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Performing the collective
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Performing the collective
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PERFORMING THE COLLECTIVE by Chloë Flores A Thesis Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC ROSKI SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF PUBLIC ART STUDIES May 2011 Copyright 2011 Chloë Flores ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are many people who have helped me, in some way or another, to get where I am today to whom I am extremely grateful. First, I could not have done this without the love and support from my best friend and cohort Matt Lipps, to whom I have the deepest affection and gratitude for his ceaseless support, advise, and hours of early morning, late night and last minutes proofreading, and uncanny ability to bring out the best of me, keep me laughing for hours, and with whom I feel most at home. Words alone will never suffice to express the how fortunate I feel to have a family that I adore, respect, enjoy and savor every minute with. Mom, Dad, Aaron, Mimi, Carmen – you guys rock my world. Thank you to whoever or whatever is responsible for the dynamics of our family. I would exchange nothing in the world for what we have. I am grateful to my generous friends, Autumn Beck and Alexander Hurt, with whom I enjoy the glamorous life. They have been remarkably understanding of my time, and even while my academic pursuits have kept me away, they always left their doors opened (and a bottle of Veuve chilled) for my return. Douglas, I wonder if the strength of my words still have the ability to communicate the depth my gratitude for the love and support you always gave me. Thank you. iii Much of my gratitude goes to Rhea Anastas who has helped shape my writing and kindly guided me, and the direction of my thesis, in what has been an extremely fulfilling process. I have had had the fortunate opportunity to have Karen Moss as my primary advisor, to whom my gratitude is ineffable. Karen’s support and generosity went beyond expectations, and it was her breath of knowledge, candor, enthusiasm, guidance, and unwavering ability to listen and that helped shape and breathe life into my thesis. Even before Karen served as my thesis advisor, she assisted me in obtaining my internship for the 2010 California Biennial, where I assisted Sarah Bancroft in her curatorial endeavors. Thank you. Working with Sarah was such a rewarding experience because she entrusted 13 artist interviews to me for publication in the exhibition catalogue. These duties took me out of the throes of museum bureaucracy and into a more rewarding curatorial capacity involving research, studio visits, mid-‐day café meetings/interviews, back-‐and-‐forth phone conversations, emails, and texts in a crazy but stimulating collaborative interview process that I will always value—a process that, and the product of which, provided intellectual fodder for my thesis. My gratitude extends to the Orange County Museum of Art for permission to republish the interview I conducted with the Finishing School for the 2010 California Biennial catalogue. My appreciation goes out to José Luis Blondet and Fallen Fruit for inviting me along on their journey beyond an exploration of art, culture, politics and food through the iv process and production of Let Them Eat LACMA. This process provided on the ground experience that helped inform my research on collective practice and the current trend of curating through education departments. Another person who has helped shape the way I think about the topics addressed in my thesis is Malik Gaines, who also served on my thesis committee. For the last year I have attended several panels and symposiums in which Malik participated alongside his collective My Barbarian and individually, with topics of conversation ranging from collective practice, to collaborative performance, to critical pedagogy. I am thankful for Malik’s insight at these events and for his time and feedback on my thesis. This thesis could not have been written without Joshua Decter, who resuscitated the MPAS program with an unwavering intellectual rigor, and challenged me through my academic pursuits. Thank you to him and Elizabeth Lovins whose help and guidance was priceless. Dear Finishing School, thank you, thank you, thank you. You have been so wonderful to work with and along side. It’s not over. I’m looking forward to the journey. Tim and Rita, thank you for opening up your hearts, home and lives to me. I can see and feel your love and support all around me. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ii List of Tables vi List of Figures vii Abstract viii Preface ix Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Nuts and Bolts 11 Finishing School 11 2010 California Biennial 17 54 19 Chapter Two: The Studio of 54 23 The Studio 23 Studio 54 25 (In)activity: Dormant Black Box in the White Cube 33 Post Script 43 Chapter Three: Performing Through Participation 44 Tactics and Media 44 Spectacle 49 The Spectacle of 54: Lights, Cameras, Action or Guns, Blood, and Tattoos 51 (In)Conclusion 58 Biennials 58 The Tour 63 The Invitation 65 Failure 66 The Journey 69 Bibliography 71 Appendix: Finishing School Interview with Chloë Flores 75 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1. 2001 Finishing School 15 Table 2. 54 Script Sociogram 21 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. 54 Proposed Video Installation View Detail, 2011 10 Figure 2. 54 Proposed Video Installation View Detail #2. 54, 2011 10 Figure 3. 54 Documentation (Crew Shirts), 2010 29 Figure 4. 54 Documentation #14 (Opening Weekend, Release Form), 2010 29 Figure 5. 54 Documentation #18 (Opening Weekend), 2010 30 Figure 6. 54 Documentation (Opening Weekend, Walking), 2010 30 Figure 7. 54 Documentation (2 Screen Shots), 2010 31 Figure 8. 54 Documentation (Family Screen Shot DOTS), 2010 32 Figure 9. 54 Documentation (Film Set Installation), 2011 38 Figure 10. 54 Documentation (Camera Lights), 2010 38 Figure 11. 54 Documentation (Poster Monitors), 2010 39 Figure 12. 54 Documentation (2 Screens EYE Detail), 2010 39 Figure 13. 54 Documentation (Trailer Still, Venice), 2010 40 Figure 14. 54 Documentation (Movie Poster), 2010 41 Figure 15. Finishing School Studio, San Pedro, 2011 42 Figure 16. 54 Documentation (Covert Camera), 2010 42 Figure 17. 54 Production Outtake #8968 (Man With Gun In His Mouth), 2010 56 Figure 18. 54 Production Outtake #8971 (Woman and Son With Gun), 2010 56 Figure 19. 54 Production still #0344 (Tattoo -‐ Medium Shot), 2010 57 Figure 20. 54 Production still #0336 (Finished Tattoo Detail), 2010 57 viii ABSTRACT The merging of performance into the public sphere has expanded the space for participation into urban and cultural landscapes through modes of activating audiences and audience participation. This movement towards the social was predicated, in part, by the historical trajectory of theater and performance-‐based art, placing it in the lineage of the avant-‐garde theater and other post-‐war avant-‐ garde participatory models of the 1960s and 1970s. This thesis situates the socially-‐ based practice of the Los Angeles artist collective, Finishing School, within this historical and theoretical trajectory that extends the “stage” to audiences, and illustrates the performability of this socially-‐based practice, as it relates to their 2010 California Biennial project, 54. This thesis works in the realm of interrogatives (i.e. what are the issues that a project like this raises?), and for this analysis, I conducted fieldwork, which includes a series of interviews, archival research, and onsite observations, focusing on snapshots of process. My goal: to allow room for both self reflexivity and critical analysis within the text while emblematically emphasizing the role I perform inside/outside. ix PREFACE I am well acquainted with the Finishing School. Our relationship does not extend much beyond art world happenings, and as far as I can remember, our relationship has always centered around the power dynamics of our “art relationship”—as artist and curator. We met in either late 2005 or early 2006 when I was co-‐directing enView gallery in the East Village Art’s District in Long Beach, California. It was Chris Hoff, who was running an alternative art gallery called The Office in Huntington Beach, who turned us on to the Finishing School. I believe they were the first artist collective and social-‐based practice with whom I had ever worked. The Finishing School at that time consisted of two people, Brian Boyer and Ed Giardina, and they pitched a series of low-‐tech plywood participatory objects titled Public Interaction Objects (PIO) for an exhibition that would be opening in conjunction with Smithsonian Week. I remember feeling confused, but curious and impressed with their level of, what I perceived as being, professionalism. They were articulate, playful, and thoughtful in their practice—and they were scheduled. Two things were for sale (one of which we bought and the other was purchased by Chris Hoff), but the real value of PIO, for us, was that it was an exhibition in line with our practice as gallery owners: one that emphasized shared experiences, exploring new ground, and interactivity. x After the exhibition we stayed in touch, in the way that gallery owners and artists usually do. At the end of 2007 we closed the gallery and it wasn’t until 2008 that I re-‐connected with them during their residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles for a series called Engagement Party. It was rewarding to see them supported by the museum and to have played a small role or part in the trajectory of their artistic career. This re-‐connection marked another stage in our art-‐relationship, which included curating them into a school generated group exhibition at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE); interviewing them as part of my curatorial intern duties for the 2010 California Biennial catalogue; documenting the Finishing School’s project; and presently, focusing on it for this thesis. I have started this preface with a personal anecdote to enter my voice into a thesis where the methodological approach is subjective and experience-‐based in practice. My attempt to make transparent the nature of my relationship with the Finishing School is to provide insight into the level of access available to me through a long history of mutual respect, trust, and generosity that has developed between the artistic collective and me. In theory and at best, these characteristics have the potential to allow for unmitigated access to their process, archive, and artwork. As this project is produced, the Finishing School and I are simultaneously watching the production of raw materials, that will make up the content of their participatory project, unfold. My presence will likely influence them, and vice versa, but this is a challenge and fact of any relationship between artists and critics, xi historian, and other critical writers. Is there ever a truly unbiased position? And, does bias, in whatever form, keep one from being critical? As I write this, I am reminded of the essay, “Word of Honor” by Arlene Raven. In it she writes: I think of my work as “working alongside of” the visual or performative efforts of other people. The dialogue, and even collaboration, of my work and theirs “shows” visually in some of my written commentaries. Because I want artists to be seen and heard, I often use more than one voice in my prose. Even when others are not physically represented by varying typefaces or areas on the page, they are written into the text. 1 Raven goes on to say that when she interprets a work, she enters into a “reciprocal relationship” with the artist, in which her process parallels that of the artist. In any relationship, where two relatively autonomous entities are “working alongside” each other, it would seem nearly impossible to divorce oneself from that shared experience and remain autonomous. Especially if that shared experience is based in a practice that values human experience, interactivity, and interconnectivity. She continues to suggest that critical language should take its cue from the language of the art it wished to interpret. Following this line of thinking as a model would require that I include or incorporate a way of talking about the process-‐oriented, intersubjective experience of my critical position, as it is located within the process of the Finishing School’s biennial project. Could this be an effective methodology? Perhaps the better question is, what is the alternative? Analyzing experience-‐based process-‐oriented artwork that lives beyond the actual experience in ephemeral objects and 1 Arlene Raven, “Word of Honor,” in Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, ed. Suzanne Lacy (Seattle: Bay Press, 1995), 106-‐161. xii documentation misses the mark in conveying the work’s essence for those that were not present to experience it themselves. It stands to logic that a better way to understand this type of artwork (one in which first-‐hand experience plays a large role in shaping meaning) would be to place oneself alongside it, where one practice is parallel to the other. From within that experience one has the potential to obtain a glimpse (if not, stare straight into) the cultural and sociological significance without having to be separate from it. It could be from that position that one could properly postulate on the current methods for understanding process-‐oriented work, and inadvertently offer up an answer to the question: how successful can one be in talking about experienced-‐based artwork from outside the experience? Or better yet, how can one present a prospective aid for art historians faced with the methodological problems of sifting through the detritus of the ephemerally based projects to locate the art’s historical significance? Precedents for this style of writing Raven is claiming to embody could be traced back to Lucy R. Lippard’s “Escape Attempts,” the 1973 and 1996 “Author Notes,” and the 1973 “Preface,” of her book, Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972…. In these texts Lippard lays bear a self-‐reflexive voice that signals a style of writing about art that is experiential and response driven, and can be considered to exist as a critical model that allows for subjective theory and individual reception. While it is not my interest to map or further unpack this style of critical writing, I have referenced Lippard’ text to signal the possible lineage of a style of writing and methodological approach to art criticism by which I can situate my critical stance. xiii This thesis is being and will continue to be written alongside, parallel to, from within, and from outside the project, as it is developed and put into practice. Given my access to the artists and my proximity to the project, I am in a unique position to comment and critique their processes, with the aim of criticality and self-‐ reflexivity. My goal is to allow room for both reflexivity and critical analysis within the text, which would ultimately, emblematically emphasize the role I perform inside/outside. 1 INTRODUCTION A standard criterion for the analysis of visual art is critical distance, and it is through this lens of historical retrospect that one can, in theory, gain a deeper understanding of the impact and meaning of art as it relates to broader cultural trends, locally, culturally, and globally. Temporal distance expands the process of analysis to include contextual readings of a milieu or an artist’s oeuvre by which the construct of revised histories can emerge. It is therefore, no doubt that it is a beneficial tool for historical analysis; however, when analyzing emerging and mid-‐ career artist trends, critical distance becomes less of a historicizing tool, and more of a state of mind. But even the re-‐definition of this mode of analysis is problematic when one starts to apply it to evolving cultural trends such as socially-‐based participatory art models. How does one maintain, or obtain, a state of critical distance with an art form that actively engages its audience, and through which meaning is rooted in intersubjective experience? Distance, albeit critical or temporal, is not the only methodological approach to facilitate understanding, and one need only to read modern and contemporary art theory to understand that it has historically sourced from other disciplines’ theoretical and methodological frameworks to analyze art (i.e. sociology, psychology, philosophy, and so on). With this understanding, the potential to analyze art practices that are process-‐oriented could therefore be approached through models that penetrate the interior mechanism to understand how, why, and to what extend something functions. Take for example disciplines such as science, 2 medicine, and anthropology that utilize, respectively, microscopes, x-‐rays, and fieldwork to dissect and extract information from within a mechanism to facilitate a greater insight to ways in which the exterior framework works. This correlation is not to imply that these disciplines do not use critical distance, but rather to differentiate methodological approaches in order to suggest the potential value of an inter-‐positional vantage point for the analysis of socially-‐based participatory artistic models. Accessing meaning through an in-‐depth engagement with the process of art production is something that the arbiters of taste and meaning-‐making are hesitant to do, as it raises reasonable questions of critical distance and biased analysis. This is where methods tend to become polarized, and where it is important to ask the question: does criticality and complicity need to be polarized, let alone be separate methods for engaging art critically? Through the methods of reflectivity, one can use the position of subjective experience as a tool for analysis, which includes fieldwork, interviews, archival research, and onsite observations to focus attention on the process of process-‐oriented artwork. Given that the Finishing School’s project is process-‐oriented, it seems appropriate to examine the process, as it unfolds, to access the construct of meaning-‐making. In doing so, I will peel back the layers of this participatory artwork through snapshots of process and the interrogation of the intersections of participatory tactics, artist intention, and public reception in order to unpack the ways in which the Finishing School’s performance strategies are used to garner participation. 3 It is through such a lens that I will conduct a monographic study of the artist collective Finishing School and their participatory film project for the 2010 California Biennial, titled 54. This examination includes an analysis of the presentation and display of the project, and will focus on the performative strategies employed by this Los Angeles artist collective to generate audience participation, situating them within a historical and theoretical trajectory of other artists who have endeavored to extend the “stage” to the audience. This requires a critical analysis of their praxis as it relates to the integration of performance as an artistic medium and strategy by which to engage audiences beyond the role of spectator. To do so, this thesis relies on various critical and artist texts from Bertolt Brecht, the Situationist International, Allan Kaprow, and the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) to illustrate the evolving cultural trend of art embodying everyday life through models of engagement, as well as reference artworks by artists such as Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, and John Baldessari to underscore a contemporary tendency towards incorporating audiences, on a performative level. 54 is a three-‐part series, set up to take place during three biennials, the California Biennial being the first. This first segment establishes the groundwork for the various strategies used to generate participation from audiences, all of which rely heavily on embodying the everyday. Because of the human level of the project, each person coming into contact with the project, whether they remain spectators or are transformed into actors, is approached through dialogical interaction. The playful cajoling that happens in this initial interaction has its moral implications, and could easily enter into the discourse on the subject established by critics 4 including Claire Bishop and Grant Kester; however, while I acknowledge that this is an important conversation to have, this thesis is more concerned with the process of these actions and operates under the shared assumption (between the artist and the institution) that this project is done in good faith, and that participation is generated under the perceived assumption of the museum as a benevolent institution. There are several reasons why a socially-‐based artist collective is an appropriate choice for an analysis that includes performance that extends into the public realm. 2 First, inherent in the artist collective framework is an existing model of participation, one that is marked by a collaborative process at the core of its activity. Secondly, some collective model structures (such as the collective model under which Finishing School operates) consist of an ensemble of players, organized similarly, to some extent, to a dramatic ensemble where the importance of the role of each performer is given the same weight. Furthermore, these types of collectives (Finishing School included) work under a collective identity and voice and function as a model of shared authorship. The lack of individual autonomy amongst the collective reflects a blurring of roles, which contributes to the ease in which collaborators can enter into their projects. It’s important to note that the Finishing School does not have an exclusively performance-‐based practice; however, it is performative. They are an interdisciplinary artist collective who explore political and social-‐economic issues using tactics that intersect the boundaries between praxis and play, and who 2 I am defining a collective to be a group that has come together with a shared set of ideas, who work collaboratively as a group, and not as autonomous individuals within a group. 5 sometimes use performance strategies to engage audiences. An analysis of the performative strategies they utilize to elicit participation from their audience is not done to situate their practice within a greater trend of social practices but rather to document and interrogate the process of these strategies for engaging audiences. The first chapter of this thesis introduces the 2010 California Biennial, provides a historical overview of the collective Los Angeles-‐based artist collective, the Finishing School, and summarizes their project 54. It begins by setting out the public outreach parameters established by the Orange County Museum of Art residency program—the vehicle by which the Finishing School has entered into the biennial structure. This is done to illustrate how these types of programs have worked to the advantage of the artist collective, as they have offered them an entry point into the museum structure, provided a built-‐in audience for them to engage, and contributed monetary and museum staff support to carry out their projects – all of which allot some sort of cultural legitimacy to their practice. For the 2010 California Biennial, the Finishing School has created a makeshift film stage, complete with green screen on which to later impose background images and maintain a veil of secrecy. This is the main site of audience interaction, as it relates to artistic production. The second chapter provides a summarized description of this project and contextualizes the project within the biennial structure. 54 is a participatory film project whose content is dependent upon the participation and collaboration of the biennial audience, who serve as actors in the film; therefore, the content of the film is driven and supported by the participants performing, acting, and role-‐playing. On one hand, artistic intention exists in a realm 6 of hypothesis and experiment, to the extent that the participants will drive the content. That is to say, due to this human element, the project opens itself up to chance where artistic control and authorship is intentionally shared with the participants. On the other hand, artistic intention is rooted in a critique of the biennial as a cultural form. In the second chapter I will attempt to deconstruct the notions of the “studio” as they apply to the film studio set installed in the museum. This will include an analysis of the studio as a site of production, the studio as stage where participation is generated through the cult of celebrity, and an analysis of the studio at the 2010 California Biennial during non-‐filming times and the problems of inactivity and absence. The breadth of this examination includes the enticement of spectators with notions of celebrity, which are themselves embedded within the ideas of movie making and through the lure of the camera lens. Such strategies rely on the growing interest of the ready-‐made celebrity as established through technological advances that allow for the instant uploads and the immediate dispersal of images via such platforms as YouTube and Facebook, which inadvertently lead to the dissolution of the boundaries between public and private spheres. The use of technological advances that allow for the immediate and vast dissemination of images is one defining factor that sets art production and reception today apart from their historical predecessors. For instance, without the technology of today, the Finishing School could not stream the studio space of 54 on the Internet via an unsanctioned web camera in the corner of the gallery. With this interventionist gesture, the collective is able to allow the space to perform without their presence, while also 7 allowing them to capture, during filming days, the micro-‐gestures of participants as they wait and watch. This not only exemplifies the ways in which technology provides artists with new possibilities of extending the reach of their practice, but also shows the degree to which the Finishing School implements filmic devices such as cinema verité to expand the notion of performance, as it relates to the everyday mimetic act of expression in the presentation of Self – which will be covered in the following chapter. Collaborative interaction has many historical precedents that offer a various templates for social and political interactivity and shared authorship. The third chapter will continue to unpack role-‐playing through a comparative analysis of the methods employed by the Finishing School to engage audiences in performance-‐ based participatory models, including: a short interpretation of the discourses surrounding notions of incorporating audiences into the fringes of process, beginning with early theater practitioners such as Bertlot Brecht and Antonin Artaud; capturing and embodying everyday life in art as articulated by Allan Kaprow, and as it relates to the role performance plays in 54; the implementation of the cinematic devices of cinema verité to capture these real-‐time gestures; and implementations of “the spectacle” for the dual purpose of enticing participation and pushing the boundaries of the artist/institution relationship. The title of the project, 54, among many things, references Fellini’s 8 ½ in a direct correlation to his film, which is a story about the making of a film as much as it is a film about filmmaking. The Finishing School’s 54 is therefore an art project about the making of a participatory film, as much as it is participatory film project 8 about art-‐making. Following the same logic, an art project that sets up a studio space within a biennial structure is therefore an art-‐project that is about the biennial structure. As mentioned earlier, 54 is participatory film project set out to critique the biennial structure as a cultural and social form, and the fact that 2011 marks the 54 th Venice Bienniale is no coincidence. This bienniale will feature the second act of this proposed trifecta project. The conclusion of this thesis will therefore address the overall structure of 54 as it relates to the three biennials (California, Venice, and the final “to be announced” biennial) as the three stages on which 54 performs. This section of the paper will examine the second phase of this project, which involves an art-‐tour to Venice, Italy during the opening days of the 2011 Venice Biennale. The tour, initiated by the Finishing School and implemented by a tour company that specializes in “art-‐tours,” is a mimetic critique of similar tours structured by museums and curators set out to cultivate taste. While functioning as critique, it also serves as vehicle for which the Finishing School has a willing, built-‐in, performing body to use as actors during this second filming section of their project. The conclusion will also address the final stage of the project which (true to the nature of a project that willingly opens itself up to chance as a driving mechanism of content) works under the unabashed assumption of the invitation to another biennial, and the problematic associated with such a proposal. The proposal for this final performance incorporates footage shot during the previous biennials (California and Venice) in an immersive participatory film installation (Figure 1, Figure 2). The preliminary sketches for the project incorporate multiple projectors triggered by sensors that detect the movement of a body through the 9 space. The idea is that the images (of previous biennial audience/actors) are displayed according to the situation of the moving body; therefore, the narrative is in constant flux, non-‐linear, and dictated by the prospective biennial audience. Furthermore, this prospective biennial audience is, perhaps unconsciously at first, transformed into a participant as they move through the space. It is in this manifestation that the participant performs a role similar to a director or editor, dictating with the movement the narrative of the film, and again sharing the authorship of the content of the final project. The purpose of this final chapter is to introduce the biennial as the conclusion, to emblematically illustrate the open-‐endedness of the project in general, but also highlighting the unknown elements under which this project is operating. This literary devise serves to systematically place the reader in an empathetic position with the project. This is done through combining the description of the open-‐ended structure of the project, as it depends on two other biennials to be completed, with the finalizing of the thesis about an unfinished project. By providing a figurative ellipsis, I intend to symbolically signal the in-‐ progress structure of the project with the open-‐endedness of the thesis. This is not done to add a creative spin on the approach to my thesis, but with the honest intention of symbolically (and hopefully literally) providing an entry point into the process for the reader. Both 54 and the structure of this paper are experiments. In a way, both are based in performance. One that intends to address process from both ends: the process through which something is made and the process of making. 10 FIGURE 1 Finishing School, 54 (Proposed Video Installation View Detail. 54-‐ Rough Edit), 2011, Multi-‐Channel Video Projection with Audio. Reproduced with permission. FIGURE 2 Finishing School, 54 (Proposed Video Installation View Detail #2. 54-‐ Rough Edit), 2011, Multi-‐Channel Video Projection with Audio. Reproduced with Permission. 11 CHAPTER ONE Nuts and Bolts Finishing School The Finishing School, established in 2001, is an artist collective who value sharing not only authorship, but also knowledge. The name of the collective developed out of their first project, “Saturday School,” which took the form of a temporary teaching institution within a gallery context, and was mimetic of educational models that operate outside normative pedagogical systems, such as a “finishing school.” A finishing school is a private school, typically reserved for girls, 3 that aims to refine and cultivate social rituals. The Finishing School’s name is therefore a playful reference to this alternative educational model that caters to affluent social classes, and plays heavily on the irony that their practice aims to break down the ideologies and cultural myths that educational models (such as finishing schools) perpetuate. The suspension and dissolution of these myths are at the heart of the practice, specifically the cultural myth of the artist as genius—a myth that tends to sustain divisions between an audience and an artwork, which in turn renders the artwork inaccessible to those not versed in high culture. Through a pedagogical lens the collective addresses this problem of accessibility often associated with modern and contemporary artworks (specifically, ones in which primacy is given to ideas over traditional aesthetics or material significance)— which they explained in our interview: 3 Ironically, the collective’s current roster includes an all-‐male collective; although, past iterations of the group included women. 12 From the beginning, we have struggled with the internal politics of delivery and the internal politics of dialogue between audience and artist. We really try to break down the barriers between us and them. For example, the quotation in the beginning of our catalogue for Saturday School, our first project, quoted Charlie Brown’s teacher, “wah wah wah wah.” That’s how the art world is perceived: “wah wah wah wah.” They put this stuff up on the wall, and you look at them and it’s like, “what does this stuff mean?” What does that do for somebody who isn’t trained? Addressing the relationship between each project and its audience is important to our practice. Because our interests are broad, we are constantly wrestling with the idea of effective accessibility of concepts with consideration of the context of each of our projects. Irony, as their collective namesake indicates, is at the heart of the Finishing School’s practice, infusing not only their projects, but their process as well, providing a conceptual framework from which projects stem. “It’s how most of our projects start,” they said recently in a salon session in conversation with the other art collective in residence at the OCMA for the biennial. 4 Irony, manifested in humor, imbues the project and process with elements of play. This constituent of play reflects Allan Kaprow’s notion of play, which he notes “offers satisfaction, not in some stated outcome, some immediate accomplishment, but rather in continuous participation as its own end,” 5 and when employed “strips bare the myths of cultures by its artists.” 6 Once play is conflated with chance and experimentation, ideas are sprung into action in praxis. Praxis allows for elements that one can not control or specify—the “x-‐factor.” This factor quantifies how an audience or participant will respond, which allows the project to reside in a state of flux. This 4 Finishing School and Los Angeles Urban Rangers in conversation at the Orange County Museum of Art, January 29, 2011. 5 Allan Kaprow, “The Education of the Un-‐Artist, Part II,” Art News 71, no. 3 (1971): 63. 6 Ibid., 126. 13 state of uncertainty, which rides alongside the element of chance, goes hand in hand with the notion of play. The Finishing School has operated for many years under a collective identity. The choice to forego individual identities for a shared nom de plume was a strategic and symbolic one. For the Finishing School, a collective identity has helped to cultivate a non-‐hierarchal structure within the group, and signifies their desire to share and employ creative, political, and social power through an egalitarian model. Collaboration is one of the pervading mechanisms within their collective structure and their practice, especially in relation to public engagement. For the collective, cultivating audience participation is much more effective when there is a level of equality—or to evoke the language of team sports: when there is a "level playing field.” 7 The notion of collective identity isn’t always as integral to an artist collective’s practice as it is for the Finishing School. In some cases, individual identity is just as important as the collective entity; in which case, efforts are made to highlight this difference (such as publishing individual names along side of the collective identity). On the other end of the spectrum, some collectives have gone to great lengths to conceal their identity, 8 not only in print but in public as well (some 7 There are various strategies employed by the collective to manifest this condition, which are detailed in later chapters. 8 The Finishing School has never tried to conceal their identity, and has consistently insisted on the representation of a collective voice on their website, in social networking communications, with institutions and in related press material, etcetera. The press was responsible for circulating the individual names in print. 14 have even donned disguises such as the anonymous members of the artist collective, Bruce High Quality Foundation, and Guerrilla Girls). Collective identity informs the practice of each group differently, and what works for one collective may not work for another. However, while there is no certified collective operating system, the Finishing School has adopted a model that has worked for them. The Finishing School is currently made up of five practitioners of varying skills sets and backgrounds (Table 1.1) who utilize tactical media 9 and interdisciplinary models to create a broad spectrum of projects that take up political and socio-‐ economic subject matter in varying interactive forms. Like many collectives, the Finishing School is not immune to the trials and tribulations inherent within group dynamics. Working closely with several collectives over the past year, it is clear that the strength of their organizational structure is due in part to a modeling after Critical Art Ensemble’s (CAE) recommended “cellular structure” for collectives. The organizing principles of this model favor a varying skill set amongst members to create a solidarity through difference; a “floating hierarchy to produce projects;” and an importance on establishing a “social principle” that allows like-‐minded people to come together. 10 9 Tactical media is defined as “a form of media activism that privileges temporary, hit-‐and-‐run interventions in the media sphere over the creation of permanent and alternative media outlets.” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_media (accessed on February 21, 2011). And, also as being “never perfect, always in becoming, performative and pragmatic, involved in a continual process of questioning the premises of the channels and platforms they work.” David Garcia and Geert Lovink, “The ABC of Tactical Media,” in Nettime, http://www.nettime.org/Lists-‐Archives/nettime-‐l-‐9705/msg00096.html (accessed on February 21, 2011). 10 Critical Art Ensemble, “Observations on Collective Cultural Action,” Art Journal 57, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 72–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his “social principle” for the Finishing School is established through collaborative interaction within in the group and with others, the ideas from which are informed by two educators and pedagogic theorists who have advocated for non-‐hierarchical structures in class rooms: Paulo Freire and bell hooks. In an unpublished version of an interview with the Finishing School, they expressed their interest in this model of interaction for their practice: The instructor provides a concept and the stimulation of concepts become real in the context of everyday life. You make them physical, make them interactive, you make them a dialogue, you make them performed through something and we really like that model, because we get better results. Our very first project, “Saturday School,” was designed specifically to break down the barrier between artist audience and the gallery. Right out of the gate, we liked this idea of performing. Dialoguing. We liked the idea of the social. We think the social is the most interesting part. Unfortunately there’s no value in it, economically speaking, and that’s the interesting quandary that we’ve been in for so long—we aren’t object makers, there’s no investment in a trajectory of craft. 11 According to Helguera, Freire’s progressive ideas on pedagogy (as well as Augusto Boal’s theater experiments) “were key in establishing education as a creative tool for constructing collective identities.” 12 It is through this pedagogical lens that the Finishing School organizes their approach for interacting with the public. The pedagogical tactics utilized by the Finishing School in 54 are less overt than previous projects such as M.O.L.D., recently reiterated for LET THEM EAT LACMA at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in November 2010. Concealed under a faux-‐hazmat 11 Finishing School, interview with Chloë Flores, Newport Beach, CA, July 22, 2010. 12 Pablo Helguera, “Notes Toward a Transpedagogy,” in Art, Architecture, Pedagogy: Experiments in Learning, ed. Ken Ehrlich (Los Angeles: CalArts, 2010), 106. 17 shelter, the Finishing School and participants donned consumer-‐grade protective gear in a workshop set out to investigate the quality of food we consume through testing the speed in which mold grows on various store bought loaves of bread (the quicker to mold, the healthier the bread). While this experiment engaged audiences on an entertainment level (i.e. the costumes and ad hoc science laboratory environment), it nonetheless served an educational focus: to promote the awareness of the science, politics, and health issues within the food industry. For 54, these strategies are built into the artist’s biennial critique, which challenges the top-‐ down infrastructure of the art establishment through the implementation of non-‐ hierarchical forms of participation. 2010 California Biennial The California Biennial is in its third decade of documenting the regional art-‐ landscape of California. First established in 1984 as the Newport Biennial by the Newport Harbor Museum, the biennial later became the California Biennial in 1996 with the formation of the Orange County Museum of Art. Historically, the biennial has set out to register the pulse of art production in the state and has served to designate a position for emerging, mid-‐career, and established artists within the art world establishment. 13 The 2010 California Biennial, curated by Sarah Bancroft, focused on a selection of mostly emerging artists (most without gallery 13 The current economic downturn has contributed to the conditions of nominal public and private funding for the arts, which have affected the biennial’s ability to support the production costs for new works. Relative to previous iterations of the biennial, this year’s biennial was marked by a decrease in funding, resulting in the exhibition of a large number of existing works, save for a few new works created either through limited funds in the biennial budget or through the generous support of rarified grants. 18 representation) from the cities and surrounding areas of San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The Finishing School accepted an invitation to the 2010 California Biennial and were provided funding for their project by the Nimoy Foundation. 14 Grant recipients, unlike the recipients of budget allocations, often receive funding under conditions of public outreach through either educational and/or mentoring models. Provisions tied to financial awards provide a feasible entry point into the museum for social-‐based practices. 15 Typically these practitioners do not participate in producing objects for commodification in the global art market; therefore, funding for a project that requires public participation is an attractive alternative to financing it themselves, especially when a large public-‐base is already built into the museum structure. For the artist collective, participation is not only a means to an end, but also forms the very basis of their practice; therefore, in addition to the stipulated public engagement outlined by the grant and residency program, the Finishing School has made use of social networking systems, such as Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, as platforms to reach beyond the scope of the museum and biennial audiences: 14 The philosophical zeitgeist of the Nimoy Foundation’s grant system is a response to the economic imperative of providing support to non-‐normative (i.e. those that do not produce objects for circulation in the art market) practices; therefore, grant monies are often provided to support the production of ephemerally-‐based projects. 15 Much remains to be theorized about the institutionalization of such art practices and the implications of ushering them into the museum system through residency programs, educational departments, and public programing (a trend that developed in the 1990s out of the museum’s desire to expand and diversify their audience), as well as the current inclusion of artists in museum programming through education departments—which has evolved alongside a clear pedagogical turn in art practices. 19 Facebook serves as the medium through which announcements are posted and “friends” are made; Flickr archives photographic documentation; and Twitter disseminates their biennial musings. 16 In a recently published text titled Notes Toward a Transpedagogy, Helguera writes that the emergence of social networks and user-‐generated content on the web has significantly effected how artists extend their reach into the public sphere, and have created spaces that are “real alternatives for communities wishing to bypass” traditional art world hierarchies. 17 The proliferation of these interfaces, he suggests, “have helped change a culture of the cult of the author to a culture of collective authorship.” For the Finishing School, these websites are valuable resources that function to create and maintain social connections to a larger audience, where notions of shared authorship create connective strings to a broader collective consciousness. 54 54 is a participatory film project that combines tactics of appropriation, intervention, homage, and participation. It is a 3-‐part biennial project, spanning the 16 Such musings (i.e. “Is perpetuity a birthright of biennials?” [January 10, 2011]; “How do you feel about missing a biennial because of time, distance, and cost?” [January 10, 2011]; “and we quote – ‘If art was a nation what would be written in its constitution?’” [December 18, 2010]; “glocal?” [December 15 th , 2011]) are archived on the Finishing School’s Twitter account online. Finishing School, http://twitter.com/finishingschool# (accessed on December 28, 2010). 17 Pablo Helguera, “Notes Toward a Transpedagogy,” in Art, Architecture, Pedagogy: Experiments in Learning, ed. Ken Ehrlich (Los Angeles: CalArts, 2010), 108. 20 2010 California Biennial, the 2011 Venice Biennale, and a 2012 TBA Biennial. 18 According to the Finishing School: The project explores the complex socio-‐economic and political landscape of biennials—using the invitation to participate in one biennial (2010 CA Biennial) as an opportunity to critique the very model through the critical cinematic dramatizing of another biennial (2011 Venice Biennale). 54 employs relevant biennial histories and narratives, investigates the role of biennial audience as participants, and speculates about the impact biennials have on culture. 19 Visitors to the Orange County Museum of Art were encouraged to participate as actors in scenes, which are being filmed at the museum and the surrounding area on scheduled dates. Loosely based on Federico Fellini’s film 8 ½ the project blends experimental narrative styles with tactics utilized to capture everyday gesture, as favored by documentary style film making, such as cinéma-‐vérité. Just as Fellini’s 8½ is a self-‐reflexive film about the creative process, so is the Finishing School’s 54. Adherence to the “script” of 54 is led by the creative process—in which flux, chance, experimentation, change, and reworking are all key. While the plot developments and the scenes evolve, the collective is continuously revisiting the film. The content is unscripted, as its determinacy depends upon each performer’s contribution, which adds texture and color to the film. That said, it’s important to clarify that the project is more about making of the film (i.e. the process) than it is concerned with the content of the film. 18 The Venice and TBA biennials are addressed in the conclusion. 19 Finishing School, interview with Chloë Flores, transcript, 2010 California Biennial, (New Port Beach: Orange County Museum of Art, 2011), 65. 21 TABLE 2: 54 SCRIPT SOCIOGRAM 54 plot structure as of March 2010 from the Finishing School archive. Reproduced with permission. One of the elements that remains constant is the playful depiction of the relational power structure of the Venice Biennale (Table 1.2), around which the plot, and conceptual and narrative framework of 54, revolves. Within the schematic structure of the diagram, the Guilds represent the art producers (those in group 1 are aware of the power structure and engage in it in some way, while those in group 2 create art that exists outside the art world structure); the object represents the commodified form—which both guilds produce, and by which their worth is determined; the Council represents the cultural and ideological space demarcated by the political and social architecture of the biennial power structure, and in turn the art-‐world establishment; situated at center of this sphere are the major power players who share interest in the art object (here to be loosely understood as a 22 commodity, either of economic of cultural value); while the main protagonist (PC, or protagonist character) and the public straddle the liminal zone of access. This absurdist graphic rendering of the biennial power structure affects the intentions behind each scene being shot, as it is the realm in which the protagonist is attempting to penetrate, but while I have included it in this chapter, it is merely to provide some background to the underlining structure of the film, and not to convey its importance over the process of making the film – which, as I previously mentioned, is more significant to the project. 23 CHAPTER TWO The Studio of 54 The Studio The romantic image of the artist in their studio has been historically imprinted in our minds through Velasquez’s La Meninas (1656) and Courbet’s The Painter’s Studio (1855); and more recently, the reconstruction of Constantin Brancusi’s studio outside the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (1997) and the recreation of Francis Bacon’s studio in Dublin (1999), which portray the studio as a site of production, but also enforce the studio as a site of ideology. 20 Today, and as evidence by the reconstruction of Bacon and Brancusi’s studio, a visit to the artist’s studio is no longer an exclusive or privileged position reserved for patrons, collectors, and curators. Much has happened to change the ways in which the studio functions in contemporary art since Daniel Buren’s 1971 text, The Function of the Studio; although, this seminal text clearly contextualizes the studio into a theoretical framework that further posits a particular analysis of production and display in terms still widely used today. For Buren, an “analysis of the art system must inevitably be carried on in terms of the studio as the unique space of production and the museum as a unique space of exposition.” 21 It is through these systems of production (studio) and consumption/display (museum) that meaning is generated. 20 In Studio and Cube, Brian O’Doherty writes at length about the studio as a site of ideology that can be read according to terms of it usage. Brian O’Doherty, Studio and Cube: On the relationship between where art is made and where art is displayed (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), 7. 21 Daniel Buren, “The Function of the Studio,” October 10 (Autumn 1979), 51. 24 What is at stake during this transition from the studio to the museum is the loss of insight to artistic process, which, for Buren, acts to preserve the “relationship between the work and its place of production.” 22 In other words, providing the viewer access to process could potentially bridge the gap between artistic intent, the reception of the artwork, and its aesthetic and cultural value. By establishing their site of production within the institution, the Finishing School has placed themselves alongside a rich historical trajectory of artists who have opened up the idealized space of the “studio” to the public, of which post-‐ studio art practices played an important role. Post-‐studio practice was codified in the early 1970’s when John Baldassari’s labeled his course at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) “Post-‐Studio Art.” 23 The post-‐studio philosophy placed emphasis on the transcendence of the studio by situating art production outside the hermetic private place of the studio and into the public realm. According to curator Robert Storr, Baldassari’s gesture “initiated a quiet revolution in the way many artists make things and much of the public think about ‘art production’” 24 —the effects of which have since resonated throughout the art world, especially for artists who have extended their practice into the public sphere. 22 Daniel Buren, “The Function of the Studio,” October 10 (Autumn 1979), 56. 23 The term “post-‐studio,” according to Caroline Jones, in her essay “Post-‐ Studio/Postmodern/Postmorten,” came from Laurence Alloway, who used the term in 1972 to describe Robert Smithson’s practice; although Robert Storr, in his essay “A Room of One’s Own, a mind of One’s Own,” acknowledges John Baldassari as institutionalizing the term when he called his California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) course “Post-‐Studio Art” in the early 1970s. 24 Robert Storr, “A Room of One’s Own, a mind of One’s Own,” in Studio Reader: on the Space of Artists, ed. Mary Jane Jacob and Michelle Grabner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 60. 25 Allowing access to process is much of what socially-‐based practices, such as the Finishing School, inherently do. They present the viewer with the choice of engagement, either as a spectator or participant—or in the case of 54, as spectator or performer. While the studio today has come to exist through varying forms and in multiple locations, it is still aligned with notions of place, process, and production; in other words, where art is produced, how it is produced, and what is produced. The participants/performers in 54 are therefore directly involved in simultaneous consumption and production of culture—namely, biennial culture. But what is the process? Studio 54 While the title of the project references next year’s 54th Venice Biennale, the studio of 54 plays heavily on the Warholian idea of “15 minutes of fame” and the cult of celebrity culture that pervades electronic media and art today in order to engender participation. During filming times, the Finishing School, with earnest tongue in cheek, man their makeshift film studio with black t-‐shirts that read “CREW” in white bold typecast on the back (Figure 3). The shirts formally mark the Finishing School collective as a crew, defining them as group that works closely together, while also symbolically ushering out the notion of autonomy. While the audience/participants/performers are momentarily bathed in limelight, the Finishing School work behind the scene, as the film crew: Plapp on video camera dolly; Boyer on stationary video camera; Giardina setting up screen shots with participants; Rojsirivat on still camera; and Heflin passing out release forms and 26 describing the project to viewers at the threshold of participation (Figure 4). The majority of the biennial audiences who enter the studio of 54 are drawn in by the spectacle of the lights, cameras, green screen, mock-‐film poster, trailer, and performing bodies (Figure 5, Figure 6). Spectators who hover at the thresholds are often won over by the observation of innocuous interaction, and the discernable pleasure and fun the participants are having (Figure 7, Figure 8). Few remain spectators, off stage, perhaps left contemplating an appearance in the biennial film. The strategy of turning over center stage to the participants is an effective one, in terms of cultivating participation. The result of this action, which places the participant at the forefront of the project, is multifold. For one, it wittingly includes the audience in the biennial critique, which is at the crux of the project. In our catalogue interview, the Finishing School talked about the audience’s role in this critique: Ultimately, we felt that the best way to make this criticism was to do it from within. An often-‐stated criticism of institutional critique is that it is supported and presented in museums and galleries, even with its critical stance towards them. Additionally, it’s said to be a complex game in which only select artists, theorists, historians, and critics can play in, leaving the general public alienated and watching from the sidelines. In this project we are keenly aware of our position and have willingly placed ourselves as the target of our own criticism. 25 The invitation to participate in a biennial is a mark of success many artists aspire to maintain. The biennial format attempts to map out the top cultural 25 Finishing School, interview with Chloë Flores, transcript, 2010 California Biennial, (New Port Beach: Orange County Museum of Art, 2011), 66. 27 producers of a specific geographic location. For instance, the California Biennial propagates these artists on regional scale, while the Venice Biennale showcases them on a global scale. The institution of the biennial, through the selection and exhibition process, reify the value of an artists worth; all the while positioning the artist somewhere within a hierarchical structure of emerging, mid-‐career, or established. In an essay about Andy Warhol, Benjamin Buchloh notes that postwar artists, such as Warhol, understood the pervasive presence consumer culture had on visual representation and public experience. 26 Warhol’s statement “in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes” not only predicts the cult of celebrity that has pervaded the systems of representation and identity today (i.e. reality television, YouTube, Facebook), but was also, as Buchloh suggests, an “announcement that the hierarchy of subjects worthy to be represented will someday be abolished. 27 ” Through the symbolic value of the crew shirts, the gesture of stepping aside for participants to take center stage at a biennial, and situating the audience as the main subjects of their film, the Finishing School are working in a similar vein. They are using their position as a biennial artist to critique, obstruct, and invert the value system of the biennial structure, in what Buchloh calls a “systematic invalidation of the hierarchies of representational functions and techniques.” 28 26 Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, “Andy Warhol’s One Dimensional Art: 1956–1966,” in Andy Warhol, ed. Annette Michelson (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2001), 26. 27 Ibid., 28. 28 Ibid. 28 Currently, there is a surge, or trend among contemporary artists and institutions to place the public in the limelight. On view concurrently with the writing of this thesis is the exhibition Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures, at the museum of Modern Art in New York. 29 An online component of the exhibition allows the museum’s online public to record and upload their screen test via Flicker to the museum’s exhibition page. More recently, John Baldessari’s project for the 2011 Sydney Festival, Your Name in Lights, invited participants to register their name and “watch it appear in lights” 30 on a mock-‐Broadway marquee installed on the façade of the Australian Museum between January 8–30 th . This trend (also evident in the Finishing School’s project) capitalizes on the cult of celebrity made famous by Warhol. But, what’s at stake for an emerging artist, who step aside to usher in the new public celebrity, as opposed the same gesture made established artists—such as Baldassari and Warhol—who had already transcended the hierarchical structure of the art world? Much more. That is, if the emerging artist’s goal is one of upward mobility towards a mid-‐career classification. And, how does that translate for the participants? Their names will appear in smaller lights. 29 This exhibition, on view from 19 December 2010 -‐ 21 March 2011, was organized by Klaus Biesenbach, chief curator at the Museum of Modern Art, and Director of MoMA PS1. 30 This quote was pulled from the Kaldor Public Art Projects’ website. They organized “Your Name in Lights.” Kaldor Public Art Projects, http://kaldorartprojects.org.au/projects/john-‐baldessari.html (accessed on January 10, 2011). 29 FIGURE 3 Finishing School, 54 Documentation (Crew Shirts), 2010. Photography courtesy of Devon Tsuno. Reproduced with permission. FIGURE 4 Finishing School, 54 Documentation #14 (Opening Weekend, Release Form), 2010. Reproduced with permission. 30 FIGURE 5 Finishing School, 54 Documentation #18 (Opening Weekend), 2010. Reproduced with permission. FIGURE 6 Finishing School, 54 Documentation (Opening Weekend, Walking), 2010. Photography courtesy of Devon Tsuno. Reproduced with permission. 31 FIGURE 7 Finishing School, 54 Documentation (2 Screen Shots), 2010. Reproduced with permission. 32 FIGURE 8 Finishing School, 54 Documentation (Family Screen Shot DOTS), 2010. Reproduced with permission. 33 (In)activity: Dormant Black Box in the White Cube Most days the studio of 54, situated in a side gallery to the left of the front desk of the Orange County Museum of Art, reads like an installation of a quasi-‐film studio set. One enters the gallery to a floor-‐to-‐ceiling green screen and orderly remnants of a working film studio, complete with a DIY camera dolly and track (Figure 9, Figure 10). The two standing monitors staged near the entrance loop green screen shots featuring participants from opening weekend, which read as dailies from shooting the day before. Mounted on the wall to the left of the entrance are two flat screen monitors (Figure 11). One plays a looping trailer with an eerie synthesized audible soundtrack (produced by the artist collective Lucky Dragons), while a static text image scores out the filming dates and times on the other (Figure 12, Figure 13). Opposite the green screen, which casts a low ember sci-‐fi glow on other unadulterated gallery walls, is a large vertical film poster referentially simulating (in size and design) a billboard movie poster (Figure 14). The poster lists the Finishing School as the writer and director, and the biennial’s curator, Sarah Bancroft, as the producer (in association with OCMA). On the lower end of the poster, three film prize emblems signify the three stages of the project, marked by the participation in three biennials: the current 2010 California Biennial, their unofficial entry into the 2011 Venice Biennale, and “(hopefully)” a 2012 TBA Biennial. The poster announces that 54 is “A New Participatory Film Project,” and absent from the poster is the name of the actors. On its own (that is to say, outside of the filming times) 54 is at best a scenic installation, a simulation of a film set, or a stage set. While it exists as a place of 34 production – where audience members can take part in the making of the film through performance – the Finishing School’s main studio and site of production is in San Pedro, on the bluff overlooking the port of Los Angeles at Angel’s Gate Cultural Center (Figure 15). Within this context, the studio at the biennial stands as a satellite studio or off-‐site studio in which a valuable part of the project is produced – one where audience participation is invaluable and an incalculable investment is garnered. As the film poster suggests, the Finishing School are not relinquishing their position as the auteurs of the project; although, by establishing a production studio off-‐site at the museum, they are manipulating the reception of the project in terms of collaboration. While the Finishing School doesn’t speak about the project in terms of collaboration (where the collaborators work together in the process and decision making of the film), the audience, through their decision to participate in the making of a final product hold a stake in the film, or investment; however, that investment is unquantifiable because the intention behind each individual’s decision to participate would quantify their investment (or “pay-‐off”), and those intentions remains unclear. The inactive mise en scène during “dark days” begets analogous problems 31 that other ephemeral and participatory, durational, and performance-‐based artworks face when represented in an institutional context and divorced from their lifeline: the artist. That is, when the artist isn’t present, the detritus (ephemeral, 31 Currently, there has been a resurgence of revisionist history of the 1960s, as art historians have now determined there has been enough temporal distance to re-‐historicize the era. While they mine the archives for detritus and ephemera from early performance and durational-‐based projects for exhibition, they are coming face to face with the problems of presentation: how does one breath life into the relics of the past for the consumption of a museum audience? 35 objects, photographic or video documentation) of these types of artworks often fall short in their ability to convey and embody the same experience that is manifested with process-‐oriented works. In the gallery, the studio of 54 is static, save for the monitors which run the trailer and filming dates on the side wall, and others that loop of footage on the detached camera monitors at the front of the gallery entrance. The camera dolly remains lifeless and unmanned, as does the entire scene. Aware of this problem afflicting their line of practice, and specifically the installation for the biennial, the Finishing School attempted to activate the space with a few looping shots from the opening weekend (illustrating audience participation), as well as installation of an unsanctioned 24/7 surveillance camera in the top corner of the gallery (Figure 16). The intervention of the “spy camera” into the gallery space activated the space through streaming video footage on their website, which allowed the installation to perform and live beyond, not only filming times, but museum operating hours. Streaming footage of the on-‐site satellite studio after hours, the empty studio, and the absence of the artist focused a lens on the performative aspects of studio and the relationship of the viewer with that space. In this sense, the interventionist action works in a similar manner as Bruce Nauman’s immersive Mapping the Studio 1 (Fat Chance John Cage) (2001) (and is a likely homage to the artist who won the Gold Lion for best national participation at the U.S. Pavilion in the 2009 Venice Biennale who also incorporates performance strategies into his work). The large-‐scale installation of Mapping the Studio 1— exhibited at the Dia Art Foundation in 2002—consisted of several projections of hours of nocturnal footage of Nauman’s studio after he left for the night. In her 36 curatorial essay for Bruce Nauman: Theaters of Experience catalogue, Susan Cross describes Nauman’s installations as facilitating “an art of art experience,” 32 and with Mapping the Studio, Cross proclaims: It is as if Nauman has finally found a way to integrate the spectator into his studio activities with him. As the roles of performer and spectator collapse, so too have those of artists and viewer, who now both face the anxiety and possibility expressed in the space before them as well as their roles in shaping its meaning. 33 The art of experience, or perhaps better understood as the art of crafting experience for the viewer, is the essence of these projects; although, both require action beyond physical participation to shape meaning. In the case of the Finishing School, crafting this experience goes beyond the spectacle of starring in, what Los Angeles Times art critique, Christopher Knight notes as a smartly satirical project that takes the “international proliferation of biennials” within the context of a “celebrity-‐driven society,” in an “ambiguous, audience-‐participation production” of a “Warhol-‐style soap opera.” 34 It’s difficult to say if the tactic of setting up an ad hoc film set and enticing viewer participation through the lure of starring in their film alone has the capability of producing self-‐reflection on the part of the audience as to their role in shaping the meaning of the project. While the point may have fallen moot during the lights, cameras, crowds, music, alcohol, and celebratory environment of filming during opening weekend, the Finishing School do rev up the ante in later filming 32 Susan Cross, “Bruce Nauman: Theaters of Experience,” in Bruce Nauman: Theaters of Experience (Berlin: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2003), 13. 33 Ibid., 20. 34 Christopher Knight, “It’s a Trek Worth Exploring,” Los Angeles Times, January 7, 2011. 37 days, where cinematic tactics are employed to incite the participants critical function in the project. 38 FIGURE 9 Finishing School, 54 Documentation (Film Set Installation), 2011. Reproduced with permission. FIGURE 10 Finishing School, 54 Documentation (Camera Lights), 2010. Photography courtesy of Devon Tsuno. Reproduced with permission. 39 FIGURE 11 Finishing School, 54 Documentation (Poster Monitors), 2010. Reproduced with permission. FIGURE 12 Finishing School, 54 Documentation (2 Screens EYE Detail), 2010. Reproduced with permission. 40 FIGURE 13 Finishing School, 54 Documentation (Trailer Still, Venice), 2010. Photography courtesy 41 FIGURE 14 Finishing School, 54 Documentation (Movie Poster), 2010. Reproduced with permission. 42 FIGURE 15 Finishing School Studio, Angels Gate Cultural Center, San Pedro. Photographed by Chloë Flores, February 9, 2011. FIGURE 16 Finishing School, 54 Documentation (Covert Camera), 2010. Photography courtesy of Devon Tsuno. Reproduced with permission. 43 Post Script Refreshing the stealthy placed video camera in order to sustain the streaming video capture became an almost daily task onsite at the museum. The length of the exhibition (approximately 6 months) combined with the other daily individual responsibilities of the collective led to the decision to advise the museum of the camera, who agreed to take on the responsibility of refreshing the camera. For reasons unknown, the streaming camera became inactive a little under a week after the institution took control of the device, and remains inactive. What this action (or non-‐action) begs into question is: who is responsible for dealing with the problematic issues associated with the presentation and display of experienced-‐ based artworks: the artist or the institution? If an artist incorporates a component into their project that is intended to deal with these issues, is the museum obligated to comply? What if that component puts the institution in a compromising position? More specifically, was the curator and staff of the Orange County Museum of Art aware of the problems of reception and display associated with these issues? Regardless, the camera remains installed, now also a remnant of artistic action. Just as the objects remain inactive, so does the studio’s stage set when the artists are not present. 35 35 The purpose of this thesis is not to outline the ethical implications of the installation of this device; although, I think it’s important to note that the Finishing School’s camera was ironically installed on the museum’s surveillance camera, which can be seen in figure 16. 44 CHAPTER THREE Performing Through Participation Tactics and Media Many of the tactics appropriated by the Finishing School come out of long lineage of cross-‐disciplinary media including theater, performance, film and cinema, conceptual art practices, and others that emphasized or made gestures towards incorporating the audience into the sphere of the work. Examples from these varying media laid much of the groundwork for an art that is built today upon the methodologies associated with blurring the distinction between art and life; many of which incorporate elements of chance, experimentation, play, and saw art as an instrument for social change. While it is not my interest to map the historical trajectory of this trend, the importance of the developments made in early twentieth-‐century theater are paramount to the Finishing School’s practice and biennial project. For instance, the writings of Bertolt Brecht reveal the underpinnings of an artistic proclivity to subvert the spectacle of art in an effort to incite a greater social awareness through methods upon which participatory artistic practices are predicated. His theories regarding the elimination of the fourth wall and the alienation effect are key characteristics that emphasize the transformation of a passive spectator towards an audience that is cognitively engaged. Brecht believed that the elimination of the fourth wall (the imaginary wall that separates the audience from the stage, and in turn, the actors) would situate that audience in an environment where they “can no 45 longer have the illusion of being the unseen spectator at an event which is really taking place.” 36 This allowed the actors to directly address the audience, which laid bare the constructed reality of theater in providing, in theory, room for the audience to interpret the actors actions and dilemmas “on a conscious [and intellectual] plane” 37 —otherwise referred to as “alienating-‐effect.” The stage would, as a result, became a didactic platform that took on a pedagogical role where the lasting effects of the experience of art resonated beyond the event and infuse the broader social consciousness. “If art reflects life,” Brecht wrote, “it does so with a special mirror;” 38 one in which “theater leaves it’s spectators productively disposed even after the spectacle is over.” 39 The theater as a medium of social change played a large role in Brecht’s dramaturgy, as it did for many other artists. His contemporary, Antonin Artaud, echoed Brecht’s theories in his 1936 manifesto titled “The Theater of Cruelty.” In this text Artaud calls for the violent awakening of the audience from their passive role: We abolish the stage and the auditorium and replace them by a single site, without partition or barrier of any kind, which will become the theater of action. A direct communication will be re-‐established between the spectator and spectacle, between the actor and spectator, 36 Bertolt Brecht, “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting,” in Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. John Willett (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), 91-‐92. 37 Ibid., 91. 38 Bertolt Brecht, “A Short Organum for the Theatre,” in Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. John Willett (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), 204. 39 Ibid., 205. 46 from the fact that the spectator, placed in the middle of the action, is engulfed and physically affected by it. 40 Ideas and notions about extending the boundaries that have traditionally framed artistic media, specifically ones aimed at transcending the traditional role of the audience, have occurred throughout the twentieth-‐century, and are encapsulated in many art forms. 41 Such practices have, either directly or indirectly, influenced the practice of the Finishing School and laid the foundation for their interactive practice. Significant to 54 are the ideas established by practitioners interested in blurring the distinctions between art and life as championed by such artists as Allan Kaprow and the filmmakers of nouvelle vague in France and neorealism in Italy in the late 1950s and 1960s, both who practiced improvised experimental cinematic techniques, such as those valued in cinéma vérité. At the heart of these practices is the importance of the role of experimentation as part of artistic process, varying methods of capturing the everyday and mundane in art, and the desire, on the part of artists, to evoke social change through the use of these tactics. Kaprow, greatly influenced by the work of American philosopher John Dewey, wrote extensively about capturing the everyday as his writings present, what Jeff Kelley refers to as, “a substantial philosophical inquiry into the nature of 40 Antonin Artaud, The Theater and It’s Double, trans. Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1958), 96. 41 Such practices would include, but are not limited to: the Dadaists, some Fluxus performances, Situationist International, Allan Kaprow’s Happenings, some of Lygia Clark’s interactive sculptures, Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed, many performance artists from the 1960s-‐1990s, Critical Art Ensemble’s Recombination Theater, body art performances in the 1990s, etc. 47 experience and its relationship to the practice(s) of art in our time.” 42 In his series of articles titled “Education of the Un-‐Artist” Kaprow writes of creating an art that imitates life, one that evokes an authentic experience, with a mimetic role towards pedagogy through notions of play: Only when active artists willingly cease to be artists can they convert their abilities, like dollars into yen, into something the world can spend: play. Play as currency. We can best learn to play by example, and un-‐artists can provide it. In their new job as educators, they need simply play as they once did under the banner of art… 43 The notion of a cultural currency invested in social change can also be found in concurrent emerging cinematic styles of improvised experimental cinema and cinéma vérité – the term, according to Geoffrey Nowell-‐Smith, was “reserved for films which were reflexive and in which the film-‐makers…interrogated the participants and indeed themselves in an attempt to determine the truthfulness or otherwise of the material brought to light by the camera.” 44 The emphasis on experimentation (also at the heart of Kaprow’s work 45 ) in the cinematic practices in Western Europe during the late1950s and 1960s are paramount to the Finishing School’s practice, as well as to the process of filming 54. The Finishing School has appropriated some of the techniques of these cinematic styles that heighten the lack 42 Jeff Kelley, introduction to Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life (Berkeley: California University Press, 1993), xiii. 43 Allan Kaprow, “The Education of the Un-‐Artist, Part II,” Art News 71, no. 3 (1971): 125. 44 Geoffrey Nowell-‐Smith, Making Waves: New Cinemas of the 1960s (New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc., 2008), 83. 45 Kaprow, as Jeff Kelly points out, identifies himself as an “experimental artist” where an experimental method are favored over the medium, style, or end product. Jeff Kelley, introduction to Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life (Berkeley: California University Press, 1993), xxiii. 48 of authorial control by opening up the project to elements of chance, echoing the “chance operations” John Cage employed decades earlier, 46 through the employment of non-‐professionals as actors in their film, shooting on location at the biennial (Nowell-‐Smith notes that “what location delivered was life” for the New Wave), 47 and following a plan-‐of-‐action script which, for the New Wave films, was “open to the uncertainties of production, to chance encounters, and ideas that suddenly come to the auteur in the here and now of filming.” 48 These cinematic styles also emphasized process and drew attention to the material conditions of the film— which acted much like the elimination of the fourth wall in that the visible imperfection in film quality was intended to bring the viewer back into touch with the fact that they were watching a film. Indeed, this new age of cinema set out to subvert the spectacle of traditional film, a tradition that Alexandre Astruc described 46 Laura Kuhn, in “John Cage in the Social Realm: Blurring the Distinctions, Seeing Wholeness” (an essay that accompanied the exhibition about the life and work of John Cage titled Rolywholyover: A Circus, organized by the Julie Lazar and exhibited by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles from September 12-‐November 28, 1993), goes into depth about Cage’s use of “chance operations,” which “demanded unqualified acceptance,” was a consistent within his “aesthetic of non-‐intent” and “procedural use of the I Ching.” Laura Kuhn, “John Cage in the Social Realm: Blurring the Distinctions, Seeing Wholeness,” in Rolywholyover: A Circus (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2008), 17. 47 Geoffrey Nowell-‐Smith, Making Waves: New Cinemas of the 1960s (New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc., 2008), 75. 48 Michel Marie, The French New Wave: An Artistic School, trans. Richard Neupert (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2010), 77. 49 as being “successively a fairground attraction” in his manifesto titled “The Birth of a New Avant-‐Garde: The Caméra-‐Stylo.” 49 Spectacle “Spectacle” has become a double-‐edged sword in the art world: on one hand it has come to represent a disingenuous tactic intended to garner attention and interest, while others use spectacle tactically to deconstruct it. When employed by Guy Debord in Society and the Spectacle, it signified experience mediated by images brought about by the proliferation of mass media, which resulted in a society detached from authentic experience and alienated from one another, where “the commodity has succeeded in totally colonizing social life.” 50 This critique on modern consumer society, and Debord’s writing on the subject of the spectacle, have helped to establish a critical lens that has informed the way in which we think about cultural production. In 1989 the Centre George Pompidou in Paris organized an exhibition titled on the Passage of a few people through a rather brief moment in time: Situationist International, 1957-‐1972. In the introduction of the accompanying catalogue, Elisabeth Sussman asserted “the Situationists thought of art as action, as idea, as a 49 This text —printed in L’Ecran français, issue 114 on March 30, 1948—was precursory to the theoretical writings about the New Wave in the Cahiers du Cinema written by François Truffant. Michel Marie, The French New Wave: An Artistic School, trans. Richard Neupert (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2010), 31. 50 Guy Debord, “The Commodity as Spectacle,” in Society of the Spectacle, rev. ed. (Detroit: Black & Red, 2010), 16. 50 vehicle for change rather than as a commodity.” 51 These notions lauded by the Situationist International parallel the principles of the cinematic avant-‐garde mentioned previously, despite the fact that cinema —guilty of mediating the experiences of the public, in turn alienating them from authentic everyday experience— was the privileged media at the heart of the critique in Society of the Spectacle. Despite the case made against cinema in the text Thomas Y. Levin argues that “it is a mistake to assume that Debord’s ‘spectacle’ is synonymous with the ‘spectacularity’ of the filmic medium,” as Debord was himself a filmmaker. 52 Levin suggests that the espousal of the filmic medium was, for Debord and the Situationist International, for revolutionary means. Therefore, cinema was appropriated by Debord and the Situationist International because, as René Viénet explains, “among other possibilities, cinema lends itself particularly well to studying the present as historical problem, to dismantling processes of reification.” 53 According to this insight, the use of cinema to subvert spectacle could be seen as a viable method of critique, as well as a vehicle for social change. The idea of dismantling the spectacle through cinematic devices that privilege spectacle is helpful to understand the use of the filmic medium by the Finishing School. This is especially apparent within the context of the museum—which had the intrinsic effect of subverting the spectacle as 51 Thomas. Y. Levin, “Dismantling the Spectacle: The Cinema of Guy Debord,” in on the Passage of a few People through a rather brief moment in time: The Situationist International 1957-‐1972, ed. Elisabeth Sussman (Massachusetts: The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 1989), 4. 52 Levin’s essay, “Dismantling the Spectacle,” appeared alongside Sussman’s in the exhibition the catalogue. Ibid., 73. 53 René Viénet, “The Situationist and the New Forms of Action against Politics and Art,” in Guy Debord and the Situationist International, trans. Tom McDonough (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2004), 184. 51 evidenced by response of museum audiences on filming days where the Finishing School incorporated a gun, blood and tattooing into their shoots. The Spectacle of 54: Lights, Cameras, Action or Guns, Blood, and Tattoos The death of the artist occurs in the assassination scene. 54 This death, according to the constantly evolving script of 54, is a necessary stage in the mobility of an artist up the rungs of the hierarchical ladder of the art world. It assumes that there is limited space within the constellation of “Who’s Who” in the art galaxy, and that one art star must expire or fade out like a supernova in order for next one to shine. On this day of filming, the Finishing School brought a life-‐like (in weight, size, and style) 9mm Beretta gun for participants to “shoot.” The staging required the participants to aim the prop directly beyond the camera lens to the movie poster on the adjacent wall. The crew held the shot for about a minute and remained silent, intent on capturing the micro-‐gestures made visible by the possible psychological effects that the duration of the shot, combined with the possible muscle fatigue that the tension made by the weight of the gun on extended arms would generate—“It’s all about the psychology of you and the gun,” the Finishing School explained. 55 While the cinematic device of extending “shots” beyond capturing an image appeared to work in eliciting a visual discomfort (physical and psychological), it is difficult to say if the intention of filming this scene in the museum was obscured by the spectacle of having a life-‐like gun in the gallery. The museum patrons who 54 This scene was shot onsite at the Orange County Museum of Art on November 21, 2010. 55 Conversation with Finishing School prior to filming, November 21, 2010. 52 participated in the scenes did so with the same trust and enthusiasm they would upon entering a non-‐threatening situation, such as dunking tank at a company picnic. Very few patrons hesitated to engage with the project, the majority of whom eventually joined. It appeared as if the spectacle of the film set combined with the fake gun was subverted in part to the context of the museum, and secondly by the pervading ambience of informality created by the collective’s ease of manner and comparatively DIY stage set. The moment the scene was put into crisis was when the prop entered into an unexpected cultural translation of the politics of firearms. When a Japanese family—a woman, man, and their approximately 5-‐year-‐old son—came into the gallery and were invited to participate in the film. The language barrier was broken at the sight of the gun and the family enthusiastically participated in the film, taking turns with the gun, even turning it playfully on each other and themselves (Figure 17). One of the scenes captured the mother holding her son in one arm, and the gun extended in the other (Figure 18). This particular interaction visually affected the Finishing School, considering two of the founding members have young children. Watching this scene, one can not help but be reminded of the senseless gun violence that happens in this country and the role that films are accused of playing in perpetuating the sensationalizing of violence, which are then exported into other countries, such as Japan, where gun control is the most stringent in the democratic world and gun ownership is almost non-‐ existent. 56 For the Japanese family the gun was a novelty, in all senses of the word. 56 David Kopel, “Japanese Gun Control,” Asia-‐Pacific Law Review 26 (1993), http://www.davekopel.com/2a/lawrev/japanese_gun_control.htm (accessed December 2, 2010). 53 Japanese media, (news, entertainment, video games, etc.) had somehow subverted the reactionary sentiment associated with the danger and violence we (in the United States) equate with guns. This was the moment the spectacle seemed to turn on itself, spotlighting the museum’s role in the display and reception of art projects, as well as the collective’s complicity in this issue. Guns (and weapons in general) have created American culture and exist as a founding principle to our society, as stated in the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As a result they have pervasively permeated the various facets of our society, including the arts: from the Elvis silkscreen series of a posed-‐to-‐shoot Elvis Presley by Warhol in 1963; or Chris Burden’s 1971 performance Shoot, in which a friend shot Burden in the arm; and most recently, the Palestinian artist Emily Jacir’s 2007 Venice Biennale (and recipient of the Golden Lion award) work titled Material for a Film (Performance), where Jacir shot a single .22 caliber bullet into 1,000 blank white books. This scene brings into question: what is the art world’s responsibility towards larger political, and socio-‐economical issues such as gun control? Coincidently, the Finishing School was not the only artwork that incorporated firearms. A stroll around the 2010 California Biennial will bring a viewer into contact with two other artworks that have guns as a part of their subject matter: Glenna Jennings photographic series Dinner. Party. Pistol (2007) which contains one photograph that portrays a young child innocently wielding a gun over a her dinner; and Carlee Fernandez’s Life and Death (2010), in which the artist has crafted a life-‐sized bronze shotgun and hand gun for display along with some other relics. It is not known whether the museum administration considered the subject 54 matter of Jennings and Fernandez’s before admitting it into the Biennial, despite their representational difference when compared to the prop used by the Finishing School. 57 But what is certain is that they had closed doors meetings regarding the Finishing School’s use of a prop gun during their filming (as well as the tattooing that occurred in the gallery on another filming date, one that was intended to mark symbolic rite of passage [Figure 19, Figure 20]). The internal institutional dialogue was a welcomed response on the part of the Finishing School, for it meant that the “spectacle” produced self-‐reflexivity and, in part, “ownership” (or at least “co-‐ ownership”) on behalf of the institution that was placed in position to parse out their responsibility for the event and weigh their position against the threat of censoring the project. It can be argued that as a residency project, 54—a self-‐reflexive film that reveals the process of making a Biennial film, within the Biennial context—is the most organic art project in the museum 58 that has continually challenged the museum to think differently about its institutional practice. This scene had the effect of not only underscoring the institution’s role and obligation to their public in 57 The guns depicted in Jennings’ and Fernandez’s artworks remain representations, while the agency that occurs once the prop is placed in the participant’s hands and performed in the Finishing School’s project, activates the prop beyond a static state of representation towards a simulation of reality. 58 Artists Carlee Fernandez, Flora Wiegmann, and Brian Dick all performed numerous times throughout the duration of the exhibition. Sarah Bancroft, the biennial curator, observed that Brian Dick was the only other artist in the 2010 California Biennial that continually challenged the museum similarly to Finishing School. Conversation with Sarah Bancroft and Finishing School, January 30, 2011. 55 mediating the representation and display of images and objects, but also placed them in a position where they were forced to re-‐examine and re-‐define what it means to invite and have artists practicing in the museum. While the praxis informing the Finishing School’s project is aimed at producing paradigm shifts through institutional self-‐reflexivity, they were quick to note that they were sympathetic to the process that calls attention to such shifts: “We had no ill-‐intent towards the museum or a desire to create problems, or get anyone in trouble,” they declared in one of our conversations on the subject. “Well, you are testing the boundaries,” I said. “But,” they replied, “we don’t know where the fence is. And you can write that down.” 59 Some boundaries, it seems, are made apparent only after you have crossed them. 59 Conversation with the Finishing School, 21 January 2011. 56 FIGURE 17 Finishing School, 54 Production Outtake #8968 (Man With Gun In His Mouth), 2010. Reproduced with permission. FIGURE 18 Finishing School, 54 production outtake #8971 (Woman and Son With Gun), 2010. Reproduced with permission. 57 FIGURE 19 Finishing School, 54-‐ untreated production still #0344 (Tattoo -‐ Medium Shot), 2010. Reproduced with permission. FIGURE 20 Finishing School, 54-‐ untreated production still #0336 (Finished Tattoo Detail), 2010. Reproduced with permission. 58 (IN)CONCLUSION Biennials The project’s intention is to span three biennials over three years, 2010 California Biennial (which this thesis addresses in length), the 2011 Venice Biennale, and a 2012 TBA Biennial. In order to understand the importance of spanning three biennials, it’s necessary to acknowledge the current surge of discourse surrounding perennial exhibitions, such as biennials. Recently, in 2009 the Bergen Biennial Conference was held at the beseech of the Bergen Kunsthall to the city of Bergen “to not dive uncritically into the establishment of yet another art biennial” and instead let a conference “take the place of what would have otherwise been the first Bergen Biennial.” 60 The three-‐day conference resulted in five hundred and eleven page The Biennial Reader and separate conference compendium, complete with critical, historic, theoretical, and artist contributions that address and respond to the shifting cultural, socio-‐economic and hegemonic landscape of the growing phenomenon. The reader, released in December 2010, came on the heels of the September 2010 announcement of a 2012 Los Angeles Biennial 61 and the February 60 Elena Filipovic, Van Hall, and Solveig Ovstebo, introduction to The Biennial Reader: The Bergen Biennial Conference, ed Elena Filipovic,, Van Hall, and Solveig Ovstebo (Ostfildern and Bergen: Hatje Cantz and Bergen Kunsthall) 2010), 6. 61 This announcement was made by the Hammer Museum and LA><ART. Jori Finkel, “L.A. art biennial on tap for 2012,” Los Angeles Times, September 7, 2010. 59 2010 announcement of the postponement of Prospect.2, the New Orleans Biennial; 62 as well as the, least recent, November 2009 announcement for the legal establishment of the non-‐profit Biennial Foundation, 63 and the 2009 compilation of biennial-‐related essays titled The Art Biennial as a Global Phenomenon. 64 The reader, a response to the conference organizers claim that a “thorough study and investigation of ‘the biennial’ has not yet taken place,” 65 signifies the growing global concern and interest in the biennial as evolving cultural form amongst cultural producers. But what is the form or “format” of this cultural phenomenon? The biennial pedigree is considered to stem from, what is considered the original biennial, the Venice Biennale, first held in 1895; however, critics and theorists are questioning the validity of an historical narrative that propagates a singular biennial history. Charlotte Bydler, as Vittoria Martini points out in her response to lectures provided by Caroline A. Jones and Bydler during the Bergen conference, warns against Jones’ “general history common to all biennials.” 66 For 62 This announcement was made by the U.S. Biennial, Inc., the organization that produces Prospect New Orleans. Jose Villarreal, ed., “Prospect 2 New Orleans Postponed One Year Due to Economic Conditions,” Artdaily (Wednesday, February 24, 2010), http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=36456&int_modo=1 (accessed on February 2, 2011). 63 The Biennial Foundation was legally established on November 12, 2009 in The Netherlands. Their activity can be found online at http://www.biennialfoundation.org/. 64 Jorinde Seijdel, ed., Open. The Art Biennial as a Global Phenomenon: Strategies on Neo-‐Political Times (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, March 2009). 65 Vittoria Martini, “The Era of the Histories of Biennials has Begun,” in The Biennial Reader: The Bergen Biennial Conference, ed. Elena Filipovic, Van Hall, and Solveig Ovstebo (Ostfildern and Bergen: Hatje Cantz and Bergen Kunsthall, 2010), 6. 66 Ibid., 12. 60 Marinti, an analysis of the historical origins of the biennial form must consider “many histories of biennials and varied points of view,” because “each biennial has a founding narrative that demands an archeology of historical specificities that is crucial to finally being able to define one history through an exploration of difference.” 67 The difference that Martini refers to accounts for every aspect of a single biennial: its structure, internal and external mechanism, financial backings, theme, discourse, location, culture, intentions, organizers, curator, artists, artwork, etc. More importantly, specific to each biennial is a distinct attempt to register the pulse of art through a geo-‐political and or spatial lens (i.e. local, regional, global, transnational, international, here, there, elsewhere). Simon Sheikh best describes the diverse biennial loci in his essay “Marks of Distinction, Vectors of Possibility” in which he takes a critical look at the biennial as a global phenomenon where new meanings are continually produced. In it, he writes: “there is, in the landscapes of biennials, not only the original and the copy, the deviant and the hybrid, but also a here and an elsewhere.” 68 While the current historical revisions and analysis are added to growing popular cacophony of biennial discourse, one thing is discernable: there exists no single biennial format, and the identity and discourse surrounding a single biennial is dependent on its specificity. 67 Vittoria Martini, “The Era of the Histories of Biennials has Begun,” in The Biennial Reader: The Bergen Biennial Conference, ed. Elena Filipovic, Van Hall, and Solveig Ovstebo (Ostfildern and Bergen: Hatje Cantz and Bergen Kunsthall, 2010), 13. 68 Simon Sheikh, “Marks of Distinction, Vectors of Possibility: Questions for the Biennial,” in Open: The Art Biennial as a Global Phenomenon 16, ed. Jorinde Seijdel (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, March 2009), 70. 61 While the California Biennial’s specificity is due in part to its aim to elucidate a bi-‐annual zeitgeist through exploring/exhibiting artistic practices in the state, the Venice Biennale comprises a much larger undertaking. Initially established in 1895 as an exhibition of regional, national, and international artwork set inside a public garden to the east of the city center called the Giardini. In 1907 the Venice Biennale was opened up to other nations who wished to build their own pavilions to exclusively showcase their national artists. From this point on, the Venice Biennale’s physical appearance, spatial territory, and internal mechanisms have consistently matured and the ever-‐evolving boundaries of the Venice Biennale continue to transform the arts festival. This territorial expansion has paved the way for global representation in the arts that now extends beyond the estuaries of the Giardini and Arsenale and into the regions of the archipelago of Venice’s city center. As the biennale has grown spatially and contextually, it has come to exist as a site of national and cultural ideology and representation. Currently, the ever-‐evolving Venice Biennale comprises a global, international, collateral, and peripheral compilation of various art-‐métiers, within a hierarchal-‐structure marked by awards—all of which contribute to its specificity. This Biennale model, often referenced as the Olympian model, is the subject of the film, as well as the stage on which 54 performs, while also constituting as the second site for the research, development, and production of the project. Given that there exists no singular biennial constitution, the choice to span three biennials in order to make a critique of the biennial as cultural form was a strategic move on the part of the Finishing School, specifically in terms of amassing 62 collective experience. While working within the folds of three separate biennials, the Finishing School is able to cast a wider net in the direction of public engagement in what they have described as their desire to share the filmmaking/viewing and biennial experience: We are interested in the aspirations and discontents of aesthetic judgments, boundaries as artists, institution, audience, nation-‐states, and the public regarding biennials. Also, the economic, historical, social, and political relevance of biennials as an insulated system and to society as a whole. Our lofty goals are to create lasting critical reflections for us, the multiple exhibition audiences, participants, and bystanders concerning the role of biennials in contemporary culture. We also want to temporarily redirect some of the flow of creative communication and power of the biennial experience into the hands of the project participants, the public at large, and the film/installation audience as the vehicle for critical reflection. 69 These intentions situate a focused lens on the biennial audiences and the peripheral and incidental publics in and around the specific localities of the three biennials, in order to spotlight, what the Finishing School is arguing, is an underrepresented biennial constituency—one which is often regarded in terms of numbers. While it can be argued that a project that extends beyond the specificity of one exhibition is in a better position to ruminate on the context of biennials (and the various publics it affects), the ideal number of events necessary to make such a critique does not exist. Nonetheless, above and beyond this argument is the important consideration that the project was initially contingent upon receiving an invitation to a biennial. This placed the realization of the project, originally conceived in late 2008 prior to their participation in the California Biennial, at the fate of curatorial selection; a factor completely out of the sway of the collective and 69 Finishing School, interview with Chloë Flores, transcript, 2010 California Biennial, (New Port Beach: Orange County Museum of Art, 2011), 66. 63 one that relies heavily on chance. Conversely, the production of their film at the Venice Biennale does not hinge on an invitation and is intended to exist as a peripheral project, one that will: take an outsider perspective; operate on the perimeter; penetrate the exhibition through interventionist acts; all the while, positioning the actions of the collective (and their participants) in situ. However, while the realization of the Venice constituent of the project did not rely on the hopes of another invitation, it was contingent on obtaining enough participants to register for the art tour they organized in conjunction with a tour company – a number they were able to reach only hours before the tour company’s deadline. A lucky break, considering a failure to meet the quota would have had a downfall effect that would first begin with a restructuring of the Venice portion of the project. What the Finishing School was banking on was, not only the lure that the opportunity of acting in their film would create, but also the ability an art tour has in mobilizing cultural tourists. The Tour Biennials, and art tours, have the ability to amass and move large amounts of art world practitioners and art audiences around the world. As Joshua Decter notes in his 2008 California Biennial catalogue contribution, “biennials and other periodic exhibition” have the “cultural capital to mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to make pilgrimages to these events and situations, specialist and cultural tourists 64 alike.” 70 The notable power of the biennial to move people is also referenced in Laurence Alloway’s 1969 historical and critical analysis of the Venice Biennale. In one of the first books that considers the biennial as its topic, Alloway reports that in the summer of 1940, when Italy entered the World War II and the biennial opened “Europe’s communication system was able to move over three thousand art works and a substantial number of civilian visitors to an art exhibition, while half of Europe was fighting for survival,” which he notes, “is impressive as it is bizarre.” 71 This ability of the biennial to motivate audiences (and in the case of 54, participants) and the ensuing travel it requires is in part what the Finishing School was depending on when they appropriated of the art-‐tour model. This gesture also speaks to notions of access in relation to the influence economic power has to cultural tourism. The participants of the 2011 Venice Biennale tour differ from the California Biennial participants for one major reason: a financial investment. An investment in the theater of experience—one in which the tour company replaces the role of the gallery or museum by offering a opportunity to “buy into” what has been coined the “experience market.” A market that panders to the increasing 70 Joshua Decter, “Biennial in your brain: California might not be (t)here,” in 2008 California Biennial (New Port Beach: Orange County Museum of Art, 2008), 25. 71 Alloway, Lawrence. The Venice Biennale 1895-‐1968: from salon to goldfish bowl (Connecticut: New York Graphic Society, 1968), 115. 65 interest in art as experience, one in which Jones’ term “biennial culture” is used to designate this increasing “contemporary appetite for art as experience.” 72 Such investment reaps subjective dividends where (similar to any other kind of investment) uncertainty reigns in a sea of risk. In other words, the level of uncertainty involved in realizing a project on the condition of the participant’s economic investment 73 is risky, especially considering the global recession. This is where the notions of chance and play, at the heart of the collective’s practice, are at stake; however, nowhere are these ideals set into crisis more than in the speculative gesture of rendering the finished project at the behest of another biennial invitation. This is where the collective foregoes praxis for gambling. The Invitation The project thus far has embodied chance on various levels starting with the catalytic invitation to the California Biennial and continuing with the hypothetical invitation to another—a gesture that requires analysis considering the film’s final realization and presentation is dependent upon this invitation. Jerry Saltz, in a review of the 2009 Venice Biennale, noted that, with the more than 100 biennials around world, the biennials are still put together "by the same 25 celebrity curators, 72 Jones, Caroline A. “Biennial Culture: A Longer History,” in The Biennial Reader: An Anthology on Large-‐Scale Perennial Exhibitions of Contemporary Art, ed. Elena Filipovic, Marieke Van Hall, and Solveig Ovstebo (Ostfildern and Bergen: Hatje Cantz and Bergen Kunsthall, 2010), 69. 73 The cost for the 6-‐8 day tour to Venice with the Finishing School is roughly between $2-‐3,000, depending on the length of stay and amenities provided. 66 drawing from the same pool of 100 or so artists." 74 Considering Saltz claim that the same artists populate the biennial circuit, the re-‐appearance of an artist somewhere within the constellation of the biennials can be considered the norm more than the exception, but this is only true of well-‐established artists occupying a position within that top one hundred. The biennial system is often criticized as being more vested in the politics of art than in art itself, where representation is caught up in a dominant system of ideas based on the social and power structure of the art world. 75 While the Finishing School is referencing the feedback-‐loop Saltz calls attention to with the speculative gesture of another invitation, the consequences of the gesture place the project at risk of being realized. What if the invitation to another biennial doesn’t happen in 2012? And what about the responsibility they have to their participants who have invested their time (and for some, their money) into the production of the film? Failure The potential for failure with such a proposal is high. Allowing the final manifestation of 54 to rest on the chance that a 2012 biennial curator will be interested in providing a platform for the participatory film installation to be experienced requires a large cultural investment on the part of the curator, as well 74 Jerry Saltz, “Entropy in Venice,” New York Magazine, Jun 19, 2009, http://nymag.com/arts/art/reviews/57466/ (accessed on November 2, 2010). 75 This notion is implicit in the Bergen Kunsthall’s request to the city of Bergen to consider the biennial as cultural form through an in-‐depth study of the biennial (via a three day conference) in order to help the city clarify their intentions behind the impulse to organize a Bergen Biennial. 67 as a financial investment on the part of the biennial institution (given that the project requires some advanced technology to effectively be rendered). While the timing for a biennial project that spans three biennials to make a biennial critique is perfect given the current climate of biennial discourse, placing the project’s realization at the hands of a chance seems irresponsible, given the prior investment of the 2010 California Biennial and the project’s participants. However, perhaps a better understanding of this component relies less in quantifying the amount of investment and risk involved, and more in considering this proposition in relation to the collective’s practice. In other words, what role does failure play in the Finishing School’s practice? If failure can be considered to be a part of the artistic process, then failure can be seen as inherently tied to process, experimentation, and learning. According to a recently published a collection of essays on the topic, edited by Lisa Le Feuvre, 76 failure “has a different currency” in the realm of art. 77 She explains: Failure takes us beyond assumptions and what we think and know. Artists have long turned their attention to the unrealizability of the quest from perfection, or the open-‐endedness of experiment, using both dissatisfaction and error as a means to re-‐think how we understand our place in the world. The inevitable gap between the intention and realization of an artwork makes failure impossible to avoid. This very condition of art-‐making makes failure central to the complexities of artistic practice and its resonance with the surrounding world…Rather than producing a space for mediocrity, failure becomes intrinsic to 76 Whitecapel Gallery and MIT Press released, as part of their “Documents of Contemporary Art” series -‐ The book, edited by Lisa Le Feuvre, examines the role of failure in artistic process. 77 Lisa Le Feuvre, ed. Failure (London and Massachusetts: White Chapel Gallery and MIT Press, 2010), 12. 68 creating open systems and raising questions. Without the doubt that failure invites, any situation becomes closed and in danger of being dogmatic. 78 The Finishing School acknowledges that this notion of failure is built into their process, and is, at any point in time, a potential outcome of any of their projects— one that is at the heart of the idea of praxis. If praxis can be defined as putting ideas into action, it must inherently consider unknown elements, previously referred to as, “the x-‐factor.” In the case of the second biennial invitation, the x-‐factor no longer depends upon the audiences’ response, but rather on the institutional response—a response that would require the next biennial to acknowledge and contextualize the process of the project. Since the possibility of failure is built into the underling principals of the collective, failure can happen at any time, and can be considered a part of every project. The interesting thing about failure is that its probability resides in every decision that is made, even with the institution. For instance, if another biennial decides to exhibit 54, what if the institution fails to accurately represent the project? Can an invitation to a biennial alone provide a tangible measurement of success? Or does it also depend on the presentation of the work? According to Le Feuvre, failure can “operate not only in the production but also equally in the reception and distribution of artworks.” 79 With the invitation to a biennial comes the responsibility, on the part of the institution, to aid artists in the presentation of their 78 Ibid., 12-‐17. 79 Lisa Le Feuvre, ed. Failure (London and Massachusetts: White Chapel Gallery and MIT Press, 2010), 19. 69 work. This places the institution in the potential line of fire and brings to question their role in assisting contemporary artists to accurately realize and display their projects. Failure, it would then seem, is all around us. The adage “we learn from our mistakes,” acknowledges failure as a being instructive and a significant part of the journey of individual, collective, and institutional growth—one in which the journey is synonymous with process. The Journey This relationship between the journey and process is an important one to consider given the context of this project, which takes us back to the placement of installation of 54 in the 2010 California Biennial. The biennial’s curator, Sarah Bancroft, in her curatorial essay wrote about her decision to situate the Finishing School’s project into a gallery “occupied by works that address ideas of transcendence, travel, and passage in distinct ways.” 80 According to Bancroft, a project like the Finishing School’s, which operates during the course of the exhibition, “fully activated and realized by the biennial visitors,” allows the exhibition to evolve and flex in “interesting and challenging ways” which are “not easily contained, and intentionally runs away to more interesting places than we would craft or venture to ourselves.” 81 That “interesting place” can be a tangible location or it could imply a realm that one enters when stakes are high. What 80 Sarah Bancroft, “Introduction: Curating the 2010 Biennial,” 2010 California Biennial (New Port Beach: Orange County Museum of Art), 2008), 13. 81 Ibid., 14. 70 makes it “interesting” is merely a state of mind—one that is open and welcomes the opportunities allowed for by chance. Praxis and chance go hand in hand with the arduous process of being a biennial curator. For Bancroft, “each part of the process” leading up to the organization of the exhibition “is an act of faith, a speculative undertaking,” 82 and her essay itself stands as a testament to her role in the process. 83 Bancroft’s investment and acknowledgement of her process foregrounds the importance of process to any set of decisions, for curators and artists alike. What ever the process, 54 has a life beyond this thesis. Instead of looking for answers, this thesis has followed the Finishing School’s process and asked questions. Kaprow once wrote, “Art sometimes begins and ends with questions.” 84 This emphasizes on the realm of interrogatives in which art resides also foregrounds my process; so in closing, it seems apt to leave off where the project does. And, while the project began with the speculation of a biennial invitation, so it now ends. What will happen next? That is all a part of the journey. 82 Ibid., 13. 83 “This essay attests to the messier stuff, to my own role in the process,” Bancroft wrote. Ibid., 14. 84 Allan Kaprow, “Preface to the Expanded Edition: On the Way to Un-‐Art,” in Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, ed. Jeff Kelley (Berkeley: California University Press, 1993), xxvii. 71 BIBLIOGRAPHY Alloway, Lawrence. The Venice Biennale 1895–1968: from salon to goldfish bowl. Connecticut: New York Graphic Society, 1968. Artaud, Antonin. The Theater and It’s Double. Translated by Mary Caroline Richards. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1958. Bancroft, Sarah. “Introduction: Curating the 2010 Biennial” 2010 California Biennial, 10–14. New Port Beach: Orange County Museum of Art, 2008. Published in conjunction with the exhibition “2010 California Biennial” shown at the Orange County Museum of Art. Brecht, Bertolt. “A Short Organum for the Theatre.” In Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, edited by John Willett, 179–205. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992. ———. “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting.” In Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, edited by John Willett, 91–99. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992. Buchloh, Benjamin H.D. “Andy Warhol’s One Dimensional Art: 1956–1966.” In Andy Warhol, edited by Annette Michelson, 1–46. Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2001. Buren, Daniel. “The Function of the Studio.” October 10 (Autumn 1979): 51-‐58. Critical Art Ensemble. “Observations of Collective Cultural Action.” Art Journal 57, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 72–85. Cross, Susan. “Bruce Nauman: Theaters of Experience.” In Bruce Nauman: Theaters of Experience, 13–21. Berlin: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2003. Published in conjunction with the exhibition “Bruce Nauman: Theaters of Experience” shown at the Deutsche Guggenheim. Decter, Joshua. “Biennial in your brain: California might not be (t)here.” In 2008 California Biennial, 22–26. New Port Beach: Orange County Museum of Art, 2008. Published in conjunction with the exhibition “2008 California Biennial” shown at the Orange County Museum of Art. Filipovic, Elena, Van Hall, and Solveig Ovstebo, introduction to The Biennial Reader: The Bergen Biennial Conference, edited by Elena Filipovic, Van Hall, and Solveig Ovstebo. Ostfildern and Bergen: Hatje Cantz and Bergen Kunsthall, 2010. 72 Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Rev. ed. Detroit: Black & Red, 2010. Finishing School, interview with Chloë Flores. 2010 California Biennial, 64–66. New Port Beach: Orange County Museum of Art, 2011. Published in conjunction with the exhibition “2010 California Biennial” shown at the Orange County Museum of Art. Helguera, Pablo. “Notes Toward a Transpedagogy.” In Art, Architecture, Pedagogy: Experiments in Learning, edited by Ken Ehrlich, 99–112. Los Angeles: CalArts, 2010. Jones, Caroline A. “Biennial Culture: A Longer History.” In The Biennial Reader: An Anthology on Large-‐Scale Perennial Exhibitions of Contemporary Art, edited by Elena Filipovic, Marieke Van Hall, and Solveig Ovstebo, 66–87. Ostfildern and Bergen: Hatje Cantz and Bergen Kunsthall, 2010. ———. “Post-‐Studio/Postmodern/Postmorten.” In Studio Reader: on the Space of Artists, edited by Mary Jane Jacob and Michelle Grabner, 286–301. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Kaldor Public Art Projects. http://kaldorartprojects.org.au/ Kaprow, Allan. “The Education of the Un-‐Artist, Part II,” Art News 71, no. 3 (1971): 34–39, 62–63. Kaprow, Allan. “Preface to the Expanded Edition: On the Way to Un-‐Art.” In Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, edited by Jeff Kelley, xxvii–xxix. Berkeley: California University Press, 1993. Kelley, Jeff. Introduction to Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life. Berkeley: California University Press, 1993. Kopel, David. “Japanese Gun Control.” Asia-‐Pacific Law Review 26 (1993). http://www.davekopel.com/2a/lawrev/japanese_gun_control.htm Kuhn, Laura. “John Cage in the Social Realm: Blurring the Distinctions, Seeing Wholeness.” In Rolywholyover: A Circus. Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2008. Published in conjunction with the exhibition “Rolywholyover: A Circus” shown at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. 73 Lacy, Suzanne. “Debated Territory: Toward a Critical Language for Public Art.” In Leaving Art: Writings on Performance, Politics, and Publics, 1974-‐2007, edited by Suzanne Lacy, 172–184. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010. Le Feuvre, Lisa, ed. Failure. London and Massachusetts: White Chapel Gallery and MIT Press, 2010. Levin, Thomas. Y. “Dismantling the Spectacle: The Cinema of Guy Debord.” In on the Passage of a few People through a rather brief moment in time: The Situationist International 1957-‐1972, edited by Elisabeth Sussman, 72–123. Massachusetts: The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 1989. Published in conjunction with the exhibition “on the Passage of a few People through a rather brief moment in time: The Situationist International 1957-‐1972” shown at the Musée d’art modern at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris France, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, England, and The Institution of Contemporary Art in Boston, Massachusetts. Lippard, Lucy R. Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972…. 1973. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997. Marie, Michel. The French New Wave: An Artistic School. Translated by Richard Neupert. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2010. Martini, Vittoria. “The Era of the Histories of Biennials has Begun.” In The Biennial Reader: The Bergen Biennial Conference, edited by Elena Filipovic, Van Hall, and Solveig Ovstebo, 9–13. Ostfildern and Bergen: Hatje Cantz and Bergen Kunsthall, 2010. Nettime. http://www.nettime.org/ Nowell-‐Smith, Geoffrey. Making Waves: New Cinemas of the 1960s. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc., 2008. O’Doherty, Brian. Studio and Cube: On the relationship between where art is made and where art is displayed. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. Raven, Arlene. “Word of Honor,” In Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, edited by Suzanne Lacy, 106–161. Seattle: Bay Press, 1995. Saltz, Jerry. “Entropy in Venice.” New York Magazine (Jun 19, 2009). http://nymag.com/arts/art/reviews/57466/ 74 Sheikh, Simon. “Marks of Distinction, Vectors of Possibility: Questions for the Biennial.” In Open: The Art Biennial as a Global Phenomenon 16, edited by Jorinde Seijdel, 68–79. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, March 2009. Storr, Robert. “A Room of One’s Own, a mind of One’s Own.” In Studio Reader: on the Space of Artists, edited by Mary Jane Jacob and Michelle Grabner, 49–62. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Sussman, Elisabeth, introduction to on the Passage of a few People through a rather brief moment in time: The Situationist International 1957–1972, edited by Elisabeth Sussman. Massachusetts: The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 1989. Viénet, René. “The Situationist and the New Forms of Action against Politics and Art.” In Guy Debord and the Situationist International, translated by Tom McDonough, 181–185. Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2004. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/ 75 APPENDIX Finishing School Interview with Chloë Flores CF: Can you give us a short introduction to your project, 54? FS: For the 2010 California Biennial, we will begin production of 54, our new participatory film project. The project explores the complex socioeconomic and political landscape of biennials, using the invitation to participate in one biennial (the 2010 California Biennial) as an opportunity to critique the very model through the critical cinematic dramatizing of another biennial (the 2011 Venice Biennale). 54 employs relevant biennial histories and narratives, investigates the role of biennial audience as participants, and speculates about the impact biennials have on culture. 54 is about the biennial experience as much as it is about the two specific biennials addressed in the project. The film portion of the project blends narrative, cinema verité, and improvised experimental cinematic styles. Intervention, homage, appropriation, and collaboration are important tactics in the making of the film. This project is becoming too absurdly complex. Which is perfect. 54 is a multifaceted project without traditional boundaries between the process of making the film, the film itself and related ephemera, and the interactive installation in which it will be presented as a completed project. 54 is our most far-‐reaching project to date, both conceptually and geographically. 76 Visitors to the California Biennial are encouraged to participate as actors in scenes filmed at the museum and surrounding locations scheduled during the course of the exhibition. Additionally, participants are invited to meet us in Italy, where we will also be filming in and around the Venice Biennale in June 2011. You should come with us. Seriously. CF: Let’s talk about the residency format as a model for your practice. How does it compare to, say, being invited to participate in a thematic exhibition that already places your work within a broader contemporary art historical context. FS: The residency format is a preferred structure for our practice. There are many differences. For example, exhibitions are typically highly controlled and static structures that serve to support a curatorial thesis, whereas a residency can be open, responsive to audience and institution and, most importantly, is measured over time and experience. “Smooth vs. striated” to quote Deleuze and Guattari. Time, fluidity, experimentation, and direct engagement are common luxuries in residencies that we relish. CF: There’s a strong performative aspect in practices such as yours, in which the focus is on participation, collaboration, and active audiences. There’s a theatricality to it. You’re performing, the participants are performing . . . FS: Yes, performance, participation, collaboration, and audience activation are important to social practice, which provides personal, open-‐ended contact; accountability; and intimacy with the artists and their ideas: dialogue that is human, 77 interpersonal, as opposed to dialogue that is solely mediated in the form of a work of art. Also, people love to role-‐play. We try to capitalize on that. Children naturally do this. We try to bring that to our work as well. The audience can help us figure things out. That isn’t always the case, but we try . . . CF: So it’s a true collaborative interaction. Or collaborative performance. In which the audience also performs. Who informs your practice in this regard? FS: Yes, placing the audience in the playful line of fire fosters accountability and reflection of ideas. As a practice, collaborative interaction has a rich history and many blueprints for social and political interactivity and shared authorship. We are indebted to so many: Bertolt Brecht, Allan Kaprow, Andrea Fraser, Group Material, and Critical Art Ensemble to name a few artists and collectives. We are also informed by the writings of Paulo Freire and bell hooks, educators and theorists who promote parallel strategies regarding praxis, agency, and power. CF: What about the role the film plays in your project? FS: The film provides a lens to address biennial issues. We’re trying to make it interactive. We want to share the filmmaking/ viewing experience. We want the audience to be in the film with us; we want the audience to travel with us to make the film; we want the audience to play a role in editing the film. CF: What is the film about? Can you also discuss the hypercube symbol found in some of the project images? 78 FS: 54 is sci-‐fi drama [laughter]. Psychological Sci-‐Fi drama [more laughter]. We would like to partially think of this as the film being made in Federico Fellini’s 8½. We have been drawn over the years to 8½ , a film about filmmaking and a film about Fellini making that specific film. We also enjoy how Fellini inserted autobiographical layers into the film and his display of process and critique of the very system that supported his film. Some of these elements will be present in our film. Seriously, 54 will be a nonlinear film presented ultimately in an installation context, masked as a sci-‐fi narrative. Critically speaking, 54 is a film about biennials and a film about these specific biennials (California and Venice). The hypercube symbol is important to us. We created a 54-‐path hypercube as a sacred/political mark for the film’s internal mythology. It also represents the number of paths (scenes) presented in the film, the relationship between various time and space dimensions presented in the narrative, and the various tiers to the project as a whole. CF: What about affect? On the very basic level, why include participants? Why interact? Why engage? What is the desired affect? FS: The answer is simple. Selfishly, it makes the ideas, inquiry, and experience more meaningful for us as a practice and hopefully for the audience as well. There is a dialogue happening in real time, in the trenches. We are always surprised with the 79 results of a project. The audience always adds to the dimension of an idea in ways that we never anticipate. We love that! CF: It feels good. FS: It does feel good. Conversely, artists and institutions traditionally wrestle with the effectiveness of didactics as a strategy to educate and elaborate on a work of art in lieu of the artist’s own physical presence in the display space and willingness to engage in dialogue with the public at large. There can be a vast disconnect between an artist’s work and the general public, a frustration that we have all experienced. Enter Finishing School: this is the territory we like to inhabit. CF: You’re dealing with the problematics of accessibility of conceptual art . . . FS: From the beginning, we have struggled with the internal politics of delivery and the internal politics of dialogue between audience and artist. We really try to break down the barriers between us and them. For example, the quotation in the beginning of our catalogue for Saturday School, our first project, quoted Charlie Brown’s teacher, “wah wah wah wah.” That’s how the art world is perceived: “wah wah wah wah.” They put this stuff up on the wall, and you look at them and it’s like, “what does this stuff mean?” What does that do for somebody who isn’t trained? Addressing the relationship between each project and its audience is important to our practice. Because our interests are broad, we are constantly wrestling with the idea of effective accessibility of concepts with consideration of the context of each of our projects. 80 CF: Let’s talk about critical reflection being made on the biennials in this project. FS: We are interested in the aspirations and discontents of aesthetic judgments, boundaries as artists, institution, audience, nation-‐states, and the public regarding biennials. Also, the economic, historical, social, and political relevance of biennials as an insulated system and to society as a whole. Our lofty goals are to create lasting critical reflections for us, the multiple exhibition audiences, participants, and bystanders concerning the role of biennials in contemporary culture. We also want to temporarily redirect some of the flow of creative communication and power of the biennial experience into the hands of the project participants, the public at large, and the film/installation audience as the vehicle for critical reflection. This project spans multiple exhibitions: the one we have been invited to, the one we are intervening in, and the one in which we hope to present the completed iteration. The critical reflection will be distributed among multiple audiences and the three exhibitions, linked by the film. CF: So you’re redirecting the power of critical reflection into the hands of the audience? FS: Sure. Because this is an open-‐ended project, we are equally interested in how it will end. CF: Why choose the biennial format to create this type of critique? 81 FS: Because it’s the biggest stage and there’s the greatest amount of risk, on everybody's part: our part, OCMA’s part, the multiple audiences’ part. Can we use one biennial to criticize another and, in the end, evaluate the entire system? We want to challenge the institution and compel the institution be self-‐reflective and consider a new paradigm. Ultimately we felt that the best way to make this criticism was to do it from within. An often-‐stated criticism of institutional critique is that it is supported and presented in museums and galleries, even with its critical stance toward them. Additionally, it’s said to be a complex game in which only select artists, theorists, historians, and critics can play, leaving the general public alienated and watching from the sidelines. In this project we are keenly aware of our position and have willingly placed ourselves as the target of our own criticism. *This interview was originally published in 2011 by the Orange County Museum of Art in the 2010 California Biennial exhibition catalog. Reprinted with permission.
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
The merging of performance into the public sphere has expanded the space for participation into urban and cultural landscapes through modes of activating audiences and audience participation. This movement towards the social was predicated, in part, by the historical trajectory of theater and performance-based art, placing it in the lineage of the avant-garde theater and other post-war avant-garde participatory models of the 1960s and 1970s. This thesis situates the socially-based practice of the Los Angeles artist collective, Finishing School, within this historical and theoretical trajectory that extends the “stage” to audiences, and illustrates the performability of this socially-based practice, as it relates to their 2010 California Biennial project, 54. This thesis works in the realm of interrogatives (i.e. what are the issues that a project like this raises?), and for this analysis, I conducted fieldwork, which includes a series of interviews, archival research, and onsite observations, focusing on snapshots of process. My goal: to allow room for both self reflexivity and critical analysis within the text while emblematically emphasizing the role I perform inside/outside.
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Flores, Chloë
(author)
Core Title
Performing the collective
School
School of Fine Arts
Degree
Master of Public Art Studies / Master of Arts
Degree Program
Public Art Studies
Publication Date
04/12/2011
Defense Date
04/11/2011
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
2010 California Biennial,artist collective,Finishing school,Los Angeles, 2011 Venice Biennale,Los Angeles-based artist,OAI-PMH Harvest,participatory art,performative,public practice,social practive
Language
English
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Electronically uploaded by the author
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Advisor
Moss, Karen (
committee chair
), Decter, Joshua (
committee member
), Gaines, Mailk (
committee member
)
Creator Email
chloeflores@gmail.com,me@chloeflores.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3730
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UC1135835
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etd-Flores-4543 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-441237 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3730 (legacy record id)
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etd-Flores-4543.pdf
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441237
Document Type
Thesis
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Flores, Chloë
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texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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Libraries, University of Southern California
Repository Location
Los Angeles, California
Repository Email
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Tags
2010 California Biennial
artist collective
Finishing school
Los Angeles, 2011 Venice Biennale
Los Angeles-based artist
participatory art
performative
public practice
social practive