Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art.

With the many problems artists face when involved in public art, from accounts of endless legal battles to extreme compromises in content, it's a wonder that artists undertake public projects at all. Even with more traditional, large-scale sculpture, problems can arise after the project is installed. Richard Serra's experience with Tilted Arc, and it's ultimate destruction, serves as a testament to the problematic nature of pursuing public art commissions. The drama surrounding Tilted Arc added to the already growing controversy over government arts funding and the responsibilities of public art. These problems notwithstanding, a new form of audience-centered, temporal, public art is becoming acceptable, even encouraged, by those who sponsor public art projects. Contemporary artists have received commissions for many alternative public art projects involving billboard installations and public works projects, such as bus signage and workshops. One of the exhilarating aspects of a less rigid definition of public art is the possibility for performance, installation and media arts practices to be used in the creation of such work. Employing the media of photography and video, artists can directly address aspects of contemporary culture in a more immediate manner.

In the '60s, counter-cultural, activist Happenings brought artwork outside the galleries and museums to challenge the perceived elitism of the art market. Later, with the development of the Civil Rights and Women's Movements, and the burgeoning "underground" culture artists and activists became closely aligned. The merger of aesthetics and activism could be seen in artworks by Fred Lonider, Suzanne Lacy, Chris Burden, Allan Kaprow and Yolanda Lopez, among others. Using guerrilla video tactics and engaging in media "break-ins," artists such as Lacy and Burden brought video into the public-art arena. Lonider and other Marxist artists worked with text and image, attacking unfair labor practices and criticizing capitalism. By installing the work in alternative sites, such as union halls and community centers, the audience for the artwork drastically changed. In a similar manner, Lopez viewed the street as her gallery. Through posters and leaflets, Lopez brought art and activism directly to neighborhood audiences. Much of this work, however, was not recognized or accepted as "public art" by arts organizations, government funding agencies or the general public. But because of its collaborative and activist nature, these activities did prepare the way for what Lacy terms "new genre public art."

Challenging traditional stereotypes of intrusive, large-scale sculpture, new forms of public art seek to open up communication and exchange between artists and audiences. Two new Bay Press anthologies, Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art and Culture in Action, work in tandem. Each provide artists working in a variety of media with a theoretical basis for practice.

Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, edited by Lacy, fuels the emerging critical discourse in public art and begins to define a new style of art production. The text includes 12 essays by important artists, curators and critics, as well as a compendium of the work of over 90 artists. Many of the essays included in this text speak out strongly against Modernist claims of authorship and individuality. Historical notions of a passive audience viewing large-scale sculpture in plazas, what Lucy Lippard refers to as "plunk art," are challenged by new genre public art. By interacting with the audience in participatory events that intend to build community, many have questioned whether the result is actually art or social work. One well-known subject in this debate is Jim Hubbard, a self-labeled "advocacy journalist" and "issue artist," who in 1989 founded the Shooting Back project that offers photography workshops and exhibition opportunities for at-risk children. Mapping the Terrain seeks to firmly place this type of activity in an art context and calls for a re-evaluation of existing definitions of art. Particularly noteworthy in this regard are the essays by Suzi Gablick, Patricia Phillips, Lippard and Jeff Kelley.

Kaprow and Lacy both offer documentation of past public works that they believe can serve as models for new genre public arts. Through a re-examination of Hubbard's experimental work "Project Other Ways," done in conjunction with Herbert Kohl, Kaprow probes the relationship between education and art. This project from the late '60s provided some public-school students with an opportunity to explore their own creative potential by engaging in literacy-building activities such as rewriting the early Dick and Jane readers to directly address their specific communities. Project One Ways served a dual purpose: it worked to increase literacy and it blurred the distinctions between the arts and education. However, as Kaprow points out, the arts community and the education community could not at the time embrace this project. By carefully evaluating the project's successes and failures, Kaprow shows how both the art world and educational communities could be radically restructured.

Mary Jane Jacob, who is also editor of Culture in Action (as well as Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art curator), analyzes public art's position within the arts system, and constructs alternative roles for curators, administrators and audience members. Revealing problems within the current system - i.e. principles of museum connoisseurship, aesthetic merit and validation; systems of division and classification - Jacob also alludes to the perpetuation of monolithic definitions of art and audience. The label "regional artist" is too readily applied to those working with specific groups or communities, and acts as an inhibitor of critical response or acknowledgment. These ingrained practices of distinguishing high art from low art, fine art from craft, and public art from collectible art, demonstrate that hierarchical structures are still present in both the art world and contemporary culture. It is these structures that future "public artists" will have to work around or overcome.

Throughout all 12 essays in Mapping the Terrain, one theme is consistent: collaboration between artists, curators, communities and critics must be achieved before new genre public art can realize its full potential. In his essay on multicultural art practices, Guillermo Gomez-Pena ends with a polite request for participation. Judith Baca, arguing passionately for specific regional- and culturally based art processes to emerge, emphasizes the multiplicity of publics within our society. She details how a number of well-funded Los Angeles-based projects displaced ethnic communities, or appropriated their symbols, instead of empowering these communities (which is what the projects claimed to do). These and other essays in the book ask us to question the term "public" in relation to much work defined as public art, for it is only through collaboration and the acceptance of a multiplicity of publics that the word "public" can be reclaimed by the arts.

Culture in Action, the textual trace of Sculpture Chicago's vast two-year project (1992-93), can be viewed as an example of what a group of artists, critics, curators and arts organizers can accomplish through collaboration. The project, now documented in this book, actively questions the value of public art. Essays by Jacob, critic Michael Brenson, and former executive director of Sculpture Chicago, Eva M. Olsen, address widely held definitions of art practice and production. Brenson thoughtfully explores Sculpture Chicago's mission as an alternative arts organization interested in closing the gap between art and everyday life. He chronicles the evolution of Culture in Action as well as other projects. "Every project builds a road or bridge where there may not have been one before," states Brenson.

The eight individual projects documented in this catalog each incorporate elements of community participation, activist strategies and aesthetic considerations through experimental art practices. The resulting partnerships between artists, activists, audiences and organizational supporters range from Lacy's commemorative boulder installations "Full Circle," to collaborative team Haha and Flood's unique mix of AIDS activism, education and botany in a project titled "Haha and Flood: A Volunteer Network for Active Participation in Healthcare." One decidedly community-specific work, "Tele-Vecindario," organized by Inigo Manglano-Ovalle and Street-Level Video, culminated in a block party where members of the local Latino community shared their "power" in the form of providing the necessary electricity to operate a massive video installation. This gesture of sharing was extended to the videotapes themselves, compiled by the youth, which were comprised of interviews with community members from all backgrounds and generations.

As more artists take on the challenge of public art, critics will be pressed to acknowledge and interpret such work. Both Mapping the Terrain and Culture in Action urge that more critical attention be given to new genre public art, but neither addresses the problem of making criticism and theory accessible to the "publics" that participate in public art. To remain true to the ideal of community involvement, theory as well as practice must involve those for whom the work was created. It is only through the inclusion of "public voice" in critical discourse that the value of public art can be realized. Continuing community interaction well past the event and requesting ongoing public dialogue represents the "release" that Conwill Majozo deems necessary in the creation of effective public art.

The precedent set by Haha and Flood, Gomez-Pena, Lacy and Manglano-Ovalle should encourage media artists to design and construct public art. The proposed strategies and theories in the books under review are a good starting point for any committed artist. By accepting alternatives to "plunk art," redefining public art as a community-based practice, and encouraging active participation, we media artists may find that public art is a vital and challenging field.

MARGARET WAGNER is Visiting Assistant Professor of photography and electronic imaging at the Rochester Institute of Technology.