Occuburbs

Among the most widespread and enduring forms of progressive organization in the suburbs are environmental groups, food co-ops, and politically oriented arts groups and small galleries. These work with the domestic ethos of home and garden rather than against it, and they do a lot of good. They support open space preservation and local farms, particularly organic farms, and establish neighborly micro-economies as alternatives to the mall and highway hegemony.

Much of what the Occupy Wall Street movement advocates in the way of human-scale, participatory, and sustainable social organization already exists amidst the country clubs and ranch houses of the suburbs. It is small in scale and particular organizations tend to struggle with the attrition of a difficult economy and, alongside that, the general drift toward the preoccupied life; people have kids to take care of, things to do. Nonetheless, the alternative economy persists, resistance is fed in the most seductive way by local honey, herbs, cheese, beer and vegetables, and in a more spiritual sense by local art, music, and poetry. Seduction is not revolution, clearly, but it is something not to be scorned.

In thinking about Occupying culture in the suburbs, then, the coop and the alternative arts space came to mind as institutions to enlist. The challenge is to introduce the dynamic of a vanguard social movement, Occupy Wall Street, into these institutions and, beyond that, to determine a format that would best encourage a creative exchange of ideas and approaches among the participants in a given project. This is partly a matter of striking a balance between contributions from local artists and those based outside the area. It wouldn’t do simply to install an exhibition of Occupy-related work from downtown Manhattan in a suburban gallery; this would run the risk of being a show rather than an action. Similarly, one would hope that any event would advance the principles of the movement rather than support or illustrate them.

Occupy Wall Street is inherently transformative; it arose, and continues to arise outside of and in contradistinction to the parameters of party politics, class and social divisions, established forms of mobilization and resistance; it is a profoundly cohesive and inclusive civil rights movement, civil rights understood in terms of economic as well as political enfranchisement. If an expression of art and social activism in the suburbs is to reflect and engage the Occupy movement, it should be internally transformative, not just another cultural event in the suburbs but one that is informed by the questions that have impelled the occupations and street demonstrations worldwide: what does democracy look like? What does art for the ninety-nine per cent look like? Is an occupied suburb possible, an occupied suburban culture and social expression?

Answers to these questions will come from many places and perspectives, from experiment and trial error. All one can do is make an attempt and submit the results, however determined and analyzed, to one or some of the many channels of discussion the movement generates  What follows is a proposal for an application of the co-op model to Occupy events in an art space.  Not all that many people have experience with food coops, and there is some general confusion between various alternative approaches—co-op is not a csa, or share in a farm, nor is it an commercial organic market—so it might be helpful to begin with a brief overview of what the cooperative model.

The Cooperative

A co-op is a member owned and operated venture in which the community pools money and labor to support, as far as practical, locally produced, sustainable food and in the process reduce the costs and inefficiencies associated with various levels of the dominant economy . The same standards apply to goods that cannot be produced locally. As a collective it is able to purchase goods in bulk or close to wholesale, providing savings for members and a reliable market for local producers and conscientious national and international companies.

As a community the co-op encourages relevant ventures among themselves, be it small scale farming, cooking classes, health and nutritional education, or outreach to those in need. The co-op uses its purchasing power to support fair labor practices, conscientious farming methods and stewardship of the land and the environment.

Membership in the co-op is open to all, and typically non-members may shop at the co-op for a slight markup. Members contribute labor and contribute yearly dues to cover overhead and administrative costs of the co-op.  They support the co-op movement and build relationships with other organizations, sometimes offering assistance to startups and often collaborating with other co-ops on social concerns such as hunger and disaster relief.

A co-op is just that: a cooperative. Membership entails working together, building together, and not just using shopping privileges. It is an alternative association of neighbors and friends. It’s  kid friendly, pet friendly, and grownup friendly. It’s friendly. Difficulties can arise when members become caught up in their lives and don’t order or help out, but that is bound to happen. Membership in a co-op is an indication in and of itself that a person has goodwill and a social conscience.

The important point is that a co-op takes one out of the usual relations of a business and consumer culture. There are no ads, coupons, sales at a co-op, no inducements to buy. One spends money at a co-op, naturally, but one doesn’t shop in the usual sense, no more than one shops, quite, for a friend or a good story or a meal out with friends. Co-ops are small typically (there are some large exceptions, Park Slope Co-op being one of them). People know each other, or get to know each other through the organization and when people come together to make purchases or pick up orders the emphasis typically is on conversation more than food.

With all this said, a co-op model is practical and tough-minded.  The usual business requirements, or most of them, apply: maintaining inventory, bookkeeping, stocking shelves, arranging work schedules and so on. Nonetheless, being practical need not conflict with being communal or cooperative….

Application to Culture

So how could all this apply to art? The word coop is sometimes applied to spaces that artists pay for collectively in exchange for the right to exhibit work. This model is focused on the artists; it would be more interesting, more consistent with an Occupy approach, to include the community. That is the approach we will consider. Also, the terms local, sustainable, and even organic are so important to the coop model that it would be interesting to consider whether they can be carried over in some way to visual art.

But before doing so, it would be helpful to bracket off at least one point of conceptual tension in the greater art market or art world. If possible, and only in this limited circumstance, it would be preferable to hold off on concern with the question ‘what is art?’ Some objects that might end up in an Occupy exhibition—ephemera like signs, announcements with graphic images, clothing altered with lettering for a given event—might conceivably push at the boundaries of what some consider art, but what would be gained by stressing that term…  Imagine, for example, replacing the word art with spice; what is spice? Who gets to say what is or is not spice? What is the importance of spice in contemporary life? Is spice only for some people, Mexicans for instance, or can anyone enjoy it? Is spice really necessary? The word art, in this context, is simply an expedient.

More pertinent are the kinds of questions and concerns that follow the ‘is it art’ issue: what kind of value does a given piece have and to whom? How is this value determined? What kind of discourse does the project speak to and who takes part in this discourse? Value, of course, is a matter of money and of qualitative, subjective experience. The two are intertwined, but since the financial aspects of the cooperative model are concrete and fairly well established, it would be best to begin with money.

Value

The question of value—what is the material worth of a work of art, how is this determined--  ideally would matter to everyone, but it is particularly important when one is a collector and patron of art.  If art is to matter to the .99, is to speak to the .99, then perhaps the .99 should become art patrons and collectors.  There are different forms and degrees of ownership: one can own the factory that makes cars, own a car, lease a car with an option to buy. In a co-op, members own a share of the company and buy what the company offers, usually at a discount to the owner-clients.  In a co-op art model, members would have both partial ownership of the space, access to discounted work, and the third option, practiced in the Netherlands: an option to lease or rent a work for a given period, a year, say, with an option to buy.

Conversely, the artist might have different options in regard to the coop, ranging from membership with certain attendant privileges (exhibition rights, eligibility for commissions and various forms of paid work such as instruction) to submitting work as a non-member to juried shows and the like.

As for determining price, one can envision different forms of artist- public collaboration and negotiation, probably but not necessarily in a committee format. The operative framework, however, is not the art market or art capitalism, but the co-op community. The art world will go on as always. Artists will still strive to be the next Damien Hirst, Maurizio Catellan, Kara Walker, etc.  The co-op may well assist an individual artist’s career, but the focus is on the well-being of the community. The incentive of speculative investment, so important in the art world—the hope that a purchased work will increase exponentially in value in the secondary art market—would be replaced, in the co-op, by whatever priorities arise in the discourse of the community.

Art for the .99

Who knows what art for the .99 would look like.  It might be feasible, however, to begin to map out the conditions in which art for the .99 might develop. It is easy enough to identify the conditions in which art for the one per cent presents itself now: Art Basel Miami, Frieze, Art Cologne… All that need be said in this context is that the collusion of wealth, fashion, media and hipster social ambition at such gatherings place them at a distant remove from the lives and concerns of most people.  Contrast such occasions with something like an artists’ guild supported by member clients, one that contributes visual work to a demonstration or direct action, ‘occupies’ walls and other public spaces to encourage comment, cartoons, graphic work, graffiti (there is a statue in the Piazza Navonna in Rome that was set aside in ancient Rome for just such a purpose; it is layered in graffiti). The artists in such an organization might paint portraits of democracy or of new forms of the family and domestic  partnerships, might introduce art into the ordinary places of life: grocery shelves, park benches, clothing stores, hospitals, parks…

The same sort of program of talks, demonstrations, lessons, exchanges one finds in a food co-op could be enacted in an art space. Membership contributions—payment of minimal yearly membership dues—by artists and the non-artist public could remove at least in some degree the oppression of selling and career that distorts the greater art world.

This is the general drift; how to get people in the door, how to induce cops and plumbers and teachers, ordinary people, to join is the key. But it can be done…  If this is of interest I can expand on it. But since I have to grade finals and papers, I will stop for the moment and wait for some feedback.

Chris