I couldn't even finish reading the comments - I was so excited about what is happening here on the EPN.
I am posting a film, a documentary about society of the spectacle - Guy Debord's thingamabop. I know that some of you might have been forced to read this crap in college, but they should have just showed you this clip:
doc of situationalist international on ubu web
One - it shows a marxist, utopian art theory, written by an artist, not a theoretician or critic (tho he is French). In his manifesto he doesn't name any artists - it just screams about what art should be - you can't argue with someone's wildest imaginings - it's only when you make an attempt to be realistic that you can get shot down (and only when you are completely unrealistic that your ideas can be actuated). It doesn't use puns. It is not romantic or ironic. And, if you watch the film, you can see that this was the beginning of a lot of action. ACTION, especially political action, is not something that artists, or really anyone, is seriously calling for these days. Hipsters don't dance - it's the same thing.
This clip starts off with, guess who? Malcom McLaren - how a-pro-po! Yes, he co-opted the situationalist's ideas and IMAGES, but they were the avant guard 50! years ago - it s silly to criticize them as sell-outs. Take a look at the art they were making, and compare it to the social effects of the movement. When you actually consider how much of an effect they have had on our culture, well, it gives me hope that all this arguing over seemingly silly ideas is worth doing.
Plus this film has IMAGES, not only words...
Now, for G-reg, and for a certain side of myself who thinks the same way: I know that the relational aesthetics essay is written by a guy who was still young and tended to sensationalize himself, his ideas, and certain artists that he admires, but there are substantial ideas in there, if you are willing to accept that you are reading the work of, you know, a guy who can't talk strait. To give an example, one art group that I learned about who is practicing the ideas of relational aesthetics is called Tercerunquinto. Like TCD was saying - they don't use the traditional signs of rebellion, instead opting for an alien language of architecture and formalism. But the work is really challenging:
It's a little hard to grasp from this site, but this is a ballsy project:
busting down consulate walls
I mean, they were forcing people who had no idea they were going to encounter art to step into the world of galleries, theory, and fetishistic art consumption, and tricking people who came to look at an exhibition to look at people who had come to fullfill some kind of everyday bureaucratic function as art objects - and then feel awfully uncomfortable about that. There is nothing nice about this work. It is far too real, tooo embarrassing, too truthful. Yeah - these guys are architects who love theory, but they take ACTION. And they dance better than the fucking sex pistols.
This project is deceptively simple, but is quite challenging - where is the art? What part of the idea of this project is art? Why isn't it just some kind of humanitarian gesture? What about the role of the participants who don't know it is art? What is the artist's responsibility towards the people who they are messin' with?
it's just a fucking concrete pad
more
I guess what I find most interesting about this work is that it is not utopian. Tercerunquinto is not trying to spark a revolution the way the situationalists were (well - they actually DID spark a revolution, albeit it failed). They are essentially trying to create a few moments of freedom, of seeing things outside of your everyday social reality. And that's as good as it gets! Chances to experience reality outside of conventional responses dictated by our role in society are few and far between. This is what Hakim Bey was talking about with his Temporary Autonymous Zone idea (I think Bourriaud did some heavy duty pakuri on that one). I'm not saying that this is the theory to end all theories (in my own art I am TRYING to find ways to work beyond it - perhaps I shall leave them out of this discussion), but at least you can understand why so many art students nowadays are talking about "artistic interventions" - what they are getting at (and have to move beyond).
A thousand thoughts, absolutely no desire to organize - such is the curse of the inebriated mind. But I am glad about one thing - every last one of my classmates started dancing tonight, spontaneously after class, just because there was a huge glass wall that was working as a mirror. No music, just ten solid minutes of sweet moves and booty rolls. Yeah.
9 comments:
I really wasn't trying to say that theory is bad. Just that, as henry pointed out, if something like astrophysics, evolution and the history of the universe can be so simply explained by Carl Sagan, why is there a tendancy to hide behind overly complex wording in art criticism?
My problem with the Situationists is that I find them too nationlistic (along with a lot of the post-structuralists). The late-capitalist society has lots of problems, sure, but I'd still take it over what existed before.
Also, I fundamentally disagree with the idea that we are trapped "in a spiral of reciprocal appropriation", or rather I don't think it's so hopeless as they all make it out to be.
Now, I think what you're saying is more about the fact that the Situationists wrote something progressive, which made change instead of simply commenting on it. Fair enough, but like I said my real problem with them was their message, not their methods.
I'm all for people coming up with theories, rallying behind them. Language is powerful, man, but it's also a big load of bullshit alot of times. Karl Rove (at least it was implied that it was Karl Rove) said to a new york times magazine reporter years ago something along the lines of "We're (the bush administration) Actors on a world stage. We make moves, and play actively in the game. All of you (the writer, press establishment) are just writing commentary on history, and when you're done writing about it we're already off doing something else" [paraphrased from memory].
Now, that statement is also kind of bullshit because the conservative establishment has been developing theories since Goldwater lost the election, but I think the point is more about the type of theory. Again, why is there such an exclusionary tone to art critisicm?
i havent looked through the material you posted yet...but you mentioned you were trying to leave your own art out of the discussion....why? maybe after a little discussion you can bring them back in....that is the sort of stuff i am interested in...the reason i put this page together....maybe one of my problems with ar theory is that you never get a chance to ask return questions...and you never get to know them.
Ha ha - this is another fine load of bullcrap:
G-reg - When posting this shit I don't even think I READ your comments too carefully. I should go back and try to figure out what they were actually saying, huh?
I mainly just posted this to share the film, which I think takes some texts that we may have been forced to read at some point and demystifies them by putting them in context. Maybe some of you undestood the history of this movement better than I did, but I found this to be an eye opening flick mostly because of the images. I can't even really say that much about their politics, but some things really struck me as good and useful. For one, the way they valued art actions that created new ways to experience the modern cityscape, personal and intimate discussions about politics, and happenings meant to challenge people's social status or assumptions about public discourse, that is the kind of freedom and individualism worth supporting (as opposed to the kind of modern american consumeristic freedom TCD was criticising - the freedom to pursue any hedonistic pleasure one feels like).
As for why art theory is complicated, I feel like that is what will happen on any planet with sentinent life. It's the natural result of the mind game effect.
As for comparing art to the universe, I do think that art is more complicated than the universe. Sagan doesn't seem to enter the world of information, symbolic exchange, emotions, consciousness. The behavioralists tried to describe human behavior in the physical world without trying to explain what was going on in the mind, but they were missing out on the real important questions (and kind of promoting dehumanization). The brain is a computing machine that is capable of literally infinite variety of thought (though it's a "limited infinity" which means that it is not capable of ALL thought) - it's capable or recursion and the ready identification of new symbols. Why not revel in it's infinitude rather than try to simplify it? I know that in the rational school understanding is basically the same as simplification and compression, but a lot of sensory pleasure is about maximalizing the bit rate of your mind's intakes, and imagination is about creating new, previously unassociated connections, possibly limitless networks of potential thought. And when it boils down, the universe is not actually compressible.
As for why I left my art out, it was because I get sick of typing sometimes - I can really turn the blahs on when I start talking about myself. I am just starting a bunch of new shit, so I don't want to jinx it quite yet. I'll jinx it in a bit.
As for how theory is a bunch of snotty bullcrap - yeah - what do you think I disagree? But simplicity isn't all that cool either - do we really want a world full of people who just know what they like? Like any other way of doing things, there are people who get technical - there are bio-mimeticists who spend years and years trying to create virtual models of how millipedes move their legs. Now, a lot of the theory is written in a manner than is deliberately exclusive and opaque, but the best theory is very clear, although there is a certain vocabulary that you need to be familiar with. But everyone here on this site already is guilty of having a decent vocabulary and if you were forced not to use the words you know, you would feel as though you were not able to express yourself. Not that you have to talk like a pompous asshole, but sometimes good writing means using an expensive word or two.
Finally, even though the text of relational aesthetics is guilty of some of the abovementioned sins, it points towards a kind of art practice that is concrete, action-oriented, very inuitively graspable, and aims to reach people outside of the art world.
a) while on one level i sympathize with g-reg's concerns that theorists hide behind silly jargon and needlessly complicated language, i have to be EXTREMELY wary of kneejerk anti-academicism. that kind of sentiment is worse than the pretension it opposes. following such logic to extremes leads one to the conclusion that "well, why talk or think about anything anyway?".
i think the exclusionary gesture, to a degree, IS necessary! why SHOULD everyone be able to understand everything? it's not like this kind of knowledge would benefit or even interest 99.9% of the population anyway. sometimes the alienating language and structure is necessary to communicate certain theories (deleuze & guattari)...
now, there is a line between obscurantism and just plain inscrutability - but it tends to be pretty apparent when people are talking complete bullshit.
also, i didn't read the entirety of the article (just the glossary), but the "reciprocal spiral of appropriation" is a notion i agree with 150%...
b) i think what i find off-putting in the tercerunquinto work is just what interests you, eff - the absence of a utopian agenda.
i find the concrete block somewhat tasteless and exploitative. it serves no purpose in the lives of those who inhabit the town - it is only a curiosity for outsiders. i'm also not entirely sure what it is asking us to question. simply engineering awkward situations doesn't appeal to me...there has to be a real goal...
c)
"But I am glad about one thing - every last one of my classmates started dancing tonight, spontaneously after class, just because there was a huge glass wall that was working as a mirror. No music, just ten solid minutes of sweet moves and booty rolls. Yeah."
this is interesting..dance is obviously a performative art that relies upon some sort of audience - even if it's oneself.
mirrors make people do weird things.
I didn't mean to sound like I was trying to dismiss theory alltogether, or anything like that. But let me address some of these points:
>>that kind of sentiment is worse than the pretension it opposes. following such logic to extremes leads one to the conclusion that "well, why talk or think about anything anyway?".
Well, that can be true, but it's also a slippery slope argument. That's the same way pro-lifers like to convince people that abortion is 'baby-killing', by saying that there is no singular moment at which something is not human. While if taken to the extreme my argument can sound anti-academic, I don't think it is what I was trying to be at all.
>> As for comparing art to the universe, I do think that art is more complicated than the universe.
How can you say that? Art is the Universe, along with our minds. We wouldn't be here making art, and taking about this if we hadn't evolved to this very particular moment in history. And Sagan does talk about that mind.
Actually Eff, I think you would find very interesting his episode of Cosmo's that starts off looking at whales. He says that every whale song has roughly the same amount of data as the Iliad. They are amazing creatures, around for way longer than us.
>> Not that you have to talk like a pompous asshole, but sometimes good writing means using an expensive word or two.
Agreed. Unless you can use a shorter, simpler word that doesn't kill the vibe or weaken the point.
TCD: You make a REALLY good point about the dificulties in writing theory that is specifically about text -- it's insanely difficult because how do you jump outside the very text you're writing in order to deconstruct the medium itself?
Well, I think abstract expressionist painters did just that when they made audiences aware of the 'paintingness' of a painting. And, yes, this was and still is way above peoples heads, and maybe pretentious (or very pretentious) and so there you go I've contradicted myself.
But I think it comes down to the bullshit meter, and something about that particular article rang some bells, and it's just good to know that I'm not the only one who thinks this stuff can sound like bullshit sometimes.
TCD
Let's talk about "b."
First of all, I can't spend forever explaining the concrete block, and I know there is not a lot of good documentation provided, but you really have it wrong. The block was very useful to the people. The slum where it was located is in a flood plain, so there is no dry solid ground. The block was raised, and so provided a natural place for people to gather. Things they did included - selling haircuts, giving kids shots, political rallies, chorus practice, religious ceremonies, and eventually the private landowner next door occupied it and built a fence. The artists spent time there in a hands-off manner, but some of the people knew it was an art project. But they didn't, like, bus in art world types to snap photos.
As for having a goal - I'm not sure that most artistic investigations, or for that matter scientific experiments, are goal-oriented. It seems more productive when people follow their interests and see what useful products or ideas emerge. Improvisation and creativity rather than tasks.
But I have to partially agree with you; I also felt uncomfortable with how 3&1/5 (Tercerunquinto)'s work treated individuals, but only in that they did not address it directly enough. A lot of my work is about examining individual experience, so I think this is one way that I am looking to move beyone relational aesthetics. But then you can ask where the line is drawn - are artists supposed to make their product completely safe, nonchallenging, and consumable? Obviously not. But where is the opposite end of this scale? At what point are you just fucking with people, even if you have a really good reason and are being really smart about it?
What is boring about utopias is how they always end up being just the new empire, just another failed bureaucratic mess - the hippies and the May 68 Parisian students were really wild, but how is their legacy any more lasting than a utopia that existed only for one evening? How do you measure freedom when it doesn't last? Isn't the quality and experience of the moment more important than the lasting power? There is no such thing as a Utopia when your alarm is ringing after a night of partying. In this train of throught, 3&1/5 is dealing directly with the TAZ proposed by Hakim Bey - it exists for only a short while, and then it fades back into the empire - but at least that affords us the chance to create holes in the empire - who cares if they are connected through time and space? Artists term this "interstitial space" - the space in the cracks, the grey areas, black markets, virtual orgies, uncensored discourse, the "derive" that the situationists were talking about - directly experiencing life on the city streets - finding new ways to relate to people through a kind of artistic framing.
Anyway, I can't write more - my head is on fire and my tummy's growling.
i hope you ate something. hunger is one the worst crimes.
i'm not sure if the fact that the block provided coincidental benefits for those inhabiting the region somehow rationalizes the exploitative bent of the project - in fact, it might just magnify it. this top-down model of art is something that needs to be resisted - i dare say it mirrors US foreign policy.
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"As for having a goal - I'm not sure that most artistic investigations, or for that matter scientific experiments, are goal-oriented."
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i COMPLETELY disagree with this statement - all scientific models, and really, most great art, is built upon some sort of hypothesis. you go into investigations looking to PROVE something, not just to accumulate information. even in your own work, farley, i think it would be rather clumsy to suggest that you have no agenda in your investigations. that isn't to say you are entirely opposed to evidence that contradicts your hypothesis - but to say you have no point you are trying to prove is really just a lie.
i agree completely with your comments regarding utopias - they are, by necessity, boring. that doesn't mean one should dismiss utopian ideals entirely - these struggles are necessary.
(too drunk)
I think TCD and EFF would find Archigram's Plug-In City take on Utopia anything but boring (or was it Peter Cook?).
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The scientific process is under attack, especially in America. Creationists want to teach Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolution as if evolution is nothing more than a theory.
Testing a hypothesis and discovering new data is precisely what takes a theory beyond the craddle and solidifies it as scientific fact. The important thing to realize here is that a scientific fact can be disproved, and the scientific community will (and often has) change the theory in light of the new findings.
To say that simply because Carl Sagan didn't get to collective consiousness theories in his program (which came out twenty years ago remember) implies that he wouldn't have had a scientific explanation for such things -- and I find that hard to believe.
Creationists also rail against science because they see it as "de-humanizing". For some, even the thought that we evolved from apes is alone a terribly humiliating concept.
Why do we constantly need to prove our special position as King of the Species? It is because of this bubble of humanity that apparently separates from other species that people do not see the environment as an important issue. As if nature were one thing, and humans were another. When in scientific reality our bodies are composed of elements and organisms as old as the world itself, down to the most simple cells -- the first forms of life.
Even our brains are like a fossil record. They show layers of our evolution, and you can see the water lines on the walls.
I think we probably will start to see a more complete scientific exploration of symbolic exchange, and other bleeding edge fashionable theories. And maybe it will be an artist who makes the most important advances.
None of this should deflate a sense of mystery. Darwin got to his theory of evolution while collecting beetles (which was a hoby, not a scientific persuit). Once he found the theory, he fully persued it using the scientific process.
TCD -
"all scientific models, and really, most great art, is built upon some sort of hypothesis. you go into investigations looking to PROVE something..."
I don't know. I'd like to learn more about how science works... I'm not sure. I'm not denying that I have some ideas that I would like to prove with my art, but these tend to be the stupidest part of the work. The best stuff seems to be the incidental stuff that arises along the way. The mistakes that become the keystone facts of a new thesis, the evidence that disproves the blunt and superimposed theories that come out of my mind.
I was listening to some dude (forget who) talking about how the government funds grad students (they tend to fund practical scientists more than art students) without specifying what projects they should work on because students are most productive when following their own dreams, their own seemingly unpromising experiments.
Like I was saying in the Haeckel post, the most detailed and "new" thoughts come from the juxtaposition or misreading of facts - creativity is highly illogical. Burroughs had it right with the whole cut-up experiment - the brain works to do the same thing on a massive scale, and is better at recognizing when a new combination of thoughts is useful and worth pursuing.
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