the following is an invitation for all activists, indymedias, reclaim the streeters, artists with political concern, and other people who like to get into trouble to come and join us this Saturday, april 16, at the Progressive Action Center, 1443 Gorsuch Avenue, Baltimore, 410.243.2471.
we will be participating in a series of presentations which will help us invite people to participate in an interesting project.


the following text, quickly drafted and poorly articulated, explains why the idea to convert the museum into a center of operations for activist
practices is problematic but interesting.


please read on.

see you there,

A.,

Yomango, Barcelona


Below this text i pasted the official description of the project. written by the contemporary museum's curators.


political art (??) - an invitation with some doubts.
the contemporary museum is openning its doors for political
activists. as part of 'headquarters', the museum proposes
itself to be used as a home base for politically inclined
artistic activity. what are the possible dangers of this
proposal and how, on the other hand it can serve as an
exciting opportunity?

political art
the artist and the activist have several things in common:
-a primary motivation to transform their surrounding. both art and
activism are fundamentally optimistic practices (i think this must be true no matter how depressingç
your art or politics may be)
-both are acts of communication. they both work on the symbolic level. though activism
can also work in other spheres, creating material realities.
-both suffer from a basic communications flaw. both have a public image as being exculsive practices.
both use specialized languages. in the case of art - the specialized elitistic language of art theory. in the case of direct action and civil disobedience-a contradictory double image of either heroic do-gooderism or criminal/vandalism.
both have their specialized public and their section in the newspaper. bringing the two publics together
could create a situation where both are made conscious of their language problems. each one of these publics
has specific communication tools at its disposal, between the two something interesting can
turn up. lately there has been mutual interest. i think the love story between the art world and political activism will not be a long lived one. i propose we (artists, activists and people who don't think of themselves as either one)
take advantage and enjoy it while it lasts.
some questions i would like to raise about political art:
1. is it enough to make art that raises awareness regarding issues?
what is it that prevents people from taking action? is it
lack of awareness? do people lack information regarding issues? do people not take action to transform their society because they lack awareness?
or could it be that they are paralized or rendered powerless by noise (too much information)?

2.could it be that representing political issues and taking
the role of 'spectator' or 'public' actually serves as a
substitute for participation in political processes? could
it be that a person who goes to the museum and sees works
of art representing unjustice, social problems etc..feels
like they have done enough?
3. is there another form of political art? one that can
facilitate participation and action?

4.what are the objectives of culture? could the same things culture
provides us or claims to provide us, be provided by direct
action? could participating in acts of civil disobedience be more exciting, enrichenning,
imaginative, transformative, than viewing?

5. what can an institutional art space contribute to political practices and social change?
some possible responses:
give legitimacy- it can alleviate the criminal-vandal image some acts of civil disobedience and direct action have.

PR -it has mechanisms to communicate to a wide public, mostly very different than the one participating in
political activity. a large part of this public could be creative people who are frustrated by the confines of traditional art practices. people who are looking for just that. a way to participate, an impact reality. a way to affect real change.

cash- art institutions, even the poorer ones, usually have more budget than your average activist group.

what are the dangers of bringing activist practices into an institutional art space?
some possible dangers:

creating a situation where our practices as activist are just another market-niche content in the ever expanding content market.

legitimacy- activists have their own kind of legitimacy and street cred. giving credibility to institutions that might
in turn be taking part of practices we disagree with: promoting gentrification, making some corporation look good
by having funded artistic activity etc...

ok. the pros and the conns. i think they should be weighed seriously.
what are our parameters to judge whether it is worth while to creat an event bringing activism into the museum? i really would judge on a case by case basis. i would constantly be asking myself: is the activity i am participating in promotes real street level social change?
is anyone transformed in a real way by having participated in this activity?

ok. the official description:

Headquarters: Interventions in Social Space

Contemporary Museum, Baltimore

Spring 2006


Headquarters proposes to transform the Contemporary Museum into a center
of operations for progressive art practices redefining social space. The
gallery or museum as simple showroom is no longer adequate for the expanded
field of current artistic practice, which has shifted toward creative, productive
and discursive social sites. In order to respond to this development, Headquarters
will variously transform the gallery space from traditional display area
into a knowledge station, meeting place, training ground, and/or networking
module for a series of diverse artistic projects in Baltimore. While Headquarters
acknowledges the museum as one command center, it also bends the term to
refer to mobile spaces of artistic direction within a larger network of social
possibility, and to continually shifting loci of social/artistic/discursive
processes that are neither conceptually static nor geographically constant.


To this end, Headquarters will offer a series of short residencies to
artists to undertake progressive projects in Baltimore. These may be socially
directed in a political sense, strategizing toward certain radical goals,
mobilizing collectives, counterattacking opponents, or they may question
the very viability of artistic activism in this period of heightened security
and terrorist alert, engendering critical reflection and social dialogue.
They may operate through open arrangements of collaborative production and
reception, or they may redefine individual process as necessarily social.
They may recast the very concept of the social, refusing the ?unity? in ?community?
which so often plagues ?public art? of the recent past, in favor of a necessary
agonistic and heterogeneous redefinition of social formation?from ?public?
to ?publics??as a progressive step toward radical democracy. As so many Spaces
of Hope, to quote urban geographer David Harvey?s study of Baltimore and
inspirational call to redesign our living and working environments, these
artistic projects will invigorate experimentation, questioning, and discovery,
even use the force of utopian imagining against all who say ?there is no
alternative.?