Art Mediation: Risk, Responsibility and Reform in Contemporary Art

Vanessa Miller
May 25, 2016
2 min read

Photo: Martin Parr Autoportrait: Benidorm, Spain 1997

How should risks be mediated in the Art Industry? Pulled from the archive, an article by Brandon Brown (2013) reviews the exhibition Space/Time/Sound at SFMOMA from December 21, 1979 through February 10, 1980, an art gala that showcased more than 20 artists in the Bay Area. Brown covertly voices the particular risk of the only three women in the show, Lynn Hershman Leeson (who I had opportunity to personally studied under at SFAI), Linda Montano, and Bonnie Sherk. "The willingness of the artist to offer up her own body to transformative experiences", Brown says, "without absolute prediction of what the outcome of these experiments on and of these artists would result in", is cause for thought. Though the epithet, Brown says, is "the ultimate refusal of the artists to inhabit the existing sites of social reproduction", what then, should the shared responsibility be concerning these risks along personal, corporate and institutional relations of these bodies and organizations?

Contemporary Art that has engaged with, participated in or judged risks vary along and across social, progressive, and institutional organizations and corporations.

From the nazi irony of Paul Chan"s site specific Social Art project,"Waiting for Godot" (2007), a re-enactment of Samuel Beckett’s play staged in the desolate streets of post-Katrina New Orleans, to the progressive Collaborative Art project of Berkeley Art Museum's,

Above photo: Donn Young and Frank Aymami Below photo: Berkeley Art Museum

"The Possible"(2014) a series of participatory, rather than staged, artistic events of artists, musicians, filmmakers and audience in a platform for shared creativity.

Where are we now in art's global and transatlantic mappings as questions of identity, history, gender, and agency continue to surface? As the face of the contemporary museum is shifting the proliferation of the selfie abounds documenting the complex narratives situated between the ideological and the practical. The material of these modes can be seen in Simon Baker's curation of "Performing for the Camera", on view now at the Tate Modern in London till June 2016, continues to collect the dilemma of creative belonging.

Though the issue of seeing and interpretation still persists, how are artist's risks being managed as they deploy out into the world? Recognizing the bravery, resilience and present day success of living legends, such as Lynn Hershman Leeson it must now be known that their risks have become this generations inspiration and responsibility. How can the creative industry grow in the contemporary to lower artist's personal risk while still optimizing their success? How can the social reproduction of risks be avoided in the contemporary Art Industry?

—Vanessa M.

Phote: Romain Mader Ekaterina: Mariage à Loèche-les-Bains (Marriage in Leukerbad)

2012 © Romain Mader / ECAL on view at Tate Modern (2016)