Since 1977, when Mierle Laderman Ukeles became the official, unsalaried Artist-in-Residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation a position she still holds — she has created art that deals with the endless maintenance and service work that “keeps the city alive,” urban waste flows, recycling, ecology, urban sustainability and our power to transform degraded land and water into healthy inhabitable public places. Ukeles asks whether we can design modes of survival — for a thriving planet, not an entropic one — that don’t crush our personal and civic freedom and silence the individual’s voice.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles (MLU):
In my generation, those feminist artists who gathered for discussions and meetings at Lucy Lippard's house didn't talk about their children. I don't think they ever mentioned a child in any of our conversations. And they also didn't talk about money. Wow. Imagine the constraints of that structure.
MLU:
We didn't talk about these things then as feminist artists. So I'm just absolutely so grateful that you have taken on this subject of economy, just like I took on maintenance. I’m saying: Listen, it's not behind the scenes anymore. It’s not just at night. Behind or below, out of sight. Here we are! Deal! And you're saying the same thing about cultural workers, about getting paychecks, about exchange.
MLU:
One reason I feel so connected to you, Caroline, and so grateful, is that in the Sanitation Department, every two weeks, people got a paycheck and they left the office. They said, “I have to go to the bank now.” And I thought, “Oh, OK.” But I didn’t get a paycheck as an artist. And every single time that happened, I felt bad. I felt jealous and really bad. And now I think, well, there's Caroline. She's going to take care of it. She's got to go talk about it.
you have taken on this subject of economy, just like I took on maintenance.
MLU:
I think this is very important. My persistence. Well, I understood in the depths of my soul then in 1969, with the
MANIFESTO FOR MAINTENANCE ART, 1969!
that I had realized something profound, and that gave me a sense of calm. It enabled me to keep going. It was about hope, seeing life whole. You know, it could be very discouraging and scary and all that, I have to tell you. I mean, the ongoing challenge of my work at Fresh Kills in Staten Island. I got this commission in 1989 — Were you alive then?
MLU:
OK. You were five years old. I got a commission to be the Percent for Art Artist of the Fresh Kills Landfill that was the only operating municipal landfill in NYC at that time, the largest in the world, but many were already planning and dreaming for it to become a park. I had worked to develop around 18 proposals. And eventually it came down to one called LANDING. I conceptualized it and got it dedicated to a particular site in 2008.
LANDING
is an environmental public artwork, a daring cantilevered overlook soaring over a tidal inlet, with two earthworks on each side. That was twelve years ago and it's still not complete!
MLU:
People like you make me feel supported. Jack, my life partner, makes me feel supported. I think Leigh Claire, your partner, makes you feel supported. Yeah, you're doing something together. Many workers and public officials have also stuck their own necks out for me along the way. That's very necessary. I think without that support—oh, no—that would be maybe too hard.
MLU:
Yes. But art also has to have room for the destabilizing individual voice. Where's the room for that voice, which can be raw and disruptive, even to the community and the peaceable contracts that are required to make these communities work? You know, breaking a sense of respect because you're exploding with the original insight that comes from artists. Humans have a capability of human creativity that is so powerful that it has no limits. We can create. We can also just destroy: destroy ourselves, destroy the whole world, which we've just about done. We're on our way. So I see the tension between the free individual and sustaining an effort as often in a kind of conflict.
Where's the room for that voice, which can be raw and disruptive, even to the community and the peaceable contracts that are required to make these communities work?
MLU:
I've been thinking about solidarity. Solidarity. Art. Economy. Your Manifesto. What is the genesis of this “solidarity economy”?
MLU:
Can you give an example of the solidarity economy in the arts?
MLU:
[Laughs] Hysterical.
MLU:
When I sent my Manifesto, whose full title is
MANIFESTO FOR MAINTENANCE ART 1969!
Proposal for an exhibition “CARE,” to the Whitney in 1969 — a s a proposal for a full exhibition — I wanted the whole building. I needed that whole entire building for my exhibition. Imagine if you would have seen “CARE” in the early 1970s! The whole entire building would be care for the earth, care for the people, care for the society. We could have gotten much further along as a culture if they took it and let me do it. Instead, I got a response back on one-half of a piece of paper, not even a whole piece of paper. They said: “Try your ideas on or in a gallery first before approaching a museum.” I understand that much of the “art world,” as it functions, does not function for you and me and that we are going to have to make our way through.
MLU:
Now, there's the conflict that Ed Ruscha, an artist whose work I admire, is getting fifty-two million dollars. He's my age. And I am in so much trouble financially. He's getting fifty-two million dollars for one painting.
MLU:
Thank God I still have my project, archives, and office as an Artist In Residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation. But I have to give up my private studio, because I can't pay the rent. People might feel this is a little negative. Like, you know, it's rude. Impolite. To talk about money, like it was to talk about children, before. But that's where I'm at. So I'm saying. Caroline, go do it!
MLU:
I mean, I know that you have 570 pages here.