Will Cotter

From Will Cotter:

While working on the reading, the first chart, on page 174, really stood out to me.  In the text, Lacy graphs the four roles an artist might take with their work and their relationship to an audience, and looking at that made me think a little more about the intention an artist might carry with their piece, or even their whole portfolio.

A lot of times I dismiss art that doesn't speak to me on a socio-political level - if I'm not moved by a work to the point where I might reconsider my own values, the piece doesn't really work for me.  What I'm starting to realize now is that different artists expose different levels of subjectivity with their stuff, and while the really "out there", opinionated work gets to me, other audiences are equally moved by objectivity.

I think a great example of an artist that transcends the boundary between roles as experiencer, reporter, analyst, and activist is Chinese artist / activist Ai Weiwei.  During his tenure on house arrest, Weiwei devised an installation called Sunflower Seeds, consisting of over 100 million hand sculpted, hand fired clay seeds that audiences could interact with, walk on, and, often, take home with them.  Weiwei's intention with this piece was clearly an active one, borrowing the sunflower imagery from old communist propaganda and enlisting the forces of thousands of poor artisans to help him create a work that mocked the continually oppresive Chinese government.  But Ai is the same guy who designed a number of the structures, including the "Bird's Nest", for the Beijing olympics.  His architecture was often praised by spectators as being indicative of the great pride the Chinese had in hosting the World Games, but really Weiwei was subtly satiring the political system that was so scared of Ai's influence that they continually arrested him on false presumptions.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's sometimes hard to tell for sure whether an artist is intending to take an activist role with their work, or if we're just appropriating a piece as an audience, but sometimes it's fun to imagine a piece being created under a totally new context.