Life is sweeter than jewish wine

thoughts on art and community; part 3

One thing that has occurred to me over time, in working in different places and with different constituencies, is that it is quite difficult to find a uniform definition of community. On a basic level we all share some agreement about a grouping of people and a commonality of some purpose. French philosopher Jean Luc Nancy, in The Inoperative Community, offers a clear definition

…community is not only intimate communication between its members, but also its organic communion with its own essence… it is made up principally of the sharing, diffusion, or impregnation of an identity by a plurality wherein each member identifies himself only through the supplementary mediation of his identification with the living body of the community. (9)

It has been my experience, that new practices within the art community are often quite eager and reliant on communication or interaction with other, nonart communities. This may seem somewhat confusing with a definition of art. A simple explanation may be that artists do not want to identify themselves through identification with the community of art. And there are many reasons to feel this way, after all, the art community is quite exclusive, elitist, and closed. However to disavow the community in search of fulfillment in work with other communities is a tell tale sign of exploitation. Nancy goes on to further define the possibility of community only in death:

Community is revealed in the death of others; hence it is always revealed to others. Community is what takes place always through others and for others. It is not the space of the egos–subjects and substances that are at bottom immortal–but of the I’s, who are always others (or else are nothing). If community is revealed in the death of others it is because death itself is the true community of I’s thar are not egos. (15)

We may further understand the desire of artist to work outside of their own community and to connect with other communities as a drive toward the actual preservation of their community. Through interaction with other communities, the artist can witness death, and through this death community. In this manner the artist can experience community without ever being threatened with their own death. It is not necessary for the artist to lose the ego in order to take part in community that they do not belong to. The act of working in communities outside of art, is thus, an act not of challenging the community of art, but rather one of preservation.

While in Colombia I read Martin Duberman’s excellent Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community, a meticulously recorded account of the history of the experimental Black Mountain College during the 1930-50’s. The book documents the uniqueness of the experiment at the time. A radical attempt to create a creative artistic community that also functions as an educational site. Over its twenty or so years of existence it went from one crisis of identity to another, constantly on the verge of collapse, always seeking redefinition. In this we can see Nancy’s definition at work within the community of art; when the community of art truly puts itself towards challenging its own notion of community, it by necessity dies, and in its death we witness community.

For the most part, art practitioners that are working outside of the institutions of art, are still interested in sustaining the institution of art. In this way the work that we do outside of the institution, we can still use refer to in some way as art. We can continue to use a particular vocabulary of art as it has defined by the institution in order to put ourselves, and the work that we do in contention with it. By doing work that is in contention with the defined modes of art, we are again, preserving and confirming the community of art. We see this time and again with the institutionalization and co-optation of new modes of working in art. However, if the artist who works in communities outside of art, and then returns to a conversation with the institutions of art in a manner that is parallel and reciprocal to the actions that took place outside of the community of art, then the artist puts the community of art into a similar dialogue that they provoked in the other community. In this manner, the artist works toward the realization of the community of art, and hence toward its destruction. Only in the wake of the destruction of the community of art will a truly new art arise.

Russian art critic Boris Groys compares the emergence of the new art as a kin to the appearance of Jesus Christ. A concept so entirely new that it is a new that cannot be put in relation to, or comparison or dialogue with the old (in the way a new car model is new in relation to the model of the previous year). The art of the new, thus, must first destroy the old, it cannot simply attempt to redefine it, as it will always be redefining in relation to. The art of the new must find the definition of the community of art.

thoughts on art and communities; part 2

In his essay on Nontheatrical Performance from 1976, American artist Allan Kaprow created five categories for modes of working in the arts. The first three fit the conventional definitions of art, while the fourth called for “work in nonart modes but present the work as art in nonart contexts” which was typical of the New Genre Public Art of the late seventies and eighties. The fifth category radically called for “work in nonart modes and nonart contexts but cease to call the work art, retaining instead the private consciousness that sometimes it may be art, too.” Kaprow went on to qualify that “…I know of no one who fits the fifth who hasn’t simply dropped out of art entirely. (one runs into such postgraduates from time to time, but their easy testimonials to the good life lack the dense ironies of double think that would result form simultaneous daily participation in art and, say, finance.)” Kaprow offers us here a definition of what it means to participate in art and nonart simultaneously, that it involves a language of dense irony and double think. In this Kaprow maybe leaves out a sixth category: work in nonart modes and nonart contexts, do not present the work as art in nonart contexts while simultaneously presenting it as art in art contexts.

Work with the duality that Kaprow suggests would qualify practitioners of his fifth category may seem exploitative, but it is my argument that even when not claiming it as art it is exploitative. By its very nature work done outside of one’s community without membership in the community within which one is working is exploitative; regardless of intentionality. Exploitative is not necessarily bad, but it is exploitative in that one is benefiting from their insertion of self in another’s community. It may be a simple case of the lesser of evils. The good that one does, as perhaps the workers in the community space in Bologna, may out weigh the exploitative nature of their work, in that they are personally profiting from this work by way of career advancement within the non-profit world, self-congratulation, satiation of guilt, knowledge of making the world a better place through individual action, etc. In this case, we can say their exploitative work has positive outcomes. We may say the same for the work in Nashira, if it ends with artists working with art language in a community that is not their own, the result being a conceptually challenging and well crafted recreational space in the community, that in some way may affect the way individuals interact in the space.

However, what if we take that same work and somehow find a reciprocal and parallel representation for it in the community to which we belong. If we are claiming the use of the language of art as qualifying of artistic practice, then by default we are associating ourselves with the community of art, where this language is utilized. By representing the work back in the art community we are containing the work within a critical and aesthetic lens, we are theorizing it, and are opening it up for interpretation, analysis and reflection. By doing so, we are participating in the critical dialogue of our own community, challenging our community, and in this manner defining our community. Perhaps we are also, by being more honest about our duality, less, rather then more, exploitative in our work.

thoughts on art and communities; part 1

I recently attended a rap battle at a community center/after school program for teenagers in a largely working class, immigrant suburb of Bologna, Italy.  As the event was going well past midnight and I struggled to keep my eyes open, I looked around at the organizers.  The community center is run primarily by university educated middle class Italians in their 20’s and 30’s.  I looked at them, they seemed bored, tired, waiting for the beat to stop and the kids to leave so that they could start packing up the sound equipment, sweep the floors and make the long journey back into town and to their beds.  As I watched them I wondered: do they think they are making a difference?  The thought didn’t occur to me in a derogatory sense, though I acknowledge it could sound that way; nor did it occur to me in a manner of reverence for their work.  The thought was more of a momentary sense of panic or anxiety, a what are we doing here? moment, with the here being a universal here, and not just the suburb of Bologna.  Whether it was informed or uninformed, social service, or charity, guilt placation, or idealism, it seemed dishonest to me as work.

Prior to arriving in Bologna I spent two months in Cali, Colombia.  There, at the invitation of the Swedish curator Veronica Wiman, I participated in a collaboration at Nashira, an Eco-village being built outside of the city for women who are the income earners of their families.  The project is the initiative of the Cali lawyer, Angela Cuevas, who started the organization La Asociación Mujeres Cabeza de Familia, providing poor women in the city with income earning opportunities.  The members of the association are offered a plan for buying into Nashira, becoming part of this new community.

The project that Veronica invited me to participate in was to build a recreation site on the grounds of the community.  While Angela could easily have paid some workers to build a small playground, instead, at the proposal of Veronica she commissioned an artistic site to re-imagine what a place for play and recreation might be.  Other collaborators on the project in its initial stage were the Cali based artist collective Helena Producciones, and the ceramic artist Jaqueline Diaz.  As the project grows, Veronica plans to invite other local and international artists to visit and contribute in some way.

One evening, we were having a meeting in the house of Veronica, logistical planning moved to a conversation on conceptual themes, which moved to a conversation on the philosophy of the project, its intentions, and its ethics. and its functions as art.  From a distance, the project does not appear that different from a social service project, however, since we are all art practitioners, and we are approaching it with an artistic consciousness and sensibility, it is an art project.  As an art practitioner I speak the language of art and hence work that I do in which I apply this language qualifies for me as artistic practice.  There was something more to the conversation that evening, something more profound, it has to do with communities, and again raises for me the question of dishonesty in work.  To the question of why we are doing this project, the answers were varied, from a more idealistic outlook that sees the project, its virtues, and aesthetics as contained within the project, and the community for whom which it is constructed; to a (perhaps) more cynical outlook that says that while the work itself is fulfilling and beautiful, as an art project its aesthetics are contained and must be viewed in the language of art.  The key difference between the two views is that of where the art is, and as a result, to which community does this belong to as an art project.  If on the one hand the aesthetics are in the work itself, and it is an art project because the practitioners are artists, then the project belongs to the community of Nashira, in which case questions of who we are, as privileged, mobile members of the first world and what our role is in working (in however, informed, conscientious a way as we are) within a third world community.  On the other hand if the aesthetics of the project are viewed as a totality from within the context of the other community at play here, the art community then we face the double edged sword of doing something positive in a community not ours, while at the same time exploiting that very same community in placing it for consideration within our own community.

Bourriaud on the function of art

“In this new form of culture, which on might call a culture of use or a culture of activity, the artwork functions as the temporary terminal of a network of interconnected elements, like a narrative that extends and reinterprets preceding narratives. Each exhibition encloses within it the script of another; each work may be inserted into different programs and used for multiple scenarios. The artwork is no longer an end point but a simple moment in an infinite chain of contributions.”

Bourriaud, Nicolas. Postproduction. Lukas & Sternberg, 2005. 19-20.

Guattari definition of subjectivity

“The ensemble of conditions which render possible the emergence of individual and/or collective instances as self-referential existential Territories, adjacent, or in a delimiting relation, to an alterity that is itself subjective.”

from Chaosmosis, pg. 9

Guattari on subjectivity

“The only acceptable end purpose of human activities is the production of a subjectivity that is forever self-enriching its relationship with the world.”

-Felix Guattari quoted in Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics

on art and goods

“On the other hand, we can say that art creates an awareness about production methods and human relationships produced by the technologies of its day, and that by shifting these, it makes them more visible, enabling us to see them right down to the consequences they have on day-to-day life. Technology is only of interest to artists in so far as it puts effects into perspective, rather than putting up with it as an ideological instrument.”

-Nicolas Bourriaud from Relational Aesthetics. 67.

Kwon on community

“Typically, the objectives and identity of a coherent community are seen as determined by its members before any encounter with outside individuals or groups, including community artists. Additionally, the community is primarily defined in opposition to the forces of an oppressive dominant culture that would regulate and defuse the efforts of those who seek greater participation in the exisiting social system. This focus on the oppositional character of a community supports the habitual tendency among artists and art professionals to think of the ‘community’ as a synonym for social groups of the marginal or underpriviliged classes. It has become commonplace in public art to cast the community as the victimized yet resilient other that continuously tests the stability of prevailing sociopolitical and economic conditions. Such a conception of community also reinforces the classic Marxist view that refuses to acknowledge the ways in which the ‘oppression’ by the dominant class can actually ensure the coherence of a minority group.”

Kwon, Miwon. One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. The MIT Press, 2004. 147