May 7, 2021 ~ For Rhonda
An hour wasn’t nearly enough time to grapple with some of the wonderful seed questions you had for me, Ceci, Wade, Dena, Marcella, and Charlie. I feel we barely scratched the surface of how we see exhibition spaces evolving in the future and even if that is something any of us want. I absolutely agree that all of us have professional and academic experiences that speak to the ways we might think of how we envision the future of art in the Bay Area and beyond. I hope you don’t mind, but I wanted to try and share some thoughts came to mind after our conversation. The answers below are more for me, selfishly, because I love processing (to the point of exhaustion, sometimes).
Before we look to the future, I’d like to ask you to describe an experience/exhibition/other in the past that provided a transformative framework for your present position or outlook.
The Refiguring the Future exhibition I co-curated with artist and scholar Heather Dewey-Hagborg in February 2019 was probably the most impactful and transformative curatorial work I’ve done to date. Back in 2016, Heather was given an “Honourable Mention” at Ars Electronica. While she graciously accepted the mention, she became curious about the recognition of mostly cisgender, straight men especially the majority of recipients of the coveted Golden Nica. Along with Addie Wagenknecht, Camilla Mørk Røstvik, and Kathy High, they co-authored a piece for The Guardian titled, “Why women are asking a major art and technology festival to #KissMyArs.” The online campaign piqued my interest and I had written about Heather’s work and we connected. Eventually, we met in Point Arena for an event called World Wide West and became instant friends talking about my experience in biotech and her work in biohacking and explorations in consent within the sciences. We co-founded a group called REFRESH and decided to try and tackle this problem as a collective. We partnered with Eyebeam and 205 Hudson Gallery in New York to co-curate a group focused on QTBIPOC and disabled artists with a strong desire to re-figure and envision, not just a different art ecosystem, but a different world.
Of course, during the panel discussion, I mentioned the 2019 p5.js Contributor’s conference as a pivotal moment in thinking about software and what it means to upend the systems that have made the majority of people complacent and acquiesce to these infrastructures (out of convenience, mostly). What would happen if we, collectively, made a commitment to actively work towards accessibility and inclusion when building creative tools and platforms? I, oftentimes, feel that I’m preaching to the choir. Yet a deep frustration that I’ve always had within the art world is based around and adheres to a capitalist system that increasingly becomes unforgiving and still based on, especially now, the popularity of an artist. But I’m digressing now…
If exhibition expenses and COVID protocols were not a consideration, how would you be producing exhibitions this time next year? In 5 Years?
It’s funny to think about these questions considering the past year we’ve had and many museums and galleries trying to create digital spaces that, oftentimes, in the past were not a consideration. Despite researching and observing new media and digital art practices for years, I’m still a huge fan of an embodied experience. But I do believe that no matter where someone is located, that there aspects of practices that are accessible in multi-sensory ways for a broader audience. If expenses were not a consideration, I would love for people to be able to correspond with the people that enabled a show to be created, curated, and installed. If a physical show, I would love the ability for shows to travel and become site and region specific to be in conversation with the host community. Admittedly, being a grad student, my mind goes directly to reinvesting in student shows and allowing for a type of stewardship of work, knowledge, and experiences. This sentiment comes from a place of seeing many graduate and undergraduate students not being able to physically show their work this past year, which is a part of the experience of school.
If you could create your own arts ecosystem (socio/economic/other) how would you want to show art? What new tools for engagement or new frameworks for participation in art patronage/viewership/production would you like to see in the next 5 years?
I would want the art to be shown in the way(s) it was meant to be shown by the artist. Also, the creation of multiple points of entry for community members. Simple and accessible ways for people to read (suggested) alt-text and image descriptions (in addition to the typical wall text). While many museums have audio tours in multiple languages, my hope would for visitors and participants to be able to leave messages and exchanges in whatever language they like. In thinking about this, I wanted to share a prototyping event I attended at the SF MOMA a few years ago.
Who is your audience in that ecosystem and what is the relationship between audience, venue/platform, and artist?
A few years ago, I was told that I didn’t have a brand and therefore not really having an audience. This observation about me and my practice made me feel a bit insecure about how I might be doing things in my life. However, I didn’t bother to change and I think this is in large part that the individual that had this opinion of me wanted an easy, identifiable, and digestible way to both consume and understand me as a writer, artist, and educator. All that being said, I don’t like thinking of an “audience,” per se. Rather, especially as a YBCA fellow, one of the questions that has continued to come up for me, for all of the fellows, really, is “for whom are you accountable to?” But if I must choose, from the vantage point of someone in non-profit that is already trying to grapple with how we maintain the FLOSS philosophy (Free Libre Open Source Software) in a seemingly hyper capitalist world, then I’m committed and accountable to the communities I serve (or my intended audience) including artists, project contributors, educators, and students. These are the people that matter most to me and why not allow them the space and place to build out relationships of their own. One of the sentiments that stuck with me was when Ceci stated that she hopes people see GAS shows and go off and want to do their own version. This resonated deeply because I feel this way with my academic, professional, and creative work. I want people to feel and believe that they can do what I’ve done. Lastly, to start changing the culture so it’s not about audience, but world building through art making and never forgetting that it is, almost always, the artists that pave the way for radical change and (re)evolution.
On the digital thread of the time-space continuum, here is a post from May 7, 2011.
