TITLE:
Art Activism, Art theory or just plain Art

ABSTRACT:
"Is that Art?" "What are you doing in Home Depot?" "I just don’t understand, so I can’t form an opinion?" "The radio seems to roll in and out of the station, why?" These are a few of the questions I have been asked about my project on Precocious Puberty. Technology, theory, activism, art, intent, content, public and private, the overlapping of interdisciplinary practices causes problems that inhibit understanding and flow of communication.



Version 4 5_30_07 : Last night I had my final Art Critique. I walked and projected my Precocious Puberty Art video and sound around the University of California, Irvine campus, performing my Portable Projections on foot paths, trailers, medical and research buildings, the library and in Starbucks. It was meant to be a site specific Art presentation. Version 1 December 2006: I presented a long Precocious Puberty video in a Women's Studies class for a grade. A DVD screened on a mobile Television. My video was my paper, (but I also had to write a research paper for the final grade.) Version 2 May 2007: I demonstrated a re-edited version of my Precocious Puberty video with the sound transmitted by radio plugged in at the wall. It was shown on a computer to visiting artist, Sharon Hayes and other workshop participants as an ‘Artwork’ in progress, non site specific. Version 3 5_07_07 through 5_30_07: With backpack, projector, DVD player, radio transmitter and radios I have been projecting and testing the Precocious Puberty project in public spaces. I walked around Long Beach and in Orange County projecting and transmitting on streets, and billboards, in Malls, hospitals and in warehouse stores, on fast food joints, oil rigs and all free walls.

Joshua Kinberg, at right in a video image, devised a bicycle that could spray the ground with messages in chalk, and was arrested during the convention. His device was held for over a year.
"AIDS Art Activism Women 1980s Guerrilla girls

"What is that, Art?" "What is Activism?" "What happens if the viewer doesn't get what you are trying to say?" These are the obvious questions that I am asked when I critiqued about my project. Can Art be placed into the public sphere, be conceptually driven, but not necessarily propaganda dominant? Can we just allow the spectator to interpret on their own, crossing into the artists space only if they choose? Can the Spectator, scholar, and Artist allow each other to be in the same space, and not all be satisfied? These are the questions I am asking when I perform with the Precocious Puberty Projections.

My blog, as an alternate text, it is my academic paper, and this notion of crossing the boundaries set up by the principles and criteria of the written paper raises the same type of questions that my Art project Precocious Puberty Projections does when placed in alternate venues. We as viewers and participants, have preconceived ideas about art, art activism, art and technology and emergent practices, performance, public art and the public sphere and all these ideas that have been created over time create a favoritism in the way we interpret different situations or our academic production of knowledge. I am 'narrow casting' my public demonstrations of my project into already narrow defined spaces, in an attempt to provoke a dialog into the way we bias the productions of knowledge at university.

INTRODUCTION:
As I walk my way through the conceptual minefield of understanding the finer qualities of knowledge and Art, the first problem that I encounter, is the fact that we are mostly, already entrenched in our ideas about Art and Activism. This creates a seamless, even unconscious, predilection towards whether we will, or even if we are prepared to notice, Art in the Public Sphere. Take for example the inherent difference between Richard Longs, work where he walks contemplatively through a desert leaving his a line of footprint as art in the public or the Graffiti artist marking the subway wall, the issues of legality, the situatedness and the actions override the aesthetics and content of the work

Calder stencil art Richard Long

Krzysztof Wodiczko

It is generally thought that Art is ‘enriching’ 1. Art improves the quality of our lives, promotes a cultured, democratic, educated society. Mention activism or propaganda, then Art becomes a radical way of interpreting oppositional ideas and tends towards marginalization. Can my Art walk this divide, being both activist and artistic? By showing my project under the 4 different situations, outlined above, I became acutely aware of the problematics of interdisciplinary practice, and the boundaries created by different languages, visual and written, personal and cultural, not only in the Arts or Academia but between the Public and Private. What is it to claim to do Activist Art? Do I have to claim to be pushing an agenda or can I wait until the public interacts with me as I have intended? If they don’t want to interact with me, then they are left to create own interpretations.The fact that the spectator has a choice in participating at different levels, creates a place where they might not understand or even misrepresent my intentions. So this continuous action of re situating an interactive performance in different places is loaded with intent and clogged with preconceived ideas, ideas that are like the "elephant in the small room" - seen but not discussed By allowing the viewer to participate or not just doing Art for Arts Sake, I am staging a place for discourse.



As I walk, I am engaging the public, by simply projecting the video in a public space. But people need to engage me, to fully understand the videos content. So what is my intent? My intent is mixed. I am totally aware of the content that drives my process and inspires the project, historically and technically. But, I am also OK with the fact, that if you do not want to know my activist agenda, you can simply walk away with your own ideas about the project. This practice of “sitting on the fence”, allowing for a mere superficial reading, challenges the Academics of Art in universities (Brecht) where the post postmodern Art critique relies on a specific hierarchy; idea, context, materiality and then the aesthetics when making the art. I want both, people to just look and others to engage.

Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel,

Precocious Puberty Projections is not just "Art for Arts Sake". It is not a Dadaist tactic, where the everyday object is raised to the position of High Art, by being placed in the gallery space. Precocious Puberty is an educated decision, where I am placing my conceptually relevant Art, into the public sphere for consumption. If the passerby wants to engage in it themselves, beyond the quick superficial glance, then they can use a radio, ask questions or simply make shadow puppets. Precocious Puberty is also a practice in Intervention Art where I am simply putting High Art into an unconventional space, doing an anti-Duchamp.




BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1. Art or propaganda Dewey + Adomo
Almost all people - even if they seldom articulate or act on this belief – believe that art is good in an ‘enriching’ type of way, making us better people and promoting a healthy and free society. Conversely, most people believe that propaganda is bad because it our experience, reducing our society to one – dimensionality and reducing our freedom. Art enriches – propaganda improvises – we have to assume that the different between politics and art is discernible easily visible