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Dear List, This is a possibly rash attempt to link Amanda's recent post back to this month's theme of art and activism: I've just been writing about interaction in Rafael Lozano Hemmer's work, and ended up with a trio of quotes about interaction from fields other than new media. It seems that those from an activist/socially engaged history, are actually rather good at being accurate about exactly how participative a work is (for example, participative within a "framework" as Amanda cites). The problem is, that new media folk are not always aware of useful activist structures, and that those from the fine art field, and from the activist field, are largely unaware of new media art. Would you agree? “I entirely understand the effects of social interaction. I think people responded a great deal to each other, rather than to the objects, to their relationship to the latter or to the awareness of their own physical processes. That is, they made up group games, competed, acted out their aggressions, showed off, etc.” Letter from Tate curator Michael Compton to artist Robert Morris, 13 May 1971, quoted by Steve Dietz[i] “Homi K. Bhabha, in an essay from the Conversations at the Castleproject in Atlanta, writes of “conversational art,” and Tom Finkelpearl refers to “dialogue-based public art.” … The concept of a dialogical art practice is derived from the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, who argued that the work of art can be viewed as a kind of conversation – a locus of differing meanings, interpretations, and points of view.” Grant Kester[ii] “The individual tendencies of participatory art - the playful and/or didactic, the "pastoral" and the "sociological" - have at least one thing in common: the background of institutional criticism, the criticism of the socially exclusionary character of the institution of art, which they counter with "inclusionary" practices. For all of them, "participation" means more than just expanding the circle of recipients. The form of participation and the participants themselves become constitutive factors of content, method and aesthetic aspects.” Christian Kravagna[iii] [i]Dietz, Steve (2004) “Was it all Robert Morris’s fault?” Yproductions: WebWalkAbout(December 19). Available from URL: <http://www.yproductions.com/WebWalkAbout/archives/000612.html>. [ii]Kester, Grant (2004) Conversation Pieces.Berkeley: University of California Press. p.10. [iii]Kravagna, Christian (1998) “Working on the Community: Models of Participatory Practice.” republicart.Available from URL: <http://www.republicart.net/disc/aap/kravagna01_en.htm>. On 12 Apr 2006, at 03:31, amanda mcdonald crowley wrote: > I also pointed to examples of projects where artists don't make > "works" per se, but rather make "frameworks" for others to contribute, > and I sited examples such as r a d i o q u a l i a 's The Frequency > Clock; Mongrel's Nine(9) and Linker; and Marko Peljhan's Makrolab. > These kinds of work only *become* works of 'art' when other artists, > community groups, researchers - participants in general in fact - > contribute to the project. > On 12 Apr 2006, at 04:23, Judith Rodenbeck wrote: > The obits of Kaprow have been lame, esp. the one from his > practically-hometown paper, the San Jose Mercury, which online had his > name > as "Krapow." This was unfortunate, but also very Allan in its Pop > overtones... Artists like Allan will inevitably be reframed in terms of > contemporary concerns--our parallax view--but it's important to > remember > that one of the reasons he and others in his cohort were always > semi-underground is that they arrived in advance of today's concerns. > Allan > was working with "communication" as a performative in 1958, with > network > technologies in 1964, with satellites in 1966, with 2-way broadcasting > in > 1968... > > Judith Rodenbeck > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Curating digital art - www.crumbweb.org [mailto:NEW-MEDIA- >> [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sarah Cook >> Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 5:08 PM >> To: [log in to unmask] >> Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] Art and Activism >> >> I hope this isn't too much of a tangent either, but I'd be curious to >> keep an eye on how obituaries of some of the great >> performance/action/happening-related artists are written -- will we be >> re-framing their work in relation to current/growing [?] acceptance of >> activist / community / collaborative practices in the history of art >> or >> the place of art in networked/media saturated culture? >> I feel unqualified to say. >> Rest in peace Allan Kaprow (Ian Breakwell, John Latham, Dick >> Higgins...) >> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/arts/design/10kaprow.html >> Sarah >> >> >> On 10 Apr 2006, at 3:48 pm, leon wrote: >> >>> Historically art has constantly confronted itself and its audience in >>> the >>> pursuit of the new. From the dynamics of the gaze, of enactment and >>> participation, the artist has been involved in a constant process of >>> breaking the conventions of previous movements and styles. Each epoch >>> has >>> had its own technologies that have shaped its art, politics and >>> religion. >>> These have been interdependently employed evolving the practice of >>> its >>> activists which feed back into this cyclic cultural process.