In looking forward to this year’s Open Engagement conference, we wanted to share our response from participating last year which also prompted us to write our own syllabus for a fantasy class on “Social Practice” art. We’ve participated in a lot of conversations where people tear their hair out trying to figure out where social practice begins and ends. As a group, we have certain texts that we pass around to each other or art practices that we get excited about. We wanted to share our own loose and ever-evolving take on what makes this kind of art practice interesting for us.
Defining the actual parameters of “social practice art” seems to be a red herring. Sometimes a dinner party should just be a dinner party, sometimes calling a dinner party an art project makes it a richer experience for the individuals participating. Social practice art doesn’t necessarily create more democratic exchange between art and audiences, often times it creates hierarchical distinctions between artists in art school and ordinary people with creative hobbies and interests that don’t have anything to do with an art career. But while it continues to be problematic territory, the larger anxiety it brings up is pretty interesting. How are artists defining the communities their work operates in, especially when traditional contexts such as commercial galleries, museums, and non-profits aren’t the intended landing pad? If one’s work is about engaging publics supposedly outside the artworld and eschewing art-speak when it comes to creative expression, who cares if it’s called art other than social practice artists? The issue then becomes not how to judge social practice within the confines of other art disciplines, but rather how the value of that work is being defined and by who. If social practice offers us anything, it openly asks not what kind of artist one wants to be but what kind of person one wants to be and how one wants their work to operate in the world.
This article was published in the most recent issue of Proximity Magazine, called “Education as Art.” It was an incredibly exciting issue, we hope you check out the rest of the contributions and buy a copy at your local bookstore. And please use this syllabus and let us know what you think.
Download the pdf here: InCUBATE- What do Artists Know (for the fancier layout with pictures, you’ll have to buy the magazine).
InCUBATE's trivia night with host Randall Szott at Open Engagement 2010
InCUBATE's Romantic-comedy picture identification round at trivia night
The 2010-2011 season of Public Culture just wrapped up last week with a lecture by artist Katie Hargrave. We wanted to share some pictures of another great talk, from Erika Nelson and her traveling roadside museum (also known as WLCoWSVoWL). It was the only time that Joseph Kosuth and The Big Duck in Flanders, New York, made perfect sense in a lecture together. Join us for the 2011-2012 series, announcement on speakers coming soon.
InCUBATE is working with threewalls to produce Phonebook 3, a directory of independent art projects and spaces. It’s coming out in October 2011, and we need support for printing costs and paying writers and our layout/design team. It’s going to be a great book and will help connect organizers and artists across the nation to collaborate and build new projects. And…you can essentially pre-order your book right here and now by contributing to our Kickstarter! Show some love!
Please join us for the next Public Culture lecture. This month, Penelope Bingham will present “Who Cooks? American Cookbooks and Changes in Gender Roles”
Tuesday, January 25th
7:00-9:00PM
threewalls
119 N Peoria St #2C
“American cookbooks—their authors, their implied audience, the social structure implicit in their recipes and meal plans—tell the story of the changes in the role of women and social structure in 20th century America. The cookbook is much more than a ‘how-to’ manual; it documents the expectations for ‘good food’ and for a ‘good cook.’ Looking at the century’s most popular cookbooks brings to light its changing values. This program invites the audience to think about the links between who cooks our food and how our society is structured.”
Bingham will be bringing a number of vintage cookbooks from her epic collection to share.
About Bingham:
Following lifelong passions for books and for cooking, Penelope Bingham began accumulating cookbooks over 40 years ago. Her personal collection of cookbooks now exceeds 2,000 volumes. She is particularly interested in the stories American cookbooks of the last two centuries tell about American culture and identity. She has given programs on American Cookbooks and Culture to libraries and cultural organizations throughout Illinois as a Road Scholar for the Illinois Humanities Council, as well as in conjunction with the Smithsonian’s traveling exhibition, “Key Ingredients: America By Food”. She has also addressed the International Association of Culinary Professionals, the Culinary Historians of Chicago, The Wednesday Club of the Newberry Library of Chicago, the Cookware Manufacturers Association, and home economists of Kraft Foods. Her work with American Cookbooks and Culture was recently featured in Chicago Magazine and on WBBM/TV’s “Table For Two”. Since 1990, she has been the volunteer “Cookbook Lady” for the Annual Book Fair of the Newberry Library of Chicago, preparing for sale the thousands of vintage cookbooks that are donated each year. Penelope holds degrees from Wellesley College and the University of Chicago. She is a member of the Culinary Historians of Chicago and the International Association of Culinary Professionals.
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The Public Culture Lecture Series, co-organized by Randall Szott and InCUBATE, seeks to highlight examinations and enactments of public culture. Rather than following a preformed idea of what public culture actually is, the lecture series treats it as an open question and invites attendees to explore the question with us. A variety of people and practices will be drawn on to present the ways that the notion of “the public” emerges in their work and/or informs it.
SCAPEGOAT is a new journal of architecture, landscape and political economy. It examines the relationship between capitalism and the built environment, confronting the coercive and violent organization of space, the exploitation of labour and resources, and the unequal distribution of environmental risks and benefits. Issue 00 focuses on Property, because it is the literal foundation for all spatial design practices. Architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design each begin with a space that is already drawn, organized, and formed by the concrete abstraction of the property lines. From our perspective, property stands as the most fundamental, yet underestimated, point of intersection between architecture, landscape architecture, and political economy. What is a “site” except a piece of property? What are architecture and landscape architecture but subtle and consistent attempts to express determined property relations as open aesthetic possibilities? How can these practices facilitate other forms of relation?
George Wietor of Sunday Soup Grand Rapids designed a site to bring together all the food micro-granting projects out there. Add your profile if you run your own program, look for granting projects in your area, and see what kinds of projects are getting funded. Feedback much appreciated!
Our recent presentation at the amazing Creative Time Summit, organized by Nato Thompson, is available here. We were honored to share the “Food” panel with Claire Pentecost, FEAST, Agnes Denes, and Amy Franceschini. Check it out.
And, a thoughtful review on all the proceedings here
We’re excited to say that we were one of the projects chosen for an award from the Propeller Fund!
We’ll be receiving $2000 for our ongoing self-publishing project Pilot Studies. We’ll be making the first five issues available for free online, printing some more, and commissioning new issues as well!
