Chat Travieso

Do you consider yourself a social activist?

I wouldn’t personally label myself an activist. That word has been used to describe me in the past and I understand why people may want to use it. But I don’t personally want to use it because there are so many activists that do political activism. I volunteer with some organizations here and there, and of course my work has social and political undertones, but I just have so much respect for activists who are doing the real groundwork by agitating systems. In some ways I want my work to be a little bit more agitational, political and overtly activist, especially in the past few years, but I would still not take on that name. I just have so much respect for those organizations that I don’t want to say that any kind of action is worthy of the label activism. I think art can play a role in activism -- I don’t think that they are mutually exclusive. However, I think activism is such a specific sort of activity that in some cases my work might wander into that realm. Even with something like Yes Loitering, I don’t know if I would necessarily call that activism or call it more in the realm of advocacy. That’s also sort of like saying advocacy and activism can overlap, but they don’t necessarily have to overlap. Same as activism and community organizing can overlap but they don’t necessarily always overlap; someone could be a community organizer without being an activist and likewise someone could be an activist without being a community organizer. These things might overlap and intersect in some ways but in other ways they can live independently.

So, would social advocate be a more appropriate title for you?

No, not necessarily. I think an artist, designer, and educator who makes work that’s socially engaged would be perhaps more appropriate. I feel like specificity in language is important but sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint.

What makes an artist different than a non-artist? What are some of the challenges an artist needs to tackle?

I think every human being has the capacity to be a creative person and to some extent every human being is a creative person. There are artists out there who haven’t necessarily gone to art school, I don’t think there is a litmus test or something that someone has to achieve and do in order for them to be qualified as an artist. I think that is something important to acknowledge. Going back to something I said earlier, the kind of work is trying to build off from what’s happening. What I mean by that is, not only like the kind of social relationships that exist but how people are already adopting this phase. This doesn’t require someone to have a brilliant mind or have a PhD in some field to be ingenious. People are innovative and ingenious on an everyday basis and that’s where a lot of my inspiration comes from. I’ve seen people take offense and attach things to it, then you look at the work I do because it’s pretty much inspired by what everyday people do. I think anybody who calls themselves an artist is an artist; anybody who thinks of themselves as a creative person and wants to use that label for themselves, more power to them. They are artists.

Regarding the second question, I think everybody also has a different role. I don’t think every single person should do participatory art in public places. I think there is room and space for art to be a practice that is more of an internal exploration. In some ways that’s a very radical act, and that’s totally fine. The kind of work that I do straddles the line between design and art because it has some functional elements.

I think art allows us to see other alternatives. There is a quote out there that says “art is to make the revolution irresistible” which I love. I also think that art is just an opportunity for us to question the status-quo. It allows us to see something different and view the world in a different way. Even if you aren’t making art that is overtly political, art is very much tied to politics no matter what. Obviously, you cannot get around the fact that art in this country and in most of the world within the capitalist market economy and just understanding that too is very important. When it comes to representation of what artists are doing in an emancipatory way, art can be extremely powerful even if it’s just a reflection of one’s own experience. I think this is a difficult question to answer, because everyone has different challenges and I think it's tied so much to one's own identity. I am a straight, white-passing Latino man. Even if I am Latino, I can navigate the world with certain privileges that someone else that might not have the benefit that I have. I think that’s also an important thing to acknowledge. As a professional artist, often times people don’t respect the fact that art is labour. Especially when you put it within the context of the market economy, people don’t value time and labour when it comes to art. I think if there’s one common problem that people face it’s that, but artists of color, women artists, non-binary artists, queer and trans artists are definitely facing that problem more harshly than I do.

Was there ever an art piece you made that stood out among the rest, and why?

That’s a good question. There are certain projects I keep revisiting, like my Boogie Down Boost project – I made like four different versions of it. A part of it is because this organization called WHEDco, which I also worked on with Yes Loitering, has been a constant collaborator over the years. I really valued that collaboration and working with them. I couldn’t have imagined while working on my project in 2004 that I would have made four different versions of it.

I can’t say that I have one favorite project. I mean I’m really excited about what I’m working on right now; it is a more research-intensive work involving more writing, so I’m excited on where that will take me. I am the kind of person where the work I do will make me more excited about the next thing I will do. I might learn something, make certain connections, or something might be going on in the world that will make me excited about a concept or idea and I’ll quickly move on to the next project. I have one permanent art project in Cambridge so it’s nice to be able to physically revisit a project.

Essentially, I don’t have a favorite project. I’ve learned something new from one that I’ve hopefully in some way have taken into the next project.

Then if I may, I would like to change the question a little bit. Has there ever been a project that influenced your approach to art?

That’s also hard to say; I have been an independent artist for almost 8 years at this point. Maybe I will feel that way toward a project the older I get, but eight years is a long time. January 2013 was the time when I stopped working in an architecture firm and started doing my own thing. That first project in 2013 that I worked on was a little free library project. That project was really influential because it was the first one and I feel like a lot of things that I did in that project I carried on to this day. That project came along because I applied to this design competition. In architecture you’ll find tons of little design competitions and this one was about designing and building a small free library. I was lucky enough to be one of the people selected. They partnered each designer with a community organization in the Lower East Side and I just so happened to be a partner with them. I have been going to meetings with them pretty consistently while I was working at the architecture firm. So, I had the benefit of already having a relationship with them and I think that idea of building a relationship over time has been the thing that I take from that project and apply. Another influential thing was the transition from working in the architecture firm to working on my own. I was the teaching artist for this organization called The Centre for Urban Pedagogy, commonly known as CUP. They were really influential in helping me learn how to teach through their teaching artist program. I also learned the ways of engaging people because they have this interactive approach to teaching by doing field research and talking to people. I would also credit them.