Krzysztof Wodiczko: Who Is the Audience?
Synopsis by Roddy MacInnes
The artist and industrial designer Krzysztof Wodiczko is internationally known for outdoor projections on monuments and buildings, as well as other projects that are meant as interventions into public space. During the presentation, he showed slides and discussed several of his recent projects that are designed to engage viewers in dialogue. Some of these include: who is audience and who is artist? or more specifically, who is a stranger? He suggested, in conjunction with Freud, that the stranger represents our unconscious and that we hunger for some proper public space within ourselves, a place where strangeness does not exist.
Wodiczko discussed the philosophies behind his work which take four directions: 1) political, where he examines issues of equality within democracy; 2) ethical, again challenging equality but from a personal stand point–the inequality of myself towards the other; 3) cultural, dealing with as Wodiczko puts it, "the legacy of the vanquished, where and when are we ‘vanquished’ or ‘victors’, and in this divide how can we acknowledge our own strangeness?"; 4) psychological or psycho-social, dealing with issues of psycho-development function of art when audience are helped to become artists.
In his presentation, we were shown slides which illustrate the relationships often experienced between strangers (immigrants,) and non strangers (hosts). In one photograph, taken on a city bus in Germany, we feel the unease in the faces of the passengers. A young immigrant self-consciously averts his gaze to the floor of the bus avoiding what he interprets as disapproval in the faces of an elderly host couple.
Such tense and conflicted human relationship dynamics are explored in his recent art piece/experimental work, "Alien Staff" which was the main focus of his presentation. This project is an investigation into audience/artist relationships and the interactions of strangers towards each other. The piece consists of a pole or stick infused with personal cultural artifacts and houses a small video monitor positioned at eye level. The monitor displays the user's face or eyes and with the help of a small loud speaker delivers pre-recorded responses to anticipated questions. Use of the "Alien Staff" requires that the "holder(s)" become creative in their interactions with their hosts. By taking the initiative and making the first move, they have the potential to inspire their psychological and cultural development. Wodiczko reiterated the need for stimulating cross cultural dialogue. His belief is that this would make it easier to confess or open up to the stranger.
In the book Veiled Histories , Bruce Robbins describes an encounter with the "Alien Staff" as such.
A passerby in the street sees someone holding a walking stick with a TV monitor on top like a hooded cobra. There is a moving image; there is the sound of a voice, perhaps an accented voice. The person holding the staff seems to want to make eye contact. What goes through the passerby's head? Another crazy foreigner? Someone who needs help walking? Moses in front of the Pharaoh?
Wodiczko also discussed his "Mouthpiece" project which is a further development of "Alien Staff." A prosthetic video-monitor is shown attached to a person's head by means of a metal bracket. A speaker has been added and sticks out from the side of the head. The image on the monitor which covers the mouth is us and, at the same time, not us. The host's face can relax while the instrument does the talking. The mouth piece conceals or replaces the face of the host.
A research project being carried out by Wodiczko at M.I.T. and discussed during the presentation, involves a voice response system which will respond to only one question such as, "Where are you from?" According to Wodiczko, this question is always perceived as a colonizing question, a question no stranger likes to be asked.
Another project presented at the conference was a video projection and sound project made in Krakow, Poland. A woman's hands shown peeling potatoes were projected onto a tower in the main square of Krakow and, from the tower, a woman's voice tells the story of how each night her husband comes home drunk and physically abuses her.
Krzysztof Wodiczko's presentation was enthusiastic and inspiring. It was followed by a stimulating debate with the audience about the merits of his unique approach to making public art which focuses attention on cultural issues and is highly politically charged.
Analysis by Richard McCabe
In his lecture "Who is the audience", Krzysztof Wodiczko explained his many projects which give a voice to the vanquished. With a mix of social/psychological theory and cyborg technologies, Wodiczko provides an atmosphere for dialogue between the victor and the vanquished.
During the lecture, it became clear that Wodiczko's audience are the "victors." The victors are those who are in power. The victors are those who control the vanquished by social, political and economic means. Wodiczko empowers the vanquished by providing to them the technologies of the victors. These individual technologies that Wodiczko spoke about in his lecture include: The alien staff, a prosthetic mouth attachment, a sound activated work and a video projection.
The alien staff is a walking stick with a video monitor mounted on top. The image on the alien staff monitor is of its holder speaking-telling his or her story. The holder of the alien staff is an immigrant. The immigrant is seen standing on a sidewalk with the staff, as people passing by investigate this never before seen technology. Located in the base of the staff is a clear plastic tube. This tube contains items and images of displacement: work permits, letters from home and pictures of oppressors.
By designing such a unique art work as the alien staff and placing it in a public space, Wodiczko is able to provide an environment for inquiry. With the alien staff, Wodiczko creates an atmosphere in which the vanquished and victor can share a common dialogue. The alien staff is successful because it permits inquiry between the public and its holder. The alien staff is the catalyst to which a better understanding of one another can begin.
The next work that Wodiczko discussed was a prosthetic mouth attachment. In this work, a prosthetic attachment which contains a video monitor is placed over the head and in front of the mouth. The image on the video screen is that of the mouth of the person wearing the device. The person wearing the prosthetic mouth attachment is an immigrant. The audio/video is telling a story of oppression and displacement.
Like the alien staff, Wodiczko's prosthetic mouth attachment uses technology to talk in place of its holder. With this prosthetic mouth attachment, Wodiczko beautifully intertwines technology and art to stimulate dialogue.
Another work, a sound activated piece took on a decidedly defensive position. Whereas the alien staff and the prosthetic mouth piece create an environment conducive to dialogue, the piece reacts to key words or phrases to defend its wearer–an immigrant. After talking to immigrants from around the world, Wodiczko found that the question "Where are you from?" always takes on a colonizing tone, even when asked in a generous manner. When key words and phrases are spoken to the possessor of this sound activated device, two video screens mounted in a backpack spring up and into action. On the video monitors is an image of the possessor of the technology. This image begins questioning the question or remark. This system is designed to question the question until the operator calls the device off.
With this work, Wodiczko hopes that "This might lead to further questioning. It is Wodiczko's use of futuristic design combined with social, political and ethical concerns that make his art so interesting. Just the design of this work is enough to warrant curiosity. By making a work that questions a question Wodiczko sets the stage for an answer.
The last work that Wodiczko talked about was a video projection. A video was projected at night onto a tower in the town square of Krakow, Poland. This town square is the largest in Europe and the tower is the largest in Krakow. The video image was of the hands of people whose voices underscored the projection. The peoples whose hands were being projected spoke of being oppressed and abused. A woman spoke of her husband who abused her. A homosexual spoke of not being able to reveal his sexuality openly.
With this work, the idea of the victim and the vanquished is realized in its fullest. Wodiczko projects the image of the vanquished onto an image of the victors–the town square's tower. Using the technology of the victors, Wodiczko is able to relay the plight of the victims to thousands. This is metaphorically portrayed by just showing the hands of the vanquished. Their faces are not seen, yet this work gives voices to those who are seldom seen as through this projection, their stories are heard.
The Role of the Audience
Panelists: Esther Shalev-Gerz
(moderator), Leslie King Hammond, Krzysztof Wodiczko
Shalev-Gerz: I thought as we talk about the audience, why not give the prerogative to the audience. They were the witness for today, and this is a summing up.
Hammond: I am very interested in what the audience thinks about this. In all of our talks, the role the audience plays begs the question: What is the definition of the audience and how does it function. Since you were supposed to be our audience, I am very interested in how you felt about the dynamics of what we were doing and how we were engaging you, and all the questions you didn't get to ask.
Shalev-Gerz: The other thing is, when I gave my talk, many people said they wanted to ask questions, but about 50% were actually statements. That was very nice. It is not necessary to convert the statement into a question.
Audience: What I have been finding myself doing as a member of the audience for almost all of the lectures is drawing themes that come up between each of the lectures and presentations. I have noticed themes of burial, resurfacing, archaeology, boundaries, surveillance, evidence, and the re-emergence of suppressed history. Can you draw this into a sense of a role a lot of us find ourselves playing, that of an archaeologist, as a millennial role? Are we trying to recapture those histories we have lost at we head to the end of the twentieth century? Or do you think it is a public role we are all taking on because we have aspects of our own histories that have been suppressed?
Wodiczko: "Recapturing suppressed history," "resurfacing," "bringing up evidence," "archeological work." Yes! The only condition, however, is that they should all be critical. As Walter Benjamin said, we must allow history to judge us for it is us who must judge history. This approach is necessary if we wish history not to repeat itself with all its injustices and catastrophes. We must look critically at the past in order to reactualize it in the present time. (As if the past was waiting there in anticipation of the present.) Judging the past must begin with critical examination of the problems and issues of the present time and only after this should we follow with the projection-juxtaposition of such an examination onto the past. The result of this procedure (projection-juxtaposition) would be an extreme clarity in seeing what it is in our present time that dangerously resembles the past. And it is exactly this resemblance, which should not perpetuate itself in the future. As artists we must interrupt the possibility or the process of such a perpetuation. In Benjamin’s words, we must "interrupt history."
Shalev-Gerz: For me, it is the philosopher that makes the change that opens up the circle. Like Brancusi, saying that from now on, after what happened in mid-century, I am responsible for you, you are not responsible for me, but you are responsible for someone else. The other one is responsible to someone else. For me, this kind of opening, linearity, and infinity, gives the possibility for what you were saying.
Wodiczko: I hope that you are right and that linearity and opening (as a commitment to responsibility for someone else) can allow for critical interruptions, recollections, and visions. The Talmud says that one of the reasons Jerusalem was destroyed was because of the very fact that people had stopped reprimanding each other (or caring to reprimand each other). This could mean that taking responsibility for somebody else is necessary but not sufficient ethical practice when facing a danger of perpetuation of destruction of the past. One must take from and then and now on the responsibility for the responsibility of the other" as Emanuel Levinas suggested, this may also require taking responsibility for the irresponsibility of the other. I would like us, the artists, to try to take risk in responding through their practice to such responsibility. In our "democratic" and "multicultural" societies such an ethical agenda may become a risk that leads to public demagogy and "tyranny of opinion." Yet, without risk, there can be no ethics. I am in favor of such risk, especially if such risk disrupts numbness of the others; social blindness towards the marginalized, passivity in face of injustice and historical amnesia which erases the memory of the past tragedies.
Hammond: Listening today, and being here, punctuates a strange relationship that I have been witnessing of how we have related to the term history, that body of knowledge we call history. We have all come from a legacy that has been owned or controlled or documented by a narrow sphere of individuals. We seem to be moving into a era where we are recognizing that no one owns any particular history, nor is any one group responsible for documenting it. Consequently, I see, in an audience like this, us as human beings seeking those voices that give authenticity to a history that has been repressed, for whatever reasons. I find myself having the need to find out. For years, lecturing, this one-dimensional experience of presenting information, left me wondering if the audience got it, what part they got, and what it meant. In most cases, I don't get to find out. But finding out is the transformative moment for me. That expands my understanding of the nature of what I am doing and how I connect to my peers, to the audience. If you don't have feedback to understand where the impact is occurring, then you walk away and you are in a netherland. I am fascinated and driven by the need to query and explore. I don't think there is one answer to your question, but I think it is about this resurgence of collective interest in the nature of what a history is about or should do or mean.
Shalev-Gerz: You come to acknowledge that it is a one-way society. There is no ministry of ritual that will answer that question. There is a lack of this. It will be interesting to see from where will come the change. We are protected by the media we have created and all the public space is only one way. We are uneducated in reciprocity.
Audience: It is interesting that we are looking at the repressed and the unknown. It also may be that we are looking to the unknown so we can reach a higher sense of self awareness about self and other. Do you think that could be bringing up all this stuff?
Hammond: At the last Academy Awards, there was a telling moment for me. There was only one Hollywood movie that won that year. Everything else was an unknown filmmaker telling a small story about an ordinary, common, spectacular, extraordinary, infinitesimal part of someone's life. I think there is a burning desire on the part of all intelligent, educated human beings, who don't get an opportunity to participate in this process, to find a way to say there are more stories to be told about living, loving, and laughter, and dying and crying and hurting. Humanity is begging for a kind of authenticity of voice and experience that doesn't come from the anointed authorities we have come to revere and respect. Not that they are wrong, but their sphere is too narrow to address the complexity and vitality of what we need in anticipation of this millennium thing. At every millennium juncture, everyone gets a little nuts. We are not much different, except that we are supposed to be intelligent, educated individuals. Our greatest fault is that we have an enormous problem in talking and communicating with each other, listening and implementing. For us to be sitting here, talking like this, is an anomaly. This is where my need level is. I often question why I am up here as an authority. Everybody has certain kinds of genius. That is what we are about. How do we get there? How do I open the door? Our charge from here is to take this discourse someplace else. That is the only way we will get it out there. While we are here, we need to maximize this and push. We also don't need to be so pleasant and polite.
Audience: When you are working as a visual artist, how do you deal with the difficulty of visually presenting the stories of the repressed without inadvertently reinforcing their position as repressed?
Hammond: It's about telling a story first, and finding a place in that story.
Shalev-Gerz: Can I tell a story? I was once in a small town off Vancouver and had to spend a Sunday waiting for Jochen to come. Nobody was on the street. There were two Indians, so I joined them. We started to talk and they told me they had forgotten their songs. I was touched. Suddenly I realized that I didn't even remember that I forgot my songs. I didn't know to what songs I should refer, compared to their history, which was so close to them. They could remember that someone made them forget their songs. I don't have anything like that to recollect. I was in a dilemma. They were much more close to their basic needs than I was. I don't know the answer. I only know I am trying to concentrate on what my song is today. If I do talk with people, I don't think whether they are repressed. I try to bring their story back to themselves.
Hammond: I think you have to speak from the center of your own experience. I may draw parallels in my talks to other individuals, but I always try to make sure that I center it in that which I experience, so it doesn't look like I am appropriating someone else's experience to promote my message.
Audience: I am concerned more with when you approach a visual piece that is putting voice to a repressive past, how you can also provide the future in that piece, so that someone is not identified through that repression and tied to it.
Hammond: That is a really difficult thing because you are so deeply into it. Sometimes I think you just have to go and do it, work it through, bring the piece to some level of fruition. Then leave it so you can get some distance. Sometimes, subconsciously, we don't know everything we are doing. We just have impulses and only afterwards can we gain some perspective. To articulate it before you do it and grapple with it is premature. Sometimes you have to go through the process so you understand these feelings that are making you uncomfortable and causing you fear, creating anxiety, and are compelling. You can't control it before you allow it to manifest itself. Even if in the end of the manifestation you gross yourself out.
Audience: My question is about time, and the fact that time and duration and the meaning of time lends itself to narrative and linearity, but fragmentation, interaction. Absence of memory becomes a juncture of a response to the kind of speed we live with now. How, in this speed, can we find time and history and duration?
Wodiczko: What do you mean by interactivity?
Audience: Interactivity becomes some form of action/response, or interfaces for action/response.
Wodiczko: I hope that what you are saying is not a nostalgia for a continuum, a return to the good old times, when we knew where we were and everything was in order. As Walter Benjamin said, the worst thing that is happening is that "things go on." Perhaps interactivity and interruption is a great hope and opportunity to insert those unheard, disruptive voices and shake up the smooth operation of the continuum of the dominant culture with all of its ideologies and preconceptions. In your question I see the worry that not enough work is being done that will take advantage of the opportunity of interruption. Clearly, this should be the topic of another session, with artists who have experience in working with cyborgian interfaces, breaking and discontinuing communication barriers, combining various "high" and "low-tech"systems. There is clearly not enough work done in this area.
Shalev-Gerz: But I think that the public through several works we talked about today goes through an experience that may take them time to understand, but they do have something they take with them that is different from the system that they had. We always over talk it in the academic way, and forget that those people have to take with them not just a memory of something but a real experience.
Wodiczko: History is the structure of experience.
Shalev-Gerz: I think we shouldn't be too quick about that. This is important to think about.
Wodiczko: It seems that, in the area you are working in, there is the possibility to think of new programs that will inspire the accumulation of experience, building the layers of history in a discursive way so that each new entry could reactualize the accumulated past and bring new questions. It might do so half automatically and half randomly in response to the type of inquiry. I am myself still behind in terms of my technical knowledge to launch projects like this but I am clearly moving in this direction with my new instruments and projections.
Shalev-Gerz: Equipment is part of it. The Web is letting voice be used. What we lost between speech and writing is a big thing. I think we are coming back to it. We will gain a lot when voice and image is both used on the web.
Audience: I want to make reference to Krzysztof's comment that a new public space might be established and Leslie's research, which develops a new type of language that has to be put out there. As artists, we sometimes hide behind the visual and forget about the language. Can you speak about that?
Hammond: One thing I have noticed, as I have been doing a lot of writing and trying to finish a major book, is that I got bogged down with language. I am writing and writing and rereading, and the language no longer supports the work and the questions that are coming forward. Written language is pathetic. We have hung on to it for so long it no longer has meaning for the kinds of issues and kind of work and materials. We have lost the ability to have a discourse that gives the meaning and intent, that preserves the nature of the experience. When I suggested before that a difficulty we have as humans is our ability to communicate, it was because when we sit down to talk, it is one of the most agonizing experiences, because we are constantly trying to get through the thick tonnage of old rhetoric, old policies and philosophies. We haven't had a community of forums to query those issues, and we have not allowed ourselves to listen to those voices who aren't authorities. That is where a lot of our work as artists has to be, in the word. Which word? How do we use the word? Is it about the word anymore? We know we need the word in the narrative, to help shape history. This is why there is so much text in art now. We are challenging the notion of language used as a political fortress. I am troubled by the language that is used to subvert that is coming out of Washington, language that dismisses us as nonessential. We need voices to shape who we are. How do we speak for ourselves? Artists in the United States are not given the status of a blue collar worker. We are always having to explain ourselves. We are constantly depending on a critic or curator to qualify us.
Wodiczko: All of avant garde art history is like a Babel tower, about trying to find the way out of Babel, against the languages dividing us for which the World Wars and global modern alienation were blamed (i.e. Dada). In that time, people like Gertrude Stein analyzed vernacular language as a hopeful alternative in search for playful and truthful multiplicity in speech. To help develop languages, maybe it is still our task. We have more possibilities today to help languages to grow. But with the new language, each time there is a need to teach others how to understand it. Like with art, you have to give both a new form or code and a new key to read it. Active and creative rereading and recoding is a very important aspect of the democratic process. This country is still doing better than many other countries in its openness to changing and transforming popular language in tune with the changing world. We should take advantage of this fact and push it artistically further.
Audience: One of the things that interests me about this is how people from different communities all frequently have the same things in mind in terms of how we relate to our sense of humanity. The biggest thing you are talking about is that language prevents us from being able to bridge those gaps. That was apparent when you were showing your work about the Tallahassee situation, where blacks couldn't go into the white community. I'm sure they would have loved to have done so, but they couldn't communicate, and therefore couldn't venture into that other world. The wonderful thing about the visual arts is that we can avoid language. We can create imagery that can beg questions, that can start dialogue, and get past a lot of those things that ultimately hinder us on a lot of levels. I've seen it by virtue of some of Leslie's things. The other thing I am getting from this is the thought of how we can begin to create those strategies to build further on that capacity to create some imagery that can challenge the status quo, and begin that dialogue and give rise to a stronger sense of humanity.
Audience: I understand your visual imagery point, but I think it's dangerous to rely on your visuals. I think that is where the change has to happen. A lot of people throw visuals out there and they don't bother to deal with the language.
Audience: I am not relying solely on the visuals. I am just looking for the part that can get the conversation started. I'm not saying we don't need to talk, but the talking can be generated by virtue of the visuals. In both your work, there is enormous opportunity for raising conversation. You are talking to people who are the other, who didn't have that voice, who haven't been heard from. By creating imagery that allows them to be addressed begs the question of what that is all about, and you have to respond to it.
Audience: Sometimes, good intentions pave the way to hell. And sometimes one goes about creating work with a certain intent to inform the message or influence an audience or public, and without any control of their own, their intention is subverted. Could you each speak to examples in your own practice that represent that and how you have dealt with that?
Wodiczko: It might bring back painful memories.
Hammond: When I am not in an uncomfortable position somewhere, where someone is trying to reinterpret what I say or intend, then I am doing something wrong, perhaps. The problem is that everybody wants to be liked. Everybody wants to be loved and accepted. And you are right about the road to hell. So with the best of intentions, you lay it out there, and there is going to be someone who is going to take a different spin. That is life, the way we come to terms with things. But it doesn't mean that you stop what you are doing. You constantly, as an artist, as a thinker, as a maker, have to push yourself and have to be more attentive to the responses that are coming. It is about catharsis. Creativity is like giving birth all the time. It is as close as you guys will ever get. Those of us who have done it, know the physicality and the pain, and the ultimate beauty and growth of all that. Nowhere was it ever promised that it would be easy, or that we have another choice.
Wodiczko: I would like to defend misinterpretation. Since I had to take care of equipment, in the early stage of my practice, I was close to the audience. So I overheard lots of conversations. Each time someone was responding to the work, my heart stopped when it looked like there was a complete misunderstanding. Then I realized that this is the structure or character of the discourse that developed, based on a variety of readings, discussions, and arguments. Eventually a strange community was formed for a while, of disagreements, and "disorganized" readings, and I realized that there is something that happened there. People communicated through their "misreadings" and in fact the reading was much more complex than I would ever imagine. I learned from this mess the complexity of work that those people deserved next time that I try. The discourse is much more intelligent and more critical than any particular expertise in reading.
Shalev-Gerz: And there is no art in paradise, so I don't know.
Hammond: As I was moving from becoming a young art student to becoming a young art historian, I was truly suffering from foot in mouth. That is because my perspectives were informed by having spent my life being an artist or maker. I didn't think of myself as an artist. I had no intentions of exhibiting. I remember all the cities I got run out of for the lectures I gave that people just did not like or agree with. They were stirring and moving. I didn't go away crying. I sat down and thought about what I had said that pissed people off so badly. Chicago is not a good place for me. The intensity of the questions is fine. That helps me shape my thinking, to shape what it is about people's assumptions or presumptions that I can understand to make me a better at what I am trying to understand. It's very unsettling. I was in Greenville, South Carolina. Oh, did I bomb there. I forgot I was in the Bible belt. I tried to do something with middle school children that dealt with imagination, and it didn't fly at all. It's a constant learning experience for me. The more I do it, the more I am struck about how much I don't know and need to know and need to think through. Today I had no idea we would sit up here and talk about audience, which I have been preoccupied with. I am trying to find out where I belong, because every time I go someplace to give a talk, I am scared about how it will be perceived.
Shalev-Gerz: For a WW2 commemorative project that was chosen by jury in Austria, we "misunderstood" the way they dealt with history and the old army veterans blocked the decision of realizing the work, that was therefore never realized. There maybe we hit a rock.
Audience: I'd like to speak to the word audience. I believe in the power of the word, and I think the word audience has been disemboweled. I am mindful of the thought that audience comes from the word audio, which reminds me that the constitution of this country was taken from the Iroquois confederacy. The basis of their democratic union was to listen. The way their leaders were appointed was that the talking stick was passed around the room and everyone spoke and then the leader was the person who listened most carefully. Could you respond to that?
Wodiczko: This is a beautiful statement in itself and it refers to a supreme art of early democracy. We should think of contemporary versions of such democracy and of such talking sticks.
Shalev-Gerz: I talked about the work we just did in Berlin. It was an audience that came to a theater and found nothing on the stage: they had to make the play. They had to listen to themselves and to each other. After the play the people’s reaction was: "I read the text, was I good?" or " I forgot what I read." The texts were horribly explicit and heavy. We are so distant from speaking out in public.
Hammond: Audience is a troublesome word. We ought to give it a rest, because it also has a very strong connotation of being entertained. The model you gave is one that refers to community, participation, collective performance and responsibility, human interface. It gives permission to other authorities and voices of authenticity to share in the process of collectively creating a strategy or result. Culturally, I think we have exhausted certain words, and I think audience is one of those.
Wodiczko: The talking stick was there before media and mass communications. Now, there are all those powerful speakers who are barricading the public space openness and accessibility of which is supposedly protected by the constitution. But today, too often speaking artistically in public space has become "publicity" and legislation process. The question is how to continue your metaphor in the present time and find a way of new counter speech. The constitution was also written before the existence of contemporary socio-economic systems dominated by speech of corporations and media. Yet it is still the only constitution in the world that puts the right of speech as the supreme human right.
Shalev-Gerz: With the Greeks, democracy started with raising your voice in public.
Wodiczko: I think there is not one answer to your question. But you provided some interesting tips, like not imagining there is one method for every group or community.
Hammond: Regarding the need to have a structure or form or strategy, I remember growing up when we would go visit our family in Harlem, I always was fascinated by the fact that there were so many ladders in that community. Someone would put up a ladder in the middle of the street, and climb up, and give forth great discourse. Whatever was on your mind, you could get on that ladder and say it. I was mesmerized. I thought it was a great thing. My father grew up in Harlem and he told me that people would talk for days and nights. I remember seeing Malcolm X on the ladder. I remember seeing Adam Clayton Powell. I remember seeing Joe Blow on the ladder. We have to be open to new vehicles and methods, to create situations where public voice can be heard. We are making some attempts at town hall meetings such as this. There is an infinite range of creativity that could be exercised. We have to stop thinking about boundaries and sanctioned arenas for substantive discourse. Look at the chat rooms online. That is another forum.
Audience: I wanted to ask about artists that fly in like a magician and are the source of all the resources, and listen to the public and then direct the public to a final thing. How does a community with a political and social agenda continue the magic, without the need of other magicians, especially when it comes to new technology?
Shalev-Gerz: I think nothing grows by itself. You have to make a space for it. You have to do a lot of things. Flying in magically takes finding ways to do things in structures that were not made to do them. I don't think that any structure that is already in place interests me very much. I am interested in perverting the structure. If the structure goes on with it, that's okay. This is what we manage to do now. Whatever I have done, the possibility was there for it to be done.
Hammond: You have to navigate two worlds. The artist is part of a community. You are more part of the community you live in and the community that connects with you than you are the community of government to which we sometimes find ourselves accountable. We have to be smart about how we deal with that and be aware of the pitfalls. There is no straight route in this navigation.
Shalev-Gerz: You have to talk to everyone.
Wodiczko: There is also another rule you have to satisfy, the community. One way the arts could be arranged for is as a sense of communal identity and make everyone sing the same song. Another thing is to help people deal with disagreements and tensions in a peaceful way. Another thing is to help some people get out of a so-called community. Community can also be oppressive. You might not want to be in that corner every day. You might want to find some way to insert yourself in a larger world. It's difficult to say whether we should be in support of a particular project. The responsibility is to figure out how to be useful, as a stranger. You must be a stranger in some ways to be useful. People who live inside a community might have no opportunity to instigate a project the way you can from the outside. At the same time, you have a great opportunity to fail completely, to misread, and not take advantage of your strangeness. It's a very tricky business.
Shalev-Gerz: I am about to do a project that is sure to fail. It is working only with the community this time.
Wodiczko: But hopefully, in an interesting way.
Audience: If it is a one-time thing, you don't have much to lose, but if the community does something, they have to live with it.
Shalev-Gerz: They won't fail, it's mainly you that fail.
Audience: But the artist has some resources to be able to come into the community, and is working with a public that may not have the resources to continue the work. How do you make sure that they are allowed to continue.
Shalev-Gerz: Why should it continue?
Wodiczko: An artist who comes in from outside has the potential to be very open to those who are creative who are already there in the community and may be able to help them continue, with a different project, perhaps. They can be encouraged by receiving recognition from the outside.
Audience: I wanted to talk about community. And I have been looking for like-minded people. As an undergraduate ten years ago, I felt I had something to say but didn't know how to say it. I was searching for teachers to help me with that. I was against the wall, because I was taking pictures of women in a way that feminist theory didn't allow according to the politically correct rules. One of the biggest problems is our paranoia with politics. We are all scared. I am German, so I have a lot of paranoia. I think it is hard to open up more to each other and accept a comment that might sound stupid and not condemn it right away. How can we promote a sensitivity to each other and each other's ideas? I have never been in a discussion like here where people are trying to connect.
Wodiczko: You are saying something I was hoping would be said. Maybe one of the points is to go beyond multiculturalism, not backward, but beyond. There is an interesting contradiction in some ways between democracy and multiculturalism. Some people call it cultural democracy. Multiculturalism also has race based traps, as a machine that selects those who will be supported and those who shouldn't. Artistically speaking, the biggest problem is a decline in a sense of humor, because humor is always wrong. Someone might be offended or might misread it. There is no easy way out. I think we should gradually acknowledge that democracy should be more disorganized, to allow the discourse to be tougher and more hilarious. It will be over our injured bodies in this country. It won't be easy, but we should not be passive. We should test the ground all the time. It is important not to end up in prison and constantly need the help of lawyers, but I would suggest having a lawyer, just in case. Don't lose your sense of humor, because once we lose that, there will be no critical metaphor and no beginning for new thinking possible.
Shalev-Gerz: This is very important, humor. The other point is that fantasy was exchanged with knowledge. This gives us a vacuum; we cannot fantasize anymore.
Audience: It is also that if you say one side of an argument, you are assumed to be against the opposite.
Wodiczko: It is what happened with Senator Helms and censorship. We don't want this to happen from the left and the right.
Hammond: This is why it is so important to have this discussion. It is through the artists that we are going to create the new language. It is through this kind of discourse that we are going to establish the models. You have to push those buttons. You are going to have to test things, piss people off. That is the nature of how you get to the other side. You can't get there without pushing.
Audience: But I don't want to waste my time trying to piss people off.
Hammond: You misunderstand me. I am not saying do work to piss people off, I am saying that what you do will from time to time piss people off. That is not to stop you from doing what you must. It is through that pushing the envelope that you find out. You have to keep your momentum.
Wodiczko: And have a lawyer.
Hammond: Always, and a good accountant. You never can tell at what junction the government will decide to audit. And keep receipts. When I was in graduate school, the best advice my supervisor gave me was to keep all receipts, because you will be audited. I have been through at least a half dozen audits. These are essentials in the business we are in. Keep those things in order, like you keep milk in the refrigerator. Then push forward. Don't let society, politics, audiences dictate or shape what your response should be. Sometimes if you get resistance, it means you are where you need to be. It's not that you are looking for negative attention, but there is a certain kind of information that gives you hints about where you need to go and how well you are doing your own critiquing. We don't have many critics or art historians who can really speak to the issues. So who is going to do it? The artists. It is in your hands. You can't look to someone else to validate you. Write your own language. I will fail my students if they don't get up and speak. I don't care what they say, but they have to give forth. Don't expect someone else to explain who you are and what you did. You must be in charge. You must empower yourself. We are the ones who create the way. The government tries to tell us we are not. We are the visionaries, the seers, the seekers. Make it. Do it. Push. You don't have to be rude and crude. Rediscover beauty, humor. Languish in the beauty of your body. Whatever your genre is, move. Discover new virtual realms.
Wodiczko: In the late 60s and early 70s we were trying to follow the sophisticated advice of Antonio Gramsci and continue our "struggle" as "pessimists in mind and optimists in will." Listening to you makes me think that perhaps the position you advocate, infused with so much optimism, may be healthier, more straightforward and easier to practice. Tomorrow I may however slip back to my Gramscian tactics.
Audience: There are a lot of people speaking here very beautifully, but it's very difficult to be heard. This has already been brought up. Esther was saying that it's okay to go into a town and the project dies after you have left.
Shalev-Gerz: No, I was saying you come there, you do a work, if you manage to do it. But there are also things you don't manage to do. Why take it to this positivism?
Audience: It is too little otherwise. There is so much great energy here in this room, and we don't even have C-SPAN. There is no one listening. Few people.
Shalev-Gerz: You should not think like that. Don't think about whether someone is listening.
Audience: But it is sad for me to listen to this and we as artists are quite happy with having very little effect.
Shalev-Gerz: First, I don't know if the effect is little. The last work, from the 600 people, 150 people volunteered to come and help with anything that I do. So I don't know. I think we don't test the society. It is a society that buys things, and sometimes people want to give away things. We never see the effect. It might be easier than you think.
Hammond: By the nature of our discipline, you become insular, self absorbed, and then go into other arenas and wonder why there can't be more of this. It is hard to manage all of it. It is difficult to try to effect change. I often tell my students that the only way they can effect change is to start with themselves and their own circle, and move out from there. We are throwing you the torch to go where you have come from and create this same kind of synergy. That is the only way it is going to happen. Eventually it will connect with someone else where you are living.
Younger: That is why you are here. We are going to do twenty well. Do your five well. And it will go out. It only took twelve, and the world is half Christian now. Do it well. The people who were where you are now eight years ago are out there doing incredible things.
Hammond: Let me give you an example. I got a call last night from a woman who called me a year ago to invite me to come to her church, because they had decided they wanted an art gallery. I reluctantly agreed. I get to the church. When I walk in, the parlor is pink, the carpet is green. They are having tea. But they are determined they want an art gallery. What kind of art gallery? We go through some books and suggestions and images. Then I show them a bit of what I did from the sacred space thing and talk to them about stuff. They invite me to the opening. I come reluctantly to the church and can't find a parking spot. Inside the church there are 300 people, including the mayor. I am freaked. They have work on the wall from artists in their congregation who they are celebrating. They have commissioned another local artist to give an award to the mayor's wife. It is a wonderful affair. Then I am ready to go, but they say I have to come downstairs and have some cookies and punch. I go downstairs, and no one else was there, thank God. They had in the basement, a full, high tea service with all of their stuff on the table. Every piece of silverware, every cup, every place setting, every platter. I was flabbergasted. Don't underestimate what you can say and what it will do. These people now follow me wherever I go, which is great. They called me last night to congratulate me. Now I don't know what to do with this new community.
Shalev-Gerz: When people told him he was famous, Duchamps was always saying that his grocer did not know him.
Audience: Regarding your experience with your piece in Berlin, with people discussing the performance, how did you approach the challenge of creating an experience that required the choreographing of participation? How did you teach people to be shepherds by asking them to first be sheep? To some degree you have to choreograph participation, but how do you give them ownership so that it means something to them?
Shalev-Gerz: You don't give ownership. You have ownership by participation. I don't give anything. The way to go through the experience for me is the way for them. There is no way to pin me on that, because it is very important to be new to the experience. I don't want to sum it up. If I sum it up, I don't know what I will do tomorrow. In a way, there is a moment that you should not understand what you are doing in that part. That part doesn't belong to you anymore. You started something, they take it. I don't know when the experience will end, or what it will create. It is only the starting of the movement.
Analysis by Maria Alos
In order to understand the aims of contemporary public art it is necessary to analyze what is the actual role of the audience, what is the definition of the audience, how do the public artworks function when they are made via collaboration, for instance between the artist and the community, and how these collaborations shift the role of the artist.
As a symbolic act, the panelists reversed the usual procedure by inviting the audience to start the discussion. The first theme brought up was the idea of the re-emergence of suppressed histories now that we are getting closer to the new millennium, and who has the role of uncovering this information—the artist as playing the role of the archeologist or the public in general trying to recover aspects of their own histories that have been lost throughout the centuries? Referencing Walter Benjamin, Krzysztof Wodiczko stated that in order to recover these histories, we have to look at the past, re-actualize it, and then judge it by a critical examination of the present time projected into the past, to see what is it in that past that should not be perpetuated in the future.
The term "history", how we all relate to it, how history has been documented or recorded by just a few people and how it is important to acknowledge that no one owns any particular history nor should have exclusive responsibility for documenting history were deeply analyzed. What seemed very clear from this panel was how we as individuals—instead of collectively—should look for those voices that give authenticity to a denied history. Artists should create situations precisely for such voices to be heard, but in order to visually represent them, artists should speak from the center of their own experience, draw parallels with other experiences, and not appropriate them.
Sometimes when one goes about creating work with a certain intent to inform a message or influence an audience without any control of their own, their own intention is "subverted", said someone in the audience. All three panelists gave a similar response that could be summarized in two ways: when people start misinterpreting a work it is because the artist might be doing something wrong, but this does not mean that one has to stop doing things. It means that one has to be more attentive to the responses gotten, and those responses are the voices that help to shape the works, as well as the artists themselves. Art-making—as Leslie King Hammond explained—is a catharsis, a sort of birth process, and artists should go through the pain and joy of this process. Esther Shalev-Gerz commented that sometimes it is very important to "keep your stupidity alive," which I understood as a fusion of highly important ideas that an artist has to bear in mind; when one overanalyzes a project before it is even started, and tries to do the most perfect and clever piece of art, sometimes it is better not even to do it. Her comment also implies that one should not be afraid to fail; there is always a tremendous learning experience in failing that makes the artist and the artwork stronger.
An interesting idea about how, as a member of the audience said, "the word audience has been disemboweled" was discussed. Audience is a complex term that we have exhausted. It brings references of a collective responsibility, collective participation, human interface, community, just to mention some. But it also has a connotation that an audience comes to be "entertained." During the panel an audience member astutely pointed out the connection between "audience" and "audio." From my own perspective, the term "audience" bears significant issues that public art has been trying to deal with, often about speaking, and being listened to. It is about participating and taking something back simultaneously.
Finally, a question was posed about how the artist—that is the one that often has the resources–should listen to the public, or the community, and then create a work that, after the artist is gone, can stimulate the community to keep working on their own agendas and make the work grow bigger. The response from the panel was not very optimistic. It seems to be that whether the work is temporary or not, once the artist stops working there, the artwork would not be touched and expanded by the community.
Even though this panel—and its audience—addressed many important points about how the artist should approach art-making, how to give a voice to histories that have been dismissed, what kind of responses should an artist expect when working in the public realm, and so on, the theme of the panel, "the role of the audience" was not discussed in depth. Many questions were left unsaid--unanswered. What happens when the community becomes an active participant in the artwork? Is the community the producer and the spectator at the same time? If not, who becomes the audience? The artist, that is usually the outsider? Or the community itself in a sort of a self-celebratory act?