• Preface: What it is and how we did it
• Introduction
• Open Engagement: Making Things. Making Things Better. Making Things Worse.
• A Tracing, Socially
• Draft of a manifesto written in defense of a group of people that did not ask for my defense, using words they would not use and engaging people they ignore
• This is the End: Death and other Sensory Thresholds
• On the Discourse of Ethics in Socially Engaged Art Practice
• Are You Lonely? Make Art For Your Friends
• Interaction! Participation! Engagement! Production
• On Collaborating Within the M.O.S.T. (2003-2008)
• The Politics of Friendship, Or, Who Your Friends Should Be. An Interview with Matthew David Rana and Rick Butler
• On Multi-Tasking
• Making Things Better
• Me, Her and Us: Mapping Displacement with Anna Martine and Mary Anne Brooks at Open Engagement
• You Need To Have That Feeling That Anything's Possible
• Social Practice Art and Tech-Nihilism
• The Persistent Complicity of Heterogeneity
• Squirming
• Don't Just Invite Me To Dinner
• Open Engagement: A Toast to Access and Inclusion
• Thoughts On Social Practice Art
• Before, During, and After
• What is Public Art and Who is Your Public?
• From Every Angle
• What I remember about the video of John Paul II Marina Abramovic showed @ Reed in 2006
• What is there to dance about?
• Global Yawning Manifesto
• Interview: Musician, Movement Artist, Designer
• Clothing Musicians
• No Art But Class War
• Mirror Neurons to the Mona Lisa
• Fragments and Tangents
• Before
• Texts: What we are thinking about when we're thinking about Open Engagement
• After
• Contributors
• Appendix: The Back Channel
• Bibliography

Thoughts On Social Practice Art

Scott Wayne Indiana

As far as I'm concerned, Duchamp had it right with his idea of art, as was already mentioned in this OPEN piece. To paraphrase, he said that, 1) someone posits something as art, and, 2) someone perceives it as art. For myself, I'd like to think I have distilled Duchamp's definition to an even more refined idea about art: if something is perceived as art, it's art. Whether or not a thing was made as art doesn't interest me as much as perceiving something as art. Consequently, as I go through the world, I tend to perceive most things in an art context. And when I say most things, I mean everything. This begs the question, isn't that just the definition of reality? Answer: yes. My perception of reality has merged with my perception of art. I like it this way. I have the license as an individual to think of art in this way. No one can tell me I'm wrong about that in the same way that no one can tell me I'm wrong about my idea of love. And, I'd never tell anyone else they're wrong about that which they perceive as art. (Note: when someone tells me I'm wrong about whether or not something is art, I always find that to be a pretty interesting art moment.)

I include that introductory piece in an effort to express that thinking of any sort of social practice thing as art should never be a stretch for anyone. Why would it be? For me, it is especially the case that things people have a hard time perceiving as art are the most interesting pieces of art.

And, this same concept bleeds over into thinking about what is, and what isn't, social practice? Further, what is it like to make it? Or, what is it like to collaborate. All of these sorts of ideas immediately pigeonhole social practice and place it in a box whereby my very next thought is to think about social practice that isn't in that box. In other words, I really take issue with anyone talking about any sort of art with any sort of authority, unless they are a craft person, which is an entirely different discussion. Perhaps this OPEN document is about the craft of social practice. However, I simply want to include my two cents which is that with all of art, including social practice, I am more interested in the spontaneous art act than the practiced craft. I have come to understand the value in developing skills and craft in an art context, or in any context, but I do not perceive these sets of skills as the essence of what I perceive as art. Obviously, if I perceive everything as art, which I have already stated, then I do perceive developed skills as art, but again, I first perceive the concept and then consider the expression, skillfully crafted or otherwise. Craft will always come second to concept, even if the craft carries the concept, which is often the case when good craft is on exhibition. (i.e. the history of art before 1900 and much art afterward.)

Consequently, if someone is new to social practice art, I'd hesitate to create an OPEN document with the intention of formulating an idea of what social practice art is. I think it's far more interesting to start perceiving much of reality as social practice. Standing in line. Being in jail. Driving on the freeway. Tying horses to rings. Gathering with family. Breaking a bone. Etc. There is no boundary around art. Anyone who wants to make anything and call it social practice is completely licensed to do so, just by being alive.

If you want to make a document about what's interesting social practice, and what's marketable social practice, and all that, then this is a different story. But i don't see any sort of difference between that conversation and any other conversation about what's marketable and popular.

Lastly, I don't mean to step into this written experiment to blast it. I think it's great to talk about things and consider them; it's one of the things I have always enjoyed most. But, I also see it as a dangerous circle to get wrapped into. I much prefer freeing up ideas about art, and then launching into idea making from that as a starting point, rather than thinking about the boxes that things must be contained in. So, my two cents to anyone reading this would be to take everything you can from this text, and then try to make things that, 1) you like, and as a supplementary piece of motivation, 2) make things that these authors have stated to certainly not be social practice.