<div dir="ltr">hi everyone,<br>I have spent a lot of this week mulling on and digesting the insights provided by Dont and Cara, which have left me with a number of open questions, some of which I’ve attempt to flesh out below as propositions. These questions, and the very terminology on which they rest, are very much in flux for me, personally, and I look forward to working them out together on this list. <br><br>Dont has said that he and the other members of Ultra-red “would insist that “social practice” art contributes to the gentrification of social practices” in the sense that such artworks tend to ascribe authorship, and authorship is a function which reproduces and imposes petite-bourgeois values — i.e. gentrification in the core sense. This statement appears to me as much more provocative than the oft-quoted claim of Rick Lowe that social practice is the gentrification of community arts. While Lowe’s claim seeks to defend the legacy of community arts in marginalized communities from the deleterious forces of disproportionately white and wealthy art world types seeking to cash in on perceived authenticity, Ultra-red’s analysis encompasses such critiques but extends them to suggest that social practice art represents the colonization and appropriation of the concrete social practices by which communities reproduce themselves. <br><br>Key to my own understanding of Dont’s comments is the sentence “Resisting displacement entails (but is not limited to) recognizing “social practices” as non-specialized and non-entrepreneurial.” For it is precisely those tasks which have historically appeared as “non-specialized” which are most central to social reproduction, and thus most likely to go un-waged and un-valorized. In other words, Ultra-red’s critique of the mechanisms by which social practice art can tend to appropriate a value-form of participation from communities is very much in keeping with critiques of social reproduction which highlight un-waged character of the labors of social reproduction (childcare among other forms of affective labor). <br><br>That point of resonance should not be seen as contradicting Cara’s observation that these critiques diverge in terms of their view of the emancipatory possibilities of participation. It may well be the case that there are multiple forms of participation at hand here, for example, and that not all forms of participation are equally available for appropriation as a form of value. Dont’s question about which social practices transform social conditions would seem to point to such a differentiation. The prominence of critiques of social reproduction within the legacy of revolutionary feminism would seem to suggest that in certain contexts the call for “wages for housework” can itself function as a transitional demand by highlighting the central role of women’s work / social reproduction in the maintenance of the capitalist order. If this is the case (and this may be an open question), then are there analogs to be found in the work of social practice? That is, can socially engaged artists work to highlight the role of participation in maintaining and reproducing the contemporary capitalist order? If so, can such increased ‘visibility’ function as a challenge to that order? What are the points moments at which we see something like such a challenge appearing in the art of social practice?<br><br>My own hunch is that struggles against gentrification — by which I mean struggles for physical spaces within the lived environment — will offer the best lens for viewing such moments, precisely because the needs of artists for such physical space, and the history of critical spatial practices within arts communities, lend a degree of necessity to the best intentions of artists to articulate solidarity with marginalized communities. This is not to say that artists do not continue to contribute to the gentrification of poor and working class neighborhoods, but merely that recent waves of development and displacement have provided a moment of shared class interest that might unite petit-bourgeois artist types with working class folks in unexpected, or even explosive, ways. <br> <br><br>On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 12:55 PM, ME Cara Baldwin <<a href="mailto:carabaldwin13@gmail.com">carabaldwin13@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>><br>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>> In reflecting on the many ways in which social practice(s) within the context of cultural production and the expanded field of art practice, both historically and in recent years, leads us inevitably to reflect on, and interrogate, the function of socially engaged practices; what are the qualities and points of engagement, and what are they directed to? This is a question that is posed both formally and conceptually. In the former case, we consider the institutional and material compositions are engaged through the work itself. Conceptually, and in terms of content, we consider the various ways these formal, material and, finally sociocultural compositions lead us to discernment of meaning and intention.<br>><br>> Dont’s involvement in the HIV/AIDS justice movement and organizing in the L.A. Tenants Union, as well as the extensive (both in terms of time and scale) of the involvement of contributing and collective members of Ultrared in work that, finally, inform and form their work together in aggregate and as a whole, are meaningful places to start in discussing what might be useful points of departure for what is at stake in socially engaged critical cultural practices, both in the arts and in fields of activism across multiple registers.<br>><br>> What strikes me, personally, about this field of inquiry and generaly and any query around the work of Ultrared in particular, is a focus in the body of work toward social practices that tend to support the survival of subjects in relation to objects. Whatever we might say about socially engaged cultural practices, in general, I think it’s safe to say that the focus in the work of Ultrared, both formally and conceptually, is aligned with corporeal and material struggles to survive that occur both objectively and subjectively; collectively and individually. This focus, in turn, seems to inform the questions put forward as those demanding response and engagement:<br>><br>> 1. What crises does the community of poor and working people face? <br>><br>><br>> 2. What is the analysis of the structural causes of those crises? <br>><br>><br>> 3. What strategies have emerged out of the struggle for transforming those causes—or, at the very least, for testing the analysis? <br>><br>><br>> 4. What tactics embody that strategy and test it in practice? <br>><br>><br>> 5. And last, who are we in relation to those tactics, that strategy, that analysis, and those who struggle amidst the crises? <br>><br>> For my part, I consider the urgency of these questions, as demands of the work, equally important. They might also provide us with a set of tools for examining the many ways in which work that is put forward as socially engaged but fails to consider the material conditions of subjects and objects it engages with, might be critiqued. This critique could occur at both the level of institutions and individual cultural and/or artistic projects. <br>><br>> Another point of departure for our conversation might be yielded in consideration of the value-form of participation as it is related and related to from the Marxist perspectives outlined in the text Dont is providing us with her (as well as in the writings of Ultrared at large) and that provided by Kyle and by way of Maya Gonzales in Endnotes here <a href="https://endnotes.org.uk/en/endnotes-the-logic-of-gender">https://endnotes.org.uk/en/endnotes-the-logic-of-gender</a> both critically and from a Marxist feminist perspective: <br>><br>> [If we were to compare the production of labour-power with the production of any other commodity, we would see that the “raw materials” used for this production process, i.e. the means of subsistence, transmit their value to the end product, while the new labour needed to turn these commodities into a functioning labour-power adds no value to this commodity. If we were to push this analogy further, we could say that — in terms of value — labour-power consists only of dead labour.]<br>><br>> What emerges, in contrast, as I read these two perspectives is a divergent view on the emancipatory possibilities inherent in participation, while, at the same time, some convergence or overlap in terms of a perspective that includes participation and participatory labor, critically, as producing of value. To revisit these terms from the perspective of the practices of Ultrared, these are understood to be as follows: the value-form of participation as the extraction of value from participation in state apparatuses. <br>><br>> I welcome any thoughts on this, and am so grateful, again, to all who care to consider any or all of these questions, and hope that my comments and these lines of inquiry are clear. <br>><br>><br>> _______________________________________________<br>> empyre forum<br>> <a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>> <a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a><br><br><br><br><br>--<br><a href="http://www.kylemckinley.com/">http://www.kylemckinley.com/</a><br><a href="http://buildingcollective.org/">http://buildingcollective.org/</a><div class="gmail_extra">
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