On Blast

At the prompting of one of my professors, I am exploring some of the complexities I've experienced relating to black artists within the art world.  Usually, I recount these episodes in whispered tones and furtive glances, to avoid upsetting the apple cart, but in the context of learning this feels unnecessarily sneaky.  So, I'm putting it on blast.  Critical discourse is a required element of this game and I figured I might as well include these observations as a part of the historical record.  Speaking of history- make sure you investigate creating an ephemera file at your local public library, interview your colleagues and embrace the power of the post (My address is 91 Howe Street #105 | New Haven, CT 06511).  Scholarly writing is beholden to research- don't be afraid to add your perspective to the mix.  Keep a record!

As I am constantly reading (and spending waaaay too much on magazines), I happened upon an interview with Clifford  Owens by Nick Stillman.  I am  slowly coming to terms with the fact that I am a performance artist (arrgh!).  I would much rather be a monumental sculptor or a painter, but alas, that is not my lot in life.  In fact, I believe that it is my general suspicion of the performance genre that ensures authenticity in my work. But I digress.  As I was reading I was struck by the passage below:

Clifford Owens: Absolutely.  Young artists have no sense of history.

Nick Stillman: Why, Cliff not enough teaching?

Clifford Owens:  (laughter) Not enough good teaching, perhaps.  But I’m not sure it even comes through academia.  Something else is happening right now with younger artists and their sense of history.  It’s as if what preceded them is of no value or never really happened.  I am always amazed when I talk to women artists in college who have no interest in feminist art.  There seems to be this frightening, alarming return to the modernist notion of the self contained, genius originator.  Young artists in particular don’t want to acknowledge antecedents.  I’m not really interested in recuperating history and I’m certainly not interested in romantic nostalgia for the past, but I’m very aware of the history.  I mean, painters are always painting against the history of painting.  Performance art seems so new, but there’s been so much development in the past 40 or 50 years.

BOMB Magazine | Number 117/ Fall 2011

First, many young artists have an overwhelming sense of history.  In fact, they are so historically astute that they speak of predecessors as adjectives- their own work reduced to a listing of references rather than the experiential origins of their practice. Having recently been introduced to this ARTSPEAK through my New Haven arrival, it seems more of a disservice,  as potential mentors jockey for position by identifying what a student's work looks like rather than questioning its intention and pushing  deeper and  beyond the reference.  I think we need to be interested in what all this access to information is doing to our relationship with other artists, other professionals, other human beings.  Through the internet we are able to easily access historical context.  With the click of a mouse we can read, see and hear a variety of enactments, but I wonder how all of this information  serves to maintain the boundaries that (performance) artists should be pushing against.  As a black female (performance) artist, my history is unconfined by "the past 40 or 50 years" that Mr. Owens alludes to.  It stretches into the proto-sphere of performance art engineered by luminaries such as Moms Mabley, Zora Neale Hurston and Father Divine.  

About a year ago I received a call from a young woman speaking on behalf of Mr. Owens.  She spoke of project he was working on that would serve as a living record of performance art created by black people.  I was delighted that he would spearhead such a important document and hopeful that I could contribute in some way that was consistent with my own practice.  I was informed that he was requesting scores from black artists that he would chose "at random" to perform at P.S.1.  How they got my contact information was never revealed, nor how Mr. Owens came to be aware of my work and when I suggested that I would feel more comfortable speaking directly with Mr. Owens, I was told about his busy schedule.  At the time, a stipulation of  my performance scores was that the performer(s) had to self-identify as female. While this excluded my possible inclusion in the re-performance aspect of the project, it seemed a worthwhile candidate for the historical record.  Ultimately, this reasoning was not in line with the project and the invitation was rescinded.  

Admittedly, my ego is on the healthier side, but the decision to put this experience 'on blast 'is borne out the comments excerpted above.  Reality reveals that history is being made moment by moment, and to make a blanket statement that "young artists have no sense of history" is just plain reckless- especially in light of the fact that Mr. Owens is an educator.  Generational striations are fictions that can prove divisive.  I've found it's the person-to-person interactions that provide the most supportive context for growth (in and out of the academy).   But what do I know?  I'm just a young artist with no sense of history :-)