Dinner digestions of Susan Sakash

Susan Sakash undergoes a partial digestion of the food and brain stuffs of Meet Me At The Table's first dinner.

Looking back at the first dinner party, I now see the dinner’s site and formalized aesthetic as a good example of where Berwick is at as an organization and where we are looking to grow.  By many accounts, this dinner was a wonderful success (read Big Red and Shiny article ) but I personally struggled to see how the outcomes of the dinner brought us closer to  two of our goals; namely, expanding our network beyond the arts community, and challenging us to reevaluate the ways in which the PAI program has been operating since 2005. 

By holding our first dinner inside an artist’s private working studio, in one of the longest standing artist studio buildings in the country, the Berwick was conscious that we were working within a setting that was familiar to us as artists and curators, but perhaps not as comfortable for people outside of the art community.  It was interesting to note, then, how the dinner guests were all artists or arts administrators (Kelly Brilliant, the Executive Director of the Fenway Alliance, a collaborating partner on the “Lumina” project along Huntington Avenue, actually got lost for 45 minutes trying to locate Brickbottom Studios and ended up turning around and going home!) despite many of the guests being new to the Berwick.  

The guests’ comfort within the setting of an artist studio and their delight in knowing one another’s work, meant that the dinner conversation was very fluid and quick to engage with Sarah King McKeon and Hannah Burr’s aesthetic and conceptual presentation of the meal.  So while there was a wonderful exchange of ideas throughout the evening, the conversation still felt very familiar and affirming.  There was also a lot of positive feedback from the guests about the projects previously supported by the Berwick—and the congenial atmosphere of the dinner table did not bring out some of the Berwick's own dissatisfactions with those projects.  

As an organization, we need to continue to push ourselves towards being more transparent about how and why we are looking to redefine the way that the PAI program approaches collaboration and conversation.  I am eager to take what we gained from this first event in applying it towards the next dinner events.

Some Questions

I am committed to finding ways in which this project can help push the Berwick to our learning edge.  If the Public Art Incubator program is committed to supporting public art works that want to actively engage with social spaces, the Meet me at the table initative has to find ways to activate the diversity of perspectives that create these social spaces.

How does true collaboration happen? Rather than holding a jury process that selects an artist based on their vision and then working to match that artist with a group or organization that we hope will share that vision, how can the Berwick act as a bridge-builder to bring in the collaborating partners at the earliest stage of a project?  How can we address the imbalanced power dynamic that seems so prevalent in the public art process in order to bring participants to a more equal playing field? How does Meet me at the table represent that struggle (by privileging the artist’s perspective) and, moving forward, how can we learn from other models out there? What are the questions we should be asking to create an environment where collaborators feel as though their input is essential to the conversation?

In terms of shaping the structure of the Meet me at the table series, we are inviting guests to join us in tackling these difficult but potentially rewarding questions.  Each dinner will be held in a locale that, together with the backgrounds of those assembled, will inform the direction that each conversation takes. This practice of addressing the same questions through the lens of different ways of approaching public art permits the guests, as well as the Berwick, to remain in the position of learners. 

The Question of Form

Meg Rotzel reflects on the formal successes of the April 13th dinner and the Berwick's responsibility for inclusion in conversations around public art.

The Berwick’s first dinner party in the “Meet Me at the Table” series focused on the individual artist, and was generously hosted in Jill Slosburg-Ackerman’s studio in Somerville. We gathered a group of artists and arts administrators in order to begin the series from the artists’ perspective. This was a comfortable and natural place for the Berwick to begin, as our programs and founding members are artist focused. However, one of the aims of this series is to learn and grow from our current position, and build towards meaningful collaborations and connections with wider existing communities in our local area. The dinner provided a stable starting place to venture out into more complex ideas of the intersections of public works and my interest in social artistic practice and its formalization within the art world.

Our multi-talented artists, Hannah Burr and Sarah McKeon, made a work of art that focused questions I have about the junction of artwork and meaningful conversation. Sarah and Hannah designed a menu and ongoing game that took the formal progression of a dinner and made conversation between diners and the rhythm of a multi-course dinner sculpturally visible. I’m interested in artworks based in exchange that invite awareness of individual acts within communities that acknowledge and build upon social structures in a meaningful way. For this bit of writing on “Meet me at the Table”, I’d like to parse out the formal aspects of this project in order to understand the Berwick’s, and my engagement in socially motivated artworks “…that takes as its theoretical horizon the sphere of human interactions and its social context…” (thank you Nicolas Bouurriad).

The dinner was composed of 6 courses of passed platters requiring each diner to serve her neighbor. Each guest marked the courses, in turn, by clinking a glass, opening an envelope announcing the next course, and passing around a bowl that contained varied individual instructions. Each chair at the table was outfitted with what looked like saddlebags, simply and elegantly sewn from canvas. Within these double pocketed bags were piles of unfinished wooden blocks, some gently sanded, others brilliantly colored. I received instructions throughout the dinner that read “place a block every time you smile”, “do not make eye contact” and “place several blocks when you agree with someone”. One guest received an instruction that read “place 13 blocks when the table comes to a consensus”, which was a momentous and clearly marked event! By the time we were into the second course the table started resembling a little city with towers of blocks that marked moments and gestures within conversation.

The artwork, pared with the discussion topic of public artwork, unfolded together. We learned the game of placing blocks while we got to know our fellow diners. The discovery of the game, our cohorts and the food brought the table together in convivial conversation about the objects and landscapes that we were all building together. This lead to my understanding of the blocks as symbolic of each of our actions, verbal and non-verbal, within conversation and collective building of ideas. The table was evidence of our individual activities and their relationships to each other.

I sat next to Matthew Hincman and Laurel Demarco, each of us had own ways of responding to our individual instructions. Laurel built concisely around her plate, and at times avoided placing blocks, I started to enthusiastically build up and out into my neighbor’s space, while Matthew did the same, but first began with picking up his plate and building a platform underneath it. Eventually we became comfortable with the necessity to build into each other’s spaces and developed a kind of playful set of etiquette, which allowed for the use of shared personal space.

Through the flow of courses, activity, and shared neighborly building the dinner conversation proceeded, as many formal dinner party conversations proceed, beginning with individual conversations that grow to engage the whole table. Sarah and Hannah’s engineering of a standard set of known formal dining etiquette, multiple courses, a considered pause between courses to regroup, and the introduction of new elements (food, conversation piece), we moved comfortably through the evening. Topics of the artist’s place in public art were discussed ranging from convoluted bureaucratic processes, misunderstanding of artist intelligence, frustration with funding, the multiple rewards of making things in public places, the need for education in the field, and anecdotes of making and encountering public artworks locally and in other places.

All of these conversational moments were important, however, as an organizer of this event, the conversation represented an acknowledgement of artist centered issues, but did not bring my thinking about the public sphere and it’s intricacies any further. I believe this is because we were located within the artist studio and within the artist community, a place where I feel comfortable and knowledgeable, which was our initial intention. Regardless of my comfort, I was unhappy that I came away without moving into new territory or getting into the meat of public works. This is where the project of defining goals, deeper intentions, and fears of complexity and risk of the public sphere must begin. The Berwick’s project of supporting work that builds a foundation of equal footing of collaboration must reach outside of its known world.

I’d like to return to the form of Hannah and Sarah’s dinner party.  As described, and as pictures of the evening’s events show, the dinner party proceeded in a well choreographed and, actually, well known way. This was not apparent at the onset, as the rules of the game, and its manifestation unfolded in stages as the evening progressed. However, with hindsight, I enjoyed the artwork because already knew its form and rhythm, and how to engage because of its familiar form. What does this imply then, this comfort and rhythm that is culturally embedded within me as a (western) diner? What do I take away from this experience, now knowing that the entwining of a culturally known forms of dining and games directly provide a conduit for engagement with my neighbor in conversation and friendly making? And to move into shadier territory, what does this culturally known entwinement imply when I ultimately left  with the galvanizing feeling of coming together, but not one of progress towards my goals of, well, positive impact on my social sphere.

To be clear, the artists are not responsible for the ultimate questioning of the dinner party. I’ll begin by questioning the form that has become popularized by the art world terms of relational aesthetics and dialogical artworks. I believe that these practices, which are now acknowledged by the art market, and taught in art schools, may seem to “take[s] as its theoretical horizon the sphere of human interaction[s] and its social context”, but after taking a “theoretical horizon of social context”, it does not actually impact that context unless it’s willing to take risks outside of its own social context. Unsuccessful artworks reiterate their own framework and make us aware of context. But, I don’t believe they actually do anything with its’ privileged and coded context in relationship to anything, except possibly other art objects.

THIS is why I’m fascinated by public artwork and its’, at times, doleful complexities. It’s given the challenge of actually doing something, or at least that’s what I’ve put upon the term “public art”. The form of public artwork sits at the intersection of many desires and expectations, “... expected to address urgent developments in a diverse range of social issues and relationships. Artists are given the task of taking on these complex, problematic and ultimately socially meaningful intersections in order to lead up into engagement via a civic sanctioned process of collaboration in order to express the “community’s” ultimate desire of dealing with these problems. We all know that this is a tall order for an artist, regardless of how many committees diligently work towards these hopeful goals.

So now that I’ve teased out this morsel, it’s important that I, and the Berwick, declare a closer reading of our intentions within our Public Art Incubator program as well as our goals for this series of dinner parties. The Berwick intends to take on the incubation of temporary public artworks that deal with social public space. By defining the temporality and the subject of our shared social sphere we become much more focused on our goals for the dinner parties as a whole. We are (I am) uncomfortable outside our (my) formal practice of art. We must build and depend on a well-honed practice of collaboration; one that starts as its foundation in rethinking authorship at the onset and requires intersections of common goals with another body of socially minded people. We must learn from community organizers and healthy community groups. We must seek out places where both groups have moments in common and build upon them, always with the time consuming process of building together, not side-by-side.

With this important fact stated and known, I return briefly to the issue of form. It is the artist’s gift and the Berwick’s ultimate goal, to produce artworks that are formally satisfying and engaging. To make a full step outside of the terms of the art world and into the reality of people, our artwork needs to look and feel like it’s ours to play with and learn from. In this way, we can look again at Hannah and Sarah’s dinner party artwork and acknowledge its strength in precisely instigating play and exchange on a group level. What was missing was the Berwick’s responsibility, the inclusion of people other than our own. And with this, we proceed to our next dinner parties, charged with the responsibility of true and meaningful collaboration.

 - Meg Rotzel, April 2007

Notes on Evaluation

by Nova Benway

Note: This mainly addresses the Berwick’s desire to expand its network. It does not make much of an attempt to address the establishment of MMT as a platform for the continuation of conversations about public art among individuals, municipalities, etc. I think we need to discuss that more as a group before I think about it individually. However, I think some of the issues brought up here tangentially relate to the development of such a platform, post-dinners.

Context

What do we value? The process of public art seems, by necessity, to ask that question – and, significantly, to provide an answer, whether it is as open-ended as “collaboration” or as specific as “the contributions of Abigail Adams to American history.” When we talk about “community building,” a term so often mentioned in the context of public art, I think we are trying to answer that question. I think good public art –like good art in general -- holds resonance for a wide range of people. To me finding out how to encourage the development of works that do this seems to be the point of Meet me at the table - otherwise, why expand the Berwick’s network at all? Thus in order to answer the question of “what do we value?” in a Berwickian way and in the context of these dinners, we have to ask it first – carefully and deliberately. I am thinking here about how to do that.

Building on Dinner 1

Dinner 1’s attendees were without exception experienced, thoughtful and perceptive people. Yet they could not give the Berwick the perspective we needed to expand our network, because (as we know) they are the network. There are several questions that seemed unaskable at that first dinner: ‘What is the value of public art? What is the potential of art in our public sphere? What has to happen for a public artwork to be successful?’ Though to me these are questions vital to the evolution of MMT, their answers seemed to be already hanging in the air, because of the close philosophical associations between most dinner attendees. (Though a few of these questions were briefly addressed, the answers were not pursued.)

I am struck by how few people noted afterward that they learned something profoundly new at Dinner 1. I think it is the Berwick’s responsibility to guide this project so that meaningful learning does occur. We must be able to organize the dinners so that they are relaxed and enjoyable, yet focused. Chances are, if learning is not happening for the guests, it is not happening for the Berwick either. This may be one way to think about how to ensure MMT’s effectiveness. We have talked about facilitation, and I think the topic should be revisited. I have been considering whether in order to bring new groups into the Berwick’s network in a way that is comfortable to them, we must ourselves step out of our “comfort zone.” Finding a way to facilitate the dinners, while avoiding the role of teacher, may be difficult, but necessary.

In order to expand the Berwick’s community purposefully, I think self-evaluation is a continual necessity. To that end, some questions:

• What characterizes the Berwick’s social/professional sphere now?
• In what ways does that need to change, and why? (My best answer at the moment is “We need to expand our network to include different perspectives because public art is a community process,” but I don’t think that’s nearly specific enough.)
• What defines a meaningful exchange or collaboration in this context?
• What would happen at the ideal dinner?
• What would the ideal PAI program look like?
• How can we present MMT to people who have never heard of the Berwick so that they arrive at the dinner ready to collaborate in a meaningful way – and again, how is that defined?

General Evaluation

So far, I have a few ways to “evaluate” the MMT process. I am not particularly happy with them, because they seem pretty facile. We can track the profession of each guest (artist? activist?), the neighborhoods they live or work in, or how connected they are to the Berwick. It seems to me, however, that what is missing from this type of easy-to-plot data is the Berwick itself: how are we making sure that we are developing our thoughts about the Berwick network and the PAI program in a useful/meaningful way? In evaluating MMT, we may benefit from brief, focused interviews with Susan and Meg, conducted systematically. Perhaps this would ensure the kind of continual engagement we all hope for, in the midst of all the planning and administrative work?

As I write this, I am beginning to think that asking the right questions – of ourselves and our guests - is an essential part of this social/artistic process. Are we fumbling toward a usable definition of “effective collaboration?"

Nova Benway is the MMT evaluator & a Master's candidate in Arts Administration at Boston University