VIS 232: Seminar on Collaboration

Fall 2005

Grant Kester

3:30-6:20PM

VAF Seminar Room

Course Overview

This seminar will examine recent developments in collaborative art practice. Specifically we will discuss projects that challenge the conventions associated with solitary artistic expression via collaborative production carried on either among a group of artists, or between artists and other groups or individuals. Examples include Ala Plastica (Argentina), Huit Facettes-Interaction (Senegal), Park Fiction (Germany), PLATFORM (London), WochenKlausur (Austria), Littoral Arts (England), Temporary Services (United States), MuF (London), Ernesto Noriega (Germany), and others. How do we account for the re-emergence of the collective unit and collaboration as a mode of artistic production in recent years? What is the history of this tendency? How do we theorize collaborative production and how does it parallel, and challenge, the forms of knowledge generated by solitary artistic practices? We will discuss the ethical and epistemological questions raised by collaborative practice (with reference to forms of collective identity), it’s conflicted relationship to research paradigms drawn from the sciences as well as the history of vanguard political movements, and its roots in modern art history. Grading will be based on attendance, class participation (including leading a discussion of weekly readings), and completion of two writing assignments involving case studies of specific collaborative projects. Readings for the class are on-line and on the UCSD Geisel Library “Electronic Reserves” site (ER).

Week 1

Thursday, September 22

Introduction to class

Week 2

Thursday, September 29

Historical Sources

Required readings

Robert Haywood, “Critique of Instrumental Labor: Meyer Schapiro’s and Allan Kaprow’s Theory of Avant-Garde Art” in Benjamin H.D. Buchloh and Judith F. Rodenbeck, Experiments in the Everyday: Allan Kaprow and Robert Watts-Events, Objects, Documents (Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery: Columbia University, 1999).

Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews (University of Chicago Press, 1998), (ER)

John Walker, “Artist Placement Group: 1966-89” (chapter thirteen) and “Placement and Performance” (chapter eighteen) in John Latham: The Incidental Person-His Art and Ideas (London: Middlesex University Press, 1995).

Thursday, October 6

Relational Aesthetics

Required readings

Nicolas Bourriaud, “Relational Form,” from Relational Aesthetics (1998)

http://www-dev.dxarts.washington.edu/coupe/dxarts531/reading/relationalaesthetics.pdf

Claire Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” October #110 (Fall 2004) (ER)

Benjamin Bertram, “New Reflections on the ‘Revolutionary’ Politics of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe,” Boundary 2, 22.3 (Autumn 1995). This essay is available via “Jstor” on the UCSD library web site (http://www.jstor.org/).

Howard Slater, “The Spoiled Ideals of Lost Situations” (http://www.infopool.org.uk/pool1.htm)

Dave Beech, “Independent Collaborative Hospitality” (Variant #22)

http://www.variant.randomstate.org/22texts/Hospitality.html

Week 4

Wednesday, October 12

Visiting Speaker

This week we’ll have class on Wednesday (October 12) rather than Thursday (October 13), for a special presentation by Insite 05 curator Osvaldo Sanchez (6PM).

Week 5

Thursday, October 20

STUDENT presentations

Week 6

Thursday, October 27

From Object to Process

• Final paper outlines due

Required readings

Steven Crowell, “Dialogue and Text: Re-marking the Difference,” The Interpretation of Dialogue, edited by Tullio Maranhao (University of Chicago Press, 1990) (ER)

Martin Morris, “The Paradigm Shift to Communication and the Eclipse of the Object,” South Atlantic Quarterly vol. 96, no.4 (Fall 1997) (ER)

Grant Kester, “Dialogical Aesthetics” Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (University of California Press, 2004) (ER)

Thursday, November 3

Co-Labor I

Required readings

Jean-Luc Nancy, “The Inoperative Community” The Inoperative Community (University of Minnesota Press) (ER)

Miwon Kwon, "The (Un)Sitings of Community," One Place After Another: Site Specific Art and Locational Identity (MIT Press, 2002) (ER)

Grant Kester, “Community and Communicability,” Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (University of California Press, 2004) (via instructor)

Week 8

Thursday, November 10

Co-Labor II

Required reading

Grant Kester, “Theories and Methods of Collaborative Art Practice,” Groundworks: Environmental Collaboration in Contemporary Art (Pittsburgh, PA: Regina Gouger Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, 2005) (via instructor)

Hannah Arendt, “Action” (chapter five), The Human Condition, second edition (University of Chicago Press, 1998) (ER)

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading,” (chapter four), Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Duke University Press, 2003) (ER)

Week 9

Thursday, November 17

Co-Labor III

Required reading

Walead Beshty, “Neo-Avant Garde and Service Industry: Notes on the Brave New World of Relational Aesthetics” Texte zur Kunst #59 http://www.textezurkunst.de/

Essays from the “Institution” issue under “Discourse” at www.republicart.net (documentation from the conference “Progressive Art Institutions in the Age of Dissolving Welfare States”)

Brian Holmes, “A Rising Tide of Contradictions”
Beatrice von Bismarck, “Academy Effects”
Simon Sheikh, “Public Spheres and the Functions of Progressive Art Institutions”

Annick Bourguignon and Christopher Dorsett, “Creativity: Can Artistic Perspectives Contribute to Management Questions”

http://econpapers.hhs.se/paper/ebgessewp/dr-03020.htm

Angela Mitropoulos, “Precari-us?” Mute 29 (August 2, 2005) www.metamute.com (see: “Special Section: Exploring Precariousness” in Mute 29).

The Cultural Policy Collective, “Cultural Provision for the Twenty First Century,” Variant 20 (Summer 2004) www.variant.randomstate.org/issue20.html

Your first assignment involves a site visit to one of the Insite 05 “intervention” projects currently underway in San Diego and Tijuana. After selecting a project to investigate (www.insite_05) you should make contact with both the artist and any local collaborators. Plan to interview participants as well as audience members about the project. Begin by examining the ways in which the project has been presented and described by Insite’s curatorial team and the artist. What assumptions have been made by each in developing the project? In evaluating the individual and institutional intentions for a given project it’s useful to review published material and descriptions (on the Insite URL or by visiting the SDMA “Infosite,” for example). Next, compare and contrast these statements with your own experiences and interpretations, after collecting data about the project. If the project is on going (vs. a singular event) you’ll want to make at least two visits. It may be difficult to make contact with the artist and participants. This is often the case in researching collaborative projects, so part of your challenge in this assignment is determining the most effective way to get access to key participants. If you run into roadblocks with one project then switch to another one. You must provide first hand documentation of the project (transcribed interviews with the artist, participants and/or audience members, site documentation in the form of photographs or video, etc.). This material will be presented in a 5-8-page paper and a 15-minute class presentation (during week #5).

Assignment #2

Your final paper will build on the methodologies established in your first assignment. You will present a detailed case study of a specific collaborative project (not a part of Insite), drawing on original research with the group that produced the project (interviews via direct contact, phone or e-mail). You will be asked to develop a set of evaluative criteria for collaborative art practice, and to apply these criteria to the project you present. Papers should include a detailed description of the project, the methods by which it was produced, an explanation of the audience or community with whom it was created, the intentions behind it, and your own assessment of its effectiveness. Further, you must discuss and justify the metric you employ to evaluate this efficacy. You must also address the following points:

How did the specific system of financial and institutional support for your project (private foundation, art museum, biennial, public arts agency, etc.) influence its form, structure and outcome?

Provide a detailed account of the specific mechanisms of collaborative interaction at work in the project (meetings, conversation circles, physical collaboration, political action, etc.). How, specifically, did these mechanisms operate and effect the consciousness and perceptions of the project participants? What forms of knowledge or insight were generated through collaborative interaction?

A précis of the final paper, describing research sources, methodologies, and evaluative criteria, will be due in class on week six. Papers for MFA students must be at least 4500 words (including endnotes). Papers for Ph.D. students must be at least 5400 words. Please double-space and use 10-12 point Helvetica (or a similar font). Format your citations as endnotes using the Chicago Manual of Style. Late papers will be marked down 1/2 letter grade for each day they are overdue.

Research Resources

Collaborative Groups

Ala Plastica (Argentina)

http://www.moseisley-bar.de/

The Art of Change (London)

http://www.panchayat.co.uk/aoc.html

Helen and Newton Harrison (Peninsula Europe project)

http://www.peninsula-europe.net/flash.htm

Big Hope (Hungary)

http://www.bighope.hu/

Colectivo Cambalache (Colombia)

http://www.amaze.it/en/mast/going/gallery4.html

Free Soil (San Francisco)

http://www.free-soil.org/about.php

Grupo Escombros (Argentina)

http://www.grupoescombros.com.ar/

Kent Hansen is a Danish artist, working with "democratic innovation"

http://www.demokratisk-innovation.dk/ENG/about.htm

Huit Facettes-Interaction (Dakar, Senegal)

http://www.cittadellarte.it/unidee/unidee2004/meetings/huitfacettes.htm

http://www.universes-in-universe.de/car/documenta/11/halle/e-huit.htm

Isuma Igloolik Productions (Canada)

http://www.isuma.ca/

Suzanne Lacy (Los Angeles)

http://www.suzannelacy.com/

Littoral Arts (Manchester)

http://www.littoral.org.uk/

MuF (London)

http://www.muf.co.uk/

N55 (Copenhagen)

http://www.n55.dk/yintro.html

http://www.n55.dk/yn55/texts/craig.html

Nuts Society (Thailand)

http://www.nuts-society.org/

Park Fiction (Hamburg, Germany)

http://www.parkfiction.org/index.html

PLATFORM (London)

http://www.platformlondon.org/

Ted Purvis (San Francisco)

http://www.creativeworkfund.org/pages/bios/ted_purvis.html

Sarai Media Lab (Delhi)

http://www.sarai.net/

Swarm TV (England)

http://www.swarmtv.org/website.asp?page=home%20page

Stockyard Institute (Chicago)

http://stockyardinstitute.org/

Superflex (Copenhagen)

http://www.superflex.dk/

Temporary Services (Chicago)

http://www.temporaryservices.org/

Three Rivers/Second Nature (CMU, Pittsburgh)

http://3r2n.cfa.cmu.edu/

Ultra Red (Los Angeles)

http://www.ultrared.org/directory.html

Wochenklausur (Vienna, Austria)

http://www.wochenklausur.at/projekte/index.htm

Essays

Conference Report, “The Beauty of Collaboration: Manners, Methods and Aesthetics” Banff New Media Institute (May 2003) Overview and “Agenda” (pdf.), http://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/bnmi_beauty_of_collab/detail.asp

Tom Dommisse, “Absence in Common: Towards a Post-modern Notion of Sensus Communis,”

http://home.concepts-ict.nl/~kimmerle/frametom.htm

“Desire, and a kind of playfulness: An edited transcription of an ‘exchange-situation’ at the Copenhagen Free University, March 18, 2002” Variant (Summer 2002),

http://www.variant.randomstate.org/issue15.html

“Concrete Social Interventions: Interview with Pascale Jeannèe of the artists group WochenKlausur,” Variant (Winter 2002), http://www.variant.randomstate.org/issue16.html

“Oh Gag Me: An Inclusive Conversation with Suzanne Lacy,” Variant (Winter 2001), http: www.variant.randomstate.org/14texts/Suzanne_Lacy.html

Marion Hamm, “Activism in Physical and Virtual Spaces,” Republicart “Real Public Spaces” issue, http://www.republicart.net/disc/realpublicspaces/hamm02_en.htm

Critical Art Ensemble, “Collective Cultural Action” Variant (Summer 2002), http://www.variant.randomstate.org/15texts/cae.html

Exhibitions, conferences, organizations

Groundworks: Environmental Collaboration in Contemporary Art

Regina Gouger Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh

http://3r2n.cfa.cmu.edu/groundworks/

Democracy When? Activist Strategizing in Los Angeles, UCLA Art Gallery

http://artleak.org/democracywhen/participants.html

The Interventionists: Art in the Social Sphere, MASS MoCA

http://www.massmoca.org/visual_arts/interventionists.html

Free Cooperation: Networks, Art & Collaboration, SUNY, Buffalo

http://freecooperation.org

“A Parliament of Parliaments: How to Overcome the Crisis of Representation,” (ZKM)

http://www.ensmp.fr/~latour/expositions/002_parliament.html

• conference organized by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel at ZKM

Documenta 11 (Kassel)

http://www.universes-in-universe.de/car/documenta/11/english.htm

“Interrupt: Artists in Socially-Engaged Practice” (London)

http://www.interrupt-symposia.org/

“Diffusion: Collaborative Practices in Contemporary Art” (Tate Modern)

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/diffusion.htm

“Almost Real” conference (Zagreb)

http://www.artforsocialchange.org/almostreal/

Art for Social change (Soros-funded)

http://www.artforsocialchange.org/front/index.php?topic=home

Americans for the Arts (US)

http://www.AmericansForTheArts.org/

Green Museum (on-line resource for environmental art)

http://forum.greenmuseum.org/

National Coalition of Dialogue and Deliberation (Pennsylvania)

http://www.thataway.org/

Journals

Journal of Aesthetics and Protest

www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org

(Re)public Art

www.republicart.net

Variant

www.variant.randomstate.org/

MUTE

www.metamute.com

Insite 05 Interventions

We have a rare opportunity this fall to observe first-hand a series of collaborative projects developed and presented in San Diego and Tijuana as part of Insite 2005. Descriptions of several of the Insite 05 “interventions” follow.

Maurycy Gomulicki, Aerial Bridge (Puente México/Tijuana)

Aerial Bridge, by Maurycy Gomulicki, brings together diverse members of model airplane clubs in San Diego and Tijuana through a creative process of personalizing model airplanes and co-created a flying event at the border. Intrigued by the way that the passion that a hobby engenders can connect disparate individuals, Gomulicki has worked for over a year with pilots from both sides of the border. In Aerial Bridge the experience of personal fantasy that is expressed in the designing and building of model planes combines with the unique experience of forging relationships that transcend cultural patterns and territorial demarcations. The experience relies on the sustained efforts of all involved in the lead-up to the event. Scheduled for September 24, the event will be held at the cemented riverbed of the Tijuana River, at the point where the yellow border demarcation line painted down the center of the river channel is approximately level with the intersection of the Vía Rápida and the border bridge.

Josep María Martín, A Prototype for Good Emigration (YMCA Tijuana)

Josep Maria Martín’s project for inSite_05, A prototype for Good Emigration, involves creating a space that can sustain experiences of renewal and learning among young undocumented migrants who have been deported to Tijuana after a failed attempt to cross the border. Working in conjunction with Tijuana architect, Sergio Soto, and a number of activists, academics and migrant support agencies, Josep co-designed a space annexed to the YMCA hostel in Tijuana. For the adolescents who are temporarily housed there the space will provide a retreat in which to rest, think, listen to music, read, or view the urban landscape. Alternatively, they can engage in youth-oriented programs addressing issues of migratory flows, human rights, and the personal deliberations that shape the weighty decision to migrate.

Mark Bradford, Maleteros (San Ysidro US/Mexico border crossing)

Mark Bradford project is an intervention into the pre-existing labor dynamic of the so-called maleteros––porters who work along the narrow border strip linking Tijuana and San Diego. Maleteros aims to facilitate and make visible the porter services that for over two decades have been offered informally, or at least without formal recognition, between various access points at the San Ysidro border crossing. Through an extended process of dialogue and exchange with the porters, who offer their services either individually or as part of an organized network, Bradford has striven to co-create a visual ‘porter identity’ at their various work locations and through customized equipment. Beyond the project’s latent potential as a political action or its appropriation of marketing strategies, Maleteros also reveals the underground economy of those who work at this interstice and who ease the cross-border flow of goods and people. Thus, Maleteros also refers to the diachronic nature of the border, of its routinized circularity, its time fractures, its veils, and its porosity.

Paul Ramírez-Jonas, Mi Casa, Su Casa (Centro Cultural de la Raza/San Diego)

With Mi Casa, Su Casa, Paul Ramírez Jonas has created a series of public presentations in order to catalyze a dialogue around definitions of access and trust. Mi Casa, Su Casa develops as a program of conversations about how we experience the limits between public and private space, and what is designated as locked or unlocked. These illustrated lectures employ personal keys as a symbol that forms the core of the interaction. At the end of each conversation the artist, along with his key-duplicating machine, will encourage those present to exchange duplicated keys. As each member of the public agrees to exchange his or her key they will receive a copy of someone else’s key in return. Through successive presentations and exchanges, an imaginary network of trust and access will take shape. The public domain and the private domain are collapsed in the individual act of the exchange of keys and in the narration of the ongoing process. Perhaps Mi Casa, Su Casa ’s existence as an artistic proposal begins at the point when each presentation comes to an end. The lectures will take place between August and October in various locations in San Diego and Tijuana.

Christopher Ferreria, Some Kindly Monster (Centro Cultural Tijuana)

Some Kindly Monster, by Chris Ferreria, is inspired by the expressive car culture that defines much of urban youth culture in the multicultural communities of Southeast San Diego and National City. Ferreria’s goal was to create a monster vehicle through the collaborative efforts of two distinct car crews who would not normally collaborate together. The transformation of the vehicle involves both visual and an audio interventions, exemplifying how these communities enact different modes of ‘escape’ and ‘arrival’—in the form of spectacle—in their everyday cultural and physical landscape. Additionally, Some Kindly Monster involves the participation of local DJs from San Diego who will hold informal sessions as the vehicle moves around the city from August through November.

Bulbo, The Clothes Shop (Galatea Audiovisual)

The Clothes Shop, by the Tijuana media collective Bulbo, involves a collective creative experience/event centered on customs of dress in the Tijuana-San Diego border region. The project includes a two month fashion workshop, involving participants from varied professional backgrounds and economic strata. The workshop served as an experimental laboratory in which participants focused on researching processes and spaces for production, marketing, and consumption of clothing. The Clothes Shop intervenes in formal and informal marketing networks and in wholesale and retail industries in both cities—from La Jolla to the Zona Río. Bulbo is organizing this project/event with the aim of broadcasting it as a documentary via television or the Internet.

Itzel Martínez, Ciudad Recuperación (Multikulti, Tijuana)

After three years of researching and filming the dramatic story of adolescent women in drug-rehabilitation programs in Tijuana Que hable la calle (Let the Streets of Tijuana Be Heard, 2003-05), Itzel Martínez del Cañizo has created a new video work for inSite 05. Ciudad Recuperación (Recovery City) deals with a group of men interned in a voluntary program for adult rehabilitation. Martínez del Cañizo decided to intervene on the specificity of their situation by employing the therapeutic effect of visual art practice and the development of a game. The patients, camera in hand, together forge a fictitious new possibility for themselves by designing a new city where they visualize a worthy and integrated space of their own: a Tijuana, perhaps, reinvented according to the desires and ideals of ‘residents in recovery.’ Added to the addicts’ vision in Ciudad Recuperación, the video juxtaposes testimonies from a group of upper and middleclass Tijuana women. The drug addicts’ own representation of the ideal conditions of their social reintegration is interrupted by interviews with these socially privileged women who hold equally idealized visions of the city and their position in it, which is shaped by their own social constructions. Ciudad Recuperación serves as an essay on the utopia of belonging within the framework of Tijuana’s social reality.

Course Overview

Thursday, September 22

Thursday, September 29

Historical Sources

Thursday, October 6

Relational Aesthetics

Further Reading

Howard Slater, “The Spoiled Ideals of Lost Situations” (http://www.infopool.org.uk/pool1.htm)

Visiting Speaker

STUDENT presentations

Week 6

From Object to Process

Thursday, November 3

Co-Labor I

Further reading

Week 8

Thursday, November 10

Co-Labor II

Week 9

Co-Labor III

Further reading

Thursday, December 1

Affinity/Collectivity

Journal of Aesthetics and Protest