|
border for some twenty-five miles. As if that werenít significant enough, it overshoots its limits and plunges into the ocean for another 100 yards. Among the projects that worked directly with the border, most of which assayed a conceptual punch line or an ironic reversal of its function, are Terry Allenís Cross the Razor/Cruzar la navaja (1994), which consisted of a van equipped with a loudspeaker on each side of the border suggesting that now, finally, Mexicans and Americans could speak to each other, and Helen Escobedoís By the Night Tide/Junto a la marea nocturna (1994), an installation on the Mexican side of the border of three wire-mesh sculptures resembling ships armed with coconut-loaded catapults, suggesting a defiant but quixotic counteroffensive against the power of the Goliath next door. Similarly, Vito Acconciís unrealized Island on the Fence/Isla en la muralla (1997), each of whose halves was to be placed on either side of the stretch of fence that extends into the ocean, would have risen and fallen with the tide, thus constantly separating and joining the persons standing on it. More subtle, perhaps, were Silvia Grunerís The Middle of the Road/La mitad del camino (1994), a series of plaster figurines of Tlazoltéotl, a filth-eating goddess in the act of giving birth, perched on the fence as if guarding over the symbolic death and rebirth of the would-be border crossers, and Ulf Rollofís 23 September 1994/23 de septiembre de 1994, five spruces mounted on a circular railroad track pivoted to a seat at the center of the circle forcing the viewer to keep his or her "background assumptions" in focus (thus reversing the usual train ride in which the background is blurred) while confronting the alien reality of the border.
At a further remove, there were more allegorical projects like Francis Alçsís The Loop (1997), that avoided the border altogether. It consisted of a twenty-day trip around the world, starting in Tijuana and following a "perpendicular route away from the fence . . . heading 67ç SE, NE, and SE again until meeting [the] departure point," but on the San Diego side. What the audience got to see was documentation from his brief stopovers in airports and hotels in tourist must-visit cities. According to 1997 co-curator Olivier Debroise, there was a "very political stake" in Alçsís effort to not cross the border the way Mexican migrants do, going to the extent of circumnavigating the globe. For Debroise, Alçsí politics reside in his self-reflective cynicism. Rather than sympathize with the "wretched of the earth" by assuming their plight, Alçs turned his gaze on himself as a relatively privileged artist who rather than parachute into a site, took a round-the-world tour. In this way, he endowed the site with spatial insinuations, particularly cosmopolitan ones, not usually associated with this border. In doing so, however, he brings us back to one of the aspects of the material conditions of inSITE that is usually lost in the various projects that commiserate and collaborate with the downtrodden or attempt to unveil the ideological underpinnings of power differentials between the two countries. Alçsís allusive project reminds us of the cosmopolitan character of art festivals and biennials. Cosmopolitan artists who are "in the loop," many of whom have participated in inSITE, are commodities "‘packagedí . . . for this new, apparently marginal, diplomatic industry called a biennial."
There are precedents for inSITEís elaboration of its regional and site-specific resource. The murals and other public works commissioned by the Secretaría de Educación Pública in the 1920s and 1930s in Mexico and the Federal Arts Program in the U.S. during the New Deal were expressive of a national-popular ethos, but remained monumental, in ways that current community art eschews. The "Art in Public Places" and "Art in Architecture" programs of the 1960s that involved modernist works, generally had little connection with the communities in whose surroundings they were sited. Arts institutions, especially museums, have of course debated their relationship to education, audiences and local community involvement since at least the 1930s, but the emphasis on drawing relevance from the experiences of audiences and communities is characteristic of debates from the 1960s. The mandate to decentralize and democratize culture, to be carried out by the institutions established in that decade (NEA, state arts councils), led to increasing demands for inclusion and community relevance, still operative today, which some see as a means to empowerment and others to cooptation. Increasing critique of public art in the early 1980s led to the inclusion of the artist in the choice and planning of the site and to the involvement of the community in 1983, according to NEA directives. The "community-engagement" projects introduced by inSITE in 1997 have as their direct predecessors the alternative (feminist, ethnic, Marxist and other activist) practices that by the 1980s began to be incorporated into the bureaucracy of government and foundation arts departments. Diversity and multiculturalism became rallying cries for the new public art, "emphasiz[ing] Otherness, marginalization, and oppression" and questioning prevailing (andro- and Eurocentric) values and privilege. By the mid to late 1980s, the role of the artist as educator, activist and collaborator was firmly established, although the effects of this "aesthetic evangelist" role have been questioned, both for the bureaucratization that resulted from it and for the governmental or pastoral function that artists took on with respect to poor communities. Indeed, as neo-liberalism took root and the responsibility for the welfare of the population was increasingly shifted onto "civil society" (as in Bushís Thousand Points of Light), the developed arts administration sector saw an opportunity to tap resources for the arts, claiming that they could solve Americaís problems; enhance education, salve racial strife, help reverse urban blight through cultural tourism, create jobs, reduce crime, and so on.
Within this framework, public art programs have drawn much of their significance from the history and social problems of a given place. Racism, class differences and other social fissures are some of the historical legacies available to the "healing" and "problem-solving" power of community-based art practices as described by Michael Brenson and Mary Jane Jacob in the catalogue for Culture in Action. In addition to Culture in Action, curated by her for Sculpture Chicago over a period of two years (1991-93), some of her other projects, like Places with a Past for the 1991 Spoleto Festival in Charleston, Points of Entry (1996) for the Three Rivers Art Festival in Pittsburgh, and Conversations at The Castle for the Arts festival of Atlanta (1996)
|
