Today I am pleased to highlight artist, activist, writer and organizer Robby Herbst, who maintains his own interdisciplinary art practice as well as works with the LA-based collective Llano del Rio. A long-time activist, Robby’s critical questioning of the Occupy movement comes from his core interest and passion for challenging dominant hegemonies. Though he is undeniably supportive and excited about artist actions and self-organizing at Occupy, embedding and interfacing his current projects in that context, Robby asks some key and uncomfortable questions. How far does radical action extend? Can artists infuse political demand into the poetics of their practices? Does the professed horizontalism of the General Assembly only go as far as our dominant institutions of culture allow it to go? Robby has demands rather than hopes for this movement, and one of those demands is an evolution in how artists interface with their society.
What are you making/interested in making with regards to Occupy LA & the Occupy movement in general? Why?
RH: What I’ve been working on to date largely has been further developing projects that I’ve been working on since before the occupation movement. And the occupation has provided interesting places to develop them. With the Llano Del Rio Collective, I’ve been working on the “Antagonists Guide to the Assholes of LA” since at least this summer. It’s a guide that seeks to promote agonistic approaches to democracy by highlighting sights where assholes dwell (governmental, corporate, military, etc). Some of the public programming we’ve put together, which helps frame the meaning of the forthcoming guide, was going to take place elsewhere. However, the occupation at city hall has provided an excellent place to discuss artists claiming power over assholes. Also we’ve rushed to distribute some of the research we’ve done regarding contestable sights near the occupation, so that it can be helpful to occupiers and their supporters.
I’ve also been working on a project with the Dumbo Art Center in Brooklyn. A public performance for that project (which will have a gallery iteration in February) was originally planned to happen at Occupy Wall Street on its first weekend there in NY. However, for several reasons (including a strong desire to be in dialogue with LA), I decided to do these actions here in Los Angeles. The piece involves the creation of human pyramids that reflects on an IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) diagram created in 1911. The diagram is called Pyramid of Capitalist System and it depicts capitalist class structure as a human pyramid. Working with mostly novice dancers and acrobats, we are building class war human pyramids down at the occupation.
Other than these projects already in the works, I hope to contribute in making AAAAAA a forum of affiliation to scheme creative and critical actions which add to vocalization of the movement or an intensification of it here in LA.
What role do you feel you/your work plays in interfacing with the protest? What role would you like it to play?
RH: Anything that gets folks interested or present in the occupations is a great thing. That is largely how I visualize this interface. If any of the projects that I am doing beyond that causes people to think, act, or relate in another way than they expected to–then that would be swell too. If through our attempts at organizing in relationship to Occupy LA , our artist community more generally begins to consciously embrace a practice of demand along with their poetics–that would be a wonderful thing too.
Many recent actions seem based on performing “scores” – why do you think this is, and how do you think these performances “perform” in the Occupy context?
RH: I am not sure if I agree with your statement. While score-based work is the impetus for some people’s work, I can equally point at a larger number of projects that aren’t score-based. Perhaps if your statement it is truthful it could just be reflective of a peer group who are a part of this affiliation. It might also be that people who are interested in self-organized space are also interested in performative acts of autonomy.
Ultimately scoring is a straightforward way to do public space performances–subtly affecting crowds. I don’t need to talk about Kaprow and Cage nor the Situationists and their relationships to chance and serendipity and non-hegemonic ways of manipulating subjectivities, do I?
Robby Herbst, Didactic Pyramid installation.
How do you feel the AAAAAA list is operating? What role is it playing? What are the challenges or benefits of this loose grouping?
RH: So much to say here…. But I’ll try to stick with what’s on hand.
It’s a networking group at the moment–folks share ideas, articles, thoughts and reflections. Folks give the thumbs up to projects in mind and completed. They share ideas and impulses. They share articles and news and opinions. They respond. They share discourses they’ve enjoyed from other communities of the internet. They throw their two cents in. Generally it’s a positive and supportive environment that ideally creates both a context for the presentation and discussion of perhaps offbeat or ideally radical public projects which aim to challenge, interface and engage the struggle. Generally there’s not many lurkers or (I think this is the right term) and inflamers around–this is a great thing. People who are talking are involved in places other than the internet.
There have been a few announced meetings. The first two occurred the first week of the occupations and were unexpectedly large. It was enough perhaps to have such a big group come together to out themselves, as it were, to being personally passionate about this struggle for economic justice. That outing was the outcome of those meetings–that and that we would come up with a name and perhaps develop a website. (A calendar where folks could list what they were doing, and see what was going down creatively, along with the facebook page, was put together almost right away). Rob Ray put up a webpage for everybody–no meeting was had to make and do it–but that seemed to be ok with everyone. I had hoped that beyond this architecture we could articulate language that might frame a position and make a statement as to where we stood together as we did our self-organized acts. This group articulation hasn’t happened yet and at one point I was disappointed by that. It seems that the will to do the work of building consensus on ideas was beyond either the interest or ability of the group–so this kind of language, “what we stand for” is not outlined. I feel that having something to push against and with is important (even if it is water)–but the desire to go there yet hasn’t shown itself that fiercely.
Later meetings included a bar get-together where some folks got drinks and worked to get to know one another. This was an attempt, I believe, to develop working and political intimacy in a group that for many stretched beyond their immediate peer group. Then recently a group of folks got together from the AAAAAA group to plan an action in solidarity with the General Strike in Oakland. That project appeared very successful and I was happy that AAAAAA facilitated a format for its creation.
Otherwise, people who are planning projects that fall on the same day have co-publicized one another’s projects. As well, an Occupy LA reader was group-sourced and produced through the list. And it seems that a Free School of sorts was worked on through it.
The benefits of the group are all of the above plus the supportive environment.
The group is a work in process and I think people are discovering that it is what they make of it. Beyond the anti-police violence that occurred in solidarity with the Oakland General Strike, I am not aware of projects that have affected the stridency of intensified social protest. The group has not functioned as a creative agency, nor as something like San Francisco’s Art and Revolution. And this is both a good and a bad thing. It allows space for people to do their thing and provides a forum for people to dream together more vital actions–but it doesn’t necessarily spur vital action. It allows for it and facilitates it, but it doesn’t demand it. At times this feels like a problem, at other times, it feels like an opportunity that will (and has) make itself known. In my mind the loose structure supports a laboratory approach, where together we are experiencing (as LA artists) the possibilities of radicalized aesthetics playing themselves out here. That LA artists are embracing this experiment beyond the safety of galleries or schools, but within the complexity of independent space–that’s a big positive in my book. One I can support. AAAAAA is an evolution. I think both LA and LA’s art scene (institutional as well as self-organized) needs evolution. I hope that AAAAAA will continue to evolve to occupy the arts–in radical as well as formal potentials.
There has been criticism of the Occupy movements and the horizontalism of the General Assembly – a polyphony of voices and lack of clarity in message or goal. What are your thoughts on this critique?
RH: This is a tremendous question for me and I won’t get far into this at all. If I read into your question, then I apologize. But the very short of it is that for me this question has implications which directly connect with contemporary art practice, especially regarding the rhetoric surrounding the supposed openness of social or relational practices. Like the occupations themselves, these structures exist within certain ideological contexts. Just as art practices are frequently contained within institutions which themselves work to suppress underlying ideologies and structures, the utopianism surrounding horizontalism working within these movement(s) functions largely to make invisible pervading ideologies and structures which should also be subject to critique. The basic critic would be that the horizon of horizontalism can only go as far as that which can be articulated in a given frame. And the terrain of that framework is only described by those that control the institutional framework of a culture. So in LA, you get people who claim horizontalism as far as it doesn’t confront historical police violence, and in Oakland you get horizontalism as long as you don’t destroy property and don’t take over and demand collective ownership over foreclosed upon property.
I am not saying that polyphony is useless as many on the left and right declare. The only real power of OWS is in its current polyphony. That it as of yet has refused to be captured, it will remain an itch in the side of our culture until somehow perhaps it is regularized. But the manner that it will be regularized and the direction that this regularization takes will be defined by the demands that people make. And if the demands are only articulated through the horizon that dominates our contexts in Los Angeles, or Oakland, or the US – than I am aware that this horizon may not be quite as interesting as I could see.
RH: Hopes–after Obama I am not so interested in hope. My demand of the occupy movement is that it continues to challenge dominant frameworks in the world which have placed the rights of private property far over the head of the commons.
Yesterday and the day before, the Getty held a conference entitled “Perspectives on Progressivism and the Museum,” which was a laudable effort to gather museum educators and scholars from around the country (and from the UK) to reconsider the progressive role of the art museum in civic politics and social justice, with an eye towards the sweeping national initiatives of the Progressivist era of the 30s and 40s. I moderated an artist panel this morning called “Social Practice and the Institution,” which gathered David Burns from Fallen Fruit, Edgar Arceneaux from Watts House Project, and performance artist Elana Mann in conversation about their own socially-engaged practices and interfaces with institutions. At the very end of the panel, a comment from a respondent struck me deeply - how can the local efforts of these artists - whose progressive practices eke out new ways of thinking, leverage new networks, and build new capacities in the ways people live and interact - translate to sweeping changes in our greater institutions? How can we scale up progressive practices in order to change the way economies or states operate in relation to their people?
It is fitting to be writing this post just after Guy Fawkes day, with the Occupy movements in their fervor invading city streets and city halls. I have become aware of many artist friends who have seized upon this moment of protest and discontent along with so many others. In an effort to understand how artists with social practices who have been engaging with protest and activism and issues of social justice throughout their careers are organizing in response and/or solidarity, I have asked several artists involved in the Occupy movements to send me their thoughts. I will post several of these interviews every week for the next few weeks, and through the varied perspectives of these very smart and creative people, coalesce my own understanding of art and protest in this context. As the polyphony of these occupations seem to be moving from incoherence to some actionable goals - like National Bank Transfer day (which was yesterday) - I am interested in how process becomes message becomes action, how aesthetics becomes symbol becomes division or solidarity, and how leaderless protest translates to progressive policy (and if that’s even possible anymore). The conversations are complex and layered and entangled, and they are happening right now.
Adam Overton is the first artist I want to highlight - a performance artist focused on the subtle and meditative, Adam is part of a loose self-organized group of artists and other cultural producers performing actions and organizing events in solidarity with Occupy - they are called AAAAAA. His positive and laid-back message is a response to the criticism of Occupy’s drawn-out decision-making process and lack of centrality. He is pondering here as well on his role as an artist in the midst of such protest energy - how he both feeds upon and reflects it.
What are you making/interested in making with regards to Occupy LA & the Occupy movement in general? Why?
AO: Personally, I’m primarily interested in occupying space, with others, and also by myself. I’ve been going down to Occupy LA and working on stuff on the lawn (mostly writing) – I think of it as chillaxistance: engaging with everyday endeavours, and art-production, while basking in the occupy-energy.
Beyond city hall, I’m interested in the Occupy-movement continuing to spread into everyday life and surroundings – but not in some sort of manifest destiny, grabby, selfish sort of way. Rather, I’m interested in seeing folks reclaim various facets of their lives, big and small, and continuing to share (resources, skills, knowledge, energy, etc) the way i see people sharing downtown. Among other things, I’m interested in making nice-nice (as we say in the massage biz).
What role do you feel you/your work plays in interfacing with the protest? What role would you like it to play?
AO: I’m not really sure. I’m not that interested in serving as an example of any kind, but I am interested in being myself – an artist – down at Occupy LA, whatever that’s worth. This all somehow feels important to me to be down there, to be a part of what’s going on – both giving and receiving. There’s a lot of learning going on, a lot of witnessing. Many of the things I’ve done down there so far performance-wise have been pretty subtle; many things have been more like gentle quiet activities (giving out a hollah to the touchy-feely committee!!); I’m sure I could do some more “direct” and spectacular actions, but I’m not sure yet if I want to go there. I somehow feel very humbled by it all. Perhaps that will change with time? Maybe I’ll have more to share, or a more outspoken approach at some point? For now I’m just barely there, but still there (which feels like a lot more than not being there).
Many recent actions seem based on performing “scores” – why do you think this is, and how do you think these performances “perform” in the Occupy context?
AO: Well, not all of the scores that have been created and announced have been performed [yet]. Many of them are very thought-full, and represent how I’m processing everything intellectually. There’s a lot to process right now. A lot of the things I notice are subtle, or rhetorical, things that seem glaringly funny, or odd, or depressing, or troubling. The scores are sometimes a way to notice these things out loud, to transcribe them, to replay them, to turn them upside down, to play with them, etc – to critique them. And then they can be passed along electronically via email, facebook, etc. Sometimes it’s enough for the instructions/descriptions to simply be read/imagined. Some of the scores I’ve been enjoying reading/imagining/performing are by my friend Mikal Czech:
That said, I am interested in performing scores down there, and I have been, off and on. When performing alone, it’s been an interesting way of altering my sense of space, or reality, or personal interactions. Dérives are like that – they’re like drugs minus the drugs. They heighten my senses, draw out subtexts, present alternative ways of existing/playing in space – without all the forgetfulness and side-effects. It can sometimes be hard to notice where certain scores start and end, and I find that useful in terms of trying to expand the movement from Occupy LA to Occupy Everything.
When performing with others, it’s been a fun way of engaging socially in much in the same way that games do. Games/scores seem odd – they’re often life-like, but surreal, and give the persons involved permission to do and notice things they wouldn’t normally think they’re allowed to. They push you into another perspective. A lot of learning happens in scores/games. I’m not sure what is to be learned, but I’d like to think that the human population and/or spirit is somehow evolving with each game/score. It feels magical. I think it’s important to engage with magic and an evolutionary spirit in this space. Games/scores seem to be an aeffective way to engage serious matters playfully, and to model different ways of thinking, acting, and interacting.
How do you feel the AAAAAA list is operating? What role is it playing? What are the challenges or benefits of this loose grouping?
AO: AAAAAA is nice – people write emails back and forth, facebook posts back and forth – right now we mostly seem to be sharing information, knowledge, opinions, ideas, videos, articles, proposals for action, critiques of things that have happened so far, etc. For me, its foremost role has been to encourage me to continue thinking about all this Occupy stuff, everyday. I read messages when I wake up, during my breaks, on my phone, when I’m procrastinating, and before I go to bed. I’m immersed. If I was just on my own, not engaged with this group, I might only hear about things every few days or weeks; in other groups I’d likely encounter the kind of uncritical rhetoric that really turns me off, and that further alienates me. If I didn’t have people sending me stuff, I might think that everything had petered out, or that it’s not my movement, not for me. But instead I see my friends thinking about it all, being concerned, being excited, being worried, wanting more, asking for help, proposing meetings, encouraging discussion, and going down there and doing things. I can’t help but feel infected by this and want to stay involved. AAAAAA encourages my continued engagement.
I’m fairly wary of the rhetoric of large groups. I like mission statements, but only up to a point. As much as I like scores, I generally don’t like to participate in things I’m not concerned enough with or connected enough to. I generally don’t like being a part of things that involve a lot of finger-pointing, finger-waving, or righteous indignation. Except on a handful of issues, I’m just really uncertain about how to aeffect change in a way that agrees with me. So, as a whole, AAAAAA is really working for me right now. It so far seems to simply represent a group of concerned beings, mostly [only?] artists from our community. People tend to function autonomously, doing things when they want, or not. There has been no specific pressure placed on anyone to participate. I like this. A challenge of this is that it can be hard to keep certain kinds of momentums going. For instance, I spoke to a friend today about how we had wished there had been more large group meetings (there were only 2, right around the start - the rest has been small clusters of folks). There are several reasons why folks haven’t met as a large group since then – people are busy, and there have been a lot of calls for “action” rather than more meetings – but I actually think the main reason more large meetings haven’t been called is that folks have been afraid that calling a meeting might push them into some sort of leadership spotlight. I certainly feel that way – if I’m always the one pushing for meetings, do the meetings then become “Adam’s meetings”? I don’t think anyone wants to become seen as an owner of the group. I think it’s a nice sentiment, but it can also slow things down, and fewer meetings are called – everyone waits for someone else. I might be totally wrong about this – this might just be my own paranoia. Anyways, I’m a firm believer that unexpected things emerge when people meet, both online and off.
Another challenge has been catching folks up, making newcomers feel welcome. It’s hard to do that on a mailing list. I get the feeling that most of the people who have been participating lately on the list and on-site have been participating from the start. Folks coming to the list late might be more hesitant to jump in to something that feels like it’s already moving, or something that feels dominated by folks who are already active. I think those sorts of boundaries get lessened when we actually meet in the space – but not that many physical meetings have been taking place. Again, I might just be assuming a lot of bullshit! But there are challenges, and I think it’s been mostly good.
There has been criticism of the Occupy movements and the horizontalism of the General Assembly model – a polyphony of voices and lack of clarity in message or goal. What are your thoughts on this critique?
AO: Sure, I think the argument is that the clearer the message gets, the more easily the “problems” can be treated – but who’s going to treat them? And if they whittle it down to the 2 most popular ones and then treat them, does that mean we go home? What happens to all the other concerns? There are so many issues at play, so many to deal with – to dumb it down into one thing seems incredibly frustrating, and exclusive. I love how many voices there are. I think there should be even more. I cannot stand when folks say dumb things like “we’re all here for the same reason.” No, we’re not! Stop trying to unite us into your false karass! Things are much more complicated and nuanced, and the confusion of not having a clear message has caused people to talk, and talk, and talk, and talk – and debate. People are learning a buttload. From each other. At least those willing to listen. Many people down there are much worse off than I am, economically-speaking, educationally, politically, etc, so I’m mostly there to listen. Simplifying their many arguments into a few, dumbing them down is not the answer. Answers are not necessarily the answer (though that might be a privileged thing to say…).
To anyone complaining about the messiness of horizontalism – get over it. It’s giant fucking sandbox. Get dirty. And, it’s only reeeeallly messy if you’re in a hurry and trying to get-things-done. Trying to set a deadline is often an exercise in futility and frustration. The General Assembly and endless dialogue at Occupy LA and online suggests that folks move from being end-focused to being more process-focused – shifting things away from
fast-food politics, rhetoric, and discourse. If you’re only looking for results – for immediate change – then you’re going to hate life while attending a General Assembly, or an affinity group meeting. I’m there for the process, to learn from people, to hear voices that I haven’t heard before, to consider their arguments I haven’t considered. And to state my mind, to support others, to point out things that rub me the wrong way. I’ve witnessed some hard-blocks down there – and more often than not they’ve brought up really interesting and valid critiques of the action or decision that was about to be made, that everyone seemed to be completely on board with a moment earlier. If anything, in this day and age when
libertarian, anti-government messages seem to be all the rage, the messiness of the process at least makes me appreciate the level of skill and attention to detail and process that seems to go into making government a not-as-messy place. The messiness of Washington makes a different kind of sense.
What are your own hopes for the Occupy movement?
AO: More conversation, more learning, more hope, more minds changing, more radical juxtaposition, more reframing, more rehashing, more investigating, more restating, more paraphrasing, more mediation, more meditation, more introspection, more disbelief that a person like “that” actually exists, more awe with how many people are here and actually care deeply about some of the same things as me, more gentleness, more humble occupation, more complexity, more creative approaches to radical everyday existence, more acceptance, etc.
Less aping of politicians’/pundits’ rhetorical flourishes, less demonizing of the Other, less finger-wagging, less interrupting, less yelling, less anxiety, less stress, less worry, less anger, less simplification, less declaration, etc.
I tried something a little different for this blog post, in response to being invited to participate in the Perpitube exhibition at Pitzer College art galleries, curated by Pato Hebert and Alex Juhasz. The exhibit focuses on YouTube, social media and its convergence or impact on artistic practice, which is the focus of Juhasz’s recent work. By curating a selection of YouTube clips and editing them together to illustrate a text, I experimented with collecting this open source material to make a point about the phenomenon of emergent complexity and its relationship to socially-engaged artistic practice.
Every chance I get, I climb above the city and take in the panorama. Los Angeles is particularly filmic – the infinite density and natural beauty ensures that every view is both picturesque and overwhelming. When I view my city from this perspective, I am reminded of Michel de Certeau’s poetic article “Walking in the City.” Just as de Certeau wrote about the crests and undulations of the “urban island” of Manhattan, I find myself admiring the long Wilshire district of steel and glass and occasional brick and the city beyond. The light-studded hills of Hollywood loom to my north, the post-industrial orange street lights and boxy structures spread to the south, with the rising terrain of Bunker Hill to the east and the long wide boulevards to the ocean, due west.
De Certeau asks, as I always do, “Must one fall back into the dark space where crowds move back and forth, crowds that, though visible from on high, are themselves unable to see down below?” He calls this “an Icarian fall.” He means that the city cannot remain frozen in our view forever, and the pleasure of totalizing the city into a vista is merely a temporary delight. This divide between the wholistic conceptualization of the city versus the messy, complicated morass of spatial practices and feelings and people and overlapping communities and spheres of knowing challenges any visionary that wishes to effect social justice or change by engaging the political. There is always the discouraging Icarian fall, and the struggle to hold on to the totalizing vision that binds all the uneven fragments together. I remember this divide as I think about socially-engaged art practice, artists who orchestrate participatory works, and especially those with a social justice prompt or goal in mind. When one’s material is so unknowably complex, when one is addressing neighborhoods and communities and a morass of social relations into one’s art practice, how can any pre-conceived goal be possible? How can any moral right be universal? How can order ever be claimed from such chaos, and a better, higher order at that?
From my perch, however, I can glimpse the patterns that do in fact arise from the chaos. Or, more accurately, they emerge. De Certeau’s distinguishing of the chaotic dark space of crowds down below versus the totalizing beauty of the panorama is better known in science as emergent complexity. When we gaze at the panorama, we glimpse patterns and a coherence that defies the sum of its parts, or indeed the will of any one leader, no matter how powerful. Defined by Jeffrey Goldstein as “the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems,” emergence is when order unwittingly emerges from complexity. Like starlings, or other swarms, like how neighborhoods gain their characters such as Little Ethiopia, or the jewelry district - emergence is a self-organized aggregation that evolves and adapts to its surrounding conditions.
Emergence is everywhere in nature, but has more recently been harnessed in decentralized, bottom-up software that organizes internet communities like youtube and social media sites. However, though we employ and encounter this kind of self-organization every day, it remains difficult for us to think in terms of the collective. We assume that complex formations - like anthills and swarms, are directed by some higher intelligence, some authority. We look for the author, the artist, the creator, rarely understanding that the power of creating self-organizing systems is not that someone is in control, creating rules and pulling the strings, but rather that the absence of rule is what gives these systems their adaptive capacity, their ability to grow smarter over time and respond to a complex and changing environment.
This difficult way of thinking strikes me as particularly applicable to socially-engaged art practices, particularly those that are of long duration and seek to intervene into the complexities of a community or neighborhood or organizational system to catalyze some change - like the Watts House Project, Project Row Houses, or Future Farmers in San Francisco to name just a few. Although each has an artist founder one can point to, the success of such projects depends less on the known skills of the artist but rather on his or her ability to create emergent systems - to embrace the unknowable, instill an elastic adaptability into the created structure, and encourage an aggregation of forces. These projects live in a myriad of small interactions, and I contend that no collective or artist can direct these interactions towards a desired result. They can, however, understand those limitations and set up structures like horizontal organizations, feedback loops that determine aggregate actions, and organizations indistinguishable from their communities that are highly dynamic and adaptive to on-the-ground situations. These bottom-up methods are often oppositional to the top-down hierarchies of our cultural institutions and are thus difficult to archive or totalize in any meaningful way as art, but their coherence can be perceived in the ongoing vibrancy of changing spaces and communities. So we must welcome the Icarian fall, the descent into chaos, and give over control to our fellows in the hopes that from the aggregation of our small conversations and inspirations and actions will arise a coherent and operative whole, a higher and better order than what came before.
On March 22nd, I had the fortune of seeing the Thai contemporary artist Rikrit Tiravanija lecture at USC. I was quite excited by this chance, especially because I had frequently read about Tiravanija’s work as theorized by others, particularly Bourriard and his seminal book on relational aesthetics (and thus heavily categorized and polarized over time through that lens) but had never had the chance the hear the artist speak in his own words about his work.
After studying only the now-canonical and much imitated cooking-food-in-galleries projects of the 1990s, I was pleased to learn about Rikrit’s more recent work, and to hear it described in its complexity of possible meaning and process rather than as relational aesthetics. It actually gave me a new perspective not on the aesthetics of relations or social exchange, but rather on labor and distribution processes as related to the aesthetics of protest and activism. Not at all what I was expecting.
Rikrit’s practice is evolutionary in its iterations, often seizing on a theme or way of working and building upon possible tendrils of meaning, form, distribution processes, and contexts over a series of exhibitions and projects - and responding to the restrictions and frameworks of an institution or art context in the process. His current work can be traced to a process he has since worked with in many variations - collections of traditional images of protest from around the world (hand-made signage, peaceful and violent gatherings, rallies and marches) clipped from newspapers and then carefully re-drawn by art students in Thailand and elsewhere. These collections of images are then displayed in myriad contexts within institutions around the world - framed as works on paper, fabricated into silk-screened wallpaper, drawn as collaborative wall murals over the course of an exhibition, translated into sound and pressed on to vinyl records, etc, etc.
Alongside this, Rikrit has begun to experiment with the fabrication, distribution and display of that most ubiquitous and anonymous vehicle of protest imagery, the t-shirt. Sporting tongue-in-cheek phrases like “No Country for Old Prime Minister” (distributed and photographed at the Bangkok protests of 2008), or “Less Oil More Courage” (which has since made its way on to Greenpeace tote bags), these shirts have most recently been fabricated by art students in a makeshift pop-up shop in Gavin Brown’s space in New York, and displayed in “parades” (not protests or marches) on the backs of teenage models in art fair contexts. The slogans, a jumble of appropriated, submitted, and made-up phrases referring to a variety of social issues and protest contexts, are gathered haphazardly into the frame of art before just as fluidly migrating out into other frameworks and lives.
Rikrit embraces and lays bare these distribution methods of activist imagery dedicated to social change (of the t-shirt, the newspaper, the hand-made sign, the protest gathering, the gallery, the art edition, the art fair spectacle), as well as issues of labor and authorship - and this, what I believe to be the most compelling and critical aspect of his work, is also what opens him to the most vitriolic criticism. After his talk, a young MFA student attacked Rikrit for using the labor of “Thai children” to produce his work, for failing to produce anything with the trace of his own hand (i.e. Walter Benjamin’s “aura”), for ethical irresponsibility and charlatanism.
Authorship is one of the greatest sticking points, again and again, when it comes to social practice works. Surprisingly, it comes from a much younger generation of artists (today’s MFAs) than one would expect, and the anger and confusion behind these “authorship” questions is sometimes palpable. It would be a little too easy to blame this young artist himself for just having a screw loose and dismiss his comments - his rage was palpable and I have felt it elsewhere - and it speaks to the state of the very system that Rikrit is attempting to address through the transparency of his methods. Young MFAs are often doomed to work as studio assistants during their best years, and resigned to a difficult life of adjunct teaching positions, the struggle for recognition, and the pressure to produce ever more cutting-edge commodified objects. Clinging to self-expression and craft and authorship is a very natural reaction to the life that these artists are very likely entering into.
Yet by this very token, artists like Rikrit are creating critical art by questioning the anonymous power of protest imagery in those contexts, re-appropriating that anonymous imagery to an artistic context and applying complex layers of authorship and distribution to it (like licensing phrases/slogans for free to Greenpeace, selling t-shirts for $10-20 that could be considered art objects that are fabricated by art students, clipping media images and applying the hands of artists, albeit student artists, to their reproductions and selling them under his name and then redistributing that money back to the student artists…). Rather than attempt to assert or remove himself, rather than insist upon a false frame for what he does, Rikrit navigates the many complexities and contradictions of these very systems of aesthetic distribution, influence, and power - embracing them and peeling them open. Anger is a natural response, but it should be leveled at the contextual processes Rikrit so masterfully identifies and lays bare rather than the man himself. This work is so much more than cooking food in galleries and congenial conversation - it implicates each of us participating in this art world context and beyond - with a smile and a wink.
Patterns in my life have emerged recently that have only intensified in their synchronicity; for some reason my work, teaching, and personal lives have encountered questions of collaboration and collectivity again and again. When I look more holistically, this synchronous set of overlapping concerns likely began with my Quaker education (a denomination and philosophy rooted in consensual decision-making), but more recently has emerged in my interest in collective artistic practices and organizational methods here in Los Angeles, which have seen a gradual increase in acceptance and interest over the past 10 years. I understand that collaboration and the collective is deeply rooted in human society and instinct, but also struggle with collective decision-making within hierarchical and individualized structures in American society. Collaboration is at once heralded as essential to any responsible organizational or educational practice, yet at the same time is so often poorly understood and implemented.
I teach “Art in the Public Realm” at USC to undergraduates, an art theory course focused on artistic practices that permeate the public sphere, and each semester I require my students to interview an artist/project/organization that does this. My class list has evolved over time, and is focused (by necessity) in Los Angeles. I struggle each semester to draw connections between such practices, partially because their disparate modes of working are so far beyond the traditional studio practices that my students are familiar with. Some look like galleries, non-profits, or tour groups – most have collective names and many members. All are formally trained in fine art but may have additional concerns related to architecture, urban planning, community organizing, pedagogy, activism. This collectivity and the forms it takes are hardest for students trained in traditional art historical models to grasp – as a member of a collective I admire, Fallen Fruit, expressed, “collectivity in art has always existed, but always on the fringe of art history.”
I invited members of that collective (David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young); Jade Gordon, Malik Gaines, and Alexandro Segade of My Barbarian; and Sara Daleiden and Sara Wookey of Being Pedestrian (and, at different times, of the Los Angeles Urban Rangers) to participate in a workshop at the Hammer Museum on February 12th on this very topic. In planning the structure for the workshop, this stimulating group of multidisciplinary artists brought up some excellent points, both conceptual and logistical, about working as collectives. They spoke about collectivity as a choice with an aesthetic logic and a formal capacity – the aesthetic of the group, of the group dynamic, of the peculiar relationship of group to audience. They also spoke about it as an act of resistance against the paradigm of the individual artist, and here made the observation that perhaps radicality within art was made possible contemporaneously with adherence to group authorship. This conversation led to more logistical concerns as well – the coping mechanisms in decision-making (My Barbarian spoke of yes-anding and then simplifying, allowing the strongest ideas to rise to the top), the perplexity of institutions and funders when confronted with collective authorship, and the constant negotiation of power dynamics within and without the group.
Hearing the experiences of these long-time collaborations was enlightening, as I now find myself participating in several multidisciplinary “think tank” like bodies where the group dynamic alternately hinders or helps, obfuscates or clarifies the decision-making process. This is both frustrating and gratifying, but much can be gained from considering the group dynamic itself rather than striving to escape it. In the midst of a fruitful and reflective conversation about group authorship, a member of one of these bodies mentioned an example from psychotherapy, the Tavistock Method as developed by Wilfred Bion in 1961. Bion observed that any group working towards a goal or the completion of a task can be undermined by what he terms “basic assumptions” – dependency, fight or flight, and pairing. These primitive responses are defensive measures triggered by the anxiety of being in a group, and underlines how collaboration can be both socially useful and distinctly unsettling, resonating in our deepest instincts. The dependency assumption relies on a dominant figure within the group as holding all the answers, whereas the fight or flight assumption causes group members to behave as if there were some external threat. This can both unite group against a perceived threat but also hinder productiveness. Finally, the pairing assumption is a form of domination that occurs when two members hijack the conversation and relegate the rest of the group to passivity – hoping that the dynamic between the pair will solve the problem or task at hand without action from the rest of the group.
This simple categorization has broad usage, and Bion urges that true group productivity comes only when all such basic assumptions are suppressed. This can be a nearly impossible task without the time, effort, and reflection it might take to break down dominant power structures and reach a rational working mode. But taking collectivity itself seriously, taking the process of collaboration seriously, and allowing for the time and experience required for actual results, seems a necessity to this way of working. Even so, it does not always work, and failure must be actively embraced. This is utterly relevant to a society focused on expansion over depth, and one that is swayed by the group but inspired by the individual.
There are too many events for me to keep track of. My Facebook events page, my calendar, my mailboxes are overwrought. I have stacks of printed calendars on my desk that remain unopened from various arts institutions. Such choice, such variety is wonderful on the surface! Why, just this weekend, I have to hit up the LA><ART opening of two solo exhibitions by Kelly Barrie and Terry Chatkupt; Edgar Arceneaux’s opening and dinner at Suzanne Vielmetter (both Saturday at 6pm); and the Fallen FruitLet Them Eat LACMAevent on Sunday. And I will miss three cool-looking events at LACE (especially the interesting Museum of Public Fiction panel) and a friend’s sketch comedy show. And these are just the events in which I feel a real investment, those I am truly interested in and want to attend for my own edification. And these are only the ones I know about.
But with this overabundance of endless panels, participatory artworks, workshops, presentations and performances comes a heavy pressure on limited time, with the reciprocal need to feel a part of the various temporary communities produced by such events.
I know I am not alone in this contemporaneous moment, as colleagues and friends have complained of the same slightly distressing pull on their time. Some are masterful at balancing children, relationships, jobs, friends and art world events – but surely there are others like me who feel constantly overwhelmed. In many ways, we can chalk this up to the increasing ease of information distribution - and thus perhaps overdistribution? I was recently clued into the block of html code that allows one to invite all of one’s friends on Facebook to an event without discriminately selecting each invitee.
Perhaps because of this knowledge, I get the feeling that I am sometimes invited to events not because I am necessarily expected or even desired at the event itself - if I were to go to [cite potentially uncomfortable art event], I would feel out of place. Rather, these forms of distribution are yet another way in which to increase one’s cultural capital – to show that one is active on the scene, out there, working and gathering and networking and advancing one’s creative agenda.
There is nothing necessarily bad about this at all, but I do find myself overwhelmed at times by the reciprocal expectation - ostensibly to enjoy, but also to attend, to be seen at, to expand my own network, to enter new communities, to advance my own creative agenda at such events. This circulatory system of venues, people, organizers, producers, audiences, and artists is an excellent vehicle through which to increase presence and thus capital – and the expansion of synapses within such a system speaks to a dynamic art world and is indicative of current modes of operation.
These events share the “situational characteristics of contemporaneity” defined by Terry Smith as “prioritizing the moment over time, direct experience of multiplicitous complexity over the singular simplicity of distanced reflection.” As Claire Dougherty explains in her introduction to the anthology Situation, “these properties are displayed by a complex network of artworks, projects, events, interventions, happenings, small gestures and spectacular intrusions over time.” There is great slippage between artistic and political concerns that demand engagement, participation, conversation, and pedagogical situations as modes of working, and the importance of the social event to fundraising, marketing, and self-promotion.
Yet, I find myself wondering as I consider the increasing demands on my time - does the frequency and overdistribution of such events present dangers of dilution and a resulting lack of “distanced reflection”? Is there a destabilizing effect on the fragile produced communities of small experimental spaces and oft-marginalized cultural producers? Or, because of the rapid expansion and increasing professionalization of the art world, heightened in Los Angeles because of the presence of half a dozen world-class MFA programs in the immediate vicinity, is there a never-ending capacity to absorb such events? An ever-flowing stream of new art students and new work and new experimental spaces, a constant refreshment of the circulatory system of this event-driven cultural production?
I worry that scholarly reflection and distance will become impossible (or at least, difficult) with such oversaturation, and that too many critical projects simply die away without hardly a peep. I also worry that this lack of distance and criticality inevitably leads to a constant reinvention of the wheel – regurgitated events and concerns that are continually cycled through instead of built up and studied and critiqued. These worries are probably somewhat unfounded, and the proliferation of artists also means a proliferation of engaged critics and writers and publications through which to address such projects. The more the merrier, but the deeper the better. For myself, I must become okay with my own discrimination, and define how I want to function tactically in this swirl of constant production.
The three days I spent in Portland for PSU’s Open Engagement Conference were blessed with perfect weather, and the city seemed lush and magical. I’d never been there before, and the public space, preponderance of bike racks, walkability, used bookstores, independent coffee shops, and general greenness seemed like some kind of fevered wish fulfillment. By day three, I have to admit, it started to make me a little uncomfortable - and I began to notice the homeless people, the pervading slacker attitude among youth, the distinct lack of creative industry, the claustrophobia. Still, Portland to me seemed like an natural fit for a conference on socially-engaged art practice, and such a livable, participatory, socially-conscious city (at least on the surface) is a fitting incubator for the students of PSU’s Art and Social Practice MFA program, started by artist Harrell Fletcher three years ago. I only hope that such students make it down to Los Angeles after graduation, after their teeth are cut. We could use them in this messy, unplanned, dystopic concrete jungle.
The conference itself was a noble endeavor and a mostly fun gathering, albeit imperfectly organized. But what isn’t? There were probably a few too many parallel sessions and a few too many dispersed and too loosely connected artist’s projects on the program - if anything Open Engagement was maybe a little too open and could have benefitted from some focus and editing. There were great people at the conference that I would have liked to talk to, but once the big sessions and talks were over, everyone seemed to dissipate into the Portland ether, and I ended up hanging out with the same five people for most of the weekend.
The space for thought and the sharing of ideas around this nebulous term “social practice” was created, and organizing the conference under the term itself allowed a like-minded group of people to explore common experiences. As Harrell Fletcher put it, it was a place for social practitioners to have some “alone time” without the studio people. I enjoyed my first day, particularly Mark Dion’s keynote talk about cabinets of curiosities. Although I didn’t feel it was revelatory in any way, it covered an anthropological/library science practice of object collection and display that I find pleasing. He made an interesting point at the end that touched upon a core theme that would arise over the course of the conference - the idea that the artist is a dilettante in the oldest sense of the word, i.e. curious about everything. Dion cautioned that it is dangerous to have a society where only experts can talk to each other, and that social practice artists, who often work within other disciplines as well as art (sociology, ecology, architecture, urban planning), must learn the discourses of these other fields and create bridges. On the other hand, this provoked for me an episode of “This American Life” from the past year called “A Little Bit of Knowledge,” in which the dangers of only knowing a little bit (about finances, about real estate, about science) can get you into a whole world of trouble and depress high levels of discourse on a grander political scale. This is indeed a conundrum that is underscored throughout many of these social practice projects.
The next panel I attended could not have been a starker contrast - called “The Ethical Implications of Social Practice.” The introduction by Connie Hockaday, a documentary filmmaker and artist, jumped right into a highly questionable reading of social practice and why it exists. She made the point that the rising interest in social practice is due to the ineffectuality of protest and dissent in this country - but whereas protest and dissent functioned within an ethical framework, social practice (and art in general) does not. I found this essentializing view of social practice quite disturbing. This type of art practice is inherently complex, and is taken on for a number of different reasons. Though many practices that fall under this rubric are politically motivated (as protest would be), such practices have existed alongside rather than in place of protest for decades. Not only that, this art functions under the same ethical system that guides the justice system in this country, and does not exist in some otherly, nebulous realm. I take issue with critics who frame arguments in this way, like Claire Bishop, who popped up again in Matthew Rana’s presentation as the panel got started. Aesthetics vs. Ethics, social practice should not be judged on an inherently Christian set of ethical values alone, because then that privileges the intention of “goodness,” so then there is no bad social practice. This kind of argument gets you into a theoretical head space that removes you so far from these actual practices that little is applicable or relevant to the practices themselves. I maintain that social practices must be experienced and then written about as case studies that embrace all the complexity of the work. Only then can ethical implications be picked apart and revealed.
Needless to say, I got a little red-faced and worked up, and then I just became so utterly bored hearing the same old Claire Bishop run-around, I had to get up and leave.
I made it back into the panel just in time for the wonderful Ted Purves’s explanation of storefront project called Temescal Amity Works involved in the distribution of free fruit and exchanges of information and services in a diverse Oakland neighborhood. One audience member took issue with his point that because the project took the form of a storefront, everyone could access it, and it was unnecessary to explain that it was an “artist’s project.” The woman in the audience angrily asked why Purves and his collaborators would keep the “artist” angle rarified, and not engage in a discussion of why the project was or was not art with the general public. Purves’s answer highlighted the problematics of critiquing social art in this way - the project has gone on for two years, and obviously it is impossible to characterize every exchange as one thing or another. Doubtless there were MANY conversation dealing with the meaning of art in the project over that time period. But the bigger question that arose, in this panel and throughout the conference, was “why not get rid of the art altogether?”
I have heard this refrain over and over, from multiple people and contexts at this point. If you get rid of the art, it uncomplicates things, the division of art world vs. real world knowledge disappears, it is easier to raise money (in some cases), it erases the elite status bestowed upon artists - they just become regular people trying to help rather than imbued with some kind of special insight. These “art world” complications are uncomfortable for many young artists working in this field, and many are figuring out different ways to deal with them.
I didn’t have a good answer to this question at the time, and it wasn’t until a week later, at the American Association of Museums Conference back in sunny LA, that I began to feel strong conviction in the negative.
Next week: A Tale of Two Conferences: Part II, or Don’t Get Rid of the Art.
If you didn’t catch my recent Huffington Post contribution, I wanted to re-post it here. It is a reworking and reapplication of the post below from March 6th. The HuffPo are shortly adding an Arts Page (about time!), and a number of colleagues and friends that I greatly respect have been asked to post to it, so check it out in mid-May. Once June hits and I have a little time again, I will be up and posting again like crazy. With the Open Engagement conference coming up in Portland on May 14-17, the American Association of Museums conference here in LA, and some other social practice-related sideline research I am working on this month, there will be plenty to write about. Stay tuned!
Excerpt:
How Art Museums Are Striving to Stay Relevant for a New Generation
As I’ve been perusing my upcoming spring of various arts-related conferences (both academic and professional), a common question emerges again and again throughout these disparate events: how must art institutions change to re-engage current cultural audiences?
The upcoming American Association of Museums (AAM) conference (happening here in Los Angeles in late May) is called “Museums Without Borders” accompanied by some fuzzy language about “connection, community, cultural identity, and the power of the imagination,” but many of the actual session titles betray an overriding preoccupation: how to get new and younger audiences in interface with museums in innovative, user-generated, participatory ways.
The overwhelming consensus (as evidenced by the alarming aging of audiences to traditional arts venues - like museums, the opera, performing arts) is that younger generations of Americans eschew the largely passive role of audience, and demand participation from their art institutions. A recent article by Diane Ragsdale for the Stanford Social Innovation Review analyzes this trend in detail.
Harrell Fletcher. Gallery HERE, 1993-1995. Oakland, CA.
If one has one’s ear to the pulse of the institutional art world, there is no question that museums have begun to implement major shifts in the way they engage their visitors - at least in Los Angeles. From MOCA’s Engagement Parties to the rash of First Fridays or whatever days, to interactive collections software at the Getty, museums have responded to new trends in media and cultural consumption using both technological and human tactics.
The overwhelming consensus (as evidenced by the alarming aging of audiences to traditional arts venues - like museums, the opera, performing arts) is that younger generations of Americans eschew the largely passive role of audience, and demand participation from their art institutions. Events, parties, and interactive artworks help this generation gather and engage, but they also desire a role in production (of exhibitions, acquisitions, programming, education) - one that is immediate and satisfying.
I believe that in finally acknowledging these trends, institutions have begun to show a more concerted interest in artists who engage in “social practice” - whose work is built on collaborative action and participation, and encourages iterative loops of feedback, research, and recommendation. This interest is felt by artists who have been working in such a way for years (Mark Allen of Machine Project had to turn down about five panel requests for the upcoming American Association of Museums Conference in May), and by young artists just embarking on their careers. For example, on Thursday I attended the first MFA thesis exhibition at UCLA, and was amazed by the number of artworks based on interaction and social research (mostly the work of Jennifer Gradecki and Derek Curry) especially in the heavily object-based UCLA context.
Yet among many institutions, there is still a self-admitted lack of knowledge about these practices. Curators who regularly deal with social practice artists in all their diversity are few and far between, and traditional curators are often at a loss when confronted with some such projects. Projects that involve social practice artists are often education/curatorial hybrids, and suffer at times from internal hierarchies between those departments. Not only that, such practices break some long-held (but largely unspoken) rules of artistic practice that have been fully embraced by art institutions - and backtracking on those traditional notions is a difficult process. For example - “artists should not work with non-artists (i.e. people from the “community,” whatever that is) to produce an art project and then show it in the museum.” Or - “art that is widely loved by and accessible to the general public should be treated with suspicion.” Or even structural rules that are far more difficult to break - “artists’ projects must fit within a specific duration.” Now these are obviously generalizations, and museums exist everywhere that have pushed, pulled and bent some of these ideas. But, I still maintain that such ideas remain at the surface of institutional consciousness, and continue to affect current programming as well as how new ideas are approached.
I had the pleasure of hearing the great Harrell Fletcher speak at USC this past Wednesday, and in his clear and calm manner, he addressed some of the concerns I outlined above. Fletcher believes strongly in projects of unknown duration, in allowing them the ability to change and evolve. His work is engineered to be highly accessible to people without an arts background, and is both site-specific and socially-specific: that is to say it’s formed around the location in which he is doing the project and intimately involves the people that live in that location. He was nonchalant when confronted with the question of authorship and artistic ethics - in involving these people in his art project, wasn’t he exploiting them? He countered with the example of an amateur theater troop. In such a context, there is no problem with a trained director leading a group of amateur actors and stage crew who have signed on to be a part of a production because they love the activity. Why then, are we so precious about authorship in art? That is most definitely a larger topic for another day, but Fletcher’s point is a good one. As institutions shift their traditional notions of art and audience in response to a changing context, the space opens for these kinds of practices to emerge, evolve, and grow.
I’ve recently been talking to several cultural practitioners about how to educate those with a more traditional notion of art in understanding and contextualizing today’s social practice. The notion of expanded or post-studio has been around for some time now, but the historical contextualization of social practice is still very much in formation. My own efforts in this realm have been mostly trial and error, guided by some very sharp and inquisitive theoretical minds, but the way I trace the development of social practice seems to find some resonance with others striving to do the same thing.
Now, I must give a disclaimer – there are so many multiple influences and complex practices that contribute to how we understand social practice today, but from a purely pedagogical standpoint the following seems most useful for bridging the gap. I start at Beuys, simply because he is a well-known albeit controversial historical figure who was able to encapsulate his paradigm-shifting work in a few useful phrases. Most notably, the phrase “social sculpture,” which illustrates Beuys’ idea that activities which structure and shape society are a form of art no longer confined to a material object or artifact. From this radical notion (and buttressed by decades of expanded, non-object based conceptual practice) arose a variety of mostly non-object based practices engaged in social and spatial issues.
These follow several major veins that are relatable but manifest in varied ways. I would describe them as such:
Relational aesthetics – projects focused on congenial gatherings like making and distributing food or beer, discussions, invitations, and exchange (i.e. Rikrit Tiravanija)
Systems analysis – projects focused on uncovering, analyzing, criticizing and/or celebrating current systems that contribute to a deeper understanding of how society works, often with the goal of shifting those paradigms (i.e. Merle Laderman Ukeles, LA Urban Rangers, the work of Teddy Cruz, Urban China)
Pedagogical Practice – projects focused on sharing information in a non-traditional format, often user-generated and multi-disciplinary (i.e. The Public School, SOMA, The Mountain School of Arts)
New Models – related heavily to systems aesthetics, these practices focus on modeling new (or forgotten) societal systems that undertake issues ignored, perpetuated, or inadequately addressed by current systems (i.e. Project Row Houses, Watts House Project, Victory Gardens, Fallen Fruit, various eco urban farming collectives, the work of the Harrisons)
There are of course many variations and overlaps amongst these categories, and work that does not fit so well in any of these. The semantics of these categories can also be argued about – the titles are working titles and may not adequately encapsulate the definitions I have put forth. Nevertheless, I find this framework useful as a starting point. In terms of current work, I do believe that research-based analysis of social and spatial systems (Systems Analysis) is very much where it’s at – though plenty of relational aesthetics practice still exists, more model-based and solution-based practices are prevalent.
This framework still brings up some questions for me, questions that solidified when I examined the very interesting “Map for another LA” put out by the Llano Del Rio Collective just recently. The map is meant to describe growing “collectivist activity” that in many ways fall into the “New Models” category of social practice – though the practitioners may identify as artists or not. I will post further about my thoughts on this map, but now I leave you with a few questions:
1)What core values run throughout these different practices – and why?
2)Are these infrastructural practices?
3)What institutional or civic strategies that may be focusing on the goals described above (systems analysis, new models, new forms of pedagogy) are not considered social practice – and why?
4)Are the “new models” that strive for reproducibility actually spread? Or do they only perpetuate other “new models”?
