THIS IS NOT A BENETTON AD: THE THEORY OF COMMUNITY ART

THIS IS NOT A BENETTON AD: THE THEORY OF COMMUNITY ART

(Pulbished in the Winter, 1998 issue of Mix Magazine, an expanded and revised version of a talk given at Vital Links, the Ontario Art Council’s conference on community art, Sept. 26, 1997.)

“The bourgeois class poses itself as an organism in continuous movement, capable of absorbing the entire society, assimilating it to its own cultural and economic level…How this process comes to a halt, and the conception of the State as pure force is returned to, etc. The bourgeois class is “saturated”; it not only does not expand–it starts to disintegrate…”

Antonio Gramsci, State and Civil Society, 1931-32

“…the Canadian state is being completely reorganized and restructured to serve the interests of transnational competition and investment in the new global economy. And with this, the fundamentals of our political life-the nation state, citizenship, and democracy itself-are being radically reshaped in the image of the corporation and free market economics.”

Tony Clarke, Silent Coup, CCPA (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives) Monitor, Summer 1997.

Anger can fill a room; only love can fill the universe.

Sufi saying.

From 1990 – 1996, I co-founded and co-directed Arts Starts Neighbourhood Storefront Cultural Centre. Operating out of a storefront on Eglinton Avenue West in Toronto (a busy, ethnically diverse street in the soon to be absorbed City of York, sandwiched between Toronto and North York, Art Starts’ mandate is “Using the arts to help build a healthy community”. Our premise was that if we made art programs in all media, for all ages, for people from all ethnic backgrounds, accessible at the street level, people in the neighbourhood would participate. We would be doing something called “community art”. Art Starts is now an ongoing, collaborative work of community public art created by hundreds of artists and community residents.

During my years at Art Starts, I confess to a little smugness about the fact that I knew nothing about contemporary art theory. I had not read Derrida, Lacan, Kristeva. No, we just rolled up our sleeves and got to work, and the work paid off. I spent six or so years in the happy assumption that at Art Starts we were doing this practical, community based, hands on art making, leaving high theory to the elitist, obscurantist official art world. Meanwhile, it seemed “Community Art” was seen by the latter as “not really art”; marginalized, ignored, patronized. Less than professional, serious, legitimate. That too was fine with me. Marginalization is a relative concept. Where we worked– our neighbourhood, the local politicians whose support we were able to win, the social service agencies who welcomed us as partners, the artists from various disciplines and ethnic groups who participated, the children and adults who wandered in and stayed to make art, the agencies who funded us (not all of them arts agencies by any means)– felt like the centre of the world. I couldn’t have cared less about deconstruction, or legitimization; we were constructing so many alliances, winning some many people over to — the arts!

Then, around 1995-96, I noticed a remarkable sea change. Books–serious ones–were being published in the U.S. about community art. Mary Jane Jacobs, the well known independent American curator, initiated and curated many community art projects of considerable scope and prestige,including an international one for the Atlanta Olympics. Carol Becker, Dean of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago writes and lectures extensively on the subject, and has revised the curriculum of the school accordingly. The Ontario Arts Council’s Community Arts Office, whose traditional function has been to support festivals and the regional community arts councils, is revamping its programs to fund “Artists in the Community/Workplace”, and it is proposed that the various discipline offices shift some of their emphasis–and funds–in this direction as well. Last September, the OAC organized a three day international conference on community art, attended by some 350 participants. The conference both acknowledged and helped to create a movement out of an increasing number of discrete community art events in the province.

All of which gave me pause. Why this sudden interest? Why legitimization, why now? I realized, taking a little bite of humble pie, that to answer these questions I would need a theoretical framework.

What follows is my attempt to place my own and other community artists’ practice within contemporary art theory, within a particular Canadian social history, and within a contemporary cultural/political context.

But first, a definition. There are probably as many ideas about what community art is as there are people practising it. Here’s mine: People with training, knowledge, experience in an art form enter into collaborative art making with people with a desire for creative expression. The latter have some perceived social bond–a neighbourhood, a common cause, a cultural background. These participants may have none, some or extensive knowledge of art making. Certainly they have culture.. The results are not evaluated by the standards which the art world sets for itself, but by different criteria altogether: did the participants change during the course of the collaboration, did the artist change, did the community change? Process, in other words, takes precedence over product. Significantly, the artist/non-artist dichotomy blurs, because the artists begin to act and identify themselves as citizens, and the citizens begin to act and identify themselves as artists.

In contemporary art theory, community art shares certain features with the epistemes of both modernism and post modernism, while at the same time breaking decisively with others.

Community art lines up with the two great emancipatory projects of early high modernism (ca 1900-1920), namely, art is or should be an agent of social change, and the belief that “everyone’s an artist”. Social change meant everything from socialist revolution to vague dreams of internationalism. The constructivists aligned themselves with Lenin and the Third International, the surrealists with Trotsky. Kandinsky believed that the use of pure colour would create a universal language and unite all mankind. Art would serve the revolution by propagandizing for it, or changing consciousness through formal experimentation. Duchamp’s notorious fountain and subsequent readymades proclaimed art to be the result of wit, not craft, and anyone could do it.

Many would cite the naivete and the failure of these objectives. Certainly in postmodernist theory they are considered to be already achieved, as in such democratic rights as universal suffrage, no longer possible, or, according to the more fashionable view, just one of many possible narratives or stories in the first place.

Nonetheless, the ideals surface in community art in ways that are less grandiose and more realizable. Change may not result in political reforms or increased “brotherhood”, yet although our evidence may be anecdotal, there is no doubt in the minds of community artists that social change takes place–for artists and community members alike. In a culture where creativity consists largely of consumer choice (red or blue? Coke or Pepsi?), and artmaking is confined to a group defined as “artists”, creation–the production of art on the part of people who don’t define themselves as artists–is a radical, transformative act. People, singly and in groups, see themselves differently.
Community art can and does help reduce crime, increase self esteem, decrease social isolation, promote health, build social networks, strengthen parent-child bonds, enable communities to self-identify, or just keep kids and adolescents out of trouble. You can tell I’ve written more grant applications than I care to remember! Here’s a case I just cited on the most recent grant proposal I helped write: A study by the U.S. College Board shows that“teenagers who study music or drama in high school do better on standardized math tests than those who do not” and “arts students have better scores in math and English than those who studied computer programming”. Globe and Mail, Nov. 6, 1997.

Modernism’s belief that everyone’s an artist was just that–it pretty much stayed on the drawing boards. It was espoused in theory but in practice the icons of modernism were the canonical “geniuses” whose prodigious individual output defined the various art movements of the first half of this century. Community art, however, puts this dictum into practice, and I believe it is the only form of art making that actually does so. It is also the first time in the history of urban western culture that it’s possible. Of course, in many other times and places art making is not split off from life, there has not been a special group of producers called artists, and some of this very different and valuable way of making art finds its way into communities with immigrants from non industrial societies. However, in a post industrial society like Canada’s, we didn’t have the social technology to put this “everyone’s an artist” into practice until “the age of mechanical reproduction”.

While we decry, rightly, I think, the erosion of literacy in the population, especially among youth, we have to acknowledge an historically unprecedented visual and aural aesthetic savvy thanks to the music industry, television and especially now, corporate advertising.

There is still a chasm, based largely on class, between “high culture”– the art world, the theatres, the world of classical music, opera and the avant garde in all the arts — and the majority of the population. Nevertheless, this majority knows much more about the conventions and history of all art than ever before. Certainly, the experience of Art Starts demonstrates an enthusiasm, a willingness to take risks and a very high level of art produced by its participants. Not only have the ideals “art as an agent of social change” and “everyone’s an artist” become feasible for the first time in community art projects, they are interdependent realities. They are, of course, completely irrelevant within postmodernism, in which ironic detachment is the requisite stance, and in which the notion of social change is itself a fiction.

Community art’s departure from some of the tropes of modernism is equally significant. The flip side of the romantic notion of the artist who stands outside, with eyes to see, who tells us what we can’t know about ourselves, is a terrifying loneliness, alienation, even madness. Community art counters that other modernist shibboleth–the sanctity of art as the highest and most unique expression of a particular individual–with shared creative output, with exchange: creators are spectators and vice versa. Community art is collaborative; it is humble. An artist working with a community undoubtedly has her own personal style in her art practice, but this is not imposed on the community. The context is the given–the mediums, the techniques, the possibilities. The result, when it works, celebrates the uniqueness of each participant equally.

And what of the conventions of postmodernism–irony, parody, pastiche, collage, appropriation, fragmentation? The de-centred subject, the fascination with popular culture? If modernism in all the arts is characterized by the incessant search for formal purity–the essence of painting (two dimensional surface, paint) of theatre (gesture, utterance) of music (random sound vibrations), then both postmodernism and community art insouciantly mix mediums and genres. Formal purity is the least of community art’s worries.

While eschewing the self -consciously parodic stance of post modernism, community art, at least in a contemporary urban context, acknowledges the multiple identities of its constituencies. Participatory art, especially if there is some sensitivity in matching the artist and the community, must recognize the fragmented nature of people’s psyches when exigencies of urban Canadian life may contrast jarringly with the histories they bring with them. One reason the word “community” is so belaboured as to be almost meaningless is that our communities are always heterogeneous and we identify in many different directions. Community art allows us to express the nature of our de-centred selves, and to see the multifarious selves of others.

Community art can also be seen as a development of some of the major trends in Canadian social history. From the settlement of the west via “peace, order and good government” (the Mounties went out first, established law and order, and the settlers followed) versus manifest destiny, the notion of community has taken precedence over the mythologizing of the individual in Canada’s sense of itself. Whoever of Joe Clarke’s speechwriters said Canada is “a community of communities” got it right.

The forerunners of today’s community art movement are the little theatres, the Sunday painters groups, the choirs and bands largely started by immigrants from the British Isles. Along with little league hockey teams, these initiatives were generated by small c conservatives who felt that it was necessary to preserve traditions and communities through public service. They believed that amateur art was an important social activity which would make communities more livable, civil, and responsible to their members–the very Red Toryism which the current provincial government has ruthlessly shut out from any decision making or power within its ranks.

These amateur art groups began, in the fifties and sixties, to bump into other forms of community creative expression–Italo-Canadian, Caribbean, Portuguese and so on. Yet Canadian communities have almost always been hybridized, have always had conflicting allegiances. The Metis rebels are the historical paradigm–French and Native by blood, pro- Irish through alliance with the Fenians. Ever since, even though the ruling class has been and continues to be mostly anglo and male, communities have usually been culturally diverse, and members of communities have had at least dual identities and varying allegiances. Both the idea of community and the fact of diversity and multiple identities have been at the heart of Canadian social reality all along.

We watch with horror the world’s fastest growing religion–a dangerous tribalism that fractures countries, including, potentially, ours. But even as we see right wing populism attempt to break up provinces and the two founding nations, in modern Canadian cities, our tribes are polyglot. Identities are so complex, we have no choice but at least to attempt to live in harmony, and the new community art can play a vital role in facilitating the effort. A caveat: we must never blur distinctions, must never not acknowledge particular struggles and solitudes. As we say at Art Starts, we are not a Benetton ad.

Finally, I want to discuss community art in relation to the changing nature of the nation state, of culture and advertising in the new global capitalism. The modern nation state is the result of a certain stage of productive forces whereby the ruling elites of particular geographical regions own the resources that create their personal wealth. Governments form to protect these interests. As capital reaches a new stage and becomes global, the owners can literally be anywhere. Money ceaselessly circles the globe, and the multinational corporation, not the nation, now owns the bulk of the resources. There is no longer any need for national or provincial governments to provide the social services that maintain a reasonably educated and healthy working population as manufacturing shifts to the third world. Hence the so called deficit, the bloodletting of health care and education, the attempt to break the unions.

Corporations more than ever need to persuade the world of their goodness and necessity. Advertising colonizes more and more private space, both outside and inside, as it takes over schools, parks, public transit, the sky — and the unconscious. For example the Nike logo now functions on its own as an archetypal symbol of strength and courage. There’s no need for words; the symbol is the message: just buy it.

Business now owns creativity, vision and ‘dreams’ because they are all seen as levers of profit. J. P. Bryan, CEO of Gulf Canada: “Business…provides a forum in which people can realize their dreams…if we don’t create minds that can dream, we’re going to achieve very little in business.” Bryan “suggested that companies will ultimately reap benefits from spending money on the arts by developing a society of creative visionary people.” (Globe and Mail, Nov. 13, 1997)

Of special significance for both the art world and community artists is the way in which advertising has also appropriated the the avant garde. A feature of both modernism and postmodernism, the avant-garde is the cult of the new, the “cutting edge”. It’s job is to epater le bourgeois; it succeeds insofar as it creates scandal. Yet there is an inherent paradox. Duchamp called it “a comet with it’s tail in front”, and Clement Greenberg averred that the avant garde has always been tied to the art world by “a golden umbilical cord”. Thierry de Duve argues that it is the nature (and the secret wish) of the avant garde to be vilified in the present and vindicated in the future.

Corporate ads now play this role, using art world referents and “titillating” content. The “Can a Bank Change” campaign by the Bank of Montreal has just the look of a contemporary photography installation, and the tequila ad campaign uses a gay theme to “shock”. The billboard depicts a babe on the back of a motorcycle with her arms around a guy. The caption: She’s using you to get to your sister. Life is harsh. Your tequila shouldn’t be. They BUY political protest as well, using Bob Dylan lyrics for the second phase of the Bank of Montreal ads. And then there’s the billboard which pounds the final nail into the coffin of the sixties: “Power to the People: Privatize Ontario Hydro”. It is corporations now who appropriate the cutting edge, the scandalous, the shocking. Witness the corporate endorsements of Toronto’s public contemporary art gallery, The Power Plant. “Cutting edge” and “radical” are terms used to promote their image as supporters of avant garde art; The very same phrases are used to refer to companies’ ‘tough’ readiness to downsize and relocate. Perhaps J. P. Bryan was using his vision of the arts, the power of dreaming, when he relocated Gulf Canada’s head office from Calgary to Denver. There is now no gap at all between vilification and vindication as both corporations and art museums eagerly vie for newest images and texts. Corporations sometimes win–the ads are often wittier and more sophisticated than what you see in galleries. After all, they don’t have to rely on public funding.

The scandalous becomes the sign of the accordance.

Consumption, consumption, galloping consumption. The little space that the avant garde used to stand on, from which it could shoot its arrows, has eroded away and we face the precipice. The question remains: where can we step outside the megalith of corporate culture, if all social and private space is dominated by the pressure, the desire to consume?

It is not in consumption that we achieve selfhood, but in creative production. Through the practice of community art, in which groups of people make art together, we have the potential to overcome passivity and reclaim ourselves as active agents. It is this practice of community art which has usurped the oppositional role of the avant garde as the critique of society’s ills. However, this critique is not a confrontation; it is organic. Every art movement has a regulative idea — to celebrate the church, for example, or to decorate the village, or to find the essence of the picture plane. I think the regulative idea of community art is to co-create our own reality. We become co-subjects. To be seen in a culture which would render us invisible, to see one another, to celebrate ourselves. Community art is generative, it is quotidian, of and in the moment. It resolves an ancient disunity by remarrying the artist and the populi. The results can be art that expresses great energy, freshness, vision and joy.