End of the Semester

As the semester winds down and I start to regain some sanity, I've been thinking over the amount of information I've gathered in such a short time period. I'm exhausted and in need of a break. Over the winter holiday, I'll be putting together a presentation set to happen in February at Temple Contemporary (Tyler's art gallery.) The presentation will be a way for me to disseminate some of my findings and to localize this effort within Philadelphia. 

In about two weeks, I'll be going back to California to stay with a friend of mine and do a bit of relaxing. While over there I plan to speak with the artist Amy Franceschini from future farmers. My friend and I also plan to take a road trip up to Portland, where hopefully, I'll get to visit Portland State University and hear about their social practice program. 

A professor of mine recommended that I move away from these artists for a while. That I try and focus on my own work, and my process of making. She gave me a few fiction books to read over break. I've already been eager to jump into them, fantasizing about sitting in a leather chair, book on my lap, hot tea in my hand. 

This semester has been rough in dealing with whether to be more of an academic or more of an artist. Different classes pulled me different ways, and often I felt torn at the center. My mind trying to wrap around various disciplines and discourses. If I look back on some of my past projects from the semester, I am relatively happy with where I've gotten. Perhaps, it is not my best work... and maybe I shouldn't have taken six classes... but I've learned a lot. 


In November, I spoke with the artist Peggy Diggs and we had a really wonderful mentoring session/ conversation. Since I am in a state of catching up-- on sleep, on finals, on blog posts, the re-cap of that session will be left to a later date. 

Cool site:

Spontaneous Interventions

"When we see beauty we see hope"- Lily Yeh

Genocide Memorial Proposal- Lily Yeh

I met with Lily in a Cosi near Rittenhouse square on a cold Friday morning. We sat at a table near the floor to ceiling windows and began to speak about my expectations. Lily said that she might not be able to answer some of the questions and I explained that it was ok, they were just there for guidance if she did not naturally bring up things I wanted to touch on.

We began, as I always do with talking about where she grew up and her transition into public artwork. The whole time we were speaking, I kept seeing these beautiful yellow flowers in my head, made out of mosaics. The conversation was magical and inspiring. Lily's passion is infectious and it is easy to see why her art appears the way it does. For her, it all comes down to a level of authenticity. She needs to be true to herself and out of that comes the rest. She describes her work as coming out organically. Building a place for healing in Rwanda was what needed to be done. We spoke about the artist as a person who can open up possibilities. Through beauty we can create space, healing, and dialogue. She told me it comes from organizing yourself, and improving yourself-- taking the freedom to explore who you are and what that means through these different contexts.

For her, it is about the desire to solve social problems. The art comes out of listening. When I asked her about the significance of being a female and creating this work, she spoke to me about feminine energy. That the world needs women artists, that we bring the emotional, physical, mental care as well as the intuitive nature to the space.

After speaking with Lily, I was overcome with this sense of joy and possibility. Through talking with her, I could sense the effects that artwork can have transforming a blighted area, or a group that is dealing with immense pain. Her methods of taking what is broken and putting it back together through mosaics, is more than poetic, it is moving. She is a wonderful role model to have and I feel honored to have been able to absorb her kindness and wisdom.

Here is the group that Lily founded called Barefoot Artists. I came across Lily's work through learning about the Village of Arts and Humanities in North Philadelphia. Check out the websites, and also watch the trailers for Lily's new documentary.

November already? A mix of jumbled notes- Mierle Ukeles Visit

Hosting my first dinner party tonight since the first was postponed due to Sandy.

If anyone is interested in helping out with disaster relief, Occupy Sandy is doing a great job.

Reading list that Bad at Sports posted for new years in January 2012: Reading List

Also if you get the podcast from itunes then you can download a very interesting interview with Shannon Jackson who wrote Social Works and will be at the performance (conference?) at Moma this weekend. The episode is 376, and should be released next week on their website. 

conference: How are we performing today?

I've been thinking recently about how much socially engaged art enters into my practice. Would I call myself a socially engaged artist? Surely that is what I am most interested in speaking about, but why? What does it really mean to work in the social sphere and can socially engaged art be effective. I just heard Shannon say in the podcast that it may not be the aesthetic vs. use but an exploration of truth or meaning. 

This past week has been overwhelming, a bit stressful, but overall incredible. On Thursday, I went to pick up Mierle Laderman Ukeles at 30th street station, for a lecture at temple. Immediately, she was asking questions about Tyler and the community arts program. As I tried to navigate Philadelphia traffic, I answered her as best I could. She was so inquisitive about how students were engaging with art at Tyler and what I was doing. I told her about my project and she was curious about the decision to describe it as mentoring sessions rather than interviews.  I explained how when I began learning about these practices, my own practice had yet to be formed (not to say it has been formed now), so these conversations were a way for me to contextualize my practice and to learn tactics and methods for dealing with a very difficult art form. 

She seemed interested in the prospect of doing one, but when we spoke more in depth about the projects I had been doing this semester she seemed to think that it might be time I stop looking at my mentors and begin to delve deep into my own art. This semester has been a very tough few months. I've been trying to balance academics, art, work, and research and have found that I don't nearly have enough time to do everything. I have managed to put together a series of works that I am interested in pursuing but I am constantly questioning my work. Part of this might be that I lack the support structure of other peers pursuing this type of art. I am researching collaborative environments and yet I come up alone. I know there are students at my university who are interested in community arts but it has been hard trying to bring people together. Hopefully, the dinner parties will provide a community of artists that can come together and support each other. 

Back to Mierle's visit--- She gave an incredible lecture at Temple Contemporary but unfortunately some of her projects were cut short by the time limit. The way she spoke was like one long poem, folding in quotes and reactions, descriptions and details. There was a great turn out for the event, people were leaning against the walls and sitting on the floor. After the lecture, I got to go to dinner with Mierle, the co-directors of the Community Arts program, the head of Temple Contemporary, and a few other wonderful people. Each brought an interesting conversation to the table about Mierle's practice but also about the state of socially engaged art at Temple and the state of Temple as a "public" institution. As a young artist, and well frankly as a person, it was such an honor to be able to sit in on that conversation and participate. 

In the morning on Friday, I picked Mierle up at her hotel and we drove through North Philadelphia on the way to campus. We stopped by where many of the students live, just west of Broad, so I could show her the area and a glimpse of the dynamic between students and residents. This also gave her some context for the breakfast conversation that Rob was holding at the Gallery. The breakfast was a chance for people all over campus to come together to discuss their role on campus as well as a chance for them to meet Mierle and ask her any questions that they had. It was a diverse group of people. From the head of facilities, to professors from the Art Ed department. There was a guy who headed a residency program that brings together artists and recycled material (RAIR,) a woman who was the head of the (no longer?) Woman's Studies Program, a graduate student who has been working with socially engaged art and maintenance, a documentary film maker, and the head of Temple Grounds. I just wish we had more time to speak. It was an incredible experience to have all of these people in one place. I even got to speak about my own practice and the type of work I have been exploring. One question that someone asked Mierle which I found to be kind of amazing, was, who were her supporters? As she went day in and day out to work with these Sanitation workers, who told her to keep going? She said that Hannah Wilke and Ana Mendieta told her to keep going. 

After breakfast, I drove Mierle over to the train station for her departure to New York. We said we would stay in touch. At a time when I feel often dismayed and disappointed by critiques and conversations in Tyler, it is nice to know that someone is pushing me forward. These women have opened a mental space for me to push boundaries, question, but most importantly stay genuine to what I believe.

Spectre of Evaluation

Thomas Hirschorn, Spectre of Evaluation, 2010, ink on paper

I came across this today in Claire Bishop's book, Artificial Hells - Participatory Art and the politics of spectatorship. It says it all.

Sandy Troubles

As all of us know, Sandy has brought devestation to many areas throughout the north east. In preparation for the hurricane, many of my fellow dinner party go-ers had to cancel. I am now in the midst of rescheduling and figuring out logistics.

As of now the dinner parties are scheduled for:
4th of November (potentially-- see how many people can come to this one)
12th of November
30th of November

If you're interested email me at activistart@phoebebachman.com
Or just leave a comment below!

Hope you all were safe in the storm and don't have too much damage.

Here are some great quotes to leave you with:

"This is something essential to art: reception is never its goal. What counts for me is that my work provides material to reflect upon. Reflection is an activity." Thomas Hirschorn

“I have consistently been interested in addressing the art world. If  wasn’t I would have obviously gone into politics or something else. I mean after all, lets talk real change." Suzanne Lacy (Bad at Sports Podcast)

Andrea Fraser Podcast

Listen to this if you get the chance:

Andrea Fraser- Bad at Sports Podcast


She brings up some very salient points that resonated specifically with my own work. It's a long podcast with a lot of different ideas brought up so it becomes hard to narrow it down. I will say, that at a point she is speaking about performing her relationships to a group, instead of performing that specific group. In this way she is always present as herself while embodying other characters persona's. I find this extremely interesting because she is allowing herself to explore that in-between space of creating a dialogue within a larger conversation.

I think that these were some of the issues I have been trying to work through in my own performances. For me, it becomes less about the specificity of a character but about the nature of how I would interact with that character and what that interaction would look like. Who is that person to me? I'm speaking in reference to a piece I just did where I attempted to take on the persona of a 1970's feminist performance artists. After listening to Andrea's interview, I realize that there is an importance to scripting and truly investigating that person before allowing them to enter into our world. Then, once entered, I should ask, who are you as an artist in relation to this character?

She also brought up a point about the Woman's Building in LA, and the emphasis that those women placed on collective learning and group process. For the Pacific Standard Time show she attempted to find evidence of this process, but unfortunately she was unable to. I started to wonder what ever happened to that type of learning? I understand many of us do work collectively at times, but what about the beginning stages? I just finished with a collaborative piece for my Installation class and it did not go so well. Is there space for collaboration and collective learning in our individualistic society?

Might be a utopian ideal...
Off to crochet upside down triangles

Organization/Reading

The first dinner party for young women activist artists is this Sunday! As the day approaches I am going a bit crazy trying to finalize all my plans and make sure confirm "reservations."

I can't wait to get this community together. It is already looking like an amazing group of women.

Right now I am reading a few books:

Frances Stark- I suggest that you go read her as soon as you can. One of my professors gave me an excerpt form the "Architect and the Housewife" then one of my good friends lent me his copy of the book "This could become a gimick [sic] or an honest articulation of the workings of the mind."She has a way of explaining herself so that you can understand exactly where she is coming from. Each piece of writing is candid, stark and authentic.

I am also reading Claire Bishop's Installation Art book- (at the section about Activated Spectatorship)
Great book for learning about historical and contemporary installation art practices.  

Last but not least, I am reading "Jane {a murder}." I'm not quite sure what I would call this book, but for now it is a collection of poems and excerpts, gathered and (some) written by  Maggie Nelson. The book is about Jane, Maggie's aunt who has been murdered just a few years before Maggie was even born. Through beautiful and powerful prose, Maggie takes us on a journey through Jane's life and her untimely death.

Doin' it in Public

Check out this site
Feminism and Art at the Womans Building!

Explore to your hearts desire-- I recommend the Video Herstories and the suggested readings. While I have not read all of the readings, I am familiar with many of the names. I was actually just reading some of the original Chrysalis (Chrysalis Magazine. (10 issues published from 1977-1981)) this afternoon at the special collections at my library!

Few of the links pulled from their site:
Lacy, Suzanne. “Artist Resource Site, Three Weeks in May: She Who Would Fly,” September 27, 2003. http://www.suzannelacy.com/1970sviolence_3weeks_fly.htm

 Judy Chicago & the California Girls. Dir. Judith Dancoff. Perf. Judy Chicago, Faith Wilding, et al. 1973, 1993. DVD. http://judychicagoandthecaliforniagirls.com/index.html

Lynn Hershman-Leeson, !Women Art Revolution. DVD. Trailer: http://www.womenartrevolution.com/

Edelson, Mary Beth and Arlene Raven, "Happy Birthday America." Chrysalis Magazine, 1.1 (1977): 49-53  [PDF]


This is especially relevant to me right now because I am in the midst of  performing a character from the 1970's feminist art movement. Just held my first -- well she, Molly Seiden, just held her first consciousness raising group last night and will be doing a body art performance piece this evening. (9pm tyler school of art)

Get ready for some quintessential early feminist performance art.

Creative Time Summit

This past weekend I attended a two day summit hosted by Creative Time at NYU. After getting up at 5:30 am, walking to a friends house with the moon still out, then taking a 7 am train, then getting stuck in morning traffic on the NJ turnpike, we finally arrived in Soho.

The Skirball center was filled with people attempting to get their badges and a good seat.  Pablo Helguera started us off with a song and a few games, then Marth Rosler took the floor.

Marth Rosler is a political female artist who has been working since the late 60's and is still working today. She has a show going up at Moma in a few weeks which she spoke briefly about: Garage Sale MOMA

Her name is the one that pops up on every other piece about political artwork. Many people know her for her work Semiotics in the Kitchen (here is the video.) I was first introduced to her work through her collages.
... eh to quote from creative time:
 "Although Martha Rosler suggests that “all artists want to change the world,” her oeuvre is distinguished for its exceptional commitment to this elusive goal, particularly with regard to feminism. As a native of Brooklyn, New York, much of Rosler’s work—which includes video, installation, photo-collage and performance—engages urban space. Rosler is perhaps most well known for her works exploring feminist issues."

One thing that she said that I've been thinking about is "what is the social value of art and its social investigations."

Each of the presenters had some very interesting things to say, and seem to be doing some pretty amazing things. Of course, Suzanne Lacy was wonderful and inspiring -- the pairing of Suzanne and Jodie Evans worked really well. They spoke about violence women and individually the work Suzanne has done and Jodie has done through Code Pink.

Tom Finklepearl spoke from the  Queens Museum and gave a similar lecture to the one he gave at Temple-- just a lot shorter. There was mention of Fluxus- Yoko Ono, Suzanne Lacy, Rick Lowe, Santiago Sierra, and Tania Bruguera. He then quoted Tania saying that it is time to return Duchamps urinal to the bathroom. This followed by a talk about the usefulness of art and its function in society.

For those of you who don't know about Tania's piece that is going on right now, through the Queens Museum, :"Immigrant Movement International (IM International) is a five-year project initiated by artist Tania Bruguera. Its mission is to help define the immigrant as a unique, new global citizen in a post-national world and to test the concept of arte útil or “useful art”, in which artists actively implement the merger of art into society’s urgent social, political and scientific issues.

After Tom we had Fernando García-Dory who was the prize winner for The Leonore Annenberg Prize For Art and Social Change and Slavoj Žižek, the other key note speaker.

I am sure there are much better summaries of the experience on numerous blogs. From a personal point of view, I want to say that it was a great experience to be in one place with all of these amazing influential artists and thinkers. I got to speak with a few of them during the lunch that conflict kitchen put together. The lunch itself was great, half of us were South Korea and the other half North Korea. The food menu was designed so that we each got different dishes for our country and then could share them "across the border." I sat across from the woman from the presenter for Taring Padi.
We shared food and spoke about her activist artwork and then she showed me this incredible book that Taring Padi put together that encompass many of their prints and pieces.

The second day was full of discussions with specific artists and creative time facilitators.  The first session I went to was Suzanne Lacy's and Jodie Evan's "Elephant in the room." We spoke about the importance of context and understanding yourself and why you are going into a community. In both this session and my next one we spoke about honesty being extremely important.  The second session was led by Fernando Garcia-Dory and it was very intimate, about ten people were there. I'm glancing at my notes from the session and I have the term "horizontal social relationships"-- what does this mean? I also have scribblings about the relationship between urban environments and rural environments. The different roles an artist can play in those two places.

The last session I went to was about the "Art User" and paticipatory works, led by Pablo Helguera. He posed three questions to us before we broke into groups:

What does it mean to have the producer disappear?
Can we create a way of art making that allows every to have a stake in it?
Is everyone an artist/ art user?

My group ended up discussing a totally different question but we had some interesting dialogue about the role of art in society, and how different cultures view the art producer in a different light than we do.

The summit ended with that last conversation and then a few friends and I went to grab food on the lower east side. We continued to babble about our role as artists and how we engage community, who those communities are, how we validate our work, how we research, how we make the day-to- day happen, whether we were being honest, how much we are going to let aesthetic dictate our work...

I'll just say, that it was kind of amazing to be in a place with so many critical thinkers who want to reach out into the world and change peoples lives.

 

http://creativetime.org/summit/

Poster #2

Taking to the streets today with my poster campaign!

Jane Golden Session

 (I did not take this Photograph, but I really like it!)

On this misty morning,  I left my house in Fishtown and road across town to the Mural Arts Program HQ in Fairmount. Cars were abundant in the early morning rush as I scrambled onto 17th and Mt. Vernon. I locked my bike outside found myself walking into the building with Jane as she started her day.

If you ever have the chance to visit the Mural Arts Building, I suggest you do it-- it is incredible. We walked up the few floors to her office and began to speak about the project. Coffee was poured, recorders were prepared, and all was ready to go.

Our conversation began how all of my sessions do, with talking about the artist's background. Where they grew up, how they got started as an artist, members of their family...ect.  From the beginning I could see that Jane has an abundance of passion. Her heart belongs with the program and it was mesmerizing to hear her speak with such conviction. 

I will save most content of the interview itself for a later date, but I thought I would touch on a few things Jane said that have stuck with me throughout the day. When Jane began her first mural in LA, she was too late to be considered for the grant, but she would not take no for an answer. Asking what the hypothetical application would be like she organized all the needed materials. From community members, to an interesting wall, to ideas for the mural itself she orchestrated the whole process. It was this persistence that landed her the grant. She even knocked on Jane Fonda's door  to ask her dedicate the mural (and she did!)

Jane is tenacious and brave. And while she may not paint anymore, she makes and effort to reach out to the various divisions of the ever-growing Mural Arts Program. We spoke about how murals can be politicizing, even if they are just a landscape. That good murals can create this domino effect in neighborhoods, from painting, to cleaning up the streets, to fostering a sense of community.

One other piece that I found very interesting, was when Jane described artists as being able to make social change relevant for citizens. As an artist myself, I often wonder how I can create change. Does it come from direct engagement outside of the art world? Or can the art world function as a catalyst for change? I guess the only way to find out is through trying and putting myself and my work out there.

Our conversation drifted in and out of herself as an organizer and the Mural Arts Program itself. When I asked her whether she is interested in being a role model for future generations, she responded, of course. She said that she is inspired by young people and their drive.  She wants them to understand what it means to be on the ground working in these real situations. It is one thing to speak about doing them, it's another to execute them. I had actually just had this same conversation the night before with a friend of mine. He said, you can go read a critical book about social practice or you can talk to people to people who are working with that practice every day. They are the ones facing the challenges and building a system that works within that public space.

So all in all, it was a wonderful experience and I hope to have a strong relationship with Mural Arts in the future. Thank you to Jane who was so generous with her time.

Here is a link to Mural Arts Program and the muralLAB.

"muraLAB: To push its creative boundaries, Mural Arts has developed an experimental creativity hub called muraLAB.  muraLAB is a laboratory for investigating muralism in the 21st century, as artistic media evolve, technologies emerge, the concepts of real/virtual communities merge, and the lines between public and private space dissolve. muraLAB will serve as a think-tank as we critically explore our dual role of  expert in traditional community-based public art practices and leader in the conversation about muralism’s future."

The muralLab has a program LEAPs (Local Emerging Artists Program,) which gives the chance for young emerging artists to do temporary artwork in the city through the Mural Arts Program. One of the commissioned artists last year was Jess Perlitz, a great artist who just happens to be my performance professor.

Oh and saw this so I thought I'd pass it along
Though Experiments- Conversation

Lastly,
Thank you to all the women who have been mentoring me thus far. It really means a lot to learn from all of you. I look back to the beginning of the project and I can't believe how much I've learned. It's an incredible gift I have been given, and I hope to share it with whoever is interested.

Zines, Book Fair, Lucy Lippard and More!

As I procrastinate on a paper, I figure I should at least update this blog.

This past weekend I went to the New York Art Book fair  (something like that) with my lovely mother. She is a rad librarian that really believes in extending the idea of what constitutes the book. As we squeezed through large masses in the school yard tent at PS 1 Moma, I came across some pretty amazing zines and artist books. The first one I picked up was a zine on Allen Kaprow. While Allen was not a female, he was a mentor to some female artists such as Suzanne Lacy.

To quote from the zine (strong language included!):

"Who the Fuck was Allan Kaprow?

.... Kaprow's legacy on contemporary art is pretty intense. Dude started out in New York for a minute doing action paintings because he liked jazz. But for Kaprow, painting wasn't the right vehicle to totally make art all about life. Paintings are totally constructed, right? I mean, what if there was an art form that didn't rely on things like composition, color, aesthetics or talent?

In 1958, Kaprow wrote an essay called 'The Legacy of jackson Pollock.'... Anyways, Kaprow demanded in his essay that the way that art was made be changed. He thought that it should include things from everyday life that we don't normally associate with art objects.

The works that Kaprow would start to do in the following years would have a profound effect on art making in general, later influencing a fuckton of movements. You can blame Kaprow almost entirely for performance art, relational aesthetics and social practice. The new mode of making that Kaprow pushed involved events known as 'Happenings.' He died in 2006 in San Diego after a long career, numerous published works and a lot of teaching (it pays the bills when you don't make objects and are kind of a bitch about documenting ephemeral works.)"

Ok, so that was a lot and pretty intense. But I think that this excerpt gets to the point and makes reading about this artist accessible. The zine was put together by Social Malpractice Publishing. 

The next zine that I picked up was a tiny one on the incredible Judith Butler.

I really enjoy this page and the expression on Judith's face. There is also a quote on the next page which I really like which states: "Butler never shies away from political activism, speaking up against zionism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia, offering her voice in support of anti-oppression causes, like the Occupy Wall Street Movement." Go JB!

(Side note) In the midst of all this DIY zine reading I've started to miss the process of making.  Though, I know that more making will come sooner than later as I prepare for three major installations.

After picking up a couple of more zines and talking with artists at the fair, my mother and I went into the "performance tent," for the Lucy Lippard talk. 

Ms. Lippard is the author of numerous books including, The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Essays on Feminist art (1995), Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object (1973),  and Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America (1990, 2000.) Lucy is also a curator and activist. She is one of the founding members of Printed Matter in NY and, as she said in her talk, has been re-examining the role of artist books throughout the past few decades. The talk took a historic look at where artist books have come from and how they are functioning in today's world. Some more recent groups (and people) she mentioned working with this medium were Fierce Pussy, LTTR, and Clarissa Sligh.

(Side note)One of the artists I have interviewed, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, was a founding member of LTTR along with Emily Roydson. Ginger continued to work with artist books and zines through her bookmobile project.

Lucy spoke about accessibility in book arts (and I guess art in general) being a utopian idea. Even if zines are distributed and affordable, many times they are aestheticized to a point where they become inaccessible. Which brings up the question, how do we disseminate information through artistic means without it becoming too insular?

A few other things I picked up... a book on Fluxus and "A Country Road a Tree Evening." -- while picking up this one I met the artist Paul Chan and spoke briefly about my work. Turns out he is coming to Philadelphia this November to speak at the PMA with Calvin Tomkins.

Three more female activist artists you should know about:
Ulrike Müller
Favianna Rodriguez
Allison Smith

I am lucky enough to get to have mentoring sessions with two of these women in October. I will also be having a mentoring session with Jane Golden from the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program this week. Now there is the matter of disseminating this information...

Check these out!

http://www.youtube.com/course?list=EC0FA67827C82639EB&feature=plcp

Awesome Exhibits at the Brooklyn Museum


Mickalene Thomas - she is an incredible painter. If you're in BK you should go see this show that is called Materializing "six years": Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art. Both of these shows were incredible.


Oh shoot, I am supposed to be writing about validating justice through the institution-- back to the evidence!

Dinner Party Poster

Mixed Media Poster

Art Filled

The past few weeks have been a bit more than hectic. I started classes on the 28th and ever since, I have been running around trying to adapt to my new schedule. That has unfortunately left me little time for writing in this blog. I have however, already had a lot of interesting ideas come up that have informed the work I was doing over the summer. Some of them have been lectures, others readings, and most recently- a three hour duration performance piece.

While this piece was highly politicizing for me, it was not inherently activist in its nature. Through this, I have come to respect this idea that I find hard to put into words-- it has something to do with looking and has everything to do with being present in the moment. This idea of living in the moment can be defined in many ways. I've found that it requires that I be aware, and present in every situation. Whether this be a performance piece, a lecture I attend, or walking from class.  I've also found that living in the moment requires that I use current methods/mediums in my artistic endeavors. This is the idea that I need to adapt my methods to fit inside the context of "today." Example: I does not make sense for me to use the same performance methods that Suzanne Lacy did in the 70s/80s/90s. Things have changed and methods must adapt to that change. It is interesting, as an artist, to embrace this idea of contextualizing your work within the every day. Mostly, because artists have always looked to the future, created the most progressive pieces, always being ahead of the curve. Perhaps in our methodology we can look ahead as we situate ourselves within the "real."

I am now figuring out ways to adopt this view point into my own art making- finding a balance between myself and work that reaches beyond my person to affect others.

I've had an art filled weekend, from seeing the Sharon Hayes exhibit again at the Whitney, to going to the Armory, to dancing at a Swoon fundraiser for a space in Braddock, to listening to Marina Abramovic talk about her methodology and present a master class performance, to attending a lecture and performance by Ashley Hunt. 

Each of these events presented a politicized view of art. However, they artists constructed that view in many different ways. Whether that be through a large installation with video monitors, or raising awareness and funds through a fun art event. To pick one path or another is not enough, I need to be able to try different methods of working and figure out what draws me in and engages others. Marina said something very interesting on Sunday, she talked about the idea of having an active audience just through being present. She had us do an exercise before we watched the performance. First we needed to relax, massage out our tension, feel comfortable in our bodies. She had us shake everything out, at one point we were asked to roll down our spine, and as we did that we were supposed to hum. The collective hum was beautiful and empowering. Then, we had to engage with one other person in the room by staring into each others eyes for ten minutes. She had the whole room do this. It wasn't awkward, but it was tough, ten minutes is a long time to stare at someone you just met. My partner was tall, so I was starting upward, he would start to smile a bit and it took every effort to not respond. It was fulfilling. At the end, we sat back down outside of the performance space and felt renewed (at least I did.) We were ready to watch the performance. No one looked at their cell phones, no one began a side conversation. We were present, we were connected. This is important. 

 

 

 Here are a few links to tack on for today!

• Ulrike Müler retracing the feminist art program.

Re-Tracing the feminist art program

• Our lovely lady, Ms. Lippard has a show at the Brooklyn Museum!

Exhibitions: Materializing "Six Years": Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art

• One of my brilliant professors sent me to this site, it is the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

Here are the podcasts, which I find helpful and brilliant.



And question of the day:

Are we exploiting people by taking the work (social practice) into different contexts (art institutions?) Do we need validation from these institutions for us to feel like artists? 

To be explored in the near future.

Talking about art- Links

• Truth is Concrete- A 24/7 marathon camp on artistic strategies in politics and political strategies in art.  21/09 – 28/09/2012, Graz

Truth is Concrete

"We take the possibility of concrete truth as a working hypothesis and look for direct action, for concrete change and knowledge. For an art that not only represents and documents, but that engages in specific political and social situations – and for an activism that not only acts for the sake of acting but searches for intelligent, creative means of self-empowerment: artistic strategies and tactics in politics, political strategies and tactics in art."


This looks like a fascinating conference that will explore some of the themes I have been working with this summer. I like that it admits that art is not activism, and activism is not art,  but there can be an understood commonplace where they come together. It is also interesting that the camp runs 24/7 and in itself is a duration performance. As they say at the bottom of the page, the world is moving so quickly that we must move with it, and maybe once we do move at this pace we can understand the absurdity of it all.

• MOMA PS1: Summer School 2012 (September 9th, 1-6 pm)

Summer School 2012


"Summer School 2012 concludes with an open house of presentations and performances at MoMA PS1 on September 9, 2012. This year’s instructors, Marina Abramović, Steve Paxton, and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, will explain their respective approaches and—in collaboration with the students—present the outcome of their workshops (held earlier this summer)."

All I can say is, it would be amazing to hear Marina Abramovic talk about her teaching methods.

• Who Cares- Creative Time

Who Cares Archive

Around 2006, artists were invited to discuss, over the course of three intimate dinner parties, what is the artists role in terms of social action and activism. These conversations were recorded and then compiled into this book, "Who Cares." Having read Living As Form before this, I felt like I had been sent back in time. These artists were thinking about 9/11, the war in Iraq, the Bush administration. All very important things, but we have moved past that... haven't we? By now, the term social practice has become much more wide spread, it is fascinating going back to the source and hearing rumblings of what is now a fast and growing art form. I have to admit though, I am only 30 pages in thus far.

Click Here to Read the Introduction by Anne Pasternak

Links today!

Today, was my third day of classes, and what a whirlwind it has been. However, despite the tricky adjustment, I've been able to figure out some issues I want to work with in the near future. More activist artwork coming soon!

One of my first "pursuits," as my installation professor likes to call them, is to find where I fit. After a summer of trying to contextualize my work and thought process, I should be a bit closer to figuring that out. Should be, being the correct wording.

Here are the links for today:

• REPOhistory

Straight from their about page:
"Founded in 1989, REPOhistory investigates and re-contextualizes historical representation through site-specific public art works. Based on the concept of re-mapping urban landscapes, our goal is to create works that intervene in an anonymous city-scape by drawing attention to the forgotten or suppressed narratives while revealing the spatial relationships inherent in power, usage and memory.

REPOhistory (repossessing history) is a collective of artists, writers, performers and educators. Originally we believed that guerrilla art projects would be the only course of action available to groups interested in re-presenting history based on a multicultural reading of class, race, gender and sexuality. However, we have created seven officially sanctioned, public funded site-specific project. Paradoxically, despite recent trends in U.S. politics, REPOhistory has been able to find support in three demographically diverse locations and has received its second National Endowment for the Arts grant.

While tactics have changed with each project, the concepts of collaboration in a multicultural context of community inclusion has been central to our original vision of site-specific public art works. The cognitive re-mapping of the ambient urban environment and the evolution of the collaborative process will be analyzed in relationship to previous projects and new works."



Speaking of urban environments, I will suggest two more great resources for finding out more about cities, The Next American City, (which actually has a great Philadelphia page!) and the Philadelphia specific blog Hidden City.

• BOMBsite

Regina Jose Galindo in Bomb
Sharon Hayes + Lawrence Weiner

Check this out!

• LACE

"LACE both champions and challenges the art of our time by fostering artists who innovate, explore, and risk.  We move within and beyond our four walls to provide opportunities for diverse publics to engage deeply with contemporary art.  In doing so, we further dialogue and participation between and among artists and those audiences."

I got to visit LACE when I was in LA and it was a great experience. Some really incredible projects are underway. My performance art professor actually shared this link, which is a great resource.

Interesting links of the week (or day)

• Feminist Tea Party in NY and Traveling!

Feminist Tea Party

Here is some info from their about page:
A Feminist Tea Party is an installation, a performance, a participatory event and a multi-faceted collaboration. At each event, we invite a new group of guests and, with them, a new conversation. We hope to engage with each of our guests, asking them to experience the space we have created, to perform within it by playing our game, to learn from each other in an open, supportive space for dialogue and, finally, to witness our collaboration and join us to make it their own.

I dare say, we have very similar ideas. This project was told to me by a woman at the Feminist Zine Fest in Philly!

• Social practice lab in Philadelphia!  (Finally!)

Social Practice Lab

Here is a little snippet from an interview between Gayle Isa and Art Place: "The ArtPlace grant will help us to renovate the third floor of our building to create more artist studio space, as well as support the inaugural year of our Social Practice Lab to host a team of artists-in-residence to explore and enliven community connections in the Chinatown North neighborhood. We anticipate that artists-in-residence will work in partnership with a diversity of residents and neighborhood organizations to create projects similar in many ways to our previous Chinatown In/flux installations – at public sites including storefront windows, restaurant tables, an outdoor plaza, a viaduct tunnel, a parking lot—and contribute to shaping the vision of the neighborhood’s future."


It is great to have such an incredible program in Chinatown (one of the most vibrant parts of the city.) Asian Arts Initiative, the organization that heads the program, has done some amazing stuff across Philadelphia and is one of the more forward thinking art programs in the city.

• Heresies Journal

Heresies Journal Archive

While I am sure I have mentioned this before, Heresies was a feminist art journal that was in publication from 1977 to 1993. One of the amazing things about this link is that it gives the public access to all the back issues of the journal in PDF form.

Fun fact: Lucy Lippard (author of the Pink Glass Swan, co-founder of Printed Matter, and scholar of Women's Art) was actually a journalist for Heresies! Here is a link to her page on the site which says a bit more about her. The other exciting thing is that she also going to be a keynote speaker at this years NY Book Fair at PS1 Moma. (Paul Chan is the other speaker!)
The book fair is from the 28th to the 30th of September-- I hope to see most of you there!

More ramblings.

After months of research and exploration, the themes I once thought unique seem to be more ubiquitous than ever. The other day, I was meeting a friend in South Philly for a meeting about survivors of Sexual Assault at the Wooden Shoe. The meeting was part of a series of workshops for the feminist zine festival that happened Sunday. --Which I will go into a bit later. My friend and I wandered down to the Cred storefront to visit some friends.  While there, I was introduced to a sculpture graduate student at Tyler. After informing him of my project, he, like many people I meet, gave me a few names to look up.

Per usual, my list of artists keeps growing. Here is a version-- if you see anyone to add let me know!

One person, who I had recognized the name of was, Mary Jane Jacob. I took a moment to look over her website today.....under her "writing" section, there are links to "On Audiences," "On Curating," "On Public Art," "On Site Specificity," "On Materiality," and "On Artists." These same words keep being addressed over and over again. It's as if we are are all trying to wrestle with these definitions. I can't tell whether is the most interesting part, or the most terrifying-- that we can create our own boundaries.

From my own experience, being in art school, social practice still has a ways to go in terms of being understood by the larger art community. I was speaking with a professor earlier today and she was telling me how she tries to throw in as much as she can, whether the students actually pick up on the practice, I am not so sure. To quote the incredibly smart Anne Pasternak (President and Artistic Director at Creative Time), "Despite the growing prevalence of this art practice, and the rise of graduate art programs offering degrees in social practice art, relatively few among the growing masses of art enthusiasts are aware of its existence, let alone its vibrancy. To be fair, this kind of work does not hang well in a museum, and it isn't commercially viable. Furthermore, social practice art has lacked a shared critical language and comprehensive historic documentation."

This leads me to another issue that I have been dealing with recently. How does one explain social practice? What is the language we use to describe this art, and how does it correlate to the language used to critique other types of art? I had a graduate student pose an interesting question regarding how we keep defining social practice as art. Which brings me back to the point about setting boundaries. Why is social practice art practice and is there a point when art becomes social work?

These are ideas that I have been working with all summer. As I have been trying to define those words, I've also been trying to figure out the lines between academic work and these process based creative projects. Where does this work stand? I am enrolled in a course that deals with the more academic side to research, which is in no way bad, just very different from what I am learning as a social practice artist. Many of the women who I have spoken to this summer have talked with me about how research is a big component in their work; whether that be looking through archives, gathering oral histories, or reading secondary sources. As I've said earlier, I see this as a process based work in which I am trying to contextualize my own practice and find a way for others to be recognized for theirs. At this point, it is about gathering a solid understanding of what I am doing and being able to clearly define those goals.

Through this project, I have discovered much more than I anticipated. I've actually started to compile a database of projects, organizations, mentors, and literature that I have guided me to where I am now. It seems so bizarre to have given myself this crash course in social practice art, but I want to be able to share this whirlwind of information with others.

Interesting things

Last week I was up in Massachusetts with some family members on vacation. My grandmother, who is a bit of a technophobe and does not know how to use a computer asked to see my blog. I pulled up the page for her and taught some basic commands, such as scrolling, and clicking- how to go from one post to the next. As she was reading through she kept pointing out grammatical errors... so I figured I should apologize for my poor editing skills and ask that you view this as a rough draft of sorts.


On another note, a few cool things going on...

http://phillyfeministzinefest.weebly.com/ 
(Thanks to Mary for telling me about this!!) It's going on next week so check it out!

http://www.phillyzinefest.com/

http://creativetime.org/programs/archive/2010/summit/WP/
(So very excited for this one!)


I believe Pussy Riot was mentioned in a comment before, so if you're interested in finding out more, here is a fascinating article... which leads to this

Also, I am still looking for a peer group to participate in my dinner party series. If you know of anyone who would be interested, please forward them this information:

This summer I have been researching women making activist art in public spaces, and now I am trying to put some of that research into practice. I will be a hosting a series of dinner parties in Philadelphia (potentially Baltimore and NY as well) in which I am hoping to find peers of mine who are interested in making work about daily interaction, and/or social change/justice. Part of the process will be to connect these young women to previous generations of activist women artists, many of whom I have been in contact with this summer. Hopefully, it will give us all a greater understanding of where this type of art has come from and allow us the opportunity to create personal connections that can foster incredible collaborative projects.

They can contact me at phoebe.bachman@temple.edu
Please get the word out there!!

Networking Art

Mierle Ukeles called it Maintance Art.....

I feel like I should call this Networking Art

Dinner Party

Call for Young Female Activist Artist Peers

For a dinner party series hosted by me but made possible by you

A la Judy Chicago, Suzanne Lacy, and countless other artists....

I wrote earlier about my desire to find peers who are working with social practice, .... people who are interested in social justice issues and who are finding a way to work with both art and activism. In the fall, I will be hosting a series of dinner parties set around the idea of finding my artistic community and connecting a new generation of female activist artists to their predecessors. I hope that by the end of the series, many of these young women will have a stronger understanding of how their art has been able to evolve due to the efforts of past generation and we will have created a strong community of incredible women activist artists.

If you know of anyone who might fit this category, please send me an email at phoebe.bachman@temple.edu

Disclaimer

I am not an art historian, I am not a journalist, I do not focus primarily on facts, I write opinions. In an investigation to find my own way of working, I have tangled myself up with these other roles. I want to offer visibility of previous generations for the benefit of my generation.  I want to educate but I need education myself. I need female mentors who I can look up to and learn from. Now I have to ask myself, to what extent am I a researcher and to what extent am I an artist?

As I said in an earlier post, I must find a way to tie together academic and creative pursuits. 

Braddock in Pictures

Church from Front

Braddock Farms

Braddock Farms

Swoon Print on Back of Church

Kondit Shelter

Screen Printing Shop in the Library

Braddock

Updates

I have been delayed in posting for the past few weeks due to travel and settling into a new house. Though, that doesn't mean that I have neglected my research in these past few weeks. Rather, I have gathered a lot of information that I am just now beginning to understand.

I've been told that three years from now I will still be making new revelations about what I have learned this summer. I certainly believe that, because I am learning so much at once that it is fairly hard to process in this short amount of  time.

Since this post is about updating I'll keep it to the point, and hopefully I can go into greater detail with other posts soon.

At the beginning of July I returned home from California and began working on drawing major connections between the artists I had already encountered. I mentioned some of the connections in a prior post, but I will rehash some of the "buzz" words that keep coming up in my research.

Empathy, Healers, Organizer, Efficacy, Authorship, History, Collaboration, Missionary Work, Class, Gender, Marginal, Context, Isolation, DIY, Queer

I have also been drawing connections between women of a certain generation and how the feminist movement has paralleled their actions. I am interested in whether the first generation of women activist artists influenced the next generation. In addition, I am asking whether the younger generation of women artists were even aware of the feminist art movement when they began their practice. So far I have heard mixed things from the generation of women in their 30's. When I was speaking with Ginger Brooks Takahashi the other day in Braddock, PA, I asked her if she had been influenced by the older feminist artists.  She told me that when she was an undergrad at Oberlin, she discovered a pile of Heresies journals and that set her off into researching the feminist art movement.

Oh yes, so the other day, I went to Braddock, pa, to interview Swoon, the infamous street artist. We had a wonderful conversation over thai food, which continued into the night. My friend and roommate at Pratt Institute had actually introduced me to Swoon's work. Then when we heard that she was to speak at TEDx at Pratt, my friend Catherine and I bought tickets right away. It was then that I really saw how passionate she was about the work she was doing, and her strong conviction to create social change. I attached a link to the talk, and I strongly suggest that people should watch it.  Anyways, I had asked for her email at the talk and we spoke a few times over the past few two years. When I decided to do this project I reached out to her and her assistant to see if Callie would be interested in having a conversation about her work. Luckily she agreed, and I was able to go out to see her this past week.

Also this week I met the other incredible women she has been working with in Braddock. The group called Transformazium, (including- Ruthie Stringer, Callie Curry, Leslie Stem and Dana Bishop-Root,) has been working in Braddock for the past few years, finding ways to integrate themselves into the neighborhood and create a sustainable community of sorts. After speaking with some of the group members, I realized that doing a large scale project such as this, is a lot harder than the media has made it out to be. There are issues of bureaucracy, community, and time, there are issues with participation and respect, there is the label missionary.... But these women have been dealing with these things in stride and taking on challenges that are much larger than themselves, which is a hard task.

The group is currently enrolled at PSU under the MFA for Social Practice.

In addition to meeting these women, I met with Ginger Brooks Takahashi. We were standing in the kitchen my first night there and someone mentioned that Ginger was doing a pickling workshop the next day. Ginger turns around and starts talking about something and I ask her what she does, she was a little tired at the time and wasn't necessarily in the mood to chit chat. Once she leaves the kitchen, I ask Dana what Ginger's last name was and she said "Brooks Takahashi"
I said "oh...wait... what! I have been trying to contact her for the past two months!"

So that is how I got that conversation in place, a little bit of serendipity.


I really thought this post was going to be much shorter.

When I got back to Philadelphia, I had to speak at a poster session for the Diamond Scholars Program. Being exhausted from the drive, and lack of sleep, I was not as well prepared as I should have been. However, I ended up talking about my project for a long time, and got asked some great questions. There was of course the question of "where I go from here." The person who asked it was an economics professor. He was keen on getting a straight answer, and I was determined to explain that this is a process based work that ties together academics and creative practice. I am not sure how successful I was convincing him. Mierle Ukeles was determined to call cleaning--- art- maintenance art. I am finding my own way to call this research process based art, tying together art history, theory, primary based materials, performance, and visual art.

Connecting Themes

As I have engaged in these various interviews, I've noticed that there seem to be a few central themes that weave in and out of these women's practice. Since I am in a position of contextualizing my own practice, I have found ways to connect through these larger themes.

Here is the list:

History, Organizing, Storytelling, Gender, Language, Class, Empathy

Growing up within a fairly homogenous class population,  I rarely thought about class as an issue. That may have been because my family was upper middle class and so were all our neighbors. When I moved to Brooklyn, I was exposed to a varied class population, but was still within the bubble of an elite art school. As I hear about these women's experiences, many of whom grew up in working class family, I feel that I lack the "clout" they have. Who am I do be doing this work? What communities can I engage with where I don't look like the white missionary? What is characterized as missionary work?
Also what class do I actually belong to, and how important is that within my work?

I am in the process of writing my class narrative and finding my community.

Gender roles were more apparent growing up. I have been lucky to always have a strong female role model in my life, my mother. So as a child I saw no real distinction between me and my male counterparts. In high school feminism was viewed as a dirty word.... even sometimes in college it is viewed that way as well. People are quick to negate the word because they believe females have gained full equality.  I look to these women as female mentors to guide me through the process of becoming a female artist. And yet, there is a slight generational gap. Where are my feminist peers?

to be continued.

Writings from Pacifica

Over the past three weeks, I have been traveling throughout Los Angeles meeting with various artists and interviewing them. I also had the chance to look at the Women's Building archives at Otis College of Art and Design and work in Suzanne Lacy's archives. Not to mention, I got to spend time exploring the vibrant art scene that LA has to offer. Last week, on Saturday, I went to LACMA for the first time and got to see a wonderful exhibit of Sharon Lockhart and a very interesting piece called Metropolis II. That same weekend, I went to Molaa, Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. There was a panel discussion on their recent exhibition entitled "Play with Me." It was a fascinating conversation about participation and interactive art.

On Tuesday, my mother and I drove up the coast together, stopping in Morro Bay for the evening. The next day, yesterday, we drove the rest of the way (to Pacifica) with a little hiking excursion in a beautiful state park. For the next week, I will be in and out of San Francisco consolidating my research and taking a bit of a break from everything else.  


Stuff I'll be writing up soon: My interviews with Andrea Bowers, Judy Baca, and Suzanne Lacy 

Sharon Hayes Interview with Huffington Post

HP: You’re going to hate this one: Is the personal always political?
Yes, I think so. I can also answer it more complexly to say the two political conditions I’m most deeply informed by as a person and therefore as an artist is feminism and a lived experience of the AIDS crisis. I wasn’t on the front lines of the AIDS crisis because I came to New York in ’91, so the middle of the crisis, and I was only 21, so it was people 8, 9, 10 years older than I was and their community was decimated. I was experiencing this moment as a 20 year old where you’re so eager to absorb everything – theater, dance, lectures, concerts – and then there were all these political performances and funerals where people were in some ways rageful privately and publicly, and that was deeply impactful. I think it’s impossible to separate the personal/private from the public or the personal from the political – I don’t think those things can be separated. This doesn’t mean we can’t have private moments that we shelter from other concerns, certainly.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/23/sharon-hayes-performance-_n_1609798.html

The Personal is Political

"Everything, from art history to the social conditions and roles we live and perform, is shaped by the social, economic, and political aspects of an era. Based on this principle, feminist art interventions researched and challenged normative cultural assumptions that condition our lives, opportunities, and imaginations, oppress women in society, and separate art from the contexts of politics and life." (The Waitresses Unpeeled: Performance Art and Life, Jerri Allyn and Anne Gauldin)

Janet Owen Driggs

P: Introduce yourself

J: Janet Patricia Owen Driggs

P: Tell me a little about who you are

J: Who am I? That's a difficult question; an artist, writer, political person, member of the Metobolic studio, mom, friend, teacher,

P: What about your background, where did you grow up.....

Janet is an incredible storyteller, she grabbed my attention the other night at the lecture at MOCA. When I asked her about her background she set the stage for me. She grew up in North London, in a suburban, edge of london area. Her family was working class and very politically active. She was convinced that the way out of the trap of economics that they were in was education. She described how her life was based around the idea of the "public." She went on to tell me that she had free public education, free public health care, lived in public housing, grew up next to a public park, walked to the public library, in general lived a very public life. Then Margret Thatcher came along with neoliberalism...

She was very politically active from a young age due to her family being so involved. When I asked her about this she said she joined her first political party when she was 13. It was the international Marxist group, revolution youth. For her it was a bit of rebellion because her dad was in labor party, a socialist, and her sister was in the labor party, a Trotsky party-- the militant. Eventually, she joined the militant as well, but then they were expelled from the labor party. A bit of British politics to brighten your day. 

At that time she got started as an artist because she was good at drawing. She kept doing it because of the attention she got from her innate skill and because she loved doing it.  She told me how her dad used to take a day off work, steal her out of school, take her into central London and go to the Tate gallery, royal academy, and all the bookstores. This fueled a love for art. She knew this was something she had to do.

I asked her about whether there was an intersection of art and politics in her early days as an artist. She told me they were kept separate. Most of her friends were activists, and activism was very much a part of her life. For amusement her friends and her would go to protests and marches. But there was no crossover, she said she had a split personality.

After the loss of the Miner Strike in the 80's, she turned to fine art.  As she perceived it, at the time, fine art and politics did not quite match. She became buried in her craft, called herself a true painter. She told me she was a storyteller, she wanted to tell personal stories about fears, fictions, and dreams. She did this through portraiture for 10 years.

P: What Changed?

J: The internet came along. And I moved to America.

Could not just transplant herself and her painting studio. How essential place is to the perception and experience of the world. Could not just live in disbelief within the white studio walls.  She then went to art school at USC because she could not access the art world within LA. Then she found it. Interesting experience in different ways, she did meet the art world, and found it was a place where the politics occurred as conceptual art. She told me that Tania Bruguera had said at the Social Practice Conference in Portland, Open Engagement, "conceptual art is not political art." Janet then went on to contextualize this.

J: "Conceptual art is fun and wonderful mind games, but it doesn't act on the ground. Sometimes might act peripherally in small and subtle ways on peoples thinking but as far as I am concerned, that is not enough. Political art needs to be much more direct"

Back to the internet. She was fascinated by its capacity for mass communication and inter-communication as a tool for political activism. Out of this interest she established a festival of Time Based Media. She started organizing, and getting involved in what was happening. And she realized that those people whom she was working with had a language, a vocabulary, that she did not recognize. She then said the most interesting thing, which I think a lot of us artists feel sometimes, that she suspected this was an emperors new clothes situation. That they were "puffing out" all of these words but in actuality were saying very simple things. She went on to talk about how she learned the language in order to break down the walls of inaccessible words, and then share it with everybody. She found that instead she fell in love with the language, which had her become a writer. This began to have her far more engaged in politics than she had been previously and theorizing in a way she hadn't been before.

J: Then I had a car crash and nearly died, then I got married, then I had a baby... then occupy happened. Well the Metabolic Studio happened.

Occupy was a turning point for Janet and her work. Suddenly all the threads came together in support of change. Her interest in public space came together with skill of being an image maker, and also a story teller.

J: All of a sudden I felt like I was whole again.

Our conversation went on, this is only the first half but I wanted to give you all a preview to what we talked about. I found my personal connection to Janet through storytelling. I have always been interested in telling stories, first it was through illustration, then painting, now public practice. Some interesting connections I found between Janet and some of the artists, was that she was from a working class family, is interested in history and archiving, and looked for this type of language that others have been talking about.

Check out some of Janet's work at performing public space  and at the Metabolic Studio! Also if you're an Occupier (or not) you should definitely look at the Occupy Octopus which made an appearance in the Rose Parade this year!

Sandra De La Loza, a Short Introduction

Thursday was a busy day, beginning with my trip to Suzanne's then my interview with Sandra De La Loza. I met Sandra in the garden behind her house. I felt as if I had entered a fantasy world, my urban reality flipped amongst rows of corn and flowers. She sat on a wooden bench waiting for me, under a tent offering shade from the hot LA sun. Our conversation began with me asking about her background.

Sandra was born and raised in Los Angeles during a time of great urban change, and discrimination. Growing up in a working class, Mexican American family, Sandra was interested in finding a way to connect. The path that led her to art was becoming socially aware through her education. She went to school at UC Berkley during a pivotal moment in LA history. At this point, she had a strong desire to create change and to foster a language to do so.  So she began writing. When I asked her about who it was for, she told me she was looking towards home, writing to her neighbors, the people she grew up with.  She aspired to create new forms of language as a De-colonization process.  She explained that traditional forms could perpetuate colonialism, so she chose to question and invent forms for herself.

Also in college she was introduced to women of color feminism, which largely revolved around cultural production and complicating politics. I found that this was extremely interesting, because many of the women who I have been looking at, were introduced to the white feminism movement. When she got back to LA, three weeks after the riots in 92', she became very active in art and community based spaces. Through a mix of historical research, art, activism, and community organizing based around cultural production, she found the basis for her work.

This form of cultural production was based around the idea of a community empowering itself. Through pirate radio stations, films, workshops, and movements these communities found themselves being represented, having a voice. She described it as an intense and vibrant moment in LA history. Between the amount of activity and the people who were organizing they began to re-imagine, re-name, and politicize themselves.

I learned a lot from my conversation with Sandra. She educated me about cultural production and the importance of internal community building. In addition, I was really excited to learn about her involvement with recognizing forgotten histories especially, because of my own fascination with the subject and my work in archives. Her work largely focuses on these forgotten, or erased histories, and her job is to intervene and bring them to life. At one point, she described herself as a "performative archivist."



This is just a tid-bit from our interview. Sandra was an amazing woman to talk to, full of fascinating insights into public space work. To look at some of her work you should check out the Pocho Research Society (here is another link to the book she just put out about the society)(and here) (this one is really good), October Surprise, and Mural Remix. Here is a good interview as well...These are just a few, but some really amazing projects.