Steve Lambert

Thomas Seeley did an interview with me about Capitalism Works For Me True/False for Breakthru Radio. You can listen to the show online.

The book is organized around three sections:

‘WHAT are examples of these movements?’ Contemporary and historical writings, including reprints of ‘Suicidal Desires’ (from the book Superstudio: Life Without Objects, by Peter Lang and William Menking) and ‘Designer as Author’ (from the book Design Noir by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby), historical reflections by Helena Mattsson and Christina Zetterlund and an interview with Doina Petrescu (FR) by Ramia Mazé.

‘HOW does it happen and what does it take?’ A substantial analysis of the tactics and methods of the examples of projects featured in the DESIGN ACT archive, by Ramia Mazé and Natasha Marie Llorens.

‘WHERE does it happen and in what contexts?’ A broad perspective on practice from institutions, education and research to new forms of practitioner initiated projects: Interviews with Pelin Dervis (TK), Joseph Grima (IT/US), Ou Ning (CH), Meike Schalk (SE/DE), Yanki Lee (UK), Ana Betancour (SE), Otto von Busch (SE), Mauricio Carbalan (AR) and Tor Lindstrand (SE), by Magnus Ericson.

The following is an essay by Sam Gould written for The Present Group‘s to accompany the edition of “I Want You To Have This”. I was very flattered by it.

If you prefer a pretty pdf version, here it is. There’s more on the project (an audio interview, photos, and ability to buy one if they are still available) at The Present Group’s website.

Against Generosity, or: Steve Lambert, and a Lot of Other People, Want Something From You

by Sam Gould

Generosity is a lie. To be more precise, generosity, as a form of absolute selflessness is almost never achievable, and most often when you come across someone attempting to be actively generous it’s an action rife with conflict and contradiction. Though we hate to admit it, we shouldn’t be worry about this too much. Unless you are training to be the Messiah why should it be any other way? People want to redeem themselves, they want to boost their ego, their sense of self-worth. People want to do good deeds for any number of reasons. And yet, to continue the adage, our punishment for our good deeds done is often the guilt in knowing that we wanted something in return for our actions, no matter how incalculable that return might be within our own heads and hearts. However benignly or benevolently, however grossly, we are selfish beings. Is that so wrong? How much good is psychically corrupted in hiding it?

Would it be more helpful for us to start describing these acts in a somewhat different fashion, a fashion more productive to the situation at hand, one that for semantics sake doesn’t degenerate into questions of intent? There’s no shame in admitting that we get something out of giving. It doesn’t dilute the gesture or its value. We create our own values when it comes to un-regulated and intangible systems of exchange. Let’s therefore promote a community of reciprocity wherein our return, the exchange in question, is self-determined. Let’s do away with the problematics of generosity for something more anarchic, more complex, more… generous in deed than definition.

Steve Lambert – his person and his work – exists on a continuum in a long line of absurdist provocateurs hell bent on changing the world for the better one sincere, well-formed, slightly ridiculous gesture at a time. Sometimes it’s not intentionally so ridiculous, it’s just that from the outside, for those not already there, it can seem a little far-fetched. But just wait. You’ll see. He makes objects and actions in equal measure, never favoring one over the other – they are all constructed as a means of provoking dialogue around various political subjects, profound and humorous alike. For Lambert these bits of provocation are intended to get people thinking (and talking) about how they act, what they believe, how they imagine the world around them, and how they imagine what it could be. Inaccurately defined, his work is generous. It gives a lot of itself. It also asks for much in return from its viewers and participants. So, from here on out, I’ll use Lambert as an agent for my argument.

Lambert’s newest project is an edition, a simple wooden box with the words, “I Want You to Have This” inscribed upon it. Keep it by your front door. Put that scratched copy of Come On Feel the Lemonheads inside, your old rabbit’s foot, the weed someone gave you and you’ve kept in the freezer for years, in the hopes it will remain fresh, thinking, “I like pot. I’ll smoke this someday. The perfect day…” and yet you just never got around to it. I Want You to Have This allows you to give away the shit you don’t want anymore, the items that follow you, from one house to the next, one phase of your life to another, like a benign demon, a cuddly, lice-free, and not all that heavy monkey on your back. They aren’t too much of an intrusion or burden, these items. But honestly, they take up space and you don’t need them now, and you might not ever have to begin with. Why not give them away? The piece is a very simple gesture that aims at discussing a less than simple subject; the transparency of a gift delivered insincerely. A gift can be a burden, and a burden given in the guise of a gift can really piss people off, as cultural norms state that you have to accept the damn thing without complaint.

These days it seems to call someone out as a Social Practice artist is to say they are doing something, which for one is public, as well as new and difficult to define. Or to call some a Social Practice artist is to say that their work is, again, public and that they aren’t trying hard enough. Lambert is a Social Practice artist, but not quite for either of those reasons. His work is about publics, yes. And his work is not hard to define or difficult. It is deceptively simple. Simplicity, as a methodology, is a great asset in the creation of a public around a piece or practice. It allows those who engage a work to enter into the piece easily, with confidence that they are aware of its place in the world, how it works, and how they are to engage it. From there on out, they gain the agency to consider, deconstruct, and absorb the work as their own. They are aware of the ruse, the trick, the framework, and in the case of Lambert’s practice, their “in on the joke.” His work, in line with a particular stain of Social Practice, is public in that it is often situated outside of the gallery space, but far more importantly it is about galvanizing a group of unknown people around an idea to consider it and make it their own. It is open. It is malleable. It grows from project to project to include others. It continues conversations from one to the next, and encourages the viewer/participant to converge with the work of other practitioners, as well as become one themselves if they do not consider themselves one already. It asks us to do this work till it doesn’t become work any more but life. It asks us to form A Public around our work so that through embodiment and accumulation it may become The Public, i.e., Common Place, Quotidian. It represents itself in a state of becoming, in that it suggests to those who encounter it a possibility of a future, a future which they are part of – with others.

Social Practice accepts and values the influence of other fields and histories outside of the aesthetic realm. Furthermore, contrary to what one might expect, Social Practice values art and aesthetics equally as much as the practices so-called outside influences. And, with that in mind, it finds that the designation of art can allow one to mine fields and hybridize them in a manner to elicit dialogue around issues that are important to the practitioner, and as this work is about the formation of publics, those that gravitate towards the work. Of course this forces one to mention an important issue – there’s a lot of disingenuous crappy social practice work out there that doesn’t work hard enough, that isn’t critical of its own intentions, and yet due to its relative “newness” gets lumped with the rest. This is work that wants to give, wants to be (pseudo)generous, without being honest with its intentions or desires, without being open with its tensions, which are generative and nothing to hide. I say this without a want to be cynical, and I’d argue that my statement isn’t that. It’s to say that to create a space that values the socio-cultural and political intentions of its rhetoric the person or people who envisioned and desired that space need to get naked, fight to relieve themselves of hierarchies, and attempt the creation of an area of questioning as much as an area of statement making. Too much Social Practice continues to value statements over questions. I’d argue though that the questions, in the end, are the slightly more valuable by- product of the two. Good questions provoke more thoughtful statements. Questions, which are of honest concern to those who ask them, are reciprocal in nature.

And this brings us back to my original point. A practice concerned with the formation of publics, the notion of social art as a form of generosity has become increasingly prevalent. For a practice whose strengths, for one, lay within its non-hierarchical stance, this is disingenuous when inconsiderately employed. In response to the work of artists such as Harrell Fletcher, do-gooder work abounds, with more and more works and projects proposing to do this and that for someone. But the imitators and the influenced, as well as Fletcher’s work itself, seem dangerously hollow. I say dangerous because I see and believe deeply in the public possibilities and political efficacy of a certain strain of Social Practice. When a work or worker presupposes that they have something to give to someone without making it plainly apparent that they get something in return for this act, a system of hierarchies is established and allowed to flourish; between artist and participant, between white people and people of color, between middle class or rich and the poor, able and disabled, and so forth down the line. A practitioner working in this way promotes dictation over facilitation in that its more about making statements through their interactions than it is about asking questions of the people who allow that interaction to emerge, or about being publicly questioned ourselves. We need to express, in overt, theoretical, even aesthetics terms that we as social practitioners are part(s) of the public which we are actively attempting to form, not actors alongside or outside the public(s) which we endeavor to help create. And, if it is evident to others that, in certain circumstances we do not consider ourselves part of that public, we need to ask difficult questions of ourselves if we wish to see the work we do as separate from ourselves while continuing to be politically effaceable. Simply put, our concerns and actions need to be reciprocal in some form or another, and this reciprocity needs to be visible. We need to ask, “What do I get out of this,” with as much intention as, “what can I give.” This is a problem that Lambert handles often, and elegantly.

Whether creating a space to publicly talk “about anything” (as in Lambert’s 2006 work, I Will Talk With Anyone…), or an object that asks its viewer to consider the manners and habits in which we give of ourselves to others (as in Lambert’s newest work), an exchange between maker and participant takes place in the work we make. In this sense, there really isn’t too much of a difference between I Want You to Have This and another work of Lambert’s, a collaboration with The Yes Men and many others, entitled NY Times Special Edition. Each work takes a simple object and presents a set of possibilities and problems in front of those who encounter it. Both are works that are supposed to live with you, rather than you visit them, in that they enter into the most quotidian aspects of our day; our commute, a visit to a friend’s house. While the scale of each project differs, the intentions of both are of a piece. They ask us to question the things in our life that we find most common place and immovable; the material wealth we collect yet find burdensome, our complicity in war’s fought in our name, education and the models we accept for ourselves and others, or our participation in economies of all sorts. With a slight smile they ask, “Well… what if?” They give something to you for free, and yet ask you to do something with the information or object you’ve received. They agitate for us to question our considerations. They are anything but singular, anything but passive, anything but generous as we know it.

From the Lower East Side Printshop’s Special Edition Residency 2010 Catalog Essay by Sarah Hanley.

Steve Lambert
Many artists aspire to be revolutionary, but Steve Lambert is truly original and radical. To begin, it takes more than a few seconds of preemptory scanning of his webpage – the main hub for his action and web-based work – to fully understand what he is about.  Second, his intended audience is much larger than the art world.  Though he possesses traditional degrees in art from respected institutions, he has managed to escape the solipsistic trap that often results from such training to create work that anyone, anywhere, can connect with and understand.   Finally, though the final product is frequently something that cannot be owned or possessed as an investment in a traditional sense, this is not his sole intention or driving concept.  Instead, Steve Lambert has dedicated his career to creating pubic signs, freeware, websites, and publications that will truly cause anyone who is lucky to witness them to stop and think, or to just improve their lives in a simple but meaningful way.

Take for example his freeware Firefox application titled ADD-ART, which replaces all ads on the browser with artwork.  Or his special mock edition of the New York Times (http://nytimes-se.com), which unlike its sarcastic relation The Onion, envisions a truly guileless and utopian alternate reality in which all public universities are free and Condoleezza Rice holds a press conference to frankly confess that the Bush Administration knew all along that there were no WMDs.

Lambert brought this spirit of enjoyable subversion to his residency at the Printshop with a series of three prints that challenge basic ideas behind ownership of art.  He was guided by one of two (or a combination of both) of the following self-determined principles.  First, he wanted people who buy the work to have to come to terms with the fact that “you can’t get a perfect one.”  This concept sprang from Lambert’s interest in Buddhist ideas, specifically, that one must accept things as they are, because that is how they should be.  OUT OF IDEAS is a screenprint in Lambert’s signature brushwork lettering style (downloadable on Lambert’s website) and each impression is either torn in two, splashed with coffee, or both, depending on the artist’s whim.   Likewise, each impression of the variable edition screenprint This is Perfect is uniquely off register.  No two are alike, but also – none are perfect.   Lambert’s choice of palette for this print was inspired by the color scheme for a palace he visited during a trip to Turkey with a friend, who noticed that one of its tiles had a mistake in the pattern.  They later learned that this was intentional and all Islamic art incorporates a flaw, as Muslims believe that nothing can be perfect but Allah.

Lambert was also interested in overturning the expectation that a collector can buy his work and simply look at it.  This was the guiding principle for In BLANK days… , an interactive print that requires the owner to fill in the chalkboard-painted blanks.  Depending on the choice of words, the resulting statement can become a directive/goal, a means of stress release, or a source of humor.  “If you own the work, you have to do something.  It’s not just…I own it, and that’s the end. “

Stephanie Syjuco created a hub for artist’s books that are print-on-demand called Particulated Matter. My Everything You Want Right Now catalog is on there as well as the Shopdropping catalog which includes an interview with me (which hopefully has been checked for grammar and spelling by now).

From the Art In America website:

Brazen critics of the art establishment William Powhida and Steve Lambert dominated the booth for the Charlie James Gallery (Los Angeles). Perhaps best known for “The Special Edition” (2008), a 14-page fake New York Times newspaper heralding the end of the Iraq War, Lambert's high-watt, blinking signage singed messages such as “Money Laundered” and “Invisible” into your field of vision, even after looking away.

via New York’s Satellite Fairs: Bling, String, and Subversive Things – News – News & Opinion – Art in America.

Rachel Dry | Washington Post

I could use more self-control.

That’s one New Year’s resolution, anyway.

Luckily, I am a Mac user and self-control is easily downloadable. One click and a few seconds later, there it is on my desktop. With this program that lets me block certain Web sites for set periods of time, I have outsourced one of my 2010 goals: Waste less time on the Internet.

But wait a minute. (Or wait 90 minutes, actually, because that’s how long I told the SelfControl program to block Gmail.) I haven’t changed — or shown much resolve. I’m not doing the work of focusing more effectively. A piece of code is doing it for

It’s the digital equivalent of the anti-nail-biting polish that attacks the habit by making your nails taste terrible. Or a gym that charges you more money if you don’t show up than if you do, making avoiding exercise a risk to your wallet as well as your health. (This model supposedly exists at a fitness chain in Denmark.) It’s the same as locking the liquor cabinet, or buying a parking spot far from your office and thereby forcing yourself to walk to get some exercise.

If I stop wasting hours of my life on the Web because I’ve blocked some sites, not because I have simply stopped wasting hours online, is it as valuable as if I willed myself to change? It seems not so much willpower as a work-around. In the metrics of New Year’s resolutions, does that count?

John C. Norcross is well versed in this conundrum. He’s a professor of psychology at the University of Scranton and a co-author of “Changing for Good: A Revolutionary Six-Stage Program for Overcoming Bad Habits and Moving Your Life Positively Forward.”

He’s very reassuring. If I am downloading the program, even if it does all the rest of the work for me, that’s enough initiative. “It’s the exact same benefit,” he says.
Norcross has tracked New Year’s “resolvers” in several studies and has seen that resolutions, like any successful changes, require “contingency management,” which means setting rewards and punishments that hinge on your behavior.

The approach I’ve asked him about — technology to make you change — is what he calls “mutual control,” where I “voluntarily enter into an informed contract.” It’s different than if my boss unilaterally blocked the time-wasting Web sites on my computer. In this case, I feel responsible or accountable for the change in my behavior.

Even good old-fashioned outsourcing in its entirety can work — and count. Norcross recalls a woman in one of his studies who resolved to keep her house clean. She didn’t want to clean it herself, though, so she hired someone to do it. But she had to work extra hours to pay for the help, so the action was still her own.
And Web-blocking is a lot cheaper than a cleaning service. It’s free.

SelfControl was developed by Steve Lambert, an artist and fellow at the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in New York. He wanted the same thing I did: something that would help him focus. But because he couldn’t find it anywhere, he made it himself, with help from 16-year-old Charlie Stigler, whom he connected with on a site called RentACoder. (Stigler’s the one who came up with the excellent name.)

The program is simple, as Lambert explains: You list the sites that you don’t want to be able to visit. After you select the amount of time you want to block yourself from those sites, your machine won’t let you access them, not even if you restart the computer. Lambert doesn’t have a specific tally for downloads, but he says more than 113,000 people have visited his Web site since March, when he made the program available there, compared with around 6,000 visitors before.

I wish I didn’t need Lambert’s help. I like the idea of changing by muscling through — putting my mind to something, whether eating better, exercising more or checking certain Web sites less obsessively. All things that would lead to a happier, healthier 2010.

I should get over that. That’s what Wendy Wood, a professor of psychology and business at the University of Southern California, has seen in her research on habit change. To alter behaviors, you must change your environment, not just try harder in the same old situation. “We all know that doesn’t work,” she says.

As examples, Wood cites the “5 a Day” campaign to get people to eat fruits and vegetables, and the “Got Milk” ads — efforts to give people information about healthy foods that assumed we’d all change our behavior once we had the facts. They didn’t work. “We’re all still in an environment where we have cookies in the cupboard,” Wood points out. “If we stop by the QuickStop to get some gas, there’s not milk and fresh vegetables there. There’s snacks.”

Wood’s advice is simple: Use changes in your “micro-environment” to develop new habits. Go ahead, put controls on your computer. That’s still you doing the work.
The risk, of course, is that you are doing the work — think Norcross’s “mutual control” — so “you can just switch it back anytime you want to,” Wood warns.

That’s why I like the perspective offered by James Anderson, the creator of LeechBlock, an add-on for the Web browser Firefox that allows a user to block sites for certain periods. (He says that since Feb. 7, 2007, it’s been downloaded more than 250,000 times.) Anderson doesn’t spend as much time in front of a computer as he did when he developed the program; he is currently an assistant professor of theology and philosophy at the Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, N.C., so he can offer a theological perspective on procrastination and resolve.

“If you think that there is meaning to life and this whole world is created by God and you’re created by God — every moment you have is a gift from God — you have a responsibility to use it wisely and not fritter it away,” he says.

And it’s not cheating to ask for help: “It’s morally commendable to recognize your own limitations and to take whatever measures necessary to help you fulfill your responsibilities.”
Morally commendable! This from a professor of theology. So it’s okay for me to say: I can’t do this myself. I need help. I will attain SelfControl in Web app form.

Of course, these various applications only block Internet access. I am still free to search among the documents on my computer, which I did recently as I waited out the SelfControl clock. There’s a quote I was looking for, one that I remember typing and saving in my student days, as I read “The Principles of Psychology” by William James. It’s about habit. At the time I wrote it down, I thought James’s insight on the benefits of effective habits would be just the thing I needed to develop my own.

Long story short: nope.

Maybe now, though, with these other tools to help me micromanage my micro-environment, his words of wisdom will help me this resolution season.

“When a resolve or a fine glow of feeling is allowed to evaporate without bearing practical fruit, it is worse than a chance lost,” James wrote. “It works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. There is no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but never does a manly concrete deed.”

I don’t know what James would think about anti-nail biting nail polish, creative fitness-center billing practices or physically blocking the Internet’s distraction. Those training wheels of habit-changing don’t seem to fit any definition he might use for “manly.”

But at least they’re concrete.

Blake Stimson has included my piece, The Emma Goldman Institute for Anarchist Studies, in his new book, Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings.

Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings
Edited by Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson
Introduction by Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson
MIT Press

From the MIT site:

“Institutional critique” is an artistic practice that reflects critically on its own place within galleries and museums and on the concept and social function of art itself. Such concerns have always been a part of modern art but took on new urgency at the end of the 1960s, when—driven by the social upheaval of the time and enabled by the tools and techniques of conceptual art—institutional critique emerged as a genre. This anthology traces the development of institutional critique as an artistic concern from the 1960s to the present, gathering writings and representative art projects of artists who developed and extended the genre. The artists come from across Europe and throughout North America. The texts and artworks included are notable for the range of perspectives and positions they reflect, and for their influence in pushing the boundaries of what is meant by institutional critique.

Like Alberro and Stimson’s Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology, this volume will shed new light on its subject through its critical and historical framing. Even readers already familiar with institutional critique will come away from this book with a greater and often redirected understanding of its significance.

Artists represented include: Wieslaw Borowski, Daniel Buren, Marcel Broodthaers, Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel, Hans Haacke, Robert Smithson, John Knight, Graciela Carnevale, Osvaldo Mateo Boglione, Guerilla Art Action Group, Art Workers’ Coalition, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Michael Asher, Mel Ramsden, Adrian Piper, The Guerrilla Girls, Laibach, Silvia Kolbowski, Andrea Fraser, Fred Wilson, Mark Dion, Maria Eichhorn, Critical Art Ensemble, Bureau d’Études, WochenKlausur, The Yes Men, Hito Steyerl, Andreas Siekmann

Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo! includes images of early work I did while living in the Mission. The kick-off event and book signing extravaganza will be held Friday, November 6th at the de Young Museum from 5:30-8:45pm.

About the book:

The Mission District is a hot spot for street art, the largest concentration in the world of public painting that embodies activism, culture, passion, and desire for social change.

Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo!, edited by Annice Jacoby [Abrams; June 2009; hardcover] showcases these vibrant works in hundreds of color photographs, with in-depth commentary by the artists who produced them and Mission-savvy writers including a foreword by Grammy Award Winner Carlos Santana.

Birthed in the early 1970s, a provocative new street art scene transformed San Francisco’s legendary Mission District into an art epicenter that crosses popular culture, fine art and political audiences. “Mission Muralismo,” is an ever-growing movement of accomplished street art combining elements of Mexican mural painting, surrealism, pop art, urban punk, eco-warrior, cartoon, and guerilla graffiti that has catapulted many San Francisco artists into the international spotlight.

Featuring over 500 full-color photographs and 30 essays, including artists R. Crumb, Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Barry McGee (TWIST), Rigo, and Spain Rodriguez, Street Art San Francisco comprehensively exposes more than three decades of this expansive and vibrant public art movement.

This is one of the interviews I did while at Prix Ars. Somehow we started talking about death in video games. If you want to know what I think about Grand Theft Auto, watch this: