Civics and Art Part I: Wandering
A few weeks ago I attended a talk by Alan Moore, a founding member of Colab, at Midway Contemporary Art along with David Little, photography and new media curator at the MIA. This dialogue prompted a further exploration of the civics of art in general on my part. The talk was a somewhat sprawling look into artist collectives with particular focus on New York in the late sixties and up through the 80s. The durability of these groups proved to be tenuous, much like the ebb and flow of politics, where results are often achieved down the line as groups fade and reappear along different lines of force. Ideas do not simply evaporate, they condense within society until someone or some group or movement investigates, analyzes and re-contextualizes them into art or some other action that then inspires new forms and ideas to come about. The work of Hans Haacke (above) illustrates well the conceptualization of art in the new age. Objects are no longer viewed as isolated from the world within a traditional gallery space; a new environmentalist attitude within the arts starts to breath in a constant and self-renewing source for the new work, wide open with possibilities.
New ways of relating to institutions were beginning to form as well; artists started questioning the very soul of art itself, its relation to society and who/what it feeds upon and/or nourishes: art devours itself like ouroboros and suffers from its own self-reflexivity or art transforms as social form of engagement. Through the seventies and eighties Haacke continued to set his target on the politics that fed the art world, resulting in the cancellation of a show at the Guggenheim through his investigations into landlords and their connections with large museums; and in 1993, he would literally tear up the floor of the Venice Biennale German pavilion as Hitler once had done. This time with full support of the art world, in Europe.
At around the same time Group Material was deep into their own work and exhibitions, always free but tightly focused on core political issues. Their work shows up on the streets and subway systems offering up dialogue on politics and art outside the white box. To Group Material politics and art embodied the same thing, so much that they embedded quasi-democratic processes within their own curatorial exhibitions and made the gallery into a discursive space where politics could happen around art and vice versa. To Group Material art was the ground upon which everything stood, politicians, corporations, all.
Art is one of the few open spaces in society.
- Kiki Smith, Who Cares
