Aldrin Valdez: Let’s start from the beginning, how did you get into making art?
Caroline Woolard: I don’t know when I started making art. My mom is a design historian, so I grew up around people who made, thought about, and loved functional and dis-functional objects, well-designed experiences, and good craftsmanship. I suppose that I committed myself to art when I applied to Cooper Union, asking my parents to trust my 18-year-old enthusiasm to attend art school. Cooper Union allowed me to pursue my own interests in a space of rigor and accountability, connecting me to artists who care deeply about public space. Cooper also allowed me to graduate with a BFA, debt-free, something that is currently under debate: http://freeasairandwater.net/mission/response/1vbjkk1zeqs0
Valdez: What projects are you currently working on?
Woolard: I’m working to make infrastructure for radical becoming, and this means I can’t follow the trend to produce new projects that only last a month. To make change, you have to commit. Each project is one that will evolve with time… grassroots organizing and economic activism at SolidarityNYC, two barter networks, teaching two classes, and running an 8000sq ft studio space. I’m also mapping the “art world” to show a wide view of what an artist can do, join, and be.
Valdez: In your work, it’s very clear that art is not exclusive to the studio. You make sculptures and performances that foster a community the foundation of which is artistic creation and sharing of individual artistic and craft skills. I’m referring specifically to your project Trade School. Could you describe what Trade School is?
Woolard: Trade School is a non-traditional learning environment that runs on barter. Anyone can teach a class, and teachers are paid in barter items that they request. Trade School is not my project. Trade School was started in 2009 by three of the five co-founders of OurGoods: Rich Watts, Louise Ma, and myself. From there, it grew to be a much larger collective with different organizers each year.
Art has never been made exclusively in a studio, for a white cube gallery. Growing up with an art historian for a mother, I was always reminded of the silly nature of that short-sighted version of history. (http://austinalchemy.com/home.html#Publications)
Valdez: Could you talk about the aspect of play in your work?
Woolard: I like to create multiple entry points into my work: via function, via play, and via critical discourse. Embodied experience carries an intelligence that distant thought cannot touch. As Yvonne Rainer said, “the mind is a muscle.” Sitting, swinging, talking, and physically engaging with things connects people to the world directly.
Caroline Woolard, Subway Swinging
Valdez: Have you always made art that engaged public participation?
Woolard: I’ve always made work where people gather: the street, the subway, and now, the Internet. Before, I made interventionist attachments to existing city infrastructure. From 2004 to 2006, I made 20 public seats and attached them to stop-sign posts around NY. I maintained the seating and watched as all kinds of people used it for reading, relaxing, and waiting. I also made a backpack that transformed into a subway swing, inviting strangers to engage in an act of play and trust despite the public announcements of suspicion and terror. Now, I build collaborative infrastructure: Trade School, OurGoods.org, and SolidarityNYC .
Caroline Woolard, Public Seating
Valdez: The SolidarityNYC website contains loads of useful and empowering information about banking and credit unions. I’m focusing in on the following statement: “We have to radically change the way we relate to each other and the purpose of economic activity.” Wall Street is a big hulking abstraction that makes it very difficult to think about economy and money as real material forces moved and embodied by real people. What are your thoughts on the Occupy Movement? How would you define the purpose of economic activity?
Woolard: I am thrilled to be living at this moment in history. With #occupy, I am having more radical conversations about “the economy” than ever before. For most people, “the economy” signifies wage labor in a capitalist market. But for me, for the Community Economies Collective, for SolidarityNYC, and for many other people, there are diverse economies that allow people to meet their needs together: sharing, volunteering, giving, bartering, commoning, and more.
What is the Solidarity Economy? Solidarity Economies meet the needs of interdependent communities (everything from financial services to food) by utilizing values of justice, sustainability, cooperation, and democracy. The Solidarity Economy focuses on grassroots economic justice, connecting businesses and initiatives that emphasize democratic member control, member economic participation, member education and empowerment, environmental sustainability, and cooperation between initiatives.
The Solidarity Economy asks “Why?” and lets “How?” follow from there. Why share? Why Cooperate? Solidarity Economies focus on the principles that guide interaction and behavior. For me, successful models always depend upon the individual people that breathe intention and interdpendence into them, living the principles that stand behind every action. As Ethan Miller writes, the Solidarity Economy evolves the existing system via defensive, offensive, creative, and healing actions:
- Defensive action: to protect ourselves and our communities from immediate harm
- Offensive action: to challenge the current structures of oppression and exploitation in all of their racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, and otherwise exclusionary forms
- Healing action: to work through and recover from the pain and brokenness that has been imposed upon us in so many ways
- Creative action: to build alternative structures that meet our daily needs and help us secede from the oppressions of the dominant society and economy
(from Solidarity Economics: Strategies for Building New Economies From
the Bottom-Up and the Inside-Out, Ethan Miller)
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