CONN.CTlVE AESTHETICS, AIllT ",'TEIll INOIYtDlI"'lISI'I } Sill.

G.ifi4

hIve been intern.lind by our whole culture and made to pervade every experience. It is nOt hud to sec how the inl1ituliorn and praClices of the aft world have been 'nodded on the same configurations of power ana profit that support '1a maintain our dominant worldview. This -business as usual" psychology of affluence is now threatening the ecosystem in which we live with its dysfunctional values and way of life; it is a single system manipulating the individual into the spiritually empty relationship of the producer to the product. Many people arc aware that the .ystem isn't working, that it is time to move on and 10 revise the destructive myths that guide us, Our entire cultural philosophy and its narrowness of concern are under intense scrutiny. Among artists, there is a greater critical awareness of the social role of and a rejection of modernism's bogus ideology of nClllrality. Many artists now refuse the notion of a completely narcissistic exhibition practice as the desirable goal for art, For inua'nce, performance aTlist Guillenno G6mezPena nates: "Most of the ...ork I'm doing currently comes, I think, from thc realiution that we're living in a state of emergency. , .. I feel that -. morc than ever we must step ouaide the strictly art arena; It i. not enoucii to make art. MIn a similar vein, arlS administrator Linda Frye Burnhamna claimed that gallery art has lost ill resonance for her, especially gallery art by what she terms "white yuppies. - -There is too much going on outside,

As a critic in the nineties, I am not really interested in writing catalog essayl or art reviews. what I am concerned with is understanding the nature of our cultural myths and how they evolve-Ihe institutional framework we take for granted but which nevertheless determines our lives. One question that has preoscupied me, for inStance, is what it means to be a Msuccenful" artist working in the world today, and whether the image that comes to mind il one we can suppOrt and believe in. Certainly it seems al if that image is undergoing a'radical re-visioning atlhis lime. The dominant modes of thinking in our society have conditioned us to characterize art primarily as specialized objects, created not for moral or practical or.social reasons, but rather to be contemplated and enjoyed,! Within the mo"ern era, art was dcfined by its autonomy and sclf-suffi- ciency, and by its isolation from the ren of society. Exposing the radical autonomy of aesthelics 11 lomtthing thu is not "neutral" but is an active participant in ca iulist ideolo has been a rimar accomplishment of t e aggressive ground-clearing work of deconltruction. Autonomy, we now see, has condemned art to social impotence by turning it into just another clan of objecu for marketin and conIum tion. anlc production and consumption, competitive self-asscrtion, and the maximizing of profiu are all crucial to our society's notion of luccess. These nme assumptions,leading to maximum energy now and mindless waste at the upense of poorer countries and of the environment, have also become the formula for global destruction. Art iuelf is not some ancillary phenomenon but is heavily impl,icated in this ideology. In the art world, we are all aware of the extent to which a power-oriented, bureaucratic professionalism has promoted a one-sided, consumeristic attitude toward art. InSiitutional models based on of product development and career achievement echo the stereotypic patriarchal ideals and values that
J;,

............ ....

she says. "Rcallife is calling. I call no longer ignore the clamor of diuster-economic, spiritual, environmcntal, political disaster-in the ....orld in which I move.- Perceptions such as lhese are a direct challenge to the artist's normative .ense of his or her role in the world: at stake is one's personal identity in relation to a particular view of life that our culture has made available to That the art world's values, structures, and behaviors arc in great ferment has been evident for some time, and the deconstructions of the eighties continue to reverberate profoundly. A climax in these upheavals was reached for many with the controversial 1993 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art-the first multicultural and political Biennialwhich dcmonstrated that the art world isundergoing a dismantling of ill professional elitism and that its closed, scM-referential ranks arc under

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!uiC.blj!t.

eOHHlellVI UITHIT,CI, AU AOlU ,..

heavy siege. Much of the new art focuses on social creativity rather than on self-expression and contradicts the myth of the isolated genius private... subjective, behind dosed doors in the studio, separate from others and the world. As I shall argue in this !Sa creativit in the modern wor gone an In an with individualism and has been viewed strictly as an indiviCluaJ phenomenon. 1 believe Ihi. conception of art i. one of the things Il1"at are now changing. As the work of arlisu who are disculSed in this book makes clear, there is a distinci .hift in the locus of creativity from the autonomous, selfcontained individual to a new kind of dialogical structure that frequently is not the product of a single individual but i. the result of a collaborative and interdependent procen. As anists step out of the old framework and reconsider what it means to be an artist, they arc reconstructing the relationship between individual and community, between art work and public. Looking at art in terms of social purpose rather than visual style, and setting a high priority on to what is Other, causes many of our cherished notions to break down: the vision of brisk sales, well-patronized galleries, good reviews, and a large, admiring audience. A. Richard Shus, terman write. in PrlfgmlftiJt Atsthetia. "The fact that our entrenched institutions of an have long been elitist and oppressive does not mean that they must remain such.... There is no compelling reason to accept the narrowly aesthetic limits imposed by the established ideology of autonomous art. In February 1994, I had occasion to tape a conversation with the an dealer Leo Castelli. in which he commented about the Whitney show: "It was a sca change, not just any change. Because I had to accept the fact that the wonderful days of the era that I participated in, and in which I had played a subllantial role, were over. In HIfJ ModeT1liJm Flfi/ed? I wrote, "Generally speaking, the dynamics of professionaliution do nOt dispose artists to accept their moral role; professionals arc conditioned 10 avoid thinking about problems that do not bear directly on their work." Since writing this a decade ago, it seems as if the picture has changed. The polilics of reconcepNalilltion has belun, and the search for a ""' aceRda for art hn become. coftKious RITCh.

.In considering the implications of this "sea change," one thing il be able to see current aeSlhetic ideology as actively contributing .to.. the molt seriou. problems of our time means breaking the cultural trance and requires a change of heart. The whole framework of modcrnist ae.thetic, was tied to the objectifying consciousness of the .cientific worldview; like scientists, artists in our culture have been conditioned not to worry about the applicationl or consequence. or moral purpose of their activity. It is enough to generate results. But just as the shortcomings of "objective scicnce are becoming apparent, we are also bcginning to perceive how the reductive and neutralizing aspect. of aesthetics and "art for art's sake" have significantly removed art from any living .ocial context or monl imperative except that of academic art hinory and the gallery sy.tern. We are beginning to perceive how, by disavowing art's communal dimension. the romantic myth of autonomous individualism has crippled art's effectiveness and influence in the social world. The quest for freedom and autonomy has been nowhere marized for me than in these comments: by the painter published in the catalog of hil exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in 198]:
The /lrtiu if not wpomible to /llIyanr. His focilll roft is /lJociII1; his only wpon-_.

1&!iI1ue1itI

Jibiil'l)' comists in 1I11lfltitNdr to tht work ht dOrJ. Thtrr if no rommNllic,dion

with Any pNhlic whA(Jotvrr. Tht Arl;ll clln 11111 /10 qNtJfioll, A/Ill hr milk" 110 JIAtrJllelll; hr offrrlllo jnformilliotl. lind hif wor" ClfnnOI br Nltd. II if Iht rlld prodNct which CONIIU, in my Clflt, Ihr picturt.

More than I decade old, these commentl by now may sound hopeleuly out of date. but in a more recent interview in Art NewJ, it was dear that the artist had in no way altered his views. The idea of changing or improving the world is alien to me and seemsludicroul, Basclitz said. Society functions, and always has, without the artist. No artist has ever changed anything for better or wone. Hidden Inhind the.e commen" i. the penonal and cultural mylh th.c hu formed Ihe artial'S idencity in the

modem _

.... ..

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_ ......
Plaubm wnItt' ar the tJ.Fnni"l 01 the modem .,... -tJw one can "Ply hMr
;1 by avoidi", it. And that an be done byli.lnl in tho world of art. POt

]e..n.Paul S.nte, Ihe exillcnli,1 truth of thCl hum.n .iNltion wu ill can tingeRer, mIn', .en.e that he doc. not belong-i. not ncteJury-lo the

" ChriMo'. M:fUIII of Ir'MISom" dw unw..verin.. rnonl impative dlat continua to be brand..hed pollde..l1y at welt ..a ph.ilosophieally in all the modern traditions of Weatern thought. It reverberated loudly in the intense conuoverty thai raSed for Ieveral yeus o\ler the proposed removal of Ric:hud Serra's comminioned sculpture Tilted Arc from itl 'ite at Pedenl Piau in downtown Manhattan. Although conceived specifically for the site, the seventy-three-ton leaning CUrte of welded lICel, which Wat installed in 1981 by the lilovernmem'l Art in Architecture Program, pro\led 10 unpopular and obstructive to local office workers that they petitioned to have it removed. As one employee of the U.S, Department of Education scated at tbe time: "It has dampened our spirill every day. It hu turned into a hulk of rusty Iteeland dearly, at )eut to UI, it doesn't have any appeal. It might have artistic value but just not here, .. and for those of u. at Ihe piau I would like 10 say. pleue do u. a favor lnd cake it away, Serra', response, 'wash in the .pirit of Was 10 .ue the government for thirty million dollar. bee,u.e it had "deliberately induced public hostility toward his work and tried to have it forcibly removed. To remove the work, according to Sern, was to dellroy it. Serra sued for breach of contract and violation of his constitutional righu: ten million dollars for his los. of nle. andcommiuion, ten million for harm to his artistic reputation, ,nd ten million in punitive damages for violation of hi. righll. In July 1987, the Pederal.Dinrict Court ruled again$! Serra, and in March 1989, the sculpture was removed from the site. What the Tilud Arc controversy fortes us to consider is whether art that il centered on notions of pure freedom and radical autonomy, and subsequently insened into the public sphere without regard for the relationlhip it has to olher people, to the community, or an, consideration eJlcepc the pursuit of art, can contribute to the common good. Merely to pose the question, however, indicate. that what hu most distinguished aesthetic philosophy in che modern paradigm i, a desire for art thlt i. ab.olutely free of the preten.ions of doing the world any good. don't know what public itt ii, rcally, the sculpcor Chris Burden once said. "1 . -.
JUII

universe. Since life wu arbitnry and meaninglclI, Satire advised thai we must allicarn to Jive without hope. and Ihe English writer Cyril Connolly summed up. whole cultural elho. of alienation wilh Ihne now legendary

commenl!: "It i, clo'ing time in the garden. of the West. Prom now on an artist will be judged only by the reJonance of hiolitude and the quality of hi. despair." Wriling about ,hi. form distrust, this VOte of "no confidence" in the universe. Colin Wilson in An lntroduction to the NnJ.J Ex;,untiAlism refers to the paradigm of alienacion,u the "fulility hypothesis" of life-che nothingneu, estrangement, and alienation thst have formed a considerable part of Ihe image we have of ourselve. My friend Patricia Catto, who teaches at the Kan.,u City Art In.titute, now refers to this particular mind-.et as "bad modernism," tn a course she gives on reframing che lelf, her nudents are about the danger of believing that humans (whether they are artim or not) are somehow ouuide of, or exempc from, a respon.ibility to .ociety, or to Ihe environment. We have been taught to experience the .elf at private, .ubjective., .eparace, from others and the world. This nolion of individualism hat so compJecely ltNctured artistic identity and colored our view of art that even for an artin like Christo, whose public projecl' such II Running Fenet snd the more recenc Umbrelttu require the participation and cooperation of chousands of people, inner con.ciousnen is 1Ii11 dominated by the feeling of being independenc,.olitary, and 'eparate. tn an interview in FLuh Art,

.........-d1

The work of'ft i, irr.tiollAl"."d perh.pl ir:re!pon,ible. Nobody nteds i,. The _Tk il. huge individu.liflk ,tlluTt th.t k:inrirely dedrieri b, me.. " One ofthe greolttll contributions ofmoriern .rt i. the notio" 01inrii",iJullli,m. .. I thi"k the .rti.t e.n do .nything he w.ntl to do. Tbi, i, why I U!"ufd never IIrxtplll commiuiorr. Irrdepe"ric"et i, molt import."t to mc. The work 0l.rt il " l(Team offreeriom.

make arl. Public arc il something else, I'm not sure it'. art, I think it's

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A"''''TleI, An An . .

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about a social agenda. Just at di.interested and -val.ue-free- science contains no inner rettnint within iu methodology that would limit what it feel, entitled to do, value-free- aesthetici.m reveal, nothing about the, limiu an should respect, or the community it might serve. Modernittaestheucl, concerned with itself as the chief source of value, did not in.pire creative participation; TIlher, it encouraged distancing and depreciation of the Other. hs noorelational, noninteractive, . nonparticipatory orientation did not easily ICcommodate the mort feminine value. of ca,..asld compu.ion, of .eeing and to need. The notion of power th.t is implied by assening one's individuality and having one's way through being invulnerable leads, finally, to a deadening of empathy. The model of the ani.t'll a lone genius struggling against society docs not allow us to focus on the bendicialand healing role of social interaction, nor does it lend it.elf to philosopher D.vid Mich.el Levin c.lls enlightened listening," listening that is orienled toward the, achievement of shared understandings. As Levin writes in The U,tening

,.

of

bring. me directly to the que.tion of whether art can

build community. Are there viable alternative. to viewing the .elf in an individuali.tlc manner1 And if so, how does this a((ect our notion of .uccess-l Can arti.ts and art institutlon.'redefine themselve. in less 'pectatorially oriented way. in order to reg.in the experience of interconnectedneu-of .ubject and object interrwining-that was in dualistic philosophic., construeg.the world at a spectacle to be observed from afar by a disembodied eye1 . When California artist Jonathan'Borofsky and his collaborator, Gary Glassman, tflveled in 1985-86 to three different prisons in California in order to make their video
PrisOfltN,

they did not go in the

mode of network reporten intending to observe It a distance Ind then de.cribe the condition. they found. Instead they went to listen to the prisonen in order to try Ind undentand their plight. They wanted to understand for themselve. what it mean; to be a pri.oner in thb fodety. to lose your freedom and live your life locked up in a cement box. Borofsky and Glauman invited pri.oners to talk about their live. and about what had gone wrong for them. In the video .ome of the prisoners .hare poems they have wrinen or show. artwork. they have made. Conversing with the video makers. they describe the oppressiveness of life inside. prison t where everything i. programmed and people never get to talk spontaneously about themselv" bec.use no one is interuted. The knowledge that one is being heard, according to Glassman, trcates a sense of empowerment. In SUl.lnne Lacy'. Th, CrystAl Quilt, performed in Minneapolis on Mother'a Day in 1987, a procession of 4io older women. all dressed in black, sat down together at table. in groups of four, to di.euss with each other their ICcomplishmentsand di.appointments, their hopes and fears about aging, in a ceremonially orchenflted artwork. A prerecorded sound track of the voice. of .eventy-two women at the t.ble. projected their renections loud e,!ough to be heard by the audience. We're no longer litting home in the rocking cbair and knitting, like you think of grandmas in the old day. We grandmas aren't doing that Inymore, comments one of the women on the audiotape. '"I think 'a lot of .enility come. from the

Self, We need to think about 'prlcticCl of the self' that Nnde1'$fo.nd the
essential intertWining of self and other, self and society, that are .ware of the subtle eomplexitiu of this intertWining. Certainly the sense of being isolated from the world and alone with one's creations is a common experience for Irtisu in our culture. the relult of modernism's historic failure to connect with the archetypal Other. As Nancy Pruer puu it in her book Unruly Pr.crices: '"The monologic view is the Romantic individualist view in which ... solitary voice [il] crying out into the night againlt an utterly undifferentiated background.... There is no room for a reply that could qualify as a different voice. There i. no room for interaction. The artist considers hi. isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almoSt holy. States film director Ingmar Bergman. -Thus we finally gather together in one large pen, where we nand and bleat about our lonelinus without listening to each other Ind without realizing that we are .mothering each other to death." Art cannot be a monologue,- the French writer Alben Camu. once wrote. Contrary to the current presumption. if there is anY''P,ln who has no right to solitude, it is the anisl."

..

"0....." .....

u, .",_ ,....,.. ,..........

fact that nobody uks you

Slates another.

uks you to

speak. Pretty soon, you lose your memory. I suffer a lot from people not listening 10 Empathic liSlening makes room for the Other and decentnli:.r.es the ego-self. Giving each penon a voice is what builds community and makes art socially responsive. Interaction becomes the medium of expression, an empathic way of seeing through another's eyes. NUke a subjective anthropologist, _ writes Lacy, M[the artin enters] the territory of the other, and ... bC(:omes a conduit for {their] experience. The work becomes a metaphor for relationship-which hu a healing power." When there is no quick fix for some of our most pressing social problems, according to Lacy, there may be only our ability to witness and feel the reality taking place around us. -This feelingnest is a service that artists offer to the world," she says. Mter Mierle Laderman Ukeles became the unsalaried, self-appointed artist-in-residence at the New York City Sanitation Department in 1978, she went on rounds with sanitation workers and foremen from fifty-nine municipal districts, talking widi them and getting to know them. Her first pitee of art wu a performance work called TOllch Sliniflltion, which went on for cleven months. During that time s.he visited the five boroughs of New York and shook hands with 8,500 workers. was an eight-hour-day performance she states. "I'd come in at roll call, then walk their routes with them.... I did a ritual in which 1 faced each person and shook their hand; and I said, 'Thank you for keeping New York City alive.' The real artwork is the handshake iuelf. When I shake hands with a sanitation man ... I present this idea and performance to them, and then, in how they respond, they finish the art." TOllch $lInitlltion wu Ukcles's first attempt
10

can only come into its own through as open converution, in which one listens to and includes other voices. For many artists now, this mnnslening previously excluded groups .peak directly of their own experience. The audience becomes an active component of the work and is part of the process. This listening orientation challenges the dominalll ocu[arcentric tradition, which.suggests that art i. an experience available primarily to the eye, and represents a rnl shift in paradigms. As David Michael Levin states in Modtrnity lind of Vision, may be the time, the appropriate historical moment, to encourage and promote a shift in paradigms, a cultural drift that, to some eXlent, seems already to be taking place. I am refernng, of course, 10 the drift from seeing 10 listening, and to the historical potential for a paradigm shift displacing vision and installing the very different influence of listening." New models pUt forward by quantum physics, ecology, and systems theory that define the world in terms of interacling processes and reladonal fields call for integrative modes of thinking that focus on the relational nature of reality rather than on discrete objects. Lacy states, "Focusing on aspects of interaction and relationship rather than on art objects calls for a radical rnrrangement in our expectations of what an IItist docs. It calls for a different approach to making art and requires a different SCi of skills. To transcend the modernist, vision-centered paradigm and its specutorial epistemology, we need a reframing process that makes sense of this more interactive, intersubjective practice which is emerging. We cannot judge the new art by the old standll.rds. "Informed by an interactive and receptive normativity, listening generates a very different cp;lttmt and ontology-a very different metaphysics," write. Levin. Modernism's confrontational orientalion resulted from deep habits of thinking that set in opposition society and the individual as two contrary and antagonistic tategories, neilher of which could expand or develop except at the expense of the other. The free and self-sufficient individual has long been the ideal of our culture, and artist. especially have Seen themselves as quintessential free agenu, pursuing their own ends. But if modernism, and the art that emerged with it, developed around the notion of a unique and separate self, the art generated by what I have called

communicate as an artist with the workers, to overcome barriers and way to understanding-to bring awareness and caring into her

open

actions by limning. Art that is rooled in a "listening- self, that cullivales the intertwining of self and Other, suggestS a flow-Ihrough experience which is not delimited by the self but ektends into the community through modes of reciprocal empathy. Because this art isliuener-centcrcd rather than visionoriented, it cannot be fully realized through the mode of self-expression; it

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SlIli G.bliJr

eO ..... CflV. MU""llCl, H1

"connective aesthetics 6 is very different. As I have argued in The Reenchrllltment of Arl, radical relatedness has dramatic implications for our understanding of art and conlTibutes to a new consciousness of how the self is to be defined and experienced. For one thing, the boundary between self and Other i, nuid ralher than fixed: the Othtr i. included wilhin Ihe boundary of selfhood. We are talking about a more intersubjeClive version of the self that is attuned to the ecological, and inter.lctive character of reality, "Myself now includes the rainforest,6 writes Australian deep ecologist John Seed, "It includes clean air and water." The mode of dillanced, objective knowing, removed from moral or social responsibility, hn been the animating motif of both science and art in the modern world. Objectivity slTips away emotion, wanu only the facu, and is detached from feeling, Objectivity serves as a distancing device, presuming a world that stands before us to be .een,surveyed, and manipulated, How, then, can we shift our usual way of thinking about art so that it becomes more compassionate? How do we achieve the "world view of attachment"-atlachment to and continuity with the world-that archetypal psychologist Jame. Hillman talks about1 To see our intcrdependence and interconnectedness is the feminine perspective thal has been mining not only in our scientific thinking and policy making but in our aesthetic philosophy as well. Care and compusion do not belong to the (a1se "objectivism" of the disinterested gazei care and compassion are the tools of the soul, but they are often ridiculed by our society, which has been weak in the empathic mode. Gary Zukav puts it well in The Sedt of the SaKI, when he .tates that there i. no place for spirituality, or the concerns of the heart, within science,'politics, business, or academia. ZuklV doesn't mention an, but until recently there hu bun no particular receptivity there either, Not long ago, I had occasion to share a lecture podium with the critic HiltOn Kramer, who proclaimed, with the force of a typhoon, that art i. at its ben when it serves only itself and not some other purpose, Things that in his opinion have no relation to art are now being accepted and legitimized as art when, according to Kramer, art is incapable of solving any problems but aesthetic ones. I would aTKue that much of the work

included in this book contradicts, absolutely, these comments. However, there is no denying that the art world subtly disapproves of artists who choose interaction as their medium, rather than the disembodied eye, Just IS crealivity in the Western world has been based on an understanding of the self as autonomous and .eparatt, the hegemony of the eye is very Itrong in our cullure. We arc ob.essed with the gaze. At this point, 10 challenge the vision-centered paradigm by.undermining the presumed spectatorial distance of the audience, or by empowering others and making them aware of their own creuivity, is to ris.k the complaint that one is producing not an but social work. Personally, I have never heard of a .ocial worker who wu interested in shaking hands with 8,SOO sanitation workers, or who tried to orchestrate a public conversation among four hundred older women about aging. Social workers proceed quite differently from artists in what they do. To all these objections, I can only say that comparing models of Ihe self based on isolation and on connectedness has given me a different sense of an than I had before and has changed my ideas about what is important, My conclusion is Ihat our culture's romance with individualism is no longer adequate, My own work and thinking have led me 10 a fieldlike conception of the self that includes more of the environment-a selfhood Ihat releases us into a .ense of our radical relatedness. It stems that in many spheres we have finally come up against the limits of a worldview based only on individualism, In the field of psychotherapy, to give jUst one example, James Hillman, in his book We've H.d II Hundred Yellrs of Psychotherdpy-And the World's Getting Worse, casligatCi therapy for encouraging us to disengage from the wor!d. He maintains that therapy increases our preoccupation with individual fulfillment and personal growth at the expense of any concern forcommunily or the communal good. Many hackles have been raised in the therapeutic community by Hillman'sassertion that therapy has become a seU-improvement philosophy which turns us inward, a....ay from the world and its problems, Psychotherapy is only working on the -inside 6 soul, according to Hillman, while outside, the buildings, the schools, the streets, are lick-the sickness is out there. The patienl in need of healing is the world.

G"blilt

"o..... ""v " ... ",'" .....". '''D'V'D'''''t.

active and ecological models emerging in our culture. I we will lee over Ihe ncxt few decades more art that is enentially locial and purposeful, and that rejects the modernist myths of autonomy and neutrality. This book bean witness to the increasing number of anists who are rejecting Ihe product orientation of consumer culture and finding ever more compelling ways of weaving environmental and social responsibility directly into their work. In this complex and worthy endeavor, I sincerely wish them well.

Conneclive aesthetic. 'lrikel at the root of this alienation by dissolving the mechanical division between telf and world that has prevailed during the modern epoch. World healing begins with the individual who welcomes the Othcr. In Ukeles'. work, for insunce, empathy and healing are Ihe parameters, the test of whether the work is, in fact, being carried out paradigm:uically. The open hand, extended to each worker, evokes qualities of generosity and care. We neea to cultivate the compassionale, relalional self as thoroughly as we have cuhivatea, in long years of abstract thinking, Ihe mind geared to scientific and aesthetic neutrality. As more people acknowledge the need for new philosophical framework, we are learning to go beyond our culture of separation-the gender, class, and racial hierarchies of an elite Weltern tradilion that has evolved through a process of exclusion and negation. With its focus on radical individualism and its mandate of keeping art separate from life, modern aesthetics circumscribed the role of the audience to that of a detached spectator-observer. Such art can never build community. For this we interactive and dialogical practices that draw others into the process and challenge the notion, in the words of Gary Snyder, that some people are 'ulenled' and they become Itlists and live in San Francisco working in open and ballet and the ren of us should be satisfied with watching televi.ion. Connective aesthetic. sees that human nature is deeply embedded in Ihe world. It makes art into a model for connectedness and healing by opening up being to its full dimensionality-not just the Social cOntext becomes a continuum for interaclion, for a process of relating and weaving together, cruting a flow in which there is no speclatorial distance, no antagonistic imperative, but rather the reciprocity we find at play in an ecosy.tem. Wilhin a linener-centered paradigm, the old specializations of atlist and audience, creative and uncreative, professional and unprofeuional-disti!tCtlons between who is and who is not an artist-begin to blur. To follow this pach, I would argue, is more than just a maner of personal lute; it represents the opening of an experimental space in which 10 institute and practice a new itt that is more in tune with Ihe many inter-

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world and whowe are, between who we are and what we do. The artist
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To search for the good and make it matter: this is the real challenge for the artist. Not simply to lransform ideas or revelations into matter, but to

make those revelations actually matter. This quesl is measured as much in

the truths we IIIcmpt to cnncsh as in the clay we might aesthetically de-

work. not only inspire the viewer but give evidence of the artist's own struggle 10 achieve higher recognition of what it means to be truly human. The works arc.testamentS to the artis!'s effon to convert a particular vision of truth into his or her own marrow.

As I meditated on the theme of th,is book, I found myself thinking about territories. both public and private..:.:aboul politicalll1rf and definilive lines, those that exclude and those that include. 1 began to reflect on the tarth and all the redrawn borders that we who are involved in public art must bring to the map if there are to be positive new directions for the world's cultures. I found n'yself contemplating, as any anist might, the corresponding territory-the terrain of the soul, that sacred space within the self that must be acknowledged and tended, that dream space where Eden and womb are ritualistically related, where conception is possible, where we can receive in order to give again. The dream space of the soul is the real terrain that we should map. If not, then nothing else that we are fighting for or against has any possibility of transformatiol): not the militarism that we resist, not the oppression we deplore, not the toxic waste dumping on the land of the poor, not the racism or the sexism that we expose. None of these concerns can be taken on unless they are examined, acknowledged, and confronted within the inner territory of the seU, the earth that, in fact, we are. The soul is the seedbed of our actions. Everything that we conceptualize, crute, or deuroy has its In:ginnings there. What we see cultivated and thriving in the outer terrain is a of our inner creative or destructive impulses. There is connected'ness between what we sce in the

..

tends the private garden of the soul and gives evidence of this process publicly through the art that, in turn, inspires others to tend their own gardens. The often-asked question as to liow one moves from being anist to activist I find interesting, because I do nOt make the separation in my own mind. For me, the twO roles exist as a single entity: the artist if the activiSt. Indeed, within the African tradition, the anist's work has a function jun like everything ehe in the world. As the mask is for feuivals, and the ground-drawing for marking a ucred space, and the dance for healing and drawing energies to oneself, so, too, the ritu'!s that' we perform and the monuments that we make have a function: the transformalion of self and community, which is the extended self. Art is a necessity, II the poct Audre Lorde says, not a luxury. The assumption that art could be something separate from the life that sustains us, that art is indeed a luxury, is as false a theory as the notion that the OUter terrain can undergo transformation without affecting the soul. And yet, many believe that the places outside, in the world, are the true sites of change. Notions of separation and otherness are ingrained in Western thought, and it is this very way of thinking that has wreaked havoc on the cultures of the world. While no .ingle culture has a copyright on truth, perhaps embn.cing an African view of the intrinsic connectedness of all things would help us to recan the mother from whom we have'all come. And in remembering her, perhaps we can begin more profoundly to ounelves. This charge of remembering the mother is important because without it our cultural and crosscuhuralamnesia is never lifted; our common humanity is never fully acknowledged. We never know who we are, and having no true identity, we end up like a person who suffera amnesia, fearing every face that is not the exact replication of our own. And sometimes in our desperation, we even fear our own face. We never develop a sense of continuity or wholeness among people. The cultures Ihat remember this connectedness are recalling the crucial element thai has been part of our survival since our beginning. The artists who remember our'common humanity and instigate recognition of OUf true nature are those like Anna Halprin, who would have people Iivin. with AIDS Ind thON' who ar. nor afl1icll cin:lc die
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urlh in a dance in an attempt to break down the barriers of fear. They are those like Suzanne Lacy, who would produce a'cry.tal quilt of women' whose choreographed laying on of hands helped change the patterns of their Ijvu and make visible the bonding and power among them. They are Ihose like Mel Chin, who would move us into the mystery of metaphor by working with .cientists to develop hybrid plantl that ablorb poisons from the earth into leaves which can be plucked from our children's surroundings. They are those like the husband and wife team Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison, who have collaborated for over twenty years, and Mierle Ukeles, artist-in-residence of the New York City Sanitation Department, and Sheila Levrant de Breueville, and Peter Jemison, and many more who recognil.e the illusion of the miracle of tion, and the beauty of making truth mauer. None of this is to suggest that the aesthetic quality of any work need ever be sacrificed. 1 say this knowing that it is a critical issue of public art proiectl involving community participants who Ife not necessarily artim. Somehow, it is feared, the partieipanll' aesthetics will bring down the quality of the work. But since the aen.hetic is determined by the artist, perhaps this is not the ultimate fear of thoie 'who are leery of the new, more collaboradve public art. Perhaps the greater fear is that elitism will be destroyed, that the function of art will once again be recognized, that frecdom of exprcssion will carry the impulse and stark beauty of our first breath, and that our own relevance as human beings will come to be seen in the meaning of our acts. If this is what is.o furful, then we must continue to make such art and 10 redefine the way. in which the making is itself a celebrated process. In deciphering the mystery of this process, the blues form, or formula, from African American culture can provide insight. As ethno-musicologists tell us, the blues has three lines: the first line is the call, Ihe second is the response, the third is the release. The second line might be the same as the first but with some slight variation, and the last is adeparture. The last line rhymes with the first and, essentially, set. you free. The whole notion is transcendence, as exemplified in this stanza I composed for illumation:

WtderWII"'1oUllin't,oblu"c '.t ." I '"1, WilIer WilIer 10U IIin't so blUt I done ch,de,d for m1s,lflind ther,', .. ,lty in 'ON.

'. Thil form--call,. answer, and a metaphor for art iuelf and the potenlia! that it hold. ca.lI is iry,cited by the experiences we havt wit/1 the world, by the condition. and predicament. within our terrain thai arouse our interest or eon.ciou.ness. Next comes the response, the artist's attempt to name, recognize, and instigate change through his or her creative .expression. But the artist's crealion is not the,end of the prt,lcess, as it.is often thought to be. The process continues u member. of Ihe community experlence the release, the inspiration that allows them to enflesh the meuage and begin activating change in their own terrain,. This basic huma,n-to-hu.man interaction signals the symbiotic relation.hip among human beings. When we understand this, we can go on to better appreciate Ihe brealh dynamic between ourselves and the trees. We can our relationship to oceans and ozones and other zones within the universe. The blue. form is not about being down and OUt. The blues calls 10 and Ifltnsform. Ihe hollerer, and continues on to transform the community. It makes those tingers willing to "work the .ound" inlo new and knowing people who go about the business of making the truth matter. Bessie Smith could nOt leave halfway through a concert. We, as the communal singer, cannot afford to do it eilher. The P0l;t Maya Angelou reminds us that our depth of erperiencc is in direct proportion to the dedication of our artistS. Indeed, we artim have to sing the second line in such a way as 10 .ignal the possibility for variation in the song. We have to create relevant art, art that invites its audience into the creative process and empowers them. We must sing in a way as to promise our lis,tener. who would become singers that the third line is a breakthrough, proclaiming without a doubt Ihat "I done checked for myself and there's a sky in you. It 'eems to me that in order for this lransformation 10 happen, we artists must prepare ourselves to respond crealively and appropriately 10

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the calls in our environment. This is no small chore, especially for those of
us in Ihe public realm, who find ourselves taking on challenging, often emotionally draining issuu; writing and rewriting proposals to obtain funding for projects; meeting for what seems like an entire lifetime with artistic collaborators; addressing community participanlS and relentlessly

Though the encounter wilh dream time is enlivening, it can also be frightening. The problem is not our descent into the soul; il is our emergence. or coming forth. Once we emerge, we must begin reconciling what we have come to know wilh what we still sec in Ihe world. We tell our. selves there is no time to retreat; we tell ourselves anything to keep from repeating the ritU1\1 of deparlure. But if we do succeed in avoiding future deseenu into the soul, we will more than likely faU inlO the trap of making aff Ihat is simply creative rather than truly visionary. There is, indeed. a distinction between creative art and visionary art.

rallying their interest in the projeCti gelling no funding at all, or just

enough 10 prescnt only hdf of the envisioned project; meeting agaIn with collaborators about the meeting on the meeting; cncounlcring those critic.

who thc:msc1vcs haye not decided 10 be imaginative in their own work; and, lut but nOf IUSI, never finishing because we arc still actively linening
10

It parallels the difference between the artist who is an observer. or reporter.

and one who is a participant in the creative process-a mailer of investmenl or soul involvement. Quite simply, Ihe visionary artiSI has not merely sight but vision, the light the soul makes to illuminale the palh (or us all. This notion of the visionary being aparl from life, going inlo his or her dream space, is not synOnymous with the Western notion of the mYJlic's separation. The visionary anist in Ihe communily works in the Ilelds of the personal self, dreams lime tmd engagement Wilh others. All artists are able 10 display their craft without the exertion and engagement Ihat marks a performance from the soul. An artin can simply project his or her persona while remaining detached (rom the performance and the audience. But if you are working Ihe sounds-if you are involved in something that engages you; confronting your own prejudices. fear., and limitations, father Ihan merely presenting what yOll already know, feeling your own discomfort and taking that discomfort into Ihe lCrrain where the truth exposes you-then you arc quilC possibly in Ihe lCrritory of the vision. You arc close to grasping the mystery of the healing. You are then, only theil, within reach of Ihe gift that you can bring baek to the world. Once you have glimpsed this vision, then you arc indeed a panici. pam. And the dualilY between you and your audience, you and your work, becomes "n illusion. And you have wril1en a poem. You have done a performance. You have enncshed the beaUlY. You have made il nlaltcr. And the community, laking part in the an, complctes Ihe laSt line of the blues refrain, initiMing a Ilew reality.

Ihe communilY's response and remaining sensitive to Ihe sounds and To be an artin amid all these currenlS is demanding. How is the

feelings in both Ihe inner and oUler life. arliSl to Devclopmenl of one's craft and keen awareness of one's

surroundings are imporlant but arc hardly enough. To be able to make truly visionary an, we artius must have in our lives the crucial element <lre"m time. that is, time when we lcave Ihis world and go inlO our own sacred space, seeking the grace needed vision
10
10

create our work. Dream

time holds the turmoil and trauma of the world at bay and 1\lIows Ihe be jiranted .nd the healing notes 10 attune us. Some sound levels in the world's chaos can be deafening. Our work in thc OUlcr terrain can become so demanding thaI we think we cannot stall 10 meditate. BUI this deliberate pausing is also part of our work, and, in realily, it may be the only thing that distinguishes us from those community members who simply cannot make the time to lake Ihis inner Yet they arc depending as much on us
10

hear the calls and to sound

the fim responses as we are depending on them to (arm a chorus for the song in order to release Ihe healing and magnify the trlnh. And as odd as it may sound, this is the native territory of the public artin. It is a space to which Ihe community, time and time again, banishes us for ilS own salvation. a that we ourselves evenwally choose as 1\ healing haven "nd h"lInwing cave. The soul. a difficult bUt n:euary terrain of (ctreu, holds the hllleprinl, or one mighl say the blues-print, of the world we inhabit.

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WMUE WE "II.E. WMUl WE COULO IU
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canh, and treat it badly. Lacking a sense of microcosmic community, we fail to protect our macrocosmie global home. Can an interactive, processbased art bring people "closer to home" in a soeiClY characterized by what Georg Lukacs called "transcendental home1essness"? Not since the regional art of the Ihirties have so many people looked

LOOKING "1I.0UNO

recorded whatlhey see or would like to see in their own environmenu, and called it arl. Some have gone beyond the reneclive function of conventional art forms and the reactive function of much aClivist art. Those who have been at it for a long time arc represented individually in this book. BUI they also havc heirs and colleagues among younger artists, writers. and activists who regard Ihe relationship between people and people unlike them, between people and place. between people, place. flora. fauna, and now. necessarily. even atmosphere, as a way of understanding hislory and the fmure. The growing multicultural (and cross-cultural. intercuhural) contributions of the lUI decade have opened up fresh ways of undemanding the incredibly enmplex politics of nature. Culture aud the conecpt of place are in fact insepllrable. yet people (and ideologies) are often Jeft out of art about land and landscape. As Kenneth Helphand has observed. landscapes (which I would dehne as place at a dinance) and legacies and can create "an informed landscape citizenry.-} National, global. collective narratives arc especially accessible through one's family history-by asking simple quenions ahout why we moved from one block or city or Slate or country to another, gained or Ion jobs. married or didn't marry whom we did, kept track of or lostlrack of certain relatives. A starting point. for example: simple research about the place where you live or were raised. Who lived Ihere before? What changes have been made? have you made? When was the house built? What do the deeds in Ihe county records have to uy about il and the land it sunds on? I-Iow docs it hi into the history of the Ciated or Has ill monetary value appreFrom Why? When did your family move
M

I've spent a lot of my life looking, but len of it looking around. Art hinory and the art world make progress, focusing on an invented vanishing point, losing sight of the eydic, panonmic vie...... And of course iI's not easy to be visionary in the smog. Meanwhile, Huel Henderson's globally, act locally has become a lruism-an overused idea important enough to remain true, The notion of the local, the locale. the location. the locality, thepllfce in an. however. has not caught on in the mainnream because in order to attract sufficient buyers in the curren! system of distribution, art must be relatively generalized, detachable from politics and pain. The social amnesia and an!ihistor;cal attitudes that characterize our society at large affect the art world as well. meaning or depth and a sense of increasingly appears But, perhaps because we are to be all that there is, ... There i. no .ense of progress which can provide at a retrospective moment in hillory-nearing the end of a millennium and iu.t past the five hundredth anniversary of the mon heralded point of colonialism-many of us are looking back to find solid ground from which
to leap forward. into the shifting future. It seems significant that what the

hinorian Lawrencc Grossberg call. the book is devoted: and

comentones of historical

can also be called the very cornerstones of the art to ....hich this of difference, undemanding of context. and ability to make critical comparative judgmenu 00 the basis of emp:uhy Ecological crisis is obviously responsible for the current preoccupation with pbce and cOntext, as il an ongoing noualgia for lost connections. The Greek rOOt of thc word means homc, and it's a hard place
at

to find these days. Precisely beeau.e so many people arc nOt

home in the

where1 Why? What Native peoples hm inhabited it1 Docs your family have a history in the area, or in any area? 00 rclativulive nearby? What is

world, the planet is being rendered an impossible home for many. Uecause

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places are Ihe reservoirs of human

Whilc place and home arc

of your house relate to the exterior? How does ill style and decoration reflect your family's cuhural background, the places from which your people came? Is there a garage? a lawn? a garden? Is the flora local or imported Is there water to sunain it? Do any animals live there? And on a broader scope. are you satisfied with the present? If not. are you nostalgic for the past or longing for the And so forth. Questions like these ean set off a chain of personal and cuhural reminiscences and ramifications, ineludinlliines of thought about interlinking histories, the unacknowledged American class system, racial, I;cnder, and cuhural divisions and common grounds, land usc/abuse, geography, environment, town planning, and the experience of nature that has made a to it so mythical. When this kind of research into social belonging is incorpor.lled into inleractive or participatory art forms, collective views of place can be arrived at. It provides ways to understand how human nccupallls are also part of the environment rather than merely invaders (but that 100). According to Wendelll3erry, the most consistently inspirinll writer nn American place, Nl'he concept of country, Ilomeland, dwelling place becomes simplified as 'the environmenl'-that is, what surrounds us. Once we see our place, our part of the world, as JHffOHnding us, we have already made a profound division between il and ourselves. N' Real immersion is dependent on a familiarity with place and its history thaI is rare today. One way to undemand ....here we have landed is
10

not synonymous, a place musl have something of Ihe home in il. In these chilHng times, the concept of place has a warm feeling to it. The implica. tion is that if we know our place we know somclhing about iti only i( we it in the historical :tnd expericntial sense do we truly belong there. But (ew o( us in COntemporary North American sociely know our place. (When I asked twenty universilY studenu to name "their place, most had none; the ClCceptions were 1Ilol0 Navajo women, raised traditionally, and a man whose (amily had been on a southern Illinois (arm for generations.) And if we can locate ourselves, we not necessarily examined our place in. or our actual relationship to, that place. Some o( us have adoplcd places that arc not really ours except psychologically. We have redefincd place as a fclt but invisible domain, [n contrast 10 the holistic, earth-centered indigenous peoples of this hemisphere (who, over Ihousands of years, had also made ch:tnges in thc land), thc invading Europcans saw the natural world M an object of plun. der to be conquered, cxploited, and commodificd. They imported denial, still a prevalent disease among their descendants. The causes of thc ex. hauSled resources, the scarcity of wood and arable land in an "old world were nevcr acknowledged; old habits were silnply reasserted in the world, NAlthough a sense of collective 10llsprcad through this country at the end of the nineteenth CCntury, when mon of the arable land had parceled out, most people in tile United Stales today nill want to believe that our resourcC$-watcr, topsoil, forests, fuels, oxygen-are infinite. Not unrelated is the scant attcntion paid to tile ways rural and urban spaces arc structured and how thcy affect our national psychology. (HistorinnJohn Stilgoe uys that in colonial New England, lo....ns planned in odd shapes were seen as disordcrly and were "more likely to harbor civil and ecclesiastical unrest.")' Today, according to Rosalyn Deutsch, space as a reflection of power rcluions (produced by social relations) on Ihe political agenda as it never has been before. is true for artists who have been landfills, shopping malls. parks, and other social Contcxts for many ycars now. Yet the ovenlllOnc is nOI exuberant. I've been struck by (hrce receO!

identify the economic and historical forces that brought us where we

arc-alone or accompanied. (Culture, said one contemporary ;lrtist, is nOI where we corne (romi it's where we're coming from.) As we look at ourselves critically, in social conlextS, as inhabitants, users, onlookers. tourists, we can scrulini:r.e our own participatory roles in the natural processes that arc forn1il11: our fUlures. Similarly, Ihe study o( place offers access to experience of the land itself (an<! what we call as well as to current ceological politics and a sense of responsibility to the future. Jeff Kelley has distinguished the notion of place from that of site, made popular in the late sixties by Ihe term sculpture:" A sile rcprescnts the constituent physical propertics of a place ... whilc

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'1.1ming old,

First, the postmodernist impulse (now supremely

least a de-

in its own right) has spawned

by modeling themselves on lndians even while wiping them OUt.' The resurgence of mainstream interest in Native culture in the htst lew years
(A process that began in the sixties) is partly due to Indians' grass-rOOts

of el<hibitions, articles, and books called re-viewing, re-visioning, re-mapping, re-thinking, re-photographing. Second, the tides of exhibitions bnd are becoming melancholic and even tic for instance, Against Nature, The Demoraliud lA.ndsolpe, The

strength and pride at having survived, partly bolstered by their rage at the cost in Native culture, health, and land. But it is also a product of the growing recognition among Euro-Americans that the five-hundred-yearold dream went awry. The search for plate is the mythical search for the axis mundi, for some place to stand, for something to hang on to. (Seneca artist Peter Jemison has said it is nm the flag but the pole and cagle on top that mean something to his people; they connect earth and sky, body and spirit.) At the same time, a de-idealization of nature and of Native attitudes toward nature is necessary be undermined. anything sel on a pedestal eao so easily

Unmaking of NiltMe, Lost Illusiom, and Utopia, I'ost-Utopia. Thir<l, the "bnd," earth," "terrain," and" mapping" are also terms
ubiquitOus in both thcory and practice. The map tual" and a micro/macro visu.11 concept has lonl; becn of interest to Artists, And puticuhrly to "concepartists from 1?65 to 1975. On one hand, mapping the maps tells us where we arc turf can be seen as abetting surveys, fences, bounduies, zoning, And other instruments of possession. On the other and show us where we're going. Understanding our cultural geography will be a necessary componeOl of the reinvention of nature. We need to stop denying difference And pretending a woozy universalism thM maintains deep social divisions. We have to know more about our rehtionships to each other, as part of the cultural ecology, to know where we stand as artists and cuhural workers on homeless ness, racism, And land, water, euhural, and religious rights, whether or not we ever work directly on these issues. l3ec;tuse they arc linked, to be ignorAnt of one is to misunderstand another. Yel such awareness demands extetlsive visual and verbal (and local) research that is nOt included in art education. Multicultural studies especially need to be incorporated into art about history and phtcc. If only white history is studied, the plate remaills hidden. For instance, when I taught a seminar on land in Colon.do, I found I had to include the way land was used and conceptualized by the original inhabitants, the tragic histories of Native lands and lives and of the continuing struggle on Mexican land grants, the roles of bhck farmers and cowboys, Chinese railroad agricultural workers, and the desert internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. White America been deeply affected (so deeply it doesn't often show on the surface) by the land-based traditions of Native and mestizo sites and techniques and survived cultures; colonists inherited

A responsible art of place must be part of a centering process. Wave after wave of exiles is still coming through this land, and we have made internal exiles even of those who are its natives, The immigrant population in the United States (all of us) has no center, no way of orienting itself. We tend to presume our ancestors had one, but my family, for example. constandy moved around; from the 1700s on, few generations stayed in the same town. When a place-oriented sculptor SAyS, is what you have left, ". I'm not sure whether she means "atl thAt remains" or "that which is left behind." Although art has often been used in the past as propagandA for colonialism and expansionism (especially during the nineteenth century movement west), and much contemporary public art is still propaganda for existing power structures (cspc<:ially development and banking), no better medium exiStS in this society to reimagine nature, to negotiate, in Donna HarAway's words, "the terms on which love of nature could be part of the solution rather than part of the imposition of colonial environmental destruction. "10 and

The upper middle class (from which the majority of artists emerges) tends to confuse place with nature, because it has the means and leisure time to indulge its wanderlust, to travel to sites of beauty, difference, curiosity, to have second homes on shores, in on abandoned farms.

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environments

also places,

formed differently, more

likely 10 spawn Ihe multiple selves us living in any bi" city we step oludoors. [t

cue cross-cultural communica-

in fact arc the result of cross-cullUrAI communicAtion. Those of are confronted by A vaSl mirror whenevcr us and thosc who, like us, live on Ihis com-

mon I;round; our appearam;;cs and livcs often differ, but we can 'I look into the Illirror without seeing them 100. The reciprocal nature of cultural communicAtion is the nail James Baldwin hit on the heAd when he Solid,

Kif I .lm nOI who YOlllhought 1

you were either.-"

then you arc nm who you thought

AllY "tw ltind 0/ art prll(ti(r is going 10 ba'Ur to take plAct At leal/ p/l.rt;ally ,m world. And hard liS it is to eJttlhlill, oJ/tIrlfin thr art world, leu drcumlCribrll urritor;es arc IIIl thr mOrt f'Aught wilh prril. OUI Ihere, molt Mtim Me Ilcilher we/(ome nor C'!ferli'Ue, bIOI i" lurr is fl pOlrntially lU//ocAI;ng (0("0011 ill which IIrtim Arc drludrd into [('('ling impO,'"111 for d(mrg ollly whlll is tltptcll!d o[ thclIl. We colllinlic to l<tllt aboul "ncw [m'mJ bccflrllc Ihr nC'w hal bren thr fmifizing fCliJh of rhc aV/l.IIt-garlic Jinct ;t del/I.Chd illrl[ from Ihe i"[flnlry. 8/11;1 lIlay hI! lhaltbC'le nctl! forml art on(yto be 10Hnd burled in lod/l.' cnl!rglCS nOI yel rl!cogniud III tin"
olllJ;de of thr

The <haleclic between pb'e :md ,hanl:e is a ,rcative crossrcmb. I'm experimenting with thc inf; numbcr of skelche(l above as teaching tools, AS ways in increasideas. Innately whi,h tuchers Anet students call collaborale to find thcir places; He becomitll; involve!1 in

Not all the varied (bUl still not varied enough) rorms that have come
to be Col tied "public Art deserve the Ilame. I would ticfine puhlic an :ts

accessible work o( any kind that cues about, challenges, involves, and COIISUltS Ihe audience for or widl whom it is made, respecting eOlllmtlllilY and environment. Thl' other stuff is still priule an, no matter how big or exposed or intrusive or hl'ped itlllay be. In order to SOrt out wherc lYe SUtl<!:tt the moment, I've made a necessarily tentative list of the elCisting genres or art place. Thesc arc not intended as froun eategoril's, and Olany obviously overlap: I. Works prep:tre(! for conventional indoor elChibitioll (innartations, pholographs, eoncepllIal and projeCt proposals) that refer' 10 local history, or envirOllmelllal issues. Eumples arc Ihight and Nancy Gonehar's Chicf/go Stories, NeWlon and Ilelen Mayer Harrison's prOflosed Boulder Creek Project, and Richard Misrach's Bravo ]0: Thr Bombing o/tht AI/ftrj(f/n Well. 2. TrAditionAl omdoor public art (not "plunk Ht," IYhich has simply becn enlarged and dropped on the sitc) that draws attention to the speeif1e charactel'isties or funeliolls of the places where it intervenes, either in predieuble locations such parks, bank pb1.u, muscum I:M'dens, and in college campusl'S (slleh U Andrcw Leiccner's mining Frostburg, M:tryland; Athena Tacha's Memory P/II/' in

imenliseiplinuy andmultieultllul, this line of inquiry and production relates to context.' and content uther than to uyle And Hends. My models arc the artislS whose concepts of place :tnd history include people and form Ihe I:r,15S roots of milch inteNelive or "new genre" ut-from Judith Baca's

Crtllt Wflll of LOJ Angdcs, which brings together tcens from different wltma! b:tckl:roun<ls to create a mllr:tl on the nonwhite history of
nia, to Mierlc Lader",an Ukc1es'.' work with the New YOI'k Cily J)cl'anmem expos;lll; how we oU1'$elves and manage Ollr waste (aml wilh whom); ft'OIll John Malpede's smail-scAle examinations of homelessness to Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison's large-scale ellviron mental rescue attempts. Artists envision proccsslh.lt resultS in an artwork.
W( AIl[

that embraces a noun) a

I've heen slruhblinl; with these q\lenions for a lnng lime. In 19(,71 WfOtc thAt visual an WH hovering at a ,rnssroal!s "that may well turn OUltO bc two to Olle place: Ht ide:t and art as aet;on .... Visual Ht is still V;SIl,ll eVl'1l wilen II invisible or visionary."" In 1980 [ Wl'Ot(':

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BubarA Jo Revelle's People's History of ColOY<ldo, in Dellver), or in untJrpeeted and sometimes inaccessible such as streclS, store windows, a cabin in the wooos, a laundromat, a golf course, an office, a supermarket, a crater in the desert, a residential neighhorhood (such as Charles Simonds's imaginary b.ndscapes and civilizations for Little
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these works ohen funetion as "wlke-up art, a eaulySl geles, and Guillermo and Coco
j:UKO'S

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collective

action, Examples are Suunne Lacy's Three WeekI in M<l)' in Los An-

Tht Year of Ihe

While BelAr at several siteJ in Ihe Ullited Sutes and Emore. 6. An thM funetions for environmental awarencss, improvement, or reclamation by lransforming wastelands, focusing on natural history, opera.ting ulilitarian sites, making parks, and cleaning up pollution. An example is Alan Son fist's TIme I.a'llluttpt ofNew York Cit),. 7. Direct, didactic that eommentS publicly on loeal or nawhich marks siles, events, San

and David Hammons's House of the

Fllture in Charleston, South Carolina). This group would also include

innovative and officially funded public art and memorials with social agendas and local references, such as Maya Lin's Viel11am Veleu.ns Memorial and Barbara Kruger's Little Tokyo mural at the Museum of Cnntemporary Art, Los Angeles. 3. Site-specific outdoor arlworks, often collaborativc or collective, that significantly involve the community in execution, background information, or ongoing function. Examples arc officially condoned graffili walls; Joel Sisson's Green Chair Project in Minneapolis; Olivia Glide alld Jon Pounds's Pul/man Projecu in Chicago; the Borda Art Workshop in San Diego and Tijullna; Dr. Charles Smith's African Alneriean Heritage Museum in Aurora, Illinois; and works by many progressive nwralislS. 4. Pennantnt indoor public installations, oflen with some function in regard to the community'S history, such as post office murals across the eoulltry and Houston Con will, Estella Conwill Majo7-0, and Joseph De The RwerJ at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. This group ceues, such the includes history9. specific communi' y projects thai focus on ongoing educational proHistory Projeet in New York CilY and lhe Lowell, Muuchusem, national industrial park. s, rer'fonmnces or tion to nit)' of idemity oUlsi{le of spaces call aHell' 8.

tional iUlles, espeeially in Ihe form of sign age on transportation, in on buildings, or by the invisible histories. Examples are REPOhislOl'y'S sign project in Lower Manhman, D;lvid Avalos, Louis I-lock, and Eli'l.aheth Diego bus projeCl, at muhiple sites. Ponable public-aecesJ radio, television, or prinl Illedi;l, such a$ videolapes, postcards, eomies, guides, posters. Examples are Carole artists' books, and and Karl Ueveridge's bnok and Edgar of Birds's Host projects

poster work wilh Canadian unions and Paper Tiger publie-aeeess television, demonstration art IUcl, the AIDS quilt, alltl the SptrlllC/e of Trtlmfnrmation in D.C. Actions and chain that tuvel, permeate whole lowns, or

over the commy simultaneously to highlighl or link eurrelll issues. Eomples are Joh" Fellner's stencils in the Bronx, New York; the Shadow Project, nationwide commemoration of antl Lee Nading's hillhway ideograms."

and lheir hiSlOries and problems, or 10 a larger commu Like streel posters, slencils, or stickers,

ror decades

tlOW

a few artists have ventured out lmo the public

cnTlfext and tllade interactive, IMrticipatory, effective, md affective art rebting to places and the people in thcm. Since .he hIe fifties there have

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process of recognizing both limitatiOns and possibilities. We need labonte with snulland luge social,

to

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relalionships and historical Constructions of place. We need utists to guide us Ihrough the sensuous, kinesthetic responses 10 topography, lO lead us into the archaeology and resurrection of
at

specialized groups of people

already informed on and immersed in the issues. And we nted to teach them III welcome artists, to understand how art un concrelize and envi silln their I:oals. AI the samt time wt nccd
to

history. 10 from the ironically ourselves H part of part of

out multiple readings of places thatlllean different things to differellt people different times. Anllthere is mucll we can cuhul'es about labeled

colbborale wilh those whose

and nltybe foregrounds arc unfamiliar to us, rejtcling the insidious lIotions of"diversity thal simply neutraliz.e difference. Empathy and exchanj\e arc key wonls. Even for interactive an workers who have all the right ideas, elitism is a hard habit 10 kick. Nothing that excludes the places of people of color, women, lesbians, gays, or working people can be called universal, or IIl:aling. To find the wholc we must know and respect aHtlle So we need to weave a relationship and rel:iprocal theory of multi plicity abom who we are, what is our place, and how our culture affects {Hlr environlllcnt. We nccd to know a lot 1110re about how our work affects ami the people expose<lto it, whether and how it docs and docs nil! COllHllunicate. This too can be btlilt into experimelltal education in both an hislory and studio courses (the twO remain absurdly separated at lllOst schools). To return to the notion of place, an cannot be a centering (ground ing) device unless the artin herself is centered and grounded. This is not 10 say that the alienated, the disoriented, the deracinated. the nomadic (i.e., mmt of us) cannot make an. But some pOrlable place must reSt in our souls. Perhaps we arc lucky enough to have some to nourish us. Perhaps the city is iusl as satisfying. studio is the den where we lick our wounds, dream up stralegies, gather the strength 10 go out the ivory .,n As work chullk of the new

nature, interdependent with everything in it-hecause nature includes everything, even technology, created by humans, who What would it be like, art produced by the imagination

responses of;tS viewers or users1 How can art activate local activities and local values? With adequate funding resources, pulllic artists might set lip social and in political to the in which energies could come together, dialogue "framing" strategy, in which what is alre.,dy of 1((entiOll. or opposition could be eoncretizcd. These might be seell

there is pUI in sharp relief by the addition of an

.. Parasit;e" art forms, like corrected billboards, can ride the dnminam culture physically while challenging it politically, creating openly contested ternins that expose the true identities of existing pbces activates the consciousness of a place by subtle without spaces Iheir function in social control. Another set of possibilities is art Ihat ing it-a booklet guide, walking lOUrs, or directional signs captioning the history of a house or a family, suggesting the depths of a landscape, the character of a community. Art is or should be generous. But artists can only give what they receive frOm their sources. Believing as I do that comlection to will make it possible ror aTlISIS to "give" placC5 back to people what makes place resonate. Alternatives will is a no necessary component of feeling close to people. to the earlh, I wonder whal longer sec them. Because land plus people-their presence and absence-is to emerge organically territories. (rom the anists'lives and experiences. And they WOll't unless a broader set

Perhaps the limiutions of

and the pages of art magazines ue stunting the growth of dreams of striding fearlessly into the streets, into the unknown, artists should. be
10

to meel and mingle wilh others' lives. provide a way to the dominant eulture's rapacious view of nature (" Manifest to reinstate Ihe mythical and cultural dimensions 10 "public" expel'ierlce and atlhe same time to become conscious of the ideological

of optiolu is laid OUt by tlH).Ie who arc exploring these Ihere" in some

The artist hns to be a l'aTlicip:\Ilt in process as well as itS dircctor, has to "live symbolically, or enlpntheticnlly.

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like Ronald Rugan) soothed U5 inlO believing the war was a bloodless, complllcri7.cd science demonstration of gigamic proportions. Youug American men with adroit rcflues trained by a video-gamc ,ullUTe demonstrated our superiority as a nation over Salldam Hussein through
video-screen 51rau:g;c air striku.

From the triumphant bron7.t general on

public's

view of whidl is the underside of galloping hooves-to lIS more conlemporny corporate versions, we find cumplcs of public an in the service of dOlll;nancc. By their daily presence in Ollr lives. these utworks intend to

persuade liS of the justice of the aclS they represent. The power of the corporate sponsor is embodied in the sculpture standing in fronl of the tnwering office building. These grand works, like their military predeces in the parks, inspire a sense of awe hy their the importance of the artist. Here, public art is unashamed in its intention 10 mediate between the public and the developer. In a "things go down bettcr with public art" menulity, the biller pills of development are delivered to the public. While percent-for-art bills have heulded developers' creation of amen;l.ulC public phces as a positive side effecI of "growth,M every inch of urban space is swallowcd by sk yscrapers and priYlli7.ed imo the socalled public sp;l.ce of shopping malls and corporate plaus. These developments prelletermine the public, selecting OUI the hamden. vendors, ;l.doleseents, public urban poor. ;l.ml people of color. Planters. benches. and other M amenities" arc suspect as potential huards or public loitering places. Recent attemptS in Los Angeles to pass laws to StOp or severely resu'!cl push<:art vt'lltledorCI from sdling dOUJ,frllltU. pale/as, and raJpados made ;l.etivis15 of merchants who had silently appropriated public spaces in hq::ely Latino sections of our cilY. VcnJedrmJ.lovcd by the people for offering lUll only popular produclS but reminders of their homelanlh, provide a Latino presence in public spaces. Any loss of botanical, mercadoJ. t'endtdorel, and things familiar reinforces segregation. as ethnic peoplc disappear to another corner of the city. Angeles providcs clear and abundant examples of developmenl .1S a lonlto colnni?'e and ethniC communitics. Infamous dcveloplIIenu abound ill public record. if 110t consc;ousness-Dod\;er Sudium,

which displaced a historic MeKican community; Bunker Hill, now home 10 a premier arts CentCr, which displaced another; and the less well documented hinory of how four major freeways inlersected in the middle of East Los Angeles's Chicano communilies. One of the mOJt catutrophic consequCnces of an endless real estate boom was the concreling of the entire Los Angeles River, on which the cilY was founded. The river, as the carth's arleries-thus atrophied and hardened-crcated a gianl scar acrou the land which served to further divide an already divided cily. It is Ihis metaphor that inspired my own half-mile long mural on thc hislory of ethnic pcoples painted in the Los Angeles riVer conduit. Just as young Chicanos UllOO battle scars on their bodies. thc Great Wtllf of LOJ AngeltJ is a lallOO on a scar where the river once ran.' tn it rC;l.ppear the disappured stories of ethnic populations that make up the labor force which built our city. SUle, and nation. Public art often plays a supportive role in developers' agendas. In many instances. art uses beauty as a falte promise of inclusion. Bcauty ameliorates the crasure of ethnic presence, serving the transformation imo a homogenizcd visual culture: give them something beaulifullo sund in for Ihe loss of their right to a public presence. Two New York-bascd artists were seleetellto deconte the lobby of the new skyscraper of Fim Internate Bank in downtown Los Angeles. To represent muhicull\lraliSIll in Los Angeles. Ihey chose angels from the Basilica of Santa Angeli nur Assisi, Italy. They Ihen tacked ethnic cmblems Onto the angels, -borrowing- the preColumbian feathercd serpent Quctu1coul from the A7.lees. the crowned mahogally headpiece (rom Nigerian masks, and the eagle's wings from our Nalive peoples as cm blems of a variety of Thelc symbols replaced the real voices of peoplc of color;n a city torn by the greatest civil disorder in the United States in decades. At the dedication, which took place shortly after Ihe rebellion (the Los Angele., riots of 1992). black and Lalino children un veiled the angels in an e1aborale ribbollculting ceremony. Hailed by the developers as a great symbol of unity. these arlifacts st('lod in for the real pcople in a city terrified of thc majority of its citizens. the $SOO.OOO spem on this single work was more thall Ihe whole city budget
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fund public murals by ethnic artisu who work wilhin Los Angeles's

concepl of "min over

on which this country was founded. I heri-

diverse Chinese, African American, Korean, Thai, Chicano, and Central American neighborhoo<h. No single view of public space and Ihe art ill occupies it will work

uge of thought that hu brought u. clearcuuing in first growth forellS and concrete conduits that kill river. as an acceptable method of flood control. These ideas nnd their parallel in the late modernist and postmodernist cults of the exalted individual. in which personal vision and originality are highly valued. As a .olitary creator the artist values self-expression and freedom (or separateness uther than conncctcdness). He is therefore responsible only to himself rather th.1n to a shared vision, failing to reconcile the individual to the whole. When the nature of El Tejon Pass-a place known to locals for its high winds-asserted iuelf during Christo's project and uprooted an umbrella planted in the ground, causing the tragic death of a woman who had come to see the work. Christo $lid. "My project imitates rcallife." I couldn't help musing on what a different project it would have been had the beautiful yellow umbrellas marched through Skid Row. whcre l.os Angeles's 1<40,000 hornelen lie in the rain. Art can no longer be tied to the nonfunctionalist state, relegated by an "art for art's tyranny. Would it nat have been more beautiful to shelter people in need of shelter, a gesture and statement about our failure as 11 society to provide even the most basic needs to the poorl Why is it not possible for public an to do Illore than Public art could be insep..r..ble from the daily life of the people for which it is created. Developed to live harmoniously in public space, it could have a function within the community and even provide a venue for their voices. for the Melliean sensibility. an imponant manifestation of public art is a work by Mellicao artist David Alfaro Siqueiros on Los Angeles's historic Olvera SlTeet. This 19)) mural, paimed over for nearly sillty years by city falhers because of its portrayal of the plight of Mellic1nos and Chicanos in California. is currently in restoration. Siquciros depicted as the central ligures a meni7.o shooting at the American eagle aod a crueilied Chicano/Mellieano. While this mural is becoming mIHco-lied. with millions of dollars provided by the Getty foundation for iu preservation and fe-presentation to the public. it is important to recogni?e that the same images would most likely be censored if painted today on Los Angeles's

of multiple perspectivu. While competition for public v.rows daily. cultural communities call for it to be used in dr;unati-

cally different ways. Whal comes into question is the vcry different sensibilities of ordcr llnd bellulY that operate in different cultures. When for eumplc, looked for the lirst time at EI Tejon Pass. he HW potential. He saw the potenti11 to create beauty with a personlll vision imposed on the landsc1pe-1 beauty that fit his individual vision of yellow umbrellas fluncring in the wind. marching up the sides of rolling hills. The bnd became his C;l.nvas,;I. backdrop for his personal aesthetic. Native people might look at the S1mc landscape with II very differellt idea of heauty, a beauty without imposition. They might sec a perfect order eKemplified in nnWre itself, integral to a grounded in place. Naturc is not 10 be umpered with; hence, a plant taken requires an offering in return. Richard Ray Whitman. a Yaqui anist. sllid. Scientifically cohesive-I am the atoms. molecules, blood, and dust of my ancest(lrs-not as hislOry, but as a continuing pcople. Wc describe our cuhure as:l circle. by which we mean that it is an integrated whole.'" Maintaining a relationship with Ihe dust of onc's anceators requires a generational relalionship with the land and a respcctful treatment of other life found on the land. Or perhaps Native peoples could nOt think of this area without rccalling fori Tejon, one of the first California Indian reservations established ncar this site in the Tehachapi Mountains, placed there 10 "protect Indians. rounded up from various neighboring HUS, most of whose cultures have heen entirely deuroyed. In Christo's and the Native visions we have tWO different aesthetic sensibilities. as divergent as the nineteenthcentury English manicured garden is from the rugged natur.11 New Muican landscape of the S.1ngre de Criuo Mountains. Perhaps a less benign impliution of Christo's idea is that landscape unlouched by man undeveloped land." This is a continuation of the

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strC1:u. The subject maller is as rdevant now, sixty yurs later, as it was then. Murals depicting the domination of 1nd resistance by Los Angeb's L1tinos or other populations of color provoke the same official resina nee
15

message from the boy in the principal's office nid, MI need you to come here right away because I'm going to get thrown out of school again.My dul with the boy, formulated over a long mentorship, W1S that he would not quit school again without talking to me fint. I arrived to find the principal lOwering over the young cho/o, who This Stance, relniniscent of a
M

they did in

19]].

Despite these

muuls h1ve been the only

intCTvenlions in public Ipacelthat articuhtl: the presence of ethnicity. Architecturc and city planning have done liule to accommodlle communities of color in our city. As competition for public space h1s grown, public art policies have hecome calcified and increasingly bureaucr;l!ic. An that is sanctioned has lustlhe political bite of the seventies murals. Nevertheless, a rich legacy of Illuuls hu been produced since Amrriea Tropiea/wa.s pa.inled on Olvera Succt by the maenro. Thousands of public lnurals in phces where people live :md wOIk have become tangible public monuments to the shared experience of communities of color. Chicano munls have provided the lcadership and thl: form for other communities to asSUt their presence and anicuble their issues. Today, works appear that speak of children caught in lhe cross fire of gang warfare in the barrios of Sylmu, the hidden problcm of AIDS in the South-Central African Amerie1n community, and the struggles of immiRration and assimilation in the Korean community. Thesc mural! have become monumellt'lhat serve as a community's memory. The generations who grew up in neighborhoods where the landsca.pe was doned by the mural movement have been influenced by these works. With few avenues open to lfaining.a.OlI art production, ethnic teenagers have crealed the graffiti art that has become another method of resisting privati7.Cd public space. As the fim visual ut form entirely developed by youth culture, it has become the focus of increasingly severe rcprinls by .1lIhorities who spend fifly-two million dollan in the County of Los Angeles to abate what they refer to as the Mskin cancer of society.M It is no accident that Ihe proliferation of graffiti is concurrent with the reduction of all youlh recreation and aru programs in the schools. Working with communities in producing public artworks hal put me into COntut with many of the'e youths. On one occasion, I was called
to a local high school after

holding his hud in

a defiant manner I had seen over and over in my work with the gangs. unccremoniously Mholding your mug, is about maintaining dignity in adverse circumstances. The principal was completely frustrated. MYou've wrinen on the Ichool', w111s and you simply do not have respect for other people's property. Tell me, would you do this in your own housd- I couldn't help but smile at his admonition, despite the seriousness of the situation. This boy was an important graffiti artist in his community. I had visited his house and seen the walls of his room, where every inch was covered wilh his intricate writings. Two diHerent notions of beauty and order were operaling, as well as a dispute about ownership of the school. The boy's opinion was that he had aesthetically improvcd the property, not dcstroyed it. At this time the conditions of our communities are worse than those that prC1:ipimcd the civil righu activism of the sixtics and seventies. FiftytwO percent of all Afric1n American children and forty-twO percent of all Latino children are living in poverty. Dropout rates exceed high school graduation rates in these communities. What, then, is the role of a socially rcsJlolllible public utili? As the wealthy and poor arc increasingly polarized in our society, faee-to-hcc urban confrontalions occur, often with catastrophic consequences, Clin public art avoid coming down on the side of wealth and dominance in that confrontation? How can we as artisu noid becoming accomplicCl to

If we chose nOt to look at

triumphs over nations and neighborhoods 11 victories and advancemenu, what monuments could we build? How can we crute a public memory for a many-cultured society? Whose story shall we tell? Of grutest interelt to me is the invention of systems of voice M giving for those left without public venues in which 10 speak. Soci11ly responsible artists from marginalized communities have a puticul.r rcsponsibility to uticulate Ihe conditions of their people and 10 provide

convinced one of the young Great Wall

production tum members that he should retUrn to school. The urgent

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catalysu for cllangc. since perceptions of us as individuals are tied to the conditions of our communities in a racially unsophisticated society. We cannot escape that responsibility even when we choose to try; we are made olthe and dust of our anceSlors in a continuing history. Being a catalyst for change will change us lisa. We can evaluate ourselves by the processes with which we choose to make an. not simply by the lrt objects we crute. Is the artwork the ruult of a privlte act in a public Focusing on the object devoid of the creuive process used to achieve it has bankrupted Eurocentric modernist and postmodernin traditions. Art processes. jun as art objects, may be culturally specific. and with no single aesthetic. a diverse society will generate very different forms of public
HI.

COMMON WOH) Jrfl Krllry

Over the pa" decade, those of us intereJ!ed in a serious and public Art have heard often of thc benefits of collaboration between artists and archilccts. The ccmVentiollal wiHlnm is Ihal cumbuccl sense of design ties of thc
10 architectural

a frcsh, unen-

projecu. and that Ihe peculiari-

ego-celllcr sl'lmehow enliven Ihe Cltherwise COllvelltional,

corpOratclqHe environments architects come up with too much of the time. The artist is assumed to be freer than the architect. and freedom is usuOlcd to be art. The archilect is regarded as a relative technician by comparison, constrained as he or she is by the legal, fiscal, and material limitations of Ihe trade. The idea is IhAt as artlsts and architccts architecture will be made II1Me human, or M least morc art-like. Art-likeness auumed to be more humalle. CClnventil'lnal wisdom aside. true collaboralinll alllong .,nd architects rarely happens. Given the stereotypical ways in which we see each othcr, it's no wonder. What passes today for collabontion lends in faCt to be a frustrating process of compromise and concession. The architecl is almon always in charge, and artislS. who arc paid very little for their services. often must fight for recognition u members of a design team. Moreover, in ou, society the conditions are nOI usually safe for coltabontion to occur. The loss of professional identity is at stake, and in corponte

Who is the public now that it has changed color? How do people of various ethnic and class groups use public space? What ideas do we want to place in public memory? Where does art begin and end? Artins have the unique ability to transcend designated spheres of activity. What represents somethiJlg deeper and more hopeful about the future of our ethnically and class-divided cities arc collaborations that move well beyond the artist and architect to the artist and the historian. scientist. environmentalist. or social service provider. Such collaborations are mandated by the seriousness of the tasks at hand. They bring a range of people into conversations about their visions for their neighborhoods or their nations. Finding a place for those ideas in monuments that are constructed of the soil and spirit of the people is the most challenging task for public artists in this time.
NOTES

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America. professional identity is often all one has. Given this territorial antagonism and the bureaucratic hassles of thc public seclQr (which
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Perhaps the most typical misunderstanding architects have about :trtists is that they want to build There is illlo the projcci. or Ihal they want to make the architccture itsel'; that is, that artists want to pili' at being archilects. truth to this. Perhaps the mosttfpical misullderuanding

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