The Necessary Contradictions of Alternative Spaces: A Bay Area Case Study
Countercultures must derive from the comfort of the establishments they despise. Here’s a little essay that tells you why.
Countercultures and art movements often stem from alternative or unconventional communities and spaces that strive to break from cultural norms, usually in response to some societal institution or ideology. However, the community spaces where these movements originate do not always portray or imitate the ideologies of the movements themselves. In some cases, the upbringings of countercultural movements take place in community spaces contradictory to the causes or viewpoints of the counterculture.
Take a small art movement from San Francisco’s Mission District as an example:
The Mission School art movement emerged in the 1990’s and persisted into the 2000’s, emphasizing ephemeral street art, graffiti, and cartoons as a medium of expression. The School was heavily influenced by the Rat Bastards Protective Association, a past San Franciscan Beat era art collective led by Bruce Conner that included other experimental artists such as Jay DeFeo.
Much to the sound of the Rat Bastards, which utilized trash and assemblage works as expressive mediums to counter the commerce and conventions of art galleries, the Mission School also utilized unconventional art methods and mediums, including the use of spray paint, pens, objects found on the street, and even scraps of art, to ephemerally express urban culture, resistance to the burgeoning tech economy, and the local response to gentrification in the Mission District in what was considered a “lowbrow” movement by critics at the time.
The use of street-oriented mediums and ephemeral, messy styles empowered artists as appropriating analogs during this transitionary period in San Francisco. Reminiscent of the Rat Bastards, members of the Mission School also rejected conventional, commercial art practices by refusing to sell their art, and instead preferred art trade. Other influential artists of the movement, such as Alicia McCarthy and Chris Johansson, presented anti-institutional agendas and expressed societal nonconformity.
At the surface, the Mission School art movement sounds as if it derived from artists directly affected by the urban struggle taking place in San Francisco, or from a group of individuals facing some localized conflict in the Mission District. However, the Mission School had its beginnings from rather privileged and institutional art communities in the city. Communities in the San Francisco Art Institute and the Jack Hanley Gallery are where many of the Mission School artists found their calling to demonstrate an anti-institutional, anti-commercial agenda using unconventional, messy, urban art mediums.
The School’s upbringing presents a peculiar case on the significance of spaces countercultures derive from: the art institutions themselves led to the Mission School’s anti-institutional art movement. But is this contradiction really an issue? Does the Mission School’s upbringing devalue the movement?
The Mission School art scene is not the first example of an anti-commercial, anti-institutional movement stemming from a privileged, commercial institution. During the First World War, a collection of intellectuals in war neutral Switzerland developed the Dada art movement, which rejected capitalist society and modern aesthetics at the time, substituting these ideas with irrationality, anti-nationalism, and a penchant for far-left politics. It appears that the comfort of the Swiss institution, the epitome of untouched, institutional privilege in a war-torn Europe, led to the fostering of anti-institutional ideologies in response to the phenomena happening around the country. It is this contradictory setting that created the Dada art movement that has become a cornerstone movement in contemporary and modern art.
An example of Mission School art. Note the broken scrap board canvas, very messy paint layers, and cartoon imagery. It seems unimaginable to think an art piece like this was procured within an art institution.
Maybe that academic, institutional upbringings in a community surrounded by social and political struggle provides a fostering space required for countercultural or alternative ideologies to develop within a community. The academic, supportive, free speech environment allows multiple point of views to be heard that can help inspire messages of anti-institution and commercialism in a region that otherwise would completely reject such notions. Although such an environment appears contradictory for an anti-institutional culture to take form, this setting is likely ideal for such art movements to take place.
Therefore, in a San Francisco that is emerging as a commercial center for technology, there is still hope for alternative art movements and countercultures to prosper in the area as long as some institutions hold onto artistic freedom and academic discussion. In doing so, there may arrive a community of afflicted San Franciscans that may coalesce and counter the commercial culture San Francisco is currently experiencing, even if they must coalesce within the commercial institution itself.
And don’t be fooled, this type of movement is not just limited to dynamic cities like San Francisco.
As a former student of an alternative school in Livermore, I experienced firsthand the contradictions of alternative communities and spaces in my suburban town. Coming from a high school with very little structure, where we were allowed to paint on the sidewalks and create trebuchets for calculus class, in a town that reflects traditionalist values, I could see there was a contradiction between the economic and cultural identities of the local families who supported the school and the curriculum the school taught. This contrast becomes particularly apparent when you examine Livermore’s culture.
Livermore, formerly “Livermore’s Ranch”, was once a convenient resting point for gold rush travelers heading east to the Sierras. Post-rush, the city hosted a rancher and winery community that endured into the 20th century. Shortly after World War II, an airbase next to the Altamont Hills was converted into a national security lab, now called the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).
In the early 1960’s, a scientific “call to action” in response to the Cold War and fear of nuclear annihilation caused Livermore to undergo a large cultural shift, bringing hordes of nuclear, middle to upper-middle class white families into town to work for LLNL. Patriotic scientists were now working on nuclear weaponry right beside grape growers and rancheros. This unique dichotomy persists to this day, with now a few silicon valley commuters sprinkled in.
In understanding Livermore’s population, it seems very unusual that an alternative school would pop up from the support of local “Labbie” and rancher families. And even as a 14 year old, I could see how interesting it was that someone’s Dad working on cold fusion would want their kid to paint murals and design posters for the Occupy Wall Street Movement.
But as I examine the role and origins of alternative spaces, I now see that Livermore was the perfect place for my school to develop. In the midst of an economic depression in 2008, Livermore’s scientists were relatively untouched, working in stable defense jobs with no likelihood that their futures would be in any jeopardy. However, everything around the scientists was changing. In seeing the rancher communities suffer and experiencing how a global economic depression can limit the pursuit of science, it must have changed their view of what the right path to success is in this world.
As confidence in the political and economic structure lessened, the patriotic, traditionalist people of Livermore now had conflict with their own identity. It led them, in their new, privileged, untouched position in society, to consider trying alternative means of education to hopefully better their children’s lives, and to break away from the traditionalist education system that has led people into joblessness and national cynicism. From this conflict, the Livermore Valley Charter Preparatory School, my alternative school, was formed in 2010.
If an alternative space can be procured in a conservative suburban town, it can happen anywhere.
Thus, to make an alternative space effective, it needs to come from a supportive, coddled upbringing from an institution of privilege in order to effectively counter the norms of society. Otherwise, it will be difficult for a countercultural movement to make ground in today’s America.
