Alison Mountz, IMRC's Director chats with Irina Aristarkhova, Professor at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan about her new book Arrested Welcome: Hospitality in Contemporary Art, published by the University of Minnesota press in spring 2020.
Shiva Mohan Welcome, listeners, to the third episode of the International Migration Research Centre's podcast, Displacements. In our last episode, Alison Mountz, Director of the IMRC, and Kim Rygiel, the Centre's Associate Director, discussed Kim's new coedited book with Feyzi Baban, "Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe". In this new episode, Alison chats with Irina Aristarkhova, Professor at Stamps School of Art and Design, about her new book, "Arrested Welcome: Hospitality in Contemporary Art", published by the University of Minnesota Press in spring 2020. Let's begin with Irina reading an excerpt from her book, after which we'll join Alison and Irina in conversation.
Irina Aristarkhova [00:01:03] Community is an abstract notion until a welcoming gesture and labor of hospitality take place. The new forms of hospitality presented by the artists discussed in this book are not just new, just in terms of the artists looking into the future and helping their audiences imagine hospitality differently. They are also new in relation to the old habits of arrested welcome that discriminate between the good face and the bad face as described in one of the chapters, and the practice of offering unconditional hospitality only to some groups, those privileged by class, gender, race, national belonging and other markers of social status at the expense of others...because exclusions from and denial of welcome have long been part of how the promise of unconditional hospitality is conditioned in practice by divisions between us and them. Extending an invitation or accepting one from them might mean standing up to the inhospitalities perpetrated by one small community, a community wills communal disciplinary power. And it might act against its own members to enforce a communal vision of inhospitality. The consequences of becoming unwelcome within one small community range from relatively mild, albeit potentially significant and consequential forms of discipline, such as stern warnings and threats to harsh physical punishment and exclusion. Historically, there have been many instances when defiant hospitality has been punished by death. That is why new forms of hospitality require not only a new vision of community, but also solidarity and support among those who are committed and courageous enough to enact this new vision.
Alison Mountz [00:03:19] Welcome, Irina, and congratulations on your new book!
Irina Aristarkhova [00:03:28] Thank you.
Alison Mountz [00:03:31] Arrested Welcome is an inviting and thought-provoking book. I also think it's beautiful in its physical form, so I encourage our listeners to check it out. As someone who researches forms of exclusion. It's really a welcome change from the books I often read about immigration. In the text, you explore different works of art by many international artists working in different media and materials. And it's really your interest and practices of hospitality that sustains you throughout this text. And these artists don't just offer hospitality, but they seek it out in other people's spaces. They don't just explore hospitality that they offer to humans, but to non-humans as well. And I love the chapter on rats. And as a reader, I really left the book thinking about hospitality, of course, but also hungry for art, especially during this pandemic. So, I'm grateful for the stories and also really wanting to experience these works or works like them myself. So, thank you for that.
Irina Aristarkhova [00:04:36] Thank you for mentioning especially that chapter, Alison. It was a challenging chapter to write as we are migrating between thinking about environmental issues and how hospitality might work out in relation to non-human. So, it was one of the more challenging parts of the book, I would say.
Alison Mountz [00:04:58] I imagine. In that chapter, the project is a is a it's a longer term one. It's it's an artist who essentially welcomes transgenic rats who have been experimented on in labs into her home and enters into this welcoming series of practices with the rats.
Irina Aristarkhova [00:05:27] Yes, it's the artist's name is Cathy High and she's based in upstate New York. And that was really a project that taught me what it means to think about welcoming non-human beings, but also in a more challenging way, rather than thinking only about domesticated animals such as pets. Cathy High thought about what it means to welcome those who are experimented upon, such as transgenic rats, in relation to learn about medications that could be used than for humans. And in this case, indeed she herself benefits from such medications, having an autoimmune disease. And partially, you might ask the question, what kind of crazy foods projects artists are doing? And I wrote the book because I felt that there is a lot of hidden labor of hospitality that happens in contemporary art works and without writing, without documenting it potentially and unpacking it for my readers, those amazing elements of this art works would be hidden or lost.
Alison Mountz [00:06:57] I really appreciate that. Irina and I also was thinking about when I read that chapter about some of the work that I've done about the detention and incarceration of humans. And there are many writers who've likened, and people who've been detained, who've likened that treatment to the ways that humans treat animals. And so I was thinking that that would be a fascinating point of intersection between our work, this spectrum of human non-human and the idea of containment versus hospitality and what those really mean.
Irina Aristarkhova [00:07:40] That's an excellent point. When I was reading your book, The Death of Asylum, it came to my mind that both of our books explore the questions of who is worthy of being welcomed and both in our homes and more national borders and territories. And it struck me how both of us seem to be interested in this tension between those who are welcomed unconditionally and those who for whom welcome is reserved and indeed, the how people, the ones who are not welcomed or traditionally excluded, indeed often are referred to as animals. And naming them animals is one way through which that discursive, exclusionary practice, the rhetoric of it operates. And unfortunately, we have seen that in the last four years in the US. And as I was writing the book, I think that trying to write it in in our last academic tone, it just struck me how those tensions are operate simply in our everyday life today.
Alison Mountz [00:09:02] Since you talked about the fact that you've been writing the book for a while and I know it takes a long time to write a book, I thought maybe we could go back to the beginning of your project. What motivated you to write this book Irina?
Irina Aristarkhova [00:09:15] I think two things. One is the promise of hospitality, not as an idea, but as practice, that it sounds really great, the feeling of being welcomed or the feeling that comes from being generous and being welcoming to others, on the one hand. And feeling frustrated, seeing that that as a practice, hospitality often does not live up to the expectations of either hosts or guests and explore that. That was one impetus for the book. And the second impetus was to open up for my readers the world of contemporary art practices around hospitality. And just as hospitality itself, as practice is so non, unclear and we don't know, it's so full of anxiety, what will happen, how it will happen and hope and anticipation. I wanted to also trace the process itself through which contemporary art operates and the specific classes that each international artist whom I've written about, they demonstrate how multicultural and full of tension, how gendered that and culturally specific the practices themselves are, and potentially even defining of what we think of ourselves when we think about cultures as such, how we treat each other and how we treat our guests.
Alison Mountz [00:11:06] Irina, I'm really struck by the idea of hospitality itself in any form as an art form. In other words, when we go to someone's home, when we're welcomed somewhere, there's a ritual and an experience that can be quite beautiful and sensual. We we may imbibe something. We may be offered something. And in any case, we're made to feel special in this welcoming, which is something that you write about in the book. So what is it that made you turn to art practices to better understand hospitality when it's in fact something that's all around us in our day to day lives?
Irina Aristarkhova [00:11:47] I think that what contemporary art can offer for me has been a kind of an incubator of a new hospitality. And as I'm thinking about hospitality as a practice that has existed, traditionally, it's as much a practice to bring us together, as you mentioned, to feel welcome, to feel great. But at the same time, it's also a practice that creates hierarchies between those who are welcomed and those who are not, between those who are actually actively unwelcomed within each community or between communities in the world. And therefore, I did not have, as I was studying and thinking through hospitality further and further, especially as a feminist theorist, it became clear to me that before we embrace it is a notion that is especially potent and important for this current moment. If we think about personal and collective crisis, so to speak, of hospitality that we encounter in our everyday life, that artists are pushing boundaries and creating new forms of hospitality that could help solve some of those old hierarchies.
Alison Mountz [00:13:14] You really are drawn to hospitality, as you note, as a as a feminist scholar, and I think you prompt us to think critically about the gender dimension of hospitality and etiquette, particularly the notion of women waiting on men, which can be part of hospitality, although, of course, it's not always and not only women who participate in hospitality, but I wonder if you could talk more about this idea that you write about that we're socialized to hospitality. It's not something we're innately born with or without. And what does this art prompt us to reckon with in our own lives and consider when it comes to gender and how we understand and engage in hospitality?
Irina Aristarkhova [00:14:04] This question of how hospitality is gendered and how women are supposed to be more welcoming and being actresses, not actors so much, but actresses and hostesses. That was a curious accompaniment to my project for a while, because whenever I speak about hospitality especially and the women's studies, feminist venues, very often I have a lot of pushback because indeed women were conditioned for a very long time in the world, in different cultures around the world to be the ones who provide, who are the providers of hospitality from the moment we are born, providers of hospitality, of welcome into this world as such, and not necessarily receivers so that not the sat on the receiving end of it. So for example, I'm writing about Ana Prvacki one of the artists for whom I am, whose practice I'm following in this book, how she talks about smiling or kindness campaigns in different countries, and how it's women who are often expected to smile, whether it's in the tourist sector or in their own communities as a gesture of welcome, a smile, as a gesture of welcome. So I receive that pushback where because women today in feminist communities, especially pushing back against this kind of stereotypical visions of hospitality. On the one hand, hospitality is gendered in this way. On the other hand, what is the solution to this gendered and essentialised vision of hospitality as women being more welcomed? Do we now want to to assert, ascertain, and assert a different vision of either what that might mean or what an alternative to hospitality? Is it hostility? And do we want a world where we don't smile? Do we want a world where welcome does not exist? And here, that's where I came to this notion as both promising a lot for me as very important but at the same time, one that needs to be interrogated, especially from a feminist perspective, because no matter what kind of traditional culture I looked at, it was pretty much unwelcoming to women. However, expecting a lot from them in terms of a labor of hospitality in everyday life.
Alison Mountz [00:16:47] I love how you as a writer and the artists that you study collectively really are trying to recover, I think some, or uncover some of the radical potential of hospitality. And I really thought about this in relation to contemporary immigration politics. I mean, we talked earlier about what's happening in the United States and you yourself are an immigrant living in the United States right now where rather racist, xenophobic and anti immigrant sentiments and actions have have taken hold recently and historically. So I wonder, what is it that hospitality can bring to this particularly tense moment in which we find ourselves? Why turn to hospitality as a practice?
Irina Aristarkhova [00:17:35] That's certainly a big question. And then I try to approach it from different angles in the book. One especially important one for me, which has been ongoing, is the fact that as you write in your book, that the asylum was this idea of a promise where people felt, different kinds of nations felt that they should be, especially in the post Holocaust, Cold War context, there should be a right to belonging, right. There should be a right to be hosted or rescued. And hospitality actually is international practice between countries. It has this cosmopolitan vision of a right to asylum, and however, at the same time, who was the one who was supposed to have this right and which groups have been excluded from it? So that's what became interesting for me on the one hand about this concept, which provided so much of a framework, including for international law, but at the same time right field on so many different levels as you write in your book, especially with the death of asylum as a practice, as a concept itself, what are we left with? And here hospitality for me where hospitality is crucial, because I find hospitality, it's not the law. It's not a right. We certainly don't want to force people to be welcoming. It's only done by some artists in the book, which I'm describing in a kind of satirical or an ironic way. But at the same time, hospitality is as practice, as an idea, it bridges these divides between public and private and political and communal. So that's what became so interesting for me, that on the one hand, we don't have a written law of hospitality, which is a great thing. But on the other hand, we also, as a community struggling with this, as on this kind of liminal space between or two between morality and ethics. But on the other hand, as you started with a question about pleasure and fun as something that makes it very different from other forms of social organizing as something which is pleasurable and aesthetic, as something that we want to to do as human beings for each other and also for the planet, and not just something that we want to write into some kind of theory or law or a manual.
Alison Mountz [00:20:27] We've hit on an important theme operating across our podcast conversations. My colleague Kim Rygiel and I spoke recently about a book that she and her partner and collaborator, Feyzi Baban, edited about living together, the politics of living together, and the idea that in this contemporary period where we have increasing polarization and division, we need to pay more attention to art, as you write, and to all the different practices that simply bring us into conversation about our differences and what it is to live together with them. And it strikes me that hospitality is one of those daily art forms that that brings us together, whether it's welcoming a person into one's home or cooking as just a couple of examples that that come up in your in your book. So it's so important. Thank you for this this project. I wanted to ask you, what's next, Irina, in your in your research and writing, are you continuing on with this topic or are you turning to others?
Irina Aristarkhova [00:21:31] I am certainly continuing with this topic related to other forms or aesthetic forms and currently just finishing. And actually in Canada in the journal called Public Art Culture Politics, a special issue devoted to hospitality, edited by Sylvia Fortin, wonderful curator and artist who works in this area, and where I write about architecture of hospitality, specifically focusing on one architectural Bureau from based in Moscow called Bureau Moscow and the work of transforming civic and public spaces in Moscow that Bureau Moscow enacts. So I'm continuing with that. And in the on the other hand, I'm also very interested in technology and the way in which technology enables and forcloses some of the indeed cultural and public spaces for us. And that project is taking off in my new interest in digital studies, which I'm pursuing at the University of Michigan.
Alison Mountz [00:22:47] Wonderful. I can't wait to read more. I really recommend this book to our listeners. And one of the things I found so appealing is that it was published in twenty twenty during the pandemic at a time when it's more difficult for most people to experience art in its different forms. So it was really enticing to me and pleasurable to read about art at a time when I can't take it in necessarily as much first hand. So I encourage people to check out Arrested Welcome and have that same experience of hospitality in a text. Irina, thank you so much for talking with us on our new podcast series. We really appreciate it.
Irina Aristarkhova [00:23:34] Thank you, Alison. It's been great talking to you.
Alison Mountz Best of luck in your future projects.
You've been listening to my conversation with Irina Aristarkhova about her new book, Arrested Welcome Hospitality in Contemporary Art. Please join us for our next conversation with Bayan Khatib and Margaret Walton-Roberts, "Syrian Refugee Resettlement in Canada: A National Project" and about some of the issues facing Syrians and other newcomers to Canada. This has been an episode of the IMRC's podcast, Displacements. Thanks for listening.