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Art, Activism and Social Change What it looks like.

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We have already looked at how contemporary Social Art Practices are addressing various social issues in various ways.

We have also looked at the particular circumstances

surrounding prisons in America, made particularly acute because of drug laws and minimum sentencing.

Today we complicate our understanding of both Social

Art and prisons.

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Let’s start with Pablo Helguera’s identification of various types of participatory structures within Socially Engaged Art. Because there are so many different ways artists are working with communities, he provides ways we might think about what it means for an artist to collaborate or participate with an audience.

1.  Nominal Participation– a viewer contemplates the

artwork in a passive manner. 2.  Directed Participation– a visitor completes a simple

task to contribute to the creation of the work. 3.  Creative Participation—the visitor provides content for

part of a work that has been created by an artist. 4.  Collaborative Participation– the visitor shares

responsibility for developing the structure and content of the work in collaboration with the artist.

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Nominal Participation– Many artists engaged in artworks that fall into this category. Addressing issues of race, cultural and religious differences the works are seen in traditional art galleries and museums. A few are highlighted here…

Kerry James Marshall The subject matter of his paintings,

installations, and public projects is often drawn from African-American popular culture, and is rooted in the geography of his upbringing: “You can’t be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 and grow up in South Central [Los Angeles] near the Black Panthers headquarters, and not feel like you’ve got some kind of social responsibility.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/

kerry-james-marshall

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Many Mansions, 1994

His works address issues of race, juxtaposing images from the history of Blacks and Whites in America.

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Wangechi Mutu Born in Nairobi, Kenya, Mutu scrutinizes

globalization by combining found materials, magazine cutouts, sculpture, and painted imagery.

Sampling such diverse sources as African

traditions, international politics, the fashion industry, pornography, and science fiction, her work explores gender, race, war, colonialism, global consumption, and the exoticization of the black female body.

https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/

exhibitions/wangechi_mutu/

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Wangechi Mutu Race, cultural and gender

stereotypes are addressed.

Wangechi Mutu Misguided Little

Unforgivable Hierarchies, 2005.. Ink, acrylic, collage, contact paper on Mylar, 81 x 52 inches

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Shirin Neshat— is an Iranian-American artist whose work addresses issues related to her culture, in particular women’s issues. She works with her own conflicted feelings about being Muslim and Female considering current Fundamentalism in Iran. 9

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Photography and films colored by religion, gender and a sense of cultural displacement are seen in her work.

Kara Walker Walker is best known for exploring

the raw intersection of race, gender, and sexuality through her iconic, silhouetted figures. Walker unleashes the traditionally proper Victorian medium of the silhouette directly onto the walls of the gallery, creating a theatrical space in which her unruly cut-paper characters fornicate and inflict violence on one another.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/

kara-walker

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12 Large scale works designed as a kind of diorama, viewers walk around the space in a more active way of viewing.

William Kentridge– A South African Artist. Works with stop motion Animation and drawing to address issues related to racial intolerance. In particular, his own implication as a white male in the violence that has been enacted.

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The basics of South Africa's socio-political condition and history must be known to grasp his work fully..

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Thomas Hirschhorn--Commissioned by Dia Art Foundation, Gramsci Monument was a new artwork by Thomas Hirschhorn, taking place on the grounds of Forest Houses, a New York City Housing Authority development in the Morrisania neighborhood of the Bronx, New York. It functioned as a temporary community center. http://www.diaart.org/gramsci-monument/index.php

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Gramsci Monument opened on July 1 and ran through September 15, 2013. It was open seven days a week, from 10 am to 7 pm. People in the housing project and community were welcome to participate. http://www.diaart.org/gramsci-monument/index.php

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Directed Participation– the artist directs the viewer to do something. Viewer has the option to do it or not. Helgara mentions one of Yoko Ono’s pieces, Wish Tree.

Another, designed by Chinese Artist, ZHANG HUAN, was designed to bring attention to this group of Chinese Workers, recently laid off when a government factory was closed. In a group performance "called 'To Raise the Water Level in a Fishpond', he asked 40 migrant laborers to stand in a pond, their physical presence altering its volume.

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For another titled 'To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain,' he and nine other artists climbed a mountain near Beijing, stripped and lay down on top of one another to create a second, mini-peak. Both of these artworks bring attention to how one body matters. In China, where there are so many people, little attention is given to the importance of the individual.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija— The New York–and–Chiang Mai–based Thai artist became famous in 1992 when he made Untitled 1992 (Free), a sculpture–performance–guerrilla action wherein he emptied out the office of the 303 Gallery in Soho and installed a makeshift kitchen, complete with fridge, hot plates, rice steamers, tables, and stools. He then cooked Thai curry; anyone could drop in, serve him- or herself, and eat. For free. His installations often take the form of stages or rooms for sharing meals, cooking, reading or playing music; architecture or structures for living and socializing are a core element in his work.

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He integrates the flux of his itinerant life into sedate museum and gallery spaces, effectively destroying the division between art and life. Installations have included re-organizing a gallery as a temporary kitchen in which he cooked and chatted with visitors.

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Known for installing ping-pong tables (this one with political and sociological phrases distributed all over the exhibition space), Tiravanija is interested in the visitor and how he relates and interacts with the work. Visitors are invited to play ping-pong, even inventing their own rules.

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Mel Chin believes art can provoke greater social awareness and responsibility so he finds ways to integrate art into people’s lives. His work, Knowmad, was designed as a video game based on the carpets of disappearing tribal cultures. His hope was that something fun could also teach people about the beautiful artworks created by these cultures that most Americans were unaware of.

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Creative Participation—the visitor provides content for part of a work that has been created by an artist. While some of Mel Chin’s work fits into the directed participatory category, Project Pay Dirt fits into the Creative one. You should already know about this project from earlier lectures.

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We have also already discussed the work of Krzysztof Wodiczko has addressed timely political, social, and psychological issues through his work as an artist for 30 years. The ones highlighted here fit into the Creative participatory category.

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The Bunker Hill Monument, in Boston, involved projecting images of individuals from the community who had experienced violence in their community, the one surrounding the monument.

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KRZYSZTOF WODICZKO, The Homeless Projection, 1986–1987. Outdoor slide projection at the Soldiers and Sailors Civil War Memorial, Boston, organized by First Night, Boston.

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In "The Tijuana Projection", 2001 Wodiczko designed a Public projection onto the Centro Cultural de Tijuana, Mexico Participants tell their painful and personal stories while their faces are projected onto the public building.

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Wearing a camera and recording device designed so the camera is always in the same relation to the head of the individual speaking, their face is can then be projected with seamless precision on the façade of the building so it appears it is the building speaking to those who have come to witness.

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The building, the Centro Cultural de Tijuana, is a symbolic structure, a symbol of the city.

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This highly public building becomes the site, the surface, the interface between the public and private as individuals open up and share painful experiences in this public space, things that are usually relegated to the private domain…or even silenced altogether.

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Wodiczko’s work exists as a form of communal therapy, a way of giving voice to the voiceless, to exposure hidden secrets and a way to see the role and function of the city as both physical structure and community support for everyone who lives there.

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Collaborative Participation– the visitor shares responsibility for developing the structure and content of the work in collaboration with the artist. Artists like: Tim Rollins and Kids of Survival Emily Jacir All Art Education and Art Therapy programs with critical intention.

Tim Rollins worked with a group of young people in an at risk neighborhood. He discovered that his students responded to art - art taught his way, not the way it is usually taught in public schools. Some of Rollins' students became a group of regulars who participated in an after-school and weekend program called the Art of Knowledge Workshop.

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Tim Rollins and his collaborators, high school students from the South Bronx, NY, typically make works based on classic literature.

This one is based on, Animal Farm.

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The students named themselves K.O.S. which stands for "Kids of Survival. "What we're doing changes people's conception about who can make art, how art is made, who can learn and what's possible, because a lot of these kids had been written off by the school system. This is our revenge.”

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Prison Creative Arts Project: This is one you all have researched. Here are some voices of the artists. Statement from the Artist: Billy Brown I started in the art class over four and half years ago, hear at ICF. I got to meet art teacher Herschell Turner. Working with him was three prisoners. Mr. Turner talked with me and asked me what would I like to learn. At that time, I said I wanted to work with pastels, so I got started in pastels and loved working with them, and I did some good work. But one day Mr. Turner was telling the class we had to come up with our own thing. I prayed about it and one day I got some colored pencils and black paper, and I came up with Billy Art. And to know that my art is like by others really makes me want to work to make it better

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Martin Vargas At age 18, I came to prison to serve a "parolable" life sentence. Scared, angry and defiant, I was easily swallowed up by the negativity saturating prisons. Now I am 46. Although the parole board voted unanimously to proceed to public hearing on my case in both 1992 and 1993, no action has been taken. So like many other middle-aged "lifers" who become eligible for parole after serving 10 calendar years, I am now a prisoner of the current board's policy that "life means life." It is frustrating to know that nothing I have done to become a mature, responsible adult, and nothing I accomplish from now on, will affect this parole board's willingness to release me. In spite of this, I know there are millions of people in worse prisons than I'm in and I try to be a productive, contributing member of society even though I must do it from here.My artwork is a great help in making this connection.Art is a tremendous gift! It brings peace and freedom where none is meant to be and has substantially raised my level of dignity and self worth. It's a big reason why my past is no longer a part of my present and I no longer have a need to prove myself

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When men in a Pennsylvania state prison join with victims of crime to create a mural about healing, their views on punishment, remorse, and forgiveness collide. Finding consensus is not easy but as the participants move through the creative process, mistrust gives way to surprising moments of human contact and common purpose. The film, featuring Philadelphia’s internationally recognized Mural Arts Program, raises important questions about crime, justice and reconciliation, and dramatically illustrates how art can facilitate dialogue about difficult issues.

Inmates Journey Victims Journey

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City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program Mural Arts Restorative Justice Program Philadelphia area.

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Some links for additional research: Community Arts network http://wayback.archive-it.org/2077/20100906194747/http://www.communityarts.net/

Prison Creative Arts Project http://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/pcap/ Artists United for Social Justice http://www.ausj.org/ Prison arts coalition http://theprisonartscoalition.wordpress.com/

Corrections Documentary Project http://www.correctionsproject.com/