Website visit: Guerrilla Girls

1. Identities & Inequalities & the Arts(access to careers, tastes and the presence of the arts in everyday life) Website visit: Guerrilla Girls

2. The Arts & Identity Issues of Art World participants • have looked at “consumers” or audiences, today participants in art worlds • Identity issues for participants • Labeling (who is considered an “artist”?) • “representations” of identities in art (ex. ambivalence in artists’ discourse, presentation of self) • status distinctions (within & between art worlds) • symbolic boundaries • material constraints • biases & values imbedded in practices & institutions • participation of minorities & the dispossessed in art worlds

3. Lecture Outline • 1- Discriminatory Dimensions of Art Worlds & resistance • 2-Traditional cultures, new practices and the international art market • 3-Artistic Practice and socio-political & cultural action

4. Discriminatory Dimensions of Artistic Practices & Institutions • “Institutionalized” sexism & racism • Gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, religion, national affiliations, geography • Tensions between artistic ‘freedom’ and socio-cultural conventions

5. Recall: the “triple game” of contemporary art • Sociologist Nathalie Heinich’s theory of how the arts push the boundaries of what is acceptable • Transgression (of norms, tastes & values by artists) • Rejection (of artworks by publics) • integration (of new art endowed with the critical acclaim of art world insiders) • Theory that contemporary artists must push Boundaries pertaining to aesthetic values & other socio-cultural values (ex.photos by Robert Mapplethorpe)

6. Examples of Critical Discourse Analysis of Women in the Arts: • DeNora on Performing gender in history of piano performance • Guerilla Girls-- http://www.guerrillagirls.com/ • Aim of exposing hegemony of white males of European heritage in contemporary Art Worlds

7. Guerrilla Girls Poster– advantages of being a woman artist

8. Guerrilla Girls Poster—Bus companies

9. GG poster: Hormone imbalance, melanin deficiency

10. GG poster about collectors

11. GG Poster: Helms

12. Guerrilla Girlsoriginally covered skin to hide identity further

13. King Kong

14. Kong and Faye Wray • Beauty & the beast imagery • Plus word play (Guerrillas as underground fighters too)

15. GG poster INGRES

16. INGRES—Odalisque

17. Another approach to resisting hegemonic restrictions on participation in art worlds: Studies of “exceptions” (success stories) Jacob Lawrence, Ironers 1943.

18. Rewriting the “canon” • Germaine Greer The Obstacle Race. The Fortunes of women Painters and their work, 1979 • Ex. Marcia Tucker et al. Out there. Marginalization and Contemporary cultures New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1992. • Griselda Pollock Differencing the Canon-- Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories, routledge, 1999 • Boim, Albert. The Art of Exclusion. Representing blacks in the nineteenth Centuryk, Smithsonian 1990 • Trinh T. Minh-ha, Cornell West etc.

19. Art-making in Traditional Cultural Practices Outside Western European Mainstream: Example: Australian Aboriginal Art E. Michaels--”For a cultural future. Francis Jupurrurla makes TV at Yuendumu” • interplay of artistic & cultural practices/values • Warlpiri Media Association broadcasts as act of cultural appropriation of media • key issues: • Aboriginal languages • social diversity of groups • social conventions for distribution of roles, knowledge (images/texts) & memories (the” law”)

20. Example: Naming Practices of Warlpiri • naming conventions & concepts of personhood • skin & subsection terms • define relations & knowledge

21. Key problems in adapting cinematic practices for Warlpiri • western practice of identification of individual artist • avoidance of generic “primitive” • indistinctness of boundaries between authorship & oeuvre • restrictions on who makes or views expressive acts

22. “The Law”&Dreamings • tradition & practice • site for inspiration & creativity • link to person’s “place” (age, gender, kinship category, “country”) • “ownership” of stories, names, images that recount the “Law” • taboo about dead people’s names/possessions Pansy Napangardi painting

23. Dreaming & the Law--New South Wales Curriculum Support

24. Traditional practices: body & sand painting

25. Jean Nampitjinpa, Bush Onion Dreaming,acrylic on canvas, 1993

26. Michaels on reconciling new media & traditions • Coniston Story -murder of trapper as “origin story” • technique “observational or direct” cinema • resistance to “making things up” for the camera • acceptance of multiple meanings • Rethinking relationship between director/actor

27. Community solutions & uses of new media • “fire ceremony” --filmed in 1967 by anthropologist • viewing issues (dead?)--deceased in “background” • banned ceremony(by church) • use as learning tool • model for shooting new performance • edited tapes filed as “not to look” • reproduction & social issues

28. Can video make us strong? Will it make us lose the law? Contemporary contradictions traditional forms of cultural practices & new media---CULTURAL FUTURE political survival of a people depends on ability to REPRODUCE CULTURAL FORMS Questions of the Warlpiri

29. Ethnographic Objects in the Art/culture system • factors in classification of art/artifacts (non-art) • formalist, aesthetic, spiritual/ritual • context (cultural, historical, aesthetic) • commodity, technology • cultural signs vs. artistic--changing categories (beautiful, cultural, authentic) • ethical issues

30. Artistic & Cultural Property in Public Museums • Three examples of transgressions & problems with secret, sacred knowledge or things (Marcus) • Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act • Academic journal article about Hopis • Publication about Aboriginal group (Yiwara) with photos of sacred places

31. Censorship of Secret-Sacred Knowledge about Aboriginal Groups • Challenges to liberal thought, freedom of expression, right to know etc… • Changing boundaries in what can be known and by whom (many factors, even when customs constant) • BUT censorship is consistent with internal controls on rights to display and share knowledge • New dynamics in politics of identity and cultural heritage for cultural renewal and survival

32. Teaching the Arts as a form of ‘action research’ & communication Example: Video clip ‘Kumba’

33. Artistic Activities for Social Change • Artists as members of social/cultural “avant garde”— • anticipate social change • provoke resistance (ex. anti-war, AIV AIDS benefits etc.) • inspire trends (ex. fashions) • support charitable causes (ex. AIDS activism) • provide leadership

34. Artistic Practice as Social Action: Samuel Mockbee’s “Architecture of Decency”—Rural Studio • Architecture students in Alabama work on buildings for rural poor: homes, children’s centre, marketplace, sports facilities • “sustainable” architecture, social welfare, practical experience

35. Mason’s Bend • Small, very poor rural community living in makeshift housing

36. Bryant (Hay Bale House)

37. 1994 & 2000 (r) Views of the Hay Bale House

38. Addition for grandchildren’s sleeping quarters

39. Smokehouse

40. Other Projects

41. Links between social conscience & high culture aesthetics • Modernism/postmodernism • High tech materials & tastes but “low tech” & low cost building solutions • Interaction with clients & feedback from them • Community-based projects • Note references to architectural traditions in introduction

42. Judith Levine: Theatre for the Forgotten • Theatre in prisons & with “social outcasts” • Benevolence & art– different than “art for arts sake” • Historic example: Beckett’s End Game

43. Theatre for the Forgotten • Funding issues: • Volunteers at the beginning • Touring inmates as part of theatre • Money for “training”, for arts diffusion • Funding for social support (education, employment readiness, counselling components) • change in emphasis– theatre professionals replaced by social workers & arts therapists • In 1970s– end of growth of guerrilla theatre movements

44. Debates: • Arts for art sake vs. arts as social-political action • Arts as “normative” (teaching shared values)– like debates about the arts & citizenship • Using other funding as a pretext to fund the arts • Use of arts funding for social programmes • Definition about what is art? • who can teach the arts?

45. Impact of Arts as Social Service • Organizational identity • Survival strategies • Changes to the actual way in which the art is done • Other types of activist theatre: ex. Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed

46. Gran Fury and AIDS activism • Gran Fury– name for an artists’ collective (1988-1992) • AIDS awareness • public advertisement campaign (silence=death) • Article about Quebec campaign

47. Political Art and Action • Against indifference to AIDS & against homophobia • But did not do <homework> in Quebec context (health coverage better there than in US, language differences) • Other causes • Against Gentrification (middle class move back to urban centres, loss of low cost housing for poor people) • Pure food movement

48. Note to Users of these Outlines-- • not all material covered in class appears on these outlines-- important examples, demonstrations and discussions aren’t written down here. • Classes are efficient ways communicating information and provide you will an opportunity for regular learning. These outlines are provided as a study aid not a replacement for classes.