Episode 388: Lauren O'Neill-Butler on Artist Activism, Artforum magazine and the seminal Project Row Houses in Houston

Introduction to Podcast

0:00This is The Conversation. It's a podcast that goes behind the scenes and between the lines of the contemporary art worlds and activism. I'm Michael Shaw. Welcome to the show. It's episode 388 with Lauren O'Neill Butler. She is a professor at Hunter College and an editor and writer whose book, The War of Art, is the focus of much of our conversation today. The website

0:33for this show is theconversationpod.com. It's the only place that you will find images of the things that we talk about. In addition to an author photo of Lauren, you will also see a few photos from the Project Row Houses, Project Entity Housing Development, if you will, in the Third Ward of Houston, including one of the houses with artwork on the front. You will also see an image of it before the renovations. Very different. You also see a couple of images from the PAIN performances

1:11or actions. PAIN is the acronym for Prescription Addiction Intervention Now that was started by the artist Nan Golden, very much the figurehead for that movement, which has been quite effective, as you will hear us talk about. What else will you hear us talk about? The things that we talk about from the book, and that book, by the way, is not only called The War of Art, it is The War of Art,

1:42A History of Artists Protests in America. And it sounds historical, but it actually covers a lot of very contemporary takes on activism and artisan activism. And that's indeed one of the first places we start in our conversation looking at that intersection of activism and artists and artists activism. Some of the groups that we talk about are Fierce Pussy, Dyke Action Machine, which was co-started by Carrie Moyer, a colleague of Lawrence at Hunter College. Of course, Project Row Houses,

2:18which was essentially started by the artist Rick Lowe. And we also talk more in the second half about pain, prescription addiction intervention. Now, I hope you guys are doing well. Happy almost summer solstice, or maybe by the time that you are listening to this, it is the summer solstice, or it is indeed summer. My least favorite season of the year now, living in a place where it can struggle to be comfortable in the summer, which I'm sure is the case for a lot of you listening.

2:49Yeah. Anyway, we'll get through it. I actually have to find a place to live by probably September. So I have some additional challenges this summer. More on that. If you reach out to me, if you're curious. By the way, I should mention that in the beginning of our conversation, you will hear me showing and describing her book, In the Flesh. That's because we record it on video. Eventually, this episode will be available on our YouTube channel. It's the conversation or podcast on

3:24YouTube. So just FYI, that won't be up for a while. But as recent as the James Del Borgo episode from a couple episodes ago is up on our YouTube page. Yeah, why don't we jump into the episode? I hope you're doing well. I will talk to you a little bit more on the back end. You will hear a little bit more than the first half of the full conversation with Lauren to hear the full conversation. You need to become a supporter on Patreon, which you can do for as low as a dollar a month. More on that. In the outro for now, I hope you enjoy this conversation about activism,

3:58artist activism, and a bit about art form at the beginning. So here we go. Thank you very much for being here. Talk to yourself. Hello, Lauren. Hi. Okay, so here is your book. And here are the

Art Forum Discussion

4:19stickies. Yep. You know, got to have variety, right? Yep. So we have so much to talk about in so little time. So just so we're both not surprised or disappointed, we're probably not going to get to it all. But we definitely won't get to it all. But maybe we'll, depending on how well things go, maybe we'll revisit the book at some point, if it makes sense. But you know, we'll, we'll play one step at a time. Great. So we're fellow Hunter alums. So that's pretty cool. We could certainly talk about

4:50that at some point. But again, we probably don't have time. Another thing about you, though, is that you were an editor at art form for a period. And before we get into the book, I was just, I thought we would just briefly talk about the common or popular conception of art forum, which I'm sure you have various perspectives on having been part of the the the magazine. But I'll just say for as sort of a prompt that this sort of twofold version, or the twofold perception or stereotype, I guess,

5:29maybe, of art form is on one hand, you have the market side where galleries will take out quarter half page or full page ads, right? So there's, there's sort of the advertising side. And then there is the content side. And on that side, there is a version of art forum that is quintessentially dense, opaque, etc. I guess my question is, how much did that fit the bill when you were there? And how much

6:01has that changed over the years the magazine? Good question. When I was there, that was 100%. So very scholarly editors, in chief, or, you know, generally, I had three different editors, and the main editor in chief that I worked for, they were wildly different, but they were all like, some of the smartest people I've ever met in my life. Working closely with them made me an editor, sort of that's how I learned. So I, you know, in the years that I was there for 12 years, and I think everything before the firing

6:36of David Velasco is, you know, these incredible, it had an incredible run of scholarship, and the dense of the, you know, the density of the text, I guess you could call it, but it's like, the, the, the way that that magazine could both produce incredible writing, engaged writing, very smart writing, I tended to think that, you know, we were able to work with the best writers. And then yeah, the ads, which made it happen. And that's a model that I don't see much anymore. So I, in other words, I don't see that balance of

7:12great writing, and powerhouse advertising, it's something that someone's got to figure that out, because magazines are failing. Things are kind of, we're in a bad place in art criticism, we can talk about that. But that, that balance of being able to pull in the money and pay the writers, not like the writers were paid great. But like, there were, there's pretty big staff. And we all, you know, that, that's a whole other thing about the money. But like, basically, something about that equation made the magazine work for several decades. And I was there for maybe half of that. So

7:44you were there for a long time, 12 years. Yeah, and like freelance writing a lot before that. So but I don't, but you didn't quite get to my concern about read legibility in writing. So you talk about great writing, but great writing to whom? To the colleague to the academic colleagues? Because I guess the point, maybe more bluntly, a lot of artists, and I don't know, what other categories, gallerists,

8:20collectors, certainly, etc. Who amongst them is going to read a full length art form article? I guess is the question. I hope they all do. I mean, I, in my time, you know, my family in Florida, who had no interest in the art world, maybe they read it because it was me, but they could certainly read it. And from like, academics. So I, you know, I think that art form produced a range of writing. Okay, it depended on the writer, like my writing is not the same as boot glow. But this is a good

8:51conversation to begin, because the book actually started at art forum. So the first essay was written around 2016, and then published in, I think it was February 2017. It was on fierce pussy. And that's the beginning of the book. Right, right. And there are a couple other essays that I wrote for art form that ended up in the book. But yeah, it's just like, you know, 2016 happened, Trump was elected. I started to write a lot about activism. Well, yeah, you actually mentioned something that's

9:21important to this. And then we will transition to the book itself. But your book is very and the articles that you published in the magazine that, you know, that you just said, or some of which are in the book, right, are very legible. Now, I don't want to get to, we don't have to go down this rabbit hole at all. But I just want to clarify a little bit further that, on one hand, if I had been reading your articles from this book in the magazine, yeah, I, this is legible. This is something that I don't

9:52have to go be, you know, frequently running to the dictionary for. But there are others that were so dense and opaque that, and the caveat that I want to add to this is this, the last time I read one of those feature articles was a long time ago. And I guess I would hope that if I were to revisit it now, it would be a different experience because of life experience, reading experience, etc. But I will tell you that I read a profile, I don't know if it would be called a profile or a study of Wade

10:25Guyton. I don't know if you remember if that was from your era or not, but you know, an artist who was, I was quite into at the time. And I couldn't tell you a single thing about what I read in that article because it was, it was just so dense. Anyway, for what it's worth, you don't have to go there.

Book Discussion

10:43All right. Well, let's move on then to your book. So the first thing, as you know, that I wanted to talk about is the fact that you've taught activism. So I'm going to just quote from your book really quickly, and then we can talk about that. So you write in the intro, increasingly artists describe themselves as activists, but has the term become normalized, instrumentalized? Some veteran activists have abandoned the term altogether and prefer to be called community organizers. Meanwhile, activism

11:16seems to mean multiple things from signing petitions and clicktivism, that's me, on social media to risking arrest and direct action. Artist led activism is the subject of classes, some that I've taught. It's a concentration in some art schools, and it's an ongoing presence in numerous museum and gallery exhibitions. In short, it's timely to cite the most common refrain, but when is it not? So my question, well, first of all, let me just say in passing that I did not, I've never heard of the term

11:47clicktivism, but I was like, oh yeah, that's what I do. That's what I do. Yeah. Thank you for introducing that to the vocabulary. What did you, what was your, what were your classes like when you taught activism?

Teaching Activism

11:59Um, to what extent were your classes on activism implicitly designed to get artists to be more involved? Oh, good question. Um, oh, the classes were, there were several of them and mostly at Hunter. Um,

12:18they were half MA art history candidates and half MFA fine art candidates. So there was a good mix there. I was not trying to get artists to do activism or become activists. In fact, I think working with the artists, the young artists emerging, I guess we could say emerging. Some were, were not emerging. They were getting their MFA after several years of work. Um, the point was not to, to make them activists or anything like that. They came to the class because they were interested. And if something,

12:51you know, sparked them or put a fire under them, I encouraged it. And, you know, we would talk about resources and people to collaborate with, and we would continue to, you know, have studio visits. A couple MA theses came out of the class that I taught, which was really exciting to see, like, the art historians continue to engage with the material, take it seriously, do incredible primary research on topics that were not sort of obscure or niche. So, um, it was very rewarding, you know, and as you know, I'm sure, at least for me, it's like Hunter's kind of the best.

13:26So amazing people to work with, amazing students, amazing faculty. Like I feel very lucky to be there.

13:34Is it, I'm, I'm gathering from the context that maybe what's amazing about some of the students is that you, you did mention people who are artists who are not emerging, right? So been working for a while. Is it, is that part of it that they're coming, you know, that they have a certain amount of life experience that they're bringing to your classes. And then I guess in other cases, the ones who are younger, they are, I don't know, city kids, you know, with who bring their own sort of urban education. Or they just moved to New York to go to Hunter. There's always, I mean, as you know, at Hunter,

14:08the model at Hunter is that, um, a lot of people work full-time and do the, do the degree at the same time, both in the MFA and the MA, but particularly in the MA though, you've got people, you know, all of the MA classes are at night for the most part. So I teach at seven o'clock at night, um, because people are at work all day and that's what makes it so fascinating. People have real world experience. People have had jobs for many years and come to the degree. So they already have some interest. Typically they come to the program with a project in mind, whether that's their thesis or their MFA, you know, their project, they've been tinkering away

14:43for a while. You don't tend to get people just right out of undergrad. People have usually at least taken a year to get state residency because it's, you know, it's a public school. Thank God. So, um, that's one thing that usually, that's how I ended up there, you know, took a year to get residency and then went to school there. So you didn't, um, it makes sense that you wouldn't like be pushing activism on them. You're teaching them about the history of activism, right? Essentially and whatnot. But is, is there a certain amount, is there a certain hope that you have that they will

15:20on their own get involved? Well, my, you know, I guess the honest answer is yes, you know? Right. Yeah. I mean, I, and it's the same for people reading the book, right? Like the honest answer to that is yes. Like, please be inspired or find the problems, you know, find the problems that need to be fixed and also find the problems with the activisms and these case studies and, and maybe figure out different ways to do it that might be, you know, more effective. I don't know. Effective

15:51is a hard term, but you know, so I mean, yeah, yeah, sure. It was about getting people motivated. The class, um, was largely taught during the Biden years. And so, but a little bit of the Trump years too. So anyway, I, I, you know, I, I tend to take a kind of, um, political pessimistic point of view and teaching the class was a place of, and writing the book was a place of putting sort of both our

16:25sort of rage containers, but also sort of ways to inspire difference. Yeah. You know, and then there's the, the, the reality that w it was brought up in a, in a well circulated article recently, which I think you might know what I'm referring to, that if you are an artist and you're working a day job, when do you have time to be an activist, right? That there's not enough time in the day for activism. And that's actually where I guess, sadly, I don't want to, you know, preface it too much.

16:58I'll let you decide, um, that click to this really does become this thing that we can do, you know, on a daily basis for whatever it's worth. Um, but organizing and especially on the level of pain, uh, you know, and even more involved projects can become a full-time thing, you know? Absolutely. Yeah. So I guess it's just, it's a spectrum obviously, but I think the, the reason, the, the sort of, uh, preface of my concede to my question is, um, can you be an artist

17:34and who, who has to make a living and still do activism, right? Yes. And I think it's important to talk about how activisms expire. So, um, you know, I have the pleasure of working with Carrie Moyer at Hunter and we were just doing an interview for this magazine. And we were talking about a very particular period of years where she was doing activism that stemmed from ACT UP, Queer Nation, the Lesbian Avengers, and then Dyke Action Machine, which is one of, which is a group that she co-founded in 1991 with Sue Schaffner. And there's a chapter in the book on Dyke Action Machine,

18:09but it also kind of expands out to those other groups. Anyway, Carrie's activism in a, you know, all told was like maybe two or three years, like intense, not in the studio, like basically making these campaigns for, damn, Dyke Action Machine. And then she stopped and she went back into the studio and made abstract paintings and continues to make abstract paintings and was adjuncting and working at the same time in advertising agencies and then was able to get full-time teaching jobs.

18:41And, you know, I think the activism is still there. We were talking about how it can be there in the teaching, which goes back to what we were just talking about and working collaboratively with

Artist Activism

18:50your colleagues. And, you know, there are ways that collaboration changes over time. So it never really went away for her, but the hardcore activism was like a couple of years. Yeah. Right. Got it. And what is from, what is your general sense from having written all the articles in the book, what post-expiration looks like for a given artist? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

19:22Yeah. That's great. I mean, I would have to get really granular with each person. Like, you know, we can talk about Rick Lowe. Rick Lowe begins, it's kind of like Carrie, um, art school, good, longer period of activism, like good 20 years with Project Row houses in Houston. And then at some point decides he's done. And for him, you know, he said the activism had expired. Like my work was that I did what I wanted to do. It became this huge nonprofit. We were hiring

19:53full-time full-time staff. Grants were coming in and I could step away and I wanted to step away and it was time. And then goes back into the studio, also makes abstract paintings and is working with a big gallery. So, you know, everyone, for everyone who was different, you know, Benny Andrews in the BECC or the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, the activism is sort of on and off for decades. Like he, I guess he is someone who really kept the activism up, um, from the late

20:271960s, at least through the 90s on and off. And then there was a period in the 80s where he worked for the NEA. Um, so, you know, kind of both insider and outsider roles, which I find are sort of artist becomes administrator, which is another way that activism's expire. And then he comes kind of back and the activism never really leaves for Benny, but it goes in and out. Um, and then like Nan Golden is another great example. Nan Golden, decades of an art career, no activism, like was marginally involved in, you know, more or less like an observer of ACT UP, um, but not particularly

21:03like a stakeholder in it. And then after decades of a very successful art career decides that it's time to put her body on the line, her work on the line, the activism is more important. She doesn't care if that wrecks her art career and she moves forward. Not everyone can do that. Nan Golden is a really particular example, right? For sure. So there's a couple examples right there and there's so many more in the book, but I think for everyone it's different.

Activism and Art

21:30And as you're talking about that, you're making me think about just activists. Is that a role that inevitably was something that you became more, uh, familiar with, you know, through your work? Like what is, I mean, I'm thinking for lack of a better example, and I, his name is completely eluding me at the moment, but I'm thinking of the guy who was incredibly associated with AIDS activism, if not ACT UP itself. Do you know who I'm talking about? He was a real

22:06curmudgeon. No, I'm talking about, I'm talking about it. I'm talking about a, a, a, uh, a senior gay member of the AIDS slash ACT UP community who was kind of a real curmudgeon. Not as, no. Larry, Larry Kramer. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Like, is that an example of somebody who's kind of like a full-time activist or, you know, of sorts? Oh, sure. Yeah. And there are so many, right? Like there are so, so, so many, right? The full-time, full-fledged, I don't know if it can be really

22:41full-time because this is really intense work. People go, people take breaks, you know, but they need to. Um, but yes, there are many, there are many, many, we can talk about the civil rights movement as being kind of like a primary example. Yeah. Um, feminist movement being another primary example, but yeah, uh, it's, that's, you know, when I did book events, I did, you know, one book event at the New York public library, uh, in last July and someone in the audience was like, why are you focusing on artists? What, what makes them so special? Why can't you talk about other activists too? And I said,

23:16oh, I get it. I understand like where this question is coming from. Uh, you know, I had to make an argument about what I thought artists brought to protest, which is different, different from Larry Kramer. Right. Right. What did you say? What else did you say to this question, Asker? Well, first of all, I said, I don't think that artists are necessarily more special. Let's just get that clear. Like I'm not trying to create a hierarchy between artists and non-artists. That's not the point. Artists have day jobs. Artists have responsibilities like spouses, children, families to take care of. They can barely pay their rent. Like we're talking about, if we are

23:50talking about a population in terms of its special capabilities, it's like beleaguered, right? Like not given enough funds to live. So, and then trying to like make art. So that's the enraging part of the story. But, um, so I said, in any case, this is a population that's already hobbled, you know, like having a hard time getting by that, that makes them special. I don't know, but you know, so I said, what they bring is an aesthetic. They bring a sense of visual cohesiveness to a protest.

24:22So we can talk about, again, Nan Golden is like kind of a quintessential example of someone who had so carefully thought about her photographs and what they would look like in every single possible from the lighting to the, you know, all of it, the positions, the colors, like these are very, these are highly composed, even though I think some, they can look like snapshots so much, but like these photographs are the ones that she chose to exhibit are beautiful works of art that are highly, highly considered. They're not, um, they're not like arbitrary. They weren't made with

24:57arbitrary decisions. Yeah. He brought that same sense of visual excellence to protest. So when she envisioned, I should really say when pain envisions a protest, they're thinking about all the different angles and where they're going to put the photographers and making sure they're getting the right look on it. Right. Like the right lighting, the right everything. And so when we see images of protests made by artists, they tend to be a little bit more, um, stunning, I think. Right. And so there's

25:31examples of that throughout the book, um, where I'm trying to show artists just bring a whole different set of tools to activism. Um, and that's why it's so important. Yeah. And, and I'm going to segue to project row houses in a second, but I, I not quite done with this question asker. Um, why do you think, do you think they were not an artist themselves? And if so, what got them to the, to your talk? Do you think? I don't think they weren't artists. I didn't ask them. I had the sense that they weren't,

26:03but I could be wrong. I mean, it was just an interesting question to ask, um, if one is an artist, but so that was a talk for the general public widely advertised through the New York public libraries channels. Um, it was one of the earlier events I did and it was sort of overwhelming how many people came and like, you know, I was speaking with two, um, art historians, writers, and we were just kind of bowled over by the audience there. And, and, you know, you had, I, what, this is what I actually love about doing events is you've got people, the regulars of like

26:34the particular bookstore of, of the particular library, the library folks who hang out and go to these events. And it was hot, you know, people were in the libraries of cooling center, like maybe that brought people, you know, I did another event in Baltimore at this wonderful bookstore called red Emma's great bookstore. And, um, and then right before the event started, this like thunderstorm, the sky broke up and it started raining and every, it seemed like everyone on the street in Baltimore, like a large population rushed into this bookstore. So you just had like folks, you know, people like people who wanted to

27:07get a coffee and like, listen to some people talk about activism and art for an hour or so. And it was fun. So you never know, I don't never understand the audience. And I find it thrilling to have, you know, this kind of discourse with like, it's very different from my days at art forum. I can just put it that way, which felt a little bit more audiences, more kind of insular. I kind of understood who they were when I do a public events or when I talk about this book, you know, it's the broad audiences and the people running off the street. I love so. And that's exactly the thing about activism for artists is that when you participate in activism,

27:43you are no longer in most cases, a lot of exceptions in your book, but in most cases, you are with people who are dealing with housing, with racism, et cetera, you know, and these people are not from your grad class, you know? No, not so different. Right. Yeah. There are some, I mean, I'm, I've been part of the Los Angeles LA Tenants Union for a number of years and there are some artists scattered in there, but most of, I'm not aware of it most of the time, you know, they're just people doing, you know, whatever they do. Um, so the question that this

28:18person who was apparently not an artist, uh, at your talk and at the New York public library really dovetails with is this question, this sort of seminal moment in Rick, the artist, Rick Lowe's

Project Row Houses

28:31history. And for people who are not familiar with, we can get into it a little bit, but Rick Lowe was one of the people sort of, he, he sort of was his, he was kind of the instigator of project row houses. Is that a fair description? I think that's fair. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So here's the anecdote, here's that seminal anecdote that, uh, from your book. So just to give a little context, when a grand jury decided not to indict this officer who had killed this, this, I guess, young black man, the community asked Lowe if they could host a press conference with his work in the background.

29:03It was a big moment for me and solidified my art activism at that time, Lowe has said. Not long after a local high school group visited Lowe's studio. And as the artist has often recalled, something happened that quote, just shattered him. A student noted that while his work was hitting on all the issues that are relevant to low income communities, the people in the third war didn't exactly need a greater awareness of them. We don't need people to come back and tell us what the issues are. Lowe remembered the students saying, we already know, we see it, we live it. If you're an artist

29:36and you're creative, why can't you create some kind of solutions? So not only is that a seminal moment in Rick Lowe's story, but it, to me, it's actually kind of the quintessential question for activism, activism, particularly vis-a-vis art, you know? And, um, I mean, I've often thought about activism and art as kind of being these, essentially being these two separate entities that maybe overlap a little bit, but rarely do so. It's hard to make, I mean, certainly a lot of people would

30:13tell you, I'm kind of playing devil's advocate here. A lot of people will tell you that making good activists art is hard and making good artistic activism is hard, right? Because of those distinctions. So anyway, I mean, what comes to mind for you just in, generally in relation to this question, how, you know, you're creative, why can't you just come up with solutions? Right. So, so to kind of riff off of what you were saying, I don't actually think that art does anything or changes anything. And that's why I take quite a bit of care to distinguish between

30:48political art and activist art and the artists themselves. And so the artist is the agent, the artist is the maker of the action. And if they want to make activist art, it has to be active. It has to have this element of action inside of it. It's not necessarily even the activist art that I'm after. I find that term to be kind of confusing. It's really like the artist doing something instead of passively, you know, making artwork, whether that's only in their studio that someone sees it or in a museum or a gallery, it doesn't matter to me. It's, there's a sort of passivity with

31:19political, political art. Political art is a huge container. It could kind of mean almost anything. It's almost too big to mean anything. It's too small to mean anything. So political art is to me kind of like not the thing. Activist art is the thing, but it's really the artist being that agent of change and of motivating and this beautiful phrasing of solutions. And so Rick Lowe became an artist who thought about solutions and enacted those solutions in his local community. And then I

31:52think, you know, I think you can even trace that line all the way through to his abstract paintings, which is a little bit like maybe controversial, but I do think that there's a sort of working out of solutions that happens within his paintings as well. It's not the same. Like again, like the, the painting is a static, it can be, it's a political artwork. I don't, I think it's passive. What he did with project row houses for decades was real activism. Right. And so some people would call it activist art. Like I tried to make a case for it as activist art, you know, for people in the

32:25community, it was like community building, you know, it was all, it was real, real, you know, sort of could be just called act plain old activism as well. So, but since there were so many artists involved and since it was about creating affordable housing for artists in particular and making sure that artists always lived within that community and always had places to show and always have studios. I think that it's powerful activist art. Yeah. What are your thoughts? You kind of mentioned this a little bit and sort of implicitly is what do you

32:55think about art that is trying to address something though? I mean, obviously it's a very case by case basis, but I guess maybe a better question is for you is what about the reaction that some people in the art world or in the art community have to art that is more political or is about something that it's didactic, you know, and therefore, yeah.

33:25This is why political art has a really bad rap, right? Like there's a bad odor around it or something and easy to hate, um, easy to love. I mean, I, like I said, I think that term is just way too big and way too small. It just means nothing. And I don't, I don't know what art isn't political. I sort of agree with Tanya Bruguera, who I mentioned in the book, but, and I briefly, there could be a whole other chapter on her, but, um, you know, that everything is political. For me, everything is

33:57definitely political. So my life is political, every single element. So art is political. I don't know of art that's not political. I think there are always political choices involved and the, and the standing of the artist is political, but these are things that I find to be kind of mundane, like not interesting to discuss. I would not want to write a book around like philosophies around this idea. I think it's sort of, um, almost a given, like, it's surprising to me that we, you know, it's 2026 and people

34:27still have ideas that art is not political in some way. Like, I just don't understand that. I mean, sorry, but I find it to be regressive. Um, I think it's extremely political, but I don't think that those are interesting things necessarily to write about. I think what's interesting is the action elements and the doing of things. And I think all art has, all art, all great art has something behind it. Some like thing it's trying to work out questions, you know, some sort of statement it's trying to make something that's trying to, you know, whether it's puzzling out something

35:02or whether, you know, whatever the content is, but there's a difference between, you know, the artist

35:09doing something often with other people in a public space outside of their studio. This is never really about the studio. I don't really write about the studio that much in the book. Although all of the artists have studios. Um, it's about something else. It's about, it's about the artists in action, outside of the world, making a public address.

35:32Well, I mean, this is not necessarily a rabbit hole, uh, or, or, uh, um, a debate that I want to get into, but I mean, you, you do, you do, you did provoke me a little bit because I, I think um, there is a difference between somebody who's making work that clearly is catering to the market and somebody who's making work that is trying to say something. I think those are important distinctions, even if you feel that all work is political. But what artist is going to say

36:07they're making work catering to the market? They're never going to say that. No, they're not. They're not. They're not going to say that. Other people are going to say that. I'm going to say that. That's how I respond to a lot of art. I say, okay, you're making something you're making as pretty, uh, you know, as beautiful and as, um, inoffensive and as collectible as you possibly can. And I, I recognize that I may accept it. I may say you're, you're just selling out or you're

36:38just catering, you know, to this LCD. So I think for me, that's an important distinction as an artist myself. Oh, for sure. And I think that's the beauty of the art leaving the studio and everyone can have their own opinions about it. So that's, that's the deal. I'm very much in that realm of the philosophy. I don't think the artists can control the reception of their work. I do think it matters what they say. So as someone that my first book is all artists interviews, long, long, long history of interviewing artists, I take what artists say very seriously. Yeah. This, this book that we're talking about right now is based on hundreds of interviews basically. So,

37:12you know, it's like, I do care what they say, but I I'm with you that it is the audience who decides what they think. Right. Okay. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Um, well let's talk more about project row houses.

Criticism of Project Row Houses

37:25Um, there are so many interesting moments, uh, so many interesting aspects of the project. Um, they were originally going to do what was it, uh,

37:4211 houses and they ended up doing 22 is how it was. They ended up doing a 22 house purchase because that's basically what the owner offered. And that ended up being a good thing because it gave them more to work with. Right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so this here, so I'm just going to skip a little bit ahead from there. Um, staff from arts organizations throughout Houston, including the Menil collection and diverse works labored alongside volunteers of all ages to help the artists repair the houses. The director of the Menil allowed Mondays to be a day

38:18off for some of the museum's employees so that they could lend a hand at PRH. The corporate sponsor, Chevron renovated the outside of the houses and organized a work day with over 300 employees for months, volunteers numbering in the hundreds fortified porches, removed trash from lots and hung drywall. So Chevron, right? I mean, you, you take the, you know, when you're, when you're building, uh, a community, when you're, when you're working on a, uh, an expensive socially engaged project,

38:50you take the money from where you can, but I mean, it's, it's, it's impossible not to see Chevron and kind of, you know, raise an eyebrow, raise an eyebrow. Exactly. Exactly. And I mean, it even kind of, uh, correct me if I'm wrong. It kind of, uh, sort of dovetails with the, the whole pain, you know, the Oxycontin, the Sackler situation, because it's all about branding in that case. Right. So you've got Chevron branding or, you know, involved in this project. Is that,

39:21I guess the question is, is that, is this a particular case with project row houses where, you know, they had this oil, this big oil company involved in their, in their fundraising? I mean, are, are these kinds of things inevitable a lot of the time in these bigger, more ambitious, socially engaged projects? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And this is 1993. Um, and Chevron. Oh, Chevron had a different invitation. Houston. No, it's all huge. No, but I mean, just like, you know, pretty much owns the city

39:51and lots of employees. So project row houses. Like Amazon now. Kind of. Yeah. So it's like, they see this opportunity of volunteers coming to help with this massive endeavor, 22 houses. And they're not going to say no to that, right? Like free labor. For sure. For sure. Like corporate people coming and getting dirty and getting their hands in there and pay, you know, no, no, that chef, I mean, probably that Chevron did give money. Um, but there, you can imagine them working alongside like the local people from the church and the, you know,

40:26the other, the kids in the neighborhood. And it was a real community wide effort. So the answer is like, yeah, sometimes the money is dirty and you got to take it. And that's just sort of, you know, like I'm not opposed to be honest, those, those conversations in America, there's no purity. There's no, there's no purity in activism. Um, I think people have to be

40:49as ethical as they possibly can be, but this wasn't, this wasn't, um, it's kind of like hard to compare it to pain. This was really about like getting this initiative off the ground that seemed almost impossible from the beginning. So yes, they took, they had to take, and they continue to take money from developers. Like, you know, like there's been, there's definitely been critiques of that. And I think the critiques are valid. I don't think project row houses could have become so robust without, without that kind of corporate effort. Yeah. The question about purity or the,

41:21the, the, um, the label or the, uh, uh, establishing purity as impossible, right? That must be something is that something that in your research, um, has become clear and to give you a little context, right? To give you a little specificity, I should say. Um, I'm in a local grassroots organization, uh, you know, private chat thread and they're talking about, you know, we just had the elections,

41:52the June elections and they're talking about candidates and one of the mayoral candidates, like they're questioning on her record on Israel and Gaza. Right. And they're like, no, she did this. She said this. She's, she didn't say that, you know, she's, she's, you know, she's, she's taking, you know, she's, she's, uh, kowtowing to Israel, et cetera, you know, which is something that is obviously going on elsewhere. Right. But it's like, come on, you know, what, what, where's the perfect

42:22candidate? You know, there's no, is there such a thing? Yeah. Oh, definitely not in politics. Oh, no, no. Come on now. So no. And I think that there, I mean, there's a lot of wonderful people who have written about solidarity in the last couple of years. And my favorite is Sarah Schulman. And Sarah will argue, and you know, her book on solidarity came out a couple of years ago, that there is no perfect, pure politics or activism. We do the best we can, but it's not

42:55going to help the left if we keep eating ourselves and we love to eat. We love to eat ourselves. We love to point the finger. We love to make projects and walk away from it very quickly. As soon as somebody has done something we don't like, you know, it's, um, I'm guilty of that. Like, let's talk about, I've, I've started projects and have problems with someone and I walk away and done that since, you know, I was a teenager in activism. So it isn't helpful to the left that we keep doing this. And so I would leave it to like those people who write so eloquently on solidarity, like Sarah Schulman to talk about

43:26this, but, um, yeah. So she's a good person to quote when it comes to these debates, maybe. You know, and Sarah's, Sarah's gotten a lot of flack too. So probably it comes from receiving it. People saying, no, you have to be a purist. You have to maintain your standards, right? Or whatever. You did the wrong thing on this. And you, you know, once you've had the finger pointed at you a few times, like you kind of start to develop this other, like, oh, okay, it's never going to get better. Like we just keep pointing the finger and like, you know, eating ourselves basically. And, um,

44:01Have you had the finger pointed at you and what has that looked like? I mean, I have, and I think we all, I mean, I don't know how you, maybe it's impossible not to, you know, in some ways. And I have found it to be a good corrective. You know, I have found it to be helpful to my research. It's one of the joys of teaching is that you get to do this in real time in the classroom and you have students call you out on something and you're like, oh, thank God they did. You know, thank you. Is there an example that comes to mind that you could share? Well, yeah, sure. So in the book, um, there's a chapter on Agnes Dennis. And so when I worked at

44:33art form, let's see, I wrote that essay on Agnes in 2018. It came out, I think in 2019. Um, and I, you know, kind of had this view of Agnes Dennis as being this kind of perfect artist, this perfect activist. And when I taught the class, students would say like, she made monocrops. What are you talking about? She made a whole bunch of monocrops and like, and like didn't give any acknowledgement to the indigenous people of the land. And I thought, huh? Okay, good point. So my tune changed on a lot of things. And so the chapter on Agnes is like,

45:07like, has more critique, I would say than the others. And my editor at Verso at the time, when we were going through the drafts, he was like, I don't know if we want this. I don't think this works. And I said, listen, no, we have to show the flaws. Like it, we have to show what works and what doesn't work. And we have to point out the problems. Like, yeah, I think it's important to do both. And so, you know, so I think I'm grateful that I get to teach and I love, you know, I love it when students, you know, help me learn. Yeah. Well, that's a really good segue to

45:42some of the criticism. And we should maybe just elaborate a bit more on Project Row Houses as a project. But, you know, to give people a little bit more a sense of it. But so let me just start

Project Row Houses Details

45:56it off. And maybe you can sort of round it out. But essentially, Rick Lowe managed to build this community, which has since, you know, turned into a nonprofit that manages this street of houses. And there have been, I guess, multiple installations, you know, or street facing art, you know, associated with the buildings. And it's provided, I guess, affordable housing that I guess that's kind of a question mark. It's not on that block. Yeah. So there's the block. If you go to Houston

46:29in the third ward, you're going to see there's a block of white painted houses that function as exhibition spaces and studios. And interestingly, each one has the sponsor above the entrance. It says, like, sponsored by such and such. And sometimes it's a corporation, just so you know. And then around a four block radius, I would say it's about four blocks, there are there's affordable housing that was built for the community at very affordable housing is always this question mark, right? Like, I think it's in the book somewhere, the percentages, the mix,

47:02some of it is market rate, and some of it's not. And that I can't remember the percentages right now. But anyway, artists also live in these houses. There are like duplexes. There are many of them, they fill up several blocks across the street from them, you'll see condos going up like hideous looking condos by developers going up at very expensive rates. Yeah. And then project wrote houses has also been preserving particular housing across the third ward in different parts. So outside of this

47:32four block radius, some shotgun houses that were built in the 20s and 30s, they've been preserving those with the idea either to move them or to leave them where they are. And that's also going to be housing. So it's a whole complex. And on top of that, there's like, you know, people who went through the project row houses, whether they were an artist or a resident at some point, there's people who have started, you know, there's a woman who has like a bakery. And so there's business, small business owners as a bookstore affiliated with it, really good bookstore. So and then there's the El Dorado

48:06ballroom, which was gifted to them, I believe. And that is this incredible event space for concerts and historic, a very historic landmark as well. So effectively, the project row houses has sustained a certain amount of housing that locals can live in, you could say that. Mm hmm. So as you write, for some critics, such as the arts writer, Ben Davis, who's been on this show, the RH CDC doesn't go far. And that's the nonprofit, right, established out of Project

48:40Row Houses, doesn't go far enough. Quote, the handful of properties that the project row houses maintains seems like a drop in the bucket, a feel good footnote to the real story, he says, during the very period when the careful work of the project row houses has won it worldwide praise, the issue that it was designed to address housing conditions in Houston has gotten worse, not better. And then you write, yet PRH did not set out to solve the housing crisis in the third board. And as a nonprofit working in the face of governmental neglect, it can only do so much.

49:10But the story is also more complicated than that. Across the US, local homeowners often pack city council meetings to complain with NIMBY zeal about new housing developments, even affordable housing initiatives. If states could strip the city's power to say no, more affordable housing could be built. And there is an obvious urgency to do so. Project Row Houses is just one example of artists taking the initiative to get things done. And much of the work has been recently happening in collaboration with private foundations as public funding for the arts has dwindled. So just for listeners to put things

49:45in the larger context of housing, this particularly resonates in a lot of ways with me. But I mean, in California, and I'm sure it's the case in New York and other states, you have middle and upper, certainly middle to upper class neighborhoods where the NIMBYs, the locals do not want any, you know, perish the thought of having an affordable housing building. They don't even want, I can't remember specific examples of this, but this is something that I remember hearing slash

50:18reading about. They don't even want like a house converted into multiple units. You know, it's just like any change they are hardcore against. And the district, the council district that I am in here, those types of people reelected this horrible councilwoman because she, you know, perpetuates that, you know, kind of dynamic and is also very pro cops and, you know, et cetera. So anyway, all to say that Ben Davis, you know, fair critique on one hand, but on the other hand,

50:50it's like, Hey, he did something, you know, there are very little cases there. Show me one other example Ben where an artist actually added in preserved housing. Okay. I hope that was informative and interesting to you to hear the rest where we talk first about the critical perception to project row houses, uh, as an entity. And we finally talk about pain, prescription action intervention.

PAIN and Final Thoughts

51:20Now that Nan Golden started, uh, we talk a lot about that and many other things on the backend, which you can listen to by becoming a supporter of the show on Patreon. Simply go to patreon.com slash the conversation pod. And for as little as a dollar a month, you will have access to the full nearly hour and a half conversation as well as past bonus full episodes. Uh, yeah. And, uh, hopefully we'll be having something exciting and new up there soon. Thank

51:53you very much for listening. I hope you got a lot out of this episode. And, uh, if you continue to enjoy the show, but you don't feel comfortable making a financial donation, spreading the word always helps. You can also follow us on Instagram at artist podcast, and you can give us a nice review on Apple podcasts, which helps more people find the show. Those are linked on the about page of the website, the conversation pod.com. Happy summer solstice. Happy summer. Thank you for listening.

52:23And I will talk to you again in about a month until then. Ciao for now.