Who Do You Serve: Re-evaluating the Art Institution
By Jessica Pierotti
Institutions within the arts and education are facing a reckoning right now - as communities call for them to not only address their internal failings, but to immediately activate their resources to support the movement for Black lives in any way possible. Put so eloquently in this portion of a post by Read/Write Library”:
Arts and culture institutions can’t have it both ways. We can’t insist on art’s ability to transform or its ability to speak truth to power — and at the same time say that we are not in the business of transforming who holds power and how they use it.
When looking closely it is hard to find any college, nonprofit, or creative platform that is free of some issue of structural racism or labor exploitation. Some are so profoundly corrupt and entangled in government and corporate interests that it seems almost impossible to construct a path to transformation. How can we move beyond surface level posturing and effect real change at large-scale institutions when white supremacy seems baked-in to every brick in the building? In forests a controlled burn functions to protect from a larger uncontrolled fire sweeping an area. It revitalizes the soil and encourages the germination of trees. Perhaps we should accept that some of the long-standing familiar structures within art and education need to undergo dismantling rather than reform - their components distributed within the community to foster new growth.
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One of our human weaknesses is the desire for stasis, even if we know that the cost of maintaining it dramatically outweighs the benefit. To many, the concept of defunding the police ranges from foolish to terrifying. Though, taking a look at this FiveThirtyEight poll, it appears education is working quickly to widen national support.
The narrative of police as a necessity, of BIPOC community members as innately criminal, of police officers as heroes, is thoroughly embedded in our culture. Even those within the movement, when challenged with an unclear moral scenario can easily find themselves sanctioning state violence against protestors - for example, because they threw the first frozen water bottle. Despite the fact that one can not be ‘against police brutality’ while also accepting brutal police actions, we are seeing this mental gymnastics take place across a range of public and private forums.
Those who are new to the police abolitionist movement are processing the many contradictions of living within a system that we actively want to dismantle. For example, though one may wish to be hardline about not calling the police, this stance can rapidly become unstable. I recently saw an individual have what looked like a seizure on my block. Calling 911 for an ambulance will most likely also bring police to my streets, and healthcare itself can function as a component of the carceral system that could potentially do this person more harm than good. Meanwhile we have police officers being brought to trial within a judicial system that we know is rigged in their favor, but will result in at least some of them entering the prison system...that we also hope to abolish in its current form. This unstable ideological ground can push us to capacity. Resulting in some individuals edging back towards ideas of reform in hopes of regaining some sense of stasis and security.
In some ways this ideological dissonance can be seen playing out in our relationship to large-scale institutions in the arts and education. We may see them as dysfunctional - but their presence as a landmark or as some symbol of ‘normalcy’, can overshadow their history of inequity and abuse. Take the Guggenheim - rationally we can see that it is wrought with corruption and systemic racism - but it is also a site for some that is strongly associated with inspiring memories and cultural history. It can be tempting to think that the museum could be absolved by donating more money and hiring a few more BIPOC staff, while we start manufacturing excuses for why they can’t do more. This is an example of fear and anxiety taking over, resulting in some resisting change, and looking instead for ‘the safe way out’. Despite the fact that long-term we can foresee that it is actually the more dangerous choice.
As fall quickly approaches there is even greater urgency to rationally consider what can be reformed, and what must be abandoned within education. I’ve attended two state schools, one community college and one private university. I have loved learning, debate, collaboration, and rigor throughout - but I also found each one flawed in a range of ways as a personal educational experience. When we zoom out to look at many of these institutions as a whole - their labor practices are actively harmful, hiring processes inequitable, recruitment and admissions processes range from hateful to just regular pay-to-play, and ties to corporations and all levels of government interests regularly dictate policy over the needs or demands of the students they claim to serve.
Every educational space is going to have unique issues ranging in severity, and some will be revealed to be too deeply flawed to reform. The pandemic and the 2020 uprisings have worked to expose the oppressive nature of our institutions while also destabilizing our lives individually. While we have become more aware than ever that the systems we work and learn within do not serve us, we may also become even more determined to retain what little security remaining in these institutions can provide us.
Taking a deep breath, and a step back, let us consider - what do students (or educators) of art actually need the institution for in 2020?
There are obviously benefits to attending a university. Education through an institution provides an automatic community of peers and mentors, access to facilities and other resources, and a structured curriculum to guide you. To start, We know perfectly well that one can build their own community - and though more challenging, it has the potential to be a much more inclusive and radical one at that. Amidst the pandemic, access to facilities and resources may be limited to nonexistent, but even if that were not the case one can find low-cost access to many similar facilities and tools as those within the institution. If we remove these aspects from the equation, then in reality students are paying for the degree itself and the convenience of a pre-built structure for learning. They pay for the piece of paper that validates a certain level of learning and increases their market value. But in a post-corona world - where we face a gutted economy, and an increasingly toxic labor structure for emerging educators, what does our market value even mean?
Bachelor’s degrees have been continually devalued over the last 20 years, the MFA becoming increasingly standard for anyone ’taking art seriously’ as a career. With many of us, myself included, arguing that despite the cost, we needed our MFA because we desire to teach at the college level. I have recently done some calculations regarding the cost of attending two Chicago institutions, UIC and SAIC, in relation to how much I have been paid. In doing so, I discovered how much in tuition dollars each of my classes produce. Confronted with the numbers it is hard to argue that we have not been complicit in our exploitation by educational institutions. In my work as an educator I perpetuate the cycle. I educate young people who pay an enormous amount of money to pursue a career in the arts or education, while I am not even paying down the interest on my own student loans. If we are paying for the accreditation to only return to work at the institution under precarious conditions, why not stop paying for the degrees and stop teaching in places that do not value our labor.
In the words of Fred Moten & Stefano Harney in “the university:last words”:
Fuck the name and the game of honor. Fuck the future of the university. Please stop worrying about that shit so we can worry (till, tease, turn over, chew over, chop up and fret) the practice of our presence. No promises from the university, no demands on the university, just the presence of our practice in love and battle, in and through its ruins, on the other side of its dying gasps and last words
These employers are not providing an equitable, or even safe, space for ANY participants to work or learn. We should stop accepting this as ‘just the way it is’. What if we stopped defining artistic success through our degrees, wealth, or proximity to institutions -- but rather valued the individual, their ideas, and their organic community instead?
If we are to consider abandoning the current avenues for education in the arts, the question becomes what do we want to build next? Does it really need to look anything like what we currently have? These are not new ideas of course, radical arts education has existed in a range of forms, most famously in the U.S. at the historic Black Mountain College. There are artists, educators, and philosophers that have been proposing radical approaches for decades, and we should turn to them for inspiration and insight. Today we are already seeing an encouraging resurgence through a range of contemporary projects and actions. (See additional resources.)
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As we all know the pandemic has wrenched apart our lives, causing an enormous amount of pain, but also creating favorable conditions for revolution. This is a crucial turning point for our globe, our nation, our communities, and for us as individuals. This is an opportunity to stop and consider our values, our value, and our quality of life. We have an opportunity to build new structures that have critical reflection built-in, and reject traditional hierarchies and funding strategies. We have the opportunity to build new networks of radical collaboration, barter, and exchange. New structures can be modular, temporary, or built to make themselves obsolete. It is inadequate to solely shift exhibitions, or funding, or course topics, in order to address marginalized groups - while relying on old methodologies and internal structures. This will not be enough to escape the capitalist co-opting of movements, and the pervasiveness of white supremacy. These actions address white supremacy through content ONLY, but not in the many internal facets of an organization that mostly live out of view of the public.
Living a truly ethical life as an individual or an organization is an impossibility. Instead we can try to do our absolute best - be prepared to sacrifice profits for our morals, and constantly re-evaluate to find new ways to function more radically. We may think that there is still some sense of security within the familiar. While we may have accepted that we are in foreign waters, we foolishly think our feet can still touch the bottom. In reality we are already in the deep end, and there’s nothing to be done about it. So we might as well swim out a little farther, and start trying to create things that have never existed before.
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Resources
Readings:
“the university: last words” Zoom conversation between Fred Moten & Stefano Harney presented by FUC (Read the core text here, or watch a video of my reading here)
The Revolution Will Not be Funded - Essay collection edited by Incite! Women of Color Against Violence
Teaching to Transgress - Bell Hooks
Experimental Programs:
Commonwealth and Council is running six free and public courses in August, one of which, "Institutions in the Art World: Critique and Imagination” I obviously signed up for.
Dark Study A BRAND new experimental program centered on art run by some very cool people.
The Black School is “an experimental art school teaching radical black history”. Founded in 2016 in New Orleans, they have recently raised over 100K to build a schoolhouse. They run workshops ranging from one day to one year long, and have a long list of collaborators and supporters.
Chuquimarca’s Tanda project is a free collaborative reading group structure.
Open School East founded in 2013 and based in Margate, UK
The New Centre for Research & Practice “ is not a degree-granting institution and does not seek this form of social recognition. The New Centre provides graduate-level seminars in a range of fields and disciplines to open new paths in artistic, philosophical and political practice.”
Patrisse Cullors’ new MFA program in Social and Environmental Arts Practice at Prescott College
*Along with so many more, especially outside of the U.S. This is an area of research I am only just scratching the surface on! Please pass along recommendations and I will update here.