Cultural Prophylactics: Cultural Vitality & Public Health
Cultural Prophylactics was a performance project conducted in 2009. For background information, please see the following sections: introduction, demographics, priorities, honesty & integrity, public health, yes/no, and the survey and some images. Also feel free to enjoy this brief overview.
Respondents were asked to rate the following figures in terms of their impact on culture and cultural vitality, and supplied numerical or verbal responses. The latter were assigned numerical value. These indicate a perception of cultural power ranked in the following order (write-in comments added):
- Community Organizers (“locally”)
- Oprah Winfrey (“mainstream,” “she gets a bad wrap”)
- You (“locally”)
- Terrorists (“not in a good way”)
- Hugo Chavez (“yeah Citgo!”)
- Pirates
- Jennifer Aniston (“idiot”)
- Tipper Gore (“oppressive,” “supports her husband”)
- Kal Penn (“no idea,” “isn’t he the new guy in charge of that?”)
- Sam Zell (“Go Cubs!”)
- Shepard Fairey
Respondents were then asked to rate the same figures in terms of their likely self-perceived impact on culture and cultural vitality, under the same value system as indicated above. These indicate a self-perception of cultural power ranked in the following order (write-in comments added):
- Oprah Winfrey (“the hand of god”)
- Community Organizers
- Terrorists
- Tipper Gore (“defender of righteous”)
- Hugo Chavez
- Jennifer Aniston (“once dated Brad Pitt”)
- Pirates (“they don’t care”)
- Sam Zell (“the hand of god”)
- Shepard Fairey
- Kal Penn
- You
Respondents were asked what three factors determine their own vitality in the public sphere, and their top five responses, in order, were (comments also supplied):
- Community support/Socialization
- Receiving press on artwork/Media appearances (“isn’t that awful?”)
- A sense of awareness/Presence/Deliberation
- TIE: Labor/Sense of purpose and Art-making/Writing/Creativity
Other write-in responses, many of which featured physical aspects of public life, included: “Feeling informed/Able to access information”; “Supportive relationships despite opposing views”; “Depth of sofa indentation”; “if it’s raining”; “Amount of beer in fridge”; “Shoe relacing frequency rate”; “If one person on the Internet agrees with you”; and “if I am happy and not stressed out”.
Respondents were finally asked what three factors should be used to determine public health, and their top six responses, in order, were:
- Barriers to public assistance/Affordability and accessibility of health care
- Access to healthy/sensible food/obesity
- Life expectancy and infant mortality rates
- Homelessness rates/Affordable housing
- Income
- Access to information/Media
- Happiness/Shooting for the stars
