Conversation Pieces

Years ago I watched Nursing change its core base of process and procedure to outcome based. All brought about by thinking people. Whilst nurses had their heads down working in blind obedience, the thinkers thought. Elizabeth Kubler Ross ( Loss and Grief) is just one example-she asked the question, ‘what about that person sitting so neatly in crisp sheets with fluffed up pillows ; so well looked after, but did anyone think or have the understanding to approach the subject of dying. The person was dying; however the subject was invisible, too delicate to approach. A new holistic genre was soon to come into being. The person was not one to be observed and pitied and ‘keep comfortable’. The person was human and could have control over their life; many major reforms took place. It was the beginning of the dialogue of change, culminating today with client based approached to health care. I hesitate at this point to make comment on the health system of today. Even though there has been a mammoth leap in technology the politics and the humanity issues still cross paths, (our desperate struggle; the person the penny) all institutions have their hierarchical structure and there is no one answer. The ‘state’ is untimely in control and if you spend the Queen’s penny you do her bidding- the dialogue is continuing. Grant Kester’s book ‘Conversation pieces’ reminds me of this same process.
In art I am seeing a divide; some artists create by doing and use object/image base, others, the thinkers, who base practice on idea/ideal. However, at a deeper level most artists are socially and political minded at heart. I hadn’t really noticed or understood this concept until pouring over Grant H. Kester words in regard to WochenKlausur’s art collective’s ’ boat colloquies’.
‘...creative act a concrete intervention in which the traditional art materials of marble canvas or pigment were replaced by “socio-political relationships”
‘...creative facilitation of dialogue and exchange’
‘...conversation becomes an integral part of the work itself. It is reframed as an active, generative process that can help us speak and imagine beyond the limits of identities, official discourse, and the perceived inevitability of partisan political conflict’
‘The work of art can elicit a more open attitude toward new and different forms of experience while challenging the assumption that avant-garde art must be shocking or difficult to understand’
For example ‘context providers rather than content providers’
Ed Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz



The ‘Hoerengrachts’ is described as a remarkable work of contemporary art that serves as a social commentary, a statement of political intent.
The Hoerengrachts is a street scene in three dimensions and depicts a street in Amsterdam’s red light district; it portrays prostitutes and their working premises.
First exhibited in 1984


http://www.theleisurereview.co.uk/images/Keinholz%20S033.pr.jpg
The distinction between these art works is the outcome; whereas ‘Hoerengrachts’ is labelled a historical record: WochenKlausur’s reached a positive and concrete response to the problem.
A “creative act a concrete intervention” that has moved away from the institution. Some critics question if this is art as it is ‘indistinguishable from political or social activism’. I can only say that these Dialogical projects produced outcomes never reached or even thought of before as opposed to pure self orientated consumerism.