As members ourselves of a particular constellation of communities (white/male/academic/artistic), our programming for The Body Project was informed by the values of that constellation. By starting from the attempt to bring together the arts and academic communities, the Project necessarily was informed by the concerns of those communities. One of the fundamental concerns that arose during the series was the question of normative or transcendent values. We'd like to now briefly describe our understanding of how this question is debated within the art and academic communities and then critically assess this debate in light of our experience producing The Body Project.

Both the arts scene and academe tend to valorize communities that make claims transcending their own perceived self-interest and address the interests of other communities as well. So, overall, academe, as a 'community', tends to support principles of freedom of speech, or rational argumentation. Whether or not this support actually benefits other communities in fact, or merely provides a hegemonistic or leitimizing mechanism for perpetuating the values of a small group (usually white, straight, male), is a matter of considerable debate among academics. But for all their attempts to deconstruct or decode in various ways how values are in fact interests, few academics or artists question the need for transcendental values. Instead, various competing groups within academe or the arts debate whether or not their values are truly the most genuinely transcendent ones.

For the most part, players in the academic and artistic systems who question the need for transcendental values are relegated to marginal positions. For example, some feminists in the Eighties began to conclude that men are socialized so thoroughly in ways antithetical to women that as a gender they are incapable of accomodating the authentic interests of women. In other words, these women deny the possibility of both men and women finding common values that authentically serve both their interests. As a result, some 'essentialist' work seeks to exclude men as completely as possible, both practically and theoretically. By and large, their work is not taken seriously because of a concern that, in deciding to eliminate the considerations of a significant group, radical feminism creates a 'closed loop', with a weakened ability to affect its social environment. Unable to respond to new input, critics feel it cannot develop new strategies reflecting changing circumstances. Whatever its merits at present, eventually such a 'closed' loop is in danger of becoming academically irrelevant.

The same scenario plays itself out in the arts. Ultimately, the reason big-eyed girls painted on black velvet are so abhorrent to the arts community is that they signify an apparent lack of any mechanism to respond to the needs of anyone other than the relatively small group who find big-eyed girls significant. Lacking that input, big-eyed girls get painted the same way, over and over again. Being so programmatic in concept, they fail to carry any expressive content.

After our experiences in The Body Project, we're not sure this reasoning about 'closed' groups is in fact correct. For example, Sandra Lockwood, who is a white performance artist, did a presentation on her appropriation of Japanese culture. On the second night, some of the people of colour in the audience vigourously denounced this show as perpetuasting racist stereotypes. After some heated debate, they declared their refusal to educate whites, and left. In subsequent discussions the classic argument about closed loops was raised: the refusal to continue to engage in debate meant neither side learned anything. On the contrary, we feel there was considerable evidence that in fact this group of people of colour, as well as their opponents in the debate, were not acting in a 'closed' way. For example, both sides politely respected our efforts to moderate the discussion, even though we are white and the debate centered on how whites dominate other races. Obviously, there was a willingness to engage in dialogue, although not for as long or as thoroughly as we would have liked.

We are coming to believe that the open/closed model of community interaction needs modification. All communities are a relative mixture of being open and closed. We believe there is a need for research into how 'open' and 'closed' get defined, and by whom. This is a notoriously difficult subject to tackle without on the one hand seeking confirmation of a predetermined normative condition (either oppositionally or by embracing it) or, on the other hand, maintaining a pretense of 'objectivity'. But we believe the academic and artistic communities are among those best equipped to handle such a difficult problem. What other communities largely define themselves through the breadth of cultural expressions that they explore?

We also recognize that this belief springs in large part from our personal interests as members of the arts and academic communities which are presently facing a crisis because of their 'closed' nature. This is particularly true of the arts community, which faces a funding crisis from, on the one hand, failing to develop very wide audiences willing to pay to see cultural work, and on the other, failing to generate the political support necessary to maintaining government subsidy of the arts in tough economic times. So, the whole question of being 'open' to the needs of other communities is a matter of life and death for us.

Therefore, the first task we face as producers of future projects is to seek artists and academics who share similar research interests. The most disappointing moments for us in The Body Project were when presenters offered simplistic, black and white analyses. They were disappointing precisely because they threatened to alienate people from outside the academic and artistic communities, who don't share the presenters' parochial language and concerns.

The best parts were works such as Jamal's, which presented with subtlety and wit some of the ambivalences of identity. For example, her use of a 'Barbie' doll showed how this cultural icon represents women in a highly specific and usually unattainable manner (thin, white, blonde, etc.). But it is also a loved toy. Or, while Jamal's image of a marriage ritual reminded us how women are institutionalized as property, it also showed us how marriage unites clans, and emphasizes the spirituality of human interchange.

The second challenge we face is to organize projects such as this one with a more specific focus. We now feel our failure to bring together an interchange of different work and audiences was in large part a failure to clearly articulate goals for the project. Ideally, we would have worked with the presenters earlier in the series to determine mutually agreed upon, substantive goals. Subsequent claims for attention by presenters could then have been evaluated in terms of whether or not they contributed to that end. For example, if we had more clearly identified the problems of cultural stereotyping as a key concern in advance, then we could have perhaps presented Sandra Lockwood's performance next to Sherazad Jamal's installation, followed by a performance by Heavenly Alarming Female, a group of lesbian women of colour. A follow-up panel on cultural stereotypes could then have been organized. A clearly articulated project goal would also allow for a more focused audience orientation, so that people would arrive with at least similar expectations. The Body Project brought together people (both audience and presenters) with such varied agendas that many were inevitably disappointed.

The third point we have come to recognize is that 'communities' are not monoliths; they are fractured by a number of competingforces. The 'art community' exists in many ways in name only. People who use that phrase often do not include Toni Onley or Amir Alibhai or Henry Tsang.The same appears to us to be true of the South Asian artistic 'community,' which fractures along lines such as traditional Indian artists, artists doing traditional Western forms such as landscape painting, or those such as Jamal and Creighton-Kelly in The Body Project who do hybrid innovative work incorporating Indian and Western ideas. Again, a clearer idea of the goals of the project would help us have a better sense of upon which levels the various communities might interact.

We hope we have been sufficiently clear in our comments that we are not presenting our views here as some kind of final or complete analysis, but rather are attempting to negotiate the difficult terrain of opening artistic and academic work to broader audiences. Obviously, critical response is essential to this negotiating process, and we welcome feedback on whether undertakings such as The Body Project offer the possibility of exploring the dynamics of community expression.

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Richard Pinet teaches in the Communication Department at Simon Fraser University. Areas of interest are media studies, cultural studies, and new communication technologies.

Derek Simons is the Director of Basic Inquiry. He is a visual artist who works in painting, installation, and performance art.

Basic Inquiry Centre for Figurative Arts is devoted to art exploring representations of the human body. It runs life drawing sessions, courses, a gallery, and performance art events. #5 - 901 Main Street, Vancouver, BC V6A 2V8