- 119 Payson Ave. #6F
New York, NY 10034 USA
- Art Studio, History, Philosophy, Education, Anthropology, Political Science, and 24 moreCommunication, Architecture, Art History, Cultural Studies, Collective Action, Gentrification, Art Theory, Practice-led research, Practice-led art research, Activist Art, Art Theory and Politics, Art and Activism, Social Movements, Political Art, Participatory and Relational Arts, Contemporary Art, Neoliberalism, Marxism, Avant-Garde, Visual Arts, Social Practice, Socially Engaged Art, Public Art, and Practice-led research in creative artsedit
- MORE ESSAYS ARE FOUND AT: http://www.gregorysholette.com/ & https://gregsholette.tumblr.com/ Dr. Gregory Sholette i... moreMORE ESSAYS ARE FOUND AT: http://www.gregorysholette.com/ & https://gregsholette.tumblr.com/ Dr. Gregory Sholette is a New York-based artist, writer, teacher and activist. He is a Professor at Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY), as well as Co-Director with Professor Chloë Bass of Social Practice CUNY headquartered in the Center for the Humanities, Graduate Center, and an associate of the Art, Design and the Public Domain program of Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. Sholette holds a PhD in History and Memory Studies from the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2017), he is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program in Critical Theory (1996), Graduate of University of California San Diego (1995), The Cooper Union School of Art (1979), and Bucks County Community College (AAS 1976). Sholette is the curator of Imaginary Archive: a peripatetic collection of documents speculating on a past whose future never arrived. His art and research theorize and document issues of collective cultural labor, activist art, and counter-historical representation. He is active with Gulf Labor Coalition and was a co-founder of the collectives Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D: 1980-1988), and REPOhistory (1989-2000). His most recent publications include the books Delirium and Resistance: Activist Art and the Crisis of Capitalism (2017); Art As Social Action (with Chloë Bass: 2018); Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture (2011) currently being translated into Portuguese and Spanish editions.edit
- (PhD) dr. Christa-Maria Lerm-Hayes, the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlandsedit
... that depicted an iconic cowboy on horseback with a bold caption that read "Area Natives ... of-the-century workers' organization known as the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies. ... Dion's largely... more
... that depicted an iconic cowboy on horseback with a bold caption that read "Area Natives ... of-the-century workers' organization known as the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies. ... Dion's largely symbolic investigations, borrow from the little known history of left politics and ...
Research Interests:
* This is the introductory chapter to THE ART OF ACTIVISM AND THE ACTIVISM OF ART (Lund Humphries, UK, 2022) * Since the global financial crash of 2008, artists have become increasingly engaged in a wide range of cultural activism... more
* This is the introductory chapter to THE ART OF ACTIVISM AND THE ACTIVISM OF ART (Lund Humphries, UK, 2022) *
Since the global financial crash of 2008, artists have become increasingly engaged in a wide range of cultural activism targeted against capitalism, political authoritarianism, colonial legacies, gentrification, but also in opposition to their own exploitation. They have also absorbed and reflected forms of protest within their art practice itself. The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art maps, critiques, celebrates and historicises activist art, exploring its current urgency alongside the processes which have given rise to it. Gregory Sholette approaches his subject from the dual perspective of commentator (as scholar and writer) and insider (as activist artist), in order to propose that the narrowing gap separating forms of activist art from an aesthetics of protest is part of a broader paradigm shift constituted by the multiplying crises within contemporary capitalism and democratic governance across the globe.
Since the global financial crash of 2008, artists have become increasingly engaged in a wide range of cultural activism targeted against capitalism, political authoritarianism, colonial legacies, gentrification, but also in opposition to their own exploitation. They have also absorbed and reflected forms of protest within their art practice itself. The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art maps, critiques, celebrates and historicises activist art, exploring its current urgency alongside the processes which have given rise to it. Gregory Sholette approaches his subject from the dual perspective of commentator (as scholar and writer) and insider (as activist artist), in order to propose that the narrowing gap separating forms of activist art from an aesthetics of protest is part of a broader paradigm shift constituted by the multiplying crises within contemporary capitalism and democratic governance across the globe.
Research Interests: Social Movements, Archival Studies, Cultural Politics, Situationism, Black Arts Movement, and 15 moreArt Theory and Politics, Activist Art, Neoliberalisms and the Transformation of the Cultural Sphere, Labor unions, Situationist International, Institutional Critique, Art and Activism, Clement Greenberg, Art and Politics, May 1968, Museum and Heritage Studies, Tactical media, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Alt-Right
Exploring the social, political and curatorial aspects of the Documenta 15 controversy (2022), this essay first published by e-flux for Art Agenda Reports argues that the Indonesian collective ruangrupa critically intervened in the... more
Exploring the social, political and curatorial aspects of the Documenta 15 controversy (2022), this essay first published by e-flux for Art Agenda Reports argues that the Indonesian collective ruangrupa critically intervened in the acclaimed event in Kassel, Germany, occupying and opening-up its structure, before the mainstream art world sought to shut it down as an act of reprisal and warning to future attempts at curating "badly" as resistance.
Research Interests: Anti-Semitism, Palestinian Culture, Global South, Art and Activism, Decolonial Thought, and 7 moreSocial history and collective memory in art, Okwui Enwezor, Curating contemporary art, Colonialism and cultural significations, Imagined identities on a global postmodern world, Art and cognitive semiotics., Lucy Lippard, Tania Bruguera, and ruangrupa
It appears to be particular and perhaps even unique to the field of the visual arts, especially over the past century, but especially the past 50 years, that those who labor within it feel an obligation to oppose, reject, boycott, and... more
It appears to be particular and perhaps even unique to the field of the visual arts, especially over the past century, but especially the past 50 years, that those who labor within it feel an obligation to oppose, reject, boycott, and sometimes engage in combat against the same establishment that they in turn depend upon as producers. Try to imagine any other cohort of highly educated professionals doing the same thing. Given this is a primary
condition of artistic work, it has inevitably generated a resistant response from art’s institutional sector. This paper offers a brief history of this
love/hate (or perhaps hate/love?) relationship between art and state/private/religious management, along with a few thoughts about how this complex affair continues to inform and to shape contemporary art in the 21st century. Published to accompany a major exhibition held at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne during spring 2022 (18 February - 15 May),
condition of artistic work, it has inevitably generated a resistant response from art’s institutional sector. This paper offers a brief history of this
love/hate (or perhaps hate/love?) relationship between art and state/private/religious management, along with a few thoughts about how this complex affair continues to inform and to shape contemporary art in the 21st century. Published to accompany a major exhibition held at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne during spring 2022 (18 February - 15 May),
Research Interests:
Clowns always speak of the same thing, they speak of hunger; hunger for food, hunger for sex, but also hunger for dignity, hunger for identity, hunger for power. In fact, they introduce questions about who commands, who protests, and who... more
Clowns always speak of the same thing, they speak of hunger; hunger for food, hunger for sex, but also hunger for dignity, hunger for identity, hunger for power. In fact, they introduce questions about who commands, who protests, and who laughs, all necessary dispositions in a precarious age of neoliberal, enterprise culture. This 2011 essay is a chapter in the book Imagining resistance: Visual culture and activism in Canada, edited by Kirsty Robertson and J. Keri Cronin (Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2011). pp 38-59.
ISBN 9781554583119
ISBN 9781554583119
Research Interests: Political Economy, Aesthetics, Social Sciences, Art Economics and Markets, Marxism, and 10 moreCanadian art, Artistic Autonomy and Social Change, Neoliberalism, Political Art, Creative Class, Activist Art, Institutional Critique, Artist Collectives, Collectivism & Individualism, and The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army
This op-ed style essay examines the wildly exaggerated claims made for Non-Fungible Tokens or NFT artworks. Above all, it questions the NFT's peculiar reversal of digital media's inherent interchangeability by turning back to the... more
This op-ed style essay examines the wildly exaggerated claims made for Non-Fungible Tokens or NFT artworks. Above all, it questions the NFT's peculiar reversal of digital media's inherent interchangeability by turning back to the centuries-old legacy of individual authorship and visionary private property. "NFT Fever: Is it Time for a Great Refusal 2.0?," was originally written for and published by the Portuguese cultural journal, Electra Magazine, and is hereby updated with some important corrections to the technical details. https://www.fundacaoedp.pt/en/content/electra-magazine
Research Interests: Art Economics and Markets, Herbert Marcuse, Alternative Economies, Digital Arts, Computer Art and Technocultures, and 12 moreAuthorship, Gramsci and Cultural Hegemony, Lev Manovich, Online Auctions, Cryptocurrency, Geert Lovink, Blockchain, Dread Scott, Crypto Art, NFT Marketplace, Non Fungible Token, and Beeple
The concept of Art Worker first appeared in the US context in the 1930s, returning in the late 1960s particularly amongst members of Art Workers' Coalition in New York City and similar, vanguard cultural groups. But what do we make of the... more
The concept of Art Worker first appeared in the US context in the 1930s, returning in the late 1960s particularly amongst members of Art Workers' Coalition in New York City and similar, vanguard cultural groups. But what do we make of the curious transformation of this idea from the mid-20th century dissident outlook of Conceptual art where it served to a de-privilege the legacy of artist exceptionalism during a period of widespread social re-appraisal especially by disaffected young people, to the period of post-1968, the pessimism of the 1970s, followed by the rise of the neoliberal notion of creative worker where everyone was now supposed to work like an artist by "thinking outside the box"? This paper explores this question by focusing on the often agonizing self-critique of a small group of Marxian inspired artists in New York City who were determined to transform their practice into a form of cultural activism supportive of broader liberation struggles on the very cusp of the "free market" economic and ideological conversion of the 1980s.
Research Interests: Herbert Marcuse, Italian art, Neoliberalism, Detroit, History and Culture, Antonio Negri, and 14 moreConceptual Art, Art Theory and Politics, Creative Class, 20th century Avant-Garde, Autonomia, Italian Marxism, Art and Activism, Art and Politics, Paolo Virno, Art Theory and Criticism, Lucy Lippard, League of Revolutionary Black Workers, michael corris, and Detroit Labor activism
We are witnessing today the full-on return of socially engaged cultural activism, not only amongst embedded movement artists and community-based cultural workers, but by professionally trained, MFA-bearing artists who refuse the... more
We are witnessing today the full-on return of socially engaged cultural activism, not only amongst embedded movement artists and community-based cultural workers, but by professionally trained, MFA-bearing artists who refuse the conventional opposition separating art from politics, from current events, and from life in general. Still, what makes this return of a highly politicized cultural consciousness so very robust and far-reaching today? [* Originally entitled, "Can a Transformative Avant-Garde Art Survive in a World of Lolcats, Doomsday Preppers, and Xenophobic Frog Memes? Do We Have a Choice?" ]
Research Interests:
Virology enters this 1984 text written just as I was discovering Derrida's ideas (in English), so please pardon the datedness of this, but I start off with a startling and prescient quote by biologist Lewis Thomas: "the viruses, instead... more
Virology enters this 1984 text written just as I was discovering Derrida's ideas (in English), so please pardon the datedness of this, but I start off with a startling and prescient quote by biologist Lewis Thomas: "the viruses, instead of being single-minded agents of disease and death, now begin to look more like mobile genes. We live in a dancing matrix of viruses; they dart, rather like bees, from organism to organism, from plant to insect to mammal to me and back again, and into the sea, tugging along pieces of this genome, strings of genes from that, transplanting grafts of DNA, passing around heredity as though at a great party."
Research Interests:
A series of remarkable gains by organized museum workers in the United States is now in danger of being erased. I am writing this on April 11 2020, as all "non-essential" businesses, including museums, have been physically shuttered in... more
A series of remarkable gains by organized museum workers in the United States is now in danger of being erased. I am writing this on April 11 2020, as all "non-essential" businesses, including museums, have been physically shuttered in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The result over the past few weeks is that hundreds of museum workers, many who are newly unionized, have being furloughed, or layed-off, even as the depth and longevity of the crisis remains uncertain. This short paper was generated during a far more hopeful moment as museum staff from the New Museum and Guggenheim to the LA Museum of Contemporary were unionizing in an effort to secure and protect their typically precarious jobs from the uncertainties of the marketplace. It was also a time, only weeks ago now, that sales of art soared into the billions. And what I argued then is that the cultural workers' drive to self-organize can in part be traced back to the practice of institutional critique, an artistic methodology studied by this generation of museum staff as they pursued their degrees in art or art history (BFA, MFA, MA or PhD). First presented at the University of Nicosia Research Foundation in Cyprus, this text was written for the "UnConference" organized by Evanthia Tselika and her associates in the summer of 2019. More about that event and other presentations can be found here: http://www.unrf.ac.cy/files/unconference-proceedings-phygital.pdf
Research Interests:
The title of this essay, which was written for a book about the Peace Press published by The Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles, comes from an awkward discovery by Josh MacPhee and the late Dara Greenwald in 2008.... more
The title of this essay, which was written for a book about the Peace Press published by The Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles, comes from an awkward discovery by Josh MacPhee and the late Dara Greenwald in 2008. While researching materials for an exhibition they were curating about social movement art for Exit Art (NYC not-for-profit gallery now closed) they came across a post-it note "not cool enough to catalog" attached to posters in the PAD/D Archive at the Museum of Modern Art. Using this anecdote as a jumping-off point this essay attempts to invert the usual way such movement culture is discussed by suggesting that well-known artists such as Andy Warhol or Richard Serra drew upon an ethereal body of fugitive posters, radical Left imagery and political graphic visual tropes that constitute a "phantom archive" informing both "professional" and informal art works when it comes to making a "statement." [From: Kaplan, Ilee, et al. Peace Press Graphics 1967-1987: Art in the Pursuit of Social Change. University Art Museum, California State University, 2011. ]
Research Interests: Social Movements, Political Art, Social History of Art, Activist Art, DIY culture, and 10 moreAndy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, John Heartfield, Richard Serra, Socio-Political Graphics Graphic Design for Social Justice, Social Media and Public Engagement, Social Movements that Influence the Arts, Science and Technology, Political posters, Socially Engaged Art, Martha Rosler, and center for the study of political graphics
Challenging ideas about class, debt, and labor as set forth by such arts and culture writers as Dave Beech, Ben Davis, Coco Fusco, Kerstin Stakemeier, Marina Vishmidt and Hans Abbing among others, this essay proposes that "there are... more
Challenging ideas about class, debt, and labor as set forth by such arts and culture writers as Dave Beech, Ben Davis, Coco Fusco, Kerstin Stakemeier, Marina Vishmidt and Hans Abbing among others, this essay proposes that "there are exactly as many artists as the system requires for reproducing itself." It was written for the book Delirium and Resistance: Activist Art and the Crisis of Capitalism (Pluto Press 2017).
Research Interests: Contemporary Art, Arts Education, Creative Industries, Neoliberalism, Arts Education and Pedagogy, and 15 moreActivist Art, Neoliberalisms and the Transformation of the Cultural Sphere, Art and Activism, Culture Industry, Community Art, Student Loan Debt, Neoliberalism and Education, Politial Economy of Culture and Communicatiion, Socially Engaged Art, Operaist Theories of Post Fordism, Occupy Museums, Marina Vishmidt , Ben Davis, dave beecg, and randy martin
This is the concluding essay written for the book Art As Social Action: An Introduction To The Principles and Practice of Teaching Social Practice Art with Chloë Bass and Social Practice Queens (Skyhorse Press 2018) and it is both a... more
This is the concluding essay written for the book Art As Social Action: An Introduction To The Principles and Practice of Teaching Social Practice Art with Chloë Bass and Social Practice Queens (Skyhorse Press 2018) and it is both a personal and theoretical reflection on the peculiar pedagogical qualities and quandaries of teaching socially engaged art in an academic, college level context.
Research Interests: Art Practice as Research, Contemporary Art, Paulo Freire, John Dewey, Bertolt Brecht, and 15 moreMichel de Certeau, Activist Art, John Cage, Allan Kaprow, Black Mountain College, Henry Giroux, Paolo Virno, Augusto Boal, Socially engaged Art, Community-based Art Practice, Pablo Helguera, Art as Social Practice, Joseph Beuys Social Sculpture, Socially Engaged Art, and Fred Moten
The practice of repurposing resources that already exist—versus innovating or engineering new ones—is an area of significant overlap between contemporary art and twenty-first-century capitalism. Low-risk and relatively low-cost, the... more
The practice of repurposing resources that already exist—versus innovating or engineering new ones—is an area of significant overlap between contemporary art and twenty-first-century capitalism. Low-risk and relatively low-cost, the process of creative reuse generates fantastic value-adding possibilities. Or so it seems. For even as real estate speculators and city planners discover the value of high culture for upgrading urban infrastructures, so too have a growing number of contemporary artists learned to mimic and perhaps intentionally mistranslate neoliberal enterprise culture's urban strategies into a repertoire of exonomic tools and “art+realty” hybrids that game the system against itself. Whether post-Fordist capitalism now resembles art or vice versa, virtually everything we thought we knew about “serious” culture has been peeled away with astonishing force, leaving behind a raw, and in some ways vulnerable thing: a bare art world, fully congruent with the political and economic emergency that marks our contemporaneous present.
Research Interests: Contemporary Art, Gentrification, Urban Studies, Creative Industries, Adaptive Reuse, and 15 moreCreative City, Art Market, Activist Art, Sustainable Urban Regeneration and Development, Art and Gentrification, Socially engaged Art, African American Art, Community-based Art Practice, Place Making, Socially Engaged Art, Turner Prize, Urban Planning, planning chicago, Theaster Gates, Conflict Kitchen, and Dan Peterman and Ken Dunn
In January 2018, at the request of Grant Kester editor and founder of FIELD: A Journal of Socially-Engaged Art Criticism, I asked several dozen associates around the world if they would submit a report about current, local conditions of... more
In January 2018, at the request of Grant Kester editor and founder of FIELD: A Journal of Socially-Engaged Art Criticism, I asked several dozen associates around the world if they would submit a report about current, local conditions of cultural innovation and resistance, especially in opposition to the rise of extreme Right wing politics since the 2016 Brexit and US elections. One year later these reflections have been collected in a double issue of FIELD numbers 12 and 13 and available online at: http://field-journal.com/issue-12?cat=30 . This essay serves as the introduction to this special issue. I wish to thank Grant Kester for encouraging me to organize this project, along with his remarkable team of UCSD based editors –Erika Barbosa, Noni Brynjolson, Paloma Checa-Gismero, Jonah Gray, Alex Kershaw and Jordan Rosez- as well as the outstanding artists, intellectuals and activists who contributed their insights in the form of thirty-six international reports including:
Ireland (Dublin)
Emma Mahony
UK (Plyymouth)
Kim Charnley
Poland (Warsaw)
Kuba Szreder
Serbia (Belgrade)
rena raedle
Australia (Melbourne)
Nikos Papastergiadis
Germany (U. Zeppelin, Friedrichshafen)
Karen van den Berg
France (Paris)
Vanessa Theodoropoulou
S. Africa (Cape Town)
Nkule Mabaso
Mexico (Puebla)
Alberto López Cuenca
Colombia (Bogotá)
Jimena Andrade, Victoria Argoty, Daniel Castellanos,
Camila Cifuentes, Miguel Estupiñán, María Gamarra,
Guerthy Gutiérrez, Susana Lyons, Silvia Valderrama,
Esthefanny Yague, Nicolás Vargas.
US Great Lakes Region,
Dan S Wang
Brazil (São Paulo )
Andre Mesquita
Sweden (Gothenburg)
Fredrik Svensk
Russia (St. Petersburg)
Dmitry Vilensky & Chto Delat?
Puerto Rico/S.Bronx,
Libertad Guerra & Monxo Lopez
China (Hong Kong)
Bo Zheng
West Coast (Bay Area),
Jeffrey Skoller
Palestine/Gaza,
Amin Husain & Nitasha Dhillon
S. Korea,
Heng-Gil Han
Italy (Venice)
Marco Baravalle
Philadelphia
Nato Thompson
Indigenous Canada
Lindsay Nixon
India
Mriganka Madhukaillya
Bangladesh
Katatare Prajapati Collective
Networked World
Chloë Bass
NATO Alliance
Marc Leger
Hungary
Kata Benedek & Ágnes Básthy
European Academic Precariousness
Carlos Garrido Castellano
Ireland (Dublin)
Emma Mahony
UK (Plyymouth)
Kim Charnley
Poland (Warsaw)
Kuba Szreder
Serbia (Belgrade)
rena raedle
Australia (Melbourne)
Nikos Papastergiadis
Germany (U. Zeppelin, Friedrichshafen)
Karen van den Berg
France (Paris)
Vanessa Theodoropoulou
S. Africa (Cape Town)
Nkule Mabaso
Mexico (Puebla)
Alberto López Cuenca
Colombia (Bogotá)
Jimena Andrade, Victoria Argoty, Daniel Castellanos,
Camila Cifuentes, Miguel Estupiñán, María Gamarra,
Guerthy Gutiérrez, Susana Lyons, Silvia Valderrama,
Esthefanny Yague, Nicolás Vargas.
US Great Lakes Region,
Dan S Wang
Brazil (São Paulo )
Andre Mesquita
Sweden (Gothenburg)
Fredrik Svensk
Russia (St. Petersburg)
Dmitry Vilensky & Chto Delat?
Puerto Rico/S.Bronx,
Libertad Guerra & Monxo Lopez
China (Hong Kong)
Bo Zheng
West Coast (Bay Area),
Jeffrey Skoller
Palestine/Gaza,
Amin Husain & Nitasha Dhillon
S. Korea,
Heng-Gil Han
Italy (Venice)
Marco Baravalle
Philadelphia
Nato Thompson
Indigenous Canada
Lindsay Nixon
India
Mriganka Madhukaillya
Bangladesh
Katatare Prajapati Collective
Networked World
Chloë Bass
NATO Alliance
Marc Leger
Hungary
Kata Benedek & Ágnes Básthy
European Academic Precariousness
Carlos Garrido Castellano
Research Interests: Indigenous Studies, Globalization, Middle East & North Africa, Contemporary Art, Neo-Fascism, and 15 moreIsrael/Palestine, Contemporary Arts, South and Central American Politics, Contemporary South African Art, Activist Art, Art and Activism, Central and Eastern Europe, Social Capital in a networked world, Community-based Art Practice, Southern European politics and government, The Far Right: Anti-Immigration Parties, Neofascist and Extreme Right Parties in Europe, Socially Engaged Art, Counter globalization Movement, Anti Capitalist Social Movements, and Brexit
For well over one hundred years, at regular punctuated intervals, and perhaps even before you finish this sentence, someone somewhere in the world is preparing to detonate an artistic manifesto. The objective is clear enough: carve out a... more
For well over one hundred years, at regular punctuated intervals, and perhaps even before you finish this sentence, someone somewhere in the world is preparing to detonate an artistic manifesto. The objective is clear enough: carve out a yawning cavity within the otherwise predictable topography of art historical tropes and social norms. Meanwhile, at this strange and uncanny present moment, President Trump is at best a third-rate Marinetti whose digital declarations ping-pong across a planet tethered together by networks of immeasurable fiber optic cable, concrete arteries of automobile-choked highway, containerized shipping channels, privatized public spaces, real estate laws, reality TV politics, and a pharmaceutically infantilized global population.
An essay commissioned for the exhibition, "A Moderate Proposal," and published by the Pitzer College Art Galleries, 2018, curated by Ciara Ennis and Jennifer Vanderpool: https://www.pitzer.edu/manifesto/
An essay commissioned for the exhibition, "A Moderate Proposal," and published by the Pitzer College Art Galleries, 2018, curated by Ciara Ennis and Jennifer Vanderpool: https://www.pitzer.edu/manifesto/
Research Interests:
Along with the social antagonism that fully networked culture fosters with its panoptic vulnerability to surveillance and self-obsessive tendencies (such as sharing one’s privacy with thousands of others as well as corporate marketing... more
Along with the social antagonism that fully networked culture fosters with its panoptic vulnerability to surveillance and self-obsessive tendencies (such as sharing one’s privacy with thousands of others as well as corporate marketing specialists), there are also no barricades or prohibitions that prevent assemblies of authoritarian and white supremacist bodies from similarly using networked culture to assemble in an effort to eclipse (or to affirm) their own dark matter obscurity. And this is precisely what we have seen over the past few years across the globe, at an accelerating pace.
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An inner link has always connected the artistic avant-garde with acts of insurgency carried out by socially disenfranchised populations insofar as both embrace the possibility of an emancipated future that is radically at odds with the... more
An inner link has always connected the artistic avant-garde with acts of insurgency carried out by socially disenfranchised populations insofar as both embrace the possibility of an emancipated future that is radically at odds with the present (picture Gustave Courbet
helping to topple the Vendome Column in
1871), except something about such historical repetition and reenactment at this time –a moment best described as an uncanny present: a present unfamiliar in its very presentness (Rebecca Bryant)– cries out for something like verification. The essay (published in ASAP Journal 3.2 2018) asks is such a thing as proof of authenticity even possible?
helping to topple the Vendome Column in
1871), except something about such historical repetition and reenactment at this time –a moment best described as an uncanny present: a present unfamiliar in its very presentness (Rebecca Bryant)– cries out for something like verification. The essay (published in ASAP Journal 3.2 2018) asks is such a thing as proof of authenticity even possible?
Research Interests: Contemporary Art, Walter Benjamin, Alejandro Jodorowsky, White Supremacy, Decolonialization, and 15 moreActivist Art, Art and Activism, Decolonial Thought, Identity and Alterity, Philosophy of history, Philosophy of political action, Walter Benjamin, Repetition, Futurity, Monuments, Gustave Courbet, American Indian Movement, Cuban art, Mark Fisher, Turing machine, Modernity/coloniality/decoloniality, and The Weird
Bad deeds are actions that occur seemingly outside what Deleuze called the “society of control.” But what is the status of such acts in the modern capitalist era when artists who do seek freedom from racism, military conscription,... more
Bad deeds are actions that occur seemingly outside what Deleuze called the “society of control.” But what is the status of such acts in the modern capitalist era when artists who do seek freedom from racism, military conscription, environmental injustice, and oppressive laws encounter censorship, criminal indictment, incarceration, or worse? If the truest artistic act in an unfree society amounts to committing some type of crime then are bad deeds beautiful? (The Collective Bad is published in The Collective Good, edited by Michael Birchall and Geir Haraldseth and published in 2017 by Rogaland Kunstsenter, Stavanger. My essay appears on pages 34 to 42.)
Research Interests:
This essay examines the emergence and transformation of 21st century pedagogical art experiments, aka "the social turn," focusing on my activities developing curriculum and teaching in Ashkal Alwan's at Home Workspace Program in Beirut,... more
This essay examines the emergence and transformation of 21st century pedagogical art experiments, aka "the social turn," focusing on my activities developing curriculum and teaching in Ashkal Alwan's at Home Workspace Program in Beirut, Lebanon from 2011 to 2015. My aim here is to try to coax out answers to several questions about the way the educational turn seeks to mix together art and learning in a new way, but often does so through the ironic reiteration of social forms and collective institutions that neoliberalism has broken down and assigned to a surplus archive of past hopes and failed promises. This suggests that a dynamic process is at work in which the converging interests of artists and cultural workers around the globe simultaneously confront and also make use of conditions opened up by the socially destructive economics of deregulated capitalism.
Research Interests:
“The phenomenon of art activism is central to our time because it is a new phenomenon” insists Boris Groys in his 2014 eFlux essay “On Art Activism,” and yet art activism has a solid backstory brimming with risks and minor victories,... more
“The phenomenon of art activism is central to our time because it is a new phenomenon” insists Boris Groys in his 2014 eFlux essay “On Art Activism,” and yet art activism has a solid backstory brimming with risks and minor victories, compromises and outright failures, just the same as any other cultural narrative, even if this one remains largely closeted within mainstream art history. How then do we approach the new wave of art activism emerging today across the globe, and what perception of time, repetition and the archive must be invoked or forgotten in order to counter what Marx described as the nightmarish weight of tradition that presses upon the brains of the living? [Published in http://field-journal.com/ ]
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Media Archaeology, Marxism, Contemporary Art, Walter Benjamin, and 12 morePolitical Art, Art Theory and Politics, Activist Art, Institutional Critique, Art and Activism, Boris Groys, Philosophy of history, Philosophy of political action, Walter Benjamin, Art Theory and Criticism, Community-based Art Practice, Hito Steyerl, Socially Engaged Art, and Political Art and Activist Art
Despite the remarkable half-decade long wave of creative resistance against capitalist business-as-usual and its forms of high culture there is nevertheless one disciplinary edifice still unoccupied. It sits at the very center of 1% art... more
Despite the remarkable half-decade long wave of creative resistance against capitalist business-as-usual and its forms of high culture there is nevertheless one disciplinary edifice still unoccupied. It sits at the very center of 1% art world, reproducing its hierarchies and disciplinary routines like the software I take for granted while writing this abstract. In short, the critical rethinking stirred up by Occupy Wall Street and subsequent political and artistic activism is nowhere to be found in the world of contemporary arts management. If you don’t believe me, start by searching for articles, essays, or teaching materials not conspicuously deferential to corporate modes of business management. Nevertheless, becoming a professional shill for public relations-greedy oil companies or cigarette manufactures has some opponents from within the world of arts administration pedagogy including the book ARTocracy: Art, Informal Space, and Social Consequence: A Curatorial HandBook in Collaborative Practice, which was published right on the cusp of OWS and the Arab Spring in 2010 and grapples sometimes successfully, sometimes problematically with ways of rethinking rural arts management from the bottom up.
Research Interests:
Inspired in part by Ambrose Bierce's acerbic Devil's Dictionary by (1906) these five glossary terms can be found along with other definitions and reading materials on the Art & Social Justice Working Group website developed by the Vera... more
Inspired in part by Ambrose Bierce's acerbic Devil's Dictionary by (1906) these five glossary terms can be found along with other definitions and reading materials on the Art & Social Justice Working Group website developed by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics: http://www.veralistcenter.org/art-and-social-justice/
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This essay was written for the book Gulf Labor: High Culture /Hard Labor (OR books, 2015, Andrew Ross editor). It offers a brief historical sketch of artists who, in response to external, political events, chose to abandon their studio... more
This essay was written for the book Gulf Labor: High Culture /Hard Labor (OR books, 2015, Andrew Ross editor). It offers a brief historical sketch of artists who, in response to external, political events, chose to abandon their studio practice in order to engage in direct actions, cultural boycotts, strikes and other militant tactics. One aim of the text is to situate the activity of Gulf Labor Coalition and G.U.L.F. within a genealogy of committed art, suggesting that there is a definite continuity between present and past politicized artistic practices. But the conclusion is also made that something new is also underway in so far as the once robust cultural politics of the cold war era have now become just politics, plain and simple. And artists, who once earnestly sought to identify with workers in the 1930s and 1960s, have in fact become, despite their creative virtuosity, just one more precarious worker amongst others.
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My book review of Stephen Wright's Toward a Lexicon of Usership for the College Art Association Art Journal (Volume 74, Issue 1, 2015) connects Wright's thesis about post-autonomous art first to Science Fiction writer Philip Dick's... more
My book review of Stephen Wright's Toward a Lexicon of
Usership for the College Art Association Art Journal (Volume 74, Issue 1, 2015) connects Wright's thesis about post-autonomous art first to Science Fiction writer Philip Dick's replicant cyborgs, and then to the current shift away from 20th Century cultural politics towards forms of direct activist art, all the while raising some questions about Wright's all-too-swift dismissal of Kantian based, representational aesthetics. [ Toward a Lexicon of Usership was published in Eindhoven, Netherlands, by the Van Abbemuseum in 2013 on the occasion of Tania Bruguera’s exhibition Museum of Arte Útil. A pdf of Wright's book is available under “Tools” at http://museumarteutil.net. ]
Usership for the College Art Association Art Journal (Volume 74, Issue 1, 2015) connects Wright's thesis about post-autonomous art first to Science Fiction writer Philip Dick's replicant cyborgs, and then to the current shift away from 20th Century cultural politics towards forms of direct activist art, all the while raising some questions about Wright's all-too-swift dismissal of Kantian based, representational aesthetics. [ Toward a Lexicon of Usership was published in Eindhoven, Netherlands, by the Van Abbemuseum in 2013 on the occasion of Tania Bruguera’s exhibition Museum of Arte Útil. A pdf of Wright's book is available under “Tools” at http://museumarteutil.net. ]
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Delirium and Resistance after the Social Turn is an essay about the state of Social Practice Art today. It grew out of a paper presented at a panel organized by Michael Birchall and Megan Johnstony entitled "The Curatorialization of... more
Delirium and Resistance after the Social Turn is an essay about the state of Social Practice Art today. It grew out of a paper presented at a panel organized by Michael Birchall and Megan Johnstony entitled "The Curatorialization of Activism in Art as a Neo-Avant-Garde" and programmed as part of the 2014 Open Engagement conference at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in Brooklyn, NY (May 16, 2014). The final version of the paper premiered in the Spring 2015 inaugural issue of FIELD: A Journal of Socially Engaged Art Criticism. The paper revisits The Interventionists exhibition at MASS MoCA just over ten years ago in order to critically reflect on the remarkable and paradoxical ascent of social practice art today in what for so many is a dysfunctional, even bankrupt society. Please click on the link to FIELD to read the piece in context and to find other papers in this first issue: http://field-journal.com
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An essay written for the exhibition Traces in the Dark curated by Liz Park for the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. February 4 to March 22, 2015.
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San Francisco's school board recently voted to essentially destroy a 1936 mural by Victor Arnautoff because some parents of color find its representation of race troubling or even racist. This blog post from June 2019 includes responses... more
San Francisco's school board recently voted to essentially destroy a 1936 mural by Victor Arnautoff because some parents of color find its representation of race troubling or even racist. This blog post from June 2019 includes responses to this decision from nine contemporary artists and intellectuals, eight are artists of color.
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A 1996 interview with the late Tim Rollins who co-founded Group Material and Kids of Survival (KOS), and who died prematurely this past December 2017. This interview, of which this only a lightly edited excerpt, was part of my research... more
A 1996 interview with the late Tim Rollins who co-founded Group Material and Kids of Survival (KOS), and who died prematurely this past December 2017. This interview, of which this only a lightly edited excerpt, was part of my research for my 2010 book Dark Matter and therefor never published in itself. Here we find Rollins with energy, optimism and ideas that sparkle into existence as if one were watching a meteor shower on a moonless night. Of particular interest is his insistence on the formal, some might even say formalist dimension of visual art as it intersects with politics, economics and social concerns.
Research Interests: Transcendental Philosophy, John Dewey, Bertolt Brecht, Urban interventions (Architecture), Social History of Art, and 10 moreRussian avant-garde art, Cultural Revolution, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Communicative action, Artist Collectives, New York City, Color Field Painting, Richard Serra, Joseph Kosuth, and Socially Engaged Art
Anti-immigration issues have driven United States domestic policy since at least the days of Chinese immigration in the late 19th century. Today the focus has shifted almost entirely to the nation’s southwest border. For the past 13... more
Anti-immigration issues have driven United States domestic policy since at least the days of Chinese immigration in the late 19th century. Today the focus has shifted almost entirely to the nation’s southwest border. For the past 13 years Cruz has been drawing creative inspiration from these high density border regions where the detritus and the wealthy El Norte intersects with the imaginative needs of the developing self. Cruz waggishly describes the resource rich county of San Diego as the Home Depot of Tijuana. This is an interview I conducted with Cruz in the Spring of 2011 for Creative Time's Artists on the News series.
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Liberation from the present, or extraction from the past for that matter, appears impossible today because our image of any collective future is today an infinite extension of our ignoble present. Welcome to the weirdly mundane, or what... more
Liberation from the present, or extraction from the past for that matter, appears impossible today because our image of any collective future is today an infinite extension of our ignoble present. Welcome to the weirdly mundane, or what political scientist Rebecca Bryant terms, “the uncanny present,” a present that is unfamiliar in its presentness. With only slight variation this claustrophobic now is like Freud’s symptom of repetition, except without an underlying trauma. Or perhaps more accurately, it is an eerie traumaless trauma: a flat, automated affect that whatever passes for social collectivity manufactures as the internalized, subjective accompaniment to Jodi Dean’s notion of “politics without politics.”
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A dual book review of Bruno Bosteels’ The Actuality of Communism and Stevphen Shukaitis’ The Composition of Movements to Come (Sholette: 2015) Available online fro Critical Inquiry at:... more
A dual book review of Bruno Bosteels’ The Actuality of Communism and Stevphen Shukaitis’ The Composition of Movements to Come (Sholette: 2015) Available online fro Critical Inquiry at: http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/that_which_must_not_be_named/
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Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Visual Studies, Art History, Art Theory, Interdisciplinarity, and 26 moreContemporary Art, Post-Marxism, Collective Action, Gender, Culture, Gentrification, Social and Collective Memory, Communication Of Memory In Archives, Libraries And Museums, Artistic Research, Alexander Kluge, Activist Art, Art writing, Artist Collectives, Curation, Anti-Gentrification, Art and Labor, Culture and Democracy, Artists Collectives, Radical Art History, Zombie Studies, Lucy Lippard, Carol Duncan, REPOhistory, Political Art Documentation/Distribution PAD/D, Writing in Visual Art, Artists’ Books, and Art ‘beyond the gallery’
Some previous and some new additions for my Glorypedia, an ongoing homage to Ambrose Beirce (and Raymond Williams and Jorge Luis Borges) including definitions for: Dark Matter, Bare Art, Mockstitutions, the unpresent, and Monumenticide.... more
Some previous and some new additions for my Glorypedia, an ongoing homage to Ambrose Beirce (and Raymond Williams and Jorge Luis Borges) including definitions for: Dark Matter, Bare Art, Mockstitutions, the unpresent, and Monumenticide. (Nov. 2020)
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A paper about art and debt given Jan. 23 at The Cooper Union for a conference organized by Noah Fisher and Coco Fusco.
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“Welcome to Our Art World” is the introductory chapter to my book Delirium and Resistance (Pluto Press 2017). Its argument pivots on the idea that high culture has been stripped clean of its mystery and illusions regarding any significant... more
“Welcome to Our Art World” is the introductory chapter to my book Delirium and Resistance (Pluto Press 2017). Its argument pivots on the idea that high culture has been stripped clean of its mystery and illusions regarding any significant distance from capitalist markets. This subsumption leaves us to confront a “bare art world”: spectacular, shadowless, it is a space lacking neither depth nor negation. What then if any resistance is possible within this unconcealed nakedness where the 1% flaunts its wealth and power brazenly without the need for ideological cover? The answer is found within the very paradoxes of capitalism itself, only now these contradictions are turned-up full volume.
