May 2025
This page is under construction and will have additional content in late May / early June prior to the third solo show opening on June 6 in Chicago — more information about that show is here.
May 2025
Some of the art theory behind Daley Wilson’s art activism is based on post-theory art and artist-placed document art.
Some general definitions and framing are below.
One conceptual theory underlying Daley Wilson’s art activism: Post-theory art.
Post theory art in the context of art-as-activism may be defined as a text-based, conceptual, and activist art practice in which the artist, acting as both theorist and creator, engages in the construction of original human-authored theories as the primary artistic medium; which are composed through language and expressed as text-based art rather than through traditional visual or material forms; and which are then situated within public, institutional, or societal domains—whether as discrete statements, embedded frameworks, or interventions—where their placement constitutes an act of performance art, and, in some cases, a real-world happening; where the intention is not merely to illustrate theory but to treat the making, connecting, and public placing of theoretical constructs themselves as autonomous works of conceptual art; and where the content of such theories is directed toward matters of public interest, social systems, philosophical problems, or human epistemology, thus positioning the work simultaneously as activist art, engaged in critique, advocacy, or ontological inquiry; and where the form is intrinsically reflexive, often meta-theoretical, inviting critical examination of the status of theory itself—its authorship, epistemic legitimacy, ethical stakes, and expressive form—particularly in an era of increasing automation, institutional abstraction, and the erosion of uniquely human creative functions; and where the artist’s role is redefined not as producer of objects or images but as a generative human public thinker, whose theories are intentionally placed in the world as artistic entities, operating across legal, social, philosophical, and aesthetic registers, to reassert the value of human meaning-making in an age of algorithmic cognition and informational entropy.
Another conceptual theory underlying Daley Wilson’s art activism: Artist-placed public document art.
Artist-placed public document art in the context of art-as-activism may be defined as a subset of Post-Theory Art and a hybridized form of conceptual art, text-based art, activist art, and performance art in which the artist authors a document—typically written in a formal legal, administrative, or civic register—containing the artist’s theory or argument on a matter of public interest; and then materially places or files that document within a public institution, such as a court, tribunal, government agency, or other regulatory body, using recognized procedural mechanisms to ensure it is officially received and entered into the institutional record; wherein the placement itself is not symbolic but procedural in nature, such that, by virtue of institutional rules (e.g., civil procedure, administrative law, judicial norms), the document obligates a compulsory response from the institution or from named parties—thus creating a scenario in which the institution, knowingly or not, is conscripted into participation within the artwork; and where the institutional or legal reply—whether it be a formal order, a written denial, a scheduling notice, or a substantive ruling—constitutes a performative and discursive extension of the original artwork, rendering the system’s procedural response a form of unintentional co-authorship; so that the total artwork unfolds over time as a living, iterative structure composed not only of the original document (text-based conceptual art), but also of the responses it compels (involuntary performance), the legal and civic processes it engages (institutional choreography), and the broader public interest issues it illuminates or interrogates (activist art); and where the work thereby collapses the traditional boundary between art and legal action, reconfiguring the artist not only as a creator of form or concept but as a strategic agent operating within real systems of power—systems that must, by their own design, react to the intervention; such that Artist-Placed Public Document Art repositions the public institution not merely as a subject of critique or a site of exhibition, but as a medium, a respondent, and a structural performer in the realization of the artwork—thus transforming the juridical domain itself into a platform for conceptual and political aesthetics.
A potential description of Daley Wilson’s art-law-activism practice as artist-placed public document art to date:
It is proposed that some art practices within the penumbra of Post-Theory Art introduce and employ a new methodology and approach for art-as-activism—one that does not merely react to injustice, or just comment on power, or just tell the viewer what should be—but rather one that requests public decisions made by power on issues of public importance.
This practice, called artist-placed public document art, is a form of Post-Theory Art where the artist places a theory of public interest—created by the artist—directly into the living machinery of public systems, such as our public state and federal courts, resulting in the initiation of:
What the art world might call performance art, or a happening;
What the legal world might call a question of first impression about an issue of public interest not yet decided by the courts; and
What art-as-activism might call a means by which art activism is not reactive in response, but proactive in presenting a theory to protect or expand legal rights, justice, equality, or other values associated with the public good.
The category of Post-Theory Art that may be called artist-placed public document art refers to a form of Post-Theory Art in which the artist formally embeds their theory into an official, legal, or institutional public forum that has power over decision-making—such as a court filing that initiates public interest litigation. In doing so, the artist’s work, which in this case would be considered text-based art (a written document), becomes both art and valid formal action by the institution’s own rules—and the art is both theory and intervention.
Unlike traditional activist art, which usually functions as protest, proclamation, or critique from the outside looking in, artist-placed public document art, and perhaps other art practices within Post-Theory Art, operates officially and within the structure, power, and rules that it engages and starts in motion.
If considered viable as both law-as-art and art-as-law, this art practice does not only speak about how power and institutional systems decide and apply our public concepts of justice, rights, and equality—it also speaks through them, and it also speaks in them. The artist’s document is not a symbolic gesture and it is not a theatrical prop. It validly satisfies all of the formal, substantive, and procedural requirements of the public institution into which the artist places it.
And from a documentary standpoint—showing what power does when presented with a new question of public interest to be decided—it is a real and tangible artifact: it is documented by the court’s public docket.
But there is more. By the court’s own procedural rules, and by the substantive and procedural rules placed upon the court by the people’s legislature, the document must be acknowledged, processed, and then substantively responded to (even if only to dismiss the public interest theory) by human agents of power—the humans who are and who run the court system: judges, law clerks, lawyers, and the parties to the public interest litigation.
The artist’s Post-Theory Art theory, embedded in the artist’s text-based art—the legal document that the artist files as performance art—literally initiates real and actual procedural law, substantive law, and, perhaps among both the participants and also members of the general public, responses that land not only in the head, intellectually, but also in the heart and the body as felt, sensory experience. The system must, in some way, respond. This is by its own rules. And, especially in matters relating to justice, rights, and equality, what the system does in response may result in emotional and body-felt responses among the humans involved, and the humans watching or hearing about the public matter as it unfolds—regardless of the outcome.
If these observations are accepted by the reader as valid, or at least viable, this is where Post-Theory Art becomes uniquely activist in a way perhaps not quite seen before in art. It is not just art about law, or art about a position—it is alive, and no one knows the outcome once it starts. This uncertainty applies not just to the substance of the legal issue, but also to how the actors—the judge, the lawyers, the parties—will comport themselves as the legal filing proceeds in the judicial machinery until dealt with one way or another.
If this is deemed law-as-art, and also art-as-law, it may follow that the artist’s filing initiates a performance—a happening—within the machinery of power for the first time. The law becomes a medium. Public officials become actors in the performance. The public becomes a witness to what happens, no matter what happens.
The artist’s theory is no longer speculative, and it is no longer static—it is lived, and it takes on a life of its own. The counterparty may move to dismiss it. The court may decide it. The court may avoid it. Whatever happens will be documented by the court’s docket and the court’s writings, available for the public to see, as to an issue of first impression about a public matter the artist has proposed.
The artist puts the theory forward not to declare what should be, but to ask—properly request—the public institution of the courts to decide what should be. This reflects the core of public discourse and a citizen’s respect for the judicial branch of public government, which exists to resolve public questions and private disputes.
The work may be seen as most fully Post-Theory Art if its impact radiates outward: the judge, clerks, lawyers, and parties may feel emotion or body-felt sensation in response to the theory or in response to how others engage with it. Members of the public—whether they relate, resist, or reject the premise—may feel empathy, discomfort, clarity, or frustration.
These are all valid human responses. They are part of what art can do when it reaches not only the head, but also the heart and the body. From this perspective, the artwork placed into the public institution activates not just institutional participants but also public bystanders—whether in real time or much later. Once initiated by the artist, the resulting thoughts, feelings, and sensory experiences may persist long after the legal proceedings conclude.
That this type of art practice is both assertive and respectful appears to be as novel as the questions of first impression that the artist may raise. In this art practice, the artist does not issue demands or declare what must be done, as is common in many activist traditions. Instead, artist-placed public document art, as a form of Post-Theory Art, does the opposite: it asks. It proposes. It trusts the public institution to consider the theory by its own rules. It relies on the emotional, intellectual, and sensory design of the theory itself to carry the weight of its potential. It asks only to be treated like any other case: to receive fair procedural treatment and a response from the institution, one way or another.
This approach sets it apart from reactive or dogmatic activist art. It initiates a real-world formal government process where thinking, feeling, and sensing are not separate—they are unified and enacted at the same time as the court applies law to fact and determines what to do about the theory the artist has presented.
In this sense, it may be accurate to say this type of art is doubly activist. It is activist not only in subject, but in method—using the institution’s own rules to compel engagement with a theory that is both art and valid legal argument. It does not just advocate for change; it initiates the system’s own processes to require a public response to a public idea.
It is both a critique of the real and a collaboration with the real—perhaps felt and received not only by the public institution of the court and its participants, but also by the public itself. A public system of decision-making becomes a kind of gallery, where new art is made, where new law might be made, and where both may resonate—through language, emotion, and felt experience—with the humans involved.