Marginal v. Mainstream?

[Linda Frye Burnham]

What is "marginal" and what is "mainstream" in art? Many object to the term "community-based art" because it sets the work apart from "real art" or "high art," which is assigned a higher value in society. Read a lovely passage by Lucy Lippard, writing about the caltegorization "outsider art" on the occasion of the 25th birthday of an organization called GRACE in Vermont: "‘Outsider’" art is a somewhat arrogant term because it has no mirror image. Artworld artists don’t call themselves ‘insiders,’ if for no other reason than the myth of all artists being outsiders, even outlaws. For most of the 20th century, ‘high art’ has been seen paradoxically as the inside story told by these outsiders. Content, meaning and accessibility have seldom been priorities. Today much mainstream art, driven by fashion and the market, has gotten so far away from daily lived experience that expressions of basic needs have come to be seen as the turf of those ‘outside’ of art history." (http://www.graceart.org/content.php?id=4) What do you think?

[andage]

Some "communities" have adopted the concept "outsider" not only as 'basic expressions' but also through the artist's "isolation from the society by their way of life". Also considered is the artist's psychological condition (eg. "mental illness have created pre-conditions for personal self-expression, that seems to be the most intuitive and intriguing, the most free and sincere, at the same being "beyond"." However, the artist can also dubbed "outsider" due to a simple "lack of interest" (aka. "conventional ignorance").

See: http://www.museum.ru/outsider/
"The term Outsider Art is not an equivalent to the art of the insane; we use this term while speaking about spontaneous art of non-professional artists who do not follow any cultural (academic) traditions, who do not recognize themselves as artists and who are mostly moved by their inner need to create." The Collection of the Moscow Museum of Outsider Art was founded - albeit unwittingly - in 1989. At the time, perestroika had focused public attention on both new ideas in art and on the plight of the handicapped and mentally ill in Soviet Society. In 1990, the first exhibit of art by Russian mental patients opened in Moscow. It was hugely successful and traveled to several European capitals. During these travels, the Russian organizers of this exhibit were fascinated with the Western genre of Art Brut, or Outsider Art.

See Also: http://www.silverladder.com/art/marginal/marginex.htm
"Most often, the drawings would appear in the margins, as not to interfere with the notes on the actual page... hence the name 'Marginal Art.'"

[elisabetha77]

Linda-

I embrace the term community-based art, not as a tool to set the work apart, but as a way of attempting to describe the work. I look at is as another theater group might explain itself as "producing new work" or "theater for youth". Whether or not the term community-based art is a) understood and b) a term inviting this "mainstream" to alienate, is another story.

While attempting to do graduate work in community-based art, I and many of my fellow graduate students came up against this idea of outsider or low-brow art. We started feeling like victims, thinking that we weren't getting the support we needed from faculty because community-based art wasn't "accepted" in the mainstream art world.

However, I and a colleague embarked on a quest to see if this was an accurate statement. What we found was quite amazing. We found that foundations were fiddling with their grant guidelines trying to fund more community-based art and art aiming to encourage community involvement, including major foundations such as Cummings, Wallace and Ford. We also found that there was a lot of community-based artmaking that was being funded and experienced. Companies just struggling to get by in the 80s were now mid-sized (whatever that means), with large mailing lists and were selling out shows and exhibitions.

Working with and studying Cornerstone for years, I realized how much the company had grown between 1998 and now. For example, the first theater to be a guest on the Mark Taper Forum's stage was not the Roundabout (perhaps not the best example), it was a community-based theater company - Cornerstone. It seemed that community-based arts were coming into the mainstream at a rapid pace. Cornerstone's Crossings had a cover feature in the LA Times' Calendar section - no small feat in this town!

What my colleague and I found lacking, however, was the educational acceptance of community-based arts. At major institutions, programs are just now, if at all, being put into place to include community-based arts in study. It seems that if we are outsiders at all, it is in the academic world. This notion of continuing the movement of community-based art is difficult when we look at the founders and how the younger generation isn't even being taught that this theater exists. The first time I learned about it was from an American history class - not a theater class. I feel very strongly that whether it implies an arrogance on my part, that someone wanting to focus on community-based theater in a university setting, especially one known for its theater program, that this someone will be seen as an outsider. Faculty, for the most part, will have no idea what to do with this student.

I think that those I look up to in the field have done their part and now it's up to my generation to continue and advance the work. It gets hard when you feel alienated in the academic world when you're simply trying to give to community-based art what other art has - a history - a foundation for study. Getting the younger generation to learn about community-based arts, and therefore get excited about practicing it, means teaching about it. Yes, practial experience is so very important, which is why we students do internships and fellowships. However, there is something about classroom reading and discussion that advances a person's thoughts and passion in art.

Don't get me wrong, some amazing work is being done in the field to encourage this and I am excited to get to the, in Malcom Gladwell's terms, "tipping point" of community-based art that will leave us not having to feel like outsiders and victims in the world of art, but rather have us seen as artists by the mainstream. I feel that tipping point comes in academia where instead of majoring in acting or playwrighting or theater history, a student can major in community-based art.

Forgive the long post, but I think you can see I've thought about this a whole lot.

Best,

Elizabeth

[Linda Frye Burnham]

Thank you, Elizabeth. I'm glad you have done this research. I will call the attention of the readers of APInews to your post this month. Re the academic world, I assume you have seen our data base on "Places To Study." They are beginning to proliferate; a recent graduate major added in Florida was imediately flooded with applications. But we also have CAN articles talking about how hard it has been for individual faculty members to establish these courses, having to jimmy them into all kinds of strange nooks and crannies in the university. Also, the term communty-based art is being used to disguise other kinds of programs as well.

One of the reasons we started CAN was that we realized the field would never be healthy until it was recognized in the academic world (certainly not the only criterion for sustainability, but a key one). That's one reason we have posted all this primary material on our site, so academics will use it as secondary research to write serious pieces from. That is happening now. I would never call our site an academic site, as it is just as important for artists and their community partners to use it, as well as people who are only thinking about doing this work. (We are always getting queries from city administrators wanting to know if Public Art is a good investment for their communities!)

The funding programs you mention are increasing, and there are some brave foundations actually using the words "art and social change" (like Rockefeller and Cummings). But these are teensy tiny little pieces of the pie. The bigger pieces are still going to the SOBs (symphonies, operas and ballets). That's still what people mean when they say "mainstream." With arts funding going down the tubes in a major way, that's what most communities are trying to "save." Not that there's anything wrong with that, a 1,000 flowers should bloom. But it would be so tragic to LOSE Cornerstone -- or any of the other eight, great, diverse, longtime community-based ensembles we covered in our study "Performing Communities" -- in favor of, say, 19th Century European classical music. In a way, we have to start thinking about ways to get more communities to support this work in a healthy way, and stop obsessing on federal, state and foundation funding.

While I do think community arts' time has come in many ways. it's really important for everybody who cares to think about how to build the field: with writing, convenings, funding, curriculum, great projects and all kinds of publicity. I just hope it's not too late for so many of the pioneers, who have given up their lives to this work and have no resources for their old age.

[Nicholas Lowe]

I am excited to have caught this debate through the AIP listing this month. This discussion string sounds very familar to the debates and issues experienced here in the UK and in contiental Europe too. Our situation has seen the emergance of community arts through a series of ten year cycles.

I have worked in education as a teacher of Community Art at the University of the West of England at Bristol. The BA and MA courses there are still functioning under the title Fine Art in Context. They grew out of a 25 year tradition of socially engaged arts teaching that was developed by a dedicated team at Dartington College of Art near Totnes in Devon in the mid 70's. This team included David Harding,(now retired) Sally Morgan (now at Massey University, Wellington NZ) and Chris Crickmay,(also retired). I am possibly not the best person to do the background to this course real justice because I wasn't there but maybe someone who was will see this and fill in the gaps. The course began as a Diploma called Art and Social Context and drew it's core aims from the Community Arts' movements from the 1960's and 70's. Teaching included a practical and theoretical examination of the roles and strategies available to the artist, and questioned the terminology of the mainstream through critical writing by John Dewey, Paulo Friere to name but two. To cut a long story short, the course became a BA and in 1992 was moved to Bristol as 'Art and Social Context' BA Hons. and was later renamed Fine Art in Context. The team there was Sally Morgan the Departmental Head, Chris Crickmay and myself.

The issues spoken of in this discussion - academic reluctance and the perception that communitypractice = low leval practice were and are prevelant in education here, as much amongst sudents as among the faculty. In recognition of the need to build a discourse a network was established by Exteter University Art Dept. to include colleagues in other UK institutions with the intention of fostering discourse around teaching and learning and to enable the proliferation and exchange of relevant texts for research and teaching. This includes around 10 universities and is called the Contextual Practices Network

Through contacts I was making in Berlin at the Institute for Kunst im Kontext (http://www.kunstimkontext.hdk-berlin.de/ind.html) we were able to extend this network to colleagues in the wider continent, and the European Contextual Practices Network was formed. In 2001 we convened a symposium called Kunst Kontext Vermittlung-Art Context Mediation (http://www.kunstimkontext.udk-berlin.de/ngbk/) to bring together colleagues from other institutions across the continent though it was mainly attended by represenatives from Germany Austria and the UK. A core group of people has continued to meet through the Interational Institute for Art and Environment INIFAE an organisation hosted by Cooperations in Wiltz, Luxembourg (the website is under development currently). The aims here are to develop a research forum, learning opportunities and a discourse around education. developments and outputs are slow but positive often held up by lack of funds.

Through all this we discoverd our experiences were paralelled and much of our discussion has concerned the similarities and institutional/structural differences. The aims and needs are very close and our experiences sound consistent with what you describe in the United States - the constant chipping away to be given space in the university, to teach and provide space for learning and research into community art practices.

Here in the UK too there has been a shift in funding criteria to include socially engaged practices, this is of course welcomed, though things are still not ideal and every ten years or so community arts practices are reinvented by succesive generations asking the same questions.

Only last week I received an Email about another forum almost ten years since the one I organised in Bristol (Community Arts in the 90's Finding a Context, 1995) This time under the banner "Interrupt: artists in socially engaged practice. Where does socially engaged, participatory and education arts activity stand within current debates around contemporary arts practice?" We still have much to learn from each other I think - Will the discussions move on this time?

[elisabetha77]

Such a great post Nicolas! I think I was a bit general in my comments earlier. I should have said something like "particularly in the US". However, you bring up two points I just want to touch on. The first is that I am noticing at least a few BA programs out there, which is very exciting. The lack of graduate programs aimed at training educators in the field is particularly of interest to me.

The second thing is the idea of forums, and I'll throw in institutes, being created to help feed the hunger of study in the field. I think that specifically what academia is uncomfortable with in the field is that training in community-based arts HAS to be both practical and theoretical. You can't be stuck in a classroom all day and learn what it takes to create and understand community-based art. I'm blanking but I think it was Carol Becker (?) who talked about institutions not wanting their art students to go out into the world and learn - a major mistake in her opinion in educating artists.

Cornerstone Theater is currently working on the planning stages of a summer institute that will hopefully allow graduate students to get the classroom teaching from Cornerstone members and practical experience by creating a community-based play using the company's methodology. I know other institutes such as this one exist and that's exciting. Of course, the problem arises when the cost of these institutes is too high, when universities don't recognize these training programs as academic, and when demand exceeds supply (although what a happy problem to have!)

I think my feelings about academia are focused on this idea that as community-based artists, we have to train ourselves. I feel like a child in saying this but it isn't fair that someone is deciding what is "important" enough to study and what isn't, usually placing community-based arts in the latter category. We can train ourselves all we want, but does that give us the "stamp of approval" one needs to teach at the university level? It's like a vicious cycle - you want to learn the craft in school but there are few teachers. You learn the art art by doing and researching but can't take that knowledge and give it to others "officially" if you want to avoid others going through what you did. The alienated artist syndrome, I guess. Does that make sense?

Forgive the rambling - it's been a long day but I wanted to respond.

Best,

Elizabeth

[Nicholas Lowe]

Elizabeth, I hadn't read your previous post as being a generalisation, quite the opposite. The contexts in which we live are related in so many ways and it's interesting to see what works, what is new and what is specific to our respective contiental experiences.

I was interested to see your quote - 'institutions not wanting their art students to go out into the world and learn' (we should check the origin of this) from Carol Becker? The strength of the programme we ran in Bristol was based upon having persuaded the univeristy to recognise that by including, what we called, 'Professional Practice' in our curriculum the students would be learning somthing which they would learn after they had graduated through direct experience. I have often stated that the majority of university trained artists do well inspite of rather than because of their education. Research in the UK shows Fine Arts Graduates to be amongst the most employable group because they are experimenters who find it easy to transfer their skills.

I have to stress that Bristol is not the only department in the UK to do this there are many - Art for Society at Wolverhampton; Art and Environment (graduate studies) at Glasgow; Also courses at Slaford, Plymouth, St Martins (London Institute) Sunderland, and Aberdeen.

It makes good sense to teach management skills and to look at practicalities around communication and audiences -addressing the maker/viewer/participant issue. Most students I worked with welcomed the opportunity to question assumptions around art and learn new strategies for working. The strength of the area was built upon the way in which we championed management and transferable skills as integral to practical art making.

To reflect back on the title of this discussion thread, 'Marginal V's Mainstream'; One of our public seminar series at Bristol called 'The Margins Create the Centre' was an exploration of socially engaged practices in relation to pedagogy through three forums, Public Art, Live Art, and Education - 12 artists and critics presented their work. all of them were operating through mainstream structures and all of them also were associated with marginal strategies or included a lived experience of marginalisation as a key informative influence in their work. This series very clearly addressed questions of what professionalism is and can be. Many students drew strength for this and for the first time saw themselves as an integral part of the mainstream, they realised that what they had to say was as valuable and could be heared next to so called 'mainstream' ideas.

Its an exciting field to be working in isn't it - and for now I'd better go work in that field, more later.

Best wishes - Nick