What is the tension between a work’s transformative capacity and its contribution to a historical trajectory?
The meaning of this question is unclear. Does it concern the difference between the messy and subjective character of lived experience and the relatively structured and quasi-objective character of the historical record? Or does it have to do with the difference between the diverse nature of transformative experiences (i.e. personal, social, political, etc.) and the comparatively specific and narrow factors that are considered relevant to art history per se (e.g. influences from and upon other works of art)? Or perhaps it concerns the potentially unlimited and, indeed, ever changing transformative potential of a work compared to the fixed and defined quality of a single, defined historical trajectory––though the question leaves open the possibility that there may be multiple relevant trajectories. Or does the question really mean to highlight the tension that exists between art and the institutions of art generally? Is there embedded in this question a call to abandon the museum and the academy, to forget theory and even criticism, indeed to dispense with anything that does not aid the work of art in by supporting its transformative capacity? After all, who would want history if you can have transformation?
But the question never mentions art or art history: it is simply about “a work” and “a historical trajectory.” Behind this question, then, may be the feeling that “social practice”––assuming that “work” = “social practice”––is not (or may not) be art at all. And, by “historical trajectory” perhaps what is really suggested is “definition,” with history standing in for “meaning.” In other words, “How can something that changes us have a singular meaning if we are transformed in the process of experiencing it?”
I suspect what the question is really asking is: “Does social practice matter”; that is, is the indefinable, indescribable, and subjective character of social practice art simply too amorphous (partly due to its capacity to “transform”) to be fixed permanently in the historical record and, therefore, at risk of being forgotten? If it is forgotten, has its transformative value been erased? Without a clear record of what happened––not only materially but psychologically, socially, etc.––how are we to recall, analyze, and understand its nature and effects? And, furthermore, how is the work to be compared to other works, how is it to be understood to have catalyzed change in adjacent fields (economics, politics, health, etc.)? Is work of this kind simply too complex and ephemeral to be recorded and remembered? And, if so, does it matter? That is, does it matter that it doesn’t matter?
About the contributor: Lawrence Rinder is Director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. He came to the University of California from the California College of the Arts where he was Dean of the College and Dean of Graduate Studies. Previously, he was the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator of Contemporary Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art where he organized exhibitions including “The American Effect,” “2002 Biennial,” and “Tim Hawkinson,” which was given the 2005 award for best monographic exhibition in a New York museum by the United States chapter of the International Association of Art Critics. Prior to the Whitney, Rinder was founding director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, in San Francisco, and served as Assistant Director and Curator for Twentieth-Century Art at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Among the many exhibitions he organized at these institutions are “Barry McGee,” (2012, curated with Dena Beard), “Knowledge of Higher Worlds: Rudolf Steiner’s Blackboard Drawings” (1997), “Louise Bourgeois: Drawings” (1996), and “In a Different Light” (1995, curated with Nayland Blake). Rinder received a B.A. in art from Reed College and an M.A. in art history from Hunter College. He has held teaching positions at UC Berkeley, Columbia University, and Deep Springs College. He has published poetry and art criticism in Zyzzyva, Artforum, nest, The Village Voice, Fillip, and Parkett. Art Life: Selected Writings, 1991-2005, published by Gregory R. Miller and Company in Spring 2006, is his first book of essays. His play, “The Wishing Well,” co-authored with Kevin Killian, premiered in 2006 and he is the author (with Colter Jacobsen) of the photo-text novella, Tuleyome (Publication Studio, 2011).