Introduction to There, We Said
By Patricia Maloney, Melissa MillerCriticism fails if it doesn’t understand that it plays a supporting role to discussions in real time and space.
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CCA | Art Practical Collaborative
There, we said, and in this place. How are we to think of there? And this taking place or this having a place...Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever
Art Practical was launched five years ago, on October 29, 2009. The first issue included two features, six reviews, and a shotgun review. We have gone on to publish an additional 102 issues, including this one. In the process, we have also continually worked to demonstrate the powerful results that thoughtful, rigorous criticism can produce. So, on this notable anniversary, we focus our attention on our purpose and core activity: criticism itself.
This issue also serves as an introduction to the expanded partnership that Art Practical is embarking on with California College of the Arts, in which the magazine serves as a tool for project-based learning and professional development. The students in the CCA Art Practical Collaborative who have curated this issue participate in an elective seminar that examines the various stances by which art publications define critical discourse for their audiences; they also contribute to the publication throughout the semester.
What follows is their selection of individual texts that have characterized our objectives to experiment; to articulate artists’ voices; to be self-reflective, evaluative, and adaptive; to best represent the practices of the Bay Area cultural communities; and to believe in the informed personal description of the encounter with an artwork.
Criticism is ultimately an exercise in prospecting, in staking claims. It delineates proximity and distance to individuals, ideas, and spaces. Art Practical defies the notion that we are losing our claims on this city, because artists and writers have been writing their story here every week for the past five years, rendering this place in their image. The articles included here are testaments of why we persist and for whom. Enjoy.—Patricia Maloney with Melissa Miller
Pipilotti Rist. Pepperminta, 2009; film still. Courtesy of the Artist.
By Carol Anne McChrystal, Keturah Cummings
By Southern Machine Exposure Project Contributors
By Shannon Jackson
By Glen Helfand
By Dena Beard
By Jeanne Gerrity
By Patricia Maloney
By Lea Feinstein
By Brandon Brown
