An Ethics of Engagement - Gray Gall - March 4th

The question asked on page 594 “Are artists reflecting upon and co-opting already formed communities – regular visitors to galleries, for example – or are they producing provisional communities that come together in experimental formations for the duration of a project?” was insightful in the way we approach the real effects of our work. The way you consider your audience or create your audience has a huge effect on what your goal could be within the creative process. What you ask of your audience is deliberate. Another insightful statement came on page 595 “Collaborative art practices, in short, appear to be judged on the basis of the ethical efficacy underwriting the artist’s relationship to his or her collaborators rather than what makes these works interesting as art.” The term later used by Claire Bishop, “Consensual Collaboration,” feels properly used as I never would have thought there was a huge difference between having the audience experience the art you've created, or have them make it with you in time. The third insight comes from page 603 “To be clear: to prescribe the aesthetic to a series of ethical and political considerations is to engage it in either a form of agitprop and propaganda or forms of instrumentalist rationalism.” I didn’t really know what instrumentalist rationalism was until this article but it lines up with behavior that can wave between ethical and not ethical, especially when aesthetics come into play. My three questions would be, Can propaganda reveal an unethical approach before anything else?, How often are regular visitors to galleries needed in conversations like this?, and How would you define interesting art? My understanding of an ethical approach for me aligns with my morals and the morals of my peers around me. This article opens it up into a broader scale. The artist that comes to mind when I think about this article is Suzanne Lacy from The Roof is on Fire. Her art, along with her collaborators, put the end perspective on the audience that could be entirely theres, instead of demanding a certain end goal. They also allowed an open space without censorship and created an atmosphere that allowed uncomfortability to exist without forcing it.