Social Practice

Regine Debatty, editor of We-Make-Money-Not-Art, flexes her interviewing skills once again. This summer, she’s posted insightful dialogs with a range of Social Practitioners.

Most recently, she discussed art and activism with the The Institute for Applied Autonomy. Because the group works anonymously, it’s not clear if the questions were answered collectively, or by a single spokesperson. They raise interesting questions about the current shape and practicality of artistic resistance.

With Rogues Gallery, the robot overcame certain kinds of social conditioning not because of its mechanical capabilities but simply because it was seen as legitimate, based on the assumption that anyone possessing a robot represented some large research institution which probably had the “right” to spray its messages on public space, rather than simply being a couple of crazy people who built a machine in their garage. Imagine if we had tried the same experiment without a robot, using only a few cans of spraypaint – no one would have participated because the action would have been clearly understood as an illegal act of public defacement. [read the entire interview here]

WMMNA’s in-depth conversation with Christine Hill included some introspection on Hill’s recent book project, “Inventory: The Work Of Christine Hill And Volksboutique.” This weaves into a discussion on commerce, money, and the evolution of ‘Volksboutique’ (is it one large project? a series? a franchise?). And a little taste of Hill’s contribution to the Venice Biennale.

This idea of merging income and art occupations culminated with opening the Volksboutique-as-shop in 1996. It was a way of claiming autonomy. It both freed me from being anyone’s employee, and launched me straight into Proprietor-status, and it absolved me from having to rely on the art system to provide me with an audience. It allowed me to build a base of operations, and work from it, which is a device I’ve held onto over years.[read the entire interview here]

Also of interest was a shorter conversation with Mark Tribe about the ‘Port Huron Project’ in which protest speeches from the New Left movements of the 60’s and 70’s are re-enacted at the original site.

We protest the war in Iraq, or the WTO, but it’s hard to imagine that we could really change things in a radical way: put an end to the military industrial complex, replace consumer capitalism with another form of economy, or achieve true democracy. Back then, people seemed to be able to imagine a radically different future. I think it’s vitally important that we recapture some of that utopian spirit. [read the entire interview here]

For two weeks in June, a group of “15 outsider young journalists” put on the “London Project.” A subset of their activities centered around distributing and circulating free books on the London Underground.

“Over the next two weeks we’ll be distributing thousands of second hand books across the tube and we want YOU to get involved. If you see one of our books, please pick it up! Then read it and replace with any book of your choice. Let’s make the tube a giant, free library!”

You can read more on their site, and listen to some recordings of participant’s reactions.

See also:

• BookCrossing
• Read It Swap It
• and BARTreads

Two seemingly dissimilar bedfellows, Nicolas Bourriaud and a ‘digital lifestyle’ magazine, came together in an interview entitled “Your Assignment: Art.” The interview by Leah DeVun with Andrea Grover, concerned Grover’s curatorial efforts around crowdsourcing (previously mentioned here).

Although I’m unconvinced by the precedents that she’s claimed (Matta-Clark’s Food), the contemporary work that she selects is quite interesting when taken as a group: ‘Learning to Love you More‘, ‘Found Magazine‘, ‘Sheep Market‘, ‘Signs That Say What You Want Them to Say, Not Signs That Say What Other People Want You to Say‘ and ‘We Feel Fine‘ (to name a few).

This selection forces some intriguing questions. What is the distinction between something that is truly ‘crowdsourced’ and work that is produced by a more traditional notion of an artist collective (an interesting test case might be Andrea Grover and Jon Rubin’s show Never Been to Houston)? In the interview, DeVun asked bout the role of the editor in crowdsourced works– Grover points to a preference for “the way the assignment is conceived at the beginning” rather than editing after the fact. But she never really answers if, and in what way editing can be part of a successful crowdsourced artwork. The interview also focuses on what makes crowdsourcing fail, and what contributes to effective projects. Grover concludes that clear and well-considered parameters are key, but also fostering a sense of community between participants– a feeling that they are contributing to something greater and larger than anything that they could accomplish alone. [read the entire interview here]

–> An interesting aside: This interview was selected for publication in “Wired” from the opensource (crowdsourced) journalism experiment “Asignment Zero.”