I feel that one can produce (or attempt to position the work of someone else as) a political statement, but I’m personally more interested in someone just doing something political. The reason why “Anonymous’” poster stood out the most for me is that it was an actual political statement/action existing within this endeavor. I believe I said it in my earlier posting, but for me it is the action that is “truly” political and not the intention. This overall endeavor is too caught up with being creative, artful and sincere to truly be political (for me). It does not throw caution to the wind, but slightly hints at how great it would be if we did. And if we did it with artists that everyone likes and/or considers intelligent.

For me what could make a work truly political (and also successful in it’s communication/existence?) is the action that goes around it. The effort is what is political, not the physical work itself. Those posters do exist as “political” work. I am not going to argue that, but they have not been “charged” by anything. They sat on the floor in an aesthetically pleasing installation and are now either on someones wall or stacked underneath the other remnants of someones life on their coffee table. I don’t look at this event as a attempt to be political, but one that unfortunately talks about something that it could easily do. This event and work did not really do anything for me in a drastic sense, but it did make me think for a bit. I think in the end we should just acknowledge is as something that might inspire us to be political or at least somewhat more poetic in our statements.

Perhaps the good old days you are referring to are the ones when artists went along with high profile locations and projects without question (for the sake of having their name/resume loaded with ‘also showed with’ gems), when the acts of the museum by the very fact of their institutional status sat beyond critique?

Or a time/place when a project was a success just because it happened without regard to any consideration to gaps between potential and result, effects and affectation?

Surely we’re better off as a community when the questions ZA asks are valid, and also where such projects as ‘In Protest’ can come to pass as successes in some people’s eyes, and failures in the eyes as others. The monolithic voice, happy to be ‘helping’, is the enemy of real discussion, political and artistic.

Maybe if you expanded your response to include your opinions of how this event succeeded further, responded to specific points in ZA’s comments you have contention with? It would be very welcome here or anywhere really…

this is the review I posted the next day:
Berkeley Art Museum//In Protest= Co organized by the Kadist foundation, this was a one night give-away of artist designed protest posters. Though it is to be extended via further iterations and gifts of the posters to ‘protesters’ , there was no relevant text specifying this or details (which protesters? where? always in art spaces?). The posters themselves varied from explicitly political to abstract, and as individual units ranged from good to excellent. Best: Anonymous’s ‘This Sign is Subject to Fetishization’, an accurate description of any item in a museum (like these) which felt all the more real as certain posters ran out early (no free Baldessari for me…) and other, simple ones (Paul Kos’s ‘ENOUGH’, Natasha Wheat’s barely visible ‘Lets Go’ though I bet she wanted it even fainter…) I love the posters (especially those I snagged), but can any event one pays to attend in a museum have a political potency without context as to its origins and future, burdened by institutional history and commodificational tendencies? Can the revolution be branded? Its easy to imagine these posters left namelessly at the May Day Protest, posted as PDFs for all to print and distribute… I’ve heard that there will be an ‘Occupy’ show at another bay area institution this summer, about which I can only sigh and hope for the best.

It is first important to note that the event at which the posters were distributed/collected was an exclusive event and was not public: it was held at the Berkeley Art Museum and admission ($7) was charged. If we are, as you suggest, to recognize this as a publishing project, rather than an exhibition, it is still similarly exclusive: only artists were asked for their words; the posters are printed in limited editions; and they are being “selectively” distributed to “relevant” groups. So, how do we understand this publishing project?

This project ostensibly seeks to build a bridge between the museum and activists. The artist is used to build this bridge. However, the museum’s nod to political participation risks very little – if a poster incites ire or actual action or controversy, the museum can remove itself easily and just defer to the artist who made it. (Further, if we find fault in the conceptualization and format of the project itself, JdP asks us outright to let the institutions involved off the hook and blame ourselves for this project’s failures.)

The May 9 event felt much like any other one night show. Though the objects on view were all giveaways, this is nothing new for a museum setting as we have had decades to grow accustomed to Gonzalez-Torres’ stacks, for instance (though unlike the near-limitless Gonzalez-Torres stacks—to which the stack presentation of the posters was compared—these posters were in limited edition). Janey, though I would like to agree with you that this museum poster giveaway event was just a nice thing to do, I cannot.

These posters, “cheaply-printed”, acquired value that was entirely divorced from any use value one might expect given their format as protest posters. Unlike actual protest posters that gain value and significance through their use in events, these posters were presented dislocated from protests, as art objects. Their value, instead, came from the authority this publishing project guaranteed: the posters were presented by a respected arts intuition and a reputable arts foundation and by a roster of artists, many with long-established careers. By co-opting the format of the protest poster for this publishing project, the project and its presentation risk confusing action with its ‘mystified’ authorizations.

I am not attempting to argue Nato’s intention, but I feel to truly answer Dorathea’s question, one has too. That the “worst” in commissioning a bunch of posters is not the commissioning, but everything else that follows suit. The programming and events that have taken place as part of Living as Form exhibition have involved a level of “getting out into the world”, working pass the walls of where “art” typically lives, but I do not understand why this endeavor is failing to do so.

Dorathea’s question and Nato’s action seem to be at odds here, but for me they are technically allies. I feel the real strength in the politics of this work would have been better suited out in the common world and not the confines of the museum. To experience these commissioned pieces in a museum for me instantly wipes them clean of any real current political capability. Why aren’t these posters simply being hung everywhere in the Bay Area? Being handed out at a real rally, protest or fair? Why isn’t an actual political event being formed for these works to meet the intended possible political strength they were commissioned for?

Basically I feel the answers to these question being asked exist within the actions of the individuals asking.