STUDIO TIME: Glenn Adamson

On October 25, the Arts Research Center will present Studio Time: Process/Production, featuring "Goodbye to Craft" a talk by Glenn Adamson, Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Dr. Adamson is the author of Thinking through Craft, editor of The Craft Reader, co-editor of The Journal of Modern Craft, and one of the leading thinkers on the concept of craft in our contemporary world. Responses will follow from local artist Stephanie Syjuco and Professor Ron Rael (Architecture). Acting ARC Director Julia Bryan-Wilson (History of Art) will moderate. In preparation for the event, Dr. Adamson has prepared the following précis of his talk.

Glenn Adamson (photo by Sipke Visser)

Goodbye Craft: A History of Departures

Little did I know, growing up, that I was living through a period of decline. Born in 1972, I was too young to experience the height of the subcultural craft movement, in which hippie idealism on the one hand and crass commercialism were inexorably intertwining. Suffice to say that the popular enthusiasm that craft had enjoyed in the 1960s and ‘70s did not survive the harsher climate of the 80s, and by the time that I began working in the field of craft history and theory came round, my subject was distinctly unpopular. That indeed is what attracted me to it. Today, that marginal status seems - if I can put it this way - endangered. There is a resurgence of craft - not only of the traditional variety, the knitting circles and wood carvings of yesteryear, but also digital/manual mashups and spectacularly crafted works of contemporary art. My instinct, faced with the new relevance of my own interests, is to run the other way: to say goodbye to craft. But then again I am very conscious of the long history of such departures. Craft has constantly been positioned in the act of disappearance, just round the bend of history. Oddly that is one of its most persistent traits. In the talk I'll be giving at Berkeley, I will try to combine my own biographical involvement in questions of the handmade with a longer narrative, a 'long goodbye' in which craft plays the leading role even as it seems to walk off stage.

CREATIVE TIME: Recap

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts partnered to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit. This annual conference in New York brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. Summit themes this year included Inequities, Occupations, Making, and Tactics. Keynote speakers included Pablo Helguera, Martha Rosler, Tom Finkelpearl, and Slavoj Žižek.

Over 100 participants attended the live-streaming in Berkeley over the course of the day. In additions to viewing talks and performances from New York, attendees took part in live discussions in Berkeley facilitated by Julian Myers and Andrew Weiner from CCA and Shannon Jackson from ARC.  UC Berkeley-affiliated artists Amanda Eicher and Erin Johnson contributed hand-crafted, locally-produced meals, while CCA artist Neil Rivas campaigned throughout the day for the detainment and deportation of illegal super-heroes.  We would like to thank everyone for their thoughtful contributions to the wide-ranging conversation about art and social change, both on ARC Muses in advance of the event, and in their commentary during the live discussion sessions. To see some highlights of the discussion, please visit the Arts Research Center Twitter feed. Thanks also to the UC Institute for Research in the Arts for helping to make this event possible!

A photo album of the day is now posted on the Arts Research Center Facebook page. If you participated in the event, please feel free to tag yourself!

CREATIVE TIME: Amy Yoshitsu

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Amy Yoshitsu, artist.

Keyword: Inequities

Gutter punks act as both an ideal and a marginalized group within the consistently paradoxical subculture that is punk. They exemplify the values of punk by living as a physical marker of anti-authority and are considered part of the vagabond, vagrant, homeless population by the Main Street eye. “Vagabonds throughout history have been seen as ‘indeterminate’ in the sense that they do not exist in fixed social or spatial locations” but are constantly somewhere in the visual public regions of and between cities (Amster, pp. 3). They are associated with danger, poverty, and are “[avatars] of chaos, indeterminacy, and unbounded freedom, suggesting   spirit of subversiveness” like pirates and gypsies (Amster, pp. 3). Gutter Punk culture however, reflects a conscious choice -  not an end-result – of making visible the displacing nature of capitalism. Some may identify themselves as gypsy-like because they value freedom and transience over a sedentary lifestyle, which, in their view, revolves around answering directly to bosses and landlords. The lifestyle is the goal itself and, though they may not seek conquest, plunder, and discovery, like pirates and other adventurous sea-farers, the world of the “vagabond” is comprised of marginal, public spaces which cumulatively parallel the ocean, in which there exists constant threats of death and destruction but simultaneous physical mobility. The marginality of the sea and coast is defined by exclusion from the system of social interactions inland. The physical world of a place-less traveler is wholly defined by exclusion from the system which facilitates the environmental limits. Both the ocean and marginal, public city spaces require humans to artificially create alternative means for food, clothing, and shelter. The duality between fear and freedom inherent to these spaces defines the vagrant lifestyle just as Henry Miller wrote in his 1991 book On the Fringe: The Dispossessed in America which was quoted in Lost in Space: “on one hand, the vagrant is viewed as an enemy, a disrupter, a menace to establish order, a parasite – he or she is someone to be shunned, stigmatized, or even killed. But the vagrant is romanticized as a vagabonding, unfettered free spirit” (Amster, pp. 4).

Amster, Randall. Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization and Urban Ecology of            Homelessness. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing. 1 Jan 2008.

CREATIVE TIME: Brian Barch

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Brian Barch, American Cyberculture student at UC Berkeley.

Keyword: Making

Humans have invented more things than we can count throughout our history, but none has had so much impact on life as one of our first inventions – the plan. Manifesting as business plans, battle tactics, essay outlines, and who knows what else, the concept of a plan has more or less defined the progression of human civilization since its invention, for better and worse. On one hand, plans have given us some of my favorite things in life: video games, science, space exploration, and more of the like. But, like everything in life, plans aren't all good. When I designed and built an air-powered grape-shooter a few years ago, I found some fine-print in the planning process – as fun as the design stage was, and as much as it helped make the grape-shooter work better, the only parts of the building stage that I could really get into were the ones in which I broke from my plans and improvised. Something similar happens whenever I try to program a game or the like: I’ll be super into the design stages and possibilities, but then the actual creation is consistently less fun – unless, of course, there’s a problem with the code and I have to make up some sort of work-around or convenient plot device to deobstaclize it. On a much larger and seemingly unrelated scale, human civilization has been progress-oriented, sacrificing some of what makes life fun for more efficiency, something the plans I’ve talked about are an example of. In a way, plans can even represent civilization as a whole – productive, fun to make, seemingly a great idea, but all the while subverting life’s meaning from one of spontaneity to one of efficiency. So if this paragraph seems random and discursive, it’s because I chose to avoid any planning this time. 

CREATIVE TIME: Heidi Rabben

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Heidi Rabben, graduate student in Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts.

Keyword: Making

What does the process of making mean for artists and other cultural producers today? Artist and activist Paul Chan offers one response to this question in an essay titled “What art is and where it belongs” where he discusses his expectations of himself as an artist and his experience making art in the following way:

“What art ends up expressing is the irreconcilable tension that results from making something, while intentionally allowing the materials and things that make up that something to change the making in mind. This dialectical process compels art to a greater and greater degree of specificity, until it becomes something radically singular, something neither wholly of the mind that made it, nor fully the matter from which it was made. It is here that art incompletes itself, and appears.”

In this excerpt, Chan intriguingly describes the process of art making, something often bound to notions of materiality and tangibility, as a dialectical process that contains an irreconcilable tension between the maker and and the product of his making. That Chan sees this incompletion as precisely the method by which art can extend itself and become something else, raises interesting and important questions about the blurring of art and life in contemporary culture. Using his statement as a frame, I would be interested in discussing what kind of new knowledge or thought is produced by this tension of contemporary making and why.

CREATIVE TIME: Regina Velasco

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Regina Velasco, MA candidate in Urban Studies at San Francisco Art Institute.

Keyword: Inequalities

When thinking about the growing inequalities affecting our global society, my mind inevitably goes to cities. Cities have been the engines of development since industrialization; they have been a fertile ground for the “society of spectacle” and the world of commodities (Debord: 1967) and, most importantly, they represent the habitat and modus vivendi of more than half of the human population. Driven by a neoliberal engine and economic growth, urbanization  is rapidly expanding cities around the world both geographically and in density and the consequences of this urban sprawl have proven to be much more than environmental costs. High standards of poverty, large economic disparities, deep social fragmentation, violence, and a dystopic distribution of space are only some of the consequences that counter-balance the benefits that cities represent and unfortunately, these are frequently overlooked or lost among the urban sprawl. 

I believe a tactical way of addressing this issue is through space, specifically through “urban interventions.” As a multidisciplinary practice, leveraging from art, politics, urbanism, design, architecture, among others, “urban interventions“ leverage from their position as “outsiders,” to establish their own terms of engagement as a social practice. As they move freely and creatively across disciplines and through the city, they represent a new boundary for creation, a fresh approach to the production of space and an innovative way of “being in the city.” They fight alienation by opening up a space for collective critical engagement; they propose a dialogue, between the dweller and the city that provokes active involvement and the questioning of urban conditions. Intervening directly in the everyday by the making of “situations,” processes that turn the city into ‘a laboratory for dramatic experimentation,’ (Debord: 1995) interventions have the capacity to create “a space between”(Rendell: 2006) one that disrupts the everyday and dares to use imaginative means and “as if” situations to think otherwise (Donald, 1999). They explore social problems and challenge urban boundaries through and with the citizen. It is when the citizen reestablishes a connection with the city how the city can re-emerge as a site of change, of political responsibility and engagement. In this way, “urban interventions” become a spatial tactic in which the citizen occupies, reclaims and questions urban space favoring the making of social change. 

If we want to address social inequalities we must enable the means for people to raise their voice, and “urban interventions” represent this possibility within the oppressive inequalities that urbanization imposes among society. As these urban realities build are our every day, our approach towards their challenges should come of the every day as well and “interventions” bring that to the streets- by working across disciplines and engaging directly with the citizen, they are an agent of change as they understand change as a social process. 

References

Debord, Guy, trans. Donald Nicholson Smith. The Society of the Spectacle, New York: Zone Books, 1995

Donald, James. Imagining the modern city. The Athlone Press, London, 1999

Rendell, Jane. Art and Architecture: a place between. I.B. Tauris, London, 2006

Debord, Guy. trans. Ken Knabb. “Report on the Construction of Situations," Situationist International Anthology. Berkeley: California: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006 

CREATIVE TIME: Ashley Ferro-Murray

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Ashley Ferro-Murray, PhD student in Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley.

Keywords: Making, Tactics

For me, tactics consist of making. Tactics take one thing and make it into something new. Tactics make things available in a different way. Michel De Certeau is interested in identifying tactics as the poetic “making” that works within systems of production such as “television, urban development, commerce, etc.” where consumers are otherwise left unable to “indicate what they make or do with the products in these systems”.* Here, the tactical is precisely the practice and process of making. Tactics reveal the making of an object or a system. One question that I have is about the importance of the intentionality of a tactic. Can an artist's work be tactical if even if that artist doesn't have tactical intentions? There is something to be said for the specificity that clear intention seems to bring to a tactical art event. However lately, I find myself seeing tactics in the most unexpected places. An artist whose project is far from intentionally tactical might present a practice in a way that opens my thinking about a static system or commodified object, or that disrupts my understanding of the way things are. I am most interested in these artistic practices where an artist focuses so deeply on creative making that there is a seemingly accidental tactical outcome. But maybe I am loosening the definition of tactics too much and conflating it with making. Nonetheless, I am interested in thinking between and around these two terms and their relationship to one another.

* Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. 1st ed. California: University of California Press, 2002.

CREATIVE TIME: Kim Upstill

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Kim Upstill, artist.

Keyword: Tactics

Tactics are to move in relation to another, to design movement towards response. A strait forward version of a tactical action might be to act in a way that plays into an expectation, and elicits a predicted response. I want to think about tactics in terms of making art. When thinking about objects and words as being interesting, worth pursuing as signs or signifiers one can ask; where am I placed by these things. What are my predictable responses to these objects or words, and who or what structure is asking this of me? Here I think it is necessary to say that utility and tactics of object and words are linked. That when I think about things and actions getting responses from us I am also thinking about to what ends we are being asked to perform. When making I want to ask how can I use these learned responses (including boredom, disinterest, anger) to act tactically, to make/move in relation to an expectation of that thing (word object or situation).

CREATIVE TIME: Simon Rhee

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Simon Rhee, American Cyberculture student at UC Berkeley.

Keywords: Inequities, Occupations

Asian-Americans are notorious for doing well academically. According to a report published by the Pew Research Center this past June, the rapid rise in Asian immigrants along with a high cultural value placed upon education and academic success, it is of no surprise that the growing influx of Asian-Americans into the high-skilled workforce is occurring (and arguably, has already occurred). Asians represent only five percent of the U.S. population,  yet represent three to five times that in Ivy League universities. One would assume that this would relate to future success. However, this is not the case; a “bamboo ceiling” is blocking their rise.

Noted by its association to the glass ceiling, the bamboo ceiling is the Asian equivalent to the barrier preventing women from succeeding. A study presented by the Center For Work-Life Policy, published in July of 2011, stated that despite high academic success, Asians failed to make it to the highest reaches of success in the almost all levels of career leadership. Only 2% of Fortune 500 CEOs and corporate officers are Asian. Asians have the lowest conversion rate to partner in law firms in comparison to any other minority group. In the medical field, Asian-Americans are one of the lowest represented members in medical board positions. These statistics demonstrate is the illusion of success for Asian-Americans, that the ethnicity as a whole does not need extra help or attention given their high levels of success, when in fact there exists a problem.

The existence of the bamboo ceiling draws a multitude of questions that should be addressed. First of all, it highlights the failure of Asian-American values, at least on the corporate level. Asian-Americans are often educated to listen to their superiors, to not stick out, and to take responsibility for their own work. There is a clear conflict between Asian-American values and traditional leadership values held on the corporate board level. What this means is two fold: a change in the Asian-American value system and change in the traditional leadership norms of the country. While it may be easy to place the blame and “change the Asian,” it may hold some importance to reevaluate traditional leadership roles and identify whether they hold validity and draw out the best ideas. By reevaluating such traditions, it may allow for other ceilings to broken through, not just the bamboo ceiling.

The bamboo ceiling also spotlights the disparity between academic preparation and career escalation. If Asian-Americans are graduating at 25% of the country's top universities, it would seem common sense that they would make up 25% of the top jobs in the country. However, this is clearly not the case. This means that there are limitations to the idea that attending top universities, and education as a whole, is the end all, be all of stepping stones to the American dream. There should be shift in the education model in the country, with a stronger focus in real workplace capabilities and leadership training. Only then can equity even be possible.

CREATIVE TIME: Dorothy Santos

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Dorothy Santos, New Media and PR strategist for Art Practical.

Keyword: Making

Artists, writers, and technologists are expected to create with certain parameters before bending and breaking the rules. With new media art, programming, creative coding, and open source culture seem to be exploring new ways that are redefining contemporary art. The interactive and immersive works prevalent in new media works offer an entirely different experience of art. Yet, what happens when the body performs and serves as the catalyst for the production and creation of an artwork? How is the mind expected to reflect on the work when the body becomes a part of the work itself? 

Since the idea of art making and creating is so vastly different with advancements in technology being made each day, it’s imperative to discuss how the body of both the artist and the the viewer are implicated in the works. Although an ambitious and arduous task, it’s extremely important to find ways to incorporate discussions in new media and digital arts and traditional art practices. Comparing and contrasting the art practices may lessen the gap between traditional artists and the artist-technologists. Having recently read philosophical text and theory on the body and disembodiment, I’m struck by how much the body plays a role in new media works that seems to cross over into actual functional use of everyday objects. Collectively, much of the public is so accustomed to the design and convenience of interactive products and commodities, it would be interesting to discuss how this revolutionizes or hinders the artist - any artist (not only new media artists but any artist). Is overuse of the body a hindrance or progressive when it comes to new media arts, specifically, or is it too reliant? What is new media addressing or not addressing in practice and in theory? Or, how it is working against traditional models?

Despite the availability of interdisciplinary studies, the way in which things are made is extremely important to the overall discourse of how the arts have changed alongside the emergence and popularity of other new media modes of art making (including crowd sourcing and interaction design). In particular, being situated in the Bay Area, how is it that there are not very many galleries exhibiting new media works? Although there are valiant efforts being made to showcase and foster the discussion and exhibition of new media and digital arts, it is important to learn the history and methods of how these works have been deemed art, by whom, and the models that may hinder or enhance progression in the arts.   

CREATIVE TIME: Kyra Kennedy

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Kyra Kennedy, American Cyberculture student at UC Berkeley.

Keyword: Making

­­­­­­­On making objects.  For me that begins sometimes with an impulse, sometimes with an idea.  But usually the impulse turns into something because ideas are like dreams – they come and they go.  And then, after a while that impulse turns into an established behavior.  I think then, after a while, can one learn about what it is really about, the deepening process happens, the connection of dots.   Sometimes I make ceramic things.  Sometimes I make a great gloppy painting full of layers and layers and things that are hidden and could only be found with an MRI.   I think about that.  About taking pictures of things with an x-ray machine or a magnetic resonance image-producer – but I haven’t done it yet.  Sometimes I feel the impulse to go and collect something somewhere.  I have usual spots that I go to get specific objects, and these are normally long-term projects.  Truthfully, most of these processes are long-term response-oriented projects.   I make drawings of these things.  I make writings in response to these things, to these actions, to these repetitious acts.  Sometimes I drive long distances to successfully investigate a process or an idea or a response.  I invest great amounts of time, hours, and cash to support these investigations, but it’s all worth it if I’ve got it.  It’s what I need to do at the time to further the project, to further me, to further my part of humanity or the collective consciousness, if you believe in that.  I spend time in the plaster room, subverting it to the clay building room.  I may even frustrate the hell out of my professors, but I truly hope they understand that I do it so that I may have more concentration with my work.  Because it’s true that I usually end up working on things in most frequently quite solitary conditions.  And that’s alright.  Either that, or with someone that I feel pretty comfortable around to successfully work around.  I have spent time tracing back my origins to my making things, of course, where it always starts, in childhood.  I think of early drawings I made, of how the struggles I encountered when faced with a grasshopper or a butterfly may have translated into my love of the abstract – so that I may never again have to feel that tension of making something perfectly rendered – and of learning to love the imperfectly perfect line, the sketch, of how I am very gesture-oriented, way beyond my art-making life.  Because we all know that to be an artist is to live with that mind, that sight, that ear, that touch, that perception – all the time.  It’s like working in a restaurant and smelling the stench of those dirty worn-in clothes even when you sleep – wearing the same clothes day after day so the overwhelming choices are mitigated, the colors and seams are comfortable – you don’t have to think about that – you can think about the large-scale surface decoration tests you need to build, and what exactly you should include and what it all means and where it could take the project – because we all know that we at some point must make decisions about what we offer to the audience, about what direction we want to draw the viewer, and how specific or non-specific we should be.  What we edit, what we keep.  What our boundaries are, and where we need them to be.  What’s for them, what’s for us.  Okay.  Some words on the making of things.  I hope you liked it.  Xo k

CREATIVE TIME: Ann Schnake

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Ann Schnake, artist.

Keyword: Inequities

Energy consumption has tripled in the US from 1970-2010; we  have less than 5% of the worlds population but use more than 20% of global energy resources. This unequal usage is well embedded in our glutinous consumption habits which capital markets & strives to replicate world wide. On an individual basis we might imagine we have the carbon footprint of Jesus but do we think about the wheels turning, data center energy consumption with random google searches?  The costs of production and ultimate disposal of new electronic devices such as this iphone that I am writing on now...

CREATIVE TIME: Michael Ball

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Michael Ball, American Cyberculture student at UC Berkeley.

Keyword: Tactics

Tactics are like algorithms–processes for making things, ultimately everything, happen. Tactics are sometimes visible or the may just as easily be hidden from sight, operating without knowledge. Yet, still, they influence everything we do. Some are conscious, like our techniques for finding a good parking spot, and others we barely realize exist, like what Google results show up first. These tactics may be simple, but they can just as easily be responsible for transferring billions of dollars per second around the world. We’re taught them in class and told to memorize specific ones for forming chemical equations, and others we learn subconsciously which guide our many ways of networking with others. They can influence art, science, food, and anything else--for good or bad. Think about some of the tactics you follow every day, what do they say about you?

CREATIVE TIME: Frances Wang

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Frances Wang, American Cyberculture student at UC Berkeley.

Keyword: Inequities

Speaking of inequities, there are already some unfair things happening in this world: the status of gender, race, and age. These categories are relatively in large range and maybe the range is already too broad, so people have been accustomed to those classifications. In terms of race, it has been arbitrarily classified by different kind of people in the past and the current time, according to this point, we, the people have already been treated unfairly. Back to our primitive ancestry, we were all from the same place, only because of the influence of the different local geography and climate that changed our current appearances.

CREATIVE TIME: Nicole Kim

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Nicole Kim, American Cyberculture student at UC Berkeley.

Keyword: Tactics

Tactics is such a vague concept. When hearing the word, I’d get confused with multiple interpretations because tactics could have a double meaning. I believe that the use of tactics have especially been used in the topic, subversion. Art can be a tool for subversion. Kony 2012 at first glance seemed like an emotionally compelling video that succeeded in getting support from the US citizens. However, it was later revealed that the video was mostly a tactical ploy for the US to occupy the oil-rich land.  

Personally, as someone who plays a lot of games, I first think of tactical games such as chess or sports. I strategize all the time when I’m pressed against the screen of my psp, furiously pressing on multiple buttons, or playing a simple game of battleship with my cousins. But tactics could also be used for more serious subjects, such as military and political tactics. I think political tactics have been emphasized a lot more this week as I’d watched the debate between Mitt Romney and Obama for the second time. I’m not an expert on politics and it was clear that both candidates performed well. However, when it comes to strategy, Romney was more tactical in his speech and seemed to have prepared beforehand to make Obama seem week. He had most likely planned way ahead what he was going to say during the speech and though most of his claims were false, he was more aggressive during the debate. Obama, on the other hand, had not strategized properly, which is why it seems that he had lost the debate. In order to win a debate, one must make sure his/her opponent does not get away with lies. The 700 billion cuts from Medicare that Romney had claimed that Obama would do could’ve been easily been debunked by a simple, “This is a lie and here is my website proving that this is a lie.” In failing to do so by remaining too passive, Obama had come out as being not as tactical as Romney. 

CREATIVE TIME: Ryan Davis

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Ryan Davis, American Cyberculture student at UC Berkeley.

Keyword: Tactics

Tactic.

Tak-tik. 

Noun. 

“A plan, procedure, or expedient for promoting a desired end or result.” - Dictionary.com

I find it to be a strange concept. I, an individual who desires to be an artist of some sort, someone who can both take from and give back to the community in visuals, am lost in its definition. For many artists whose work has personally touched me, I feel as though their tactic is to glean from the troubles of society and produce an answer, create a spotlight and shine it on what very badly needs improvement. As far as I've experienced, this is done through intuitiveness, feelings, and faith in the heart and soul. Painters to sculptors, performance artists to shock artists, there is surreal amounts of emotion involved in their processes. That is their tactic to making art: the showcasing of anger, happiness, and every emotion in-between. I am fascinated by this because I truly feel I lack it. When I create pieces of personal art, I must plan out my works in such a precise manner that I feel my piece has become devoid of emotion. I just want it to be executed as how I view it in my mind; I want to come as close to that perfect vision as possible. My work suffers from this problem to the point if seeing all of the flaws I have made, and I became artistically paralyzed. It's turning into something painful: I do not create and produce pieces of artwork as much as I use to. My ideas become so bottled up within me that they may never escape and become realized, may never become as beautiful as I want them to be, and may never provoke someone to think. I no longer listen to my heart and soul, but rather the perfection of the process. And in this, I no longer feel I am creating art, but rather just something nice for viewers to gaze at. It doesn't make them think critically about the possible message my piece may contain because my emotions in it are lacking; like me, they feel nothing from it.

As an intended major of both the Art Practice and Computer Science divisions here at the University of California at Berkeley, I can see how the arts may intermix with other academic disciplines; how other studies may become an artistic medium themselves; how they affect the very lives of the people they surround. Now that I am more aware of how my majors and my interest in executing my ideas affect how I may create my art, I highly believe being exposed to an extremely innovative and ingenious space will open myself up more to the emotional aspects of the creative process. I truly think the Creative Time Summit will help free myself from becoming restrained down by the process and expand artistically. I truly cannot wait to see what will happen in a space like this and how it will change me.

CREATIVE TIME: Danielle Alojado

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Danielle Alojado, American Cyberculture student at UC Berkeley.

Keyword: Making

I believe that making is an important part of a person's identity. Whether it's making coffee in the morning, making art, or making up a story. The act of creating applies an essential part of yourself into the product. This is why I love art -- it is the very unique essence of an individual and has life in itself. It validates existence. Whether you think the product turns out horrible or if it's your best masterpiece yet, just keep creating.

CREATIVE TIME: Mohan Zopey

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Mohan Zopey, American Cyberculture student at UC Berkeley.

Keyword: Inequities

The word inequity, to me, means a lack of fairness, equality, and justice. There are several examples of inequity throughout the history of mankind, including slavery in Alexander the Great’s kingdom, civil rights of African Americans, and gender disparities in wages. Because of this long history of inequities that continues to this very day, it is likely that there will always be inequities in one form or another in human society. It is one of the many factors that make a utopian society (i.e. ideal and perfect) virtually impossible. However, inequities still play a very important role in society. They help us identify major issues that need to be looked at (i.e. civil rights, gender rights, etc.) and help precipitate change (i.e. through a movement or revolution). Through this process we can help make society better and take one step towards a brighter future. This, of course, has happened in the past and will continue to happen now and in the future. It is important to note that this is an ongoing process that likely will never cease. As we progress as a society and eliminate certain inequities, others will invariably pop up. In other words, although we may get closer and closer to an ideal standard, we can never quite achieve it. Despite this, it is important that we learn from our mistakes (i.e. the inequities) and try to ensure that they never happen again. 

CREATIVE TIME: Brea Willey

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Brea Willey, American Cyberculture student at UC Berkeley.

Keyword: Inequities

There is so much inequity across the globe that needs to be confronted, which is why it is so difficult to face head on. Thus, in order to fix the lack of fairness in the world we have to fix the issues one step at a time, in each country. For instance instead of attacking the globe, we need to address the inequalities of each nation starting from the smallness of injustice. Each country has its own problems and it is not all going to be related to just wealth. In America we need to address issues a state level first before tackling the national problems, so possibly starting with gay marriage, abortion, and marijuana usage. For just these three issues each state has different laws, and if we can not even attack these problems it is going to be really difficult to attack global issues such as wealth distribution and taxes. For other countries it may not be the same such as countries in Africa or the Middle East. In the Middle East injustice is more so related to religion, and not so much as wealth. Thus one cannot just sum up all of the world's problem based off of wealth distribution because injustice is injustice in any form, and it is because of this that we need to address the smaller issues in each nation and then worry about the wealth distribution.  Not only must we stop saying let's confront the inequity across the globe, we need to actually do something about it. People have been saying lets confront the inequities of the world for ages, and clearly not much has happened;  we have a lot of the same problems that we had back then now. There always has been and always will be rich people and poor people, but maybe we should start addressing why do the poor stay poor and how can we change that? We can always blame the rich for imbalance in the wealth distribution, but sometimes people have to look at themselves and question why they are in the predicament that they are in.