IMLab Summer Workshop. Photo Courtesy UCLA IMLab.
For the next in this series of interviews in conjunction with the SOCiAL: Art + Peopleinitiative of public programs, I sat down with Anne Bray (artist, organizer of SOCiAL and founder of LA Freewaves) and Fabian Wagmister (director of the Interpretive Media Laboratory, IMLab). Long-time collaborators and innovators in the use of new media to foster collective creativity, Anne and Fabian spoke about the roots of their practices in leveraging a rapidly changing media landscape to enhance a connection to place, foster dynamic community development, and create generative, civically-engaged networks in Los Angeles. They will be joined by fellow artists Pedro Joel Espinosa (IDEPSCA’s Mobile Voices), Vicki Callahan (USC IML), Micha Cardenas, and Shagha Ariannia (Long Story Short) in a panel and discussion at Chiparaki on Saturday, November 3rd at 1pm.
Sue Bell Yank: I think it would be helpful to get some background on LA Freewaves, and UCLA IMLab, what your overlapping interests are in terms of interactive media, and what you hope to explore in this panel.
Fabian Wagmister: The Interpretive Media Laboratory, which IMLab stands for, is a project of REMAP, The Center for Research, Engineering, Media and Performance here at UCLA. Fundamentally it focuses on collective creativity and participatory design as a way to bridge communities with a public design process for their own neighborhoods. So we’re very interested in finding a dynamic, fluid, meaningful process by which residents of a neighborhood engage the public process in terms of what’s happening to the neighborhood. We specifically focus on Northeast Downtown at this point, because we have a base there, which is Chiparaki (where this event will take place), and because we have established a partnership with California State Parks in relation to the Los Angeles State Historic Park. Largely the two concepts, really that are connected, is this idea of collective creativity. So we look at the community not so much as providers of content for us to make things about, but as the creators instead. We are interested in creating cultural architectures where that can take place. So the gathering of media, data, all the ways to find out visual expression, we release the power into the group that is doing it. Generally we do this in the context of engaged civic research, in that basically we look at mobile devices and technology as a research tool for the community, to use it to analyze what a particular public project is proposing, and then do what we call “citizen science.” This is to go out into the community and document the reality, and see to what extent it reflects, matches, or that the plan being proposed serves the needs of the community. Usually, similar to these other projects, we provide groups with the technological infrastructure to go out into the community and basically we look at the cell phone as a magnifying glass, as a sound analysis tool. We use sensors and additional technology depending on what people are trying to study. It’s not so much about making images–even images for us is a form of data that then people keyword, categorize, and it’s a way of thinking about their own environment.
For example, a recent project, we did a Summer Institute for high school students from high schools specifically around Northeast LA. For six weeks they gathered data from their own neighborhoods and then they were introduced to statistical analysis of that data so they could learn what does this data say about my neighborhood. They focused on a multiplicity of projects including sound pollution, to history awareness of their neighbors, to what extent are people aware of the history of their neighborhood, to a number of other things.
Read the rest of the interview here.
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.
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.