'One Place After Another' -response

Chapter four of Miwon Kwon’s text ‘One Place After Another’ brought up many questions for me regarding the general basis of the movement ‘Culture in Action’. The art that was produced out of this movement acted as a method the voices of minority communities to be heard; some of Kwon’s initial examples being Suzanne Lacy’s sculptures that honored women in the city of Chicago as well as a neighborhood parade to reflect the lives of public house dwellers and the growing of hydroponic garden for HIV positive patients etc. When reading this one of my questions became ‘in this example, who would eligible to contribute to this conversation regarding the civil rights of minorities?’ Would, for example, a man have the right to join the female movement? Or white people act as an ally to a community of people of color? And following this consideration how is it that we the people can create art that could speak to all communities? How can we come together to create something that can apply and aid every group whose voice and civil rights are being silence?

For me it was fascinating to be reading this particular reflection on this movement from the 1990’s during our frightening current political state where our to-be leader of our country seems to be moving towards the diminution of civil rights for minorities. Which brings me to the question: what can we do to keep this conversation going? How can we create activist art that will keep the conversation sustainable as these problems are still very much occurring nearly 30 years after this movement?

How do we protest through art? It is written that one of the main goals of ‘Culture in Action’ was to take ‘art to the man on the street’, and to ‘shift the role of the viewer from passive spectator to active art maker’. One of my more specific question is regarding what this statement actually means and how can we create art that has the ability to transform an individual in this way?

What so resonated with me when reading this article is the fact that art has the power to reflect and resonate within a person, I consider that perhaps the answer to my previous question about this goal to shift the role of the viewer from ‘passive to active’ translates to art having the ability to stimulate another person so to the point that they themselves become an activist.

I wonder if there is a way to make a more permanent conversation of activism through art, Lacy’s sculpture project for example, a continuous reminder of voices in society that need to be heard. I want to know how, as an artist and as a woman I could contribute to the conversation in order to keep it alive and consistently active. What can I do as an individual to consistently speak out what needs to move forward in society. One example of a conversation I would wish to enliven in our current political state is that regarding female reproductive rights, how could I create a piece of art or display that would be constantly speaking this argument? 

Kwon’s examples of the projects that were produced out of ‘Culture in Action’ taught me that there really is no limitation to the way in which we as artists can communicate and protest what needs to be heard, through public sculpture, block parties, candy bars and more. As artists we cannot limit ourselves, there are ways in which to speak our protests I would not have thought of, particularly the example of writing it out on a piece of confectionary as a continuous reminder regarding the conversations that need to be had.