the Think Tank that has yet to be named

The Insurmountable Dilemma of a Rooted Practice

Posted by DIM on October 29, 2007

Four Directors recently attended Artivistic 2007 in Montreal, where we presented a collaborative montage of typical conference presentation formats in order to interrogate a potential failure in our work. We have described this failure as the Insurmountable Dilemma of a Rooted Practice.

Photo by Lucas Ihlein

For the official program, the Directors of the Think Tank that has yet to be named made a presentation about our work in order to problematize the perhaps insurmountable dilemma inherent in exporting to another locale a deeply contextualized art and activist practice. Specifically, we focused on our Publicly Held Private Meetings (PHPM). These are performative and collaborative interventions, and a format that we have used frequently in our investigations of contemporary urban issues in Philadelphia. As a critical spatial practice (to borrow a term currently much in fashion), PHPMs are held in the places directly related to the focus of the given investigation, even while considering and comparing its situations to other cities. Living, working, and organizing in Philadelphia, we rely on an intimate knowledge of the city in order to initiate and faciliate these dialogical projects. This knowledge is often gained over time through research, observation, and by virtue of simply sharing and negotiating space with others.

Traveling to another place to “make work” generally falls outside of the practice of the Think Tank that has yet to be named. This raises a number of questions for us that are relevant to the conference thematic: Can a practice rooted in a rich, nuanced interrogation of an intimately known place be relocated effectively to another, unfamiliar place? To what extent does such a localized art / activist practice rely on internalized assumptions about the valorization of indigenousness and the privileging of “authentic” spatial occupation? And what is “authentic” spatial occupation anyway? Can we even precisely locate indigenous? Circumventing this apparent impasse, we intend the presentation of our practice in this setting to act as a literal form of exportation whereby audience members may realize or acknowledge their own Directorships within the Think Tank that has yet to be named. We encouraged those potential Directors then to go forth, establishing their Departments and initiating their own critical investigations in their own localities, be they PHPMs or otherwise.

KEYWORDS: projects