Interview with Margaret Tedesco



images and audio interview to follow soon

Yesterday I interviewed Margaret over the phone about her collaboration with Isabelle Massu and the San Fransisco Homeless Coalition. She gave very full & detailed information and context for for their project
Parlor Game: a Popular Version (initiated in 1995). She talked about the context in which the games were created and presented, about the people whose artworks were the starting point for the project, about their expressions and representations of their life experience on the other side of 'the line', about US art funding and much more.

And my most clear impression is of the care and conscientiousness of all the makers of this project; a care not to jump to conclusions, to strip away assumptions, to do whatever there is to be done in the realisation of the project and to facilitate expression and communication across a divide.

This interview is a testament to a certain process. I don't know what kind of art this project is, I guess it falls into the category of 'community art' but this term is very difficult. All through the interview Margaret struggled with similar terms such as 'outsider art'; symptoms of a certain attitude that limits the possibility of what art might and could and possibly should be. It suggests that Art is for the appreciation and improvement of an isolated, fully individuated elite- 'not-community'.