User:Menno Harder/project proposal

Introduction text

I would like to open a new social space within my own neighborhood. I live opposite of some empty spaces and these could suit perfect to house this new platform. Through different kinds of research, both in an artistic and collaborative way, but also with a theoretical approach I want to create an archive of work surrounding my own place within this neighborhood and the possible outcome of such a space. Ideally this place will be an environment where we can have workshops, talks, music and show movies but also have the opportunity to invite people from the neighborhood to come by for a cheap weekly dinner, take free items from the give–away shop and have a place to quietly read the abundance of books that will be available for everyone.

I would like to carefully plan and create a possible structure for a such place. What can it’s appearance be, it’s meaning within the context of this area in Rotterdam? How does it relate to my personal feelings about the city, and the current cultural climate within Rotterdam, and, even more important, how do I present this space to the people that are passing by or are living near it. I can imagine that the opening–exhibition of this space could be the visualization of my own research and thoughts towards living in this neighborhood, what we can and what we can’t do. As the Middelland neighborhood consists of quite a few different area’s, both in physical appearance (it’s architecture and street planning) and in it’s social structure: it is a very multicultural part of Rotterdam, quite segregated and has seen some huge gentrification in certain parts the past years this is certainly an aspect that I could explore and visualize through the use of graphic design.

Relation to previous practice

Forming new idea’s and starting a new project always relies on the experience I have had with past projects. A new project is built while still dealing with the thoughts and concepts of a just finished project. Looking back on works I have done in later years, I identify a certain way of working and initiating projects. A work usually comes forth out of an exploration of the area visited (this can be exploring the place while actually being there), or exploring it by listening to stories or reading about it either on the web or in a written document. Usually the mere visualization and translation of such an area can be a work in itself (objective journalism, documentation), but identifying the conflicts that happen within this area and commenting on them gives the work a personal and subjective layer, making the work critical towards the topic it is discussing. This project will most certainly be a combination of these two elements, in one way it is a celebration of the neighborhood, what it was, what it is and what it can become. But on the other side it is a critical reflection upon it’s history and current state. I understand that this is also a personal opinion, and that I do not share these opinions with everyone.

It's important to work for a certain kind of audience, who am I making this project for? Why am I creating an archive of several neighborhood projects? What do I see happening in Middelland right now, and how can I be sure that this additional space integrates within the already existing shops, bars, offices, houses and in a more abstract way the atmosphere (or, feel) of this location. While it seems important to actively DO something, I have to realize that my intentions are not necessarily shared by everyone. So the reasoning behind my intentions should be clear, and should take in great consideration what the actual benefits towards the neighborhood of this supposed space will be. Some of these questions are difficult to answer right now as much of them will be answered while initiating the different research-projects.

Research trajectory

The creation of an autonomous cultural space has of course been done before and is still been done in cities throughout the world. For example, there are many active squatting groups in several Dutch cities that are reclaiming certain empty spaces and turning these into cultural centers, without the help of any municipality or subsidies from third parties. I understand that this project is also a very personal matter, as I see many empty spaces in my own neighborhood, it feels like the right moment to do something myself. Apart from claiming the actual space to perform all these activities I have to take into account the effectivity of my plans. The importance of the audience is not to be underestimated. Will this centre be an artistic environment with mostly young people or will it be suited for any kind of visitor, even those without interest in for example the current exhibition. I have to find a way to make these different groups work together, so that it can be a place for everyone. I also wonder about the Rotterdam municipality, and how they plan the neighborhood of Middelland and especially the West-Kruiskade area and 1e and 2e Middellandstraat. As various stores are popping up everywhere, and small scale business seems to flourish in these streets, how open and willing would they be for a proposal like this? And while there are several cases of successful openings, there have also been numerous spaces that had to close down due to bankruptcy and so on. An ideal situation would be a space that could survive every month by breaking even, living of of small donations and the work of volunteers.

As a starting point of my research exploring and documenting the neighborhood in several ways (through interviews, photographs, extracting and recognizing certain specific elements from the streets, visualizing and abstracting it’s street life, recording the ‘sound’ of the neighborhood) will hopefully provide me with more knowledge about the situation, and in it’s turn provide an explanation for my cause. The creation and afterwards evaluation of what I see as small neighborhood projects will give me more information and reasoning as to why I want to do this, and how I can do it. Whilst creating this archive of information I would like to create awareness of my idea's and share these with as many people as possible. In the end, it is important that my cause and intentions will be known by not only my personal surroundings, but that they also change the psychological space on the street itself. For example: When I introduce announcements for an event that might happen involving the creation of this space, then already it starts to become real, preparing the neighborhood for a future opening.

Possible outcome

Eventually the various different project's that I have done throughout the year will be revealed. Presenting all the material that has been collected and created through collaborative work and researching of the subject. The structure in which these findings are to be presented will be visible in a physical manner (the projects actually presented in the space) and in a digital way (the works can be seen online, where they are presented on the official website of the space). I see this possible outcome as sort of library, in which the viewer can dig through the research that has been done. An important thing to note is that this library should be located within the neighborhood it researches, so to return the information. This is one of the forms in which the project can be presented, the launch of the space takes a big part in this as well. The opening of the space will bring together the different projects I have been working on this year: On one hand the presentation of the research material, and on the other hand the opening of the space.

IMPORTANT THEMES

• Documentation
• Emerging Landscape
• Participation/Cooperation
• Habitus/Cultural Identity
• Folklore
• Self Governance/ Homebrewing
• Institutional Critique of the (80's)
• Relational Practice (90's)
• Socially Engaged Art
• Dialogic Art

Bibliography

What we Made Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation, Tom Finkelpearl
In What We Made, Tom Finkelpearl examines the activist, participatory, coauthored aesthetic experiences being created in contemporary art. He suggests social cooperation as a meaningful way to think about this work and provides a framework for understanding its emergence and acceptance. In a series of fifteen conversations, artists comment on their experiences working cooperatively, joined at times by colleagues from related fields, including social policy, architecture, art history, urban planning, and new media. Issues discussed include the experiences of working in public and of working with museums and libraries, opportunities for social change, the lines between education and art, spirituality, collaborative opportunities made available by new media, and the elusive criteria for evaluating cooperative art.

Living as Form, Nato Thompson
Over the past twenty years, an abundance of art forms have emerged that use aesthetics to affect social dynamics. These works are often produced by collectives or come out of a community context; they emphasize participation, dialogue, and action, and appear in situations ranging from theater to activism to urban planning to visual art to health care. Engaged with the texture of living, these art works often blur the line between art and life. This book offers the first global portrait of a complex and exciting mode of cultural production—one that has virtually redefined contemporary art practice.

Artificial Hells, Claire Bishop
Since the 1990s, critics and curators have broadly accepted the notion that participatory art is the ultimate political art: that by encouraging an audience to take part an artist can promote new emancipatory social relations. Around the world, the champions of this form of expression are numerous, ranging from art historians such as Grant Kester, curators such as Nicolas Bourriaud and Nato Thompson, to performance theorists such as Shannon Jackson.

Artificial Hells is the first historical and theoretical overview of socially engaged participatory art, known in the US as “social practice.” Claire Bishop follows the trajectory of twentieth-century art and examines key moments in the development of a participatory aesthetic. This itinerary takes in Futurism and Dada; the Situationist International; Happenings in Eastern Europe, Argentina and Paris; the 1970s Community Arts Movement; and the Artists Placement Group. It concludes with a discussion of long-term educational projects by contemporary artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Tania Bruguera, Paweł Althamer and Paul Chan.

The One and the Many, Grant Kester
As artists increasingly produce work on international sites in conjunction with local populations, art historians seek to model these new practices and assess their conceptual and political implications. In his previous book, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art, Grant Kester historicized the shift away from art as object-making to art as an open-ended form of exchange, which he characterized as “dialogical practice,” wherein art “unfolds through a process of performative interaction.” In his most recent book, The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context, Kester expands upon his definition of “dialogical practice” to advocate for collaborative, politically-engaged artwork that blurs the line between community activism and artistic production.

Conversation Pieces, Grant Kester
As artists increasingly produce work on international sites in conjunction with local populations, art historians seek to model these new practices and assess their conceptual and political implications. In his previous book, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art, Grant Kester historicized the shift away from art as object-making to art as an open-ended form of exchange, which he characterized as “dialogical practice,” wherein art “unfolds through a process of performative interaction.” In his most recent book, The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context, Kester expands upon his definition of “dialogical practice” to advocate for collaborative, politically-engaged artwork that blurs the line between community activism and artistic production.

Art Scenes, the Social Scripts of the Art World, Pablo Helguera
Starting in the mid-1990s, either through performance, drawing, music, theater or literary fiction, the work of Pablo Helguera has extensively addressed the social dynamics of the contemporary art world. This book brings together Helguera’s research on the subject in essay form, aiming to contribute to the neglected area of the sociology of contemporary art.

In this provocative new book, Helguera argues that contemporary art makes us perform self-conscious or instinctive interpretive acts; and that the construction of value in artworks is determined less by the objects themselves—and by extension, by the art market—than by the nature of our interpretive performances, having a trickle-down effect on practically every aspect of art in society. Bringing together perspectives from sociology, education and art theory, Art Scenes aims to contribute to the inauguration of a new field described by Helguera as “Art World Studies.”

Social Works, Performing Art Supporting Publics, Shannon Jackson
Shannon Jackson’s Social Works embraces a range of late-twentieth and early twenty-first century visual and theatrical works of Europe and the Americas variously categorized as performance ethnography, site-specific art, documentary theater, public art, and post-dramatic theatre. Like Amelia Jones, Jane Blocker, and Rebecca Schneider, Jackson—Professor of Rhetoric and Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at University of California, Berkeley—takes on a capacious set of projects in theaters, on streets, and in galleries to offer “critical traction” to a field of expanded art practices vexed by medium-specific critical approaches (14). She traverses genealogies of visual and theatre studies in order to dislodge the perceptual and methodological patterns that tend to overlook the interdependencies between art and social systems. Rather than looking at how art does something to or for a public, Jackson devotes attention to works that provoke a sense of the blurred lines between the artist and the social.

Dark Matter, Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture, Gregory Sholette
Art is big business, with some artists able to command huge sums of money for their works, while the vast majority are ignored or dismissed by critics. This book shows that these marginalised artists, the 'dark matter' of the art world, are essential to the survival of the mainstream and that they frequently organize in opposition to it.

Gregory Sholette, a politically engaged artist, argues that imagination and creativity in the art world originate thrive in the non-commercial sector shut off from prestigious galleries and champagne receptions. This broader creative culture feeds the mainstream with new forms and styles that can be commodified and used to sustain the few artists admitted into the elite.

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