Teddy Cruz: Creative Time Revolutionizes the Sleepy Conference - A Review by Andrew Russeth for ARTINFO 10.26.09

By Andrew Russeth for ARTINFO, October 26, 2009

NEW YORK—“In this country, when you’re critical of the government from the right, you get a mainstream TV show,” artist and activist Dara Greenwald declared on Saturday at “Revolutions in Public Practice,” the first ever summit organized by New York arts nonprofit Creative Time. She didn’t finish the thought, but the multigenerational crowd of academics, activists, and artists that had gathered at the New York Public Library to hear many of their most distinguished colleagues speak could probably fill in the rest.

The summit began on Friday with culture jammers The Yes Men receiving the $25,000 Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change, a new Creative Time tradition. Saturday was dedicated to a freewheeling conference presented at breakneck speed. Organizers grouped presenters — ranging from artists Yael Bartana and Liam Gillick to activist Reverend Billy to thinkers like Morris Dickstein — into loose groups of three or four and gave each speaker seven minutes to share a project. When their time ran out, even the most distinguished speakers were unceremoniously cut off by a live instrumentalist — a flautist, a trumpeter, or a double-bassist, to name three examples.

Speakers tackled the simultaneously very open and very constrained format in remarkably different ways, but they remained intently focused throughout on the possibility of realizing massive, disparate cultural changes. As Iranian artist Rene Gabri put it, in a slyly humorous presentation with Ayreen Anastas on formulating a socially efficacious art practice, “Everything that increases or enhances the power of acting is good.”

But the focus was not solely on art. In a panel on “Crisscrossing Geo-Political Boundaries” architect Teddy Cruz discussed the dense, unsafe development taking place in contemporary Tijuana in a rapid-fire burst of language. Calling for the formulation of a “political economy of waste,” he exhorted attendees to action. “We as artists and architects could be the designers of alternative economic frameworks!” he declared. Then the discussion shifted to Istanbul, whose recent biennial was curated by What, How, and for Whom. Two representatives from the curatorial collective provided a carefully rehearsed call to arms. “The language of politics has been de-politicized,” they argued, before insisting that today’s political complacency “must be replaced by the politicization of culture.” They were among the few presenters to finish under their time limit. At other points in the panel, Multiplicity, a Milan-based architecture consortium, analyzed trade flows in the Mediterranean, and artist Kristina Norman shifted the talk to Estonian nationalism.

The time constraints were frustrating, and the jumps in topic occasionally dizzying, but those techniques added a sense of urgency to a format that can sometimes grow soporific. “I’m not a speed reader,” super-curator Okwui Enwezor admitted, before promising, “I’m going to do my best.” He proved willing to embrace the format, suggesting “the possibility that images of… public violence can become critical vehicles for the intersection of the traumatic and the ameliorative in documentary forms.” He was discussing Alfredo Jaar’s Sound of Silence, which investigates the photograph of a young African boy dying of starvation in Sudan, which led perfectly into Jaar’s presentation.

Jaar began by thanking Creative Time’s director. “Anne Pasternak is one of the few cultural producers that still believes in the capacity of culture to affect change,” he said. “Anne makes [legendary Italian revolutionary Antonio] Gramsci happy, and she makes a lot of us happy.” Instead of presenting a new project, Jaar recreated his 1994 performance Untitled (Newsweek), about the political and journalistic failure to prevent the Rwandan genocide.

As Jaar loudly recited weekly summaries of events in Rwanda beginning with April 6, Newsweek covers flashed on the screen to his left, showcasing Paula Jones, Nelson Mandela (its headline: “Black Power!”), and D-Day 50th anniversary coverage. He rapidly announced body counts at the end of each segment (200,000 by May 8, 300,000 by May 22), while photographs of O.J. Simpson flooded the screen. On August 1, Newsweek finally put the crisis in Rwanda on its cover. Peacekeeping efforts increased, but one million people died nevertheless.

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Original story on the ARTINFO website at:
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/33063/creative-time-revolutionizes-the-sleepy-conference/