Sandro Dernini PLEXUS BLACK BOX A MULTICULTURAL AESTHETIC INQUIRY INTO AN INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY BASED ART PROJECT Copyright © 2007 Cover by Micaela Serino ii To my mother Rosa Sanfilippo, to George Chaikin, Stelio Fiorenza, Paolo Maltese, Silvio Betti, Ciro Ciriacono, Giovanna Ducrot, Langouste MBow, Leonard Horowitz, Sarah Farley, Bruce Richard Nuggent, and to all other Plexus friends who are not anymore with us along this endless art journey. iii iv PREFACE In this book, I present a revised edition of my Ph.D. dissertation A Multicultural Aesthetic Inquiry into “Plexus Black Box” an International Community-Based Art Project, completed in 1997 at the School of Education of New York University. In particular, in Chapter VI, with a deconstructionist approach, I revised my original “close reading” of Plexus Black Box, and, in Appendix C, there is updated chronology of Plexus activites and participants, from 1982 to December 2006. Plexus Black Box is related to a series of art events made in the ‘80s and mid ‘90s by Plexus International, an ongoing group of artists, scientists and community activists in which I participated since its beginning in 1982, in New York City. Plexus art co-operas, conceptualized as global community-based art events with no financial banking, have involved on some occasions hundreds of participants from different parts of the world, against the slavery of art and the disengagement of the artists from the community. From 1984 to the present, Plexus International has played a seminal role in the conception and realization of numerous experimental interdisciplinary, collaborative, cross cultural, and multi art & science events, which are still an unexamined part of the contemporary history of art. Plexus International is still striving 25 years later in a contemporary art environment known for the brief duration of art groups and movements. Through its quarter of century documentation, it is providing a unique historical opportunity for artists to get their own independent community-based artistic identification. This book has the overall aim to contribute to the claim of a legitimacy also for a community-based artistic identification, challenging in this way the hierarchical Western view that the artistic identification is conferred to the artist only by the Artworld. The assumption of my inquiry in 1997 was that a more participatory understanding of community-based art experiences should be invaluable in developing local and global alternative strategies for the reinforcement of mutual respect necessary to cohabit with diversity. Now, in 2007, my assumption for v publishing this book is that a more participatory understanding of Plexus artistic and creative process, as a qualitative problem solving, should be invaluable in the acknowledgement of art as an underestimated individual and collective well being resource toward the sustainable development of alternative strategies. In this way, it will contribute to overcome the obsolete notion of autonomous art by means of a more complex interdependent vision of art. I was part of the project under inquiry and I had to deal with the methodological problem how, as an “insider,” I could conduct an “objective” investigation. I resolved such methodological challenge by having “insider” accounts intersubjectively validated and supported by evidences publicly accessible as constituents of the community-based art project under inquiry. I concluded my inquiry with an open end, with an open “multi-points perspective” critical contribution, because I identified non feasible to terminate with “one-point perspective” understanding a multicultural study on an international community-based art project. In this book, I present not a formal aesthetic analysis but contingent multicultural aesthetic characteristics of Plexus Black Box, from 1992 to 1993, with the wish to offer the possibility to grasp an “insider” understanding of it. I am conscious of the limits of my critical contribution, as a context-bound to my own interpretation, therefore, I would like to invite all Plexus participants to implement collectively online this book, through the Plexus website www.plexusforum.net, with their “insider” interpretations for the publication of a new revised edition of Plexus Black Box book, as an effective collective participatory effort. My aim is to achieve also for Plexus International a historic acknowledgement for its 25 years independent art journey, as well as, to establish a Plexus credit line to continue to run ahead toward its own future. Sandro Dernini, Rome January 2007 vi CONTENTS PREFACE v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix CHAPTERS I THE ORGANIZATION OF THE INQUIRY 1 Introduction 1 Statement of the Problem 3 Delimitations and Definitions 4 Need for the Inquiry 7 Method 12 II RELATED LITERATURE 30 Aesthetics, Hermeneutics and Deconstruction 30 Artworld and Contemporary Changes 43 III STRATEGIES OF INTERPRETATION 56 The Artist as Researcher 56 Field Research 62 Glossary 67 Procedures of Interpretation 71 IV DOUBLE WRITING AND DOUBLE READING 77 “Insider” Narratives 78 V HISTORICAL EMIC ACCOUNT 100 BY THE ARTIST AS RESEARCHER A Narrative in the First Person by Plexus 23s 100 VI A CLOSE READING OF PLEXUS BLACK BOX 151 Strategic Survival by Art Withdrawing 158 The Repatriation of Art into the Community 162 Open Social Ritual Multi-Arts Form: Plexus Art Co-opera 173 Plexus Compressionist Art Process 183 Against the Slavery of Art "Isms" 188 Eating Art 194 Well Being in the XXI Century 204 Final Remarks 208 vii APPENDICES A PLEXUS “INSIDER” PAPERS AND ACCOUNTS 211 B PLEXUS HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS 268 C CHRONOLOGY OF PLEXUS ACTIVITIES 1982-2006 273 BIOGRAPHIC NOTE 292 BIBLIOGRAPHY 293 viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness to all copyright holders of the works that have been quoted in this book as well as of the photos, artworks and texts. I am grateful to them to have made possible the realization of this book and the continuation of the undertaken voyage. I wish to express my gratitude to the members of my Ph.D. Dissertation Committee of the School of Education of the New York University, Department of Art and Art Professions, Professors. David W. Ecker, Angiola Churchill, and John V. Gilbert, who were able to guide me in dealing with such a complexity of issues raised by the subject matter of the study. I wish also to thank Maria Pia Marsala for her critical editing of this revised edition and David Boyle and Lynne Kanter for the first editing in 1997. I would like to thank all Plexus players with whom I shared the experience of Plexus. In particular I would like to acknowledge as coauthors all "insiders" who contributed to this book. They must be acknowledged for their indispensable and critical discussions on my Ph.D. inquiry, which shaped at the same time the dissertation and the history of Plexus. The survival artists’ struggle in the community was our motivational force. There are so many people who did and do so much that are not properly mentioned in these pages. For this, I apologize and give them my commitment for a further implementation of this book, through a new revised edition reporting all their inputs, corrections and missed credits. ix x CHAPTER I THE ORGANIZATION OF THE INQUIRY Introduction Plexus started its activities in 1982, in the Chelsea neighbourhood of Manhattan. It was at once an idea and a place, founded by two architects, an art critic and the present researcher in the role of cultural organizer. Since its beginning, Plexus was conceived as an interdisciplinary and multicultural project committed to the achievement of a heightened understanding of alternatives enhancing human experience. Over these years, Plexus aim was achieved through the organization and documentation of large international collaborative arts events, Plexus art co-operas, situating art in an expanded community and heterogeneous multicultural environments, which involved, on some occasions, hundreds of artists and scientists, from different parts of the world. In these events, fully financed by the participants themselves, without grants or market support, Plexus encouraged face to face dialogue and creative also critical interaction among all participants. It still continues to move so today. Artists, scientists, and audience, representing various cultures and ideologies, traversing separations of languages, disciplines, places, and individual differences, have created in Plexus art co-operas a complex multicultural art environment, bridging the community and the academy, and contributing to the development of an art form, expressly appropriate for today multicultural complex society. But, it would be difficult to label Plexus or group activities under existing art categories, especially because Plexus members intentionally refused art definitions. 1 Plexus Black Box was conceived in 1989 for the need of Plexus historical survival. The idea was to "freeze” Plexus and its activities metaphorically within a "black box," in order to be preserved for art history. By "freezing" Plexus within a conceptual black box, Plexus players were projected in the future, defending the survival of the group, as well as their individual, collective, artistic and cultural identities. Plexus Black Box was a conscious act of artists running ahead toward their own future. Being futural gives time, cultivates the present and allows the past to be repeated in how it is lived. With regard to time, this means that the fundamental phenomenon of time is the future. In order to see this without selling it as an interesting paradox, each specific Dasein must maintain itself in its running ahead. In so doing it becomes manifest that the original way of dealing with time is not a measuring.1 Materially, Plexus Black Box consisted of records and relics from Plexus history and performances. Many records were compiled images made as frames of reference or quotes of other records. Over the years, Plexus events have built one upon the other. Through documentation, Plexus concepts, people and events, were linked together. Each event took place in its own present but it was made up of past concepts and activities while it projected its own various parts into the future activities of Plexus.