Introduction
This is a book that blurs boundaries. Not only the disciplinary boundaries of most commercial publishers and academics, but the journalistic division of arts-and-culture writing into two self-contained categories: The objective, so-called news embodied in "front of the book" reporting, and the subjective "reviews" tucked away at the "back of the book." This rigid formulation sacrifices the interconnectedness of subjects, as well as historical context and informed point of view.
The notion of journalistic "objectivity" is flawed in both theory and practice. Editorial selection is, of course, far from objective. Apart from the issue of what gets written about--or not--this sort of journalism usually relies on the he said/she said model, leaving the insufficiently enlightened reader to make up her/his mind. Such approaches to arts writing only advance the entertainment-media conglomerates’ role as producers and ratifiers of the conventional--ever-so-conventional!--wisdom.
Some of us yearn for social change, rather than the bottom-line-oriented status quo. Arts writers might profitably look to Edward Said’s bracing credo that "Criticism must think of itself as life-enhancing and constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny, domination and abuse; its social goals are noncoercive knowledge produced in the interest of human freedom." The subtext of virtually all my work--whether embodied in skewering self-interested government officials and televangelists, or showcasing arts innovators and public-interest projects--is inequities of power and their possible remediation. Even if in-depth arts writing is of increasingly little interest to the mainstream media, it is still a valuable forum, occasionally even a formidable bully pulpit. As Emile Zola sagely counseled the then-young critic Theodore Duret: "I have read your article on the Salon, which is excellent. You are a bit mild. To speak well of those one likes is not enough; it is necessary to speak ill of those one detests."
Eye/I Witness: Art Writing as Activism, Criticism and Reportage is many things at once. It is first-hand reporting on the Culture Wars and the demolition of the National Endowment for the Arts. It encompasses criticism, reportage and theory about the emerging fields of online- and queer art. It provides analysis of cultural policy and examinations of cultural phenomena including the theme-parking of museums and representations of artists by Hollywood and the mainstream media. It attempts historical recovery by including accounts of exhibitions and performances that are otherwise nearly undocumented. Finally, it comprises a few personal narratives about cultural organizations I have helped found (including ‘Visual AIDS’, the producers of Day Without Art and the Red Ribbon, and ‘911--The September 11 Project: Cultural Intervention in Civic Society’.)
My manifesto for ‘The September 11 Project’ suggested the vital links between cultural activism and the public interest, institution building and educational mentoring: "The traditional view of art’s potential in this crisis was expressed in the New York Times of September 17, in which the pleasures of art were described as ‘comfort, replenishment, beauty’, and the museum ‘as a calm haven from devastating events’. These observations are apt," I wrote, "But reinforce the notion of contemporary art’s remove from daily life. Artists/cultural workers are knowledge makers and engaged citizens. They are experts at creatively utilizing their hybrid skills to reach numerous audiences--from school children and people on the street, to gallery-goers and far-flung electronic audiences--with meaningful ‘messages’ ranging from healing images and narratives to analyses of mass-media imagery and manipulation...In a monolithic media culture, it is imperative that more diverse voices be heard...art-world predecessors [for such an initiative are legion]."
This activist-oriented style of speaking my mind was nurtured by many years’ writing as an arts-politics columnist and investigative reporter for the Village Voice. Such writing helped me feel that I was contributing to the local and sometimes national conversation about vital cultural issues related to the preservation of a pluralist, secular, democratic society that remains threatened by corporate and fundamentalist religious interests. Nearly sixty percent of the material included here was first published in the Village Voice. (The rest comes from sources as disparate as Art in America and Japanese Esquire, as well as from the three online sites/journals I have helped establish and edited: TalkBack!: A Forum for Critical Discourse; Artery: The AIDS-Arts Forum; and The Media Channel.) Much of this writing--in the form of exhibition catalogues from small museums, defunct art magazines, or Village Voice pieces that were never posted to commercial, online content aggregators such as Nexis--is now inaccessible. Ironically, in the Information Age fewer, rather than more, key documents and accounts are being lost, or relegated to nearly total obscurity.
A larger problem also exists in our amnesiac culture. Little arts publishing exists outside of the academy, and it rarely incorporates on-the-spot reporting, unfiltered by corporate mainstream media. Established narratives are constantly reiterated from over-simplifying and discipline-specific perspectives. (How many times must we read that the contemporary culture wars begin almost 15 years ago with the Serrano and Mapplethorpe flaps, when they must be dated back at least as far as Anita Bryant’s 1977 assault on Dade County’s equal rights protection for gay men and lesbians, Ronald Reagan’s elimination of C.E.T.A.--the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act--which provided public-service jobs for artists, and the N.E.A. National Council’s eighty-sixing of grants for art critics, both of which took place in 1981.) The richness of events--and the raw stuff of future history writing--suffers from such sporadic journalist attention. My interest in demystifying and contextualizing this often-complex material and presenting it in accessibly-written form, extends beyond, what I believe, is its increasing relevance for scholars. It might also help provide encouragement--and cautionary advice--for those seeking social change through activist art and cultural organizing.
In a recent, museum-commissioned memoir about my cultural writing, I opened by noting that "During the mid-eighties, art seemed to burst out of its museum and gallery ‘frame’ to increasingly mirror goings on in society-at-large. Consider one moment--October 1987. Two significant events took place that month: The stock market imploded and the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt debuted on the mall in Washington, DC. Both shook the world of art and artists." This coupling of economic and artistic goings-on embodies the traditional art historical modus operandi of my training. That I have been able to marry this to my interest in contemporary political and social conditions reflects a time in the 1980s and 90s when such writing was more possible than it is in today’s climate of journalistic superficiality and sensationalism. I am grateful for that accident of history, and to the progressive editors and publisher who have contributed to the possibility of this anthology.
Robert Atkins
June 2002
New York City
