ART
Paul Chan: Sade for Sade's Sake at Greene Naftali Gallery, NYC
/ Thom Donovan
12.10.09
Something that has impressed me about Chan's work since first encountering it in the early aughts is its negotiation of activism and problems specific to art as a field of knowledge. Like the early modernist motto "art for art's sake," Chan has famously (and controversially) taken a position that partitions his work as an activist from his work as an artist. What the art aims for instead of a politic effect is "freedom," and a sense of "contradiction"––that the elements of artworks are unresolved, and therefore resist ideological coherence or comprehensibility.
Despite this position, Chan's recent work has been extremely socially and politically engaged. In Chan's 2007 production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in the 9th Ward of post-Katrina New Orleans, the artist worked with locals to organize the production. Surely, one can perceive this aspect of the production––the pre-production community meetings, advertising, and rehearsals––as stemming from Chan's activism, and specifically his work with Iraquis via Voices in the Wilderness. By addressing the needs of the 9th Ward’s inhabitants––what they might want from a work of art? how a work of art may serve them?–– Chan would seem to provide the perfect negotiation of activism and aesthetic production. The activism and artwork, moreover, would seem to involve a single investigation of the ways practice and theory enfold and inflect one another through a set of consequences (what either activist or art work may yield as effective).
The immediate consequences of Waiting for Godot one can read about and view at Creative Time’s website (Creative commissioned the piece). People came together to see Beckett's canonical play performed in the 9th Ward complete with free gumbo, a Mardi Gras-style procession, and using "props" and "stages" left-over from Katrina. Whether the production helped the people to overcome their own sense of “waiting” (deferment or abandonment) is a question I would like to ask Chan himself, since the success of the work—based on Chan’s articulations of the work’s intention—would seem to hinge on whether it brought relief to the 9th Ward's plight.
Despite this position, Chan's recent work has been extremely socially and politically engaged. In Chan's 2007 production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in the 9th Ward of post-Katrina New Orleans, the artist worked with locals to organize the production. Surely, one can perceive this aspect of the production––the pre-production community meetings, advertising, and rehearsals––as stemming from Chan's activism, and specifically his work with Iraquis via Voices in the Wilderness. By addressing the needs of the 9th Ward’s inhabitants––what they might want from a work of art? how a work of art may serve them?–– Chan would seem to provide the perfect negotiation of activism and aesthetic production. The activism and artwork, moreover, would seem to involve a single investigation of the ways practice and theory enfold and inflect one another through a set of consequences (what either activist or art work may yield as effective).
The immediate consequences of Waiting for Godot one can read about and view at Creative Time’s website (Creative commissioned the piece). People came together to see Beckett's canonical play performed in the 9th Ward complete with free gumbo, a Mardi Gras-style procession, and using "props" and "stages" left-over from Katrina. Whether the production helped the people to overcome their own sense of “waiting” (deferment or abandonment) is a question I would like to ask Chan himself, since the success of the work—based on Chan’s articulations of the work’s intention—would seem to hinge on whether it brought relief to the 9th Ward's plight.