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Entry Points: The Vera List Center Field Guide on Art and Social Justice No. 1
Providing a lively snapshot of the state of art and social justice today on a global level, Entry Points accompanies the inaugural Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics, launched at The New School on the occasion of the center’s twentieth anniversary. This book captures some of the most significant worldwide examples of art and social justice and introduces an interested audience of artists, policy makers, scholars, and writers to new ways of thinking about how justice is defined, advanced, and practiced through the arts. In so doing, it assembles some of the latest scholarship in this field while refining our vocabulary for speaking about social justice, social engagement, community enhancement, empowerment, and even art itself.
The book's first half contains three essays by Thomas Keenan, João Ribas, and Sharon Sliwinski that map the field of art and social justice. These essays are accompanied by more than twenty profiles of recent artist projects that consist of brief essays and artist pages. This curated and carefully considered map of artists and projects identifies key moments in art and social justice.
The book's second half consists of an in-depth analysis of Theaster Gates's The Dorchester Projects , which won the inaugural Vera List Prize for Art and Politics. Produced to complement the project’s exhibition at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons School of Design in September 2013, this analysis illuminates Gates's rich, complex, and exemplary work. This section includes an interview between Gates and Vera List Center director Carin Kuoni; essays by Horace D. Ballard Jr., Romi N. Crawford, Shannon Jackson, and Mabel O. Wilson; and a number of responses to The Dorchester Projects by faculty in departments across The New School.
Published by Duke University Press and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School
The book's first half contains three essays by Thomas Keenan, João Ribas, and Sharon Sliwinski that map the field of art and social justice. These essays are accompanied by more than twenty profiles of recent artist projects that consist of brief essays and artist pages. This curated and carefully considered map of artists and projects identifies key moments in art and social justice.
The book's second half consists of an in-depth analysis of Theaster Gates's The Dorchester Projects , which won the inaugural Vera List Prize for Art and Politics. Produced to complement the project’s exhibition at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons School of Design in September 2013, this analysis illuminates Gates's rich, complex, and exemplary work. This section includes an interview between Gates and Vera List Center director Carin Kuoni; essays by Horace D. Ballard Jr., Romi N. Crawford, Shannon Jackson, and Mabel O. Wilson; and a number of responses to The Dorchester Projects by faculty in departments across The New School.
Published by Duke University Press and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School
288 pages, Paperback
First published November 7, 2015
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About the author
Carin Kuoni
19 books16 followersCarin Kuoni is a curator and editor whose work examines how contemporary artistic practices reflect and inform social, political and cultural conditions. She is Director/Curator of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School and teaches there. A founding member of the artists’ collective REPOhistory, Kuoni has curated and co-curated numerous transdisciplinary exhibitions, and edited and co-edited several books, among them Energy Plan for the Western Man: Joseph Beuys in America; Words of Wisdom: A Curator’s Vademecum; Speculation, Now; and Entry Points: The Vera List Center Field Guide on Art and Social Justice. She is the recipient of a 2014 Andy Warhol Foundation Curatorial Fellowship, directed “SITAC XII: Arte, justamente” in Mexico City in 2015, and is a Travel Companion for the 57th Carnegie International in 2018.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 14, 2016
Carin Kuoni and Chelsea Haines, eds. Entry Points: The Vera List Center Manual on Art and Social Justice, No. 1. 288pp, 153 illustrations. $25: ISBN: 978-0-8223-6200-5. January 2016. Duke University Press.
****
This book needs an introduction because anybody that comes to it without an orientation will become confused. The title, cover and the map of artists on page 12 promise a collection of modern social art, but then three essays on the personal experience and theory of the relationship of postmodern art to politics toss the reader into a haze. It seems the structure of the book is deliberately breaking design norms. An introduction in small font explains how the book is organized: Part One, “The Field” presents a “snapshot into the state of art and social justice on a global level with reflections on key concepts” by looking at twenty-two distinct projects very briefly. Part Two, “Dorchester Projects” by Theaster Gates theorizes in essays on the 2008 transformation of two buildings in Chicago into a library, performance space and soul food kitchen (7-8). Once you orient yourself in this scheme, it’s easy to turn through the individual social art projects and concepts to dig for the information that interests an individual reader.
This book was sent to me by Duke, but they are only the distributer for the project. It was designed with the support of The New School in Manhattan that also houses Project Runway. They created a deliberate sense of disorientation in part by starting the table of contents on the left-hand side and using multiple columns for the chapters as if they were image titles and not placing “contents” or another identifying label above the list. The second you take the book into your arms, you feel strange bumps on the front and back cover that feel like brail, but do not appear to have any visual correspondence with the wooden house photograph on the cover. The next thought you have might be if you have unintentionally damaged the book or if it was damaged in transit, so you check it more closely and the dents appear smooth and artistically positioned (if nonsensically). Then you turn the pages past the introductions and find a black-background map with white and green dots on it and suddenly the two might come together and you realize that the bumps on the cover echo the pattern of art installations marked on this interior map. Each of these dots also re-appears on the first page of the chapter that discuss the installation in that geographic location (frequently overlaying the text on that page). The spine is also made up of two rectangles, orange and green, in contrast with the beige tones on the front cover. The font in the introduction and in those crucial sections where the achievements of radical artists are introduced are in tiny 8-9 point font, while the sections of casual personal theory and interviews are enormously sized at 12 point font. There is also a cacophony of fonts used for the different types of content blocks. In parallel, there are great low-contrast, meaningful photographs across the book. Overall, reading this book is a postmodern experience, and if the reader has enough time to explore this sensation, this is a good thing.
One of the artists interviewed and described is Ai Weiwei who “brought 1,001 Chinese people to Kassel, Germany, throughout the run of the exhibition to wander around the city in specially designed clothes, towing custom-made luggage. His exhibition So Sorry (2009-10) at the Haus der Kunst in Munich included reproductions of thousands of ‘too little, too late’-style apologies expressed by governments, industries, and corporations worldwide, as well as a giant banner covering the museum’s façade made of 9,000 children’s backpacks that spelled in Chinese the phrase ‘she lived happily for seven years in this world,’ a reference to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in which poorly built schools collapsed and killed thousands of children. A photographic series Ai has produced features him ‘giving the finger’ to a series of national monuments, while another documents his destruction of ancient Chinese pottery by dropping them defiantly on the floor” (52). I had to reproduce this entire passage because all of these exhibits are very striking and help to explain why it’s important to create collections like this of examples of radical art. Weiwei was later arrested and imprisoned, and is now making films of himself at home to demonstrate against government surveillance.
Another project is the Ontological Walkspaces, where after the corrupt 2008 Armenian election, the protestors were forbidden from protesting in public, so instead they took what they labeled as “political walks” and discussed politics as they went in an attempt to make a political statement without being arrested for public protestations.
Amy Balkin created the Public Smog series of projects in 2004. Balkin’s website reproduces fictitious “financial and legal documents” that grant the public ownership of vast air parks that are supposedly traded in the open market and can fall into the hands of consumers who want to keep smog out of their air space. She also has documents that show that she attempted to “register the earth’s atmosphere as a UNESCO World Heritage site” but was refused (70).
Then there are sections about larger artistic organizations. Chto Delat (What Is to Be Done?) in Saint Petersburg, Russia has been doing collaborative art projects with proactive goals since 2003. DABATEATR in Rabat, Morocco runs a theater company which aims “to bring as many people as possible into the exploration and uncertainties of the creative process” (96). The Etcetera collective founded in Buenos Aires has been protesting with arts, acting, poetry and puppeteering for decades, and recently started the Errorist Movement that included a series of actions in protest on the streets “to Bush’s war on terror” (104). A war on terror is an absurd concept because fighting a feeling of fear is only likely to evoke that feeling in all involved. There have always been protestors (violent and non-violent) that have overthrown monarchies and tyrannies (i.e. the American Revolution) so fighting anybody that might cause one to feel terror is a psychotic proposition.
Anybody that has an ambition of practicing political mass art should read the stories in this book for inspiration and ideas. The design is unique, but this helps the text become a work of art in its turn, allowing its owner to acquire not only information, but also a piece of art to display predominantly on a shelf.
****
This book needs an introduction because anybody that comes to it without an orientation will become confused. The title, cover and the map of artists on page 12 promise a collection of modern social art, but then three essays on the personal experience and theory of the relationship of postmodern art to politics toss the reader into a haze. It seems the structure of the book is deliberately breaking design norms. An introduction in small font explains how the book is organized: Part One, “The Field” presents a “snapshot into the state of art and social justice on a global level with reflections on key concepts” by looking at twenty-two distinct projects very briefly. Part Two, “Dorchester Projects” by Theaster Gates theorizes in essays on the 2008 transformation of two buildings in Chicago into a library, performance space and soul food kitchen (7-8). Once you orient yourself in this scheme, it’s easy to turn through the individual social art projects and concepts to dig for the information that interests an individual reader.
This book was sent to me by Duke, but they are only the distributer for the project. It was designed with the support of The New School in Manhattan that also houses Project Runway. They created a deliberate sense of disorientation in part by starting the table of contents on the left-hand side and using multiple columns for the chapters as if they were image titles and not placing “contents” or another identifying label above the list. The second you take the book into your arms, you feel strange bumps on the front and back cover that feel like brail, but do not appear to have any visual correspondence with the wooden house photograph on the cover. The next thought you have might be if you have unintentionally damaged the book or if it was damaged in transit, so you check it more closely and the dents appear smooth and artistically positioned (if nonsensically). Then you turn the pages past the introductions and find a black-background map with white and green dots on it and suddenly the two might come together and you realize that the bumps on the cover echo the pattern of art installations marked on this interior map. Each of these dots also re-appears on the first page of the chapter that discuss the installation in that geographic location (frequently overlaying the text on that page). The spine is also made up of two rectangles, orange and green, in contrast with the beige tones on the front cover. The font in the introduction and in those crucial sections where the achievements of radical artists are introduced are in tiny 8-9 point font, while the sections of casual personal theory and interviews are enormously sized at 12 point font. There is also a cacophony of fonts used for the different types of content blocks. In parallel, there are great low-contrast, meaningful photographs across the book. Overall, reading this book is a postmodern experience, and if the reader has enough time to explore this sensation, this is a good thing.
One of the artists interviewed and described is Ai Weiwei who “brought 1,001 Chinese people to Kassel, Germany, throughout the run of the exhibition to wander around the city in specially designed clothes, towing custom-made luggage. His exhibition So Sorry (2009-10) at the Haus der Kunst in Munich included reproductions of thousands of ‘too little, too late’-style apologies expressed by governments, industries, and corporations worldwide, as well as a giant banner covering the museum’s façade made of 9,000 children’s backpacks that spelled in Chinese the phrase ‘she lived happily for seven years in this world,’ a reference to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in which poorly built schools collapsed and killed thousands of children. A photographic series Ai has produced features him ‘giving the finger’ to a series of national monuments, while another documents his destruction of ancient Chinese pottery by dropping them defiantly on the floor” (52). I had to reproduce this entire passage because all of these exhibits are very striking and help to explain why it’s important to create collections like this of examples of radical art. Weiwei was later arrested and imprisoned, and is now making films of himself at home to demonstrate against government surveillance.
Another project is the Ontological Walkspaces, where after the corrupt 2008 Armenian election, the protestors were forbidden from protesting in public, so instead they took what they labeled as “political walks” and discussed politics as they went in an attempt to make a political statement without being arrested for public protestations.
Amy Balkin created the Public Smog series of projects in 2004. Balkin’s website reproduces fictitious “financial and legal documents” that grant the public ownership of vast air parks that are supposedly traded in the open market and can fall into the hands of consumers who want to keep smog out of their air space. She also has documents that show that she attempted to “register the earth’s atmosphere as a UNESCO World Heritage site” but was refused (70).
Then there are sections about larger artistic organizations. Chto Delat (What Is to Be Done?) in Saint Petersburg, Russia has been doing collaborative art projects with proactive goals since 2003. DABATEATR in Rabat, Morocco runs a theater company which aims “to bring as many people as possible into the exploration and uncertainties of the creative process” (96). The Etcetera collective founded in Buenos Aires has been protesting with arts, acting, poetry and puppeteering for decades, and recently started the Errorist Movement that included a series of actions in protest on the streets “to Bush’s war on terror” (104). A war on terror is an absurd concept because fighting a feeling of fear is only likely to evoke that feeling in all involved. There have always been protestors (violent and non-violent) that have overthrown monarchies and tyrannies (i.e. the American Revolution) so fighting anybody that might cause one to feel terror is a psychotic proposition.
Anybody that has an ambition of practicing political mass art should read the stories in this book for inspiration and ideas. The design is unique, but this helps the text become a work of art in its turn, allowing its owner to acquire not only information, but also a piece of art to display predominantly on a shelf.
September 14, 2017
Good introduction to the Dorchester Projects and artist, Theaster Gates. Some excellent essays in the latter half of the book framing the social and historical climates that the Dorchester Projects arose from and influence. "Collecting Publics: The Spatial Politics of Dorchester Projects", by Mabel O. Wilson, still resonates with me. This essay outlined specific economic / housing strategies (including some official government policies) that were employed to stack the cards in the favor of white families and further marginalize African American families throughout the twentieth century. I'd recommend this book for this section of the book under the header of "Dorchester Projects". This portion of the book merits a four star rating. After reading these essays, I was spurred to follow up with more research on the work of Theaster Gates.
The first half of the book ("The Field") introduces a number of other socially engaged art projects by a variety of artists. I skipped around this section reading through some. Honestly, I think the design of the book, in terms of its content and how it is presented, presents a barrier to the reader as it didn't support an engaged experience. To begin with, It's confusing. To follow, it is cold. It could be helpful if you were looking to supplement understanding of a particular artist or project. For an introduction to the genre of socially engaged art that is accessible, I'd recommend Living as Form, by Nato Thompson.
The first half of the book ("The Field") introduces a number of other socially engaged art projects by a variety of artists. I skipped around this section reading through some. Honestly, I think the design of the book, in terms of its content and how it is presented, presents a barrier to the reader as it didn't support an engaged experience. To begin with, It's confusing. To follow, it is cold. It could be helpful if you were looking to supplement understanding of a particular artist or project. For an introduction to the genre of socially engaged art that is accessible, I'd recommend Living as Form, by Nato Thompson.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews