View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Open Access Institutional Repository at Robert Gordon University LACY, S. 2013. Imperfect art: working in public; a case study of the Oakland Projects (1991-2001). PhD Thesis. Aberdeen: Robert Gordon University [online]. Available from: https://openair.rgu.ac.uk Imperfect art: working in public; a case study of the Oakland Projects (1991-2001). LACY, S. 2013 The author of this thesis retains the right to be identified as such on any occasion in which content from this thesis is referenced or re-used. The licence under which this thesis is distributed applies to the text and any original images only – re-use of any third-party content must still be cleared with the original copyright holder. This document was downloaded from https://openair.rgu.ac.uk Imperfect Art: Working in Public A Case Study of the Oakland Projects (1991–2001) Suzanne Lacy PhD. 2013 i ii IMPERFECT ART: WORKING IN PUBLIC A Case Study of the Oakland Projects (1991–2001) Suzanne Lacy A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Robert Gordon University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy This research was carried out in connection with On the Edge Research Programme, Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland June 2013 iii iv IMPERFECT ART: WORKING IN PUBLIC A Case Study of the Oakland Projects (1991–2001) Suzanne Lacy Doctor of Philosophy Abstract: In Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art (1994) the author called for a new language of critique for the transient and publicly located art practices known today as social, or public, practices. Since that time authors have taken up the challenge to site the work in art historical, philosophical, and cultural contexts and to assess its aesthetic merits. One of the major themes is how, exactly, the social claims in this work can be calculated. This paper adds to that discourse through the examination of a complex and lengthy set of art projects in Oakland, California, through the lens of critical pedagogy. The Oakland Projects (including performance, installation, exhibition, civic action, curriculum, and workshops) focused on social circumstances, popular media representation, and public policies regarding urban juveniles in California between 1991–2001. This research examined five sites—institutions within health, education, criminal justice, and civic policy, and youth experience. The praxis of classroom teaching and theories on education and democracy found in the literature of critical pedagogy offer a possible way to examine how this work might operate in the public sphere. The author traces the threads of a personal historiography of two significant teachers (in the 1970s) that metaphorically and practically provide a nexus of educational reform and avant-garde art as background to the examination of the Oakland Projects. In the process key issues in the work, including aesthetics and ethics, are examined, but the focus is on how forms of pedagogy—from the expanded notion of public pedagogy to the intimate level of the mentoring relationship— add dimension to the work’s claim to hold a relevant place within both the public and professional art spheres. Keywords: social practice, visual art, Kaprow, education, Oakland, youth, performance v TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Abstract v Table of Contents vi Acknowledgments viii Author’s declaration ix Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Methodology 8 Review of Primary Source Documents 8 Interviews with Collaborators and Participants 9 Working in Public: Seminar Series Produced by “On the Edge” Research Program at Gray’s School of Art 10 Graduate Public Practice Program, Otis College of Art and Design 11 Building a Critical Position for the Artist’s Voice 13 Chapter 2. The Oakland Projects Narrative 20 Teenage Living Room 23 Going to (Public) School 23 Performing Listening 26 The Roof Is On Fire and Perceptions of Oakland Youth 30 Building a Team 30 Making the Performance 36 Finding a Site 42 Rehearsals 46 Performing Themselves 50 Next Steps 58 Beginning the Conversation: Youth, Cops, and Videotape 61 No Blood/No Foul and the Oakland Youth Policy 69 The Game Night 74 Expectations: Girls and Graduation 81 Teenage Pregnancy in the News 81 Summer School 85 Curriculum 87 Installation at Capp Street Gallery 92 Symposium and Broadsheet 96 vi Code 33: Emergency Clear the Air 100 (Criminal) Justice for Youth? 105 Training Workshops for Police 108 Youth, Neighborhoods, and Fear 112 The Production Process 117 Performing Conflict 123 Eye 2 Eye at Fremont High 131 3. Art and Pedagogy 137 Allan Kaprow and Herbert Kohl 137 Judy Chicago and Arlene Raven 142 Pedagogies in the Oakland Projects 151 Research as an Art Practice 154 Forms of Curriculum 156 The Classroom of Public Messages and Counter-Messages 157 Class- and Workshop-Based Curricula 158 Youth Development Activities 160 Producing Publics (Community Organizing) 162 Performance and Expanded Politics 165 Aesthetics 166 Ethics 170 Success or Failure When Art Changes 176 4. References 182 5. Appendix 1: Timeline for the Oakland Projects, 1991–2001 188 6. Appendix 2: The Oakland Projects Archives, 1991-2001 190 7. Appendix 3: CD-ROM (accompanying) vii Acknowledgments First and foremost I thank my thesis supervisor Anne Douglas for her incredible support and encouragement at every step along a very long path of framing, executing, and completing this research. She consistently went above and beyond what anyone could expect of a supervisor and believed unswervingly in this project. I also thank my other thesis supervisor, Grant Kester, for his critical role in theorizing social practices and his consistent and gracious support. I appreciated the stimulation, early on, provided by those who participated in the “Working in Public” conversations (designed by Douglas), including Tom Trevor, Simon Sheihk, and the many Scottish arts professionals enrolled in the series. I am indebted to the Henry Moore Foundation for funding support during this research. In readying this document for presentation, I particularly thank Sue Heinemann, intrepid hand-holder, editor, and advice giver, and Kelly Akashi for her design of the online presentation. Otis College of Art and Design and its president Samuel Hoi supported me in this research since its inception, and I am grateful for a continuing academic home in the Graduate Public Practice program there. Most of all I want to thank my colleagues in Oakland, California, who worked with me over ten years to co-produce the artworks and the community described herein, including the many who consented to interviews years later. I am grateful for their continuing friendship. viii AUTHOR’S DECLARATION I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. The word count for the main body of thesis does not exceed 80,000 words. Signed: Suzanne Lacy Date: 12/7/2013 ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In the early 1990s I noticed that the prevailing images of the “teenager” in urban America no longer favored the delinquent white working-class kids of my generation. Now the “troubled” teen had a distinctive color, clothing, and language style, modeled on a sort of aberrant gangster interpretation of the Black Panthers. The effect of these media images reached beyond institutions that directly impact youth into areas like immigration and welfare policy. Youth’s real experiences remained a matter of private knowledge, locked inside communities that had little purchase on public voice. The only imagery created by teens themselves was from youth culture (like music), and that available to the mainstream media tended to reinforce stereotypes. Co-option of inner-city youth culture was confusing for youth, turning a potential protest into a commodity. Their mediated expressions of defiance contributed to their ineffectuality in the public sphere and worse—to the heightening of public fear. With its vibrant youth culture and large percentage of African American teens, Oakland was at the epicenter of a mix of cultural politics and activist organizing strategies focused on youth as part of a broader social critique on race and class inequalities. As sociologist Mike Males (1996) pointed out, the income of California youth dropped sharply between the 1970s and 90s, leaving a large percentage of the state’s youth in poverty. These changes were coincident with a variety of factors, but one in particular is relevant to this thesis: the rise in youth poverty reflected demographic changes in age—the state population had become younger—and ethnicity—the “minority” population was on its way to becoming the majority. Guided by the media images, middle-class residents of Oakland feared a rise in crime and seemed leery, for example, of high school students hanging out at street corners while waiting for a bus. Redevelopment plans for downtown Oakland were thought to be hindered by these fears. In Oakland, where 25% of the population in 1990 was under the age of 18, a flood of organizations were formed, and strategies developed, to make institutions more responsive to youth. Early pioneers of racial equality, labor, free speech, and the Black Panthers were still active in public life. Progressive educators supported youth citizenship rights and penned ideas on youth development that often included arts and media inside of classrooms and after school, 1 especially important after the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 led eventually to the elimination of school funding for most of the arts. These themes in youth politics and education were developing in parallel and sometimes intersecting manners with a new form of public art. Along with other artists, I was exploring the boundaries of art itself, and working with inner-city teens in the series of pieces I came to call the Oakland Projects felt to me like a way to examine career-long questions about the relationship to art and life.