Page 13 |
Save page Remove page | Previous | 13 of 70 | Next |
|
small (250x250 max)
medium (500x500 max)
Large (1000x1000 max)
Extra Large
large ( > 500x500)
Full Resolution
All (PDF)
|
This page
All
|
7
alternative economic systems, their work offers the kind of practical experimentation that, as Negri and Hardt suggest, tests other possible paradigms of exchange.
Artist/activist Minerva Cuevas created Mejor Vida/Better Life Corporation (MVC) in Mexico City. She appropriated the identity of a corporation to offer free services and products for MVC’s clients as an act of generosity to address socio-economic concerns and offer functional solutions. MVC is an outcome of Mexican artists’ response in the mid-nineties to the institution of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and economic and political crises such as the devaluation of the peso, Mexico’s monetary unit.21
In her seven-year social art experiment DaytoDay, Carolina Caycedo practiced the art of non-monetary exchange. Her experiment in living day-to-day without money operated by way of informal economies such as bartering. While cultivating a social network, she offered personal skills, time and commodities in exchange for her daily needs. Caycedo’s practice can be traced back to her time as an art student in Bogotà, Cuevas’ work is contextualized therefore in response to the rise of neo-liberalism and globalization. Her self-identified corporation functions simultaneously as a series of public interventions in Mexico City, as a social, participatory and activist practice, as well as a form of social service. Using the status of a corporation to critique the very same apparatus, MVC exemplifies a distinct artistic strategy of irony and appropriation. Art historians and critics Cuauhtèmoc Medina and Hans Ulrich Obrist provide insight into the political intentions of Cuevas’ art and activist practice.
21 Ruben Gallo. New Tendencies in Mexican Art: The 1990s. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004),9.
Object Description
| Title | Mejor vida/better life and day-to-day exchanges: Networks of social exchange in contemporary arts practice |
| Author | Anderson, Joy Angela |
| Author email | joy.anderson@usc.edu; majikalnature@gmail.com |
| Degree | Master of Public Art Studies |
| Document type | Thesis |
| Degree program | Public Art Studies |
| School | School of Fine Arts |
| Date defended/completed | 2011-03-08 |
| Date submitted | 2011 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2011-05-06 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Decter, Joshua |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Owen Driggs, Janet Gonzalez, Rita |
| Abstract | The current economic crisis has brought attention and criticism to a dominant global economic system that is characterized by the goal of exponential expansion in pursuit of private monetary profit. In this thesis I explore the possibility for social and participatory art to invoke, inspire and mobilize action towards alternative sustainable systems of economic exchange. Generosity and non-monetary exchange as a social practice and artistic strategy provide a space for artists and audiences to perform models of alternative economies in the social/public sphere. While they also cultivate a network of social and cultural capital that values shared time and resources for mutual benefit. Using tactics evocative of feminist artists of the 1970s, the art projects considered in this text experiment with ways to live independent of, and in resistance to, the corporate market. My discussion focuses on the socially engaged art projects of artists Minerva Cuevas and Carolina Caycedo, and the Time/Bank initiated by artists Anton Vidokle and Julieta Aranda of e-flux. I reveal how their art projects perform creative models towards an economic paradigm shift, while positioning social and participatory public art practice as models towards sustainable lifestyles. |
| Keyword | social practice; generosity and non-monetary exchange in contemporary art; non-object art; Latin American artists; Mexican artists; Interventionist art; public art; public practice; feminist art; participatory art; alternative economies; barter; time bank; time currency; environmental sustainable lifestyles; economic sustainability; global corporate capitalism; global economic paradigm; art activism; paradigm shift; environmental and social justice; temporary autonomous zone; relational aesthetics; social capital; conceptualism; DIY; globalization; gift economies |
| Coverage date | 1970/2010 |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m3921 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Anderson, Joy Angela |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-anderson-4448 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume44/etd-anderson-4448.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 13 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | 7 alternative economic systems, their work offers the kind of practical experimentation that, as Negri and Hardt suggest, tests other possible paradigms of exchange. Artist/activist Minerva Cuevas created Mejor Vida/Better Life Corporation (MVC) in Mexico City. She appropriated the identity of a corporation to offer free services and products for MVC’s clients as an act of generosity to address socio-economic concerns and offer functional solutions. MVC is an outcome of Mexican artists’ response in the mid-nineties to the institution of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and economic and political crises such as the devaluation of the peso, Mexico’s monetary unit.21 In her seven-year social art experiment DaytoDay, Carolina Caycedo practiced the art of non-monetary exchange. Her experiment in living day-to-day without money operated by way of informal economies such as bartering. While cultivating a social network, she offered personal skills, time and commodities in exchange for her daily needs. Caycedo’s practice can be traced back to her time as an art student in Bogotà, Cuevas’ work is contextualized therefore in response to the rise of neo-liberalism and globalization. Her self-identified corporation functions simultaneously as a series of public interventions in Mexico City, as a social, participatory and activist practice, as well as a form of social service. Using the status of a corporation to critique the very same apparatus, MVC exemplifies a distinct artistic strategy of irony and appropriation. Art historians and critics Cuauhtèmoc Medina and Hans Ulrich Obrist provide insight into the political intentions of Cuevas’ art and activist practice. 21 Ruben Gallo. New Tendencies in Mexican Art: The 1990s. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004),9. |
