To what degree does socially engaged work support or challenge a neoliberal framework?

 

The question assumes several things: 1.) that socially engaged work is concerned with affecting a political framework––here, neoliberalism––in one way or another; 2.) the frameworks of both socially engaged work and neoliberalism have clearly defined parameters within and through which quantifiable results are produced and can be identified (perhaps looking something like this), specifically degrees of support or challenge; and 3.) both are consistent across continents regardless of different social, political, or economic climates. Finally, I assume we are talking about socially engaged art work.

The degree to which I consider socially engaged (art) work to support or challenge any political framework within the U.S. is relative to the extent that the artwork results in policy change, either directly through the “stuff” of the work itself (i.e., actions, materials, etc.) or through informing, empowering, and/or inspiring other people to make change. Ultimately, the degree of an artwork’s impact is relative to the degree that the public finds that work to be relevant to their lives, well being, and world view.

While neoliberalism is primarily concerned with ideas of free trade, I believe that economical concerns (and questions) are inseparable from political or social ones. One artist to consider in this context is Laurie Jo Reynolds and her project Tamms Year Ten, a volunteer grassroots legislative campaign, created with former and current inmates at Tamms, their families, and other artists, that sought to reform or close Tamms Correctional Center, the notorious state-funded “supermax” prison in southern Illinois. On January 4, 2013, Tamms closed, in part due to Reynolds’s efforts.

In 2013, Reynolds received The Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change from Creative Time, whose website describes her as “an artist, policy advocate, and researcher who has dedicated two decades of work to addressing the negative representations of people in prison. Her “Legislative Art” participates and intervenes in government systems, with the goal of concrete political change” (emphasis mine).

Tamms Year Ten is interesting to me in the context of this question because it is concerned with the treatment of people who have been removed from society through a series of legal actions. Reynolds employed the recognizable abilities of both an activist and an artist in order to represent the Tamms prisoners, rendering them visible once again as human, feeling, individuals.

The more conventional art aspects of the campaign were funded by art organizations such as Creative Capital––photos, videos, and installations/performances that were presented to decision makers as part of targeted campaigns for policy change. However, I am less interested in Tamms Year Ten as an artwork in and of itself and more interested in it as the work of an artist. Reynolds accomplished what some of history’s most memorable artists were also able to do through their work: directly influence public opinion (and here, policy) by rendering complex ideas, relationships, injustices, experiences and more of contemporary life.
 

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About the contributor: Nancy Zastudil is an arts administrator, writer, and itinerant curator whose current work focuses on social progress through philanthropy and entrepreneurship in the arts. Currently, Nancy is Administrative Director of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation, Co-administrator of The Lightning Field, and monthly visual arts contributor to A+C TX Magazine. She was Taos Coordinator for ISEA2012 Albuquerque: Machine Wilderness in 2012, co-founded PLAND in 2009, and was Associate Director of the University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts from Fall 2007 to Spring 2010. She categorizes her itinerant curatorial work under The Necessarian, which includes Show Up Show Down, Pacific Exhibits, and numerous independent and collaborative projects. She is Editor and Project Manager of the Mitchell Center’s 10 year anniversary publication (forthcoming), Co-Editor of On the Banks of Bayou City: The Center for Land Use Interpretation in Houston (March 2009) and has been published in edible Santa Fe, Arts + Culture Magazine Houston, Temporary Art Review, Artlies, Proximity Magazine, spot, …might be good, and Curating Now.