[-empyre-] For whom is art "made"?

[Helen Thorington]

Wow, Brad.  Yes, too much art is made for art-institutions, and it
saddens me to see it as a direction some of the artists we have dealt  
with over the years are
taking. But if you check out the networked_performance blog -- an  
archive of networked
projects since 2004, you'll see that thousands of creative people are  
in fact creating
work for themselves and for others like themselves -- not for art- 
institutions. A lot of it is
"open" work.  Many of the people doing this do not identify as  
artists,  So question: can
academics open to the change that has brought thousands into the new  
media field as creators
of open, participatory work. Or will they stick with an older idea of  
artist -- the one the art institutions
support?

BTW, many of the projects I'm thinking about make use of  familiar  
objects and things
from everyday life. They thus "offer a return to the connection of art  
and life.." [Landy],
which for many is most welcome.

Helen



On May 6, 2008, at 2:42 PM, { brad brace } wrote:

>
>
> That's the problem Megan... AArt is determinately-made for
> art-institutions and the plethora of art-minyons and
> acolytes who profit-from-it and
> say-everything's-ok-as-long-as-they-get-paid... Basically,
> if it's called Art it's really not. I'm sorry but you have
> no viable future... maybe that's called 'AArt-History.'
>
>
> /:b
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, 6 May 2008, Megan Debin wrote:
>
>> First of all, thanks to Jennifer and to all for introducing me to an
>> interesting community of discussion.  I would like to introduce a  
>> new topic
>> about audience and the public in general.
>>
>> For a long while, I have, for reasons unbeknownst to me, been  
>> resistant to
>> Jennifer's urges to check out errorista's work.  I hadn't quite  
>> figured out
>> why I felt this resistance until today.  *Light bulb!** * I am  
>> afraid of not
>> understanding.  I have an intense fear of being wrong – a truly
>> anti-errorista sentiment – that what these artists do will be  
>> beyond my
>> mental grasp.  As I have learned from errorista, there is no wrong
>> answer.  There
>> is right in the mistake.  All this self-doubt... and I'm in academia!
>>
>> So, this got me to thinking about an often-forgotten segment of our
>> population: the general public.  The everyday person, when asked  
>> about their
>> thoughts on art, usually thinks things such as, "I don't understand  
>> anything
>> about art," or "Maybe if someone explained it to me, I might get  
>> it.  But
>> probably not."  How have we lost touch with the audience?
>>
>> My questions to the empyre community are these: How does current art
>> production relate to the general public, to the Joe Shmoe on the  
>> street?  How
>> is the public *really *involved?   Shall we sit in our ivory towers  
>> and wax
>> philosophical, using complicated terminology that most of the  
>> general public
>> does not understand?  That *is* our job, right?  How can artists  
>> and critics
>> reclaim a true relationship with the people?  Why do we have these
>> discussions?  How does it relate to the larger population? And a  
>> critical
>> one: For whom is art made?
>>
>> P.S. By the way, I checked out errorista.  It's witty, ingenious,  
>> all right
>> and wrong all at once. I love it.
>>
>> --
>> Megan Lorraine Debin
>> M.A. Latin American Studies, UCLA
>> meganldebin at gmail.com
>>
>> "Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to  
>> shape
>> it" -Vladimir Mayakovski
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