Sunday 10/19 conversation + general summary

The meeting last Sunday was lengthy, as before, because there are so many issues on the table and we need to push to some resolution and decision relatively soon. I will characterize here what I believe was discussed at that meeting. I will also attempt to summarize where we stand at this point. If I missed anything, or have given the wrong impression of what was said, please reply.

We started discussing Lynn's project, Claire's List (after Claire Bishop), which is described in the project ideas section of the wiki. To put it simply, its a kind of Craig's List for Social Practice projects, providing the public-at-large an opportunity to structure and organize their own participatory projects. The strength of it is that it could grow in use and size well beyond our initial input, in part because the public would build it over time. (This gets around one of Lynn's critical problems that the artist' isn't single-handedly trying to fulfill some public need, which seems presumptuous to her and a bit too 60's). It could also help the public create new projects and activities in social space. On the downside, it was mentioned that it doesn't really get around the wide-eyed utopianism on the part of the artist/creator, because the artist is still setting up the proposition to begin with and the general structure. A second problem came up that people would just not use it, because the question of the nature of the exchange between participants has not been worked out. Try, for example, to imagine why a Stanford physicist might be part of it, or even any of us, given our busy schedules.......Lynn is going to retool the idea.

The next project discussed was Danielle's Reframe idea. See this on the wiki as well. There was enthusiasm for the idea but questions came up with how the reframers would be chosen and what kinds of reframing ideas would be activated. There were speculations about where the retooling shop could be installed - both in the museum and in a variety of locations around the Bay Area (it could be portable and easy to set up). It was mentioned that its admitted relationship (and inspiration) from William Pope L's "Black Factory" undermines the force of this idea. Danielle was not at the meeting to give the idea the next level of development because she somehow fell off my email list (many apologies!). So we need to see if we can take this idea further on Thursday.

Christian made an impassioned plea for us to consider focussing on the location given us for this project - the Koret educational center at SFMOMA. He and Michael visited it a few days and discussed its character. He suggested we do an excavation of what it is and how it functions to convey ideas about art and especially about the collection of SFMOMA. Because of these comments Brian visited two days ago and took a close look. The space has a very definite character and use which could be explored. Dominic described how it will be reconfigured for our events. There's one full wall projection space and then a separate projection on the back side of a large sandblasted glass divider. So two projection surfaces. The space has a very institutional vibe, as they say, and is pretty uninspiring. The final point made was that the Koret center could be a site for a project, but we need to have a sense of what that might be before we turn over our attention to it. Perhaps a preliminary excavation could be done.

Malak gave an enthusiastic presentation of her "Tableau Vivant" idea. She wants to make a SFMOMA/San Francisco extension of the large San Jose festival which has a stage with hundreds of people sitting in front of it watching the enactment of historical paintings. Her idea is to hire the company that produces this event and direct them to enacting some of the participatory projects in the SFMOMA show like Acconci's following pieces or Alys pushing the block of ice. This "Pageant of Artistic Masterpieces" would serve the critical function of highlighting Rudolf's canonization and museum-ifcation of participatory art - which somehow seems contradictory. Our group got stuck however, imagining how we could make this happen and we couldn't get to considering its critical vitality. The San Jose festival costs 4.1 million dollars and takes at least a year of preparation. The group was asked to think of how something like this could be manifested in an alternate form that we could do. The poet/critic Frances Richard from New York, our much praised class visitor, weighed in on this project as well. She thought that this gesture works to flatten all participatory art into one kind of thing, much like the museum canonization itself. She wondered why we didn't want to take our understanding of this form of art and these processes and make our own participatory project which critically engages the situation. (of course, this is what we are trying to do!).

There is also an idea on the blog that we have not discussed. It is Michael's 3-Institutions idea. we should discuss this on Thursday as well. 

If there are any other ideas that we should be actively considering, please put them back on the table. Also, its not too late for entirely new proposals. In the meantime, we need to see how far we can push and reshape the ideas above. We also have a mystery guest for Thursday, Ted had to cancel. Be sure to read the Kristine Podesva article.

 I also need to tell you about the state of our first artist production, by the larger collaboration between CCA/SFMOMA/Stanford by Jon Rubin. Its the mini-Hoover Institute. Stanford is being very resistant to it, or at least is not facilitating it, and we might need our Stanford cohorts to weigh in with support and engagement.

see you Thursday

Brian