I don't think that it's fair to ask Social Practice artists to justify what they do as art. Rather, I honestly believe that regardless of the shape or form a practice takes, if an artist intends it to exist within the context of art, then we owe it to that artist to at least entertain the idea and diligently engage with it. That said, I also believe that the artist owes it to us to engage us by utilizing devices that we understand as being related to art. Primarily, what I'm alluding to is a conscious and intentional utilization of aesthetics. One of the pitfalls that I often see in socially engaged art is that while a sincere desire to provoke discourse and thought is considered, aesthetics are overlooked. One of the most important parts of "Relational Aesthetics," to me, is Bourriaud's insistence that if an artist wants us to critique or understand a social situation, a happening or an event as a piece of art, then said artist has to be willing to have it examined using the lens of aesthetics. However, this is not a prescriptive demand - aesthetics, like ethics, cannot be viewed in a binary fashion. Meaning, there does not exist a set standard for what counts as effective or poor aesthetics. Levels of taste account for much of what we visually respond to, but those levels do not necessarily account for an objective reading of whether or not a piece of work is aesthetically successful. What I like to look at or what gives me a sense of satisfaction is irrelevant. What is more important is whether or not a work of art, be it a protest poster wheat-pasted to the side of a government building or an artist dinner focused on exposing participants to locally-grown foods, affects me in a fashion that gives me pause for consideration. I want to have my paradigm shifted when I experience art. I want to wonder if my own opinions, my own beliefs, my own standards of decency even, are sound. When I was in graduate school, I served as a Teacher's Assistant for Victor Maldonado who once said something that I find both incredibly amusing and terribly profound. We were discussing the difficulty that some viewers have engaging new forms of art (socially-themed public happenings, offensive performances, etc...), and Victor said to me, "Art should get you off. It should either make you horny, or completely piss you off." That seemed pretty astute to me, despite the obvious crudeness in its dialect and hyperbolic nature. But its simplicity is why it stuck. This response, this natural arousal or aversion resulting from a particular piece of art, is what keeps me looking. On any given day, what turns me on or offends me might be different, but that is exactly the type of paradigm shifting experience that I'm talking about when I demand something of art.
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And yet you aren't interested in allowing your paradigm to be shifted in order to appreciate a social/engaged/participatory work because "aesthetics are overlooked" in such work. I propose that interaction and participation (as I mentioned briefly and inadequately above, in "Squirming") demand their own set of aesthetic standards. You want pretty? Go look at a painting. You want a room to feel like a perfectly designed installation? Go to the museum. You want to create an environment where people will interact, possibly in directed ways, possibly not? Then talk to a performer or social practice artist who is *willing* to sacrifice the generally accepted and appreciated "aesthetic" forms of presentation that can *get in the way of* the actual interaction, collaboration, and participation at the core of their work.
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Please let's think about how "social practice art," as people are struggling to define it, is not the same as "socially-engaged art." Leon Golub, Nancy Spero, the Mexican Muralists, Goya and a long, long list of others thoughout history made work that engaged viewers socially and politically and invited their (cognitive, emotional) "participation."
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Would you like to elaborate? In your opinion, what is the line between social practice art and socially engaged art? What is the line between the kind of cognitive and emotional "participation" that arises in the usual situation of 1) artist makes art-thing; 2) artist makes art-thing publicly available; 3) audience witnesses pre-existing art-thing and "participate" by reacting or cogitating ... versus a social practice and/or participatory piece wherein the audience/participants actually make or shape the work as it is being created? And how are we, these days, delineating social practice from other types of participatory artwork and participatory performance? To me, it seems like how my fellow artists and art fans talk about social practice has changed, congealed, settled up a great deal in the last few years; as though the rules of engagement are finally in place. I'm not sure if there is a definitive source, a canonical definition we're supposed to be looking to now. Do you?
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The point is I don't think there should be, and I am suspicious about efforts to make boundaries that don't really exist. My opinion is that there is not a consistent, identifiable, identifying line between social practice art, socially-engaged art and many other labels that we give to work (dematerialized or not) that seeks to shake things up. I'd just like us to keep in mind that there is art that is socially engaged that would not fit most people's current definition of social practice. [more later, have to go now]
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My own morals and levels of taste are malleable. Further, what I respond to aesthetically shifts radically on a pretty regular basis. So, if I attend an artist dinner, I don't expect to be wowed by a considered selection of dinner ware that visually engages me. Rather, I'm expecting that the aesthetics of the experience will have been considered. What is the composition of the room? Is there a balance of individuals on hand who will provide a critical and meaningful experience? (Or is everybody at the dinner here to pat backs, give high-fives and make the "author" feel validated?).
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I like that kind of experience, too... but what happens if we allow that interaction itself is an artistic tool that requires years of skill and rigor to develop? Should your visual art notions about room composition somehow trump the live-experience-interactive-artist's concerns, which focus on other matters? Should I judge your paintings or photography on the basis of your choreographic skill?
As an artist, I'm going to look at these things and be highly conscious of them from the moment that an experience begins. Part of my own suspicion when it comes to Social Practice is not that I don't think art can affect change, but that I'm often under the impression that the artist is not willing to take responsibility for the residual effects of a given piece. Also, there exists a lot of "feel-good" aspects to many of these endeavors that seem troubling to me. A significant amount of things in my life already serve in giving me a sense of wholesomeness, happiness or pleasure. I don't need art to do that for me. My aforementioned fascination with the idea of art either making me hot or making me angry is not equal with my feeling good or upset. On the contrary, these are essentially different emotional responses to a situation. In the same fashion that I eschew prescribing a set of specific aesthetic standards to anyone's practice, I expect an artist to offer a reciprocal respect in not assuming that he or she knows how to make me happy. Not all socially engaged art attempts to do this - just the ineffective, flaccid and boring kind. If I participate in a Social Practice piece, and I mean participate in that I am not a viewer or the author, but a willing participant, I expect to be affected. However I interpret a particular work is indeed in some capacity out of the artist's hands, but that does not imply that he or she cannot anticipate a likely response on my part. *****TO BE CONTINUED****
This adds to the idea I've been playing with. Couldn't all 'good' art be considered a social practice? With your definition of good art, its is essentially something that causes a reaction. Work that initially begins as a social commentary might not succeed simply for the lack of personal reaction, while a piece that was created as a release that successfully causes a reaction is a social piece.
Where does the intention of artist come in here? I am wondering about examples for the scenario "a piece that was created as a release that successfully causes a reaction is a social piece." Perhaps the Illegal Art exhibition illustrates this, such as Todd Haynes "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story." This work has become an interesting case study for the appropriation / copyright conversation, the same is true of Diana Thorneycroft drawings in that exhibit.
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Intentionality is overrated, over-discussed, over-required. Reading and writing grant applications and artists' statements and MFA work brings it home. Makes me want to weep. If you're genuinely open to the strange and exhilarating possibilities of process, transformation, and revelation, Intention must often be sacrificed. At least, it must be made malleable. It must be allowed to roam vague and mysterious lands.
That's what makes the world freakin' awesome. We *don't* know what's going to happen next. Our creations aren't entirely linear, they don't fall neatly into their adorable cubbyholes and stay there for life. The instant our objects, words, videos, and gestures enter public space, they become something new and different. Over-directing them, forcing them to adhere to a preconceived statement we pinned to the wall, can suck the life out of creativity AND out of that moment of public interaction. Same thing can happen with over-directing the audience/observer/participant's response by conjuring a statement after we've made the initial work but before the public has approached the work (and sometimes we *know* that our Artist's Statement is 50% bullshit).
Yet this is how we judge—and fund—the arts.
"What was your intention?" Maybe there's something to be learned from the crafts or from more old-fashioned approaches to art. "My intention was TO MAKE A BASKET, ya jerk." Or: "My intention was to find out what happens when you put five people in the dark for 5 hours and play covers of Olivia Newton John songs on a harmonica."
When is a cigar just a cigar? When is a basket just a basket? Why can't basket-ness be enough for us? Why the social change message attached to everything? I want a basket, damn it! But a basket that's really a metaphor for the civil war in Albania probably gets put in a better gallery, and costs more. Hm.
Then again, it's just plain scary to be genuinely open to the vagaries of experimentation, of process-based work, of real improvisation. Drop the facade of deliberate, honed intentionality and you can lose direction, lose the excuse you give yourself and the outside world for why, exactly, you're being self indulgent enough to undertake this crazed artistic process. Stray too far and you may end up nowhere, in the dark, shivering, hungry: scared. That experience may or may not bring you to some great artistic or life moment. To live and work past the boundaries of a more obvious and shaped intentionality is to allow for the possibility that the work you're making right now might not make the cut. It might be complete bollocks. And that's scary to face.
When making open-process work, that everyone can see while you're flailing around, it's more convenient to have an obvious, Elevator Speach kind of intention to hang things on. Same goes for time-based pieces with volatile tendencies --- social practice being an example, because hey, even in today's trained audiences you don't *really* know what the hell people are *really* gonna do at your dinner party that is actually an artistic exploration of the Wobblies or free love or whatever.
Working with vague intentions, formless and weird and ineffable things, stuff that burbles up from your stomach, your heart, your genitals, your intuition: it's hard enough to let yourself go there in the first place. Harder still to show it to other people without wrapping it up with ribbons and bows, bells and whistles, artists' statements and proclamations. Do we have room for a loose intentionality, a process-based focus that barely deserves the label "intentional?"
Why are we so obsessed with the artist's intention, anyway? Is that a necessary outgrowth of conceptual art? --TLB
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Boy, I'm a little scared to get out of the kiddie pool I was splashing around in by myself down below, and I've got to admit that I might be a little too short to be permitted to this ride, but I digress, and I'm going to throw out some thoughts. Intention seems important to me; even if you're just trying to make a vase, you first must have the intention to make a vase. And if you're adding a design to that vase, that's a deeper intention as well. Going further, if you want there to be actual meaning behind that vase design - say, to tell a story about your Grecan wrestling matches or whatever - then there's a further level of intention. I'll take it one step further and speculate that maybe you want to tell more than the story of your Grecan wrestling match, and your intention is to persuade people that Grecan wrestling matches are totally radical, or maybe you want to convey it as a parable for the struggle of being alive or whatevs. So in my mind, there is always an intention in creating a piece, and I think the more involved a piece is the reason to wonder about the intention of the piece becomes more valid. Keeping with this analogy, I think aesthetics and craft are also important components here; did the sculptor of the vase have the skill and vision to create it in such a way that the intention of his message is clear? (Maybe he doesn't care that it's not clear.) If the ability to craft the desired result doesn't exist, that's a problem. If the sculptor has taken into account or anticipated the aesthetics of his intended audience, then that's going to be a problem in conveying any intent as well.
So maybe he's done all of this and he's thought of all of this, and he puts it out on a pedestal for everyone to check out. What are the reactions? Maybe the first person walks by and thinks,"Hey, that's a pretty sweet vase," and that's it. A second person stops by - this person is the sculptor's intended audience - and thinks,"WHOA, OMG! THIS IS ABOUT THE STRUGGLE OF BEING ALIVE OR WHATEVS." And that person is Victor Maldando's turned on audience member. I'm going to walk by and think,"Huh, a vase. I'm not really into vases." Maybe the next guy walks by and thinks,"Sweet! I needed something to hold all this wine, and this vase looks pretty good." And the guy takes off with it and has a nice vase for his wine. Once that vase is out in the world, it's all subjective; the only objectivity that be made is the factual: it is a vase, it is on a pedestal, it has a design on it. Trying to even describe the design is a subjective act because it relies on interpretation instead of obective facts.
So I'm thinking now about the person creating relational art/social practice/your-name-for-it-here. I think their first intent is their medium, or method of engagement. Let's say they decide on the above-referenced dinner. And the intent of the dinner is engage about something, I don't know, maybe the fabric of the community or something. So that's kind of the design. And then, maybe they've invited specific people that they think are somehow representative of the "fabric of the community". Maybe they went so far as to think about what sort of conversations might happen, and how that could be facilitated; the artist arranges people in certain seating positions. These are all of the artist's intentions, and again, the craft and aesthetics are going to come into play as well - the person has to set it up in a way that this intended audience is going to see the "fabric of community". The artist is working on guesses and assumptions about his argument.
The dinner happens, and the reactions are as diverse as the reactions to the vase were. One guest is a personal friend of the artist and doesn't "get" it but says,"Yeah, that dinner was really fun! And the food was good!" Another guest is impressed,"Ostensibly it was just a dinner, but it was really about how the community is a weave of people! I love that artist!" Another guest is upset that they weren't turned on or turned off, "It wasn't visceral enough! There was a lot of back-slapping of the artist going on there." Someone else felt it wasn't challenging. I didn't show up at all, because I don't care for the medium.
Art is a transaction of ideas and emotions, and it's rarely an equitable one; how often does the artist feel like their work was appreciated and understood, and how often does an audience member feel like they liked and understood everything by the artist? Maybe the artist wants to evoke that visceral feeling, or maybe they want to evoke something pensive; either way, they have little control over how the audience is going to receive what they're offering - it's too subjective. I think an artist statement is only a tool that helps shape the nature of a piece; it can be descriptive and provide insight, or be (intentionally or not) opaque, or it can be used as a framework to guide the audiences expectations and behaviors in advance of the piece. -KS
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