on+Art+Gangs+chapters+and...

These are my comments on the readings /awm. Comments on readings To start with I'd like to make some comments on the readings Stevphen has assigned. 1 – me, Art Gangs chapters. 2 - AWC demands (basically nothing) 3 - Joseph Beuys (more or less nothing)

Prologue:

The key omissions in Art Gangs – and I excused myself at the time due to the lack of preliminary research, i.e., articles and books on the question, as of the late '90s, and my desire to finish the dissertation within my lifetime – is the story of collective organizing among women and artists of color in New York. Should I revise this book, I would include chapters on those groups. It is important to note, however, that in considering those groups, one considers also the bodies of theory that emerged from them. The insights feminists and thinkers of color have on collective formations is largely a mystery to me given the omissions in this book. It is curious now to look over these chapters I asked folks to read from my own book. (Not only the embarrassing typos!) I wrote the first draft as a PhD thesis in 1999. It is, finally, despite my revisions in the direction of readability, an academic book. It is also of course New York-centric, being basically a series of linked case studies of artists' collectives functioning within very specific times and places. New York's artworld, of course, is taken as a model, a template of the modern capitalist art system, much as was the Parisian beaux arts system in the 19th century. (Much of the most cogent contemporary analysis of that artworld, by the way, was developed by an emigre Briton, Laurence Alloway; p. 5, fn12.) But there are very significant differences with cultural systems in other countries. The most significant in my view is 1) the presence of an over-arching system of art patronage by the state, and 2) really existing socialist, communist and anarchist political formations with regular electoral and “extra-parliamentary” voices heard in society. Very specifically, there is a European trajectory of major exhibitions which engaged collectivity among artists which is not the case in the USA. These began not long after the demise of “really existing socialism” in 1989. One of the earliest is Beatrice von Bismarck, Diethelm Stoller und Ulf Wuggenig, eds., Games, Fights, Collaborations: Art and Culture Studies in the Nineties (Ostfildern, Cantz, 1996). This series of shows – “Kollektive Kreativität” (2005) is one; we have a reading from the catalogue, and a meeting with the curators What, How and for Whom is scheduled – established a kind of canon of artists' collectives, a familiar maneuver in the art world. There is a series of similar exhibitions in the USA, and a similar emergent “canon,” however the venues are small, and the attention paid has been minimal, especially by mainstream art exhibiting institutions. There are also, however, what Gregory Sholette called “insouciant collectives,” artists' groups which have worked deliberately within the accepted frame of gallery and museum exhibition, which have been finally accepted within the international canon. These include WHW itself, as a curatorial collective (inheritors of the work of Group Material), Bernadette Corporation, and most recently Bruce High Quality Foundation. (Sholette's critique was based on different groups; unlike his subjects, both the latter-named groups have engaged political issues in their work.) What can it mean that particular artists' collectives are valorized in this way? Does it advance the notion of the collective as an actor in high culture? Next I note as a theme that continued in my own work in the early '00s the artists' self-education initiative popping up with the AMCC an anti-catalog publication (1977). At the time, I argued that it was an important revision of U.S. art history, anticipating the turn towards social history. Yes, but John Berger and the British academy had that well in hand, and this little book was a U.S. reflection. What is most interesting in that publication, and the whole AMCC, U.S. Art & Language episode was, I think, the emergence of a serious, self-organized, analytic and critical extra-mural academic formation. I could argue that this is a continuous dynamic in academic art, which is not so much the case in other disciplines. Also, in reflecting on Colab – and a great deal is going on for me now in terms of that group's history (e.g., XFR STN at the New Museum this summer, a commissioned article on the Real Estate Show and another on ABC No Rio) – I feel as if that was a moment when subculture, even subculture aspiring to be mass culture, was written into high culture, into the art world, in a way which was read at the time by mandarins as appropriation, i.e., as a “sell out” of politicized criticality. It has long been my position that this was true only in part, only “intramurally,” that is, among artworld actors. What really mattered was the world of high art and culture coming to terms with the mass subcultural movements of punk and hip hop. That is still playing out in our time. Another important thing to note about the Art Workers' Coalition chapter – and it's something I can't talk about in any informed way really until I have done a lot more archival work – is the vital presence in the early phases of that group of international artists, in particular Takis, a Greek artist resident in the U.S.. (Takis had lived many years in France; early on he served time in prison as a leader of a wartime Greek student movement.) More shadowy figures include the Iranian poet Farman and the photographer Mehdi Kohnsari. Simultaneous movements among artists critiquing art institutions sprang up in other countries, including the UK and Spain. All of this history is vague. Perhaps now, even a few days on the internet would lead to a new picture of international artists' organizing after 1968. The AWC also replicated itself in other U.S. cities – Boston and Atlanta that I know about. In Atlanta, the AWC was a late-forming group. Its members were responsible for generating numerous artist-run art spaces, many of which survive today. From my year of work there, I know that as of 2006, there was nothing much written on this, much less any attempt to put together national stories. Substantial information about all of them are most likely buried within the AS-AP database for anyone who cared to look. Finally, in terms of what is missing, or what I did not at the time understand, was the affect of the AWC – the sense of forward motion of a moment, and the internal dynamics of the open assembly mode of organization. (I participated in the anti-Vietnam War movement as a foot-soldier, yes, but that experience is remote for me now, and I was very young.) 2011 has changed that; a lot of people now will instinctively, subjectively understand the way in which the AWC came together and moved forward as an open assembly organization. 2 – AWC Statement of Demands This is the moment for a general discussion. It is pretty clear that the political and economic demands of the AWC remain almost entirely unaddressed. 3 – Joseph Beuys What's he doing here? Well, he is a key actor in the development of a dialogical performative politicized public art. I used his idea of “social sculpture” as a jumping off point for discussing what has come to be called “social practice” art. (See my “Geneaology of Social Sculpture” at: http://www.joaap.org/webonly/moore.htm#note .) Yeah, well, back to the book, and more soon.

REFERENCES:

AMCC, //an anti-catalog// download URL: []

Gregory Sholette, "Introducing Insouciant Art Collectives, the Latest Product of Enterprise Culture" Intelligent Agent 4.2.3 2004; []