A good example of the type of art that [Nicholas] Bourriaud recommends is Gavin Turk's The Che Gavara Story. This event followed a series of works made by Turk in which he had inserted his own face into well-known images of Che in black-on-red hoardings and in a waxwork mock-up of the famous photograph taken to prove that the revolutionary was dead. In 2001, in an ambitious departure from this previous line of work, Turk staged a series of meetings and discussion sessions about Che's life and legacy in a squatted room in Shoreditch. Political strategy meetings were followed by sessions in which activists would organize a demonstration that was to be the culmination of the series. The idea of this work, said Turk, was to use his status as a newsworthy artist to set up a space for discussion and action that would have a chance of breaking into the mass media. (pg.179)

[...]

The discussion I attended had many points of interest but felt aimless and unfocused, and others I spoke to who had attended the sessions felt similarly. Bizarrely, the final manifestation was dominated by nudists arguing about their right to go naked in public.

The Che Gavara Story demonstrated a number of key features of socially interactive works. Firstly, there is a trade-off between the number of participants and their diversity and the likely discourse. Active paritcipants tend to be few, elite, and self-selecting. Secondly, in these temporary utopian bubbles, no substantial politics can be arrived at, not least because even among those who do attend, real differences and conflicts of interest are momentarily denied or forgotten. A merely gestural politics is the likely result. If, following Bourriaud, one's primary interest in such manifestations is aesthetic, this hardly matters. (pg.181)

[...]

If all this seems a self-consciously futile and token activity, then the rise of this art may be less positive than Bourriaud thinks. Coupled with thinking about the hollowing out of democratic politics...what Bourriaud describes is merely another art-world assimilation of the dead or the junked, the re-presentation as aesthetics of what was once social interaction, political discourse, and even ordinary human relations. If democracy is found only in art works, it is in a good deal of trouble. (pg.182)

This brings to mind Carole Conde & Karl Beveridge's collaborative work with trade unions and community groups. As much as I agree with much of the political concerns, I love their photo works for much more formal reasons. (and if their actual art products weren't so sophisticated, I would just be embarrassed by their gestures as I am with any well-meaning bad art.)

Maybe Wendy's Right (1977-78)
Standing Up (1980-81)
Oshawa (1982-83)
Class Work (1987-88)
No Power Greater (1990-1991)

- L.M. 1-16-2006 11:18 pm