Public Audit

Abstract

The current economic recession has been debilitating for many artists regardless of the content of their work. Since this climate is characterized by a particular hostility toward controversial art, it is especially significant that Elizabeth Sisco. Louis Hock. and David Avalos have maintained a reputation for causing trouble in San Diego. Their collaborative public art projects receive scandalous reports in local and national news media and are often used as examples of the National Endowment for the Art' inadequate standards of quality. Their most current collaborative project Art Rebate (1993) refunded $10 bills to 450 undocumented workers along the San Diego, California/Mexico border. It was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego and Centro Cultural de la Raza as part of the La Frontera/The Border exhibition. In response to recent attention to border relations due to NAFTA and other government policies, the artists wished to refute the popular misconception that undocumented Mexican workers do not pay taxes as well as demonstrate. albeit with a small symbolic gesture, their appreciation of the undocumented as valued members of Western states, communities. Furthermore, I believe their work has significant implications for undocumented workers from other nations, residing in other regions of the United States - Caribbean workers in Florida and New York City, for example. If the communities in which the undocumented workers from these areas work and reside could also acknowledge their common contributions, in the form of taxes among other things, then perhaps we as a society could also begin to address the crimes inflicted upon these groups and apply our democratic notions of human rights to those within our national borders. The term proliferates in today's political rhetoric and has infiltrated the rhetoric of many professions including the alternative arts field. Yet, in the various contexts in which it is used, it is difficult to determine what is being referred to or how it is defined by the individuals or groups using it. Often is unscrupulously repeated and reiterated without any acknowledgement of its ambiguity or its several, sometimes contradictory, working definitions. Sisco, Hock, and Avalos grapple with their own layered definitions and attempt to avoid the gross generalizations of community that occurs particularly in public art endeavors. As they state the artists are not seeking to create communities, they are seeking to create public forums that involve diverse participation. They do not profess nor attempt to empower anyone, but instead try to reveal public policies that are implemented without public debate. The first of their collaborative projects was Welcome to America's Finest Tourist Plantation (1988). This project consisted of a bus poster depicting a pair of hands Washing dirty dishes, a pair of hands being hand-cuffed, and a pair of hands delivering clean towels to a hotel room. These images were displayed on the back panel of 100 public buses in San Diego whose routes stopped in the restaurant and hotel districts. The piece, executed in time for the 1988 Super Bowl held in San Diego, attempted to reveal the presence of undocumented workers in he tourist industry of the city. In between these projects Sisco, Hock, and Avalos have been involved in several other collaborative works with other artists and scholars. Red Emma Returns (1989) was a street performance staging a return of anarchist political activist Emma Goldman to San Diego after her first and only visit in 1912 to assist the fight against the Anti-free Speech Ordinance; participating artists were Carla Kirkwood, Deborah Small, Bartlet Sher, William Weeks, and Scott Kessler in addition to Hock, Sisco, and Avalos. Americas Finest? (1990) were bus benches that appeared throughout the city for one month critiquing the increasing use of deadly force by San Diego police officers and the city government's refusal to hold the department accountable for their actions; artists involved included Small, Kessler, Sisco, and Hock. …