Reading Between

So I think what you're saying, following my reading of Kaprow, is that artists who wish to step outside of the value system of the art world are left with a peculiar kind of paradox/limbo: their work only has art-meaning within the context of the very system they are trying to get outside of.  From all the way outside, the practices of these artists are just activities of life, not art at all. 

Artists like Fred Wilson and Andrea Fraser, because they practice literally within art institutions and especially museums are never in 'danger' of losing the art-meaning of whatever they do  (plus of course their work is *about* museums and art institutions).  This is not unlike simply bringing elements of daily life into a gallery -- these objects or activities become art simply by virtue of the framing of the gallery.

Kaprow's late practice involved a couple of strategies -- during one period, he simply held in mind that everything he was doing (brushing his teeth, etc.) was art.  He also composed activities for increasingly small groups of people, usually students or friends.  These projects took place largely outside of the art world context -- his work become more and more private & intimate (although, not so private that I don't know about it! -- information about some these pieces is in The Blurring of Art and Life, and also a newer book about Kaprow's art called Child's Play).  In a private or intimate context the paradox evaporates -- it really doesn't matter so much whether these activities are 'art'.  They are interesting (or not) as experiences.

But to go back to your comment above...

LeisureArts wrote:

I believe that Kaprow is analagous in that he could be interpreted as saying that merely shifting from studio work to post-studio work doesn't sufficently question
the notion of "WORK" itself.

I'd be curious to hear more of your notion of "work" in that sentence, and it's relation to "art" or "art work".

Another sketch of my thinking:

I think Kaprow was pointing the way to a new model of cultural production/engagement. Something I've been grappling with for some time. Throughout my academic career I struggled with the notion that in nearly all of the liberal arts, the only way to work through ideas was through writing. In the arts, however, manifestations of thinking can take on virtually limitless guises. I was drawn to that flexibility, but soon discovered that it was going to be an awkward fit at best. Choosing to work under the designation of artist instantly connects your thinking to a history of display practices and lineage of intellectual/material devleopment that may be ancillary at best. We see this problematic played out all the time with activist groups or so-called "new genre public artists." I would argue that there are many people operating, and have operated, as artists only because other disciplines "won't have them." There are many sociologists, engineers, philosophers, etc. whose work falls outside the accepted professional practices of their field who end up in the field that will put up with their "unprofessional" activities. This is what I find most compelling about Kaprow, that he sees that there are modes of cultural production that COULD be talked about, connected with, and framed by, the discourse(s) of art; but we should ask ourselves what we gain from this and what we lose (see especially his discussion of Rosendale Village).

Does that in any way address your question Sal?

"At the moment, I'm still feeling like I gain more than I lose by being within the discourse of art, but it seems you're thinking otherwise?"

Well, as it stands now, I gain from the designation because we haven't developed the conceptual/institutional tools to talk about the kinds of cultural production I've been considering. I've lamented the many times I had students who would be interested in a particular idea/thing/activity and then sought ways to make it conform to the framing strategies of art production. I lament this because spending time and energy thinking about how to display/make public these things detracts from further exploring them in and of themselves. Now don't get me wrong, there is a great deal to be learned from figuring out the "display problem," but it often sends people on useless tangents into the realm of professionalism at the expense of the ideas themselves. To be utterly pedantic: if someone says to me they're interested in eating cupcakes, and then shows me a video of themselves eating cupcakes, I wonder "why make the video?" All that does is import a whole dialogue around the difference between performance and video, acts of framing, video vs. film etc. Meanwhile, their pleasure in eating cupcakes is erased by their wrong-headed attempt to make it public. I am not arguing for a descent into solipsism here, just trying to push people to move outside the constraints of professionalism...

To bring this back to the impact on me...I maintained a "pure" position relative to art professionalism for about ten years - steadfastly refusing the label all the while earning two grad degrees in art. In grad school I literally made nothing, had no final exhibition, had no studio visits, presented nothing for critique, etc. Since grad school, I maintained this "purity," refusing exhibition opportunities, applying for teaching jobs without slides etc. In the end, all I had was "purity." So as a tactical matter, I've decided that some compromise is necessary. My activities fit neatly inside art discourse, but I will do what I can to frame them in other ways.

(This was written on the fly and I could say more, but I always feel like i go on too much in my posts)

Yes, I got the degree. The initial premise was two-fold, one to take literally the quote I mentioned of Kaprow's previously about the task of artists being to make no art, and secondly, to take disciplinary fluidity to a "meta" level. That is, there were students in drawing who didn't draw (they made videos for instance), students in sculpture who didn't do sculpture, etc. So I thought it would be nice to be in an art department and not make art - a logical extension/challenge of the structure of the degree program.

There were some funny things about that experience - rather than having people insist that what I was doing *wasn't* art, they insisted it *was*. The more I insisted that my activities weren't to be considered art, the more adamant people became that they were! Additionally, many faculty and fellow students were annoyed that I was getting off easy - there they were working all the time, and there I was "not working" all the time. Of course going to an MFA program and making work is actually EASIER than refusing to make it. I mean the institution is built around rewarding work, rewarding visibility. It's actually quite difficult to find a way to operate against all expectation and all institutional measures of academic progress.

As far as the myth value of performance goes, that's a huge theroretical puzzle. You've probably read Peggy Phelan's Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, but she lays out some of the important issues around talking about performance and its documentation. For me, the conversation around these practices becomes difficult because we aren't having a conversation about, or with, the work, but its documentation. The notion of site-specificity is widely accepted, if not abused, but temporal/audience specificity still hasn't been adequately addressed to my mind. My practice is deeply involved with these issues, as I imagine yours must be as well. The immediate problem becomes one of criticality - something mentioned in last month's Art Forum (although that article, The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents by Claire Bishop takes a decidedly different tact than I'm presenting) concerning social/relational practices. It's difficult to take a critical position regarding a work one hasn't really experienced - which is to say my work, and that of others of my sensibility cannot be experienced beyond the immediacy of its enactment. So the potential critic can only critique the residue. It's like trying to analyze a site-specific sculpture that has been moved back to the studio. This is no small problem for the current art world critical apparatus.

There is a lot more to say here - but again, I feel obliged to pause.

I found my notes on Phelan's book. I didn't realize I read it almost seven years ago!

Phelan's work helped me develop "evanescent" practice - a overwought term I develped to describe my activities way back when...On invisibility:

"There is real power in remaining unmarked...[big edit]...Visibility is a trap...it summons surveillance and the law; it provokes voyeurism, fetishism, the colonialist/imperialist appetite for possesion"

or:

"Performance is the art form which most fully understands the generative possiblities of disappearance."

But more related to our discussion, relative to display/documentation:

"Performance honors the idea that a limited number of people in a specific time/space frame can have an experience of value which leaves no visible trace afterwards. Writing about it necessarily cancels the 'timelessness' inagurated within the performative promise."

and:

"The paradox of this book - a series of marks about the possible virtues of being unmarked - might be a fruitful one. The argument cannot be made in writing for in recording it, I destroy precisely what I want to affirm."

That last one is really the crux of what my practice oscillates around. As a side note, I might be adopting an odd tone writing-wise in future posts because I'll probably be using material cross-posted on my "theory object" (blog).

As I mentioned, I too, was radically anti-documentation. I applied for many university teaching jobs with no slides, or any trace for that matter, of my activities other than a general philosophical polemic. Needless to say, this really puts you in a difficult position. I figured at this point it's easier to be an employed hypocrite than an unemployed purist; hypocrite in the sense of rejecting the necessity or value of documentation, yet engaging in it all the same. There are times when you have to "face the reality" of the market, which for me was the birth of my son. That necessitated compromises for the sake of an "adult" income. Perhaps this is all an elaborate rationalization for "selling out," but I'm pretty tired of those sorts of accusations in the first place...Funny thing is, I've "sold out," but STILL don't have an adult income - but I am greatly increasing my chance of academic employment by conforming, or so I'd like to believe.

I wonder, should we move the leisure discussion here (I posted about it in the other thread, but it seems more appropriate here)?

Hey Edith! Glad to see you in this thread.  I think your practice very much bears on these questions too.

That's an interesting point you bring up, the choice of invisibility being linked to privilege.  I think it's closely related to what LeisureArts is saying about needing to 'sell out' (in this case, become visible) in order to try and get a job.

I remember a teacher of mine years ago had a quote over her desk: "whatever keeps you from your work, becomes your work" (I think it  may be originally by grace paley, but I'm not sure anymore).

What I take it to mean is that if you have some problem that impacts on your work, it needs to be part of the work in some way.  So I think you can begin with a dilemma, like 'I don't believe in documentation' meets 'I want to get a teaching job' and look at it more deeply.  Not as a question of compromise or not compromise, but as a critical aspect of the work.  In this case, it seems that there are some circumstances where you do want for people to know 'about' the work as well as know the work directly by participation.  So what are the implications of that? I think there's some opportunity to think creatively through this puzzle, though it might take a long time to find a solution that is really native to your enterprise - but I do believe it's possible.

I think I've always felt that a deliberately and completely invisible art practice (and this could include a practice where objects are made of course, like someone who draws privately every day) is an honorable and beautiful thing, but something quite close to a spiritual practice.  I don't actually think a situation of great privilege is required for this, just a sense of purpose that is private.  Something more like meditation.  Practices that have any kind of public or social aspect are another thing entirely.  How and why they are public, the exact situation in which they meet other people, becomes an essential aspect of the work itself.  Only by adopting a genuinely conventional practice can one get away from these questions, just by adopting whatever the conventions of display are (as in typical, well understood gallery shows, etc.).

But I'm still mulling over Edith's questions about political visibility/invisibility.... more on that