Robby Herbst
Artist Statement
I’m an interdisciplinarian interested in social and behavioral architecture. My work engages contemporary and historic experiments in socio-political aesthetics through publishing, social sculpture, organizing, writing, and visual art. I have a long history in speculative counter-media as a co-founder of the critical art collective the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, as well as the instigator of the geographically sited critical-landscape projects of the Llano Del Rio Collective. I’m the 2014 winner of the Graue Award for a project to be completed in San Francisco exploring the legacy of the humanist New Games Movement. I am also the recipient of a Warhol Foundation Writer’s Grant for essays exploring the relationship between social practice art and political protest.
While At Headlands
In 1973 the Gerbode Valley, adjacent to Headlands Center for the Arts, was the sight of the first New Games Tournament. The Tournament was put together by Stewart Brand (of the Long Now Foundation and Whole Earth Catalog), George Leonard (of the Esalen Institute), and Pat Farrington. It spawned the New Games Foundation that popularized, through sport and public play, many of the aspects of the Human Potential Movement. While at Headlands I will be developing new “new games” that respond to the social and political climate of the day, as well as work on related artworks responding to this mixing of 70’s humanism and contemporary post-humanism.
