Cauleen Smith: Practice

I’m hopeful that the practice of public culture in all of the iterations offered by fellow committee members can be made manifest in the way Visarts asserts itself on the campus and in the greater San Diego / La Jolla community.

On the campus, between studios, on the bus, in the bike lanes, at the city council meetings, in the canyons. I believe we gain immensely by allowing the local to be our laboratory and the launch pad for the global.

I understand that creating relationships and dialogs that span Latin America and Asia is imperative. I would like to suggest that demonstrating the ways in which research, collaboration and production really do create moments of destabilization, and therefore opportunities for reflection and communication in public life must happen here, in San Diego/La Jolla, well.

I’ve noticed that this kind of work is fruitful and engaging when there are opportunities to contribute on both ends – the high/expert and the low/amateur. An openness to the ways in which the “greater public” are actually needed in order for public art to “work”, we are not solely making work for the legacy of our sponsors/benefactors/institutional umbrellas. I think public culture should really in fact be public.