Engaging in dialogue (day 163)

CODE Dialogues happened yesterday.  I didn't blog about it because I needed a break to get clear on what stood out for me about the event.

Bruce Ferguson started the day with a pretty heavy talk on the responsibilities of being an artist working with technology in the context of a world where many things are not working optimally.  There is still a tech divide.  The disparity of, say, access to the web, is pretty glaring when you see it on a map.  He was basically pointing out that artists have a role in working with technology in a way that highlights the inflection points of tech as creative and destructive.   He was pointing out that culturally we are still pretty clumsy at discerning what we should do with tech, and how we should do it.

It was a nice segue into the next talk about urbanism, technology and participation.  Alexandra Samuel did a great job moderating a fairly difficult group of panelists.  The discussion found its legs I think on the discussion about interaction vs. participation.  My feeling was participation in this case was perhaps meant in the sense of 'engagement'.  The difference between interaction and participation then centres on commitment to a larger dialogue for which the artwork or technology becomes an entry point.  Many interactive artworks are still very much about entertainment and spectacle.  And in some ways, people expect that.  As it becomes more mainstream I think we'll see a shift in emphasis to work that provides deeper ways to engage.

As I was getting ready for Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's talk during the break, the discussion in the morning started to worry me.  His work is so much about play and grand gestures.  It can be hard to relate his work to social responsibility.  There was some controversy about 'Vectorial Elevation' being enacted in Vancouver both because of the cost of installation and the amount of power needed for the lights.  Especially in the context of the Olympics where the cost/benefit analysis continues to trigger a lot of anger.  Rafael himself is not one to emphasize political issues in discussion about his work.  I was super nervous.

In good form, he started his talk with Mexican music to lighten the mood.  He went on to describe a series of recent work from his relational architecture, shadow box, and sub-sculpture series.  I was really glad that he finished his talk with Voz Alta, a work to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Tlatelolco student massacre in Mexico in 1968.   It is by far his most political work and I think highlights the potential of participation at a visually grand scale.   It was about owning a space and speaking out, involving the memory of the buidings and geography directly.  It was not about 'alien memory' as he often states of his relational architecture work.

I started with a question about the tension between large scale public installations and political overt work.  Creating large public installations often requires official permission and sanction so may limit the range of expression possible, yet the potential for impact is high.  He spoke about the fact that the work in Mexico was commissioned by the students at the University.  They were able to mount the work independent of government control.  It made me wonder if this would even be possible here.  He spoke about needing to compromise but not giving in on crucial points of the work.
I followed up with a question about Vancouver and why Vectorial Elevation, if he could have done a Vancouver-specific work what would it have been.  He didn't answer the second part of the question but talked about Vectorial Elevation as being ideal for the Olympics because of its possibility for cross-country and international participation.  Hard not to agree with that.
I then addressed the controversy more directly and asked about the need for such large scale work.  Why spend such large sums when there are more pressing social issues to be solved.  He spoke about the power issues with his work and said that people usually felt more comfortable once he told them that the power needed to run his piece for the entire duration of the exhibition was equivalent to three hockey games.  He also mentioned that the controversy noticeably quieted down once the piece went up.   He ended it with support for the fight to re-establish arts funding in BC.  People clapped.   Thinking about it now I think I would have rephrased my question.  I framed it in the context of the Olympics and NASA, things that are expensive but appeal to a hopeful sense of unity, exploration, out of the reach of the practical grittiness of life.   I think I would have asked his opinion more directly about how such endeavours help or hinder the possibilities or motivation of solving some of the more gritty issues of living in society.   Because that is the tension.  When I experience a work like Vectorial Elevation, am I suddenly more optimistic about world unity, world peace?  By highlighting the best of human nature, do we give ourselves a push to work all the more harder to solve the problems?  Or is it a distraction, a diversion?  I suppose anything can become a way to hide from responsibility.   When the question is framed about money I think it hides a category mistake.  Many of the social issues we face are about process, not money.  It apparently takes 75K per year for the government to take care of one homeless person.  Clearly, money is not the issue.  Still if we devoted all the energy and human resources that was devoted to the Olympics towards alleviating suffering in the Downtown Eastside, I'm sure we'd see progress.   Where people are willing to devote energy is the real issue.  It also helps that the Olympics has a definite end point, a goal.
Anyway, that is the real discussion that I would have liked to have with Rafael.  I still don't know what he thinks about it.  I sensed he wasn't going to go there with me.  He spoke eloquently about his work and process but stayed pretty clear of its potential impact.
I'm sad I didn't get to ask him about the question about Augmented Reality.   But I think he would have been against the personal and commercial nature of it.  Over the time I spent with the documentation of his work, and at the dialogue, it became clear that he is very much about people physically engaging with each other and the space.  He's a very social person and fun is very much part of his motivation.

Ok enough with the blow by blow.  I felt terribly uncomfortable up there.  Even though it was supposed to be a dialogue the nature of the setup made that difficult.  I think I would rather do radio.

A song for this post.