The function of art?

 
Post 1970 the investigations of the potential for explicit use of participatory tactics in creating art have focussed around political and social activism and change, the futility of such intentions, and more recently a resurgence of them. Eleey describes a ‘delicately Utopian co-existence of antagonism and service’ (2007) which seems a very poignant and apt description of a potential role for art.
The Fruitmarket Gallery currently hosts an exhibition of the output of several quite high profile artists who have undertaken the Galapagos Residency.  The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation has worked in partnership with the Galapagos Conservation Trust and invited artists to visit the Islands and respond to whatever they find. The two organisations involved in the residency appear to have slightly different agendas, The Trust produces glossy coffee table books with beautiful images of turtles and forewords by Prince Phillip. The strategy for protection of the Islands is Class A tourism (elite tourism). By contrast the Calouste Gulbenkian operates with a strong ideology of inclusion and community participation to engender increased human understanding and tolerance. Not something perhaps that Prince Phillip is winning any prizes for any time soon. The curator Greg Hilty (currently Director at the Lisson) selected artists who could explore the Galapagos’ social constructs as well as the natural constructs which have been so iconic.
The Director of Technical assistance at the Charles Darwin Foundation of the Galapagos is a galapagan native. He talks (Arends and Ede 2012, p37) about his hopes for reciprocity and hopes the art will make it’s way back to the Islands ‘we were all clear from the start that the artists would not only take but would also give something back, and I still hope that will be the case’. The fact that he is saying this in an interview after the project’s completion and speaks of ‘still hoping’ suggest that he feels that the project has not delivered.
Of the artists that have taken part in this extremely short (two week) residency over the years, several have made efforts to engage with the community as envisaged. Jeremy Deller chose to focus on the residents of the Islands and present an image of them which was as far away from the stereotype view of the Galapagos as secular Eden as possible. This emphasis on other, whilst initially seeming to illustrate the brutal cruelty of the residents (filming a cock fight), after a while seems to become more about the brutal cruelty of the way the rest of the world uses the Galapagos. Less dead chickens, but more net brutality.
This brutality is evidenced by a filmed interview with fisherman Captain Tito Mosquera made by Kaffe Mathews. This is an oral history, not even a documentary. The artist has not made art with this man’s words, simply putting them in a gallery context has not been sufficient to affect alchemy. Mosquera speaks very eloquently about the gaps of logic in the conservation strategy– big business and central government who take almost all the Class A tourist revenue without setting foot on the Islands themselves. Fishermen are asked to leave fish in the water for the benefit of multinational tourist companies and the detriment of their own families.
Gulbenkian has been arranging residencies or placement since the 70’s  and Sian Ede (Arends & Ede 2012, p9) writes about scientist’s scepticism about artists swooping in to make rush conclusions about knowledge it has taken them years to accrue. Ede is generous about the nature of an artist’s knowledge, also acquired over years and is positive about the potential benefits to both parties from these forms of collaboration. In a exhibition video artist Tania Kovats talks about how she has been ‘thinking about Charles Darwin for years’. What kind of thinking, compared for example to the teams of people at the Charles Darwin Foundation who have also been thinking about Darwin for years? Darwin himself took 8 years to think about barnacles before publishing ‘The Origin of the Species’, Kovats took 8 years to think about Darwin and made a barnacle. It is easy to see how the artist might encounter some scepticism.
Guy Debord promoted the idea of situations, constructed by artists to allow new relationship and ways of being. Bishop (2006) paints a picture of participation as a political tool in the arts which has been so absorbed into all areas of life, from philosophy to reality TV as to have lost it’s bite, or at least to have as much chance of developing bite as any other medium, It is not of itself any longer a political or oppositional act to use participants in your art work as it may have been 50 years ago. And yet despite these more media savvy times, Marcus Coates of all the artists at Fruitmarket, seems to created something both participatory and relevant.
Coates made a television programme using kit from the local tv station interviewing the galapagans whilst dressed as the iconic blue footed booby. He then chose to use the resulting news programme about his adventures as the final art work. In this way the art work was firmly embedded in the community and participatory. The artwork has been reported on and by removing the actual original film from view, the tv programme emphasizes the idea of the artwork in the world, affecting the world.
Marcus Coates genuinely engaged with the community. The film has been taken good-naturedly and not as a hoax. As a work of art (unlike Kaffe’s piece) importantly Coates has been able to ask questions and create circumstances which would not be possible in a non art setting. Dressed in a cardboard outfit it becomes permissible for him to say ‘it’s okay if you all die’.
Felix Guattari discusses an ethical integration of art and life in his book Chaosmosis. For Guattari art is an “activity of unframing, of rupturing sense”, “a mutant production of enunciation” (in Bishop p80).  Guattari talks about the importance of subjectivity in determining our future, and has what might seem a rather optimistic view of the role artists might play in encouraging a creative refashioning of subjectivities to enable change on all human levels including global politics. When Guattari talks about the future of the third world, an image forms of Buster Crabbe playing an artist Flash Gordon with his belly curving endearingly over his pre lycra trunks.  “ Spartacus , we only have 15 minutes to save the earth, put that champagne down.” And yet standing in front of Coates’ TV screens, the remnants of a potential power for art do seem wispily present. Coates has worked not only with but within the community.
“critical art must negotiate the tension that pushes art towards ‘life’ and which conversely separates aesthetic sensoriality from other forms of sensible experience. It must borrow the connections that provoke political intelligibility from the blurry zone between art and other spheres”.

(Ranciere in Bishop 2006, P84)

Ranciere describes a collage process between art and the everyday, a juxtaposition of two worlds. He quotes Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics p37 “by offering small services, the artist repairs the weaknesses in the social bond”. I found this Galapagan show disturbing in many ways. As the Director of the Charles Darwin Foundation says, once you have arrived in the Islands you are part of the problem. As soon as the Islands were ‘discovered’, like a loss of virginity it was impossible to return to their original state. As an Island dweller myself for many years I saw a lot that resonates with my own experiences, and most importantly I felt the show gave me a range of potential roles for art for me to consider, from beautiful objects on plinths to sense rupturing performance.
Bibliography
Claire Bishop (Ed)                             Participation –Whitechapel and MIT Press 2006
Bergit Arends & Sian Ede (Ed)  Galapagos – Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation 2012