When reading over the Introduction to Grant Kester's book, I found that there was a fine line between political/social activism and art making. In particular, the 'performance' piece 'The Roof Is on Fire' where 220 Latino and African American teenagers would sit in cars on a Californian rooftop discussing relevant issues to 'transcend the one-dimensional cliches promulgated by mainstream news and entertainment media' was an example of this grey area. The dialogues performed on the day led to other collaborations which proved that the performance was successful in its hopes and aspirations. Perhaps it's my ignorance when performance work is concerned but I found it difficult to see the difference between art practice and activism when reading over the WochenKlausur's aspirations.
That said, the way in which the WochenKlausur talks offer the individual a situation to be themselves and respond in the same way, moving away from all traditional modernist approaches can only be positive. As I read through the introduction, Dada's spontaneity came to mind immediately and coincidentally Kester then relates the WochenKlausur's talks to Dada based practice. As a young person though, and more importantly as a young artist, when Kester talks about challenging the 'deadening representational conventions of academic art' it's hard to understand as to whether that is either a positive, or negative thing.
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