Authentic Enthusiasm > Critical Theory in Social Practice

Suggested Reading Materials:
Ted Purvis/ What We Want Is Free
Relational Aesthetics
Harrell's towards a Tender Society
Participation
Conversation Pieces
One Place After Another

Taking the Matter into Common Hands: On Contemporary Art and Collaborative Practices by Johanna Billing, Maria Lind , Lars Nilsson Editors

This is part of a conversation I had with artist Stephen Hendee. Stephen is a sculptor, installation artist, and also teaches at the University of Nevady Las Vegas.
The main topics of our conversation were the performative, the oppositional, and social practice in art.

Richard started the website: guerillagardining.org this site connects illicit gardeners all over the world. I consider him to be a social practice artist. He doesn't claim that, he has a lot of interesting commentary on the role of art, people, communities, and what motivates us, I hope you will listen.

Harrell appears to be a leading figure in how people view Social Practice. His writings and writings about his work deal with themes like art as interaction, art and everyday life, what can be considered art and art practice, and institutional contexts as platforms for social practice. I am hoping that by taking a closer look at his writings and work we can better understand his approach and the origins of our program and of Social Practice as a viable institutional ( and non-institutional) art form. Harrell under the microscope conversation-scope.

Towards a tender society of thoughtful questions and answers
2002

By Harrell Fletcher

People often asked how I'm able to entice random strangers into working with me on art projects about their own lives. The answer is that I appear to actually be interested in the person and his or her activities. And what is the best strategy for appearing interested? The answer is to sincerely be interested in fact nothing else will work. This is not difficult for me, because I actually think that people are interesting. I would even go so far as to say that I have a great fondness for the human race.

This wasn't always the case; as a child and adolescent, I was extremely shy and preferred to stay clear of most people. Dogs, books, and cheeses were all preferable companions to me. When, later in life, I decided to become a participant in society, I realized that I had no social skills for constructively engaging with people. Small talk had always made me feel dead inside, so that wasn't going to work. Instead, I decided to actively push conversations in the direction of "bigger talk." I asked people real questions about their lives, their work, their histories, their favorite foods, etc. Sometimes this was perceived as invasive, but I tried to be very sensitive. I became an increasingly capable listener and asker of related follow-up questions. As a result, my social self has been very intentionally constructed. This isn't as bad as it might seem, though. I think everyone's social (and personal) selves are constructed, just not usually very consciously.

As it turns out, people really like to be paid attention to. Perhaps they are even starved for thoughtful attention. From these interactions of mine, I have formed collaborations with people to produce exhibitions and public art projects about aspects of their lives that might otherwise have gone unnoticed, sometimes even by themselves. I've worked with neighborhood residents in Oakland, mall shoppers in a Bay Area suburb, developmentally disabled adults in San Francisco, office workers in Minnesota, a ten-year-old boy in Seattle, etc. One project that was produced here in Portland involved Cleveland and Joan Williams' lawn sculptures, which had been vandalized. I created twenty reinforcement sculptures that looked like the original three, but were based on the Williams and their friends and family. All of the sculptures were shown at PICA last summer as part of a show I did there and are now permanently displayed in the Williams' front yard. After the project was completed, I continued to spend time with the Williams and eventually bought a house in their neighborhood that had belonged to Cleveland's mother, who had recently died. So, my relationship with the Williams not only developed into an art project; it created a way for me to become a part of a neighborhood in a very real way.

Through asking strangers questions, I have learned to have more meaningful interactions with people outside of my work--friends, family, neighbors, even people at art openings, sometimes. I try to be willing to discuss subjects that are really important in my life, too. When my sister died last summer, I talked with several people about it (sometimes people I didn't know very well) and found out that most of them had also faced death in some way. It was very comforting, and it caused me to believe that people in general have the ability to relate to all sorts of things, if they are given the chance.

Since I've been paying attention, it's become incredibly obvious how few meaningful questions people ask each other. I recommend that people try a little harder. How much do you really know about the people who you encounter on a daily basis? Try asking these people what they really care about. Show them that you are truly interested. Perhaps it will rub off on them, and they will ask you a question back. Whole complex conversations might ensue. You'll learn things from each other, trust and honesty could develop --the world (and the art world with it) might become a better place.

Some Thoughts on Art and Education
2007

By Harrell Fletcher

Come Together
I was doing a weeklong workshop at an art academy in Odensen, Denmark. All of the students there said that the town was not interesting so I asked them to each go out and find someone from the town who was willing to talk for ten minutes about something they knew and cared about. We then had all of those people come over to the academy and do their presentations one after another. It lasted about four hours. The students had to host and introduce the people they selected. The topics included health care, bus routes, skateboarding, scuba diving, furniture polishing, invisible social networks, playing music on the streets, etc. We were all blown away by the variety of knowledge that existed in one little town. Almost all of the presentations were truly interesting too. Since then I've used the same strategy for similar events in London; NYC; Austin, TX, etc. and have done a separate series as part of the American War traveling exhibition which focused specifically on local people talking about war related experiences.

Collective Learning
I teach at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, and I have a class currently where we started by having all of the students tell their life stories to everyone else. It took three classes to get through them all, but they revealed many interesting things that wouldn't come out in more cursory introductions. Based on connections the students had we organized a series of field trips to places like a Veterans hospital, an alternative kindergarten, a campus fraternity, a high school geometry class, a Native American community center, a radio station, etc. From those experiences the students broke off into groups to develop projects like a radio show about grandmothers, and a lecture series in the frat house living room. Some of the field trips didn't develop into projects, but were still valued as experiences. I like to think of this method as a way to lessen my role as the authority in the classroom and instead we share that role and all become collective learners.

Project Research
The way that I work is that I'm often asked to go somewhere to do a project, an art center or a university gallery or something like that. Generally it's a place that I would never have gone to had it not been for the offer to do something there. Examples include Eastern Kentucky; Croatia; Vietnam; Hartford, Connecticut; Houston, Texas, etc. I use these travel opportunities to learn about the place that I go to. This happens in a few different ways. I might read some books and or watch some documentary films about that place and try to figure out a project from that information. Or I might just go there and wander around and talk to some people that I run across. Sometimes I wind up working with the people I meet on a project and am taken deep into their lives. I think of that as primary learning experiences, or first hand learning experiences. The book and film research is secondary learning. I like both forms. The part that is really interesting to me is that on my own I wouldn't have learned about the things I learn about at all-I allow the direction of my research to be out of my hands at the start. I still determine specifically what I'm drawn to and want to spend more time working with and only choose things that seem interesting to me. Once I've done the raw research I sometimes turn aspects of it into projects for the public to experience. I want to share what I find interesting. It's sort of like referring people to a restaurant that you like or a movie, but in my case it might wind up being a video made at a gas station based on James Joyce's Ulysses or an exhibition about the Vietnam War based on a war museum in Vietnam.

Photography and not photography
My dad has always liked pointing things out. He literally points to things with his finger--a tree, a building, a cloud, and then he will tell you what he knows about the thing he is pointing to. When I was about ten years old my parents bought me a used 35mm camera and I started walking about taking pictures with it. I realized that it was a way for me to point like my dad at things that I found interesting and then capture them to talk about later on. When I had the camera in my hands the world became a more visually interesting place, or I guess the world didn't change but I became more sensitive to what was interesting to me. I continued to take pictures and look at the world in terms of possible photographs for the next couple of decades. Then I decided I didn't need a camera anymore, I could just walk around and see interesting things with out the camera device, some of these things that I see turn into projects in one way or another. Largely I think of what I do as an artist as just pointing to things that I think are interesting so that other people will notice and appreciate them too.

Experiential Education
When I was in college as an undergraduate at Humboldt State University, which is in a very small hippy town in northern California, I took a class from a teacher named Bill Duvall, he had co-written an important environmental book called Deep Ecology. The class I took was called Experiential Education. On the first day of class Bill Duval asked each of the students to pick an outdoor physical activity to do during class periods for the rest of the semester. Some people chose surfing, some bike riding, and some kayaking. I decided to walk on railroad tracks. I got really good at it, by the end I could walk on the tracks for miles at a time without falling off, I could also run on them, jump from one track to the other, spin around on them, and walk on them with my eyes closed. The class didn't meet for the rest of the semester until the last weekend when we all meet up on a camping trip to talk about our personal experiences of doing our activities. Somehow I think about that class often, where as most of the other classes I took in college and all of the tests and papers and discussions that were a part of them are long forgotten.

Farm Apprenticeship
Two years after I got my MFA I went back to school to attend an organic farming apprenticeship at UC Santa Cruz. There were forty students all living in tents together on a twenty-acre farm on the university campus. Most of the time we just did a lot of hard labor, but it was so much better than any other educational program I'd ever participated in before. Most of what I do as an art professor now is based not my art education but instead on my farming education.

Open Source Approaches
In the art world there is so much emphasis on originality. Artists buy right into that, and even though they are always influenced by other people they try pretending that they are not. The galleries promote this idea and encourage "signature styles", rarification and the star/celebrity system. I can see why the galleries would like that way of doing business because it allows them to inflate prices and make demand, but for artists there is no real benefit. It just suppresses the true way that people develop their work through adapting and hybridizing and creates an environment where artists feel like they have to protect and make secret their process rather than sharing it freely and feeling good about doing that, which I think would be much more healthy both for individuals and as a system.

Social Practice as Opposed to Studio Practice
Let me define "art" as anything that anyone calls "art". That can be a maker or viewer. By calling something "art" it doesn't make it art forever just during the time that it is being appreciated as art. Similarly, I don't think, as Beuys said, that everyone is an artist, I just think that everyone has the potential to be an artist. If anyone wants to be an artist they can be one as far as I'm concerned and that is regardless of their credentials. You definitely don't need an academic degree to be an artist. Most of my favorite artists don't have academic degrees.

I think an artist is someone who gets to do whatever they want (within whatever limits might be containing them-financial, legal, ethical, psychological.) Other professions or practices don't have this level of freedom, dentists need to do dental work, dog trainers train dogs, etc. Those could be fun or not so fun professions to have, but regardless that is what those people need to do until they decide that they want to do something else. Artists can do a project about dentistry or dogs or anything else they are interested in at any time and then can do something else right after or even during, and still remain an artist.

Social Practice in regards to art can be looked at as anything that isn't studio practice. By studio practice I mean the dominate way of making art-spending time in a studio working out personal interests into the form of paintings, or objects, or photos, or videos, or some other pretty easily commodifiable form. The often unspoken intention for this studio work is that it will go off to a desirable commercial gallery, be reproduced in art magazines, and eventually wind up in museum collections, while making the artist into a celebrity of sorts, and paying all of the bills. That is the carrot on the stick that keeps this dominate approach alive and kicking, even though very few of these studio practice artists ever get their work shown at all, and most just give up and find some other way to pay off their student loans.

I've just started up a Social Practice MFA program at Portland State University. There are currently eight students enrolled. They don't get studios like the other MFA students and instead have a shared office and a shared classroom space. Currently we are looking for a more public version of these spaces possibly in the form of an off-grid alternative energy portable building that might locate itself in different parts of the city in vacant lots and at grade schools, etc. The students take some classes with the other studio MFA students but they also spend time on projects in various collaborative groups working with the city of Portland, various non-profits, and applying for public art projects in other places, as well as doing their own individual social practice work. I'm trying to show that artists can actually have sustained and supported careers within the public in ways that aren't possible when the commercial gallery is the primary system that artists are trying to respond to. So far it is going very well.

Learning Environments
I like to read about alternative education for kids from the 60's and 70's. There is one writer I'm particularly fond of named John Holt. He wrote a great book called How Children Learn, and then about twenty years later he revised the book by adding comments on his own writing in the margins of the book. He thought that a lot of the text he'd written twenty years earlier didn't make any sense. One of the things he did agree with is that traditional classrooms are not set up as learning environments because the kids are divided up in terms of age, and because they are forced to sit in desks and not move or talk unless they raise their hand and are called on and then only to regurgitate what the teacher has already told them. He says that instead a learning environment would be one that has a mix of ages and experiences in one place so that people can learn from each other, and that learning happens through doing activities and talking with other people, so those things shouldn't be suppressed. In later books he suggests that typical schools are really more like prisons for kids rather than places of learning. I tend to agree.

Making Work That is Accessible to Both Art and Non-Art Publics
When I was younger it seemed like it was good to make art that was very obscure, so obscure that even I had no idea what it was about. If anyone asked I would just say that I wanted the viewer to have their own interpretation of what the work was about, but really I now think that was just a way of avoiding having to know what I was doing or why I was doing it. Then it occurred to me that it might be nice if not only I understood what I was doing, but that even non-art trained publics would be able to find the work accessible. Even though I'd never been taught to think in that way it turned out to not be very hard to do. One of my favorite approaches is to do work with a local person or group of people that I met around the place where I am going to have a show. That way they feel invested in the show and invite their friends and family to see it. Working with these people made me avoid doing anything obscure and instead I found ways of making engaging projects in pretty straightforward ways. The work is interesting and complex not because I made it that way, but because the people I work with are interesting and complex (as it turns out everyone is). I'm just able to put it all into an art context, which makes people consider it in ways they might not otherwise.

Multiple Ways to View the Same Experience
I like art that can be viewed in a number of ways. I think of it like going for a walk in a forest by myself and liking it in a certain sort of direct but abstract and emotional way, and then going on the same forest walk with a botanist friend of mine who tells me the names of all of the plants and where they come from, etc. I like both experiences very much, neither is better or worse for me, they are just different. That's how good art can be too.

Walter
I spent two years out of school between undergrad and graduate school. For one of the years I drove around the country and into Mexico living out of my truck, periodically crashing on the couches of friends and family. The other year I lived in Los Gatos, California and worked in the after school program of a small grade school in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I did art projects with all of the kids there from kindergarten to 5th grade. Right away I noticed that the kindergarteners were all interdisciplinary artists, and that they were very fearless and motivated. There was a slow regression that took place as the kids got older and by the time they were in 5th grade there was usually only one kid in each class that was considered an artist and that was because he or she could draw realistically. The rest of the kids were convinced that they had no artistic abilities at all.

One of the kindergarteners I worked with was named Walter, he was the smallest kid in the whole school but he was clearly very intelligent too. Somehow he had learned to multiply and divide in his head and the other older kids loved to throw complicated equations his way and wait for him to come up with the answers, which were almost always correct. I'd had bad experiences with math as a kid, and like the 5th graders who had lost their artistic sense of themselves, I'd lost any concept of myself being able to do anything but rudimentary math. But Walter wanted more math to tackle and it wasn't being supplied in his kindergarten class. So I asked my mathematician friend Cleveland to explain some simple algebra to me. Cleveland is a thoughtful and patient instructor and soon I actually found myself learning and being excited about math with the primary motivation of being able to pass on what I was learning to Walter.

When it came to the art projects for the kids I tried to keep it simple, I liked making books and so I showed them how to make books too. Walter was particularly excited about this activity. Every day he made a new set of drawings on a specific subject of interest like insects, dinosaurs, ghosts, monsters, animals found in Africa, etc. He would then dictate to me the text and title and staple the whole thing together. Then he would run around the little campus and make everyone look at his book. Kids would stop basketball games and gather around to flip through Walter's latest creation. After he had shown everyone, Walter would discard the book, with total disinterest (I rescued several from the trash) and started speculating on the next day's book topic.

It occurred to me that Walter was fulfilling a whole little system of parts which are crucial to the artistic process. He determined a subject that was of interest to him, insects, etc. expressed his feelings on the subject through his drawings and text, and then went out to share his product with an audience. There were no other factors or motivations, no hope of using the work to get into grad school, or to get a gallery show, and no desire to make something that looked like something else he saw in Art Forum. It occurred to me that I had started similarly to Walter when I first was interested in making art, but that somewhere along the way that system had been corrupted. I decided to stop making art for a while and then as projects slowly started occurring to me again I tried to compare them with Walter's process to determine if I should pursue them or not. It has been difficult to maintain Walter's level of simplicity and integrity, but it is always a goal of mine.

Learning To Love You More
In 2002 I started a participatory web project called Learning To Love You More with filmmaker Miranda July. Miranda and I come up with what we call assignments like Write Your Life Story in Less Than A Day, and Take A Picture Under Your Bed, and Describe Your Ideal Government, etc. and then people all over the world respond by doing what we call Reports, which are the results of following an assignment. These reports are archived on the site so that people can see and compare everyone's contributions. At this point we have over sixty assignments (which we continue to add to) and over 5000 people have participated by doing reports. The idea is that sometimes it's nice to not have to worry about coming up with an idea and instead to concentration on the experience. We think of the assignments sort of like recipes that people might want to follow at first and then later after feeling more confident from the results they might be more comfortable cooking their own thing. Or for those who have no desire to come up with their own ideas they can do many of the assignments and it can be more like a yoga class where you follow along with an instructor who directs the students into a variety of different poses, but while everyone is doing for instance Downward Dog, they are still each doing their own version of Downward Dog. I personally really like taking yoga classes because for some reason I can't get myself to do yoga on my own, but following the prescriptive exercises always makes me feel better about life in general.

Aunt Grace
In my first year of grad school I made a Xerox book of a long transcribed interview that I'd done with my Great Aunt Grace when I visited her in a nursing home in a small town in Okalahoma just before she died at the age of ninety-eight. One of the people I gave a copy of the Aunt Grace book to told me that she took it home with her over winter break and showed it to her mother. She said her mother read it and loved it. That gave me pause. Did I want mothers to love my work? For a second that seemed somehow uncool. But then after thinking about it a little longer I realized that yes I did want mothers to love my work, I wanted all sorts of people to love my work and have all sort of other emotions in regards to it also.

Contemporary Art History Dilemma and Solution
For the last two years I've been trying to get Portland State University to offer a contemporary art history class that just focuses on work made during the 21st century. Somehow this seems like an impossible task for the people who teach art history. Last year the teacher was a very nice woman but she was unable to even reach the 1990's in her class. This year we tried a new teacher. I met with her and explained that I didn't want her to even mention anything about the seventies, eighties or nineties except in reference to something made in the 2000's. I told her not to use a textbook, and not to try to put the art into themes. Instead I asked her to just show a variety of artists and work made since 2000 and then to discuss it with the class. This proved to be too difficult somehow, and so she started with the seventies, had the students all buy textbooks that were published before 2000 and organized the term into a set of themes. About ten of the grad students dropped out of the class with my approval and instead set up their own class. They created a blog with links to contemporary art sites, they assign each other readings and writings and have their own class discussions. I'm going to periodically check in with them, but it looks like they are doing just fine.

Three Classes
I taught a class last year in which I had all of the students find a department on campus that wasn't the art department and then to find someone there, a professor, student, or staff person, and ask them if they could become an artist in residence for that department. So the students became artists in residence in the black studies dept, the science dept, the music dept, the psychology dept, the systems analysis dept etc. they spent the term learning about and doing projects with that dept. Periodically the whole class would go on a tour of all of the depts. and see what everyone was up to.

I had another class that as a group went on the same walk together one day each week. We walked for an hour and then turned around and went back to the university. The students were asked to make projects with people and about things they encountered on the walk and to install the work along our walk route. By the end of the term we all had a very different understanding of the neighborhoods we had been walking through then when we started. There was another class that was made up entirely of field trips. The students were in charge of organizing and conducting the field trip. They were graded on the quality of the field trips they organized. I'm not much for grades, but I'd rather grade the organization and execution of a class field trip than an object of art. We went to visit dams, and mansions, and parks, and corn mazes, and suburban developments, and recycling centers. It was very educational and fun and interesting too.

Crow Bio-diesel project
My wife Wendy Red Star is half Crow Indian and grew up on the Crow reservation in South/Central Montana. When she took me there to meet her family it occurred to me that there was an interesting dynamic at work on the reservation. It is very common to deep fry food there in cooking oil, and people tend to drive in big diesel trucks. After talking about it Wendy and I came up with an idea that would combine these two aspects of reservation life into a project. The plan is to create a bio-diesel station on the reservation that collects and processes used cooking oil and converts it into bio-diesel that can be used as a cleaner fuel for the diesel trucks that people often drive there. Our hope is that the free or inexpensive fuel would be a draw for people to come to the station that would also serve as a community center that includes educational and cultural experiences designed specifically to address issues and concerns on the reservation, and could possible function as a kids daycare center too. The vehicle that would go and collect the used cooking oil would also operate as a mobile learning center/book mobile, going out into the community and providing services like teaching traditional Crow language and cultural practices, along with providing information about contemporary health and environmental issues, etc. Right now we are in a research and development stage.

Leading an Interesting Life
I had a professor in grad school who told me that he was addicted to the art world, and that he was never satisfied. Once he got into one show he just wanted to get into another that he perceived as more important, he also scanned Art Forum every month to make sure his name was mentioned somewhere in it and if it wasn't he felt depressed. I think he told me this as a warning.

Mostly what I'm trying to do as an artist is to live an interesting life. At least that's what I keep telling myself. It can be a struggle at times, but I think that is pretty much what I am doing.

AK: Some of your work seems to be both video, performance art, and intervention (like the Reed performance). How much did you see your recent How To Sell Out performances as cultural interventions (into both low and hi art audiences, subcultural and art-world)?

AD: Wow. Good, tough questions. Right out of the gate that I don't do a great job theorizing about my work. As I talk to people who have seen it I start to get a picture about how it's affecting people and what it's doing. So I have a much more developed sense of how the eBay show works becase I've performed it 30 times over a period of a few years in diffirent places. But the Sell Out show has just been the 4 shows during TBA so far.

I think the show defintely subverts expectation. I spent a lot of time during the concepting of the show thinking about how I wanted to make the audience feel about selling out. So the design is very much about taking the audience through a journey of emotions, starting with their pre-exisiting notions and hopefully shaking that up a bit by show's end.

The show at this point has been seen predominantly by a hi art, art world crowd. I think culturally a $15 performance is seen as very exclusive, even though a $15 rock show is seen as fine so long the band has enough subcultural cache, which is too bad. But enough subcultural people got in one way or another to make it interesting -- guest list, being a TBA blogger or volunteering. This audience is important because the show is much more geared to people who are against selling out or who are considering it. And hopefully I've framed the show so that the discussions afterwards are less about me, more about selling out in general. It was interesting to read the PICA blog the week after the performance. I certainly stirred up some good discussion. And while there were some things said about me personally that make me question being so honest and putting myself out there so much in the future, there was also a lot of great contemplation and introspection. I think my favorite comment was from a very anti-coporate punk rocker who essentially said he hated to admit it, but my very simple show was the most thought provoking piece in the festival. He didn't condone my working in advertising, but he wrote a really thoughtful entry about it. Does that classify as a cultural intervention? I guess so. I mean, my intention was to try and get a conversation started on a subject that is usually dealt with in cliches but is increasingly going to be necessary for artists in this city to consider. As the art world gets more recognition, as the city gets more expensive, as artists get older, we need to consider why or why not to make decisions about how to work and who to work with.

My goal is to perform it again here in town for cheaper or free and try to get a younger, more 'subcultural' audience. I don't think I'd purposefully seek out a low art audience, I think Selling Out requires a certain privilege, but I've always strove to make my work assessable. It's a point of pride that I've had the security guards compliment both shows at the TBA festival. And I think having shows like these are great for TBA because they can recommend them to audiences that are new to performance and need to build up to something more experimental or metaphorical.

AK: Did learning how to act and acting in your projects affect how you made your art, or your art yourself? How does acting figure into it? How about public speaking ability? Are you comfortable talking with groups?

For sure. It's ultimately what I'm best at. Inhabiting a character. Improvising. Making a point by showing as opposed to telling. As soon as I realized I could do it and enjoyed it, almost all my projects have involved if not acting than at least some interaction with the audience. At first I made films in which I acted, but it wasn't long before I started to act in front of audiences. I love public speaking. I still find it easier to be a character live then be completely myself. For some reason even the bit of swagger and dry humor I used during the Sell Out made that show easier than doing the PSU lecture. So that's a personal challenge, to try and strip away everything and just get up in front of people, be real, and be comfortable. But it's more fun to bring a little something to it. I love the blurring of fact and fiction, I think it's a great way to keep audience engaged and guessing. Erin at PICA told a great piece of advice years ago, whatever you do, just don't be boring.

AK: What collaborations have you been involved in in the past? Can you describe these relationships, how they evolved?

AD: I think my most sustained creative collaboration has been with my writing partner Bill Bailey. We met working on film and commercial productions getting coffee and both made feature films around a similar time which was kind of our bond. Portland has or had a very experimental film scene so making narrative story driven work with traditional acting made us natural allies. And we both enjoyed acting and have a similar sense of humor. So we made a series of short films called Autographhss.com together. So we were acting partners but also writing and filmmaking partners. We had both written our own features so we decided to write a scrpit based on Autographhss.com together. And have written another half dozen together. Unfortunately we haven't sold a script yet. We've gotten writing jobs together, mostly in TV or advertising. And we've had a long list of close calls that keep us going. But it's been a challenege not get a little cynical and start writing for the marketplace. But we're currently working on a very independent script which we have some interest in so we'll see. One interesting part of the relationship is he moved to LA about 7 years ago. I lived there off and on for 2 years, but for the other 5 this has meant most of our work happens on email, on the phone (after 8 when the minutes are free) or during intense weekend or week long trips. I think in some ways we were less productive when we both lived in the same city because we're such good friends we just wanted to talk about life and do fun things. So we've developed a good system of talking through ideas and what needs to be done and dividing and conquering.

Steve McDougal was also a great collaborator. He shot and edited the Autographhss films and Hunter Dawson and was really the ringleader behind the Lab and hence the Lab Lecture Series which often gave me a performative assignment. He moved to LA about a year before I did and my creative world defintely changed significantly. The Lab was this epicenter that brought together a lot of creative people. So when he left and the Lab stopped doing events I stopped running into a lot of people I was used to seeing there. Steve has this ability to make things happen and rally a lot of people to create a whole greater than it's parts, so I think that was kind of an end of an era for me. We hung out a lot in LA and he introduced me a very cool group of creative people down there, but LA is an entirely different beast. It's much harder to do things on a DIY scale - people are more spread out, it's more expensive, and the kind of stuff we were doing is a very second or even third class creative endeavor down there, whereas it's really valued up here.

My wife Susan is also a huge collaborator. I think that relationship creatively has strengthened dramatically over the years. Initially when you're dating someone there is a fear that it might not work. But very quickly I came to rely on her opinion. Over time she's become much more of a equal partner. I still mostly write my material, but she plays a huge part in shaping it and directing me. Usually she's the only person who sees a piece before it's performed live.

It's a medium for sure, but I suspect you're getting at is it an art medium. I think so. But I wrestle with that. The eBay show was a performance. I play a character, there's music, a lot of interaction, many multi-media elements. Even so, PICA wasn't even sure the eBay show was 'art.' It's a testament to their vision that they were so enthusiastic about presenting it. The Sell Out show is really a lecture. It's more of less me giving a PowerPoint lecture. But I think for me art succeeds when it changes the way people see or think about something. Which I think to my earlier point Sell Out did. But I guess a college lecture can do the same thing, but it's not 'art.' So I guess context plays a part. Sell Out functions as art because it's part of a performing art festival. But if I give it a college or the library, it's probably just a lecture. Although I should ammend 'just'. Lectures can be pretty bad ass.

Your work has involved the online market Ebay. Do you see Ebay as a viable artistic platform for other artists as well? Can you give any examples of ebay buying and selling that is art but not recognized as art?

A lot of artists have made art about eBay. The All My Life for Sale project comes foremost to mind. Commerce is rich terrain for art, but one many artists avoid because it brings up some issues a lot of people aren't comfortable with. For instance, any artist who sell their work for significant amounts of money has a hard time condeming capitalism.

I'm not sure about buying and seling that is art but isn't recognized as art. Again context is key. I think if you say something is art, it is, at least to you. And the rest of us can consider it in that context. And if we question that it is in fact art, we can talk about the nature of art. But if someome is doing something that they don't consider art, more their hobby or vocation, I don't think we as artist have the right to correct them and tell them it's art.

Harrell's scar piece is a great example. To my mind his show is art, but the people in it aren't artists. They have a scar he photographed and they told him how they got it. It's up to them to decide individually if they made art with Harrell or if they just told Harrell a story. If he convinced someone who thought the latter that they in fact did the former, well that's pretty cool. Because art has a pretty shitty rap in this country and the more we can get people to engage and think they have the capacity to make and understand art the better.

AD: To that last point, I think what you all are doing is really cool because it is engaging regular people. I think sometimes even framing things hi versus low art or art world or subcultural can create these boundaries. If you call something hi art or say it part of the art you're creating a barrier for people who don't think of themselves as art fans from engaging with it. So keep it up!

Just a little food for thought: The more I learn about negotiation (which is my elective this quarter), the more I am starting to think of each interaction we have as artists with the audience as a kind of negotiation. Negotiators are trying to "create value" for the other side and to persuade them into thinking about the issue at hand in a new way. So in theory, as artists, we can decide to have a collaborative style or competitive style or avoidant style with our audience, or with other artists, or with funding institutions. So, instead of thinking of negotiating as something a lawyer does, we might have fun seeing negotiation as something each of us does in every interaction we have with another person. Or, we could try and match different artists with different conflict styles. Do painters negotiate with their audience in different ways than social praciticioners? If so, how?

For class on the 12th, we talked about the results from the Conflict Styles Assessment and discussed the reading from Collectivism After Modernism using the provided study guide as a jumping off point for our conversation.

Download reading materials
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1. Introduction to the book "Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945" ( Stimson, Blakeand Gregory Scholette, ed. Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.)

As part of another class this term, I worked with fellow student Bethany Hayes to interview Posie Currin about her artistic practice. This interview is not related to the discussion on Collectivism and Collaboration, but is included here as a resource for looking at different ways for artists to talk about their practices.
Please link the words "bethany hayes" to bethany's blog: superkitchenwitch
and link the words "posie currin" to posie's blog: posierose

I want us to watch Miranda July's movie, Me and You and Everyone We Know. I thought it would be an interesting approach to think of questions to ask Miranda about this movie specifically. We will each come prepared to interview her, and let these interview questions lead the discussion Tuesday, and/or actually set up an interview with her soon.

In lieu of class discussion meeting, I would like to give you a class assignment:

"Do you need art in your life?" If yes, ask "Why?" If no, then ask "Why not?" Ask participants their occupation as well. However, they can remain anonymous. I prefer no art related occupations. All responses will be posted here.

1. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man By John Perkins. Published 2004, Berrett-Koehler
Publishers Corporations, American. 250 pages ISBN 1576753018

2. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond. Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: January 1999. ISBN-13: 9780393317558

Read online (I recommended that you at least read "Why is world history like an onion?" and "Yali Question")

1. "Yes"
2. "Art is a beautiful way of expressing myself! When I'm making art - in any form - I can't help but be as happy as a clam! Art can calm me, energize me, balance me, basically it helps keep my mind and energy flowing! If I hand no art in my life I would be very sad :("

1. "Yes, I do."
2. "If not for any other reason, because I have a degree in it. Other reasons would be:
- an outlet to express myself
- a way to gain insight into others
- to change my perspective
- to make the world more beautiful"

1. "Yes, it is important to have art in your life. A well developed aesthetic is essential for a healthy mind."
2. "See above."

1. "Yes"
2. "I suppose I could survive without it. But art is a part of human experience. It is man's idol in tribute to our creative prowess which is our primary survival mechanism."

"Art for me is absolutely necessary for a meaningful life. It brings beauty, color, mystery to
various senses. It can delight, challenge, cause remarkable feelings in the viewer.
The artist offers an experience of reality or non-reality for the viewer to ponder, contemplate,
explore, absorb. It involves one in many different ways -- depending on ones experience,
knowledge, cultural background. I can't imagine a world without art...I think there is a movement
that takes a day without art...connected with AIDS...it is a sad commentary to think of the loss
of artists to this disease.

May you continue to enjoy and explore in your own artistic world..."

Best wishes,

Mary Louise
Newark,DE

"Excellent question! Yes, emphatically, I need art in my life, even in my daily life! I need art the same way I need air to breathe. Art in all its myriad forms is a breath of fresh air for the human mind and soul. I believe art can be found in nature. A glorious sunset. A baby's smile. A lover's kiss. As well as in all the written, painted, sculpted or portrayed artforms our beloved artists give us.

And then, there is another artform that I have only recently become acquainted with. I would call it existential art. Where an artist or group of artists express themselves artfully in the moment. The individual or group endeavor is not meant to perdure. By way of analogy, this art is like the flash of a comet across an August night's sky. Capture it, or it's....gone forever!

Art in its highest form is where the Divine and the human seem to meet and commingle. For example, Michelangelo's portrayal of creation emblazoned across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Inspired in both design and execution. Ecstatic!

In my opinion art appreciation has a very strong subjective modality to it. So, all that I have tried to express above is my very subjective opinion about the nature and the need of art in our lives. Thank you for asking!"

"Absolutely! Of course, we may not agree on our definition/perception of "ART". For me, it encompasses experiences using visual, kinetic, auditory, and olfactory senses. Its creation may be divine, spontaneous, or human.

My perception further defines the experience of ART. If/when there seems a void without ART, I will create it myself with a song, a drawing, poetic words/thoughts, or a pause to recognize the patterns, beauty, emotions or "newness" around me. Novelty opens me to new
experiences and creative thoughts/sensations. ART can be found throughout the day, and everywhere we seek its presence. ART gives our lives dimension.

"Absolutely need art--it is essential. The world would be a dismal place
without Art. Wish that I could spend more time on this, but as you
know, I am off to Ashland soon!!. Suffice it to say that I believe we
all need love and beauty in our lives. Art takes away from the day to
day "chop wood, carry water" mentality to the realm of possibilities!!"

The colors, textures, designs, the variety of forms from textile (my 15
year old step daughter creates fashion art daily as she dresses for
school and as she designs and makes her own "clothes art"), to
performance, to 3 dimensional.....it sparks my brain and connects the
synapses and creates a bridge which leads to other forms of creative
thought.

Whether it be walking through a gallery, watching a metal or glass
artist create with heat and fire, or sitting with a child who is up to
their elbows in paint, art, how ever defined or experienced, enriches
and expands my life's possibilities."

What a nice thing to wonder about. Of course, the answer is "yes, I do need art in my life."
Why, Hmmm? I think it's because it reminds me that I am a part of this interacting, communicating, social milieu that is humanity. I believe that art, in all of its many forms--whether it is a novel, an acting performance, a six-year-old's crayon drawing, a Navajo weaving, a Rembrandt masterpiece--represents the most creative attempt to communicate and engage in the human conversation. I guess it reassures me that I am part of all that and, at the same time, reminds me to listen a bit more and look a little harder to find my own way to contribute to the dialogue.

“I don't know, I guess art is important to everybody's life. What does that mean (the question) Art is subjective.... the creative aspect. Literature, is art, fiction is art.”
Answer by: Francesca, middle school student.

“Sure I like art” (why?) “Well it depends on what you call art.” (what do you call art) “Any thing that gives pleasure and has no function”.... “like a beautiful glass can be artistic and I need to have that beautiful glass to pour something into, or like a painting I hang on my wall, I don't have to have it, but I look at it, I contemplate it.” “It (art) is for thinking and contemplation.”
Answer by: Marco, restaurant owner.

“Everybody needs art” “its like education”, “its like asking – do you need math.” “It is part of what you need (in order ) to learn.”
Answer by: Tony, business student and marketing intern."

"Considering that the best artist in the universe, the One who created
such beautiful flowers, such beautiful animals, such incredible human
body, the gorgeous sunsets, the magnificent roaring of the oceans, the
marvelous galaxies with its planets and other cosmic bodies marching in
accurate harmony , and the One who gave the gift of the arts to so many
privileged people like you...Yes, I need to understand infinite art for
my life!

"Do I need art in my life...holy smokes.
Start simple
Life and art
Art and life
A cooperative relationship to mutually enhance and benefit each other, a unity.
Unification can involve need, one can't exist without the other.
Life needs art, art needs life, I need life, I need art.

"Hmmm.
Because creative expression is a way to identity and work through the
mess that life sometimes becomes. Because if all we had were words to
express then my head would explode or catch on fire or something.
Because sometimes it's nice to see and recognize with you eyes and ears
and heart something that doesn't necessarily make "sense" to your
brain. Because sometimes your mind and not just your brain needs
nourishment. Because although we don't all identify as artists, it is a
part of our collective soul and to ignore it is to allow a part of
yourself to whither and die and that's just sad." :-PJess

"I'm planning on coming up with an answer to you question, but I thought
this was an interesting answer too!
Let me know if the link doesn't work! click link"

Just as I need air to breathe and food to eat, I need art to feed my
soul and keep my spirit hopeful. It is my connection to what is
real. A reminder of that power greater than me, greater than all of
us , that manifests itself in music and poetry and beauty in nature.
Life without art is hell. Jean

Describe a collaboration you've had with someone (Business, Domestic, Creative etc.).

What would you say are your life wisdoms, or can you give people who might be reading this interview some life advice?

I'm the executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Champaign County and ReStore, in Champaign, IL. We're an affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International. In broad terms, I do all of our public relations and outreach; fundraising; program development and oversight (e.g. our home improvement ReStore, home building); oversee our finances; oversee our relationship with home owners; work with the Board of Directors.

I go to the gym several days each week to walk and watch trashy television. Yesterday I watched an MTV documentary, which took me far from my monkey brain. I serve on my church's Board, which is fun in terms of spending time with people I care for. My wife and I walk our dog together. I read a lot of fiction, some Jesus material. I write lots of letters to my 4- and 2-year-old nephews, which involves some artwork. We have season tickets to women's basketball at the U of Illinois.

> Describe a collaboration you've had with someone (Business, Domestic, Creative etc.).

I pulled together a group of local housing and poverty-related agencies to form the Community Housing Collaborative. This spring we will announce a year-long effort to build 20 homes with serious post-purchase support and community education.

For work I do a lot of presentations at rotaries, chambers of commerce, service clubs, churches and the like. This leaves to a lot of side conversations and chatting. Sometimes it feels social, sometimes like work. As for my life, not much. I am very bad at making time for myself.

Their story. Where they've come from, where they want to be, the choices they've made and why.

> What would you say are your life wisdoms, or can you give people who
might be reading this interview some life advice?

Do everything you can to hold onto or achieve freedom. Don't carry credit card debt. Have 6 months of savings in the bank. Claim time for yourself and don't apologize for doing so.

To begin with, I have issues replying to a survey where I do not know what will be done with the information. With that said, I have conducted surveys myself, and subjects had enough faith in the information gathering process to answer openly and honestly. I will try to do that here.

I am currently unemployed. I was in a casual position in retail and left because of my working environment. I am a graduate and have worked in the areas of retail, call centre and hospitality.

I use to find socialising fun. Life circumstances intervened and I activities which provide me with a sense of well being enable me to have fun. In particular, I like to make sense of riddles and make sense out of perplexing situations. This has been a response to take control of my life. Fun to me is any situation, either alone or with people that makes me feel good. This can be an activity or talking. If I come away from an interaction with a new approach or perspective, it is a positive interaction. If I come away feeling confused or septic, it is a negative interaction. The last time I had fun was today reading Ben Elton's Dead Famous. It was fun reading because it succinctly described the obtuse and bizarre situations people find themselves in by trying to conceptualise aspects of life that are not centred on the core concerns of their life. The fun lay in being able to relate to the protagonists whilst being safe in the knowledge that I can control my interaction with the storyline; something that each of the protagonists was lacking in the storyline.

> Describe a collaboration you've had with someone (Business, Domestic, Creative etc.).

I am describing the collaboration as an agreed upon outcome. With that said, my collaborations have rarely come to fruition, or even to plan. Comes down to the journey, I suppose. The former statement is said in a completely retrospective analysation of the question you posed.

Social encounters are limited. Used to be plentiful and productive. Use to like the spontaneous interdispersed with the routine. A quick drink with a friend, punctuated with all out debaucery. Or, an unexpected and unprompted discussion with a stranger or customer. I've found that different phases of your life offer the potential for different social interactions each of which needs to be into contect with the setting provided. I have found that during times of heightened social interactions, your need to question them becomes less. It is not so much a formulamatic approach to social interactions, but rather a natural ebb and flow that springs from a natural curiosity of those around you and the desire to interect with your environment.

Strategies seem to come into play when I am not having succesful social interactions. Symbosis and mutually benefical social interactions seem to triumph over strategy. When I actively attempt a strategy for a social interaction, it is an alarm bell to me that I am not in a mindset to have productive social interactions. A strategy, therefore, is nothing more than a defence mechanism to rebuild my social confidence so that when free flowing social interactions take place, I grab them with both hands.

Making sense of the absurdity of life given the restriction of limited sensory perception. The mishaps and the misunderstandings give me a sense of utter amusement. Í am the kind of person who can make sense of a broken wheel, but who would be run down by a chariot. The parables aside, I like people who can identify and overcome adversity and find innovative ways to convey their understanding(s) to others.

Non linear explanations for the inexplicable. Physicists have hit an epistomolgical brick wall with their attempt to explain how atoms can be in two given places at the same time. I suppose that is an inarticulate way of describing what interests me. I'm interested in thoughts and ideas that are in their embryonic stages.

> What would you say are your life wisdoms, or can you give people who might be reading this interview some life advice?

The people who provide life wisdoms are usually failures. Stay well clear of them. Find the quietachievers and try and understand how they remained undiscovered and protect them from exposure. Do not expose what you value to vultures.

Airline pilot

> Describe what you do for fun.
Listen to high quality music reproduction. Play with pets. Take acting classes.

> Describe a collaboration you've had with someone (Business, Domestic, Creative etc.).
Worked closely with a friend writing a historical analysis of the history of the Baha'i Faith from the perspective of a dissident sect.

> What kinds social encounters do you have as part of your life and work?
Mostly shallow encounters at work, although I do get into heated political discussions from time to time.

> What strategies do you have for successful social interactions?
Try to keep the focus on the other person.

> What aspects of other people interest you?
I'm very interested in what psychological and cognitive processes keep people from asking more critical questions about their world.

> What things and/or ideas are interesting to you lately?
9/11 Truth, acting, cooperative models of living and development.

> What would you say are your life wisdoms, or can you give people who might be reading this interview some life advice?
Ignore the spectacle. It's not nearly as interesting as deep reality.

> Any other thoughts?

> THANK YOU!

Describe what you do for fun.
I Spend time with friends and family, go to the Spa (pool, sauna, steam room ) Crosswords, Scrabble

Describe a collaboration you've had with someone (Business, Domestic, Creative etc.).
Domestic - cooking together, professionally -setting up meetings and groups to look at areas of spirituality

What kinds social encounters do you have as part of your life and work?
All kinds - counselling following bereavements for example, sometimes confrontations, or mediations. I have to chair meetings and seminars, give talks, sometimes to groups of people with dementia. And I preach, every week.

What strategies do you have for successful social interactions?
I try to keep safe, not antagonise anyone, avoid people under the influence of alcohol. Make time to be with friends where none of the aforementioned matters

What aspects of other people interest you?
Everything, I find them fascinating. I suppose because a lot of things are told to me and to no one else, confidential things

What things and/or ideas are interesting to you lately?
Mysticism and mystical theology; feminist writing; the absence of God in the literature of the last 50 years.

What would you say are your life wisdoms, or can you give people who might be reading this interview some life advice?
Try to be authentic in what you do, that it represents your best efforts, and does not cause harm or offence to others.

Any other thoughts?
Remeber the marginalised and the outcast in society, and , if you can, be a voice for them. Human rights are paramount.

I have been an architect for over 25 years, designing residences; I also do stained glass and other art; have not done much art lately as my focus has been mainly on researching ancient architecture and other subjects.

Research of all sorts. Practice TM, and listen to the Silence. Hang out with people. Make things. Volunteer.

Describe a collaboration you've had with someone (Business, Domestic, Creative etc.).

Meals are often a collaboration at our house; I collaborate with my wife Susan Russell on these: she likes to cook, and I like to keep things moving smoothly as well as achieving the meal. I make pasta, an involved process, and she makes the sauce; I choose the bread, grate the cheese. I chop vegetables for steaming or sautéing, and she usually makes the salad and dressing. She likes to make pies to serve afterwards, especially when fruit is in season. This sort of meal happens when Susan invites friends over. I usually collect the dishes after each course, and often do the dishes as the meal is progressing, as this is essential to keep the kitchen clear for more courses and utensils.

Listen and watch, then appreciate and respond, either by initiating an interaction non-verbally, or verbally (a smile, then a hello if need be, for instance, with strangers and friends alike.)

What they do for fun, what they like to do; what they do that we have in common; how they cope/strategies for living, and especially if they are interested in the serendipitous and the esoteric.

Definitely the knowledge of the Veda and Vedic literature. The effect of sound and harmony with nature. I do not like to listen to most popular music these days in favor of Indian (Asian) music and Vedic recitation, and ambient sounds that nature makes. Am also interested in how people are cognizing the changes going on in the world, and how they are responding to them (like or dislike of it.) Are people happier? Going with the flow? I like to listen to people’s stories. Part of it is helping by listening, and appreciating that they want to explain themselves even though they might not be looking at it that way. The Body-Universe parallel.

What would you say are your life wisdoms, or can you give people who might be reading this interview some life advice?