Michael Krugman
Cheap Propaganda

“…performed by myself, Ariel Block, and Marcia Swanberg, with music, film, lights, speech, and objects. this piece was about a political uncertainty I was experiencing at that time: ‘What does an artist do when he or she doesn’t want to serve any longer as a propagandist for the ruling class (the bourgeoisie)?’ the piece was not very effective because it stated the problem in a very indirect way, and didn’t even begin to answer it. Also it relied heavily on the ‘avant-garde’ cliches of ‘performance art,’ which made Cheap Propaganda, a very obscure, narrow and parochial work of art. However it was positive in that it started a process of questioning the authority of bourgeois avant-garde art and the ideology behind it.”

Excerpted from Brentano, R., & Savitt, M. (1981). 112 Workshop, 112 Greene Street: History, artists & artworks. New York: New York University Press.