It was raining, in a figurative sense too, when I met Alina Lupu on a bench in Amsterdam.
When arranging my interview, I had apologised for only being able to buy her a coffee for her time to drink outside in the rain because of the pandemic. I had thought of an old interview Adrian Piper did with the New York Times Magazine, where the journalist had mentioned how he had dined her at one of the fanciest restaurants in Berlin — perhaps to discredit her a little, I’m still not sure. But I didn’t mention it to Lupu. I knew we were also going to talk about activism and art, but neither of us had studied at Harvard and I was not working for a prestigious media house.
A couple of days before, Lupu had just had her application to the Fine Art programme at the Sandberg Institute rejected — in her email she had described it as a “funny time” in her practice. A funny time. I guess that’s one way to take the brunt off. I had thought we were going to speak about one of her current art projects, documenting her work as one of the many food delivery people that have been feeding the city during the past year, but instead it became a long talk about rejection.
Lupu came to the Netherlands to study at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, and since graduating she has made a practice out of navigating and describing the social and economic conditions facing young artists in a world of funding cuts and a general increase in labour insecurity.
I had been rejected from the Sandberg last year too — from their critical studies programme — which we laughed about. Lupu told me, she probably would have been accepted into that course, because of all the writing she had been doing lately, but —
“I wanted specifically to apply to something that would allow me to think about practice more. Last year. I was doing a lot of writing, because I couldn’t put myself through organising some kind of performative event. It didn’t make sense to me. And now it’s like: okay, the year is finished; we are almost there with the vaccines; I can focus on practice again.”
“And then to get the response: what you are doing is too much activism…”
“What I am interested in is of course related to labour theory, and it’s related to activism, and it does deal with institutional critique. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an artistic value. So I never thought about questioning whether it does or not?”
Too much activism. And too little something else presumably? But how does anyone establish such a balance? I am reminded of the uncomfortable challenge that Claire Bishop set to the world of art theory when she asked how to evaluate the difference between that much discussed genre of socially engaged practice and actual — meaning having no artistic aspirations — social work.
“I was asked: wouldn’t it be weird for you to study in an institution where you would also be criticising? And I had to clarify that I don’t think that’s weird. But that’s also not how my practice works. Sometimes you just need a break, and time to focus on your practice. The institution doesn’t need to be an object of critique always. So to be asked that during the interview was also a red flag.”
“Maybe I would have asked for more as a student. And that would have been a problem, because the institution cannot offer that. It can offer events framed as critical, it can offer funding for student initiatives. But it cannot offer stable contracts for the teachers or more teaching time — which I find fascinating.”
The purely theoretical question of whether it is really possible to critique an institution that you are part of evades the very practical problem that under current economy, it is difficult — to say the least — to sustain any form of artistic practice outside of an institutional setting. This purely economic incentive to enter into further education only makes internal criticism that much more important to the health of an institution.
“People really think that once they enter the institution everything will be fine, and they will be able to speak their mind, be active and vocal. But it’s hard to do that without becoming, you know, the arsehole. And I’m fine with being the arsehole if I have to. But yeah, it’s not a pleasant position to be in.”
I told Lupu that the only time I had seen her before our interview was in a live-streamed panel discussion about the contested work installed by Erik Kessels at Breda Photo last year. She was there in place of the people who had led the campaign to have the work removed, after they had refused to enter into dialogue with the organisers, fearing they would end up mis-framed during the event. She had been cast as an activist, and an arsehole. But not the right kind of arsehole: not the kind of artist that instigates “public debate” by being daring and provocative. Not the kind of arsehole whose actions are framed as aesthetic rather than political decisions. Why was it that only one side of the debate had their actions framed as art?
“There is a lot of division between labour and art. Artists mostly work as project managers, organising all the things that happen. When I was at the Rietveld, there used to be a show, which was organised by someone at the school with the students. And it was quite a public show. And the technicians from the wood workshop would come to the show, look around, and they would see all the works that they had made. Because they had the expertise to help the students. And it almost felt like the real artists ended up being someone else. But authorship is something else of course. And what the school grants you is this authorship over whatever you’re doing.”
Apart from granting you certain privileges to do with funding and teaching positions, the art institution also authorises the critique that is raised within it — and outside by its different forms of affiliates. But the form of criticality is usually expected to take an outside or top-down perspective that positions the artists or institutional framework as a beneficent voice of progress or reason in relation to its public. This theorisation of disciplining power is by no means a new one, but old habits seem to die hard even within institutions that pride themselves on new forms of education.
The notion of ‘care’ most usually applied in the context of art follows this top-down approach, but what might be at stake if we committed ourselves to blurring the distinctions between the right and the wrong kind of arseholes, and including the grass-roots perspective of care? Is the continued attempt at keeping fine art and criticality at arm’s length (eg. through different MA programmes) sharpening the focus of both or preventing us from seeing how they can be intimately connected? The unreason in Lupu’s insistence on having her activism framed as art is one that is difficult for me not to sympathise with, being a young art student myself. Even though it walks a fine line between social progress and overindulgence — with powerful voices questioning the very value of arts and education.
“I do think criticism can also be care. Spending your time figuring out how an institution functions, and maybe how it doesn’t function —that is also care.”
And if it isn’t already considered an art, then maybe we should try to imagine it as one.
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