Social Practice chalkboard mapping. (Source)
Why?
Social Practice has been gaining popularity since the late 1990s, but has roots that go back into the 1960s. There are many definitions of social practice—some that are solely political, others that just about creating social situations, others that lean towards humanitarian work. These readings explore some avenues of social practice, and we will discuss more in class. It is important to understand the possibilities for social practice as you work toward your own social practice project.
According to Abigail Satinsky, a noted writer, curator, and practitioner of Social Practice art:
Defining the actual parameters of “social practice art” seems to be a red herring. Sometimes a dinner party should just be a dinner party, sometimes calling a dinner party an art project makes it a richer experience for the individuals participating. Social practice art doesn‘t necessarily create more democratic exchange between art and audiences, often times it creates hierarchical distinctions between artists in art school and ordinary people with creative hobbies and interests that don’t have anything to do with an art career. But while it continues to be problematic territory, the larger anxiety it brings up is pretty interesting. How are artists defining the communities their work operates in, especially when traditional contexts such as commercial galleries, museums, and non-profits aren’t the intended landing pad? If one’s work is about engaging publics supposedly outside the artworld and eschewing art-speak when it comes to creative expression, who cares if it’s called art other than social practice artists? The issue then becomes not how to judge social practice within the confines of other art disciplines, but rather how the value of that work is being defined and by who. If social practice offers us anything, it openly asks not what kind of artist one wants to be but what kind of person one wants to be and how one wants their work to operate in the world.1
Since there are different and contested definitions, there are also different terms that are used synonymously with “Social Practice,” or heavily overlap it. Terms like Relational Aesthetics, Social Sculpture, and Socially Engaged Art are the most prominent.
Note: Due to facets and branches of Social Practice being political, some material below may be be contrary to your own political and social views. If you have concerns, please contact the instructor and they can guide you to material that will be suitable for you.
Required
How the Art of Social Practice Is Changing the World, One Row House at a Time, ARTnews
“This type of art of the encounter, frequently referred to as ‘social practice,’ has been having a moment in art circles—albeit a moment that dates back a couple of decades. In that time, artists such as Rick Lowe in Houston and Theaster Gates in Chicago have turned urban renewal into an art form, transforming abandoned buildings into thriving cultural hubs. In Detroit, the Museum of Contemporary Art harbors Mobile Homestead, one of Mike Kelley’s final works, a near-exact replica of his childhood home, which now serves as an ever-evolving community center.”
Definitions, Education for Socially: Engaged Art A Materials and Techniques Handbook
“What do we mean when we say ‘socially engaged art’? As the terminology around this practice is particularly porous, it is necessary to create a provisional definition of the kind of work that will be discussed here.”
The Man Who Planted Trees
This fictional animated film is based on Jean Giono's 1953 short story The Man Who Planted Trees.
Supplementary Readings
- Social Practice
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Guadalupe Maravilla & the Sound of Healing, Art21
“Does healing have a soundtrack? Sculptor, performer, and sound healer Guadalupe Maravilla combines his personal experiences as a formerly undocumented immigrant and cancer survivor with ancient and indigenous knowledge to create new rituals for healing. An impressionistic and kaleidoscopic look at Maravilla's multifaceted practice and biography, the film follows the artist as prepares his solo exhibition at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, New York and conducts healing sound performances for his community. From his Brooklyn studio, Maravilla recounts his personal journey as an unaccompanied minor fleeing the civil war in his native El Salvador and migrating through Central America to the United States. As an adult, Maravilla was diagnosed with colon cancer, which he considers a physical manifestation of the trauma he experienced as a child. During his radiation treatments, Maravilla was introduced to the sound bath, where participants are "bathed" in sound waves meant to encourage therapeutic processes. Struck by the healing potential of sound, Maravilla vowed to learn and share sound healing with others if he overcame cancer.”
Artists Seeking Social Change Bring the Public into the Picture, KQED Arts
“Social practice art can look like just about anything: journalism, community organizing, even a shop. The goal is to engage the audience and help people think about social issues in new ways. ‘For me,’ says social-practice artist and professor Stephanie Syjuco, ‘the best social practice projects actually try to attract people to join a conversation.’ Two artists, Chris Treggiari and Chris Johnson, recently went into the streets of Oakland to record conversations and make art.”
Harrell Fletcher and Jen Delos Reyes, Art Talk AM
An interview with Harrell Fletcher and Jen Delos Reyes of Portland State University's Art and Social Practice program.
Social Practice Art’s Identity Crisis, Bad at Sports
“The question of what social practice art actually is, who is defining its parameters and to what end, is a hot mess. Since the 1990s, a number of mostly European and North American art critics and historians have struggled to understand a notoriously chaotic set of practices, under an ever changing set of names including new genre public art, socially-engaged practice, relational art, dialogical aesthetics, etc. While I have no interest in throwing my hat in the art historical ring on that one (and I think the folks over at 127prince.wordpress.com/ are doing a good job on talking through the issues), I admit that I like the identity crisis that social practice art is always wrestling with. It’s rapidly becoming professionalized through MFA programs, like California College of Arts, Otis College of Art, and PSU. Yet it also heralds a kind of everyday creativity and social connectivity that is supposedly available to anyone with or without an art degree.”
Is Social Practice Gentrifying Community Arts?, Bad at Sports
“‘Is Social Practice Gentrifying Community Arts?’: This question posed by Rick Lowe of Project Row Houses in conversation with Nato Thompson at this years Creative Time Summit, Art, Place & Dislocation in the 21st Century, was a crystallizing moment in a series of gatherings and convening I’ve been part of the last few months. Addressing “gentrification,” the thematic buzz word of this year’s Creative Time convening, Lowe said that to really talk through the issue of gentrification, we must also address our issues with race.”
Social Practice | Artbound | Season 5, Episode 7, PBS SoCal
“In this episode, Artbound explores social practice arts throughout Southern California. Featuring Olga Koumoundouros' occupation of foreclosed homes in Los Angeles; The Workers' Rug/La Alfombra Del Trabajador, an art project by day laborers, organizers affiliated with IDEPSCA, artist Katie Bachler and Jade Thacker, and the Craft and Folk Art Museum; Public Matters' Market Makeover project addressing the "grocery gap" in "food deserts," areas that have limited access to quality, healthy food; the collective Fallen Fruit, who map local public fruit trees, encouraging us to rethink our relationship to food and public space; and a performance by Moses Sumney.”
Harrell Fletcher with Adam Moser, PSU Art and Social Practice Reference Points
“I had the opportunity to visit Harrell and the Art and Social Practice program at Portland State University. Through my visits and interactions with the Social Practice program, I’ve come to see it as yet another work by Harrell, with his co-director Jen Delos Reyes. The two have created an ongoing project in which the student is given much of the onus. The program is most often noted for being student-led, a pedagogical model that resembles Harrell’s works and writings, much of which is a reaction to his own frustrations with his education as a student and his experiences as an artist.”
An Incomplete and Subjective List of Terms and Topics Related to Art and Social Practice Volume 1
“Each week in the Art and Social Practice MFA Program at Portland State University we have an hour of what we call ‘topical discussion.’ During that hour we explore a term or topic related to art and social practice. Some of the terms and topics are very basic, like collaboration, and site-specificity, but there are also less common terms like a touch of evil which we heard about from Pedro Reyes when we were visiting him in Mexico City a few years ago. Many of the ideas we discuss are not specific to socially engaged art, but we are looking at them from a socially engaged art perspective. Several of the concepts are ones that I have used in my own work but until recently hadn’t named what they were or detailed how they could be used as strategies when developing or analyzing a project. I hope that the list might be useful to people interested in socially engaged art. I started with about sixty terms and topics that I wrote about in 2019, and now I have added an additional forty or so. I’m already working on several new ones for a second volume.”
- Relational Aesthetics
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Relational Aesthetics
“Where does our current obsession for interactivity stem from? After the consumer society and the communication era, does art still contribute to the emergence of a rational society? Bourriaud attempts to renew our approach toward contemporary art by getting as close as possible to the artists works, and by revealing the principles that structure their thoughts: an aesthetic of the inter-human, of the encounter; of proximity, of resisting social formatting.”
Critique of Relational Aesthetics, Third Text
“Bourriaud’s fetishism of the social produces an inversion of his critical claims for relational aesthetics. His realised utopianism echoes with the commodified friendship of customer services. For all his claims to the novelty of the idea of relational aesthetics, it is a reapplication of Romanticism. Art is conceived as an immediate form of non-capitalist life. But without an account of what mediates relational art’s disengagement from capitalist life, it is helplessly reversible, obliviously occupying the other side of capitalism’s coin.”
Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, October
“But Bourriaud is at pains to distance contemporary work from that of previous generations. The main difference, as he sees it, is the shift in attitude toward social change: instead of a “utopian” agenda, today’s artists seek only to find provisional solutions in the here and now; instead of trying to change their environment, artists today are simply ‘learning to inhabit theworld in a better way’; instead of looking forward to a future utopia, this art sets up functioning 'microtopias’ in the present.
Response to Claire Bishop’s Paper on Relational Aesthetics, Circa
“It is unfortunate (but strategic) that Bishop’s only example of a relational artwork at first hand is so far removed from any of the above. Jerry Saltz, describing his experience of a work by Rirkrit Tiravanija for Art in America, gives us an exercise in namedropping and nepotism that demonstrates how familiar types of social practice based on networks of influence and exclusivity can surface anywhere. But as Bishop points out, this actually tells us little, because if we were to base our judgement on individual testimony then every participant in the work would have to be taken into account (suggesting a wildly democratic if untenable form of art criticism).”
Response Question
Remember to cite specific instances from the “readings” to support your views.
- Which version of Social Practice is enticing to you and why?
- According to Helguera, SEA is not symbolic, but an actual practice. How do you understand that, and how does that impact your perspective on your own art?
- In The Man Who Planted Trees, Elzéard Bouffier never directly interacts with people, yet creates an enormous amount of social good. Would you consider this social practice? Why or why not?
- Abigail Satinsky, “Social Practice Art’s Identity Crisis,” Bad at Sports, February 27, 2011, https://badatsports.com/2011/social-practice-arts-identity-crisis/