Bruce Barber
Encyclopedia
Bruce Barber is an artist, writer, curator, and educator based in Halifax, Nova Scotia
, where he teaches at NSCAD University. His artwork has been shown at the Paris Biennale
, the Sydney Biennial
, the New Museum of Contemporary Art
, the Walter Phillips Gallery
, London Regional Gallery, and ArtSpace Auckland
. Barber is the editor of Essays on Performance and Cultural Politicization and of Conceptual Art: the NSCAD Connection 1967-1973. He is co-editor, with Serge Guilbaut and John O'Brian
of Voices of Fire: Art Rage, Power, and the State. His critical essays have appeared in numerous anthologies, journals and magazines. His art practice is documented in the publication Reading Rooms. He is best known for his early performance work, his Reading Rooms, Squat Projects and his writing and theory on Littoral Art
.
's 1925 Reading Room as a model for a workers' library and study. These multi-part installations made use of multi-media formats to re-present various forms of corporate advertising and news reporting. The Red Room addressed the construction of masculinity through media representation. The imagery used for critical readings was obtained from various sites of popular culture including film, advertising, war history, weapons magazines and comic books. The Newsroom section contained newspaper accounts of male violence; the Viewsroom contained slide projections; the Videoroom contained video footage of x-rated films and a Marvin cartoon satirising male parenting behaviour; the Theory/Criticism Room provided tools with which readers could alter a selection of magazines. A theoretical essay titled "Excision, Detournement and Reading the Open Text" elaborated the process they would have then been using. Among some of the aphorisms contained in this essay are the following:
3) The excision is less a surgical operation than a cognitive procedure, opening up the possibilities for renegotiating the areas of signification both within and beyond the image or text. Excising elements from the image confirms the existence of a primary context, pretexts and within the image itself, subtexts which disclose the competing economies of the sign(s).
9) Warning: Excision should not become the servant of censorship.
25) Close reading has never been a good substitute for criticism.
29) Absence only becomes a problem where power is concerned. Absence is difference (Jacques Derrida
). Open reading allows readers to acknowledge the provisionality of meaning. Power and political efficacy is a function of use. In this context history may represent change yet remain the same.
30) The open reader accepts his/her status as a political subject with all this may imply.
38) Open reading may assist the promotion of critical education.
39) Critical education may become education for criticism.
Bruce Barber, Reading Room III: The Red Room, Halifax, 1992
that was common in the late sixties and early seventies had run its course. While emerging forms of postmodern performance were appropriating mainstream forms of entertainment, their critical function was often weakened or altogether abandoned. Performance could possibly withstand becoming affirmative culture (Herbert Marcuse
) by rediscovering its sources in avant-garde
theatre. Bertolt Brecht
, for instance, echoed Karl Marx
's critique of philosophy when he wrote: "The theatre became an affair for philosophers, but only for those philosophers as wished not just to explain the world, but also to change it." Brecht coined the term umfunctionierung (functional transformation) to enable theatre to become an instrument to serve the interests of class struggle. And in his famous essay, "The Author as Producer," Walter Benjamin
extolled the virtues of the "operative" artist, providing as his example the communist author Sergei Tretyakov
, who thought of his work not merely as descriptive reporting on reality, but an active intervention. Benjamin believed that cultural practice should refuse modish commerce and should give work a revolutionary use value
. This meant the avoidance of the impulse to aestheticize and the ordination of critical agency as a post-aesthetic strategy, one that can contain values that are nominally subsumed under several progressive political/aesthetic ideologies. In an implicit effort to politicize advanced forms of performance, Barber placed the term performance under erasure with the formulation of [performance].
Since the publication of "Towards and Adequate Interventionist [Performance] Practice" (1985), Barber has explored the radical potential of performance. The table of binary oppositions below represents general differences between two types of political action, configured as acts of protest or resistance. Depending on the circumstances and the type of event, intervention can become an exemplary action, and thus devolve into a form of political posturing, closely implicated in extreme versions of behaviour characterized by violence, anarchic rejection or destructive nihilism. While exemplary actions are usually without theoretical support, interventions attempt to put theory into action. The intentions and ultimately the audience response are different. The exemplary action consists, instead of intervening in an overall way, in acting in a much more concentrated way on exemplary objectives, on a few key objectives that will play a determining role in the continuation of the struggle.
Among the artists that Barber has recognized for their contributions to [performance] practice - Martha Rosler
, Adrian Piper
, Guerrilla Art Action Group, Critical Art Ensemble
and WochenKlausur, among others - he gave a priviled role to the Situationist International as an exemplary model of operative art. The SI and the students they influenced participated in occupations, sit-ins, teach-ins, theatrical agit-prop events and other forms of protest. The SI endorsed the fundamental importance of intervention as a post-theoretical and practical aspect of their critique of the "Society of the Spectacle" - as theorized by Guy Debord
. Among the theoretically informed strategies that were developed by the SI is the constructed situation. The constructed situation is bound to be collective both in its inception and development. However, it seems that at least during an initial experimental period, responsibility must fall on one particular individual. This individual must, so to speak, be the 'director' of the situation. For example, in terms of one particular situationist project - revolving around the meeting of several friends one evening - one would expect (a) an initial period of research by the team, (b) the election of a director responsible for co-ordinating the basic elements for the construction of the decor, and for working out a number of interventions, (c) the actual people living the situation who have taken part in the whole project both theoretically and practically, and (d) a few passive spectators not knowing what the hell is going on should be reduced to action.
is very different from direct action or intervention, although it may seem to employ some of the characteristics of both. Jürgen Habermas
, who has arguably done more than anyone else to theorise various forms of political action within the public sphere
, distinguishes between strategic, instrumental and communicative actions. The distinction, he argues, between actions that are oriented toward success and those toward understanding is crucial. In strategic actions one actor seeks to influence the bahaviour of another by means of the threat of sanctions or the prospect of gratification in order to cause the interaction to continue as the first actor desires. Whereas in a communicative action one actor seeks rationally to motivate another by relying on the illocutionary binding/bonding effect of the offer contained in the speech act (J.L. Austin). Donative and Littoral art practices work in a way that challennges the strategies of the postmodern era: taking, quoting, and appropriating.
In a number of essays on "littoral art," Barber has emphasized donative art practices as examples of communicative action. Donative art actions insist that giving can be used strategically to further a number of identifiable lifeworld and humanitarian goals, as well as provide some critical intervention into the ideological fabric of our culture. While donative practices may activate a cycle of reciprocity, gifts may remain unreciprocated. Each cultural intervention, exemplary or not, engages a "logic of practice" (Pierre Bourdieu
) that encourages an infinite variety of exchanges or gifts, challenges, ripostes, reciprocations, and repressions. The logic of practice privileges agency in its unpredictability and provides, according to Habermas, an alternative to money and power as a basis for societal integration. Among the artists engaged in donative art practices and who are mentioned in Barber's writings are: Istvan Kantor
, David Mealing, Yin Xiaofeng, REPOhistory
, Kelly Lycan & Free Food, Bloom 98, WochenKlausur, Ala Plastica, Peter Dunn & Lorraine Leeson, Art Link, Hirsch Farm Project.
Bruce Barber, Diddly Squat performance #2, 2003;
Photo by Miklos Legrady
1) Littoral art describes the intermediary and shifting zones between the sea and the land and refers metaphorically to cultural projects that are undertaken predominantly outside of the conventional contexts of the institutionalised artworld.
2) Littoral projects are lifeworld affirming as opposed to system reproducing. Littoral artists work between the private realm and the public sphere.
3) Littoral artists recognise their position as political subjects and act accordingly.
4) Social actions may (re)produce cultural judgments.
5) Cultural interventions may lead toward social change.
6) Public, community based art is essentially political.
7) The political positions that artists adopt should be followed ethically.
8) Littoral artists acknowledge Marx's injunction in his 11th Thesis on Feuerbach that it is not up to "philosophers (artists) to simply interpret (represent) the world; the point is to change it."
9) In Littoral art projects social interactions should be co-ordinated with less emphasis on egocentric calcultions of success for each individual and more through co-operative achievements of understanding among participants.
10) Social and cultural actions can be strategic, exemplary, instrumental or communicative. Communicative actions attempt to lessen provocation and encourage dialogue. They are the result of the conjoining of theory and practice into a political praxis.
11) In Littoral art projects no one individual should assume absolute control of the communicative process; rather it should be, in the best sense possible, participatory and democratic.
12) Public art projects are aimed at stimulating dialogue and participation within a specific community to engender (or engineer) conscientization, and possibly, social change.
13) The interaction between marginal groups, and their integration in such projects, can lead to extraordinary results in which artistic, social and environmental objectives overlap.
14) Littoral art helps to stimulate dialogue and elevate the standards of conversation between different communities and disciplines whose paths would normally not cross.
15) The littoral artist may use any form and employ any materials, techniques or procedures to reach his/her objectives.
16) Littoral art is more about giving than taking.
17) Within littoralist art practice, donative art strategies extend the language of the altruistic gift into a more politically efficacious education about the nature of giving and reciprocity.
18) Littoral artists acknowledge their debt to history and respond positively to successful models presented by the historical avant-gardes and neo-avant-gardes of the more recent past.
19) Littoral art projects can provide a powerful incentive for social integration as opposed to individual competition.
20) Littoral art can provide an alternative to capital accumulation
and power as an indicator of success.
21) Political correctness cannot rescue a bad idea. It is difficult to subvert a politically correct position.
22) Littoral projects may become art if they are concerned with art and enter the fields of discourse associated with art theory and criticism.
23) Some successful littoral projects may begin from a position of naivete.
24) Surveillance is a form of control. Observational techniques represent methods of social control.
25) Littoral artists should attempt to understand the effects of their actions and interventions in the public sphere and learn from their mistakes.
26) Artists may perceive the littoralist projects of others to be better than their own, but they should strive to approxiamte success at every level of their social engagement.
27) Littoral projects may engage directly with an institution.
28) Once the immediate objectives of the project are established, the course of events should be allowed to unfold organically. There may be many side effects that the artist cannot imagine or control. These may be used to stimulate and/or assist the development of new work.
29) The process is social and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.
30) There are many elements involved in a littoralist project. The most important may not be the most obvious.
31) If the artist uses the same methodology in a group of projects but changes the techniques and materials, one would assume that the artist's work privileged the method.
32) Banal ideas cannot be rescued by privileging the aesthetic values that may reside in the work.
33) It is difficult to bungle a good littoral project.
34) When an artist displays his/her craft too well, it may result in the loss of the social importance of the work.
35) These sentences comment on littoral art but are not art.
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
, where he teaches at NSCAD University. His artwork has been shown at the Paris Biennale
Biennale de Paris
-History:The 'Biennale de Paris' was launched by Raymond Cogniat in 1959 and set up by André Malraux as he was Minister of Culture to present an overview of young creativity worldwide and to create a place of experiences and meetings.-Presentation:...
, the Sydney Biennial
Biennale of Sydney
The Biennale of Sydney is an international festival of contemporary art, held every two years in Sydney, Australia. It is the largest and best-attended contemporary visual arts event in the country...
, the New Museum of Contemporary Art
New Museum of Contemporary Art
The New Museum, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to presenting contemporary art from around the world...
, the Walter Phillips Gallery
Walter Phillips Gallery
Walter Phillips Gallery was established in 1976 in Banff, Alberta, as a part of the Banff Centre in Banff National Park. Walter J. Phillips was a printmaker and painter, from the 1930s to the 1950s, who played a seminal role in the development of the visual arts program in The Banff School of...
, London Regional Gallery, and ArtSpace Auckland
Auckland
The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...
. Barber is the editor of Essays on Performance and Cultural Politicization and of Conceptual Art: the NSCAD Connection 1967-1973. He is co-editor, with Serge Guilbaut and John O'Brian
John O'Brian
John O'Brian is a writer, curator, and art historian. He is best known for his books and articles on modern art history and criticism...
of Voices of Fire: Art Rage, Power, and the State. His critical essays have appeared in numerous anthologies, journals and magazines. His art practice is documented in the publication Reading Rooms. He is best known for his early performance work, his Reading Rooms, Squat Projects and his writing and theory on Littoral Art
Littoral Art
Littoral art is a term used by Canadian artist and writer Bruce Barber to describe art occurring outside of the institutions of the artworld. It is a manifestation of Nicolas Bourriaud's relational aesthetics and is public and community-based, emphasizing the interaction between artists and...
.
Reading Rooms
In his Reading Rooms, Barber worked with Alexander RodchenkoAlexander Rodchenko
Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko was a Russian artist, sculptor, photographer and graphic designer. He was one of the founders of constructivism and Russian design; he was married to the artist Varvara Stepanova....
's 1925 Reading Room as a model for a workers' library and study. These multi-part installations made use of multi-media formats to re-present various forms of corporate advertising and news reporting. The Red Room addressed the construction of masculinity through media representation. The imagery used for critical readings was obtained from various sites of popular culture including film, advertising, war history, weapons magazines and comic books. The Newsroom section contained newspaper accounts of male violence; the Viewsroom contained slide projections; the Videoroom contained video footage of x-rated films and a Marvin cartoon satirising male parenting behaviour; the Theory/Criticism Room provided tools with which readers could alter a selection of magazines. A theoretical essay titled "Excision, Detournement and Reading the Open Text" elaborated the process they would have then been using. Among some of the aphorisms contained in this essay are the following:
3) The excision is less a surgical operation than a cognitive procedure, opening up the possibilities for renegotiating the areas of signification both within and beyond the image or text. Excising elements from the image confirms the existence of a primary context, pretexts and within the image itself, subtexts which disclose the competing economies of the sign(s).
9) Warning: Excision should not become the servant of censorship.
25) Close reading has never been a good substitute for criticism.
29) Absence only becomes a problem where power is concerned. Absence is difference (Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
). Open reading allows readers to acknowledge the provisionality of meaning. Power and political efficacy is a function of use. In this context history may represent change yet remain the same.
30) The open reader accepts his/her status as a political subject with all this may imply.
38) Open reading may assist the promotion of critical education.
39) Critical education may become education for criticism.
Bruce Barber, Reading Room III: The Red Room, Halifax, 1992
Operative Art
In a number of texts, beginning in the early 1980s, Barber has considered the potential for performance work to avoid its ossification into a genre category. Clearly, the type of conceptual performance artPerformance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
that was common in the late sixties and early seventies had run its course. While emerging forms of postmodern performance were appropriating mainstream forms of entertainment, their critical function was often weakened or altogether abandoned. Performance could possibly withstand becoming affirmative culture (Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
) by rediscovering its sources in avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
theatre. Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
, for instance, echoed Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
's critique of philosophy when he wrote: "The theatre became an affair for philosophers, but only for those philosophers as wished not just to explain the world, but also to change it." Brecht coined the term umfunctionierung (functional transformation) to enable theatre to become an instrument to serve the interests of class struggle. And in his famous essay, "The Author as Producer," Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
extolled the virtues of the "operative" artist, providing as his example the communist author Sergei Tretyakov
Sergei Tretyakov
Sergei Mikhailovich Tretyakov was a Russian constructivist writer, playwright and special correspondent for Pravda. He graduated 1916 from the department of law at Moscow University...
, who thought of his work not merely as descriptive reporting on reality, but an active intervention. Benjamin believed that cultural practice should refuse modish commerce and should give work a revolutionary use value
Use value
Use value or value in use is the utility of consuming a good; the want-satisfying power of a good or service in classical political economy. In Marx's critique of political economy, any labor-product has a value and a use-value, and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an...
. This meant the avoidance of the impulse to aestheticize and the ordination of critical agency as a post-aesthetic strategy, one that can contain values that are nominally subsumed under several progressive political/aesthetic ideologies. In an implicit effort to politicize advanced forms of performance, Barber placed the term performance under erasure with the formulation of [performance].
Since the publication of "Towards and Adequate Interventionist [Performance] Practice" (1985), Barber has explored the radical potential of performance. The table of binary oppositions below represents general differences between two types of political action, configured as acts of protest or resistance. Depending on the circumstances and the type of event, intervention can become an exemplary action, and thus devolve into a form of political posturing, closely implicated in extreme versions of behaviour characterized by violence, anarchic rejection or destructive nihilism. While exemplary actions are usually without theoretical support, interventions attempt to put theory into action. The intentions and ultimately the audience response are different. The exemplary action consists, instead of intervening in an overall way, in acting in a much more concentrated way on exemplary objectives, on a few key objectives that will play a determining role in the continuation of the struggle.
| EXEMPLARY / SRATEGIC ACTION : ANARCHIC / INDIVIDUALISTIC ACTION | INTERVENTION / INSTRUMENTAL ACTION : COLLABORATIVE OR PARTICIPATORY |
|---|---|
| spontaneous | planned |
| dynamic / direct / focussed action | exhibits less dynamism / indirect |
| absence of theory | theory laden / movement toward praxis |
| induces repression / confrontation | integrative / mediative / interruptive / provocative |
| cathartic / provocative / dialectical | non-cathartic / attempts to lessen provocation / encourages dialogue |
| theatrical / spectacular | performative / non-spectacular |
Among the artists that Barber has recognized for their contributions to [performance] practice - Martha Rosler
Martha Rosler
Martha Rosler is an American artist. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, where she now lives. She graduated from Brooklyn College and the University of California, San Diego . Rosler works in video, photo-text, installation, and performance, as well as writing about art and culture...
, Adrian Piper
Adrian Piper
Adrian Margaret Smith Piper is a first-generation conceptual artist and analytic philosopher who was born in New York City and lived for many years on Cape Cod, Massachusetts before emigrating from the United States...
, Guerrilla Art Action Group, Critical Art Ensemble
Critical Art Ensemble
Critical Art Ensemble is an award-winning collective of five tactical media practitioners of various specializations including computer graphics and web design, film/video, photography, text art, book art, and performance. For CAE, tactical media is situational, ephemeral, and self-terminating...
and WochenKlausur, among others - he gave a priviled role to the Situationist International as an exemplary model of operative art. The SI and the students they influenced participated in occupations, sit-ins, teach-ins, theatrical agit-prop events and other forms of protest. The SI endorsed the fundamental importance of intervention as a post-theoretical and practical aspect of their critique of the "Society of the Spectacle" - as theorized by Guy Debord
Guy Debord
Guy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
. Among the theoretically informed strategies that were developed by the SI is the constructed situation. The constructed situation is bound to be collective both in its inception and development. However, it seems that at least during an initial experimental period, responsibility must fall on one particular individual. This individual must, so to speak, be the 'director' of the situation. For example, in terms of one particular situationist project - revolving around the meeting of several friends one evening - one would expect (a) an initial period of research by the team, (b) the election of a director responsible for co-ordinating the basic elements for the construction of the decor, and for working out a number of interventions, (c) the actual people living the situation who have taken part in the whole project both theoretically and practically, and (d) a few passive spectators not knowing what the hell is going on should be reduced to action.
Communicative Action and Littoral Art
According to Barber, communicative actionCommunicative action
Communicative action is a concept associated with the German philosopher-sociologist Jürgen Habermas. Habermas uses this concept to describe cooperative action undertaken by individuals based upon mutual deliberation and argumentation...
is very different from direct action or intervention, although it may seem to employ some of the characteristics of both. Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
, who has arguably done more than anyone else to theorise various forms of political action within the public sphere
Public sphere
The public sphere is an area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action...
, distinguishes between strategic, instrumental and communicative actions. The distinction, he argues, between actions that are oriented toward success and those toward understanding is crucial. In strategic actions one actor seeks to influence the bahaviour of another by means of the threat of sanctions or the prospect of gratification in order to cause the interaction to continue as the first actor desires. Whereas in a communicative action one actor seeks rationally to motivate another by relying on the illocutionary binding/bonding effect of the offer contained in the speech act (J.L. Austin). Donative and Littoral art practices work in a way that challennges the strategies of the postmodern era: taking, quoting, and appropriating.
In a number of essays on "littoral art," Barber has emphasized donative art practices as examples of communicative action. Donative art actions insist that giving can be used strategically to further a number of identifiable lifeworld and humanitarian goals, as well as provide some critical intervention into the ideological fabric of our culture. While donative practices may activate a cycle of reciprocity, gifts may remain unreciprocated. Each cultural intervention, exemplary or not, engages a "logic of practice" (Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher.Starting from the role of economic capital for social positioning, Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location,...
) that encourages an infinite variety of exchanges or gifts, challenges, ripostes, reciprocations, and repressions. The logic of practice privileges agency in its unpredictability and provides, according to Habermas, an alternative to money and power as a basis for societal integration. Among the artists engaged in donative art practices and who are mentioned in Barber's writings are: Istvan Kantor
Istvan Kantor
Istvan Kantor is a Hungarian born Canadian performance and video artist, industrial music and electropop singer, and founder of Neoism....
, David Mealing, Yin Xiaofeng, REPOhistory
REPOhistory
Founded in New York City in 1989, REPOhistory was a multi-ethnic group of writers, visual and performance artists, filmmakers, and historians....
, Kelly Lycan & Free Food, Bloom 98, WochenKlausur, Ala Plastica, Peter Dunn & Lorraine Leeson, Art Link, Hirsch Farm Project.
Bruce Barber, Diddly Squat performance #2, 2003;
Photo by Miklos Legrady
Sentences on Littoral Art
These sentences were written by Barber in 1998. Paragraphs on Littoral Art can be found on the Squat Official Site1) Littoral art describes the intermediary and shifting zones between the sea and the land and refers metaphorically to cultural projects that are undertaken predominantly outside of the conventional contexts of the institutionalised artworld.
2) Littoral projects are lifeworld affirming as opposed to system reproducing. Littoral artists work between the private realm and the public sphere.
3) Littoral artists recognise their position as political subjects and act accordingly.
4) Social actions may (re)produce cultural judgments.
5) Cultural interventions may lead toward social change.
6) Public, community based art is essentially political.
7) The political positions that artists adopt should be followed ethically.
8) Littoral artists acknowledge Marx's injunction in his 11th Thesis on Feuerbach that it is not up to "philosophers (artists) to simply interpret (represent) the world; the point is to change it."
9) In Littoral art projects social interactions should be co-ordinated with less emphasis on egocentric calcultions of success for each individual and more through co-operative achievements of understanding among participants.
10) Social and cultural actions can be strategic, exemplary, instrumental or communicative. Communicative actions attempt to lessen provocation and encourage dialogue. They are the result of the conjoining of theory and practice into a political praxis.
11) In Littoral art projects no one individual should assume absolute control of the communicative process; rather it should be, in the best sense possible, participatory and democratic.
12) Public art projects are aimed at stimulating dialogue and participation within a specific community to engender (or engineer) conscientization, and possibly, social change.
13) The interaction between marginal groups, and their integration in such projects, can lead to extraordinary results in which artistic, social and environmental objectives overlap.
14) Littoral art helps to stimulate dialogue and elevate the standards of conversation between different communities and disciplines whose paths would normally not cross.
15) The littoral artist may use any form and employ any materials, techniques or procedures to reach his/her objectives.
16) Littoral art is more about giving than taking.
17) Within littoralist art practice, donative art strategies extend the language of the altruistic gift into a more politically efficacious education about the nature of giving and reciprocity.
18) Littoral artists acknowledge their debt to history and respond positively to successful models presented by the historical avant-gardes and neo-avant-gardes of the more recent past.
19) Littoral art projects can provide a powerful incentive for social integration as opposed to individual competition.
20) Littoral art can provide an alternative to capital accumulation
Capital accumulation
The accumulation of capital refers to the gathering or amassing of objects of value; the increase in wealth through concentration; or the creation of wealth. Capital is money or a financial asset invested for the purpose of making more money...
and power as an indicator of success.
21) Political correctness cannot rescue a bad idea. It is difficult to subvert a politically correct position.
22) Littoral projects may become art if they are concerned with art and enter the fields of discourse associated with art theory and criticism.
23) Some successful littoral projects may begin from a position of naivete.
24) Surveillance is a form of control. Observational techniques represent methods of social control.
25) Littoral artists should attempt to understand the effects of their actions and interventions in the public sphere and learn from their mistakes.
26) Artists may perceive the littoralist projects of others to be better than their own, but they should strive to approxiamte success at every level of their social engagement.
27) Littoral projects may engage directly with an institution.
28) Once the immediate objectives of the project are established, the course of events should be allowed to unfold organically. There may be many side effects that the artist cannot imagine or control. These may be used to stimulate and/or assist the development of new work.
29) The process is social and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.
30) There are many elements involved in a littoralist project. The most important may not be the most obvious.
31) If the artist uses the same methodology in a group of projects but changes the techniques and materials, one would assume that the artist's work privileged the method.
32) Banal ideas cannot be rescued by privileging the aesthetic values that may reside in the work.
33) It is difficult to bungle a good littoral project.
34) When an artist displays his/her craft too well, it may result in the loss of the social importance of the work.
35) These sentences comment on littoral art but are not art.