Socially Engaged Art
Texts: Elaine Angelopoulos, Laura Dodson, Sabu Kohso, Mario Naves.
Edited by: Effie Halivopoulou.
First published in 2016. This publication is based on research and it is not for commercial use. All authors are responsible for the content of their texts.
© 2016 Effie Halivopoulou, Sabu Kohso, Laura Dodson, Elaine Angelopoulos, Mario Naves.
Introduction
The texts of this anthology were written following discussions with the authors. They were finalized and compiled in June 2016 in New York City. Through a four weeks stay at NYU, I did research on Socially Engaged Art. This was a Scholar-in-Residence program of the Faculty Resource Network. It was also a pre-election period, and the city was vibrating in an air of collective hesitation connected with the post-Obama era.
My understanding of the developments in the field broadened through discussions with Dipti Desai, Director of Art and Education Programs at Steinhardt, and Kathy Engel, Chairperson of Art Public Policy at Tisch College of Art. As a set of ideas and questions regarding the environment in which Socially Engaged Art operates developed during my research in New York, I decided to start collecting opinions. I distributed my schematic texts to my contributors and now share them with the readers of this edition:
Manuel Castells, in his book “Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age” argues that social movements throughout history, usually emerge from a combination of two things: the degradation of living conditions that make the life of the people unbearable, and the deep distrust towards the political institutions that manage people’s lives. Social movements are emotional movements, as emotions are always motivations for human behavior. Anger, fear, anxiety, a sense of rejection or exclusion, as well as euphoria, joy, hope, characterize numerous social movements and bond with actions like solidarity, violence, etc. The collective emotion inherent in social movements triggers creative individuals/artists to become engaged in the creation of projects targeting social change. Through their projects, they amplify social injustice and they use art as a social force. What is the armature that an artist should have when dealing with situations of severe community stress?
On June 12th, an armed man entered a populated nightclub in Orlando and opened fire. Fifty people were gunned down and fifty three were wounded. This was the deadliest mass shooting in the United States and the nations’ worst terror attack since 9/11 (New York Times). The nightclub is a space where gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual people gather to “speak their minds, to advocate their civil rights, to empower their community”, as president Obama stated in his speech addressing the incident. The social networks caught fire, and Facebook users were connected with the victims of the attack. Dancers, vocalists, lovers, musicians: a young, joyful crowd that perished in minutes; a spectacular crowd. It was only a matter of minutes that the meeting point, nightclub Pulse, and the community that was present that night, became a mystified rhizome in cyberspace. A community in space and time that was forced to produce a unique tragedy, one of those that come to reassure that life surpass- es the wildest imagination.
Retroactively, cultural products will spring out of this tragedy, as it always happens in these bigger than life events. A cultural worker could proceed with cautiousness and a sense of responsibility in order to maintain an ethical stance in view of the gravity of the event. But this is not always the case. We have witnessed practitioners who follow global misfortunes in order to gain visibility and a moment of fame. They act as tourists in the pain of others.
What is the fine line that brings socially engaged projects to the surface – becoming important influential practices for the empowerment of the communities involved?
Claire Bishop, in her book “Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship”, argues that political and cultural institutions often embrace participatory art as a form of soft social engineering. Participatory projects, through their experiential regime, expand in time and tend to value what is invisible: a group dynamic, a social situation, a change of energy, a raised consciousness. The unclear, never-ending, oftentimes non-authored nature of a big number of participatory projects is the field of intervention and channeled outcomes, through sponsoring by multinational enterprises and companies, political parties, cultural foundations, etc. How do you react to Bishop’s argument?
Effie Halivopoulou, June 2016, NY
Mario Naves
An artist’s social obligation to the broader culture
As mentioned in our conversations during your stay in New York, this question has been raised repeatedly in my classes at Pratt. Given the state of the world, not to mention the unceasing flow of information we receive from the internet, it’s impossible for any sensitive person not to be burdened by a certain anxiety, as well as feelings of ineffectuality. For those involved in the arts, this can be especially nagging given the intensely personal--i.e., individual--nature of art-making and art’s inherently non-utilitarian nature.
Of course, just how non-utilitarian art might be depends on how one defines it. The concern about what kind of role the arts play in society, whether for good or ill, is ages old. Socrates bemoaned their impact on the polis; Rousseau argued that they caused a weakening of morals; and Stalin felt that art should be controlled, lest it divert attention from the prerequisites of the revolution. These arguments all address, in one way or another, the social or political role of the artist.
The painter Philip Guston, in response to the political and cultural turmoil of the late 1960s, famously asked “What kind of man am I, sitting at home reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue?” The shift Guston made from the shimmering Impressionist abstractions of the 1950s to the cartoonish grotesques of his late period is assumed to be (and not without reason) a response to that question. But anyone who thinks Guston stopped adjusting reds to blues misses a fundamental point: That an artist’s responsibility, above anything else, is to craft coherent works of art--objects that have their own free-standing authority.
This authority doesn’t accrue from political, social or religious impertives, but from artistic form. If anything, Guston’s adjustments of red and blue became more nuanced--more important, really--when he made the turn to figurative art. Which isn’t to say that art can’t address or embody, say, the devotional needs of a given community. The history of world art would, in fact, be considerably poorer without the influence of spirituality. But it’s worth asking why only a handful of paintings of the crucifixion resonate as art--and, remember, there are thousands of paintings of the crucifixion. All of them have the same content--all of them mean the same thing--but most are so-so in quality; some are out- and-out bad. Only some of them are any good as art.
Art can encompass life, but its ultimate value lies in its separateness from life. Art provides wholeness in the face of events beyond our control. Art offers not escape so much as sustenance. Is there any wonder why our cave-dwelling forebears sought to make images in the face of a life dominated largely by brute survival? Viewed in that light, art is hugely utilitarian--psychologically, intellectually, culturally, you name it.
Mario Naves is a critic and a painter who lives in New York
Sabu Kohso
I have the feeling that today the limit of “activism” has become evident
First, I disagree with Castells: the degradation of living conditions and deep distrust towards the political institutions are more or less constant state of this world throughout history, therefore people’s struggles never disappear. Social movements are just one form of the struggles.
This is not a direct answer to the question, but might be relevant: during OWS (Occupy Wall Street), artists, under the name of Occupy Art, used their skills and expressions – their artistic works -- for the cause; and importantly, they also worked with the unions of art handlers (of museums and galleries) and made attempts to physically occupy spaces of art institutions. That is to say, they challenged both art as expression and art as capitalist institution. Artists are also commoners -- workers, students, men and women or both – who share emotions with everyone else – so they should not limit their practices within the acknowledged context of Art Works. Art is indispensable –but not prestigious -- part of the world.
Art is a great thing, but cannot do everything. Art is not equal to justice or revolution, but can be a form of the struggle. I think that, when artists consider their works and themselves as omnipotent, ugliness of their master subjectivity is revealed (like Ai Weiwei). I respect anonymous hackers in this sense.
I have the feeling that today the limit of ‘activism’ has become evident. Activism has played an important role, liberating revolutionary impetus (including affective domains) from authoritarian hierarchy and control of the old time leftism (i.e., Leninism). But now it is unable to fully interact with insurrections that reverberate from France to Brazil, from Rojava to Mexico. It is too institutionalized and self-limiting. As I observe, the connection of art and activism is significant on one hand, but can be a fetter for revolutionary projects on the other. It is high time for art=activism to re-create itself in some way. I would assume that giving up the rubric of Art and doing the same thing as uncategorized action might be one way to understand both the limit and possibilities of the action and empower the practice of art in to it.
Sabu Kohso is a writer and translator who lives in New York
Laura Dodson
The nature of art is self-reflective
The John Grant/Sinead O’Connor song Queen of Denmark begins with the following lyrics: “I wanted to change the world, but I could not even change my underwear”. It is my opinion that the nature of art is self-reflective. For personal expression of private experience to become a convincing broader social statement it has to be organically generated, reflexive in its reaction to the times, fully immersed in the events. As it stands, most victims actively engulfed in social crisis do not have the luxury to make art. For their issues and their condition to become an art movement, third parties usually get involved.
To this effect, in the past few decades, research based social projects have begun to spring up in art institutions. They are often collective efforts, heavily curated and packaged, sponsored and invigorated by corporations, non-profit groups and activist organizations. They focus on injustice, poverty, crime, and the suffering of those individuals and groups who often cannot afford to have a voice. Because such projects are meant to be discursive and participatory, their structure tends to be low brow and embraces the everyday: text, photojournalism, documentary videos, megaphones, town hall meetings, internet links, Facebook pages, pamphlets, posters, more text.
Once art becomes a “project”, it becomes dependent on external agendas and needs to conform to a specific didactic, both in terms of its content and in terms of its presentation. Visuals can certainly be used for propaganda, performances can be staged for the sake of activism, images can be conduits for awareness, but the “art” element in these is secondary to the politics, the journalism, the preaching.
An example that come to mind: The Monument Quilt currently on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art is more convincing as a virulent shout against violence, a call to awareness and a demand for change. Defined by its makers as “a public healing space by and for survivors of rape and abuse”, it is written and painted on red fabric by a collaboration of over 1,000 victims of sex predators. Displayed in 22 different cities across the US, it continues to grow as those affected are encouraged to make a square. When these culminate in 6000 pieces of stitched fabric, the plan is to blanket the mile of Washington DC’s national mall to spell the words “Not Alone.” Like the AIDS Memorial Quilt before it, The Monument Quilt is a socially engaged project with tentacles meant to branch out as well as to unify. It both amplifies and alleviates a singular experience by rendering it plural. It is a public outcry with a private center and it is effective and therapeutic. Then again, is it art? It hangs in a museum, it is useful as outreach, but in my opinion it is not art, nor was that its initial intention.
Martha Rosler’s “If you Lived Here” comes to mind as a second example. One of its offshoots was recently on view in Chelsea’s Mitchell-Innes & Nash Gallery under the title Privatize! Presented by a group called The Temporary Office of Urban Disturbances it hosted a large list of contributors ranging from individual artists to community based coalitions and civic alliances, all of them concerned with facilitating transformative and progressive urban intervention projects. While the activist impulses of the exhibitors should be applauded, the gallery space itself was a ludicrous venue for such an effort. Founded by a power broker duet from Sotheby’s, the gallery is housed in Chelsea under the High Line, Manhattan’s prime example of recent hyper gentrification. The old neighborhood here has been swept under an unparalleled construction boom of high-end developments. The homeless fill the benches of Hudson River Park nearby. Did even one of these dispossessed come to Mitchell-Innes & Nash’s openings? Hardly.
Visual Art has a narrow audience and therefore a limited impact, compared to music for instance, or television and film, which are more populist in their scope. Socially informed visual art may shape-shift itself into accessible, democratic, everyday formats like posters or pamphlets but I would argue that makes it even more pretentious in the context of a cultured or academic environment, where only a sophisticated audience can comprehend it. In such elitist spaces it is in essence preaching to an already liberalized and converted group.
Visual Art has a narrow audience and therefore a limited impact, compared to music for instance, or television and film, which are more populist in their scope. Socially informed visual art may shape-shift itself into accessible, democratic, everyday formats like posters or pamphlets but I would argue that makes it even more pretentious in the context of a cultured or academic environment, where only a sophisticated audience can comprehend it. In such elitist spaces it is in essence preaching to an already liberalized and converted group.
To conclude, while public activist projects can exist in visual form to promote social skepticism and response, they can invariably be reduced in impact when sailing under the flag of “art”. Perhaps they could better serve were they like “Scabby”, the Inflatable Union Rat that materializes on sidewalks across the USA to protest contractors and companies employing nonunion labor. This site-specific giant rodent is very confrontational. Does it satisfy the functions of socially engaged art? Yes, it is meant to promote public awareness and outrage. Does it encourage audience participation and awareness? Yes because passersby collect informational flyers from nearby striking workers at the very spot of the offense. Is it visually arresting? Definitely, Scabby is an eye grabbing show-stopper. Is the rat intended as art, of course not, but it is highly recognized and as a result, much more effective than a Rosler exhibit.
Laura Dodson in an educator and a photographer who lives in New York
Elaine Angelopoulos
Soft engineering, eco conscious approach to change ... exploitative form of labor.
The illusion of change with the masses as a real time effect of socialist realism as a performative experience constructed by well-organized managers and public relations professionals. Bishop’s tone suggests that these funded acts could function as a front or face to the invested interests of enterprises, companies, political parties, cultural foundations, etc. etc.
As I have not read Bishop’s entire book, “Artificial Hells”, but only snippets and the introduction, I am reminded that the chapters focus only on select movements that geographically/culturally exclude the Northern America, particularly the United States. She states clearly the nearly minimal funding that exists for social art projects in the US, and the Labor Party’s open opinion of public art as soft engineering in the United Kingdom. Since this book was published, we have seen the Netherlands drop its entire arts funding into the abyss, and an increase of participatory art as a functioning utility since the significant decline of economies as in Greece, and in Spain.
On a positive perspective, there is something to be said for participa- tory projects. Volunteering to participate in a performance or in a project as a performative gesture or vehicle to envision a specific torque of social change gets people interested in how art is constructed, cutting across the class boundary, for art to be made in a way that reflects the collective. These are methods used historically in volunteer organizations, usually hiring local artists who in turn teaches and cultivates the volunteers to develop basic art making skills and evoke a kind of self-confidence that helps shape cultural codes that would otherwise be forgotten. These constructed social networks have always been a part of local communities as sustenance in difficult times, even to the extent of migrant labor sending financial support from abroad. It’s a set system that as we had experienced in New York after Occupy with Hurricane Sandy devastated the east coast. Occupy members implemented the methods created and maintained during the movement towards people most affected by the hurricane when local, state, and federal support fell short. There are also a few accounts of activist support and a collecting of funds needed for lawsuits, debris removal and even reconstruction for those greatest in need when funding fell short. For those who had electricity and other resources during and after the storm, social networking became a resourceful means to connect persons and places.
When people hear these formal structures from our lips as one that we try to implement in our work, it sounds rather grandiose. Some say that they have been enacting these methods as educator, community activists, and citizens prior to the new trend of “participatory art” and “social engagement”. As an artist who first studied performance art, and art that was trans-disciplinary during the 1980’s that stemmed from its origins in the fluxus movement and the 1960’s, I was fascinated by the documents and the text that remained and described what I couldn’t experience unless the work was re-enacted as a performative. Little did I know that “I had to be there” changed to “make it and they will come”, and that one had to just start meeting to make a movement happen. My emergence into the cross over between art and activism informed my early adult years in New York City. A lot of free labor was invested in exchange to experiences and self-fulfilling growth along with confusing results of strong emotions that in turn took years of head scratching to understand at times if a great impact was made and what caused the disruption, though some have said that this is a natural occurrence with activist minded groups. What remains are memories, ephemera, portions of creative components from collective interactive installations, and media in personal collections and in institutional archives that may or may never see the light of day during our lifetimes unless someone is invested to see it publicly contextualized.
The critique of soft engineering stems from a few factors, some of which proceed the new framing of participatory art as social engagement. Many have pointed out at the formalizing of what became post-modernist critique out of the 80’s cultural politics and aesthetics that seems to state that identity politics exploit activism for the sake of self-reflexivity, that collective action and its formal pursuits are a masque to the personal agendas of visibility and higher platforms of power within the arts and culture. At that time, the NEA individual grants and the grantees were held at extreme scrutiny by republican politicians, a resurgence of evangelical religious morality that made its way into the national stage. Exhibitions by the grantees were held to question to the point of nearly shutting down public access. The arts communities at large converged to retaliate with petitions, meetings, and massive protests. Simultaneous to this faster results to the treatment of AIDS, breast cancer, and to challenge the limits towards birth control and abortion. Coalitions formed across identities, to publicly address the lack of acknowledgement of police brutality, requesting that there at least be a Civil Complaint Review Board on a city council capacity to bring to visibility the mistreatment of persons of color by the police force. Coalitions formed within identified fronts and across to one another in recognition to the lessons learned from seasoned activists on the necessity of a strong enforcement of these rights as necessary civil liberties. Note that this activism was all volunteer efforts with an outcome of establishing inventive methods of self-organizing economics in order to consolidate contributions to maintain the ongoing public relations and effective visuals for the media and the greater public. Eventually non-profits were formed by groups and their mechanisms due to a growing need of managing volunteers and the services that were provided within the organization. This was largely visible for those dying of aids, and for those who were trying to find ways to stay alive. In the midst of this birth of cultural politics, the first invasion of Iraq by the United States was enacted and easily viewable from our living rooms, on television. Perestroika was in the works, the Berlin Wall was collapsed, and students in Tieneman Square were challenging their government with the freedom of speech and visibility of dissent. Soon after this led to the wars within the former regions of Yugoslavia. The activism was hands on, on the street, and hand made, before the gradual decade long boom of the internet.
Greg Scholette’s “Dark Matter” and David Graeber’s “5000 Years of Debt”, the points they make about the erosion of abundant ingenuity through the lack of individual grants by federal funding organizations, and the rechannelling of those funds to powerful non-profit entities. In the case of women, gay women, race politics, we were faced with the separatism that ensued in the 70’s, and thus the guys were still more vocal on the premise of the collective human; this changed at the onset of the 90’s politics with the help of those in the leadership ranks of cultural and academic institutions who were especially confronted with the right wing enforcement.
The internet and telecommunications changed everything. In a sense, the illusion of access to information online that in a sense contributes to the soft activism that can be aligned with Claire Bishop’s perspective. Our email boxes and social networks are flooded with news posts, petitions, and long exchanges proclaiming views like manifests toward change.
Elaine Angelopoulos is an artist and senior administrator at Feldman Fine Art
Laura Dodson in an educator and a photographer who lives in New York
Elaine Angelopoulos
Soft engineering, eco conscious approach to change ... exploitative form of labor.
The illusion of change with the masses as a real time effect of socialist realism as a performative experience constructed by well-organized managers and public relations professionals. Bishop’s tone suggests that these funded acts could function as a front or face to the invested interests of enterprises, companies, political parties, cultural foundations, etc. etc.
As I have not read Bishop’s entire book, “Artificial Hells”, but only snippets and the introduction, I am reminded that the chapters focus only on select movements that geographically/culturally exclude the Northern America, particularly the United States. She states clearly the nearly minimal funding that exists for social art projects in the US, and the Labor Party’s open opinion of public art as soft engineering in the United Kingdom. Since this book was published, we have seen the Netherlands drop its entire arts funding into the abyss, and an increase of participatory art as a functioning utility since the significant decline of economies as in Greece, and in Spain.
On a positive perspective, there is something to be said for participa- tory projects. Volunteering to participate in a performance or in a project as a performative gesture or vehicle to envision a specific torque of social change gets people interested in how art is constructed, cutting across the class boundary, for art to be made in a way that reflects the collective. These are methods used historically in volunteer organizations, usually hiring local artists who in turn teaches and cultivates the volunteers to develop basic art making skills and evoke a kind of self-confidence that helps shape cultural codes that would otherwise be forgotten. These constructed social networks have always been a part of local communities as sustenance in difficult times, even to the extent of migrant labor sending financial support from abroad. It’s a set system that as we had experienced in New York after Occupy with Hurricane Sandy devastated the east coast. Occupy members implemented the methods created and maintained during the movement towards people most affected by the hurricane when local, state, and federal support fell short. There are also a few accounts of activist support and a collecting of funds needed for lawsuits, debris removal and even reconstruction for those greatest in need when funding fell short. For those who had electricity and other resources during and after the storm, social networking became a resourceful means to connect persons and places.
When people hear these formal structures from our lips as one that we try to implement in our work, it sounds rather grandiose. Some say that they have been enacting these methods as educator, community activists, and citizens prior to the new trend of “participatory art” and “social engagement”. As an artist who first studied performance art, and art that was trans-disciplinary during the 1980’s that stemmed from its origins in the fluxus movement and the 1960’s, I was fascinated by the documents and the text that remained and described what I couldn’t experience unless the work was re-enacted as a performative. Little did I know that “I had to be there” changed to “make it and they will come”, and that one had to just start meeting to make a movement happen. My emergence into the cross over between art and activism informed my early adult years in New York City. A lot of free labor was invested in exchange to experiences and self-fulfilling growth along with confusing results of strong emotions that in turn took years of head scratching to understand at times if a great impact was made and what caused the disruption, though some have said that this is a natural occurrence with activist minded groups. What remains are memories, ephemera, portions of creative components from collective interactive installations, and media in personal collections and in institutional archives that may or may never see the light of day during our lifetimes unless someone is invested to see it publicly contextualized.
The critique of soft engineering stems from a few factors, some of which proceed the new framing of participatory art as social engagement. Many have pointed out at the formalizing of what became post-modernist critique out of the 80’s cultural politics and aesthetics that seems to state that identity politics exploit activism for the sake of self-reflexivity, that collective action and its formal pursuits are a masque to the personal agendas of visibility and higher platforms of power within the arts and culture. At that time, the NEA individual grants and the grantees were held at extreme scrutiny by republican politicians, a resurgence of evangelical religious morality that made its way into the national stage. Exhibitions by the grantees were held to question to the point of nearly shutting down public access. The arts communities at large converged to retaliate with petitions, meetings, and massive protests. Simultaneous to this faster results to the treatment of AIDS, breast cancer, and to challenge the limits towards birth control and abortion. Coalitions formed across identities, to publicly address the lack of acknowledgement of police brutality, requesting that there at least be a Civil Complaint Review Board on a city council capacity to bring to visibility the mistreatment of persons of color by the police force. Coalitions formed within identified fronts and across to one another in recognition to the lessons learned from seasoned activists on the necessity of a strong enforcement of these rights as necessary civil liberties. Note that this activism was all volunteer efforts with an outcome of establishing inventive methods of self-organizing economics in order to consolidate contributions to maintain the ongoing public relations and effective visuals for the media and the greater public. Eventually non-profits were formed by groups and their mechanisms due to a growing need of managing volunteers and the services that were provided within the organization. This was largely visible for those dying of aids, and for those who were trying to find ways to stay alive. In the midst of this birth of cultural politics, the first invasion of Iraq by the United States was enacted and easily viewable from our living rooms, on television. Perestroika was in the works, the Berlin Wall was collapsed, and students in Tieneman Square were challenging their government with the freedom of speech and visibility of dissent. Soon after this led to the wars within the former regions of Yugoslavia. The activism was hands on, on the street, and hand made, before the gradual decade long boom of the internet.
Greg Scholette’s “Dark Matter” and David Graeber’s “5000 Years of Debt”, the points they make about the erosion of abundant ingenuity through the lack of individual grants by federal funding organizations, and the rechannelling of those funds to powerful non-profit entities. In the case of women, gay women, race politics, we were faced with the separatism that ensued in the 70’s, and thus the guys were still more vocal on the premise of the collective human; this changed at the onset of the 90’s politics with the help of those in the leadership ranks of cultural and academic institutions who were especially confronted with the right wing enforcement.
The internet and telecommunications changed everything. In a sense, the illusion of access to information online that in a sense contributes to the soft activism that can be aligned with Claire Bishop’s perspective. Our email boxes and social networks are flooded with news posts, petitions, and long exchanges proclaiming views like manifests toward change.
Elaine Angelopoulos is an artist and senior administrator at Feldman Fine Art
