Class of 2020 of Theories of the Avant-Garde

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Editors Mariana Gusso Nickel & Elisabeth Violet Velema

Introduction

Dear reader,

This publication includes the fruits of intense collaboration and individual effort. It was created for the Theories of the Avant Garde course 2020, and presents, amongst other things, documentation of the Avant Garde symposium that took place on the 20th of December 2020, in which fellow students presented their ideas on the contemporary and future state of the Avant Garde.

For this project we researched artistic practices that were defined by their horizontally organized collaborative nature and the socially engaged motivations. This is why, for the symposium we organized a small space in which we, as a community, could discuss what it meant to create a common publication. Within this booklet you will find an ever so small second publication containing the ideas that emerged during the short discussions we had with three different groups. This mini publication documents the first steps towards a social sculpture, or in other terms, a commoning publication. In this sense, this publication can be understood as a publication within a publication, where the one you are currently reading facilitates the context for the tiny publication that is in essence the outcome of this process (up to now).

Below you will find the theoretical basis that underlies this small project. The writings discussed below have greatly informed our considerations on the form and organization of what we have presented at the Avant-Garde symposium 2020, and provided many ideas about the potential consequences of organizing small social gatherings.

We hope this publication provides you interesting insights into the recent past and emerging future (and possible end) of art. 

Socially engaged art and Social Sculpture

The artist Joseph Beuys introduced the term Social Sculpture in 1973 to refer to social activities, not easily distinguishable as art, that aim to somehow intervene and change the environment or society. Social Sculptures are understood as an artist initiated socially engaged works of art influenced by activism, which takes the form of a collaboration between many different (sometimes loosely connected) people all gathering to achieve a common shared goal. In the art of Joseph Beuys, art, social life and activism become intertwined. Beuys imagined the role of art as facilitating social interaction which a shared cause was the leading motivation for artistic and social collaborations. With the notion of the whole of life’s experience becoming like an artwork, everyone became an artist (Berg, et.al. 2019).

In terms of its Avant-Gardist qualities, the social sculpture is critical of the secluded nature of the art world, and the lack of political and actual effect of art in the world by the relative passive role that is demanded from its audiences. The aesthetic innovation that results from dismissing the boundaries between artists and audience, art and real life has problematic consequences when holding on to modernist notions of authenticity and innovation. Crane (1987) identifies how Avant Garde movements originate in high culture. Social Sculptures often find their origin in high culture, however, it aims to incorporate the input from all participants, regardless of artistic affiliation. So, while this might challenge boundaries between high and low culture, the relatively small scale at which these practices take place make these endeavors somewhat exclusive. However, Gielen (2018) argues that they should remain somewhat small and hidden to allow for their survival and resistance, and prevent commodification and appropriation.

A number of recent movements strongly recall the notions first introduced by Beuys in the 70’s. These emerging practices can be defined by their activist, socially engaged motivations, as well as their aversion towards the traditional exhibition place, so as to directly interact with social and political life. Equally important is the reformulation of the role of the audience into that of participant, where the role of the artist is merely that of facilitating the social interaction that constitutes the artwork (Berg et.al, 2019). With art becoming more like life, art becomes more political, as it becomes further removed from the autonomous sphere in which it functioned in the 20th century. In this sense the developments in socially engaged art can no longer be understood as merely aesthetic developments (Berg, 2019).

In The Art of Direct Action- Social sculpture and Beyond (Berg, et.al.2019) facilitates an overview on discussions, discourse and development on the notion of Social Sculpture and art that revolves around direct action in the past two decades. The collected essays and interviews with and by artist, scholars, critics and curators allow a reconsideration of the role of artists, audiences, and art in society at large. Woolard (2019) describes how the term social sculpture has come to encompass a growing sense of the transformative potential of art, but also that its association with the artist Joseph Beuys has become somewhat problematic with the explosive emergence of like-minded, albeit vastly transformed artistic endeavors that move far beyond the original formulation of the term. This motivated us to provide a small overview of terms that seem to fall within the framework in which social sculpture was originally formulated. As such we hope to illustrate the more widely occurring movements and shifts within art and politics that motivate such collaborative artistic creations.

Metamodernism and Relational Art

Now with the notion that there exists a plurality of art movements and activities that potentially fall within a similar framework, the question begs what characteristics encapsulates this recent body of work. For this we will refer to the text by van den Akker and Vermeulen (2010) on metamodernism to facilitate the broader context in which we might understand such developments. Metamodernism, they write is characterized by an oscillation between postmodern and modernist sentiments; between detachment and commitment. It takes from both post-modern formal and stylistic conventions, such as postmodern irony, while incorporating modernist forms, techniques and aspirations. It is characterized by a structure of feeling present in art that strongly recollects neo-romantic notions of nostalgia and its search for alternative meaning, in a distinctly skeptic way that distances itself from naivety and countering fanaticism.

Although socially engaged art perhaps more clearly leans towards representing a clearly modernist utopian desire to structure society, the emphasis on the local, temporary and small-scale reach of these projects are marked by a postmodern skepticism towards global movements. Indeed the artists are not so much motivated by a desire to initiate the change through art themselves, but rather to allow art to facilitate the interaction that may or may not result in change, where the emphasis is put on the horizontal collaboration between different people, and to allow a community to emerge from such activities.

We see a desire for horizontal collaboration structures emerge as an important factor in these movements. With the increased awareness of the role in institutional organizations facilitating the exclusion of certain groups there is a growing interest in rethinking the actual form of collaboration itself. In this sense the way we think about working together with people from different backgrounds and with opposing viewpoints has become the art in itself. The logical consequences of this are that notions of authorship and authenticity will have to be radically redefined and reconsidered. What is first and foremost at the center of these artistic collaborations however is the desire to cocreate with a democratic ethos of equality, and symmetrical self-organization (Laermans, 2018).

One term that is strongly recalls the definition of Social Sculpture is relational art, a term that tends to encompass art works in the form of facilitated social interactions within art institutions. In these art works the meaning is created collectively through intersubjective encounters between audiences, or a community of participants, rather than individually through consumption. The actual form and meaning of relational art then is left to physical and social context in which it is situated, rather than that it is created as an autonomous work of art that transcends context (Bishop, 2004). In this sense it inverses the goals of Modernism as defined by Greenberg, where the envisioned audience experience changes from “private” to “public”, a change that has been associated with a clear break from modernism (Bishop, 2004 ;Krauss, 1973; Greenberg, 1992). The concept relational aesthetics was coined by the art critic Bourriaud in 1998, and defined as “A set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space” (Bourriaud, 1998, p.113). Bourriaud describes a shift in the attitude towards social change, where artists now seek to find a temporary solutions to learn how to “inhibit the world in a better way” and create microtropias in the present, rather than imagine utopian reformations (Bishop, 2004; Bourriaud, 1998, p.13).

Larger political movement

Another term we associated with Social Sculpture is Commonism, or communing art. Although this formulation of relational aesthetics strongly recalls the communing practices described by Gielen (2018), commoning practices tend to take place beyond art institutions and tend to be motivated by more precisely defined political and social issues within a given social, and sometimes geographical context.

Commonism is a more widely encompassing ideology which concerns itself with re-imaging how the organization of social life may do more justice to the complexity of human relations in economic, private, and political spheres. The necessity for such an ideology comes forth out of an understanding that Neoliberalism, the currently dominant ideology in the West and many other parts of the world, ignores certain social realities to such an extent that it no longer reflects the actual functioning of society, and thus causes ecological, and political disturbance of unprecedented scale. In this sense commonism aims to be what realism was to romanticism; a return to the Real. Here Gielen (2018) refers to Lacan, when he speaks of the denial of this social reality in representational politics as traumatic. This suppressed social reality in turn may come to haunt us in the form of counter movements and disturbances of public order. These eruptions come forth out of a longing for social recognition and an economy that serves the social reality (Gielen, 2018). Foster (1996) in his book The Return of the Real, has similarly argues that the return of authenticity, depth and hope mark the return of modernist notions present in the Avant Garde, and thus marks an era beyond postmodernism. Here commoning practices, by explicitly allowing the perils, difficulties, ugliness, depth and authenticity to emerge in horizontal collaborations, as opposed to holding on to a clean, efficient, abstract organization that defines the neoliberal aesthetic, allows the suppressed social reality to emerge as traumatic. In this sense Commonism is a return to Real.

Within this framework there is an active role to be played by the arts in its ability to give form to an imagined future. Here it also becomes necessary that it detach itself from the established art world, so that art, in a post or anti-capitalist struggle, can be understood as an open field, allowing it to be re-appropriated in communing (Stavrides, 2016).

In imagining what artistic communing would entail Laermans (2018) has written that any artistic cooperation requires a co-definition of a set of terms and concepts, that allow for a mutual understanding that facilitate the communication. With this in mind we set out to arrange a space at the symposium where we could make the first steps in finding out what others thought it would take to truly create a publication together.

Charlois Aan Het Water

Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Kamiel Verschuren is a Dutch artist, based in Rotterdam, whose work is aimed at the public space, and public domain. The artist describes himself as a curator, producer, organiser, initiator, urban adviser, drawer, designer, landscape artist, publisher and social activist, autonomous or in collaboration with other artists or organizations. As part of the Stedelinks 010 - formed by Verschuren and two other visual artists, Jaap Verheul and Pauline Schreurs - and in collaboration with Vitibuck Architects, G-Routes and the Rotterdam Neighborhood Theater, the artist is related to the creation of Charlois Aan Het Water, a pavilion containing a ferry which connects the neighbourhood Charlois to the port of Rotterdam, facilitating the connection between those areas and serving as a cultural hub. On the project’s website, the initiative is described as ‘an interactive process with and for residents, entrepreneurs and policy makers’,  being an open space for cultural initiatives such as exhibitions and social gatherings, offering artistic residencies as well as offering affordable food produced in the neighbourhood in its restaurant.

For more information go to https://charloisaanhetwater.nl/ and https://www.foundationbad.nl/artists/kamiel-verschuren/

Green Party

Germany, 1980

The term ‘Social Sculpture’ is easily traceable to the work of the german visual artist, art theorist, and pedagogue Joseph Beuys (1921-1986). For Karen van den Berg (2019), the main contributions left by the artist were the reshaping of the artistic figure into the role of facilitator of common practices, as well as the repositioning of art within the sphere of a social activity, capable of permeating every aspect of human life. Beuys is famous for stating that everyone is an artist, and this negation of strict artistic autonomy can also be seen in the intertwining of both artistic and political spheres, for Beuys, who used his artistic practice as a vehicle for social activism. This is illustrated by his involvement in the creation of the Student Party (1967), the Organization for Direct Democracy (1970) - which would be turned into his Documenta 5 exhibition (1972), presenting an agenda of 100 days filled with talks on socio-political issues as women rights, unemployment and more - as well as the creation of the German Green Party (1980).

For more information go to

Berg, K. van den, (2019) Socially Engaged Art and Fall of Spectator - Social Sculpture and Beyond. In Berg, K. van den, Jordan, C. M., Kleinmichel, P. (pp.1-40) The Art of Direct Action- Social Sculpture and Beyond. Potsdam: SternbergPressBerg

Organization for Direct Democracy at the Documenta 5

Kassel, Germany, 1972

The term ‘Social Sculpture’ is easily traceable to the work of the german visual artist, art theorist, and pedagogue Joseph Beuys (1921-1986). For Karen van den Berg (2019), the main contributions left by the artist were the reshaping of the artistic figure into the role of facilitator of common practices, as well as the repositioning of art within the sphere of a social activity, capable of permeating every aspect of human life. Beuys is famous for stating that everyone is an artist, and this negation of strict artistic autonomy can also be seen in the intertwining of both artistic and political spheres, for Beuys, who used his artistic practice as a vehicle for social activism. This is illustrated by his involvement in the creation of the Student Party (1967), the Organization for Direct Democracy (1970) - which would be turned into his Documenta 5 exhibition (1972), presenting an agenda of 100 days filled with talks on socio-political issues as women rights, unemployment and more - as well as the creation of the German Green Party (1980).

For more information go to

Berg, K. van den, (2019) Socially Engaged Art and Fall of Spectator - Social Sculpture and Beyond. In Berg, K. van den, Jordan, C. M., Kleinmichel, P. (pp.1-40) The Art of Direct Action- Social Sculpture and Beyond. Potsdam: SternbergPressBerg

Eco-FAVELA

Hamburg, Germany, 2014

Out of a collaboration between the theatre Kampnagel and the Hamburg based art collective Baltic Raw, the collective used the space of the theatre to construct living spaces for refugees, who stayed there for the period of one year between 2014-2015. The initiative - officially justified as an ongoing performance - was created in the legally secured space of artistic autonomy described by van den Berg (2019) as crucial for the experimental character of those projects.

For more information go to https://www.kampnagel.de/en/program/archive/?rubrik=archiv&detail=1952 and

Berg, K. van den, (2019) Socially Engaged Art and Fall of Spectator - Social Sculpture and Beyond. In Berg, K. van den, Jordan, C. M., Kleinmichel, P. (pp.1-40) The Art of Direct Action- Social Sculpture and Beyond. Potsdam: SternbergPressBerg

Neue Nachbarschaft // Moabit (New Neighbourhood // Moabit)

Berlin, Germany, 2013

Neue Nachbarschaft // Moabit, founded by the artist and social activist Marina Naprushkina among other artists, is a public initiative aimed at the adaptation of refugees in Germany. It offers a cinema, lectures, concerts, language courses, among other forms of cultural entertainment. As an independent initiative, it does not receive government  fundings, but is sustained by donations. According to Naprushkina, the socialization aspect of the project is equally important for refugees and citizens of Germany, and therefore it is seen by her as a collaboration of ongoing learning between different nationalities and cultures. The artist describes it as a platform for dialogue and interaction.

For more information go to https://m.day.kyiv.ua/en/article/culture/marina-naprushkina-refugees-are-opportunity-europe-change-better and

Berg, K. van den, (2019) Socially Engaged Art and Fall of Spectator - Social Sculpture and Beyond. In Berg, K. van den, Jordan, C. M., Kleinmichel, P. (pp.1-40) The Art of Direct Action- Social Sculpture and Beyond. Potsdam: SternbergPressBerg

Flatbread Society, by Futurefarmers

Oslo, Norway, 2002 - present day

Founded as a proposition to activate the common area of the waterfront of Bjorvika, in Oslo, the project considers the connections between the knowledge of grain/bread production to other realms of knowledge sharing, as stated on their website, with a special concern for the sphere of the ‘commons’. The project, initiated by the Belgium based group Futurefarmers, counts with the collaboration of artists, activists, farmers, bakers, and more, being constituted by the site-specific grain field, bakehouse and programs, and assembles in other locations. Concerning the latter, the group offers workshops on making bread as a form of initiating dialogue with participants, among other activities. The photo illustrates an intervention from 2013, when members of the group walked around Oslo carrying a canoe, stopping in front of a psychiatric day-care/café and inviting participants to share bread, or roll the dough themselves. After that, the Mobile Bread Oven has been taken to other areas of the city, being described by the Flatbread Society as a research methodology in order to assemble knowledge about the city.

For more information go to

http://flatbreadsociety.net/calendar& http://flatbreadsociety.net/actions/39/a-boat-walking-on-land

Painting workshops for Yazidi women

Dohuk, Iraq, 2017

The British artist Hannah Rose Thomas, together with the clinical psychologist Dr. Sarah Whittaker-Howe, ran a two weeks series of painting workshops for Yazidi women who had escaped ISIS captivity, in Iraq. The project was aimed at helping the victims overcome symptoms left by the traumatic experience. The artist, associated with organizations as the One Young World Charity or Relief International Organization, had previously carried a similar work with Syrian refugees in 2014. The portraits were later exhibited at the Trust Conference in London, 2017, and the House of Parliament on March 2018.

For more information go to

http://hannahrosethomas.com/unhcr-art-project-1

Berg, K. van den, (2019) Socially Engaged Art and Fall of Spectator - Social Sculpture and Beyond. In Berg, K. van den, Jordan, C. M., Kleinmichel, P. (pp.1-40) The Art of Direct Action- Social Sculpture and Beyond. Potsdam: SternbergPressBerg

New Walk Ways for New Bell: Faces of Water

Douala, Africa

In the neighbourhood of New-Bell, Douala, the Dutch artist Kamiel Verschuren created an open-air system of gutters, allowing the rainwater to penetrate it through small openings whilst preventing the infiltration of garbage. The system was created with wooden boards, covered with sentences written by the artist and referring to water. For Verschuren, the most important side of project was creating a sense of collectivity, teaching technical skills, as well as social aspects of organization, to the - payed -locals involved on the construction.

For more information go to

https://www.foundationbad.nl/artists/kamiel-verschuren/ and

https://popupcity.net/observations/iabr-aqueous-thinking-art-and-collectivity-on-the-streets-of-douala/

Definitions

An extended understanding of Social Sculpture

None of these terms could fairly be attributed the status of ‘umbrella term’, although for some a more general chronological claim could be made as to when the word first emerged, and from where other related terms developed. The development of these other terms can be attributed to the basic need to adjust to the specific context in which they function, as well as to distance themselves from the authorship connoted or connected to the other terms and artforms.

social sculpture noun  | \ ˈsō-shəl skəlp-chər \

[1] “Social sculpture is a theory developed by the artist Joseph Beuys in the 1970s based on the concept that everything is art, that every aspect of life could be approached creatively and, as a result, everyone has the potential to be an artist” (Social Sculpture, n.d.).

[2] The art of direct action (Berg, et.al.  2019).

[3] Defining genre for burgeoning activity of artists seeking to affect social conditions and work outside the institution of art- thus in life and with citizens or communities. (Jacob, 2019)

new genre public art noun | \ ˈnü ˈzhän-rə ˈpə-blik ˈärt \

[1] “The term new genre public art, refers to public art, often activist in nature, and created outside institutional structures in order to engage directly with an audience” (New genre public art, n.d.).

dialogic art noun | \ dī-ə-ˈlä-jik ärt \

[1] “Art brought into being through exchanges between people as they interact with information, objects, and/or each other...Addressing the question, "What is dialogic art?" involves asking: "What is dialogue?"” (Critical Practice, 2011)

socially engaged art noun | \ ˈsō-sh(ə-)lē  in-ˈgājd ˈärt \

[1] “Socially engaged practice describes art that is collaborative, often participatory and involves people as the medium or material of the work” (Socially engaged art, n.d.).

[2] Socially engaged art seeks to apply those strategies and methodologies (of activism), directing them towards social justice aims and affecting change, sometimes with direct demonstrable effects (Jacob, 2019).

[3] Socially engaged art is a form of activism that applies art thinking and making in both traditional and Avant Garde ways (Jacob, 2019).

community art noun | \ kə-ˈmyü-nə-tē bāst ˈärt \

[1] “Community art is an artistic activity that is based in a community setting, characterised by interaction or dialogue with the community and often involving a professional artist collaborating with people who may not otherwise engage in the arts” (Community art, n.d.).

[2] Art focused on ‘’shifting the relationship of artists and audiences through a deeply embedded and committed connection to community’’ (Jacob, 2019).

social practice noun | \ ˈsō-shəl ˈprak-təs \

[1] “Social practice is an art medium focusing on engagement through human interaction and social discourse”, where the medium consists of the people and their relationships, forming the actual aesthetics of the art (Helguera, 2012).

[2] ‘’’Social practice’ puts the emphasis on the actions of artists, while at the same time connoting their life path [...]. It also leaves room for [...] those who don’t consider themselves artists in conventional terms (Jacob, 2019).

activist art noun | \ ˈak-ti-ˌvi-zəm \

[1] Activist art is a term used to describe art that is grounded in the act of ‘doing’ and addresses political or social issues (Activist art, n.d).

commoning art noun | \ ˈkä-mən-niŋ ärt \

[1] ‘’The graceful, light-touch structuring of people’s distinctive energies, passions and imaginations as they interact in groups’’ (Bollier, 2014).

[2] Commining verb | ‘’to collaboratively hold a natural or cultural resource as a ‘commons’ — is a way to collaborate in safeguarding the gifts of nature and culture that people share in a particular place and that humanity shares collectively’’ (Wahl, 2018).

[3] ‘’socially engaged art or participatory art—ranging from ecologically oriented practices to urban justice—offer methodologies and examples of engaging in communities. These engagements create and offer possibilities of social co-existences that are established through artistic methodologies.’’ (Tan, 2018).

[4] “artistic commoning entails the co-creation of any kind of aesthetic commonality, ranging from the co-production of an exhibition by a curator and several fine artists to the joint production and performance of a new piece by a theatre collective, to the kind of relational or participatory art that very much engages audience members (Laermans, 2018).

[5] The art of assemblage.

relational aesthetics noun | \ ˈkä-mən-niŋ ärt \

[1] Coined by Nicolas Bourriaud in 1998, it entails a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space’’ (Relational Aesthetics, .n.d.)

[2] ‘’The posing of an artist-constructed social experiences as art making’’(Chayka, 2011).

Documentation of the Avant Garde Symposium 2020

Please sit down. Take a pillow, and make yourself comfortable. Would you like some tea? Yes, there you go - and in fact these were all very important elements of our proposition, a welcoming environment which would allow us to have a conversation on commoning practices. More precisely, a conversation about the making of a common publication, the one which you are reading at this very moment - the publication inside of the publication  was collectively imagined on a proposition about the making of this proposition, yes… It is meta-modernism, anyways! We hope you are still with us, here.

We started this project by planning on making a common publication. We were very inspired about socially engaged art, and also looking forward to the avant-garde symposium. So it seemed like a great plan to facilitate a common publication, with our fellow students of Theories of the Avant-Garde, about the phenomena which we had all researched on, and the works we had produced. However, soon enough, we ran into a big question: what would a commoning publication look like?

After researching works by contemporary artists concerning the topic, it became clear that we could not impose much structure to the publication beforehand. After all, commoning practices are about communication and collaboration for a common goal. So we rejected our initial plan of documenting our class mate’s presentations and making a publication on the spot, and instead decided to get cushions, biscuits, print images of the artworks we had studied and turn it into a conversation piece. We heard different approaches on the topic, and shared experiences. We asked what kind of environment would be necessary for a more inclusive experience, and we discussed how to subvert the hierarchy of a proposition into a collective process.

Some participants pointed out that common practices should take place at the integrant’s homes, whilst others defended that they should take place in public spaces. We considered the internet as a possible site for anonymous collaborations, at the risk of losing the human side of interactions considered crucial for social practices. We wondered whether previously reaching a common ground would be necessary for collaborations, and how to approach this. And together we considered that the publication could be a documentation of these conversations, which you can also find on the photos below. Moreover, we are still wondering about the topic, and if you are wondering too, the literature mentioned in this publication about commoning practices could be an interesting start…