Inspiring Artists
I have great love and respect for artists who commit to engaging with the public and/or create work in public spaces. The following is a list of socially engaged artists and actions that float my boat.
Augusto Boal
“Legendary Brazilian political playwright and popular educator. He was the founder of theatre of the oppressed a popular international movement for a participatory form of theatre as a means of promoting, knowledge, democratic forms of interaction and transformation.
Invisible theatre is a form of theatrical performance that is enacted in a place where people would not normally expect to see one, for example in the street or in a shopping centre. The performers attempt to disguise the fact that it is a performance from those who observe and who may choose to participate in it, encouraging the spectators to view it as a real event”
In Boal’s book Theatre of the oppressed he talks about Aristotle’s interpretation of the origins of Greek theatre.
He said that after long periods of hard work and discipline people would celebrate and during such times they would burst into song, dance and animated story telling.
“People singing freely in the open air. The theatrical performance was created by and for the people. It was a celebration in which all could participate freely” “these songs and dances came from the soul, it was creative anarchy”
The aristocracy were unnerved by this creative anarchy and this creative freedom was seen as a threat. They set about establishing not only a place to behave in such a manner i.e. the amphitheatre but style in which to do so
“When it was free the body could invent the dance, which came from inside, then the choreographer turned up and charted the movement, explained the gesture, defined the rhythm and limited the space. The dramatic poet came and wrote his verses, no more freed thought or creative chaos……… The aristocracy created divisions: some persons will go to the stage and only they will be able to act: the rest will remain seated, receptive, passive. These will be the spectators, the masses, the people”
In terms of context, narrative and theme, the plays in this early Greek theatre were used to prop up the ideologies of the ruling aristocracy. The stories were used as a coercive tool to spread the ruling class’s beliefs and to essentially dominate the masses. I believe that the propaganda and fascist beliefs of much of our cinematic, televised and politically motivated media have their roots in these origins.
When we look at the etymology of the words aristocracy and act the connection becomes even clearer. The term is derived from the Greek “aristokratia” meaning “rule of the best”. A class of people considered superior to others. Boal thought that keeping groups of people separated in such a way is wrong and believed that in order to do so “First the barrier between actors and spectators is destroyed: all must act, all must be protagonists in the necessary transformation of society. Then the barrier between protagonists and choruses is destroyed: all must be simultaneously chorus and protagonist.
http://www.theatreoftheoppressed.org
bio: www.ptoweb.org/boal.html
Space hiackers
“The Space Hijackers are a group of Anarchitects which was set up at the beginning of 1999.
“Our group is dedicated to battling the constant oppressive encroachment onto public spaces of institutions, corporations and urban planners. We oppose the way that public space is being eroded and replaced by corporate profit making space.
We oppose the way that users of space are being put under increasing scrutiny and control by those who own or run it. Be this via CCTV installed to monitor us, or architectural elements designed to control our moods.
We oppose the blending out and destruction of local culture in the name of global economic progress. Newer and Bigger is not always better, it is usually both impersonal and imposing.
Through our various actions we attempt to raise awareness of issues within spaces and change how these spaces are used and perceived in the future. We intend to destroy hierarchies within spaces and claim back public ownership. Our projects act as another voice within space, and become engrained upon the places we Hijack.
Our aim is to change the way that ownership and usage of space is perceived, to put users of space in a more level position. We want to have a say in how we all exist within public space, on where and how we meet.
We are fed up with being treated like criminal cattle by the institutions and corporations that decide on the shape and content of our environment.
The Space Hijackers in no way want to become leaders of some kind of resistance movement, our actions detailed on this site should act as a catalyst for others. If we can, you can. However we want to expand our membership in order to create a forum for discussion and development of these ideas. Our agent’s area is a space where interested parties can meet in a non-hierarchical manner and help each other in their quests.”
http://www.spacehijackers.co.uk/html/projects.html
Example of work: the a-z of retail trickery
http://www.spacehijackers.co.uk/html/projects/anarchitectureweek/
atoz.html
The Vacuum Cleaner
“The vacuum cleaner is a cultural resistance collective of one fashioning radical social and ecological change. By employing various creative legal and illegal tactics and forms the vacuum cleaner attempts to disrupt concentrations of power and reverse the impending ecological collapse of planet earth.
The vacuum cleaner has intervened, disrupted and occasionally shutdown corporate and public spaces like every Selfridges, a lot of Starbucks, a few Virgin Megastores, The City of London, Wall Street and the Nokia HQ.
http://www.thevacuumcleaner.co.uk/menu/
Example of work: One Hundred Thousand Pieces of Possibilities
http://www.thevacuumcleaner.co.uk/mov/100000.mov
Reverend Billy
Reverend Billy and the Life After Shopping Gospel Choir believe that Consumerism is overwhelming our lives. The corporations want us to have experiences only through their products.
Our neighbourhoods, “commons” places like stoops and parks and streets and libraries, are disappearing into the corporatized world of big boxes and chain stores. But if we “back away from the product” – even a little bit, well then we Put The Odd Back In God!
Mission
The Church of Life After Shopping is project of The Immediate Life, a New York based arts organization using theatre, humour, and grassroots organizing to advance individuals and communities towards a more equitable future – starting today. We partner with citizens, grassroots organizations and progressive visionaries to produce dynamic, informed public campaigns that enact our core values – participatory democracy, ecological sustainability, and the preservation of vibrant communities and local economies.
Example: the wall
http://www.revbilly.com/work/the-last-televangelist/the-wall
http://www.revbilly.com/
The yes men
“Identity Correction
Impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Our targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else.
THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD is a screwball true story about two gonzo political activists who, posing as top executives of giant corporations, lie their way into big business conferences and pull off the world’s most outrageous pranks.
From New Orleans to India to New York City, armed with little more than cheap thrift-store suits, the Yes Men squeeze raucous comedy out of all the ways that corporate greed is destroying the planet.”
Example: the yes men impersonating Dow Chemicals and take full responsibility for the Bhopal catastrophe.
http://theyesmen.org/
My Dad’s strip club
http://www.mydadsstripclub.com/
Example: Prayers to products.
http://www.mydadsstripclub.com/page11/page11.html
L.M. Bogad
“L.M. Bogad (Associate Professor, University of California at Davis) is an author, performer, and activist. His book Electoral Guerrilla Theatre: Radical Ridicule and Social Movements, is an international study of performance artists who run for public office as a prank. Bogad works on the intersection between art and activism, and on the role of humour and imagination in organizing social movements.
Bogad’s darkly humorous plays and one person shows have covered topics such as the Haymarket Square Confrontation of 1886-7, the FBI’s COINTELPRO activities and the PATRIOT ACT, and global climate chaos.
He is a veteran of the Lincoln Centre Theatre Director’s Laboratory and the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army. He has performed in film, theatre, and street theatre across North America and the UK.
http://www.lmbogad.com/
Artangel
“Based in London but working across Britain and beyond, Artangel commissions and produces exceptional projects by outstanding contemporary artists. Over the past two decades, the projects have materialised in a range of different sites and situations and in countless forms of media.
Each new project evolves from a singular commissioning process, born from an open-ended conversation with an artist offered the opportunity to imagine something extraordinary. Artangel’s work is powered by the belief that artists are capable of creating visionary works which impact upon the way we view our world, our times and ourselves in unusual and enduring ways.
Many Artangel projects are given shape by a particular place and time. They can involve journeys to unfamiliar locations, from underground hangars to abandoned libraries. Or sometimes they can offer unfamiliar experiences in more familiar environments – a terraced house, a department store or daytime television.
This open-ended approach to the artistic process has seen Artangel generate some of the most talked-about, contentious and acclaimed art of recent times, including work by Francis Alÿs, Matthew Barney, Jeremy Deller, Douglas Gordon, Roni Horn, Steve McQueen, Michael Landy, Brian Eno, Gregor Schneider, Robert Wilson and Rachel Whiteread.”
http://www.artangel.org.uk
Richard Dedominici
“I believe that art is at its most powerful when witnessed by non art audiences” Richard Dedomenici is a one-man subversive think-tank primarily dedicated to the development and implementation of innovative strategies designed to undermine accepted belief systems and topple existing power structures.
By approaching the limits of conventionally acceptable behaviour, Richard Dedomenici’s poetic acts of low-grade civil disobedience forcibly ask pertinent questions of society, while his subtle anarcho-surrealist interventions create the kind of uncertainty that leads to possibility.
http://dedomenicitemporarywebsite.blogspot.com/
Example: The Big Flyposter Draw
You Are Beautiful street art displays
“This anonymous crew from Chicago have collaborated with artists from all over the world to produce feel-good, inspiring street art. You can find their lyrical work on top of buildings, on trains, against a park fences, written in a multitude of different languages. But their message is a simple one: ‘You Are Beautiful‘.
http://you-are-beautiful.com/
JR
“Paris street artist/photographer known as “JR” focuses on publicizing his images not just on building walls, sides of trucks, & doorways – but also takes into account the areas where his images are plastered. JR spent this past year taking portraits of victimized women in Africa, Asia & South America. From challenging stereotypes of street gangs to capturing life in the largest slum in Africa (Kibera, Kenya), JR has travelled and seen more of the world where many and most ignore.
Whether you agree or not with his illegal postering of his work on public space, most often unwanted (thus, the reason for his anonymity “JR”), the images that are captured nonetheless, can’t be denied.”
In this particular one he plastered the faces of the local female heroes onto the roof tops of the shanty town, but they were also made to be water and long lasting.
http://jr-art.net/
Minerva Cuevas
“She is known for the social and political research that guide her projects usually developed as site-specific interventions. Her production includes installation, video and photographic works. She is the founder of the Mejor Vida Corp. (1998) and member of Irational.org.”
http://www.irational.org/minerva/resume.html
Example: Free student I.D. cards
M.V.Corp. has issued thousands of student ID cards. This ID has been approved by Carmen Macazaga Valencia, the University Extension Coordinator, who was elected for this charge by looking for M.V.C. initials in the Mexico City’s White Pages. The MVC Student ID Card can be used internationally to obtain free or reduced museum admissions, public transportation, travel accommodation, other IDs, discounts on airfares, as well as many other benefits
Lone Twin
“Under the artistic direction of Gary Winters and Gregg Whelan Lone Twin have been making performance events since 1997. Across the world the company’s work is met with critical and popular acclaim with a truly international audience enjoying an ever-diverse range of works for stage, studio and public space. Lone Twin and Lone Twin Theatre are committed to creating entertaining and hopeful works that appeal to a wide audience. Projects range from touring theatrical works to public projects created for specific community contexts.”
Examples of public projects: http://www.lonetwin.com/public- projects.htm
Hideous Beast
“Hideous Beast is a collaborative effort between two artists, Josh Ippel and Charlie Roderick. Through organizing structured participatory events we attempt to encourage cultural activity outside the bounds of mainstream entertainment and fabricated desire.
Critical of the audience as a passive participant, Hideous Beast seeks to coordinate events in which an acknowledged exchange between the event (as entertainment) and the spectator (as collaborator) can generate meanings beyond traditional formalized modes of entertainment.
It is our intent as artists and beings in common to shift perceptions of authorship and participation within the realm of constructed entertainment and art generated activities.
This might change though. We are always looking for others to collaborate with, both in carrying out our own projects and realizing others. Please contact us with any ideas for activities or events.”
http://www.hideousbeast.com
Lottie Childs and street training
What is Street Training?
Street Training is the art of judging how to and how not to interact with place and people on the streets, by regularly, safely and joyfully exploring ourselves and the spaces we inhabit. Street Training teaches us that, by focusing our thoughts and behavior, we can have an effect on our surroundings equal to that which our surroundings exert upon us. As changes take place within the street trainer they also take place in the streets: it is a discipline that evolves interactively in relation to physical, social and mental structures that make up the city. Street Training focuses on the conditions of specific urban locations through the senses of specific individuals and frames them in a way that can be tested in any global city.
Street Training is an emergent 21st century Martial Art. It requires commitment and sustained practice, and encompasses the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of being. It rewards the Street Trainer with incremental changes in their ability to defend themselves against the bombardment of city life, and shape their environment positively.
http://streettraining.blogspot.com/
Yomango
Yomango (In Spanish slang, “Yo mango” means “I steal”) is a shoplifting movement that originated in Barcelona (Spain) in 2002. It is billed as an anti-consumer lifestyle.
It gained publicity when clothes were stolen from a store, put on and worn back to the store in a “fashion show”. Some people claim that it is intended to be a parody of the Mango clothing line popular in Europe.
Actually Yomango consider themselves as an informal community aimed at diffusing practices of social disobedience. The kind of shoplifting promoted by Yomango may even be a tactics of direct re-appropriation and redistribution of wealth. Yomango is connected with the European movement against labour and social instability.
http://www.yomango.net
Example: yomango tango
Julie Fiala
“Julie Fiala is an artist and thinker interested in performance and forms of activism through art”
http://juliefiala.tumblr.com/
Susanne Bosch
“Bosch ‘s work concentrates on art in public space, installation and site-specific pieces in exhibition spaces. She tends to work on long-term projects that deal with specific themes: From 1998-2002 she worked in a large-scale public art piece throughout Germany dealing with money, ideas, wishes and utopian visions (www.restpfennig.com).
Since her Cultural exchange grant in Istanbul in 2003 (from the Berlin Senate of Science, Research and Culture), she has focused on the meaning of public space in countries that violate human and basic democratic rights; migration as well as the experience of “Otherness”. In 2004 she took part in a conflict transformation training for international crisis intervention in Germany.
Susanne Bosch is an artist and course director of the MA Art in Public, Interface, University of Ulster, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Previously she lived and worked in Berlin and was an assistant professor at the Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany.
www.susannebosch.de
Kuratorisk Aktion
“Kuratorisk Aktion (KA) is an independent curators’ collective, formed in 2005 by Danish independent curators Frederikke Hansen and Tone Olaf Nielsen. Collaborating with artists, theorists, and activists from all over the world, KA produces cross disciplinary exhibitions, publications, and discussions that investigate the complex relations between historical colonialism, capitalist globalization, and neo colonial forms of exploitation on the one hand and postcolonial forms of conviviality on the other. KA’s projects include: Rethinking Nordic Colonialism: A Postcolonial Exhibition Project in Five Acts (2006), The Road to Mental Decolonization (2008), and Metropolitan Repressions (2009). Their most recent project is Tupilakosaurus: Pia Arke’s Issue with Art, Ethnicity and Colonialism, 1981-2006, the first comprehensive examination of the work and legacy of Pia Arke, the Greenlandic-Danish artist who died in 2007. It was exhibited in Copenhagen in 2009 and toured Greenland and Sweden in 2010.”
http://kuratorisk-aktion.org/
It’s yours take it!
“Born from the bowels of the Free Art Friday Flickr Group, “It’s yours, take it!” is a global free art project taking place in 5 cities. Stateside we have Chicago,Illinois, Honolulu,Hawaii and Phoenix, Arizona. Outside the land of consumption is Tel Aviv, Isreal and Portsmouth Hampshire, UK.
Artists contribute one piece each to these five locations. In place of curators we have “Nailers”… those that will be putting these pieces up at an impromptu outdoor location.
http://itsyourstakeit.blogspot.com/
Fiona Whelan
“Fiona Whelan’s practice is motivated by relationships of difference across sector, culture and background. She’s a committed practitioner in the field of socially engaged art practice, Fiona has positioned her practice over time in Rialto where she was instrumental in the development of What’s the Story? A Collective, intending to push the boundaries of engagement between young people, Youth Workers and Artists”
“Second Reading Event: The Day in Question
http://www.section8.ie/index.php?/the-group/under-construction/2/
Alfredo Jaar
He is an artist, architect and filmmaker originally from Santiago Chile. He has created more than 50 public interventions around the world.
Examples: Notes on cloud 2000
Notes on a playground 1999
www.alfredojaar.net
Cian Mcconn
Cian creates performances, interventions, photography and print.
http://cianmcconn.wordpress.com/
Rosie Dennis
“Rosie is a Sydney-based artist who weaves stories with the delicacy of a spider’s web to create deceptively simple and emotionally evocative performances that have a strong connection with the everyday”
Example: access all areas/no entry
Fraudulent behaviour
http://www.suture.com.au/
