For this week’s class, we had the opportunity to listen to Xtine Burrough’s presentation about her work and collaborations on her work ‘Art As Social Practice: Technologies for Change’. In many of the social psychology classes that I’ve taken, there have been many discussions about the ways in which our social practices are formed. It wasn’t up until this class that I had the opportunity to explore this subject from the art perspective and what that would mean for our society. I found Xtine’s work to be very informative and thoughtful and think that it was wonderful to hear from her collaborators and learn that there are so many distinct ways in which art can influence and create social practice. As I did more research outside of class, I found that social practice art is now being practiced outside of the United States as well. In fact, there was an artist highlighted on medium.com, that expressed her view on the importance of this type of art. In her opinion, “Social practice art — often defined as collaborative, community-driven work that engages with social issues — has emerged as a powerful approach for artists confronting current political and social challenges, especially in the UK.” (medium.com) It was very interesting to learn more about the ways in which social practices are formed and how art can be combined in order to touch on important social issues. With further research, I found that according to artnews.com, this style of art is gaining in popularity as it is bringing more people together in order to stand up for various social justice situations. According to isreview.org, this type of political art seemed to gain traction, especially during the COVID era of being quarantined and also going through the social injustices of that time. I think this is a very interesting type of art and one that is of great importance, as it brings light to various social practices and injustices.
During the workshop, it was so intimidating when Xtine Burrough mentioned that each of us would create our own poem. I have never heard of one breath poems before and really enjoyed hearing some of the examples she discussed during this lecture outside. According to alchemyofbreath.com, and upon further research, I realized that one breath poems were another word for Haikus. Throughout my education I have taken a few poetry classes and found it so interesting that we had the opportunity to do one ourselves. The fun part of this experience was the way we could weave in our emotions to social problems or topics that we were interested in. According to equityhealthj.biomedcentral.com, COVID was definitely a strong proponent to a lot of social justice work happening, and increased awareness for the flaws in our society. I think when thinking of creating these haiku’s reflecting on the social injustices that happened during quarantine brought out a lot of emotions. It felt real and raw and overall, it was just such a unique experience. I think that these types of poems are very powerful in the ways that they convey emotion and creating workshops like this allows raw emotions to come out and for people to be very introspective on the social practices in our culture.
Resources:
Abbagnano, About the Author: Anthony, and Danielle DeWilde November 4. “Haiku – One Breath Poetry.” Alchemy of Breath: Breathwork Training and Events, 5 June 2019, https://alchemyofbreath.com/haiku-one-breath-poetry/#:~:text=Haiku%20is%20sometimes%20referred%20to,snapshot%20of%20the%20natural%20world.
Davis, Ben. “A Critique of Social Practice Art.” A Critique of Social Practice Art | International Socialist Review, https://isreview.org/issue/90/critique-social-practice-art/index.html.
Kickstarter. “Ten Artists on What Social Practice Means to Them.” Medium, Kickstarter Magazine, 1 Oct. 2019, https://medium.com/kickstarter/ten-artists-on-what-social-practice-means-to-them-9cae0a0f1364#:~:text=Social%20practice%20art%20%E2%80%94%20often%20defined,challenges%2C%20especially%20in%20the%20UK.
Miranda, Carolina A. “How the Art of Social Practice Is Changing the World, One Row House at a Time.” ARTnews.com, ARTnews.com, 18 Nov. 2019, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/art-of-social-practice-is-changing-the-world-one-row-house-at-a-time-2415/.
Toure, Kadi, et al. “How George Floyd and Covid-19 Are Highlighting Structural Inequities for Vulnerable Women, Children and Adolescents - International Journal for Equity in Health.” BioMed Central, BioMed Central, 28 Aug. 2021, https://equityhealthj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12939-021-01540-0.