Fish, Creative Time and Place

Fish are not central to social practice art but perhaps they should be because they are the canaries in the mines of water and food. Without fish, we may not have either soon enuf. It seems fish and artists are being de-corporealized into cans and service silos, the better, perhaps, to consume us to the very last bite.

Every year, Creative Time (CT) hosts a conference on social practice in the arts. It is a "place" in art discourse. It is also a bit of a discursive hothouse, this year without any opportunity for formal back & forth between audience & presenters. So at lunch, yesterday, I took a bit of a walk in Washington Square Park and saw some art with a little less baggage.

The air and the music (Debussy) cleared my mind and I walked away humming.

This year, the CT theme was place-making and gentrification. As last year, there were some controversial aspects to the event. One for many, was the shutting down of a talk by Lucy Lippard to hold to time constraints and another, for me- in contrast- was the long rant that was not cut off by Invincible. More controversial, to me, was the relative absence, except for Lippard's talk, of thoughtful address to the anthropocentric paradigms that seemed to be dominating the discourse. What much of the controversy has been about on Facebook, has been whether artists, like fish are being commodified to the brink of survival and to what extent, Creative Time may be complicit in that process. The reason for that suspicion was that the very valorization of large-scale social practice works, such as a recent ambitious event by Suzanne Lacy, can corporatize the art process while making the suffering and struggles of disadvantaged peoples both high art fashion and that marginalizes and excludes more modest practitioners. Ironically, historically, when money rules, there has always been a "high" art that appeals to the prevailing 1%. In this case, the 1% are those who are the best-educated, gentrified art world. Except this time, instead of casting in bronze, we are casting for the poor.

And how does any of this change essential systems that generate poverty? Not so clear. What I am very sure of, is that when we marginalize the environment in order to place humans at the center of the world, all life suffers, including and especially, poor humans. There was a great deal of discussion about displacing the poor for artists and then making room for the 1% but very little, except for Lucy's talk, about displacing the natural world with built human infrastructure. extrapolating from the displacement of nature and Lucy, we are displacing our water and food sources, which is why I always come back to fish. 

There was no opportunity for Q&A in the CT format therefore these questions could not be asked publically. There were various formats for informal gatherings, however, including, after the aftermath, on Facebook.

In response to the shutting down of Lucy Lippard on Martha Schwendener's page and a format without Q&A I wrote:

I was there and just on the point of shutting Lucy down and formatting: I also found it shocking that she was shut down, esp given audience response. What made it even more distasteful was how the last presenter was allowed to ramble on forever in a long rant with a lot of incoherent rage. Nato Thompson had said in the beginning, that he wanted us all to consider framing our listening in terms of intent, content, context, production, distribution, and documentation (which seemed very corporate) but at the end, there was no wrap up except an invite to socialize at Judson. When I went there, the noise, crowd and drinking was too much for me and I went home. Today I'm trying to decide what I think and finding it difficult. It's informative to read the threads from you, Martha Schwendener and Mira Schor who weren't there. The experience of being there, I'm sure was very diff than watching but the lack of opportunity for audience participation, even on the level allowed last year, felt deadening and made it harder to have a clear take away. There were many good moments, inc Joshua Decter (sorry I didn't say something yesterday). The Palestinian question esp seemed very heavy handled to me and ethically questionable at the beginning and the end. It's often hard for me to distinguish between exhaustion & depression (over my impression that plus ca change, plus ca reste la meme) and yesterday I felt both. But when I think about the most moving presentation, Laura Jo & her collaborators, I now question the whole set up, which put the three people of color on display, as they cried and the audience silently witnessed. I noticed that afterwards, they walked thru the lobby and no one approached them nor did they seem to want to be approached. That was of a piece for me with watching an elderly black woman trying to walk home with her groceries before the opening of Suzanne Lacy's piece last week & being turned away by (an also black policeman under orders and clearly upset by having to follow those orders). Last night, I wondered if I should have thanked Tallant, Hourani & Forte at that point but they seemed very self-protective and it felt wrong. My biggest take away was from my conversation with Mierle Mierle Laderman Ukeles to the effect, as I wrote on my own page, that we were watching a gentrification of social practice, in which yes, Suzanne seems to be quite active and about which, as Mierle said, "it's scary." It has apparently become another BIG industry except most artists going into or accessing social practice will not make any more money than all the artists who are not represented by Gagosian Gallery. Another comparison, ironically, is to the very gentrification artists pioneer with real estate, from which neighborhoods are displaced. It's painful to consider the implications of this kind of commodification of ethics and disadvantaged communities at the hands of art entrepreneurs.

On my own page I wrote:

Fascinating day 1 of 2 with old friends & new @ Creative Time today- some terrific work in Zimbabwe & Caracas, Venez. Will post more later. My only caveat so far is that ecological art is still being treated like, at best, the vegetable garnish on social practice art instead of being recognized for its indispensable interdependence. Made notes that will inform my diss and Kitty is pleased I'm home for the night.

The second day of Creative Time had some amazing highlights and some deep lows. Yesterday the most moving presentation was about the courageous defense of Giza Park in Istanbul to "save a couple trees." Today, besides brilliant presentations by Rebecca Solnit and Lucy Lippard, the Annenberg Prize was given to Laurie Jo Reynolds with prison activists Sally Tallant, Khaled Hourani and John Forte, the last three of whom stood silently for many minutes with the audience standing as well, to bear witness to the numbers of years 2 of them and a son had spent in horrendous conditions.

Sally Tallant, Khaled Hourani and John Forte bearing witness to their own pain and loss
before the standing CT audience.

Some lows: conversation with Mierle Ukeles to the effect that social practice is being gentrified; no Q&A except in informal, segregated social venues and some painful conflation of ahistoricity and deskilling at the end. I wrote a much longer comment on my responses on Martha Schwendener's page (which makes me wonder if I should separate my professional & personal pages) but my take away this AM (Sunday) is that the entire experience felt virtually disembodied because except for Mel Chin's brief comments about green making him go red with anger and presentations, like Rick Lowe's on urban farming, there was little mention of ecological issues. I don't recall the term global warming being used even once for example. Lucy's format-truncated talk was the closest we came to an in depth analysis of the relationship between environmental issues and place-art-making. The term biodiversity was mentioned a couple times but fairly abstractly. There was a lot of friendly networking in the lobby but in the end, that seemed a means towards self-promotion rather than the kind of forum for cutting edge ideas I might have hoped for and left me feeling a bit hungry for depth. The food we were served seemed to have the same affliction: elegant without much substance. I don't mean to sound down because there were many wonderful presenters who can be accessed at their site. However, at a time when the earth as we know it is crying for help, what I heard was some tremendously anthropocentric thinking.

Fish tales, teams and dominance patterns

 

Fish in the Mississippi River are indicator species for the health of a far larger
biogepgraphic region that surrounds the river.

1: PM

In less than an hour, we will have a Gulf to Gulf webcast session for the team working on Fish Story.

That team for Fish Story, includes:

James Bradley, media provider, Executive Director at WebServes, New York, NY http://webserves.org/

Emily Caigan, Project manager for “Fish Story” West Hurley, NY

Daisy Morton, studio manager to Aviva Rahmani, Vinalhaven ME

Aviva Rahmani, ecological artist, University of Plymouth and INSTAAR affiliate Vinalhaven ME and New York, NY: ghostnets.com, avivarahmani.com

Susan Steinman, Director of WEAD, ecological artist, Berkeley, CA: http://www.steinmanstudio.com/

Eugene Turner, dead zone biologist, and Distinguished Research Master and Professor, Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA: http://www.oceanography.lsu.edu/turner.shtm

James White, paleoecologist, Professor of Geological Sciences, Fellow and Director of the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, CO: instaar.colorado.edu/index.html.

We will also be joined by Memphis Social curator Tom McGlynn who invited our participation.

There are going to be a number of important topics I hope we will address but I am still considering the lessons learned and considered about framing from last week's CT event. The two Sunday workshops that stuck in my mind, were the one on creating narratives in social practice, with Suzanne Lacy and Jodie Evans and the one Steve Lambert did about advertising and public art. The latter was intended to define points of entry with a community, how to listen and how to shape a work out of the input. It was mostly a discussion of how to listen, which I'm all for. The most important take away that I related to, was to look for the gap, the paradox, the intersection where values can be aligned. 

In working with scientists, finding that mystical point of entry is the most delicate and important part of my work and aligns with "trigger point theory," that small place I always look for, where hope can start to grow for environmental restoration. The trick in Fish Story will be to align that point of entry with the aspirations and concerns of people I may meet there.

Steve's workshop had us doing a deceptively simple exercize of making columns for old behavior (in this case, gutting the environment) and new behavior (finding ways to live resiliently with the rest of the natural world) and then breaking those two columns down in terms of the benefits and barriers each option convey. So, for example, an old behavior might be that it's easy to overfish and the ease is the benefit. The barrier to fully enjoying that old behavior to change is the fat that if we continue, there will be nothing left to exploit and deplete. The barrier to new behavior is just changing behavior and the difficulty of that change. People don't usually like something easy suddenly made more difficult. Steve reminded us that it's not just about the community we work with, it's also about not allowing ourselves to get burnt out.

In both workshops, the presumption was that an artist is invited in by a community to avoid the critique of "parachuting in" and then leaving. Suzanne and Jodi emphasized that building a good rapport for a project with integrity can take a year or more. But the third workshop workshop I participated in last Sunday, about the landslide caused by fracking in Taring Padi, assembled a memorializing action in one week, which has taken on a life of its own there. So these are 3 diff approaches to developing and sustaining social practice projects. What they all have in common is finding how & where to align an artists agenda with the community where the work will be presented. In the case of "Fish Story," it's not going to be just about those 2 agendas (art & the community), it's also about land management and what science can tell us about what is happening there. And then there's my agenda: to find a trigger point in environmental degradation to effect healing change ... without imposing myself  .... by finding ways to give voice to the voiceless on the ground. Not just fish. The people who want a world with fish.

So the critique of the first two social practice approaches above, is that they both, in effect, manipulate people to effect what a predetermined good may be but that "good" remains anthropocentric, human dominated. So how do I negotiate for the fish? How to I find the voices that speak for the fish among the people in Memphis? That search appears on the surface to argue for an inversion of familiar dominance patterns and by doing so, finding the path to speaking for the fish. It seems like a layered paradox to even consider that challenge. So that is the "little" gap/paradox I hope we will explore today.

4:PM

We had the meeting. I'm in absorption mode. The scientists are open and supportive. Gene showed us a picture of a 300 lb alligator gar which must have been 20' long, caught using a net & held up by a sports fisherman. 

Susan commented at the end of our meeting, "it's (Fish Story) so unlike you. It's so anthropocentric!!" I replied, "well, you can't do much restoration without a few people." I guess that's my paradoxical point of entry. Maybe the question now, is what behavioral change might make a difference, where in Memphis? Jim & Gene commented about how Memphis has seen itself as the center of the world because of it's historical position on the river. So what I might be looking for, is whom can tell me where might be the trigger in that center?

1910 Photo of 10' Alligator gar, author unknown

Reconstructing frames

What does the inhabitant of this urban living room have in common with
the large-mouthed bass in my previous post have in common? Both ar
voiceless, invisible, disenfranchised and powerless. The difference is that
we only eat one of them.

I didn't want to keep talking about CT & the BDS but it keeps coming up on blogs & on FB. I would like to see our whole set of values premises torn apart. Meanwhile, since I've already been outed on & called on my views, I'm reposting for the record, what I wrote in individual exchanges when i was taken to task for the seriousness of my charges quoted on Mira's blog (see previous posts). The following is from those exchanges today.

I stand totally by what I wrote about incitement to Neo-Nazis, who incidentally target Muslims as casually as anyone else. A good look at history is the best proof of that. I think ideally, this conversation goes to deconstructing and rethinking the narrative frame. As Suzanne Lacy mentioned in her workshop about narratives, & Mira referenced in her blog, some of us struggle with being defensive. I am very sensitized, as many Jews are, to the perils of anti-semitism. My Mother was a Holocaust survivor. My father escaped the Russian pogroms AND the revolution. One uncle, a revolutionary war hero, was sent to Siberia by Stalin for being Jewish and another uncle died in a suicide bomb in Jerusalem. My father changed his name from Gabin to Rahmani, because he had many Arab friends and sympathized with their cause. The BDS argument is that circumstances in Israel conflate with Apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid is a loaded term. I agree that in many circumstances that is the outcome in Israel but for very different reasons and that is worth noting. One of my most vivid memories is a conversation with a Palestinian taxi driver in Tel Aviv in 1984, who told me that Iranians then were going door to door threatening people's families if they didn't join the Intifada. I recall visits there as a child & young woman when the separations we see now were non-existent. It must also be noted that blacks in So. Africa never targeted school children and white supremicists there never offered to negotiate. This is complex stuff and my argument is against the dangers of over-simplification. And I've probably written too much.

How many artists from how many countries receive funding from govts whose policies are impeccable? Yes, I made serious charges. No, I don't think the BDS is open to serious dialog. I have been in dialog my entire life with both Israelis & Palestinians and my father before me. I think there are serious issues there that require serious attention with people's lives at stake, not flamboyant grand standing. My point beyond the excerpt in Mira's post, in much longer posts I wrote on FB, was that when serious political statements are made that tacitly disenfranchise any group of artists, both sides need to be presented and the whole framed in terms of what principles on what basis.  

Framing Creative Time

I'm exhausted but feel good at the end of the Creative Time Summit, which presented many terrific artists and their ideas, from whom I learned a lot. Part of what exhausted me, however, was a contretemps over an Egyptian artist who made a melodramatic protest against Israel that colored most of the first day by refusing the invitation to appear, at the last moment. One reason I feel good is time well-spent with people, including organizers Nato Thompson & Anne Pasternak about the boycott issue. As far as the boycotters, honestly, I  think Egyptian artists have enuf fish to fry in Egypt. I've written about it on my FB page and will only add here that I think, when critical political issues aren't adequately framed, they become a dominance free-for-all, serving only individualistic interests.

I also think this question of who or what takes dominance goes to the heart of what has precipitated our present environmental crisis. When we privilege anthropocentrism, we are presuming human dominance. When our (mine also) point of view is stubbornly selfish/ close-minded/ nationalistic/ anthropocentric, we (I am) are doomed to fail, regardless of the "justice" of our (my) point of view.

In this case, the case for "Confronting Inequity," the conference subtitle, in my opinion, was not adequately framed over the boycott. I don't accept Israeli policies wholesale, for example, on the settlements, but think serious issues deserve seriously framed discussions of the issues and policies, separated from the peoples. In their defense, CT said they were blind-sided.

More on the conference and the boycott is on Mira Schor's blog:

http://ayearofpositivethinking.com/2012/10/13/amazing/

I'd rather play a good game of chess than deal with artists boycotting each other. Art politics and chess are both based on surprise but chess, generally has better framing.

Friendly adversaries playing chess in Washington Square Park.

The following are some of my notes from the first day of the conference (with my comments in ital.):

Nato Thompson & Anne Pasternak introducing: Art & social change- talking vs. doing @ Zucotti (Nato) and Arab Spring; artists that pulled out of CT to boycott Israeli because Israeli Center for Digital Art in Holon, Israel, had been a screening partner.

Pablo Helguera: songs about immigration, humour. Asked for volunteers for role playing &gave out dollar bills to reapportion: "The Dictator Game." Then the Ultimatum" game. Another song, "This little angel has died ..." asking questions- art about the thing, art. Everyone is an artist is condescending. Who are the winners & losers? Why should I give the public what they want? 3rd song, a la Woody Guthrie: "Deportee ... they are just deportees (killed in plane crash)" ... (their bodies/lives) scattered like dry leaves on (our) fields."

Martha Rosler: capitalism, neo-liberalism & class, 1973 "Garage Sale,"(I recall going to one of her garage sales in 1977? in Solana Beach, CA) to address relationships with things, shame of what we discard, gender, as an indicator of economic instability- art as one more system, negotiation for value, parsing 1 project for a Marxist critique, change over time. Relaxed about tech troubles, narratives. Attacked by Marcuse & Sandi Dijkstra for inappropriate art

(Note: I also recall many long arguments I had with Marcuse & my then street theatre group, the American Ritual Theatre about what is revolutionary art)

Hegel vs analysis. Owning material & means, friendships. Marx on the fetishism of the object @ the center of art world? (legitimizing) shopping. Meta-monumental labor & work in walls made of money. What is the social value of art, production?

(Note to self re: 1968 Alejandro Jodorowski on the only acceptable residue of performance should be the changed psyche that has framed all my work since)

Malkia Cyril: Center for Media Justice. Racial wealth gap. Consciousness created from ‘us’ but wealth concentrated w/ corporations (1%) 100 million people no access to media. Media action grass roots action. Prison as arts & culture issue. “Bank vs America.” ‘when I came out as a teenager, my Mom told me we had to go on the talkshow circuit.’

LAPD, John Malpedes: biggest recovery group program anywhere (homeless in LA). Parades & stories. LACAN not allowing homeless people to lie down on the street.

Joia Mukherjee: Medical- no sustainability without art. “Partners in health” began in Haiti re: hydroelectric dam displacing people from their land. Missions as dignification of social & economic rights: FOOD, WATER, SANITATION vs sentimental idealization compared to another beauty? Haiti hospital mural  “every person is a person.” Beauty in ugliness of oppressive disease rooted in lack of dignity. Diseases of impoverishment. AIDS as a disease of oppression. Migration as part of that oppression. Treatment as a basic right& became part of recovery. They are we.

Skart: 50 person choir for Yugoslavia political songs in refugee camps to give joy to Serbia. “Backward” poem for conservative institutions. Women in Black against church involvement in public life: poem- story- song about, "a tree that grew in locksmith’s shop with no concept of birds or the sky"- Very Moving!!!

Taring Padi: about landslide in Indonesia caused by fracking “give us back our land," May 29,2006 hot sludge buried rice fields, in river, 30 villages, 60, 000 people displaced, forced migration. People left behind their history, lost their cultural cohesion. Art focus on retrieving cultural memory, “Reflections in the Mud” to fight for their rights. Using art to confront critics creating alternative livelihood: giant banners & puppets to express grief & pain during carnival. (Weird sound to tell presenters their time was up from musicians) Way to express frustration & anger & community. Still waiting for compensation. http://taringpadi.com/

Suzanne Lacy & Jodi Evans (Code Pink): (Jodi began with statement in support of the boycott about Israel persecuting Palestine, which I found very jolting but was thankfully much briefer than some subsequent statements by other artists). Rape addressed @ Nuremburg, Rosa Parks & rape, Jim Crow, “he offered me a drink of whiskey.” Bangladesh rapes- still no prosecutions. Susan Griffin, ramparts, rape as the all-American crime, “Ablutions” (the seminal work on rape that Suzanne, myself, Judy Chicago & Sandi Orgel did in 1972.) , “3 Weeks in May,” Leslie Labowitz & Women’s Building to raise awareness. Rape as tool of war- Balkan war on 60, 000 Muslim women. Rape as crime against humanity as genocide. Congo despite  peacekeepers- sexualized violence, Eve Ensler, Egyptian sexualized violence in Tahrir Square. LACE changes since 1974- prominent map if incidence of rape w/ 50 events, men deeply involved. Focused on schools where rape has increased. Used social bloggers. Shame has NOT changed. Women under siege. 1 in 3 raped in US military. Syrian rapes: 92% by Govt. officials. Obtrusive guitar sound calling them to conclusion. “Why don’t you (Republicans) spend your time ending rape vs defining rape.”

Break: lobby visits with Mary Miss, Lillian Ball, Martha Rosler, Mira Schor, Carol Stakenas, Linda Weintraub, Suzaan Boettger, etc., where it was mentioned that Suzanne had referenced me for "Ablutions." Lillian thought she’d seen me in Suzanne's slide, bathing naked in one of the tubs we had set up. I corrected her that that was not me. In a similar conversation, walking with Martha and Suzanne a little later, we clarified to Martha that none of the creators had been naked- a deliberate decision about power & vulnerability )

Tidal Journal: Occupy theory & strategies on Palestine. Boycotting Israeli Digital Art from occupied Palestine. Call for boycott against Israelis & divestment (BDS: please boycott my country & those who are profiting). Arab Israeli normalization & institutional violence @ expense of indigenous population (implication that Israeli Jews are not indigenous, solidarity with American Indians, etc). debt governments responsive to global capital not people. Strike debt. The debt resistors <strikedebt.org>.

Note: Tying Jews & $: sad old story. As I blogged on FB later, where would these people be if they boycotted the tech & medical advances which have come from Israel?

Rabih Mroue: the Syrian protestors are recording their own death. How make the victim visible? (powerful film) Victim reflected in sniper’s eyes over & over in pixellated focus Complexity between warmaking & picture making. Put the other hors de champs by killing him. Real event Syria 2011. Reenacted 2012.

A.L. Steiner: in transparent plastic suit over ‘naked’ body suit. Pussy Riot films. “Patriarchy is a pyramid scheme.” Moving screaming “music.”

Leonidas Martin: Spanish revolution. World Bank & IMF 10, 000 arrived to tour Borsa de Barcelona, chanting, “you will not have a home in your whole fucking life.” “It’s too weird (for the Guinness Book of Word Records).” Constructed more houses than France & Germany combined during boom. Not a crisis but a fraud: 424,465 billion bank bail out. “Transform your anger into fun.”

Tom Finkelpearl: Put the RMutt urinal back in the bathroom. Immigrant movement (Roosevelt Ave). Socially collaborative art. Co-operative vs adversarial activism, SDS, Saul Lewinsky & “Revelry for Radicals,” Radical Women- Carol Hanish (sp.?), Zap Action, Mierle Ukeles, SNCC, The Diggers “live as tho the revolution was already won.” Abbie Hoffman dropping & burning dollars @ Stock Exchange, Act Up, Yoke Ono’s “Cut Piece,” Kaprow, Suzanne Lacy, Beuys, Rick Lowe @ SHAPE, People’s Front for the Liberation of Judea. Re: boycott cancellations (Mosireen) if not here, where? When? What are the practical implications of taking this action? John Dewey.

(My note re: thoughts on art & artists re: society, comparing Biden as chessmaster anticipating Ryan’s next move in debate; me often quoting from one of the IPCC members on climate change, 'look out for where the hockey puck will be vs following the puck')

Fernando Garcia-Dory: Paris Commune. Spectacle & narration of success. Community artists as contradiction: individual vs the commons. Self as renegade. Environment as a thing that requires remedy & sales. Not narrow, technical solutions myth & religion. Walking from Brussels to Berlin with flock of sheep, stopping to make actions in each village. Shepherds as curated vision. Soul + matter, thing & symbol, GMOs, Goats. Organizing. Silent wars. Campo adentro. Shit is very important: rural Spain- traditional music & new tech. Welcome to Majorca.

Slavoj Zizek: things are going pretty bad. There will be crisis. Does the global left know what it wants? Difficult to imagine change? Moralism= don’t know what they want. Liberal capitalism. Accepted vs the system. Chinese prohibited alternate realities & time travel narratives. Can imagine end of life but not socialism. (Why) are we blind, unjust?

A few closing thoughts:

In one of today's workshops, with Steve Lambert, Steve commented twice, that we're going to die, so we need to choose what we're going to do with our time.

As I was walking home tonight, I saw the sign for the passing of Rev. Moody, a man whose time was well and generously spent, framed by the deaths of servicemen in our wars. Now that's what I call well-framed.