but is it really art?

An artist (Christoph Büchel) disguised (though artist and gallery use the word “initiate”) a high powered gallery in London (Hauser and Wirth) into a free community center with rooms dedicated to “computer classes, prayer, and counseling”, and complete with “locker room and gym”.   As a free Community Center in Piccadilly, the piece of real estate (that was still in reality Hauser and Wirth) was used for all kinds of community activities ranging from neo-natal yoga to classes in aromatherapy and Algerian baking.  It was attended qua community center by a certain class of people who were unaware that it was also attended, “un-qua” community center, by a completely different set and class of people: the art spectator class.  

Was this "initiation" really art? 

To quote a quote by Andrea Frazier quoted in the review I read about this, “the institution of art lives immaterially in the head of anyone who recognizes it.”  Art or “institution of art”: how does one go about recognizing the Picadilly Community Center as such?  What clues other than prior knowledge of the gallery location and “project initiation” point to the fact that this transformation is indeed art to the uninitiated?  What on earth other than arrogant inside knowledge leads this immaterial action to be recognized as such?  And if art it is, and art it is since it is in the system, what is it about? 

According to author Alex Farquharson, “The Piccadilly community Center was an extraordinary installation…but ultimately it did not rise to the social and political challenges facing Britain today.”   Am I to conclude that by initiating an unstable environment where “society’s most vulnerable and least visible” come unknowingly into contact with affluent enfranchised gallerygoers, while affluent enfranchised gallerygoers sometimes feel uncomfortable when the Center is in full swing, the artist is somehow making a statement about the state of the global economy and about the disenfranchised?  Am I to conclude that this was a piece about global recession, over-leveraging, and the fall-out that comes from governments spending beyond budgetary constraints?  

Sorry, no can see.  What I see is a morally dubious action by players acting in an over-bloated market that still has not caught down to economic reality.  But since its players seem to come from the classes that do not feel economic downturns, this market might remain hot and putting out this kind of "initiative" for quite a while to come.  The Piccadilly Community Center might have been art, but not any art I care to see.  

now we're talking

Llyn Foulkes, Deliverance

Now this, this is information, unlike the lack thereof to which I was referring to here.

cutting the fat

Joseph Beuys, Fat Chair

I must admit that in "polite society" the title of my last blog entry is a bit jarring.  Jarring as it might be, it represents my disdain for meaningless "information" in the widest possible definition of that word.  In my dealings with people and the world, for better or worse, I like to cut to the chase.  Unfortunately, I live in a part of the world, the American South, where cutting to the chase is viewed, at best, with weariness (a fact confirmed by a very good friend of mine who was born and raised here and left for the straightforward shores of New York City). 

Recently I got fired from my job.  Well, technically, I was "not hired" and it wasn't so recently.  I had worked part-time at a job that turned into full-time for which I was asked to apply to by my chairman.  I was indeed given the option of keeping my part-time job; but to cut to the chase, I was tired of being treated like shit and figured, erroneously, that if I worked full-time at it, I'd rediscover the pride I once felt about the place.  

Being treated "like shit" should not have come as a surprise, for part-time teaching jobs are by nature shitty and I should have taken it as a given.  But given the nature of the place, and the heady plans we had for it when "we", and I was very much involved at the time, set up the program, I never got used to the reality that, as the years went by, working conditions deteriorated rather than improved, as planned, through the embodiment of the principles I thought the place purported to be built upon and to uphold.  Principles having to do with working artists teaching, REALLY teaching, in the grandest and widest definition of this word, and expanding young minds through the arts and the humanities rather than by setting up a very average high school with art as an after school activity (which is in essence what happened).

As "working conditions deteriorated", I did voice my displeasure; and yes, I did it publicly (if one could possibly call my blog public); a no-no in contemporary society that I knew could bite me in the ass.  But already at the time, voicing my opinion in the only way I was allowed to and knew how had become as important to me as the job. Apparently, thanks to the magic of Google, my blog really is public, and it ruffled feathers up high, sealing my fate; though nothing was told to me directly at the time, or even now.  

Once I was in the running to keep doing my job in a full-time capacity, the blog and my vociferous verbal voicing of opinion did indeed bite me.  And although I "made it" to the final phase of the job search, there was pressure from above to get rid of me; so I had no real chance from the very beginning.  What rankles is all the bullshit I had to go through to get that final slap on the face. Truthfully, I would have liked it better if when I first publicly voiced my opinion, "they" had given me the option of rescinding it or leaving; but those are not the dance steps practiced here.  

I was told that although I was applying for a ten month position, I was fired (ok, “not hired”) because I did not readily acquiesce to teaching 9th and 10th graders in summer (notice: not a legal part of the position).  If only I had the temperament, I would have, like my cousin suggested that I do, hired a lawyer to punch holes though their decision and get compensated for it.  But at that point, hell, fuck it.  

This is an old story that apparently I am still “processing"....  ...And I had set out to write a blog about values and cutting the fat....  During my job interview, which was being conducted by what at one point I considered friends, I was specifically told these words: "Katya, I know you will come to me when you see something you think is bullshit and you will tell me; and I value that."  Well, I did; and I always do.

a clear case of dick sucking

I've always loved a lot of Ed Ruscha's work.  Just the other day I was commenting to friends, while discussing the merits of attending "visiting artist" lectures, on how a no-nonsense kind of guy he seemed to be when I saw him speak at the Hirshhorn once upon a time.  Then, I didn't think I got much insight into his work from his lecture; today, I think my memories of the lecture make sense in light of the work and vice versa.  This interview (Ed Ruscha, The Golden State: an interview with Bob Monk; AIA Oct 2011) however is a true waste of time, paper and eyesight.  There is no insight to be had.  It's a clear case of one guy sucking up to another one who is not giving away much of anything.

cheesy but fun

I was looking to find some images of Larry Bells' work after reading an article by Faye Hirsch about some prints he made in the 70's that he does not particularly like but likes to see being shown precisely because he does not like them (image above).  And upon coming to his site I groaned in view of all it's gimmicky, in the way the internet can be gimmicky, moving parts.  There is so much about the internet I find visually offensive, but somehow this works for me: Larry Bell

I must be loosing it.