Seminar Introduction
Anna Novakov and Cheryl Younger
Cheryl Younger: I am going to ask Anna Novakov to join me because she has been the one who has helped put this program together. This year's program, like those we've done over the last eight years, grows out of the last year's seminar discussion and concerns. One of those concerns was how to make art more accessible, and that has grown into a discussion of Public Art. Anna has written a number of books. In Veiled Histories, she presents interviews with a number of public artists. It has been a tremendous pleasure working with her on this year's program.
Anna Novakov: My background is in art history. When I started to work on my Ph.D. at NYU, I thought public art would be a perfect area because it is not just about art but it also covers architecture, sociology, political science and all kinds of other vibrant, interesting fields. For someone with a short attention span, like myself, this was ideal.
I started writing about a project, called "Messages to the Public", done on the lightboard in Times Square. Eighty artists over the course of eight years were give 30-second spots in which to do something on the big board. It was interspersed with regular commercials. That was a pivotal project which was organized by the Public Art Fund. It had many ramifications. Most people couldn't tell if it was art or not. It functioned in a densely populated urban area that had lots of other visual stimuli. It brought up different issues from communities and contingencies that were represented among the artists.
As things progressed, I began to do other projects, including curating. I am working on a project now in which five international artists are going to take over a small town in Sweden. They will work with the local community, a population of about 20,000. It should be interesting. I have also been involved in organizing several conferences on public art.
Going into the next millennium, or at least the next century, public art seems to be a particularly viable area of art. It is expanding, has a certain amount of funding, and starts to break down barriers which marginilize contemporary art, which is often seen as elitist and obscure. On a theoretical level, it is just starting to develop. It is one of the few areas where people from different fields are participating in a collaborative way. All these things contribute to a very vital field.
Cheryl and I met last year and developed the idea for this conference. When we started thinking about the program, we tried to put in a lot of different things, to overload you, hoping that, through that overload, something would come out perhaps six months or a year later. To gather a lot of active, diverse people in one place will get things moving. It will have an effect on your work at some point, somehow.
Cheryl Younger: Two aspects I am interested in are, how we make art more a part of everybody's life, and how does it become part of the culture? For me, it is important that, when we do public art, wonderful personal things come out of it. I love Barbara Kruger's pieces because they hit us hard. They say things that mean something. Some people get mad at it, but surely it is heard it. As an artist/educator, I am interested in how we train artists, and if I had it my way, I would turn that process upside down. A couple of schools, because they are focused on public art, are teaching in a very different way. These programs can provide us with new educational models. One program we will look at in-depth during the Seminar is the program that Amelia Mesa-Bains runs in California. Very different kinds of skills become important when you are determined to work as a public artist (as verses the garret model). You have to learn how to collaborate with people, how to negotiate, how to be clear about your point, stand up for it, while working with someone else. These skills are different from the ones usually taught to artists. We do our own work in our own place. Sometimes we are secretive about our work, and yet it is claimed to be public. These are the things I am interested in–the ones we have talked about over the past year, and which led to this year's conference.
Last year we investigated new knowledge systems. Amelia Malagamba talked about Latino altars as an art-form and the women who make them. Women create the altars, not necessarily as artists, but the altars are examples of creative expression and they are artistic and personal. We looked at Haitian culture and some quasi-religious, quasi-art objects. We investigated this as an example of art truly integrated in people's lives, and wondered how we get to a point where art really becomes part of our "American" culture. When we do that, I think we will have larger audiences for our art. We might become better artists and we will have an audience as well.
Novakov: There is also a tremendous amount to be gained from the idea of collaboration. If you are part of the art world, most of the time, you deal only with other members of the art world. We are extremely insular, and then wonder why other people are not interested in what we do. It pushes your boundaries and the way you think to apply another methodology to your work.
In addition, certain discussions this week will have to deal with basic ideas of public and private space. Where are the parameters? In popular culture, if you read the newspaper, there is a preoccupation with privacy because we have so little. There is an expanding public space filled with people wanting to know your business for control purposes. It minimizes the space in which you can operate privately. As far as the culture as a whole is concerned, there is a tremendous dialogue having to do with public and private space. Public art as a way to undermining Big Brother is an interesting idea.
Younger: In past seminars there have been discussions about who has control of the public forum. All the book publishers have been bought up by only seven major houses. They have little boutiques, but all are controlled by seven major companies. The same thing is happening in the news media, especially with cable TV and public access channels. Moreover, there are efforts to cut out small radio stations and the number of bands on which they can operate, and yet, some of these stations remain the only forums not controlled by corporate or political America. These are the only alternatives that we might have some access to.
There is now another great crush on artists. The right wing in particular wants to silence the voices of artists, many of whom are radical in how they think and act. It is a voice that can't be controlled. It’s an independent voice. In some ways, as a part of this nation, we as artists are carrying something we don't realize the importance of–the right to free speech. My husband, Allan Harris is the counsel for the Society for Photographic Education and has followed the arguments about censorship. We have the right to present pictures embodying censored ideas and thoughts, because we are artists. Presently legal cases are being brought to attack that right. Journalists also have this right, where others in our country do not. However, journalists and writers are controlled by the venue in which their work must appear. We as artist then are the only "free radicals" as it were, not yet controlled. If you don't stand up for your rights, it could be your work that is taken down next. This is something that, as Americans, we need to be vigilant about. We need to take our role in our culture seriously. The role of the artist in our culture is part of what we will be talking about here these two week. You will find that many of the public art projects discussed on the coming program are from people who never had the forum to speak before–like the Rural Women's Project. When you see Maxine Payne-Caufield's work, you will realize you have never heard from Arkansas' white women before. You will see projects that are about giving voice to people who haven't had voice.
Novakov: This is an extraordinary opportunity for you. You should utilize it to its fullest. Talk with people, ask questions, get involved in the larger dialogue, become engaged in the process.
Younger: There are some things about the process we should talk about. We will have a hand mike, so we can hear and record your questions. For those in the audience who don't know about the American Photography Institute, the brochure describes what the Institute is. This is the first time it has been open to the public. The students are among the finest MFA candidates studying photography in the USA. It is very competitive for them to get here.
Audience: For people that live in New York, how do you feel about the streets, which have been public space, becoming controlled?
Younger: I think Mayor Giuliani is a big bully. That is my opinion. He has done some things to clean up NYC, and now he won't let people cross the street. He is pushing too hard on everyone. Even when you have a demonstration here, they push you around. We were trying to demonstrate against a hotel in Soho . Many of the demonstrators are older artists who have lived in Soho for a long time, trying to demonstrate at the ribbon cutting for a new hotel owned by Hartz Mountain, which owns the Village Voice and the LA Times, and gave a lot of money to Giuliani. The police were really pushing on us, I mean we were a bunch old people, New York City citizens–why didn’t we have the right to demonstrate?
Audience: Repo History has just had a project censored by the Giuliani administration directly. They have done similar projects in the past that have gone through the system in New York. This was shut down moments before it was dedicated. Much of the text being put up was critical of Giuliani.
Younger: There is information about that case on the table.
Audience: During the Clinton/Lewinsky thing, it is interesting how they went to the bookstore to find out what she had been reading, which would seem to be the epitome of her private life. Now "Big Brother" is looking at that. Now the information age is encroaching on our privacy.
Novakov: Every aspect of our lives is controlled that way. If you search the Net, all your moves are traced. In California there are club cards at supermarkets that show exactly what you buy and when you buy it. It is an electronic paper trail that produces a statistical profile of who you are.
Younger: In New York there are surveillance cameras, on the streets, everywhere. A survey recently noted New Yorkers are photographed on an average of about 9 times a day.
Novakov: (In response to inaudible comment) That is very true, I also think that is the traditional, historical role of the artist, to provide some sort of space, guidance and distance, in order to be able to evaluate and look at something. Artists have always been at the forefront of the culture. That is also why they are often feared and despised. If you want to control a society, the first thing you do is control the artists.
Audience: People are resistant to having critical discourse.
Audience: I haven't collaborated very much, but I am interested in how people become active, and do activist things. I think that is a big step.
Novakov: That is one of the things that will be wonderful about 90% of the speakers being actively working artists. You will really be able to see the process. How do you start these relationships? How do you start collaborative projects? What is involved? Each one will have a different story. It will be helpful for those of you who are interested in breaking out of the studio.
Younger: What I think is unique about the artists is that the work is personal, in touch with what the artist is thinking and feeling, and that those thoughts and feelings causes the artist to join an activist cause. That is where it starts: caring.
Audience: I have real trouble getting community involvement, instead of putting an image out there and having dialogue.
Younger: That is because the schools don't teach you to do that.
Novakov: I also think it is a vital way to sustain yourself. It is a way to survive.
Audience: I have seen that when I have tried to talk to others that you have to overcome suspicion about your ulterior motives. That has been interesting for me to try to overcome in trying to associate myself with people in a collaborative process. I am looking for strategies to overcome and mediate that barrier.
Novakov: It is very tricky. There is a thin line between exploitation and collaboration and you have to walk that line.
Younger: Documentary photographers have dealt with that, being trashed because they weren't part of the community they were documenting.
Audience: One of the debates that I hope will come up will be the determining factor between over-zealous self-expression instead of good public art.
Audience: Do you think skills like negotiation and collaboration are skills that have deteriorated because of the emphasis on the individual instead of the collective? Or are these new skills in the process of development?
Novakov: I think people in other countries have developed these skills and retained them. I think American individualism has led to isolationism that is against the notion of working with someone else. But it has gotten to the point that collaboration is one of the only viable ways left. It is either that or extinction.
Younger: There is a long history of people who have worked collaboratively to make change to improve communities, like Unions. But you don't read their history in school. It's been buried. The history of women who have worked for women's rights is not known. We don't know how they collaborated, but we do know how Rockefeller built Standard Oil. The history of collaboration doesn't exist.
Novakov: In a way it is the most traditional way of working. It is unnatural to work by yourself, culturally speaking. Within American culture, we are burdened with the ideal of the self-made man.
Audience: Any advanced society was built by cooperation between people. The individualism is what creates a backward society. I think our individualism is moving us backwards.
Younger: It is also true that the power brokers are not interested in having others collaborate because the hierarchy could be challenged. As power brokers they have an investment in the status quo. You can see that in the way the unions challenged corporations to give workers rights. Union action challenges the hierarchy, the power brokers and is often seen as challenging America.
All self-made millionaires had help from somebody. However those in power are always trying to subvert that knowledge to maintain their position of authority. It is an example of the king is a descendant of god story, or in our world, "the artist is somehow gifted by god and all the work created springs purely from their genius" version.
Audience: Another element working against public art, besides individualism, is the expectation that if you are not going be an individualist you will be homogenized and the art must represent everybody. Total inclusivity is impossible, so you get hung up on whether work is too individualistic or how it can represent everybody.
Novakov: I sit on a lot of the committees that decide how to spend money on public art. Always at the end of several days of looking at slides, we pick the one that is basically the worst work of art, the one that is not offensive to anyone. We can talk about that issue with some of the administrators. I am personally against permanent works. I don't think they work. I think if you are going to make a work of public art it has to be temporary. If you are going to make an intervention, you can't expect the next generation to take care of it. Public art is located in a certain moment in time, a certain historical place. It is by nature, site-specific.
Audience: That cuts into the whole artistic ego of being famous forever.
Audience: So public art is an intervention to break down fictions about artists as immortal . . .
Novakov: It is a possible way to do it. Not all public art does it, nor are all artists doing public art interested in doing that.
Audience: I have been working with WEA in the San Francisco area (Women Environmental Art). We are developing a panel on the state of the art of environmental art and are getting some fascinating submissions from rural artists working all over the country, doing healing, exciting work. What comments do either of you have on the development of public art in rural areas? What strikes me in the discussion of public art in the city, people forget that the cities are totally dependent on rural areas. As topsoil is lost and fisheries are lost, there won't be food for the cities. There is an important interdependent relationship. Do you have any comments on strategic financial planning for artists working as wild cards in these kinds of situations?
Younger: We will have a whole day on rural artists and projects. It is very important. We haven't sold one ticket to that session, which says something to me about the mind set of people who live in the city. When living in rural Minnesota, I was interested in how little New York has to do with most people's lives. Yet, New Yorkers believe they are the world. In this group, we have people from all over the United States, so we will try to bridge those gaps as artists. Ask your questions of the artists and commissioning agents throughout the seminar.
Audience: How were the students selected to participate in this? By an essay, by their work?
Younger: The answer to that question is in the program brochure. All graduate schools could nominate three people, a male, a female, and a minority student as finalists. They had to be artists who were doing good works, but also who were willing to contribute to the community. It is important that they bring these discussions back to their community. In consultation with their major professors, they will create projects that somehow create a forum for these issues in their home countries. They will also be writing articles for the journal that will be published. We have a national jury who picks the 20 out of all the submissions. All the nominees are considered finalists. We try to make it as fair and democratic as we can, at the same time seeking for the most diverse group possible.
Audience: There is an emphasis in the art market on the individual producer, even more than on the art product. The art star has become more important than what he or she makes, which goes counter to an important theory in public art projects. So we need to talk about reforming the art market so that collaborative projects can happen.
Novakov: We are obviously in a commodity system.
Younger: Yes, in a commodity system you must establish a value for the commodity, and how do you value it except by the star system. Since the Cold War ended, everything has shifted. Capitalism won and with the waning of Russia, there is no longer even a nod to socialism, to communities or to valuing of things (i.e. education, children, homes, aesthetic attributes) in terms other than money and commodity. Even nonprofit activities have shifted to things that can be counted. If you are being trained to run a nonprofit organization now, you have to learn how to document how you have affected people, with goals and objectives that are measurable. How can you measure the effect of ideas? It has happened in higher education as well. The measure of being a teacher is how many books you have published and how much money you bring in the door. It is not about who you are, how engaged you are in learning or in the dialogue in your field, or even how well you teach.
Audience: That is true for students as well. They come in with the expectation that they are buying a product. There are standards that need to be met, but I also think that you can't make someone take an interest in the work, and they can't pay for it. It is hard sometimes to make students understand that they are only going to get out of their education what they put into it.