What social and institutional memory is lost when it is branded as social practice?
To make sense of this question I had to consider that the “loss” would be reciprocal––that it would happen not just when labeling art as social practice but also when designating social practices as art.
When a particular artwork is categorized as a form of social practice what disappears first is its autonomy based value-neutral status. As viewers or producers we should then be required to consider all the social behavior that surrounds its making and presentation, paying special attention to the power structures and hierarchies of production and presentation. This should expand the scope of social and institutional awareness rather than diminish it.
Similarly, recognizing an instance of social practice as art will also lead to a re-consideration of its status. Although anthropologists might not define such forms of expression as art they place tremendous value on them (as do historians of ancient art and artifacts) recognizing that they contain primary information about cultural history. And many institutions follow practices like the Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., gathering materials such as cooking utensils, clothing and documents for their family and social life collections to create archives that record the customs and social practices of the past.
Since my entry is appearing a few days past the halfway point in the OE countdown it seemed necessary to find a way to review some of what’s been discussed (and argued) so far. If the quotes I’ve selected appear to be rejoinders or expressions of wishful thinking instead of answers to my assigned question that is entirely intentional.
At the same time I want to thank everyone who has written for or worked on the production of this blog for your thoughtfulness and eloquence and for so generously sharing your ideas and ideals, your struggles and commitments. I feel privileged to contribute this “mash up” and hope you will perceive it as the homage it is meant to be.
What social and institutional memory is lost when social practice is branded as art?
social practice (that) exists in many forms and all places, towns and tiny community rooms and neighborhoods all across the world. Each place is different, each has culture. The real beauty of this whole movement is that it’s not limited to the art world, but is straddling many worlds. – Hope Hilton
social practice is when someone devotes an extraordinary amount of time, energy, and attention to relationships between people.” – Bryce Dwyer (and his grandmother)
“Evaluation”. Evaluation typically offers some feedback about a practice and the methods for obtaining that feedback can fall along scientific (think, the actual definition of experiment in the lab and not in art), quantitative or qualitative lines. – Daniel Tucker
how do we begin to decolonize ourselves. – Sylvia Juliana Mantilla Ortiz
create opportunities for more power to be distributed to more people? – Deborah Fisher
Pierre Bourdieu said “(e)very established order tends to produce (to very different degrees and with different means) the naturalization of its own arbitrariness.” Which is to say that as soon as the term was appropriated from Marxist theory and applied to art, a canon formed based on each and every instance of exclusion and inclusion – each program, summit, conference, show and publication that announces itself as “social practice” also serves to delimit the practices that are considered as such. And, an accumulation of these micro gestures will likely create a “canon.” – Helen Reed
What institutional and social memory is lost by branding it (art) social practice?
Art (as) has to be an end in itself, despite its social value, because otherwise it must be leveraged to meet metrics. – Sue Bell Yank
art for art’s sake and despise the global culture industry. – Stephen Wright
a myth of individual genius. Although contemporary artworks that circulate in museums, galleries, and biennials are mostly produced by unpaid interns, underpaid artists’ assistants, seasonally-employed shop technicians, and far-flung contractors hired by artists’ project managers, narratives that celebrate individual charisma and “the artist’s touch” continue to permeate wall labels and art discourse alike. – Caroline Woolard
Giv(ing) the art world less power in relationship to how our creative work is expressed or shaped by the various art world institutions that impact the way and where we practice. – Jules Rochielle
individual acts of expression and avant-garde shock. – Greg Sholette
work––not in the service of our individualism. – Chloë Bass
designers (and artists) to move away from anticipating and responding to desires. – Sarah Margolis-Pineo
artists avoid(ing) and mak(ing) invisible their own: institutional power, educational backgrounds, and race and class privileges…by making race and class privilege invisible these social practitioners actually conceal areas of neo-liberalism that if understood better could lead to liberation for the people they target with their work…sound political analysis and critique of: political economy, neo-liberalism, global finance capital, and White privilege, coupled with fugitive sensitivities for power, race, class, gender, and sexuality. – W. Keith Brown
About the contributor: Maureen Connor, Professor of Art at Queens College, CUNY since 1990 and now Co-Director of Social Practice Queens (SPQ) designs projects that combine installation, video, interior design, ethnography, human resources, feminism, and social justice. Recent work includes collaboration with Winter Holiday Camp, a collective intervention at Center for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw with whom she continues the work begun with Personnel, her project about the workplace (since 2000), and the collective she co-founded, the Institute for Wishful Thinking (IWT) (since 2008), producing interventions that explore the attitudes and needs of individuals and institutions. Her feminist work from the 80s and ’90s is included in numerous publications and collections. maureenconnor.net