Art F City

Open Engagement Sunday Recap: This Is Amazing
by Paddy Johnson and Corinna Kirsch on May 21, 2014

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Art and Activism

Open Engagement 2014: Life/Work
by Elizabeth Travelslight on May 22, 2014

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BURNAWAY

Life / Work: A Journal of Engagement 
by Maggie Ginestra on June 17, 2014

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Cultural Producers

The Aguilar Family on Open Engagement 2014, Part I
May 28, 2014

The Aguilar Family on Open Engagement 2014, Part II
June 2, 2014

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Guernica

Side Street Projects

Now/Later interviews with LA artists who attended OE

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Temporary Art Review

In Defense of the Possible at Open Engagement
by Netta Sadovsky on June 2, 2014

New Interfaces in Social Practice at Open Engagement
by Mary Coyne on 6 June, 2014 

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Urban Omnibus

Socially Engaged Art in the Public Realm: A Recap of Open Engagement 2014
by Mariel Villeré on June 11, 2014

How would you make the conference less boring?

Open Engagement 2014 featured a Kids Art Camp run by Wooloo and the Queens Museum as well as a Kids Lounge, an interactive play-space facilitated by Regeneración Childcare NYC.

As part of this space Wooloo collected feedback on Open Engagement from children and parents to find out how to make the conference less boring (more fun was the initial phrasing, but the children insisted the right question was “less boring”).

Were you also at OE 2014? If so, we also want to hear from you! Share your thoughts by filling out our post-conference survey.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/OpenEngagement2014

Below are the suggestions on ‘How to you make the conference less boring?’
More glitter.
Empathy, equity, social change
Collective imagination act
More connective
Plans for next steps
More kids!!!
More snack food?
More alcohol?
Games?
Borrow “advice roulette” concept?
Entertaining performances? Music, puppet shows, “FREAKS”, jugglers—people are doing socially conscious/political versions of these.
Drop in collaborative projects.
More art making and collaborative exercises—less watching presentations.
More interactive presentations.
Video and movie screenings in between presentations
Pizza
comfy chairs
healing spaces
Balloons!
Cut down on show and tell
Invite practitioners to engage directly in the space
More interactive and hands on activities
Salsa and cumbia dancing
Singing together
Go outside!
More games and ice breaking
More problem solving hypothetical scenarios as a group
Food?
Alcohol?
Keynote speaker with social justice projects.Workshops on social justice art making.
More conversations, less talking heads.
Work even more with local communities! These were great!
Field trips
Physical exercise
Plenty of chances to leave the room.
Pets (optional)
Shake it up! Dance in the atrium!
More walking sessions
Put kids area at the center
Community kitchen
Community art making zone
Scavenger hunt where you find people at the conference instead of things and get to know them!
>MORE SNACKS!!
Bouncy balls and piñatas
More dancing
Less information and explanation and more cats, ice cream, flowers and friends.
A place to make lunch and hangout.
More food and drinks, please.
More radical social justice conversations please.
Serve ice cream on a stick, make the conference more messy.
More Australians.
I wish there was more dance breaks during the day and communal eating, but I don’t think this is a boring conference! Thanks!

As part of Open Engagement 2014 some of Queens Teens worked as reporters, attending sessions and writing reflections. Here are two perspectives on the The Socially Engaged Art Student Summit and the Family Life and Socially Engaged Art Panel by Emily Torres and Aria Shehas.

The Socially Engaged Art Student Summit Student
By Aria Shehas

This was the first experience I’ve ever had in a discussion let alone a conference and to be able to be apart of it was amazing in itself. This discussion had been with students from all over to discuss the next generation’s perception of engaging art. There were a bunch of tiles of paper hanging on the wall and they all had to do with something different. They were sectioned off into groups such as “terminology”, “issues”, “identity”, “audiences/collaborators”, and “forms”. They had asked students all over to fill in these categories and they printed them up and hung them. The discussion was more free form, we would go to read some and interact with people who had an interest in a similar idea off of the tile. Some people had some amazing ideas and even showed me some projects they or their friends are working on. There was one lady who took it upon herself to have some examples of her work to self promote in the process of discussion. I got the opportunity to talk to a lot of people in this discussion and I found that I resonate with a lot of these students, especially since I am part of the new generation of engaging art.

Notes on The Socially Engaged Art Student Summit Student
By Emily Torres

Interactive conversations.

They introduced everyone in the beginning.

Most people here are very open and kind after you got to speak to them.

It was a bit hard to start a conversation with some people and I think that’s because I’m very young compared to all of them.

Most people there were college students.

I learned some new art techniques and I even got some advice from some people.

Most people started conversations with me and were surprised that I was a high school student at this event.

There were people from all over the world (ex: Australia, San Francisco, Portland, Texas, Mexico).

Family Life and Socially Engaged Art Panel
By Emily Torres

There were a few performances, some were funny.

There was a lot of music being played along with the performances.

There were a lot of messages/ lessons in the conference.

I was able to understand the situation and relate to it.

The audience often reacted to the things talked about during the conference.

It was more about listening at first and then answering one big question at the end about safety.

The topic was very helpful.

It was easy to talk to other people.

Family Life and Socially Engaged Art Panel
By Aria Shehas

There were three panelists in this discussion and I sat in front of some students from the West Coast that I had spoken to during the previous discussion. The first panelist was a father and he brought his family to show how he engaged them and involve them in his career. What I appreciated from them was that with the children’s performances and knowledge, it showed how involved and aware they are of the art community. I wish I had the exposure they have at their age.

The next panelists were two mothers who are the founders of BHAM, which stands for Brooklyn Hi-Art Machine. This is a communal opportunity for the children in the area to come and learn to make all sorts of art projects. I liked their ability to be innovative and active in the community.

The third presenter shared her story of how she had her newborn and was going to a residency in Miami and it turned out to be a very dangerous environment. She explained how she was starting a website to prevent these incidences and asked us what safe means for us and what would a family residency require for it to be safe.

I was discussing the issue with two students I spoke with from the first discussion and they were two young males. None of us had kids and found it to be irrelevant but came up with the idea from a students point of view, as if we were said child and came up with some contributing points. Overall the experience was worth sitting in on but the subject matter had been less relatable.

For the closing event of Open Engagement 2013 we set out to collect 100 questions generated by the assembled group of conference attendees to further get a sense of what is emerging, what people are thinking, and where this conversation is going. This was inspired by Sister Corita’s “quantity assignments,” to generate 100 questions before embarking on intensive work and research. The format was that each of our six panelists joined one of six seated groups that each had about 40 chairs, and we then had about 35 minutes to work together and for each group to write 17 questions and then we reconvened and the panelists shared the group work.

It was the hope that after the conference we could then reflect on this list of the questions we are currently asking ourselves about socially engaged art. This series of blog posts sets out to do just that.

In the lead up to OE 2014 we are launching a blog that will have 100 contributors from the field reflecting on these 100 collectively generated questions. Each contributor has been assigned one question to write about.

These blog posts are not intended to answer the questions necessarily, but possibly to address why it is being asked? Why it matters or doesn’t matter? These blog posts will provide an important venue before the conference to deepen our shared exploration of the ideas and questions that socially engaged art provokes.

Thank you to all of the contributors at Open Engagement 2013 who participated in this process. We hope that highlighting these questions will help to continue to push forward the conversations and work. We look forward to continuing this generative conversation in May in New York!

Jen Delos Reyes
Founder and Director, Open Engagement
 
100 Questions Blog Project is edited by:
Gemma Rose Turnbull- Gemma-Rose creates collaborative photographic works, that examine ways in which the integration of collaborative strategies and de-authored practice can catalyse social change agendas and policies through image making and sharing. She is currently doing a practice-based PhD at The University of Queensland in Australia and is a scholar in residence at Portland State University.

With support from Ariana Jacob- Ariana makes artwork that uses conversation as medium and as a subjective research method. Her work explores experiences of interdependence and disconnection, questions her own idealistic beliefs, and investigates how people make culture and culture makes people. She received her MFA in Art & Social Practice from Portland State University. Her work has been included in the NW Biennial at the Tacoma Art Museum, Disjecta’s Portland 2012 Biennial, The Open Engagement Conference and the Discourse and Discord Symposium at the Walker Art Center.

and Jen Delos Reyes- Jen is an artist originally from Winnipeg, MB, Canada. Her research interests include the history of socially engaged art, artist-run culture, group work, band dynamics, folk music, and artists’ social roles. Jen is the founder and director of Open Engagement, an international conference on socially engaged art. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Portland State University where she teaches in the Art and Social Practice program.

So I have this dog, Rufus. Technically he is my sister’s dog, or even my nephew’s dog, but I was complicit in the acquisition of him, and as it turns out, he has chosen me to be the subject of his singular doggy gaze. I’m Australian, so my analogy for the intensity of his adoration is that if I had a pouch, like a Kangaroo, he would never, ever, ever leave it.

I’ve always been a cat person, so becoming the ‘owner’ of a completely neurotic, second-hand runt, who latched onto me like a tick took quite some getting used to––the aloofness of cats is so much more appealing. I curse him at least half a dozen times a day as I trip over his body, which is always positioned a little too close to mine, but mostly I let him pad behind me without too much protest.

Actually, that is a downright lie. I’ve come to like it. Like, really like it. I like having him curled up on the chair while I work, often until obscene hours of the night. I like the comfort of his little nose on my cheek. I like how he dances for me––leaping and wagging, a huge smile on his face––when I return home. I like how I can take him to parties with me (much to the bemusement of friends). I like having him with me all the time. Or almost all (for all my indulgences he sleeps on the floor, not on my bed).

But it is more than that. He had kind of a rough start. He’s a retriever, and while he wasn’t horribly neglected per se, he was the stay-at-home dog left outside, alone, for too long, when he was too young. And anyone who knows anything about retrievers knows that they’d prefer a pat from their owner than to eat the nice, freshly-killed, duck they’ve fetched from where you shot it down. Basically, they want and need people. So I feel bad for him, and like my indulgence can somehow make up for the crappy bit at the beginning, so I allow the incessant company.

But this year I am mostly living in America. So I left him, tearily, with my sister, and my nephew, and they’re okay, but they’re not me, and he got anxious. Rip-up-the-carpet, scratch-the-doors, refuse-food anxious. Turns out that my caring, my ‘making it better,’ wasn’t helpful in the long term (though it was lovely in the short). I wanted to wrap him up in cotton wool, and besides it gave me comfort. It seemed like win-win. It wasn’t.

That is a rather long-winded way of getting to the question––Who cares? There are many ways to tackle it; Who gives a shit? comes with a probable answer––probably we should just get on with it, stiff upper lip, and stop all this hand-clasping; or Who is it that cares? that could come with a catalogue of demographics––breaking down who exactly is doing all this caring; or, more existentially, How is it that we come to care? which would take a far greater philosopher than I to tackle.

What this question, Who cares?, raises for me is not any of these things, but How do we care?, or even, What impact does our ‘caring’ have on the people we deem need ‘care’? The Rufus-analogy is not really fair, because it just serves to illustrate intentions gone wrong. And that kind of good/bad dichotomy lacks the nuance this conversation needs in relation to socially engaged art practices and the hierarchies, demographics and people-centered outcomes of ‘caring’ and ‘cared-for’. (And let me note here that prefacing talking about socially engaged art practices with a analogy about me being a terrible dog owner is extremely problematic––my dear friend Erica pointed me in the direction of a great quote from When Harry Met Sally: “Is one of us supposed to be the DOG in this scenario??” Here, no one is the dog. Except Rufus.).

My impulse is to rush in and ‘save’­­––I’m an accomplished buoy thrower­­­––and kindness is something I have never resisted indulging in. I don’t think it is useful to deconstruct my self, or my practice, to totally eradicate that impulse and end up in a state of paralysis. But, like Lenine Bourke so elegantly stated in a letter to herself about being a ‘do-gooder’, there is some necessity to examine that impulse to caring, which inevitably leads to wanting to fix, without necessarily having determined if your caring/fixing is in anyone’s best interest––least of all the person (or dog) being cared for/fixed.

It’s a rush of course––the feel-good-ness of it all. The vision of swooping in and rescuing. But sometimes there is the hangover­­––the regret of extending beyond your own capacity. Years ago, when I was a newspaper photographer, I photographed the four families of kids who’d been killed in a car accident. It was completely horrific walking into homes suddenly empty of their teenage boys, and my soft heart barely stood it. My face was sad with theirs, and one of the boy’s grandparents fixed on it and me, and months later they’d call and we would cry on the phone, both helpless and immobile with grief. I cared too much and couldn’t extract myself from what was mine, and what was theirs (it is no exaggeration to mark that ‘job’ as the end of my newspaper career). Again, in a really different way, the immediate gain and the long-term pain.

Perhaps this ‘going beyond the care of duty’ is peculiar to me, but mostly I think that people come into this kind of art practice because they genuinely give a shit about other people. Regardless of whether that is naïve, the natural extension of How do we care? is How do we care in ways that support our own needs as people (who happen to make art with other people) and that support the needs of the people we make art with?

Were it in my powers I’d furnish everyone with the kind of polished caring skills that allow the perfect balance; the ability to finish a project without being totally emotionally and physically exhausted, and caring the right amount in the right direction. Lacking those kinds of super powers I will just wish that we’d all take a moment, before that deep breath where we launch in. Not to undermine that part on the inside that cares with everything––expansively, unabashedly and exhaustively––but to mediate our inner ‘rescuer’ with some firm advice; “If you don’t care to listen, you’re not caring.”

About the contributor: Gemma-Rose Turnbull instigates collaborative photographic projects that examine ways in which the integration of collaborative strategies and de-authored practice can catalyse social change agendas and policies through image making and sharing. She has collaborated with street-based sex workers, elderly people who have suffered from abuse, and children. In each of her projects, issues of power, othering, objectification and alienation are unavoidable. Gemma’s style of working acknowledges these issues from the beginning, and each of her projects experiments with structures that can reflect those tensions in a productive way. She is currently doing a practice-based PhD at The University of Queensland, Australia and is a Scholar in Residence in the Art and Social Practice program at Portland State University. gemmarose.com.au /asocialpractice.com

There are “audiences” and “audiences.” People used to ask me, “Who’s your audience?” I never understood that question, and I never knew what to say. What are you talking about? Everyone and anyone is my audience. Especially if you locate yourself in the public domain, the ESSENCE of the public domain is that it belongs to everyone. Everyone is already there and is an owner. The audience is present. That’s what I like about it. That’s its value.

Now, of course between you and me, while they could, yet they often don’t show up, right? That’s a problem. And also some of them ask the dumbest questions too, right? So infuriating. I actually wish that the “effects” of public works became a central concern to critics and curators. So we would have responses to public work with highly articulated thinking, writing, talking. That’s a big after-effect with a lot of public work: bland, uncritical responses to the artist’s strategy and strategic thinking, quality of concept, justice sensitivity, impact, aesthetics, methods, meanings. And often not careful enough paying deep attention to what the artist is doing or what the art is aiming to do. Also responding midway through a work then all along the work’s spooling out––that’s critical too.

Are you expecting me to say we can change peoples’ lives and change the world? Yes! Though pretty battle scarred, there are zones where a lot of fundamental shifts can occur. I personally think I have had an impact on wedging Western culture open to think about, see, worry about maintenance, service work and workers, infrastructure, continuity, sustainability, human worth, wrecking the planet.

Let’s shift gears. Let’s talk about the future. We are creating a force field of social _____ art. You fill in the blank. I often call this wave that is certainly becoming / is already an art movement: “social shmocial art.” It is here and it is powerful. And most important, a lot of artists are creating these works like crazy. This kind of work is painfully heavy in paper and plotting and planning and talking, hoping, proposing, projecting, strategizing––although not enough strategizing. A lot of the creativity in the work is sitting inside all this stuff. Then there’s the work that happens. And then there’s cleaning up and then there’s after effects. Often the whole overall “work” has multiple shapes and forms and can take even years to come about. What will happen to all this knowledge, effort, accomplishment, failure, sinking, trying, lifting up, trying again, giving up and then trying again?

Where will it reside?

So I want to encourage all of us to create an ARCHIVES! We need an ARCHIVES! Many artists, certainly of my generation, who are “public domain lifers” lay awake at night worrying about this. What’s in this archives? Where is it housed? Who will have access to it? And who will maintain it?

Will all this gorgeous gracious generous human effort and accomplishment blow away? Become compost?

About the contributor: Mierle Laderman Ukeles is a defining artist in the history of performance, feminist, and socially engaged art and has been the official artist in residence with New York City’s Department of Sanitation for over three decades. Her work models possibilities of how an artist can create long-term, sustainable alternative contexts within which to situate and create their work.

“The arts, then, have been hunted back to their mediums, and there they have been isolated, concentrated and defined. It is by virtue of its medium that each art is unique and strictly itself. To restore the identity of an art the opacity of its medium must be emphasized.”
––Clement Greenberg, Towards a Newer Laocoon, 1940

“All media are mixed media…Materials and technologies go into a medium, but so do skills, habits, social spaces, institutions, and markets. The notion of “medium-specificity,” then, is never derived from a singular, elemental essence. It is more like the specificity associated with recipes in cooking: many ingredients, combined in a specific order in specific proportions, mixed in particular ways, and cooked at specific temperatures for a specific amount of time.”
––W.J.T. Mitchell, There Are No Visual Media, 2008

Let me take a moment to acknowledge my affinity for W.J.T. Mitchell. In my opinion, “medium specificity” as defined by Clement Greenberg never really existed. As such, there is no way for me to discuss the how’s and why’s of “medium (in)specificity killing gallery art.” Frankly, I am not even sure what to make of the term “gallery art” which qualifies the question, but that’s a topic for another day.

My first reaction is to ask what on earth does it mean to talk about anything “medium-specific” in 2014, but in particular on the eve of an annual conference dedicated to socially engaged art practices? Are artists (regardless of their mediums), art historians, educators, curators, critics and culture watchers really still debating this and related terms like “formalism”? Hasn’t the wake of late 20th-century Postmodernism hunted Modernist “medium specific” theorists like Clement Greenberg back to the 18th- century? This is not to say that Clement Greenberg isn’t without his theoretical charms of persuasion. I rather like the old goat for having an opinion and sticking to it, but his mid-twentieth century arguments for the primacy of abstract painting and the holiness of “medium specificity” have always been a story of mythic proportions to me, and a story that’s as much about how theories and critical frameworks/discourses of art are constructed within particular historical moments, as they are the specific theories themselves. In Greenberg’s case, when we read now classic texts like Avant-Garde and Kitsch (1939), Towards a Newer Laocoon (1940), or Modernist Painting (1960-65), we are also revisiting the complexities of a post WWII art world newly rooted in the United States (specifically New York City), and brimming with communities of artists in exile, or those passing through from all corners of the globe. We know as close observers of this history that the framework/discourse of “medium specificity” found a vocal champion in the body of Clement Greenberg, but we also know that while his voice was loud and listened to by a powerful ecosystem of gallery owners, artists, institutions of higher education (i.e. art schools and art history departments), and even mainstream media, his theories reflected a tiny slice of what was actually happening on the ground. Yes, he dismissed or simply ignored artists who didn’t fit within his disciplined framework of media purity. In other words, he was silent on the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and Allan Kaprow. So be it. His loss. Water under the bridge.

In the highly readable essay There Are No Visual Media (2008), W.J.T. Mitchell argues that all media are mixed media…”the very notion of a medium and of mediation already entails some mixture of sensory, perceptual, and semiotic elements.” He reminds us that it was the cultural theorist Raymond Williams who further defined medium in the mid-1970s as a “material social practice,” not a specifiable essence dictated by some elemental materiality (paint, stone, metal) or by technique or technology. In our historic moment, I appreciate it when Mitchell goes on to smartly suggest that it may be more useful to think of “medium specificity” within more open structures, structures not dissimilar to recipes for cooking where we acknowledge the range of possibilities among specific ingredients, proportions, and time.

So, where do ruminations and reminders on “medium (in)specificity” leave us as we consider the universe of socially engaged practices today? How might we continue to define, refine, an enact mediums of the social? I, for one, welcome recipes that call for a little of this and a little of that, but do so with purpose and a deep understanding of ingredients and where they come from. As a relative newbie to thinking and communicating about these expanded fields (and as an art museum staffer), I am in a constant state of curiosity, wonder and learning. I continue to have more questions than answers but I like being in this kitchen and mixing it up alongside some very talented chefs.

About the contributor: Stephanie Parrish is the Associate Director of Education & Public Programs at the Portland Art Museum where she currently oversees the Museum’s annual Shine a Light collaboration with students in the MFA in Art & Social Practice at Portland State University. She has presented on museums and socially engaged practices at numerous conferences including the National Art Education Association (NAEA), American Alliance of Museums (AAM), and Open Engagement. She earned a BA from New York University and an MA from Washington University in St. Louis both in Art History.

Today, in the era of the complete triumph of the spectacle, what can be reaped from the heritage of Debord? It is clear that the spectacle is language, the very communicativity or linguistic being of humans. This means that a fuller Marxian analysis should deal with the fact that capitalism (or any other name one wants to give the process that today dominated world history) was directed not only toward the expropriation of productive activity, but also and principally toward the alienation of language itself, of the very linguistic and communicative nature of humans, of that logos which one of Heraclitus’ fragments identified as the Common. The extreme form of this expropriation of the Common is the spectacle, that is, the politics we live in. But this also means that in the spectacle of our own linguistic nature comes back to us inverted. This is why (precisely because what is being expropriated is the very possibility of common good) the violence of the spectacle is so destructive; but for the same reason the spectacle remains something like a positive possibility that can be used against it.
-Giorgio Agamben

Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.
-Susan Sontag

The first de­ter­rence, nu­clear de­ter­rence, is presently being su­per­seded by the sec­ond de­ter­rence: a type of de­ter­rence based on what I call ‘the in­for­ma­tion bomb’ as­so­ci­ated with the new weaponry of in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nolo­gies. Thus, in the very near fu­ture, and I stress this im­por­tant point, it will no longer be war that is the con­tin­u­a­tion of pol­i­tics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed ‘the in­te­gral accident’ that is the con­tin­u­a­tion of pol­i­tics by other means.
-Paul Virilio

About the contributor: Robby Herbst is an interdisciplinarian broadly interested in socio-political formations; behavioral architecture, languages of dissent and counter cultures. He is a writer, artist, 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 has history involved in alternative media. He is the co-editor, with Nicole Antebi and Colin Dickey, of “Failure! Experiments in Social and Aesthetic Practices”. He’s contributed to catalog essays for artist Katie Grinnan and Fritz Haeg, and entries in other arts and activist publications including: Afterall,Proximity, Clamor, Artus, and Arthur. He has lectured widely and taught contemporary art at USC, Otis College of Art, and Goddard College. He is a recipient of a Warhol Foundation Arts Writer’s Grant for essays exploring the phenomenology of social practice art and protest. robbyherbst.wordpress.com

Here are just some of the stakeholders that come to mind when I consider The Laundromat Project’s work: artists, program participants, laundromat owners, institutional partners, community members, workshop leaders, staff, board, consultants, institutional funders, and individual donors.

Depending on the day, the activity or the existential question, they might move up and down the scale of prioritization. Our only constants are our organizational values. In spring 2013, we concluded a vigorous and collective process of self-examination and self-redefinition (also known as strategic planning) and came up with seven core values that animate our mission to amplify the power of creativity by connecting artists and everyday people in New York City neighborhoods. We thus define ourselves as creative catalysts, community-centered, neighborly, people-powered, active listeners and learners, collaborative and cross-pollinating by design, and propelled by love.

Since 2012, we’ve also been working with the amazing Ebony Noelle Golden, who has helped us ground our work in the principles of cultural organizing, especially that of deep listening and remaining accountable to the communities we serve. Cultural organizing can be defined in many ways, often foregrounding asking, listening, reflecting, and listening some more.

So, on those days when the staff and I are trying to figure out the best ways to serve our artists, engage our participants or partners, respond to funder directives, our fallback plan is to ask if this action reconciles with our values as an organization as well as being sure to check in with most affected by our decision for their input? How hard could that be, right?

Well, when running up against time (everything is due now!) and other factors, intention can be casualty if one is not vigilant. Early this year, we started a new commissions program that allows us to support the socially engaged practice of our professional development Fellows alumni. Our program director Petrushka Bazin Larsen and I came up with the idea during a subway ride and we would need to launch within just a few weeks. We quickly mapped it out and got really excited at the possibilities of investing in our Fellows and the larger social practice field. And then we remembered to take the time to listen. We held three phone conferences with alumni and chatted up the idea with them individually over lunches and drinks. We learned so much and quickly made the program more flexible (across NYC, not just our three anchor neighborhoods), inclusive (defining community flexibly), and relevant (allowing for networking and community support throughout), just by asking, “How would you make this better?” In a couple of weeks, we’ll be announcing our first two fabulous Fellow commission projects, and we are pleased as punch to have learned from them how best to serve them.

We are now in the midst of a strategic planning process solely around our arts education work. We are holding roundtables and one-to-one interviews and making sure we hear from students, parents, funders, teaching artists, colleagues in the field, and many more. The process is not as speedy as we might like, but it is thorough, invigorating, challenging, and grounded in all of our values. So, in short, we reconcile the expectations of our stakeholders by staying true to who we are in the most generous and open-minded way we can manage. It’s an ongoing practice, perfection is not the goal, and we are learning always.

About the contributor: Kemi Ilesanmi is the Executive Director of The Laundromat Project. With over 16 years experience in the cultural arena, she is inspired by the immense possibilities for joy and positive change at the intersection of arts and community. Prior to joining The LP, she was Director of Grants and Services at Creative Capital Foundation where she supported the work of American artists making adventurous new work. From 1998-2004, she was a visual arts curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. While there, she organized several exhibitions, including The Squared Circle: Boxing in Contemporary Art, and ran the visual arts residency program. An alumna of Coro Leadership NY, she also holds a MPA from New York University and BA from Smith College. laundromatproject.org

In posts by Deborah Fisher, W. Keith Brown, Brett Cook and others, “our own power” takes many forms: power as agency, power as hubris, discursive power, privilege. Many of us engaged in this conversation wrestle with the dilemma of how much to embrace our own power and how much to reject it because of the problems that the (unequal) ownership of power creates.

Rather than addressing my own privilege, I would rather turn my energy toward disrupting the political, economic, educational, and cultural systems that create privilege and regulate power, many of which are antiquated and some of which are morally corrupt.

How do I do that in my work? Through questioning (assumptions, systems, myself); through listening closely for prophetic voices; through teaching and challenging my own pedagogy; by learning other languages and assuming that when others speak, what I do not understand is my own deficiency; through believing in and seeking out the power that exists in unexpected places; by building alliances; by allowing myself to fall in love.

Many of us got into this field as a way to value difference and to resist dominant cultural and political structures through strategies of our own design. The territory between subverting our own power and using it, between agency and privilege, is an ethical minefield, gloriously murky, more complicated than any one question or category or label permits. Its danger is its power.

This territory is preceded by political and aesthetic movements around the world where citizens needed to be creative to survive. They needed new methods to threaten corrupt authorities. So Gandhi staged spectacular public burnings of British-made textiles and quietly spun his own yarn, and Boal devised ways to encourage citizenship and change laws through theater. Creativity was part of politics. What does it mean that these labels “socially engaged art” or “social practice” are really only used to describe art and social projects in the United States or from an American perspective? Do we Americans crave a container for these ideas because they are too risky for our cultural and political landscape?

Despite the recent and repeated desire to circumscribe it, I think this territory is most fruitful when it remains unnamed and undefined and malleable. I agree with Grant Kester; I don’t know why people want to make this kind of work seem clean and tidy and name it as an “art movement.” To do so reinforces the very power dynamics that many projects have sought to dismantle, critique, or challenge. Plus, when it is good, it is not clean at all. When it is good, we are all implicated.

About the contributor: Eric Gottesman is a photographic artist, teacher and organizer. His first book, Sudden Flowers, based on a fifteen-year collaborative project in one neighborhood in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, will be released in July 2014. He has taught in art schools, university art departments and in collaborative workshops in several countries. EricGottesman.net