[-empyre-] Social Practice/Collaboration/Poetry

[margaretha haughwout]

Dear Margaret,

Thank you so much for sharing this work! To me both of these projects,
though very different, share commonalities in their design. The design of
both allows for focused yet multiple expressions that can unfold over time
and also take on a life of their own such as with the story Miracle. Here,
as I understand it, not only is the video it's own piece, but Helen Hall is
able to use it for advocacy and to generate new exchanges between
researchers, incarcerated folks, and their families and communities....

Perhaps for starters I am curious what your creative process is like, and
if you ever conceive of yourself as a designer of sorts and yes how you
encounter and work through issues of power in your creative process. I'm
also wondering how you might link your process to feminist pedagogical
processes and research. Do you locate a certain way of working that in
itself is resistant to cooptation?

Perhaps most pressingly, I'm curious where you locate the aesthetic in your
social practice, and if this is ever in any kind of tension with the
political or ethical concerns of the work... This of course could easily
dovetail with your initial requests to engage in institutional critique,
which I share.

That's a lot of questions! Please feel free to answer what inspires you the
most.

Kind regards,
Margaretha Haughwout
uncli*que* <http://beforebefore.net>, disconnect
<margaretha.anne.haughwout at gmail.com>


One of the most moving outcomes of From the Center, was when one of the
> participants Helen Hall was able to present her story Miracle to HIV/AIDS
> researchers at UCSF, and  how art can intervene within binary economy of
> community/experts and center issues of incarceration:
> https://vimeo.com/26096719
>
> I'd love to explore questions of institutional critique and social
> practice art. What is gained and lost when social practice art is legible
> as "art" within particular institutions? How is change (structural and
> individual) occur through aesthetics? How does one teach social practice
> art, especially when engaged within and with institutional power? I've
> found myself retiring to read Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Paulo Freire and love
> to discuss how their concepts of libratory education and knowledge product
> may shape the discourse on social practice, community collaboration, and
> advocacy. Also interested to discuss affect such as grief, joy, and pain.
>
> best,
>
>
> Margaret
>
> --
> Margaret Rhee, Ph.D.
>
> Visiting Assistant Professor
> Women's and Gender Studies
> University of Oregon
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
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