Response to One Place After Another by Miwon Kwon

One of the first statements (articulated by Suzanne Lacy) that stood out to me in Kwon's text was the claim that new genre public artists find more "freedom" of working in "real" places. Maybe I'm being nit picky, but if anything I'd say that new genre public art (or whichever other label one wants to put on it) leaves room for less "freedom" as opposed to other art forms/mediums. Artists of this nature, generally, are critiqued and questioned more. Just last week, I attended a conversation between Sam Durant, Theaster Gates, and Charles Gaines, whom were questioned as to the long term impacts of their art, to which Charles responded that it is interesting that such questions are only posed toward political artists. On the extreme end of things, we might look at the case of Tania Bruguera, who's freedom was in fact severely limited about a year ago through the increased policing of her actions and movements, restricting her to Cuba. I guess it is interesting that at first thought one might find or perhaps even feel more freedom to engage with art beyond the institution, but ultimately there might be even more restraints as opposed to art on a gallery wall.

Further in the reading, I appreciated Kwon's recognition of public art's tendency to "overrun the pubic and the meaningfulness of local places and culture..." This of course brings up the issue of gentrification. How has public art aided in the gentrification of communities? How can we as artists recognize this and be more conscious of the decisions we make?

On another note, I also appreciated Kwon's detailing on the nuances of language, more specifically she writes about "community-specific" versus "site-specific," when discussing the art of Culture in Action. The term site is still associated with an institution as it is something that belongs to someone else. This is something I hadn't previously thought about. 

I especially found it extremely relevant to read about the appropriation on the concept of "community" from neoconservatives and furthermore, the Mac Donald quote, in which she expresses: "When social service advocates talk of 'community,' they are using a code word that has absolutely no reference to real communities." I think even more so today, in the wake of a Trump-era, things such as fake news have enabled such coding and abstraction of terms such as community and ultimately it is all a spectacle. Further on, Kwon expresses that we must reclaim the term 'community' from misrepresentation and misappropriation, but  I suppose I would challenge this and ask what new terms could we use/invent? Rather than working with "community," why not further deconstruct this? Kwon herself writes that this term is ambiguous, so why not embrace that ambiguity? Ambiguous spaces enable room for dissent.

As I continued reading through Kwon's case studies of participating artists I initially found myself dismayed by Elaine Reichek's proposal to work with Native American women in what the curators of Culture in Action claimed to be "self-serving," but as I read along I found that I was even more disappointed by the actions of the curators whom went so far as to uninviting Reichek from participation. While I agree with their sentiments and the ethics of not including such work, I would hope that the curators would spend more time with the artist to work out a better a solution, in which all parties are happy. Furthermore, it brings into question as to who has the authority to make such judgement calls or perhaps set the rules for socially engaged art? Museums/institutions don't "disinvite" artists whom they are going to display in a retrospective for instance, if something isn't working out the curators and artists work together - I'm not sure that there should be any exceptions for socially engaged art.

Lastly, Kwon also wrote about the limited lifespans of artist initiated community art once Culture in Action had culminated, which of course right away brought up the question of why the curators did not invite more Chicago-based artists, besides the two listed (Haha/Flood and Manglano-Ovalle)? I do also ponder the scale on which such art is judged - very often it is judged on the outcomes/effectiveness or timespan, but one thing that isn't very often studied are the little seeds that get planted via such community-engaged art. No one really knows the outcomes that play out and I think that's a really great ambiguous space to be in, as opposed to holding the artist accountable as though they are social service provider.