She has gone between making objects, to doing performances, to staging interventions. When I asked about being a female and doing social practice she drew a very interesting connection that I hadn't thought of before. She talked about how women (within traditional gender roles) often do things that don't lead to a product, whether that be cleaning, taking care of your child on day to day basis, or gardening. In this same vain, social practice is an action that does not lead to a product. This kind of thought process reminds me of Mierle Ukeles and her maintenance art. As people, we do many "remedial" tasks that don't lead to an object but that doesn't mean these actions should go unrecognized.
Another interesting point that she brought up was the idea of Value. How we choose to assign values to things and we might challenge our own notion of value. She has worked with this idea through her bartering projects, challenging participants to think about what that object actually means for them, and for others.
What I found very fascinating about her work is that she wants to investigate daily life and how small actions can spark bigger ruptures in society. When we talked about notions of what Public meant, she brought up an interesting project she did in Spain where she created a collaborative project with people in the area. In this project she assigned collective ownership to the piece that was made which was a tent structure. The museum bought the piece but then participants could take the piece for a week at a time if they had an event they wanted to have it for, or just to have it for a little while.
One last thing that she taught me, was to be more open minded. I keep wanting to dismiss the gallery and institutions, but the fact is there can be room for those and for public work. There is a practical side to art making that needs to be recognized, because there are opportunities in all realms.
In the beginning of this post, you describe a point that Carolina brings up, the whole idea of women(in traditional gender roles) perform these menial tasks(cleaning, childcare, gardening etc.) and that it may not always be an "end product" that is important. I am interested in this idea, and there is actually a quote that I recently pulled from a book of Gerhard Richter's writings where he says, "Life is not what is said but the saying of it, not the picture but the picturing." To me this was very relieving to accept because there is so much pressure for artists, especially in school to create work, to complete a piece, to realize an object or environment. Whether there is or is not a difference in what Carolina and Richter are saying, I think that the experience(or the action) deserves to be considered somewhat differently(or almost as equal to concept of end product). Just some thoughts...
ReplyDeleteWe have to remember that anything can become a product in the end, this is the biigger picture of capitalism remember? Even process, the so called im-material, or aspects of the everyday life, are products to be sold, or can be made into products that can be turned into "cultural capital". One of the problems the Earth work artists from the 1970's were struggling with.
ReplyDeleteThe the question today, after the "acceptance" traditionally of woman's" work, in the art art world, has domesticity become a product of sorts in museums and galleries?
Richer may not be the best example here. Mierle Ukeles and her maintenance art as Phoebe cited is on the right track I think, along with some aspects of Joseph Beuy's work who proceeded her in investigating this type of art process: Social Sculpture.
Richter is talking in the quote about the process of Life as "reflection", and the notion of the unspoken before it gets inscribed in language, in a larger sense of that framing. It is the difference between something becoming doxa, as opposed to something always becoming in the process: The saying, the picturing...this romantic notion of "life" is always slipping pass being fixed.
I like Richter very much, saw a pretty good documentary on him at Film Form called:
"Gerhard Richer Painting", but Richter himself has become a product of the 1 percent of the art world. Even his classic posturing of reluctance to speak about his art, has become his signature product, which in the end has many art critics and historians jumping into figuring him out who is Gerhard Richter...
Richter is selling enigma, the "aura" of G. Richter is the product, not unlike Andy Warhol.