How can these projects fill or reveal vacuums left and maintained by structural inequity and resist becoming place holders for more meaningful and lasting efforts? 

 

“Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.” – William S. Burroughs [1]

Art will not directly solve the ‘structural inequity’ we see around us today and to expect it to do so diminishes our understandings of the more profound potentials for art’s role in society. Great art is simultaneously and deeply both in and out of its time and place. Too much inside and it has no perspective, too much outside and it is irrelevant. 

I think of my work as a permanent contribution to humanity, and not intended just for a momentary audience. The art that I want to see and make sends out infinite rings of ripples and waves through time and space, impacting and affecting people in ways that can’t always be anticipated. This is where things get interesting and the first part to get shut down when the work focuses its intended impact exclusively on one momentary issue or audience. The work does not need to find its entire audience or have its fullest effect in the moment it is presented. This is the realm of advertising, propaganda, or even activist social work. Of course each has its place and may even be co-opted by the artist as a means to a more complex and nuanced end. 

‘More meaningful and lasting efforts’ are only possible when there is a sense of direction, purpose, and understanding of what we want and how we feel. This is what art can offer us. I am more interested in charting intentional directions towards mysterious and unachievable ideals, than I am in just taking on knowable problems that I think I can actually solve. And the thought that projects by conscientious artists will preempt these ‘more meaningful and lasting efforts’ for an equitable society is really the least of our concerns. 

The ‘change’ that Borroughs refers to is constant and relentless. It is part of a process that is alive and never finished, not with one project or one artist. Each generation of artists can and should unravel and defy not only systems of social inequity, but even the well-intentioned work that has come before it. 

I often view my own work as a public rehearsal or performance of a world or way of living that I want to see, but which is not yet quite possible in the world that we have. 

“The performance of a piece of music can be a metaphor of society, of how we want society to be…a representation of a society in which you would be willing to live.” [2]

“Art is a sort of experimental station in which one tries out living.” – John Cage [3]

[1] Burroughs, W., in Charters, A. (1992). The portable beat reader. New York, NY: Penguin Books.
[2] Cage, J. (1990). I–VI. The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1988-89. Cambridge: Harvard UP.
[3] Cage, J., & Retallack, J. (2011). MUSICAGE: CAGE MUSES on Words* Art* Music. Wesleyan University Press.
 

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About the contributor:  Fritz Haeg‘s work has included animal architecture, crocheted rugs, domestic gatherings, edible gardens, educational environments, preserved foods, public dances, sculptural knitwear, temporary encampments, urban parades, wild landscapes, and occasionally buildings for people. Recent projects include Edible Estates – an international series of domestic edible landscapes; Animal Estates – a housing initiative for native wildlife in cities around the world; Domestic Integrities – installations and gatherings staged on massive crocheted rugs of discarded clothing and textiles that expand as they travel; and Sundown Schoolhouse – an evolving series of educational environments and initiatives. Itinerant since 2006, in summer 2014 the Schoolhouse launches a regular enrollment program at its Los Angeles geodesic dome home base. An open call for applications for the first 12 week summer session – focused on civic and embodied arts – will be announced soon. www.fritzhaeg.com