I am pleased to announce that the Social Practice Art: A History box sets created by my fall 2011 History of Art and Social Practice students are now available at Nationale and Reading Frenzy in Portland, OR. Some great zines on socially engaged art!

I am pleased to announce the release of the Manitoba Folkways Collection!

All three volumes are available for digital download are available here: http://www.canadianfolkways.com

Limited edition vinyl of Volume 1 are available while quantities last. Contact me for details if you are interested.

Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music and spent much of the early part of the 20th century driving across America in a car that he modified to house his recording equipment so that he could record the folk music of the American people. He contributed a large amount of recording to what would come to be the Smithsonian Folkways Collection. Smithsonian Folkways states that their mission “is to document people’s music.”

Manitoba Folkways is an endeavor similar in nature to Lomax’s and the mission of the Folkways Collection. Artists Jen Delos Reyes and Kerri-Lynn Reeves drove across Manitoba in search of examples of contemporary vernacular music about the lives of Manitobans. Manitoba Folkways is an audio portrait of the province today.

“Short Verses in Small Spaces,” were micro-readings set in small spaces in the Portland Art Museum perfect for a short reading with a intimate audience. These readings and the locations selected reflect what poet Lisa Ciccarello describes as the New Intimacy poetry movement.

Poets Sarah Bartlett, Lisa Ciccarello, Matthew Dickman, Donald Dunbar, James Gendron, Emily Kendal Frey, and Rodney Koeneke each gave poetry readings in the sometimes overlooked spaces of the Portland Art Museum, such as storage closets, in-between spaces, and more.

What is the effect when artworks are perfectly visually combined in a space? When it is the right combination, does it look like a perfect harmony sounds? In Polyphony Jen Delos Reyes selects a set of short vocal harmonies inspired by The Beach Boys to pair with four of the sculptures in the Portland Art Museum’s contemporary and modern collection. Each sculpture is literally given its own voice that it contributes to a four-part harmony. The effect when standing in the sculpture court is like being surrounded by a group of harmonizing singers.

While the visitors to the museum may not get to fill the walls of the galleries with their own selections, WPAM Portland Art Museum Radio allowed them to fill the airwaves. Visitors to the museum could request a song from a WPAM DJ that they dedicated to people or pieces of the Portland Art Museum.

This October CS13 will close out our two-and-a-half year run as a multi-disciplinary art space with one last act of social dreaming. This final gallery project is a group exhibition themed around the small river town of Utopia, located 45 miles out of Cincinnati along U.S. Route 52. The town is marked by a green road sign, a convenience store with a single gas pump, a handful of half-mile long streets that run down to the riverbank, and a Ohio Historical Marker that reads:

“Utopia, Ohio was founded in 1844 by followers of French philosopher Charles Fourier. Fourierism, based on utopian socialism and the idea of equal sharing of investments in money and labor, reached peak popularity in the United States about 1824 until 1846. The experimental community of Utopia dissolved in 1846 due to lack of financial success and disenchantment with Fourierism. John O. Wattles, leader of a society of spiritualists, purchased the land and brought his followers to Utopia in 1847. The spiritualists, who sought secluded areas to practice their religion, built a two-story brick house on the shore of the Ohio River. A flash flood on December 13, 1847, killed most of Wattles’ people. The majority of the few survivors left the area. Thus, the idea of the perfect society, or utopia, died. Henry Jernegan of Amelia, laid out the present village in 1847.”

Utopia, perhaps the most confidently named, was only one of approximately 270 utopian communities that existed in the United States between 1787 and 1919. Due to Ohio’s unique location on the nation’s frontier, the state found itself the site of much of this activity, in both religious settlements established by Shakers and Amish as well as secular attempts based on the writings of Charles Fourier and Welsh social reformer Robert Owen.

These secular communities, Utopia included, while short lived, are memorable for the challenges they presented to existing social and economic order, presenting alternative notions about religion, marriage, family, sexuality, property ownership, and wage labor. Revisiting and interacting with these historical moments provides a window into an era of American history where frontiers were both physical and ideological, and where quixotic or even bizarre ideas of how people can best coexist were of primary interest to these diverse populations and their thinkers. Such communities were, so to speak, efforts in which political science, economics, and sociology were wedded with the literary imagination.

Our final gallery project, Utopia, OH will present different reflections on American utopian history: These works range from those that look to the specific history and spirit of the town of Utopia, those that address the narratives and philosophies that led to the short 19th century flourish of likeminded projects, those that look at the the the diminished presence of a “utopian” spirit in contemporary American political and social thinking, and finally those that look to the future with a Fourierist sense of curiosity, whim, and possibility.

In this way, this project is both a love letter and a fond farewell, stuffed full of history and myth, nostalgia, and wishful thinking for the future, as only goodbyes can be.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS INCLUDE:

-Randall Szott in conversation with Shannon Stratton, Nancy Zastudil and Duncan MacKenzie

-The Order of the Third Bird (Sal Randolph and D. Graham Burnett)

-Cheon Lee and Arthur Brum

-Jen Delos Reyes

-Mark Harris

-Wyatt Niehaus

-Kelly Frigard

Music Education by Radio Broadcast is not a new concept.  In the spirit of the former CBS School of the Air or the the University of Wisconsin’s “Wisconsin College of the Air,” among many more have inspired, School of the Air Band Class. School of the Air Band Class is a weekly broadcast focused on exploring music, social implications, collaboration, and group dynamics. Each broadcast is approximately 30 minutes in length

These four weekly broadcasts will look at group singing and social music. We will listen to songs of Work and Play, Union and Protest, Choirs and A Capella and in the last week focusing on Bands and Groups.

Through recordings, readings, and activities listeners can engage in an exploration of social music.  Weekly assignments will be given on the air that will encourage you to gather together a group to engage in these musical forms.

These readings and most albums featured on these broadcasts are available in their entireties at Ditch Projects in Springfield, Oregon from September 3- October 1st, 2011.

The broadcasts are available for download here:

Week 1: Work and Play
Week 2: Union and Protest
Week 3: Choirs and A Cappella
Week 4: Bands and Groups

To obtain copies of the weekly reading packets that accompany these broadcasts please contact me for pricing.

Special thanks to Stefan Ransom, sound engineer and editor of the School of the Air Band Class recordings

September 3, 2011- October 1, 2011 at DITCH
Hours: 12 noon – 5 PM Saturday
Opening Reception: September 3, 2011 – 7PM

DITCH PROJECTS invites you to celebrate 3 new projects and 3 distinct strategies by 3 socially
engaged artists.

Jon Cohrs: Drug Machines
Jen Delos Reyes: Band Class + School of the Air
Sara Rabinowitz: Refuge(e)

Jon Cohrs is a recording engineer and visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Often employing
humor and absurdity, his work uses public engagement and site-specific interventions to address
global issues. Recently, he created OMG I’m on .TV; an analog Pirate TV station that filled the
void left behind by the digital transition. OMG TV was used as a reference in a Supreme Court
amicus brief on creativity and copyright. Currently, he is a fellow at Eyebeam Art + Technology
Center working on creating boutique salt containing antidepressants from local water called
Alviso’s Medicinal All-Salt, a book on urban wilderness, and researching sonic weapons in
collaboration with Audint. Jon teaches at Parsons, The New School for Design.

Jon’s project for Ditch, Drug Machines, is a research project intended to repurpose popular drugs
for more than just personal consumption.

Jen Delos Reyes is an artist originally from Winnipeg, MB, Canada. Her research interests
include the history of socially engaged art, group work, band dynamics, music, and artists’
social roles. She has received numerous grants and awards including a Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant. Jen is the founder and director of Open
Engagement, a conference on socially engaged art practice. Jen speaks widely on Art and Social
Practice at conferences and institutions around the world. She is currently an Assistant Professor

at Portland State University where she co-directs the Art and Social Practice MFA program.

Jen’s project for Ditch, School of the Air:Band Class, is a four-week class focused on group music. School of the Air Band Class is a weekly broadcast focused on exploring music, social implications, collaboration, and group dynamics. Each broadcast is approximately 30 minutes in length. These weekly broadcasts will look at group singing and social music and will cover songs of Work and Play, Union and Protest, Choirs and Accapella and in the last week focusing on bands and groups. Through recordings, readings, and activities listeners can engage in a full exploration of social music.  Weekly assignments will be given on the air that will encourage you to gather together a group to engage in these musical forms.

Sara Rabinowitz is a cultural worker whose practice is shaped by collaboration. Her work encourages new relations to emerge through interactive furniture, installations, events, and performances. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design and her Master of Fine Arts in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This past summer Sara participated in an art and life workshop with ARTWAY OF THINKING from Venice, Italy. In addition to the show at Ditch Projects Sara will be working on a large-scale installation with Wolfgang Laib and researching on the Great Basin through the LA PLAYA residency program this fall.

For Ditch Projects Sara will be working on three projects mining the visual and cultural “everyday” of Eugene, Oregon. She will negotiate the rights to a new HOBO type family. In her BY THE YARD line Sara mediates found textiles into new psychedelic prints. She will also show her efforts exploring historic portable architecture in search for a new model studio.

Discotopia: Searching For Paradise on the Dance Floor

“The dance floor is somewhere you should ask, “Could heaven ever be like this?” It should be a place of bliss, just happiness and joy.”

-Michael Gomes, MixMaster, Summer 1978

The days of disco seemed a utopic time of dance and collective euphoria. It seemed a time where everyone in the world just wanted to dance. By 1976 disco dominated the popular charts with sales accounting for almost half of the entire music industry. There were thousands of discotheques across America and they were growing in numbers with each passing year. People were dancing socially en masse. Dances like the Hustle, the L.A Hustle, and the Walk had people dancing together in small and large groups.

Like many from my generation, born after disco peaked, my first exposure was the glossy mainstream disco crossover hits. As I became increasingly intrigued by disco music and listened to more, more, more, I was finding that I was most interested in music that was emerging from the New York dance scene before 1983. It quickly became clear that the epicenter of the music I was most drawn to was spinning on the turntables at the Paradise Garage. Could it be true by the namesake of this club that the time I was beginning to long for was truly paradise? The Paradise Garage was one of NYC’s largest dancefloors with a capacity of over 2000. The Garage was in operation from 1976-1986 and it became legendary for it’s DJ Larry Levan as much as it did for the large community of dancers that surrounded him.

Disco is social. It was born of the idea of community. The roots of disco were in New York’s gay underground scene. Post-Stonewall New York’s gay community was experiencing a new found freedom and openness. For the first time two men could freely dance with one another in public. This sense of freedom and love permeated the music that helped build their scene. In the words of Mel Cheren, a well known disco record producer of the time and a regular at the Paradise Garage, “It may seem odd to describe disco in these terms, but we were a tribe, and we were doing what tribes have been doing for thousands of years. We were building a community through communal dance and celebration.”

While the dancing may have started in gay and urban communities in New York City, disco had most of the world dancing to its infectious beat by the mid-seventies. To this day no music has bettered disco for its ability to entice the broadest cross-section of people—both young and old, whether nimble or uncoordinated—onto a dancefloor^[1]. For a musical movement as big as disco it had relatively few bonafide stars. Mel Cheren believes it was because it was not about celebrity, but about the dancers. They were the stars.

It appeared that disco was about unity. However even within the community that it emerged from as much as there was a feeling of togetherness there was exclusivity, and to a certain degree segregation. The first disco clubs were private clubs like David Mancuso’s Loft, and were either by invitation or admittance by membership. Even bigger clubs like Studio 54 were notoriously exclusive with its door closely guarded by owner  Steve Rubell who spent most nights curating the crowd. As it turns out Paradise was members only. Not only were these clubs closed to many people to begin with, many of them were men only clubs, and then on top of that certain clubs were seen as either “white” clubs or black and Hispanic clubs. Paradise fell into the latter category, though owner Michael Brody was constantly working to counter that. These clubs, no matter who they served, mostly did not serve alcohol so that they would not be governed by the rules of the liquor commission so they could stay open as late as they wanted so the party could go on and on. What this meant was excessive, if not mandatory, drug use as many recount tales of acid spiked punch.

The diversity of disco was not as readily accepted as the music. As a Newsweek article from 1979 read, “ The after-hours music first heard only by small urban groups of blacks, Hispanics, gays and insomniacs had invaded the hearts, minds and feet of all ages and classes.” Invasion is a word that likely accurately described how many at the time felt about gay culture’s inclusion in the mainstream and music industry. The time of disco was not at all the one nation under one beat that I imagined. There was rampant homophobia and racism that plagued disco which would be what eventually put an end to the movement. Chicago based DJ Steve Dahl was the man behind the “Disco Sucks” campaign. Dahl would make homophobic remarks on the air connected to disco and went so far as to hold a public anti-disco rally/burning of disco records at Wrigley Field. Burn baby burn disco inferno indeed. That public burning signaled the end of disco. But disco did not die, it went back underground or was referred to more generally as “dance music.”

As Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton put it, “Disco was the revolution. Disco was freedom, togetherness, love. Disco was dirty, spiritual, thrilling, powerful. Disco was secret, underground, dangerous. It was non-blond, queer, hungry. It was emancipation.” While disco may have been all of those things for some people, it was not a utopia.  I had longed for the time of disco because it seemed a time in history where people were all moving together in step to the same beat. But things were not as they seemed in my imagination. The disco-topia that I envisioned was more like a distopia of segregation, hate, anxiety, drugs, and in the end greed. While I find it troubling that this moment in history is not exactly what I had anticipated, it leaves me with hope that there could still be a chance for that kind of utopia in my lifetime. Maybe there will be a time when the world truly does all dance together in joy, exuberance, and freedom. Hopefully, the soundtrack will be just as good.

Sources

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey, Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton.  1999, Headline Book Publishing, New York.

The Disco Files 1973-1978 New York’s Underground Week by Week, Vince Aletti. Published by DJhistory.com, 1998

My Life and the Paradise Garage: Keep On Dancin’, Mel Cheren. 24 Hours For Life Inc. New York. 2000.

“More, More, More,” Andrea True Connection, 1976.

“Disco Inferno,” The Trammps, 1976.

Image by Paul Mckee