Socially Engaged Art, Critics and Discontents: An Interview with Claire Bishop By Jennifer Roche
What criteria should we use to evaluate socially engaged art? London-based critic Claire Bishop recently raised provocative questions and poked at the critical status quo about the discourse surrounding what she term, "relational" practices — socially engaged art, community-based art, experimental communities, dialogic art, littoral art, participatory, interventionist, research-based and collaborative art. In her article for Artforum (February 2006), titled "The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents," Bishop argues that the creativity behind socially engaged art is said to "rehumanize" a "numb and fragmented" society. However, she emphasizes that she believes socially engaged art has fallen prey to circumscribed critical examinations. The discourse, she argues, has focused mainly on the artist's process and intentions, or the project's socially ameliorative effects, to the neglect of the work's aesthetic impact. "Artists are increasingly judged by their working process — the degree to which they supply good or bad models of collaboration," she writes. "Accusations of mastery and egocentrism are leveled at artists who work with participants to realize a project instead of allowing it to emerge through consensual collaboration." “There can be no failed, unsuccessful, unresolved, or boring works of collaborative art because all are equally essential to the task of strengthening the social bond," she continues. "While I am broadly sympathetic to that ambition, I would argue that it is also crucial to discuss, analyze, and compare such work critically as art.” more... http://tinyurl.com/r6s73 _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
