Groundwork has to be done.

Interviewee: Mary Jane Jacob

On one level it is great that we have other mechanisms for these works to be realised and discussed. It is great that people write about their own stuff, publish books and do things and generate exchanges. There are many more modes of communication, than the few venues in which recognized, major critics and curators publish. Still on another level, in the end there are still maybe ten books to which students and others in the field turn—and they harbour some problematic concepts about social practice. Thus, there remains a need to re-mediate the situation, not just argue with these critics but  further develop and actually overturn the ways in which social art is currently perceived, understood and taught. It is hard to do that groundwork. Maybe we are ill equipped for it. We are not sociologists but still we can sensitively have a conversation with people and listen—because they have lot to say; they have a lot of experience—the experience of art—through these projects. They could tell us something about the art that is social practice and about the art experience of this work. Maybe it would not tell us that such art projects can became a part of life and that life can become art.