Joseph Beuys is remembered as having claimed that “everyone is an artist.” For years, in the imaginary conversation going on with him in my head, I would respond “well, everyone has creative potential.” What, I wonder today, was the distinction I was drawing there? Moreover, why did it matter to me so much to draw such a distinction?
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With the one year anniversary of the birth of the Occupy Movement this fall, I have been contemplating how the movement’s legacy will continue to grow and how its memory will eventually come to be passed down to the next generation of activists that follow.
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On September 12th I woke up to the news that hundreds had died in a factory fire in Pakistan. It took me a moment to realize that the report was not about the all-too-similar tragedy that took place 101 years earlier in New York. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire killed 146 workers, mostly young women from immigrant families who either burned or jumped to their death from the 8th floor of the building since the workers had otherwise been locked in.
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In response to rampant privatization of public space, cultural producers in the Bay Area increasingly publicize private spaces (apartments, marginalized real estate, etc) and, in doing so, radicalize notions of public space, even when these spaces aren’t conventionally “public.”
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My thoughts on inequity, making, occupation, and tactics are currently entangled. I am thinking through a recent paper by Daphne Plessner published online via Art & Education. At the moment, I cannot say anything better than she, so please forgive the cheap trick of supplying a quote and a link as my application into the Summit viewing party.
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One of the keyword statements for ARC’s “Occupy as Form” last February, “Occupy the Hood — We are the 99%” by Gina Acebo, eloquently spoke to the need to center a racial analysis within the narrative of the Occupy movement because people of color are disproportionately affected by the issues that the Occupy movement raised.
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During a panel presentation at a recent conference in Los Angeles, Andrea Fraser presented video stills from Official Welcome first performed by the artist in 2001. The images on display showed Fraser standing at a podium, reciting selections by notable critics, intellectuals and collectors who warmly praised and introduced well-known artists. Being somewhat familiar with this piece I was not shocked by images of Fraser removing her clothes in front of an audience, unabashedly bending over in a Gucci thong, or mimicking the shenanigans of well-known critics. Rather what struck me during the presentation was her frank account of the work.
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I propose that we consider the work of Donna Haraway on interspecies relations as a viable theoretical framework from which to elaborate strategies. Haraway defines “the world as a knot in motion” in which the interactions between species at all levels shape the world.
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