Serina Bernstein
4/17/16
Art & Community Engagement
"Aesthetic Evangelists" Analysis
In Aesthetic Evangelists, Grant Kester tears apart community art. In the introduction he uses the word "analyze" and "investigate" to describe what he is going to do in the paper. He does not use the word "criticize", despite how ruthless he is in calling the community artists out on what is wrong with their practice. In the end, he justifies himself by saying:
If I have focused on the less successful aspects it is in part because of my sense that most of the critical dialogue around this work has been characterized by a certain circularity—rather than testing, evaluating, or closely examining the claims made for these works critics have by and large been content to simply promulgate them.
As opposed to creating a balanced argument in his own paper, Kester balances out the general discourse. His paper is a part of a greater whole, and less a whole in itself. However, this method of structuring assumes that the reader is aware of the other, more positive discourses surrounding community art, (which in this case, I am somewhat) but for other readers, the paper could discourage their potential tendencies towards a practice of community art. In his other writings, Kester is more supportive of community artists. In Conversation Pieces, which was published after this article, Kester allows the artist group WochenKlausur to come to their own defense.
In response to those who would equate their practice with social work or activism, Zinggl is insistent that it be defined in terms of art. 'Localized between social work and politics, between media work and management,' as Zinggl writes, 'interventions are nonetheless based on ideas from the discourse of art.' These ideas would include, first the capacity to think critically and creatively across disciplinary boundaries. (Kester 101)
This is very different from how he treats Dawn Dedeaux who created the piece "Soul Shadows: Urban Warrior Myths", in "Aesthetic Evangelists". He uses Dedaux's own words against her.
In fact, Dedeaux explicitly states that she considers questions such as these to be beyond the proper domain of the artist. As the installation flyer from Rochester notes, […] I think it is notable that for Dedeaux the artists' proper "function" stops at precisely that point at which their work might raise troubling questions of "politics" and "policy". Community artists are "qualified" to diagnose the emotional maladies of the incarcerated, and to unthinkingly reiterate the most problematic commonplaces of conservative ideology, but when it comes to diagnosing the structural features of the urban economy they suddenly find themselves out of their depth.
In the previous examples, Kester is critical of Dedeaux's words, where as in the case of WochenKlausur, he was not. This is evidence that his style of critique is not always as hard-edged as it is in "Aesthetic Evangelists".
In addition to the case study of "Soul Shadows: Urban Warrior Myths", Kester also spends text emphasizing two main points of critique, which appear before the case study. The first of these main points challenges the artist's authority in defining a given community and proposes that it would be better if the artist would work with politically coherent communities instead.
A very different kind of "collaboration" would arise out of a project produced with a politically-coherent community. In this case the collaboration would be characterized by a more equitable process of exchange and mutual education, with the artist learning from the community and having his or her own presuppositions (about the community, specific social, cultural, and political issues, etc.) challenged and expanded.
This quote makes it seem like Kester is arguing for a more hands-off approach on the part of the artist. But how can marginalized, degraded individuals struggling with fulfilling basic needs be able surmount that and have the imagination, will power and energy to form a politically coherent community? Especially in a culture where hierarchical capitalist structures encourage the deferment to external authority, but not the reclaiming of personal initiative/intuitive wisdom? If the politically coherent community was able to form, found art to be a useful strategy to further their goals, and were empowered and clear on how they wanted to communicate through the art, then the artist becomes commoditized, A tool for this group, marginal as they may be, to further their agenda.
A second point that Kester makes in the article is that community artists have taken the form of social service providers and that this furthers conservative aims of privatized philanthropy which supports Victorian bourgeois ideas around this. The community artist operates from a comfortable position, and in doing so, ignores how their comfort indirectly comes at the expense of the disempowered due to the social structures and norms.
Within this system "others," (and for Victorian reform this would include slaves, "fallen women," the poor, heathens, etc.) become the necessary vehicles for the bourgeois subject's own spiritual evolution. This transcendence can only occur so long as any troubling causal or structural relationship between the philanthropist and the "other" is suppressed and replaced with a rhetoric of individual and spontaneous charity.
Kester's description led me to wonder what this structural relationship is? What is a specific example of it? Kester uses the phrase "systematic forms of oppression" at another point in the paper as well. These phrases vaguely step around a grandiose overwhelming issue without explaining it. To combat this problem, I looked into further explanations of systematic inequality and found one structured around the creation of interior and exterior categories of social mediation in Durable Inequality.
Matching interior with exterior categories reinforces inequality inside the organization that does the matching. The creation of a well-marked interior boundary itself facilitates exploitation and opportunity hoarding by providing explanations, justifications, and practical routines for unequal distribution of rewards. But matching such an interior boundary with an exterior categorical pair such as white/black or citizen/foreigner imports already established understandings, practices, and relations that lower the cost of maintaining the boundary. It borrows potent scripts and common knowledge. Emulation thereby reinforces exploitation and opportunity hoarding. The labels "interior" and "exterior" do not identify the content or members of a categorical pair; rather, they indicate the relation of the categories to the organization at hand. (Tilly 77)
According to Tilly, systematic inequality is reinforced in the correspondence between internal and external definitions and categorization. The categories within the structure (i.e. the hierarchy in a business) are attached to external categories based on difference (i.e. men and women). This can be an example of what a bourgeois philanthropist is party to. Perhaps they are in the position of categorizing people in such a way in their hiring practices. In this position, they hold up and perpetuate a skewed system that is exclusive. Some demographic is always left with the short end of the stick. They see their spontaneous acts of charity not as way to make amends for their position, but as a selfless act of giving.
Kester is consistent in the direction of his critical stance throughout his paper, except for at the end where he throws the readers a bone, and offers a few consoling words. This style of writing is different from this essay, where I am not consistently critical of Kester's points and strategies. Sometimes I am, sometimes I support them, and sometimes I seek merely to understand his techniques better. Though Kester's criticism of community artists in the paper is harsh and for the most part unrelenting, it's still valid. The eye of the critic should escape no one regardless of their benevolent aims—And treat all equally. However, I wonder how useful this criticism is to community artists. Perhaps it moves them forward by motivating them to make new art that aims to correct whatever was problematic in their last piece. And yet, how Sisyphean this seems! No matter how many times they change their tactics, their works will never be perfect and free from the critic's attacking words.
Works Cited
Kester, Grant. "Aesthetic Evangelists: Conversion and Empowerment in Contemporary Community Art." Afterimage 22 (January 1995) 22 (1995): n. pag. Web. 17 Apr. 2016.
Kester, Grant H. Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art. Berkeley: U of California, 2004. Print.
Tilly, Charles. Durable Inequality. Berkeley: U of California, 1998. 1998. Web. 17 Apr. 2016.
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