SCULPTURE ART 656, Collaborations: Labor, Surplus Value, and Art
The Maysles Brothers’ film Running Fence documents the installation of the 1976 artwork by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Composed of a temporary nylon fabric fence spanning 24.5 miles, the work traveled across the Sonoma and Marin Counties in Northern California. The artists needed to secure the permission of the 59 ranchers whose property the fence would extend across. The filmmakers document a protracted battle with the state, in which the ranchers had to advocate for the artwork’s installation. In one public testimony, the wife of a rancher equates her work in the kitchen, the skill and creativity it entails, with that of the artists in Running Fence. In this revelatory moment, we witness her acknowledgement of how the artwork connects to a broader range of creative labor. She speaks simultaneously as an artist, collaborator, audience member, and citizen.Within the visual arts, the concept of collaboration is all too often limited to a discussion of authorship. Yet collaboration need not be limited to two artists working on a project together, or even to the relationship of the filmmakers to the portrayal of events; but rather to a broad range of social dynamics that refuse to privilege a single authorial perspective and gives itself over to a multiple understanding of society.
Thus, this seminar will adopt an expansive view of collaboration, viewing it less as artistic tactic and more as a dynamic intrinsic to aesthetic processes. We will address the collective nature of an artist’s relationship with the audience, institutions, curators, patrons, technicians, assistants, and communities. Because collectivity in art is directly related to labor and its surplus value, this class will work through the labor theory of value inherent to art making under global capitalism. Indeed, we may cease to look at artworks as the product of isolated vanguards and consider them instead products of complex labor relations. Our decision to learn together in the form of a seminar will itself be a subject of discussion and a site for experimentation.
Artist collaborations are encouraged but not required. A greater emphasis will be placed on building analytical skills that fit the participant’s practice as it relates to class discussions. We will address a variety of lectures, readings, films, and practical exercises. An open mind is required, as is permission of instructor.
MEETS 6X FOR 1.5 CREDITS: 9/10,9/24, 10/8, 10/29, 11/12, 12/3
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