Littoralist Art Practice and Communicative Action(1)
Since the turn to autonomy, art has striven
mightily to mirror one basic aesthetic experience,
the increasing decentration of subjectivity.
It occurs as the subject leaves the spatio-temporal
structures of everyday life behind, freeing
itself from the conventions of everyday perception,
of purposive behaviours, and of the imperatives
of work and utility. (Habermas,1990:17)
The theme of the gift, of freedom and obligation
in the gift, of generosity and self-interest
in giving, reappear in our own society like
the resurrection of a dominant motif long forgotten.
(Mauss,1924,1967:66)
Within the politically progressive arts of the
postmodern era, strategies of taking, quoting,
appropriating, have usually assumed greater
currency than those of giving, donating and
providing. Within the past few years (2)
however, the practice of giving seems to have
become more readily appreciated as a modus operandi
for producing ethical, socially responsive and
politically efficacious art. In this essay I
will argue that as a specific form of littoral
art practice (3) - the art
of giving, and its associated `modalities'-
conform in many ways to what the German philosopher
Jurgen Habermas could acknowledge as forms of
communicative action, aimed at the progressive
de-colonisation of the life world, and even
perhaps, the inauguration of what Habermas idealised
as "the good and the true life."
In the first section of this essay, I will
discuss several examples of littoralist art
practice that have occurred within several international
contexts, including Halifax, during the past
three years. (4) I will interpolate
the discussion with some points on the conditions
of giving and the relationships between this
form of cultural work, social commitment, engaged
art practice and tendency, or tendenzkunst,
the implicit ground for the critical negotiation
of this kind of art as normative, and not therefore,
radical political practice. These are terms
with an extensive intellectual legacy that have
challenged many artists, philosophers, art theorists
and critics, beginning with Marx and Engel's
famous critiques in The Holy Family (1845, of
Ferdinand de Lasalle's historical drama Franz
von Sickingen (1859) and Eugene Sue's The Mysteries
of Paris. (5) Acknowledging
the political problematics of some of these
art works, I will attempt to establish a claim
for considering them as practical examples of
Habermas' theory of communicative action, in
action. I hope that this brief discussion of
littoralist art practice and its theoretical
implications will contribute to the various
inter-related topics of the Habermas Seminar
and the Khyber Lecture series: criticism, the
public sphere, communicative action, the decolonisation
of the life world, education, postmodernity,
reason, morality, ethics and democracy.
***
From his earliest essays of the 1960's and
early 1970's, Jurgen Habermas' views on the
role of art in the transformation of society
have remained somewhat opaque, yet not, I will
argue, underdeveloped. He affirmed that art,
along with philosophy, law, politics and economics,
is an important terrain for mediation, communicative
rationality and pragmatic action, yet he is
somewhat ambivalent about the extent to which
this can occur in an institution which the forces
of an increasingly technocratic and bureaucratic
modernity have rendered into increasing autonomy
from the life world. As a Kantian, he has remained
somewhat resolute in his defence of the separation
of pure and practical reason from aesthetic
judgement.
In modern societies, the spheres of science,
morality, and law have crystalized around these
forms of argumentation (instrumental reason).
The corresponding cultural systems of action
administer problem solving capacities in a way
similar to that in which the enterprises of
art and literature administer capacities for
world disclosure. (Habermas,1987:207)
It is clear from this statement, which he employed
in his extended critique of Derrida's purported
collapsing of the genre distinction between
literature and philosophy, that while Habermas
views art and culture generally as an important
locus for theoretical attention, he maintains
a boundary between the forms of communicative
action which can operate within the spheres
of political, legal or philosophical discourse,
and those that can occur within the fields of
art and literature. For Habermas art remains
at the level of representation, distanced from
the material reality and "spatio-temporal
structures" of the life world, and as such,
can not be considered as ideal a site as is
language - or rather speech - for the deployment
of communicative action.
I believe that the origins of Habermas's somewhat
ambivalent position on the function of art in
the transformation of society can be found in
his essay "Consciousness-Raising or Redemptive
criticism - the Contemporaneity of Walter Benjamin",
which appeared before the publication in 1973
of his famous Legitimation Crisis (Legitimationsprobleme
im Spatkapitalismus). In this essay, Habermas
counterposes the differing aesthetic positions
of Herbert Marcuse and Walter Benjamin, two
of his intellectual mentors, in what he suggested,
somewhat later, was an attempt to revise the
theoretical assumptions within critical theory;
an attempt to link a contemporary theory of
communication based upon a Gadamerian hermeneutic
philosophy with historical materialism, and
this, in order to provide a truly comprehensive
theory of society and the process(es) of societal
evolution. In his Benjamin essay, published
in German in 1972, and subsequently in English
as a contribution to a special New German Critique
issue on Benjamin (No 17: Spring 1979), he traces
and contrasts the theoretical positions of these
two important members (6) of
the Franfurt School, brilliantly articulating
the differences between Marcuse's activist and
Benjamin's redemptive criticism. In Benjamin
he finds (or projects) an endorsement of his
own mistrust of conventional Marxist political
categories and processes - class, class struggle,
the labour theory of value, and the function
of revolution in order to achieve social change
- and an early affirmation of the possibilities
of commmunicative action grounded in critical
reason. But with the historical knowledge of
the Second World War and the Holocaust, which
was denied to Benjamin, Habermas is forced to
contemplate the limitations of trust in mutual
understanding and consensus formation between
individuals, social groups and nation states.
A theory of linguistic communication that wants
to reclaim Benjamin's insights for a materialist
theory of social evolution would have to consider
together two Benjaminian propositions. I am
thinking of the assertion: "that there
is a sphere of human agreement that is non-violent
to the extent that it is wholly inaccesssible
to violence: the true sphere of `mutual understanding',language.
(R:289) And I am thinking of the warning that
belongs here: "Pessimism all along the
line. Absolutely.... but above all mistrust,
mistrust and again mistrust in all mutual understanding
reached between classes, nations, individuals.
And unlimited trust only in I.G. Farben and
the peaceful perfection of the Luftwaffe"
(R., 191). (Habermas: 1972:59) (7)
Taking from one of his key intellectual mentors
these somewhat contradictory cues, and others
less contradictory, from Adorno -"after
Auschwitz, poetry is impossible" - Habermas
recognised, at this early stage in the development
of his communication theory, the inherent problematic
of a communicative action that did not offer
the possibility of its own (dialectical) transformation.
And though his Frankfurt School inspired system/lifeworld
paradigm could adequately describe the instrumental
logic behind the progressive development of
administrative bureaucratisation and the economic
forces driving the conflict(s) between the system
and the lifeworld (8), communicative
actions, wrongly used, could have, as Benjamin
himself understood, wholly undesirable consequences.
With Benjamin, Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse,
Habermas does see an important place for art
as a critical mediating agent in the decolonising
process; however, how art could, or should mediate
is less clear. If Science, philosophy and art
are thoroughly institutionalised and subjected
to increasing ideological incursion by the legitimating
practices of the state, how can any one `sphere'
become the privileged site for communicative
action? The issue now, he writes in 1983 "is
how to overcome the isolation of science, morals
and art and their respective expert cultures"
(1983,90:19), and return them to the pubic sphere.
By the early 1980's it seemed as if Habermas
is beginning to heed Marx's injunction in his
11th thesis on Feuerbach - that it was not up
to philsophers "to simply interpret the
world - the point is to change it." By
this time Habermas had fully articulated the
restrictions wrought upon life world activities
by the hegemony of expert cultures and their
rarefied exclusive esoteric languages. However
his own work as a philosopher still remained
somewhat distanced from that very life world
which he so wished to protect.
I agree, somewhat, with Terry Eagleton's opinion,
that as an academic Habermas is "aloofly
remote from the sphere of political action"
but that his work as an intellectual represents
a "political strike for the life-world
against administrative rationality." Eagleton
also generously admits that:
...art itself is for Habermas one crucial place
where the jeopardized resources of moral and
affective life may be crystalized; and in the
critical discussion of such art, a kind of shadowy
public sphere may be re-established, and so
mediating between the separate Kantian spheres
of the cognitive, moral and aesthetic. (Eagleton,
1990:4020.
This essay represents an attempt to match Habermas's
theory of communicative action with some "crystalized"
examples of littoralist art practice.
My first example of littoralist art practice
as communicative action, is presented in the
collaborative work of an Austrian based group
of artists, whose activities to date have been
identified by titles that simply represent the
length of time they spend working on each project,
for example, 6, 8 or 11 Wochen Klausure (6,
8 or 11 Weeks of Enclosure). Encouraged in the
summer of 1993 by project co-ordinator Austrian
art critic Wolfgang Zinggl, a group of eight
artists (9) used the existing
social infra-structure of the Wiener Secession,
a famous exhibition hall for contemporary art
in Vienna, "to work on the problem of homelessness."
(10) Through a series of informal
discussions with individuals and various groups,
including homeless people, representatives from
government and social agencies, they discovered
that a major problem for the Viennese homeless
was that they did not have access to medical
care, the result of not being officially registered
for health insurance. Over the course of several
days of round table discussions, the artists
decided to raise funds to purchase a bus that
was remodeled into a multi-purpose ambulance.
The group also lobbied the local government
to provide a physician to work with the bus
and subsequently the overall management of the
ambulance was taken over by the Caritas organisation.
Since its inception the medical health service
has provided medical aid for more than 500 homeless
people a month, people who previously had no
access whatsoever to health care. The group
also discovered from their discussions with
the homeless that they had no place to store
or protect their personal belongings. As a response
the group of artists arranged for some 200 lockers
to be provided at various shelters throughout
the city. Through ongoing dialogue with various
government and social agencies the 11 Wochen
Klausur group also developed a communication
system which would prevent unfair evictions
of tenants from their rental accommodations.
They have since established a pilot system for
two Viennese districts.
In Switzerland eight months later, at the Zurich
Shedhalle, an exhibition gallery for contemporary
art, the group, with a few new members, tackled
a another social topic - the city's drug problem,
reputed to be one of the worst in Europe, and
a source of growing embarrassment for the Swiss
government. After several months of intense
research into the issues they realised that
the problem was exacerbated by what they called
"the highly superficial, meaningless and
politically overburdened discussion of the issue."
(11) Their response was to
arrange daily "boat talks" which took
place over several hours on Zurich Lake. Small
groups of four specialists each representing
the spheres of business, politics, human rights
organisations, medicine social work, including
some of the drug addicts themselves, met over
the course of eight weeks (8 Wochen Klausur).
Each of the groups discussed various aspects
of the drug problem. Away from their various
institutional and administrative contexts, minute
takers, file systems, and in a genial context
with coffee, fresh air and a view, the groups
were able to have relatively open discussions
about the drug problem and how best to respond
to it. According to members of the 8 Wochen
Klausur group, the atmosphere on the boat trips
encouraged the `specialists' to articulate positions
that would have been difficult or impossible
to communicate within their highly administered
institutional environments. In this new context
they could minimise, or erase the conflicts
which had developed between their various institutions
and expert communities, and challenge prevailing
attitudes, bothin a reasonable and ethically
responsible manner. Over the course of several
weeks some sixty representatives from various
political and business constituencies met, including
the chairmen of all the Swiss political parties,
two senior prosecutors, police superintendents
from several Swiss regions, members of privately
and publicly funded relief organisations, business,
church groups, social volunteers, and the chief
editors of the Swiss print media.
The discussions on the boat lead to the formation
of an enhanced needle exchange initiative, and
resulted in a lessening of spectacular news
coverage and the "othering" of drug
addicts which typically takes place in the media
on a regular basis. The discussions also resulted
in a plan to institute a boarding house for
drug addicted prostitutes and other long term
initiatives. In a short time the artists' group
realised the raising of 100.000 for the boarding
house, but when they attempted to integrate
it into a neighbourhood, a demonstration lead
to a withdrawal of the plan. According to Katharina
Lenz, one of the members of the group, the next
round of discussions will involve more inviduals
from the projected neighbourhood site for the
boarding house.
A third project in Italy involved a small village
90 km north of Rome. After consulting the local
newspapers from the previous ten years, consulting
with municipal authorities and different groups
of village inhabitants, one third of whom were
over 65, they decided to focus upon the development
of a recreational facility for seniors. Using
a novel method of fund raising the group provided
a centre with some basic equipment, bar with
refrigeration, dishwasher, etc. They started
a photographic event which had people pay a
nominal fee to be photographed in front of a
large painting of the town. Through this action
the local population indirectly financed the
bar. In addition the group arranged for the
recuperation of a "centrally located but
incorrectly constructed and therefore abandoned
boccia field." The recuperation of this
important facet of rural Italian social life
was obtained through the development of a contract
with a large scale wine producer, the initiation
of export connections and sales within Austria
which netted a small net profit that was then
channeled into the reconstruction of the boccia
court.
How do these `art' actions conform to Habermas'
theory of communicative action? Habermas distinguishes
between strategic, instrumental and communicative
actions. The distinction he says between actions
that are oriented toward success and those toward
understanding is crucial.
I speak of communicative actions when social
interactions are co-ordinated not through the
egocentric calculations of success of every
individual but through co-operative achievements
of understanding among participants. (Habermas
in Thompson and Held 1982:264)
and elsewhere he writes,
Whereas in strategic action one actor seeks
to influence the behaviour of another by means
of the threat of sanctions or the prospect of
gratification in order to cause the interaction
to continue as the first actor desires, in communicative
action one actor seeks rationally to motivate
another by relying on the illocutionary binding/bonding
effect (Bindungseffekt) of the offer contained
in the speech act (Habermas, 1990:58)
In this and other collaborative projects undertaken
by the Austrian group Habermas's pre-requisites
for communicative action, as opposed to strategic
action, were respected. For instance at the
outset in this and other projects, no agendas
or goals were established, neither were outcomes
predicted by any members of the group, including
the group facilitator, Wolfgang Zinggl. Rather,
the group employed a method of on-going dialogue
with provisional consensus taking at appropriate
points in the process, in order to exercise
a modicum of control over the resulting plans
and initiatives. (12) No one
individual assumed control of the process; rather
i was, in the best sense possible, participatory
and democratic.
Co-operations, the International Program of
Art & The Environment based in Luxembourg
has had some extraordinary success in developing
new modes of communication between expert communities.
Their programme encourages the development of
multifaceted interdisciplinary projects in which
artists, social workers, psychologists, landscape
architects and members of marginal groups -
the mentally and physically challenged - have
co-operated to create new ways of responding
to the environment. "The interaction with
marginal groups, and their integration in such
projects has led to extraordinary results in
which artistic, social and environmental `objectives'
overlap"(Brochure 1995). One of Cooperations
most successful projects has been the redesign
and building of an extraordinary garden in Wiltz.
Similarly, the Argentinian artist group Ala
Plastica, an NGO (non-government organisation)
established in 1991, has promoted various environmental
projects, recycling programs and educational
initiatives. These include the recuperation
of degraded spaces in La Plata Zoo and the transformation
of these into public spaces for the environmental
education of school children. Since their founding,
Ala Plastica have used collaborative methods
to develop proposals for improving the life
quality of municipal provincial and "cultural
organisms", education, and urban waste
management. Members of the group are represented
on the Environmental Advisory Council of Buenos
Aires State and La Plata City hall. They have
also established co-operative agreements on
environmental education with La Plata National
University.
Over a decade ago Peter Dunn and Lorraine Leeson
formed the Art of Change group in London as
a visual arts and design organisation concerned
with issues of relating to the transformation
of the urban environment. They have spent the
last decade working with communities in London's
east end. West meets East was realised as a
collaboration with a class of Bengali girls
in an east London school. Working with the girls,
the artists explored themes relating cultural
difference in a large photo textile mural containing
both English and Bengali text and images.
Art Link, formed in 1992 and based in Donegal,
Ireland, works collaboratively on public art
projects of various kinds aimed at stimulating
dialogue and participation within the community.
They have worked with the Buncrana Environmental
group (BEG) and the Donegal Clean Waters Association
on issues relating to environmental education,
air and water conservation. An English group,
Platform founded in 1983 has been working on
year long community projects involving performances
in peoples' private homes. They construct forums
for the discussion of radical social ideas such
as their recent quest to find and reopen some
of London's historic 18th century waterways,
now obliterated by roads and buildings. They
maintain links with labour groups and various
organisations such as Greenpeace, Common Ground
and the Free International University.
The Hirsch Farm Project is probably the purist
example of communicative action in action. Based
in a rural context in Northbrook Illinois, the
HFP is described as "an arts based think
tank concerned with public art, the environment
and community" that brings together individuals
from a wide range of disciplines to meet in
camera for a period of a week to discuss specific
topics and sub-topics. Their project titled
"Non-spectacle and the Limitations of Popular
Opinion" expanded upon results obtained
from a 1991 (MUD) and 1992 Pressure on the Public
programmes which examined "the dynamics
of how artists and other professionals communicate
with a specified audience or community, and
how these intentions are received" (13)
Each participant in HFP `focus groups' develops
a proposal or essay that reflects or responds
to the conversations generated during the week
long discussion sessions, and this results in
a publication that is distributed to individuals
and organisations in the arts, sciences and
humanities. According to Laurie Winter, a co-ordinator
the goals of HFP are to "stimulate dialogue
and elevate the standards of conversation between
different communities and disciplines whose
paths would normally not cross."
Other littoral artists and artists groups include
Fine Rats International, Dogs of Heaven, Cultural
Transmissions Network, Prgetto Cuspide (Venice),
Locus+ (Newcastle), Ocean Earth (NYC), protoplast
(Basel), Projects environment (Lancashire),
Synapse, Sydney Australia, Whaur extremes meet
(Scotland), Suzanne lacy, Group Material, Conrad
Atkinson, Karl Beveridge and Carole Conde, Helen
and Newton Harrison. These are just a few of
the many groups and individuals outside of Halifax
who are producing what can be called littoralist
art.
The next examples of littoralist art are from
Halifax, the first an exhibition entitled, appropriately
enough for these economically depressed times,
Food Bank. This exhibition by Nova Scotia artist,
Kelly Lycan, was installed during the first
two weeks of December 1994, at the newly founded
artist run Khyber Arts Centre in Halifax. As
the title suggests Food Bank was "an exhibition
with the function of gathering and offering
food." Several weeks before the exhibit
a notice was sent out to members of the Halifax
community with instructions on how to participate
in the exhibition together with a number of
blank card tags. Participants were requested
to write a favourite recipe or two on the cards
and to describe their occupation in the space
provided. The artist offered to pick up the
recipe tags and participants' donations for
the Metro Halifax Food Bank. The food donations
and recipes could also be deposited by December
1st in a drop box in the vestibule of Kelly
Lycan's apartment building on Morris Street.
The announcement card stated that the recipes
would be placed on the gallery wall for others
to see and exchange. People were invited to
bring food to the exhibition and to choose a
recipe from the rear wall display to take home
with them. Lycan's intention was to initiate
what she called "a circular gift."
People who took the recipes could cook them
for friends, thus passing on what the artist
referred to as "the gift of food."
At the gallery the packaged food items were
arranged in a square on the floor, bounded by
an elegant gold line. On the wall adjacent,
the recipe cards were hung on hooks, and on
the other adjoining wall, a service line control
ticket tape machine, such as those found in
super markets or government agencies, provided
numbers for the participants. A notice informed
the participants that the number which they
received from the ticket tape machine corresponded
with a recipe card which they could take home.
At the conclusion of the exhibit the collected
food was delivered to the Metro Food Bank and
distributed to its users.
Lycan's Food Bank engages a number of critical
issues relating to the value of art, productive
labour, the politics of reciprocity and what
we can term the political economy of giving.
(14) Many of the participants
identified humbly with the actual needs of food
bank users by providing cheap and easy to produce
recipes. The reciprocal and participatory form
of the work which obliged gallery goers to give
food and take a ticket in order to collect a
recipe, encouraged the donors' identification
of themselves as potential food bank users.
They were not encouraged to choose any recipe
which they desired. Instead, they were required
to donate food and then take a ticket and line
up as they would for the food bank itself. Some
donors recognised that their privileged status
as food donor rather than food bank recipient
(or `client' as some bureaucratic agencies emphemistically
call them) was transitory, thus reinforcing
sociological studies which reveal that the majority
of givers are often barely able to make ends
meet, and occasionally have been aid recipients
themselves. Many donors took the opportunity
to produce their best recipe for exhibition
which they decorated artfully on the card. Others
presented their favourite creative alterations
of famous staple/comfort foods for the impoverished
such as macaroni dinner and tomato soup. Many
realised upon entering the exhibit, that they
had engaged in a collaborative process, in which
they too became exhibitors, where donors became
recipients and where exhibition value was transformed
conveniently into use value. Discussions about
the meaning and value of the work took place
informally both inside and outside of the gallery
context throughout the two week exhibit.
The end result of Lycan's exhibition was not
simply the donation of food to the local food
bank, although, this to be sure was one important
aim, but also the critical engagement of the
Food Bank participants into various aspects
of the labour process, including the acknowledgment
of the important ideological relationships between
social class (here indicated by occupation),
and cultural consumption. Food Bank encouraged
the negotiation of the conditions of the purchase
of food items, of cooking, creating recipes,
exchanging and consuming food as forms of "cultural
capital" (Bourdieu, 1977, 1984). Lycan's
project questioned the terms of market value,
exchange versus giving, altruism and giving
as a necessary and obligatory component of receiving.
Her exhibition reinforced the reciprocal nature
of giving and the critique of capitalism so
eloquently expressed in French sociologist Marcel
Mauss' seminal study The Gift (1924),that since
its publication, has become the foundation for
many subsequent studies on the socio-cultural
characteristics of giving by Mauss's followers
and critics, among them Claude Levi Strauss
and more recently, Pierre Bourdieu. Forty years
before the introduction of the computer and
the inauguration of the so-called "information
age", and now, the putative, "age
without work", Mauss wrote:
It is only our Western societies that quite
recently turned man into an economic animal.
But we are not yet all animals of the same species.
In both lower and upper classes pure irrational
expenditure is in current practice. Homo oeconomicus
is not behind us, but before (us), like the
moral man, the man of duty, the scientific man
and the reasonable man. For a long time man
was something quite different; and it is not
so long now since he became a machine - a calculating
machine.(Mauss, 1924:74)
With the exception of the negative gloss on
reason, these are probably sentiments with which
Habermas himself could identify.
In her discussion of Food Bank Lycan refers
to Mauss and one of his more recent disciples,
Lewis Hyde, whose book The Gift: Imagination
and the Erotic Life of Property, she acknowledges,
has provided some of the key theoretical underpinnings
of her work, such as her negotiation of the
complex relationships between the gift and capital.
She agrees with Mauss and Hyde that the "gift
should move" and moreover - an important
point- that givers should not capitalise upon
their giving. Hyde interprets the `spirit' of
gift exchange as an "erotic commerce"
(xiv). In this he acknowledges the influence
of anthropologist Marshall Sahlin's Stone Age
Economics (1972), a rereading and insertion
of Mauss's interpretation of the potlatch, prestation,
and various other forms of reciprocal giving
and exchange into the context of a political
philsophy, liberal humanism. Hyde argues that
various models of creative giving, and the gift
itself, are not only a means toward critically
renegotiating property and capital, but also
of formally renouncing the profit motive, acquisitiveness
and selfishness as the primary motors of social
life within capitalist society. Yet, he acknowledges
also the implicit refutation of his humanism,
and suggests as a possible antidote to his positive
pronouncements on the social panacea of giving,
the somewhat more pessimistic essays by Garrett
Hardin (1968) and Millard Schumaker (1980),
who discuss the limits of altruism and the problem
of giving, obligation and reciprocity in an
increasingly secular, individualistic, administered
and technological society.
Lycan's work does not employ democratic discussion
as a key element in her project as in the Austrian
work and that of others discussed above.I would
argue however, that it also conforms to Habermas'
prescription for communicative action by privileging
the use of critical reason and the bonding/binding
of participants throughout.
The next examples initiate a similar critical
negotiation of the political economy of giving,
the socio-cultural significance and politics
of food distribution, and, implicity, international
aid. The Empty Bowls project initiated by ceramists
Lisa Blackburn and John Hartom of Franklin,
Michigan, began in 1990 with a simple idea;
ceramic artists, teachers, students and others
would make some bowls, then invite some friends
for a meal of soup and bread (or rice or ice
cream), convivial discussion and possibly music.
In exchange for the bowl and the meal, the guest
was asked (but not expected) to donate $10.00
or more to a hunger organisation chosen by the
sponsors of the meal. Their promotional material
provides details on three primary objectives
for the Empty Bowls project; the first, "to
raise as much money as possible to feed hungry
people in the U.S. and abroad"; second,
to engage people in hunger awareness and education,
and third, art education. "The language
of art", they suggest in a romantic passage,
"circumvents the boundaries of all other
languages to touch our souls. We feel through
creativity we can create positive social change."
(Blackburn and Hartom 1990:2)
According to their literature, the original
Empty Bowl project was timed to coincide with
International Food Day, October 16th 1991, an
annual event based upon the founding on that
date in 1945 of FAO, the United Nations Food
and Agriculture Organisation. Blackburn and
Hartom encouraged what they called "a high
level of integrity for the project." In
order to achieve this ideal, they wrote, Empty
Bowls is a project of inclusion, cutting across
social, political, racial, religious, age and
any other perceived boundaries to join us all
in working towards a common goal"(1990:2).
Since their project was initiated many groups
throughout the U.S. and further afield (as far
away as New Zealand), have used this model to
successfully plan and undertake fund raisers
and education programmes for local food banks
and non-governmental world hunger relief organisations.
Using the successful model established by Hartom
and Blackburn, a group in Halifax last year
established their own Empty Bowl initiative,
renaming it the Hungry Bowls Project. Members
of a Ceramics tableware class at the Nova Scotia
College of Art and Design lead by instructor
Walter Ostrom of NSCAD negotiated with several
restaurants in the Halifax metropolitan area
to donate tureens of soup to the NSCAD Cafeteria
venue. Participants purchased tickets for $12.00
each and two days before the event they were
sold out. A ticket provided the bearer with
a bowl of gourmet soup and several helpings
of bread. In addition they could take home the
hand crafted bowl which had been created for
this purpose by students and faculty of the
Ceramics Department. The event raised over $2400
for the local Metro Food Bank and garnered much
media attention. The organisers structured a
similar event this year and plan to make this
an annual event.
Hungry Bowls is more of a do good, feel good
project than the Lycan example discussed earlier,
and it is certainly no frontal assault on the
socially constructed and reproduced inequities
within capitalist society. And yet its aim is
similar, extending the language of the altruistic
gift into a more politically efficacious education
- communicative action - programme of the type
endorsed by Blackburn and Hartom. Only upscale
restaurants, where a bowl of soup would typically
cost in the $5.00-$10.00 range, were requested
to donate. The event was promoted in the press
and on air as a focus for Food Bank donations
from the general public and at the conclusion
of the event, money rather than food was sent
to the Food Bank, thus assisting it to reinforce
its bulk purchasing capacity.
The next example is an international relief
aid project developed by NSCAD Design Communications
professor Michael LeBlanc, graduate student
Sara-Marie Loupe, and TUNS (Technical University
of Nova Scotia) Professor Michael Smedley. Last
year the three developed a proposal to use digital
photography to construct a computer database
to reunite refugee families in Bosnia and Rwanda,
both countries devastated by their recent and
continuing conflicts, resulting in Rwanda, in
the murder of hundreds of thousands, principally
members of the Tutsi minority and Hutu intelligentia.
Titled loosely the Refugee Family Relocation
Project, it began with Sara-Marie Loupe's concern
for the plight of approximately 100,000 Rwandan
refugee children separated from their families.
After some preliminary work the Halifax group
began collaborating on line with individuals
at the California State Polytech at Pomona and
a few NGO's in the U.S. Loupe pioneered the
concept to develop a database which can be used
in the field by those working directly with
refugee populations. With the assistance of
LeBlanc she developed the interface and graphics
while Smedley used the designs for implementation
on a Macintosh Powerbook. Sara-Marie Loupe was
subsequently invited to Washington D.C. to meet
with Joseph Mutabuba, the Rwandan Ambassador
to the U.S., and was offered the opportunity
to show the team's demonstration models to non-government
aid agencies. Mutabuba reportedly said "If
I had a database sitting on my desk right now,
I could be getting families back together...I
have people calling me every day looking for
their families." (15)
A Salt Lake City organisation dedicated to tracking
unaccompanied children recently gave the group
a grant to continue their research. The project
organisers expect the system to be fully operational
within one year. Given the continuing strife
and dislocation of people in Rwanda this could
not be too soon. Sara-Marie Loupe recently took
her database model to Rwanda to undertake some
field tests.
The next example is titled simply Giving part
of an end of year Intermedia Area exhibition
(Intermedia General (December 13-17, 1994),that
final year BFA students arranged for NSCAD's
Anna Leonowens Gallery. Gallery window posters
and other promotion tools informed gallery visitors
that during the duration of the exhibition and
at certain times of the day, they could take
advantage of the following free services: bicycle
repairs, button sewing, telephone calls, letter
writing, kids' crafts, hair cuts, "Alice's
thoughts", and a reading. During the week
of the exhibit many individuals took advantage
of the free services, particularly the haircuts
and bicycle repairs. The hair cutting service
provided by Leah Miller, a graduating student
specialising in tattoo art, was a major hit
among the many cash strapped students who attended
the exhibition. Upon graduating with her BFA
in December 1994 Miller returned to her home
town with the intention of continuing her artwork,
and making a regular income at the same time,
by starting a professional tattooing practice
from a room in her parents' home. Toward the
conclusion of the Giving exhibit, Andrew Mclaren,
a professional cycle smith, a local competitive
cyclist as well as a full-time art student,
repaired Leah's bicycle in exchange for a haircut.
Similar deals were struck throughout the week
with non `exhibitors', thus mirroring in some
senses the informal student economy as well
as the extensive labour and services exchange
(bartering)that characterise the informal economy
in Cape Breton, one of the poorest regions within
the province of Nova Scotia, with one of the
highest unemployment rates (up to 50% in some
areas), in Canada. While it is not unusual for
students to exchange services as part of their
"common culture" (Willis, 1992) it
is somewhat unusual for them to provide services
freely to anyone in a public gallery context
as a performed art. This exhibition circumscribed
the process of giving as an informal service
economy - one that can benefit both giver and
recipient - raising for discussion the socio-political
issues of altruism, reciprocity and exchange.
This exhibition demonstrated world disclosure
at its best.
The final example, by young Halifax based artist
Stephen Ellwood, bypassed the obligation, reciprocity
problem altogether to give money directly to
the needy. As part of an OO Gallery sponsored
project, Ellwood sought and received donations
from various individuals and sponsor groups
and exchanged this money into nickels, some
$300.00 worth. At an appointed time he then
threw these into an awaiting crowd from the
top of a building on Barrington Street, one
of the main thoroughfares of downtown Halifax.
This work encouraged much media attention and
Ellwood even received criticism from a Reform
Member of Parliament who feared that government
(taxpayers') money, used to subsidise OO Gallery
and other artist run centres, was being used
irresponsibly.
Each of these examples encourage critical reflection
upon the nature of community, the market economy,
the underground or informal economy, the commodity
status of the work of art, giving, obligation
and reciprocity. The final example, Ellwood's
action (16), could be described
in conventional avant-garde terms as a blague,
or more charitably perhaps as a type of a Scrooge
action with its object the public renouncing
or expiation of miserly guilt. Ellwood could
also be the exemplary Robin Hood who extracts
alms from the rich to distribute to the poor.
Like Lycan's example, this work tests the meaning
of altruism and questions the limits of giving
(and taking) within late capitalist economy.
There are many theoretical implications for
an engaged or committed cultural practice in
each of these `artworks'. It is strange to even
nominate them as art works when each engages
some form of performed, participatory /communicative
activity and there are no final objects - commodities
-save the documentation of the event, to place
in a permanent gallery context. In most of the
examples and on one of more levels, labour is
freely given and no compensation is expected
or anticipated, except perhaps, for the cynic,
art world cultural capital from essays such
as this. It could be argued that one of the
`works' - the Refugee project - exists outside
of the art legitimating context altogether,
and would thus have some difficulty assuming
any conventional art label. The Rwandan Relief
Project, is a computer design and international
relief project rather than an artwork, even
recognising the fact that two of its producers
are designer/artists. To different degrees each
of the examples described exist as cultural
services. Within specialised art world discourse
they could be framed within the so-called live
art, performance art genres but perhaps they
are better appreciated and understood as artist
initiated examples of collaborative, operative,
engaged or interventionist cultural practice,
and, as I have attempted to suggest, examples
of communicative action in action.
I would now like to shift register here somewhat
to discuss further the theoretical and critical
implications of giving in all of these projects.
Giving is never a neutral or value free activity.
There are always conditions, expectations, obligations
attached, for both the giver and the recipient.
To the most cynical, self-less giving, altruism
- the regard for others as the ethical precondition
for action - and philanthropy, do not exist.
There are, it is presumed, always benefits which
can be conferred upon the giver. To those cynics,
the Christian axiom "it is better to give
than receive," is often that - better!
More benefits accrue to the giver than the recipient
of the gift. Moreover, the gift implies that
the giver has engaged in some virtuous activity
which has some sort of redemptive value. In
more secular terms, the gift promotes the elevation
of self-esteem; sub-consciously, the giver thinks,
"I want you to think better of me, to love
and respect me for what I have given you."
(17) The Christian gift -
the offering - encourages members of a congregation
to offer money as a propitiation of God, through
the expiation of sin - the accumulation of wealth,
usury. Like Max Weber's arguments concerning
labour itself, this public act of atonement
secures redemption for the faithful.
In Marxian terms altruism and philanthropy,
within a capitalist economy, reproduces the
moral superiority of those who have the power
to give. Giving becomes a means toward assuming
or reinforcing social power and existent hierarchies.
However, there exists also within Marxism the
contradictory nature of the gift that conflates
needs and desires into a politically acceptable
form. In Marx's writings the gift is subsumed
materialistically under the acceptable socialist
maxim "from each according to his/her ability...to
each according to his/her need."
Conservatives are likely to argue that the
various conventional types of giving, including
welfare and foreign aid keeps the political
order intact and the poor impoverished, that
it reaffirms their poverty by sapping the recipients'
initiative and will to develop. Giving, in these
terms, promotes dependency and subordination.
The whole business of giving in welfare and
in forms of foreign aid have come under attack
in recent years. Critics argue that welfare
recipients should work for their money. Workfare
programs now operate in many areas in the U.S.
and are being contemplated in Alberta, Ontario
and other Canadian provinces. Critics of international
aid programmes argue that aid to third world
countries reinforces under-development and responds
merely to the symptoms of poverty and not the
underlying cause. Aid to third world countries
does not encourage the establishment of the
necessary infra-structure to develop indigenous
industries, neither does it promote community
or national self-sufficiency. Development workers
are cautioned with the examples of aid agency
giving which has gone wrong - the water pump
that was sent to irrigate the arid plain without
the necessary back-ups for repair; the rubber
thong factory which managed at full capacity
to put cheap shoes on everyone's feet while
it put the local shoemakers and repairers out
of business.
Conservatives and even many leftists argue
that without the altruistic concerns of liberal
do-gooders, philanthropists, Christians, the
Welfare State itself - members of the underclass,
the lumpen proletariat - and whole populations
of third world countries would be at the throats
of their bourgeois and first world oppressors.
In contrast to these somewhat jaundiced views
however, there are many ways in which the art
of giving can be said to represent politically
efficacious practice, that is, socially responsive,
ethically responsible activities, that achieve
in small measure, their largely unstated claim
to effect real change. This is especially the
case, I believe, if each giving project is considered
as part of a general process of education, or
communicative action. I would argue that the
`target' groups for each of the giving exhibits
are different; that for the student Giving exhibit,
giving was a service rendered implicitly for
a service in kind; telephone someone and they
may return your call, write someone a letter
and they may reply, repair someone's bicycle
and they may be able to give you a haircut in
return. Ironically the student's giving and
exchanging demonstrated the actual survival
strategies that they may have to adopt upon
graduation, particularly in this era of diminished
expectations. The students giving strategies
may have their corollary in the arenas of international
aid. Despite many problems relating to the neo-colonial
and imperialistic adventures of donor governments,
the history of international aid projects demonstrates
how the work of various agencies and institutions
can provide the basic requirements for the building
of international trust and co-operation, which
are the cornerstones of development and self-sufficiency.
On a microcosmic scale, Ellwood's anarchic
action argues for the redistribution of wealth
in society, but warns also of the feeding frenzy
when the containers of wealth are opened. His
view of human nature is somewhat Hobbesian;
that is, given the right opportunity greed will
always assert itself. The money he threw disappeared
in a matter of minutes, even when he pre-empted
his own noon hour deadline by some thirty minutes.
Some would say he had cold feet but the enraged
members of the media who gathered at the appointed
time to capitalise on the spectacle of people
groveling for money, added another layer of
meaning to his public intervention.
Some will argue that each example of the art
of giving discussed above can be framed as either
liberal altruism, or as leftist tendenzkunst,
and perhaps both. The tendency argument would
insist that while evidencing the `correct political
tendency' the work remains at the level of representation,
acting out the forms of cultural politics without
providing the important political substance
that would engender real change. Armed with
the legacy of Marx, Engels, Walter Benjamin,
Georg Lukacs, many on the left would argue that
the artist /intellectual should align him/herself
with the appropriate progressive or revolutionary
forces within society and their representative
social groups and political parties. Like Marx
and Engel's critiques of Ferdinand Lasalle,
each giving example could be criticised for
evidencing the correct political tendency but
lacking the correct engagement with its object
of concern, which would necessitate an adoption
of the approriate (time honoured) and normative
political strategies for social change.
I believe however, that the most important
strategic element of each project is the artists'
insistence upon working with social reality
itself rather than indirectly through various
forms of representation, and this mitigates
against a strong endorsement of the tendenzkunst
conclusion. Lycan's exhibition is not simply
another form of compassionate victim art masquerading
empathetically with the disenfranchised proletariat.
On the contrary, Lycan problematises the very
conditions of giving as a reciprocal process
within a structured economy that privileges
taking, individual ownership, the profit motive
and conspicuous consumption. She understands
that the political economy of altruistic giving,
like the corporate identity of some national
and international aid organisations, churches
and food banks, conforms to a "logic of
practice" to use Pierre 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). Her Food Bank example insists that
giving can be used `strategically' to further
a number of identifiable life world and humanitarian
goals, as well as provide some critical intervention
into the ideological fabric of our culture.
Claude Levi Strauss has argued "The automatic
laws of the cycle of reciprocity are the unconscious
principle of the obligation to give, the obligation
to return a gift and the obligation to receive"
(1987:43). However, as Bourdieu argues in his
critique of Levi-Strauss's structural logic
of the (Maussian) law of reciprocity, in reality
"the gift may remain unreciprocated."
(98) For the Austrian artists, Lycan, Ellwood
and to a certain extent the ceramists, the Refugee
Project people and the student givers, this
realisation would necessitate that the givers
themselves become the first targets of conscientization.
11 Wochen Klausur, Lycan's Food Bank, The Giving
Show, Ellwood's Free Money engage a logic of
practice which permits an infinite variety of
exchanges or gifts, challenges, ripostes and
reciprocations to occur. These examples of the
littoralist art are exemplary in the manner
in which they creatively engage their public
in conscientization and provide service of some
social and cultural value. But in accordance
with Bourdieu's wry observation on the politics
of giving and receiving, these examples also
acknowledge:
The simple possibility that things might proceed
otherwise than as laid down by the `mechanical
laws' of of the `cycle of reciprocity' (and
that this) is sufficient to change the whole
experience of practice and, by the same token
its logic.(99)
In contrast to Mauss and Levi-Strauss' insistence
on laws and structure in the cycle of reciprocity,
of obligation and exchange, Bourdieu's logic
of practice privileges individual agency, in
all its unpredictability and contrariness, as
the primary component of a generative model
of giving (and understanding). Perhaps this
logic of practice, like that promoted by Habermas
himself "provides an alternative to money
and power as a basis for societal integration."
(Calhoun 1992:31) And without this acknowledgement
of individual agency, of potential for contrariety,
giving, the gift of labour, the gift of blood,
and of life itself, would seem valueless.
Works Cited:
Baxandall, Lee, and Stefan Morawski (eds.),
Marx and Engels on Literature and Art St Louis
and Milwaukee: Telos Press, 1973.
Blackburn, Lisa and Hartom, John, Empty Bowls
Project Franklin, Michigan: (self-published
pamphlet), 1990.
Bourdieu, Pierre, The Logic of Practice Standford,
CA: Standford University Press, 1990.
Calhoun, C. (ed) Habermas and the Public Sphere
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992.
Eagleton, T. The Ideology of the Aesthetic
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990.
Hardin, Garrett. The limits of Altruism: An
Ecologists View of Survival Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1977.
Habermas, J."Consciousness raising or
redemptive Criticism - the Contemporaneity of
Walter Benjamin" New German Critique Special
Issue on Benjamin No 17, Spring 1979.
Habermas, J. Legitimation Crisis Trans. T,
McCarthy, Boston: Beacon, 1979.
Habermas, J. The Theory of Communicative Action
Boston: Beacon, 1984.
Habermas, J., The Philosophical Discourse of
Modernity:Twelve Lectures Trans. Frederick Lawrence
Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 1989.
Habermas, J. Moral Consciousness and Communicative
Action Trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry
Weber Nicholsen with introduction by Thomas
McCarthy, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press, 1990.
Hyde, Lewis, The Gift: Imagination and the
Erotic Life of Property New York: Random House,
1983.
Mauss, Marcel The Gift: Forms and Functions
of Exchange in Archaic Societies New York, London:
Norton, 1967.
Sahlins, Marshall Stone Age Economics Chicago:
Adline Publishing Co, 1972.
Thompson, J.B and Held , D., (eds) Habermas
Critical Debates (including a reply to my critics
by Jurgen Habermas) Cambridge Mass: MIT Press,
1982.
Willis, Paul Common Culture Boulder, Colorado:
Westview Press, 1990
1. This essay is a longer version
of The Art of Giving published in Fuse Magazine,
volume 19, no. 2, Winter 1996.
2. There are many historical
prototypes in evidence both within western modernism
and cross culturally throughout various epochs.
3. Littoral describes the intermediate
and shifting zone between the sea and the land
(coastal) and refers metaphorically to projects
which are undertaken predominantly outside of
the conventional contexts of the institutionalised
artworld -lifeworld affirming as opposed to
system. The first Littoral: New Zones for Critical
Art Practice symposium was organised by Ian
Hunter and Celia Larner of Projects Environment
in Manchester England in September of 1994 and
attracted artists from over 20 countries. The
second Littoral symposium Chimera was organised
by Neil Berecry and Adrian Hall, members of
the Australian group Synapse.
4. Within the international
field of Littoral art practice there are many
examples including artist groups that work with
people with disabilities (Co-Operations in Luxembourg),
children (Projects Environment, Manchester),
the environment, Ala Plastica Foundation in
Argentina, ArtLink in Ireland, and as a think
tank Hirsch farm project in the U.S.
5. In their individual correspondence
with Lasalle regarding his drama, Marx and Engles
criticised him for schillern, a propensity in
his text to "Avoid... the real material
issues (content) of the Revolution, which was
its subject" - in other words to focus
on the aesthetic form of the work at the expense
of its political potential. Schillern is both
a pun on the German word for describing, and
the name of the writer Friedrich von Schiller,
who tended to proivilege aesthetic form and
the plight of the tragic individual over the
collective tragedy. Both Marx and Engels suggested
that Lasalle's tragedy would have been more
realistic and therefore more politically efficacious
had he taken Shakespeare as his model and not
Schiller.( Rose, M.,1984:94) Marx's critique
of Eugene Sue was more pointed: comparing Sue
to a bad painter who must label his painting
to say what it represents, Marx accused him
of producing the "most wretched offal of
socialist literature." Baxandall and Morawksi:
1973:119)
6. (and also, implicitly, Adorno's)
7. The Benjamin quotations
in Habermas' essay are from Reflections ed.
Peter Demetz N.Y. (1978)
8. As Habermas argued in Legitimation
Crisis (1975) the system has penetrated deeply
into the lifeworld, progressively reorganising
its practices in accord with its own rationalising,
systematising and bureaucratic logic. The instrumentalising
of human activity, he posited, destroys the
possibilities of democratic participation in
social interaction and political decision making.
9. Frederike Klotz, Martina
Chmelarz, Anne Schneider, Gudrun Wagner, Marion
Holy, Christoph Kaltenbrunner and Wolfgang Zinggl.
10. Presentation by Katherina
Lenz, Littoral Conference,
Manchester Septemebre 1994
11. Pamphlet "Art and
Social Intervention" September 1994
12. Katharina Lenz, Presentation,
Manchester September 1994
13. Littoral Symposium booklet
(1995)
14. 14.An earlier Lycan exhibit
employed a similar participation process, this
time used to gather house plant cuttings from
London, Ontario residents for exhibition in
a local gallery.
15. The Mail Star, Halifax,
February 4 1995
16. Within the history of
modernist art there are many works which employ
money as a medium, enough in fact to construct
a genre which would include its own canoninical
examples such as Marcel Duchamp's Janzc Cheque
( ) a work in payment for some dental work,
Robert Morris's U.S. Dollar Covered Brain (
)and Gerald Ferguson's One Million Pennies (
).
17. A Booleian keyword search
which I undertook at the Dalhousie University
library while writing this paper, turned up
334 items with Giving in the title, with about
a third of these texts related to the Christian
ideals of self-less giving - focusing upon the
Biblical maxim "give and ye shall receive."
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