Artists step up: creativity in social practice

How the Art of Social Practice Is Changing the World, One Row House at a Time

Social practice is going mainstream as more artists focus their work on making an impact on problems like homelessness and pollution. But the question of how to judge activist art remains elusive.

by Carolina A. Miranda, ARTnews, April 7, 2014

Black Artists Retreat, Chicago 2014, invites proposals

2014 [B.A.R.] OPEN PROPOSAL Research/Advocacy/Criticism/Exhibition

Following our first gathering in 2013, Theaster Gates, Carrie Mae Weems, Sarah Workneh, Marlease Bushnell, and Eliza Myrie came together to share what we had heard from participants and our own feelings on what could continue to happen with the Black Artists Retreat. As we prepare for [B.A.R.] Chicago 2014 we are seeking proposals that explore a range of topics related to black cultural production in its many forms.

We identified four focus areas that can lend structure to the concerns of the community without overdetermining what the community itself thinks is important. Proposals, while open, should fall under one of the following four categories: 

Research/Advocacy/Criticism/Exhibition

This open proposal is an opportunity for individuals to share their own thoughts on where our cultural production stands. What are the issues that we now face? What are the themes, concepts, and ideas that underscore critical thought and artist’s production?

Assembling a diverse and intergenerational group of proposal reviewers will allow us to assess where there is consensus. The invited panelists will meet in New York City to review proposals and select the presenters for [B.A.R.] Chicago 2014. Those proposals selected will have the period from May to August to expand their abstract in order to more fully present their ideas during the August retreat.

Please consider how your proposal can contribute to and foster the discussion of concerns facing the entire [B.A.R.] community, your proposal may consider individual presentations or group presentations and panels.
At this time there is no funding for the realization of proposals.

March 31: Proposals Due

April: Proposal review and deliberation

May: Chosen proposal authors contacted

August 21-23: Proposals presented as part of [B.A.R.] Chicago 2014

For complete information, including application and proposal guidelines, click here.

B.A.R. (Black Artists Retreat) Web site

Vera List award goes to Chicago's Theaster Gates

New School Prize Goes to Theaster Gates
by Randy Kennedy, The New York Times, November 11, 2012

related:

In Grand Crossing, a House Becomes a Home for Art
by Rachel Cromidas, The New York Times, April 7, 2011

Black sutra

Chelsea's Rubin Museum of Art, a beautiful home for the classic arts of the Himalayan region, regularly looks far beyond the Himalayas for ideas, imagery and energies that resonate with its spiritual focus. Last Saturday, the Rubin hosted If We Breathe, a living installation by Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist Theaster Gates that featured members of The Black Monks of Mississippi, five Black men and women whose performance practice involved the unexpected blending of gospel, blues and Buddhist chant; yoga asanas and the strumming of cello.

At their 2pm public performance, Charisma Sweat's mellow gospel vocals led us up the museum's spiraling staircase to a tiny gallery. There Khari Lemuel plucked spare notes from his cello, while Aya-Nicole Cook performed a smooth yoga sequence before sitting in meditation. In a short while, the monks quietly retreated, and the audience dispersed.

That performance--part of an afternoon in which the group appeared on each hour, from noon to 3pm, and in "a special salon concert for high-level members"--could not have lasted much more than five minutes. For something so short and so understated, though, it left a residue of serenity with an undercurrent of soul that said firmly, without shouting, "We are present." To me, it suggested a place for difference, and our awareness of difference, within the context of sameness, the context of expectations--Buddhism is Asian; Buddhism in today's America is white and affluent; yoga in today's America is white and affluent; Black Americans are Christian, period. In its quiet way, this installation blew down all kinds of boundaries.

I didn't expect, though, that it might have something to suggest to me about dance writing. But I found a thought arising, unbidden, about dance criticism and about how prominent critics of dance and other disciplines have recently taken defensive postures about the value and even the very survival of their profession. It was this question: "What if we were to think of our dance criticism not as 'my job' but as 'my practice?'"

How might that shift things? How might commitment to practice open up, for each of us, the possibility of humility, curiosity, attention, creativity? What if we realized we had nothing to protect and much to learn and exchange?

Really, I don't know why that thought about practice arose at that particular moment, but I thank Gates, Sweat, Cook, Lemuel, Yaw Agyeman and Dayna Lynn for planting the seed.

Theaster Gates: The Black Monks of Mississippi performing at 2010, the Whitney Biennial

More videos:

The Black Monks of Mississippi on blip.tv

Theaster Gates lectures at Milwaukee Art Museum

For information on current and future programs of the Rubin Museum of Art, click here.

The Black Monks of Mississippi

Rubin Museum of Art:

Theaster Gates and the Black Monks of Mississippi

Saturday, January 22

Echoing his video installation in Grain of Emptiness, sculptor, urban planner, and performance artist Theaster Gates infuses the gallery with live monastic chanting at the top of each hour. Monks layer meditative sutras and gospel singing in this accumulative performance, juxtaposing the Buddhist and African American spiritual experiences. Each performance is distinct, building upon the experience of the previous hour.

Public performances at 12, 1, 2 and 3pm

Free with museum admission

(complete information)

Rubin Museum of Art

150 West 17th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues), Manhattan

212-620-5000

(directions)