ACE - Week 2

1. The terms public and community imply two very different relationships between the artist and the administrative apparatus of the city. Where is the line drawn between public and community art? Communities are groups of people who share similar values, what ever those may be. It is important that they artist be able to identify, and identify with that community which they are working with.
2. What really is the relationship between an artist and the “community” or “public”, more so, what should the relation ship be? At the beginning of section one, Pierre Bordieu states that an artists collaboration “might consist simply of a particular group, functioning as the subject mater for a project, or it might extend tot he artist somehow involving a given subject or group of subject in the process of creative decision making” (4). Often times it seems as if artists have appointed themselves as the spokes person for the community and that it is their art which is going to to bring in rapid change to their community and that their art is bettering the people and the culture, but, are they really the chosen person, or the best person to go about that? 
3. A direct example of this relationship and form of representation is that of Alfredo Jaar’s exhibit of “one or Two Things I Know About Them”. Jaar, was elected, chosen, to represent this community of Bangladeshi people in a gallery. This collection of images captioned with derogatory descriptions from another were taken back by these remarks, demanding that they be removed. The images were taken down. As shown in the reading this is an unusual thing to happen as often the community does not often have an opinion in what can and cannot be shown, more so, they often do not have the power to have the art taken down such as the situation here. This, I think, has to do with the fact that he was appointed as a representative of this community. This is how it should work. The artist making art, the community stepping in when they need to, and everything being alright. 
4. As said in the reading this authority to be the spokesperson comes from Jaar, “surrendering some degree of their creative autonomy.” It was a known between Jaar and the people that they may not approve of his decisions, and with that they have the power to speak against it. It is this shifting of autonomy that allowed Jaar to make those decisions. Bordieu’s “second point of anchorage” being “founded on a moment of transference that establishes a moral equivalence between their position and that of the community” Is highly important. The artist must be able to relate to the community which they are serving. In Jaar’s case, his exile from Chile, in Hope Sandro’s case her visits to Catherine Street, it was these turning points in their lives that allow them to relate to the community that they are working with.