Mierle Laderman Ukeles and Maintenance Art - Essay Example

Social Activism, Gender and Urban Issues: Mierle Laderman Ukeles and Maintenance Art Introduction Maintenance artists are part of the larger activist artists. Activist artists develop art using sociopolitical, technological advancements and aesthetic channels in their attempt to challenge the traditional hierarchies and boundaries of culture as practiced by those in positions of power. A factor that influenced the emergence of activist art was the need to connect art to a wider and more diverse audience while attempting to open up spaces in which the disenfranchised and marginalized members of society could be seen. That is one reason why activists address sociopolitical issues in the public space and encourages community participation in initiating social change. However, this does not render Maintenance Art inherently good or bad since it bears both advantages and disadvantages. This paper will discuss the pros and cons of Maintenance Art with particular focus on the works of Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Pros The works and concepts of Mierle Laderman Ukeles are within the activist context that aims to empower the society to change its values and break the divisions between private and public realms. She explains how art has been infected by everyday routine activities of life and the divisions that society has enforced between higher class public jobs and maintenance jobs. Among the underlying pros of Maintenance Art is the ability to provoke responses not only from the public and society but also authorities for the general good of the citizens. Basically, this means Maintenance Art has the potential to improve the democratic space (Lim and Golan 714). For example, Ukeles’ Maintenance Art eventually led to her getting involved with the authorities at the New York Department of Sanitation. This was by her refusal to believe that garbage will simply disappear even if it is ignored in modern metropolises and launching the “Social Mirror” in 1983 (Feldman 49), which also forms the basis of this discussion. This shows that Maintenance Art is beneficial to the society by waging nonviolent conflict in the interest of social justice. This social advantage is achieved either by targeting social orders or authoritative organizations as one strategy or targeting marginalized organizations or powerless movements. Therefore, the society benefits when powerful and often detrimental social orders are challenged and destabilized and powerless movements are unified and also stabilized and empowered. The benefit to the society emphasizes the objective of the art activists to bring about balance by ensuring the powerless have a voice and the powerful listen. In the Maintenance Art manifesto written in 1969, Ukeles reinterpreted household duties by calling herself a maintenance artist, a title that tied her to performing the duties (Grindon 819). The significance of this is that “maintenance” was revealed as a key condition for social functioning and liberty, which was advantageous to women because their role in the social order was viewed differently since then. These pros can be viewed from a cluster of four perspectives. First, they wage and intensify nonviolent conflict, because they are tools and strategies of activism anyway, which increases the power of a group to address issues as well as establish and develop the blueprint for transformation (Feldman 48). Second, direct violence is greatly reduced through the aim of the artists to prevent and relieve the suffering of violence victims while restraining its perpetrators. The concept of nonviolence in the first two perspectives is realized by the use of temporal interventions which include installations, performance, exhibitions and media events. It can also be via mainstream media and employ newspaper inserts, billboards, advertising and posters (Sze 69). Third, activist artists transform relationships by using trauma healing, restorative justice and conflict transformation to do justice. Fourth, activist artists build capacity to enjoy rights and meet needs while preventing violence by researching and conduction education and training through their works (Feldman 50). Therefore, Maintenance Art ensures the realization of positive social change when it actively engages in representation processes that raise consciousness and cultivate participation in dialogue. When public participation is used to activate individuals into becoming change catalysts, the participation transforms a whole community into an act of self-representation and expression (Yaeger 326). This contributes towards the pros of Maintenance Art because it is the same community that will be the key beneficiary of the response they will provoke from whoever the activism targets. Therefore, Maintenance Art is also beneficial to the community because of its enables community members to map the complex system that is otherwise difficult to visualize yet comprised of human relationships and interactions. Another popular maintenance artist is Teresa Margolles who has held performances, made installations, intervened in public spaces and developed conceptual and artistic strategies using images of corpses and bodily substances (Langhill 101). Through exploring death as a subject, she has brought awareness about social exploitation, how violence defines the modern philosophical and cultural landscapes, and political and economic inequalities. Such awareness is by all means awakening to the society and can motivate them to lobby for change by the policy makers. Cons Maintenance Art also has disadvantages that mainly stem from the vague understanding of the concept by society or its lack of fully appreciating what it can achieve. However, it is worth noting that the advantages greatly outweigh the disadvantages. For example, some will start with positive intentions but the society soon turn them into chaos by turning the whole concept into scenes of clashing ideologies and debates (Sze 92). This will only drift the cause away from its intended objectives. Further, Maintenance Art is only more successful and effective depending not necessarily on the cause but the institution it targets. For instance, it is more successful when it launches campaigns against governments and public organizations as compared to private businesses. Looking at the disadvantages from the point of view of view of the society not fully appreciating what Maintenance Art can achieve, for example, Ukeles addressed her work directly and personally to the underpaid maintenance laborers (Feldman 51). Although the move was successful in bringing that social sphere into public view, when the art was replaced back to its original site, it was portrayed as a political statement (Grindon 824). The key disadvantage of such a twist of events is that matters can easily get over sensitized with the risk of culminating into chaos. Another example of the cons of activist art is propaganda art. Propaganda mainly occurs in the form of posters during war with the core aim of communicating to and influencing a community’s attitude towards a position. However, it is also known for being selective and biased in conveying facts (Langhill 83). The downside is that rather than producing rational responses, propaganda almost always produces emotional and detrimental responses to the communication conveyed. An appropriate example is the way the British National Party used propaganda to build hatred within its ranks. Even in the 1930s, propaganda art was used in Germany to mobilize people against Jews by spreading lies about them. During WWII, propaganda art was used to ignite and propagate conflicts between countries. For example, the poster with the title This is the Enemy was circulated throughout the US after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor with the sole purpose of portraying the whole of Japan as a brutal enemy to be eliminated (Navarro 1). The occurrence of the attack notwithstanding, the poster represented a clash between the two countries basing on biased perceptions with devastating and dehumanizing historical consequences for Japan (Finch 380). As a form activist art, propaganda can be used a means of influencing the psychology of people so as to modify their social perceptions. Looking at the work of Teresa Margolles, although it has it positive aspect of informing the public of the ills of the violence and inequalities created by the figures of authority, it is largely of a controversial nature. Critics have pointed out that exploring death in such an explicit and uncensored manner can actually have the opposite effects than the intended ones on the audience and lead to stigma (Yaeger 327). This is especially the case for those who have directly been affected by the acts of violence the art is against and worse still, lost a loved one. Again, this will result in a case of over sensitizing matters. Conclusion Maintenance Art has been shown to belong to the wider category of activist arts through which the artists deliver ideals behind their works of art. This came into being following the need to connect art to more audiences in an attempt to open up spaces where the marginalized members of society could be seen. Advantages of Maintenance Art include the ability to force a response from leadership positions in order to address matters that the society find oppressive. Maintenance Art has also driven the society to act as their own representative and democratically demand change from those in authority over the. However, it has also been shown that Maintenance Art has the potential of over sensitizing matters and achieving the undesired results. For example, propaganda art, which is a form of activist art, is characterized by selective messages which are intended to modify the psychology of crowds during conflict. This mostly draws emotional reactions rather than positive and rational responses. Works Cited Feldman, Mark. “Inside the Sanitation System: Mierle Ukeles, Urban Ecology, and the Social Circulation of Garbage.” Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies 39.4 (2009): 42-56. Print. Finch, Lynette. “Psychological Propaganda: The War of Ideas on Ideas During the First Half of the Twentieth Century.””Armed Forces & Society 26.3 (2009): 367-386. Print. Grindon, Gavin. “Surrealism, Dada and the Refusal of Work: Autonomy, Activism, and Social Participation in the Radical Avant-Garde.” The Oxford Art Journal 34.1 (2011): 814-830. Print. Langhill, Caroline. Me Calling Him-Him Calling Me. Toronto: The Visual Arts Foundation, 2011. Print. Lim, Joon S., and Guy J. Golan. “Social Media Activism in Response to the Influence of Political Parody Videos on YouTube.” Communication Research 38.5 (2011): 710-727. Print. Navarro, Anthony. A Critical Comparison between Japanese and American Propaganda During World War II. Michigan State University. 2010. Web. 19 Feb. 2015. . Sze, Julie. Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009. Print. Yaeger, Patricia. “Editor’s Column: The Death of Nature and the Apotheosis of Trash.” PMLA 123.2 (2008): 321-339. Print. Read More