Harrell Fletcher's Blog

An Incomplete and Subjective List of Terms and Topics Related to Art and Social Practice Volume 1

Each week in the Art and Social Practice MFA Program at Portland State University we have an hour of what we call “topical discussion.” During that hour we explore a term or topic related to art and social practice. Some of the terms and topics are very basic, like collaboration, and site-specificity, but there are also less common terms like a touch of evil which we heard about from Pedro Reyes when we were visiting him in Mexico City a few years ago.

Many of the ideas we discuss are not specific to socially engaged art, but we are looking at them from a socially engaged art perspective. Several of the concepts are ones that I have used in my own work but until recently hadn’t named what they were or detailed how they could be used as strategies when developing or analyzing a project.

I hope that the list might be useful to people interested in socially engaged art. I started with about sixty terms and topics that I wrote about in 2019, and now I have added an additional forty or so. I’m already working on several new ones for a second volume.

Purchase the book online.

Some thoughts on writing a manifesto

I was asked by Scott Robertson from Fifthsyllable to write a “manifesto” for a book of artist manifestos that they will be publishing. Here is what I came up with:

I recall thinking as a young art student that I would never personally experience an art movement like the ones I was learning about in my twentieth century art history class—impressionism, surrealism, futurism, dada, abstract expressionism, conceptualism, that sort of thing. I also assumed, as part of that lack of direct involvement with an art movement, that there would be no need for me to ever consider writing or signing onto a manifesto.

Little did I realize then that I would in fact experience something like an art movement myself in the near future, and would even play a role in its development. I’m referring to what is now known as Art and Social Practice, or just Social Practice. Even though there were many precedents for socially engaged art practices (Mierle Laderman Ukeles, John Malpede and the Los Angeles Poverty Dept, Wendy Ewald, and Rirkrit Tiravanija among many other examples), they were scattered and underrecognized as a coherent movement other than through related (but not great fitting, from my perspective) terms like “community-based art” and “relational aesthetics”. In the case of community-based art, the focus seemed almost entirely on process which led to many handprint murals on school building walls, and alternately, relational aesthetics was based on the work of artists who were mostly functioning in the gallery/museum system and who often treated participants as material rather than as collaborators with agency. In the case of the developing field of Art and Social Practice, process and product are of equal importance and things like crediting, collaboration, audience, context, and making work in non-art spaces are highly valued.

I come from a photography background that focused a lot on the world and people around me. I thought of photographs as a way of pointing to things that I found interesting and wanted other people to see and appreciate. The bridge from that to a non-media based, socially engaged practice was not far for me. I transitioned away from photography while I was in graduate school at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California, in the early 1990’s. At the same time, I made connections with professors, students, and other related folks who were also interested in expanded approaches to public art and collaboration—Jon Rubin, Lydia Matthews, Suzanne Lacy, Larry Sultan, Ted Purvis, Mary Tsiongas, and many others—who went on to help formalize Social Practice (or Public Practice, Contextual Practice, etc.) at various academic institutions around the country.

To my knowledge, there hasn’t been a well-known attempt at writing a manifesto for Art and Social Practice. In some ways, doing that might be antithetical to the principles of socially engaged art which tends to be dynamic, multi-authored, and resistant to a single definition. In my mind a manifesto is fixed, authoritative, and exclusive, but maybe it doesn’t have to be that way, maybe it can be seen more as a starting point to base developing ideas onto.

When I think about my own practice, even outside of the framework of social engagement, there are various important elements. Personal enjoyment, intellectual engagement, and having varied new experiences are of greater importance to me than typical art world success—settling on and developing a medium and style, working in a studio, showing in galleries, selling object-based work, receiving appreciation from collectors and critics. I was never interested in perfecting a medium or style and instead have been interested in how my practice can allow me to learn about and experience the world outside of my own normal life conditions. As a result, I prefer an interdisciplinary project-based approach to working that allows me to explore topics, ideas, histories, activities etc., that puts me in the position of learning as I develop work, and in some cases to even become an audience to the projects I have created.

In place of a more prescribed and static version of a manifesto, I would like to instead offer a few suggestions for things to think about while making work as an artist. I’ve decided to limit myself to five topics. Some of the suggestions are specific to doing socially engaged work, others are more general and I think can apply to a broader set of interests. The list is made up of ideas based on what came to mind at the moment for me right now; on a different day I would probably come up with a different set of suggestions.

Make work that actually interests you. This seems obvious but, somehow, based on my experience working with art students for the past several decades I have discovered this common mistake: instead of working on things the person is actually interested in, they will often try to make art that just looks like work they have seen in magazines and in galleries. How do you go about figuring out what you are actually interested in so that your art can engage with those things? Start by thinking about what you do when you are not making art. Do you like to cook, walk, sleep, read, drink beer with friends? Once you have assessed what you like to do without the ulterior motive of making art, then you can use that to create art projects that allow you to engage in and explore those activities and subjects.Consider context. I think for the most part artists are taught to assume that the ideal place to show their work is a white cube gallery type space. By maintaining that assumption, artists are limiting themselves both in regard to the many other interesting places they can present work, but also by the nature of the work that they make, which is almost unconsciously designed specifically as objects for gallery spaces and the ability to transport those things to collectors houses and museums. Instead, I suggest thinking much more inclusively about all of the possible options for where an artist might present work and what that work might be. That could include schools, libraries, parks, stores, front yards, etc., and might be objects and activities that are ephemeral or totally permanent and not designed for shipping at all. In the situations where a gallery is the most appropriate location (and in some instances, but certainly not all, that might be the case), then it is still useful to evaluate those locations for their specific contextual qualities which include the white cube itself, but also what can be found beyond those walls (the neighborhood and everyday life the gallery is a part of) and to potentially make work that responds accordingly.Avoid friction. Artists often create obstacles for themselves that make it very difficult to produce the projects they want to make. Sometimes that is about the need for budgets or other resources that aren’t available. Other times it is because they are waiting for approval from a curator or gallerist before making the work. Often the friction is a matter of just coming up with overly complicated, elaborate projects that are laborious to produce. My friend, the artist Charles Goldman, introduced me to the idea of valuing art that is “adequate”. On the one hand that could seem limiting and uninspiring, but there is often a beauty to work that is not trying too hard, that just crosses the threshold of becoming meaningful. When artists can reduce the friction that exterior forces and limited resources create, then projects become much more possible.Expand parameters. Artists are generally taught to focus exclusively on object making in a studio environment, and not at all on the broader set of elements that surround and support the presentation of that work. In that case the “art” is just the object that has been made and nothing else. Artists can broaden out their practice to include a much wider set of aspects than just object making. That could include audience engagement, ephemera production and distribution, the construction of conceptual frameworks, the additions of participatory activities, etc. By working within a larger field of possibilities, artists can, to a much greater extent, determine and influence the way that their work is perceived and experienced. Think about how a really good restaurant considers not just the food on the plate but the whole environment that customers experience. Artists can similarly think not just about the objects they make, but instead about everything that is related to the presentation of their art to an audience.Give Credit. Unlike theater, film, music, dance, etc., art has been made to seem like it is a solo activity. Collaboration is discouraged in many ways within art education and the art world, often explicitly on grant and residency applications where only individual artists are allowed to apply. As a result, collaboration and group work practices are rarely seen as an option for emerging artists. At the same time, artists are encouraged to appear to do all their work on their own even though they often work with assistants, fabricators, curators, designers, writers, etc., who are never billed in the way they would be if they were taking part in the production of a film or theater piece. The commercial art system has promoted this misrepresentation to make it seem like the artwork they sell is purely created by just the “hand of the artist.” That unfortunate situation can be changed by artists themselves by insisting on crediting people for the roles they play in the creation of artworks. Demands can be made to arts organization to include collaboration and group work in funding and other opportunities. The art world could become a more supportive environment for non-solo based work, but artists will need to lead the way in the promotion and development of thoughtful crediting if that is ever going to happen.

Experiential Education

Hallie Ford Fellows in the Visual Arts 2017–19
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art
University of Oregon
Eugene, Oregon
October 3, 2020 to January 10, 2021Building Community: PSU Art + Design Faculty, Past + Present
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University
Portland State University
Portland, Oregon
March 9, 2021 to May 9, 2021

This project might be a little hard to understand conceptually. I used what I call “retroactive claiming” to go back in time and formalize something I did in the past as a work of art now. I’ve included a description of what exactly I mean by “retroactive claiming” and how it can be employed, not just by me, but by anyone who might find it useful. The work itself is a text piece (enlarged for exhibition) describing the past activity. In the project crediting I did something that I think is probably a stretch—suggesting it is a “collaboration” with someone who is currently dead. Students of mine always seem to want to push the idea of what collaboration can be into areas that I generally think are probably something else (usually just project content) like the idea of collaborating with non-human animals, plants, fictional characters, etc. I don’t have anything against working with those categories of entities (I’m a big plant and animal fan!) but my definition of collaboration includes the idea that all parties must have some kind of agency in the project, and also maybe just as importantly, that all of the collaborators find some value in the collaboration. As far as I can tell non-human animals, plants, fictional characters, and dead people, don’t have any interest in art projects. Even so I felt compelled to include a collaborator in this project who is dead and has no agency in the decision I have made to reclaim the activity that I did with him decades ago as art. I suppose in this case I’m thinking of the collaboration credit more as an honorary status than an active one. It’s a debatable thing to do, but I did it anyway.

A coincidence occurred in regard to the project’s presentation. The first time it was shown was at the JSMA at the University of Oregon which held specific significance because that museum is located across the street from the special collections library that was referenced in the piece, but because of the Covid pandemic I never saw it installed (the museum consulted me remotely about how to produce and present the work) and very few other people were able to experience it either because of museum access restrictions. Soon after the show that the project was a part of came down, I was asked to contribute a piece to another show happening at the newly constructed JSMA at Portland State University (where I teach). Since the first version had a very limited audience, I thought it would be a nice opportunity to try to re-present the project (even though the site-specificity was more removed). As it would happen the pandemic and its restrictions continued through that exhibition as well. So, the same piece was shown at two JSMA’s in less than a year and neither one really had an in-person audience. I guess that’s just the way it goes sometimes, but at least now I can present the work in this mediated form here on this website.

Read the project brochure from the exhibit at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon.

Experiential Education
Harrell Fletcher with Bill Devall
Arcata, California
1998, 2020 

When I was an undergraduate student at Humboldt State University, I took a class from sociology professor Bill Devall. Devall was well known as the co-author of the book Deep Ecology, but I didn’t know that at the time that I signed up for the class. We met in a typical classroom at the university on the first day of class, but Devall immediately asked us (my recollection was that there were about twenty students) to follow him out the door and onto a trail that led into the redwood forest behind the campus. We wandered for a while and then found a clearing to sit down in. Devall told us that for the rest of the semester we would not be meeting during the class times and that, instead, he wanted us to each choose an outdoor activity to do on our own during those times. He also suggested that we keep a journal about our thoughts and observations. 

I was a bit perplexed but diligently decided to follow Devall’s prompt. Two days a week at the appointed time for the rest of the term I walked from my apartment to the Arcata Bird Sanctuary. There I stepped onto the rail of train tracks and started walking south towards the city of Eureka, balancing in an attempt to not fall off for the full duration of the class (I can’t remember now how long that was, maybe ninety minutes). Soon I could walk on the rails with my eyes closed, run, jump back and forth from one rail to the other, and spin around in a circle, all without slipping off. At the end of each walk I would sit and write down my thoughts in a journal I brought along with me, and then I would head back home. 

At the end of the term we were told to prepare for a two-night campout with the rest of the class. A bus picked us up on campus and drove into the forest somewhere north of Arcata. I expected Devall to ask us to talk about our individual experiences, but he never did. Instead we wound up doing solo silent hikes and other similar activities. He didn’t even ask to see our journals. I remember wondering what the other students had chosen for their outdoor activities and if they actually did them during class, but I don’t remember ever finding that out, and for some reason, even in casual conversation, it didn’t come up. 

Time went by and I transferred to an art school in San Francisco, graduated from there, took a couple of years off to travel and work, went to graduate school, and eventually started to teach at colleges myself. Somehow even now, over thirty years later, Devall’s class (which wasn’t really a class at all in the normal sense) sticks out for me as the one that I learned the most from, and that has shaped my life and work, as an artist and teacher, more than any other. 

At some point I started to wonder what happened to Bill Devall. I did a little online research and realized he had died a few years ago, and that, interestingly, his archive is located at the University of Oregon’s Special Collections at the Knight Library (Devall received his PhD from UO) right across the street from the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. I scheduled an appointment and spent several hours looking through the boxes of Devall’s papers trying to see if I could find a syllabus for the course that I had taken with him. I wasn’t able to, though there was a lot of other interesting material. I guess it wasn’t that kind of class. 

Retroactive Claiming

Imagine finding some writings or drawings that you had done ten years earlier. At the time that you made them you had no thoughts about publishing or exhibiting the work, but now much later you see value in considering them differently, so you go about formalizing the work for the public to be able to experience the drawing or writings. Similarly, you might have gone through a hard experience at an earlier time in your life that later on you were able to see as educationally valuable, so in your mind you reframe the experience from negative to positive retroactively and you tell people about that change in perspective.

What if you used that retroactive claiming/framing approach to non-material forms of art? You could at any moment go back in time to earlier activities you did and reframe them as artworks, even though at the time you didn’t think of them as art. The possible activities and experiences are endless, but for example let’s just say you walked to work for a week instead of driving a couple of years earlier and still recall that you enjoyed the chance to get some exercise while noticing things that you didn’t see while in a car and had a few unexpected interactions with people along the ways that were interesting as well. You could take that experience and retroactively claim it as an artwork and reframe it by giving it a title, date, location, description and potentially documentation that could be from that time if you happened to take a photo as you walked or through re-constructing the activity by taking a photo now that represented the earlier activity or by making a drawing, re-performing the activity publicly, etc. though documentation (other than a title etc.) of the retroactive project isn’t actually necessary. You could then add that “project” to your resume and website, create publications based on retroactively claimed works, talk about them in lectures, and apply for funding to retroactively reframe more projects or work with others to select and formalize their own retroactive artworks. I can imagine skeptics saying that without initial intention the past activities can’t be reframed as art, but why should we be concerned about when the activities happened, eventually everything becomes a part of the past, and there is still intention it’s just intention to retroactively reframe rather than intention to do something at a future point.

Another variation on this idea is to think about all of the email writing that you have done in the past not as writing emails, but simply as writing, in which case most of us would have already written enough for several books. It’s a way of valuing what you have already done in ways that you may not have previously done, and through that process it might also make you appreciate what you are currently doing or going to do in the future in a different way.

— Harrell Fletcher

(For the University of Oregon exhibit, a Spanish version of the above wall text was created.)

Reclamo retroactivo

Imagínate que encuentras algunas escrituras o dibujos que hiciste hace diez años. En esos momentos cuando los hiciste, no habías pensado en publicar o exhibir el trabajo, pero ahora muchos años después, ves el valor de considerarlos diferente, por lo que te dedicas a formalizar el trabajo para que el público pueda experimentar los dibujos o escrituras. Igualmente, podrías haber tenido una experiencia difícil en tiempos pasados de tu vida que después pudiste ver como algo valioso educativamente, por lo que en tu mente reformulas la experiencia de negativa a positiva retroactivamente y le cuentas a la gente sobre ese cambio de perspectiva.

¿Qué pasa si usas esa perspectiva de reclamo o reformulamiento retroactivo en las formas no materiales del arte? En cualquier momento, podrías retroceder en el tiempo a las actividades del pasado que hiciste y reformulaste como trabajos de arte, aun cuando en ese tiempo no las considerabas como arte. Las posibles actividades y experiencias son infinitas, pero por ejemplo, simplemente digamos que dos años atrás caminaste a tu trabajo por una semana en vez de conducir tu vehículo y que todavía recuerdas haber disfrutado la oportunidad de hacer un poco de ejercicio mientras notabas cosas que no veías cuando estabas en un carro y tuviste algunas interacciones inesperadas con las personas en el camino que también fueron interesantes. Podrías tomar esa experiencia y reclamarla retroactivamente como un trabajo de arte y reformularla para darle un título, fecha, ubicación, descripción y posiblemente una documentación que podría ser de ese tiempo si coincide que tomaste una foto
mientras caminabas, o mediante una reconstrucción de la actividad tomando una foto ahora que represente la actividad pasada o haciendo un dibujo, volviendo a realizar la actividad en público, etc., aunque una documentación (además de un título, etc.) del proyecto retroactivo no es de hecho necesaria. Entonces, podrías agregar ese “proyecto” a tu currículum vitae y sitio web, crear publicaciones en base a los trabajos reclamados retroactivamente, hablar sobre estos en conferencias y solicitar un financiamiento para reformular retroactivamente más proyectos o trabajar con otras personas para seleccionar y formalizar sus propios trabajos de arte retroactivos. Puedo imaginarme a los escépticos diciendo que sin una intención inicial de actividades pasadas no pueden reformularse como arte, pero por qué deberíamos preocuparnos sobre cuándo ocurrieron las actividades, ya que
eventualmente todo se vuelve parte del pasado y todavía hay una intención, simplemente la intención de reformular retroactivamente en vez de la intención de hacer algo en un momento futuro.

Otra variación de esta idea es pensar sobre todos los correos electrónicos que escribiste en el pasado como algo diferente de una escritura de correos electrónicos, en cuyo caso la mayoría de nosotros ya habríamos escrito lo suficiente para varios libros. Es una manera de valorar lo que ya has hecho de maneras que podrías no haber hecho anteriormente, y a través de ese proceso podría ser que apreciaras lo que haces actualmente o harás en el futuro de una manera diferente.

— Harrell Fletcher

[See image gallery at www.harrellfletcher.com]

Some Thoughts Collected

Since 2014 I’ve been (very periodically) writing small texts mostly related to the topic of Art and Social Practice and posting them on my website under the heading “Some Thoughts.” This PDF version puts them all together in chronological order for anyone who might want to read them that way printed out or on a digital device. My hope was to publish a book of those texts along with other writing I’ve done over the last decade or so, but I keep procrastinating on that project. Hopefully it will still happen in the future. I will also likely add more texts to the website now and then so if you are looking for more at some point you might be able to find them there. 

Harrell 3.22.20

Read the collected texts here

7.9.19

Imagine finding some writings or drawings that you had done ten years earlier. At the time that you made them you had no thoughts about publishing or exhibiting the work, but now much later you see value in considering them differently, so you go about formalizing the work for the public to be able to experience the drawing or writings. Similarly, you might have gone through a hard experience at an earlier time in your life that later on you were able to see as educationally valuable, so in your mind you reframe the experience from negative to positive retroactively and you tell people about that change in perspective.

What if you used that retroactive claiming/framing approach to non-material forms of art? You could at any moment go back in time to earlier activities you did and reframe them as artworks, even though at the time you didn’t think of them as art. The possible activities and experiences are endless, but for example let’s just say you walked to work for a week instead of driving a couple of years earlier and still recall that you enjoyed the chance to get some exercise while noticing things that you didn’t see while in a car and had a few unexpected interactions with people along the ways that were interesting as well. You could take that experience and retroactively claim it as an artwork and reframe it by giving it a title, date, location, description and potentially documentation that could be from that time if you happened to take a photo as you walked or through re-constructing the activity by taking a photo now that represented the earlier activity or by making a drawing, re-performing the activity publicly, etc. though documentation (other than a title etc.) of the retroactive project isn’t actually necessary. You could then add that “project” to your resume and website, create publications based on retroactively claimed works, talk about them in lectures, and apply for funding to retroactively reframe more projects or work with others to select and formalize their own retroactive artworks. I can imagine sceptics saying that without initial intention the past activities can’t be reframed as art, but why should we be concerned about when the activities happened, eventually everything becomes a part of the past, and there is still intention it’s just intention to retroactively reframe rather than intention to do something at a future point.

Another variation on this idea is to think about all of the email writing that you have done in the past not as writing emails, but simply as writing, in which case most of us would have already written enough for several books. It’s a way of valuing what you have already done in ways that you may not have previously done, and through that process it might also make you appreciate what you are currently doing or going to do in the future in a different way.

1.26.19

As soon as I finished writing short descriptions for the
first set of terms and topics related to social practice (see the previous
post) I immediately started compiling a new list. So here are an additional
twenty-two terms and topics with subjective definitions, I’m sure there will be
more to come.

Duration

The amount of time spent working on a project is one way of
looking at the duration of the project, though it could also be referring to
how long the project is active too, or both of those two together. There is a sort
of knee jerk idea that when it comes to socially engaged work that long
duration equates to being better, and that short duration is less good. I’ve
always felt that this was not an accurate assumption, and as I have said many
times, if a bad project lasts a long time it doesn’t make it better it just
means it is bad longer. My feeling instead is that duration is just another
factor in determining the best way to approach and develop any given project.
Some projects, based on resources available, circumstances, etc. are best when
they are very short term. There are ways to avoid the problems that come when
an artist is “parachuted” into a project, primarily by setting up the work so
that the artist allows local people to present content creating a situation in
which the artist becomes an audience to the project that they have conceived of
and or facilitated.

Social Justice

There is often a confusion that social practice work
inherently needs to be about social justice issues. I don’t think that’s the
case, if it were it would be called “Art and Social Justice” not “Art and
Social Practice”. Many artists doing socially engaged work are interested in
and engaged with social justice issues, and that can of course be the subject
and purpose of their work if that is what they want to do, but social practice
work could also be about non-political, non-social justice type topics, and or
can be indirectly addressing social/political issues in various ways.

Education

Many socially engaged projects have educational components
built into them. One of the advantages of project-based work is the opportunity
to use the process as a way to learn about topics that the artist is interested
in from experiential, direct, and indirect approaches. I like to position
myself, when working on a project in a place that I am not familiar with, as
the one who is learning from the people who I meet and interact with, often
creating project structures that allow those local, and more knowledgeable
people to be the ones providing content and leading the educating of me, other
outsiders, and each other.

Ideal Situations

Artists have the chance to construct situations in the way
that they would like them to be as opposed to the way that they might normally exist.
For instance, just because kids are not normally included in the art world, at
least not in positions of agency, it is still possible for artists to create
projects that allow kids to take those kinds of roles. That same approach can
apply to anything else that an artist would like to see happen within the small-scale
realm of possibilities that they have control over when producing a project.

Ethics

In general, it is important to be able to determine how to
behave and operate in life so that you are functioning within both personal and
societal ethical practices. There are of course constructed laws that we each
need to decide if we will follow or not follow and in what ways. This might be
partially considered from the point of view of self-interest, familial
interests, societal interests, and based on if the laws make sense in any
particular situational circumstances or not, though some people prefer to use
precedent and generalized moral codes instead of having to make ethical
decisions based on each issue and experience that they encounter. There are
pluses and minuses for both approaches, but I favor the situational ethics one
even though it requires a lot more work.

Artists need to also figure out their own ethical ideas,
methods, and value systems and then try to apply them as they do their work. I
tend to think that common sense and following basic social contracts of not
harming others (or annoying them too much) is the best approach, but it could
be that many artists are not aware of the potential harm they might cause through
their work and so need to educate themselves to have greater understanding of
their own biases, privileges, power etc., so that they can effectively do the
work that they want to do in meaningful and useful ways.

I have encountered the idea that social practice artists
need to be especially conscious of their ethical responsibilities because of
the social nature of their work, but I have always contended that everyone
(including studio/gallery artists) should be engaged with understanding their
impacts on other people, the environment, wealth distribution, hierarchies,
etc. and that artists who are interested in socially engaged practices are
generally at least already somewhat aware of these dynamics, whereas
non-socially engaged artists often times are less conscious of the ways they
are making impacts with their work from ethical perspectives. Also, when faced
with this question I often ask for an example of a socially engaged art project
that has had a negative ethical social impact and have not yet been given a
good suggestion (though I’m sure there are a few out there). Considering a
socially engaged project to not be very good from a subjective point of view
doesn’t qualify. There is lots and lots of “bad” art being made out there (and
because there are a lot more paintings and sculptures than socially engaged
projects that means there are also a lot more “bad” paintings and sculptures
than there are “bad” socially engaged art projects) but that is no reason for
artists to stop doing work, at least not from an ethical point of view.

Walking

Many socially engaged projects have featured walking as a
primary element (including several of my own). There are many reasons why
walking is appreciated from a social practice angle. Walking is something that
is free and available to most people in some form or other and does not require
special skills to do. It provides an opportunity to get exercise while holding
conversations, examining the environment that is being walked through, and
providing self-transportation. Walking can easily be combined with other
activities like presentations, readings, and performances. I also just really
enjoy walking, so when given the opportunity to do any kind of project that I
want to do I often choose to include walking as some part of it.

Funding

In the US the typical ways that artists fund themselves are
through commercial sales, teaching, or arts grants. In reality most people who
think of themselves as artists don’t receive any funding at all, and probably
most artists don’t even bother trying to get funding for their work. There is a
big disparity between the number of artists and the capacity of commercial
galleries to show and sell those people’s work, as well as a limited number of
art teaching possibilities and arts grant opportunities. Those options are all available
to project based socially engaged artists, but there are other ways to fund
work as well. Working on commissions from arts and non-arts organizations is
one example. Sometimes the commission can be for a project that does not
interfere with regular exhibition and other programming at the institution,
which makes it more likely and increases the number of possibilities (temporary
event-based projects or exhibitions in non-gallery parts of museums like cafes
and bookstores for instance). Another approach is to create projects that
function as self-initiated institutions or artist residencies within existing
organizations like schools, libraries, park systems, or sanitation departments
(like Mierle Laderman Ukeles) and to apply for funding that is not normally
available to individual artists through those entities. A small business model
is another option. It is important to see funding approaches as part of
projects and not just as the support system for them.

Variable Practice

There has been a pervasive idea in the past that artists
were supposed to pick a medium and develop a style for their art and work on that
for the rest of their lives. There has always been lots of deviation from this
approach, but it still persists as a concept that is often taught to art
students. The primary benefit of artists working in that way is to be able to
deliver consistent product for the commercial gallery system and all of the
other art world elements that rely on that system. Artists, on the other hand,
rarely only want to work with just one medium and style and have to be
conditioned into finding value in that approach. Any kind of artist can free
themselves from that way of thinking and create a more interesting, varied
practice for themselves, but socially engaged artists are particularly well
situated to work in that way because they are generally not directly connected
to the commercial gallery system, and work on different kinds of projects that
can be situationally determined, so that in one case the artist might use
photography in an exhibition form, and in another creates participatory
sculpture for a public context, or mixes up multiple mediums and styles in one
project, anything is possible when the artist has a variable practice.

Learning

As I mentioned in the “education” topic, an artist can
position themselves as someone who is given an opportunity to learn through the
process of creating a project. That could include anything from learning a new
media to learning about the culture and history of a project location. The
shift is that in normal conditions it is the artist that is supposedly offering
up culture and education to the public and in this other scenario the artist is
instead learning about existing culture and knowledge from members of the
public.

Site-visit

Going to a place where a project will be happening to have a
personal experience evaluating the nature of the place and the type of project
that would be interesting to develop there based on resources, social dynamics,
histories, etc.

Hanging Out Method

A process which can be used during a site visit or during
the research phase of any project in which the artist wanders around, talks to
local people, and spends time casually observing in the location where they
will be developing a project in order to come up with ideas for the concept of
the project.

Inclusion

Within a socially engaged art project the artist has the
opportunity to be as inclusive as they would like to be in various ways, that
could include who the collaborators and participants are, how accessible the
project is to local and diverse audiences, and in what ways the project is made
available in documentation form, which could include free publications
distributed publicly etc. to allow the project to be known by people who might
not normally go to a contemporary art venue or presentation.

Hierarchy

The art world system is built on status and hierarchy, but
artists can deviate from that approach if they want to. That can include not
going along with the idea that you can only go up the steps of “art world
success” which would dictate that once you move from showing in alternative
spaces to commercial galleries, to fancier commercial galleries, to museums,
that you cannot move backwards for fear that your stock will go down. Instead,
if artists showed their work based on what they actually thought was
interesting that could mean that they worked with a whole range of different
status level organizations (alternative spaces, Community College galleries,
museums, etc.) in different places (not just art world hubs like NYC, and LA)
and as part of socially engaged projects that might take place at schools,
prisons, hospitals, the list goes on). If artists make it clear that they don’t
want to be limited to art world status conventions and hierarchies then the
system can change, but examples need to be made by people in power to correct
that situation.

Artists can also use their agency to dissolve or diminish
hierarchy through collaborating with people who have less art world status
(kids, non-artists, artists with little or no art world connections, etc.) and
can also alter audience hierarchy by privileging and creating access for local
audiences and people who are generally given less value by the art world
system.

Instructions

The use of instructions, prompts, scores, or assignments as
part of a participatory art project. In many cases the artist comes up with the
instructions and others (who should receive credit for their roles) respond by
producing whatever the instructions suggest. This can be used as part of “distance
projects” but you really have to be careful about who is on the other end
facilitating the instructions, because if they don’t know what they are doing
or deviate from the specific instructions without consultation with the artist
things can fall apart or turn into something undesirable.

Exhibitions

Typically, it is assumed that artists want to primarily show
their work as part of exhibitions, but in the case of socially engaged projects
exhibitions might not be the best platform for the work. Sometimes an
opportunity for an artist is tied to doing an exhibition even if that is not
the primary interest of the artist. In that case the exhibition can be seen as a
resource for the project that can also include non-exhibition work (workshops,
public art, performances, web, publications, etc.) that happen both inside and
outside of the exhibiting institution.

Public Art

Public art has typically been thought of as permanent
sculptures or mural type projects that are funded by government percent for art
programs or corporate entities. There are several alternatives that could also
be thought of as public art including non-sanctioned street art of various
kinds, temporary public art in the form of fliers, posters, performances, or
interventions, and site-specific participatory projects. Over the last couple
of decades there has been a slow but promising shift towards using percent for
art government funding to support less orthodox ideas of what public art can be
considered. Social Practice seems to be included in that development.

Collections

A big part of typical art world success is based on the
museum and private collections that an artist’s work has been acquired by. But
what if as an artist you don’t make objects that are easily bought and sold and
shipped? If your work is project based and possibly ephemeral or site-specific
it might not be able to be collected in typical manners and that reduces the
status (and funding) that an artist can receive. But there are examples of
artist’s works that have somehow made their way into art collections while not
being object based. Roman Ondak’s piece “Good Feelings in Good Times” which is
owned by the Tate Modern in London is a good example. The project is a set of
instructions detailing how a group of actors should be hired to stand in a
queue line in various locations attracting members of the public to line up
behind them until they disperse and reassemble somewhere else to repeat the
process. Apparently, the work operates in the collection in a similar way to a
painting—it was purchased, it is listed as belonging to the Tate, it can be
borrowed by other institutions, etc. So instruction based work is one approach
to use for entering into the arena of a museum collection (and you would think
the Tate would be very happy with it because of the lack of need for storage
when it is not in use) but there are other methods as well. Documentation and
artifacts from a socially engaged project can also be collected, and if a
curator is open to it a project could be designed by an artist specifically to
function as part of the museum’s collection. When artists who have different
kinds of practices are treated equitably by art world powers then it will be
more likely that artists will be able to choose the ways that they want to work
without systemic structural pressure and conditioning determining that for
them.

Status Quo

I have realized over the years that much of my work is based
on creating alternatives to various status quo situations that I run across in
society. You could say that “conceptual twists” use similar dynamics—taking
something that has a normal way of operating and then tweaking it into some
alternative form so that it breaks from our status quo understanding. This has
made me think that it is important to understand and recognize the status quo
in various situations so that you can then contemplate deviating from that to
create an interesting project. The status quo is not always bad and a twist on
the status quo is not always good, so just making an alternative is not
necessarily the right thing to do in every situation, but it usually useful to
understand the status quo of a given situation and to critically evaluate it
for yourself when working on socially engaged projects.

Project Producer

This is the idea that, like a movie producer or other kinds of producers who handle logistics for a director or team of people working on a film etc., there could also be producers for socially engaged art projects that are not the main artist or artists and not a participant of the project, but instead help to produce the project by handling budgets, scheduling, paperwork, brainstorming ideas, etc. It would be interesting if artists took this role for other artists. I have not run across any formalized version of that in the US, but have encountered something like that in Canada and parts of Europe for some public art projects, but in those cases the “producers” were not artists and instead were administrators or curators of one kind or another.

Intimate Projects

This involves making projects that the artist has a personal
connection to as a starting point for something that could then be made of
interest through participation and other involvements by a wider audience. One
of the current students in the PSU Art and Social Practice program, Xi Jie Ng
has created several projects that operate in this way, one was based on her
interest in her grandmother’s bunions, and another that she is working on now
is about the apartment complex where she lives. Xi Jie suggested this term as
one that should be added to this list after I described a project that I was
working on that had to do with my grandfather and his work as a farm manager at
a university in California.

Re-naming

An approach to making work that very literally just renames
existing things in the world. That could include existing buildings, streets,
geographic areas, monuments, everyday objects, systems, jobs, activities, etc.

Theory

I’ve always had a resistance to reading and giving
legitimacy to theory in its typically canonized forms. I always found comfort
in the supposedly Yogi Berra quote “In theory there is no difference between
theory and practice, in practice there is” finding in that assessment a very
true statement, from my experience and perspective, that makes it hard for me
to value totally abstracted theoretical ideas (in terms of art) that have no applied,
concrete elements to them. But it could be that my aversion to theory has also led
me towards an unnecessary bias that could be more nuanced and less polarized. I
have read and appreciated lots of theory that is related to direct experience
on topics including alternative education, farming, politics, ethics, etc. I
also realize, especially as I have been writing these term and topic
definitions, as well as earlier writing of various kinds, that I have been in
some ways creating a kind of theory, but one that is based on my thoughts,
conversations, and readings, coupled with applied experiences of producing
socially engaged art projects for over half of my life. It could be that like
many other examples of redefining for myself what I consider to be valid forms
of various things–education, art, history, etc. that I also just need to think
of theory differently, allowing it to be another resource that I can tap into,
in ways and at times that I find useful.

12.24.18

Each week in the PSU Art and Social Practice MFA program we have an hour of what we call “topical discussion.” During that hour we explore a topic related to art and social practice. Some of the topics are very basic like collaboration, or site-specificity, but there are also terms like “A Touch of Evil” which we heard about as a program when Pedro Reyes explained his understanding of how that idea works in art projects while we were visiting him in Mexico City a couple of years ago. Many of the ideas we discuss are not specific to socially engaged art, but we are looking at them from a socially engaged art perspective. Several of the concepts are ones that I have used in my own work but until recently hadn’t named what they were or how they could be used as strategies when developing a project. Some of these topics are ones I have been already written about in previous versions of these thoughts that are posted here and some of them I have yet to address but hope to at some point in the future in a more substantial way.

It has been interesting to see how these discussions, topics, and terms have been introduced into the ways students talk about work, sometimes seeming to offer explanations for previously difficult to explain decisions and actions. Seeing that happen has made me think that it might be important to make our findings more publicly available in case they might be useful to other people.

I have compiled an ever-growing list of topics and the students are all selecting a couple of them to try to construct descriptions for them. Some of the students asked me to write up my own brief explanations that might be useful for them to develop more fully, others thought that might limit their own approach to the topic (for those in the latter category read no further). At some point when the students have created enough topic descriptions we plan to post them on the PSU Art and Social Practice MFA website (which would hopefully grow over time) and to potentially also publish them in a book of some kind that might be ready to distribute during our 2019 Assembly conference.

Here are the current (though I’m sure I will add more later) set of terms (in no particular order) and my short, subjective descriptions:

Conceptual Twist

In comedy they call this “misdirection.” It’s the element in a project that in some ways breaks from expectation or logic. The whole project can be constructed as a conceptual twist or it can be added in somewhere.

Touch of Evil

I’m just going off of what I understood Pedro to mean by this, but my recollection of what he said is that it is an element in a project that could come across as challenging, negative, edgy, messed up, etc, but adds complexity. There is a critique of social practice that it is about trying to “do good” and in fact many socially engaged projects might have an intention of making some sort of positive impact on society, but if you can throw in a “touch of evil” then it makes the project more complicated and less easy to write off as only trying (most likely unsuccessfully) to do good.

Archiving  

This is the creation of an archive, or the augmentation of an existing archive, as the structure and content of an art project.

Enigma

As Emily Dickenson said, “tell the truth, but tell it slant” or something like that. Just because it is socially engaged art, doesn’t mean that the work can’t have mystery! It’s just a careful balance because too much enigma can make work inaccessible, but not enough can make it dull.

Adequacy

I got this term in relationship to art from the artist Charles Goldman. The way he explained it to me was the idea of making art that barely passes the threshold of being art. He liked that dynamic of just crossing the line, it is evident in a lot of his work. I’ve expanded that idea when I talk to my students to also include an artist’s whole practice. To consider what you need as opposed to what you might want. Do you need to have art world fame or just neighborhood fame? Do you need to do super elaborate and expensive projects or will more basic ones be satisfactory? It’s a question to pose for each thing that an artist engages in, and what’s interesting is that often the more modest a project or practice the more beautiful.

Replacement

Or in it’s more explanatory but cumbersome term “system segment replacement.” This is an idea I stumbled on while thinking about a possible project and then realized that it applied to a lot of my past work as well. The way it works is that you take an existing system (any one will do) and you leave the start and end points but take out and replace some part of the middle. In many cases that might mean creating a less efficient system from the point of view of time or costs, but the qualities that can be created are potentially much more interesting.

Augmentation

The process of adding onto something that already exists as a project. That could be an art related institution, event, publication or non-art organization or activity like a library, small business, a festival, etc. The idea is that you are taking something that functions normally and then are adding to that in someway that changes the existing something.

Claiming

This is the basic Duchamp readymade approach, except it can function not just through re-contextualizing non-art objects into art contexts, but can expand that strategy by suggesting that non-art objects, organizations, activities, etc can be artworks without physically putting them into an art context. Instead, through the use of framing devices, it is possible to achieve the perception that the claimed subject is an artwork. Those devices could include using a title, location, date, etc in a publication, website, lecture, or listing as part of a larger art exhibition.

Residency

More precisely this could be called the self-initiated residency model. For this approach the artist creates (generally with approval) an artist in residence position for their self (or others) at an organization that normally doesn’t have an artist in residence program or position. This could be at a school, a business, a library, a park, etc. Once the “residency” is established, (which can be formalized by being listed on the organizations website, through establishing a space for the residency within the organization, through physical signage, business cards, etc) then the artist can work within that context to develop work that is relevant to the people who exist in that place.

Conceptual Art

In this case what I’m talking about, and I wrote more extensively in a previous text about this, is the radical potential of conceptual art. By that I mean the use of conceptual art approaches, which require little or no material resources, in circumstances in which people have limitations that make it hard to create physical art works. The place I’m thinking of in particular is prison because I’m currently leading a conceptual art class at a local prison myself, but it could apply to almost any situation with any potential participants who might feel like material based art making is unappealing or inaccessible and who instead could find conceptual art strategies of interest and use.

Delegation

Or the “delegated model” where the artist conceives of an idea for a project and then asks a set of other artists (or non-artists) to create an aspect of the project, then when all of the pieces are put together into a single exhibition, event, publication etc, the small delegated parts become a larger whole. It is important in delegated projects, as with all social practice projects, to credit each participant for the role that they have played in the project. The primary artist is likely in this approach creating the structure that the other people are then filling in content into.

Platforms

The platform is the structure that the project takes place in or on, so that in the case of most object based art work, the platform is a gallery or museum or quasi-version of those things like an alternative space in a garage or a cafe, etc. In the case of social practice projects and other non-object based work the platform can be a school, a library, a food cart, a radio program, the web, clothes, a podcast, etc, etc.

Framing

This is in reference to an artist deciding the parameter for a project. In the conventional approach the object (painting, sculpture, photograph, etc) is the artwork that an artist makes and nothing else is art. But in a social practice project the artist can decide that the artwork includes the process as well as various tangential elements including publications, events, posters, documentation, etc. It also allows the artist to collaborate in various ways and to create co-authorship as part of a project.

Distance

The idea here is that the artist constructs a project that is to take place remotely from where the artist is living. This could be either done with a site visit to the location where the project is going to take place or potentially without ever going to that place. Instead, the project is produced by people in the location where the project is taking place through instructions that the artist has created for that place. The people on the ground in the project location can be thought of as collaborators and should be credited for their role in the project.

Context

The context is the place that a project is developed and produced in, which includes not just the physical elements of the place, but also its history, current and future dynamics, and emotional/psychological elements.

Audience

In regards to social practice projects I like to think in terms of three different audiences, the first are people who actually participate in a project directly and also experience it, the second are people who experience the project directly but didn’t participate in the development or construction of the project, and the tertiary audience are people who experience the project through documentation or any kind of mediation including photographs, video, written description, word of mouth, etc.

Consulting

The act of discussing, brainstorming and working on the concept of a project with another artist or an organization as an artwork in and of itself. This is related to something that Lee Walton has discussed, the idea of an “artist assist” being something that should be valued and credited in the way that an “assist” in basketball (and maybe some other sports?) give credit to an assist when one player helps another player to score points. It’s interesting that this kind of consulting is highly valued in other occupations, but in art there is no existing form for even acknowledging when an artist assists through consultation.

Pitching

This is what you do when you come up with a project idea and propose it to a person who has the ability to help facilitate the production of the project. This could be directed to a curator or other art professional, but it could also be a non-art person, someone who works for a city agency, a librarian, a business owner or non-profit director etc. The pitch should be simple and easy to do so that it doesn’t take up much time and energy before and agreement has been made. In most cases an email with a description of the project idea and the potential resources needed. Having some kind of “in” with the person is always helpful, but is not totally necessary. One extra related idea is that when it comes to traditional art venues, a social practice type project proposal can be to do work that takes place not in the galleries (which are less likely to be available) and instead in an unorthodox place like the lobby, cafe, bookstore, or outside but in proximity to the art institution.

Project work

Instead of working on an object the artist works on a project, which most likely would happen outside of a studio and could have multiple elements and not be designed to be purchased in the traditional sense of an object being bought and sold, but could instead be commissioned. In this way instead of the artist making objects and then hoping that they will be sold, the artist is commissioned in advance and then produces work to fill that commission.

Self-healing Projects

This idea is related to using the delegated model but could be done in other ways as well. The way it works is that when designing a project it is constructed in such a way so that if any one (or potentially more than one) part or participant doesn’t work out the rest of the project still happens and is not adversely impacted.

Multiple Points of Access

Having various entry points or interest areas within a project, so that some people might be engaged by one aspect of the project and other people might be engaged in another. This could also apply to how a project functions for a non-art audience in certain ways, but also has elements that might be interesting from an art world perspective as well.

Publications

Social practice people seem to really like publications. It makes sense for a few reasons, one of which is that since there are not always objects made for a social practice project publications can function as a tangible thing that can represent the project. Also depending on the way the publication is produced (newspaper printing is a good example) it can be done cheaply and in large number so that it can be given away for free. And again, because objects aren’t always primary in social practice projects documentation is important and publications can serve as one means of doing that.

Documentation

Because social practice projects don’t always involve objects that can be transported and re-presented and instead might be totally ephemeral or totally permanent and un-moveable, documentation is important for a tertiary audience to experience the work. This can happen in traditional forms like photographs, video, etc and can be shown on the web, in publications, and as part of lectures. But documentation can also be done is less orthodox ways like through re-creations, drawings, rumors, etc.

Design

Because social practice type projects often involve publications, posters, and other design related materials, it can be very useful to either develop good design skills or to cultivate good relationships and collaborations with designers.

Self-initiated Institutions

The creation, as an art project, of an “institution.” It could be ongoing or temporary, for instance a contemporary art museum in school, an artist residency in a prison, a small personal library inside of a college library, etc. Various formalizations can be employed to enhance the sense that the self-initiated institution is real like a website, signage, staff positions, etc.

Curation

The use of curatorial strategies as an artwork or art practice, so that the artist may function in some ways like a curator selecting and presenting work, but doing that while still seeing what they do as their work as an artist.

Local Audience Engagement

Constructing projects so that wherever they take place the local audience feels interested and invested in the project. This can be done at both art and non-art venues by exploring who lives, works, hangs out at or near the location that the project is being presented at and to then make work that those people can have a role in or is of interest to them.

Interdisciplinarity

The use of various disciplines, medias, and approaches as an artist in any project, as opposed to being an artist who only works in one medium.

Collaboration/Participation

Working on a project with more than one person and or designing a project so that other people can participate in it. There is a range of ways that people can collaborate on and participate in social practice projects. If we start with passive viewership as the least involved way that someone can engage in an art work, we then move on to simple interactions where the people involved are not significant as individuals, then into more involved types of participation where the participants are important as individuals, and eventually onto partial collaboration and ending with full collaboration in which the project is totally conceived of, developed, a produced by two or more people. Collaborations can be done with artists and non-artists as well.

Site-specificity

Making work that is responsive to the location that the work is being made in including the physical elements of the space, but also the broader contextual elements as well—the history, social dynamics, resources, etc. This could also be called “context-specific” or “circumstance-specific.”

Art Institutions

There are various advantages to working with arts organizations and some downsides. They know about and understand contemporary art and are open to the idea that artist will do unorthodox things and are supportive of that kind of activity. But doing socially engaged project work is sometimes hard to accommodate for organizations that are primarily used to putting on exhibitions. Additionally art organizations (especially smaller ones) tend to attract art audiences, which can be limiting.

Non-art Institutions

There are various advantages to working with non-arts organizations and some downsides. They have access to non-art audiences of various sorts depending on what kind of organization they are and where they are located, and they have resources that are sometimes more interesting than arts organizations have depending on the kind of work that they do. But non-arts organizations are not necessarily familiar with contemporary art and may not be supportive of the weird ideas that artist may want to do with them. They also might have pre-conceived concepts of the ways they think art might be useful to their organization, which may not be of interest to artists.

Humor

Making projects that have funny elements is one way of making them more accessible. Personally I like my humor pretty dry.

Crediting

Like films or plays or music recordings it is also important to credit the people involved with art project, it is also an opportunity to counter the status quo idea that artists need to work solo and in proprietary ways.

Existing Forms

Inhabiting existing forms can sometimes be more effective and efficient than trying to always create new ones. That’s partly why painters continue to use canvas and oil paint over and over again, but when it comes to project based work sometimes there is a sense that the form needs to be different for each project. I don’t think that’s necessarily true, project structures can be reused in different circumstances to create very new content. Also you can use a non-art forms like a cafe, library, making furniture or clothes, offering counseling or education, etc as your art project.

Re-creation

Replicating a preexisting project, event, exhibition, etc as an art project. The re-contextualization of the original project is what makes the new version of interest to do. Crediting the original project and producers of that project are important and if possible asking their approval to do the re-creation.

Revealing

Constructing a project that shows something that is normally hidden or not focused on, it could be a system, a history, a person’s activities, a place, etc.

Removing

Using the action of taking away something that exists somewhere, but in someway making the erasure evident as the art project.

 

 

It’s Time To Read Orwell Again

Nashville, TN

James Robertson PKWY N/S @ Nissan Stadium, Facing East

October – November 2018

I was invited to design a billboard for the For Freedoms project: www.forfreedoms.org

After hearing about Rudi Giulani’s comment that “truth isn’t truth” I couldn’t help but think about the book 1984 and the Orwellian concept of “Newspeak” where words can mean their opposites. I recall reading 1984 when I was in high school, I think in 1983 which made the book even more ominous. At that time things seemed bad with Regan but now we have entered a whole new almost fictional seeming time with Trump, so I looked up the cover copy of the 1984 that I had read and decided to use the design elements from it for my billboard in an attempt to get people to consider the possibility that we could be heading towards a totalitarian state and that now is the time to do something about it.

[See image gallery at www.harrellfletcher.com]

A New Path to the Waterfall

Contemporary Art Gallery

Lord Strathcona Elementary School

Vancouver, BC

2017 -2018

Over the course of the 2017-18 school year A New Path to the Waterfall was a collaborative art project that situated a CAG satellite gallery space within MaryAnn Persoon’s grade 6/7 class at Lord Strathcona Elementary School.

In 2015 the Contemporary Art Gallery invited me for a residency at their Burrard Marina Field House. Growing out of that period of research, I proposed a yearlong project in a classroom connected to issues and topics in the school curriculum. The project was conceived to open up new ways for the students to engage with art and the wider world while re-shaping the ways in which we consider contemporary art, gallery spaces and public schools.

Within A New Path to the Waterfall, MaryAnn Persoon’s grade 6/7 class engaged in five projects created and led by six Vancouver-based artists; Justine A. Chambers, Elisa Ferrari, Hannah Jickling, Carmen Papalia, Helen Reed and T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss. The students were encouraged to take creative risks and experiment with different ways of making to investigate local ecosystems and issues surrounding accessibility, inclusion, power structures, taste and consumption. Aspects of each project in A New Path to the Waterfall were presented to the public through exhibitions, interventions, performances and public programming at six week intervals on-site at the school and in the surrounding Strathcona neighborhood.

[See image gallery at www.harrellfletcher.com]

12.22.18

12.22.18

I want to digress a bit from Social Practice and go into a more general topic, or topics—letters of recommendation, and open calls.

I’m often asked to write letters of recommendation for students or past students for everything from small awards to PhD programs and I have grown to question their value. In fact several years ago we removed letters of recommendation from the set of requirements that we ask for in the application for the PSU MFA in Art and Social Practice program. Instead we just request a list of references and their contact information. The reason for this is multifaceted, in most cases from my experience of being on MFA selection committees the letters of recommendation are never read for many of the applicants who have been filtered out in a first round of evaluation based more on their work samples and their own statements, which are generally seen as more significant than letters of recommendation and college transcripts etc. As a result my sense is that there are a lot of people out there (like myself) having to write a lot of these letters that are not actually considered. What we do in our MFA program is once we have settled on a set of reasonable finalists we reach out through email to some of the references that have been listed to ask about particular questions that they might be able to give insights into. From my experience these short, targeted email exchanges are more helpful than generalized letters of recommendation, which are usually positive or they wouldn’t be writing them in the first place. So by eliminating the requirement for letters of recommendation we cut down on the workload for people asked to write the letters, and create a system that is more effective at determining the qualifications of the applicants.

A little side note on the recommendation system is that I also think it might be interesting in both the case of letters of recommendation (since regardless of my little critique they aren’t going away anytime soon) and references is to broaden out who we think of as qualified to provide those services. Instead of relying largely on academics and occasionally arts professionals like curators and public arts administrators, what if we also included a wider set of people who have come in contact with the person being recommended? They might have some useful thoughts in regards to their abilities that otherwise might not be considered. Obviously you would want to avoid people with extreme biases (although it’s not like teachers and curators who have worked closely with artists don’t have personal biases) like parents and friends, but maybe a neighbor or co-worker or fellow student would round things out a bit and make for a more complete perspective on the applicant. Something to think about or perhaps encourage (maybe we will suggest that in the Art and Social Practice MFA application).

The other related, systemically embedded, (but I think should be rethought) process, are open calls for artists. These happen in a myriad of ways for everything from group shows, to awards, public art, residencies, and of course graduate programs. In some cases they may be unavoidable, but can at least be mitigated in various ways. There are a variety of issues I have with the open call procedure. The big issue is that in each instance it creates a lot more losers than winners. Along the way to achieving that unfortunate situation the process of filling out the applications takes up huge amounts of time, energy, and money that could be going towards the actual work that the artists want to be doing as part of their practice. And even though open calls are thought to be “democratic” they are often times very exclusive to the people who are in the know and have the time, energy etc to put towards the application process.

So what should be done about this terrible situation? First of all for people who are currently administrating open calls or who are considering the creation of one stop and think if your objective is really best fulfilled by that particular approach? It might not be, and your program could be better served through using a thoughtfully designed curatorial selection or some other process that eliminates applications.

Again the things that should be avoided are creating extra, unpaid work for artists who already are often suffering from a lack of time and funds, producing more losers than winners (the experience of rejection weighs heavy on sensitive artist people and can create a feeling of defeat that might end up causing them to give up, so not only do they not get the thing they were applying for they are also made to feel like their work is not good and maybe shouldn’t be pursued), and inadvertently limiting the pool of people who are being considered for whatever is being offered.

If the open call is still going to be employed, the extra work and creation of more losers than winners issues can be addressed to some extent by simplifying the application process so that it is much easier to apply (requiring a lot less work and investment), or alternately by making it more complicated in a way that filters out applicants that are unlikely to be successful in the first place. Though we have eliminated reference letters in the PSU Art and Social Practice MFA application we have added the requirement of making three short videos that help us to determine if an applicant would be a good fit with the program, but that also discourages applications from people who are not willing to fulfill somewhat strange unorthodox requests, cutting down on the total number of applications, but increasing the percent that might be desirable for the program.

Additionally, open calls can be structured so that everyone who “applies” can be included in some way (possibly online) and then individuals (or collaborations) can be curated from that set for specific other functions. Years ago I co-created, with Miranda July and Yuri Ono, an online web based participatory project called Learning To Love You More which offered assignments that Miranda and I came up with and the opportunity for anyone to add their results which we called reports. Everyone who followed the instructions and submitted was included on the website, but then from that set (which eventually reached about 8000 participants) we selected certain people who got small grants and or were included in exhibitions that happened at museums and art centers around the world. Of course it was better to get funds or have your work shown in an institution, but those things were not the main point of LTLYM and so for the people who didn’t receive those extras it was unlikely that they felt like they were losers or had put in work that didn’t have a purpose in relationship to the broader project.

In regards to the problem of many open calls not actually being inclusive there are a couple of things that can be done to improve that condition. One approach, which also helps with the workload and loser dynamics, is to use a nomination system, which additionally attempts to spread out the potential for finding people that might normally be left out. I was once asked to be a nominator for a large financial award and exhibition at a museum in NYC. The administrators created a thoughtful selection system–they asked ten artists in different parts of the country (many of which were not art hubs) to each nominate five artists from their region who they thought would benefit from the award. From that set of fifty artists a selection committee picked five artists to receive the award. It still left forty-five people feeling like they had not been given awards (which was bad, but if the award had not been nomination based and were based on an open call instead there could have been hundreds or thousands of people in that position). The artists who were not selected were still all listed (in the catalog, online, and at the exhibition) which was a partial benefit because it was treated as an honor and not as a loss. But the more important feature was that it allowed for a much more diverse set of artists to be placed under consideration. One of the people who I nominated was untrained and had previously had very little experience with the art world, but was still given an award based on the strength of his work.

In general I think it is important for people in positions of power in relationship to the arts community to be thoughtful about what they may be structurally asking artists to do and how that might be impacting them systemically. Status quo approaches are not always the best ones, but they get replicated again and again even when they might be causing more harm than good. Being creative about the structure of a selection process is just as important as being creative when making artworks (it could even be thought of as an artwork under certain conditions).

One other slightly connected side note (that probably should be in a separate writing, but I likely won’t get around to it, so am just going to stick it in here) related to open calls is the way that they often exclude collaboration. Many awards etc are set up specifically to only consider individual artists and that structurally discourages collaboration through offering fewer resources to artists who collaborate, by institutionally devaluing co-authored work, and through causing friction in interpersonal dynamics when one collaborating artist gets an award and another doesn’t while using work that was produced together. I have personally addressed the collaboration exclusion situation with administrators in the case of at least three major grants and awards locally and nationally. Though I was met with resistance in each case, over time two of the organizations have made changes to their policies that are more open to collaboration, my hope is that eventually that will no longer be an issue going forward and that collaboration will be given the support and respect that it deserves.