AESTHETIC EVANGELISTS

Victor Murillo

Art and Community

01/25/17

AESTHETIC EVANGELISTS

As you read this text, reflect on the ethical considerations that artists or collectives should take into account when working with/for a specific community or group. Collect at least 4 separate observations (5 points each) on a blog post, and refer to evidence in the text to support your thinking.

1.   As analysis of community-based public art must begin with the vexing questions of just how one define “community” itself. …”community based projects often, although not clearly always, refers to individuals marked as culturally, economically, or socially different either from the artist or form of audience… projects are usually based on some form of collaboration[within the community].” Grant brings great points on the on how to approach community based art projects. That community is a diverse set of individuals that need someone to represent them. That representation can be accomplished through research about the community done by the artist or a form of collaboration within the community.

2.   “The signifying authority of the community artist is based on two points of ideological anchorage. First, their authority is understood to derive from the process of a pedagogically-based "collaboration". This is an "exchange," in which the artist, by surrendering some degree of their creative autonomy in negotiations with a given group over the production of a project is understood to have gained in return some authority to speak from the group's position or on their behalf.” Whenever working on a community project were one must have a good sense of authority but also good sense of compromise. Compromise is needed since in a community-based project there never is a boss.

3.   “There is a tendency in community-based public works to define the participants who make up a given project's community serially, as socially isolated individuals whose ground of interconnection and identification as a group is provided by an aesthetically ameliorative experience administered by the artist. Within this dynamic the artist takes on the delegate's role and attempts to literally "create" a community consciousness out of the atomized social detritus of late capitalism… Typically the artist sets out to challenge the subjects, to expand their awareness and engage them in a process of critical self-reflection and analysis… to resuscitate their sense of "self-esteem" and to provide them with a meaningful creative experience that will allow them to become "participants in their own reclamation.”  These point of making public art in a community that are more politically coherent show how artist who make community based art projects should be more about making the audience self reflect on issues in there community.

4.   When working on an art project in a public setting, is it considered public art or community art? How can you determine your project type? On page 2 of the reading, “The terms "public" and "community" imply two very different relationships between the artist and the administrative apparatus of the city. The public artist most commonly interacts with urban planners, architects, and city agencies concerned with the administration of public buildings and spaces, while the community-based public artist more commonly interacts with social service agencies and social workers (women's shelters, homeless advocates, neighborhood groups, etc.). In each case the interaction between the artist and the "public" or community is mediated through a discursive network of professional institutions and ideologies that the artist collaborates with and, in some cases, seeks to radicalize or challenge.”