ONE PLACE AFTER ANOTHER - Monoskop

character flaw (lack of initiative, diligence, inner resolve, moral rectitude, selfesteem,
etc.). So that in facilitating the production of “empowering” and “spiritually
uplifting” community (self-) portraits—variously poignant, heroic, strong, united—
the community artist may legitimate the presumption that the cause of social problems
rests with spiritually and culturally deprived individuals rather than with the
systemic or structural conditions of capitalist labor markets, stratified social hierarchy,
and uneven distribution of wealth and resources. In this way, communitybased
art can easily obscure the effects of the broader socioeconomic, political,
and cultural forces, including art initiatives themselves, that render certain individuals
and communities marginal, poor, and disempowered in the first place.
Despite the accuracy of some of Kester’s assessments, his economically deterministic
reading of community-based art has led to charges of oversimplification.
Artist Martha Fleming has pointed out that what critical projects like Kester’s
are addressing is not so much the actual practice of community-based art but one
discursive characterization of it, its commodification and promotion as “new public
art” by a “professional-managerial class (PMC)—the critics and curators currently
creating careers and fiefdoms for themselves by harnessing and bringing into the
fold an artists’ activity that has been threatening the institutions that employ them.” 22
While conceding the importance of Kester’s work in bringing class and historical
analysis to bear on current community-based practices, Fleming accuses him of
contributing to a discourse that homogenizes the complex activity of such practices,
excluding not only artistic precedents but “the hesitancy and doubt experienced
by many artists working in this field.” 23 To Kester’s various characterizations
of community artists as vehicles for the implementation of a conservative economic
agenda, as pawns in the machinations of dominant political ideology, as victims of
their own “corrupt” desire for fame through servitude, Fleming counters:
But not all of us will so easily be made into inexpensive marketing
consultants for disenfranchised communities abandoned by the
state, or take the rap for the failure of the welfare state. ... In some
cases our artistic practice has come out to meet our social activism.
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THE (UN)SITINGS OF COMMUNITY