Guerilla Art Action Group
Five booklets from Half-Letter Press
Temporary Services (TS)–through Half-Letter Press–has been producing wonderful little booklets of interviews, which now number five. One of the “Temporary Conversations” was with Jean Toche of the Guerilla Art Action Group (GAAG). Formed in 1969 and enduring through 1976, GAAG consisted of Jean Toche, Jon Hendricks, and Poppy Johnson, with occasional others. The bright orange booklet (2008) that features TS’s interview with Toche has illustrations provided by Jon Hendricks.
I really enjoyed driving back from Chicago with Brett Bloom of TS and hearing more about the process of this interview. The entire interview was conducted using snail mail!
One excerpt from the booklet–which you can buy from Half-Letter Press–that has been sticking with me, is a 1971 communique by Hendricks and Toche called Esthetics and Revolution:
TO BE INVOLVED WITH USEFUL LABOR–AS A REVOLUTIONARY ARTIST–YOU MUST:
- BE AVAILABLE WHEN NEEDED
- FORGET ABOUT IMPRINTING YOUR OWN STYLISTIC ESTHETIC ONTO THE REALITY
- DEAL WITH DAY-TO-DAY REALITIES, NOT FANTASIES
- BE ABLE TO OVERCOME YOUR PERSONAL HANG-UPS
- DEAL WITH ISSUES, NOT PERSONALITIES
- BE ACTIVE, NOT REACTIVE
- BE ABLE TO WORK ALONE OR WITH OTHERS
- BE FLEXIBLE
- BE ABLE TO TAKE INITIATIVE WHEN NEEDED
- NOT BE AFRAID OF MAKING MISTAKES
- NOT BE AFRAID OF BEING INCONSISTENT
- BE VERSATILE
- BE IMAGINATIVE
- GET RID OF PRECONCEPTIONS
- CONSTANTLY REDEFINE YOUR ROLE AS REALITY DICTATES.
Seems like a good description for getting through life in general.
The Big Neighborhood Supper
Chickens, chard, plums and cabbage
About 25 of us gathered on a fairly warm and humid August evening to enjoy The Big Neighborhood Supper. Artist Maggie Taylor worked hard all summer to collaboratively organize workshops , conceptualize a group gathering around local food and drink, and produce a meal in a lovely setting. She pulled it off, and then some! In Maggie’s back yard, we sat around home-made tables from discarded lumber found in an alley; set with 60-year-old china, vases of flowers from Rachel’s garden; placemats made from photos of local fruits, vegetables, and chickens (see photo); decorated with fabric and candles hanging in trees; and sprigs of herbs on each place setting. We all pitched in to prepare the food, and what food! Pesto and bread (thanks, Pekara!), chilled cucumber soup, salad greens with sweetpea currant tomatoes, grilled veggies, vegetable frittata, and half cantalopes filled with mint ice cream and warm plums. WOW. Almost everything was local, grown by the people who came to the meal. The four children, three dogs, and many adults were quite content when I left at 9:30 last night. We shared memories of food production and I met many new people, or got better acquainted with people who have been around as long as I have, but I haven’t talked to much. (Three of us were 56!) Thanks SO much, Maggie and all BNS participants! 
Imagining America, Part One
Promotional material for Cornerstone Theater
A friend recently asked me what two things I learned from attending the annual conference of Imagining America in early October 2008. In general, I will say that 1) it matters to see people in their home milieu, and 2) it demystified public engagement work for me. The conference was quite small, and mostly West Coasters, which makes sense given that it was in Los Angeles. So to be able to see what Angelenos are doing in Los Angeles meant that I saw evidence of incredibly hard work, against tall odds, by a relatively few people.
Judy Baca gave the keynote address and told the story of the Social and Public Art Resource Center, which she founded in Venice (CA) thirty years ago. Now with a certain level of support, she creates digital murals at the Cesar Chavez Digital Mural Lab, funded by the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is on the faculty. I wrote about that Lab in a previous post on April 11, 2008.
So many other activities from the last few years had a presence in Los Angeles:
- The Bresee Community Center and the Echo Park Film Center, among others, supported youth in creating media about important issues, like gentrification. Stephanie Cisneros, for example, created “Echo Park: A Different View,” which is about 8 minutes long and available on YouTube. Some of the Spanish-to-English translations are a little off, but it gives a real feel for a rapidly changing neighborhood around 2004.
- Homeboy Industries and Homegirl Cafe, started by Father Greg Boyle, provides jobs for former gang members and good food for the community. I brought home a copy of the DVD, “Father G and the Homeboys,” narrated by Martin Sheen. It tells the story of an organization being built up, burned down, and otherwise hugely challenged over the last twenty years.
- I was able to see a read-through of the Cornerstone Theater’s “For All Time,” part of their Justice Cycle. This featured a large cast depicting experiences and attitudes toward punishment and retribution on the part of victims, families, and incarcerated people.
- Michael John Garces and Paula Donnelly from the Cornerstone Theater led a group of about 40 of us in an engaging workshop on “Turning Community Stories into Art.” The Cornerstone is an ensemble-based company in LA that combines professional actors and community members in productions that are often original works. They’ve been refining their techniques for over twenty years. It was great to participate in their cultural mapping exercises, and sample some of the ways they draw stories out of people with whom they co-create performances.
Continuous City
The Builders Association performed their show, “Continuous City” last night here in Champaign-Urbana. I was intrigued by the publicity, since it was supposed to be about cities, social networking, and theatre all at once, and how cool is that? The funders also touted the “boundary-pushing” and “cross-cultural” understanding of interdisciplinary art productions like this one. First of all, I’m glad that Marianne Weems, director, Harry Sinclair, writer, et al., brought this to our campus. Weems has been and is in a position to really think about arts in a globalizing world, having directed some other interesting pieces here before–Alladeen and Super Vision–and co-edited, with Brian Wallis and Philip Yenawine, a book I’ve used, Art Matters: how the culture wars changed America. In the program notes, Weems cites Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Mike Davis’s Planet of Slums as contributing to the development of this work. So, the bar is set pretty high.
On the plus side, the video work was pretty nifty and at times stunningly beautiful. I’d like to know more about how it was done. Peter Flaherty did the video design and you can learn more about him at www.thefourthefive.org The ideas behind the production were wonderful: video contributions from Shanghai, Mexico, Toronto, and KCPA, with an amusing “vlog” by Moe Angelos. Harry Sinclair as Mike was good as a globe-trotting, clueless father who, in his exhausted, unshaven way, was trying to sell a video-networking product he didn’t believe in, to people who already had satisfying in-the-flesh relationships. And his daughter, Sam, was great as a sullen, precocious, and cute kid.
But–of course there is a “but”–with all this techno-savvy and on-stage skill, the performance was ultimately about the lead character J.V.’s inability to have intimate relationships. That theme is treated much more profoundly and richly by many other playwrights. Rizwan Mirza’s J.V. didn’t convince me that he was a stressed out Internet entrepreneur. He seemed way too relaxed for that. And the metaphor of cutting off possibilities by going into a tunnel was really unsatisfying as an ending. I’m usually disappointed by endings, but this one seemed a cop-out.
Perhaps it comes down to “social architecture,” what Richard Farson in 1970 recognized as something we need to build in order to match (or compensate for, I’m not sure) the level of the technology we have set up. It seems like the technology on stage last night was flashy, sophisticated, funny, and capable of subtlety, but the dramatic storyline was too thin, too undeveloped, to support all that computer wizardry.
There were some inklings of social complexity, with food security, immigrants, and sprawl having brief mentions. It was thought-provoking as the family members were fuzzy and static-y, the images of Mike kept breaking up, and Sam kept hiding from her dad. But the evidence of resource-intensive, upper/middle-class ownership and production juxtaposed with a seeming lip service to papadum sellers in Mumbai or Vietnamese living in U.S. trailer parks rankled. Am I ungrateful that at least these folks are trying? No. Do I want more? Yes.
