Convenings

Past Learning Exchange Reports:
Minneapolis, March 8–10, 2002

Open Space Session: Artistic Control and Community Engagement

What is the artist willing to give up?  Going from artists vision to community vision. 

Question of intent:  How relevant is intent to artistic control?  Where are you trying to go?  This should be determined at the beginning of the project, so there is a social contract that is agreed to; can be more explicit, in written goals, parameters.  It’s important for an artist to be able to say what s/he wants to get out of the collaboration. 

Take the time to get pissed off and time to say “Wow!”  Time to work through issues and appreciate what the people you are working with are doing. 

Artistic control is dependent on conditions of time and place.  Everyone agreed that it was good for artists to be able to set their own timeframe.

Any artist participating in collaboration has acknowledged giving up some degree of control.

Art as bridge-builder, connector.

If you're willing to be flexible, then you have control.

Lingering questions:  How does performance live beyond the moment?  Are differences in different artistic disciplines?  What about the next generation of artists? 

Ta-Coumba considers this type of work as "guerilla work, speaking for the voices of those not heard."  Political change was not the subject of his mural - but it was the effect.  Funders often divide who is "good" from who is not.  "Quality" becomes a way to eliminate projects for funding.  The community and public artists judge success differently from foundations.  For communities & public artists, success is partially measured by community input, the inclusion of language and attitudes from the community, the degree of engagement.  "Do you want the mural to stay untouched by graffiti, or do you want it painted over?" is one measure of success.   His efforts are about "bringing everyone up to and beyond your own level.  Not just about CREATING that art—but TEACHING—to achieve a level of quality." 

Example: To say "I want symbols" versus "here are the symbols I want."  He always shares his previous

Work before working with a group, so that they can see his vision, too.  Compromise: "If it's just your thing, you didn't collaborate at all."  Ta-Coumba said, "If it were my art, it would be in my house."  How do we let our art get touched by the community?  "You can facilitate a dialogue without changing the art—but the dialogue might change the NEXT thing you do."

Ta-Coumba sees the value of working with others: "artists should allow themselves to be used more than they do - because they will learn more."

Need to build a level of trust and spend time together creating work.  Taking the time to work out conflicts as you go along, and also to appreciate the moments of joy and beauty.

How giving up control depends on condition, time and place:  We might be perfectly willing to give up control in one place, but want it in another place.  That's okay, but we need to make a clear distinction between realms (control or no control).  We also need to be able to control ourselves first.  We need to work with organizations to help them put all this stuff on the table.  Talk about what could possibly happen. 

Intent:  We felt that the artists' decision to be involved in this type of work implies a contract from the very beginning of the process, and that if would be very useful to be MORE EXPLICIT about that contract.

Training new artists to do this work:  Ta-Coumba says "Give them projects to work on."   Suggestion: maybe the next steps for Animating Democracy could include some kind of deliberate mentoring?

Ta-Coumba talked about letting go of the control of the visual image: his postcard images spread like wildfire.  By letting go of the control, the image spread much further than if he had held to it tightly ("marketing by epidemic").