A SOCIALLY ENGAGED ARTS READER Compiled 2019 GSholette PRACTICES HISTORIES PEDAGOGIES THEORIES BEUYS BIBLIOGRAPHY CONTENTS PRACTICES The Schoolhouse And The Bus: Mobility, Pedagogy, and Engagement. Reisman et al: catalog on Pablo Helguera & Suzanne Lacy (2018) Interference Archive Building a Counter Institution in the United States. Jen Hoyer and Josh MacPhee (2018) A Place Under the Sun: Art of Andreja Kulunčić. Natasa Ilić (2006) Transforming Corona Plaza Queens NY: a project by SPQ. Multi-authored (2012) HISTORIES The Art of Social Cooperation: An American Framework, Tom Finkelpearl. Preface and Introduction of What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation (2013) The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents. Claire Bishop, Artforum: August (2007) PEDAGOGIES Education for Socially Engaged Art. Pablo Helguera (2011) Selections from the book, Art as Social Action: An Introduction to the Principles and Practices of Teaching Social Practice Art. Chloë Bass, Gregory Sholette (2018) Where who we are matters: Through Art to Our More Social Selves. Chloë Bass Pedagogy as Art. Mary Jane Jacob Interviews of Pablo Helguera, Steve Lambert and Steve Duncombe by Jeff Kasper and Alix Camacho Vargas NYU Flash Collective: An Art Intervention in the Public Sphere. Dipti Desai and Avram Finkelstein Two Social Practice Lesson Plans: Noah Fischer (US) and Bo Zheng (China) THEORIES Dialogical Aesthetics: Critical Framework. Grant Kester (2000) Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics. Bishop, October, Fall (2004) Delirium and Resistance after the Social Turn. Gregory Sholette (2015) Do We Need A Turing Test for Activist Art in a Bare Art World? Gregory Sholette (2018) Instituting The Common In Artistic Circulation: From Entrepreneurship Of The Self To Entrepreneurship Of The Multitude. Kuba Szreder (2018) Toward a Lexicon of Usership. Stephen Wright (2013) BEUYS Dewey, Beuys, Cage and the Vulnerable, yet Utterly Unremarkable Heresy of Socially Engaged Art Education (SEAE). Gregory Sholette from: Art as Social Action (2018) The Role of Diversity in the Production and Reception of Art in Belfast: Space Shuttle. Suzanna Chan, Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes (2011). From the book Beuysian Legacies in Ireland and Beyond: Art, Culture and Politics Lerm Hayes, V. Walters, Verlag, 2011 Anthropology, Mythology and Art: Reading Beuys through Heidegger (2011). Nicola Foster Ibid Beuysian Legacies BIBLIOGRAPHY ARTS (SOCIAL CHANGE & ACTIVISM). Compiled by William Essilfie (2018) THE SCHOOLHOUSE AND THE BUS Mobility, Pedagogy, and Engagement Two projects by Pablo Helguera and Suzanne Lacy / Pilar Riaño-Alcalá edited by Elyse A. Gonzales and Sara Reisman A THE SCHOOLHOUSE AND THE BUS Mobility, Pedagogy, and Engagement Two projects by Pablo Helguera and Suzanne Lacy / Pilar Riaño-Alcalá edited by Elyse A. Gonzales and Sara Reisman 01 INTRODUCTION 04 by Elyse A. Gonzales and Sara Reisman THE SCHOOLHOUSE AND THE BUS 06 by Elyse A. Gonzales THE SCHOOL OF PANAMERICAN UNREST 16 Project description by Holly Gore DOCUMENTATION: THE SCHOOL OF PANAMERICAN 18 PB UNREST (2006) JOURNEY NOTES OF PANAMERICA: THE SOCIAL 25 PRACTICES OF ART A conversation between artist Pablo Helguera and Adetty Pérez de Miles DOCUMENTATION: THE SCHOOL OF PANAMERICAN 34 UNREST (2003–2006) CONTINUED OBJECT LESSONS: THE ROLE OF MATERIAL 42 CULTURE IN SOCIALLY ENGAGED ART by Sara Reisman SKIN OF MEMORY 48 Project description by Holly Gore DOCUMENTATION: SKIN OF MEMORY (1999) 50 DOCUMENTATION: SKIN OF MEMORY (2011) 62 RELATIONSHIPS, MATERIALITY, AND POLITICS IN 68 THE SKIN OF MEMORY A conversation between Suzanne Lacy and anthropologist Pilar Riaño-Alcalá PEDAGOGICAL PUBLICS 74 by Shannon Jackson THE SCHOOLHOUSE AND THE BUS (2017) 78 Installation views at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum, UC Santa Barbara ON SOCIAL PRACTICE 84 A conversation between Suzanne Lacy and Pablo Helguera BIOGRAPHIES 90 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 93 The Schoolhouse and the Bus: Mobility, Pedagogy, and Engagement, INTRODUCTION referring to the exhibition and this publication, is the result of by Elyse A. Gonzales and Sara Reisman conversations about the nature of art’s role in society. Though our audiences and settings are incredibly different, with one at a university in Santa Barbara, a regional seaside city, and the other in New York City, a major urban art center, both of our institutions are focused on the belief that art and artists can transform individuals and communities. These transformations may not always be immediately visible, but we regard artists as having the potential to be catalysts for change, especially through dialogue that fosters mutual understanding. Our audiences, with their vantage points from the east and west coast, largely comprised of students, faculty, activists, practicing artists, and other cultural producers, are eager to understand the means and methods of utilizing art to affect change in these particularly unstable and challenging times. Focusing on the work of two social practice artists was a natural outgrowth of our conversations, considering the field’s emphasis on engagement, with a goal of affecting positive outcomes in relation to social and political concerns. The more we talked and listened, the more we understood The Schoolhouse and the Bus as an opportunity for broader audiences to experience the work of important artists in this field. Suzanne Lacy and Pablo Helguera represent two generations of socially engaged artists who have also built their careers and work on pedagogical engagement. Their transcribed exchange “On Social Practice: A conversation between Suzanne Lacy and Pablo Helguera,” serves as a terrific record of the artists’ overlapping concerns and guiding principles. The works we have chosen to highlight are seminal for not only Helguera and Lacy as artists, but also the field itself. Helguera’s The School of Panamerican Unrest (2006), and Suzanne Lacy/Pilar Riaño-Alcalá’s Skin of Memory (1999–2017) are focused on local conditions, from the broad perspective of twenty-nine communities in the Americas to a single neighborhood in Medellín, Colombia, respectively. Additionally, linked by their mutual emphasis on mobility, both artists are attendant to the ways in which geographic location informs the possibilities of social and political transformation, a concept that is addressed by Elyse A. Gonzales and UC Berkley professor and leading thinker in social practice, Shannon Jackson in their essays. Another incentive in organizing this exhibition and publication was the opportunity to delve into questions and concerns that revolve around exhibiting social practice works, which are made for a specific time and place. Sara Reisman’s essay unpacks the complex nature of representing these live, audience-based works through the objects that remain and the projects’ more ephemeral, 04 lasting impacts. 05 In total, we see The Schoolhouse and the Bus not only as an essential record of these artists’ projects and contributions to the field, but also as a lens through which readers can examine the issues raised therein. Just as importantly, we see the relational and experiential nature of these works as a means of highlighting the essential aspects of social practice, an art form that is increasingly bridging the divides between museums and communities, as well as art and activism. Suzanne Lacy and Pablo Helguera are Genre Public Art (1995), the most well-known THE SCHOOLHOUSE AND THE BUS social practice artists, representing two of her books, was the first definitive collection by Elyse A. Gonzales generations, who have helped shape the of essays devoted to explaining the field with field through their influential writings, her own selections, as well as those by other teaching, and artworks. Over the past two artists and curators.1 decades, many contemporary artists have Helguera (b. 1971, Mexico City) increasingly sought a way for art to foment represents the next generation of social larger societal change. This has given rise practice, and his work has evolved using (Seattle: Bay Press, 1995). Bay (Seattle: to social practice —also known as socially methods of public engagement that are engaged—art, which is notable for its in dialogue with Lacy’s seminal strategies. emphasis on performance, activism, and For the last twenty years he has made often non-object-centered art making. This work that addresses a range of subjects field is reliant on audience participation including anthropology, museums, pedagogy, generated through time-based events sociolinguistics, ethnography, memory, such as performances, conversations, and and the absurd. Helguera, like Lacy, has workshops. Lacy’s and Helguera’s works are contributed extensively to the discourse further identifiable as socially engaged art of social practice: in addition to publishing by the fact that they respond to cultural numerous articles on the subject of social and political concerns, and promote the practice, his book Education for Socially Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art New Mapping the Terrain: Education for Socially Engaged Art: A Materials and Techniques Handbook and Techniques Socially Engaged Art: A Materials for Education empowerment and transformation of Engaged Art: A Materials and Techniques communities. In short, they intend for their Handbook (2011) became an influential text work to be catalysts of positive change within and for the field. 2 While Lacy’s book for the communities in which they work. established and laid out the nascent territory Suzanne Lacy, ed., Suzanne Lacy, Pablo