Social Practice

Marjetica Potrc, Urgent Architecture, 2004

One huge challenge I see in social practice is an enormous shift in the kind of working method and knowledge base required of these artists than those who work exclusively in the studio. If social practice involves an artist “inserting” him or herself into a community, the types of knowledge and skills required of that artist expand exponentially.

Of course, it’s difficult to make that statement lightly, because contemporary studio artists work in incredibly varied ways, many involving huge amounts of contextual research into history, society, and space. Not to mention that such artists, in order to navigate the territories in which they operate, often need a fairly solid art historical and theoretical knowledge base. But artists operating in social arenas must strive to understand the communities they inhabit, even briefly, and they must be completely self-aware and reflective that their actions are of consequence within such communities. They must even be prepared to face the fact that their presence might be unwelcome, unwanted. These artists must be prepared to fail on a wholly different scale than studio artists – a very public and a very consequential scale.

The weighty social practices I am talking about here are largely community-based, and exist outside of the safe space of the museum or gallery. These practices are in the public, involve city government, require groups of people buy in to the project, and call for often massive funding. Amy Franceschini’s Victory Gardens project in San Francisco was on a city-wide scale, whereas The Watts House Project operates in a very small, specific community in Watts, but perhaps affects peoples’ lives (for better or worse) even more deeply because of its focus. Marjeta Potrc’s interest lies in informal cities and design solutions in places like the West Bank and Caracas, and her massive research into these communities reflects the social practice aspect of her work.

Amy Franceschini, Victory Gardens, 2008

Yet to juggle the huge range of contextual knowledge required, the specific proficiencies needed in the realm the artist makes his or her own (i.e. housing, philanthropy, building social connections, pedagogy, marketing) and the added ability to reflect, to remove oneself from everything and break down one’s systems of doing things, analyze the hierarchies and power structures at work, and make connections amongst all the different spheres of one’s knowledge is a tough prospect. As the scale of the project grows, it becomes less and less likely that all of these skills and knowledge can be embodied in one person. Teams must be put together, and the artist must acquire yet another skill – how to run a working and dynamic organization. Although social practice artists often talk about collaboration (more on that later), it is really organizational practice that forms the infrastructure for massive project production to occur.

Perhaps it is the socio-cultural-spatial-economic building of knowledge, the work with groups of people, the organizational capacity, and the rigorous approach to a problem that distinguishes the social practice artist.

Quickly back to the pedagogical theme of these posts, though, and a final question: How can the academy support this type of knowledge-building for MFAs in social practice programs? What spheres of understanding do they feel are most primary, and how does this privileging reflect the hierarchies within these institutions themselves?

How do you teach someone to be a visionmaker, teacher, communicator, connector, housing expert, engineer, marketing expert, director, and artist all at once in a two-year program?

You don’t, not really. You nurture the desire and hope they can rise to the challenge.

Art and Beer Event at the Portland Museum of Art, Eric Steen

Artist Eric Steen, a recent graduate from the Social Practice MFA program at Portland State University, wrote me the following in an email yesterday:

“In this article by Kristina Lee Podesva, in Fillip Magazine, she mentions that Claire Bishop calls much of the work where artists are turning galleries into bars works that have a “Microtopian Ethos”…saying, “an artist re-purposes [the gallery] as a site of refuge from the real world (even though he or she attempts to recreate social interactions there typically associated with existing places such as the pub or community centre). In this way, this work does not encourage us to strive for a larger utopian goal—such as securing permanent and free communal space—but rather to sit back and enjoy, in whatever way we can, the here and now.”

When I think about my own work, it is the smaller interactions, the ability to build relationships and insert myself into another community that is a more effective process for relaying my ideas to a broader group of people. For me, the small act, the conviviality, the togetherness, are all actions that are activism. It may be quiet, it may be small, it may not impress anyone but the people to which they are directed.”

Mr. Steen’s thoughts got me to thinking about several themes I’d like to explore in the next few posts, including the role of the academy in art production (and society in general), and what Podesva calls “the pedagogical turn in art” – in which educational activities are utilized as artistic processes or products. I find this particularly interesting both in my capacity as an educator at the Hammer Museum and as a former public school teacher. In my present job, I work frequently with undergraduates and graduates studying art (at UCLA in particular, but also many of the other first-class art schools in the Southland). I find quite a rich territory where education and art meet – from the notion of the second-class artist-educator (thanks to artist Liz Glynn for that particular categorization), to the fact that museum education departments are becoming the de facto sites for social practices (i.e. public programs such as MOCA’s Engagement Party series), to the massive output of MFAs across the country each year. What do all of these factors mean to systems and hierarchies of art production? And what does it mean to have such a professionalized MFA program dedicated to Social Practice? (Note: I currently know of three. Otis’s Public Practice MFA, the PSU Program, and CCA’s new MFA concentration in Social Practice).

Mr. Steen, the product of such a program, seems to be rethinking the foundations of relational aesthetics as well as pedagogical practice in his work. Building relationships, sharing ideas, facilitating social interactions. I am immensely curious how his colleagues from PSU are operating, and what similarities might be drawn from their work. How are they analyzing communities, the public, their audience/participants? What are the activist qualities of these “small actions” Mr. Steen speaks of, and is their purpose to impress, or change, or cause revelation, or build connections, or pleasure? Should one measure such effects? How? What are the larger societal concerns and implications of this work? How is the process of social practice production and relevant theory taught?

So many questions. Attempting to address them will require some research on my part, but this wave of new social practice art graduate programs is fascinating, and I will continue to post my thoughts down the line.