose Mercury, which online had his name as "Krapow." This was unfortunate, but also very Allan in its Pop overtones... Artists like Allan will inevitably be reframed in terms of contemporary concUse of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at E:.cgi line 451, line 1.erns--our parallax view--but it's important to remember that one of the reasons he and others in his cohort were always semi-underground is that they arrived in advance of today's concerns. Allan was working with "communication" as a performative in 1958, with network technologies in 1964, with satellites in 1966, with 2-way broadcasting in 1968...
Judith Rodenbeck
OTHER POSTINGS / THREADS
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 12:26:57 +0200
From: Geert Lovink
Subject: activist art
Dear all,
I just got this spam/announcement. Interesting to see that 'activist art' is now an accepted genre. From an east-european perspective this whole thing remains odd, as 'activists' were the most uglu communist party members who were supposed to be doing propaganda (read: spying) on the work floor.
best, geert
> From: "frans"
> Date: 18 April 2006 12:10:36 PM
> Subject: activist art
> Dear Sir/Madame,
> Frans Smeets is a Dutch artist. He makes art in which skills, globalisation and the >controversy between man and nature are important. His work can be seen as activist >art. You can see some of his work on: www.franssmeets.com
ENDS |