Points of Intersection: Martha Rosler and the Center for Urban Pedagogy

Julie Niemi

Thesis Practicum in Art History

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Artists have long been considered in a position of pedagogical authority.

However, it is the recent progression within the field of art education and

contemporary art that traditional performative roles of student-to-teacher, or

artisan-to-artist, has caused an impulsive turn towards the practice of artist as

teacher. In result, current projects have embraced a post-hierarchical learning

method where the teacherʼs role is broken down to only a collaboration of co-

participants. 1 This action has created the public space as a medium of post-

studio production, or the creation of artwork outside of the studio, for the educator

as a field of work and research. A structural observation embraced by artist

Martha Rosler in the 1989 exhibition If You Lived Here...realized the transmission

of ideas and exchange of shared experience, in turn, intended the exhibition as

an activation space for the passive audience. With the incorporation of on-site

lectures, seminars, and reading material, the intuitive practice of alternative

education found in this exhibition, by default, critiqued how the use of

collaborative material defined the artist as the most autonomous, authorless

educator.

In the essay titled “Exhibition as School as a Work of Art,” writer Anton

Vidokle discusses alternative models of education by inserting the learning

experience in the temporal environment of the exhibition space. Using this text as

a lens to investigate Roslerʼs project If You Lived Here… and the didactic work

produced by New York-based non-profit, the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP),

this paper will argue that the attempt to activate audience to activist-participant

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initially recognized in the socially-engaged work of Rosler, didnʼt quite succeed in

the activation of audience. Rather, by assuming identity on its initial subject,

Roslerʼs exhibition isolated its intended audience. On the contrary, the projects

realized by Center for Urban Pedagogy create a more successful platform for

collaborative audience-driven work by not necessarily assuming a targeted

identity, but rather constructing a toolkit of collateral research material for creative

activism.

“Participatory project” describes the artistic practice imagined outside of

conventional galleries and museums, intersecting the arena of art and cultural

activism, participants and collaborators. Often times, this method of artistic work

is anchored in the field of arts-based research, which, in the cases of these

projects, uses public space and artist as teacher as a means of educational and

collaborative investigation. For the sake of clarification and consistency,

“participatory art” will be used to describe the field of socially engaged artwork

throughout the duration of this paper. Although there is an impulse to analyze the

depth of participatory projects, it is unnecessary for the scope of this paper to

define such a vast, ambiguous genre of art.

The focus, instead, will be placed on participatory project as an

educational space, in which artists and collaborators work outside of the

traditional notion of a school. Through this practice, emphasis is placed on the

creation of visually and socially engaged material as a method of research and,

in the case of the projects discussed, activism.

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To achieve this objective, the paper will be structured into three parts: the

first will dedicate an introduction to Vidokleʼs recent essay “Exhibition as School

as Work of Art,” providing a contemporary framework for both Rosler and CUPʼs

practice. Next, it is necessary to offer an introduction to Roslerʼs exhibition

structure and its influence on the recent discourse of pedagogy in visual art and

design. Furthermore, a discussion dedicated to the problems found in Roslerʼs

project including its failure to connect to the intended audience as a platform for

social activism. Additionally, the temporal duration of the exhibition becomes a

burden to harness any lasting research. The latter half of the paper will focus on

the analysis, and likewise, the inclusion of multi-professional fields, found in the

projects produced by the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP). It should be noted

that while Roslerʼs exhibition is in tandem with a recent conversation of pedagogy

in contemporary practice, it is necessary to point out that radical forms of

education as art practice characterizes a broad trajectory in 20th century art. That

being said, the decision to include projects from both a historical past and a

present example is to provide two differing, yet extremely similar models in

approach and content. It is important to discuss these roles in tandem with one

another in order to offer a perspective of both an exhibition as an educational

space and the current structure of the non-profit as an educational space as both

alternative means of learning and participating.

Between the years 2007-2010, critical contemporary discourse

surrounding participatory projects within the educational space was introduced,

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described as the pedagogical turn in art. 2 Speaking to this particular dialogue,

writer Anton Vidokle discusses the exhibition-as-school model through a specific

project titled unitednationsplaza. Vidokle, with collaboration of other artists,

opened 3unitednationsplaza in Berlin after the failure of the Manifesa 6 biennial.

The intention of unitednationsplaza was to offer a critique of the institution of art

school and artistic agency as a mediator between discourse of object and

education. 4 Vidokle saw exhibition-as-school as a quixotic space for education,

away from institutionalized aesthetics and selective admission policies of private

institutions. In the article, Vidokle describes the idea of a temporary school:

Unlike exhibitions, schools are most often closed to the public, with much of their programming and content available only to the body of admitted students. Furthermore, the academic structure of educational institutions, with their insistence on the necessity to comply with previously established rules and standards, often guarantees that for all the promise of experimentation and innovation, each successive generation of students evolves into a replica of the preceding generation—something that could be bypassed if a school was temporary. If the two models are combined, perhaps a new, radically open temporary school could be a viable alternative to exhibitions of contemporary art and could recuperate the agency of art by creating and educating a new public. 5 In its most idealistic state, exhibition-as-school appears to be a progressive path

towards a utopian example of the new arts education. Yet it begs a number of

questions from the standpoint of an activist trajectory, a motive strongly found in

Rosler and CUPʼs projects. With Vidokleʼs attention to radical education in

contemporary art, there is no better time to ask critical questions of Roslerʼs

intentions with If You Lived Here… and itʼs relation to private exhibition space as

a public platform and the inclusion of public audience. How does the refiguring of

the traditional usage of exhibition space engage an entirely different audience,

different than those typically considered of the “art crowd?” And furthermore,

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does this model instead become a space of privilege and hierarchical advantages

when distanced from the space of free but bureaucratized public education? And

finally, does the access of information for these projects differ based on

institutional structures, such as private gallery versus non-profit?

During the late-1980s, New York City experienced antagonistic social and

public dichotomies in the environment of social space. In the city alone, the

homeless housing crisis and a surge in real estate development created a wealth

of separation between the rich and poor.6 Using this as a source of inspiration

and agitation, Rosler created If You Lived Here…at New Yorkʼs Dia Foundation.

Using the exhibition space as a reflecting site for these social implications, the

intention was to involve the general public on raising awareness of the New York

homeless population, while directly involving them in the exhibition as well. In itʼs

entirety, the content and execution of If You Lived Here… was a group project on

housing, homelessness and the systems and conditions underlying them such as

gentrification, bureaucratic complicity and the increasing privatization of the

public sector. (Fig. 1)

The exhibition honed in on a significant psychological and personal

disruption of the homeless population by specifically framing the content around

the impact on the individual. What this particular group lacks is the private space,

which creates a level of individual discontent and in result, a psychological void of

intimate privacy. Such a state of psychological disruption can cause the constant

rearing of existential jeopardy. The space of the Dia Art Foundation created a

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symbolic gesture towards the individual, offering an equally, yet simultaneously

derisible, symbolic notion of private space to the homeless community.

The actual material featured in the space considered work by fifty other

artists, including separate areas of working and sleeping spaces, as well as a

reading library.7 (Fig. 2) Clippings from magazine and newspaper articles,

handwritten introduction and interpretive text contributed to a rather

unpretentious and almost disheveled aesthetic, achieved by the curatorial vision

of Rosler. The inclusion of the informal material heightened the formal space of

the Dia, located in the gentrified neighborhood of New Yorkʼs SoHo District,

critiquing the conventions of the object-based art world and the institution as well.

Originally, the Dia Art Foundation propositioned Rosler to create a

retrospective exhibition displaying two decades of her work. Sometimes,

established artists have the benefit of institutional leverage towards galleries and

museums, and in this case, worked in favor of Rosler. In the essay “(Under)-

Privileged Spaces”, published by writer and critic Nina Möntmannʼs, she states

Rosler “avoided” the role of the curator to de-professionalize the exhibition,

although it is obvious in retrospect that Rosler did in fact operate as a curator and

liaison between professional fields and content. 8 The intention was to retract the

focus of individual artistic agency and instead, invite a group of artists to

participate in the creation of a participatory social project. The objective was to

heighten social awareness by ignoring sole-artistic agency, but years later, the

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discourse surrounding Roslerʼs exhibition is only the artistʼs intention and

selflessness to the deny the notion of sole authorship. 9

Although the aspiration of the piece was to raise awareness of the

homeless population of New York, no documentation towards the exhibitionʼs

impact on the targeted audience was actually recorded until a revisit to the

exhibition in 2009, titled If You Lived Here Still…(Fig. 3) Opening at e-fluxʼs

gallery in New York, If You Lived Here Still… served as a site-specific, temporal

archive of the social impact and research provided by If You Lived Here…The

research material was highly visualized including publications and hand-made

posters, unique to this style of participatory projects. However, If You Lived Here

Still… resides in the private Martha Rosler Library (Fig. 4), which occasionally

travels to galleries, where it serves more appropriately as an archive by artists,

for artists.

A similar strategy of participatory projects is found in The Brooklyn, New

York non-profit, Center for Urban Pedagogy, which uses collaborative

approaches to art and design in order to improve civic engagement. 10 Through a

process of defining what founder Damon Rich refers to as “Intersecting points of

interest” in communities, the projects seek to determine stakeholders surrounding

all points of the civic engagement projects in communities, 11 an example being

the series Making Policy Public. Working with advocacy groups and designers,

the structure of Making Policy Public calls for a juried submission process around

a topic, choosing teams to collaborate with CUP in the production of educational

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ephemera. (Fig. 5) The topics explored range within the realm of public policy,

such as urban land use and public housing, with the purpose of making

complicated political initiatives transparent for activists, educators, organizers

and the general public.

Revisiting this notion of “points of interest,” it is this underlying

methodology that is most successful, and completely unique, to CUP in the realm

of participatory practice and non-profits. This strategy bridges together outside

audiences of an issue by juxtaposing the opposition through visual design, video

and archival documentation. (Fig. 6) Rooted heavily in the methodology of early

twentieth century labor organizing, the process of points of interest can be

attributed the practice of Chicago community organizer Saul Alinsky. The

research team at CUP delves into organizing methodologies similar to Alinksy by

discovering the self-interest of the stakeholdersʼ involved, and creates material

bridging oppositional forces. For Alinskyʼs method of organizing to discover the

self-interest, the point was not to dwell on the morals people should hold, but to

understand the morals, which guide people in practice. Similar to CUPʼs project

structure, Alinsky intrinsically believed in the importance of self-interest when

organizing Chicagoʼs Back-of-the-Yards12 community in the 1930s.

It is precisely this creative process, looking outside of internal critique and

internal debate, that doesnʼt box CUP into a category of social activist art. CUP

succeeds in this by not providing a necessarily arts-driven service and nourished

by identity-based projects. Rather, they provide a collection of visual educational

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aids and services on various topics that surround the everyday life in which we

live and work in, but are often times misunderstood.

With participatory projects it is important to consider the post-project

implications. Since both projects heavily rely on collaboration across multiple-

fields, such implications to consider include the access the general public has to

project material for research purposes. When speaking of CUP in relation to

Roslerʼs exhibition, the materiality of design-based tools is what separates the

two, and furthermore, what is rather successful in the organizational materials of

CUP. Perhaps a part of the structural comparison can be attributed to difference

in the institutional differences of these two projects.

Returning to Vidokleʼs essay, the mention of Roslerʼs exhibition is in lieu of

the temporary school model. Both Vidokle and Rosler define their work as a

temporary learning space. Rosler, like Vidokleʼs unitednationsplaza, defend the

idea of dialogue as object and consequently, as an artistic practice. Although

CUP fits into this compartment, the separation between is found in CUPʼs

compulsion with documentation and Roslerʼs relationship to the art market. It is

simply not allowed for a non-profit to produce a purely ephemeral, dialogue and

process-based project, where Roslerʼs project fits quaintly into the idea of the

autonomous artist.

On the contrary, it is unfair to ignore the bureaucratic component of the

nonprofit. While in this case, the space of the nonprofit serves the advantage of a

more successful platform for participatory practice, the structure demands not

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only documentation, but annual reporting and project evaluation for the interest of

stakeholders, board members, public school studentʼs, and collaborators.

Both projects aim to provide an egalitarian space for social research and

social activism through participatory projects. When the social is discussed with

the intention of providing a platform for the activation of audience to activist, the

temporary nature of the project must be considered. With the case of Rosler,

situated in a gallery as educational space, lightly considered the short-term

duration of programming for If You Lived Here…but fell short when connecting

the public lectures, town hall meetings, and in-house lectures to any housing

accessible research. On the other hand, perhaps it is built within the non-profit

structure that social implications be considered because of the accountability

from the institution to the non-profit.

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End Notes.

1 Kristina Lee Podesva, “A Pedagogical Turn: Brief Notes on Education as Art,” Fillip #6. 2007 2 Refer to Irit Rogoffʼs essay, “Turning:” Irit Rogoff in Curating and the Educational Turn, edited by Paul OʼNeill and Mick Wilson, (Open Editions/de Appel, 2010), 32. 3 unitednationsplaza is a project by Anton Vidokle in collaboration with Boris Groys, Jalal Toufic, Liam Gillick, Martha Rosler, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Nikolaus Hirsch, Tirdad Zolghadr and Walid Raad. Anton Vidokle “unitednationsplaza” last modified in 2011. http://www.unitednationsplaza.org/event/7/ 4 unitednationsplaza was originally intended for Manifesta 6 in Nicosia, Cyprus in 2006, but due to the cancellation of the biennale, relocated to Berlin. This project places an emphasis on not only the temporal nature of the exhibition as school, but also itʼs ability to be a traveling school. Unitednationsplaza also temporarily hosted the Martha Rosler Library. For more information on the school, please refer to: Anton Vidoke, “Exhibition as School: unitednationsplaza” in Curating and the Educational Turn, ed. Paul OʼNeill and Mick Wilson. (Open Editions/de Appel, 2010),148. 5 Anton Vidokle. “Exhibition as School as a Work of Art,” Art Lies: A Contemporary Art Journal, 2008. http://www.artlies.org/issue.php?issue=59&s=1&p=statement 6 Nina Möntmann. “(Under) Privileged Spaces: On Martha Roslerʼs “If You Lived Here…” e-flux Journal #9. October 2010. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/underprivileged-spaces-on-martha-roslerʼs-“if-you-lived-here-”/

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7 Anton Vidokle. “Exhibition as School as a Work of Art,” Art Lies: A Contemporary Art Journal, 2008. http://www.artlies.org/issue.php?issue=59&s=1&p=statement 8 In If You Lived Here…, Rosler, who avoided the title of curator, tied the locally oriented, deliberately “deprofessionalized” practice of self-organized alternative spaces of the late 1960s and 1970s together with curatorial approaches that were to be later considered within the scope of “new institutionalism.”26 Her tension-packed project in an established institution and her choice of formats anticipated curatorial approaches that would only later become broader curatorial practices. While those who ran alternative spaces deliberately shunned exhibiting in institutions and galleries, positioning themselves as an alternative on the periphery of the art world, new institutionalism builds on an internalized critique within the institutions themselves. This critique is no longer seen as an—albeit ultimately “desirable”—activity conducted solely by artists against an institution (and limited to the exhibition format), but is instead deployed at the level of institutional administration and programming by curators themselves, who initiate a drive for critique and structural change together with artists. Nina Möntmann. “(Under)Priviledged Spaces: On Martha Rosler's ʻIf you lived here...ʼ” e-flux Journal #9 (2009). Accessed February 2, 2012. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/underprivileged-spaces-on-martha-roslerʼs-“if-you-lived-here-”/ 9 Möntmann states: “In considering the processual structure of If You Lived Here… alongside its open forums, reading rooms, publication conceived as both component and further platform for the project (and not just as a catalogue or documentation), its multipart, thematically focused exhibitions, its local participation going beyond the art public, the collaboration of architects and theorists from other disciplines, as well as the artistʼs dissolution of her authorship and the inclusion of the public in communicative processes—one discovers the very elements and intentions with which curators strove to restructure institutions around 2000. Here, one might cite the Rooseum in Malmö under Charles Esche, or the Kunstverein in Munich under Maria Lindʼs directorship. While in order to realize this multi-layered project, Rosler had to hijack an institution as an artist playing the role of a freelance curator, the approaches twenty years later are now institutionally legitimized through collaborations between an institutional agent, the curator, and artists.” Nina Möntmann. “(Under)Priviledged Spaces: On Martha Rosler's ʻIf you lived here...ʼ” e-flux Journal #9 (2009). Accessed February 2, 2012. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/underprivileged-spaces-on-martha-roslerʼs-“if-you-lived-here-”/

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10 Center for Urban Pedagogy mission statement: The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) is a nonprofit organization that uses the power of design and art to improve civic engagement. Center for Urban Pedagogy Mission Statement. Last modified in 2012. http://welcometocup.org/ 11 Interview with Damon Rich and Rosten Woo by Nato Thompson. “Creative Times Presents: Center for Urban Pedagogy.” Creative Times: Interrogating Public Spaces. August 2010. http://creativetime.org/programs/archive/2010/publicspace/interrogating/2010/11/center-for-urban-pedagogy-august-2010-2/ 12 Saul Alinksy was a community organizer, activst, and founder of Industrial Areas Foundation in Chicago. His most influential work was in 1930s in the Back-of-the-Yards south side Chicago community, where a large majority of the nationʼs meat-packing industry was housed. Mike Seal, “Saul Alinsky, community organizing and rules for radicals,” the encyclopaedia of informal education. Accessed April 15,2012

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Illustrations.

Fig 1. Martha Rosler, If You Lived Here…, 1989; Public installation. Dia Art Foundation, Art Lies: Contemporary Art Journal

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Fig 2. Martha Rosler, If You Lived Here….1989; installation in exhibition space. Dia Art

Foundation, Art Lies: Contemporary Art Journal

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Fig. 3. Martha Rosler, If You Lived Here Still….2009-2011. Exhibition poster for traveling

installation. Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona, Spain. e-flux website.

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Fig. 4. Martha Rosler Library, 2010. Interior image of the library. E-flux Gallery, New York. e-flux website.

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Fig. 5. Center for Urban Pedagogy, Collaboration Diagram. 2010. Visual Diagram. Center for Urban Pedagogy website.

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Fig. 6. Center for Urban Pedagogy, Vendor Power, 2010. Photograph, Vendor Power pamphlet, offset lithograph. New York, New York, Good Magazine.

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Bibliography. Podesva, Kristina Lee, “A Pedagogical Turn: Brief Notes on Education as Art,” Fillip #6. 2007 Rogoff, Irit. “Turning,” in Curating and the Educational Turn, edited by Paul OʼNeill and Mick Wilson, 32-46. Open Editions/de Appel, 2010 Anton Vidokle. “unitednationsplaza.” Accessed March 17, 2012. http://www.unitednationsplaza.org/ Vidokle, Anton. “Exhibition as School as a Work of Art,” Art Lies: A Contemporary Art Journal, (2008). Accessed February 20, 2012. http://www.artlies.org/issue.php?issue=59&s=1&p=statement Möntmann, Nina. “(Under)Priviledged Spaces: On Martha Rosler's ʻIf you lived here...ʼ” e-flux Journal #9 (2009). Accessed February 2, 2012. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/underprivileged-spaces-on-martha-roslerʼs-“if-you-lived-here-”/ Thompson, Nato Interview: Woo, Rosten and Rich, Damon. . “Creative Times Presents: Center for Urban Pedagogy.” Creative Times: Interrogating Public Spaces, August 2010. http://creativetime.org/programs/archive/2010/publicspace/interrogating/2010/11/center-for-urban-pedagogy-august-2010-2/ Seal, Mike, “Saul Alinsky, community organizing and rules for radicals,” the encyclopaedia of informal education. Accessed April 15,2012 Other Sources. Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Perigee Trade, 2005 Jacobs, Mary Jane. “Reciprocal Generosity” in What We Want is Free: Generosity and Exchange in Recent Art, edited by Ted Purves, 1-9. State University of New York, 2004 Fletcher, Sampson, Steen, Steel, Smith, Kalin, Kurtz, Asher and Christopher. “It can Change as we go Along: Social Practice in the Academy and the Community.” Art Journal, Vol. 67, No. 4 (2008), pp. 92-112

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Thompson, Nato. “Contraction of Time: On Social Practice from a Temporal Perspective.” e-flux Journal #20 (2010). Accessed February 12, 2012. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/contractions-of-time-on-social-practice-from-a-temporal-perspective/