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Thanks to you all for these insights. A few years ago Margaret and I were a
part of Kyle McKinley's excellent month on empyre called Social Practice
and Social Reproduction (in fact that's how we met!), thinking through the
ways social practice fails to create change and instead reproduces the
larger structures of capitalist relations. It is a rich and important
discussion, and one that leaves me mindful about the pitfalls of the term
and the work. I too think I prefer participatory to describe my practice,
or to just get more granular about the actual actions that are being
employed, and describe those. Thinking too about Bueys' social sculpture
and how this compares as a term. Does the frame as sculpture offer space
for deeper critique in its emphasis on materiality? With an earlier
collaboration of mine, the Guerrilla Grafters, I often use the term
'gesture' to describe our work, in that we are gesturing to other possible
worlds. And here I have been really inspired by Ricardo Dominguez's use of
that word, another person on this list. Needless to say I am excited about
this book and to be a part of it! I feel so much more can be said about the
overlaps between work in new media and in the larger field of social
practice, particularly when it comes to social change. What is really
interesting is how many works in your volume exceed the scientific frame
and move into other ways of knowing and imagining. In my last post I
responded to Tim to think through futurism and imagination... and it seems
like a lot of the artists in your anthology are doing a lot of future
dreaming otherwise.... Was it chance that so many are engaged with magic
and ecology, or was this something you were looking for? I think this also
ties into Kathleen's work with story as a starting point for making....
M
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beforebefore.net
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On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 7:11 PM xtine burrough <xtineburro...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Hi Margaret,
>
> I have been teaching a graduate class called Creativity as Social Practice
> (because I have too many students who start by saying, “I’m not an artist”
> so using the word “Art” too much of a set-back) for several years; and more
> recently, an undergraduate class called Digital Art as Social Practice. In
> these classes, too, we explore social practice, collaboration, and
> community-engagement. I’d love to syllabus-share with you off-list!
>
> I relate “social practice” to Pablo Helguera’s notion of socially-engaged
> art (I recommend his "Education for Socially-Engaged Art: A Materials and
> Techniques Handbook” if you are reading Empyre this week and are
> unfamiliar, it’s a great read). In the chapter, “Definitions,” Helguera
> understands that terminology around socially-engaged art (and perhaps the
> genre itself) is “porous,” with connections to multiple disciplines
> including activism, community organizing, ethnography, sociology, and
> social work. While Helguera begins his discussion with the idea that “All
> art...is social,” he frames socially engaged art as a category of
> art-making rooted in conceptual, process-based art. This does not go
> untroubled, as one might compare process art that seems to have a low level
> of social interaction or outcome with one that appears to have greater
> community impact. For instance, Helguera suggests a Donald Judd sculpture
> would not be categorically similar to a Thomas Hirshorn performance in its
> socially-engaged dimensions. Helguera offers this background in conceptual
> art and process-based works to serve a historical reference, and includes a
> reflection that uncovers how not all of these types of work are equally
> “social” for the purpose of understanding socially engaged art. This
> unclarity is not a weakness, though. Instead it is an opportunity for
> artists to bring their practice into the realm of the social while
> understanding that there is a spectrum of opportunity for engagement and
> participation in many forms of social practices.
>
> Like you, I use the word “participatory” to define my own work. I like how
> Claire Bishop suggests “This expanded field of post-studio
> practices currently goes under a variety of names: socially engaged
> art, community- based art, experimental communities, dialogic art,
> littoral art, interventionist art, participatory art, collaborative art,
> contextual art and (most recently) social practice. I will be referring
> to this tendency as ‘participatory art’, since this connotes the
> involvement of many people (as opposed to the one-to-one relationship of
> ‘interactivity’) and avoids the ambiguities of
> ‘social engagement’,…” (Artificial Hells,1). For me, personally,
> “participatory” points to the method or mode of being with/in the work, and
> is less about naming a genre. This mode always seems to be true for the
> works that I make. But the anthology is much bigger than me.
>
> In the anthology, we include a diverse group of artists whose works center
> on the social, including those ranging from a Helguerian “Level 2” to
> “Level 4” participatory structure (directive, creative, or collaborative
> participation), such that the “involvement of many people,” as Bishop
> suggests, creates a participatory experience. While my practice in new
> media art has introduced me to a circle of peers who create this kind of
> work, Judy’s background in photojournalism coupled with her commitment to
> collaborative methods has brought a group of people to this collection whom
> likely would have escaped my frame of reference. Together, we felt that
> "Social Practice” is a phrase that is “porous" enough that it would
> communicate or account for the variety of practices included in the
> anthology. To be honest, the publisher asked for the word “Art” in the
> title :) I guess if you’re not familiar with “Social Practice” you might
> think it has something to do with social work or *gasp*, Socialism.
>
> So, back to your question—we are using "social practice,” as a term for
> its porous qualities, and its relationship to socially engaged art that
> generates encounters, participation, and collaboration. We will address
> this in the introduction to the book; and we are including art
> historians/critics who will write section introductions throughout the
> manuscript that I think will help to clarify these points. As an artist, my
> aim for this collection is to create a space where artists' voices are
> amplified, together. Working on this edited anthology feels as though it
> shares a creative and collaborative spirit with social practice art. We
> started by inviting a few of our close contacts and then asked them who
> else we should include. By the time we arrived at the 26 artist
> contributors we can say that just building the table of contents was a
> surprising and collaborative activity.
>
> Thanks for your thoughtful and generative question,
> xtine
>
> On Mar 11, 2021, at 3:52 PM, m r <mrhee...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi xtine, Margaretha, and everyone,
>
> Thanks as always to Renate for the invitation and curating a fantastic
> month of empyre! I'm excited to hear more about Margaretha's contribution,
> and xtine's anthology. It's great to see Dalida Maria Bennefield's work
> included and others I've engaged with over the years.
>
> I just taught a Participatory Media Art course last semester here at SUNY,
> and we focused on social practice, collaborative art, and community engaged
> art, oscillating around those terms. I've worked for about a decade on
> feminist jail based digital storytelling drawn from participatory research
> methods and settled on participatory as a term to help describe the
> methods. I wonder if you could talk more about social practice as a term,
> and if the artists utilize that to describe their work, or how it may shift
> when centralizing media and technology? The book sounds fantastic and I'm
> looking forward to reading it. I wish it was available to teach last
> semester for the course I taught and hope to teach it in the future.
>
> Thanks everyone, and look forward to the conversation.
>
> my best,
>
> Margaret
>
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 1:27 PM xtine burrough <xtineburro...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> Hi Renate, All,
>>
>> Yes—thank you for your prompt. I enjoyed reading the list during the
>> first week and do see (joyful!) parallels between interventionist tactics
>> and the works I will mention here. There are projects throughout the book
>> Judy and I are working on that creatively reimagine, undo, or expand
>> technologies through social engagement and participation. I’ll share a few
>> of them here:
>>
>> In the Magical Machines section, Lauren Elder showcases The Art Bank, "a
>> repurposed, ‘trickster' ATM machine [which] served as a media kiosk
>> showcasing a collection of creative work by teens, their college mentors,
>> and an animated short. The animation pairs Lauren Elder, the project
>> director, with a Hopi youth who submitted his artwork by mail from Arizona
>> State Prison, where he was incarcerated for hitting a cash dispenser when
>> it failed to return his card.”
>>
>> Dalida Maria Benfield writes about a VR project for the Expansion
>> section: "VR Utopia is an iterative, experimental virtual reality space for
>> knowledge exchange and collaboration for the global community of artists,
>> designers, and transdisciplinary researchers of the Center for Arts,
>> Design, and Social Research (CAD+SR), co-designed with design researchers
>> M. Eifler and Evelyn Eastmond (Microsoft) and a focus group of CAD+SR.”
>>
>> Joseph DeLappe shares a body of work in the Re-imagination section:
>> "Woven through all of the works described is a keen sensibility of engaging
>> issues surrounding memory, violence, peace, and social justice. Such
>> projects have involved either the creation of temporary, large scale low
>> polygon sculptures and installations created on site with local
>> communities/collaborators; internet based engagements including an early
>> experimental global sing-a-long; and a series of crowdsourced rubber
>> stamping projects to intervene with political symbols on cash.”
>>
>> I know Margaretha has either just written or is about to write to the
>> list, so I will leave this short(er) in anticipation of her post.
>>
>> My best,
>> xtine
>>
>>
>> > On Mar 11, 2021, at 11:56 AM, Renate Ferro <rfe...@cornell.edu> wrote:
>> >
>> > Dear xtine and our -Empyre- guests and subscribers,
>> > The book sounds fascinating and actually resonates with last month’s
>> feature of artists who use the code of Social Media code as a tool against
>> itself. In fact artists Derek Curry and Jennifer Gradecki will join us
>> once again this month.
>> >
>> > These artists use code, data and other technological tactics to turn
>> social media in on itself through obfuscation, education, and other
>> critical means. I expect there are artists in the Expansion section of
>> your text that do like-minded interventions.
>> >
>> > Where does your own artistic work fit? The juxtaposition of practice
>> and theory have been seminal in my own work, perhaps you would share with
>> us how you see the influences of both on one another especially when it
>> comes to socially engaged work?
>> > Sent from my iPhone
>> > Renate Ferro
>> >
>> >> On Mar 8, 2021, at 12:35 PM, xtine burrough <xtineburro...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> >> Thank you, Renate, for your introduction. Hello Empyre—long time
>> reader, first time contributor :)
>> >>
>> >> Judy and I are artist/academics collaborating on an anthology, Social
>> Practice Art: Technologies for Change to be published by Routledge near the
>> end of this year.
>> >>
>> >> This book centers on the voice and works of artist-author contributors
>> across six sections (listed below), which we are pairing with section
>> introductions written by art historians and critical scholars.
>> >>
>> >> Social Practice Art: Technologies for Change demonstrates how artists
>> use their creative practices to raise consciousness, form communities,
>> create change, and bring forth social impact through technologies, from ATM
>> machines to artificial intelligence. This book, a collection of case
>> studies, is envisioned as a resource for artists, faculty, and students who
>> engage with technology as a conduit for creative expression, and who want
>> to explore social practices, such as cultural commentary and criticism,
>> participatory art, and community engagement.
>> >>
>> >> The book begins with “Seeds and Tools,” a section that includes
>> chapters grounded in digital investigations of ecosystems then traverses
>> the digital wild. In “Windows and Mirrors,” we highlight the wisdom of
>> powerful artists who consistently create socially-engaged art that employs
>> technological practices then reflect their processes back to the readers.
>> Moving on to Section III, “Magical Machines,” we focus on the supernatural,
>> including magic, science fiction and time travel; themes that many are
>> craving during these unprecedented times. In the “Expansions” section, we
>> include artists who discuss art as social practice that forefront the
>> affordance of digital forms, virtual spaces, and algorithmic
>> experimentation as part of the creative process and expand consciousness
>> across networks and in virtual spaces. Embedded in Section V,
>> artist-authors draw on “Reimagination,” to confront, change, or rethink
>> humanity using emerging platforms and on-demand processes. And finally,
>> artist-authors create entirely new platforms for social exchange in
>> “Radical Matrices,” which we felt was a fitting theme to end the journey.
>> >>
>> >> We imagine that intuition, perhaps through improvisation, is greatly
>> at play in the works featured throughout this book. Digital media projects
>> with collaborative lifeforms (mushrooms and artificial intelligence, for
>> instance, in Cesar and Lois’ work) require agile and flexible approaches to
>> artistic projects centered on participation.
>> >>
>> >> We would like to invite some of the contributing artist/authors to
>> this conversation, including Kim Abeles, Dalida Maria Benfield, Christopher
>> Blay, Margaretha Haughwout, Praba Pilar, Lucy HG Solomon, and Victoria
>> Vesna (tag, you’re it!).
>> >>
>> >> Warmly,
>> >> xtine and Judy
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> empyre forum
>> >> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> >> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
>
>
> --
>
>
>
> Margaret Rhee, Ph.D.
>
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Media Study
> SUNY Buffalo
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
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