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.