For your reading pleasure this is my dissertation for MA Social Practice and the Creative Environment, Limerick School of Art and Design. I am currently using the research and conclusions from this text to inform a large-scale group collaboration around the idea of speculation.
On the 11th of May I will be hosting a part of my project in association with Catherine Street Cultural Dig, this micro project will consist of a two-day time capsule project. During this project I will be asking participants to make immediate contributions to a time capsule project commemorating the dig in 2012 to be uncovered hopefully in 2037. This project will allow me to start a dialogue around the concept of speculation and hopefully the discussions which will arise will entice participants to become collaborators in a larger project.
This a segment taken from the Elephant Talks WordPress page, Elephant Talks is a series of presentations based around process. It is held regularly at various locations in Limerick City most notably at Ormston House. At the first ever Elephant Talk speculator Steve Maher talks about his time capsule research and his his first sub-project which is an interpretation and use of some of the methods seen within the function of creating time capsules in all there different incarnations.
Elephant Talks One
Elephant talks got off to a great start with its maiden peer review in Ormston House. The first fifteen minutes were presented to the group by architect Peter Carroll who lectures in the School of Architecture in the University of Limerick. He described the values that matter to him in design particularly in the context of Limerick city and brought the crowd through projects on all scales that he has been involved in. Peter displayed pen drawings he made as a student architect where he captured with incredible accuracy the old Iaranrod Eireann trains that carried him from Colbert Station. He explained his desire to document the careful design that allowed these trains to be successful interior public spaces. As he continued through the discussion he increased the scale of each next project from a collaboration with artist John Gerrard as part of the EVA exhibitions to the all-encompassing research unit in SAUL. The conversation never strayed from the importance of appreciating and understanding of values in his own design process and he questioned the level of consideration and sensitivity of the limerick regeneration.
The next talk was held by artist Steve Maher. Steve is currently in the middle of completing a master’s program in Limerick College of Art and Design. He talked the group through his design process in contrast to the finished products of the previous discussion. The audience became involved in the process and enabled the discourse to morph into a searching entity. Steve is proposing to make a time capsule that would reorganize a future according to values that he is currently investigating. He handed out science fiction novels amongst the audience and other material on speculative fiction that he is openly referring to in his work. He asked the group what three things they would place in a time capsule if left up to them clearly in turmoil at this early stage about the description of his artifacts. He showed slides of various types of containers and this led the discussion towards the main topic of his research to date being the medium by which the artifacts are displayed.
The next presentation was by Limerick based New Mexico reared Musician Peter Hanigan and he covered a topic that was close to the heart of everyone in the room. He spoke about the ‘pommodoro’ time management technique and with great eloquence described how it has allowed him to practice, work and have time for his personal life even though he is fully immersed in the hectic world of music. This was the final talk of the night and it made perfect sense to speak about the preparations that allow designers, musicians or architects to function. It raised issues of overlaying a routine on design and that implies a system by which decisions can be made. It was interesting to consider process like this as a mechanical rhythm that we master as a framework to search for the answers to the questions raised by its own existence.
Of course the beauty of elephant talks is the open floor conversation that happens for the fifteen minutes after each presentation. So many enthusiastic people in attendance made the first night of Elephant Talks worthwhile for all involved in the organization of it. Ormston House must also be commended for providing a beautiful and ever changing backdrop for the talks. For each month that we have an event there will be a new exhibition in the same space creating a wonderful landscape of ideas and inspiration. Thanks to all who came.
Imagine a parallel reality, society is based on a highly social order where justice and equality for all are not contorted by law. Now imagine what shape the counter culture would take within that society. Does there have to be a counter culture? It arguably is as natural to any social mammal as it is specific to our time and place. The counter to the dominant inherits the tittle to the throne, this is observable in the animal kingdom ( from which we differ by only our own definitions). For Homo sapiens this stomping ground takes place in the social forum, civilization is a defense erected by humanity not against bestiality, but against itself.So in a world where the social ideal has been realized what is the counter point, what is the descent within the ranks and, observable based on our own context, what is the moral norm in this reality? How do we recognize this when the context is broader than our current time and space? My point here is that there can not be an ideal. What would be the opposition to such an Ideal. In this reality what we define as the left exist in opposition to morally opaque globalization, the same ironically can be said of the far right. This perspective is apparent through Slavoj Zizek’s terms in his appearance on Democracy Now! discussing the Far Right and Anti Immigration:
These apparent groupings differ in motivation because they are a binary and closed representation of an imagined organised grouping and not the chaotic rabble of different cultures, agendas and religions to name a few of the alignments that people hold. If a fully socialized(whatever that means) society could exist what would it define itself against? The past possibly, the long forgotten tragic past? Plenty of social species live without history, but history is a medium that we have adapted and in part defines us as human. Even indigenous peoples have verbal history although apparently by Western standards that is inaccurate even though they have its own traditions for defining accuracy. It is a tool. Language too is history or rather history is language. What would happen after a couple of generations to this hypothetical culture which basses its moral compass on the trespasses of its forefathers? What would they have to base their actions against? If the horrors that are possible are not part of their culture in the immediate, without a media to constantly inform them about what they should fear what direction do they take? Is there position sustainable?
The questions do not end, the outcome is not identifiable because the situation it could happen in does not now exist nor might it foresee-ably exist. We base our predictions too much on what we currently know as opposed to what we do not currently know, there are far too many angles too many possibilities.
History is a form of communication, one that can be utilized to different agendas by different groups. The potential outcome is unknown but the relatively short effect it has on society can be swayed to suit organisation/organisms and what effect they wish to see. To effect the current cultures to suit there immediate conditions for survival. Communication and power are defined by Manuel Castells in his book Communication Power (2009) as
Power is more than communication, and communication is more than power. But power relies on the control of communication, as counter-power depends on breaking through such control. And mass communication, the communication that potentially reaches society at large, is shaped and managed by power relationships, rooted in the business of media and the politics of the state. Communication power is at the heart of the structure and dynamics of society….The most fundamental form of power lies in the ability to shape the human mind.
Even as I construct this blog entry I am by these standards exerting power, and hence exerting my influence. Power even when broken down to as we call a primitive level is essentially symbolic, like the language used to create it. Power is the things that are believed about what ever group or individual, in this way power is within all communication. Where Focault saw power in every interaction in every form of communication in fact Foucault believed that the seemingly chaotic occurrences of history are conflicts of power. He states that there is an “intrinsic intelligibility of conflicts” that can enlighten us to the reasons behind actions. So what has drove humanity in the opinion of Foucault is a fundamental omnipresent power.
Mind Mapping was the topic of the day last Wednesday the 28th of September. In this seminar lead by David Brancaleone we discussed the application of the theories of Kevin Lynch particularly Cognitive Mapping form his book The Image of the City (1960) and its application by Fredic Jameson in his post-modernist theories concerning urban planing. The book is considered a precursor to many of the base ideals around participative research (in architectural practice and as far as I can tell from my further research its contribution to urban design in the post modern context. which is a related interdisciplinary field). I can only speak for myself but this seminar set the theme and tone for other areas of social practice that we happened upon this week. We went through our own interpretations of the two Hal Foster texts which I mentioned in my previous posts at the start of the seminar, of course there where elements of the two subjects which had parallels. These parallel where my own particular interpretation of what I see as an illustration of a genuinely ethically sound motivations, this is a broad an encouraging statement I can make not being subject to the scrutiny of any readers. Where I see these parallels are within Hal Fosters vague yet accurate deconstructions of his two topics (the criticism being evidence enough of his altruistic motivations) and Kevin Lynch’s revolutionary almost Patch Adamsy approach to urban design. My point is its enough to take action, even theorizing is praxis enough if the spread of the concerns you have are promoted. Published theory is a social engagement in and of its self.
The Basis of Lynches approach is that rather than using the spatial geographic information laid out in formulaic mapping of Boston, Lynch approach the “indigenous” population who really actually lived in the space. These peoples concerns where with the practicalities of there day to day living. He had his own approach to the layout and categorizing of this information broke down into Paths, Edges, Nodes(central areas), Districts ( known as city areas) and Landmarks, but the information was ascertained by the information given by the “general public” . Lynch created a new paradigm which was not to be popularily recognized till much later.
The main thing that this seminar brought to my mind from my own research was Magnasanti the brain child of Vincent Ocasla who spent a year and a half creating the perfect system within the game Sim City 3000. Vice Magazine Labeled him as a totalitarian Buddhist having made within an essentially unbeatable game the best optional layout for a sustainable city within the confines of the game. The city itself is the peak of efficiency with zero pollution or traffic congestion. Its important when looking at this work to get past the bias of this program being a only a game, Ocasla himself sees “SimCity 3000 is more than just a game. It has evolved to become a tool or medium for artistic self-expression”. But this harmony has its dark side.
There are a lot of other problems in the city hidden under the illusion of order and greatness: Suffocating air pollution, high unemployment, no fire stations, schools, or hospitals, a regimented lifestyle – this is the price that these sims pay for living in the city with the highest population. It’s a sick and twisted goal to strive towards. The ironic thing about it is the sims in Magnasanti tolerate it. They don’t rebel, or cause revolutions and social chaos. No one considers challenging the system by physical means since a hyper-efficient police state keeps them in line. They have all been successfully dumbed down, sickened with poor health, enslaved and mind-controlled just enough to keep this system going for thousands of years. 50,000 years to be exact. They are all imprisoned in space and time.
Today we met in the George’s Quay campus to discuss Hal Foster’s “The Artist as Ethnographer – The Return of the Real”, the exert details what drives this “current”(1996) trend in contemporary art and criticism of the appropriation of Anthropological methods. He breaks this new trend into what distinguishes it from previous similarities between art practice anthropology, his five points are:
Anthropology like art often deals with the idea of otherness, along with psychoanalysis its terms are commonplace.Thy are “The Lingua Franca of artistic practice and critical discourse alike”
Anthropology like postmodernist practice and theory takes “Culture as its object”
Both are contextual, both seek “fieldwork in the everyday”
Anthropology “seems” to settle contradictions in practice.
Anthropology values the participant observer, the individual carrying out the work is at once seen to be involved in the work while also allowing him or her to be validated in his or her field of study.
In Fosters opinion this causes a perception of this terminology like psychoanalysis within art practice and theory to be exempt from critique, although Foster adds that “it is along these lines that the critical edge is felt to cut the most incisively”.He then goes on to do his job as a critic. First he points out how there are inherent contradictions within anthropology which contaminate this form of work, particularly two epistemologies, symbolic logic and practical reason. But he points out cynically that art is “magic” and resolves this, just because.
So he then goes on to explain the pitfalls of such practice with the works of Fred Wilson in Mining the Museum and other artists, I say and others because Wilson was one of the artist Lisa Watters (of our study group) had a lot of incite to and whom we discussed at great detail (above is a clip of Wilson). Foster’s main point within the institution the inclusion of this type of work is almost an inoculation against what it critiques. Like the inclusion of arts previous modes of subversive operation, if the museum champions these new cultural occurrences it can blindside the public of the very fact that they are deconstructions of the very institution which now houses them and what it represents.. Added to this they take a risk of becoming almost inaccessible to any significant critique because they use the same form of discourse established by said institution. My conclusion from this text is that I operate my own practice under great caution if not for my works own integrity but to avoid the harsh critical scrutiny which artist seem to endure past a certain level of success.
“Museums are safe places for unsafe ideas” – Elaine Guirrion
Clifford D. Simak city
My research at the moment is a general crash course in Social Practice, this has sparked through its theories, particularly those which relate to the consequences of social change, a re-investigation into dystopian science fiction. Authors such as Philip K Dick, Isaac Asimov, Clifford D Simak, Joe Hadleman, Alfred Bester and Walter Tevis to name a few. Books I have recently finished and noted are Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K Dick and Mockingbird by Walter Tevis, Currently I am reading City By Clifford D. Simak. Classic science fiction particularly from the late 60’s and early 70’s from writers like JG Ballard to John Sladek has outlined the dystopian outcome of utopian ideals. The genre often takes dominant ideologies from our current period and extends them in continuity to demonstrate there potential limitations with out cautious social reflection. Irregardless of the narrative progression of the stories the overall content serves as a predictive parable. Cautionary tales that often might be too late. A warning of the consequences to some of the aspects of modern living and their flow as debris of empirical thought. Often too they propose the usual question of the genre of what it means to be human. Simak’s City shows how current social structures are almost destined to be redundant, obsolete even now, only present because of the necessary services they offer, services which already in the age of globalization are autonomous. Simak predicts the individual autonomy already present because of the digital-connectivity that modern technology presents and the inevitable agoraphobia to come. The following extract is a monologue form the primary antagonist of the first chapter titled City, the chairman of the chamber of commerce of a dying middle American city
The city is an anachronism. It has outlived its usefulness. Hydroponics and the helicopter spelled its downfall. In the first instance the city was a tribal place, an area where the tribe banded together for mutual protection. Then the wall finally disappeared but the city lived on because of the wall finally disappeared but the city lived on because of the conveniences which it offered trade and commerce. It continued into modern times because people were compelled to live close to their jobs and the jobs were in the city.
But to-day that is no longer true. With the family plane, one hundred miles to-day is a shorter distance than five miles back in 1930. Men can fly several hundred miles to work and fly home when the day is done. There is no longer any need for them to live cooped up in a city.
The automobile started the trend and the family plane finished it.Even in the first part of the century the trend was noticeable- a movement away form the city with its taxes and its stuffiness, a move towards the suburb and close-in acreages. Lack of adequate transportation, lack of finances held many to the city. But now, with tank farming destroying the value of land, a man can buy a huge acreage in the country for less than he could a city lot forty years ago. with planes powered by atomic there is no longer any transportation problem.
sow what have we? […] I’ll tell you what we have. Street after street block after block, of deserted houses, houses that the people just up and walked away from. Why should they have stayed? What could the city offer them? None of the things that it offered the generations before them, for progress has wiped out the need of the city’s benefits. they lost something, some monetary consideration, of course, when they left the houses. But the fact that they could live as they wished to live, that they could develop what amounts to family estates after the best tradition set them by the wealthy of a generation ago – all these things outweghed the leaving of their homes.
And what have we left? A few blocks of business house. A few acres of industrial plants. A city government geared to take care of a million people without the million people. A budget that has run taxes so high that eventually even business houses will move to escape those taxes. Tax forfeitures that have left us loaded with worthless property. That’s what we have left.
Minus the atomic planes this sounds like Limerick.
I have reservations about blogging initially, but it is a tool like anything else and if it helps me develop concepts based on my current and future research then it has a purpose beyond the personal blogs of which I am used to coming across on the internet. I was made aware that the personal content of these online contributions during our meeting with the previous year of S.P.A.C.E would be of little interest in the critical and contextual evaluation of me as a student as part of this course. There would be more in interest in solid research and work not a intimate personal account. But I have no interest in writing like a robot, I do not think it would keep my interest and I think based on our introduction to the course I am meant to create my own methods for my interpretation of Social Practice. We will see what happens over the year, maybe it would be better to keep this clinical but then again if I can write honestly but with authority it could work.
Study Group Ormston House
Working with the group today I got a better understanding the Hal Foster text, Chat Rooms (from those White Chapel Gallery colection books) provided in Dr David Brancaleone seminar on Wednesday, I think as a year we intentionally thrown in at the deep end. I am used to art critical theory so I had a basis for understanding the text but the group session today really helped me fully understand the context, so there you are already getting social.
The impression I got from the text where that Foster has reservations not just about Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics and Postproduction and Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Interviews as the the introduction to the text says the optimistic rhetoric accompanying collaboration and participation. Actually this only became plainly visible to me and the group after reading and discussing the entire text, it was only after that we came to realize that the introduction actually meant anything. I am assuming that this is O.K. and that this is the learning curve. There are three concluding points at the end of this text he gets to these point eventually not with out first highlighting his concerns.
My most clear and concise notes follow:
Socially engaged work through Fosters eyes in danger of becoming within the institution of the art world fashionable, which means on a whole as an identifiable artistic practice in danger of being smothered by its own popularity. This could also suffer the consequences with out caution of becoming merely a facade of sociability, commodified to the point of redundancy. For any Artistic practice social or otherwise vibrancy is essential, over familiarity with modes of production social or otherwise rob any engagement of its ability to create social change.
The outcome of these works is a reverberation within culture and by extension society of socially ephemeral ideas that last longer than the event or action. They are as much in the same as any creative provocations because they exist after innocent primary social contributions as ongoing documented and discussed work.
Bourriaud sees the artist as a social medic (comparable to Beuys’ the artist as a Shaman) reparing and replacing the absent elements of modern living by presenting what is lost or what is still there through the orchestration of socially engaged projects.
Foster is concerned, and I take this to heart for my own practice, this form of work is in danger of turning the individuals involved within the work as “aesthetic objects interacting
In the end Beside what Foster sees as possible interpretations by the audience, of this being both positively and negatively the End of Art or “for others it will seem to aestheticize the nicer procedures of our service economy”, there is his final point which seems, although I am only assuming, to be closer to his main conclusion. ” Relational aethics might be sucked up in the general movement for a ‘post-critical’ culture- an art and architecture, cinema and literature ‘after theory’ “.To this Concern I have to say so what, people read theory and do what ever the hell they want anyway.
Also we set a Facebook group although most of us have yet to find it yet, but that is cool it might even be the way this class communicates eventually. We will probably end up communicating through smoke signals or something equally esoteric. Here is a picture of the thing that we gone and done, aren’t we the greatest:
Tajik FB Corespondance
I hope I haven’t wasted the title of this entry, ah if I want to use it again I will just subtitle it Participation or Provocation: Part 2 .In my next entry I will outline my currently varied line of research both primary and secondary. It’s all very dystopian and shit.
The Speculative Society 