Patrick Rowe
November 8, 2013
Chapter 1 Introduction and Methodology
Chapter 2 Literature Review
Chapter 3 Context (specific artists and collectives and your place within these fields)
Try to add a few sub-titles where you think it makes sense so that you break up the long
passages of narrative for the reader.
Evolution of Social Practice: 1970-Present
Social practice and socially engaged art are terms commonly used today to
describe art projects that hover between different disciplines or fields of knowledge.
These projects usually involve direct participation and social cooperation. Crossing into
other disciplines they challenge arts autonomy as a discourse. The line between art and
life are blurred. The development of this practice is rooted in the late 1960’s as artists
began moving into the realm of everyday life and civic engagement. Artists have
continued to move further into everyday life, breaking down the barriers between artist
and audience, and initiating socially engaged projects with the goal of confronting
political issues and strengthening communities.
The conversations and debates surrounding social practice and socially engaged
art have led to countless books and articles over the past 10 years. Art historians and art
critics have tried to create a framework to distinguish this kind of practice from others.
Art historian Miwon Kwon’s contribution to the field, One Place after Another: Site-
specific Art and Locational Identity (2002), critiques process based community art
through the evolution of site-specific art. This text provides a framework for a type of
practice where the process is the central aesthetic of the work. In the book Kwon
challenges this position on an ethical basis. The process as central aesthetic paradigm is
the focus of Grant Kester’s critique of collaborative art. Kester’s book, The One and the
Many: Contemporary Colaborative Art in a Global Context (2011) supports dialogic art
and collaborative art practice. His analysis of 2 paradigms, the textual and the
collaborative, serve to distinguish projects that have socially beneficial outcomes and
unfold over time through collaboration from those that rest on the modernist and avantgarde position of disruption and ironic detachment. Along similar lines, Queens Museum
director and art historian Tom Finkelpearl’s book What We Made: Conversations on Art
and Social Cooperation (2013) traces the history of socially cooperative art from the civil
rights movements of the 1960’s and the feminist movements of the 1970’s to our
contemporary time. Like Kester, Finkelpearl draws a distinction between cooperative
artist practice and relational symbolic practices. Rather than relying on conventional
signification, disruption, and autonomy, socially cooperative artwork intersects with other
disciplines to provide socially beneficial outcomes and possibilities for art. Art historian
and critic Claire Bishop takes a decidedly different position on the topic of socially
engaged art in her book Artificial Hells (2012). Bishop favors the disruptive, believes in
the autonomy of art, and questions the significance of artwork that does not antagonize,
basing her analysis on the traditions of the avant-garde and performance art. She does
however champion the concept of collaboration and the pedagogic approach with her
analysis of Tania Bruguera’s Arte de Conducta in Havana, Cuba. The pedagogic
approach that is essential to most cooperative and collaborative art projects is further
explored by artist and educator Pablo Helguera in his book Education for Socially
Engaged Art (2011) Like Kester and Finkelpearl, Helguera posits that socially engaged
artists work across disciplines and that they enter various discursive fields, like pedagogy
and educational science, during the process of making their art. Helguera elaborates on
the concept of pedagogy within the work of artists for whom process is the central
aesthetic.
In her introduction to One Place After Another, Kwon describes the redefining of
the art-site relationship that has occurred over the past 50 years. She argues that sitespecificity, rooted in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, has been redefined in various ways
by contemporary artists. These artists define site as , “context specific, debate-specific,
audience-specific, community-specific, project-based” (2). This destabilizing of the site
comes out of debate surrounding special politics – “ideas about art, architecture, and
urban design, on the one hand, and theories of the city, social space, and public space, on
the other” (3). Kwon describes a trend as she sees it in projects that expand out into the
public realm, projects that are “dispersed across much broader cultural, social, and
discursive fields, and organized intertextually through the nomadic movement of the
artist.” From this point, Kwon is able to posit that a new type of practice, “community
artistic praxis, as opposed to community based art” has emerged. Written in 2002, this
description would appear to relate to what critics and historians would later refer to as
social practice, participatory art, or socially engaged art.
In The One and the Many (2011), art historian Grant Kester critiques
collaborative art practice, a continuation of his previous work on art and the dialogic
process. The book focuses on “site-specific collaborative projects that unfold through
extended interaction and shared labor, and in which the process of participatory
interaction itself is treated as a form of creative praxis” (9). Kester believes this turn
represents a paradigm shift in artist practice.
Kester asks the basic question “why are artists collaborating?” and asks the subquestions: what is art when it gets blended with other disciplines? What forms of
knowledge do these types of practices generate? How do we criticize art like this, and if
the process is the art what methods do we use to critique it? These questions are similar
to A. Downey’s and C. bishops and will be discussed in detail later. Kester identifies a
paradigm shift that follows political global change (the negative effects of neoliberalism
and the optimism of global political renewal) – the shift to disavow the authorial position
of the artist, the move toward collaboration and participation, and the “increasing
permeability between “art” and other zones of symbolic production” (7). Kester sees this
contemporary shift as being similar to art made during previous moments of social crises
(progressive era, depression, 1960’s).
According to Kester, while the traditional definition of collaboration might be 2
artists working together to create a virtual third artist, the type we see today involves the
artist (the one) as the “locus of creative transformation” (2) (with the many). To construct
his textual paradigm, Kester offers up a definition for modernism. Modernism is referred
to as an ongoing project that brought about the move toward singular genius but also the
gradual erosion of the authorial position of the artist. The condition of modern art is the
same in many ways to contemporary SEA and collaborative practice: “The ability of
aesthetic experience to transform our perceptions of difference and to open space for
forms of knowledge that challenge cognitive, social, or political conventions (12). The
term textual art is often used by Kester to refer to object making and event making that is
intended to be shown to a viewer. Textual Politics refers to the process of reading or
decoding work “insulated from the exigencies of practice or direct action” (14).
Chapter 1 focuses on the re-articulation of aesthetic autonomy as art practices
parallel, overlap with, and challenge other fields of cultural production. The chapter looks
at the artist’s personality vs. autonomy and the implications of this on collaborative
practice. The chapter also discusses the idea of Textual Politics and the ways in which
work is read and experienced.
Chapter 2 begins with the question, “What forms or knowledge are catalyzed in
collaborative interaction?” (15) “How do they differ from the insights generated through
the specular experience provided by object-based practices? (15). The chapter also looks
at rural/urban dichotomy, global dialogic practices, and the discourse of “development”.
Chapter 3 looks at Collaborative art and the image of urban renewal/regeneration
and how artists also work to reclaim urban space and go against gentrification and
displacement. Here again is the question of agency, identity, and labor.
Queens Museum director and art theorist Tom Finkelpearl enters the conversation
through the lens of community based practice or “social cooperation.” Finkelpearl wrote
What we Made (2013) to confront the fact that many artists consider their work to be
cooperative – that is what they do as their art. The process is the central aesthetic.
Examples are given to illustrate the difference between relational/participatory art
practice and social cooperation. According to Finkelpearl, social cooperation is defined
as work that is dialogically based and created collaboratively. In essence the work is
made by the group.
Finkelpearl sets up the context for what he calls the art of social cooperation
through the American framework. He breaks it down into evolving categories beginning
with the social movements of the 1960’s, civil rights and community organizing, and “the
Movement and participatory democracy”, elements of which culminate in performance
based activism. Finkelpearl claims that the 1960’s counter institutions and community
organizing models, and art practices (like Fluxus/Kaprow/Beuys) that were outright
performative, participatory, and conscious-raising, plus the influence of theory from
Europe that arrived in the 1980’s and the culture wars of the 1980’s, culminated in what
we now recognize as cooperative art. The rapid rise of artists like Theaster Gates and the
myriad books on the subject of this kind of practice, suggest that the art establishment is
finally opening their eyes to it.
After analyzing community organizing practices and social movements,
Finkelpearl takes a look at the pioneers of American cooperative art. Within his
description the concept of experimental pedagogy is discussed. Kaprow’s “Project Other
Ways” is described as progressive participatory education that begins to take on the
dialogic model. But while Kaprow wanted to “play with the world” others wanted to
change it (22) – leading to projects like Tim Rollins and K.O.S.
The Public art Movement of the 1990’s is also described as a watershed moment
in the development of art and social cooperation. Finkelpearl takes the same route as
Kwon in arriving at conclusions regarding the significance of “Culture in Action” and its
reception in the art world. Finkelpearl later moves on to the subject of relational
aesthetics and Bourriaud. Perhaps most important is his description of Bishops postBourriaud remark. Basically he thinks that the post-Bourriaudian might want to engage in
direct social cooperation rather than relational kinds of work.
Finkelpearl also describes the concept of alternative forms of exchange and
reciprocity - as well as collectives and a description of exchanging with social life as the
medium of expression.
In her book Artificial Hells (2012), Art historian Claire Bishop concentrates on
what she calls participatory works, where “people constitute the central artistic medium
and material, in the manner of theatre and performance” (2). Rather than looking at work
that is simply “relational” she looks at work that is participatory as a politicized working
process. She also concentrates on Europe, and on the relationship between participatory
art and “Marxist and post-Marxist writing on art as a de-alienating endeavor that should
not be subject to the division of labor and professional specialization” (3). Bishop refers
to the social turn as a turn back to the social and the historic avant-garde, positing that the
fall of communism in 1989 was a major “point of transformation” in this turn.
In her critique of participatory art, Bishop favors the disruptive, the provocative.
She chooses to relate participatory art to the historic avant-garde and performance art. For
Bishop, participatory art or socially engaged art is defined as art fused with social praxis,
however she prefers the criticality and aesthetic of antagonism to cooperation.
Through the lens of participatory art, Bishop examines, “the tensions between
quality and equality, singular and collective authorship, and the ongoing struggle to find
artistic equivalents for political positions” (3). Bishop primarily looks at theatre as she
believes that theatre and performance are crucial in the encounter that takes place in
participatory art. This position sets Bishop apart in that she is most interested in
participatory art that is provocative – again a return to the historic avant-garde.
In part 1, The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents, Bishop makes
reference to Kwon’s idea of site-specific art practice and social engagement, or rather the
“site” itself as social engagement, the paradigm that her thesis arrives at. Socially
engaged art is today’s avant-garde, the carrying out of the modernist goal to blur art and
life. In essence socially engaged art has the potential to re-humanize. However, given
these criteria, every socially engaged art project could be called good. As a critic, Bishop
is interested in how socially engaged art can be critiqued as art. She designates two
“areas” of thought on the subject: Non-Believers: Aesthetes who reject this work as
marginal, misguided, and lacking artistic interest of any kind and Believers: Activists
who reject aesthetics questions as synonymous with cultural hierarchy and the market.
Bishop wonders if there can be some middle ground. Many of the artists engaged
in the social turn value the process over the product – or means without ends. In engaging
others, aesthetic judgments would seem overtaken by ethical criteria. Bishop gives the
example of the Turkish Oda Projesi, which is devoid of recognizable aesthetics
intentionally – because they are seen as dangerous. Bishop in turn asks if they are
dangerous shouldn’t they be used? In any event the projects discussed (including Thomas
Hirshorn) illustrate how aesthetic resolution is sidelined in favor collaboration with the
community. She references Kester and his writing on dialogic art, which moves away
from “sensory” and towards discursive exchange and negotiation”. Communication in
this case is an aesthetic form (similar to Bruguera’s aesthetics as transformation).
Bishop favors the provocation – a turn back toward the historical avant-garde that the work might accept a level of the absurd and eccentric. She goes on to describe
several projects by Phil Collins, Artur Zmijewski, and Carson Holler. In these cases the
artists venture into the darker side – or antagonism. In one example, Jeremy Deller’s
Battle or Orgreave (2001), a reenactment project, engages a community by actually reopening an old wound rather than “healing it” directly.
Bishop references French Theorist Jacques Renciere, for whom art operates as
removed from rationality while blurring art and life. In the final analysis, art that contains
with in it these contradictions and the dark side – the aesthetic and not purely good or
self-sacrificing – can allow us to confront more difficult things. “Untangling the knot – or
ignoring it by seeking more concrete ends for art is slightly missing the point, since the
aesthetic is, according to Racier, the ability to think contradiction: The productive
contradiction of arts relationship to social change, characterized precisely by that tension
between faith in arts autonomy and belief in art as inextricably bound to the promise of a
better world to come.” In other words, the disruptions created by artists can show us how
we might live differently.
Artist and educator Pablo Helguera enters the conversation through education
with a desire to discuss the nuances of what he calls socially engaged art. His short
handbook Education for Socially Engaged Art (2011) is meant to serve as a guide for
those interested in learning about the genre. The book is divided into useful sections with
mostly theoretical perspectives on socially engaged art. Helguera defines socially
engaged arr in the United States as a genre that emerged out of Allen Kaprow’s work in
the late 1960’s and developed along with feminist art and criticism taking on pedagogic
characteristics. Helguera, like Bishop, describes SEA as “performance in the expanded
field”. To understand socially engaged art, Helguera argues, you have to have an
understanding of “pedagogy, theater, ethnography, anthropology, and communication,
among others”. As Helguera is an artist and educator he takes on an educational approach
in writing this “handbook”. Helguera posits that socially engaged artists work across
disciplines, that they enter various discursive fields during the process of making their
art. Like other authors he is concerned with separating symbolic practices like relational
aesthetics from socially engaged art.
Socially Engaged Art: The Local and Global Contexts and an American Framework
The discussion of a disruption vs. cooperation in socially engaged art, as reflected in the
positions of Bishop, Kester, Finkelpearl, and to some extent Helguera, are further
discussed in terms of their local and global contexts as well as European and American
frameworks. Kester offers examples of where the global meets the local in somewhat
uncomfortable ways in the Chapter The Genius of the Place from his book The One and
the Many (2011). Finkelpearl and kester discuss this concept further in What We Made
(2013). Finkelpearl also develops what he calls an American Framework for art and
social cooperation, rooted in the developments of the civil rights movement and
community organizing.
Kester uses the example of Francis Alys’s, When Faith Moves Mountains, to
better understand collaboration as a form of artistic production. This piece, according to
art critics, fits within the local and global context. The participants are from Peru and
they shovel sand in a futile effort to move a massive sand dune that stands high above a
shantytown. The piece is a critique of modernization (the usual critique offered up by
Alys in his projects) and failure is part of the poetic symbolism of the work. Critics
however state that the “local” participants experience the forming of community, the
“spirit of conviviality”, or the “degree zero” of community”, while globally the pieces representation in galleries and institutions as a film invites further interpretations. For
Kester this re-presentation becomes purely symbolic, reducing collaboration and all its
complex components to the textual paradigm. For Kester, Alys is a textual artist failing to
make collaborative art. He delivers the goods to a global audience fixed in the textual
paradigm as well, seeing disruption and provocation as the only worth while form of
artistic production and representation. The very provocation of critiquing modernization
through failure fixes the piece in the textual paradigm.
In an interview with Tom Finkelpearl in the book What We Made (2013), Kester
expands on the local and global perspectives on collaborative art. How do artists work
within the collaborative paradigm and how do they make “labor productive differently?”
Continuing his assertion that “there is discomfort in the artworld with projects that
“don’t incorporate a sufficient degree of ironic detachment”, Kester is interested in work
that according to Finkelpearl “(is) complex conceptually and socially.” Kester looks very
carefully at these projects as they unfold. Going deep into projects that create critical
consciousness, changed consciousness, and respond to social concerns, he returns to the
local and global conversation, focusing on Indian artist Navjot Altaf .
Altaf works in villages around India, designing water pumps in collaboration with
villagers. The pumps help woman in the villages collect water and provide a space for
relaxation and togetherness. To create the work, Altaf works in the villages for several
years. According to Kester, Altaf has “effectively remapped the psychogeography of the
villages” (122). Through the collaborative process, Altaf plays with the notion of “craft”
which in the local context has complex symbolic and material meaning. She learns from
the villagers and they learn from her. According to Kester, “consciousness is being
transformed at both the individual and collective level, and that’s what art‘s all about”
(123).
In the same interview, when asked about how virtual space serves as a backdrop
for socially engaged art today, Kester responds by talking about touch. According to
Kester, modern art theory began by eliminating touch and tactility. He gives an example
of a Maori tradition in New Zealand. This traditional ceremony involves touch and
physical sensation and influenced MLK Jr. and Ghandi. In Maori culture, they think
about “ways in which people inhabit space and interact collectively, and how the somatic
informs cognitive and perceptual experience” (125). In essence, thinking in the west has
been dominated by the idea that Oriental = reliance on the reassurance of physical touch
and Advanced European = master the world through optical distancing and abstraction.
The final discussion of the interview critiques the Danish art collective SuperFlex.
Kester describes the groups project in Tanzania, where parady and “situational critique”
is supposed to offer an alternative to Danish NGO’s. Kester researched NGO’s in
Tanzania and revealed that these groups engage in similar practices. It seems SuperFlex
was relying on “ironic distancing”, separating themselves from people working in the
NGO field. But why? Perhaps once again we encounter the difficulty of transcending the
textual paradigm.
In What We Made (2013), Finkelpearl sets up the context for what he calls the art
of social cooperation through the American framework. He chooses to do this, perhaps to
separate the conversation a bit from the work of other historians and critics. The
American Framework is understood to encompass immigrant artists who have played a
vital role in the development of cooperative art. He breaks it down into evolving
categories beginning with the social movements of the 1960’s, civil rights and
community organizing, and “the Movement and participatory democracy”, elements of
which culminate in performance based activism. Finkelpearl claims that the 1960’s
counter institutions and community organizing models, and art practices (like
Fluxus/Kaprow/Beuys) that were outright performative, participatory, and consciousraising, plus the influence of theory from Europe that arrived in the 1980’s and the
culture wars of the 1980’s, culminated in what we now recognize as cooperative art.
Relational Aesthetics
Relational Aesthetics is often presented in opposition to social practice, existing
within a similar discourse but set exclusively within the institutional frame. In his critique
of the work, Grant Kester questions the assumptions that Relational Aesthetics (as
defined by Nicolas Bourriaud) has in relation to the position of the viewer. In Kester’s
opinion, Relational Aesthetics is stuck in the textual paradigm. It assumes universiality
with respect to the work of art and the viewer in the tradition of modernism. The term
Relational Aesthetics originates in the writing of curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud.
In his essay, Relational Aesthetics (1998) Bourriaud creates the framework for what he
terms Relational Aesthetics, a genre of art practice that emerged in the 1990’s. Relational
Aesthetics involves people as its central medium but operates within the conditions of the
art world or art institution. Claire Bishop arrives in the conversation through her critique
of Bourriaud. Bishop is interested in the provocative and disruptive capacity in socially
engaged or relational art. Even her description of Tania Bruguera’s Catedra Arte de
Conducta focuses on the symbolic and the performative in its pedagogic elements.
Bourriaud explains relational art as “the sphere of human relations as art Venue
(p. 44). Through his descriptions of RA, Bourriaud attempts to characterize artist practice
of the 1990’s. Bourriaud claims that 1990’s art is no less politicized than the works of the
1960’s, “Developing a political project when it endeavors to move into the relational
realm by turning it into an issue. (17)
Relational aesthetics is a response to the shift from goods to service-based
economy and virtual relationships of Internet and globalization – a response that has
prompted artist DIY to model “possible universes.” The horizon of Relational Aesthetics
encompasses “the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the
assertion of an independent and private symbolic space (RA. P. 14).” Within this
definition, “meaning is elaborated collectively (p. 54)” and the audience is given what it
needs to create a community.
In Artificial Hells (2012), Bishop continues her case for participatory arts location
in performance and provocation. Like Bourriaud she is concerned with the genre’s fitting
within the art historical frame, namely the avant-garde.
In the chapter Pedagogic Projects: how do you bring a classroom to life as if it
were a work of art? From Artificial Hells (2012), Bishop analysis several pedagogic
models that have recently appeared in the expanded field of contemporary artist practice.
The first of these case studies is Tania Bruguera’s project “Arte de Conducta”, a school
for political performance art in Havana, Cuba. This example illustrates how a “school”
can be symbolic by acting outside the conventions of traditional pedagogy while
providing useful knowledge and ultimately successful performance art. Being both
useful and Symbolic, “Arte de Conducta” provides one example of how a “workshop”
might be considered a work of art –even if only as a provocation.
Introduction of Pedagogical Turn: 1970-Present
The use of pedagogy as artist strategy, medium, or content, comes out of the
collaborative paradigm and the move toward cooperative art. Art that relies on the
dialogic process certainly fits into this paradigm. The process of art and learning, set
within the expanded field of contemporary art practice and the collaborative paradigm,
offers new insights into education and pedagogy as a whole.
Authors who debate the merits of social practice, and the nature of socially
engaged projects, often return to the issue of pedagogy. The fact that a project involves
experimental forms of instruction, dialogue, and reflection, while at the same time being
inclusive and participatory, require some degree of pedagogic strategy. But, pedagogy is
also discussed as the a priori operation of many artists today. Tom Finkelpearl describes a
significant turn in the evolution of socially cooperative art (within the American
framework) in his description of Allan Kaprow’s work at UC Berkeley in the early
1970’s. Grant Kester challenges the work of artists who he believes struggle to work
socially because they are stuck in the textual paradigm. Again looking at the example of
When Faith Moves Mountains, Kester describes the pedagogic approach that fails within
the textual paradigm. Pablo Helguera breaks down the pedagogic strategies used by many
socially engaged artists in his description of what he calls transpedagogy in his book
Education for Socially Engaged Art (2011).
Finkelpearl addresses the topic of pedagogy in various places throughout his book
What We Made (2013). The idea of education and art are central in the socially
cooperative art project. In describing the framework and historical narrative of socially
cooperative art and pedagogy, Finkelpearl uncovers an interesting component of Allan
Kaprow’s work often overlooked. While it is well known that Kaprow began his
happening in the 1960’s with brief workshops and dialogues, this component is pushed
aside in favor of the performative actions themselves. In 1969 Kaprow worked with
educators at UC Berkeley on a project entitled “Project Other Ways”, a progressive
participatory art project. In the same year, Kaprow started pedagogic experiments with 6th
grades, working on graffiti projects. This work would have a long-term effect on
collaborative educational practices like Tim Rollins and K.O.S.
Along more critical lines Grant Kestor describes the project “When Faith Moves
Mountains” in The One and the Many (2011) as an example of where an artist (Francis
Alys) who operates within the textual paradigm attempts to work in the socially
cooperative realm. Part of the process involved in this piece was instruction and dialogue
about the idea of modernization in Peru. However, according to Kester this pedagogic
strategy was misguided. The participants were engineering students from the Lima. The
site of the piece was a dune in rural Peru opposite a shantytown. None of the shantytown
residence were asked to participate. While the artist was trying to make a statement about
Modernization, he engages a different group in the pedagogic process than the one with
whom he is addressing. This distancing is indicative of the textual paradigm. Here the
considerations of site and of participation are manipulated to appeal to traditional
signification in-line with the textual paradigm.
Pablo Helguera’s very description of socially engaged art practice in Education
for Socially Engaged Art (2011) comes from the perspective of pedagogy. His term
transpedagogy “refers to projects by artists and collectives that blend educational
processes and art-making in works that offer an experience that is clearly different from
conventional art academies or formal art education” (77). For these projects the actual
pedagogic process makes up the core of the artwork. Helguara wishes to separate practice
that is symbolic (like relational aesthetics or tactile arts) when he discusses
transpedagogy. Helguera argues that educational science already has vast existing
unconventional structures that a socially engaged art practitioner should be aware of, so
that they would know what to work from. This way pedagogy becomes a methodology
within the artist’s practice.
Foundations of Pedagogy
My research would be incomplete without an introduction to important authors
and concepts in pedagogic theory. John Dewey’s Art as Experience (1934) was highly
influential for Allen Kaprow in his development of the Happenings and later the
Activities. Dewey challenged artists of Kaprow’s generation to move art into the realm of
everyday experience, a move that eventually resulted in the expanded field of
contemporary art and social practice. Pablo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968)
challenged the vertical structure of education and has had a lasting impact on alternative
education models as well as on many artists. Lev Vygotsky’s Mind in Society: The
Development of Higher Psychological Processes (1978) introduced the Zone of Proximal
Development to the west. This concept connects learning to socialization and is worth
referencing in relation to education and social practice. Although Vygotsky developed
these ideas in the 1930’s, the work was not translated into English until the late 1970’s.
John Dewy introduced the philosophical idea of art moving toward the plane of
experience with his book Art as Experience (1934). Dewey’s influence was evident in
Kaprow’s early Environments, and Happenings, beginning in the mid 1950’s. The central
ideas in the book linked art to the everyday and would serve as a foundation for artists
interested in entering the realm of social experience and the everyday.
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), Paulo Freire describes what he calls “the
banking concept of education” as an oppressive system in which “the teacher is the
Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects”. This vertical
education model is reinforced by the dominant elite to maintain “freedom, order, and
social peace” at the expense of the oppressed. The teacher in this case is tasked with
addressing the student as if he or she was a vessel (a static object) to be filled with
knowledge. This knowledge is possessed by the teacher and directed to the student. Freire
argues that education, which is a narrative act, should be carried out from one subject to
another equal subject. The teacher learns with the student within the reality of the world
(the world in which the teacher and students live). For this to be possible new forms of
horizontal education must be practiced. Freire calls this new dialogic form of pedagogy
“problem-posing education”. The teacher and students pose relevant issues/problems and
learn together in the form of a dialogue. .
For Freire this dialogue “is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in
order to name the world”. While the students and teacher maintain an existential
relationship with the world, they learn together, united in the reality of the world. Freire
refers to this pedagogic model as a system of constant evolution and change, or praxis.
Praxis in this case is transformation through reflection and action. Freire defines five
characteristic of the dialogic method of problem-posing education that are necessary for
transformation and empowerment: humility, faith in human kind, horizontal relationships,
hope, and critical thinking.
Freire is concerned with the oppressive nature of knowledge when education is
hierarchical and standardized (dismissing knowledge possessed by the Other). He is also
concerned with connecting pedagogy to the real world of the empowered subject. The
student is then able to learn, in solidarity with other students, through the world in which
they live.
In the chapter entitled, “Interaction Between Learning and Development” from
Vygotsky’s Mind and Society (1978), the author flips the script on previously held beliefs
about the relationship between learning and child development. In introducing his “zone
of proximal development”, Vygotsky asserts that learning begins at birth, and is
stimulated through interaction and cooperation with peers. In essence a child learns
through and along with the world around them, not simply through repetition of age
appropriate arithmetic or grammar. If a group of children are given a problem beyond
their age appropriate understanding, and guided through the process, some will catch on
and others will not. The ones who do are at a higher level of development. Rather than
assessing what children already know, Vygotsky wants us to assess the way in which
they are developing. By combining learning and development in this way, Vygotsky is
able to make the claim that “learning becomes a necessary and universal aspect of the
process of developing culturally organized, specifically human, psychological functions”
(90).
Vygotsky rejects the previously held belief that development follows learning, or
that learning and development are one and the same – that we give children information
to repeat and as they repeat they develop. These older models had a general claim that
learning the classics would help a child develop and be able to meet their age appropriate
abilities. While this might have sufficed as adequate learning for a long time, Vygotsky
rejects it completely and believes that we begin to learn at birth, giving meaning to signs
around us, and that our development is the internalization of meaning from these signs.
Collaboration and interaction with peer groups stimulates the learning process and allows
development to occur. In essence Vygotsky believes that the development process lags
behind the learning process. Vygotsky describes the learning process as a collaborative
one that is an internal and external process. Vygotsky is unique in his concentration on
child development and in the way that learning, through environment and peer
cooperation, plays a critical role in that development.
You will move—Site Specificity and Communities here.
Social Practice Projects (this is moving to Chapter 3)
To further understand the relationship between pedagogy and social practice, a
survey of the field will be presented. Each artist or collective uses a different approach to
challenge or redefine art and learning. Alternative economies and Arte Util (Useful Art)
will provide the first model, followed by site specificity and community engagement, and
finally the aesthetics of commitment and long-term projects. I believe that these
categories are sufficient in understanding the unique insights socially engaged artists
bring to the field of education and pedagogy.
Add this to the end of this section and move the following section to the next
chapter. (See Chapter 3 for a discussion of artists and art collectives that use……)
Experimental Education/Education and Exchange
Many artists have used alternative forms of exchange to generate new
environments for learning. This process often involves alternative forms of currency,
time, or other forms of reciprocity outside of traditional forms of commodity.
TradeSchool and Ourgoods are cooperative art projects-as-education-models initiated by
artist Caroline Woolard. Information from websites and interviews will be used to further
understand how reciprosity, mustual aid, and the exchange of knowledge can create
community and be viewed in terms of aesthetics. Time/Bank, a project supported by webbased EFlux will also serve as an example of alternative forms of exchange that create
alternative economic structures and places for learning. Finally, a discussion of Arte Util
will combine these concepts with the symbolic to create a framework for art that is both
aesthetically powerful and pragmatically useful. Within Arte Util, the workshop and the
free exchange of knowledge is seen as a major principle in building community. A close
look at Tania Bruguera’s work in Havana and at the Queens Museum, will help
distinguish Arte Util from the textual paradigm and connect it to barter and mutual aid
projects.
Trade School is a project initiated by Caroline Woolard, an artist who has
experimented with the concepts of communitarianism, alternative economic structures,
and mutual aid. Her work is often viewed through multiple registers but supported by arts
institutions including the Queens Museum of Art. According to TradeSchool’s website,
“Trade School is a self-organized learning space that runs on barter. Rather than paying
for classes with money, sign up for classes by meeting your teacher's barter requests. We
started in 2010 and will open in 2014 when we get a long-term storefront space.” This
pragmatic and direct language is consitant work, which is simple in form but complex
theoretically.
Time/Bank was a project initiated by artist Ulieta Aranda and made available via
the EFlux website. Aranda’s work also includes Pawnshop, and e-flux video rental.
Time/Bank was featured as part of the 2011 Living As Form exhibition in conjunction
with the Creative Time Summit of the same name. The project is described in the Living
as Form literature as well as on the EFlux website. With Time/Bank, time is exchanged
for services as an alternative to traditional forms of economy. In other words if you
would like to learn how to do something you would offer your services in exchange for
that knowledge. This alternative form of exchange challenges capitalist structures and
monitory value. This type of disruption provides the participant with a consciousness
raising experience – if only for a moment.
Arte’ Util’ or “useful art” refers to art that is both symbolic and useful. This term
came into use in the late 1960’s with Eduardo Costa’s Street Works (1969) and was later
used to describe Krzysztof Wodiczko’s Homeless Vehicle. For the project Street Works,
Costa replaced street signs and painted subway stations in NYC. Costa’s idea was to
“attack the myth of the lack of utility of the arts” by making modest improvements to the
living conditions around the city.
Today Arte’ Util has strong political motivations and responds to societal
urgencies. According to Bruguera, “Arte Útil moves beyond a propositional format, into
one that actively creates, develops and implements new functionalities to benefit society
at large … replacing authors with initiators and spectators with users, and re-establishes
aesthetics as a system of transformation.” Social engagement is a necessary part of this
system. In replacing authors with producers, the pedagogical model seems particularly
useful. Pedagogically based Arte Util’ projects respond in many ways to Jacques
Ranciere’s The Emancipated spectator. Through the system of transformation,
communication, and direct participation, the once passive audience of spectators can
become a community of narrators and translators.
In some cases artists have used the pedagogic model as a step in the artistic
process, while separating it from the art itself. The science of education is given its own
position, and art maintains its autonomy. In the case of Bruguera’s Catedra Arte de
Conducta, the artist created a school designed to teach “political and contextual art to
students in Havana.” However, dismissing the structure of a formal art academy, the
school, according to Bruguera, was a “symbolic structure that I installed but I do not
respect” (Artificial Hells, 249). The two-year curriculum included visiting lecturers,
artists, and formal critiques. The focus was on “art that engages with reality, particularly
at the interface of usefulness and illegality.” For the 2009 Havana Biennial, Bruguera
opened the school to the public. According to Claire Bishop, “Each night the space
looked completely different, while the students’ short, sharp interventions often
outstripped everything else in the biennial in terms of their subversive wit and direct
engagement with the Cuban situation” (Artificial Hells, 249). The school created the
structure through which social transformation could occur. The curriculum set things into
motion, culminating in the exhibition. According to Bishop, “In the case of Arte de
Conducta, it’s necessary to apply the criteria of experimental education and of artistic
project (Artificial Hells, 251).” In this way, Bruguera’s work “straddles the domains of
art and social utility” (Artificial Hells, 251).
Beginning in Spring 2013, the Queens Museum began an exhibit called Arte’ Util
Lab, co-curated by Tania Bruguera and museum curators. The exhibit was designed to
operate as a research center to test the ideas of Arte’ Util in the context of a public art
institution. The criteria through which the museum defined Arte’ Util included work that
“proposes new uses for art in society, is implemented and functions in real situations, has
practical beneficial outcomes for its users, and re-establishes aesthetics as a system of
transformation. Here it seems that the emancipatory possibilities of modernism have
reemerged through the legacy of socially engaged art. Rather than simply celebrating arts
expansion into the expanded field of everyday life, Arte’ Util responds to the urgent
needs of society, merging ethics and aesthetics into a system of transformation.
Site-specificity and Communities
Participatory art that moves into the community, or social space, must consider
the site, both physically and discursively. Working within communities brings up issues
surrounding ethics and identity. I will look at Kwon’s critique of “community art praxis”,
a foundational text that provides many questions regarding community-based art. A
careful look at Susanne Lacy’s recent project, “Between the Door and the Street” will
shed a little light into the pedagogic process behind a large-scale community
performance. Interviews with participants involved in the project as well as writing by
Lacy will be used to reveal as much about the artist’s process as possible. The ethics
surrounding active participation and work within communities would be incomplete
without a discussion of ethnography. As social practice enters into the realm of the
ethnographic it faces criticism. Anthony Downey discusses the potential ethical pitfalls in
social practice in his essay An Ethics of Engagement: Collaborative Art Practices and the
Return of the Ethnographer (2009). Continuing with the conversation of art and ethics,
Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples
(1999) provides a very different perspective. Written for “indigeinous researchers” this
book offers some answers to Downey’s concerns regarding work within communities to
which the artist does not belong. Finally, anthropologist Arlene Davila’s Culture Works
(2012), examines what culture is “asked to do” in the neoliberal context. This text looks
at the role of cultural work in communities an provides a frame for analyzing art projects
that involve community participation.
In chapter 5: of One Place after Another, The (Un)Sitings of Community (2002)
Kwon critiques community based art practice and opens up the conversation about what
the author terms “Community art praxis”. The chapter deals with the ethical dimension of
working with others as well as a continued analysis of spatial politics. The site of public
space remains the site of political struggle. Kwon is interested in redefining community
as an unstable force that allows us to open onto an all together different model of
collectivity and belonging” (7). The chapter includes descriptions of various artist
practice including New Genre Art and Culture in Action as a turning point.
Artist and educator Susanne Lacy’s 2013 Project “Between the Door and the
Street” took place in the neighborhood of Prospect Heights in Brooklyn. It was her first
major work on the East Coast. The project is described on the Brooklyn Museum’s
website as, “a free public performance initiated by internationally celebrated artist
Suzanne Lacy. Women and men of all ages will sit in small groups on the stoops of Park
Place and—in the long-standing tradition of Brooklyn’s stoop culture—engage in unique
and unscripted dialogues about social-justice issues and how they relate to feminism. The
issues will include equity, changing gender roles, labor, violence, poverty, and migration.
The audience will wander freely between stoops to observe and absorb the candid
commentary, shaping a new understanding of feminism. Organized with the input of
nineteen advisers, nearly eighty organizations, more than 300 individual participants, 120
volunteers, and the Park Place community, this is truly a collaborative effort.”
Information on the project is also found on the Creative Time website. Creative Time
supports large-scale socially engaged projects like “Between the Door to the Street”.
According to the Creative Time site, for the project, “Some 400 women and a few men–
all selected to represent a cross-section of ages, backgrounds, and perspectives–gathered
on the stoops along Park Place, a residential block in Brooklyn, where they engaged in
unscripted conversations about a variety of issues related to gender politics today.
Thousands of members of the public came out to wander among the groups, listen to
what they were saying, and form their own opinions.”
My interview with participants revealed a pedagogic process that unfolded prior
to the event. This process reflects Lacy’s developed methodology. The ethics behind the
project, and the projects relationship to the site of its unfolding are open to criticism.
Having experienced the project as a resident of the neighborhood I wondored how it
benifited the neighborhood or if that was ever a concern?
According to Downey, Contemporary critical discourses are struggling to criticize
and support socially engaged art. Downey wants to think about how communities are
coopted, and in some cases exploited in the name of art. For him ethics is the keystone to
criticizing SEA. Generally speaking, we approach SEA ethically first and aesthetically
second. In other words caring more about the quality and ethics of the collaborative
practices that they set in motion and less about the aesthetics in relation to social praxis –
or distinctions between art and life. Furthermore, there is some belief that art should
actually extract itself entirely from the aesthetic and go toward the social praxis. So,
Downy believes that this social praxis should be judged in ethnographic terms. In fact the
discourse of ethnography is already similar to that of SEA in the things it responds to
(aesthetic merit, impact, self-awareness, etc).
The problem become this: Ethnographic Authority in the name of Artistic
Authority. Under these conditions “aesthetics involved in the so-called expanded field of
pseudo-ethnographic collaborative art cannot be divorced from ethics, nor can they
necessarily be resolved in relation to ethics. He gives example of Olaf Breuning’s work
in Africa.
Downy suggests an Ethics of Engagement: Artists can create a form of defamiliarization among observers that leads to active as opposed to passive participation.
The socially engaged project can move into politics and ethics without being reducible to
such terms: Aesthetics as form of socio political praxis.
The concept of ethnography, the artist working within another community, is
further explored by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, but from the perspective of research
methodology. In her book Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous
Peoples (1999) Smith writes for the indigenous researcher but is also concerned with the
institution of research and its relationship to power. Smith identifies as an indigenous
researcher. She refers to the “encounter of research”(5) as historically having been from
the colonizer to the Other (indigenous/colonized). This book flips this encounter around
and offers analysis of the role of knowledge and the exclusion of indigenous people (part
1) and the possibilities of re-imagining research from the position of the indigenous
researcher in their communities (part 2). Smith places significant value on the alternative
forms of knowledge sharing (reporting back – sharing research gathered with the elders,
etc.) that already exist in indigenous communities. For “western” trained researchers
having to engage with community elders would be a “barrier” but for the indigenous
researcher it is part of the process and perhaps the foundation or cornerstone of
indigenous methodologies.
Methodology is defined as a “theory of method, or the approach of technique
being taken, or the reasoning for selecting a set of methods” (from forward). Smith
describes the methodologies of “western” or “colonizer scholars” in several ways: the
traveler stories about cannibals, etc. that came from adventurers, the academic
researchers who “extract and claim ownership of indigenous culture.” In each case an
image of the Other is created, filtered through a lens of western values and projected back
onto the indigenous peoples. This story runs alongside imperialism and has had a longterm dehumanizing effect.
Indigenous or indigenous peoples is a term from the 1970’s. It has its roots in the
American Indian movement. According to Smith, the term was created to signify and
internationalize the experiences and struggles of the world’s colonized people. To give
the Other a name and a face. Historically indigenous people have been the subject. This
book considers them agents.
The fear of research amongst indigenous peoples is consistent with fear of
colonization and injustice. However, for oppressed people survival may appear far more
pressing than anything like research. For Smith indigenous research is important as it
works to decolonize, to “retrieve who we were and remake ourselves” (4) and thus carries
an emancipatory effect and is part of survival. This book is written to be directly useful
for the indigenous researcher in such pursuits.
Smith writes from the “margins and intersections” as well as from “inside” and
“outside” and makes this position very clear – it is a position that is consistent with most
indigenous researchers and is a valuable perspective rather than a problematic one.
According to Smith this book, in its first edition, was found to be useful for
people in many different disciplines. I can see how working with disenfranchised
communities or immigrant communities or communities at the “margins” and having
goals of empowerment might require an understanding of indigenous methodologies
(research and pedagogy). This book provides alternatives to western styles of research that may already exclude marginalized communities or at least place them in an inferior
position.
In Culture Works (2012), anthropologist Arlene Davila examines what culture is
“asked to do” in the neoliberal context. This text looks at the role of cultural work in
communities.
According to Davila, “Culture” is hot now, and plays an integral role in
neoliberalism. Culture gets reduced and used in “economic policies, projects, and
frameworks”. Culture Works takes as its point of departure the many debates that have
come out of this situation.
Davila examines people’s social and physical mobility within the neoliberal state,
the reality of what is at stake, and questions who decides what is valued etc. The author’s
goal “is that readers will appreciate how similar dynamics of space, value, and mobility
are brought to bear in each location (she looks at several), inspiring particular cultural
politics with repercussions that are both geographically and historically specific but that
are ultimately global in scope” (2). The author will look at the types of work that cultural
producers are asked to do, and the restraints they experience.
You will write a conclusion to the whole lit review here and a transition to the
next chapter.
Move the next section to Chapter 3: Context
Long-term Projects: The Aesthetics of Commitment
The pedagogic approach is a commitment, one that must allow for the exchange
of knowledge to unfold over time. In some cases this commitment is long-term for the
sake of reaching the goals and desires of both artist and participant. I call this the
aesthetics of commitment. For artist Rick Lowe, this is at the heart of “Project Row
Hous”e in Houston, TX. For Tania Bruguera the strategy is similar. Her approach with
“Immigrant Movement International” was to initiate a political movement that would
extend beyond her involvement – though that involvement stretched over 3+ years. I will
also look at a group of community-based artists whose recent panel discussion at “Blade
of Grass” covered many ideas related to commitment and pedagogy. I have also included
analysis of collectivity, an element of many long-term projects whose goals would not be
possible without collectivilty. As many of these projects are current and on-going, much
of my research of them will be based on interviews, websites, as well as secondary
sources.
In What We Made (2013) Tom Finkelpearl sat down with Rick Lowe to discuss
his long-term project, “Project Row Houses” and the concept of “Social Vision and
Cooperative Community” (133). According to the official website, Project Row Houses,
which started in 1993, is described as “a neighborhood-based nonprofit art and cultural
organization in Houston’s Northern Third Ward, one of the city’s oldest AfricanAmerican communities… and began in 1993 as a result of discussions among AfricanAmerican artists who wanted to establish a positive, creative presence in their own
community.” Finkelpearl’s interview with Lowe uncovers perhaps 3 major dimensions to
the project. First there are the social goals of the project such as revitalizing a depressed
community and offering actual low-income housing. Second, there are the aesthetic goals
in terms of architecture and art-on-site. The third would be “the aesthetic of human
development and action” (133). This dimension is described in relation to social
cooperation (Finkelpearl’s term) or social sculpture, a term introduced by Joseph Beauys.
This idea merged with the concepts of Arte util, described in detail later in this literature
review. According to the website for Project Row Houses, the project was “founded on
the principles that art – and the community it creates – can be the foundation for
revitalizing depressed inner-city neighborhoods”. Long-term commitment is at the heart
of Project Row Houses, which continues to meet its original goals.
Immigrant Movement International (IMI) represents a long-term artist project that
hovers between community center, political movement, and art project. This project was
initiated by Tania Bruguera in 2011 with support from the Queens Museum and Creative
Time. IMI was initiated to realize the goals of Arte Util, or useful art, to effect actual
social change. IMI can be viewed through a variety of registers but at its heart it is
directly engaged with the community in Corona, Queens and open for continual change
and redefinition. According to Tom Finkelpearl, the inspiration for IMI came while
Bruguera and Finkelpearl were talking about “Arte de Conducta”, Bruguera’s
performance art school in Havana, Cuba. The idea of doing something similar in NYC
started a long conversation that resulted in the creation of IMI. Finkelpearl and Bruguera
are both interested in the long-term effects of socially engaged, collaborative art. They
are also both committed to the idea that new forms of education are possible within the
realm of art. Therefore, IMI is also seen as a kind of think tank where artists and
community members can create workshops that follow the criteria of Arte Util, while
appealing directly to the local community.
The concept of learning as social empowerment, and the ties between community
and dialogic learning, were the topics of a recent panel discussion held in New York City
on September, 8, 2013. The panel was entitled, “The Aesthetics of Doing”, and was
sponsored by Blade of Grass, an organization dedicated to socially engaged art and
artists. The panel included Kemi Ilesanmi, executive director of The Laundromat Project,
Pepón Osorio, artist and Professor of Community Art at Temple University, and George
Emilio Sánchez, performance artist, writer & educator.
During this conversation the idea of learning and community engagement was
discussed from various points of view. I particularly interested in the presentation and
commecnts of Pepón Osorio, who described his process of working with communities on
long-tem projects. These projects leap from communities to institutions (museums,
galleries, et cetera). In his work, he decided to create storefronts as part of his community
work for public display before moving them into institutions. He believes that the “work”
exists in the middle of this back and forth. This is the space that he defines as the
pedagogic or dialogic, and he has turned his method of working into a pedagogic
philosophy. Fro him the story of the work (engagement) is floating around and we make
sense of it through the work of art. Also for Osorio, his spiritual and mental condition has
to be in alignment with the community. knowledge always exists in flux. In terms of
Process without object – can this exist? He thinks so, and as he gets older, the exhibition
is becoming a secondary process. He also refers to himself as being from a different
generation, perhaps what Kester would call the textual paradigm, distanced from the
social practice artists.
Osorio started in the South Bronx. In his practice, “collaboration must begin from
a place of strength, not weakness – while things might suck, you look at the strengths –
what are they really good at, that maybe I am not good at”. For Osorio the process of
community work involves “lots of rigor” and a defined methodology. “Artists in studios
don’t cover the rigor and methodology.” Osorio broke his methodology into a series of
simple steps,: Step 1. Listen – invisibility (find core group in community) Just be a
citizen. Step 2. Engage with people, wait for stories 0 what has resonance. “But really it’s
about what you as the artists are looking for in you.”
When working within a community, Osorio often asks himself, “where is
conceptual art in a place that values tradition? Where is the place, my place? That’s the
question. Where is the intersection? You need the grants, name, etc. So how do you work
in the intersections and consider your work in the community. The people I work with
know the social architectural space I am working in – they can move it forward. You
create long term relationships in the community – the artists come and go. Navigate in
ways that do not disturb structures that already exist – learn to navigate places of power.”
This insight is powerful when considering the aesthetics of commitment as well as the
ethical and political dimensions of work in the community.
Enveloped within the aesthetics of commitment is the need to sustain ones
practice. Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) examined the benefits of collectives in their article
Observations on Collective Cultural Action (2002). Collectives are seen as a way of
sustaining and feeding into an art practice.
According to CAE The modernist tradition of the individual artist genius is not
dead. This is true even in community art (dig on Habermas). In the final analysis we still
want something that can be collected and sold. This has lead to collective action not
being taught in higher education.
According to CAE, “collectives exist in the liminal zone, they are neither an
individual, nor an institution, and there are no other categories.” (I don’t have page
numbers yet of original article)
The art market demands artists to be “renaissance me”. CAE chooses to be a
collective as a matter of economic survival, process integrity (not buying labor) and also
because each member offers a specialized skill. This is different than “band culture” were
each member shares skills. Also, CAE follows Foucault’s principle that hierarchical
power can be productive (does not necessarily lead to domination), and so they use a
floating hierarchy when they produce projects.
Cellular Collective Production: typifies contemporary collective construction.
Members do not share similarities of skills – together they form the “renaissance person”
so to speak. Cells require distribution support to realize project goals. CAE is highly
critical of the concept of community and state, “The idea of community is without a
doubt the liberal equivalent of the conservative notion of family values – neither exist in
contemporary culture, and both are grounded in political fantasy”. The example given is
the term “gay community” which seems to assume strong similarities in all gay people.
One important quote that I do agree with is, “who wants a community in the first place?
After all it contradicts the politics of difference”. It is important to pause here and
remember that Steve Kurtz and CAE are anarchists.
The idea of a coalition means that members can form hybrid subgroups (among
cells) for specific projects and at completion or if it falls apart that person can “walk
away whole”. This is necessary when approaching large-scale cultural production.
The final point, that relates to economic exchange is clarified in this statement,
“CAE believes that artists research into alternative forms of social organization is just as
important as the traditional research into materials, processes, and products”.
Social Practice Pedagogy Move this to Chapter 1—Under Introduction and
Methodology sections.
The point of departure for my research begins with 2 questions: what kinds of
pedagogic methods are used by socially engaged artists? What insights might these
methods provide for High School art education? Through arts based research and action
research I will look at the work I do as an artist and educator, as well as look at the work
of other social practice artists. During this research I will look closely at what I believe to
be the key elements of social practice pedagogy: Arte util, alternative exchange, site
specificity, community engagement, and the aesthetics of commitment.
In my own art practice I initiate socially cooperative projects that begin as
workshops and develop into participatory events that unfold in public space. Though I
often incorporate printmaking and drawing into these projects, pedagogy and dialogue are
central to the work. By defining the methodologies that I use, and looking closely at the
methods used by other artists, I hope to create a picture of what insights social practice
has for art education. With this in mind I hope to create a socially engaged art curriculum
for High School students. My long-term goal is to work as an art teacher in the New York
City public school system and use this curriculum.
In March 2013 I began a project called Mobile Print Power at Immigrant
Movement International in Corona, Queens, NY. This project began as a workshop where
families from the local community learned silkscreen printmaking using a fully equipped
mobile printmaking cart. Having learned the basic skills, participants are now planning
and implementing mobile print projects in public space utilizing the cart and their
knowledge of printmaking. With these site-specific works participants produce their own
material, become narrators and translators of personal and collective experiences, while
engaging other members of the transnational community of Corona, Queens in the
printmaking process.
This project articulates my combined interests in social engagement,
pedagogically based art practice, and mobility. Placed in the context of a multicultural
community, the project tests the theory that a mobile art project can operate as an
empowering and transformative force in the interstices that exist at the overlap of hybrid,
unfixed identities. Having become interested in the concept of useful art, I designed the
printmaking cart and the workshop curriculum following the criteria of Arte’ Util. Each
section of the project was evaluated based on this specific criterion and eventually
presented to the Association of Arte’ Util at the Queens Museum’s Arte’ Util Lab on
April 28, 2013. In October 2013 I became Arte util artist-in-residence at immigrant
Movement International, receiving funding and logistical support to continue my work
there.
Back in May 2013, thirty-five Mobile Print Power participants brought the cart to
Corona Plaza to complete their first public project. The group had decided to initiate a
gift exchange with passers-by in the plaza. Participants invited people to choose images
from their inventory of graphic material. Most of these designs were related to issues
surrounding migration, the importance of public space, and the value of communication.
The passer-by had to supply the material to be printed on. They were also asked to create
one print by themselves with instruction from the knowledgeable project participants.
The effect of this exchange was powerful. The community was drawn toward the peculiar
cart and became part of the making of cultural material, not simply consumers of it. The
rich dialogue that evolved between participants and passers-by opened up a space for
transformation and mutual understanding that has space to evolve with future public print
projects.
My goal with Mobile Print Power has been transformation and empowerment
through active spectatorship and visibility in the public realm. The impact of this project
will be measured by its lasting positive effect on participants and on the greater
community. It is my hope that the group can continue to bring visibility to social/political
concerns, both personal and collective, as they transmit their ideas in print form in public
space. This project has given me a chance to experiment with the major elements that I
see in pedagogically based artwork: Long-term commitment, alternative economies,
limited hierarchy, knowledge of the site both in physical and discursive terms, and belief
in the real social benefits possible through art.
My research strategy will involve a combination of arts-based research and action
research. The goal will be to find where social practice, or socially engaged art, offers
new insights into pedagogy and how those insights might lead to an effective socially
engaged art curriculum in a public High School environment.
To begin I will compile my own weekly assessments of Mobile Print Power to
reflect on and define my own teaching methodology. This assessment will perhaps
illustrate how I incorporate the elements I believe come together to create unique social
practice pedagogy: Arte util, alternative exchange, site specificity, community
engagement, and the aesthetics of commitment. I will also attempt to use this assessment
on other socially engaged projects. Though a seemingly didactic approach in the field of
art, this method fits with traditional educational science. Social practice is defined by a
willingness to move through different disciplines at the service of art, and at the service
of those disciplines. The goal is to benefit both the field of art and social practice, and
education.
Having completed my arts-based research into Mobile Print Power and the work
of several other artists working in the realm of social practice, I will begin my action
research. I will use what I have learned from my research into the elements of social
practice pedagogy to construct a High School art curriculum. This curriculum will be
used in the Spring of 2014 as part of a residency at the Casita Maria Center for Arts and
Education. As resident artist I will work with a group of High School students from the
Bronx Studio School for Writers and Artists. For 3 months I will work with these
students and follow the curriculum that I create. This will serve as an opportunity for
research and inquire into the actual potential of such a curriculum.
Works Cited
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.
Bishop, Claire. Artificial Hells. London: VERSO, 2012. Print.
Bishop, Claire. Participation. London: Whitechapel, 2006. Print.
Bishop, Claire. "The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents." Artforum (2006):
178-83. Print.
Critical Art Ensemble. "Observation on Collaborative Cultural Action." Variant 15
(2002): Print.
Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Minton, Balch &, 1934. Print.
Downey, Anthony. "An Ethics of Engagement: Collaborative Art Practices and the
Return of the Ethnographer." Third Text 23.5 (2009): 593-603. Print.
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