Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

 

Archive

 

Volume 15 Number 2, August 2014

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What we made: Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation explores a variety of participatory art projects in contemporary North America, all of which seek to have social benefits. These different projects, to greater and lesser degrees, all involve relationship, dialogue, and collaboration between ‘artists’ and ‘participants.’ The conventional process of a single artist creating a work which is primarily of aesthetic value, and over which they have sole authorship is problematized. Power relationships and elitism are consciously disturbed, and art becomes a de-authored collective endeavour.

 

This is a publication that will be appreciated by artists, educators, and activists, as well as academics. The book begins by considering the historical, social, cultural, philosophical and political contexts that have inspired cooperative artists in the North American context. The book’s editor Tom Finkelpearl describes the significance of social movements beginning in the 1960s - including the civil rights movement, the counterculture, and feminism - and considers how these continue to influence the work of cooperative artists. Ideas about equality, the fundamental and inextricable connections between people, and about the importance of community organising, are situated as the founding ideologies for many of the projects described in detail in the chapters of the book.

 

Many of the projects described here began with a single artist, and a moment of inspiration. However they were often simply too complex, time consuming, or multidisciplinary to be achieved by the artist alone. Seeking the knowledge and expertise of others was vital to what was produced. Collaboration begins out of necessity but it is also woven into the process, ethics and outcomes of the work. Art is seen as fundamentally relational.

 

Finkelpearl defines cooperative art as a diverse spectrum of practice which includes all projects on which people have worked together. Cooperative projects that begin with a single artists’ concept or idea but which are not necessarily realised by the labour or hands of that artist, and projects where an artist sets up a scripted situation in which audience participation and interaction is the artistic product can all be included in this definition. Although a cooperative ethos infuses all the projects described in this book, what was made differs widely in the different examples shared across the book’s chapters. Interesting debates about aesthetics, the role of artists, and what constitutes a worthwhile product are found throughout the book.

 

The book presents ten different projects which all involve art as a form of social cooperation, illustrating the breadth and diversity of cooperative art. In addition to offering a detailed and reflective examples of art as social cooperation in practice, each chapter also include reflections on the intentions, inspirations, achievements and challenges faced along the way.  

 

The chapters which form the body of the book are all presented in the form of conversations, interactive dialogues between Finkelpearl, and the artists/activists/academics/collaborators involved in each project. Showcasing the diversity of collaborative art is clearly an important aim for this work, but paradoxically this breadth and variety and the format chosen for the presentation of these stories is perhaps the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of this book. The conversational format which has been used throughout has the advantage of giving the stories of praxis within the chapters’ an intimacy and immediacy, but this stylistic similarity throughout the book, coupled with the rich diversity of stories and histories in each chapter can also make the stories blur into one another somewhat. For me each example could perhaps have been given a little more space, and have benefitted from greater social/cultural/political and historical context and reflection.

 

In the concluding chapter of the book, Finkelpearl offers the reader an in-depth analysis of the underpinning concepts and the ongoing impacts of Project Row Houses (Chapter 5). He links this example of social sculpture - of reclaiming derelict public housing and involving architects, community members and outside supporters, artists and activists to create affordable public housing and build community - to broader social and political ideas. This depth of analysis and expert commentary helps the reader to appreciate the ideas and impacts of Project Row Houses, making this particular story one of the most memorable and successful elements of this book.

 

This book is extremely rich and thought provoking. It successfully challenges the reader to think differently and creatively about the ways in which art can and should be made, who might be involved, and to what purposes. It challenges us to consider possible ways in which cooperative art might influence and interact with our communities and daily lives. Artists are presented as people who are not only able to see things differently, but also as people who can and should be catalysts for translating that vision into tangible action in the world.