« Art Critics' Reading List
CAROL A. SKATENAS
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Carol A. Stakenas is the executive director of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). Previously, she was the lead curator for “Los Angeles Goes Live: Performance Art in Southern California 1970-1983,” an exhibition and performance series that featured re-inventions of historical performances and actions and was staged throughout the city. Most recently, she produced Suzanne Lacy’s public art work Three Weeks in January: End Rape in Los Angeles, which engaged participants from fields as diverse as activism, education, media, city politics and art. She is currently developing a new online series with Natalie Bookchin entitled In Between Screens. |
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Pablo Helguera. Education for Socially Engaged Art: A Materials and Techniques Handbook. New York: Jorge Pinto Books, 2011.
Much of the recent writing dedicated to the subject of socially engaged art has operated primarily from the perspective of the scholar and critic. Now, Pablo’s Helguera’s text addresses the practitioner directly. In his introduction, written in Porto Alegre, Brazil, as well as Bologna, Italy, and Brooklyn, N.Y., he states, “Those of us in socially engaged art need our own reference book of ‘materials and techniques,’ as it were.” And here it is. In this slim, 91-page volume, Helguera offers a concise, clear-thinking analysis linked to a broad spectrum of practices, from the well-intentioned community art mural to the confrontational work of Santiago Sierra. He brings a refreshing critical point of view, especially for the artist/organizer trying to navigate the persistent questions that accompany the field: symbolic versus actual practice, social work versus social practice, etc. This text has also deepened my own understanding of how to work more effectively with artists. |
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Show and Tell: A Chronicle of Group Material, edited by Julie Ault. London: Four Corners Books, 2010.
By its nature, Group Material challenged traditional structures of authorship, so to produce a publication that reflects on its 17-year project provides a particularly compelling case study. Filled with correspondence, meeting minutes, invitations and other intriguing ephemera, Show and Tell grapples with the limits and possibilities of sharing a complex and conflicting history of the collective and its members. Following Group Material’s signature timeline approach, the book design employs bold colors, sets up evocative image interplay and includes multiple points of view to explore this amazing social history set within the volatile political context of the 1980s and 1990s. For archive mavens who want to take a deeper dive, the colophon notes that the Group Material archive in the Downtown Collection can be viewed by appointment at NYU’s Fales Library & Special Collections. Enjoy. |
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Net.art Per Me, edited by Vuk Ćosić. Ljubliana: MGLC, 2001.
Produced on the occasion of Slovenia’s Temporary Autonomous Pavillion at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001, this catalog features screen shots, reprints of emails and other documentation of early net art. During a recent public conversation between Hans Ulrich Obrist and Danny Hillis, inventor and engineer, Hillis reflected on a “digital dark age” that is being created by our reliance on digital formats that become unreadable as both the software and hardware evolves faster than we have time, or current motivation, to “upgrade” into the current format. With the continued exponential integration of digital networks into our daily lives and in the art world, Net.art Per Me and its paper-based archive is an invaluable resource to gain access to the seminal days of network culture and the artists and curators who were exploring this territory. No upgrade needed. |
