Jason Foumberg

In a recent New York Times article on consumer-generated advertisements, which are now the buzz on YouTube and television alike, reporter Louise Story notes, "Consumer brand companies have been busy introducing campaigns…that rely on user-generated content, an approach that combines the populist appeal of reality television with the old-fashioned gimmick of a sweepstakes to select a new advertising jingle."

These marketing gimmicks put the message in the hands of the very people who will later be digesting them. Perhaps it is no surprise that the snack-food generation loves to watch itself and can sell itself on any crappy product, as if the mystery of the ouroboros is that its tail is crunchy and cheese-coated.

Can art survive a similar reality-flavored marketing infusion? What happens when an artist or an educator issues instructions for viewers to become active users of art and culture? Two exhibitions now on view seek to shake us out of mere observational mode and into participatory agents of culture.

Play-Acting
Lee Mingwei’s "Letter Writing" project at the Chicago Cultural Center asks users to enter large mailbox structures and to pen a message to someone who they would have liked to communicate with yet never followed through on it. If left in an un-sealed envelope, the note is available for anyone else to read.

Mingwei’s project is reality-art. Unlike documentary photography (also reality-based) and akin to reality TV, "Letter Writing" project does not put itself in a position to reflect on culture. It is instead a bit of easy entertainment. Many of the letters that I read took a tone that assumed an audience. Surely we act or perform in a certain theatrical manner when we know that we are being watched. But also, what type of real or truthful cathartic message can be conjured in a moment’s notice at the snap of the artist’s fingers? I engaged the work three different times and wrote three spontaneous letters. The first was about unrequited love. Many, many other people shared similar sentiments. My second experience was a response to a political event. Again, many others treated the public mailboxes like a bathroom wall, scrawling punchy witticisms and broad-reaching meaning-of-life taglines. If the mailbox structures were really the toilet stalls that they resemble, the graffiti would be as easily forgettable as the daily purging that normally happens there. My third attempt tended toward a sad cynicism because I knew that I wasn’t accomplishing anything; I was merely play-acting. Lee Mingwei’s art pretends to be a public service. As such, it generalizes the needs of its audience and the public responds in kind, acting out individuality in a rehearsed manner.

Among an ode to Oprah and jabs at corporate America, one user summed up the entire experience of the project quite well. Addressed to "the public," it reads, in part: "You make the world either better or worse and I think that’s either great or less so. Take care of yourself or someone else or no one and nothing at all and I’ll see you around." The ambivalent stance somewhere between compassion and apathy is a blow to Mingwei’s plan for public unity. The user’s comment expresses the inherent futility of living-as-acting, an imitation of a preconceived feeling.

Pray-Acting
Mingwei’s call for spontaneous and meaningful action comes across as rather artificial. So too is the case with a replica of Jerusalem’s Western Wall (also called the Wailing Wall) at Loyola University’s Museum of Art. The plastic replica is placed at the end of an exhibition about Pope John Paul II’s relationship with the Jewish people. Aside from a saturation of text panels, the exhibit contains two types of objects: replicas and authentic artifacts. There is a replica of the Pope’s paperweight alongside the readymade terror of victims’ shoes from the Holocaust. The "Western Wall" invites users to write a prayer and insert it into the cracks of the wall, echoing the age-old practice of serious religious meditation that is enacted in Israel by devout Jews and pilgrims.

The idea of inserting spontaneous hand-written paper prayers into the wall is undercut by the fact that, although we may never have actually been to the real Western Wall, we already know what to expect. These prayers have been rehearsed a million times. As a piece of make-believe, it is one of the finest I have ever seen.

The fake Western Wall is high kitsch; a blessing of pop-religion. The notes inserted into the plastic cracks do not contain an ounce of cynicism, for these are messages to God, not the public. The God being addressed is a generic God, a unity of Catholic and Jew, available to anyone and innate in any object, turning the fake into the real. The generic and the mystical get mixed up here. One prayer reads, "As we remember this horrid time, we must carry on converting evil to stop such a tragety [sic] from ever happening again." The sentiment perfectly encapsulates a confusion of political, religious, private and consumer-driven identities that exist within every gesture, from the Pope’s to the president’s to "the public" and to mine and yours.

Lee Mingwei shows at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 East Washington, (312)744-6630, through July 1. "A Blessing to One Another: Pope John Paul II and The Jewish People" shows at Loyola University Museum of Art, 820 North Michigan, (312)915-7600, through August 12.

(2007-05-29)

Also by Jason Foumberg

Eye Exam
To be an artist is to be a professional dilettante. With what ease does the artist dip in and out of various scientific, economic and political source material and then claim expertise! Often the artist is only an expert of his or her craft; the content of the work, even if it strives to be socially responsible, falls behind the creative practice. Such is the case with two concept-driven exhibitions now on view, Dannielle Tegeder's "The Chicago Index of the Invisible: Incidents and Interconnections," which charts years' worth of missing-person cases in Illinois, and Stuart Keeler and Amanda Browder's "Urban Warp/Weft," an exhibition that considers the issue of "green" or sustainable living
(2007-05-22)

Eye Exam
"La Cabeza," a wild-eyed and multicolored death's head by French artist Niki de Saint Phalle, is far removed from the mournful aspect that such a symbol typically represents
(2007-05-15)

Eye Exam
Katharina Grosse slips a suggestively gothic impression of life through the backdoor of beauty. The 46-year-old German artist is internationally recognized for spewing garishly colored acrylic paint from her air gun in a sweeping gesture on any available surface, from walls, floors and ceilings to beds, piles of soil and, now, gigantic balloons
(2007-05-08)

Eye Exam
The way that we interact with the world, and the way that it actively or passively shapes us, are the topics at hand at Mess Hall's "Marginal Travel" series. Mess Hall is an alternative community center that seeks to engage people in diverse cultural, economic and leisurely topics
(2007-05-01)

Eye Exam
(2007-04-24)

Eye Exam
(2007-04-17)

Portrait of the Gallerist
(2007-04-10)

Tip of the Week
(2007-04-10)

Tip of the Week
(2007-04-03)

Portrait of the Artist
(2007-03-06)

Gallery of Gallerists
(2007-02-27)

Tip of the Week
(2007-02-20)

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