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wouldn’t that be a cool visit? :)

Lidérc, the first story on this page, is about a demonic lover. Sensual and haunting. By Andrea Dezso, one and only!

I am posting again! My last posts on here are from when I passed my Div 3 project, December 10th- almost 2 months ago. On one hand it seems like it happened to so long ago, it can’t be only 2 months. But on the other hand I wonder - where did those 2 months go? What did I do? Well, about 2 weeks after officially passing, I moved into my new home in NYC and before I could get settled left on a trip across the ocean. First, my partner and I visited our good friend in Bangalore, India for a wedding. Then, while my partner returned to the states I traveled on to Perm, Russia, my birthplace where I had not been in over 2 years (there’s a lot of 2s in this paragraph...). This trip was filled with both new and exciting experiences as well as old, comforting ones. It challenged me to be present, which was sometimes easy and sometimes painfully difficult. I was productive with origami while in Russia, making the shapes I could - boxes, cranes, hearts, lilies, bunnies - out of candy wrappers. In the end I glued them into a garland and hung it over my babushka’s (grandma’s) mirror. She is an unconditional lover of my art. So now I am back from vacation, back on the internet, back to searching for a job, cleaning my house, cooking my food, etc. And I am in a new home, NYC, for no particular time limit. Just, to live. As I am searching for jobs I am also searching for friends, for community, for special places, for a space for my art, for “success” and for Happiness. That is a lot to do at once. I keep needing to remind myself not to compare my life to the lives of others. That takes up a lot of energy, and that energy is better used on reaching my own goals and manifesting my own desires. My life and art continue to be intertwined. Here’s to evolving in the process! ~*~*~

Almost forgot - communal collage from show night!

Final show pictures! Featuring my friend Elena’s inclusive education tree, and my mother contemplating next to the origami. (Fun fact: they are both named Elena!)

The final show happened last Friday, December 4th, 2015. I reflected on paper this time, but here I will post some highlights. -People came to help out of the blue. And I needed this dearly. Before the show began I needed the hands to move the couches in the space, move all my art, and set everything up. The unexpected task ended up being having to put tape on everything since the walls were too thick for thumb tacks. And luckily I had 3 people making tape loops for me. I still cannot believe that they showed up! All week I was looking for helpers, and it seemed like I was going to end up doing the whole thing myself. I am so thankful this was not true. -Perhaps this is the air of any final art show, but I got so many congratulations and appreciations for my project. This was really moving. I want to note what one of my attendants said - he said my writing piece made him think about the global economy, and my table made it come to life. There were at least 6 languages among the stuff - be it in instructions for an electronic appliance or on the lid of a tea kettle. That is truly beautiful, and something to think about. Among one of my paranoid thoughts, I thought about the contradictory nature of the exchange table and the food table which inherently embodied injustice and pollution. Who was going to bring this up and catch me? The person turned out to be my brother. At least it stayed in the family! And at least the food was eaten, and what was left I gave to my friend who hosted me all week. The gift returned. -I rain into one of my shows attendants a few days after the show, and found that my signage could have been more clear. While there were big invitations/instructions right next to the table, I put up all the signs asking people to not take things on the wall behind it. And this person (who’s name I forgot! Sorry if you are reading this!) thought that those were the real instructions, and I was conducting a psychological experiment to see who would take things and who would not. I guess I unwittingly did just that. Next time I need to make a sign saying which signs are true and which ones are not. -While the origami was lovely, them being in a nook limited the amount of people who could look at them at one time. This was unfortunate. -The show was scheduled from 6-10, but it began slowing down by 8. The wine and beer were drunk in less than an hour! Lots of people came, and I was especially proud to see those who I did not know or talk to. In the end, only a few people stayed, but the ones who stayed spent a while just hanging out and talking. I like that my shows give this kind of experience. Perhaps they will not gather a huge crowd, but will attract a devoted few. -My outfit consisted of gifts as well (sadly there will be no picture as I forgot to do a final show pose). The pants and socks were handed down from my mother. The boxers belonged to my partner. And the shirt was a gift from my friend Amelia - a few years ago when we were walking from class I saw she had no winter coat, and I gave her the one I was wearing, an old one. Next week she brought me a shirt custom-made for her as a gift. In the two years since, only one event felt appropriate for the shirt - the day I became an American citizen. The show was the second one. I hope to have more events that are worthy of this shirt.

When does a project end? Sometimes it is decided that it is only a one-time event, or a single piece of media you are making. Sometimes you stop because you do not wish to work with your partners/collaborators any more. There are many reasons as to why a project will end. Questions: Would you do it again? Under which circumstances? How would you change what you did? What were tasks you found yourself doing that you did not know you would do/need to do? (for example, the amount of e-mails I have sent about reserving spaces, buying disposable plates/cups for the opening, etc. were unexpected but necessary to make the project come to life) Is there something new and exciting you want to do now? I find myself going into fantasies of what I could be doing while in the middle of a project - perhaps you have these fantasies as well, and when you finish it is a good time to see which of these fantasies can come to fruition. However, before starting something new you will want to gather your documentation, reflections, and any materials left over in one space (or a few designated spaces). This activity can be reflective in itself.

Artists/Projects/General Resources Education for Socially Engaged Art: A Materials and Techniques Handbook by Pablo Helguera (exactly as it says - outlines the basic tactics of SEA, problems you may face, etc.) excerpts on Helguera’s blog Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011 by Nato Thompson (SEA history/theory essays by Nato Thompson, Claire Bishop, Maria Lind, Teddy Cruz, Carol Becker, Brian Holmes, and Shannon Jackson, as well as collection of 100+ SEA projects) The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents by Claire Bishop http://www.sociallyengagedartjournal.org/ http://museumarteutil.net/ (the archive contains many socially engaged art projects) http://creativetime.org/ http://www.pbs.org/art21/ http://www.prole.info/ http://beautifultrouble.org/ http://openengagement.info/ http://www.socialpracticequeens.org/ (Queens Museum) Mel Chin Ai Weiwei - Never Sorry Marina Abramovic - institute - The Artist is Present Tania Bruguera - Immigrant Movement International - On Art 21 Rick Lowe - Project Row Houses Suzanne Lacy Mierle Laderman Ukeles - Maintenance art Manifesto 1969! Molly Crabapple - articles on Vice Amanda Palmer - the Art of Asking Fallen Fruit Collective Sut Jhally / Media Education Foundation /Killing Us Softly - Jean Kilbourne Taryn Simon - MOMA exhibition - Josh Greene Little Free Library Human Library Project Interference Archive Susan O’Malley (obituary) Occupation of Greenham Commons Solvognen - The Santa Claus Army Susan Jahoda kara lynch - invisible :: meet me in okemah :: saved -La Linea Andrea Dezso - Lessons from my mother The Young Turks - YouTube Voina Pussy Riot - in English Alina and Jeff Bliumis Sources tagged on this blog: http://sorok-a.tumblr.com/tagged/sea%20resource

Exercise: If you have ample time to experiment and explore, try this task: observe a space you are interested in. This means experiencing the space for as much of a span of 24 hours as you can. Start with 2-4 hours in the space. Write down what you see, make sketches about the environment, just look around. Use the methods you are comfortable with to observe. You can switch from sitting in one place to walking around. After you feel like you have seen everything you have to see, try seeing more. What did you not find important? Write that down, too. If working in a group, you can divide the task of observing the space between group members, asking each one to observe it at a different time of day. If working alone, come back the next day at a different hour and see what has changed. After you collect this data, see what stands out. What are some frequent actions of the people there? What are important objects in the space? Is it a transitional space? Is it a space where people stay for a long time? With these questions in mind, plan an intervention - what are ways to engage people in this space? Is there a recurring problem in the space you want to confront?  Reflect on this experience - what worked, and what did not? Put in a second intervention. Do this a few times. See what you have learned. Perhaps you have become attached to this space. Perhaps you want to see the intervention you designed somewhere else. (taken from Andrea Dezso and kara lynch/personal experiences of working in their classes)

Socially engaged art (SEA) is an art practice that emphasizes participation and interaction. While it exists in traditional art disciplines, it can involve methods such as research, physical labor, etc. SEA encompasses many practices - participatory art, social practice, community art, activism, relational aesthetics, kontextkunst, new genre public art, connective aesthetics, and dialogic art. It may be used to describe anything ranging from the mass protests in Egypt's Tahrir Square in 2011, to election night celebrations in Harlem in 2008, to Complaints Choirs, literally organized choirs that sing their complaints, from most minute to ones felt on a global scale. The desire for social engagement can be traced back to art movements around the world including Russian Constructivism, Tropicalia in Brazil, and Theatre of the Oppressed. But today's SEA was not just influenced by art movements. The social movements of the 20th century - civil rights movement, AIDS activism, the women's movement and anti-Apartheid movement have all influenced what SEA has become today. As different SEA artists are influenced by specific communities, experiences, and disciplines, art under the same umbrella may look quite different. Participation is not synonymous with collectivism or inherently opposed to capitalism. While Western artists have used SEA as a tool for public engagement, artists in the USSR used participation to create private spaces for individual expression (Thompson, 2012). While SEA is an umbrella term for many practices, there are some criteria for what it is, and what it is not. SEA is anti-representational - it is not a painting of something, it is something. While SEA projects may rely on symbolic acts, they are the means for a communicative action (Helguera, 2011, p. 8). Many SEA projects happen outside of the gallery, or what we can call the "real" world. It must be noted that it is problematic to separate traditional art spaces from the "real" world as it implies that these spaces have no impact. However, we cannot deny that a separation between art and real exists. After all, “art” is the root of “artificial”. SEA stands in opposition to "spectacle", a term coined by Guy Debord in his film, The Society of the Spectacle. Spectacle is an integral feature of the modern world. It mediates social experience through images, and induces passivity of the audience. It exists both in capitalist and totalitarian societies (Thompson, 2012, p.36). Spectacle is propaganda, advertisement, popular film, music, and art. Spectacle replaces the tangible world by something inaccessible, yet remains more desirable than reality (Debord, "La société du spectacle"). Spectacle is meant to remove power from its viewers, so "engagement is [its] only antidote" (Thompson, 2012, p.71). The heightened zeal for SEA in the past two decades can be attested to the rise of neoliberalism, characterized by "[privileging of] free trade and open markets, resulting in maximizing the role of the private sector in determining priorities and deemphasizing the role of the public and the state's function in protecting and supporting them" (Thompson, 2012, p. 29). This system is inherently linked to injustice (Thompson, 2012, p. 75). Cruz notes that the income gap in 2008 United States is as great as it was in 1928, during the Great Depression. The Depression era was followed by greater taxation of the wealthy and a willingness to participate in public work (Thompson, 2012, p. 57). Today's economic crisis was followed instead by large cuts to public services, losses of homes and jobs, and the bailing out of its architects. Public engagement through the arts may be the natural solution to the current crisis, but it is important to remember that emphasis on participation may also pander to neoliberal ethics. Not all art that has a participatory aspect is necessarily resistant to the dominant culture. In fact, it can reinforce neoliberal ideology. Bishop notes that “today participation is used by business as a tool for improving efficiency and workforce morale; it is all-pervasive in the mass-media in the form of reality television; and it is a privileged medium for government funding agencies seeking to create the impression of social inclusion” (Roche & Bishop, 2006) . Thompson outlines two types of SEA projects – tactical and strategic. Tactical works are temporary, interventionist and discreet pieces quickly consumed and “digested by conditions of power” (Thompson, 2012, p. 31). Strategic works on the other hand are long-term investments based in local communities. Lind notes that short-term works may develop into long-term efforts (Thompson, 2012, p. 50). It is important for artists to understand the line between self-promotional works and works that are good for the community. Bishop creates another distinction between SEA projects. While some are meant to empower its participants, or others instead wish to further the alienation of its participants. While at first glance, SEA is linked to social justice and social work, this is not necessarily true. SEA is the product of tension and play of social and aesthetic commitments – neither can be privileged in its critique (Thompson, 2012, p. 38). Reducing it to social work means focusing critique on its ethics rather than its aesthetic. Focusing solely on the social aspect of SEA makes it vulnerable to corporate and state cooptation. We must trust that aesthetic also carries a positive social impact (Bishop, 2006). Art is not social work - it does not come with understood rules of engagement with its participants. In fact, the rules of engagement change depending on the project. Bishop suggests that the relationship between artist and participant in SEA is not solid and systematic. Rather, it is a fluid tension between artist and participant, likened to BDSM in its constant re-visiting and re-affirming of relationships (Thompson, 2012, p.41). It may be tempting to give up all power to participants, but an artist should not feel guilt over claiming some power. The label of art gives SEA freedom to perform works for social good alongside antagonizing social critiques. However, art, even SEA, is not enough to create lasting social change. At a point, artists must allow other institutions to step in while “[reasserting] art’s inventive forms of negation as valuable in their own right” (Thompson, 2012, p. 45). Sources used: Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle Claire Bishop, The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents Pablo Helguera, Education for Socially Engaged Art: A Materials and Techniques Handbook Nato Thompson, Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art 1991-2011

an MFA project by Caroline Keniston involving food and social engagement.