FLUX 2011. Photo by John Ramspott.

Early Modernism saw two visions of the relationship between art and life emerge. One held that art was autonomous, whereas the other sought to integrate art and life. The former, traceable to such artists as Velazquez and Manet, and subsequently brought to the fore by the Abstract Expressionists and Clement Greenberg, is supposedly self-referential and self-reliant. The latter can be shown to move in two directions; one, via Russian Constructivism as influenced by Marxist historical materialism and the Bolshevik Revolution, sought to dissolve art into life; the other, sometimes associated with rationalist utopianisms of the Bauhaus, De Stijl, and other movements in western Europe, sought to make all of life an aesthetic experience. Two lines, faint and meandering as they may be, can be drawn from the two aforementioned primary modes to the two major ways of making art today. Autonomous, self-referential art could be associated more with objects of the gallery or museum (and permanent outdoor sculpture), while work descendant of “art-merging-with-life” relates more to performance and outside-the-gallery happenings. Throughout the Modern period, myriad art movements have leaned one way or the other in attempts at creating an art that would most accurately reflect and critique the Modern experience. Often, this critique was focused on the project of capitalism; paradoxically, artists of both camps remain reliant on capitalists in order to subsist.

Elevate: Art Above Underground, 2011. Photo by John Ramspott.

Some critical thinkers move beyond the paradoxical relationship with capitalism into the precipitous problem of experience. Walter Benjamin, in an essay titled “Experience” (1913), concludes that an adult (probably an analogy for modernity) loses the ability to have real life experiences in favor of knowledge and cynicism. Giorgio Agamben furthers Benjamin’s thesis in Infancy and History (1978), wherein he applies a linguistic-semiological interpretation to the problem, suggesting that the only thing we experience is language, and our most valued experiences relate to words with no clear referent. For neither writer is experience merely raw stimulus reception, but that which changes us on a deeper level. As Agamben notes, “For modern man’s average day contains virtually nothing that can still be translated into experience. Neither reading the newspaper, with its abundance of news that is irretrievably remote from his life, nor sitting for minutes on end at the wheel of his car in a traffic jam…Modern man makes his way home in the evening, wearied by a jumble of events, but however entertaining or tedious, unusual or commonplace, harrowing or pleasurable they are, none of them will have become experience.”

The Object Group performs Eyewitness at Off the Edge, 2012. Photo by Sara Keith.

I would think that for many people, this analysis rings particularly true in today’s smart-phone-web-2.0-html5-world. Everywhere you look, people are face down, attentive to a glowing screen, “doing” something other than experiencing the physical world immediately around them. Even when a spectacle worthy of drawing one’s attention away from the screen presents itself, many are still obliged to mediate that experience through the screen via obsessive picture taking or video making. As one can tell by the date of Benjamin’s essay, although our technologies are new, the phenomena that follow are not.

Similar ideas can be found in the writings on Situationism from the 1950s and 1960s, and on Relational Aesthetics from the turn of the 21st century. The argument for a more real and imminent relationship to the world is often used to build a case against museums, galleries, and static art in general, in favor of public and interactive art. I believe that the argument has become so common that it is often accepted on its face value, and its flaws never emerge. I also believe that an examination of the questions I present below can help Atlanta’s art scene, inside and outside the gallery, to strengthen and continue to grow.

KAWS opening at the High Museum of Art, February 18, 2012. Photo by Dylan York.

The first problem is that certain experiences are given preference; the “real” kind are seen as deep and valuable, and the “virtual” kind as passive and meaningless. This bias boils down to a kind of Kantian relativism, in which subjective taste is mistaken for universal law. Although I think most people do find real life more meaningful than a virtual one, the distinction becomes blurred when choosing between mediated experiences. Why do so many of us find information from a book, even if it’s fiction, more important than televised drama? Why can some people sit before a computer all day, then brag about how they “don’t even own a TV”? A mediated experience is a mediated experience—just because a person is dressed up, dancing on the corner of the street, does not make the event more real than someone doing the same thing on a proscenium stage. Personal and social boundaries define the line between “real” space and make-believe, thus the definition of mediated is dependent on each viewer’s psychology.

gloATL performs at FLUX 2011. Photo by John Ramspott.

The second problem is more directly related to the idea of experience, specifically with regard to the popular argument that public interactive works create a sense of physical community, as opposed to virtual, online interaction. In today’s hyper-mediated world, a carnival-style art event is equally likely, if not more likely, to be experienced through the lens of a camera phone than is a gallery show. Also, for many, to “experience” such events as Flux Projects’ one-night art extravaganza, Elevate: Art Above Underground, or similar happenings is to follow a map and a schedule analogous to some bourgie version of TV Guide.

Ben "Bean" Worley's SYNTHESIZ at Get This! Gallery. Photo by John Ramspott.

Finally, the pace required to “see” all of the art at any of these events often mimics the pace required to get a plasma television on Black Friday, leaving little time to socialize with the company in one’s midst. By comparison, the conversation-filled, wine-sipping, partylike atmosphere of any gallery opening may have more to offer in terms of creating community than the best open-air festival. At the same time, the ratio of numbers of works to amount of time a given festival occurs can be unkind to a viewer trying to interact with all the work to be seen. While this evanescence is representative of the drive-by nature of contemporary real-life interaction, it is also counter to being able to engage with the work on a deeper level. By contrast, in the days or weeks following the opening of a gallery show (the opening being a time when work probably gets the least amount of attention), one can stand in front of a work at one’s own pace, take time to communicate, and make a real, deep connection with the work, in a way described by James Elkins in his series of essays How Long Does It Take to Look at a Painting.

Obviously, I am not calling for an end to public art events. They are great fun and offer opportunities for artists to make, and viewers to experience, works that are disproportionate to the gallery. I have participated in them, and will continue to do so, both as an artist and a viewer. I do wonder though: Why is there such a push to move art outside the gallery? If all of our experience is mediated by technology, what difference does it make where art exists? What does art outside the gallery promote that art inside a gallery does not? Does the apparent need to evangelize the visual arts mark a failure in its ability to compete with the kitsch found on television, in movie theatres, and the on the Internet; are we, as “fine” artists jealous of the popularity of these “lower” art forms? Most importantly, I question why we go to such lengths to produce and receive art: to be able to say that we have experienced its existence, or to actually improve our own existence and experience?

Malina Rodriguez (left) led a team of Dance Truck volunteers to install swing sets at the Goat Farm for PLOT. Photo by Karley Sullivan. Click the image to zoom.

Silence, emptiness, stillness—even the most stubborn absolutes also contain a hint, the seed of potential, of becoming their opposites. For instance, the blinding sun-bleached oblivion of Atlanta’s summer can suddenly subside into a cool midday shower. The year 2011 had many moments just like that.

If you found yourself caught in a rainstorm on the right day, perhaps you saw gloATL’s dancers dashing into downtown traffic—as a devoted crowd stood amazed, unmoving despite the downpour. Or perhaps you stayed indoors and attended Dashboard Co-op’s dinner party where strangers shared their “largest and most elaborate” visions for Atlanta’s future. These are among our favorite memories from the past 12 months.

About this “Top Ten” List

For the past three years, BURNAWAY opened its year-end survey to readers only. We invited ten guests to write about ten arts events they considered the “most personally inspiring,” with little to no interference from our staff. The format for Our Favorite Things 2010 was roughly the same as 2009 and 2008, the year this publication began.

Now we’re mixing things up by letting you know what BURNAWAY thought of 2011. Eight staff members contributed nominations and collaborated in writing the descriptions below. As in previous years, the events follow in chronological order. So, collectively, these are our ten top favorites from the year, but it isn’t a “top ten” if that means the first is better than the last. Enjoy!

Trends for 2011

Where others see nothingness, artists see opportunity. In July, Dance Truck installed swing sets to transform an overgrown lot outside a former factory into a performance site. Other projects invaded public parks, spilled across train tracks, disappeared down hidden trails, and materialized overnight on the sides of buildings dozens of feet high. Notable items in this category included the Four Coats murals, Elevate: Art Above Underground, Living Walls throughout the city, and the aptly named performances in near-inaccessible environs.

Many of the biggest developments, however, involved crossovers between dance and the visual arts. Atlanta’s dance scene coalesced in 2011 with a renewed recognition of the power of collaboration—among dancers, across disciplines, between companies, and between Atlanta-based and visiting artists. The continued drive to interact with the public beyond the stage produced strong work, and dancers clearly took cues from the cooperative spirit that’s recently built momentum among Atlanta’s visual artists. But the especially interesting part was how the visual arts scene began to take a greater interest in dance. The ingredients have existed for some time, but now the beginnings of a singular and potent movement are taking shape.

Scroll down to read our ten picks for 2011, in order by date!

Photo courtesy Ryan James.

Modes of Operation
Curated by Dashboard Co-op
999 Brady Avenue
January 15—February 12, 2011
Featuring artists Sean Abrahams, Kombo Chapfika, Patrick Flibotte, Helen Hale, Johnathon Kelso, Katy Malone, Duncan Shirah, Johnathan Welsh, and Jay Wiggins

Dashboard Co-op’s Modes of Operation realized a big group show of nine young artists curated with impressive elegance and scale, especially in a raw space without white walls. Set up temporarily in a large empty warehouse in the Westside Arts District (the address is now home to Fabrefaction Theatre and Miller Union restaurant), the exhibition also provided a backdrop for a dinner party with a surprise dance performance by Helen Hale. Guests watched in amazement as the choreographer and her partner danced and fought and became exhausted in a sequence of abstracted, expressive movements. Hale has a particular abandon in the way she moves: a sense of intimacy, unpredictability, and real emotion flows out from her without overt histrionics or sentimentality. Very cool.

IngridMwangiRobertHutter, The Cage, 2009, single-channel video, 12:01 Minutes. Image courtesy the artists.

Constant Triumph
By IngridMwangiRobertHutter
Spelman College Museum of Fine Art
February 4—May 14, 2011

The husband-and-wife collective IngridMwangiRobertHutter exhibited the largest presentation of their work in the U.S. to date at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. The exhibition Constant Triumph consisted primarily of video, which functioned both as the medium and as documentation of their performances in South Africa, Kenya, Germany, and other parts of the world. The show pushed their personal boundaries, using “their body as canvases, and the blood as ink.” Their performances create intimate experiences between the audience and the artists, a dynamic echoed by the couple’s willingness to share their artwork with Spelman’s students during the two weeks they visited Atlanta. In keeping with the museum’s reputation, the show again pushed visitors to reconsider what’s possible inside a gallery space.

Click here to read BURNAWAY’s review.

Craig Dongoski, Durations: Spring, 2009, oil pencil on birch panel, 63 x 48 inches. Image courtesy Whitespace.

Attack/Decay/Sustain/Release
By Craig Dongoski
Whitespace Gallery
March 4—April 16, 2011

Attack/Decay/Sustain/Release presented Craig Dongoski’s audio-graphic drawings whose repetitive energy is both esoteric and hypnotic. Black and blue lines bubble, bleed, and loop out over large wood panels and, in one case, an air-brushed scene depicting downtown Atlanta. His marks compliment the physical striations of the natural wood surfaces and also reference sound waves much like the gyrations of a pen that measures earthquakes. The images are visualizations of audio recordings of pencils scratching on drawing surfaces, an interest in sound that the artist has pursued for years. And, once again looping the show’s concept back on in itself, Dongoski performed a live drawing accompanied by traditional musicians on trumpet, percussion, digital sampler, and sax. His collaborators read the drawing as a musical score from left to right. Since it started with empty space at the top left, all players were silent for the first several minutes.

Danielle Roney, On the Edge of Self (installation view), 2011. Image courtesy the artist.

On the Edge of Self
By Danielle Roney
Kiang Gallery
April 14—June 4, 2011

Danielle Roney’s solo exhibition at Kiang Gallery (recently renamed Kiang Projects) took viewers on a journey that plumbed the nebulous psychology of a world that’s becoming increasingly transnational. Roney’s two-channel video On the Edge of Self, which inspired the title of the show overall, dominated the gallery’s space. The work depicts two characters who remain disconnected as they move through separate spaces, seeking something indefinable without resolution. International travelers would immediately recognize the environments even without knowing their location (although local viewers may have noted that Roney shot some of her most striking imagery at MARTA’s Peachtree Center Station). These terminals and transit stations exude a globalism that erases their local specificity. The video’s dreamlike quality hints at the feeling of confused recollection often experienced when crossing borders of time and space. Meanwhile, Roney’s characters resist the dehumanizing effects of homogeneity by reminding us that, even as we travel strange distances, we are all the while constructing our personal narratives.

Images courtesy the High Museum of Art.

Exhibiting Radcliffe Bailey’s work alongside John Marin’s watercolors introduced a new dimension to the viewing of each show. We decided to list them both and present the shows as we experienced them, side by side.

Memory as Medicine
By Radcliffe Bailey
High Museum of Art
June 26—September 11, 2011

The fact that the High Museum hosted a major exhibition by an individual Atlanta-based artist was a milestone. Memory as Medicine demonstrated Radcliffe Bailey’s unique technical and storytelling virtuosity: his work is grounded in specific history but it’s also accompanied by a resonating, even heartbreaking, individual sense of the transcendent. His painting, sculpture, collage, and installation—shimmering with deep incandescent blues—employed a visual language informed by the history of slavery, segregation, migration, pain, and injustice. The collected work told a story that was at once profoundly simple and unexpectedly intricate and ineffable.

Click here to read BURNAWAY’s review.

Watercolors: A Medium for Modernism
By John Marin
High Museum of Art
June 26—September 11, 2011

Modest in size, Marin’s slightly cubist landscapes from the 1920s and ’30s are both heartwarming and stunning. Many visitors entered the show from the back, where it connected with the end of Bailey’s exhibit and emphasized the contrast between Marin’s loosely abstracted paintings and Bailey’s more photography-based work. For Marin, seeing is a “repetition of glimpses,” and each painting gathers from “the eye one looking” a single composition through washes, economy of line, and empty space on white watercolor paper. Although the practice has sadly gone out of fashion, this work stand as a reminder that artwork observed from life, and then translated through a refined stylized lens, is precious. And the frames, which often can be so tedious in museums, were brilliantly integrated as part of his work: sleek unobtrusive rectangles of iridescent silver and white.

Photo by John E. Ramspott.

Liquid Culture
By gloATL
Five locations throughout Atlanta
July 9-23, 2011

gloATL’s Liquid Culture comprised a sprawling series of five site-specific dance performances that took place over two weeks. Each episode created a “utopia station” in public locations across the city, ranging from the store fronts of Little Five Points, to Sol LeWitt’s sculptural installation 54 Columns, to the Lindbergh MARTA station. The piece was densely-packed with multiple dreamlike narratives, little vignettes, shifting groupings, intricate movements, and surreal images that all seemed to spill out from the locations themselves. The final evening, which convened at the busy intersection of 15th and Peachtree, had the feeling of a watershed event in Atlanta, particularly when two dancers ran through the intersection diagonally to embrace at its center, surrounded by traffic all around them. Optimistic, aspirational, risky, tender, and defiant of the regimented patterns of everyday movement, the action prompted the pondering of a million possible utopias.

Photo by Karley Sullivan.

PLOT
By Blake Beckham
Presented by Dance Truck and The Goat Farm
July 28-31, 2011

In choreographer Blake Beckham’s site-specific work, four dancers evoked the phases of nature’s cycles at the Goat Farm in West Midtown as the production roamed through and physically transformed several spots around the arts center. One particularly memorable scene was in the cellar-level Rodriguez Room where an elaborate tree-like root system held up a raised stage, lit by vintage light fixtures that were found at the Goat Farm, dusted off, and repurposed for the performance. PLOT was as remarkable for its bleak, gorgeous vision as it was for the way it was built: the fledgling organization Dance Truck, under the leadership of Malina Rodriguez, marshaled an army of volunteers and visual artists who worked together to build the large-scale piece from the ground up, thereby demonstrating the outrageous potential of smartly guided collaboration. PLOT was a landmark performance, a large-scale, communally constructed, immersive work whose immense possibilities were realized and grasped as the creation unfolded over several months.

Micah Stansell, installation view, 2011. Photo courtesy MOCA GA.

The Water and the Blood
By Micah Stansell
Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia
August 27—December 3, 2011

Micah Stansell’s installation at MOCA GA, The Water and the Blood, orchestrated a tightly structured analogue of memory through eight large-scale video projections and three available soundtracks. The artist  represented fragments of his memory with just enough of a gap in the narrative to allow viewers to fill in the blanks. The choose-your-own narrative follows a selection of Southern characters and tropes that elicited a sweet nostalgia without being overly stereotypical or too sentimental. The Water and the Blood provided a fully immersive environment—physically, psychically, and emotionally—that was constantly new through multiple viewings.

Photo by Thom Baker.

Nosferatu
Film score composed by Felipe Barral
Presented by Possible Futures at The Goat Farm
October 27 & 28, 2011

The Goat Farm’s Goodson Yard was the perfect setting for screening the moody silent cinema classic Nosferatu, the unauthorized German bastardization of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This intelligent Halloween alternative to Atlanta’s Netherworld was accompanied by a live, original score composed by Felipe Barral, presented by Possible Futures. The Chilean artist (whose interests include music, painting, photography, and writing, on top of his work as a producer at CNN) first conceived his rock-Romanticist fantasy for Murnau’s film in Santiago in the late 1990s. Although he developed earlier versions, the score presented by Possible Futures last year was the fullest realization yet. Built around a framework of poetically-freighted guitar and bracketed by bass (Eddie Cortes) and drums (Daniel Renjifo), these live performances added the vocals of Delonda Harvey, whose haunting improvisations respond to images onscreen. We hope the event has a sequel in 2012, perhaps involving contemporary artists interpreting other classics such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Golem.

As a way of saying Happy New Year, we’ve included two tracks from Barral’s Nosferatu score below.

Click the player above to listen, or click here to download the MP3.

Click the player above to listen, or click here to download the MP3.

Thanks for reading! For the time you spend sharing with us, we are immeasurably grateful. As always, we are:

Yours truly,

BURNAWAY

Disclosure: Possible Futures awarded significant grants to this publication in 2010 and 2011. The grants, however, were given unconditionally with the understanding that “meaningful arts criticism is vital in that it challenges artists to do their best work.”

All photos by John E. Ramspott.

Elevate: Art Above Underground ended its 66-day public art festival with the Elevate Carnival that mobilized 101 performers and an enthusiastic crowd despite the chilly winds last Saturday. Two Kids and a Dream danced at the VIP party and throughout the event, alongside men on stilts, trapeze artists, aerial acrobats, fire-swallowers, hoola-hoopers, and burlesque dancers.

Gigantic murals several stories high, a vinyl painting that covered the entire height of an outdoor staircase, and acrobats that swung down from the Peach Drop tower—these were no small achievements. The event was also a big tent party, including artists of many stripes.

Overall, Elevate went big. So many artists of all ages and colors gained a chance to show Atlanta what they could do, and people who normally are not exposed to art had a chance to see quite a variety. I would, of course, have liked to see bigger crowds for the performances and more coverage from the mainstream news media. But the bottom line is that the event enabled artists who make ends-meet by doing nonartistic jobs to spend time making art, supporting each other, and sharing their work with the people of Atlanta for free.

Photo courtesy the artist.

Sometime around 8PM on Friday, August 26, 2011, after two hours of drifting amongst the various works installed on the street above the mall at Underground Atlanta, I finally found a map for the events and artworks sponsored by Elevate / Art Above Underground. Of course, I had seen most of them in my aimless wandering, but had not yet ventured out to the corner of Peachtree and Decatur streets for what would be the highlight of my night, Nathan Sharratt’s interactive performance and installation, Be My Blood Brother.

(Note: the Elevate map is slightly off. Be My Blood Brother is located at 6 Decatur Street, not the corner of Edgewood Avenue and Peachtree Street.)

Photo courtesy the artist.

This was Sharratt’s third run at Blood Brother. He first performed it for a sculpture class at the Savannah College of Art and Design-Atlanta, then publicly in March of 2011 at The Granite Room in Castleberry Hill. Although I briefly saw the performance in Castleberry, the Elevate opening was my first real interaction with this work.

I walked into the small storefront to find it transformed into what may be best described as a slightly futuristic mashup of a doctor’s office, the DMV, and a shaman’s lair. In the center, Sharratt, looking more like a serial killer than a doctor, was seated on a small white stool, facing a small white table, wearing all-white coveralls with fake blood stained across his chest. Opposite the artist sat an identical stool, empty and inviting. Various syringes, jars, and beakers stood on the table flanking the main props for the interaction: a small crimson puddle of fake blood, a butter spreader, a rubber stamp, and a stack of card-sized certificates. As newcomers entered the sparsely decorated red, gray, and white room, Sharratt’s assistants guided viewers to their assigned tasks.

Photo courtesy the artist.

Photo courtesy the artist.

First, I sat down with the artist, who welcomed me with a deadpan question, “Would you like to be my blood brother?” Upon accepting, he asked me for my name and wrote it on a certificate that he also stamped with a serial number. After this, he did not speak. Sharratt mixed the “blood” on the table with the completely blunt butter spreader, pretended to cut the flesh of his hand, and left the red residue in his palm. Then, with an obvious gesture of sharing, he offered me the knife. As silly as this felt, I played along, repeating his actions with my own body. We then justified our actions by clasping our “bloody” hands. This is where it became real … .

Sharratt took a firm grasp of my hand and began to peer deeply and purposefully into my eyes. Maybe it was a minute or two, but it felt much longer. I felt helpless. I did not attempt to release my grip, but was fully and overwhelmingly embarrassed. Something metaphysical changed. Through the artist’s gaze, I had been subjectified.

With “artist’s gaze,” I mean to arouse Jacques Lacan’s idea of the almost benevolent gaze that art allows, as found at the end of his essay “Of the Gaze as Objet Petit a” (from Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis). Generally for Lacan, the gaze is a property of inter-subjectivity where, when one perceives that he or she is being viewed by another, one is objectified by the other. This can be extended to include interactions where observing an object reminds one that he or she is also an object. The gaze is first encountered in early childhood during Lacan’s mirror stage, and remains as a reminder of our inherent lack, the source of desire.

According to Lacan, the best art requires that an artist put his or her desires into the work, giving the viewer a rest from the gaze by revealing that the artist is vulnerable as well. Art that is created this way presents an image that shows itself as such. In understanding that the image is a veil to be looked beyond, we are relieved, feeling that we have seen something more real. We, in turn, also feel more real. In Be My Blood Brother, this scenario plays out perfectly.

Photo courtesy the artist.

Photo courtesy the artist.

In an interview on Google+, Sharratt shared with me the way that his family thought of his adopted father as his biological father—so much that his mother sometimes forgets, worrying that Sharratt will develop similar genetic traits. Be My Blood Brother translates this meaningful bond between father and son via the sharing of fake blood. Similar to how the Christian Eucharist is a way of joining a church family, Sharratt sees his “bonding with a new Brother” as a way of constructing a bond that is as real as possible. The artist describes it as “try[ing] to be a mirror through which [the participant] can see themselves.” Taking it a step further, Sharratt provides a digital forum for initiated Blood Brothers to share their stories. Here, he gives a stage for what was once a group of strangers, a collection of others, to surrender their gazes and acknowledge each other’s subjectivity.

Maybe I have romanticized Be My Blood Brother by espousing qualities usually associated with relational aesthetics and interactive art. But what I do know for sure is that, for at least the rest of the night after I became a Blood Brother, I felt very real.

Couple taking in the Sunday Sunday Art Revival mural. Photo by John E. Ramspott.

If you think art is just something that hangs in museums and galleries, it is time for you to change your thinking. People in the Atlanta Metro area definitely need to check out the public art on display at Elevate /Art Above Underground. Public art is not new to Atlanta. The Beltline project has featured public art, and you can find murals and tags all over the city of varying quality; however, Elevate has brought together talented artists of multiple mediums from around the city and around the world. Elevate has plenty of murals on walls, but also has sculptures, poetry, video, a vinyl waterfall going down concrete steps, vinyl murals in windows, a wall of televisions, painted window displays, and photography.

Lelavision. Photo by John E. Ramspott.

Elevate is the brainchild of Eddie Granderson, the Public Art Program Manager for the City of Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs, part of the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs. Granderson is excited to “bridge the gap” between Atlanta’s young artists and the people of downtown Atlanta. He also wants the art to draw people down to the Underground. One of the people supporting Granderson is Robert Witherspoon, Project Supervisor for the City of Atlanta Public Art Program. Witherspoon is himself an artist, and he has been helping the project in many different ways.

Courtney Hammond of Dashboard Co-Op and Danny Davis of Dance Truck. Photo by John E. Ramspott.

If you have been following BURNAWAY on Twitter, Tumblr, or Flickr, you have seen extensive photographic coverage of the construction of Elevate, along with the VIP party and grand opening. While providing this coverage, I ran into Witherspoon a lot, whether he was hauling equipment or working on displays. There are two other people that have been critical to getting Elevate off the ground—Courtney Hammond of Dashboard Co-Op and Danny Davis of Dance Truck. I saw both of them no matter what time of day I went down to photograph Elevate’s progress. Hammond coordinated all of the action and did the legwork of getting agreements signed with building owners and coordinating the activities of the artists. Davis was the muscle and man on the ground, in the air, or wherever he needed to be to get the artwork up.

Deanna Sirlin stands above her vinyl waterfall. Photo by John E. Ramspott.

All of this hard work would have been to no avail if not for the outstanding work of the artists. Deanna Sirlin’s waterfall of vinyl going down the steps leading to the Underground is an engaging work of art, not to mention one that holds up to people walking on it. The SAM 3 mural on Alabama Street reaches dizzying heights, while below, the Sunday Southern Art Revival window/wall mural grabs the attention of passersby. Sarah Emerson painted murals that were then printed on a brand new transparent medium that her team taped into the windows on Alabama Street and Central Avenue. It looks nice during the day, but really stands out at night.

Allison Rentz live performance at the grand opening. Photo by John E. Ramspott.

The grand opening on August 26th drew a smaller crowd than the organizers hoped for, but one that was appreciative of the art and the live performances from Allison Rentz, Lelavision, Noot d’ Noot, Doodledrag, Nathan Sharratt, and others. Rentz put on a performance with people dressed in white outfits that were checking audience members for radioactivity. Lelavision put on an acrobatic performance and Noot d’ Noot played lively music to cap off the event. Sharratt was extending his “family” by performing a ritual with people to make them “blood brothers” or “blood sisters.” Lillian Blades had a sculpture on Alabama Street that attendees could add to. Children and adults took the process of adding to the sculpture quite seriously.

Young woman contributes to Lillian Blades's sculpture. Photo by John E. Ramspott.

The Atlanta arts community has been supportive of Elevate. At the grand opening, I ran into members of Dance Truck, gloATL, Flux Projects, SCAD professors, BURNAWAY, gallery owners, and others. Living Walls also participated in Elevate, while still doing their own murals around the city and at the Goat Farm. It’s clear that Elevate is tapping into Atlanta artists’ desire to collaborate and create great art locally.

If you are upset you missed the opening, the art will be on display until October 30, 2011. More live performances by artists have been scheduled over the sixty-six-day run, and you can find a flipbook schedule here.

Sarah Emerson's mural at night. Photo by John E. Ramspott.

My advice is to schedule a time where you can see the work by day, grab a bite to eat, and then walk around again at night. Sirlin’s waterfall looks good by day, but looks otherworldly under the lights at night. Emerson’s window art also looks best by night, as does Chris Chambers’ wall of televisions on Peachtree Street.

On the Elevate blog, Camille Russell Love, Director of the Office of Cultural Affairs, said “Public Art installations throughout Atlanta will birth an appreciation for art in and around Atlanta. The addition of Elevate / Art Above Underground to the public art offerings will allow residents and visitors to explore art within a context of a culturally rich city which will contribute to the image of Atlanta as a thriving cultural hub.” The variety and scale of the art present at Elevate is impressive. Residents can appreciate the art as they go about their lives, and visitors coming in for Falcons games, Braves games, or Dragon*Con will see Atlanta as a vibrant art community. In conversations with members of Sunday Southern Art Revival and some of the other featured artists, everyone enjoyed the chance to make art with other artists in a variety of different mediums. One of the Sunday Southern Art Revival members even quit his day job to work on this project. While the City of Atlanta provided grants to defray the costs of producing the art, the artists themselves were working for free for the opportunity to do what they love in a vibrant location. Elevate appears to be a success for both the artists and the community of Atlanta.

Elevate / Art Above Underground will host a number of public art exhibitions and performances in Downtown, Atlanta through October 30, 2011. For more information on programming, check out their events guide.

For more images from the opening visit BURNAWAY on flickr.

Recent dialogue surrounding cuts to Atlanta's arts funding shows a lack of engagement with the outside world. Photo by Caitie Elle.

Following on the heels of a proposed cut to the arts and subsequent responses from Atlanta artists, Mayor Kasim Reed appeared at last month’s Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund luncheon with a seemingly grand and heroic announcement. Gathered that afternoon with the knowledge that 50 percent of the Office of Cultural Affairs’ Contracts for Arts Services budget would be eliminated, the audience listened with anticipation to Reed’s address. “I’ve always said that art changes you, enriches you, and for a moment I forgot that and worried about the budget instead,” he disclosed, in a revelatory fashion. “I’ve been thinking about it and then I realized, I was the Mayor. We’re going to restore every single penny,” he explained. In a single motion the funding was slated for restoration to its 2011 level—$470,000—and as Camille Love described the situation to BURNAWAY last month, the room was “like pandemonium” as Reed faced a standing ovation.

Praises sprang up all over the internet that afternoon, building to an explosion of enthusiasm on Facebook, Twitter, and the websites of groups like the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Elevate/Art Above Underground, WonderRoot and other groups that attended last month’s protest in front of Atlanta City Hall, individual artists, and media websites such as BURNAWAY and ArtsCriticATL. “10 minutes ago – Mayor Kasim Reed announces City of Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs Arts funding is restored” one group’s status read, and “Thank you Mayor!” said another. The AJC, 11Alive, and other mainstream news sources followed shortly after with more detail. In a particularly telling excerpt, Catherine Fox of ArtsCriticATL wrote of an interview after the luncheon wherein “Reed said he made the decision on Wednesday while jogging. He said the May 12 City Hall demonstration on the issue had no bearing on his decision. ‘I get protests all the time,’ the Mayor said.”

Fascinatingly, from the initial cut proposal to the aftermath of Reed’s announcement, critical analysis from the aforementioned Atlanta arts groups seemed decidedly minimal. Chris Appleton of WonderRoot did write an op-ed in Creative Loafing that made a case for investing in the arts, wherein he highlighted the disproportionate amount of Atlanta’s grants funding to other Southern cities. And of course Atlanta art supporters gathered outside of City Hall with signs like “Have a Heart Save the Arts” and “Art for ATL.” But when it came to incisive criticism of the cut and the discourse, framework, and dynamics surrounding it, there almost seemed to be a tacit agreement between Atlanta’s art leaders not to break the surface. “Don’t make waves,” the understanding seemed to say. “Don’t expose or address any real truths. Don’t antagonize because we won’t get what we want.”

Common slogans at last month's arts protest at Atlanta City Hall included "Have a Heart Save the Arts." Photo by Caitie Elle.

In fact, in keeping with the tacit agreement, the most radical response actually came from a reader’s comment on ArtsCriticATL. Longtime Atlanta arts advocate Evan Levy sent in a scanned AJC newspaper clip detailing a demonstration against a proposal to cut the city’s arts budget in 1994. “This has been going on for 20 years,” Levy wrote. “It seems like the assumption from city politicos is that the arts community are fools (and we prove it over and over again). … Those who are not aware of history are doomed to repeat it.”

Levy’s criticism being the sole exception, the arts leaders’ tactic of keeping it bland in order to maintain the city’s (lowly) allotment to the arts precludes the ability to make piercing inquiries into the nature of these incidences. Why exactly, it is imperative to ask, is there a $17 million shortfall in the 2012 budget? If the arts funding was to be cut by 50 percent, what other areas remain untouched? How is this decision situated within a constellation of happenings or within a historical timeline?

Just to begin scratching the surface here, two months before the city’s proposal to cut the arts, Georgia’s legislature passed extreme cuts to the HOPE scholarship. And just two days before the rally, the Georgia Board of Regents approved a 16-percent tuition increase (yes, another tuition hike) for certain students in higher education. In addition, along with cuts to the Contracts for Arts Services program, Atlanta’s Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs department was scheduled for a 14-percent decrease in funding, and as of June 1, 2011, a MARTA committee suggests that the cost of public transportation be increased even as routes are cut and services decrease. (Click here for the full PDF describing service changes.)

In all of this what should be apparent is a pattern of economic decision-making that is not random but rather far-reaching and interconnected. These examples don’t even begin to list identical trends nationally or transnationally; austerity measures are being imposed on people from Wisconsin to California to Greece, and there is an all-too-common thread. The arts are not alone, nor are they separate—they’re a part of the many areas of enrichment, enjoyment, necessity, and public services that are purposefully shrunken in this economic terrain. But just as these incidents are ceasing to be seen as isolated events, the time is also nigh to refuse the only other mainstream overarching explanation—that unfortunately governments are forced to make “tough decisions” due to the economic crisis, because the money purely and simply just is not there.

Whether it’s dubbed “the shock doctrine” or classic neoliberal policy, the observation remains the same. As author and activist Naomi Klein has said, “crises are often used as the pretext for pushing through policies that you cannot push through under times of stability.” While the Mayor of Atlanta and the rest of Georgia’s administrators maintain the no-money narrative for art and education, funds for projects of their choosing seem magical in their capacity to never end.

Atlanta's Clean Team installed flower boxes on the wall surrounding Woodruff Park in February. Photo by Caitie Elle.

For examples of superfluous and fundamentally unacceptable ways that Atlanta spends money, please scope the following:

1) In the midst of our “budget crisis,” on May 16, 2011, Creative Loafing posted a story with the title “APD arrests 79 in sexy Midtown bust”—a thoughtless news blog entry quipping about the Atlanta Police Department’s recent six-day bust on prostitution and drug sales. Doling out charges that range from misdemeanor to felony, “Operation Summer Heat” exemplifies the incredible amount of money and resources that go into incarcerating people for nonviolent “crime” in Georgia. At around $46 per day per inmate, if all 79 arrested were given yearlong sentences, it would cost $1,326,410. The money it would take to keep the 69 people charged with prostitution-related crime in jail for a year would be enough to double the Office of Cultural Affairs’ funding for arts grants.

2) In February of this year, Woodruff Park underwent an ostensibly harmless change—members of Atlanta Ambassador Force’s Clean Team could be seen installing flower boxes on the park’s walls. While nothing could seem more innocuous and kind-spirited than a bunch of flowers, Woodruff Park is known for the amount of people experiencing homelessness that pass the time there in the daytime hours. Whether from private donation or direct city funding, projects like this fall into the category of “beautifying” efforts like the infamous erasure of Atlanta’s homeless for the 1996 Olympics. The flowerbeds make it nearly impossible to sit on the wall. Park patrons (who asked to remain anonymous) say that if they’re seen sitting between the boxes side-by-side with another person, the Ambassador Force will approach them with demands that only one person sit per space. The final effect of these functional flower boxes and the rules that accompany them makes for an extremely frightening view. The wall is topped with lush flower box then body, to repeat in a pattern around the circumference of the park. People cram themselves into small spaces or onto tiny ledges just to sit by one another. “They’re trying to make it inconvenient for the people who have nothing,” one patron said. “We used to rest and take naps here in the park. Now it’s for dogs to piss and shit.” In this case, Atlanta flaunts its priorities: while we have no money to fund the arts, can we still cover labor costs and material for “beautifying” the city and displacing poor people of color? Why, yes, we can manage that.

The flower boxes break up space between park visitors in an intentional effort to discourage the park's poorest patrons from staying for too long. Photo by Liz Kinnamon.

3) Mayor Reed and other city officials are calling for curfew enforcement. Parents whose children are caught past curfew on multiple occasions will be fined $1,000 and subject to 60 days of jail or community service. Don’t worry: according to the proposal, police patrols around pools and other “potential problem areas” will be increased, so rest assured that spending this public money is imperative and for good cause.

4) The Atlanta Graffiti Task Force: a joint effort by city departments, police, and the CSX railroad company to rid Atlanta of unwanted graffiti. The actual labor of removal will be handed off to city employees and inmates, and costs (including “graffiti removal kits”) as of the beginning of this year totaled $30,000. Enough said.

Undoubtedly, as time stretches on it becomes apparent that the line “because we are in a financial crisis” is hollow and will not suffice. The trend is toward protecting business, toward maintaining the prison industrial complex, and toward increased policing, and ultimately it becomes clear that a $470,000 art grant program must be cut so that Georgia can spend $3 million dollars a day on its Department of Corrections.

When it comes down to it, in regard to the art community’s celebration of the resources that let art thrive, I will unquestioningly take part. But when it comes to appreciation for Mayor Reed gracing Atlanta with his benevolent personal decision—with indifference to the rally and all the other protests for change in Atlanta—this is something I can’t give thanks for. Displaying a servile gratitude at the reversal is something I can’t participate in.

But in a way, the real gift in this sequence is one Reed didn’t even know he gave. His triumphant rescue of the arts funding was backed with the promise that the money could be found elsewhere to make up the difference, which is absolutely true. This points to an inconsistency in the no-money narrative. It becomes transparent that the issue here is what these officials prioritize, what choices they make on their morning jog.

The combination of this promise with comments like “I’m the mayor, so I get to change my mind” and “I did a bad thing” is almost prankish. The episode laid bare the malleability of the budget, but most importantly, it laid bare the farce of institutional decision-making. It was a reminder that all things are socially constructed, as his stunning admissions had the effect of self-perforation. The question “Do we really yield control and expertise to these officials?” subtly asked itself.

The comical absurdity of Mayor Reed’s statement was the gift. In the end, in at least one sense, the best thing he did was a complete and total accident, and to me, it’s the thing worth thanking him for.

If you are interested in becoming active in these issues, BURNAWAY encourages you to voice your concerns about local arts funding, or lack thereof, by contacting your state representative.