Read: Yoko Ono, Mend Piece, Springfield Art Museum: https://www.sgfmuseum.org/261/Yoko-Ono-Mend-Piece
Read: Jayme Collins, The Art of Climate Protest
Read: Setyawan, et al. Art activist: nature, culture and art-based environmental movement https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/905/1/012094/pdf
Read: Hal Foster. “The Artist as Ethnographer?” https://monoskop.org/images/8/87/Foster_Hal_1995_The_Artist_as_Ethnographer.pdf
Review: Slide deck
Choose one artwork from this week’s readings to discuss in the context of Activated Art as you understand that term. Use a critical lens (such as Foster’s, or Abenap’s) to analyze the work, consider its impact on humans, non-human animals and the environment, economics and representations, etc. and suggest alternate iterations/investigations of the same concept.
In activated art, the audience’s involvement is essential. Their interactions with the artwork suggests the social impact of it. Activated artworks usually address social, political, or environmental issues, and calling for audiences to reconsider about the status quo of the world around them. Ideally, start to act on the issues.
Yoko Ono's "Mend Piece" invites participants to engage with the act of mending broken objects, specifically shattered cups and saucers, transforming a simple restoration process into a communal ritual that emphasizes connection and healing. Through the lens of Hal Foster’s critique, this work can be seen as an activation of art that blurs the boundaries between artist and audience, promoting interactivity and collective experience. The objects in the piece are everyday materials, which makes the piece more tightly knitted with human life and consumerism. The piece encourages reflection on our relationship with material culture, urging us to consider how objects hold memories and stories, which resonate with both human and non-human entities. It also promotes sustainability by suggesting repair over disposal, which happens too much in the modern world. By valuing repair, this piece is urging us to consider the environmental costs and try to minimize waste.
As alternate iterations, we could explore digital mending, where participants upload images of broken items to a shared platform, promoting virtual collaboration in restoration efforts. On the internet, we could create new pieces of sculpture with broken objects from reality, making it not only a mending experience but more so transformation of materials from the past. Another alternative could be to explore “mental mending”, perhaps similar to art therapy where participants can join a short meditation session in a peaceful room. These approach would emphasize themes of repair, connection, and ecological awareness in the "Mend Piece”.
Project 1 concept, sketches and outline/brainstorming (in pairs) – post on both your blogs
Working in pairs, develop one shared concept informed by the course readings, discussions, and assignments. You should identify specific materials, scale, and site (inside gallery, outside on location…) that speak to that concept. Record all this in written form as well as sketches, and post it on both your blogs. (Yes, this post should essentially be the same for both of you.)
You can use repurposed and/or transformed natural/bio-degradable materials – such as cardboard, paper-mache, wood shavings/sawdust, plants and leaves, cloth, yarn, beeswax, and/or natural dyes from foods and plants – to create interactive, non-digital installations. You should not use plastic or other non-biodegradable materials. Note: although you may used found objects in their original form and/or manipulate them, a significant part of the installation must be made from transformed material.
