Jorge Tabarés – ULEC: Social Practice – 10/14/2016

Collaboration: Pablo Helguera dedicates an important amount of time in his book

Education for Socially Engaged Art to speak about collaboration. It is a key factor in
Socially Engaged Art. Collaboration implies sharing the duties, tasks, and
responsibilities between the two parties involved in the creation of an SEA project.
These two parties are the artist himself, and the audience or community. Collaboration
most of the time is organized and controlled by the artist, and according to Pablo
Helguera, it requires a big amount of expertise. In the book he poses the example of
Paulo Freire, and his pedagogical method to teach Brazilian farmers how to read and
write in 48 days.

Community-based art: To quote from the Reading, this kind of art is “typically
understood as a descriptive practice in which the community functions as a referential
social entity. It is an “other” to the artist and the art world, and its identity is understood
to be imminent to itself, thus available to self expression” (p. 154). This type of art
evolved and developed from Public Art. Projects that serves as examples of community-
based art are: Culture in Action and In Public: Seattle 1991. In these types of projects,
the artists work with the local people of a community and make art together. Many
times these projects are aimed to reinforce a particular group in society that would
otherwise remain marginalized. In the case of Culture in Action, it consisted of a series
of 8 projects that took place throughout the city of Chicago. However, many would also
argue that Culture in Action pertains to a more concrete type of community-based art
called “New genre public art” (which is a new kind of movement that has emerged from
public art).

Conflict Kitchen: this is a takeout restaurant in the city of Pittsburg. It is currently

located in the center of one of the main public spaces of the city. The way the restaurant
functions is that, for a certain amount of time offers food from a country with which the
United States is in conflict with. Jon Rubin is the creator of this project. They have been
serving food from various countries such as Palestine, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela,
and a couple of others. The project is already six years old. Conflict Kitchen raised most
controversy when it started serving Palestinian food. Several Jewish communities saw it
as a threat and an anti-Semitic act, and thus, tried to force Rubin to stop serving
Palestinian food.

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Creative Participation: Pablo Helguera distinguishes between 4 different types of

participation in SEA projects. Creative participation is the third type. In this type of
participation, the audience is literally, a piece of the artwork designed by the artist. A
good example would by the project The Muster by Allison Smith. Here fifty volunteers
dressed in Civil War uniforms, and carried out a reenactment. I personally don’t agree
with how Helguera separates between Nominal participation and Creative participation.
In a work of traditional art, let us say, a poem, the participation required by the reader
encompasses both degrees, nominal and creative. The reader of the poem must reflect
on the philosophical message of it, he must use all of his creativity and imagination to
understand the symbols and metaphors used, and even further, he literally needs to
become the poem, he needs to become the characters in the poem, he needs to get under
their skin, so that he can fully understand the emotion that the poet is talking about. This
last aspect falls under creative participation, because the reader must literally become
part of the poem to understand it.

Culture in Action: this was an event that took place in Chicago in 1993. It was
sponsored by Sculpture Chicago and curated by Mary Jane Jacob. The event was
comprised of eight different projects throughout the city of Chicago, all of which took
place from May to September of 1993. Culture in Action aimed to reinvent and rethink
the concept of public art. Instead of thinking about specific sites as possible scenarios
for their projects, they thought of the entire city as a possible scenario. They also
focused on the role of the audience as participants in the creation process of the public
art work. Thus, it is believed by many that this is a way of democratizing the audience,
which is to say, empowering the audience in the creation of artworks.

Fluxus: this term comes from latin, and it literally means “flow.” It’s an artistic
movement in visual arts, music, and literature. Fluxus rejects the idea of a physical
tangible artistic object, and embraces art as a sociological procedure. John Cage was a
famous Fluxus musician. One of his most famous works is titled, “4 minutes 33
seconds.” In this work, the performer sits on the piano and doesn’t play a single key for
4 minutes and 33 seconds. In my opinion, John Cage was a thinker, perhaps a
philosopher, but not a musician. Such a piece is telling us what Beethoven already
discovered 200 years ago: that music is the most beautiful sound after silence. If Cage is
trying with this piece to tell us that we should listen to the silence, that true music is
silence, yes I absolutely agree. But again… he is not innovating in any way, ZEN

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meditators, Buddhist meditators discovered this hundreds of years ago, and dedicate
hours of their day to contemplate silence. Thus, I tend to see John Cage more as a
thinker, than a musician.

Neo-concrete movement: this was a Brazilian art movement that has its origins in the
city of Rio de Janeiro. It was initially formed by a group of artists called the “Grupo
Frente.” Famous neo-concrete artists include Lygia Clark, Helio Oiticica, and Lygia
Pape. I find interesting and attractive some of the works by Oiticica. Lygia Clark has a
famous work titled, Baba antropofagica, which I don’t like at all. What I don’t like
about it is that people call it art. It is an interesting project, but it resembles more of a
ritual than art. If this is considered art, then we should also consider taking a bath as
art… and enjoying a pleasant windy day should also be considered as art. Any
experience that we have with the body then would be eligible for the artistic world, and
in my opinion, it’s much more complicated than this.

Participatory art: This is art that, in order to be created, or done, requires some degree
of participation by the spectators. When referring to participation, it’s referred to
physical participation. Projects under this category include, “Tiza” by Jennifer Allora
and Guillermo Calzadilla, and “Key to the city.” Socially engaged art is often referred to
as participatory art.

Ready-Mades: This is a term brought up in the reading when the author refers to
Duchamp’s urinal. This project basically consists of a urinal with the signature of
Duchamp in it. It was exposed in museums and has been considered to pertain to the
field of “Ready-made” art. In my opinion Ready-mades are not art. Art is not just a
piece of reality; art transforms reality into something different. How is it possible that
such things even receive attention from the public, and then magnificent works of art,
such as Bach’s Mathews passion (just to name a work of art which has driven crazy
many experts), receive so little attention from the public? In my opinion, Ready-mades
exist because of the business world trying to maximize profits in the art world. In order
to do this, they need artists to produce at a very fast rate. The result is such weak
projects such as ready-mades. Artists have seldom been very rich… art takes a
tremendous amount of time, effort, experience, expertise, talent, to be created. If ready-
mades should be considered art, then I would say that they pertain to the weakest kind
of art ever created by men. Just compare the actual philosophical and emotional

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meaning of the Urinal, to any of the greatest works of the greatest artists, musicians,
philosophers, writers, poets… The Urinal is not even close. In the renaissance,
musicians like Monteverdi and Galilei studied ancient greek history and came to a
conclusion: music would only posses its highest powers if it appealed to the affects, to
the soul, and only if the form of the music helped portray these affects and emotions.
This can be applied to absolutely all arts. Well, 500 years after this discovery, we seem
to go backwards in our evolution process… In what way does the Urinal appeal to my
emotions, in what way does it speak to my soul?

Women on waves: this is an activist project in which physician Rebecca Gomperts

organized and prepared a ship that contained an abortion clinic on board. Their goal was
to travel to countries were abortion is illegal and offer abortion services to those in need
of them. Technically, this was legal since the ship was property of The Netherlands, and
there, abortion is legal. In my opinion, abortion is a very complex topic, and you cannot
apply the same rule to the whole population. This is to say, you can’t just say, abortion
is completely legal, or, abortion is completely illegal. In the one hand, I think there are
cases were women really deserve to abort… If women are raped for instance, and get
pregnant. I know of a particular case in my home town, were a young girl got pregnant
by her grandfather… All these cases are horrendous, and women should have the right
to chose in such cases.

Works Cited

Kwon, Miwon. One Place after Another. London: Mit, 2002. Print.

"Ludwig Van Beethoven Quotes." BrainyQuote. Xplore, n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2016.

Helguera, Pablo. Education for Socially Engaged Art: A Materials and

Techniques Handbook. New York: Jorge Pinto, 2011. Print.

Finkelpearl, Tom. What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social

Cooperation. Durham: Duke UP, 2013. Print.