"Living As Form" Combines Art and Activism

What happens when the lines between art and social activism blur? That’s exactly the question that “Living as Form (The Nomadic Version),” a new exhibit at the Carpenter Center which opened this past Thursday and will run until April 6, attempts to address. A reinvisioning of a 2011 New York exhibition, “Living as Form” is a traveling and continually growing collection of unconventional and eclectic pieces focusing on observing artistic aesthetics in everyday social activism.

Pieces in the exhibit range from a series of long basketball nets cut and re-knitted by children to an interactive installation in which attendees are presented with a collection of audio clips reflecting on the “War on the Poor.” Artist Caitlin Berrigan’s “Lessons in Capitalism” is especially attention-grabbing. The piece takes the form of a Harvard Business School affiliate offering free financial advice to attendees, which is sent through pneumatic tubes to unseen financial advisors who turn out to be between the ages of five and 10. Berrigan says the interactive aspect of the piece fits with the mission of the exhibit. “[The concept of ‘Living as Form’] is an interesting one. It’s about participatory and socially engaged work, and that’s often hard to capture. It’s nice that this one can be live and have a participatory component.”

“Living as Form” also boasts several scheduled live performances throughout its duration. During the exhibit’s opening reception, performance artist Tomashi Jackson created an original artwork. Perched on a small industrial scaffolding, Jackson used red oil sticks to draw on the Carpenter Center’s window, explaining the act as a way of reflecting on the largely unseen nature of labor. “I am drawing portraits of two people who work at the Carpenter Center…onto the glass of this historic piece of architecture,” Jackson said. “I’m interested in labor that is largely invisible and very necessary. A lot of my work is centered on…imagining and visualizing private labor.”

In addition to live performances, “Living as Form” contains many pieces that take the form of accounts of socially conscious artistic endeavors throughout the country. Projects range from adapting abandoned homes into campuses for artists and single mothers to invigorating rarely visited towns by converting local train stations into free hotels. Exhibit curator Nato Thompson acknowledged the difficulties involved with trying to capture such work. “Projects in ‘Living as Form (The Nomadic Version)’ resist display in an archive like this. Admittedly, each video, poster, and image remains a pale shadow of the original action. Nevertheless, the sheer scale, geographic range, and interdisciplinary nature of these works illustrate how these kinds of projects are participating in the social and political landscape,” he said.

“Living as Form” combines the artistic and the everyday in unique and compelling ways. By viewing social activism through the lens of the gallery, the collection hopes to challenge viewers to reflect on the roles of and subtle interactions between social engagement and art in their lives.