"This is a work in progress created by Steve Lambert, artist provocateur and Stephen Duncombe, theorist provocateur. We both consider ourselves engaged citizens and both think that using art and culture to transform the world is a good idea. But we are both haunted by the same question: How do we gauge the success of our projects? Hell, how do we even think about success when our goal is utopia? This site is a place to explore this and related questions."
http://howtowin.visitsteve.com/
Numerous interviews with artists and activists; some great ideas to think about here. I personally love the concept of the artist-as-citizen, and the role of/goals of artists as bringing about positive social change. Take a look—it's a neat project with intelligent conversations. Very inspiring.
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Yeah, I think civic duty and art should be emphasized more in the liberal art education system.
ReplyDeleteArt in a visual culture like ours is the most powerful tool to catalyze social reform and cultural change. Culture is the the expression of ideas symbolically. Therefore, art is the prime tool for effecting positive social change.
Looking at 20th century propaganda and 21st century advertising, it's clear that the language of visual art as a whole has been subverted and politicized by the oligarchy as a means to cement culture rather than change culture and to assert a collective nationalistic, economic identity held up by institutions that reinforce static cultural values.
But culture is ever in flux, no less so than today, where globalization perpetuated by transnational corporations (the ones using visual imagery and symbolism to sell us stuff) has caused all cultures to diffuse and acculturate, blending together all the visual symbols and ideas, technologies and values together.
No tribal culture today is unaware of westernistic modernity. This process of cultural diffusion on a global scale is basically what caused modern art and post-modern, or Globalistic art (my new art history term to explain post-post modernism); that is, art that combines a full range of cultural symbols.
Globalism therefore, is a visual tower of Babel because each symbol represents a cultural idea with it's own cultural function. To combine say, an african mask with a Japanese textile design, with Scandinavian writing laid out using Western graphic design techniques is scrambling, diffusing the cultural meanings of the visual elements.
I know the idea of Globalistic art is similar to post-modernism in that post-modern art is the recombination of existing ideas from every source, often for ironic and subversive purposes whereas Globalism is concerned with using the full cultural scope of visual images to effect culture change positively.
The idea of anti-advertising as found in Adbusters magazine for instance, or in Graffiti (the writing on the wall) are examples of art movements that forces itself into the public consciousness. I think that the success of the graffiti movement is because of the western concept of private ownership and the illegality of non-commissioned public art.
Now though, more graffiti writers are receiving private commissions, commissions from communities and non-profit community action groups.
Civic art is expressed through the public domain, must penetrate the collective conscious and now, in the 21st century there are more avenues than ever to express ideas publicly, specifically through the internet, self-publishing, legal and illegal street art and art happenings.
I think the most exciting thing about visual art is the immediacy and directness with which it transculturates people, causing them to wake up out of the habituality of their internal world, to question their values, to take an inventory of their lives, and to change.
I agree with what you have to say...however, I have a hard time believing that all of this visual information is internalized as much as you suggest. The hope is that a piece or series has the viewer question their values and make changes where necessary. Something like this is incredibly difficult to do however, considering that we all live a life that has been molded by our familial and cultural surroundings. Like anything else--an overload of information can send people into an uncomfortable shock....so where is the balance between sending a message while maintaining a sense of urgency? How far do you go to transcend your message for the majority of the world's population and still have it be appreciated?
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