Conversation Pieces the Role of Dialogue in Sociallyengaged Art Citation

Grant Kester (2005) discusses the movement of a number of contemporary artists towards dialogue-based socially-engaged art. Hither the artists avert the tradition of object-making, instead embracing a performative, process-based approach which "involves the creative orchestration of collaborative encounters and conversations well beyond the institutional boundaries of the gallery or museum…….these exchanges tin can catalyse surprisingly powerful transformations in the consciousness of their participants".

Kester hold upwards as a successful exemplar of this type of fine art practice the piece of work of an arts commonage known every bit Wochenklausur. This collective organised a number of 3hr cruises on Lake Zurich over a period of several weeks, to enable an eclectic group of people: politicians, journalists, sex workers and activists to have a "conversation" regarding the homeless plight (and consistent vulnerability) of drug-addicted prostitutes within the metropolis. Kester asserts that because in this state of affairs their statements were "insulated from direct media scrutiny, they were able to communicate with each other outside the rhetorical demands of their official status". They were then able to move on from the expected oppositional positioning of themselves regarding morally-charged views on the employ of drugs and the upshot of prostitution, and in harmony develop a small but practical solution aimed at easing this social problem (a boarding house providing  a condom haven).

Kester states that this emerging genre of gimmicky art promotes the conversations which constitute this fine art form every bit being active evolving discourses that are emancipated beyond fixed identities, institutional viewpoints and official rhetoric, and therefore has the potential to produce new cognition and understanding that would be across the limits of normal social or political advice and date.

Gavin Turk, 2000. Che Guevara self-portrait (online) Available at: http://gavinturk.com/artworks/image/203/ [Accessed 4/2/2011]

In contrast, Julian Stallabrass (2004) is deeply critical of this art genre: The example that he quotes is Gavin Turk's The Che Gavara Story. Hither Turk arranged a series of conversations and discussions near the life and legacy of Che, which amounted to political strategy meetings where a sit-in was organised. Part of the original intent of this piece of piece of work was to "highlight the mismatch between Latin American Politics and the glittering banalities of 'young British fine art'.

Stallabrass describes the discussions as "aimless and unfocussed" and asserts that this piece of work is "feature of many socially interactive works", in that it is less positive than 1 might promise for being perhaps "self-consciously futile and token". Although highly opinionated, this author brings up an important signal about the fact that much thought needs to be put into the planning of these events for them to reach success.

"At that place is a trade-off between the number of participants and their variety and probable discourse. Agile participants tend to be few, elite and self-selecting. In these temporary utopian bubbles, no substantial politics can be arrived at, not least because even among those who exercise attend, real differences and conflicts of interest are temporarily denied or forgotten. A merely gestural politics is the likely result."

This event was also heavily criticized by Jonathon Jones in the Guardian in 2001.

The success of this blazon of fine art, every bit judged by producing a positive effect on social club, conspicuously depends on intelligent and informed organization of the result – any accomplishment being exquisitely dependent on the participants, both their status within their particular filed of expertise, or as good representatives of their social group, and indeed the residuum of the different types of participants invited.

Bibliography

Kester, G., 2005. Conversation Pieces: The Office of Dialogue in Socially Engaged Fine art. In Z. Kocur and Southward. Leung, eds. Theory in Gimmicky Art Since 1985. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 76-100.

Stallabrass, J., 2004. Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Printing, pp. 119-135.

Jones, J., 2001. Glad to be Che (online) Available at <http://www.guardian.co.united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland/civilization/2001/jan/22/artsfeatures.argentina> [Acessed four/two/2011].

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Source: https://thinkingpractices.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/%E2%80%9Dlook-who%E2%80%99s-talking%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-dialogical-aesthetics/

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