Social Practice

The Distributed Exhibition Call for Site-Specific Artwork

The Distributed Exhibition asks: What might happen when artwork is created for a particular person, family, or living situation? What if private residences became display spaces? What if the occupants became gallerists? What if the viewers became guests?

Create a new site-specific artwork in a private residence or local business as part of an exhibition by the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art. Artists should be interested in responding to the unique layout, architectural features, personal display, or social dynamics of the space.

For full description of submission requirements and project, visit:
http://borro.ws/distributed_ex/
Or email: distributed_ex AT borro.ws

A project initiated by Sara Thacher, hosted by the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) from March 28 – May 17, 2008.

Deadline for Submissions: February 1st, 2008, by 5:00 pm. Submissions may be hand delivered.
Artists Notified: February 11th, 2008

Mail submissions to:
San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art
“The Distributed Exhibition”
560 South First Street
San Jose, CA 95113

Designers Vincent Fichard and Matthew Jones (couldn’t find a website for them) created alternate road signs in Dubai last month. View the video documentation on YouTube.

It took a few days to make the signs, and a week to shoot, we had over a hundred people reacting to them and they’re still on the streets of Dubai. The wording is in Arabic and English; and the style of the signs are exactly like the construction/info signs you see all over town. [via itsnicethat]

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.”

In the fall of 2006 the Banff Center for the Arts hosted a residency called “The Future of Idea Art.”  One outcome of this gathering was a “Relational Aesthetics Song” (produced on their wiki, naturally).  Here’s a little snippet of a verse:

“
Oh there won’t be any evidence that anything happened when we’re done
Or maybe there will, like someone could leave
A crumpled up kleenex or something like that on the floor for when we’re gone”

Of course, if you don’t like the lyrics– you can always re-write them.

A new web-based (and occasionally physical space) curation project just opened its doors in Berlin (and beyond). SocialDesignSite intends to open the discussion about what ‘Social Design’ is and what changes it might bring about. Their motto, “We cannot not change the world,” is based in the belief that every action we take shapes our social interactions and has broader consequences for the world around us. They describe their role as connecting projects undertaken with a similar Social Design perspective across the globe.

Within the categorization structure that they’ve set forth, ‘art based’ is just one mode out of many that Social design can inhabit. Most categories are a little slim in projects, so it’s hard to get a read about the distinctions (or usefulness) of these divisions. They have also built a ‘discussion’ feature that will allow a message board style conversation about an individual project. They do appear to be soliciting submissions for exhibition on the site, so it will be interesting to watch the growth of their exhibition over the next few months.

They’ll be having their official launch as part of ‘DESIGNMAI 2007′ in Berlin from May 14th to 18th.

For the Dale Sko Hack, Otto von Busch initiated a workshop for factory workers and designers at the Dale shoe factory. This activity brought together people intimately tied to the physical prodection of style with those responsible for the aesthetic prodection of style. The discussion centered around questioning and redefining the process of manufacture. They concluded that “. . . we must find ways to use the existing manual craft skills better in the design, find non-linear ways to operate production that creates more interesting results and narratives” (via wmmna interview). Not only have the results of this dialogue recieved the critical attention of the international fashoin community, but shoe factory is sustantially restructuring and reforming their production. They also produced a download-able book [PDF] documenting the project.

Otto von Busch sees his practice as similar to ‘hacking’ or heretical thinking:

“Modifying and breaking into systems to alter them, injecting micropolitical will into the channels and flows of the system. But they do not oppose the inherent power or code processing of that system. This is what makes hackers similar to heretics; they oppose the hierarchical role of the interpreter, administrator, or author, but not the power itself – code or faith. The heretic is not an atheist, but someone hacking the institutional and hierarchical interpretation of the faith. Like the hacker, modder, or tinkerer the heretic is keeping the power on, not renouncing or opposing the core or energy of a system.” (also via wmmna interview)

Von Busch and his partner, Evren Uzer, constitute the group “roomservices.” Currently they are working on a two part workshop/conference called “epicenter/periphery.” These events will consider the “exploration, mapping, and building of rural conditions for embracing creativity.” Epicenter/periphery will take place consecutively in June and October 2007; the workshop will take place in 14-21 June 2007 and the conference will be realized in 18-21 October 2007, in Dale Norway in collaboration with Nordic Artists’ Center- NKD and United World College in Fjaler.

A group of elementary school students and the teachers at their after-school program started a pedagogical exploration of social justice and resource management. A communal set of Lego building blocks launched this investigation an reflection on privilege, democracy, and self-organisation. Here’s a little excerpt of a conversation between the kids:

Carl: “We didn’t ‘give’ the pieces, we found and shared them.”

Lukas: “It’s like giving to charity.”

Carl: “I don’t agree with using words like ‘gave.’ Because when someone wants to move in, we find them a platform and bricks and we build them a house and find them windows and a door.”

“These children seemed to squirm at the implications of privilege, wealth, and power that giving holds. The children denied their power, framing it as benign and neutral, not something actively sought out and maintained.”

Read all of the essay “Why We Banned Legos” by Ann Pelo and Kendra Pelojoaquin (originally published in “Rethinking Schools“)

On March 25th, Rebecca Gamble hosted “An Event for Conversation” via the peer-to-peer internet telephone service, Skype. She invited participants to BYOB, pull up a stool, and log on. Following in Tom Marioni’s technologically enabled footsteps, she describes the gathering as

“. . . the first event in a series, for the project ‘An Event for a Conversation’, which celebrates social networking, and explores the social and technological methods we use to communicate. . . . This event will be documented by the participants, through text sent to the artist and through screen grab images of desktops. The conversations themselves will not be recorded.”

So far, the documentation from this raucous virtual pub-crawl* have yet to surface online, but you can find more information on the project blog.
*I didn’t attend, so my description may be completely off