I found them in the book Between Artists: 12 Contemporary American Artists Interview 12 Contemporary American Artists.

MK: I always said the performances were about belief systems. I thought of them as propaganda-gone-wrong. I think that after doing the performances for a number of years, and always denying that I had had a belief system of my own, they started falling apart. By the time I got to the Plato’s Cave performance I saw that certain themes came back again and again in my work. There’s sort of an ur-group of information that I was suppressing.

…

MK: That’s more love that you can ever pay back. So what? You’re just fucked then. I wasn’t even thinking about the objects as objects, I was thinking about them as just hours-of-attention.

JM: That’s what craft forms have come to signify. That was Thorstein Veblen’s critique of John Ruskin and William Morris—that the Arts and Crafts Movement was simply reverting to less efficient and less economical ways of doing things.

…

JM: Why did you stop doing performance? I know that performance anxiety made you physically sick, but were here other reasons?

MK: The first reason was ghettoization – I didn’t want to be thought of as a performance artist per se.

JM: That’s true. For a long time you were categorized as a performance artist.

MK: I never thought of myself that way, so I realized that if I was going to find acceptance as an artist, I had to do less performance.

…

JM: You’ve never fallen into that tendency to exoticize materials that comes out of arte povera.

MK: I’ve never been a fan of arte povera for that reason. It’s like high school surrealism: I’m gonna throw a teapot in with a hankie and something exotic and wierd. I don’t care about that.

So, I’ve been reading this book for a class I am teaching at SUNY Purchase, and it got me thinking about how I am now seen as a do-gooder artist. Like I am trying to save the world. And that’s something I want to avoid being cast as. A few years ago I was a smartass with a Napolean Complex. Now I guess I am an earnest Napolean Complex. I know I earned it: I was a Peace Corps Volunteer; I am running my own USA Work Program; I am Inclusive of the Third World.

It’s quite clear where 2011 needs to go. And I think I was thinking about this a year ago…

- p. 102, What We Want Is Free, edited by Ted Purves.

“Instead of treating communism as pure political abstraction, the projects presented by the seminar deal with concepts, events and/or particular personalities related to communism and its history which have survived the Bildersturm of the recent past and can be artistically reactivated.”

Bildersturm means “the breaking of images.” Don’t the Germans have the best language ever? I mean, they have one word (Schadenfreude) for “pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.”

I really like L’Ecole Publique’s Interface/ System: one person proposes a course they want, and other people say if they can teach it or want to take it. Sort of Threadless meets OurGoods / TradeSchool.

Some quick jots from The Critique Handbook, by Buster and Crawford, with some insights from John Baca as well. This book was written to help students understand what goes on in critiques, but it reads more as a list of things to think about in order to critique. I think Art and Fear is more of a help-a-student-cope-with-art-school book. Or, help a human cope with being an artist book.

Anyway, for people who don’t care about critiques, I think this list can still be useful for recognizing the techniques that serve as your own defaults, so that you can either explore other techniques from the list, or be more deliberate about the specific strategies you employ.

SO:

FORM and CONTENT
FORMALISM and MODERNISM
REPRESENTATION and ASSOCIATION/ The Poetics of Meaning (danger of “looks like a duck”)
ABSTRACTION and REALISM

FORMAL:
OBJECT in SPACE (FIGURE and GROUND)
DISCRETE OBJECT
FOOTPRINTS
RATIO
GRAVITY
EXPANDING, EXPLODING, or MEANDERING FORM
PARTS to WHOLE
CONSIDERATIONS w/in the OBJECT

MATERIAL and PROCESS (HIDDEN or FOREGROUNDED)
ADDITIONAL and SUBTRACTIVE
CRAFT

INTEGRITY and ILLUSION
FOREGROUNDING – WHAT STANDS OUT AS UNEXPECTED
MIMESIS

MEANING and INTENTION
DENOTES vs CONNOTES
CONTENT vs SUBJECT MATTER

• CONTENT : MEANING : CONNOTES : HOW

• SUBJECT MATTER : DENOTES : WHAT

PRESCRIPTIVE (should be) vs DESCRIPTIVE (is)
THE LOADED MESSAGE
NUDE vs NAKED

FOREGROUNDING and MEANING
FORM as CONTENT
COLOR – as SYMBOL, as INDEX
VEHICLES FOR MEANING

• THEATER of FORMS – PLACEMENT as MEANING

• CONFIGURATION

PLACEMENT as MEANING
-THEATRICAL FUNCTION (PLACEMENT affects MEANING)

• ACTIVATE

• POSITION
• CONTEXT

-CONFIGURATION

AUDIENCE or PARTICIPANTS

FORMAT as MEANING
GESTURE as MEANING

• of FIGURE (slumped)

• of PROCESS (pollock)
• of FORM (takete vs maluma)

MATERIAL as MEANING
PROCESS as MEANING

OPAQUE vs TRANSPARENT language
SEVERAL LEVELS vs “GOTTEN”
OPACITY vs TRANSPARENCY

• FORM
• PROCESS
• CRAFT

MEDIA and MEANING
TITLE and MEANING

CRAFT

CRAFTING and APPROPRIATION
AUTHENTICITY and AURA
PLAGIARIZE vs. APPROPRIATE
MATERIALS have IDENTITY
MATERIALS as REFERENCES

HANDMADE vs FABRICATED
SIGNIFYING AUTHENTICITY
CARELESS MAKING vs INTENTIONALLY CASUAL

HISTORY of an OBJECT

CONTEXT

CONTEXT – PHYSICAL, THEMATIC

IDEOLOGY – The imaginary way we see the world
HISTORY/ CULTURE/ GENDER
STRANGLE FREEDOM out of CONCERN for the OTHER
OTHERING (verb) / OBJECTIFYING
VICTIM ART

READABILITY
NARRATIVE
OLD LANGUAGE with a NEW IDEA
LANGUAGE of the STRUCTURE

“Like old black and white photographs of early performance art, what is exhibited in a gallery becomes the art, in that it is what we experience in place of the event itself” p. 91

TYPES OF CRITICS
CONNOSIEURS
JUDGES
EVALUATORS
SPECIALISTS
NARCISSISTS
DRILL SEARGENTS
UNCONDITIONAL SUPPORTERS
PHILOSOPHERS
VISITING ARTIST

DISCUSSION
MEANS vs COMMUNICATES
INTRO – what are CRITICAL ISSUES
FRAME THE WORK

• TECHNICAL issues

• SOURCES

QUESTIONS, not CLAIMS
“The most important thing you can do here is really listen. The gap between what you think you are doing and what you are actually producing can only be bridged by stepping to the side and trying to see your work as it is” p. 114

A TRASHCAN HAS INTERNAL CLARITY

SOME HELPFUL QUOTES FOR THE CRITIQUED:
“You can often benefit as much from comments on a fellow student’s work, as from comments on your own” p. 96

“Do you only hear the negative criticism, or the positive?” p. 99

“The instructor can feel very powerful. You may notice that the decisions that you make in your work begin to rely almost exclusively on his eye, even what you imagine he would think or say.” p. 101

“Make sure that you are taking the information from the critique in an active, not reactive way.” p. 93

SO:
Find out what they think it’s about
Don’t solve it for them
Don’t tell them what you think about it
Success or failure is important, not what you think about it

Address material: what it says
-according to history, this is what it says (the ‘intimate’ 8 foot marble statue)
-how is it made/ level of craft

And finally, from Why Art Cannot Be Taught, a meandering, cave-like, sometimes psuedo-scientific/archeologic/psychologic ramble in the dark recesses of scattered but often illuminating art minds:

FORMS OF CRITICISM
MIMETIC – REFERRING to EXTERNAL WORLD
PRAGMATIC – impact on AUDIENCE
EXPRESSIVE – INTERNAL
OBJECTIVE – formal analysis, iconography

CRITIQUE vs CONVERSATION

“ENABLING FICTION”

JUDICATIVE vs. DESCRIPTIVE
-”JUDICATIVE criticism can be an unwitting chronicle of the things that are not seen in the work” p. 154
-DESCRIPTIVE

• PRIMARY ANALYSIS: of the thing

• SECONDARY ANALYSIS: of my reactions
• TERTIARY ANALYSIS: overlying theory of reactions

CHAIN OF QUESTIONS
JUDGEMENT – REASON – UNEXAMINED ASSUMPTIONS – AXIOM

PRESENCE OF ARTIST AT 3 LEVELS IN CRIT
-APPARENT IN WORK
-APPARENT IN CRIT
-ARTIST’S OWN NARRATIVE

“Art w/o some sense of the artist’s intention will seem random, irresponsible, or unaccountable”p. 159

“The classical metaphor for this [a critique] is childbirth, since the work is like an offspring; but in this context, I would suggest that the solitary time spent creating can also be seen as time spent in front of a mirror, ‘fixing’ or primping an ideal image, and it is that image that is displayed for the panelists.” p. 133

I received Failure!: Experiments In Aesthetic And Social Practices, from the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press, for my birthday, and have really been enjoying it.

Some quotes:

“The utopian writer is usually a miniature paranoid king.” Eduardo Abarora, p. 61
——–
“Solanas claimed SCUM not as an organization but as ‘a literary device… a state of mind.’… Though S.C.U.M. never existed, Valerie was by no means the only member… “ Catherine Lord, p. 39-40, Failure!: Experiments In Aesthetic And Social Practices
——–

“They [the Morningstar Ranch people] saw their reduced consumption as an answer to the degrading and exploitative forces of capital” p. 32

“9 million French people striking for a month” p. 31

“Materializing Freedom means beginning by appropriating a few patches of the surface of a domesticated planet.” – Basic program of the Bureau of Unitary Urbanism

-Sarah Lewinson, Tales from the Uni-nursery.
——–
Our minds constantly design and re-design possbility. Indeed there are an infinite number of patterns in the universe, but we return to the same basic pattern themes over and over again. p. 63 -William Pope L.

“What I mean is: I do not waver intentionally. In fact, whenever I waver I believe I am struggling in earnest, following my natural process. As I write this, I feel a tiny bit exposed. This text will be printed for public consumption and perhaps, for some, undermine their belief in me as a political artist but it is important to examine what is in the dungeon. Face it. Communicate it. Anywho, perhaps it is more important to be human than a political artist…” p. 64, -William Pope L.

Ambivalence can be a cop out. All political or social interventions begin with a set of ideals. In the muck of battle, these ideals are bound to be tested, stomped and muddied.

And with the water, the earth, and the entrails comes the sobering realization that ideals are fine but it is struggle that gets you through the darkness that is in the daylight. As far as I am concerned there’s nothing fancy about struggle. That’s why utopias ain’t my kind of sandwich. p. 64, -William Pope L.
——–
The three stooges were naive visionaries p. 73, David Schafer, Up is High, How?
——–
SG:I have noticed some utopia in the fine art world, but the thing that bums me out about the stuff that I’ve seen is that the art world sometimes uses it just as playing with subjects that have a charge

RH: But how do you see what you are doing as different than this?

SG: Because I really care about it in a real world situation; it’s not an intellectual exercise – it’s not about “titillation through a loaded topic”. It’s about how is there ever possibly going to be a world that’s more just, where there’s more empathy than there is right now.” p. 109

Colin Dickey: …if you are living in America with your two cars and your home and that sort of thing, that this is a sort of violence…

Sam Green: a sane response to what is happening in the world is to run out and give up your possessions and make a revolution. An insane response would be to go about your life as if everything is ok. p. 98,

-Colin Dickey and Robby Herbst, Interview with Sam Green
——–
We have no patience for utopian thought. We can use our creativity for practical, real world change. Indluging in utopian thinking is a distraction and escapism that just needs to be jettisoned. We need practical ways to reconfigure the world and we need to talk about them in ways that takes us far from the fantasies and banalities of utopian thinking. p. 65, temporary services (brett bloom)

Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex….

“There is no human reason for money or for anyone to work more than two or three hours a week at the very most.”

“Provide the male with a goal. Incapable of enjoying the moment, the male needs something to look forward to…”

‘… as Buck-Morss put it, “universal humanity is visible at the edges”:

rather than giving multiple, distinct cultures equal due, whereby people are recognized as part of humanity indirectly through the mediation of collective cultural identities, human universality emerges… at the point of rupture. It is in the discontinuities… that people… give expression to a humanity that goes beyond cultural limits. And it is in our emphatic identification with this raw, free, and vulnerable state, that we have a chance of understanding what they say. Common humanity exists in spite of culture and its differences. A person’s non-identity with the collective allows for subterranean solidarities that have a chance of appealing to universal, moral sentiment, the source today of enthusiasm and hope.”‘

- from Hegel, Haiti and Universal History, in Slavij Zizek’s First as Tragedy, Then as Farce

This quote came out of the context of a rupture in roles and assumptions that took place during the Haitian revolution, when what something is runs counter to what it is actually doing (and certainly extends my thinking in ‘the remains and what remains’ 140k pdf):

‘The ex-slaves of Haiti took the French revolutionary slogans more literally than did the French themselves: they ignored all the implicit qualifications which abounded in Enlightenment ideology (freedom-but only for rational “mature” subj ects, not for the wild immature barbarians who first had to undergo a long process of education in order to deserve freedom and equality . . . ) . This led to sublime “communist” moments, like the one that occurred when French soldiers (sent by Napoleon to suppress the rebellion and restore slavery) approached the black army of (self-)liberated slaves. When they heard an initially indistinct murmur coming from the black crowd, the soldiers at first assumed it must be some kind of tribal war chant; but as they came closer, they realized that the Haitians were singing the Marseillaise, and they started to wonder out loud whether they were not fighting on the wrong side.‘

“But the whole discourse of noise-as-threat is bankrupt, positively inimical to the remnants of power that still cling to noise. Forget subversion. The point is self-subversion, overthrowing the power structure in your own head. The enemy is the mind’s tendency to systematize, sew up experience, place a distance between itself and immediacy… The goal is OBLIVION.1 – Simon Reynolds, “Noise” “

Deborah: you’re fighting a straw man here. Perhaps the “Art World” is not focused on changing the world, but that doesn’t mean Art can’t be.

I earnestly believe that Art does have the ability to insert itself into many industries and fields as a critical agent. It can operate within society as a self-reflexive tool that works within while chafing against the field in which it is working.

An artist working in a hospital or an investment banking firm, can raise questions and force situations not open to the average employee.

In this way, Art can change the world in important and earnest ways.

Your question of Abandon belongs in a different post than your question of Changing The World. Good community or international development (the field most focused on actually changing the world in what I consider worthwhile ways) is not driven by Abandon, and absolutely DOES care what the world thinks of it. When you are changing the world, you better care what the world thinks of it, or you’re the sort of self-centred person who should NOT be changing the world.

This does not mean cow-towing to popular demand or buzzword trends; it means being sensitive to the needs and effects produced by your work.

And all of this comes from a career that has operated uncomfortably on the edge of art and community development for over a decade, struggling with the great potential and impotence of art in everyday life working alongside a person focusing intently on Peace Building post-conflict regions of the world.