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03-19-10

Fluxus with Tools

Last night Riva and I made our way into Detroit to see FLUXUS founding member, Alison Knowles, and her scholar daughter, Hannah Higgins, give a lecture/performance entitled “Fluxus with Tools.” I didn’t know quite what to expect, but hoped there would be food involved and I was not disappointed.

Knowles’ classic FLUXUS score “#2 Proposition (1962)” acted as the structure for the piece, which she performed while Higgins interrupted with interjections alternating between reflexive commentary and FLUXUS score interpretation. As a viewer/participant I felt my position alternating between engrossed and removed, challenged to look closer at the mundane actions performed on stage and challenged yet again to analyze them . I was in between surrendering my ego and enjoying the performance and pondering. As Higgins and Knowles cycled through various “hits” from the FLUXUS back catalog I couldn’t help but think that this event was both the perfect primer to FLUXUS and a refreshing reminder to any who many regard the FLUXUS artists as their kinfolk.

My seminar professor, Danielle Abrams, was invited on stage to help distribute bowls of salad and I was later treated to a spaghetti sandwich by Higgins. Riva and I were also able to salvage the chewed up piece of paper ejected from Knowles’ mouth following a particular performance. The event last night was a wonderful experience and it has inspired the idea for a new weekly series I will be posting to my blog. Each week I will be pulling some score, video, or other digital ephemera from the FLUXUS archives and posting it here. I hope that those reading will treat it as a message to carry along with them, like a feather in their cap.

More pictures after the jump…

03-17-10

Open Engagement 2010

Open Engagement is a conference for artists with a socially-based practice.

Yesterday, Riva and I booked train tickets aboard the Amtrack Empire Builder from Chicago to Portland, Oregon to get us to the Open Engagement Conference. I am so ridiculously excited to attend the conference and meet other artists with a socially-based practice that you can’t even imagine it.

I can remember when I first started doing socially-based works as an undergrad, but felt really confused at the same time. I wasn’t sure if what I was doing and what I wanted to do was even considered art. All I knew for sure was that it felt more real than anything else creative I had ever done. I began to look for other examples in the past of artists creating social artworks and came across FLUXUS. It was an awakening. I realized not only was I not alone as a social artist, but there were actually tons of people who thought the way I did, and some of them are really amazing!

On a related note, I will be heading to the Detroit Institute of Art tomorrow night to see Alison Knowles and Hannah Higgins give a lecture/performance. I am super psyched about that as well. I’ll report back on Friday with my thoughts on their presentation.

10-16-09

"I can pay for it myself."

Yesterday I conducted another social experiment at Ambrosia Cafe. This time rather than buying coffee in advance and waiting for a response, I decided to confront people face-to-face in hopes to gain more insight into individual responses to the project.

After customers placed their orders with the barista I approached them and asked if they would be willing to let me buy their coffee for them. Most people took this as a come on and held up their money suggesting they could afford to pay for it themselves and others avoided my eyes completely. About half of the people I talked to wanted to know why I wanted to buy them a cup of coffee, including the first man I talked to, who still refused the cup once I explained it was a social experiment/art project.

Lewis Hyde discusses the erotic nature of gift-giving in his landmark book, The Gift, which was something that I witnessed first-hand. Although two people did accept my offer to buy their drinks (see the receipts above) most people avoided any potential obligations that might come with this gift by declining.

Most of the time, we choose to use our consumer power to remain separate and unattached from the people around us, owing them nothing but the cash in our wallets. They sell their labor while we use a symbol of our own abstracted labor in exchange for consumer products. This abstraction separates us from the person on the other side of the transaction. Much of the push behind the movement to “Buy Local” combats this estrangement from the humanity of our economy.

After the first three customers I approached refused my offers I began to feel extremely sad, disappointed, and a bit hopeless at the rejection of my potential gifts. The second woman who agreed to let me buy her coffee, Kristin, mirrored these feelings in her explanation for accepting my offer. She said that she noticed the negative effect it had on her friends when she turned down their generosity and was making a conscious effort to be open to such opportunities. Her attempt to be more receptive was a foil for my attempt to be generous.

In developing the next iteration of this project I intend to focus on two questions:
How can gift debt be put to use in a positive way?
-and-
How can the feelings I experience while conducting the experiment drive the direction of this project?