The talk

KP: It finally happened.

KP2: Finally. Not that the lunch talks before were not interesting. But this one left an echo, bitter taste, for some admiration, but a lot of questions for sure after it was finished.

.....

Even on Saturday evening, while most of us enjoyed our white wine and Aperol spritzer, the topic of the lunch talk organized by Tania Bruguera and the discussion that followed the talk with Christoph Draeger popped into conversation. A day later and it still caused heated reaction or at the most interruptions in so far very polite politics of first listening and then asking or answering.

The talk on Friday concentrated around a topic of "Useful Art" (Arte Utile)" by which artist actively introduce art into society's urgent social, political and scientific issues". Just introduction to the burning questions is not enough to be useful art; it requires sustainability within a very specific and localized community where the burning issue in a sense originates from, evident change after the implementation of the project is carried through and in the end a solution to the problem. If solution to the problem is not provided then it is not useful art and the search for the solution is still on.

Two very different stand points of what art is where presented to us. On one hand the idea of the autonomous art and as its counter point useful art. The two differ in their approach to problem solving. Questioning and internalizing of the dialogue leads in Tania Bruguera's point of view to an autonomous art, art for art sake, while the approach in a more active manner to problem solving  leads to the idea of useful art. This caused many questions and I am not sure how many people Tania Bruguera managed to convince. A lot left the talk questioning the use of art esthetics in such a project, definition of art, role of the art. Is this concept a new concept? Is what we consider to be socially engaging art just art of raising awareness?  All the burning questions that happen when a certain shift in the look at the function of art happens. But in the end, question was asked, is art moving into a completely different spheres that of social work and politics. A social worker was in the audience during the talk and she was not able to answer if the examples given are examples of social work projects or art projects. Tania Bruguera founds this ambiguity to be a good sign since the set definitions are becoming more and more blurred.

Christopher Draeger quoted Ad Reinhard and explained that this is his favorite quote on what art is "Art is art. Everything else is everything else." It seemed that for every point during the discussion a possible counter point created itself. Two artists for sure presented their different points of view in a convincing manner but  both were  open to listen to the other points or questions from the audience. Such questions were considered very useful.

It is evident that Tania Bruguera has a big project in mind, the one that she herself worked on for many years on and off. In the last two years she decided to focus her attention, to use her gained name in the art world to raise awareness and create a change. Many leaving the talk mentioned that they are interested in seeing how all of this will unravel but also there were others that reacted very emotionally to the talk and were not at all taking what the talk was about with ease. Let us see what will happen.