Bradley Cloversettle - A Genealogy - Week 15

One thing I took away from this genealogy of community engaged art is the progression that this work has made, and the paths and tactics that have been created in order to obtain engagement. One thing that stuck out to me was the "Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp. I was aware of this work before, but never in the context of being a starting point for engaged arts. Conceptual Art can be very shocking and surprising at times, and whether it was intended or not, this work certainly paved way for other art just like it, and I think engaged people just because it was so shocking. I think there is an element of this, to some extent, in every community engaged practice.

For example, in Christo and Jeanne-Claude's work Surrounded Islands consisted of surrounding the outer edge of small islands in Miami with pink floating fabric. I can only imagine how surprising this must have been for people living there. It is such a big and bold statement, but it is without explicit context, which leads to curiosity in the project. I found that Surrounded Islands was "underlining the various elements and ways in which the people of Miami live, between land and water." This is a very interesting statement for this work, and is an interesting way to engage people living there. This project also consisted of going to the island and having marine and land crews clear debris from the islands. This included kitchen sinks, refrigerator doors, mattresses, abandon boats, etc. So in the process of creating the art, they also did some good in cleaning up the island. I like to think this was an intended part of the project to also promote saving the environment, but whether it was or not I think it is something to keep conscious of when creating community engaged art.