Response to Aesthetic Evangelists

I appreciated Grant Kester's warning of the ways in which artists may tend to use their own "imaginary construction" when working within communities other than their own. In this regard, I find it important within my own to practice to focus in on what is personal to myself and then expand from there. Nonetheless, I found Kester's terminology helpful as I think it is human nature to form our own imaginary constructions based on our own personal experiences/knowledge and so it is useful to read and make notes as to what should be avoided when producing community-centric work.

I found Kester's detailed explanation of the conservative right's moral war on welfare particularly striking and ubiquitous with Trump's dogma of today. Kester writes, "Welfare 'teaches' young women to have illegitimate children and to shirk responsibility (for work and for reproduction), while arts funding allows the state to support "deadbeat" degenerates who can't earn a real living and whose works "teach" bad, anti-American values. Both can be viewed as symptomatic of a general cultural and moral decline." I suppose what I'd elaborate on today is the division between the right and left that fuels such dogma. As we've clearly seen, such a division is much wider than we initially thought and that lack of understanding between the two oppositions enables a war against the poor and a dismantling of basic social services, such as, healthcare. Where do the arts come into this? I think artists have the power to bridge that ever-present gap or divide if we allow ourselves to function beyond the safeguard of the institutions that support us. In an NPR article from this year, perhaps, not so directly connected to the arts, a Nigerian chef held a potluck dinner in Appalachia - for me this has been a very helpful example of the ways in which we might bridge that divide as artists, as fellow humans.

The following observation of Kester's essay is his detailing of the artists' unintended "dismantling of existing social policy (such as it is) and its replacement with a privatized notion of philanthropy and moral pedagogy." I wonder if community-engaged art is framed as a replacement for basic social services due to the ways in which, such work is oftentimes critiqued or judged? Too often, such art is judged on it's impact or lack of and it is held accountable to provide some form of a service. Perhaps, a new system of critically analyzing such work must be implemented, where in which, it is not regarded as a replacement for social services, but rather it is allowed to breathe and function in its' own unique way?

In Grant Kester's probing of Dawn Dedeaux's "Soul Shadows," he explains, "...that for Dedeaux the artists' proper "function" stops at precisely that point at which their work might raise troubling questions of 'politics' and 'policy'." I think that Kester's point is a concern of the time and place that art and life merge into one. It can sometimes be a messy place, but I often refer back to a Claire Bishop quote that helps me navigate through this issue within my own practice, in which she writes, "Participatory art is not a privileged political medium, nor a ready-made solution to a society of the spectacle, but is as uncertain and precarious as democracy itself, neither are legitimated in advance but need continually to be performed and tested in every specific way." Returning back to Dawn Dedeaux's example, I feel that as artists we may tend to gravitate and feel comfortable functioning within the representative mode shielded by art institutions rather than allow the work to function beyond those boundaries in a sometimes challenging space. On that note, I think Kester raises some interesting concerns and questions, although I feel more limited in forming my own opinion without having seen Dawn Dedeaux's work in person, myself.

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The following are some of the photographs I took from the Women's March this Saturday! The experience was one of overwhelming solidarity and in the very first moments of entering the march, I felt chills all across my body at the sight of the immensity of the crowd. It was a truly inspiring experience! (On a side note, I was extremely overjoyed to have my friends join me on the march with their newborn baby of 5 weeks!)