Art can be aesthetically pleasing and aesthetically disturbing. It can be bought, sold and even inked into your skin. But is it anything more than an intellectual or visual diversion - something to look at, think about and move on from? Who are the artists that create it? Who do they create it for? Does it matter?

Carol Becker does not create art; she talks about it. She has written and edited six books about art and artists in society. She used to work with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and now she is the Dean of Columbia University’s School of the Arts. She thinks that art has a role, and that artists have a responsibility.

In fact, Becker takes a much broader view of what constitutes art, and how it is changing. She calls it “micro-utopian practice.” Her definition of “utopia” is “to critique what is present,” making a micro-utopia a particular critique on a particular issue. Throughout her career she has emphasized the subversive and critical potential of art to further dialogue and unsettle the status quo.

She views art as uniquely able to reveal the complexities of daily life that are hidden from public view. In the introduction to her edited volume The Subversive Imagination: Artists, Society, and Social 

Responsibility she phrases it rather succinctly: “The more simplistic the representation of everyday life … the more art must reveal.”

Becker thinks that artists can, and should be social critics. They should be able to freely engage in “micro-utopian” practice in the public arena. She views this as an integral part of a pluralistic, democratic society. But, in our age of ever-increasing privatization, how do artists fully participate in the public sphere and effectively engage micro-utopian practice?

There are, of course, many ways to do this, but of particular note in recent years are public demonstrations. While these are a far cry from paintings in a gallery, public demonstrations temporarily offer a critique of our present society. They may not be indicative of long-lasting or concrete change, but these instances create public dialogue and participative communities. They do not change our society through legislation, but through culture.

In the recent past we’ve seen Occupy, the Quebec student strike, the Arab Spring - many lengthy public demonstrations focused on raising awareness about issues plaguing our society. Would income inequality be such a hot-button issue today if Occupy hadn’t received the exposure it did? These demonstrations affect both the way in which we perceive issues and which issues we perceive.

Art has no single definition. It can exist purely for aesthetic purposes, but should it? Artists can and should play an active role in defining their roles and responsibilities in the 21st century. In our tumultuous age of protest, revolution and change perhaps we ought not question what art can be, but what it should be.

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Carol Becker will be giving a lecture entitled “Artists as Public Intellectuals: Engaging Micro-Utopian Practice” on Thursday, Nov. 29 at the Design Annex on James St. North from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Admission is free. This lecture is presented by the Public Intellectuals Project, along with Mac10 and the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s Design Annex as a part of the McMaster Seminar on Higher Education, sponsored by the Office of the President. 

Alex Epp

They’ve infiltrated our universities, our art crawls, our festivals and our headphones. Maybe they’ve been here all along, and we’re the infiltrators. Who are they and what do they do?

They’re Hamilton’s hip-hop artists, and they’re not something you want to miss out on.

Lee Reed has been a Hamilton hip-hop fixture since the mid-‘90s. Reed gained prominence as the front man for the legendary and revolutionary group Warsawpack. Now he works on solo projects – playing shows all over Hamilton and releasing his own albums.

In a recent interview with the Public Intellectuals Project, which is a group of students, professors and activists writing about local concerns and academic debates, Reed talked about his musical and political role in Hamilton.Throughout the years, he’s been working with others in the hip-hop community to open up bigger clubs in Hamilton – the Casbah, This Ain’t Hollywood, Club Absinthe – to aspiring hip-hoppers so that they have a decent chance at exposure and success.

“The path I took with music locally has helped build bridges between the regular and hip-hop music communities,” said Reed. He sees other cities, like Toronto, as being divided between hip-hop and other musical circles.

Back when Hamilton’s scene was developing in the ‘90s, Reed, along with some other artists, helped make hip-hop a definitive part of Hamilton’s culture.

His work with Warsawpack involved live instrumentation, something that’s not often found in hip-hop scenes small or large. This, as well as years of networking with promoters and club owners, is part of how he has helped Hamilton’s scene become so integrated and diverse. Now, other distinctly Hamiltonian hip-hop groups like Canadian Winter play with live instrumentation to back up their rhymes – and believe me, it makes for a mind-blowing set.

While many of Reed’s lyrics have a radical edge, he insists that he doesn’t fully subscribe to any of the famous -isms.

“I’m not completely an anarchist, or a communist or a socialist or any of those things,” he said, but he believes that something needs to change. “We need to work towards a world without hunger, war, thirst … where people are treated respectfully and they treat their environment respectfully.”

However, he is not one to say that he has all the answers. He is a self-proclaimed critic, with the power to spark thought and emotion through his music. When describing how he is able to make a statement, he said, “I think I have the distinct advantage of poetic license. So, I can exaggerate, I can enflame, I can be vague, I can be open-ended.”

As a hip-hop artist, he doesn’t have to come to an academic conclusion in all of his arguments, but his listeners take away something from his music. They begin to see the cracks in the wall, and they’re challenged to draw their own conclusions. He’s unapologetic about his angry music, and it’s refreshing.

“I think I’m best defined by what I stand against with my music … and I think that’s how it manifests, as a loud and angry criticism.” Luckily for us, that angry criticism comes in the form of sick rhymes and dope beats.

At Supercrawl, he’s playing in the Roots 2Leaf Urban Arts Fundraiser at Club Absinthe, 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 15. Admission is by donation. There will be more than 16 performances, with break dancers, DJs, producers, beatboxers, emcees and a wall open for graffiti artists.

Part two of the fundraiser takes place at the Tivoli Theatre from 6:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.

Roots 2Leaf is a free youth mentorship program that aims to empower youth through hip-hop.

Reed is also playing at Everybody Dance Volume 7: Super Crawl After-Party, at This Ain’t Hollywood on Sept. 15. He’s playing along with the Dirty Nil, BA Johnston and Toledo.

For the full interview with the Public Intellectuals Project, go to vimeo.com/49074075. You can follow him on twitter, @FreeLeeReed, and download his full-length album, Emergency Broadcast, for free at leereed.bandcamp.com.

Alex Epp