Even as we strive to create art that moves past the limitations of capitalism, we must still work within this system. How do you create communities without hierarchies when those hierarchies are pressing down all around you and limiting your time, resources and energy?
After The Storm Editor Alex Mell-Taylor sits down with artist Claire Alrich to discuss moving past this paradox. We also chat about the nature of beauty and activism and discuss her favorite futurist media.
Alex Mell-Taylor
Could you just, in your own words, tell us a little bit about who you are?
Claire Alrich
Sure. My name is Claire Alrich, she/her pronouns. I live in Northeast Washington, DC, and I would call myself a multidisciplinary artist. I have a background in dance and theater, but my work really encompasses a whole world of performance. I work a lot with textiles as well as community facilitation, teaching and various other kinds of ambiguous art organizing within the community. I've lived in DC for the last eight years, and most of the work I've done has been in DIY and self-produced spaces in DC, spanning the dance, music and visual art communities. I've also done some teaching in schools and working with [non-profits]..
Alex Mell-Taylor
So when you say DIY, “Do It Yourself,” my first image of that is Pinterest or people making improvements around the house. Could you explain what that means in an art context?
Claire Alrich
That's a great question … DC has a really rich history in a DIY, “Do It Yourself,” music scene, specifically stemming from the punk music scene and that community. To me, it has actually more of a big, grungy feel. If we're going to put on a music show, we have a house. We're living in a house with a group of people. We're going to put on a show in our living room or we're going to go to this in a park. And we're just going to have a show and we're not going to have any permits. We're just going to do it. DIY is sort of like a “just do it energy.”
Specifically for me, I ran a DIY art gallery with my friends Nick Stavely and Mark Hoelscher. We called it the “Shed Gallery” because it was literally out of a dilapidated shed in my friend's backyard. And we ran it out for two years where we were piecing things together.
And then I'm part of an artist collective and space in DC called Hole In The Sky, which is in a warehouse type space, which similarly is putting on shows and doing things. It is a little bit outside of capitalism … I would say it's more in the sense of making art for art's sake. Often it's totally self-produced and the artist is reaching out. “Oh, I have something to do. You have a space?” … To circle back, it's more connected to … a grungy aesthetic of making your art happen because you want to make it happen, and that being a strong enough reason.
Alex Mell-Taylor
So it has more to do with the vibe of it.
Claire Alrich
I do feel it's really also about the community, the community of people making it happen. Because it's not just me. One person as Claire saying, “I want to put this on.” It's more like, “Who's the space and who's coming?” People really sort of support each other, saying things like, “Oh, and you know what? I actually really need a speaker for the show. Actually, this person has a speaker. Let me get it.” … Working within those networks.
Alex Mell-Taylor
Sounds a bit like mutual aid.
Claire Alrich
Yeah. People coming together to make art happen both because they want to make it and they also want to see it.
Alex Mell-Taylor
I wanted to talk a little bit about The Field/DC, the org that you're a part of. Can you describe that for me? How it got started, how you got involved and what it does?
Claire Alrich
Fieldwork is an artist feedback method that started in New York City in the 1980s and now has spread. It has various sites around the US, and it's been practiced around the world as well … I like to call it an artist support group. What it looks like is a group of artists of any discipline getting together and they show their work, and they give feedback in this specific method. The design is to make it non-curated so anyone can come in and to give feedback that is a little bit more spacious. So that is non-directorial, as opposed to saying, “Oh, I would have liked your piece more if you had more blue paint in it.” To instead say, “So I noticed you used a lot of yellow.” And then it's up to the artist to say, “Oh, maybe I want to change this a bit.” So that's a little bit of what fieldwork is.
As for my role in it, I've been involved in it for the last seven years as a participant and then now as a facilitator. And I organized the DC chapter of it, which really just means organizing the sessions. Often they're eight or 10-week sessions where you meet every week. It's a structure to make work. It's a structure for community, which I think is really important, especially coming from a performing arts background. When you're making a dance, you're making a performance piece or theater, you need to do it to understand what it is. If the first time you do it is because there's a performance with a full audience and everything, you're not going to know everything. So it's a way of also just working through things.
But it's open to artists of all disciplines, all kinds. And for me, it's actually really about experimentation. It's been a major part of my art practice. I've grown into it in terms of … experimenting in my own art practice. I want to go here and try this out. But also, to me, it's a real tool of learning how I'm seeing art and how I'm connecting with my art community and helping me think about how I am shifting my lens around seeing and about talking about what I'm seeing.
And I think maybe the other thing, it's ideally a non-hierarchical situation. When I'm a facilitator, I often will say, “I'm basically just organizing the time and the space.” We do have two hours in that space. So I'll make sure that we use those two hours so that everyone serves everyone. But I'm not necessarily this expert, and I'm not telling the group what to do. So that's the other thing about it. It's supposed to be a community in that sense.
Alex Mell-Taylor
That is wonderful. … A lot of times when I hear people talk about crits in the fine art community, they can be very brutal, not everywhere, but in a lot of places. And this sounds like it's almost the antithesis of that.
Claire Alrich
It's designed to be supportive. But also for me, I feel like it's honing how to experience it as a viewer. It's honing what you're seeing. And that's why it's open to anyone because anyone can ask, well, “What are you seeing? What are you noticing in that?” It's divorcing the critique experience from “good or bad” or “like or didn't like it.” It's just, “What was your experience? And name that.” And then it's up to me as an artist to say, “Okay, that is the experience I was hoping to convey or that wasn't.” Or, “Actually, that's really interesting. Let me go further.” It's about how we are sharing experiences and then not having to focus on what's right or wrong, getting out of the good-bad binaries, ideally breaking down some binaries around art and thinking.
Alex Mell-Taylor
I love that. Earlier you talked about how community is very important for this practice. What would challenges be in both creating that community … both in the DC area and elsewhere?
Claire Alrich
I do feel like space is huge. Where is their space? Where can you have regular space? Because it is ideally a two- or three-hour weekly meeting over eight to 10 weeks. And when is the time that's good for a lot of people, and you have people maybe who are working in the restaurant industry or people who are working a regular job. When is a good time for people to get together? And that's a huge thing.
There's always this question of money. If we're renting a space … I also need to make sure if I'm organizing a session that this person should be paid for their time because they are giving … effort on their part in coming and organizing. And you're like, “Well yes, because of all these exchanges we set up, this person should be paid.” The question of money … how much do you say this is going to exist outside of capitalism?
We just want to get together and share art, but also there's real people's skills in their space … and then there's also the real question of, “Okay, the goal is that it's a non-hierarchical space, but how do you organize that in practice to make sure everyone feels seen and feels safe and feels welcome?” That is a constant negotiation. I'm lucky. I have a great group of fieldwork facilitators. We talk about our experiences too and how we can do better. I feel any time you're trying to operate, not in a capitalist system, there's a lot of conversation that needs to happen. What's the right way to do it? And it's often just case-by-case.
Alex Mell-Taylor
The dilemma of building a non-hierarchical structure while still being surrounded and immersed in hierarchies, that sounds challenging. Have there been any particular frameworks that your organization has used that you found helpful? Frameworks, philosophies, theories, anything like that?
Claire Alrich
I should say Fieldwork DC — fieldwork, overall — is a very loose network. And The Field/DC is very loose too in that it's an organization, but it's just me and a couple of other people. It's not a nonprofit or anything like that, but we work with other nonprofits. So that's some background there.
I have this idea of “to see and be seen.” I think it's an important human desire. Everyone wants to be seen. So how can I make people feel seen? I think it's just giving it space and time, not rushing. That's something I really try and think about when I'm organizing a session within the group, letting there be space for people to feel seen.
Alex Mell-Taylor
I want to transition a little bit because you're involved with so much in the community. There's another group called Area Woman. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Claire Alrich
It’s a performance collective that I started with two of my friends, Sarah Lewitus and Sadie Leigh. And we started in about 2018. We've also worked with our friend Meg Lowey a lot.
I think going back to that kind of DIY aesthetic is that we wanted to do more performing and do different kinds of performances that weren't in a traditional proscenium theater space. We just got together and started. And I just said dance theater performances, but our performances often involve textiles and audience interactions. And so we've done a couple evening-length shows. We worked with the Fringe Festival in 2018, which is a great organization. And then in 2019, we made our own show that toured to eight different spaces. We did it in bars and art galleries. The idea of just getting out of the traditional places where dance is happening. Everything we've done is really created very collaboratively, from the movement to the social media to all of it, where it's sort of a group art project.
Alex Mell-Taylor
It sounds very collaborative.
Claire Alrich
I think I’m always interested in how we can connect with the audience and how we can bring people in in different ways. We didn't do too much during the last couple of years. Live performances have been a little bit tricky. We are doing a show in May that will be a limited audience run. It will be in a park that will be a hike and dance performance combo.
Alex Mell-Taylor
That sounds lovely. Your Instagram, by the way, looks wonderful.
Claire Alrich
Oh, my gosh!
Alex Mell-Taylor
The art that I see on it is very subversive from my perspective. How do you conceptualize art like that? That is both subversive and trying to challenge current systems of oppression? And how would you say that relates to imagination in general?
Claire Alrich
For me, it's not just about what the end thing is. It's the whole story. It's like honing my imagination capabilities. It's helping me think about different ways of doing things. And hopefully I think with an audience or a viewer, it's also letting them into some of those possibilities.
I'm also especially interested in messiness and failure and things that are not quite clean. Like I said, often I do a lot of work with textiles and sewing and dyeing and putting different pieces of fabric together that don't actually go together. And even just that small thing of sewing two pieces of fabric that wouldn't necessarily look normal or you wouldn't think to be next to each other … literally sewing it together has so much metaphorical potential to me. Sewing specifically, this idea of bringing things together, always makes me think a lot about how we are forming community and thinking about how the pieces of our society work.
I recognize I'm not changing something necessarily by doing it, but for me, it's about how it lets my brain shift and think. So a big project I did this last fall was with Rhizome DC, which is a really great space and venue up in Takoma Park, Maryland. It was called still, life and was an immersive silk installation which has interactive components and workshops. It was about wondering how we can be together and how can you be in a space without needing to produce something? Just being in the space.
And it was also about beauty. I'm a big believer in beauty and … big beauty, like, awe. Moments where you're awestruck. And I think that … that's a human right. Everyone should have moments where they're like, “Wow, I'm in something very beautiful.” In connection to beauty I think there's something of how that makes us feel invested in our world, and in our community that then can have a lot of other possibilities.
Also within this idea of breaking down systems of oppression. I don't know if I would say that my art is always doing that, but more like breaking down norms like, “Oh, this is how something has to be, or this is how this type of exchange needs to be.” I'm really all for making art for no purpose, making things, trying things. You don't necessarily have to sell it at the end.
Alex Mell-Taylor
So many wonderful points. I'm trying to decide which branch to jump off to because I really did love that. I'm going to go with what's in my head, first. So you're talking about beauty and how that is a concept and a value that you like to foster in your art. What do you, as an artist, consider beauty? Because I think that is in itself an interesting political act that can be very subversive.
Claire Alrich
I do wish there was another word for beauty because it's so loaded. I'm definitely not talking about the beauty industry or something like that, but to me, it's almost beauty as a feeling. The feeling when you see a beautiful sky, the sunset or the sunrise. That feeling of seeing, that is what I mean. And I think that that can happen in a whole range of experiences.
Even the other day, there was a weird cement tube on the ground that was painted orange on the inside. And I was like, “Oh, my God, this tube is so beautiful.” I was really looking at this, and saying, “If this tube was in a museum right now, everyone would be looking at it as beautiful.” I do think it's so personal, and I think what I try to do with my art is communicate my version of beauty or my experience of it, and then maybe that reads for someone else, or maybe it does something different. I think generally with my art, I tend to work in more abstract worlds, and maybe it has a very specific reason for me, but then leaving it open for people to connect.
I am very inspired by Merce Cunningham, who was really an amazing choreographer and worked with John Cage. He has a quote about how he made a dance about falling. It was just about falling. He went to Berlin and they said, “Oh, it's about the Berlin Wall.” And he went somewhere else. And they said, “Oh, it's about the Vietnam War.” And it's just, if you make something that is imbued with a certain feeling, then people will take away what they need from it or their own connection with it, as opposed to saying this is what this is about.
To the thing of beauty, I feel for me as an artist, it is something I've realized is a skill set I've honed. It is seeing beauty around me and feeling the agency to stop and notice it, which I think our culture doesn't necessarily lift up. Well, in certain ways, it does. … We have the beauty industry, for instance. But not necessarily, “Let me stop and look at this sky” or “Let me look at this tree.” Let me stop and notice something is a skill to hone. And I think that it really enhances our well-being and ability to enjoy life.
Alex Mell-Taylor
I agree with that. It intersects with a lot of important issues with leisure and time. A couple of minutes back, you were talking about the need for art not to have a certain utility or productivity, which I think is very important. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Because especially in activist spaces, I feel like sometimes there is this need to link art specifically to a political mural …
Claire Alrich
… or an art sale. Totally. I do feel like it's a tricky thing because I also believe that artists, we live in a society where we are undervalued. And people say, well, “Don't you want to do this thing for free? ... your fun hobby doing art.” And it's like, “No, this should be valued, and this should be paid and all of the things.” I find it really challenging. I do sometimes sell work of various kinds. And people are like, “Think about how much time you put into it, and that's what your value should be.” And I always say, “How do you know? How do you break this out?” That's definitely a struggle I have: how do you think about the value of stuff?
Especially from a performance background and thinking about connecting with activism, there's so much power in what can't be tangible. It isn't a product that you can take away and say, “Oh, now I have this thing, or I've had this experience.” I think that to me is part of this project of imagining a different future where we're able to exist without it needing to end in a product. Art is a space where we can practice that. Especially dance and movement art and theater art, where it is about literally the space and time you're with people. It's interesting, that movement in the kinetic sense and movement in a political sense. There's a reason they're similar words. And there's all this history of artists and activists connecting.
For me, I do a lot of experimental dance. Just being in a space with people and doing an exercise. A simple one is to walk through the space and just notice how close you can get to someone else, noticing how to be in a space with someone else. Or sharing weight with someone is a very simple movement exercise you often do where you're leaning or walking. It's a basic thing of learning how to support someone else with your body. We do have a culture that devalues our physical knowledge, but there's so much knowledge in our body and how we interact and how we're connected. About 90% of communication is non-verbal. And it's like, “Okay, how are we practicing that and how are we thinking about that?”
I actually think that's a space for activists. If we're thinking about different ways that art can be involved in activism, what if you had a movement workshop with a group of people and then you went and talked about Medicare for All? I don't know, what would that look like? It's not like I've really been fighting to do that, but it's an idea, those sorts of things. What sorts of spaces can different art approaches connect to beyond like, “Oh, yes, I made this painting.”
Alex Mell-Taylor
Integrating it, being intersectional, if you will, rather than being viewed as a “nice to have.”
Claire Alrich
Right? Everyone understands what it is to be a body moving through space. And dance is just putting that in a different context. But then you can also take it out of that context. And then if you're at a protest, what is it to be a body in space? It's a question that dance is asking, which I think is so applicable across other spaces.
Alex Mell-Taylor
We're creating this type of art, this sort of kinetic art that is not as easy to be productized, if you will. What would you say are some barriers that you've experienced?
Claire Alrich
To me, I think space is the biggest one, and I think money is obviously also part of it. But especially in DC, I've been a part of a couple of different spaces that have ended up having to close because of development. And I think, especially in the DIY community, it's sort of expected. These are spaces that are existing on the margins. They're not going through the system, and there's a benefit to that.
Yet that also makes them tenuous. So I think there's some beauty and being like, “Okay, things come and go. Like things are not forever and letting stuff go.” But it makes it challenging to plan. And even, I think, for the artist community in DC, yes, you can make stuff work in your living room or whatever, but if you have access to a more regular space and you know that that's going to be there, it’s easier. And I also think of space in terms of who gets to stay living in DC? Who's around?
Alex Mell-Taylor
You actually brought up an interesting point there regarding space. We were talking earlier about physically being able to rent out a space. But there are other spaces as well, like emotional space.
Claire Alrich
If you're working two different jobs, do you have the mental capacities to come to an art show? I think about public transportation. Like what time does the bus end up going to this space? Do you need a car to access it or not? Are they bringing people from outside of DC? Is there touring? Is that a possibility or not? If there's a touring company, do they have a place to stay? Is there space for someone to come from New York and share something? Granted, if you have enough money, you can figure out all of the space things.
But I also think if you have a space, like for example there's Rhizome DC. Shout out again, I think it has been an amazing kind of community space for many years …
Alex Mell-Taylor
Can you briefly describe what Rhizome is?
Claire Alrich
Rhizome is a non-profit community art space. It feels like a house venue. but no one lives there. It’s a big supporter of DIY art and music. And they host workshops, art exhibits, concerts … I'm actually going to go to a concert there tonight. But yes, it's right in Takoma Park, right by the Metro. So it's easy to get there. Or it's possible to get there, I guess I should say. Not necessarily easy. They'll host traveling artists … It's just a very open space that really makes things happen, but in a loose and supportive way.
Alex Mell-Taylor
The glue that holds a lot of informal spaces together.
Claire Alrich
I've been there and there'll be a homeschool art group, and then there'll be a concert and then there'll be a community forum thing. It is a kind of DIY space, but it's also not. People aren't living there. So you're not contending with it being a living space as well, which DIY spaces often are.
It speaks to the energy of, “Yes, I could put on a show in my living room, but then also I've got to destroy my living room to make it a show space.” Which you can do. But it makes it a little bit different. It makes what's possible different in how you think about things.
I also just think of space in terms of rehearsal space, studio space. And to your point of this mental space and time to think. What I hear from a lot of other artist colleagues is just about time. If you're working or whatever your issue is, you need childcare or whatever. How do you have the mental space to do something as well?
Alex Mell-Taylor
That's a good thing to reflect on. So, transitioning to our last question. What is your favorite piece of media about the future?
Claire Alrich
Okay, this question I really was like, what do I even do? I don't feel like I have a cool answer.
Alex Mell-Taylor
Any answer you have will be cool.
Claire Alrich
Okay. What I started thinking about was the movie WALL•E. … There's a lot of messages in there. But how in the beginning it's just this little robot in a human refuge finding things that are beautiful. … Even if that movie didn't continue on and the humans don’t come back to nature. Just a world where you have this little robot going around finding things that [are] beautiful. It's a future I kind of like, in a way. Or I don't know if I like it that humans go extinct. But that was the thought that came to my mind. There's certainly better things out there that I'm not thinking of. But that's first thought, best thought.
Alex Mell-Taylor
No, I love that. I love the idea of what you were saying earlier about the ability to reflect on beauty. And that's what WALL•E is. He's a collector and he's literally finding beautiful things and storing them.
Claire Alrich
Yeah.
Alex Mell-Taylor
Where can our readers find you? What are your handles? What shows are you having? What's your website? Give us the whole download.
Claire Alrich
The whole shebang! I do have a website, clairealrich.com, and I update it semi-regularly but you can definitely find me on there as well as my email of alrich.claire@gmail.com, and my Instagram is @calllrich. But definitely feel free to reach out to me on any of the mediums of Instagram or email. Always interested to talk about possible collaborations or ideas or anything.
And then in terms of what is coming up … I've got some other textile pieces that might be in some shows but still finding the details, so follow along for more to come!
I should say, if you're interested in getting involved with Fieldwork, we will hopefully have a session in the fall, so that information will be up on my website as well.
