Oddly enough though it might seem, I am in pretty much substantial
agreement with Brian, though as he says from the other side of a
fence, and I thank him for his considered response. I don't think
that fence is clearly recognized though for what it is.
What I appreciated about Brian's contribution to that Tate conference
was how succinctly and smartly he delineated the costs to an activist
project if it insists on the category art. I have no intention of
stigmatizing the idea of activism, merely in pointing out the
constraints and costs of retaining something so limited (though
magnificent) as art, in other words the sterility of contemporary
activist art UNLESS it adopts post-author models (one of which is
different collaborative models) that involve shedding the
intentionalities of didactic, educational, models of communication,
in other words putting the "art" itself up for complete rethinking.
See the incisive, biting critique of authenticity based on the
valorization of community-responsive, so-called interactive site
specific art in Miwon Kwon, One Place after Another: Site-Specific
Art and Locational Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002).
This is why this list is interesting for it addresses the issue of
collaboration. This is of course anathema to identity-politics, circa
1992 art making, and to "using" art as a platform, a quickly obvious
cliché if there ever was one. Shedding intentionality is anathema to
the dated and sloppy idea of collective or solo forensic analysis of
the art world as somehow affective; instead, as Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe
said in the inaugural issue of Art USA, this is deconstruction as
decoration. Corporate networking in trustee boardrooms of course, is
historic fact; telling me that means artists like Matthew Barney or
Sarah Sze or Eija-Liisa Ahtila make irrelevant art, though each
artist DEPENDS upon the institutions of art and its "generosity" is
to mistake one's own project for teleological necessity. Here we come
back to this list's rationale and why this discussion is relevant. In
other words, if art is an inefficient and ghettoized forum for
change, why not move outside. I'll post a longer response later, both
talking about the bookkeeping model of collaboration versus ethical
action model. It is plain silly to assume I don't fully grasp the
complicities of art, museums and capital, instead of wondering WHY I
would appear to be so oblivious, why I would relativize the
affectiveness of activist projects, not distinguish them from post
studio, relational or other post-author models. In the first place, I
was not speaking from a dumb, Greenbergian, museum PR-person
position, or demanding that activist artists cease work. All I wrote
was that classically avant-garde, vanguard artistic projects are
anachronisms and increasingly dysfunctional ones, dependent upon
their own peripheral privilege and marginal usefulness to art museums
(yes, if Bureau des Etudes can sort out its graphics, not snarl at
surprised audience questioners, and if it learns to produce a group
of work that mimics artistic consistency, then I predict I'll see
them in two years time on museum walls and represented by a good rue
Louise-Weiss gallery). Second, I harbour no illusions about the
contemporary art world, which is no transcultural, globalized
paradise, and by and large is amazingly conformist, class-based and
geographically closed. I just don't believe that Brian's vision is a
very promising or productive one, and it's too totalizing. The Negri
appeal to the multitude won't work. I think it's plain silly to use
art as a platform when other modes are more effective and less
academized. All my life I've been part of campaigns for environmental
and conservation issues, for Free Tibet issues, now in Australia for
pro-asylum seeker issues, and long, long ago as a kid in anti-Vietnam
marches. So: reform art's institutions? Use art as a platform for any
of this? Give me a break. At the Tate conference one particularly
silly interjection urged we burn museums down; if this wasn't
neo-Futurism circa 1912, with all its Animal Farm arrogance, I don't
know, except that such self-righteousness is oblivious to its own
irrelevance. The funny thing is, the so-called People DID adopt art,
but as consumers; Tate is just full of them. The vanguard turned out
to be Sony. Move outside art, then. And Brian agrees. But that
doesn't mean I should, or every other artist should, if we don't
think freedom is what Brian thinks it is (and I don't really think he
wants to be so prescriptive). Nor does it mean that the possibilities
of art are exhausted if it doesn't work in this particular conception
of quote, becoming free, close quote. Quite simply, his and my idea
of becoming-freedom is very, very different, and yet that doesn't
even mean I vote Republican or Conservative (see above) and in fact
letter writing or campaigning may be more effective than his
activist art. This is the other main point: the aspiration of
becoming free he is working for may simply perhaps be not well
worked-for through art, or it may, but that is not the whole
"becoming free" story, but name-calling is and remains a stalinist
reflex. Or take advantage of art's ability as a fund-raiser if you
can, to give real help to real projects. (Incidentally I'm aware of
all the range of projects another writer mentioned a few days ago,
I've written on groups like Superflex, who are exemplary; I'm trying
to tease out something else altogether, and I resent being ranted at,
though not here). Brian was dealing with important questions, and so
was I, and our separate approaches oddly intersect around the same
worries, except that I have fewer illusions about art's social
affectiveness, and I am also concerned to point out just how much
many projects, including institutional critiques, invest in
preserving the objects of critique as hosts. This is why, for someone
like me from the Southern Hemisphere, the agendas are a little
different and the trajectory of responses so far so frustrating
because so neo-marxist formulaic. This is why someone like Okwui
Enwezor is so impatient with North American avant-garde
anti-institutional art and its art critiques (see October's Artforum
for a shorthand version), even though he works within the domain of
art museums. Please read Coetzee's new novel, Elizabeth Costello, if
I'm still not clear (likely not, likely still too confusing).
Costello (and Coetzee and I) would ask: talk about freedom while you
eat the dead flesh of sentient animals? Really. More later. But
thanks Brian for your useful words.
CG
--
Dr Charles Green
Senior Lecturer in Contemporary International and Australian Art,
School of Art History, Cinema, Classical Studies and Archaeology
University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
tel 61 3 8344 4429 fax 61 3 8344 5563
email c.green*at*unimelb edu.au
http://www.sfca.unimelb.edu.au/profiles/charles-green/index.htm
Senior Curator Adjunct, 20th and 21st Century Art, National Gallery of Victoria
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