Field Perspectives is an arts writing project organized by Common Field in collaboration with nine arts publishing organizations around the US. Field Perspectives publishes writing that considers the state of the artist organization field and the key ideas explored in the Common Field 2017 Los Angeles Convening.

The nine 2017 Field Perspectives partners are Los Angeles publications Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (CARLA), contemptorary, X-TRA; and national publications ARTS. BLACK (Detroit/New York), Art Practical (Bay Area), The Chart (Portland, ME), DIRT (DC, Maryland, Virginia (DMV) Area), Pelican Bomb (New Orleans), and Temporary Art Review (St. Loius).

Commissioned writers include Chloë Bass, Dan Bustillo, Travis Diehl, Lucy Lopez, Lindsay Preston Zappas, Ellen Tani, Anuradha Vikram; Andrea Andersson, Imani Jacqueline Brown, L. Kasimu Harris, and Charlie Tatum; and a collaborative essay by Ani Bradberry, Martina Dodd, Andy Johnson, Jordan Martin & Ikram Lakhdhar, Georgie Payne, and Valerie Wiseman.

Thanks to the organizing and editing efforts of the people behind our nine partner organizations — Taylor Renee Aldridge, Anahita Bradberry, Michele Carlson, Poppy Coles, Jenna Crowder, Martina Dodd, Andy Johnson, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Eunsong Kim, Ikram Lakhdhar, Jessica Lynne, Shana Lutker, Jordan Martin, James McAnally, Georgie Payne, Lindsay Preston Zappas, Cameron Shaw, Vivian Sming, Charlie Tatum, and Valerie Wiseman.

Each publication commissioned writing published weekly throughout October 2017, with goals of catalyzing discussion, dialog, and debate before, during and after the Los Angeles Convening.

To see the 2016 Field Perspectives project, you can download a PDF of the essays from Common Field or read on websites of 2016 partners Miami Rail and Temporary Art Review.

Project organized by Courtney Fink, Common Field PDF Publication organized by Amanda Choo Quan, Common Field Design by Design Services

Generous support for Common Field and the Field Perspectives Program is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Thanks to the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Metabolic Studio for their lead support of the 2017 Los Angeles Convening. Additional support for the 2017 Convening is provided by The Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation, The Wilhelm Family Foundation and Common Field’s Membership Network. Table of Contents

5 24 AIRING OUT AMBIVALENCE: THE POWER OF PLACE: ON CULTURAL CARE AND THE A CONVERSATION ON LIVING ALLURE OF JUDGMENT AND WORKING IN NEW ORLEANS Ellen Tani Charlie Tatum with Andrea Andersson, Imani The Chart (Portland, Maine) Jacqueline Brown, and L. Kasimu Harris Pelican Bomb (New Orleans) 8 ON CARE AND PARRHEISIA 30 Lucy Lopez SORRY NOT SORRY. Temporary Art Review (St. Louis) (COUPLES COUNSELING FOR ARTISTS AND INSTITUTIONS: 11 STEP TWO) OP-ED: AN ULTRA-RED LINE Chloë Bass Travis Diehl ARTS.BLACK (Detroit, New York) X-TRA (Los Angeles)

33 16 THE LANGUAGES OF ALL- #Hashtags, THE BIG LIE Anuradha Vikram WOMEN EXHIBITIONS Art Practical (Bay Area) Lindsay Preston Zappas Contemporary Art Review (Carla)

20 37 LIKE PISS IN MOTION: DISSECTING THE ARCHIVE: RACE, GENDER, AND FILTRATION AN INVESTIGATION IN SYSTEMS IN THE WORK OF SEVEN PARTS CANDICE LIN Georgie Payne, Martina Dodd, Ani Bradberry, Dan Bustillo Valerie Wiseman, Andy Johnson, Jordan Martin Contemptorary (Los Angeles) and Ikram Lakhdhar DIRT (DC, Maryland, Virginia (DMV) area) FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 5

AIRING OUT AMBIVALENCE: ON CULTURAL CARE AND THE ALLURE OF JUDGMENT Ellen Tani

In the opening line of his 1992 essay Ideally, one’s text should move the reader Originally published in The Chart “Skin Head Sex Thing: Racial Difference in the spirit of how the artwork moves the (Portland, Maine) and the Homoerotic Imaginary,” Kobena writer. Recent debates over controversial Mercer lays out his intention “to explore or triggering artworks must grapple with the experience of aesthetic ambivalence variations in cultural climate,4 but often in visual representations of the black male move the reader to police the words and nude.”1 The subject of his ambivalence is work of others, creating an echo chamber Robert Mapplethorpe’s homoerotic book of antagonism. Is there a space for writing Black Males (1982). Calling up both the with caution and care, to retain a voice 1. Kobena Mercer, “Skin Head Sex intellectual and embodied experience with a self-consciousness that doesn’t Thing: Racial Difference and the of ambivalence, Mercer seeks to reckon result in self-censorship? Criticism should Homoerotic Imaginary” in Welcome to with his attraction to the bodies pictured ultimately be an act of generosity; modeling the Jungle: New Positions in Black by the artist, a sentiment that contradicts ambivalence in our writing realizes Cultural Studies,1995, 171. his anger at the artist’s reduction of those vulnerability as a necessary quality of bodies to aesthetic objects. Viewing it with developing alliance. And at a time when the 2. Ibid. his friends, he says, “we wanted to look, line between identifying with and identifying but we didn’t always find what we wanted as can be a matter of life or death, it’s worth 3. “ambivalence | ambivalency, n.”. to see…But still we were stuck, unable complicating the notion of allyship, which OED Online. June 2017. Oxford to make sense of our own implication has become an easy stand-in for signaling University Press. http://www. in the emotions brought into play by one’s position on the “right side” of other oed.com.ezproxy.bowdoin.edu/view/ Mapplethorpe’s imaginary.”2 people’s struggles. In a culture in which Entry/6176?redirectedFrom=ambiv- race, gender, and poverty are factors of alence (accessed September 22, The emotional force or valence of a relative value for human life — a strange 2017). work — the quality that repels or attracts economy indeed — equivocating in our — drives us to write about it. Repulsion words seems like a slippery slope. 4. When Theodor Adorno said that “to and attraction are obviously not the only write poetry after Auschwitz is two feelings that move us to respond, We may fail to recognize our ambivalences, barbaric,” he was not negating and we often feel both at once. The term or let the shame of their discovery move aesthetics writ large; rather, “ambivalence” describes this situation: us to sweep them under the rug.5 In the he was describing the aesthetics coexistence in one person of contradictory heat of debate — as exemplified by recent of post-Holocaust poetry as “bar- emotions or attitudes (as love and hatred) public discourse around the exhibition of baric” in character: rough-hewn, towards a person or thing.3 Yet ambivalence controversial artworks — assumptions unresolved, and reflective of the is considered a weakness in the writing of often seek validation through selective dialectic of culture and barbarism. art criticism, which, for the sake of authority reading and listening at the expense The act of making art, he argues, and clarity, ostensibly happens after of research or even authentic voice. is not barbaric; its barbaric one has made up one’s mind. The mind’s Cultural harm, in the context of the art quality was an inevitable climactic resolution produces a thesis statement, world, can take the form of what we see effect of its context. evidence of the author’s decisiveness. But and what we don’t see; it affects specific what if the point we need to — or are afraid viewers, bodies, and human subjects more 5. The desire to bypass ambivalence to — make is that we haven’t made up our than others. Cultural harm can emerge in the service of action undergirds mind? Is there a place for ambivalence in from perspectives that are informed by the problematic aspects of noblesse art criticism? neither direct experience of artwork oblige as well as advocacy for nor responsible inquiry into the broader non-minority rights. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 6 circumstances of the event, belying an ambivalence of the identifications we ambivalence that has been closeted for actually inhabit in living with difference.”6 the sake of vocality. As a result, we volley Ambivalence is key to this framing, perspectives back and forth, but rarely because, as he notes, it always happens unpack the thought process of arriving between the cultural text, the world, and the at them. By postponing judgment, and reader. admitting that we don’t know how to make up our minds — or that we can’t — More recently, critic Aruna D’Souza criticism might produce more generous authored a positive review of Jimmie rather than hazardous effects, and cultural Durham’s retrospective at the Hammer institutions might recognize how to avoid Museum, followed several months later by a doing cultural harm in the process of powerful essay properly summed up by its performing cultural care. Productive title, “Mourning Jimmie Durham.” Durham, ambivalence requires listening both to the who was deeply involved with the American self and to others, dismantling defensive Indian Movement and whose artistic codes, and allowing for temporary self- practice took wry and cutting approaches effacement in the service of widening our to the vicissitudes of identity politics view. and postmodernism, had a complicated relationship with Native American identity. A few brave writers, Mercer included, In her self-reflective text, D’Souza unfolds have undergone performative revisions her ambivalence as follows: — issuing a text weeks, or sometimes years, after an original text — that The work tickled all my sweet spots — grapple with indecision. They realize that it was funny, self-deprecating, ironic, powerful art has a strong and complicated anti-essentialist when it came to the valence, and that its restlessness reflects artist’s own identity and the romantic inevitable changes in context that stereotypes forced upon him by the re-establish the ground against which artworld, and it was deeply critical. that work is read: ambi-valence. When The problem was, of course, that while we let our ambivalence breathe the same Jimmie Durham’s work appealed to me air as our judgment, we make ourselves — a South Asian woman determined to vulnerable to our audience and dismantle work beyond the bounds of my identity our claim to authority. By laying bare — precisely because of his defiant the incompleteness of our intellectual rejection of attempts to box him into the world, we reject the hegemonic allure of category of “Cherokee artist,” it turns judgment. Exercising ambivalence, while out that it wasn’t his box to claim or acknowledging intention, is how we begin to reject in the first place.7 recognize what we don’t know. 6. Kobena Mercer, “Skin Head Sex D’Souza’s metacognitive reflection Thing: Racial Difference and the Its manifestation as passive resistance or acknowledged her difficulty, as a person of Homoerotic Imaginary,” Welcome to apathetic inaction makes ambivalence a color and an ally, to temper her enthusiasm the Jungle: New Positions in Black familiar feeling for POC and white people with criticality and recognize her own Cultural Studies, 1995, p.171. alike. Honoring the feeling of ambivalence, omissions. In addressing her error, she rather than disguising it, can be a half-jokingly admits to experiencing the five 7. Aruna d’Souza, “Mourning Jimmie productive way to teach ourselves how we stages of grief as the public investigation Durham,” Momus, July 20, 2017. think, and in doing so, to understand our over Durham’s self-constructed mythology Online: http://momus.ca/mourn- own biases and limitations. Mercer, who first of Cherokee ancestry compounded on ing-jimmie-durham/ wrote about his response to seeing Black social media: Males in 1987, revisited the topic three 8. Nyeema Morgan, excerpt from The times, most recently in 2003. Along the That I passed through these stages in Dubious Sum of Vaguely Discernible way, his attitude was shaped by the shifting public, on Facebook threads that will Parts, 2012.Ibid. context of contemporary art practices by forever record my stubborn refusal black queer artists in the U.S. and Britain to accept some basic truths about 9. Tania Bruguera, “Culture as a that cast Mapplethorpe’s work into an art, identity, and settler colonialism, is strategy to survive,” Delivered at ever sharper historical light, primarily more than a little embarrassing. But, Culture comme strategie de survive, because of how they problematized earlier shame aside, I was lucky to benefit from Organized by Maria Inés Rodríguez, conceptions of identity in black cultural a group of incredibly patient, open- March 6, 2009, Jeu de Paume, March practices. In reckoning with his earlier text minded Native American friends and 2009, Paris, France, bc, Summer through the work of other artists, Mercer strangers who took the time to school 2009, pp. 80–81. asks how we might frame “the constitutive me — and trust me, they schooled me FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 7

— through every one of the inevitable concept appearing later, after the fact, not steps required to process such a major an a priori decision.”10 revelation.8 Bruguera and Morgan’s reflections remind D’Souza’s performative revision takes as its us that we should stop treating art as if subject the process of using ambivalence it were always there, as if an artist could as a source of productive struggle, and forecast and carry out the spectrum of acknowledges the discomfort of having artistic intention. Intention is subject to the 10. Berlant: “I am proposing that one one’s judgment stripped bare. Artists, too, forces that shape what Mercer identified task for makers of critical social have used ambivalence in generative ways, earlier — that mercurial space between form is to offer not just judgment making the case for ambivalence in the the reader, the text, and the world — or about positions and practices in creative act. Artist Nyeema Morgan wrote what Lauren Berlant has referred to as the the world, but terms of transition the following diaristic text in tandem with infrastructures of sociality.11 Ambivalence that alter the harder and softer, making drawings: as equivocation is powerful, both in its tighter and looser infrastructures ability to mute action and to fuel stronger of sociality itself.” (The commons: In the beginning my intention is to be as connections with complicated debates. Infrastructures for troubling equitable as possible. I start near the times (Environment and Planning D: center — approximately — and this is Ambivalence is part of how we, as writers, Society and Space 2016, Vol. 34(3), where the doubt begins. Anticipating point to and explore the horizons of p.394). congestion, I give sentences room humanity bound by hegemonic systems to breathe without resorting to strict that value some lives over others. We ELLEN TANI measurements that would slow an are constantly negotiating difference: Ellen Y. Tani, PhD is an art his- already labored process. I feel optimistic between ourselves and others, between torian, curator and critic whose in the potential for something wonderful our changing selves and a changing world. research explores the political and to happen, something different despite And while critical authority stems from philosophical endeavors of contem- a task that will be no less than tedious. one’s intellectual world, it’s easy to forget porary artists, with an emphasis on I make a few satisfactory strokes; I am that one’s intellectual world participates artists who engage with racializa- content. Time passes and I am attentive in these systems, is shaped by ideology tion. She is currently the Andrew W. — proud of my resilience. A hierarchy even as it forges the tools to reckon with its Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow of visual perception emerges, governed entanglement. Too often, ambivalence is at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, by my waxing and waning interest. My relegated to process rather than portrayed where she organizes exhibitions, growing ambivalence is making me feel in the act of writing, as if it’s a mere phase teaches class sessions in the museum, guilty.9 of thought that bears no traces. We can and leads workshops for faculty on acknowledge the contradictions in our own object-based teaching. She is cur- Morgan’s earnest reflection conveys a thinking without producing contradictory rently organizing a major exhibition different tone than other more conventional texts. Thinking through ambivalence might entitled “Second Sight: the Paradox artist texts — either the generic artist’s enable us to understand the contradictions of Vision in Contemporary Art” (Mar- statement or the strong-voiced manifesto. endemic to seemingly resolute vagaries June 2018), which features a range She is not immersed in her work with — like “accountability” and “responsibility” of artists from the 1960s through a consistent intensity and focus; she — invoked in demands for reparation of today who question and challenge the acknowledges her fatigue; she is fascinated cultural harm, which have no singular origin primacy of vision in their practice. and bored; she is both guilty about her from which to proffer a solution, even if Dr. Tani received her PhD from Stan- feelings and proud of her efforts. The form institutions, artists, curators, or writers are ford University in 2015, where her of the manifesto, on the other hand, has a the obvious culprits. When we do make up dissertation, “Black Conceptualism structure of forward progress; often written our minds, we might examine the forces and the Atmospheric Turn, 1968-2008,” in a punchy, declarative style, it conveys an that shape our judgment, negatively and examined how artists like Charles uncompromising commitment to clearly- positively, and acknowledge those forces Gaines, David Hammons, Lorraine stated aims. But even a manifesto can rather than dismiss them as scraps in the O’Grady and Lorna Simpson responded honor ambivalence. Tania Bruguera, who process. to the interconnected legacies of is notable for her declarative and often conceptual art and the black arts polemical work, embraced the value of movement. Dr. Tani has worked at the insecurity in her 2009 talk “Culture as a Whitney Museum of American Art, the Strategy to Survive,” acknowledging it as Cantor Center for the Visual Arts at an essential aspect of authenticity: “Artists Stanford University, and the Smith- should stop and start from scratch, from sonian Institution National Museum a place that is not self-nostalgic, a site of American History. Her writing has where all our insecurities are present, been featured in Art Practical, Daily an insecure place, a place that is not Serving, American Quarterly, Apricota self-important, a place where art is not journal, and Artsy. an important concept. Art should be a http://ellentani.com/ FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 8

ON CARE AND PARRHEISIA

Lucy Lopez

Documentation of Policy Show Meeting #1: Unspoken Policies of the Art Organisation, Eastside Projects, 2017. Image credit: Stuart Whipps (Courtesy of Eastside Projects)

Can a practice of instituting also be a Courage of Truth” lectures at the College Originally published in Temporary Art practice of care? In his paper “Instituent de France from 1983-84) as a form of Review (St. Louis) Practices: Fleeing, Instituting, Transforming”, uncompromising truth-telling: to practice Gerald Raunig discusses the potential parrhesia is to speak frankly from a position of ‘instituent practices’ as a process of of exposed vulnerability, to speak truth to 1. My emphasis. ongoing instituting, rather than a process of power4 and in doing so to practice a kind of gradually “becoming institution in the sense radical care of the self. 2. Raunig, G. (2006) ‘Instituent of constituted power.”1 He describes the Practices: Fleeing, Instituting, process as one of exodus — not in terms of In 2016, Simon Sheikh expanded on this use Transforming’, trans. Derieg, A. withdrawal from the institution, but rather of parrhesia to consider the connection of Available at: http://eipcp.net/ through “betraying the rules of the game.”2 care and power in terms of the institution.5 transversal/0106/raunig/en This entails a departure from the two In other words, to consider institutions previous iterations of Institutional Critique speaking truth of, and to, themselves — by 3. Ibid. by drawing something from each: working looking at the relationship between their from a position of ongoing self-questioning artistic programs, the information they 4. Foucault, M. (1983-84), col- (not imagining an artificial distance from make public, and their modes of governing lected lectures from the College the institution), but also not fixating on and instituting. How could the institution de France, in The Courage of Truth complicity within it.3 In his development practice care of the self — towards (or (The Government of Self and Others of this theory, Raunig draws on Foucault’s on behalf of) its workers and its publics? II), Ed. Gros, F. (2011) Bas- writing on parrhesia (developed in “The As Raunig describes, the truth-teller is ingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 9 involved in a self-critique that “queries through what they term the “biopolitical the relationship between their statements regime that shapes the consumer’s (logos) and their way of living (bios)”.6 If we nervous system”11)? With the histories and see the outward facing program of the problematics of institutional critique in institution as its statements, or logos, and mind, how might we resist the subsumption its internal functions as its way of living, or of these practices into the institution, and bios, then a reconciling of the two is needed instead critically address, acknowledge, in order to practice parrhesia as a radical and act upon their capacity to have a position of (self) care. measurable impact on the way that we work? In the 2017 Contemporary Art 5. Sheikh, S. (2016), ‘Careful and Writing for the October 2017 issue of e-flux Society conference in London, Andrea Careless Power’, paper presented journal, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez makes Phillips proposed management as a site of during a public editorial meeting a case For Slow Institutions, with a call to contemporary political struggle, and not at BAK, Utrecht, 2016, titled curators to “imagine new ecologies of care in the ways we might expect (such as Instituting for the Contemporary, as a continuous practice of support…to exploitation of workers or micromanagement commissioned by Clark, T. Hlava- radically open up our institutional borders under contemporary capitalism), but jova, M. and Lopez, L. and show how these work — or don’t — in rather a site of struggle in how we manage order to render our organizations palpable, institutions — with management as key to 6. Ibid. audible, sentient, soft, porous, and above their transformation in real terms.12 all, decolonial and anti-patriarchal”.7 This 7. Petrešin-Bachelez, N. (2017) ‘For sentient and porous, slow institution — one This struggle over management is also Slow Institutions’, in e-flux which might adapt according to changing simultaneously a struggle over the bios issue 85, October 2017. Avail- needs8 and resist crystallization9 — of the institution, viewed most directly able at: http://www.e-flux.com/ might go some way towards a practice of through the experience of the art worker, journal/85/155520/for-slow-insti- parrhesia. and the anxiety and exhaustion which tutions/ this often entails. As highlighted by FcU As Nina Möntmann has put it, the art (Feminist Curators United) at a recent 8. ‘Evolve according to changing organization — often the smaller, non- event in Nottingham Contemporary’s needs’ is Eastside Projects policy profit, the artist-run — has the potential to New Institutionalities series, the tendency number #5, 2009, as included in function as a wild child:10 to challenge and to fetishize hard work, to present as a the publication Eastside Projects disrupt the forms of institution building and public face the ‘coping curator’ is widely User’s Manual #7.2, 2017, eds. institutional governance that form the major recognisable. During this event, curator Langdon, J., Lopez, L., and Wade, G. infrastructure of our societies and culture. Helena Reckitt presented the results of a There is no lack of art which challenges workshop around working practices, with 9. Raunig, G. (2006) existing conditions and makes propositions responses from numerous contributors for new ways of living and working together stating their relationship with work: one 10. Möntmann, N. (2008), ‘Playing the — yet all too often these practices are which was underpaid, overcommitted, and Wild Child: Art Institutions in a strictly supported and celebrated in the often took precedence over family and Situation of Changed Public Inter- realm of programming, while our institutions personal commitments.13 To put it simply, est’ in Open, 14: Art as a Public neglect to learn from the radical practices we know that we are overworked, and that Issue. that they propose. it seems almost unavoidable in the strained financial context of working in the arts 11. Meineche Hansen, S. (2014) ‘Emo- What can we learn from the practices of under neoliberalism. What does it matter, in tional Reasoning’, in conversation artists such as Alex Martinis Roe (whose the wider context? Apart from the obvious with Gritz, A. in Mousse Magazine project “To Become Two” continues (that institutions — publicly funded or issue 44. her research into feminist alliances not — should not be exploiting their staff), and methodologies for navigating the it matters because the first stand we can 12. Phillips, A. (2017), ‘Museum as contemporary condition), Dorine van Meel make is how we work together (and treat Social Condenser’, paper given at and Nelmarie du Preez (who, in their project those who work alongside us) and because the Contemporary Art Society con- “The Southern Summer School,” worked this is a real enactment of the care that ference The Museum as Battlefield: together with collaborators from the we might profess in grander and more Alternative Models of Museum Prac- Netherlands, South Africa and the United distanced ways. tice. Kingdom, towards creating non-normative spaces and alliances of solidarity across It is up to us as art workers to address 13. Child, D., Reckitt, H., and Rich- national borders) and Sidsel Meineche the reality of the institutions in which we ards, J. ‘Labours of Love: A Hansen (whose discursive projects work — to make demands on behalf of Conversation on Art, Gender and “Towards a Physiological Novel” and “This ourselves and our publics. Artistic research Social Reproduction’ in Third is Not a Symptom,” explore nervousness and practice is at the core of curatorial Text, 2017, available at: http:// as a response to the institution and the work. Can we follow the lead of artists www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10 biochemical production of subjectivity imagining new ways of living, of truth-telling, 80/09528822.2017.1365492 FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 10 of establishing collectivities? If we are to live and work by (‘evolve according to to think about how we can really make a changing needs’ and ‘as long as it lasts’). shift within the wider context, we need to Working together with Cisneros, Nyampeta, likewise reimagine this institutionally: what Phillips and Zaman, and facilitated by artist are our governance structures? Could they Rosalie Schweiker, alongside the input of be rethought as a critique, rather than a Eastside Projects’ staff, volunteers, board reflection, of the neoliberal context under members and publics, our first event late stage capitalism? resulted in a number of action points towards developing our policy of care. As Andrea Phillips writes in her recent Moving forward from this first meeting, we paper ‘Reclaiming participation: arts will develop a care consortium — working centres and the reinvention of social with other small art organisations to share condensation’; and develop policy together (around maternity leave and sick pay, for example), “just as arts centres have morphed whilst also acting as a potential lobbying into sites of the performance of group. The further development and neoliberalism, so they could transform implementation remains to be seen over again into locations where we test the course of the project, and the years to and perform practices of equality follow: part of our work will be to develop a on a daily basis: not just through the framework for accountability within this. making of exhibitions and events but through equal staffing and pay We must not only begin to imagine how structures, through fair pricing, through these policies are situated within the the maintenance of equality within our singular institution, but how they might collegiate relationships and through the begin to connect to a resurgent left. recognition of the intelligences of our Sheikh locates these potentials within audiences”.14 “galleries, museums, biennials, art fairs and art schools,” but we could extend this to In order for the institution of art to practice networked contexts such as Common Field, parrhesia, it needs to be as Petrešin- that connect and form alliances between Bachelez writes, sentient; to care and the resistant strategies of artists and art 14. Phillips, A. (2017) ‘Reclaim- to speak. In his essay “Art After Trump,” organisations, in order to reimagine not only ing participation: arts centres Simon Sheikh asked the questions: “How the institution but the “rules of the game” and the reinvention of social do we act institutionally? In terms of how itself. Raunig states that what is needed condensation’, in The Journal of we govern within artistic institutions such is “parrhesia as a double strategy: as an Architecture, vol.22:3. as galleries, museums, biennials, art fairs attempt of involvement and engagement in and art schools – can we re-orient these a process of hazardous refutation, and as 15. Sheikh, S. (2016) ‘Art After spaces away from the vanishing center, self-questioning.”16 Applied to the institution, Trump’, in e-flux conversations, and towards a resurgent left?”15 This we can see how in order to practice November 2016. Available at: reorientation could be a form of reconciling parrhesia it must both speak truth to power https://conversations.e-flux.com/t/ the logos and bios of the institution. (in terms of content and on behalf of its simon-sheikh-art-after-trump/5325 publics) and, at the same time — speak This framework was the starting point truth of, and to, itself. 16. Raunig, G. (2006) for Policy Show, the current program at Eastside Projects (Birmingham, UK), LUCY LOPEZ which I have co-curated with Gavin Wade. Lucy Lopez is a curator, writer, Policy Show brings together a group of and editor, currently Associate artists and art workers (Teresa Cisneros, Researcher at Eastside Projects, Bir- Christian Nyampeta, Ciara Phillips and mingham, and co-director of Jupiter Rehana Zaman) to think along with Eastside Woods, London. She is a PhD candidate Projects about its existing policies, and to at Birmingham School of Art. She was develop together a policy of care for the previously Curator at BAK, basis voor organisation. Our first step was to publish actuele kunst, Utrecht. She holds the existing policies of the organisation, an MFA in curating from Goldsmiths, ranging from measurable policies (‘We will University of London. Her research work with a minimum of 50% women artists focuses on the intersection of prac- and curators’) to the more everyday (‘last tices of instituting, structures of one out, turn off the tea urn’), and those governance, and social, political policies which function more as artworks, organisation. Lopez lives and works though are no less considered as guidelines in Birmingham and London. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 11

OP-ED: AN ULTRA-RED LINE

Travis Diehl

“The truth is, polarization is exactly what In contrast to the equivocation of much of Originally published in X-TRA (Los we are trying to fight.” the art world, BHAAAD has made a strategy Angeles) –Boyle Heights Alliance Against of absolute certainty. While 356 Mission has Artwashing and Displacement1 remained open to dialogue, the activists demand nothing less than the keys to their In September of 2016, a coalition of activist building. In directing their complaint at every groups called the Boyle Heights Alliance gallery in Boyle Heights, the activists lump Against Artwashing and Displacement together outfits from UTA Artist Space, a (BHAAAD) marched to Arts District Hollywood talent agency’s art showroom, galleries on the east side of the river, down to Self-Help Graphics, an Eastside print Mission Road, between 3rd and 4th Streets, shop and community center that has and Anderson Street, between 6th and 7th, served the area since the 1970s, when it was and served them with eviction notices. “You founded during a previous burst of political are hereby notified by the people of Boyle organizing. This was also the period when Heights, who have fought for decades to what is now the world’s busiest freeway preserve affordable housing for low-income interchange carved up East Los Angeles; families,” the mock notices read, “that in the early 1960s, the south end of the 101 you must remove your business from the severed a few residential blocks from the neighborhood immediately.” It was a small rest of Boyle Heights, pinning those houses taste of what faces the galleries’ neighbors. (including the Pico Gardens public housing project) in with the garment factories and In a milieu that thinks of itself as politically beer distributors that abut the Los Angeles progressive, and that claims to value River at the neighborhood’s westernmost, nuanced, balanced discourse, the activists’ industrial fringe. 1. Boyle Heights Alliance Against unqualified stance has art-worlders Artwashing and Displacement, rattled. The founders of artist-run gallery The demand that all galleries leave the “BHAAAD: A Short History of a PSSST were caught off guard when anti- area is a demand that the citizens of Long Struggle,” http://alian- gentrification groups protested their grand Boyle Heights be allowed to determine zacontraartwashing.org/en/ opening. In February 2017, Los Angeles- the composition of their neighborhood. coalition-statements/bhaaad-the- based filmmaker and artist Ambar Navarro This absolutism has its mirror image in the short-history-of-a-long-struggle. cancelled a screening of her work at the 356 discriminatory, racist policies of the Federal Mission gallery in solidarity with the boycott Housing Administration that, between 1934 2. See The Town I Live In, dir. — while, in the Facebook post announcing and 1968, made it next to impossible for Matt Wolf, Field of Vision: 2017, her decision, Navarro urged people to look at residents of certain areas to obtain loans. In https://fieldofvision.org/the-town- both sides of the issue. Guadalupe Rosales a practice known as redlining, the Federal i-live-in. grew up in Boyle Heights and makes work Housing Authority produced color-coded about Chicanx history; she also had her maps designating areas as desirable 3. See Alexis C. Madrigal, “The Racist reservations, but chose to go through with or, in their bare euphemism, “lacking Housing Policy that Made Your a residency at PSSST.2 People throughout homogeneity.”3 Neighborhood,” The Atlantic, May the art scene feel conflicted and angry. Many 22, 2014, https://www.theatlantic. find the activists’ demands unreasonable or “Yellow areas are characterized by age, com/business/archive/2014/05/the- unrealistic. Some think maybe the galleries in obsolescence, and change of style; racist-housing-policy-that-made- Boyle Heights should just leave. expiring restrictions or lack of them; your-neighborhood/371439. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 12

Protesters post eviction notices on the gates of Maccarone Gallery, Sep- tember 17, 2016. Courtesy of Boyle Heights Alliance Against Artwashing and Displacement.

infiltration of a lower grade population; which does not contain detrimental racial the presence of influences which elements, and there are very few districts increase sales resistance such as which are not hopelessly heterogeneous inadequate transportation, insufficient in type of improvement and quality of utilities, perhaps heavy tax burdens, maintenance.” 4 The suburbs of the mobile, poor maintenance of homes, etc. “Jerry” white upper- and upper-middle classes built areas are included, as well as continued their social convection, while neighborhoods lacking homogeneity. poorer areas and ghettos, especially black Generally, these areas have reached and immigrant neighborhoods, were left the transition period. Good mortgage to stultify. The people who were already lenders are more conservative there — “Jewish professional and business in the Yellow areas and hold loan men, Mexican laborers, WPA workers, etc.,” commitments under the lending ratio as the report says of Boyle Heights — were for the Green and Blue areas. effectively trapped.

Red areas represent those neighbor- The protesters’ ultimatums should be hoods in which the things that are now viewed within the context of this harsh taking place in the Yellow neighbor- history. A broadsheet published by the hoods have already happened. They are L.A. Tenants Union, members of BHAAAD, 4. “Area Description, Security Map of characterized by detrimental influences declares, “We must move beyond asking Los Angeles County,” 1939, archived in a pronounced degree, undesirable for crumbs and only making demands by the Testbed for the Redlining population or infiltration of it. Low considered ‘realistic’ and ‘acceptable’ by Archives of California’s Exclusion- percentage of home ownership, very the system that creates the housing crisis ary Spaces (T-RACES), http://salt. poor maintenance and often vandalism in the first place.” Where equivocation has umd.edu/T-RACES/data/la/ad/ad0417. prevail. Unstable incomes of the people failed, “We must start making demands that pdf. and difficult collections are usually ask for what we really need.” 5 But within prevalent. The areas are broader than BHAAAD, absolute certainty is more of 5. L.A. Tenants Union, “El Plan de the so-called slum districts. Some a tactic than an ideal. “The only way you Vivienda Popular/People’s Housing mortgage lenders may refuse to make can start this conversation is by saying Plan,” broadsheet, 2015-2017. loans in these neighborhoods and no,” activist and Boyle Heights resident others will lend only on a conservative Leonardo Vilchis told the Los Angeles 6. Leonardo Vilchis, quoted in Car- basis.” Times. “The only way we are heard is when olina A. Miranda, “‘Out!’ Boyle you say no. And that’s terrifying because Heights Activists Say White Art In 1938, on one of the first redlining maps, you’re a jerk who says no. But we have had Elites Are Ruining the Neigh- Boyle heights ranked in the fourth grade: more negotiations now since we’ve said no borhood…But It’s Complicated,” red. “This is a ‘melting pot’ area,” notes a than if we had said yes.” 6 Los Angeles Times, October 14, pre-war government report, “and is literally 2016, http://www.latimes.com/ honeycombed with diverse and subversive Vilchis is also a member of the radical entertainment/arts/miranda/ racial elements. It is seriously doubted sound collective Ultra-red. Founded in la-et-cam-art-gentrification-boyle- whether there is a single block in the area 1994 by Los Angeles artists and activists heights-20161014-snap-story.html. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 13

Dont Rhine and Marco Larsen, the letter is one of the strongest declarations A member of Defend Boyle Heights group has grown to include members in of support for the Boyle Heights activists holds a sign at Self-Help Graphics Canada and the United Kingdom. Their by active art-world participants. This is protesting against several art gal- projects range from electronic albums not surprising, considering the group’s leries that have opened recently in and sound collage to public education position at the intersection of activist, Boyle Heights, July 2, 2016. Cour- and community organizing, which take political, and artistic organizations. “Even tesy of Los Angeles Times. Photo: the form of programs by the School of before our collective formed in 1994,” they Steve Saldivar. Echoes. Many of the group’s members write, “members of Ultra-red stood with the are also founding members of the Union residents of Pico Gardens in the 1980s, then de Vecinos (Union of Neighbors) and the through the founding of Union de Vecinos Los Angeles Tenants Union, both of which by thirty-six public housing families in participate in BHAAAD but predate the 1996, and up to today.”9 Their letter marks 7. Boyle Heights Alliance Against present conflict. One of Ultra-red’s major a continuation, a through-line from the Artwashing and Displacement, “The works, the album Structural Adjustments struggles to save Pico Gardens and public Women of Pico Aliso: 20 Years of (2000), incorporates field recordings that housing in Los Angeles to the current one. Housing Activism,” http://alian- document a past struggle by the residents When Boyle Heights organized against the zacontraartwashing.org/en/press/ of the Pico Gardens housing project, who galleries it was partly because they had the-women-of-pico-aliso-20-years- faced eviction in the mid-1990s when done it before; they could recognize the new of-housing-activism. the Housing Authority tried to clear their face of an old struggle. buildings. The movement succeeded and 8. Terre Thaemlitz, “Top Ten,” Art- the residents were not evicted.7 A fellow On a February morning in 2017, a group forum (Summer 2017), https:// musician describes the group members as called the Artists Political Action www.artforum.com/inprint/ “True participants in social struggles, not Committee (APAN) arrived for a meeting at issue=201706&id=68674. ‘political art’ bullshitters.”8 356 Mission but found the entrance blocked by a handful of activists with a bullhorn. The 9. Ultra-red, “An Open Letter In June 2016, Ultra-red posted an open solidarity art-worlders felt — or sought — to Hyperallergic,” http:// letter to Hyperallergic, a New York-based after Trump’s election did not erase the hard alianzacontraartwashing. art journalism website that has hosted line drawn by BHAAAD and its affiliates org/es/coalitionstatements/ the most thorough coverage of the Boyle between those art venues gentrifying Boyle ultra-red-an-open-letter-to-hyper- Heights arts district controversy. The Heights, unwittingly or otherwise, and allergic-ingles. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 14 those fighting to preserve it in its present Like the picket line, this unequivocal state. Artists who showed up for the APAN stance recalls the heyday of organized meeting had to choose between crossing labor more than it resembles the popular the picket line or turning back. “You are movements of the twenty-first century. on the wrong side of history,” yelled the Occupy Wall Street, for example, was protesters. They cast the word picket like defined by one feature in particular: a spell. Occupy made no demands. BHAAAD’s binary stance is specific to their Scholar Nizan Shaked wrote about experience fighting gentrification in East BHAAAD protesters and APAN meeting her experience that day: “Unless you Los Angeles, where developers’ hard attendees gather outside 356 S. strongly disagree with the position of the boundaries must be resisted with even Mission Rd, Los Angeles, February 12, picketer,” she decided, “you just do not harder rhetoric. Occupy had a different, 2017. Photo: Nizan Shaked. cross a picket line. That is activism 101.” 10 more abstract target — the machinations Shaked’s piece was titled “How to Draw of capital writ large — and learned a 10. Nizan Shaked, “How to Draw a a (Picket) Line,” and draw a line is a good different lesson. Capital cannot abide (Picket) Line,” Hyperaller- term for what happened. Picketing as a a limit; it must turn it into a barrier, then gic, February 14, 2017, https:// tactic evolved out of organized labor — transcend it.14 Both a banking regulation hyperallergic.com/358652/ organized, in particular, around a class and a union demand make excellent limits. how-to-draw-a-picket-line-ac- relationship between the workers and the tivists-protest-event-at-boyle- owners. In calling their protest a picket, The galleries and artists, meanwhile, heights-gallery. BHAAAD appealed to the morality of have been surprised to find themselves class fellows. Side with us, your fellow on the wrong side of the line. Artists and 11. See video of the action posted to art-workers, they said. Our cause is just, academics indeed pride themselves Facebook by Defend Boyle Heights, and if you cross this line, you side with our on identifying with underrepresented https://www.facebook.com/defend- exploiters and subjugators, the abstracters populations and repressed movements. boyleheights/videos/vb.93002065044 of our wealth. “Boycott 356 Mission,” sang Ultra-red is no exception. In an exhibition 8263/1238112606305731 and https:// the bullhorn. “Don’t cross the picket line. called Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy, www.facebook.com/defendboyle- Boycott 356 Mission.” Protesters called, and Activism in the Americas (affiliated heights/videos/vb.930020650448263/ “Scab,” after those who went inside. with the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time 1191757300941262. Accessed October “SCAB! SCAB!”11 initiative, “LA/LA”), the collective 11, 2017. presented their Los Angeles Library But who is the owner here? The owner of for Anti-Gentrification (2012–17).15 The 12. The gallery’s website states: “356 the building, maybe.12 The owner of the installation includes a bench and wall- Mission does not own the build- gallery or the gallery’s fiscal backers. As mounted rack stocked with pamphlets ing in which it operates. We rent art critic Ben Davis points out, artists have and one-sheets related to recent anti- the building from Vera R. Campbell aspirations that bring them in contact with gentrification struggles — particularly (Boyle Heights Properties) and the ruling class, while their sympathies by the Los Angeles Tenants Union began renting in 2012.” See the and their self-image align with the working and the Union de Vecinos — and two gallery’s website at http://356mis- class. But artists themselves are best monitors looping 13 videos documenting sion.tumblr.com/post/161592451395/ understood as middle-class — small anti-gentrification actions and landlord why-was-356-mission-founded356-mis- business owners, sole proprietors.13 Where shenanigans. The library positions the sion-is-a. artists are both complicit and concerned, literature of the past five years of anti- the activists made their appeal. gentrification activism squarely in an art 13. See Ben Davis, 9.5 Theses on Art context. Ultra-red has declared for Boyle and Class (New York: Haymarket Short of a true picket line, the protests Heights, but they continue to participate Books, 2013). outside 356 Mission were a rhetorical form. in the contemporary art system. In so Specific arguments don’t serve. Instead, doing, they render the short history of 14. To paraphrase British economist the idea of us/them must be drawn out gentrification an object of mutual analysis David Harvey paraphrasing Karl to an extreme, abstracting the cause of for activists and artists alike — a common Marx. anti-gentrification and the cause of labor text. “In trying to establish a fine arts rights until they match. Artists were the space within the professional sector,” Dont 15. The exhibition is on view at the workers and artists were the owners, too. Rhine, a founding member of Ultra-red, Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College “356 Mission is a developer, just like Donald told KCET, “it’s next to impossible to start of Art and Design from September 17 Trump,” the activists are fond of saying or maintain that space without direct through December 10, 2017. — drawing a gross equivalency between complicity in speculative development. It’s our grifter-in-chief and whatever abstract impossible to escape complicity.”16 Or—as 16. Dont Rhine, quoted in Carribean owner holds sway here, in Los Angeles, in Rhine phrased it in an earlier article, “How Fragoza, “Art and Complicity: How Boyle Heights, on the 300 block of South might our cultural actions refrain from the the Fight Against Gentrification Mission Road. same mechanisms of domination from in Boyle Heights Questions the which we hope to produce emancipation?”17 Role of Artists,” KCET, July 20, FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 15

Ultra-red, Los Angeles Library for Anti-Gentrification, 2012–2017. Printed booklets, posters, and videos. Installation view, Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy, and Activism in the Americas, Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, September 17 – December 10, 2017. Courtesy of Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design.

This is a realistic picture. But is it enough for artists to be aware of the reality of their complicity?

The picket line has sides — in and out, in front of and behind, picketer and scab. The picket line is the limit that gives traction to capital. We talk about “the right side of history,” as if history were a demarcation or a border. Rather, it is a timeline. There are crucial differences. A timeline has directionality, like a sound wave; it indicates, like an arrow. And it offers, simply, an escape from cyclical time — the time 2016, https://www.kcet.org/shows/ thrown out of joint by which the medieval artbound/boyle-heights-gentrifica- became the modern and by which the same tion-art-galleries-pssst. old struggle yields progress. Thus, it’s not only the shape of the line that describes the 17. Janna Graham and Dont Rhine, priorities of artists, but also the ways they “Audio, Audition, Audience,” spend their energy defining it, preserving it, X-TRA 10, no. 2, Winter 2007, and measuring distance from it. The form of http://x-traonline.org/article/ the collage or collection, elastic and ultra- audio-audition-audience. red, offers an alternative to the border. TRAVIS DIEHL Read responses to this article from Ultra- Travis Diehl lives in Los Angeles. red and Nizan Shaked. He serves on the editorial board of X-TRA. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 16

#Hashtags THE BIG LIE

Anuradha Vikram

This fall, Los Angeles finds itself in the the majority of city residents, apart from Originally published in Art Practical international spotlight. The Getty-led the wealthy. Rising perceptions of affluence (Bay Area) initiative Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA and commensurate luxury development (PST: LA/LA) is well underway, boasting mask the significant gap between wages more than sixty exhibitions of Latin and the cost of goods and services in the American and U.S. Latinx art across city. These disparities disproportionately the broader Southern California region. affect Latinx Angelenos, many of whom Meanwhile, the International Olympic struggle with language barriers, poverty, Committee has designated Los Angeles and uncertain legal status. as the host city for the 2028 Olympic Games. As the world turns its attention to The “big lie” is a term usually associated the artistic and economic vibrancy of the with the extreme right wing, as its origins city, L.A.’s future appears to be bright. Yet stem from Adolph Hitler’s boasting about Los Angeles continues to operate like a the ease with which he could seduce a large town with aspirations of becoming a populace by pandering to their need for big city, not like an international metropolis. emotional validation over common sense.1 1. “Big lie,” Wikipedia, https:// Corporate investment and cultural cachet With the surreal barrage that emanates en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_ have yet to produce tangible benefits for daily from the White House, the phrase lie. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 17 seems newly relevant. It might seem un- The questions prompted by this generous to refer to a benevolent, diversity- multifaceted event can only be answered oriented, and financially supportive by dedicated assessment on the part initiative like PST: LA/LA with a term that of the Getty with PST: LA/LA partner harbors such unsavory associations. But institutions. Some critical questions they the current era of right-wing nationalism might ask include: Are the city’s cultural has not spared Latin America, manifesting institutions structurally reconfiguring most visibly in the 2016 deposition of the their staff and boards (as encouraged by Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff. Nor is the Ford Foundation and the Association the use of emotional validation to mani- of Art Museum Directors2) in order to Juan Downey. Nazca, 1974; enlarge- pulate public opinion limited to the political represent and serve Latinx artists and ments of photographic documentation right. While there are important symbolic audiences beyond the end of the initiative of performance with video, The gains to be made from all this attention on in early 2018? Specifically, has PST: LA/LA Kitchen, New York, February 1974. L.A.’s Latinx heritage, are the city’s cultural resulted in new hires of staff curators from Courtesy of the Estate of Juan institutions equipped to retain and serve Latinx communities, or has an increase in Downey. Photos: Peter Moore, © Latinx audiences who are strained to even representation been limited to short-term Estate of Peter Moore/VAGA, New remain here? What does this initiative do — and part-time commitments? Additionally, York. Juan Downey: Radiant Nature, and what does it not do — to rectify how can the multicultural inclusion installation view, Los Angeles Con- decades of disempowerment of Latin celebrated by PST: LA/LA be conferred on temporary Exhibitions, September American and Latinx people in Los Angeles? other identity groups in the city, the most 13–December 3, 2017. numerous being African Americans and Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is an Asian Americans? unprecedented survey of art and cultural production from the Latin American region. Audiences may also have questions. (Previous Page) With close to a hundred participating Can and should PST: LA/LA address Julio César Morales. Boy in Suit- institutions and informal partners, the city’s the city’s gentrification debates, with the case, 2015; high-definition cultural centers seem to be embracing displacement of lower-income Angelenos, animation video (digital transfer) and seeking to expand their reach to their many Latinx, near complete on the city’s with mirror, sound; 3 minutes, 33 Latinx audiences. Individual exhibitions west side and occurring at a furious rate seconds. Courtesy of the Artist and — such as a retrospective of the queer on the east side? What about the violently Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco. Chicana photographer Laura Aguilar at racist rhetoric on immigrants coming from © Julio César Morales. Vincent Price Art Museum and the first the president in Washington, DC? Here, West Coast retrospective of the Chilean the initiative is likely to have the most intermedia artist Juan Downey at Los positive effects. Few would have predicted Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) openly volatile behavior from a holder of and Pitzer College Art Galleries—are the American presidency when PST: LA/ timely and meaningful. Many exhibitions, LA was launched back in 2013. Indeed, the notably the Hammer Museum’s Radical tenor of U.S. politics has come to resemble Women: Latin American Art 1960–1985, that of the Latin American countries, are jumping-off points for the larger, crucial which agencies of the U.S. government task of establishing scholarship to bridge have worked hard to destabilize since the gaps in established art history. Often, 1970s. Now that our colonial impulses are institutions are presenting their shows backfiring, the equal footing between Latin with didactics in English and Spanish for America and the United States that PST: the first time. Education initiatives are LA/LA promises may finally be upon us. underway, including partnerships with Similar questions should be asked of L.A.’s K-through-12 and college and university political and cultural institutions in the programs. Promotional banners strewn run-up to the 2028 Olympics. There is no across the city declare, “There will be guarantee that international events on a art.” Is it enough that artworks made by citywide scale will appropriately serve the Latin American and Latinx artists will “be” political concerns of the public. The games here? Will Latinx audiences, and Latinx have been promoted to Angelenos with Angelenos, continue to “be” here in the the promise of investment in infrastructure years following this initiative? Or could this and economic development, which the be another situation in which artists of color city badly needs. At the same time, there 2. Association of Art Museum Direc- and cultural production from marginalized is a growing sense among L.A.’s immigrant tors, “From the Field: Diversity communities are presented to satisfy the communities that they are not the focus of in the Arts,” September 21, 2015, public’s emotional need for representation the city’s new internationalism. As affluent accessed October 11, 2017, https:// while diverting attention from urgent but emigrés buy up beachfront properties as aamd.org/our-members/from-the- difficult political problems? investments, creating a seawall of vacant field/diversity-in-the-arts. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 18

Laura Aguilar. In Sandy’s Room, 1989; gelatin silver print; 52 × 42 3/4 in. Courtesy of the Artist and UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. © Laura Aguilar. See more photos here.

palaces along the Pacific, L.A.’s working be for museums to acquire regional immigrants are priced out and pushed artists’ work in conjunction with these farther east, beyond the city limits, toward exhibitions, which the Los Angeles County the desert. Metro rail service is expanding Museum of Art (LACMA) has done.5 More into new neighborhoods, but without clear direct investment by Southern California policy directives to keep low-income museums in local artists of color from residents in their homes near Metro disenfranchised communities is required, stations, property rents will rise and those and more L.A. art collectors need to make most in need of train service cannot remain. it possible through philanthropy. While Latin Whether these properties will house American collectors and philanthropists taxpayers or become Airbnbs for Olympic have been a highly visible presence at visitors is up to elected officials to decide, PST: LA/LA events, Los Angeles collectors but waiting to take action until preparations and philanthropists have not been as well for the Games are underway in earnest will represented. If support for the city’s cultural be too late. Similarly, elected officials have sector is imported rather than cultivated 3. Gale Holland and Doug Smith, to decide now whether they will create a at home, it reduces the likelihood that the “L.A. County Homelessness Jumps a workable plan to humanely house more city’s cultural priorities will relate to the ‘Staggering’ 23% as Need Far Out- than 50,000 Angelenos currently living on needs of its population. paces Housing, New Count Shows,” the streets3; one hopes that officials will Los Angeles Times, May 31, 2017, not take the approach of Beijing, where What happens to Los Angeles if accessed October 11, 2017, http:// police evicted hundreds of thousands of international investment is allowed www.latimes.com/lanow/la-me-ln- low-income residents from the city center to dictate development of the city’s homeless-count-20170530-story.html. before the Games in 2008.4 landscape, shaping future housing policy and the allotment of cultural resources? 4. Jonathan Watts, “Beijing Announces The museum exhibitions present another The result might look something like San Pre-Olympic Social Clean Up,” conundrum. Lenders to these prominent Francisco, where longtime residents and Guardian, January 23, 2008, shows will likely see the value of their young white-collar workers alike cannot accessed October 11, 2017, http:// assets increased by the substantive afford to live in the city. Like Los Angeles, www.theguardian.com/world/2008/ historical scholarship and significant San Francisco frequently promotes itself jan/23/china.jonathanwatts exposure enabled by the initiative. But as a creative mecca, but it is now a city Latinx artists based in L.A., who are where arts philanthropy exists primarily as 5. “2016 and 2017 AHAN: Studio represented in a number of group shows architecture and spectacle, and where the Forum Acquisitions,” Unframed, connecting local and international artists proliferation of pied-à-terres and Airbnbs August 7, 2017, accessed October around thematic concerns, will continue has eviscerated neighborhoods. Perhaps 11, 2017, unframed.lacma. to struggle to afford materials, rent, and there will be enough affluent émigrés org/2017/08/07/2016-and-2017-ah- health care. The corrective for this would from the newly minted upper classes of an-studio-forum-acquisitions. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 19 emerging global economies to maintain Undergraduate Internship and other multicultural appearances in these new programs, to foster equity in museum cities of transients. Perhaps, like Jerry Yang, staffing and leadership. The question the co-founder of Yahoo!, they will have the remains whether institutional recipients inclination to collect art and the largesse to of PST: LA/LA support will install Latinx make substantial gifts to local museums. culture and values permanently within their Will their generosity benefit California cities’ ranks, or only temporarily on their walls. shrinking communities of color? Or will the result be more development without pragmatism? Yang’s $25 million gift to the Asian Art Museum stipulates a new building to replace one renovated fifteen years ago, for which the museum still carries $90 million in debt.6 [Editor’s Note: The Asian Art Museum has since contacted us, stating that the gift, which was made by both Jerry Yang and his wife Akiko Yamazaki, will support “not only the construction project, but exhibitions, and [their] endowment relatively equally” and that “the special exhibitions pavilion that is the core of the project is actually an addition to an existing structure, not a replacement.”] This is unchecked development masquerading as philanthropy. Will art museums continue to be complicit in the charade, all the while silently buckling under the accumulated receipts of the past?

When a lie is so egregious that it cannot be debated on its factual merits, anyone who believes the lie must buy into it emotionally, validating feelings already held. The big lie of large-scale cultural-equity initiatives focused on minority representation is that increasing the visibility of an underrepresented community’s cultural production inherently strengthens that community’s stake in the institutions where their culture is newly visible. This is not a 6. Jori Finkel, “Yahoo Co-Founder guaranteed result. Without investment in Gives $25 Million to San Francis- diversifying the staff and boards of these co’s Asian Art Museum,” New York institutions, investment in exhibitions and Times, September 26, 2017,accessed related programming does not alone yield October 11, 2017, https://www. equitable results. The Los Angeles County nytimes.com/2017/09/26/arts/design/ Arts Commission has demonstrated as asian-art-museum-jerry-yang-yahoo. much in its recent Cultural Equity and html. Inclusion Plan, which calls for countywide efforts to develop and promote diverse 7. Los Angeles County Arts Commission, museum staff and board appointments.7 “Strengthening Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Arts and It may be that another appealing lie to Culture Sector for All Los Angeles which we cling is the idea that a single County Residents,” April 5, 2017, institution, however powerful, can turn the accessed October 11, 2017, https:// tide. Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA should www.lacountyarts.org/ceii-report. not and cannot be expected to address the problem of fair representation in arts #Hashtags is a column, formerly institutions alone. The Getty Foundation’s published on Daily Serving, that investment in PST: LA/LA follows decades explores the intersection of art, of support, in the form of its Multicultural social issues, and global politics. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 20

LIKE PISS IN MOTION: RACE, GENDER, AND FILTRATION SYSTEMS IN THE WORK OF CANDICE LIN Dan Bustillo

In Paris and in the Middle Ages, sewage Candice Lin’s recent show at Bétonsalon in — human and non-human waste — was Paris, titled A Hard White Body (Un corps routinely dumped onto unpaved streets blanc exquis), examines narratives of race, before working its way to the River Seine, gender, class, and sexuality through the from which people drank directly. Throughout lives and stories of James Baldwin and the nineteenth century, sanitation extended Jeanne Baret, as well as through non- far beyond Parisian urban development, into human actors, such as porcelain, plants, colonial governance, and serves today as and glass. The installation includes a video a tool for imperial control. Pleating health, on Lin’s research on plants, materials, and sanitation, and territorial administration into histories of their use in narratives of race political power are current actions in the U.S. and gender; research documents atop a around pollution and sewage floating along short wall made of bricks; plants throughout the Tijuana River, which runs across the U.S. the gallery; intricate drawings; and larger border. In step with this logic, sewer systems drawings that cover the windows of the tell us something about borders — ports gallery, occluding parts of the exhibition of access, manholes, passageways — and from the outside while introducing other about a veritable contact zone between elements to the inside, namely a life- health, citizenship, and dissent. size drawing of a white body with plants growing out of its stomach; a bed made Piss and shit gather in our bodies, exit of porcelain, and a filtration system. through specific ports, plunge into other Welcoming visitors at the entrance of the bodies of water, and tunnel through an gallery is a urinal connected to a distillation elaborate infrastructure designed to convey system that processes urine from the urinal Candice Lin, Installation view, A sewage and wastewater through pipes. and combines it with distilled water and Hard White Body, 2017, Bétonsalon, Crucial is their mobility. In ‘Of Imagination,’ water from the nearby Seine River. Tubes Paris. in Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes speaks of cross the gallery walls, feeding into a set of mobility in a slightly different — though not sprinklers that every hour mist a room that unrelated — way: “that when a thing lies still, is curtained off as if it were quarantined. unlesse somewhat els stirre it, it will lye still The room is based on James Baldwin’s for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of…” novel, Giovanni’s Room and is replete with While Hobbes is warning against a kind of mugs, bottles, domestic debris, a bed — intellectual stagnancy, he is not saying we all made of unfired clay. In misting, the should mobilize piss and shit. The artist filtration system (further assisted by gallery Candice Lin, however, proposes a version workers who spray the room by hand daily) of this. Using drawing, sculpture, video, assures perpetual change, a resistance to and installation, Lin’s highly complex works permanence, to a fixed solid state. question human and non-human historical complicities in narratives of colonization, An ingredient in making gunpowder and race, and gender. Of the many materials teeth whitener, urine has long been used she engages in her critical inquiries — from for medical diagnosis (uroscopy) and graphite to parasite — I will take a closer look divination (urology). Drawing from the at her use of piss, and particularly, of piss set medical use of urine analysis in ancient Originally published in Contemptorary in motion. Egypt, India, and Babylonia, medieval (Los Angeles) FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 21

European medicine, which was based on from toxin to tonic, I am reminded of the Candice Lin, A Hard White Body, the fluid system, identified health with 15th century Swiss doctor of toxicology, 2017, Bétonsalon, Paris. Closeup of urine “thick and white like a man’s sperm,” Paracelsus’s famous maxim: “sola dosis urinal and funnel. or disease such as diabetes, Sweaty Feet facit venenum,” “The dose makes the Syndrome, lovesickness, or anger: “But if poison.” When outside the individual body, the sickness arises from anger, it makes for urine is, for the most part, sterile, though a fever that is great and savage.” it retains the potential to piss on or off, to intoxicate, anger, or trouble the otherwise Getting pissed, having rage: piss in motion clear liquid of a larger social body, because, is a prime ingredient of resistance to as Alexis Shotwell writes, “We are and of that which keeps us still. In Bétonsalon’s the world, contaminated and affected.” exhibition publication, Lin speaks of the ocean as holding space, as memory, where Candice Lin previously worked with urine water embraces and disappears bodies during her exhibition, The mountain, at thrown overboard from ships, and of liquid Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles, as it relates to condensation and breath, which brought erased histories of violence and to mold that destroys plant matter, and colonialism together with nourishment. ultimately “making the ink in archives On glass panes with detailed drawings were ‘bleed’ so that the handwriting is no longer terrariums that housed living silkworms, legible.” In Lin’s work, liquid, then, offers plants, dried bacteria, fungus, and putrefied possibility; in its potential to erase, it does artifacts. Much like piss at Bétonsalon, the something else. Lin says, “I think of liquid piss Lin worked with at Commonwealth & as caretaking, as moisturizing, as keeping Council was communal. Before the show, something supple and tender, able to bend. she held a dinner in the space where she Liquid that keeps something fed, growing fed and hydrated her guests, collecting like a plant, or in a state of wet potential: their urine in return. She amassed 15 gallons unfixed, unfired un-certitude.” Once of piss, which she then distilled, and used distilled, urine no longer contains urea, to hydrate two types of mushrooms that its toxic component, which then makes it were cultivated during the exhibition: one mostly sterile. In considering its passage type enhanced memory and the other, the FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 22

Candice Lin, A Hard White Body, 2017, Bétonsalon, Paris.

immune system. Both the individual and the used for filtration. Lin engages materials collective bodies are potentially serviced as containers for histories of race, gender, by these mushrooms, whose livelihood and class sanitizing. Resting on the urinal in depends on the piss-moisture from the Lin’s show at Bétonsalon is a funnel made of community of people, who, then, lend their porcelain, a reference to one often used in liquid bodies to the social architecture Louis Pasteur’s studies. As Lin details in her of the exhibition space in which the text for the exhibition publication, Pasteur mushrooms were placed. Having more to and his assistant, Charles Chamberland, do with community and large amounts than developed a porcelain Pasteur- with small doses prescribed to a singular Chamberland filter, which allowed them body, access to memory becomes a shared to identify toxins that made their way past experience through the liquified, “bleeding” the filter, such as tetanus and diphtheria, ink in the archives, as Lin might have it. subsequently establishing the field of Inextricable from classification systems virology. Lin’s funnel, however, was used as and discourses of purity that frame racial, a Stand-To-Pee device to assist guests at gender, and class hygiene are the materials the urinal, either in the gallery directly or at FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 23

Candice Lin, A Hard White Body, 2017, Bétonsalon, Paris. Closeup of piss being distilled. See more photos here.

their discretion in a bathroom nearby. That the funnel is made of porcelain links race to gender in crucial ways. As Lin points out in her writing, Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries used Chinese porcelain, which they saw as a “pure white body” because of its impermeability and resistance to stains from liquids like coffee or tea, to filter water. Porcelain, in Lin’s work, however, does not solely serve as a metaphor for racial purity politics: the porcelain funnel Chamberland and Pasteur designed was also used in the colonies to filter drinking water where standing water was considered a cesspool for bacteria and waterborne disease, disseminated via insects like mosquitoes. Lin recuperates materials such as porcelain, which she then uses to flood the distillation process with piss.

Lin reminds us that histories of race and gender do not become sterile over time. By sampling water from the Seine, from willful pissers, or from dinner guests, and using those same liquids to maintain and care for something or someone else, she deploys piss as a form of pastness. Like time, history is neither fixed, universal, nor fair. In re-inscribing materials within their histories of race and gender, Lin restores that which is often invisible to the gatekeepers of DAN BUSTILLO dominant concerns, interests, and beliefs, Dan Bustillo is a writer and artist to an archive that might not have been based out of Los Angeles. Along with designed for it. Joey Cannizzaro, they founded and host the Best Friends Learning Gang. Through research, writing, and col- laborative work, they investigate structures and dynamics of power, the U.S. security state, and sur- veillance culture. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 24

THE POWER OF PLACE: A CONVERSATION ON LIVING AND WORKING IN NEW ORLEANS Charlie Tatum with Andrea Andersson, Imani Jacqueline Brown, and L. Kasimu Harris

A billboard on Galvez Street and Orleans Avenue as part of Blights Out’s Blights Out For Mayor Campaign. Courtesy Blights Out, New Orleans.

EDITOR’S NOTE So, last month, I sat down with three Originally published in Pelican Bomb This conversation was commissioned by colleagues — the four of us comprised of Pelican Bomb as part of Field Perspectives one artist, one curator, one administrator, 2017, a co-publishing initiative organized and one critic — in an attempt to better and supported by Common Field as a articulate some of the issues we, as arts part of their Los Angeles 2017 Convening. workers in New Orleans, collectively face. Field Perspectives 2017 is a collaboration We focused on the relationship between between Common Field and nine arts practice and place, examining how the very publications across the country. Partners fact of geography affects our daily lives each commissioned a piece of writing — from disparities between wages and that aims to catalyze discussion, dialogue, the cost of living to the seeming necessity and debate before, during, and after the to travel and remain in contact with arts Convening. communities in larger urban centers. We also thought about our roles here and within When asked to contribute to this network the international cultural landscape. of essays, interviews, and projects, Pelican Bomb organized a conversation, one of our Andrea Andersson, Imani Jacqueline favorite forms because of its ability to hold Brown, and L. Kasimu Harris, all native multiple voices. As the only New Orleans- New Orleanians, shared with me their based contributor, we counter the desire experiences leaving, loving, and relearning for a single cohesive narrative of our city by the city. Andersson is the Chief Curator embracing a diversity of perspectives. of Visual Arts at the Contemporary Arts Center; Brown is a founding organizer of FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 25

Blights Out, a core member of Occupy through Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs. Installation view of “Adam Pendleton: Museums, and Director of Programs at I realized then how much New Orleans Becoming Imperceptible” at the Con- Antenna; and Harris is an independent had influenced me and still had to teach temporary Arts Center, New Orleans. artist and journalist whose work has been me. I came back to be part of the city Courtesy the artist; The Contempo- published in Oxford American and The after having been gone for so long, and I rary Arts Center, New Orleans; Pace FADER, among other publications. won’t necessarily be here forever, but New Gallery, New York; Galeria Pedro —Charlie Tatum Orleans will always be with me. Cera, Lisbon; and Galerie Eva Pre- senhuber, Zurich. Photo by Traviesa Andrea Andersson: I’m also from New Studio. Charlie Tatum: I want to start this Orleans, but I don’t know that New Orleans conversation with a question we all think traveled with me in the same way when I about: How does New Orleans relate to was studying and living elsewhere. My areas the work that you do day-to-day? And, in of study and scholarship were driven by thinking about that, how did you end up other concerns. I became a true-to-form doing that work here specifically? formalist. But I now know that the most interesting way to think about form is to Imani Jacqueline Brown: I’m from New recognize that it is necessarily political Orleans, so New Orleans is something that and social — so it’s interesting to see my I carry with me all the time and will always practice change since returning to New carry with me, not just because my family Orleans three years ago. There are projects is from here and I went to school here. I am and undertakings that I thought of realizing who I am because of New Orleans in a lot elsewhere that made no sense the moment of ways. I left New Orleans after Katrina I was back on New Orleans’ soil. The social and went to school in New York and was and political imperative became so much involved in Occupy Wall Street — and I greater. It made me look at form in a really heard these anarchists squatting in the rigorous way. streets talking about the need to have mutual aid-societies. I started thinking CT: Do you have a specific example of how about it and realized that we in New Orleans your viewpoint on a specific project shifted? have been doing that for generations FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 26

AA: Well, the Adam Pendleton exhibition AA: I want to think more about that, Kasimu, that I realized at the CAC is just one possible that you’re a firm believer in telling our own example. I had always been interested in stories. I think that’s a really interesting appropriation, textual appropriation, and question in the work we do here, because the politics of textual appropriation, but there is a way that New Orleans is this Adam’s work seemed really important here remarkable, navel-gazing city that always because it was tapping into a very specific wants to tell its own story, at the exclusion history. The question of who speaks and of all the other stories that might happen. whose language we’re borrowing always I’m curious about that balance, and I’m holds weight, but in the city of New Orleans always thinking about this in my particular there are very particular histories that role at the Contemporary Arts Center. What need to be narrated. And in my opinion, is this institution? On one hand, the CAC those are both the stories of the diverse seeks to be a global institution; but it also communities that make up New Orleans but seeks to be a local institution — so how also the histories of contemporary art that do we tell stories of global relevance that may be less rehearsed here. I think there are also necessarily a reflection of our own is a constant demand to put the familiar in experience? contact with the unfamiliar, social histories in contact with aesthetic histories. And we CT: That’s really central to what we think do that from a very particular location and about at Pelican Bomb. In publishing about perspective in the Global South. Every time contemporary art in the city, we have two I show work here there’s a double question: audiences. There is the audience of folks What is the work that New Orleans needs here in New Orleans who are either artists to see, and also what is the work that needs or who are interested in the arts or who to be translated through the lens of New might be interested if we can convince Orleans? There’s a way of engaging with and them. And then there’s a separate audience devouring art here that makes certain work of people in the art world at large who are come back alive. looking to New Orleans to see what else is happening — CT: How has the city influenced you, Kasimu? AA: — what else there might be, right? That question of what else might there be is L. Kasimu Harris: I left New Orleans a something that feels really important right semester after high school — I’m from New now. Orleans as well — and art had always been a curiosity to me, but when I left, I was more IJB: Else to what? into performing arts and music. I was really into jazz — I’m still into jazz. When I was in AA: Else to the traditional historical high school, I was an aspiring professional narrative of contemporary art as it is trumpet player, and, when I went to college translated through the eyes of New York at Middle Tennessee State University, I or other art capitals. There is a question in started to pursue journalism, casually, and America, and much further: What are the a few years later, I went to graduate school other stories? What are the stories we’re not at Ole Miss, to pursue an M.A. in journalism. telling? That’s the same year Hurricane Katrina happened, 2005. When I came back to IJB: When we think about the “art world” New Orleans, like 45 days after Katrina, I of New York and London and these picked up a camera. It still wasn’t a pursuit various places that are invariably financial of art per se, but it was storytelling. It was centers of some sort, places with great part of a frustration that the stories and concentrations of wealth, we’re really the narratives being reported out of New thinking about the art world as being Orleans didn’t necessarily match what I shaped around and by the art market. So experienced. A lot of people were doing yes, people are definitely like, Well, what parachute journalism, but I’m always a firm else is there? as we’re realizing how flawed, believer in telling our own stories. Now I’m limited, and self-destructive that [market- still uncovering and trying to tell stories — centric] perspective is. Art has become some of the themes relate to New Orleans increasingly focused on its function as an and some of them not at all. asset class, and we’ve watched it become more abstracted, not in the formal sense, but abstracted from its social context FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 27

and more concentrated on its financial ways an art movement. It was channelling A photograph from L. Kasimu Harris’ context — as our own economies have African call and response through the War On The Benighted series. Courtesy also become more and more frenzied and People’s Mic. It had performance intimately the artist. abstracted from any real social value. As interwoven in it and was reminiscent of we’re watching, we’re realizing what a dead voodoo circles. The movement was drawing end our economic system is, what a dead on these — I hate the word — traditional, end capitalism and neoliberalism are — or maybe inherent, aspects of culture and also recognizing what a dead end art that everyone in the world carries deep focused on capital is. I think what’s really within them. We still had and have that in interesting about New Orleans is that, at New Orleans and express it through many least prior to Katrina, we were far behind in different creative outlets. I think that is what the neoliberalist game. Neoliberalism hadn’t is so attractive to people when they look at really settled in here, and Katrina was the New Orleans. They see something before opening of the floodgates to allow for the and beyond capitalism, and they want to privatization of everything and for the influx know what that is and be a part of it. of moneyed interests and for profit to be sucked from so many things. CT: Can we return to your comment about concentrations of wealth? As we know There are many things good and bad that from the practical realities of living in New have come with the influx of people and Orleans, the wealth is not concentrated ideas since Katrina, and I’m all about the here — evidenced by the small number of free flow of ideas and information. Katrina jobs, the low wages, etc. While we think that also had an outward momentum, as people the cost of living somewhere like New York from New Orleans were propelled to other is much higher — the funding structures parts of the world and were able to share there do better support the arts — even if their stories. When I was in New York, those structures are precarious themselves. learning about Occupy Wall Street and this It would be arguably easier to work in a massive social and economic movement larger city, where that infrastructure already around rejecting capitalism, the status quo, exists. and profit-seeking, to me, it was in a lot of FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 28

AA: Yes, and the relative cost of living in alone by national publications outside of the New Orleans is high. With the question of city, which is an odd kind of thing. ease, I don’t think there’s an argument. I think it is easier to do the work that we do, AA: Can I ask you why you think you’ve been easier to do almost any work, outside of written about by more national publications New Orleans, and the arts are no exception than local publications? to that. LKH: I don’t know, I’m trying to figure it CT: Can you think about that through a out. The arts have been gutted. We have personal lens? What are the benefits of two major newspapers here, and then you Blights Out’s Theater Of The Gen- working here? It would be easier elsewhere, think about whatever alternative weeklies trified Reading And Rally, as part whether because of funding or because we have, but then it also comes down to of their Living Glossary project, it’s easier to catch the eye of curators a problem about inclusion. It’s just a fact featuring a scribe called Quess?, and writers and because it’s easier to be that people who write about arts and Mariama Eversley, and Daquiri Rene automatically included in this idea of an culture in New Orleans largely look one Jones. Courtesy Blights Out, New international art world — which is really just way, and it ain’t like me. The mainstream Orleans. More photos from article New York talking about itself most of the publications—the Times-Picayune, the here. time. What are the benefits of being here? New Orleans Advocate, even Offbeat or Gambit—they don’t have many writers of AA: One of the great benefits of being color or photographers of color. Too often, here, which is maybe also a burden, is that I feel that their influences and what they there is a mandate to think very seriously, write about are very narrow and exclude, particularly during the current presidential intentionally or unintentionally, too many administration, about what populism is. artists. What are populist practices and what are inclusive practices? What’s traditional and But why do I make work here? A lot of my what’s innovation? New Orleans has long work is based in New Orleans, but, as I try been associated with tradition and, in terms to scale out and explore other issues, I think of contemporary art, we are pursuing a eventually I’ll be more apt to leave or to version of New Orleans that is interested in move, but when you have a family structure, innovation. It’s much easier to drive a public you get a little comfortable. into an arts institution through a populist address, right? But I think that we, as a AA: There is a different sense of mission country, have explored over the last two when I am making work here. I know I’m years, some very dangerous ramifications of making something that, if I don’t do it, my populist address. daughter or my son will not encounter here. That’s not true when I’m working in LKH: Sometimes I think about “making New York. There, I can be a great cultural it,” or getting the widest recognition. Even consumer. My children can see so much when I was a teenager, I wondered if you stuff, and I don’t have to do anything right? could fully do that living in New Orleans, or It’s already out there. I do think that there’s if you had to go somewhere else to make that kind of responsibility to this community. it. I think Katrina obviously shifted that, I feel that we have to build it or it won’t be when the number of people, the long-time there. native residents, shifted and shrank, and the number of people from outside expanded. I IJB: I returned to New Orleans with a still struggle with that a little bit. I think now mission, to participate in my city, to be a you can make it living in New Orleans. But part of it. I had seen disaster capitalism anything I’ve done outside of New Orleans is come up after Hurricane Sandy in New in some way connected back here. York, and was like, Shit, I have to go see As far as recognition, I feel ignored by the what’s happening in my hometown. I have media here in New Orleans. It’s easier to get some work to do. I have some giving back in a publication far from here than it is to get to do. I had some guilt for not having been written about in New Orleans. here after Katrina, and I needed to work through that. Katrina was my senior year of All, together: Mmhmm. high school, and I never got to say goodbye. Even though I had planned on leaving, I LKH: I think I’ve been written about by local never got to formally say goodbye. I needed publications twice, maybe. It’s like, man, I’ve to find closure, but realized that you can’t been written about three times this year have closure with your home; there is no FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 29 wrapping up. This is not the only place IJB: It’s a privilege to be able to travel and happens here for others who don’t live here where I do work though. I’m pretty lucky to see the world and to have that exchange as I am doing work here on the ground. still have a practice with a collective in New with people around the world, and that’s York — Occupy Museums — and we’re still probably the most important thing in my life. LKH: Is there a particular point that you all able to do projects. I’m lucky and privileged I’ve always traveled a lot. My mother is an started working outside of New Orleans? to have this base and to be able to travel international law professor in New Orleans And is that opportunity granted to everyone and do projects around the world. All that is at Loyola, and she has a research stipend. or is it not? I don’t think so. What do you incredibly important to me. So as a child I was definitely very privileged think made us different? I can’t necessarily to have been born of this woman who answer that for myself, but it’s something AA: We’ve all referenced working further would only have to to pay for a plane ticket that I grapple with. afield, being rooted in the city of New and then everything else was covered. It Orleans, but also operating elsewhere. That’s really gave me this unquenchable thirst AA: I think that a lot of it has to do with one of the most interesting things about to learn from other people and see how opportunity, and I think that opportunity New Orleans, and I think it distinguishes we’re all connected, how our struggles are affords imagination. Neither of my parents New Orleans from many other places. There connected. Today I travel to New York a were from New Orleans. My father is is no way to think about the history or the lot. I am grateful to have been a part of the German and my mother is Greek. And that culture of the city without acknowledging Whitney Biennial with Occupy Museums this meant that elsewhere was always part of global trade exchanges and patterns, and March, so I had to travel there. When I left my experience of the world. In your case, the historical relationship of this city to every New York in 2013, I was worried that I was Imani, you were always traveling with your other place on the globe. going to miss it, but I’ve been lucky to return mom — frequently. CT: These ideas bring up a practical IJB: I was inspired by her, of course, but to question: How often do you all travel I’ve also had some really incredible get to the point where I now have my own specifically to engage with art? Whether for opportunities to travel globally. I’m traveling kind of momentum and my own propeller work or pleasure, because of course that line to the U.K. and Poland this fall for a giving me opportunities; I have to create is so blurred now. I most often go to New York fellowship and a residency. I’ve done a lot those. I think, in large part, the privilege because of the concentration of galleries and of traveling, to the point where I start to feel that allowed me to leave and develop more museums and also many friends and loved uncomfortable about it. I start to calculate projects elsewhere was the privilege to ones. Where do you all go and why? my carbon footprint. So I’ve come to realize evacuate during Katrina. I often think about that the way I live my life, as much as I love it, the fact that there are so many people here LKH: I’ve been to Georgia maybe three or is really unsustainable. who’ve never left New Orleans, and as a four times this year to Atlanta and to the result their lives might be incredibly rich art museum at LaGrange College, which AA: I travel more than I wish I did. I love to and fulfilling but they might also take it for surprised me. I went to New York twice this travel, but I also have two small children, so granted because I took it for granted, until I year, and every time I go I’m intentionally it’s harder and it’s different than it ever was went to New York, or until I went to D.C. and trying to see art. I got a chance to see the before. There isn’t a month that I don’t travel was like, Oh, that’s how y’all live? I always show at the Brooklyn Museum, “We Wanted to New York. I also go to many other cities saw myself leaving New Orleans and hated a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965– for traveling shows and to see the work so many things, and then I realized there’s 85,” and then I saw the Whitney Biennial. of colleagues — which is important and so much to love about it. I went to L.A. this year. different than visiting New York where there is simply such a density of experience. But I CT: Do you have specific goals for those am curious about what and how works gets trips, or is it more open-ended, trying to shown and resonates in different places and absorb as much as possible? regions across this country.

LKH: I’m not saying this to try to be funny, Still, more than anything, I tend to think of but I remember when I was an undergrad, New Orleans in a transnational context. So in any city, I wanted to find a Kappa Alpha it feels important to me to leave the country Psi Fraternity brother, and I hopefully knew and to look back on what we’re doing a girl who lived there. I have a woman now, from that perspective. I was fortunate this but the mentality is the same when I travel. summer to be able to see the international I want to connect with people — personal art presentations going on in Europe, and or professional; sometimes it’s to see art or this fall I will return again for work. It seems share a meal. You never know where it’s going to be the condition of the work, partially to go, and then maybe something happens because I think we are tasked with the job two, three years down the road. That organic of holding a conversation in New Orleans practice, to meet people, has benefitted me, and making sure that New Orleans is also when I travel, to reach out and just say, “Hi,” in all the other conversations. I think we all and maybe have a drink. serve as ambassadors of this city. I probably spend as much time narrating what FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 30

SORRY NOT SORRY. (COUPLES COUNSELING FOR ARTISTS AND INSTITUTIONS: STEP TWO) Chloë Bass

Image from The Book of Everyday Instruction, Chapter Two: Things I’ve seen people do lately, 2015. Courtesy the author

ARTS.BLACK (Detroit, New York) Sorry not sorry. in bold. The source of each quote has been cited in the footnotes. A database 1. Presented as part of Chloë Bass’ (Couples Counseling for Artists and of political apologies and reparations can project The Book of Everyday Institutions: Step Two) 1 be found here. Both the search function Instruction, Chapter Six: What is and the links to external sources only shared, what is offered. Previous (Author’s note: In contemplating how our sometimes work. Sorry about that. couples therapy sessions between world holds us (or doesn’t), I have been artists and institutions have examining the role of apology. We seem I recently apologized to someone myself, explored an exploration of phases to fear direct apology, perhaps because the real way: I acknowledged what had of love shared over time (“Step it sets a precedent for future reparations happened, I said it was because of me, One,” which premiered in Febru- (i.e. if I say sorry now, how many times will I and then I said the words I’m sorry. I also ary 2017 at CUE Art Foundation as need to say sorry in the future?). Is apology cried a little. As to that last bit, I wish I part of The Visible Hand, curated a moment, a process, or a rut? How can we hadn’t. Still, the vulnerability inherent even by David Xu Borgonjon), as well as begin to see it as an opportunity? to the shabbiest of apologies makes it an couples counseling for individuals interesting point of departure from which to and their relationship to Black- Sorry not sorry is an interweaving of dissect the relationship between individuals ness (which premiered at the Design personal experiences of apology, or the and institutions. — Chloë Bass) Studio for Social Intervention in blank gaps of non-apology, mixed with March 2017, a few days shy of Black quotes from famous institutional and History Month (sorry/not sorry), at professional apologies. Quotes appear the invitation of Kenneth Bailey. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 31

Apologies for mis-attributing your role in A sharing exercise at an outdoor art event 2. A brief sampling of the first 50 the project! in New York in July. It’s a hot day, and I’m search results for “apologize” in Apologies for the random reach-out. partnered with a stranger, a young white my Gmail inbox, as of September Apologies for my delay here. woman, to take turns holding each other’s 25th, 2017. I apologize that I couldn’t send an object heavy places. I hold her first. My focus is up to Montreal. hazy in the heat, but I breathe and try to 3. The start-up company Bode- Our apologies for the confusion. accept her. After a few minutes, we’re told ga’s apology about their name, Apologies for duplicate emails. to switch. I place my hands on top of her and general launch proceedings, I apologize for not sending a clear and hands, gradually giving her the weight of my to the people of the internet, specific proposal. arms. She begins to tremble, adjusts herself, 2017, accesed via [https://blog. Llamas to apologize to Texans now.2 and then looks into my eyes with alarm. I bodega.ai/so-about-our-name-aa5bf- feel sick, she says, I need to sit down. She f63a92d]. We did some homework — speaking to slumps, puts her head down: I’m sorry. I rub New Yorkers, branding people, and even her back. It’s okay, I think, if I didn’t have to 4. a) While I have never, to my running some survey work asking about feel the way I feel in the world, I wouldn’t knowledge, been mistaken for the name and any potential offense it want to, either.6 white, I am often seen as might cause. But it’s clear that we may not not-Black even by other Black col- have been asking the right questions of the [T]hank you for caring enough to complain leagues. Passing is complicated, right people. Despite our best intentions or to praise. Perhaps we can all agree that so I do not expect an apology for and our admiration for traditional bodegas, whatever values we look for in the theater, these moments of misidentifica- we clearly hit a nerve this morning, we we all stand on the common ground tion, but I wonder what purpose apologize. Rather than disrespect to that it is a vital and important art form it serves. [and/or] b) I tend to traditional corner stores — or worse yet, that we look to to illuminate the human find myself in spaces where people a threat — we intended only admiration. experience with complexity and integrity.7 share a fair amount of educational We commit to reviewing the feedback and affiliation, so difference can understanding the reactions from today.3 Note the way we treat other people as come as quite a surprise. vaults: I told you to remember that so I Well-cited: the things that people say when wouldn’t have to hold onto it myself. I can’t 5. Jim Gaines, then managing editor they think everyone in the room is like them. count the number of times some supposed of TIME Magazine, apologizing Less-cited: the things they don’t say when ally has pointed me towards a piece of for the infamous cover photo that they realize that wasn’t the case. I am made Black information — even useful things I darkened OJ Simpson’s skin color, strange to myself through the apology of not don’t yet know — only later to ask “wait, accessed via [http://www.thewrap. passing and the silences it prompts.4 what’s that?” when I reference that same com/oj-fact-check-read-time-maga- information again. No sign of a blush for the zines-apology-for-making-simpson- First, it should be said (I wish it went fact that you gave me something so you had blacker/] without saying) that no racial implication the permission to forget it yourself.8 was intended, by Time or by the artist. 6. I tend to take no longer than 10 One could argue that it is racist to say that We’re sorry for the massive disruption minutes between admitting I feel blacker is more sinister, and some African it’s caused their lives. There’s no one who nauseated and actually vomiting. Americans have taken that position in the wants this over more than I do. I would like course of this dispute, but that does not my life back.9 7. Tim Stanford’s apology to the excuse insensitivity. To the extent that audience of Playwrights Hori- this caused offense to anyone, I deeply I was sitting on the floor of Powell’s, reading zons, 2013, accessed via regret it. Nor did we intend any imputation Roxane Gay’s Hunger and beating myself [https://mobile.nytimes.com/ of guilt. We were careful to avoid that in up for not choosing a more interesting book blogs/artsbeat/2013/03/25/ our story, but for at least some people, while surrounded by so many rare things, the-flick-prompts-an-explanation- this cover picture was worth several when I was struck by a sudden sneezing from-playwrights-horizons] thousand words. The issues surrounding attack. Once, then twice, and on and on. No photo-illustration, particularly with one near me said anything. My eyes began 8. A corollary to this is when the regard to news photos, are much more to swell. The sneezes continued. I believed information people are feeding me complex. To a certain extent, our critics I was cursed: to keep up these exhausting somehow corresponds to their sense are absolutely right: altering news pictures explosions until someone acknowledged that they’ve invented who I am, is a risky practice, since only documentary me with bless you.10 or suddenly been the first person authority makes photography of any value to discover me out of nowhere. in the practice of journalism. On the other I know that my public comments and my This is very much, I imagine, how hand, photojournalism has never been silence about this matter gave a false America felt when Columbus sailed able to claim the transparent neutrality impression. I misled people, including up and crowned it the Indies. attributed to it. Photographers choose even my wife. I deeply regret that.11 angles and editors choose pictures to 9. BP CEO Tony Hayward’s apology make points[.]5 to residents of the Gulf Coast FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 32

Every day, the weight of this work breaks my heart, and then I work again to unbreak it. Surely there must be more to life’s labor than this.12

For those who were abused by a member of the clergy, I am deeply sorry for the times when you or your family spoke out, following the 2010 oil spill, to report the abuse, but you were not accessed via [http://www.cnn. heard or believed. Please know that the com/2010/US/05/30/gulf.oil.spill/ Holy Father hears you and believes you.13 index.html]. An apology adver- tisement video can be viewed here: In the importance of acknowledging https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ context and how it holds us, let me tell AwD_7yNzKo you that I intended to write this work entirely in transit between Portland and 10. Fourteen sneezes, at which point I New York City on September 11th, 2017. I got up and moved. liked this disconnected scene: imagining the I’m sorrys that tie me to the ground 11. Bill Clinton’s apology to the while floating disconnected through the American people concerning the air. But I couldn’t do it. I was seated next nature of his relationship with to someone else’s grandmother. We were Monica Lewinsky, 1998, accessed 16. A future iteration of this work traveling together. It is hard sitting down to via [http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLI- may focus on forgiveness, and a piece of writing when you’re responsible TICS/1998/08/17/speech/transcript. whether the equation of forgive- for someone else’s relative. It is even harder html]. ness = forgetting really holds if you’re responsible for your own. Your own true. Sometimes I think I forgive relatives know when you’re lying.14 12. First recorded instance of heart- more when I remember the inci- break: sometime in the fall of dent that required the apology. To The time has now come for the nation 1997, my 8th grade year. Cause: remember translates forgiveness to turn a new page in Australia’s history the senior boy I liked not saying into an ongoing act rather than a by righting the wrongs of the past and hello to me during his travels generosity that stops after its so moving forward with confidence to from homeroom to science class instance. the future. We apologise for the laws (Physics? Chemistry?), a route and policies of successive Parliaments that I strategically walked on as 17. Chloë Bass is a conceptual artist and governments that have inflicted many mornings as time permitted. working in performance, situation, profound grief, suffering and loss on these Later, when I was older, this boy publication, and installation. Her our fellow Australians. We apologise became my boyfriend. We dated for work addresses scales of intimacy, especially for the removal of Aboriginal over three years. When we sepa- where patterns hold and break as and Torres Strait Islander children from rated, the heartbreak I felt was group sizes expand, and daily their families, their communities and different, but not worse. life as a site of deep research. their country. For the pain, suffering and Her current project, The Book hurt of these Stolen Generations, their 13. Pope Francis’ apology for of Everyday Instruction, is an descendants and for their families left ongoing incidents of juve- eight-chapter investigation into behind, we say sorry. To the mothers nile sexual abuse in the one-on-one social interaction. and the fathers, the brothers and the Catholic Church, 2014, accessed Chloë is a 2017 – 2018 Workspace sisters, for the breaking up of families and via [http://www.phillyvoice.com/ resident at the Center for Book communities, we say sorry. And for the transcript-pope-francis-apolo- Arts, and a 2017 studio resident indignity and degradation thus inflicted gy-church-victims/]. at Triangle Arts Association. Her on a proud people and a proud culture, we projects have appeared in recent say sorry.15 14. Like many people, I lie more about exhibitions at CUE Art Foundation, innocuous things than important Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts I’m so sorry, he writes. Please forgive me. ones. Project Space, The Southeastern And I do.16 Center for Contemporary Art, the 15. Apology from the Australian gov- James Gallery, and elsewhere. Her ernment to the Aboriginal people forthcoming book will be published of Australia, 2008, accessed by the Operating System in Decem- via [http://www.australia.gov. ber 2017; her writing is most au/about-australia/our-country/ often found on Hyperallergic. She our-people/apology-to-austra- is an Assistant Professor of Art lias-indigenous-peoples]. at Queens College, CUNY. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 33

THE LANGUAGES OF ALL-WOMEN EXHIBITIONS

Lindsay Preston Zappas

of women; the masking of uneven gallery Originally published in Contemporary rosters that show predominately men; the Art Review (Carla) trend of showing late-career or deceased women artists; the dual demonization and romanticization of motherhood within the biographies of woman artists; and the lack of sustained institutional support for women artists working today. But, I’d like to focus here specifically on thelanguages of all-women exhibitions.

First we must consider how language — in the form of show titles, press releases, promotional materials, and general aura — spawns prejudice before anyone even Guerrilla Girls, Dear Art Collector, walks through the front door. Like the (2007). Image courtesy of guerrilla- joke about vegans: How do you know if girls.com. © Guerrilla Girls. an exhibition will include only women? It “I am still struck by the psychological will tell you. And it often tells you loudly, 1. Lucy Lippard, “Introduction: Moving displacement of women who are and in advance. In a 2016 Atlantic article, Targets/ Concentric Circles: Notes alienated by and in language.”1 Sarah Boxer described visiting Women from the Radical Whirlwind,” The – Lucy R. Lippard of Abstract Expressionism at the Denver Pink Glass Swan: Selected Feminist Art Museum: “I could see banners Essays on Art, (New York: The New All-women shows have been markedly in announcing the women’s exhibition from Press, 1995). vogue in the past few years.2 Under various a distance. WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN. It curatorial frameworks, these — often- almost looked like they were announcing 2. Revolution in the Making: Abstract exhaustive — gendered shows always a strip tease.” As Boxer walked closer, a Sculpture by Women, 1947 – 2016 at have one thing in common: women. As a miniscule text that read “women of abstract Hauser & Wirth, Escape Attempts at woman myself, I often feel sheepish about expressionism” could be seen in small Shulamit Nazrian, SOTGFO at Ghebaly questioning the structures around these type, low on the banner. Boxer also recalls Gallery, Power at Sprüth Magers, exhibitions as it is well documented that the cover for the catalogue of WACK! Signifying Form at the Landing, women are underrepresented in the art Art and the Feminist Revolution — the CUNT at Venus Over Los Angeles, world, and in need of exposure and support. massive all-women exhibition at MOCA in Radical Women: Latin American Art, Still, I bend toward suspicion when galleries 2007 — which features Martha Rosler’s 1960–1985 at The Hammer, and We and institutions tout an all-women roster. clippings of naked women from Playboy, Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Frustratingly, many of these exhibitions “as if to announce, ‘sexy ladies inside!’”3 Women, 1965–85 at The California can feel revisionist, or worse, imply a While the Rosler work was exhibited in African American Museum come to capitalization on the trending socio-political WACK!, choosing that particular work for mind as notable examples in Los resurgence of women’s rights, or the threat the catalogue image problematically gave Angeles in the last year. to them in our current politics. There are primacy to the fetishization of the nude certainly broad problematics within the female, if even while being subversive. 3. Sarah Boxer, “An Era for Women all-women structure worthy of discussion Artists?,” The Atlantic, December — the capitalization on the real struggles The recent exhibition CUNT at Venus 2016. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 34

Marilyn Minter, Twenty Sixteen (2017). Dye sublimation print, 40 x 30 inches. Edition 2 of 5 + 2 AP. Image courtesy the artist and VENUS, Los Angeles.

4. The etymology of the word cunt relates to the celebration of the feminine and the goddess, where Over Los Angeles chose a more subtle In the WACK! catalogue, Eva Hesse’s its sister-word, vagina, has more promotional tack, its title notwithstanding: a incomparable work Hang Up (1966) is violent and aggressive root word square baby-pink poster with the exhibition organized under the heading “Gendered connotations, translating to title centered, all caps, in white. While Space” though historically this work has sheath or scabbard in which to understated, the graphic recalls normative been associated with minimalism, not thrust a sword. Gillian Schutte, baby-girl colors as well as the anatomy feminism. This reframing of context recalls “C is for Cunt,” Ms. Magazine of female genitalia. While the exhibition the way in which Ana Mendieta’s work (blog), November 27, 2012, http:// featured fantastic work, that poster (and has been adopted by various feminist msmagazine.com/blog/2012/11/27/c- the brashness of the word cunt) infected groups and causes over the years, while is-for-cunt/. any pure experience of the work apart from Mendieta herself was “dissatisfied with its association to female genitalia. There being reduced to one vision of feminism, or 5. Mira Schor, “The ism That Dare Not are certainly many convincing arguments one articulation of identity.”6 For instance, Speak its Name,” in A Decade of towards reclaiming and normalizing the white feminist groups looped her work in Negative Thinking (Durham: Duke word cunt4 — even students in early with the representation of The Goddess, University Press, 2009), 30. feminist programs were instructed to “a trendy subtopic” of the era, although repeat the word cunt until it was removed Mendieta’s relationship to goddesses was 6. Julia Bryan-Wilson, “Against the of its derogatory associations.5 Still, utilizing more “complex and volatile.”7 Her work Body: Interpretting Ana Mendi- it as a moniker for a group show by women was also contextualized within restricting eta,” Ana Medieta: Traces (London: shrouds the work included under the feminist dialogues of the body, victimhood, Hayward Publishing, 2013), 35. complicated social and linguistic baggage and violence. This type of singularity was that the word carries. precisely what Mendieta’s work was meant 7. Ibid., 31. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 35 to reject, and these misrepresentations “as though my own identity and actions ultimately led to her resignation from the had been subsumed by patriarchal feminist group A.I.R. in 1982.8 Charles nomenclature.”10 Merewether explains, “the question of naming has afflicted the scholarship As we incessantly insert women back and reception of Ana Medieta’s work.”9 into art history, we in turn agree with the It is indeed this question of naming that normative patriarchal telling of history that is paramount in the re-historicization of tells us that these women need inserting women artists today, as it shapes the — while, as Griselda Pollock insisted, future narrative of their historically tenuous “feminist history began inside art history.”11 careers. As we continue to group women together in exhibitions, and insist on qualifying the Often all-women exhibitions include exhibition as belonging to women, we keep the qualifier,woman , almost as a sort of women on the outside of mainstream art. warning of what can be expected of the As my editor Aaron Horst commented in work. In researching this article, I reached a recent conversation, “it makes the fact Ana Mendieta, Silueta Works in Mexico out to Micol Hebron, who has been actively of being a woman and an artist somehow (1973-1977). Color photograph, 19 1/4 tracking gender inequality on gallery remarkable.” Famously, when asked at a x 12 7/8 inches. The Museum of Con- rosters since 2013. “I think the more party “what women artists think,” Joan temporary Art, Los Angeles Purchased complicated and perhaps insidious reason Mitchell turned to Elaine De Kooning, with a grant provided by The Judith that this is a problem is the longstanding exclaiming, “Elaine, let’s get the hell out of Rothschild Foundation. © The Estate inherent bias against women’s work,” here.”12 of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Hebron wrote to me in a recent email. Image courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co. “Women’s labor(s) are historically valued Perhaps to combat these musty More photos from this article here. less: their wages are lower, their art sells normatives of art-history, curators of for less, and the aesthetics associated with all-women exhibitions slap on language ‘women’s work’ are considered less cool. that opposes weakness: power, revolution, So, an all-women show can be seen as a radical, escape, get the fuck out, wack! This concession of sorts.” combativeness often feels put on, as if we must insist and argue that women might be When curators and gallerists preface able to wield power. Though not specifically exhibitions with an admission of the artist’s an all-women exhibition, in reference to gender, it makes the fact impossible to the titling of Trigger: Gender as a Tool ignore and surely has an effect on the way and a Weapon (a recent group exhibition in which the artist’s work is being viewed. A of mostly LGBTQ-identified artists at the wonderful exhibition at the Landing gallery New Museum), Peter Schjeldahl wrote last summer, which included stunning works “the four nouns in the title of the [show] by Tanya Aguiñiga, Loie Hollowell, Lenore go off like improvised explosive devices, Tawney, was titled dryly — and reductively boding civil strife.” A beat later, Schjeldahl — 3 Women. The title was lifted from a 1977 concedes that the works in the exhibition 8. Ibid., 134-135. Robert Altman film, yet, dropped on this don’t live up to its corralling and boosterish context of three intergenerational artists, it nomenclature. “The show’s provocative 9. Charles Merewether, “From Incep- became a descriptor, a confession. Under title turns out to function rather like the tion to Dissolution: An Essay on this titling, the indomitable weavings of old vaudeville pistol that emits a little flag Expenditure in the work of Ana Tawney, who worked alongside Agnes imprinted ‘BANG.’”13 This sort of blanket, Medieta,” Ana Mendieta (Poligra- Martin and Ellsworth Kelly in the ‘60s, categorical re-contextualization that pha, 1998), 148. seemed to sink into categories of “women’s the exhibition titling imbues is precisely work,” while Loie Hollowell’s expansive and problematic as it limits — or makes difficult 10. Lippard, The Pink Glass Swan, 13. intricate paintings read more explicitly like — a reading of the artwork under any other pretty little vaginas. conceptual framework. 11. Griselda Pollock, “Feminist Inter- ventions in Art’s Histories,” We never hear an exhibition described In reference to the titling of SOGTFO Kritische Berichte, 16, No. 1 as an all-men exhibition, since it is (Sculpture or Get the Fuck Out), a five- (1998). the understood normal. As such, as woman sculpture exhibition at Ghebaly we constantly denote woman, we are Gallery, Jonathan Griffin wrote, “Even 12. Boxer. reinforcing men as the engrained default. subverted, its aggressive tone seems In her introduction to The Pink Glass unfitting for the general measured output of 13. Peter Schjeldahl, “Safe Space: A Swan, the feminist art critic Lucy Lippard these five artists. None are polemical about Show on Gender Soothes More than describes working on her own writing and their gender, and it’s hard to imagine any of it Unsettles,” The New Yorker, constantly referring to “the critic” as he, them coming up with a title as caustic as October 9, 2017. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 36

SOGTFO — which, of course, they didn’t.”14 While it is potentially the case that women artists are consulted and collaborated with in the development of exhibition titles (as in fact was the case with CUNT15), elsewhere the titling is meant to evoke struggle and combat that isn’t inherit in the work itself. In the case of titling WACK!, Connie Butler explains that “the exclamatory title of the exhibition is intended to recall the bold idealism that characterized the feminist movement during [the late ‘60s and ‘70s]… The violent and sexual connotations of WACK serve to reinforce feminism’s affront to the patriarchal system.”16 These abrasive nomenclatures seem to perpetuate the stereotype of the brash and wild feminist, while also reeking of self-congratulatory prose, suggesting that the institution who undoubtedly titled said exhibition has rediscovered — and tamed? — a wild bunch of feminists.

Yet, to a large extent, many women in these monstrous exhibitions do not consider their work feminist at all (and some decline participation). It is an arduous task to clarify the difference between a feminist framework and actual feminist art,17 and the all-women context “allow[s] for some form of erasure or fitting women into existing 14. Jonathan Griffin, “SOGTFO at Fran- parameters.”18 cois Ghebaly,” Carla, issue 1, April 2015. The way in which we are speaking, writing, and naming all-women exhibitions 15. Carla Podcast, Episode 1, October seems paramount to the ways in which 2017. http://contemporaryartrev- the next generation will understand the iew.la/episode-1/ contributions of women artists. As Helen Molesworth has said, “the only way to 16. Cornelia Bulter, “Art and Fem- get diversity is to actually do it.”19 It is inism: An Ideology of Shifting this doing that can get complicated as Criteria,” WACK! Art and the Femi- institutions constantly point to diversity nist Revolution (Los Angeles: The they are implementing — look ma, no Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007), hands! — with promotional language and 15. curatorial strategies. Language instills pattern; pattern becomes habit. “The 17. Cecillia Fajardo-Hill, “The invis- habits of mind that our culture has instilled ibility of Latin American Women in us from infancy shape our orientation Artists: Problematizing Art His- to the world and our emotional responses torical and Curatorial Practices,” to the objects we encounter,” wrote Guy Radical Women: Latin American Art, Deutscher in a Times article about how 1960-1985 (Munich, London, New language shapes reality. “They may also York: Prestel, 2017), 23-24. have a marked impact on our beliefs, values and ideologies.”20 As such, all- 18. Ibid., 21. women exhibitions may have the power to accelerate or neuter efforts towards the 19. Boxer. equalization of gender biases in the arts. And much of this power comes down to the 20. Guy Deitsher, “Does Your Language naming; the language that garnishes press Shape How You Think?”, New York releases and show cards may in fact be Times Magazine, Aug. 26, 2010. reinforcing our ingrained biases rather than liberating us from them. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 37

DISSECTING THE ARCHIVE: A INVESTIGATION IN SEVEN PARTS

Archives are everywhere and everybody 1. WHY A SOCIO-POLITICAL LENS IS archives. Whether in relation to the body, Why A Socio-Political Lens is CRUCIAL FOR ARCHIVE USERS social media, the library and museum Crucial for Archive Users stacks, or within the quotidian, we are Jordan Martin Jordan Martin challenging and energizing the field of archiving. 2. “So, I realized that actually to decide The Fertile Grave to gather information, organize With a focus on highlighting art, culture, Martina Dodd information, and preserve information and history, we seek for DIRT to serve as a to disseminate it was a political act.” – living and evolving archive of the past and 3. Alda Terracciano, 2009 1 present, as well as a resource for the future. Archivist in the Field The motivation for this collection of essays Georgie Payne Last year I took it upon myself to act as stems from that desire. my family’s genealogist. Prompted by my 4. brother finding my Great-grandparent’s Through a seven-part investigation, DIRT’s Embodying the Archive marriage license in the basement of my editors address: why a socio-political lens Andy Johnson family’s home, I immediately purchased is necessary to approach an institutional an ancestry.com subscription and began archive; how an individual finds agency in 5. searching, starting with my paternal forming their own archive; the processes in Archiving Performance Art in grandparents. Looking through the 1935 which artists reincarnate the archive; the Post-internet World census, I found my grandfather’s name challenges of archiving performance art Ikram Lakhdhar listed on the 2200 block of 13th St. NW. after the Internet; the body as an archival It didn’t take long before I noticed “W” vessel in drag and house ball culture; the 6. marked in the “Race” column for not only role of the archivist in the contemporary Collecting Thoughts: my grandfather but also his mother, brother, art field; and the practice of archiving in the An Artist’s and sister-in-law, who all lived with him at everyday. Living Things the time. His fair skin and thin wavy hair Ani Bradberry did not make him any less black, nor did it Originally published by DIRT (DC, change the fact that he was relegated to a Maryland, Virginia (DMV) area) 7. segregated all-black firehouse for his entire Stories From Between career as a DC firefighter. The census must The Archives have made a mistake. Weeks had passed, Valerie Wiseman but this new discovery stayed fresh on my mind. During a family dinner with my 97-year-old grandmother, I couldn’t wait to tell her that from 1935 – 1937 her husband Georgie Payne, Martina Dodd, was listed as white. Ani Bradberry, Valerie Wiseman, My grandmother suspects this mistake was largely due to how the census was gathered Andy Johnson, Jordan Martin during the early 1900’s. Traditionally surveyors would go door-to-door and and Ikram Lakhdhar ask brief demographic questions, write FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 38 their recordings, then move to the next Umbra Search African American History 1. Terracciano, Alda. Activism & Her- house. Rarely did a household complete at the University of Minnesota, found a itage. 2013. http://aldaterra.com/ the census documents themselves. “collection within a collection” while parsing activism-heritage/ (accessed August Was the surveyor in a rush? How did the through the Kautz Family YMCA Archives.4 28, 2017). surveyor come to the conclusion that my Within the Student Work Records, Berry grandfather was white? Nonetheless, a found materials from a Historically Black 2. Maher, William J. “Stepping out large assumption was made when the University. With no added context of from the Shadows: Is Impartial surveyor saw my grandfather and his HBCU’s within this description, users that Decision-making in Archives a family. are new to archives or perhaps unfamiliar Myth?” Septmeber 10, 2010. with the U.S educational system could “The archivist . . . Tends to be have issues accessing these particular 3. Cox, Richard J., and David A. scrupulous about his neutrality, and to records. To create ease of searchability Wallace. Archives and the Public see his job as a technical job, free from and therefore accessibility, Berry decided Good: Accountability and Records the nasty world of political interest: a job to selectively digitize the records of in Modern Society. Westport, CT: of collecting, sorting, preserving, making HBCUs, craft metadata that describes Quorum Books, 2002. available, the records of the society. But the Student Work Movement, while writing . . . The archivist, in subtle ways, tends to in plain language “this folder specifically 4. Berry, Dorothy. “Hide and Seek perpetuate the political and economic includes materials from Grambling State, a Organizing Hidden Collections status quo simply by going about his Historically Black College/University.”5 This for Umbra Search African Amer- ordinary business. small but generous action demonstrates ican History.” Los Angeles His supposed neutrality is, in other how despite working within the systems of Archivist Collective. 2017. words, a fake.” institutional archives, archivists have the http://www.laacollective.org/ – Howard Zinn, 1970 2 power to re-contextualize and adjust the work/hide-and-seek-organiz- barriers and access to information. ing-hidden-collections-for-um- From the very moment, objects are bra-search-african-american-his- deemed artifacts, biases are almost ARCHIVIST AS ACTIVIST tory/ unavoidably inserted. It starts with what an individual, community, organization, Recognizing this power, archivists are 5. Berry, Dorothy. “Hide and Seek government or archivist decides to save figuring out ways to actively address Organizing Hidden Collections or preserve. For example, a family estate the issues of access, bias, and injustice for Umbra Search African Amer- removing unfavorable documents (i.e. within the record. This births the “archivist ican History.” Los Angeles love letters from a mistress etc.) before as activist,” a phrase that completely Archivist Collective. 2017. submitting their materials into a collection. contradicts the assumed position of http://www.laacollective.org/ The choice to preserve or discard, acquire neutrality.6 Rather than being passive, work/hide-and-seek-organiz- or forfeit materials nullifies objectivity and archivists are acknowledging institutional ing-hidden-collections-for-um- therefore affects the social memory of power structures that inherently influence bra-search-african-american-his- a collective.3 Though archivists try to be the archival record. By starting or tory/ as impartial as possible it’s inevitable for volunteering for community archives7, some decisions to contend with objectivity. collecting materials that reflect the 6. Blouin, Francis X., and William Whether it is a bureaucratic institution that fullest possible range of social interests G. Rosenberg. Processing the past: reflects systems of power and privilege or a and actors, or by correcting/balancing contesting authorities in history small human error on a census document, the record with the use of tags and and the archives. New York; Oxford: we have to come to a collective awareness descriptions, archivists are adjusting their Oxford University Press, 2013. that these circumstances have larger practice rather than feigning impartiality.7 impacts and objectivity should not be 7. Community archives are defined assumed. Until archival institutions fully adapt to as “collections of material gath- the current realities, where a nuanced ered primarily by members of a As contextualities shift and complex social understanding of the many systems of given community and over whose use and cultural issues of today continually oppression actively inserted into the community members exercise some inform our perspective on the past, archival bureaucratic practice, users level of control” (Flinn, Stevens archivists have a very difficult job with the should engage the archive with a critical and Shepard, Whose memories, whose classification of records. Not only is there socio-political lens. While some archivists archives: Independent community the obvious challenge of creating neutral take on the role of activist, it’s imperative archives, autonomy and the main- descriptions and classification that do that archive users also question the stream 2009) not reflect an ideological or political bias, presented narratives as it will only result in but also working within a bureaucratic a more complete and authentic collective process does not always lend itself to memory. the contemporary social and political paradigms. For instance, Dorothy Berry, the digitization, and metadata lead for FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 39

THE FERTILE GRAVE series entitled When Dad Comes Home, temporal assemblage, which ruptures DC-based artist Larry Cook uses the visual King’s movements and re-situates his Martina Dodd vernacular of the prison system to speak moments of unease from the background to those who have been separated from to the foreground. History is like a ghost that haunts our loved ones due to incarceration. Through present through memory, subjectivity, and the appropriation of photographs taken of temporality. It refuses to go away; yet at his uncles during their time incarcerated, times it is forgotten, misinterpreted, and the artist claims ownership of these altered. Buried deep in the recesses of our memorialized moments in time.2 Although minds and shelved away in the allegorical he did not stage the photographs himself, graveyard of the archive, moments of the he does direct the complex narratives of past live on forever. his family members to provide insight into the representation of black fatherhood and However, if historical accounts and records family. are simply entombed in libraries, archives, Still from M.L. or even our own nostalgia without constant revisiting or acknowledgement these Cook experiments with alternative memories fade into nonexistence. It is the representations of memory in M.L. to act of remembering and recontextualizing create a counter-narrative while When Dad that resuscitates such moments and Comes Home pulls directly from his family’s breathes new life into their stories. archive to embed universal meaning into personal experiences. In this perspective, Scholars as well as artists play an active When Dad Comes Home #3 the artist uses the archive as an “excavation role in discovering new aspects of meaning site” to dig up the remains of the past in embedded in classic text and archival While in prison, Cook’s uncles collected order to reveal truths and disturb known imagery. Like exhuming a dead body, an enough photographs taken during visitation realities. archival artist unearths stories, documents, hours to fill entire photo albums. Once and images of the past that speak out of they were released they initially brought It is not up to the dead to keep in touch with their lifetime and into our own. Hal Foster the albums everywhere they went to show the living, but our duty to press and pull describes the archival artist, in his 2004 off to friends and reminisce. One may not at the tension between remembering and article An Archive Impluse, as one who think a stint in prison would be a time a forgetting, to retell and relearn their stories “seeks to make historical information, often person would want to remember, but these left for us to find. lost or displaced, physically present.”1 I photographs commemorated the intimate would add that for many of these artists moments of joy between family and friends 1. Hal Foster, “An Archival Impulse.” it is not simply to make what was lost or rather than the pain and isolation imposed The MIT Press, no. 110 (2004), 4. forgotten present, or even relevant, but on them within the prison industrial to reexamine and question historical complex. Pulling from their own repository 2. The term appropriation refers to narratives and assumptions. of memory these men, cemented within the use of pre-existing images with Cook’s work, push against their own little or no alteration. Works created by archival artists are erasure by controlling their image and prime examples of how history entwines archiving their experiences. By presenting itself with fiction; and at times even reveals his uncles photographs, undisturbed and historical accounts, seeped in personal without alteration, Cook allows the images biases, as fiction themselves. Through to speak for themselves through the lens sourced materials, appropriated text, and of a polaroid rather than through his own archival photographs, these artists explore artistic license. the graveyard of historical information to resurrect the past in order to create On the flip side, inM.L. , Cook heavily edits compelling contemporary work. together footage from a speech given by one of the most iconic Civil Rights Well-known artists like Andy Warhol, leaders in America, Martin Luther King Jr., drew from a shared lexicon of images to create a two minute video of awkward and popular culture to critique notions of glances, eye rolls, and lip licks. Cook’s originality and authorship. While others secondary manipulations redirects the like Fred Wilson, pull esoteric imagery and viewers’ attention from the man to the historical text from archival stacks and moment: the brief moment of anxiety felt museum vaults to expose the disparity right before speaking in front of a crowd, of recognition and acknowledgement the exaggerated moment of annoyance, between the material culture of the or perhaps an unbridled moment of visual oppressed and the oppressor. In his grief. This video montage is a non-linear FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 40

ARCHIVIST IN THE FIELD the studio recommended that I apply, as account for the fact that the materials and the studio was looking to hire someone with collections are continually growing and Georgie Payne a professional degree for the first time. expanding.

Jennifer Kishi is blurring the lines between [Additional info about the archive: The 4. Can you speak more on the idea of archival work and social networking as an collection is primarily visual, comprised of the MPLP (more product, less process) archivist for a contemporary LA-based images documenting completed artworks, approach? artist studio and a founding member of the production processes, exhibition and Los Angeles Archivists Collective. installation images, as well as research Sure, the MPLP approach was first coined and development materials. Also included by Mark A. Greene and Dennis Meissner As an archivist she is maintaining in the archive are audiovisual materials, in 2005 The American Archivist article - physical, digital, and intellectual control correspondence, publications, exhibition “More Product, Less Process: Revamping of the artist’s’ studio archives through files and related ephemera.] Traditional Archival Processing”. It’s an appraisal, arrangement, description, approach often taken by large institutions and preservation, and processing a vast 2. What drew you to want to work with with a surplus amount of backlogged collection of photographic materials, archives? material because it allows for them to get conceptual sketches, drawings, and the boxes in the public realm faster with renderings, textual records, publications, Initially, I was just interested in working minimal levels of work. Essentially with this artworks, artifacts, exhibition ephemera, with and learning more in-depth about the approach, the material remains organized audiovisual and digital materials. collections I would be processing. Archives at “a box level” with minimal levels of are of course much more than just an descriptions and relatively rudimentary Outside of her work, she is bringing the interesting collection but have the power organization methods given. Los Angeles-area archives community to play a crucial role in the preservation together to discuss, collaborate, connect, and access to the historical and collective 5. You mentioned that the materials in and support one another. With a mission to memory. your current position are continually build a local community that encourages growing and expanding — how are you professional development and skill-sharing, 3. You have worked in several different able to accommodate for that within the LAAC hosts social events, workshops, archives throughout your career — what systems that you have put into place? repository tours, lectures, networking are some of the differences you have opportunities, and other activities to found with how these institutions handle I tend to deal with the materials as they facilitate connections to local resources, their material? Have you approached come up — inputting and cataloging newer and promote general archival awareness. archiving any differently within your exhibition catalogs and materials before Though a highly effective and well-designed current position ( i.e working in a dealing and dealing with the older things website, LAAC is making archives more contemporary artists’ studio)? on a slower schedule as they often times approachable with a comprehensive require more work. list of archival resources, one-of-kind The main difference is a number of archive zines, and providing the tools for resources that are available for processing As I mentioned before, being an archivist collaboration, education, and archival the collections and materials and the for an artist is not a typical position in my participation amongst a wide audience. level of bureaucracy built into the system. field. I try to mix it up with not making the Institutional archives tend to have studio’s archive as formal as the ways I have 1. Tell me a little bit about yourself what established standards and protocols been trained in for institutional archiving, are you working on, where do you work to ensure the materials are processed I am instead finding a balance with what and what led you to that particular consistently, as their collections are often works for the studio and what I think is best position? processed by many different students, practices. interns, fellows, and project archivists. I’m an archivist and a founding member These institutions also tend to have a 6. Has social media played any role in the of the Los Angeles Archivists Collective. long backlog of collections that need to archive you are creating? I work at an artist studio in Vernon, CA be processed. To get these collections where I manage and oversee the archive out and available for researchers ASAP, I think it’s similar for most archives, it’s and library. The archive documents the the MPLP (more product, less process) hard to find the time to collect ephemeral activities of the studio and spans the artist’s approach is often utilized to expedite the information from social media with so much career from his early works to the present. time it takes to process collections. At other material already sitting in backlog. Though working for an artist studio is a smaller organizations, such as my own, In an ideal world, we could document fairly unusual path for an archivist, I knew there is often only one archivist on staff and collect everything, but it’s not really that this would be a great opportunity to (the lone archivist) and rules may be a bit possible at this time. work with a complex and growing visual looser. At my current job, I have adjusted collection and help plan, establish, and my approach to archival practices so that 7. What, in your opinion, is the role of the develop an archive that would ensure the way the materials are organized and archivist in contemporary archiving? long-term preservation and access to the arranged is logical and accessible by the What level of contextualization do you materials. A friend who had recently visited artist and the studio staff. I also have to give the material you are working with? FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 41

How does this influence how others may do limit and make accessing archival Society of California Archivists (SCA), be able to use this archive in the future? materials difficult, especially for those these organizations only met once a year new to the system. Some of these rules during the annual conferences and we To me, the role of the archivist is that of are set in place for practical reasons: found ourselves wanting to connect with service. The purpose of contextualization to protect and preserve these one of a our field more frequently and in a less is to provide basic and/or known historical kind, primary resource materials; archival formal setting. We created LAAC with the information about the collection while materials are often stored off-site, so it mission to bring together and build a local maintaining as neutral a position as takes time to locate and pull the boxes archival community that is free and open possible. The idea is to empower future from storage to the reading room; the to all persons related to or interested in the users to utilize and make their own number of seats in the reading room could field. interpretation of the materials. be limited; permission to reproduce can be complicated with certain materials such as 11. I think that’s so important in every field 8. In your experience, can you give some photographs and videos, and publications — to have space where you can talk with advice or best practices for artists or could be protected by copyright or your peers informally, connect to a like- individuals interested in starting to build trademark. minded community and have a little bit and maintain their own personal archive? of fun within your field of interests while What can an individual do to help a future I would recommend planning ahead and shaking off some of the stuffy personas archivist who might be handling their giving yourself plenty of time. Archival that are perpetuated in these formal materials? research can often be a long and arduous organizations. process. Don’t just show up to the archive Some basic steps you can take to help expecting to see the collection right away. Yeah, we were inspired by similar regional build and maintain your own personal informal archive organizations like The archive is to identify, decide, organize, Review the collection access policies Archivist Round Table of Metropolitan New and make copies. Inventory and identify before visiting. Institutional archives usually York (ART) and the Archivists of Metro D.C where your materials are located; decide have the policies clearly stated on their and were adamant on wanting to engage what materials to keep, and get rid of website. If something is unclear, don’t with not just professional archivists but also any duplicate materials and junk (also hesitate to get in touch with the archive anyone who is interested in archiving or known as deaccessioning); strategize and and ask lots of questions. Or, if you are history and letting them also participate. prioritize what materials to organize first looking for something in particular and — consider what is most important or at don’t know where to begin, ask a reference 12. What has the response or feedback risk of being lost; back up your materials archivist at your local institution. If they are been within the community? and have at least two copies. Some other unable to help, they may be able to refer best practices: come up with an archives/ you to someone who can. Review finding LAAC is a community-driven organization preservation plan and organizational aids and note collection names/numbers and we make a conscious effort to structure that makes sense to you; create and potential boxes you would like to view. encourage participation. One of the first a file naming standard and stick with it; Depending on the institution, access may events we had was just a happy hour event keep the highest resolution files as your be prioritized or limited to researchers we put out on facebook where we weren’t master/archive copy, etc. I think the best with specific agendas, i.e. not just open to sure if anybody would show up and thought thing an individual can do is to maintain anyone who is curious and wants to look at you know maybe we would get a few friends their materials in a way that makes the materials for fun. Some helpful resources to come, but we ended up getting over 100 most sense to them. When collections are - there’s OAC for collections in California, RSVPs and that really validated the need being processed, most archivists maintain DPLA and Archive Grid. for this type of collective to exist with the the fonds or original order of how the community. I think partially the reason we records were organized by the individual or 10. Tell me a little bit about Los Angeles have been so successful is because Los organization, as it may inform or give insight Archivist Collective (LAAC) and your Angeles is such a sprawling community, and into how the materials were accessed and involvement in its start. How did it begin? has such a high population of independent utilized by the creator. What role do you see it playing in the or lone archivists, we really were filling this field? void of informal gathering opportunities 9. Institutional archives have a bad where these people are able to get together reputation for being very formal and hard LAAC was founded in 2014 with Angel and talk and learn from each other. to access - between needing to schedule Diaz and Courtney Dean. We met during an appointment way ahead of time, to our Masters of Library and Information 13. How have your events grown or needing all types of special permission Science (MLIS) program at UCLA. After developed since that first happy hour? to reproduce materials — do you have graduating in 2013, we realized that the advice for artists or individuals wanting community we had during the program The initial year or so of forming the to use institutional archives as a resource quickly dissipated as people moved away organization required many hours of or material for their work or personal to jobs or began working full-time. Though planning and organizing. However after research? we were members of regional and national restructuring a bit, our community outreach professional organizations such as the and event series has grown and expanded Yes, it’s unfortunate that these formalities Society of American Archivists (SAA) and beyond happy hours and quarterly FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 42 community meetings to include tours of EMBODYING THE ARCHIVE Mizrahi, the House of Ninja, the House of local institutional and private archives, Xtravaganza, the House of Aviance, the workshops such as “personal digital Andy Johnson House of Labeija, amongst countless others archiving workshops for non-professionals”, — and drag families — which include drag resume building and skills labs, as well as A simple Google search for the word mothers, daughters, and sisters — form an online publication, ACID FREE, zines “archive” results in countless images of genealogical networks of information etc. This increase in programming and temperature-controlled facilities with rows sharing, support, longevity, and memory. events is completely driven by our amazing of boxes containing old documents, books, House members and drag families maintain subcommittee members. photographs, and objects. What we define a sense of their identity and history by as an archive is shaped by several factors: “taking on” the name of the house or family 14. Last but not least — what is your dominant cultural ideologies, what society they belong to (though not always). To favorite archive you have ever visited? deems valuable/worth recording, and the consider oneself a part of a ball house or What archive do you most want to visit? ways in which we seek knowledge. With drag family is to take on the responsibility this in mind, my intention here is to “queer” of carrying the torch, continuing the legacy, A few notable archives I’ve visited: The the archive;1 to consider other spaces and and ensuring longevity. During the height of Interference Archive in New York is a places in which the archive resides. How the AIDS crisis, ball houses supported their community archive that is an “open-access, can we re-conceptualize and challenge the most vulnerable members by providing open-stack archive of cultural ephemera archive by shifting our focus from objects housing, food, covering healthcare produced by and for social movements to bodies? costs, and offering emotional support. worldwide.” There’s the Internet Archive in Additionally, these kinship networks San Francisco whose mission is to “provide With this in mind, I turn to drag and ball served as lines of communication for sex Universal Access to All Knowledge.” I culture as an example of history told education and the latest on AIDS treatment believe you can still join every Friday for through bodies, rather than objects. and prevention.4 Due to the United States’s lunch with the staff and a tour of their Though in existence for more than five unilateral negligence of the crisis, and facility. In Los Angeles, I enjoyed seeing the decades, the largely white, middle-class, particularly its impact on LGBT black and Academy Film Archive and the Margaret heterosexual world was first introduced to latino/a communities, many houses were Herrick Library’s incredible collections. the underground ballroom culture through left to formulate prevention and treatment But really there are so many archives and Jennie Livingston’s 1990 documentary strategies on their own. collections out there that I don’t even know Paris Is Burning and Madonna’s 1990 music exist, it’s impossible to say which is my video Vogue. These depictions, it must be favorite or which I’d like to visit the most. noted, are singular in their representation of the body as simply spectacle. Drag and the ball scene undoubtedly revel in the art of spectacle; however, at their core they serve as sites of both resistance and self-preservation, not simply dance parties and performances. Marlon Bailey in his monograph Butch Queen Up In Pumps Willi Ninja in Paris is Burning. writes, “this community offers an enduring social sanctuary for those who have been Additionally, in terms of ballroom culture, rejected by and marginalized within their official titles and prefixes serve as records families of origin, religious institutions, and to one’s own experience and history society at large. For most, the Ballroom within the ball scene, and as a system of scene becomes a necessary refuge and classification. The status of “legendary” or a space in which to share and acquire “icon” is bestowed upon members and their skills that help black and latino/a LGBT houses, which denotes years of experience, individuals survive.”2 prestige, and solidifies, in a way, the memory of an individual or house. Thus, the process through which the history of the ball scene and drag culture The second strategy, the archive as spoken is archived is, in a way, antithetical to and performed, arises within the actual institutionalized archiving. For the sake of balls and drag performances. The archive brevity, I will elucidate two such archival is activated through ritualized gestures, strategies: a perpetually lived and shared song, dance, movement, lip-synching, and archive, and a repeatedly performed and performance. Each ball is a re-telling, of Chantal Regnault’s photograph of spoken archive.3 sorts, of the history of ball culture. Take Willi Ninja. for example Willi Ninja, the “godfather Ball culture and drag are lived and shared of voguing” and previous mother of the through non-normative networks of kinship. House of Ninja (he passed away due to Ball houses — for example the House of AIDS-related heart failure in 2006), whose FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 43 style of voguing is iconic. To mimic Ninja’s While Bailey characterizes the ballroom goings on of the world both socially and egyptian, hieroglyphic-like movements is a scene and houses as sites of resistance politically each day. We carefully curate commemoration and re-telling of the roots and survival, I add that drag and house our own unique digital profile where we of vogue. ball culture also serve as sites of self- earn social capital and express our views preservation and memory. The archival to audience numbers we would have Drag performances, both mainstream and strategies of drag and ball culture, while never been able to before. The digital underground, serve as sites of memory certainly not new to its members, offer has democratized how we are seen and where through performance and song exciting perspectives on how we can perceived because we don’t have to rely on the history of drag is repeated over and challenge the object-centric narrative someone else’s gaze to frame our stories, over again. We can think of any number of the archive and begin to embrace we are doing it ourselves all the time. of drag impersonators or drag queen’s alternative archival processes. whose aesthetic and performance is rooted Instagram, as an example of a highly utilized in the history of gender nonconformity 1. Admittedly, the contemporary use of social media platform, plays a critical role in and gender-bending. Pussy Noir, an the term “queer” is almost mean- re-presenting contemporary art online, and androgynous performer and entity ingless. Nonetheless, to “queer” an important role specifically in the realm of of the DC nightlife circuit and native the archive, I am attempting to ephemeral and performance art. Where we Washingtonian, spoke of his belief that the conceptualize it beyond its insti- were once limited to hiring a professional body stores and expels energy, and that tutionalized, heteronormative, videographer or photographer to capture this kinetic energy is carried through and object-centric narrative. the moment, we now can rely on anyone often a driving force for his performances. with a smartphone and a social media Through his gestures and movements he 2. Marlon Bailey, Butch Queen Up In account to record the work, tag it to a “blends both the elegant and melodic as Pumps: Gender, Performance, and location, hashtag it, and effectively archive well as the wild and seductive.”5 The body, Ballroom Culture in Detroit, (Ann the work instantaneously. Additionally, as an archive, stores, maintains, and when Arbor, Michigan: University of individual Instagram users can now called upon, re-tells its history. Michigan Press, 2013), 6-7. bookmark posts, archive them into folders, and access them at any point. 3. These two strategies are simply the tip of the iceberg in terms of By capturing the moment and posting it in theorizing drag and ball culture’s real time, the performance can be relived long and colorful histories. again and again through the lens of the account owner and its varied viewers within 4. It was not uncommon for members minutes of the work being performed. of houses or drag families to also Remnants of the performance are found serve in community-based organiza- at their raw and uncensored state as tions that formed to fight the HIV/ this evolving hashtag becomes an active AIDS crisis. space, consolidating a mosaic of input from different viewers. Image courtesy of Pussy Noir. See 5. Jason Barnes, e-mail message to more photos here. author, September 27, 2017. But what happens when that cloud data is erased and lost? While social media access I do not mean to suggest that the history can help in some ways, it can also be of ball culture and drag are ignored within CAPTURING THE MOMENT: damaging in others. We become consumed the archives. As early as the 1970s, LGBT- ARCHIVING PERFORMANCE ART IN A with a desire to always be posting and specific archives arose from the seeds POST-INTERNET WORLD outwardly sharing our experiences to our planted by the culture wars — including detriment, which can in turn alienate us ONE Archives Foundation, Trans Archives, Ikram Lakhdhar from experiencing the authenticity of truly and The Lesbian Herstory Archives. In ephemeral works. Walter Benjamin’s pre- the age of social media, Instagram-based Social media is a tool that re-introduces Internet prediction of our doom crystallizes archives, such as the AIDS Memorial ephemeral art into the quotidian, this notion of our loss of the aura1; and LGBT History, have also come into challenging the confines of institutional existence. Artists such as Rashaad archives’ approach towards ephemeral What is really jeopardized when the Newsome and Kia Labeija are examples of art. While we often think of the traditional historical testimony is affected is the the interrelated history of the art world and archive as static and fixed, in the wake authority of the object, the weight it drag/ball culture. Newsome, in recent years, of social media platforms and networks, derives from tradition. One might focus has hosted the “King of Arms Art Ball,” a the archives of contemporary art grows on these aspects of the artwork in the live performance event that brings together increasingly mutable each day. concept of the aura and go on to say: renowned figures from the art, fashion, what withers in the age of technological music, literary, activism and underground With each advance in technology, we are reproducibility of the work of art is the LGBTQ & GNC vogue community. seemingly forced towards using social latter’s aura.2 media on the daily to stay attuned to the FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 44

Having experienced the power of a wonder was what it would have been like performance’s aura in real time, and if the viewers or the artists had access most recently at Vaginal Davis’s Blick und to social media back when this work was Begehren (Gaze and Desire) at the New being made — how would it have added? Museum, I can testify to this loss that is What would it have taken away? With a inherent to documenting any ephemeral simple search of the hashtag #KarenFinley, art. Certain aspects of the performance, hundreds of public photos, videos, such as the smell, the performer’s and captions that describe her latest sound variations and vibrations, and the performances are revealed. audience’s reactions and responses, are most quintessential, and yet most 1. Benjamin defines aura as “a strange difficult to capture through an audio or tissue of space and time: the visual recording. When Davis whispers unique apparition of a distance, words, lip-synchs, or yells in high pitched however near it may be.” gibberish, she furloughs the capacity of documentation. 2. Benjamin, Walter, et al. “The Production, Reproduction, and Reception of the Work of Art.”The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. Screenshot of the hashtag “KarenFin- ley” on Instagram. See more photos 3. Full discretion: Karen Finley cur- from this article here. rently serves as the author’s MA advisor at NYU Tisch School of the On a recent trip to the FF archive, I was Art, Art and Public Policy Depart- moved by the act of shedding the layers ment of my highly digitized self to travel through time, exchanging my trusty iPhone for a COLLECT YOUR THOUGHTS: AN notebook, pencil, and magnifying glass. The ARTIST’S LIVING THINGS experience provided a rare opportunity to unravel pockets of historical evidence. Ani Bradberry As I dug through Karen Finley’s FF performances from the 1980s and 1990s I’m unpacking. I’ve been unpacking. A (a pivotal time for the artist’s career when month ago, a move from a sublet to an politics came to define and ostracize apartment finalized a relocation from her performances), I discovered positive city to city, and with it, all of the boxes in reviews iterating her ability to reproduce storage that I’ve drifted in and out of for Screenshot of the hashtag “Vaginal the feeling of the oppressed, and became the past few months. I am in the midst of Davis” on Instagram. See more photos familiar with the controversy that pushed processing the closure and exposure of from this article here. the NEA to revoke her funds.3 These objects and documents I’ve lived within testimonials continue to live in the physical during many formative years. The process This issue of how to thoroughly document archive, a place that the domain of social of transporting and translating the items and archive the ephemeral is in no way a media is unable to replicate. that shaped the past into the present new issue — both the new-age social media is intensely physical and sensual. I’m documentation and ‘old-school’ institutional While we need to pay close attention to the just beginning to pronounce my new life archives have had variations of this same role of social media as a platform that we with weary glances at a closet, a room in problem. Institutions such as Franklin often don’t recognize as an archive, and one disarray. Surrounded by objects in mock Furnace (FF) are a great example of how an that we all use daily, it is important to clarify order, it feels as though their effect and organization can approach archiving. Artfully that the point of this essay is to present consequence has completely overwhelmed preserving a comprehensive record of social media’s possibilities and pitfalls as a my agency. I remind myself of my power, ephemeral art since 1976, FF has collected tool of and for the millennium. excavating the depths of a large box of event ephemera, support materials, photo books and setting aside a pile to give away. documentation, and full-length videos that While the archive experience can be Exhausting and filled with delight, this is the eternalize the specificity of ephemeral and magical, it can also be incomplete terrifying beauty of a reliance on tangibility. performance art work. However, despite their in other ways — not every FF Karen I have been re-planted — my roots are best efforts, some project documentation is Finley performance has audio-visual sticking out. still not always all-encompassing. documentation. What I couldn’t help but FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 45

Eucalyptus slice scan (2017), obtained during work at Snøhetta Tokyo Subway Map, 2014, obtained during 3-month undergraduate semes- After years of archival work ranging from The last Andy Warhol Time Capsule to ter. See more photos from this aricle scanning 300 year old plant samples at be opened, TC 500 of 610 (Courtesy: here. the National Museum of Natural History Andy Warhol Museum Archive) to deciphering film and photographs from While visuals and tactile objects are the early 20th century at the Freer and Despite its formal associations, archiving essential in my search for inspiration, Sackler Galleries, I cannot help but imagine occurs largely by accident. Andy Warhol sound has become an extremely revelatory a future for the items around me. This began collecting boxes of hundreds of medium for my artistic research and self-awareness during construction of a thousands of items as suggested by his personal library. I began randomly new living space has heavily influenced assistant when moving into the Factory. recording noise about three years ago, my renewed focus on art history and art- Containing a wild range of intimate and starting with an intimate archiving project making. I’m back to work and self-aware, boring objects — nude photos of Paul accumulated during my three-month fully immersed in the emulsification process Richard Shipman, junk mail, dead bees, a semester in Tokyo. back into the objects and documents of tyvek suit adorned with Basquiat drawings, my past. Inevitably, this movement requires exhibition opening announcements — Since then, I’ve taken time to sporadically molting — separating and shedding items these ‘time capsules’ are autobiographical document everyday noise in DC, ranging from your life. As you build your personal and performative. Archiving with the desire from cicadas outside my apartment to library of materials, notes, images, text, for self-reflection allows artists and art the sirens and crowds of the anti-fascist sound and ephemera, it is necessary to historians to expand their understanding protests on inauguration day on January gradually skim off the duplicates and of the emotional potential of objects 20, 2017. When combined with video impersonal items. Still, clutter is no enemy and writing. In many ways, incorporating footage from police body cameras from the of a blooming archive. These unplanned or archiving into everyday practice is an act of same day, the memory is intense, especially subconscious moments of collection will self-imaging. in the opportunity to view the event from result in the most intimate everyday objects the ruthless police perspective: becoming staples in your library. When archiving and art handling become intimate aspects of daily life both professionally and personally, the approach to objects is a paradox involving constant oscillation between practicality and preciousness.

The title “archivist” carries a certain weight of intent: a person who directly unpacks and unfurls history through documents and Dormitory room number, Tokyo, 2014 Axon Police Body Camera Footage, objects. While the act of archiving and the January 20, 2017. See more photos notion of an archive remain intimidatingly Apart from my attempts to render the from this aricle here. institutional, it is valuable to expand and transition from art historian to artist internalize these practices on the individual tangible, the process of moving from Keeping these memories fresh has been level. The emotional composition of our apartment to apartment, city to city, essential in both my studio and written relationship to objects and text is invaluable fleeting sublet to semi-permanence, has work, emerging most recently in a light and for artists and art historians alike, despite proven that casual approaches often yield video installation exposing this footage contrasting approaches to creation. the most striking informational results. The to the public. The experience of shifting Deeply tied to the accumulation and most immediate lessons are graphic, as from art historian to artist became less of reflection upon information and imagery design cues that once drew us in emerge a movement from scholarship to studio as art historians are, artists also possess while rifling through piles of exhibition and more of a realization of the political the power to escape fixed linear readings brochures and maps. potential of art practice itself. It inevitably of history to create their own breathing takes time to digest memory, but when archive. equipped with objects or documents as resources, the interpretation of the past FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 46 remains alive rather than simply reflective. Returning to once-everyday experiences I am looking to learn as much as I can from through sound, text or image allows us to the art and cultural stories of DC through more deeply absorb our relationship with the people who are personally archiving our surroundings. it. Still new here, I reached out to my immediate—and admittedly still limited— It has become clear that while individuals network asking to visit their archives or are framed and defined by the everyday share a DC art story that might not be objects and ideas that surround them, common knowledge. Realizing the inherent we also may find agency in the life of bias of only asking the people I knew, I put objects, whether they be inconsequential out requests online for pieces of the archive. or monumental items. It is the awareness I asked for more names and digitally of our influences that reveal the most introduced myself to many amazing people about the cultural cues that we respond in DC, asking for photos or stories of art to and are shaped by. As I continue to times gone by. You know how it goes, there sort the receipts, videos, sounds, e-waste, is never enough time for all the projects. plastics, notebooks, sketches, letters, Timelines don’t always line up until later. The etc., I experience fresh feelings and ideas keep on building. emotions connected to memories and simultaneously to others’ as well. This stage So, this piece is evolving, just as the archive of reflection may expand to collective Wiseman, Valerie. 10.10.12. 2012; is evolving. By no means a full picture of levels, suggesting a strong connection Spiral Notebook, Pilot G-2 Ultra Fine DC’s contemporary art stories yet, this brief between archiving and solidarity. Still, it 0.38mm Gel Pen, Digital image. photo essay aims to record and archive is just as important to archive purely for these stories of DC; highlighting three of the yourself and not for the public. Nurture your While the answers to those questions submissions—three personal stories, three memories and encourage yourself to revisit might not be enough to write home about moments of art in DC. and reinterpret your past. Sensitivity to the (or an article about), the circumstances consequences of archiving unexpected nevertheless contributed to our pieces of everyday life is challenge to environment and shaped the work I did. PART 1 . consistently take note from the past in The asides during our meetings, while “WALTER HOPPS WILL BE HERE IN order to understand a complex and absurd often interruptive, fostered some of the 20 MINUTES” present — a process that is impossible to best ideas for fundraisers and project find through nostalgia alone. Your archive is proposals. Discussions between artists alive: feed it. during everyday chores introduced new approaches for working with materials. STORIES FROM BETWEEN Realizing projects is more complicated THE ARCHIVES than what is on paper - how the grant was written, the quotes in the press release, the Valerie Wiseman Google doc timelines, or the photographs taken at the opening. More importantly In late 2015, I got out of a long-term for me, it is about the less conspicuous relationship with an arts non-profit. moments that shaped the work we did. I Working in the space between artist and am interested in the unofficial institutional administrator, I played on both fields. knowledge: things that become second Between all the projects, events, and nature: the personal stories, the creative administrative sessions, what stood out environment, the artists’ anecdotes, most about the work was only ever casually shared breakfasts, weather patterns, and discussed and informally remembered— summer department meetings at the pool but, the things that even a few years later, I that enhanced the work we did. This is still think about. What transpired between the ineffable part of the organization that I people and projects, the by-products inevitably took with me when I left. Will that of the work, is what made the programs ever translate back into the organization’s “walter hopps will be here in 20 successful (or not). Often these subtleties archive? Should it? minutes” button. 2017; Digital image. were only unofficially recorded - like that one time in 2012 when we were trying to HOW DO YOU ARCHIVE THE JOKES? “Walter Hopps was one of the curators print copies and start a staff meeting, but THOSE PARTICULAR MOMENTS, who was part of a significant pivot the copy machine, coffee machine, and PHRASES, AND EXPERIENCES THAT in curatorial practice in the 1950s printer were all broken -- did we end up BRING LEVITY AND HUMOR TO THE and 60s — away from a traditional finishing that meeting? Make those copies? SERIOUS WORK OF CO-CREATING academic model, towards a more Ever actually get to drink the coffee? CULTURE? improvisational way of creating shows. FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 47

He came to DC in the early 70s and was longer beholden their institutional “So, back in my very early 20’s I heard Director of the now-defunct Corcoran legacy. Liberated! They gained a new about a call for extras for the John Gallery of Art for a while before moving life housing the mediocre art of all the Waters film, “Serial Mom” while listening on to the Smithsonian, and then the students screwed by the Corcoran’s to WHFS, the long defunct indie radio Menil Collection. He was a tough guy failure.” station in DC. I was a fan of John Waters to find, and often people would show and the entire trash genre. up for appointments, but the staff –Joseph Orzal, artist & curator, hadn’t seen him for days. They would based in DC + Baltimore I was very thin with magenta highlights politely tell the visitor, “Walter will see in my hair and in a uniform of a black you in twenty minutes,” then frantically t-shirt depicting Dali’s photograph, try to track him down. I never met him “Voluptuous Death” and leopard print personally, though I saw him around the mary jane creepers. I was selected museum when the Corcoran did the among many in the casting call and Rauschenberg multiples exhibition in reported to HammerJacks (defunct the early-90s. I heard that he was very metalhead venue in Bmore) early in the good to DC artists, spending lots of morning. time talking to them in their studios and generally being accessible. Robin Rose The day consisted of standing around told me that in the wee hours of nice with the biggest room of curated freaks, summer nights, he and Walter would which was quite enjoyable, eating hang on this bench (by the bus stop in scoops of spaghetti, elementary school the little park across from the 7-11 on lunch style and listening to L7 play the Columbia Road) trash-talking the art same riff over and over again as a band world.” called Cameltoe, with visuals to match, as Kathleen Turner pursued her next –James Huckenpahler, artist, murder victim. The complicated chase based in DC Nixon’s Campaign Poster Featured in scene took about 10 hours as John ‘Now More Than Ever’, April 15 - May Waters meticulously arranged those 27 at Washington Project for the of us that were standing in the line of Arts; October 2017; Digital image. sight. You can only see a blur of my hair See more photos here. headbanging in that scene, but it was still a good day. John Waters yelled for people to get in their places and I jokingly replied, “don’t worry John, we’re PART 3 . all professionals here” and he burst out “SERIAL MOM” laughing.

I was called back to be an extra again a few days later for the courtroom James Huckenpahler at the corner of scenes. The woman that played the 19th St NW & Columbia St NW in Adams second housekeeper on “Different Morgan, Washington, DC. October 2017; Strokes” was in this scene as a non- Digital image. See more photos here. recycling neighbor and I riffed, calling her a “non-recycling bitch”. Needless to say, this moment did not get into PART 2 . the final cut. The only moment I can “INSTITUTIONAL LEGACY” be seen sometimes, is as a willowy figure in the very distant background. I “It’s amazing how valueless everything was mesmerized watching Ricki Lake becomes in the final months of a dying hilariously hitting on her co-star, who institution. Things that were once played her brother, Matthew Lillard and preserved of reused and repurposed got my picture taken with Patty Hearst. over and over suddenly become trash. All these things happened and sadly, My favorite day was When Ken Ashton the only remnant from this experience is opened up his museum frame shop this cut off oversized t-shirt.” during the last week of the Corcoran. Photo teachers and student swarmed “Serial Mom” t-shirt; 2017; Digital - Dawne Langford, filmmaker + the room like a Best Buy on Black Image. See more photos here. organizer, based in DC Friday. Hundreds of amazing frames that once housed priceless works no FIELD PERSPECTIVES COMMON FIELD CONVENING 48

PART 4 . “EVERYBODY ARCHIVES”

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