Art & Politics – A Survey: Part 2

Read the 2004 survey here

Gregory Sholette
is an artist, activist and author based in New York. He co-founded two artists’ collectives: Political Art Documentation and Distribution (1980-88) and REPOhistory (1989-2000). He is the author of Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture (Pluto, 2010) and co-editor of Collectivism after Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945 (2007) and The Interventionists: Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life (2004). IT’S THE POLITICAL ECONOMY, STUPID: The Global Financial Crisis In Theory and Art edited by Oliver Ressler and Greg Sholette with texts by Slavoj Žižek, John Roberts, Julia Bryan Wilson, Melanie Gilligan, and Yates McKee among others, will be published by Pluto Press in 2013.

What constitutes political art?

The work of Pussy Riot in Moscow is an example of art that is made politically, as opposed to simply something we might describe as ‘political art’.

Do you think there has been a resurgence in political art?

Yes, politics is finding refuge in the world of art, just as there has been a withdrawing of serious political debate from the ream of society in general.

Can you give an example of a piece of art that you think is politically effective?

See above: Pussy Riot at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.

Do you think it is effective to make political work that functions within the art world, or is that simply preaching to the converted?

Both. It’s effective if it preaches to those who have claims to be converted, but who either refuse or are incapable of taking their conversion seriously.

Harrell Fletcher
is an artist and Associate Professor of Art and Social Practice at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. In June his performance Where I’m Calling From was included in the BMW Tate Live: Performance Room series and he has a project that will be included in the 9th Shanghai Biennial that opens in October this year.

What constitutes political art?

I suppose anything that anyone wants to call political art. I think both art and politics are non-intrinsic terms, so they can be used in relative and flexible ways. I guess for me the question is what is the benefit of calling something political art? If there is some function or advantage in using that term then it’s fine with me for people to employee it in anyway that they want.

Do you think there has been a resurgence in political art?

Political art is not a term that I use or think about much, so it’s hard for me to say if there is a resurgence of it. On the other hand I think there has been a great development in socially engaged art practices recently and often times there are political aspects to that sort of work.

Can you give an example of a piece of art that you think is politically effective?

I really had to ponder that for awhile. I think the work that Carmen Papalia has been doing related to disability issues is effective at least in raising awareness about the politics etc surrounding those issues.

Do you think it is effective to make political work that functions within the art world, or is that simply preaching to the converted?

If it only resides in the art world then that is probably not a very effective context for political work, especially the commercial art world. But I think that work can exist in multiple contexts including the art world, and those various contexts can help support each other, which could in some cases make for more effectively political art projects.

Anja Kirschner and David Panos
are artist who live and work in London, UK. They were the winners of the Jarman Award 2011. Recent solo exhibitions include Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, UK (2012); The Projecting Stage, castillo/corrales, Paris, France (2011) and The Empty Plan, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and Kunsthalle Oslo, Norway (2011). Their latest video installation, Ultimate Substance (2012), made during 2011/2012 in Greece, will be exhibited at FACT/Liverpool Biennial (UK); Secession, Vienna, Austria; Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp, Belgium; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, Germany, and the Greek Pavillion at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France during 2012/2013.

What constitutes political art?

Actually, we wish this tedious term would go away. These days it usually operates to obscure competing notions of the ‘political’, replacing potential antagonisms with the self-congratulatory assumption that all ‘political’ art shares a liberal/progressive and ultimately compatible perspective. This allows artists, curators and dealers to gesture towards the idea of politics, with all its potentially ‘radical’ connotations without having to define and discuss what their politics actually are. In general the term seems a corollary of ‘criticality’ – probably the most overused and devalued concept in art.

Maybe a prior question is whether the designation makes any sense at all. At the level of form and content all art can be read as entailing a potential ‘political’ position of some sort, conscious or not (and often contingent on a set of constantly changing historical factors). Does labelling some art as ‘political’ connote some particular agency or ‘commitment’ on behalf of a work?

Do you think there has been a resurgence in political art?

As we’re in the middle of a full-blown and ongoing global, Capitalist crisis where the question of the economic organization of society cannot be avoided and new forms of social unrest are emerging, art must invariably refract these circumstances to a greater or lesser extent – but does that count as political?

What we have recently encountered are attempts to respond to the current situation by curating ‘political art’ programmes (which are often participatory and dematerialized – i.e. cheap) in institutions where budgets are being slashed and staff are laid off, with not even the attempt to try and draw these two horizons together.

Can you give an example of a piece of art that you think is politically effective?

The question here is what is entailed in the idea of ‘effectiveness’ per se, and whether artists or intellectuals can be seen as a vanguard ‘inspiring’ people to action or offering up new ideas or rather a rearguard – lagging behind and distilling what has already happened on the street. There is much to suggest the later is more likely the case.

Do you think it is effective to make political work that functions within the art world, or is that simply preaching to the converted?

Perhaps we should ask the question differently: what about other forms of creativity that are not considered ‘art’? Some of the most radical and progressive impulses have come from outside the art world – from the sphere of popular culture, both in the realm of entertainment and the ‘underground’ – while much of ‘political work’ within the art world has either focused more and more narrowly on criticism and self-criticism of the artist, the art work, art institutions and the art market or proposes a problematic retreat to individual and small-scale utopias as ‘outside the system’.

Max Andrews
is co-director of the curatorial office Latitudes in Barcelona, Spain.

What constitutes political art?

I do think that Thomas Hirschhorn’s declaration for making art politically, rather than making political art, remains a potent one, and at the same time I’m dubious of the argument that states all art is inherently political. However, I’d say that there is a recognizable genre of campaign-like art which seeks to address perceived inequality and injustice – particularly with regards to the holding to account of power in the form of governance and capitalism – that could be most straightforwardly associated with the term ‘political art’. Or: art that becomes instrumentalized by politicians, which can easily jump from merely being politicized to being ostensibly political.

Do you think there has been a resurgence in political art?

The Arab Spring, Indignados, Occupy, and financial crises axes of the last four years have doubtless involved or influenced many people from all walks of life – artists and curators included – to be more politically aware, precise, and active. There has certainly been a resurgence in the aesthetics of disobedience allied to these momentous events. (As well as new manifestations of ‘street art’ in the name of subversion.) Whether there has been a meaningful revival in political art, or whether it ever went away, I think we are too close to know right now – it is probably a question better answered by the historians of the future.

Can you give an example of a piece of art that you think is politically effective?

Tino Sehgal’s This is Propaganda (2002) is devastatingly treacherous, and charismatically genuine.

Do you think it is effective to make political work that functions within the art world, or is that simply preaching to the converted?

W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy) is doing pretty effective and important work within the art world, without preaching, yet exactly because the art world is clearly not ‘the converted’ – or especially faith-based anymore, as the idiom suggest. Equally, the most effective politics in art may well lie in voluntarily not working despite the consequences – refusing to participate in something one does not consider right, or withholding one’s consent.