In the field 03 - May 2nd - Returning from the dogs

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Richard Jochum, the artist and professor I met before also invited me to participate in his next performance that would be staged at the Elga Wimmer Gallery in Chelsea (Mid-West Manhattan). The name of the exhibition was "Don't feed the animals" and it showed work of artists that performed deviant behavior in public as I would summarize. Richard asked me to participate together with a dozen of others including my guest Niek. See what happened in a performance that would intervene with the opening reception at the gallery.

ps remember the performance of Dutch fluxus artist Wim Schippers: "Going to the Dogs" 

Real life writing in the field 00 - April 30th - Remedy for the modernist hangover?

My friend Niek came to visit me the 25th of April. The first couple of days we stayed at the Morningside Heights right next to the Columbia Campus. We stayed with Rahul and Susham Bedi. Susham appeared to be a well-known Indian writer and former movie actress. The house was filled with colonial paraphernalia like panther and tiger skins pinned to the wall, and at the first floor there was a private primary school. We were not staying in a BnB but in the decor of a novel.

April 30th, Niek told me there was a symposium about the modern Avant-Garde right next door in "Das Deutsches Haus". Together with the crowning of a new Dutch King and the tiger skins at the wall of our hospice it all made sense to me. So within a few seconds we were listening to a series of lectures on the "Modernist Hangover" of the Avant Garde in literature and art.

Now, it could have been the acoustics, or maybe the limitations of our understanding of academic English, but we had a hard time understanding what was said. The second speaker spoke about an artist group called "Tiqqun" and their "Theory of Bloom" but unfortunately I could not properly hear her elucidation. Nevertheless musing on these few fragments of information I had a stroke of insight.I was thinking something like:

What could be the modernist hangover? I guess the acknowledgment of the limits of human ability to fully understand the world and control its destiny. For post modernists this would mean a liberation of the totalitarian rationalization of every aspect of human existence. But for the hardcore modernists this surrender would be a defeat, a failure of the modernist project.

What could "Tiqqun" mean in this context? It is the name of a contemporary art magazine that seems to refer to the Jewish word "Tikkun Olam", meaning "repairing the world". In the context of the modernist hangover it might suggest that we should not focus on changing the world but on fixing it. We might not be able to mold the world completely according to our will, but we might be able to put ourselves to the task of adjusting, rectifying and modifying it the best we can, everyday over and over again until eternity.

And what about the "Theory of Bloom"? I figure it suggests we should think of development of the world in lifecycles instead of linear trajectories from imperfect to perfect. The world will never reach a final stage of perfection. But it will bloom every now and then. And if we treat it well and dedicate our selves to the work of "Tikkun" it might bloom more luscious, and more often.

I am pretty sure this interpretation is my own and does not match the version of the speaker or the artists she was talking about. Nevertheless I find this line of thought very inspiring as a perspective to move on past modernism. Maybe these "Tiqqun" artists could be a new case in my research. I will definitely sort them out the next couple of days.

In real life 06 - April 27th - New York City on a Roof

People that know about my whereabouts as an artist also know about "City on a Roof" and "Do the Rooftop-Hop", situation art concepts I coined to develop together with a couple of architects, designers and the Pavlov medialab. To put it simple I would say that these projects were an attempt to inhabit inner city rooftops in order to unlock undetermined city space for creative city development (City on a Roof) and artistic experiment in public (Do the Rooftop-hop).

 

It was a delight to see that such a rooftop landscape was eventually build, not in the Netherlands but here in New York City. It is actually a modification of a former subway fly-over called "the High line". http://www.thehighline.org/ Now covered with green and redecorated as a public performance space the High line unlocks a formerly hard to penetrate western harbor area of Manhattan, starting from the Chelsea art district. April 27th Niek and I took a stroll on this marvelous stretch of public space. Watch the video. 

In writing 03 - April - The most radical gesture

I've been studying the situationist movement again by re-reading the earliest publications of their magazine Internationale Situationiste. (on line version) The vision of the SI is still so far out that it is beyond art as we know it today.

Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio, Piero Simondo, Elena Verrone, Michèle Bernstein, Guy Debord, Asger Jorn, Walter Olmo.
Dutch members not on picture were: Constant Nieuwenhuijs, Jacqueline de Jong, and Armando

 

The SI wants to complete the liberation struggles of all the Avant-Gardes that set art free and proved every rule in art to be wrong. Through the ages the Avant-Gardes broke with all limitations of shape, form, sound, composition or material. The SI wanted to take the ultimate consequence of this struggle and strive for total dissolution of any boundary of art.

According to the SI this would have to mean an irreversible merge of art and every day life. Therefore artists had to leave the production of artifacts and performances behind and would have to focus on the construction of situations.

Prime theorist of the SI Guy Debord writes in "Report on the Construction of Situations":

"A 'constructed situation' is not limited to an integrated use of artistic means to create an ambiance, however great the force or spatio-temporal extent of that ambiance might be. A situation is also an integrated ensemble of behavior in time. It is composed of actions contained in a transitory décor. These actions are the product of the décor and of themselves, and they in their turn produce other décor's and other actions.  (…) It could be said that the construction of situations will replace theatre in the same sense that the real construction of life has increasingly tended to replace religion."

But Debord took it even further and wanted the artists to make the "most radical gesture"; they would have to stop being artists! In the same manifesto Debod writes:

"A constructed situation must be collectively prepared and developed. It would seem, however, that at least during the initial period of rough experiments, a situation requires one individual to play a sort of 'director' role. (…) This relation between the director and the 'livers' of the situation must naturally never become a permanent specialization."

But this is just a glimpse of the great thoughts of this movement. All contemporary critique on media, urbanism, capitalism and institutionlized art has had it's prelude with the situationists. So please read some more.

see also: Guy Debord "The society of the spectacle" 
and: Sadie Plant "The most radical gesture"

In real life 05 - April - Free enterprice part one

There are two ways of staying long term in NYC. When you're rich you buy something, then you live there for as long as you please and then you sell it with a profit. If you're poor you rent something and work your fingers to the bone to pay the rent. New York makes the rich richer and the poor labour hard.

I tried to find a place via on line brokers. DON'T !!! This is how it works: Browsing the data base you'll find a couple of gems. These will appear to be fake. When you apply for them they won't be available anymore. They never were. But of course, now they've got you on the hook they have something else to offer. This offer will be total crap. So you'll complain about that. Then they act like they're going to make you a special offer and make you feel smart. In the heat of the negotiation they will make you an offer that looks like a mistake and so you think you have to snap immediately. DON'T !!! Carefully read the small print first!

I was about to make a deal untill I red the small print in the on-line brochure. It said "these pictures show a show model accommodation, all accommodations look the same". "Accommodation" may mean "apartment" it also may mean "furniture and amenities". So I asked for the floor plan of the apartment they offered me. To my amazement it was not available (!?!). Then I asked if the view from my apartment was similar to the pictures. The answer was "there is no window sir".

So I went to NYC to find an apartment using my own eyes. This seemed to be a good idea. Still there are lots of other ways NY real estate sharks manage to drain your wallet. First. They won't give you a contract shorter then one year. This means that if you're staying for half a year or so you'll have to break the contract and have to pay at least one extra month rent as a penalty. They're also very creative in the creation of all sorts of extra fees: application processing fee, cleaning fee, heating start up fee and so on. In most cases they want you to mail these fees in cash, check or money order. They will not accept credit card or wire transfer because these are all bribes they have to keep outside the books. And these were official renomated brokers!

 

On the brink of dispare and ready to make such a deal. I was dead beat and prepared to go al the way including the bribes. I made the arrangements and called to make an appointment to pass the cash, sign the contract and collect the keys. "Oh yes sir, and don't forget to bring $500,- good faith deposit to hold the apartment for you in the mean time, of course you'll get this back if we decide to cancel the deal". In other words if I would cancel the deal in my turn I would loose this money. Once I got stuck to the deal you'd bet that they would rob me even more with all kinds of so called fees and deposites.

So far my experience with the open market of free enterprice. It's not freedom - that's a fairy tale - I had nowhere to go. This was mere blackmail and extortion! Now I'm occasionally sharing apartment with Linda and rent via AirBnB all over town. AirBnB is a marvelous on-line diy system of couch sharing and sublet. No tricks, no cheats, just straight one on one deals with common honest folks like you and me. And of course there is a big political lobby going on of real estate companies trying to outlaw this grass roots self help practice. Well, I still got this crowbar in the toolshed.

In the field 02 - first weeks of April - Pluggin into the NY art world

My study consists of a handful cases of situated art practice. Artists that include their social and physical environment in their work of art. These artists produce "situations" instead of not artifacts or performances. I could have selected these cases before I came to NYC but I chose not to. Making a selection based on the information I had access to in the netherlands would have been a decision filtered by the media through which they were dispatched. I wanted to be led by well informed new yorkers on location. I also wanted to make my decisions based on direct observations and my own experiences.
Fellow PhD student Lynda offered me generously to "plug me into the New York art world". She invited a number of art professionals to a party at her apartment on April 5th. From that moment I have gotten into flow of encounters and discoveries. But just hanging out with Lynda would have been good enough to get in touch with more then sufficient friendly and inspiring art enthusiasts.
I met several teachers of the columbia art and education department who gave me a couple of good tips. Razia Sadik introduced me to one of her students Laia Solé. She is a young artists who does not "make art" but "lives art" I would say. After entering Razia's graduation program she had to buy a lot of literature. She decided to load all this literature in an open cart and drag this through the neighborhood. These walks became journeys with many amazing encounters. She even met a street cleaner who appeared to be a former east european academic. This street cleaner explained many interesting things about the unread literature she was carrying.
Sean Justice sent me in the direction of public art (example) and - virtual - street take overs (example). Following this lead I ended up in Alphabet City in the MoRUS or Museum Of Reclaimed Urban Space. Richard Jochum sent me to the Flux Factory in Queens, a Fluxus inspired living and producing community of artists. This community appeared to be a gold mine. I will get back on them later.
I also had tea with Gloria, a well informed New York art lover. First thing she asked me was if I was straight or gay. Since our first meeting she put  me on her mailing list. The amount of things to see and do she sends me leaves me with no spare time left anymore.
Finaly I met Abby Scher, editor of the report "Can Arts Change the World?". She told me a lot of interesting things about the political scene in New York.She recommended me to get in touch with Caron Atlas. So far I haven't heard from her.

In real life 04 - April 4th - The anonymous orchestra

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What I find amazing in New York is the dedication and intensity of peoples' behavior in everyday life. What ever they do they do with conviction, humor and style. The way the people dress, do their jobs, talk, walk or otherwise move through the street is beautiful to watch. And of course they record it and put it on the web. But when I watched this in real life on a daily basis I wondered if this city really needs professional artists.
Nobody seems to be afraid to dance or sing at work, in the subway or just walking down the street. Maybe that is why the New York street artists have to be damn spectacular ... or ... far out eccentric.
Movie maker Paolo Paci has webcasted a great number of recordings of interesting street performances, many of them in New York where he lives. He called this legion of creative street workers "the anonymous orchestra" and opened a youtube channel dedicated to them. I really enjoyed watching it. Maybe you should check it out!

 

Paolo Paci

In writing 02 - April 3rd - The transformative powers of community art

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Last week I've been reading the report on the collaborative inquiry into "the transformative powers of community art". The list of success factors and threats (they call it "insights and challenges") make the study very useful on an operational level. I highly recommend this study to artists who are regularly working with people on an artistic level.

I consider some findings of this study very helpful to me in order to compare situated art with community art. I also find it very interesting in a methodological sense. Experienced practitioners articulated the research questions as well as the answers that were given. The researchers acting like involved but independent experts led the process, but the content was chosen and shaped by the subjects themselves. 

The brochure I discussed earlier summarizes the research very well. For now in the web log I will present two quotes from the full report that might be of remarkable interest to my study.

"The dominant methodology coming through these chapters is that inquiry through the arts helps people tap into questions of importance to them and others in the community."

"Though the importance of the affective and aesthetic dimensions of the learning process has been recognized (see Imel, 1998: Greene, 1995), for the most part they have been background to the cognitive and rational dimensions of adult learning theory and practice. Emphasis has been placed on verbal discourse and dialogue, as well as the processing of experience through thoughtful (and at times critical) reflection. The arts promote alternative, and powerful, methods for bridging boundaries and enabling learners to expand their experience by accessing those of highly diverse others. The arts are also a way of bringing into consciousness, and finding expression for, experiences and insights that heretofore a learner has not had the capacity to express."

Source: Hayes, S. & Yorks, L. (2007) "Lessons form the Lessons Learned: Arts Change the World When ...", in New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education Special Issue: Arts and Societal Learning: Transforming Communities Socially, Politically, and Culturally. Volume 2007, Issue 116, pages 3–11, Winter 2007. Wiley-Blackwell; New Jersey.

In the field 01 - March 28th - Teachers College Columbia University

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I go to TC Columbia to see the campus, meet professor Victoria Marsick specialized in informal learning and professor Lyle Yorks who conducted the collaborative inquiry into the transformative powers of community art.

Columbia is Ivy League. This means it is old and expensive. I saw kids arriving in a car with chauffeur. The Columbia campus is big and classic, proclaiming prestige. You can clearly recognize the former British influence of the Kings College. And so you see references to ancient European heritage in architecture as well as in writing. On one of the facades over a series of neoclassic Dorian columns I read: "Homer - Herodotus - Sophocles - Plato - Aristotle - Demosthenes - Cicero - Vergil". I wonder why they put that up there and what it actually says?

When entering Teachers College, the education department of Columbia University, you can read over the security desk a quote of John Dewey, one of the famous professors who taught here. Other then the namedropping outside there is no doubt about the message of these words.

I have a conversation with professor Yorks and he gives me the peer-reviewed publication of his research into the Transformative Power of Community Arts. (order online) I also meet professor Marsick who invites me to diner with a couple of other graduate students and meet her husband Peter Neaman who is well informed on the New York art scene.

In real life 03 - Easter - Pass Over

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When I arrived at the airport a week ago it was crowded with orthodox Jews coming to NYC or leaving for the holy land. This weekend they will all get together for the traditional festivities. Last week I saw lots of indications of kosher food and drink in almost every shop and restaurant. My hostess Lynda was fasting as well.

The Christians also will have their easter festivities, especially here in Harlem at 116th street where one church is build right next to the other. There I saw big black ladies with purple hair and orange dresses wearing hats as big as boats.

Extravagant headgear can also be seen on the Easter parade down town on Fifth Avenue. Here the upper white class dresses up and parades the streets on this early spring day. But they're not going to church. They're heading for one of the many society parties in the gardens or at the rooftops of midtown Manhattan. It reminds me of the Mardi Gras festivities back home. Spring is in the air.

In writing 01 - March 28th - Can the Arts Change the World?

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(download borchure)

I've been reading the brochure "Can the Arts Change the World" by Abby Scher. It deals with a research led by Lyle Yorks, professor at TC Columbia. The report summarizes the success factors and threats of a selection of community art projects in the US from an educational point of view.

I hope it will be interesting to compare the inclusive strategies of these community art projects (including people for educational purposes) with the strategies of the situated art projects (including people for artistic purposes) in my study. I have to get hold of an extended research report and tal to the researcher and editor.

In real life 02 - March 27th - Times Square

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Every real city and even the smallest town must have at least one central space functioning as a sort of living room, a place to meet and to hang out. When visiting even the smallest village I have to move on until I've reached this "heart" of the community. To get the feeling I definitely arrived in NYC I decided to go to Times Square since this was the place where sailors went after anchoring the New York harbor.
Now a days the site has changed drastically after Giuliani became major and swiped the streets. The prostitutes that once served the sailors and soldiers have changed their wardrobe. Mini skirts are traded for cartoon figure outfits and their customers are now of minor age while Disney became their pimp. Only their strong taste for the green and an occasional gesture tell who's behind this masquerade. Like in this picture where Kitty is not meowing "Hello" but is giving me the finger for taking pictures without tipping, which I finally did after all.

In real life 01 - March 24th - Arrival

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A fellow PhD student called Lynda Hallmark picks me up from the airport. She studies informal adult learning in relation to autonomous art just like me. Since 2010 she has been interviewing people who took part in the famous art exhibition/performance "The Artist Is Present", by Marina Abramović. (go to website) She will graduate this autumn. I'll publish a link to her dissertation when it is ready.

We travel by train from JFK. On our right side to the North lies Queens. It is a vast industrial suburbia with wooden houses between rusty factories and dusty warehouses. On our left to the south lies Brooklyn. It has an urban landscape with old brown stones amongst a little more shops and a little fewer factories. We arrive in Manhattan at Penn station and take a cab in front of Madison Square Garden.

The cab rushes up Park Avenue along the jewelry stores and million-dollar-condo's. The further we get up north the more the city seems to run down. When we pass 110th street the neighborhood gets "funky".

We arrive in East Harlem at 116 street and Lexington. This neighborhood is also known as "Spanish Harlem". Here jewelry is sold in the streets next to the "cuchifritos", and the drivers wear bandanas behind the wheel while playing salsa on the car radio. Being blond and tall I never felt so aware of my race ever before.

Introduction - Personal experiences with situated art - A demand for change

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Personal experiences with situated art.

For about 20 years I created a lot of art projects together with my friends under the name of "Pavlov". I would call these projects "situated art" and describe it as an art that steps out of the frame, of the pedestal and of the stage. This type of art is not producing artifacts or performances like paintings or symphonies but is about creating and directing situations, turning the social and physical environment into a work of art.

For example: "Mobile". One of the projects we did was an urban expedition marching straight through people's homes and other private spaces. We asked people to open their backdoors and windows so we could climb through. With hundreds of people we entered hidden spaces and met people in remarkable circumstances. (See video) 

During another project, called "City On A Roof" we build dwellings on the rooftops in the inner city trying to explore a new way of living in this empty forgotten inner city landscape. (See website)

Most of these art works were first of all gatherings of people at a certain place and a certain time in order to experience an adventure by doing or making things in a playful or dramatic way. Other then so called "community art" there was no educational agenda. To me the motivation was purely artistic, it came from a yearning for sensations and experiences that move, inspire or fascinate. Still people learned a lot during these projects. A many told me it changed their life.

So Pavlov published a book about a dozen situation art projects that completely consists of testimonies and reviews depicting the rich variety of meaning and undergoing of these projects. Pavlov 2012 Cities within your city: (order here)

 

A demand for change

This study presumes that "art makes smart". I argue that while you give way for a free play of your thoughts and feelings you discover things around you or within yourself you did not know they were there just a second ago.

I also think it is safe to say that it is widely recognized that communities with a lot of art also have lots of new inventions and initiatives, new ideas and new business. Art seems to stir things up in inner life and in social life. And when there is movement there is a chance for change, and change is a condition for evolution one might argue.

There are many people, in education, politics and businesses, who try to master art as a source of creativity and innovation. And frequently I've been asked to explain my view on this challenge. So I've been thinking and reading a lot about this topic.

I found out that the educational application of art at school, at work and in communities have been studied rather well. The transformative power of autonomous art in informal everyday life has not been studied very much. The latter is not led by an educational agenda but by aesthetical motives and one might wonder if this leads to a different sort of learning opportunities. I have an experienced conviction that situated art might offer some interesting perspectives on this topic. Therefore I decided to take on this study.

Quote of one of the professors at Teachers College, written on the wall at the Art and Education department.

Preface - Subject, Dates, Language, Content, Enjoy!

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A web log reporting my research activities in the New York art scene supported by Teachers College Columbia University (TCCU), the Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen and the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.

Thuur Caris, 2013

Subject:

(how) does art make a society smarter?

Policy makers and economists suggest that a society with lots of creative activity has a better chance of becoming more innovative and prosperous. They show us the figures but don't tell us how it works. This study wants to help to find out more about that. Hoping this will recognize the benefits of an everyday life filled with "useless" art.

Dates:

My quest in NYC started March 25th 2013. I started publishing June 8th so the first posts will be back dated.

Language:

I write this web log in English so that all of the people involved in this study can read it. I ask you to understand that this is not my native language. So be prepared to enjoy the circumstantial clumsy quality of the text. As a spontaneous accessible addition to the formal scientific journal I don't want to spend too much time rereading and rewriting. So you have to deal with everything that escapes the automated spelling and grammar check …

Content:

After the introduction this web log will be split in 3 recurring columns:

·      "In the field", reporting my whereabouts in the NYC art world,

·      "In writing" reporting my readings and writings, and

·      "In real life" reporting my personal experiences

I hope this will help you to select the text parts of your interest.

Enjoy!