city worker classes

Last week city workers taught each other classes in tin working, paper flower making, and dancing during their lunch hour. This is a little bit of the documentation. I was inspired to organize the classes, as part of a multi-layered strategy to intervene in city workers' work days. The unhappiness and stress people have at their jobs from filling multiple positions in city offices is one of the most challenging hurdles for me to break through in my residency at city hall.

There are other projects in progress, but it'll probably be a little while before I share any of that documentation.

performance is the oldest art form in the world

Performance is the oldest art form in the world. The act of moving, the act of speaking, the act of growing food, the act of hunting, the act of cutting vegetables, the act of communicating, the act of surviving, the act of staring at a fire and the stars for hours on end while you move and drum and sing, the act of Facebook posts, the act of knowing you're on camera, the act of writing an email, the act of holding a conversation, the act of putting a paintbrush on a canvas, the act of going to work every weekday at 9 AM, the act of leaving work at 5PM and everything in between we do to make our bread, the act of drinking beer, the act of smoking cigarettes, the act of smiling, the act of frowning, the act of ignorance, the act of sincerity, the act of being a woman, the act of being a man, the act of teaching, the act of going to church, the act of acting our age, the act of walking, the act of falling in love, the act of typing these words, the act of building a career, the act of being a student, the act of being who we are-- all define our experiences, our identities, and our creative output in the world. We create our own worlds in our performances.

Performances are creative rituals and acts of communication that always affect ourselves, our audiences, and the material world. The effects that performance can have on people are almost always ephemeral. Performances' outcomes in the material world can exist in either tangible objects that are directly produced by actions, or they can exist in tangible products that are eventually produced by the distillations of an audience's experience of a performance.

Can you show me something that humans do that is not a performance? I will buy you a shot of whiskey if you can.

But, of course, not all performances are art.

The omnipresence, social efficacy, ancientness, and inherent humanity of performance makes it a primary medium that begs for more consideration in conversations on Social Practice. At least, that's how I feel.

How can Social Practice struggle for a coherent discourse, a canon, and a solid method of critical evaluation, when it rightly claims the rich histories of Dada, Situationism, Fluxus, and the many iterations of public political art over the last few decades as its art historical context? Could “performance” work better than “Social Practice” as a wide umbrella to describe public, interactive, participatory art?

Certainly, “Performance Art” may have stereotypes among non-arts audiences that “Social Practice” does not (read: scary, pretentious art clubs, naked girls and ketchup, etc.). “Social Practice” oftentimes brings work to new (read: non-arts) audiences in less predictable ways than market-based art does. The term's neutral connotations and obscurity can render it superficially harmless, which can be valuable depending on your intentions, and the sites and audiences you are working with. The term “Social Practice” can work to recruit artists of certain social, do-gooder persuasions to various academic programs with different perspectives on “Social Practice.” (That's why I'm here, writing this now.) “Social Practice” also may or may not help artists fund projects better through grants.

But here's my million dollar question of the evening-- would we gain more from our educations as artists who want to make public, interactive, participatory art if we studied our craft, historical and critical contexts as performance-based? We don't have to throw the term “Social Practice” out to study performance's technique and history, and have it improve our work and the discourse around it.

Does preoccupation over the term “Social Practice” and its significance obscure the fact that Social Practice artists do have a wealth of tried and true rich history to draw from in our evolving creative practices? Does the dematerialization of art practices also entail the disintegration of technique?

I, personally, want to be able to practice and evolve my technique through my studies and see my work be evaluated by the aesthetic qualities of the technique of what I do and what it produces. Performance has methodologies for this kind of study and evaluation that could work very nicely for Social Practice.

I do recognize that my inclinations probably don't fit all of the artists I know working under the “Social Practice” umbrella. I'm also just beginning to articulate these ideas. I woud love to hear your thoughts on this.

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