CREATIVE TIME: Kim Upstill


On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers–including artists, critics, writers, and curators–to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Kim Upstill, artist.
 
Keyword: Tactics
 
Tactics are to move in relation to another, to design movement towards response. A strait forward version of a tactical action might be to act in a way that plays into an expectation, and elicits a predicted response. I want to think about tactics in terms of making art. When thinking about objects and words as being interesting, worth pursuing as signs or signifiers one can ask; where am I placed by these things. What are my predictable responses to these objects or words, and who or what structure is asking this of me? Here I think it is necessary to say that utility and tactics of object and words are linked. That when I think about things and actions getting responses from us I am also thinking about to what ends we are being asked to perform. When making I want to ask how can I use these learned responses (including boredom, disinterest, anger) to act tactically, to make/move in relation to an expectation of that thing (word object or situation).