Activism
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Sharlene Khan and Fouad Asfour lay in to Anthea Buys on her Thought Leader blog Art Schmart. Read the original piece here (scroll down for Khan's and Asfour's responses) and Anthea Buys' response here. The crux of the matter under argument is the following:
In criticising the slow response to recent violence from a an institution which proposed to re-energise artistic activism, Buys says 'Perhaps we will have to wait until some artist decides six months down the line to revisit this horrific episode, to meditate on violence in its stale, still wake, before we hear any significant critical voice on the matter from fine art institutions. Maybe Sharlene Khan will daub some portraits of suffering refugees and take them to Sweden?'
I am fully in agreement with this statement. Khan's involvement and empathy with refugees and street traders is not under question. These are positive aspects of her. However, showing images of poor people to rich people in Europe, does not count as activism or make the work good. In fact, all it does is provide more material for Europeans to other Africans, and makes the artist a colonial servant. (Much like the continual criticism this blog has had for the work of Pieter Hugo).
Personally, I have little faith in artistic activism, I think the nature of art creation always makes this activism self-serving. Unless the art is about making people aware.
In criticising the slow response to recent violence from a an institution which proposed to re-energise artistic activism, Buys says 'Perhaps we will have to wait until some artist decides six months down the line to revisit this horrific episode, to meditate on violence in its stale, still wake, before we hear any significant critical voice on the matter from fine art institutions. Maybe Sharlene Khan will daub some portraits of suffering refugees and take them to Sweden?'
I am fully in agreement with this statement. Khan's involvement and empathy with refugees and street traders is not under question. These are positive aspects of her. However, showing images of poor people to rich people in Europe, does not count as activism or make the work good. In fact, all it does is provide more material for Europeans to other Africans, and makes the artist a colonial servant. (Much like the continual criticism this blog has had for the work of Pieter Hugo).
Personally, I have little faith in artistic activism, I think the nature of art creation always makes this activism self-serving. Unless the art is about making people aware.
posted by Robert Sloon at 11:22 AM
3 Comments:
Anthea Buys really answers her own question. She wants to see the artworld offer something of relevance to the humanitarian crisis, but all SHE can think of offering is addresses where you can drop off blankets and food. Why should it be any different for artists? According to what warped ideals does art attain the immediacy of blankets and food? And also, especially given the theory that art should have some bearing on real life, why then should artists respond to a crisis like this through a mediated kind of art. Maybe dropping off blankets and food IS art, and certainly the only kind that is of any immediate use.
She calls attention to the uselessness of art in this circumstance by taking a dig at Sharleen Khan's work, implying that that work fails to address crises like these, as it is all talk and no action. She then goes on to defend dig by pointing out that Sharleen Khan's work is of inferior quality for a whole lot of artsy-critiquey reasons that are EVEN FURTHER from relevant direct action than Sharleen's work was in the first place.
Doesn't it become obvious here that one should drop the delusion of art addressing something as immediate as this. Art is not a plate of food or a policeman or an envoy from the fucking UN.
Unless we want to discuss the form, texure and use of light an artist engages with as they hand over their blanket, or maybe show the starving refugees videos of chicken s roasting slowly in Pick 'n Pay, or maybe an interpretive dance performance of shivering with cold.
In short, can't we just respond to a crisis without undergoing intellectual brain death. Living in Africa should have taught us by now that it is crude and insulting to start mistaking the actual suffering of people for art.
I accord with the spirit of this post: art is really useless in addressing these issues in ANY meaningful manner, if we take 'meaningful' to suggest immediate, remedial, helpful to the people directly affected.
In situations like this, it seems that what frightens art and journalism the most is the resulting realization that they are incidental, even peripheral to the real-world manifestations of things they talk about the most: social inequity, suffering, violence.
Having said that, I applaud any and all effort given to eliviate suffering, no matter how small or seemingly ineffectual. Just let's not start 'framing' these within terms the art world can commodify.
I accord with the spirit of this post: art really is useless in addressing these issues in ANY meaningful manner, if we take 'meaningful' to suggest immediate, remedial, helpful to the people directly affected.
In situations like this, it seems that what frightens art and journalism the most is the resulting realization that they are incidental, even peripheral to the real-world manifestations of things they talk about the most: social inequity, suffering, violence.
Having said that, I applaud any and all effort given to eliviate suffering, no matter how small or seemingly ineffectual. Just let's not start 'framing' these within terms the art world can commodify.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home