5 Questions for Contemporary Practice with Andrea Geyer (@Art21)

http://blog.art21.org/2012/02/28/5-questions-for-contemporary-practice-with-andrea-geyer/

"There are many different forms of expression that are named “art” or “culture.” What relates them for me is their potential to offer an experience, a space of reflection, a place to ponder complex issues, to ask difficult but necessary questions, a site of knowledge, a poetic document of the context and time and conditions of their authorship. I think art is needed because it allows a public space inclusive of a complex diversity of ideas and forms that are otherwise difficult to experience, address, or even recognize. As a collective social space it gives possibility for these ideas to reinsert themselves into parts of a public consciousness. I am interested in a public space of (slight) discomfort, unexpected emotions and pleasure that only art can create. Offering an anchoring point, art has the potential to engage places we don’t know or can’t acknowledge—places of uncertainty. It helps us to recognize the fringes of our own comprehension not as a threat but as potential. Art is a collective space, even if the viewing of the work does not necessarily happen collectively. The idea of the shared experience remains with artworks thus framing it as a political site. The viewers appears bodily and socially as vulnerable and incomplete to herself and to others and is invited to understand this condition not as a shortcoming, but a productive site of actions."