Social Practice

Over 100 people assembled outside Penneys and then walked up O’Connell street past the banks, as far as Anglo Irish Bank offices on Henry Street.The Citizens March was organised at short notice by Claiming our Future Limerick following last week’s Citizen’s Assembly held in the Absolute Hotel. The consensus at that meeting, was that a Citizens event should be put together in January.

An early sketch was a larger Assembly type event, with talks, presentations, and LOCAL ACTIONS.

A blank canvas, over the Christmas break, put on our thinking caps, and try to imagine what this event could be:

What could be it’s objectives?

How could it contribute to reforming a Republic that is broken?

Giving people back the civic confidence to say...”Enough is Enough”.

WHAT IS CLAIMING OUR FUTURE

Claiming Our Future is an umbrella group attempting to create change in Ireland. Claiming Our Future wants to unite the strength of individuals, volunteers, community organisations, and charities. It wants to co-ordinate civic events and actions that force change and reform in Ireland.

Claiming our Future was kick started in 2010 through funds from private charitable foundations,

and help from individual civil society and trade union members. It is not a political party.

 WHAT DO THEY ( WE) WANT?

A Claiming Our Future event in Dublin on October 30^th 2010, brought together over 1000 people, and agreed the following priorities:

• Radical reform of political institutions to make them accountable to the people

• A coherent strategy for the economy, jobs and natural resources

• An ethical banking system that serves the needs of the local economy

• Greater income equality

• Universal access to quality public services

• Human rights and responsibilities as the core values of our legal and political systems, and the basis of our international relations

Poster- Protest in Limerick in response to the IMF in Irleand

Well we did make some noise, we didn't bring pots and pans to  bang together to create that noise but get heard. We meet at Pennys at 6, we arrived early to get a good spot but much to my horror there was lots of space and only about 20 people there with make shift posters and waiting for it all to kick start. discussed the state of the country with the organizer of the event, very passionate man indeed and i even found myself getting distracted when he started to throw statistics at me. A very passionate man and it was great to talk to him. The Gardai arrived to keep control of the few protesters, luckily for them they didnt have much work to do but stand back and take the long gaze. I was on the anarchists mode, it felt good and I wanted to be heard, and I felt a real urge to shake the public out of complacency, designed to “ dramatize the issue so that it can no longer be ignored.'' 'Direct Action' - Wikipedia

There was a small turnout but considering that it had only been organised two days previous, and with a population of about a hundred people i guess it was OK.

I think I need to work very hard to be in a position to understand social practice  from a political perspective or to be in a position to write about social practice, but my understanding of it is that it involves the social, the people, the community, and an interaction and relations on both. I am not sure that the word ART needs to be considered at all. At this stage I am not capiciated to write about social practice without the social and the practice.

'The similarities between the avant-garde and anarchism extend beyond their similar “shock and rupture” tactics; political theorists and art historians alike have declared both to be failed movements. In the avant-garde movement, this failure arises from a paradoxical hierarchy encased in the primacy of the art object. If the art object itself contains the power to elicit epiphany, than the artist is elevated to a status “uniquely open to the world,” and viewers that are open to the transformative experience of the object are likewise more educated and socially aware than those who are not'.1

Sue Bell Yank discusses Artists for Social Justice

I went to my peers presentation today- they were responding  to a talk given the previous week. They were discussing Public Art, Its role and how it can be or is associated to socially engaging art. When i think of Public Art I think of outdoor art that has been made public. 

On reflection, Public Art relates to art pieces being commissioned by public authorities for the public domain. The way I see it is that the art piece then becomes socially engaging is when it is engaged with, even if it is vandalized with. that's engagement!

I like the title of the MA I am doing, Social Practice and the Creative Environment- there is no 'art' in the title and maybe this is something that we should consider? should it be ? Do we need to consider art when talking about social practice? If we answer yes to this then we must consider what art is today? ( as i have been questioning in  previous posts) 

I want to look at negotiations between art and society and a certain creative and critical thinking about communities. What is this gab between art and community, where does it exist?  What are the aesthetics of everyday life and can we present it through  art.

I think it is important to maintain the social practice but to write about it , to document it,  as a case study, then hopefully I will be understand it at a deeper level and be in a better position to critique social, active, collaborative, public... art.

Social practice cannot exist without a collaboration of ideas, thoughts, practices, and social beings. This practice should lead into productive approaches and discursive communication. This cannot exist without solidarity.

1. Grant Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004), 27.