Two weeks ago I presented the first part of two blog posts highlighting certain socially engaged art pieces that I experience at Assembly, a four-day conference in Portland, Oregon featuring presentations, discussions, interventions and activities that look at topics related to art and social practice.The conference is hosted by Portland State University which has a Master in Fine Arts program dedicated to art and social practice.
As I mentioned in the first of these two blogs posts, it’s incredibly difficult to share the experience of social engaged art through 2D images or write-ups when socially engaged art relies heavily on the experience the participants had with one another and the event. So, I will inevitably fail at defining fully each of the following pieces I experienced. But, let’s try!
Backyards
Kimberly Sutherland and Paul West
How often have you walked down your street block and taken notice of the types of trees and shrubs that also live near you? In this educational walk around a Northeast Portland block, longtime resident, arborist and musician Paul West, took us on a tour showing us the trees that inhabit his block. Each of the trees play a specific role in the urban space and many of them have medicinal qualities that I didn’t know. Upon returning to my own city block in Calgary, Alberta I pondered the tree and shrub neighbours that are in my backyard and down the street. Many of them I don’t know but, it made me have a far more bigger appreciation for them and the larger ecosystem I live in.
Some Time Between Us
Emily Fitzgerald, Honnai Aguado-Nielsen, Delaney Alvord, Jackie Anderson, Antonia Beil, Cindi Burgos-Be, Brenda Culhane, Judith Ford, Harvey Garnett, Tom Getts, Frank Gorretta, Lanaireoje (Bubbles) Hayes, Raina Heilman, Jacqui Jackson, Allen Julian, Marel Kalyn, Benjamin Kirchoffer-Talbott, Ausha Lathan, Dolores M. Peters, Lucia Sanchez-Ventura, Jan Starnes, Maria Tran, Jackson Wolfe
There are two things that everyone has in common: we were once young and we we will eventually all get older. This project brought together a group of students from Beaumont Middle School and seniors from the Hollywood Senior Centre to create an intergenerational exchange. Over six-weeks the group explored their individual and cultural expressions initiated by questions they had for one another. What is the hardest part about being you age? What is the happiest memory you have? What are your fears for the future? Relating to each other through storytelling, writing and photography the teens and seniors built a relationship over the six-weeks that provided space for empathy and learning from each other. The culminating presentation of this project was presented at the Hollywood Senior Centre and featured photography, music, performance, poetry and dialogue amongst strangers.
Collaborative Learning for Physical Prowess (on the dance floor): How to Dance Like a Boss &
The People’s (dance) Party
Jens Hauge & Renee Sills with guest presenters Leif J. Lee, Tonisha Toler, and Padraic O’Meara
This was a two part project.
The first. Have you ever wanted to learn to do a specific type of dance but were to afraid to go take a dance class because of the possibility of failing or looking like a goof? In Renee Sills & Jens Hauge “Collaborative Learning for Physical Prowness (on the dance floor): How to Dance Like a Boss” three non-professional dancers were asked to research and present their favourite “How to Dance” YouTube videos and teach the group of participants the steps. Everyone started off like wall-flowers glued to their chairs. No one wanted to be at the front of the dance class. But after some great engagement and hosting skills by Jens Hauge the room was full of people watching YouTube videos and mimicking everyone from country line dances to house, lyrical ballet to MC Hammer. It was ridiculous and mesmerizing to see so many people doing the same choreography and also looking as ridiculous and memorized by YouTube videos as I was.
The second. What makes a great party? Renee Sills spent months investigating and asking people this question. For this culminating event she brought all the elements necessary to have the best party of the world! And it sure was! A good sound system, good music, good lighting, a disco ball, a good dance floor, fun people, costumes, free water, free snacks, and even free booze. It was the perfect recipe to let loose and see how far everyone could go in shaking their booty. If I remember one thing from this entire festival, it is that parties make the best social art practice events if done right. Thanks to all those who danced and danced and danced that evening.
For more information on ASSEMBLY 2016 please visit this website:
Last weekend I booked a flight to Portland to attend Assembly, a four-day conference featuring presentations, discussions, interventions and activities that look at topics related to art and social practice.The conference is hosted by Portland State University which has a Master in Fine Arts program dedicated to art and social practice.
Over the next two weeks I’d like to highlight some of the pieces I saw at the conference. These will be posted in two parts. Part two of this blog post will be posted in two weeks.
It was brought to my attention by my Montreal-based colleague and social art practitioner, Vincent Brière, that it’s incredibly difficult to share the experience of social engaged art through 2D images or write-ups when socially engaged art relies heavily on the experience the participants had with one another and the event. So, I will inevitably fail at defining fully each of the following pieces I experienced. But, let’s try!
Williams Ave Mapping Circle
Emma Collburn in collaboration with Project Grow artists
I had just arrived in Portland and my first destination was to North Williams Avenue and Project Grow. Emma Collburn, the lead artist, had produced a series of community mapping exercise over the year in the area associated with North Williams Avenue. What I came to find out was that North Williams Avenue, since the 1980s had seen significant development that caused the demographic of the area to change. Emma Collburn engaged the community in mapping out where there had been significant economic investment put into the area, and where it hadn’t. For her presentation at Assembly, she had the public and artists at Project Grow, whose mission is to provide space for artists with mental and physical disabilities, collectively create a map of North Williams Avenue by attaching fabric to represent different city blocks. The project engaged me on several levels. On one level I was just getting to know Portland and learning about the issues of community development, gentrification and the displacement that I see far too often in the city I live in. It allowed me to learn a specific history of place. On another level it was great to see Emma engaging the artists at Project Grow in the creation of this piece. I got to tour around the facility and was blown away by how much the organization serves it’s community of mental and physically disabled artists, it’s inclusive policies, the urban garden business cycle they also teach their clients and the goat that hangs out by the window.
Click here to learn more about Project Grow http://www.albertinakerr.org/DevelopmentalDisability/CommunityInclusion/PortCity/Programs/ProjectGrow
Portland Museum of Art & Sports Opening
Anke Schüttler and Lauren Moran
It’s not often that I connect recreational sport and contemporary art. Like stereotypical high school characters the Jock and the Art-Geek aren’t suppose to get along. One is always in the gym flexing their muscles and being driven by the ever increasing sexy body they are manifesting. While the other, the Art-Geek, stereotypicly the introvert, hides away in the art room attempting to make just one more beautiful painting.
The Portland Museum of Art & Sport was conceived by German artist Anke Schüttler, and American, Lauren Moran. The idea was to have the two realms of sport and art inspire each other. The venue — Portland State Universities Rec Centre. Amongst people swimming laps and packs of men ripping shredding their muscles with dumb-bells lay an array of artistic expression. On one wall hung a vertical rectangular paper which was torn on one end and was covered in markings made by individuals in wheelchairs from Project Grow Portland. There were pictures and description cards around the gym featuring moments in history when humans had lifted heavy objects a project conceived by Adam Carlin. And, in front of the treadmill were mathematical charts that described what was happening to the body of an individual who chose to run on that treadmill which was a collaboration between the curators and a mathematician grad at Portland State University. These plus many other pieces were placed amongst the sweaty recreationalists and gym equipment. In someways it made it feel safer for me to be in the gym — a place that much like high school, made me feel alienated and not athletic enough. The Portland Museum of Art & Sport was founded in 2015 and will continue to explore the subject and relationship between contemporary art and recreational sports in the future.
Ink Visible Public Event
Arianna Warner, Kimber Teatro, Aubrey Hight, Tanya Magdalena, Trevor Ward, and Lindsay Carter
This event happened at a bar. Never an issue for me. It posed the question “What is your invisible disability?” Working in collaboration with tattoo artists, project lead Arianna Warner, asked these tattoo artists the same question and asked them to write about their invisible disability and also design a temporary tattoo that represented that illness. The night of the event the public were asked to consider the invisible disability and also write their story and design a temporary tattoo inspired by their writing. The tattoo artists’ stories and tattoos were there to collect and bind into a book you could take home.
I couldn’t help but discuss mental health with the people around me as we designed our tattoos and sipped our Portland craft beer. This idea that mental health is invisible is indicative of the world’s reluctance to openly talk about mental health. Anxiety, depression, ADHD are all common mental health issues that many people feel ashamed telling someone about. This event allowed peoples stories to be told in a safe space and an equal exchange between everyone as we all attempted to define what disability we hold inside of us that we don’t often express to others.
To learn more about this project visit the project website : http://www.inkvisible.org
For more information on ASSEMBLY 2016 please visit this website:
Ask anyone on the street how they define public art and they will inevitably refer to it as a sculpture in a park or on the street. That’s been the definition of public art for quite some time.
In 1991, artist, educator and activist, Suzanne Lacy, proposed the term new genre public art to define work that engages the public but may not in fact end with a sculpture. She first coined the term in a public performance at the San Francisco Museum of Art and later in her book Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art. She defined it as art for activism, often created outside the typical art institution, and which the process had the artist engage directly with the public or audience in discussing and creating action around social and political issues. In her own words, new genre public art is “socially engaged, interactive art for diverse audiences with connections to identity politics and social activism.” (1)
Emerging out to the 1990s were these alternative definitions for public art such as contextual art, relational art, participatory art, dialogic art, community-based art, activist art, and the comprehensive new genre public art. Artists began moving from the art institutions into the realm of civic activism. Instead of reflecting social or political issues through metaphors in public art, new genre public art aimed to engage the regular citizen, specifically those from marginalized groups, in creating solutions for these issues.
Examples of this can be seen in the work of Mark Dion and his Chicago Urban Ecology Action Group. Dion, who believes that art and ecology can be fruitful partners in creating solutions for environmental conservation, along with a group of youth from two schools in Chicago, traveled to Belize to learn about the conservation initiatives the country was implementing. They then returned to Chicago and researched the work of different art and ecological initiatives in the area and how the issues of the Belize tropical ecosystem parallel to those of their own environment. This culminated in establishing an experimental field station that would be the site for future art/ecology experiments, guest speakers and future activities. It also acted as the base of operations for weekly community clean-up and restoration projects. (2)
One of Suzanne Lacy’s works, Silver Action, brings women from diverse political and socio-economic backgrounds to discuss the role that women played in political protests of our time. It explored issues that were relevant in British media at the time around aging. Workshops were held with women who participated in the miner’s strikes, disability, ecology and feminist movements. Four hundred women then participated in a five-hour performance split into three tableaux. Each hour one hundred women were seen conversing at small tables. (3)
New genre public art challenges the idea of commissioned public art. Does public art have to be sculptural when in fact the work is for the public? It also challenges the relationship between the viewer to the art piece. Is the relationship the viewer is having withe art the only relationship? And, finally, it challenges the possibility of perspectives. Is the art work suppose to mean only one thing — that which the artist intended it to be. Ultimately, new genre public art aims to engage the public in the creation of an art work that does not necessarily end with a sculptural or typically visual aesthetic and instead engage the public in bringing about change through art.
Knight, Cher Krause (2008). Public Art: theory, practice and populism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4051-5559-5.
http://distributedcreativity.typepad.com/on_collecting/files/Mark_Dion.pdf
http://www.suzannelacy.com/recent-works/#/silver-action-2013/