Kester + Collective art practices

I found Kester discussion revigerating. his exploration into a network of artists and collectives united by a desire to create new forms of understanding through creative dialogue that crosses boundaries of race, religion, and culture. Some of the most innovative art of the past decade has been created far outside conventional galleries and museums. Provocative, accessible, and engaging Kester situates these socially conscious projects historically, relates them to key issues in contemporary art and art theory, and thus allows a unique critical framework for understanding them. In a parking garage in Oakland, California; on a pleasure boat on the Lake of Zurich in Switzerland; at a public market in Chiang Mai, Thailand—artists operating at the intersection of art and cultural activism have been developing new forms of collaboration with diverse audiences and communities. I really did appreciate the way in which Kester’s exploration of the ways in which artists corroborate and challenge many of the key principles of avant-garde art and art theory. Kester traced the origins of these works in the conceptual art and feminist performance art of the 1960s and 1970s and draws from the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, Jürgen Habermas. I suspect that is the trick, they are seamlessly intertwined and inseparable to culture using, referencing and being reactionary to culture, society.

I found this on Collective invention website, i think it summarises the complex and dynamic approach that these artsits like The Art of Change, Helen and Newton Harrison, Littoral, Suzanne Lacy, Stephen Willats, and WochenKlausur took.


-http://www.collectiveinvention.com/