Evans Blog Post #1

September 10, 2024

For my first blog post, I’ve decided to focus on art works that are not necessarily by one person, but created by a group of many working together towards the same goal. Though, one of the pieces I’ll be looking at is by one person, I believe that the reaction of its audience puts forward this idea of it being pulled together and represented as more than just the creators thoughts about it. To start my blog post, one of the readings I covered to help me find this topic was the, “AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW ( December, 1974 - Volume 39, NO 6.) – ART AS A COLLECTIVE ACTION”1 by Howard S Becker. Although my blog post doesn’t strictly apply to Americans but all people of the world, Becker discusses some very important points that should be applied to my post. “Art works can be conceived as the product of the cooperative activity of many people. Some of these people are customarily defined as artists, others as support personnel. … Cooperation is mediated by the use of artistic conventions, whose existence both makes the production of work easier and innovation more difficult. Artistic innovations òccur when artists discover alternate means of assembling the resources necessary. This conception of an art world made up of personnel cooperating via conventions has implications for the sociological analysis of social organization.”1 While music can be something simple that may come to mind for most of us when considering what would be “art as collective action”1, I will solely be focusing on art pieces utilizing food, or other edible products, which spoil and prove an even more interesting glimpse into what it means to create art as a collective with something that lasts at a significantly shorter amount of time than most other pieces. After doing my research, I wonder: are there other kinds of art-related food pieces that wouldn’t be considered “collective action”1? If so, how would those be displayed and presented? What wouldn’t be considered “collective action”1? If they weren't, how would those be displayed and presented?
For my initial idea for this post, I wanted to look closer at Seattle’s famous gum wall. Starting all the way back in 1993, this art work began thanks to human boredom – people waiting to go into the then Market Theater and sticking their gum on the wall while waiting for the line to move forward. After a movie appearance in 2009, the alleyway became much more popular to visit and add gum to– a similar (albeit more likely to cause disgust) project that is vaguely reminiscent of the love lock walls in different places of the world. Despite it being a (mostly) popular attraction – fears of the substance damaging the ancient brick (much akin to moss or ivy) led to the wall being cleaned for the first time in 2015. With over 130 hours tucked into the arduous project, and over a ton of gum resulting from all the work, the clean look of the walls didn’t last; “...it has taken visitors approximately 5 months to return it to its original, colorful look.”2 It was cleaned yet again in 2018, but the results were all the same - the gum reappearing in mass in around the same time frame as before.

Photo source: 2 (but originally from shutterstock)

Unlike the gum wall’s decidedly group-effort to preserve and continue the tradition, the next piece I’ll be looking at, while made by one creator, the audience reaction to this installation is what I believe makes it a “collective action”.1 Compared to the last one, I find that this installation is far more disgusting than the gum wall – I myself have an incredibly strong sense of smell, to the point sometimes where I believe it a curse instead of a blessing, and walking into this installation would have been nightmare fuel for me. William Pope.L, the creator of this installation titled, Claim (Whitney Version)3, had displayed 2,755 pieces of bologna that had been attached to the walls, allowing the already wet meat to drip down to the wall-hugging container on the floor, which eventually became splattered with the orange liquid. The overall meaning of the installation is that, the supposedly “curing”3 meat (which was not replaced at all during the length of the installation) is meant to reference healing, since the meat itself is being “cured”.3 The whole meaning of the piece, according to ARTnews was, “... [It] focuses on how entire groups of people with a collective identity can turn abstract through numbers.”3 This claim should be true as well for all collective food-related pieces like this, too; the multitudes of gum on the Seattle wall being a product of over hundreds of people all coming together, and while there was a more distinct note of people from different creeds all becoming unrecognizable as the meat cures in Claim (Whitney Version)3, the decision to use something with a putrid smell in my perception of the piece helps to show a collective thought - how people can perceive “healing”. For those of us with sensitive senses of smell, this type of “healing” could be seen as foul – odiferous and unpleasant. But, for those of you with a weaker sense of smell, or those without a sense of smell thanks to COVID, perhaps this form of healing is one that can be aided with more visual attention to the twisting photos instead of searching for an escape from the smell.

Photo source: 3
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