What constitutes a public?
Dear Robby[1],
I’m writing to you as I’m guessing that you know what I’m talking about better than most and that, despite any small differences in tactics, ideologies, goals and such, we are of a sort. What “sort” that might be remains to be determined and the unpacking of that is the job, the fun of it, yes? That’s the work and meaning. We are most certainly members of some sort of affinity group[2], but I’d argue––and possibly you would as well––that we are more importantly members of a public. A public which is many. A public dispersed, disjointed, and constantly at odds, and hence very much a public. My hope in calling this out into the open is that in making our public visible it will assist in helping it crack, break apart and form new terrain for us and others to traverse across together. This should be the wish of us all. Because, as you know well, it is the friction generated through the convergence of bodies on a landscape of experience that helps in forming, not only the landscape we inhabit, but also the new visits to look towards, the new desires to dream about, the new trails to consider moving in the direction of, or possibly even astutely avoid. No matter. It’s this friction that bevels our lens, making the landscape a series of subjects, prismatic, deobjectifying our view of one another.
We exist as members of many publics upon a shared landscape, though not all of us recognize this. It is through the recognition of this shared landscape that our publics form, disparate and nomadic upon a terrain of experience. Here we begin to create (our)selves. This landscape is vast, infinite, and varied. The actions and effects occurring upon it forming a relational ecology. Through our collective (though, importantly, not in the least harmonious) experience we create more fill, more land, more vistas to traverse, and always, ever so slowly shifting tableaus which we gaze upon from varying distances. We exist, relate, and calibrate at a series of distances. This landscape is continuous and infinite when embodied across the multiple histories of experience which affect us, it’s just that sometimes, as we walk about, we enter a fog, or the debris of experience is too vast for us to recognize as anything but an impasse.
You’ve had those feelings of abstract ecstasy that I’ve had, haven’t you? If any public exists which we might call ourselves joint members of I believe it is these types of wordless Noetic[3] moments that bond us, these inarticulate expressions and (mis)understandings of our collective experiences on this shared landscape of ours. It is these experiences in accumulation that align us, which hold us together and create a sort of pragmatism within all this uncertainty. By eviscerating the lines between what we might call life and what we might refer to as work, and insisting, as we do, to energize the surface[4], however fleetingly, and make these sorts of convergences visible we are engaging in an act of public-making which we can define as publication; dematerialized, disjointed, at odds and in flux.
A publication is a mobile and ephemeral vessel for questioning. It is anarchic and flat. A public which forms through publication is a tool, a means and not an end. A publication is not a repository of knowledge and experience but the energizer of just that. It’s a waystation. A public materialized through publication is an apparatus for seeing, building, surviving.
Inasmuch, a public is different than the public; a body which doesn’t exist and never did exist. It is also decidedly different than a community, which is basically a micro-distillation of the notion of the public. These are two distinctions that purport a false sense of disparate agreement and cohesion and are hence unreal. There is no cohesion. We’re all alone here, but we are alone together if we desire it, and that counts for something when we begin to recognize the space between us as a space of meaning, the energizing point of all our knowledge and experiences. We articulate across this divide between us. It is within this space that publics begin to formulate themselves through shared questions and desires if not, often enough, the same set of answers or actions.
And so, I hope to see you this summer in Minneapolis to work on Henry[5] together so that our varied publics might, as they do from time to time, collide through our shared affections, conjoin ever so briefly, and shatter, forming a bridge between the Midwest Radical Culture Corridor and hazy dreams of your Los Angeles.
Fare forward voyager,
Sam
[1] The “Robby” I am referring to is Robby Herbst. He is an artist, writer, teacher, and something other. He co-founded, and is former editor, of the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, and currently instigates the Llano Del Rio Collective’s guides to Los Angeles. He is the co-editor, with Nicole Antebi and Colin Dickey, of “Failure! Experiments in Social and Aesthetic Practices”.
[2] The term Affinity Group has been attributed to the radical anarchist activist Ben Morea who, along with Ron Hahne established the publication Black Mask. He went on to help found, among other ecstatic and beautifully troubling affinity groups, the Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers and the International Werewolf Conspiracy.
[3] “Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for aftertime.” James, William (1902) In Lectures XVI & XVII: Mysticism (pp. 277 – 313) London, England: Longmans, Green & Co.
[4] “Our aggressive habitation of the surface is the site of the political but our ability to reflect and act is often drowned out by the hum of the everyday. The false notion of The Public and The Statement generates static, a field of disturbances decidedly different than the disturbances––the friction––we generate through willful public making, the act of Publication.” Gould, Sam (2013) Surface Tension (pp. 6) Minneapolis, MN Wooden Leg Press and Print
[5] “A multi-year distributed action, Henry exists within the intersection of three distinct South Minneapolis neighborhoods utilizing the notion of a Right to the Imagination in parallel to urbanist / activist strategies of a Right to the City. By energizing a continued series of projects, dialogues, and mediated conduits, Henry’s aim is to energize a “city from below” mechanism, attempting to open up space for each and every neighbor to question not only where they live, but their place, autonomy, voice, and responsibilities within their shared landscape over a series of years. Through in-home classes, lending libraries, free media and more, Henry encourages an anarchic collaboration and transparent space for possibilities as a way for individuals and neighbors to relate and govern their own shared lives.” – Henry is a five to ten year long initiative facilitated by Red76 within the intersection of three neighborhoods in South Minneapolis, MN: Powderhorn, Central, and Phillips West. Along with Katie Hargrave, Eric Asboe, Katie Bachler, Dylan Gauthier, and others, Robby Herbst will be a visiting resident in the initiatives first year.
About the contributor: Sam Gould is the co-founder and lead facilitator of Red76, a collaborative practice which materialized in Portland, Oregon in the early 2000’s. Red76 often works towards creating publics through the creation of ad-hoc educational structures and discursive media forms. While these frameworks are often situated in what is called “public space,”–– such as street corners, laundromats, taverns, and the like––the pedagogy of their construction is meant to call into question the relationships, codes, and hierarchies embedded within these landscapes.
Gould has taught within the graduate department for Social Practice at the California College of the Arts and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has written, as well as lectured extensively within the United States and abroad, on issues of sociality, education, and encountering the political within daily life.
Gould is the editor of Red76’s publication the Journal of Radical Shimming, of which the first fifteen issues were recently acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He is currently at work on a book in conversation form with artist / educator Douglas Ashford to be published in the Between Artists series by Artist Resource Transfer Press in 2014. red76.com