Michael Rakowitz
“Parasitism is described as a relationship in which a parasite temporarily or permanently exploits the energy of a host,” Rakowitz says, in introducing paraSITE. This temporary and transportable shelter for the homeless is dependent on the outtake duct of a building’s heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system for its form and source of heat. paraSITE is a conspicuous social protest, not a long-term solution to homelessness. “It is very much an intervention that should become obsolete,” Rakowitz says. “These shelters should disappear like the problem should. In this case, the real designers are the policymakers.”
Current discussions about art are very much centered on the question of art activism—that is, on the ability of art to function as an arena and medium for political protest and social activism. The phenomenon of art activism is central to our time because it is a new phenomenon—quite different from the phenomenon of critical art that became familiar to us during recent decades. Art activists do not want to merely criticize the art system or the general political and social conditions under which this system functions. Rather, they want to change these conditions by means of art—not so much inside the art system but outside it, in reality itself. Art activists try to change living conditions in economically underdeveloped areas, raise ecological concerns, offer access to culture and education for the populations of poor countries and regions, attract attention to the plight of illegal immigrants, improve the conditions of people working in art institutions, and so forth. In other words, art activists react to the increasing collapse of the modern social state and try to replace the social state and the NGOs that for different reasons cannot or will not fulfill their role. Art activists do want to be useful, to change the world, to make the world a better place—but at the same time, they do not want to cease being artists. And this is the point where theoretical, political, and even purely practical problems arise.