(on artistic significance in second tier communities)
by Craig Reynolds
from Basta! v2n2
In June 1999, I was asked to participate in the Mid-Western/Rust-Belt installment of the Co-Generate Project, a National Association of Artists Organizations "think-tank," the purpose of which was to determine the perspectives of artists and arts-management types 30 years old and younger. Consisting of regional gatherings in San Francisco, Seattle, New York and several other centrally-located cities around the country, the project intended to determine the future of government support for alternative spaces such as Buffalo’s Hallwalls and CEPA Galleries, as suggested by the specific needs of the emerging generation of artists. But as much as our group––culled from various arts organizations in Buffalo, Rochester, Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburgh and Boston––might prove to include next year’s Ed Cardonis, Sarah Kellners and Margaret Smiths, it became clear early on that a division existed between the arts professionals and those mining a more subterranean creative route.
The differences between the 8 participants revolved mostly around career/life/artistic ambitions, especially as they related to geographical dynamics. Each of us living in second tier communities (strangely, when I referred to Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Cleveland as “rust belt” cities, most everybody looked at me funny, either having never heard the term before or believing it to be a thoroughly derogatory piece of slang . . .) must face the spector of New York or some other looming power–city, and the question that we––as both individual artists and as arts organizations––must face is: how do we measure success in a community in which we have no hope of being recognized outside of our community. For some, the cities in which we find ourselves living serve merely as training grounds––and sure enough, the 2 participants from Pittsburgh were planning their NYC moves for the near future while another from Columbus was on his way to Philadephia––but for others (myself included, so this recollection reflects an admitted bias towards my perspective on and memories of our discussions), a redefinition of the concept of success, one that takes into account the specifics of other environments and the innate worth of the work being produced there, is perhaps a more noble solution.
For Stephanie Grey, representing Buffalo’s Locust St. Art Classes, access to materials for underprivileged subgroups provides one measure of achievement. Karen Vanmeenan, who edits Afterimage through the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, evidenced the fact that a magazine of that stature could originate in a second-tier city, thus problematizing the concept of the Art Forum tract entirely. For me, New York City’s authority evokes the problem of defining success in the art world, but more importantly, the problem of determining the larger authenticity of living outside the gaze of the media–spectacle. I work proudly from the American margin in deliberate defiance of the stranglehold that New York City and other major cities have over the American mindset, but that’s a social reaction amplified through my “art.” To me, living in Buffalo is a badge of authenticity, an “I still matter!” uttered loudly beneath the sensors of a homogenized media spectacle too disinterested to quote me.
Since we cannot expect our work to succeed on the Art Forum tract (and because we don’t have the luxury of a patron class to take its place), we must reach out to local audiences that otherwise would not have paid attention to contemporary artistic activity, but not necessarily in the ways that alternative spaces have traditionally done. When one participant mentioned a film festival that she had organized, to which a small audience had been drawn in part because there had been no media coverage, I suggested that we all could stand to: 1) abandon the typical means by which we promote and showcase contemporary art to audiences that don't necessarily care to embrace it; and 2) make it so that the media has no choice but to cover us, and the audience has no choice but to pay attention. Another participant added that she hand-makes her event flyers using glitter, markers and paint stick for the simple reason that if somebody went through that much trouble to invite her to their show, she would have no choice but to go, which I thought was great (I think that my point of reference was somewhat charged toward subverting the concept of the alternative space since, in fact, I was not necessarily representing one even though I was there at the suggestion of one, and wanted to assert my independence from these spaces as well as their equivalents across the country). While hand-glittered flyers won't solve the problems faced by all alternative spaces, there is something to learn from that kind of direct engagement with one's audience.
In Buffalo, places like Hallwalls appeal to a great many people, but other, younger creative subgroups have little interest in visiting them … simply because they are alternative spaces, the legacy of which leaves little room for contemporary ideas unconcerned with the established dialogue of contemporary theory. By contrast, events at venues like Boston's Bad Girrrl's Studios started as artist open houses and eventually grew to include bands and performance artists, an expression of community rather than a professional discipline. I suggested that in Buffalo, we have no choice but to forge close relationships with our audiences because there’s no money to support a private or governmental patron class and more importantly, arts organizations in Buffalo (El Museo, Just Buffalo, the Polish Community Center, Locust St. Art Classes, The Irish Classical Theater, Buffalo United Artists, the Hag Theater Co., CEPA, Hallwalls, Big Orbit, to name just a few) exist because the communities that support them authorized their existence. Look at Media Study Buffalo which, when the money vanished in the early ‘80s, was partly assumed into the UB Media Study department; but the other half, which provided access to film and editing equipment for the community, was so lamented that Squeaky Wheel was developed as a kind of grass roots forum to provide it. In this case, art serves as a function of life (in its myriad incarnations), rather than a professional task or career ambition, which is why it works in a smaller community.
Roberto Bedoya, the project's moderator, remarked that it was interesting that audience had become an issue because no other gathering had mentioned it (“In San Francisco, they don’t talk about audience because there’s always an audience,” he observed). What’s interesting about Buffalo is that even as the money fades, the government forgets about us and the Art World looks away, the creative spirit refuses to die. Even on a commercial level, our artistic businesses exist by the wills to succeed of their founders and employees, from Righteous Babe Records to P22 Type Foundry to Artvoice newspaper.
I suggested that perhaps we should take a cue from the rave scene, with its spontaneous network of DJs, promoters and audiences, because that particular web probably resembles much more closely tthe alternative space network that gave rise to the new art of the early ‘70s. What’s more, doing so would forgo our uncle's apparatus of revolt (navigation through which is now a professional requirement), since our community, as a larger expression of our age, requires that we do so. With no-one else there to nurture and challenge us, we have almost no choice but to recreate the world by the grace of our own free will.