June 2010
1 post
Cooking with Leif Hedendal
I talked to multiple people who said the meals at Open Engagement were one of their favorite events at the conference. For starters, I heard some say that they had a chance to discuss panels or discussions or whatever they pleased. Others said these discussions framed with food yielded better or more open-ended conversations. These sentiments reinforce Leif Hedendal’s regular practice of...
Text Readings Regarding Inclusion to the Canon....
Thierry deDuve identifies Duchamps ideas as a shift from -HERE IS ART To THIS IS ART. Okawui Enwezor writes-” Which is the tension between modernist art and contemporary art-between the artificially fabricated and the technologically generated.” (Pg 226-The Production of Social Space as Art work).
Cameron Cortiere writes-“Public art is art outside of museums and galleries and...
May 2010
31 posts
DAVID HORVITZ
Mathew Rana and Rick Butler's Branch in the Social...
By Robin Corbo 5/26
Rana’s intention is truly in the vein of social practice. He wrote in the essay
Names for What We Do:Thoughts on Encounter and Art he wrote: To be in dialogue with others is to find meaning in one’s experience. This way of meeting envisions speech as a recognition that the world is comprised of subjects rather than objects. Furthermore, it is a recognition that that...
We, Her, Us with M.A.Brookes, Anna Martine...
This parallel session took place in the Art Building, room 260 on Saturday. When I arrived and introduced myself to the artists, I first noticed that only two of them where there and then upon speaking with M.A. Brookes and Anna Martine learned that the panel was no longer a panel but a performance…then I noticed the very small turn out of people…and the disarray of the room they had...
Shotgun Review: The Role of the Art Institution in...
Panel members included:
Nato Thompson (Moderator) Jeff Nye (Dunlop Gallery) Tina Olsen and Stephanie Parish (Portland Art Museum) Danielle Abrams and Students (University of Michigan) Elizabeth Cline (The Hammer Museum)
At the beginning of the panel, Nato Thompson set the tone, “Capitalism wants you to do things for free and die.” He encouraged audience members to make heard their...
Bruce Conkle's place in the social practice...
Makin' Up Money
Review by Stefan Ransom
Maiko and Chris began the session with a game that they had designed to get everyone acclimated to a basic system that with participation would describe a model of currency flow and trade. Sparing the description of rules, everyone seemed to enjoy the activity and warm up to the idea of micro/macro currency movement.
The session then moved into a panel discussion...
Shotgun Review-Floating Forests by Chloé Womack
Monday, May 17th Bruce Conkle gave his presentation on “Floating Forests” during the Open Engagement parallel sessions. Conkle covered the history of large oil tankers, lead the group through slides that accentuated the enormous size of these ships, and their resulting decline for practical/ economic reasons. These massive ships used to carry oil from ocean to ocean are now one by one...
If It Ain’t Broke- Their Place in Social Practice...
By Josh Mong Sara Black and John Preus consistently use two basic hallmarks of social practice in their work as If It Ain’t Broke. These are the dialogical process and the collaborative process. Not only do these elements manifest simply between Black and Preus as artists, but also with their audience/participants in the execution or creation of their work. The pair engages in a discussion...
Douglas Paulson and Paryme's Public Cannon by Sam...
Dougals Paulson and Parfyme’s project, Everyone Can Use The Harbor (2008) draws many associations throughout 20th century and contemporary art. Beginning with the Dadaist tours of Paris and the white bikes project of the Situationists, a legacy of direct community participation through collective strategies begins to emerge. As the Dadists sought to bring art and its viewing public outside of the...
Jill Baker My Candidate for The Canon of Social...
Jill Baker is a high school teacher from Brookings Oregon. She is proactive and pedagogical in her walks and interviews with students and citizens. Her collaborations begin with walking, which leads to- 1. Activities 2. Discussions. 3. Drawings. 4. Interviews 5. Mappings 6. Psycho-geographical Studies. 7. Video. 9. Writings. She is part of a “life Class.” At the Open Engagement she...
Group Work: The Collective Impetus- Shotgun...
The Group Work Session had a large panel of presenters and participants filling the space of the Autzen Gallery. Katy Asher, the moderator of the session, begun as she introduced the session and its presenters.
Katy Asher investigates how artists and audiences create a shared meaning through her work in groups, participatory art and facilitative practices. She is a former member of the arts group...
Shotgun review. The Unexamined Process. Posted by...
The idea of assumptions. Things that one takes for granted. You have plotted out your plan and now to initiate. Then there is the unforeseen. The factor decides to place itself into your equation and now must be included as part of the summation. It happens in various forms as well as situations, as four distinguished professors from the University of Oregon discuss at the Parallel Session...
The Ethical Implications of Social Art-Shotgun...
Last Saturday, I attended the parallel session, The Ethical Implications of Social Art, which centered around a panel discussion on the theme of ethics and the role it plays as art crosses the boundary from the private studio setting and into the public sphere. The panel featured a nice array of artists, all seemingly having a similar dilemma regarding their responsibility to the public and...
Pictures from the Human Taxidermy Project
Pictures from the Human Taxidermy Project by Robin Corbo
Socal Spaces and Participation Sunday Edition
Social Spaces and Participation 5/16 By Robin Corbo
From September 2008 to May 2009, Ernest Patrick “Rick” Butler collaborated with artist Matthew David Rana to write and illustrate a 16 page autobiographical comic book. Rick makes his living selling handmade crocheted hats at the MacArthur BART station in Oakland, California where he lives with his dog Mama. The comic book chronicled major...
MY POST GOT DELETED AND NOW I AM BUMMED KRS
Left to Right: Helen Reed, Henry Jenkins (via Skype), Anna Snyder, Kara Helgren and Harrell Fletcher.
On Saturday, May 15, 2010 as part of the Open Engagement Conference in Portland, Oregon, five unlikely individuals met and spoke to these themes: the role of the fan and the connectivity of the internet in creating Affective Economies or “economies of love”. Led by Helen Reed, MFA...
History & Critique of Social Practice
History and Critique of Social Practice, posted by Nicole
Moderated by Jen Delos Reyes
Panelists:
Chen Tamir
Sean Joseph Patrick Carney and Michael Reinsch
Elyse Mallouk
Overview of the Panelists:
Once Jen Delos Reyes introduced the panelists, Chen Tamir, director of Flux Factory took the floor. Chen Tamir split her lecture into two parts: first she talked about the difference between social...
Beers With Douglas Paulson (of Parfyme)--Sam...
On Sunday, I arrived early to Douglas Paulson’s parallel session on Parfyme. After some mic trouble, we waited to begin while an architectural video played for twenty minutes. The video looped throughout digital images of a proposed office/apartment/museum building on the site of Copenhagen’s last undeveloped section of harbor. Avatars navigated the building, walking stairs, riding...
Sara Black and John Preus: If It Ain’t...
Sara Black and John Preus engaged in and around the concepts of brokenness, function, and restoration during their two days at the Igloo Gallery. Prior to the open Engagement conference the pair solicited for instances of brokenness and offered to respond with three options: return, concession, and transformation. After accepting three submissions of items, Black and Preus engaged the owners in...
Social Spaces and Collaborations Shot Gun Review...
The meeting began with three of the speakers-Samuel Shaw, Amelia Winger and Jill Baker. The three decided to do everything in the park..a different vibe. We walked through the different spaces in Portland. The idea was to journey through Waterfront Park, construction sites, and urban paths to see how spaces change concluding at the max Transit to be whisked away by travel technology albeit the...
ANTAGONISM & RELATIONAL AESTHETICS
imma talk about it
lv,
cbax
Dialogical Aesthetics Grant H. Kester-By Lewton...
Kester argues that art critics against new art (where the communication is a social connection and equal participation with the art, the audience and the artist) are overlooking what an experience creates and what can be defined as aesthetic. He begins with The Politics of Shock-“From Clive Bell’s attack on representational “psuedo-art” to Clement Greenberg’s fear of...
"Unexamined Process"
Three professors from the University of Oregon’s Arts and Administration Program will present on the “Unexamined Process”. John Fenn is a folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He will be exploring the ways that ethnographic investigation ~thinking and practice~ help to serve and/or foster relationships between community engagement, social practice and art. Per his bio Dr. Fenn...
Makin' Up Money
Makin’ Up Money: Alternate Economies Workshop
Posted by Stefan Ransom
Maiko Tanaka & Chris Lee
Saturday, May 15th 2:30pm- 4:30pm
Autzen
I had some difficulty trying to research this workshop, as well as any information on Chris Lee… Luckily, I was able to strike up an email conversation with him, so here is some of the information he gave about the project:
this is chris, i’m...
Learn My Art!
I am starting a program in North Portland in cooperation with Project Grow
(www.growinginalldirections.org) the name of the program is Learn my Art and the idea is to have a one hour work shop twice a month in the evenings that will be open to both the clients at Project Grow and the community at large. Project Grow is the brain child of Natasha Wheat and is a division of Port City...
Social Spaces And Collaboration- Lewton Jones
May 15th at Open Engagement expect Jill Baker, Teacher Cara Tomlinson, Sammy Shaw and Amelia Winger Bearskin. Amelia describes her work as “somewhere between social practice and sociology. Samuel says he is an urban /community and cultural sociologist and thinks about the world in terms of how people and groups exist and interact. Samuel postulates how cities (place) become a template for...
April 2010
28 posts
Social Spaces and Collaborations
Social Spaces and Collaborations Posted by Robin Corbo
Sunday, May 16th, 2010
Art Building Room 260
Project Description: Show and Tell
Exploring ideas around prized possessions, the value of objects, and the relationships that one can have or associate with an object, Show & Tell will be a session much like one would have had in third grade but with one twist. Participants are to do...
Ourgoods.org; Caroline Woolard- Posted by Grace...
When:Saturday May 15th at 2:30-4:30pm
Where: Portland State University Art Building Room 135.
Who:Caroline Woolard of ourgoods.org
Ourgoods.org is a peer to peer online network where artists can barter and trade for goods and services. The site offers a barter pairing service and technological assistance to aid artists with completing their projects. Ourgoods functions as a kind of alternative...
History and Critique of Social Practice
History and Critique of Social Practice, posted by Nicole
Saturday, May 15, 2010
2:30 PM – 4:30 PM
Art Building Room 200
Project Description:
The Social Bind: Renegotiating the Aesthetic in Contemporary Art
In recent years, an upsurge in museum programming that focuses on social exchange and the creation of graduate programs in Social Practice have combined to draw tentative boundaries around...
By Vanessa Robertson-Rojas
Me, Her and Us- Anna Martine Whithead, Roxy Farhat, Wafaa Ysin, M.A. Brooks
Me, Her, US is describes as a “performative panel featuring three non-male artists of color who strategically use their bodies to interface with the social” who “will explore the intersections of relational aesthetics, embodiment, and otherness”. In looking at the work of the four artists...
If It Ain't Broke by josh mong
Sarah Black and John Preus will operate an object repair station in the extra room of the Social Practice space on 10th and Jefferson. This repair service will operate with a philosophical approach offering three options to consider and engage broken objects. A dialogue concerning notions of brokenness, general condition, and repair of each object will be instigated. Three options are...
Everyone Can Use Some Abandon: 2 Sessions by Sam...
Curating With Abandon
Saturday 15 May
Curating With Abandon’s Judith Leemann, Shannon Stratton, & Namita Gupta Wiggers’ Bios and Statement:
Judith Leemann is an artist, educator, and writer living in Boston. She teaches at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and serves as artist in residence at the Design Studio for Social Intervention. www.judithleemann.com
Shannon...
Wealth Underground Farms Tour
Parallel Session 2:30-4:30 Monday May 17th @ Wealth Underground Farms 14019 NW Newberry Portland, OR. Moderated By Jacquie Hill
The lowdown: Wealth Underground Farms is a small CSA located just 10 miles from downtown Portland. The farm is one acre of hand cultivated land that is dedicated to growing a variety of organic vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers in a sustainable manner. They...
Group Work: The Collective Impetus
Group Work: The Collective Impetus
Moderator Katy Asher, Sunday May 16th at 2: 30pm, participants include, the National Bitter Melon Council, InCUBATE, and Broken City Lab.
National Bitter Melon Council: Making Things Bitter, but not Worse
Community, commodity, cultivation and creativity are the four words that seem to best describe the National Bitter Melon Council (NBMC). The NBMC is devoted to the cultivation of a vibrant, diverse community through Bitter Melon by celebrating projects that highlight the foreignness of bitter melon. These projects examine the flavor and the emotion of bitterness, and instigating situations that, through bitterness, can create an alternative basis for community.
The word bitter is often associated with worse-iness, yet an appreciation for the flavor bitter is considered a sophistication. If we can cultivate an appreciation for the bitterness of taste, perhaps bitterness the emotion can be appreciated too.
The workshop explores this possibility through a short presentation combined with hands on activities. It will explore why bitterness and Bitter Melon are such a potent creative medium to engage and cultivate community. With a short presentation of the Better Living through Bitter Melon philosophy, participants in small groups will create strategies relevant for those interested in immediately Making things Bitter, but not Worse in their own lives and communities. With and through bitterness, participants test ways to generate community participation through simple creative gestures, structures and formulas.
Broken City Lab: Justin A. Langlois, Danielle Sabelli
Broken City lab is an emerging artist collective that tactically disrupts and engages the city, its communities and infrastructures to re-imagine the potential for action in the collapsing post-industrial city of Windsor, Ontario.
During the session Research Director, Justin A. Langlois, and Senior Research Fellow, Danielle Sabelli will discuss the work of Broken City Lab as a model for collaborative cultural production and an experiment in tactically infiltrating the institutions of the city.
Justin A. Langlois has an MFA in Visual Arts and a BA (Hons) in Communication Studies from the University of Windsor. He currently is an instructor at the University of Windsor, the Executive Director of the Arts Council Windsor & Region, and research director of Broken City Lab.
Danielle Sabelli is a visual artist and filmmaker, finishing her MA in Communications and Social Justice at the University of Windsor. She is a senior research fellow at Broken City Lab.
www.brokencitylab.org
Magnetic Planters: www.newmagneticplantersfeildtest_brokencitylab.org
InCUBATE
InCUBATE is a research group dedicated to creating better understanding of how the world works for those doing non-commercial creative work and imaging alternative funding models that could support them. They organize exhibitions, publications, lectures, and meals to figure out how to collectively achieve this goal.
Projects start by activating extremely simple solutions in response to issues that face art and culture makers. If these solutions prove useful, they continue, if not, they are brought back to the drawing board to be reexamined or are thrown out all together.
InCUBATE is less interested in a franchising model and more into letting the seed grow where it may. But with this kind of attitude, is there any hope of building a movement, a national conversation, a collective voice to address how our infrastructures for supporting and cultivating creative work are just straight up failing? What is our capacity to build new institutions to support ourselves?
You could say InCUBATE is:
Technically speaking a design studio
A warm goulash of art, design and culture
Concepters and producers work for print, advertising, video and interactive media
Going to dig, not diss on your high-tops
A salute to the unknown
Able to design a new logo for you and find good retirement for your old one
A safe house for intergalactic creatures
A place full of people who love their jobs
Where design process becomes part of the solution
Full of folk with a knack for sweating the details and unflawing the flaws.
www.incubatewhoweare.org
Posted by Tanya Thornton
Global Perspectives on Art and Social Practice
I was excited when we where going through OE proposals and a number of international applicants showed interest in discussing what’s happening with Social Practice around the globe. Global Perspectives on Art and Social Practice is a parallel session on Sunday May 16th from 2:30-4:30pm at Shattuck Annex. The session features Dino Mangini, Emilia Javanica & Sudandyo Aprilanto and IRUS...
Amy Franceschini-Bad At Sports Interview By Lewton...
Amy Franceschini brings her education (MFA/Tourist Teacher Stanford) to the OPEN ENGAGEMENT conference withan ability to organize people via online magazines such as Atlas, photo journalism and blogs and coalitions. Amy's freelance background and skills at improvising and embellishing spaces and fiedls via gardens and technological play are in harmony with the theme of the convention. Amy's work with Future Farms addresses themes and issues such as sustainability, nature, technology and city spaces. Her projects on fruit and distribution will contribute to the panels immensely. Her background in design and the Victory Gardens are in step with the conference which will concentrate on the 'new studio' and outside art both civic and in fluxus. Amy has done lectures at other conferences mostly recently in Canada on the same themes at OPEN ENGAGEMENT. The Green Manifesto and city gardens is a theme Amy is familiar with.(San Francisco Green Mayor Matt Gonzales). The theme of utopia which is thematic to Nil's Norman (also a speaker) is in Amy's work as well. She used the Victory Gardens as a way to help urban dwellers win the war of a dying planet. The conference will benefit from her projects which have created an art action that is independent from corporate food systems. One of her themes was also a utopian proposal of making a series of life/nature scultures that imitiate technology in a positive way. Structures for modern art apparatus/temporary structures join the discussions in May at PSU. She brings maintanance free ideas and her ephemeral space ideas to the forum. The outside gallery is her forte as well the internet and pedagogy. Amy will encourage the conference to be creative, smart and playful in designing a new society in the life gallery of engagement.
Affective Economies
A discussion with Helen Reed, Henry Jenkins (via Skype) & Harrell Fletcher
Digital Participation by David Horvitz
In his book Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins coins the term affective economies to describe a new configuration of marketing theory, which seeks to understand the emotional foundation of consumer decision-making. According to the logic of affective economies, consumption is no...
The Ethical Implications of Social Art
DESCRIPTION:
The Ethical Implications of Social Art is a panel discussion comprised of artists, writers, social researchers, and activists. The panel will engage a conversation about ethical participation, the difference between participation as a means vs. participation as an end, accountability, the effectiveness of art as a vessel for social change, the potential for art to redefine social...
guerilla architecture
Adventure Playgrounds
WWII Bombsite in Stockwell, UK
Slade Gardens Adventure Playground
designed, built, demolished and rebuilt by children, with the aid of a playworker
adventure playground bordering high rise development
encouraging kids to take risks and learn their limits
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Placemaking
Share it Square...
1 tag
Post-Studio Practice
Post-Studio Practice
Utopian Proposals by ally drozd
To understand the concept of utopia, the complimentary concept of dystopia must be considered simultaneously. They are opposite yet they balance each other, like yin and yang, and they both contain opportunities as well as drawbacks. Dystopia is a state of oppression often characterized by hatred, violence, war, and all around bad times. However, the up-side of a dystopia is that things are so bad...
Social Practice by Vanessa Robetson-Rojas
It seems like the best way to describe Social practice is with the understanding that its development is occurring very much in the present day. As a discipline, Social practice utilizes participation, exchange, and/or interaction, as a vehicle for work. Because of its relative newness, social practice is still forming its traditional practices however it generally includes some type of social...