by Bruce Barber
Symposium 2000 Christchurch
New Zealand
November 10-13
This essay is based on a paper I presented
at "Chimera" the littoral art symposium
held in Sydney, Australia in 1996. A subsequent
essay, "Littoralist Art Practice and
Commmunicative Action" (1997) was published
on a web site as part of my Squat installation
at the Walter Phillips Art Gallery, Banff
Centre during the summer of 1999. I have had
time to reconsider some of the implications
of the theoretical prognoses I articulated
in both these earlier texts. This essay represents
an affirmation of some of the positions I
held then, but is also an affirmation of some
of the tendenzkunst characteristics
of work associated with some examples of donative
art practice. I began "The Art of Giving"
(1996) paper with a somewhat polemical quote
that engaged the political economy of giving
from The Gift: Forms of Exchange in
Archaic Societies (1924) a classical text
on the subject by the French social anthropologist
Marcel Mauss. I argued that
if the 1980's were a time of taking, quoting,
appropriating, and expropriation, during the
1990's a new mode of cultural practice - the
donative - had surfaced to take its place.
Perhaps my idealism at the time had been fueled
by the work of some younger artists and cultural
groups [5]
who were not weighed down in their practice
by the legacies of the historical avant-garde(s),
the edifice of Greenbergian modernism, or
the aesthetic vicissitudes of postmodernism.
These were artists whose work, I thought,
evidenced a fresh take on community involvement,
social responsibility and political praxis.
They were engaged in collaborative, infra
and extra-institutional, socially progressive
endeavours aimed at generating social (and
cultural) change.
In this context I wish to continue some of
the thinking contained in these earlier essays
with a practical reconsideration of the political
efficacy of intervention, one of the
keywords of this symposium, exemplary
and communicative actions within an
operative frame of cultural production.
I will consider the cultural implications
of giving within an economy that privileges
other forms of economic exchange, notably
those that reinforce systems of privilege
obtained through the conventional manipulation
of power. Here, I will invoke the theoretical
work of German philosopher Jurgen Habermas
on communicative action, as both a function
of, and prelude to giving, acknowledging the
warnings about the gift and reciprocity articulated
by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu
in his Logic of Practice (1994).
...one is liable to forget the effect produced
by the circular circulation in which symbolic
added value is generated, namely the legitimation
of the arbitrary, when the circulation covers
an asymetrical relationship"
(Bourdieu 1994:100).
I will discuss five examples of operative
art practice that in different ways involve
the act and art of giving, four contemporary
and two historical. The first example is a
performance/action by the Chinese artist Yin
Xiaofeng, followed by the Blood Campaign
of Canadian/Hungarian artist Istvan Kantor
(a.k.a. Monty Cantsin). I will contrast these
two examples with other donative works - more
firmly within the so-called littoralist camp
- two from the mid 1970's, Jumble Sale
and Blood The River of life (1974),
produced by the New Zealand artist David Mealing,
that deserve to be properly located in their
historical context as clear antecedents of
littoral art practice in the 1990’s,
and a quarter century later, another blood
project, Circulation (2000), produced
by the New York based group REPOhistory.
The discussion will continue with Bloom
98, an Eco Green Project undertaken by
artists working with Vivid, Birmingham's Centre
for Media arts and finally "Free Food"
(not a project title), events sponsored
and produced by artists and their collaborators
working in Halifax, Canada, who wish to remain
anonymous.
I hope that it will become evident throughout
that I am implicitly criticising cultural
work that capitulates to Bourdieu's paradigm
of an asymmetrical relationship and does not
recognise the legitimation of the arbitrary,
contingent and the exigent, that are at the
core of any asymetrical relationship.
The "logic of practice" is implicit
within Bourdieu's description of the social
habitus - "a system of structured (and)
structuring dispositions, [the habitus]
which is constituted in practice and is always
oriented towards practical functions"
(Bourdieu, 1990:53). In this context the habitus
can be read axiomatically as an art system,
reproducing itself conservatively according
to its normative structured dispositions yet
containing within its most progressive (value
added) practices the possibility of redemption
and liberation.
In 1998 an Agence France-press photograph
of Chinese performance artist Yin Xiaofeng
(fig 1.) appeared in dozens of newspapers
and magazines around the world, showing him
tossing (gifting) seven earthenware pots containing
the ashes of burnt books from a balcony window
in the south west Szechuan province of Chengdu.
The photograph was captioned with the title
"OUT WITH THE OLD ART IN CHINA",
implying that "out with the old"
was indeed "IN WITH THE NEW." The
caption suggested that Yin was the first artist
that Chinese authorities have ever given permission
to do this kind of "conceptual performance".
The newspaper article did not indicate which
books were being ritualistically burnt. Neither
did it reveal if Yin's quasi liberatory, iconoclastic,
yet still, in my view, somewhat totalitarian
act - reminiscent of Nazi book burning ceremonies
and Fahrenheit 351 - would have been
read differently if the books had been Mao’s
Little Red book, Gombrich's Art
and Illusion, Greenberg's Art and Culture
or copies of Joyce's Ulysees, any of
which would have elicited different readings
of his performance.
My second example is provided by the bloody
actions of Neoist group founding member Istvan
Kantor. Since 1979 Kantor has been performing
ritualistic blood actions in major galleries
throughout Europe and North America, among
them: The Ludwig Museum, Koln, MOMA and the
Metropolitan in New York City, the Art Gallery
of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada,
Ottawa, and the Musee d'art Contemporain in
Montreal. The artist's modus operandi
in this body of work consists of donating
(gifting) his blood in the form of an X mark
to a suitable museum collection (fig 2). After
choosing the institutional recipient for his
`gift', Kantor enters the gallery and splashes
vials of his blood in a large X fashion on
the wall, usually between two key works of
art in the gallery collection. This action
often results in his arrest or forced ejection
from the gallery, with his return forever
banned. Notwithstanding his declamation in
the Neoism Manifesto (1979) that "Neoism
has no Manifesto", Kantor's "neoist
research project", in typical avant-garde
style, is accompanied by a press release,
a letter of intent and/or manifesto.
The artist's "GIFT to Rauschenberg"
(1991) for example, is described in a letter
thus:
Dear Mr Rauschenberg,
I made (a) beautiful gift for you in the form
of a blood-X, using my own dark and cold blood
splashed on a white wall surrounded by your
early works at the Ludwig museum, in Koln,
where presently you have a powerful retrospective.
Would you please leave GIFT on the wall,
to be listed and signed as your own work,
an additional piece to Erased de Kooning
(1953) and Elemental Sculpture (1953),
until it becomes meaningless and obsolete.
Revolutionary art is a gob of bloody spit
in the face of art history, a kick in the
arse to the art world, a tribute to the beauty
of vandalism: the ultimate act of creation
is, of necessity criminal.
My greatest regards,
signed,
Monty Cantsin.
According to an earlier ‘manifesto',
titled provocatively "Sweet Blood of
a Dead Pigeon” (Jan 30 1991), "the
function of the blood campaign is to subvert
culture, to question the very validity of
established culture that is always corrupted
by profit and controlled by censorship, to
question the order of priorities, especially
the fact that property always seems to have
priority over people's lives and needs".
This is followed by the broadside: "Resistance
is our business." Kantor is also responsible
for coining the term "ANACHRO",
for Creative Anachronism, subtending the notion
that we are living within an anachronistic
age that demands an anarchic response.
Kantor's blood actions are preceded by the
work of many other artists who have used body
fluids as their raw material for various types
of performance actions. David Mealing, an
artist working in New Zealand in the 1970's,
produced a very powerful gallery intervention,
or "social sculpture", to use a
term popularised by Joseph Beuys, by turning
the Auckland City Art gallery into a temporary
blood bank, replete with nurses, beds, needles,
tubes, blood collection bottles, refrigeration
equipment and a recuperation area for donors,
where they could receive tea and biscuits.
Titled Blood the River of Life (fig
3), this event ranks as a prototypical
littoral work some twenty years before its
time. With the assistance of the local Red
Cross blood donor clinic, Mealing's gallery
intervention introduced blood as a political
agent into the public sphere ten years before
HIV and Aids made blood the troublesome product
of State managed and independent collection
agencies and signal subjects for a rich group
of cultural work from artists around the world. [6] Mealing's Jumble
Sale (December 6th-10th)(fig 4), another
antecedent of contemporary littoral art practice,
creatively interfaced between the public and
private spheres in a somewhat less provocative
but similarly intelligent manner. For this
‘installation’ the artist secured
support from members of the public, used clothing
shops and other donors to model this situation
on the conventional school jumble sale, garage
sale or church bazaar where visitors may swap
or purchase cheap clothing and exercise their
good will toward a deserving cause. In poster
advertisements for both events, Mealing refrained
from promoting his own name, therefore subordinating
his position as author of the event to the
spontaneous, exigencies
of everyday life.
The New York city based group REPOhistory
engages its participants in a variety of ways
through street signage, handbills, and computer
technology. As with many littoral projects
the viewer becomes less a consumer than a
critical reader, an active participant in
the construction of meaning and ultimately
the assignment of value for the work.
Formed in 1989 REPOhistory [7] ,
consists of a changing group of artists, writers
and others [8] who have developed
a forum for developing public art projects
based on the reconstitution of hidden histories.
Their published goal is "to retrieve
and relocate absent historical narratives
at specific locations in the New York City
area through counter-monuments, actions, and
events". According to their literature
this work “is informed by a multicultural
re-reading of history, which focuses on issues
of race, gender, class and sexuality.”
And like their sister littoral groups REPHistory
has chosen to create public art in attempt
to expand the audience for art by operating
outside of the institutional confines of the
museum and gallery structure and directly
within the public sphere. Circulation's
multilayered website actively solicits the
attention of its readers by directing him/her
to various links and soliciting participation
in the virtual transmission of personalised
postcards representing various critical, political
perspectives on the circulation of blood within
New York City. (Fig 5)
Bloom 98 is described as a "Quintessentially
British" Ecoart project with the intention
of "transcending monetary and class values" The brochure
describes this as an engaged community art
project, enacted through a collaborative initiative
by a large number of artists. Bloom 98 was
a contemporary Live Arts event on Allotments
of land provided by local government for community
activities. Under the direction of artist
and director Harry Palmer, the Uplands allotment
Association, Birmingham and Basingstoke, assembled
the assistance of approximately 20 artists
(gardeners and others) who collaborated with
each other and members of their respective
allotment communities to produce creative
garden projects. The gardens improved formerly
vacant lots and industrial land providing
their communities with flowers and vegetables
on a continuing basis.
My final example is provided by artists members
of the so-called Free Food group who organise
spontaneous meals at a certain place and time
for passersby in the streets of Halifax, Nova
Scotia. Several weeks before the event the
collaborators meet to produce cheap posters
and handbills, gather the necessary food materials,
cooking utensils, dishes and cutlery. A day
before the meal, they take over one of their
kitchens and cook huge pots of very good,
elegant vegetarian food for free distribution
the following day. The meal usually takes
place at a very public location in the city
with a high traffic volume such as the public
library. Four such events have taken place
and the organisers have managed to feed hundreds
of homeless indviduals, itinerants, students
or those passersby who just want a good meal.
Some donate money for the privilege, which
enables the group to subsidize their activity.
Some restaurants within the city have also
donated materials, kitchen utensils as well
as vegetables and other foodstuffs for the
events. The project is similar to the successful
Hungry Bowls initiative sponsored by the Ceramics
department of the Nova Scotia College of Art
and Design. The price of a ticket, usually
between $10 and $15, provides the purchaser
with a nourishing bowl of soup and bread and
afterwards they keep the bowl made especially
for the purpose. Proceeds from the event held
near Christmas each year go to Food Bank and
other service agencies. [10]
With respect to the history
and criticism of performance genres within modernist
art, each of these examples engage the central
problematics - the first two, arguably more
than the others - of oppositional and/or subversive
art practice. In different ways each event reproduces
some of the least desirable features of what,
for want of a better phrase, I will call the
enactment of protest. If I have some criticisms
of each of these works, my aim in this context
is not to subvert them or deny their relative
efficacy as political art works but rather to
enrich the categories of oppositional artwork.
I will now explore the terms and conditions
of oppositional as distinct from operative practice,
and the political efficacy of strategic (exemplary),
interventionist, instrumental and communicative
actions.
The actions of Yin and Kantor
can be described as strategic actions, the others
as interventionist/ instrumental, but not quite
communicative, in the best Habermasian sense
of this term. As an agitational form of protest,
strategic (exemplary) actions were criticised
by many groups who participated in the events
of May 68, in Paris, Nanterre, and other so-called
countercultural demonstrations in various urban
contexts throughout the 1960's, not only for
their implicit absence of theory, but also their
anarcho-individualistic, heroic and spectacular
character. Advocates argued that the exemplary
action has a symbolic use value that is only
fully understood after the event - usually as
a result of mediation (framing) through the
media - and that its spontaneous "unprogrammed"
character encourages the "fusion of various
political tendencies" that otherwise would
not coalesce as collective protest. Yin's action,
for example, has been framed as an act of individualised
creative freedom, albeit state sanctioned, applauded
by the free West. Kantor's Blood Campaign 'gifts',
conflating as they do, art and crime, are guerilla
acts of cultural sabotage worthy of the Futurists.
Yet both these exemplary subversive actions
encourage the reproduction of the "vicious
cycle of provocation-repression", ironically
identified to those engaged in this form of
social protest, as a mark of success. Like the
union tactic of the "wildcat strike"
(the‑illegal strike), the repression precipitated
by such actions is usually so severe that it
blocks the formation of all other types
of legitimate protest. Furthermore, these
subversive actions often serve to reproduce
the very mechanisms of authority at which they
are aimed.
By way of contrast, intervention (instrumental
actions), allow a range of critical and/or
resistant strategies to be attempted without
(usually) precipitating a crisis or "culture
war" of the kind
evident recently in the US, Canada and elsewhere.
In the form of an interruption or mediative
action . a cultural
intervention within a context characterised,
for example, by its resistance to change,
may encourage several positions (and responses)
to be adopted by those engaged in the enactment
or performance of social protest, as well
as those at which it is aimed.
The major problem is that the intervention
may simply remain at the level of theory,
instead of engendering (and engineering) an
authentic state of praxis on the part of those
participating.
The origin of the use of the term intervention
in the discourse of art can be traced to the
writings of Karl Marx, specifically the famous
"11th Thesis on Feuerbach" (1845),
in which he argued that "The philosophers
have only interpreted the world in
various ways; the point is to change
it." Almost a century later Bertolt Brecht
paraphrased Marx with: "The theatre became
an affair for philosophers, but only for those
philosophers as wished not just to explain
the world, but also to change it." In his famous essay "The Author
as Producer" Walter Benjamin,
Brecht's contemporary, extolled the virtues
of the operative artist, providing
as his example the communist author Sergei
Tretiakov "whose mission was not to simply
report but to struggle; not to play the spectator
but to intervene actively" (Benjamin,
W 1969: 223; emphasis added). Benjamin's prognosis
for the political project of the photographer
was similar "What we should demand of
the photographer is the text that would wrench
his (sic) work from modish commerce and give
it some revolutionary useful values."
Benjamin's concept of the operative artist
"intervening actively" implies both
the subordination of any impulse to aestheticise
and the ordination of critical agency. In
other words it could be characterised as a
post-aesthetic strategy, one which nonetheless
could contain those values nominally subsumed
under several aesthetic ideologies.
In the late 1950's the International Situationists
(I.S) endorsed Brecht's and Benjamin's operative/interventional
projects for artists committed to social change.
In the very first issue of the I.S. review
outlining the situationist project, they endorsed
the fundamental importance of intervention
as a post-theoretical and practical aspect
of their critique of the (Debordian) society
of the spectacle.
The constructed situation is bound to be
collective both in its inception and development.
However it seems that at least during an initial
experimental period, responsibility must fall
on one particular individual. This individual
must, so to speak, be the 'director' of the
situation. For example, in terms of one particular
situationist project - revolving around the
meeting of several friends one evening - one
would expect (a) an initial period of research
by the team, (b) the election of a director
responsible for the co-ordinating the basic
elements for the construction of the decor
etc., and for working out a number of interventions,
all of them unaware of all the details planned
by the others), (c) the actual people living
the situation who have taken part in the whole
project both theoretically and practically,
and (d) a few passive spectators not knowing
what the hell is going on should be reduced
to action
If exemplary actions, are without theory;
interventions attempt to put theory into action,
to wed theory to practice. Both are intrinsically
related to one another, as was understood
clearly by those who participated in the occupations,
sit-ins, teach ins, theatrical agit-prop events
and other forms of protest evident during
the 1960's.
However, the intentions and ultimately the
"audience" response are different.
The
exemplary action consists, instead of intervening
in an overall way, in acting in a much more
concentrated way on exemplary objectives,
on a few key objectives that will play a determining
role in the continuation of the struggle.
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