Profiles of Contemporary Art and - ARTisSpectrum

As an ongoing artist residency focused on public engagement, also known as A.I.R. The Machine Project (2009-2010), the Hammer
Museum recently hosted direct collaboration with Public Social artists. The August Cultural Retreat for Plants (2010) was
well received by patrons and museum staff alike and stood out as a visitor favorite. In this art project, city citizens were invited
to bring their house plant into the museum for a “vacation.” For one month the plants would bask in the warm, loving light of the
Lindbrook terrace and have a weekly ‘spa’ schedule, which included readings, music and a plant portraiture by the artist Lisa
Anne Auerbach. One of their most recent projects, Dream In (2010), invited participants to “camp” in the Hammer Museum’s
courtyard for an evening and collect any dreams that occurred while at the museum. During their attendance, participants were
offered the opportunity of experimental dream workshops, bedtime story support, and a musical concert to wake them from their
slumber. On the following day, dreams were then periodically reenacted for museum patrons by Gawdafful Theater.
In a celebration of Portland’s budding Social Practice art scene, the Portland Art Museum
has collaborated with Portland State University’s Art and Social Practice M.F.A.
program to create a night dedicated to Social Practice artists, titled Shine a Light. All
of the artists involved in Shine a Light aspire to provide onlookers with a new interpretation
of the museum’s permanent collection by creating events out of the typical museum
environment. Projects have ranged from PAM Jingle Orchestra (2010), by Lexa
Walsh, which provided visitors with periodic jingles of museum staff job descriptions
to Art/Life Partners (2010) by Ariana Jacob, which officiated marriages between visitors
and their favorite piece of artwork in the Portland Art Museum. Promoting a ‘long,
dedicated, and communicative relationship’ with the artwork and the museum, this
art project offered a year long membership to the first 50 visitors who participated 3 .
When asked about the museum’s participation in the event, Tina Olsen, Education
Director at the Portland Art Museum stated:
“We want to broaden the public’s perception of what can happen in a Museum, and
their ideas about ways to experience art…We are suggesting that visitors understand
and experience art—even art produced long ago—as alive and vital right now,
something they actively shape and participate in and that is directly related to their
life today.”
In its approach for total inclusion, Social Practice looks to public spaces and spheres
for their innate non-discriminatory qualities, and typically choose an environment that
is routinely visited by an audience of a diverse background. Reflective of its popular
predecessors, such as public art, interactive art, and performance art, Social Practice
art embraces art history but makes no claim for the exclusion that “only this is art” can
bring. Instead, Social Practice bypasses traditional art forms and mediums previously
used in other modes of artistic presentation. It leans on other non-art endeavors and
Hammer Museum presents the August
Cultural Retreat for Plants, (2010) a project by
Artist-In-Residence, Machine Project. Photos
by Lisa Anne Auerbach, courtesy of the
Hammer Museum.
fields to exemplify and critique the parameters that define our current art infrastructures, with a focus on social issues, boundaries
and activism 4 . Acclaimed Social Practice artist Harrell Fletcher describes it as the following, “Instead of working in a studio
solo, and showing work only in gallery type contexts, artists doing social practice type work can operate out in the world and can
create collaborative or participatory projects that don’t only happen in studio contexts, but also happen in stores, libraries, parks,
on the web, the radio, in a newspaper, etc.”
On the Social Practice art forefront, a group of artists, called ‘Broken City Lab,’ work as an ‘interdisciplinary creative research
group, tactfully disrupting and engaging the city, its communities, and its infrastructures in order to re-imagine the potential for
action in a collapsing post-industrial city.’ The city of focus is Windsor, Ontario, Canada which is often noted for its close proximity
to Detroit, Michigan, a city that is well known for having been battered by the auto industry’s slump. Documenting the transition
of a community during an economic downturn, Broken City Lab’s inspirational artworks and methods have captured the soul of
their neighborhoods, providing a new community identity. In Cross Border Communication (2009), Broken City Lab, with the help
of the University of Windsor’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Research Leadership Chair and Spectrodata sent messages
for three evenings that were visible to the city of Detroit from the city of Windsor. The messages were not only inspirational and
touching, but evoked emotions on economic, social and political levels alike.
3
“Shine A Light.” Rethink What Can Happen At A Museum. Portland Art Museum/ Portland State University: M.F.A. Concentration in Art and Social
Practice, n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2011.
.
4
“Social Practice Workshop | California College of the Arts.” California College of the Arts. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Mar. 2011.
.
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