Nomenclature

We always struggle with articulating what we do.  We know what it isn’t – community art, participatory art, socially-engaged practice are all terms used for the kind of work we make.  But these terms are sadly inadequate and don’t really tell the story of the work we make.  Our Bulgarian colleagues recognised the same problem and we discussed it at length.  This kind of work has developed, and is developing all across the world – we realise we’re not the only people who are doing it, but like any relatively new development, the language hasn’t developed in pace with the thing itself.  We make art, first and foremost (the old question about whether it is art or social work being safely put to bed, we hope), contemporary, conceptual work, but in a ‘real world’ context, alongside people who are not artists.  It is very much not traditional ‘community art’ (but owes a great debt to those pioneers from the 70s and before), it does not necessarily live in an ‘art context’ – like a gallery or arts centre, so it can’t be ‘proper art’ either.  So what do we call it?  Any suggestions?  I’ve played around with various ideas, but haven’t been able to come to any conclusions, yet.  It’s context-specific and responds to the ideas and concerns of its ‘audience’ – responsive art?  It blurs the boundaries between audience, artist and participant – boundary art?  It serves to bring people together and create a dialogue between them – dialogue art? There are all kinds of impacts that the work makes, direct effects in the real world – legacy art?

As you can  see, I’ve come to no conclusions as yet, but it’s a perennial problem, this naming what we do thing.  We want to advocate for this work, we know how powerful it is, but without having the language to explain it easily, it makes it hard to spread the word.  If we take someone through a project, and explain the whole thing they get it, but this is very time intensive for everyone.  Finding new ways of explaining it would save a lot of time and energy, better used elsewhere.  But perhaps it is for others to define us, perhaps we should stop worrying about that and just get on with doing what we do best, making the work.  I’ll let you know when I come up with a solution.