[PROMPT: How are positions most effectively developed and demonstrated? Discuss this in relation to a creative practice or text. Then explain how this has helped you think about developing your own emerging position.]
American performance artist Andrea Fraser is considered something of a luminary of a so-called second generation in the Institutional Critique movement. Her works, notably site-specific performances but also structured in the form of talks, films and writing, challenge the very museum and gallery institutions in which they are shown.
At face, there would appear to be a hypocrisy within such a practice; many have accused the movement of such. But it is by directly engaging with the spaces she seeks to scrutinise that Fraser’s position — and that of a number of her contemporaries — finds it strength. Through words, motions and characters operating within the spaces in question, Fraser illustrates an understanding of what it is she seeks to confront, acting out an analysis founded on critical theories from philosophy and art writing, in collaboration with the humanising weapons of satire and humour.
For the performance piece Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk (1989), Fraser assumes the role of ‘Jane Castleton’, a smartly dressed docent and museum guide who leads a bizarre tour of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. On the tour, Fraser as Castleton speaks in a sophisticated yet incongruous manner on some of the broader historical and social issues surrounding the very concept of a ‘public’ institution. These digressions are interspersed with elaborate remarks on many architectural and functional aspects of the space, delivered in a deadpan tone. For example, Fraser describes a humble drinking fountain in the museum’s cloakroom as ”a work of astonishing economy and monumentality…it boldly contrasts with the severe and highly stylised productions of this form” (Fraser, 1989:104).
The effectiveness of Fraser’s performance comes from her adopting the lexicon of the very institutions and hierarchies she seeks to critique. Rather than an attack, Museum Highlights reads like an embrace; it is in its adaptation of said language and ideologies that the space’s underlying boundaries and rules are exposed, through the lens of a heightened awareness in the viewer. From this and other works by Fraser, we can infer a value in forming a position that not only relates to, but borrows from the subject framed by its line of questioning. This approach to engaging with the subject matter has significantly influenced my own attitude towards working in regard to my established position.
On the subject of aforementioned hypocrisy, Fraser has maintained a well-rounded theoretical approach. In her writings she has grappled directly with the flaws of her own position, saying in a 2005 issue of Artforum:
”How, then, can we imagine, much less accomplish, a critique of art institutions when museum and market have grown into an all-encompassing apparatus of cultural reification? Now, when we need it most, institutional critique is dead, a victim of its success or failure, swallowed up by the institution it stood against” (Fraser, 2005:278-279).
From Fraser’s actions, we might garner that a strong position need not ignore its critics and flaws. In fact, her words offer some suggestion that a position may be strengthened by an openness towards its own weaknesses.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fraser, Andrea (1989) Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk
in Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser (2005), pp. 95-114
Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press
Fraser, Andrea (2005)
From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique
in Artforum (September 2005) Vol. 44 Issue 1, pp. 278-285