FACE VALUES

FACE VALUES, a participatory art event organized by MCB in collaboration with Corcoran College of Art students from his “Art as Social Practice” course, opens Saturday, May 11 at STUDIO 1469. Students photographed random people in urban environments and at the event the participant subjects and the public may post comments on the photographs and what they suggest or reveal about the person. The event seeks to initiate conversations about social identity, stereotypes, the way we present ourselves and how others see us.

From the event announcement:
"In a project working within the public sphere, we seek to convey a message of acceptance, not tolerance. In an exhibition from the students of the Corcoran College of Art + Design's “Art as Social Practice” course, they shall embark on a quest of neglected importance to the people of Washington, D.C., but also to the world at large. Tendencies to judge others based on color of skin, amount of tattoos or piercings, age, sex, sexual orientation and gender has become so ingrained into our everyday lives that we make assumptions without thinking critically about ourselves and the others with whom we interact.

Through this project we seek to challenge the notions of stereotypes juxtaposed against the actuality of who people really are versus who we assume them to be. For the duration of one week, students will set out to take photographs of willing participants that will be exhibited at STUDIO 1469. on Saturday, May 11. At the opening of the exhibit there will be opportunities for the photographed participants and others to use Post-It Notes to write down what characteristics are revealed about the participants in the photographs. Whether good or bad, all comments will be posted alongside the photos so that conversations may begin in an open, and welcoming atmosphere to potentially start a discourse on race, body modification, age, sex, sexual orientation and gender, and about how we display ourselves, and how others perceive us. It will also speak to the fact that although we are all equal, we do all have differences that are of little consequence. Our goal is to spread awareness of the equality of all people, and thus create a sense of community within the Washington, D.C. public sphere."

CONTACT: mcb@markcameronboyd.com

"Art as Social Practice"

"The culmination of this course will be the class project; it will combine the assembled talents of the students’ multiple disciplines to coalesce in a unified whole that expresses intentionality, intelligence and creativity. As art students engaged in the study of various majors, you possess levels of skill and expression in fine arts, graphic design, photography and photojournalism, interior design, museum studies and digital media. Together our combination of intellect and energies will not only create art but also can direct our intention to make a statement, engage a community and enact Social Practice as art."

- - from MCB's course syllabus.

This site is re-launched as a class blog for the "Art as Social Practice" CCAD Spring 2013 course; watch this page for weekly student Presentations on examples of Social Practice art from around the world, and the subsequent discussions that occur. We also welcome public comment and discourse.

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IMAGE: Arnstein, Sherry. "Ladder of Participation," Journal of the American Institute of Planners, July 1969.

"Untitled participatory piece #3"

On site

A performance by Mark Cameron Boyd & friends creating a spatio-temporal, participatory installation in the conference room at Grupo 7, Georgetown's leading architecture firm; MCB will speak "on site," his words transcribed via his text bisection process that guests may decipher afterward.

Sponsored by The Art Registry Group, Alchimie Forever & Grupo 7; additional artwork by Joan Belmar, Joel D'Orazio, J. Ford Huffman, Ani Kasten, Khanh H. Le & Greg Minah.

Where: 1010 Wisconsin Ave. NW, WDC
When: reception: 5:30-8; performance: 6:15pm
RSVP: rsvp@theartregistrygroup.com

On the 5 Proofs of God

“A Postmodern Meditation on the Five Proofs of God” is an exhibition of the art-work by Mark Cameron Boyd that features an installation addressing logical propositions by Thomas Aquinas to explore language and its putative conveyance of ‘reason’ to ‘ways of know-ing.’

In his ‘Summa Theologica,’ Aquinas introduced the ‘quinque viae,’ or ‘Five Ways,’ that he felt offered rational proof of the existence of God. Aquinas’s medieval theories on God’s existence extended the Aristotelian tradition of ‘rational philosophical truths’ and issue forth from Aquinas’s application of reason, thus they do not rely on ‘faith’ alone to prove there is a God.

Since 2003, Mark Cameron Boyd has been creating paintings with words, which were initially based on his own writings. Since then he has appropriated texts from a variety of sources, includ-ing Derrida, Nana Last, Rosalind Krauss, and most recently, Thomas Aquinas. On a variety of surfaces, usually wood or wood painted to resemble a black-board, or even glass, he writes sentences across horizontal pieces of tape laid on the surface. He then peels the tape away, leaving half of the words, and sentences floating in a field. These ‘text bisection’ paintings are original and fascinating works of art. Their surfaces are covered with lines of writing comprised of pieces of letters, which, at first glance, are indecipherable.

As viewers we are compelled to complete the words and sentences of the text-bisection works, to make meaning out of the ghostly textual images. Actually, viewing is a two-step process, of first determining what the words are, or could be, some are too fragmentary, and second, putting those words into sentences, and then making meaningful statements. One can always bypass reading or opt out of the conceptual demands and enjoy the beauty of the fragmented words.

His text bisections subvert the process and idea of language as signification. Although viewers are invited to participate in completing the words, there is always room for error and creativity. In fact, the paintings depend upon the creative input of the audience. The meanings of his state-ments are suspended and incomplete, left open to play and to change. The irony of some of his titles, which derive from the text written on the surface, also plays a role in this process.

Boyd’s art making process is informed by his reading and teaching of theoretical texts. The idea of obscuring half of the written text is derived from Jacques Derrida’s idea of ‘sous rature,’ placing words under erasure, to signify that meaning is always deferred and words carry the traces of other meanings. His interest in semiotics, the interrelation of word and image, and the process of making meaning in art and language, falls within the tradition of conceptual art and the ‘linguistic turn’ in American art criticism and art history of the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. However, what began as a simple transcription of random thoughts ex-perienced during art-making has evolved into actions upon the text, in particular the text bisec-tion, which undermine the conventional meanings of the words at same time that his writings have become more complex and theoretical meditations on the nature of art, subjectivity, and the process of signification.”

Gallery statement by Dr. Lisa Lipinski, exhibition curator, Associate Faculty at Corcoran College of Art + Design, and Adjunct Assistant Professor at The Catholic University of America. © Copyright 2010.

Image: Visitors decipher “Quinque viae: Proof 3” on Nov. 11; exhibition runs thru Dec. 17, 2010.
Photograph by Scott Boyd; © Copyright 2010.

Participatory Conceptual Collaboration

My 18-year-old niece, Matilde Chan Do Rosario, wanted to make art with me so we did a small blackboard she can take back to Macau. It's participatory so she can invite her friends to decipher the sentences and conceptual because I only supplied the idea, the words and the process.

The Collaborative Turn

"Maria Lind characterizes 'collaborative practice' as having the subsets of collaboration, interaction and participation. Collaboration is 'an umbrella term for the diverse working methods that require more than one participant.' Interaction can be many people working together or one individual 'pressing a button.' Participation is 'creation of a context' for participants to 'take part in something that someone else has created.'(1) My goals for Graduate Collaborative Studio come from my vantage point as an artist who makes installations that function as participatory sites for the collaborative art making experience. My text-based installations invite viewers to actively participate by writing directly upon my artworks. In my practice, this collaborative play with text 'stands in for' the experience of art as the viewer’s contribution affects the 'final image' of the work."

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1. Quotes from "The Collaborative Turn" by Maria Lind, in Taking the Matter into Common Hands: On Contemporary Art and Collaborative Practices, London, 2007.

Participation & "De-Authoring"

“The gesture of ceding some or all authorial control is conventionally regarded as more egalitarian and democratic than the creation of a work by a single artist, while shared production is also seen to entail the aesthetic benefits of risk and unpredictability. Collaborative creativity is therefore understood both to emerge from, and to produce, a more positive and non-hierarchical social model.”(1)

Collaboration in art-making is not new. In fact, much contemporary art is a collective production engineered through technical support and mediated through components of technology. What is more intriguing about the collaborative making of art is the idea that it embodies a “de-authored lineage that aims to embrace collective creativity.” The rejection of a sole “author” responsible for the artwork is an essential 20th Century art theory and currently fertile grounds for collaborative art-making. This “de-authoring” continues to launch new interpretations of collaboration in socially-engaged art, postconceptualism, cinema and performance.

The goals for Graduate Collaborative Studio come from my vantage point as an artist who creates participatory installations that function as sites for the collaborative art-making experience. My text-based installations invite viewers to actively participate; to “play” with the words and meanings hidden in the text by writing directly upon the panels. This collaborative play with text “stands in for” the experience of art as the viewers’ contributions affect the “final image” of the work.

There are two areas of collaborative art-making that I wish to explore: situations, sites or installations that invite collaboration to transform viewers into participant /interpreters; and “de-authored” collaborative works that yield control by one “author” to production shared by many.

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1. Bishop, Claire. “Viewers as Producers” in Participation, London-Cambridge, 2006, 12.