Intervention
March 4th, 2009You could think of it as Bible Study for art zealots. Or AA for art addicts.
For the most recent Town Hall Meeting, just a few days ago, about thirty people filled a seminar room at the New Museum. It was Thursday night, when the museum offers free admission. Many of those thirty people were random museum visitors who had the luck to wander into the event. The meeting began with presentations by the cultured, ambitious, and utterly gorgeous hosts Christopher Stiegler and Dina Shaulov. Their topic was Michael Blum’s Exodus 2048, part of the New Mu’s Be(com)ing Dutch exhibition.
Dina identified some common characteristics of political art: that it is often diaristic and often uses documentation, namely photography. She then led a discussion about the fictional diaspora depicted in Exodus 2048. “Is there a point to getting upset over something that never happened?” Chris reviewed the Golden Age of Dutch painting and then tracked some of the ancestry of Exodus, noting traits shared by both 17th Century Dutch painting and Blum’s 21st Century installation.
Both presentations sounded solidly researched and critically alert, yet they were accessible enough to warm the crowd of strangers into a fluid discussion. One noted how the installation’s plastic dolls reenacted and represented how wartime violence always putrefies life force. Another commented on its “Hegelian subject/object dichotomy.” (Pretty heavy for a Thursday night, and it’s been years since I’ve read Hegel, so I can’t tell dialectic from diarrhea…)
Thirty minutes – and several stimulating threads – later, the meeting wound down and the strangers shuffled out.
The first Town Hall Meeting, almost a year ago, occupied a Chelsea gallery to discuss on issues of city life, while neighboring galleries bustled with art-opening persiflage and wine. The second harnessed ideas and energy circulating through the Donald Judd Symposium, held at the Chinati Foundation. Common to each Town Hall meeting is an agenda or topic, people speaking, and a record – including subsequent essays, printed materials, and eventually, exhibitions. Last week’s event was the ninth project/event, evidence of a very busy year for Dina and Chris.
Here is The Town Hall Serenity Prayer:
“Let us coalesce – not unite – organically.
We are a curatorial effort working within our community to investigate art by employing its practice.
Without standardization, continuous structures, or individual authorship, we organize in academic pursuit, in conversation, in all seriousness, and in fun.
Our goal is to establish a collaborative idea machine made up of invitees and comrades.
Through a series of nomadic meetings we are continuing a collection of Town Hall Meetings.”
At a panel discussion a few years ago, Zach Feuer advised young artists that their best shot at success depended on their ability to create a scene. So they should form crit groups with their peers, curate shows, and find ways to build community. (But what does Zach Feuer know?) And many young artists do take that initiative, hosting studio visit groups and slide nights, selecting like-minded studio mates, publishing zines or journals, writing blogs, and curating shows. Initiative is the key term. Initiative is the catalyst, the switch that sparks a dormant “creative type” into the kinetic action of an artist. Nobody else can start art for you. The Town Hall Meeting Initiative is voluntary and autonomous. And so far, it is independent, working with available resources in lieu of seeking sponsors. And now that art money has evaporated, Town Hall Meeting is a model for all of us.
UPDATE: Dina Shaulov tells us, “We have been asked to hold this meeting again tomorrow, Thursday at 7p. An art history professor from The University of Oslo, Norway will be bringing his 20 students over to the New Museum for an International Town Meeting. He thought the content was provocative and that the concept of Town Hall Meeting may spawn some other types of initiatives for his students to take on in their home countries.”