A relic unearthed.
Way back in the day Jen Delos Reyes and I (among others), started a journal devoted to social practice. Gone, but not forgotten – the original domain is now a porn site, but you can still find the material here. I even gave it a face lift.
Ted Purves – Aesthetics – Social Practice – Personal Economies
Summer of Utopia: Interview with Ted Purves
We’ve been working from another starting point: the position of economies in people’s lives and how exchange functions. Even though we tend to think of ourselves as living in this highly capitalist market economy, we actually live within several different economic systems all at the same time. Getting paid and going shopping is participating in a larger capital economy, but giving a friend a lift to the store is a different, casual kind of economy. Not all of our relationships are of cliency and payment. We are interested in the way people are negotiating between competing or overlapping economies within their own lives, and creating a way to see that there are different ways to view your own personal economy.
…
I feel like a project is successful if we have had substantive encounters with people, if we have created spaces where a kind of exchange—whether it’s family history, or talking about why something should or shouldn’t be in an art museum, or sometimes it’s just swapping recipes—some form of animated or engaged dialogue comes out, or some sort of story emerges. It means we learn something, a story can be brought forward from that, that’s when things are successful. Another high-five moment comes when there is something compelling to look at. A lot of times when you see a social practice show, it’s either a room full of crap to read, or it looks like a place where they had a party and you didn’t get to go. I’ve been to a lot of those, and they’re not satisfying! You either wish they had just printed a book you could take home and read in your own chair—because it’s not very comfortable to sit in a museum—or you wish that you’d been at the party [emphasis mine]. When we did Lemon Everlasting Backyard Battery we had hundreds of jars of lemons on this table, and it was beautiful.
Open Engagement 2012, or a drop out drops in
What follows is a wholly incomplete account of my time in Portland during the Open Engagement conference. It may or may not be accurate or completely truthful. It is dedicated to my fellow travelers, and is especially dedicated to Abby (it may not be poetry per se, but still…):

Public sculpture near lecture hall.
eclipse watchers on the sidewalks
early dusk hummingbird escape
a graceful old farmhouse scratched by divorce and chicken feet
yakuza drinks with a Port Townsend farmer I swear keeps talking about gynecology (but is not)
an old friend rant, like falling from a bar stool – “ham and cheese sandwiches in my pocket!”
Cheerful Tortoise
beards and spectacles
aggressively unfashionable lesbians
fashionably unaggressive straight dudes
bloody mary truth serum
portable wardrobe sidewalk disintegration
confiscated fake id with threats of boyfriend reprisal
tales of mutton served to unsuspecting family members
Grain and Gristle
red velvet cake with herbaceous Italian dessert wine
crazy i-talian farmstand bitches
Native American salmon fisherman breaking down his catch over beer (I open one for him as his hands are slimy from the work)
DOC
opening remarks missed due to hangover
pickled beets greens mint soft boiled egg
bamboo mat is magic carpet then hiding place
alka seltzer + alka seltzer plus cold medicine
they talk and talk of social practice yet the farmer’s market overshadows
Woodsman Tavern
stacking veggie filled Rubbermaid totes for Gathering Together Farm
iced coffee in the rain
old haunts with new friends
new haunts with old friends
honey basil tequila lime
driving a Toyota Tacoma
lunch in the grass
radicchio feta hazelnuts
crows by the dozen carrying on as crows do
pea shoots and potatoes
drunk Florida women yelling from a car (see also i-talians)
deviled egg w/anchovy
anchovy butter w/cauliflower
cauliflower w/smoked almonds
almonds coated in salty sweet cocoa
Obama classmate from Hawaii describes him in a way that makes me like him
Robo Taco throat slash confusion
Ted Purves as phantom limb
Stephen Wright as mushroom shaman
who is sleeping with their grad students/who is not?
much note taking and unasked questions
I left it all with a heavy heart and a French goodbye (thanks Sal)…
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