Social Practice

encounters
an interesting link that i came to sort of tangentially while researching the urban think tank.

look towards the bottom for ‘all real living is meeting - encounter and relation’ and the discussion of the work of martin buber.

Another book that I had mean to to put down on our reading list for the year:
Magic Moments: Collaborations Between Artists and Young People,
Anna Harding (Ed.), Black Dog Press, London, 2005

Additionally, I had thought it might be a good idea to use the website to track our reading activity, both to let each other know what books we are currently reading, and also to recommend new books for the list. For example, it would be great to know who has picked up a copy of the various books on the list or who may have borrowed something from the Workshop Library.

Also it might be a good idea to use this website to keep track of online articles, pdf downloads, etc… For example, I found the first four chapters of “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and the entirety of “Empire” online.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Empire

Should this be done through the ‘blog or the Wiki? If we used the blog, it might be good to keep a single, common tag, like Pedagogy (or some such) so that we could quicky track things down.

a couple weeks ago i was reading the current ‘issue’ of ARTWURL, curated by HOMEWORK (Ditte Lyngkaer Pedersen, Carlos Motta, Lize Mogel, and Jeuno J.E Kim) a new york based collective whose project is an attempt to apply pedagogical strategies to socially engaged art practices.

Contesting the purported neutrality of education, HOMEWORK aims to examine and engage in alternative pedagogical models to understand the larger historical context, learn to think from within the confronted problem, and to develop creative responses. HOMEWORK is a project based on processes, where each homework is a self-initiated assignment to practice our continuous critical engagement with notions of the “political.”

an interesting project that could be instructive given the context of the workshop this term.

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]

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.