Collective Practice

The Introduction to Conversation Pieces sees author Grant Kester describe an art practice that is process rather than object based, and involves encounter, dialogue, and conversation. Kester discusses the work Shelter for Drug-addicted Women instigated by the collective Wochenklausur in 1994. The work, or rather "concrete intervention" to use the term preferred by the collective itself, saw almost 60 experts over the course of two weeks participate in panel discussions held on a boat in Zurich. The aim was to develop and instigate a plan to help drug addicted homeless women, and the result was a twenty bed shelter that ran for eight years.

Cue discussion of is it art, or activism? What is the difference? Is there a difference? Does it even matter?

I'd prefer instead to discuss a relatively minor point that struck me. Strangely, Kester chooses to liken the actions of Wochenklauser to the work of early 20th century German Dadaists Hannah Hoch and John Heartfied. Kester's argument is that the boat talks instigated by Wochenklauser saw a sort of recontextualising of the expertise and actions of the experts of various political persuasions. He sees the art-context of the discussions as functioning to emancipate participants from their officious roles and obligations, allowing them to act freely in a way that would not be possible within the bureaucratic and administrative confines of social work/public health/activism. Kester likens this to the compositional juxtapositions and recombinations of imagery in the photomontages and collages of the Dadaists. Kester here seems to be clutching at straws in a ham fisted attempt to describe a lineage from the historical avant garde to works such as Shelter for Drug-addicted Women. It almost seems as if his desire to place this kind of work in an historical Art context is a sort of preemptive rebuke to those who will argue that it isn't art. It just comes across a little awkwardly.