Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

140 Rachel Weiss
THE COLLECTIVE AND/IN THE “PUBLIC”
Another collective tendency cuts across this chronology of disenchantment,
however, with strong sociological intentions for breaking down barriers around
art by interacting on an equal footing with local communities, with the goal
of working in a more long-lasting way and on a deeper cultural level. 124 One of
these projects was Proyecto Hacer, 125 which proposed to “link art with socially
useful work, offering the individual new perspectives for confronting and coming
to understand his own activity; to design a pedagogical method applicable
to the art schools while looking forward to professional activities; and to create
a cultural treasure for people that will arise from within their communities,
their own lives and spiritual characters.” 126 While Hacer seems to have
existed mostly in theoretical terms, another project with very similar goals
and deWnitions (and some of the same participants) did materialize in 1989.
At the height of the tensions, censorship, and confrontations,
this extraordinary project was launched in the impoverished eastern town
of Pilón—a fact that, among other things, also brought into much clearer
focus the assumptions about the inherent afWnity between artist-collectives
and the public that had been implicit in much of the work during the latter
half of the decade. 127 Not only departing from the architectural and bureaucratic
institutions of art but also from the urban center within which the
new art had been mostly conWned, the Pilón project envisioned an entirely
new situation in which the deWnition and practice of art itself would emerge
from the public, and its circumstances, rather than be overlaid onto it.
The project arose from the artists’ discontent with the breadth of
the audience and the social discourse that was engaged by their work. Despite
the signiWcant public presence that the new art had achieved, still the audience
for this work, with few exceptions, was limited to the orbit of the specialist
and aWcionado. 128 Dissatisfaction with this situation had already found
repeated expression, whether in Arte Calle’s street commotions or Art-De’s
actions and debates in the parks. Each of these moves out of the gallery and
museum drew a parallel between the idea of the “public body” and “public
space” and implied a change in the identity of the spectator that was being
sought. Leaving the gallery and museum was the spatial move that facilitated
this work in the direction of a new audience, and the move out of
Havana signaled an even more radical effort to engage those who had largely
been left behind by the revolution and its cultural projects. The Pilón project
went further than Arte Calle, Grupo Provisional, or even Art-De had
in implicating the bystander in critical acts, through its immersiveness (the
artists lived in the small town for several months) and in its total recasting
of the source of art itself. 129 The project, moreover, was staged in a location