CREATIVE TIME

This second iteration of the Creative Time Summit provides a platform for international, socially engaged artists to present specific projects to the general public. We hope their presentations and the dialogue that they provoke expands the brackets enclosing what is possible in cultural production. Admittedly, these artists’ parameters of working continue to be difficult to define. What constitutes a socially engaged art practice remains a mystery that either evokes strong feelings or, strangely enough, a determined ambivalence. Nonetheless, after last year’s Summit, the concern that political art “preaches to the choir” was raised in numerous post-event discussions. This critique certainly must be addressed, for it is one that is all too familiar when working along the difficult yet urgent axis of the political and cultural. In fact, this common adage, lobbed at most political art, often hovers ominously without resolution. Let us then ask the question that is both implied by the audience in the room and the audience participating and watching online: Who is the choir?

I like to think that the Creative Time Summit preaches to a choir that has yet to exist. As a critical community engaged with the potential and actual affects of cultural production on the political realm, there are few points of consensus. Certainly critic Claire Bishop’s discussion on ArtForum’s web diary garnered much discussion and raised numerous points of contestation. “Is there a benefit to calling this work art and must such a category be used?” “To what end are some of the works merely gestures and lacking in political efficacy?” “Who is the audience for this work?” “What are the evaluative criteria from which socially engaged art can be assessed?” These hotly contested issues, while certainly not unique, do paint a picture of a choir lacking in harmonious agreement.

There are also numerous barriers yet to be crossed for this loose-knit field of socially engaged art. Racial, geographic, gender, economic, and post-colonial lines continue to haunt the field and these barriers are certainly part of producing the boundaries of what a choir could be. Without a doubt, socially engaged artists must assess the limits and strategic choices of the language, aesthetics, and communities within which they willingly or haphazardly choose to work with. These concerns certainly lend credibility to the “preaching to the choir” accusation and its specific concern of audience must remain a critical element in any discussion.

In his book, The Inoperative Community, the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy calls for a community that is “ever becoming.” As opposed to a community formed out of a nostalgia for a mythic past, he asks for one based on a resistance to power. Certainly such a community has the potential to emerge out of this gathering that shares an interest in contesting power using numerous tools culled from activism, art, and other disciplines. If such a community can develop toward a horizon of social change that confounds economic, racial, and geographic barriers, then it has the potential for providing unique responses to global, political injustices.

To address this concern, we invited curators from different countries (Mexico, England, Spain, Lebanon, Nigeria and Thailand) to report on nascent forms of socially engaged art with the hopes of broadening the potentiality of this community. In addition, the roster of artists presenting do not entirely reflect the known quantities of political artists that tend to travel the globe. As one of the numerous axes for selecting artists to present, I intentionally considered the degree of social capital that each artist possesses in order to acknowledge and represent a vast community of artists who not only demure from the spotlight, but may in fact see individual financial success as running counter to their activist aspirations.

The artists highlighted at this Summit approach culture in expanded forms. While certain sectors of the art world continue to approach the arts from a niche market perspective, the artists here have moved into terrain that fluidly crosses boundaries. As cultural production has been radically integrated into the economic logic over the last sixty years, artists have found that cultural production is now a part of the language of everyday life. This is to say, that the production of politics is, at this point, a deeply cultural question. These artists are implicitly aware of this transformation and their desire to work via cultural production derives from a keen understanding of its efficacy.

As such, certain themes have emerged as forms of working that highlight the degree to which cultural production has become a major element in the creation of the contemporary social landscape. By either confronting extant systems or producing off-the-grid alternatives, many of these artists use the basic structures that govern everyday life as a form. Infrastructures of everyday life such as schools, economies, agriculture, and approaches to government have gained widespread interest as socially engaged artists grapple with concerns of tangible efficacy, alternative economies, social relevance, and sustainability. These projects can manifest alternatives such as micro-granting soup projects, alternative art schools, and untraditional economic models. They can also manifest as forms of art that contest existing power structures, ranging from governments, to prisons to the institutions of the art world itself.

There is much to discuss and this Summit is yet another platform upon which to aggregate a potential critical community to action. Social change through culture is not only possible, but in considering the work presented here, we will find numerous examples of its robust impact. As part of a vast community interested in the questions raised at the Summit, we invite you to participate in discussions during and after the event. The Creative Time website will be hosting an online, post-event discussion moderated by Gregory Sholette. Finally, we are also live streaming this event and allowing viewers from around the globe to contribute and ask questions (admittedly we can answer only so many.) While there certainly isn’t a given choir to which these artists preach, there may be the makings of a choir that exists in the future.

Nato Thompson
Chief Curator, Creative Time