Alejandro Aguilar
E. Serrano
April 2016
The main issues that were prevalent to me in Grant's article on communities and the effects and roles artists take in many cultural layers, where the ways in which a community is defined under Grant's terminology. I enjoyed how he framed the interactions between any group or domain of particular interest or social imbalance. Discussing what a community artist is in relation to public artists, delegation and avocations for a group dialogue between artist and community where eye opening in the sense that the place of power between a single or a few skilled individuals can be transferred onto a group via the medium of art.
The challenge though is the current fight between conservative change or dialogue between communities engaged, such as the youngsters in prison viewing the Hardy boys, then the prisons adaptation to the Hall of Judgement , they only truly affected change and transformation within the individuals, not the community within or outside affecting the actual placement of these kids. A lot of pedagogy is run by politics and higher ups that grant space for discourse, which is where a lot of power lies for community artists. In many ways they have access to those public spaces, grants, and levels of entry or dialogue at a larger scale to involve themselves with funded projects or specific communities.
It's confusing because it's easy to critique and face many imperfect or trade-off oriented projects such as the project with the women being misrepresented by the photos taken of them, which where accurate, but with nasty captions that didn't reflect their thoughts at all. Artists may target the wrong community, or enter with the wrong frame of mind or concept that sends a warbled exchange between the artist's catalyst for awakening within the public community.
The good side of this is there is still a response from a group, meaning if listened to, change can be applied. Too bad for Alfredo Jaar's, not changing the racist or sexist tags in his project "One or Two Things I Know About Them," but instead opting to close down the exhibit. In that case, maybe missing the mark so hard on Jaar's big attempt made sense to not further that shambled discourse by staying silent.
One of the ways Alfredo has followed up to those events was to exhibit images of famine in "Sound of Silence" to cover his imbalance towards his reliance on words to supplement a story, so he has taken this in stride to further improve his communication between himself and communities.
Being aware of the political and world effects as to challenge right wing ideologies (Which tie in to Victorian principles and duties of the empowered) helped paint a broader understanding of the repeated patterns of history from which we cycle today. Empowering those that may not need empowering or shunting a community in a lower position of power when someone intervenes to 'help' or 'awaken' someone makes the power focus on the art and artist more than communities being boosted on a higher pedestal to speak. Lowering the ego of the artist involved is difficult. Figuring out how invisible or prominent an artist should be during a community engagement changes the dynamics a lot in the form of any art piece. By having a target person of focus to blame or claim the catalyst for change in perception with their art, it makes the artist easily viewed as the individual who must change themselves for the world to receive the artist's message properly.
One man whom I feel achieved a balance between presenting his works in the open with near transparency and invisibility would be Krzysztof Wodiczko's Homeless Vehicle Project. Wodiczko's use of engineering, design, to create a feasible living experience for those devoid of one is incredible. Wodiczko illustrates to me how a tool can open up so many questions within the borders of comfort over our daily lives, and how a successful, affordable intervention can empower and enrich even those that are seen but not heard. His transforming vehicle that allows for private bathroom use, sleep, portable storage, speaks volumes for itself. Most importantly I feel it forces a community change instead of individual reflection, for building a tool that is engaging in so many ways in and of itself.
In that sense, this critique Grant offers is in many ways valid, lasting change must go outside of the individual, but dealing with groups can make depersonalizing easy. Change does usually start from within. Creating action from inaction is perplexing, complex, and fascinating. Working and challenging the community of artists engaged in other projects or social services is super interesting to me how meta we are going within our own self awareness to spread out our messages with greater balance and structure towards positive change. There are many venues to walk towards his trains of thought in terms of my role as an artist, and it makes me question how far I can push myself to find platforms in which different groups or communities can change.
Viewing all of the projects degrees of success and responses helped widen my perspective to the levels of challenges opened up from success. I want to dive deeper in a project involving social work than the surface level of "what is it that I'm really doing for these people?" Grant did a fine job expanding my perception in regards to my role as an artist now, and how I view or categorize groups of people.
Works Cited
Kester, Grant H. "Aesthetic Evangelists:." Afterimage 22 (1995): 1-39. Slought. Web.
Hebdidge, Dick "The Machine Is Unheimlich: Krzysztof Wodiczko's Homeless Vehicle Project" Walker (2012). Web
Wei, Lilly "Alfredo Jaar: interview" Studio International (2014). Web.
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