This was my grant proposal for my project. It explains all facets of the project in detail. I would like to thank the Boise State University’s Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Awards Committee for awarding my the grant, it made this project possible.
Proposal for The Posthumanist Aesthetic Manifesto: An Artist’s Statement for Social Change
Research Question:
What media and methods have the greatest propensity to effect social change in the microcosms of our community and the macrocosms of our increasing global world? I will explore this question through the utilization of visual and public art, television and print media, and academic writing under the auspices of posthumanist theory.
Summary of Project:
The Posthumanist Aesthetic Manifesto: An Artist’s Statement for Social Change is an interdisciplinary and multimedia art project designed to explore ways of creating social change in Boise State University and the Boise community through a myriad of arts. This project will involve the following art forms: sculpture, an installation, video, academic research, the writing of a manifesto, a TVTV public access show and public art utilized to highlight important nonprofit organizations in the Boise community. This media is used in an attempt to create a dialogue with the public about the importance of art as a tool for social change and social justice.
I will be writing a manifesto on the posthumanist aesthetic, which is an exploration on what the experience of posthumanism can be through the arts and how this experience can be utilized to help create social change. The foundation of this project is posthumanist theory, which is used to explain why there is a great deal of social inequality in the world based on race, class and gender. My thesis will serve as the foundation of my project, and everything that follows is my experiment to see what types of art can aid best in educating the public, which then can be used for social change. I will leave copies of my manifesto around the community and university to make it accessible. I resolve to construct a twenty foot sculptural installation which will be displayed in Boise State University’s Hemingway gallery with televisions inside of the sculpture playing videos I have made about prehumanism, humanism and posthumanism. I will then install a public sculpture around noteworthy nonprofit organizations in our community that are working for different types of social justice. These non-governmental agencies are an important key to our global future. There are many boundaries in the art world and academia that I want my project to transgress. My project will address the harm in the rigid divisions in academia by blurring the boundaries between disciplines. I will achieve this by integrating different departments into my creative project, including my committee, which consists of faculty from four departments and two colleges. I want fine art to extend out from institutions such as galleries and be integrated into the public sphere in meaningful ways. I am dealing with new theory within my public art, and as an artist I have a social responsibility to educate the public about these issues. Therefore, I will host free lectures at Boise State University to explain the art and my theories clarifying how they serve a practical purpose in helping make our community a better place. I am also creating a television show on Boise’s public access TVTV channel eleven, which will be a forum to educate the community about this work. On the show I will have people from the various nonprofit organizations with which I am working, my faculty advisors, and people from the community to discuss their reactions to the work. These half hour shows will be broadcast throughout my project and they have the potential to reach 65,000 viewers. I have experience working with the media and know that it is a vital tool in the dissemination of knowledge.
This project is over and above the normal degree requirements for a BFA and an Honors Senior Thesis because it is an interdisciplinary multimedia project that incorporates public art, a colossal sculptural gallery installation, art education and extensive research and scholarly activity. The Art Department and the Honors College have given me full support and approval for my project. I will receive academic credit through independent studies.
My Background and Experience:
I am an accomplished sculptor and have studied sculpture at Boise State University for four years. In the summer of 2002 I had a sculpture internship at Shidoni foundry, one of the premier foundries in the Western United States. I have spent the last three years taking advanced Honors classes and courses in critical, postmodernist, gender and art theory in the Art, English, Sociology and Communication departments. Boise State University awarded my academic and artistic accomplishments with scholarships and funded my scholastic trips abroad to study in Germany and Egypt, which allowed me the invaluable experiences of having direct knowledge of other cultures and languages. I have also produced shows and volunteered at TVTV Channel eleven to learn about democratic grassroots media and how to effect social change through a plethora of media. I have spent the last two years researching social dialectical/littoral art, and art for social change. This past year I have focused on the new body of theory called posthumanism. My thesis will elucidate what posthumanism is and I will create and describe what the posthumanist aesthetic is through all the facets of my project.
I am an artist double majoring in Art History/Visual Culture with an emphasis in contemporary art, and a Visual Arts major with an emphasis in sculpture. I am also a Gender Studies minor and an Honors College student. I will be graduating in Spring 2005. This project is geared towards what I want to pursue during graduate school. I plan to receive a MFA in Multimedia Studies and then to receive a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies.
Purpose of Project:
The purpose of my research project is to initiate social change through the visual arts by integrating theory, writing and the public. I am challenging myself to go above and beyond the parameters set for a BFA Senior Show and an Honors Senior Thesis Project, and this creative research project will be above and beyond the work these senior projects require. Art is a powerful communicator, which can be used in the service to help create social change. I want to inspire artists to think beyond art as a commodity and transgress the boundaries of the gallery and museum systems. My advising committee and supervisors will be multidisciplinary. My supervising professor for the grant is Professor Nicholas Newman. My Honors Project supervisor is Dr. Louie Simon from the English Department. My supervising professors for the sculptural-video-installation are Professors Nicholas Newman, Francis Fox, and Richard Young from the Art Department; Dr. Ginna Husting from the Sociology Department; and Dr. Peter Lutze from the Communication Department. Christopher Schofield and Dean Gunderson are two professional sculptors who will serve as structural and safety consultants for my installation.
The main academic nexus of this project will be my manifesto. I will be creating my own theory on how posthumanism can become an aesthetic which may be applied to varying types of art to create social change. The art and manifesto are intended to create a dialogue about public and private art as tools for social change and how they are significant for their transformative power. This project will involve the integration and manifestation of advanced postmodern, feminist and poststructuralist theory. There will be an exploration of the display and interplay of three-dimensional multimedia assemblages in the context of gallery installations and sculpture as a social dialectical public art process. The sculpture will also be part of a multimedia installation incorporating video. I am attempting to integrate disparate theories and art processes into the manifesto and my BFA arts exhibition. Social dialectical art is a type of art that is displayed in the public sphere that in some way creates a dialogue with the public about certain issues concerning the community. The entire process is social dialectical, because the writing and mass distribution of my manifesto, the TVTV show, and the display of my artwork will be generating a discussion about art in Boise State University and the community. I will focus on social inequalities such as women’s rights, minority and refugee rights, environmental protection and animal rights. The public art will be installed at institutions in town that I believe exemplify my idea of posthumanism. My expectation is to raise awareness of these centers and their issues. I want to demonstrate the importance of art in larger sociopolitical environments, not just the narrow confines of the art world and gallery systems. My manifesto will allow me to clearly articulate and advocate the progress that I want to see in the art world, while my sculptures and TVTV show will be a clear visual instance of this.
Literature Review:
The field of posthumanist and posthuman theory is relatively new. Therefore, I am drawing extensively from foundational texts by the forbearers of posthumanism including, Nietzsche, Freud and Marx. Dr. Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” provided the major impetus for this field of study, because she questioned humanism and the role it would play in the twenty first century. I am utilizing this theory to formulate an aesthetic for the visual arts. Centuries of humanism’s anthropocentric worldview are being called into question by the theoretical position of posthumanism.
[i] Humanism is then argued to be a root cause of environmental and social problems in our current society. It is a paradigm that has failed to create a holistic interrelated global world. Therefore, it is my goal to utilize posthumanist theory in the service of visual art and vice versa to correct the oversights of humanism. Art has the capacity to communicate, generate interest and create spectacle about specific social and political issues in the public sphere. In order to generate new theory on the posthumanist aesthetic I must have a thorough understanding, through extensive research, of the origins and implications of humanism.
In “A Cyborg Manifesto” Donna J. Haraway argued that the epistemological myths of Western civilization are corrupt and are inhibiting social progress, such as origin myths about a time when humanity was pure. The myths come from Eurocentric ideologies that marginalize the rest of the world. Haraway advocates deontological thinking to be employed in the fabrication of new myths for a new millennium and she states, “liberation rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative apprehension, of oppression and so of possibility.”
[ii]
My theoretical construction of the posthumanist aesthetic will draw heavily from a relatively new movement in art, which is social dialectical art/littoral. The foremost scholar of this phenomenon is Dr. Grant Kester who gave a lecture at Boise State University in 2000. I have been in contact with him about my project and he has aided my project with excellent research material written by him and other experts in the field. He defines social dialectical art/littoral art as:
This [movement in art] has placed the emphasis on artistic engagement as educational, or pedagogic, in a way that attests to inclusion within society as an integrated whole…this is espousing a shift in the terms of engagement between artists and what were traditionally regarded as audiences, to a more therapeutic or correctional interaction with an underscored group of people.
[iii]
My manifesto, sculptures and video work are all attempting to create a dialogue with Boise State University and the community about how art can cause social change. I am arguing that artists have social responsibilities, especially artists who work in the public sphere.
During the last twenty years artists have been caught in an ideologically tumultuous time because they have had to question the role they play in a larger social context than just the art world. Henry A. Giroux, a professor of cultural studies, articulates this crisis in ideology very well by stating that artists who work in the public sphere become cultural workers.
I want to insert a broader notion of the political back into this argument… to rearticulate the role of artists as cultural workers whose public function offers them the opportunity to serve as border intellectuals who engage in a productive dialogue across different sites of cultural production. Border intellectuals function in the space between "high" and popular culture; between the institution and the street; between the public and the private. At stake here is not merely the opportunity to link art to practices that are trangressive and oppositional, but also to make visible a wider project of connecting forms of cultural production to the creation of multiple critical public spheres.
[iv]
The term “cultural workers” is very appropriate, because these artists are going above and beyond just producing art for the art world and art market; they are trying to initiate change through their work. Postmodernist art is about the reexamination of traditional conceptions of art, while pushing the boundaries of what are considered to be socially acceptable forms of art. Postmodernist art allows for a plurality of disciplines and ideas to be integrated into art. In my manifesto I will argue that sociopolitical art is a new form of art that transgresses the boundaries of the art world to encounter a larger political and public sphere, which allows art to function within the service of society.
Here are the facets of each crucial component of my project:
Each facet of the project is an integral part of my research question. This is a creative research project that I have formulated as the culmination of my education at Boise State University. This research will help guide me in graduate school as I experiment with what types of art and media effect social change and help to better the communities in which I live. This project is on a grand scale that has never been attempted by a BFA candidate. I am combining sculpture, installation art, public art, video, television and extensive writing and academic research into one ambitious undertaking to create a dialogue with the community about art, media and most importantly social justice as represented through the organizations with which I will be working.
Manifesto: The manifesto is the core work of my Honors Thesis project. I have decided after exhaustive research into postmodernist, feminist and poststructuralist theory that the most effective way to create social change is to understand the root causes of social inequality. As a visual artist and student of visual culture I have decided to employ an age-old art methodology, the manifesto. I will be advocating that artists must begin working outside of human-centric models of art and focus on larger issues. This is my opportunity to create new theory regarding posthumanism and aesthetics, as well as integrating various contemporary theories with my hypothesis of what constitutes progressive theory; and assert how it can be used in the service of social change through the arts. Posthumanism is my answer to the root causes of general social inequalities, gender, animal rights, and environmental issues. The manifesto on posthumanist aesthetics and the importance of social dialectical art will be exemplified by my installation artwork.
Sculptural Video Installation: I will fabricate one large-scale sculpture to be displayed in the Hemingway Gallery at Boise State University. This will be constructed from both permanent and ephemeral media while integrating video installations. This installation will be the most costly part of my budget due to the scale and uses of metal and fiberglass. I want the sculpture and the video to literally be sublime. In the past twenty years artists have utilized the concept of the sublime to gain audience attention, such as large-scale work by Abstract Expressionists and Earthwork artists. This twenty foot sculpture will serve as an environment where one may enter and watch the videos I have made. I have been heavily influenced by the idea of Pacific Islander art that creates environmental sculptures for the dissemination of knowledge. This illustrates my concept of creating transformative sculpture. I want this sculptural installation to have a mesmerizing effect on viewers through the use of scale, the juxtaposition of synthetic and natural materials and the three video screens. Installation art is about utilizing the space where you display your art to have a total effect on your viewer. My art will be heavily abstracted. I see realism as being connected to humanism. Abstraction has a history of being used for political means in order to facilitate the audience to question their preconceived notions of what constitutes reality, such as Germany’s Blue Rider group, the Russian Constructivists and German Dada. I will be documenting every step of the process from the actual creation of the artwork to the methods of dealing with public institutions for the display of my sculptures. The process of creating the artwork and interacting with the public is extremely valuable to my project.
Site-specific Display: I will fabricate one sculpture to be displayed in front of the chosen nonprofit organizations that are helping to benefit the Boise community. This elaborate sculpture will be a portal like structure that fits around the doors of these institutions. Indicating that these nonprofit agencies are the “portal” towards a more progressive future. The sculpture will also be fabricated out of fiberglass and steel to maintain a cohesive aesthetic with the installation. The sculpture will be a rotating piece of public art that travels around to the different organizations.
TVTV show and Media: I am creating my own public access show on TVTV called Our Posthumanist Future. This show will help me to further disseminate information about my manifesto and my sculptural installation. I will have representatives from the various organizations on the show to discuss the issues. The media is also very important in a project like this because it reaches such a large audience. The media is a fundamental tool for social artists. I have the potential to reach approximately 65,000 people in this area using public access television. To increase awareness of my project I will send out press releases to all the TV stations and papers in Boise near the time of the display of my sculptures.
Lectures: Artists who put work in the public sphere have a responsibility to educate the public as to the nature of the artwork. Education is fundamental to my process. Therefore, I will have a public lecture at Boise State University and City Hall provided I receive permission from the Boise City Arts Commission. The Visual Arts League has agreed to sponsor a room for my lecture in the Student Union Building. Since my work revolves around new theories I want to make an attempt to reach out to the public in order to explain and clarify my position. At these lectures I will have a pamphlet condensing my manifesto and explaining what I am trying to accomplish at Boise State University and in the community with this multifaceted project.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, this interdisciplinary and multimedia project is about creating awareness of social justice through the use of art, writing and the media. The nonprofit organizations that I work with will gain more recognition for their worthwhile causes. Art will be expanded from the elite realm of the gallery into the public sphere where the public can learn about art and theory and these organizations in an open environment while witnessing the new theory of the posthumanist aesthetic in practice and action. Thank you for your consideration of my research and creative activity project.
Endnotes [i] Badmington, Neil ed., Posthumanism Reader: Readers in Cultural Criticism. New York: Palgrave, 2000.
[ii] Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Women. New York: Routledge, 1991. 149-181.
[iii] Kester, Grant. “Dialogical Aesthetics: A Critical Framework for Littoral Art.” Variant. Issue 9 www.ndirect.co.uk/~variant
[iv] Becker, Carol ed. The Artists in Society: Rights Roles and Responsibilities. Chicago: New Art Examiner Press, 1995. 5.
