Get Real...

I used to live in South Newtown in a real dump of a house. It was cockroach infested, it was always dirty and at one point the ceiling caved. By all this you can probably imagine what the backyard was like. It was in that very backyard that I had a statement thrown out at me in front of a huge earthenware buddha head on a balmy summer night -It was that 'art can't change anything. So why bother.'

Why do artists make art? What do they aim to achieve? I believe that contemporary artists produce art to cause change, whether it be an internal, individual response or to cause a change in the 'community'/society they live in. Contemporary, avant garde art is largely utopian and aims to have an affect - whatever that is. What is important is not its economic worth, but the value of a work of art being to able to affect change. This brings me to Grant H. Kester's Conversation Pieces introduction and the artist collective WochenKlauser who he mentions. To them I say this:

This is exciting. It's really really exciting. A piece of art that actually achieves something. Art can change the world. To all those sceptics out there, suck. on. this.

Despite the success of the work 'Intervention to aid drug addicted women' resulting in such a positive conclusion, you may say why didn't they just have a dialogue between both groups? Why didn't a representative act on behalf of the women to discuss issues? It's simple really. By the work operating under the framework of art the intervention made it less of a spectacle - it was made to be less of a deal than it was, and the people who interacted in the intervention were able to be themselves - to be real. And that's really saying something for a bunch of prostitutes and politicians on a boat.