It is difficult to know where or how to enter a conversation that
appears to be taking place between two people who shared an
apparently very exciting if particular experience in London several
weeks ago. But if the seriousness of the issues under discussion
appears to have slipped right past my, apparently ineffectual, effort
to open up this conversation to a more collaborative form of
conversation, then I suppose being accused of reflexive name-calling
is the least of it. Still, I do appreciate Dr Green's promise to
clarify and expand upon his notion of collaboration in the near
future as well as to elaborate on his vision of the art world itself.
Yet, at the risk of being labeled a serial ranter, I do think it is a
bit of a misrepresentation for him to insist that:
"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."
When in fact he suggested that:
"The avant-garde nowadays in art has a pretty bad name as a concept,
for its historical genealogical link with left terror has never been
forgotten."
These two sentences hardly amount to the same thing. As anachronistic
as stalinism is today, and I hope we all agree on that, by invoking
the sins of the father one invariably levels a far more ominous
reproach than simply claiming something is outmoded. In any case your
recent amendment is much preferred. thank you. time to move on.
The question of institutional power is serious and complex indeed and
perhaps more so for anyone claiming an engaged, critical art
practice. Nor can it be addressed in either or fashion: That is to
say either taking the stance that the contemporary art world --the
formal economy of dealers, collectors, museums, biennials and the
administrative and discursive network that maintains this network --
is totally, political useless
OR, that it is sufficiently influential by virtue of its very
integration into contemporary managerial culture, to be worthwhile
engaging as an activist in anything like an exclusive manner.
If the first position marks the stance of many who practice
"community based art" (the "" is because this label seems poorly
conceived to me), then the second stance is associated with
institutional critique. As a former student of Hans Haacke's I have
wrestled with this issue for over twenty years in fact and, admiring
Haacke and his institutional critique as much as I do, still
recognize the need to look beyond the institutional art world for the
intention and reception of my work. And I believe this is necessary
if one chooses to see one's creative work as a call to both the
imaginative as well as the socially critical or political pragmatic.
At the same time, I remain a practicing artist who makes objects,
(god help me aye), as well as someone with a history as an arts
organizer. The latter includes co-founding such collectives as PAD/D
or Political Art Documentation and Distribution (1979-circa 1986),
and REPOhistory (1989-2000). The fact that both of these entities
remain obscure to the denizens of the institutional art world
suggests to me that there is indeed life "outside" that world, the
one in which the Tate, MoMA, Artforum and October operate. I have
given this other space the designation of dark matter. This shadow
region includes artists who, for economic reasons are forced, or for
political reasons have chosen, to operate outside the visible zones
of the art world. But it also includes work by non-professional,
hobbyists, zinesters, phantom editors, Sunday painters and so forth,
not unlike shadow economies exist in between official ones.
Despite its invisibility cosmic dark matter allegedly makes up more
than 90 percent of the universe. Likewise, artistic dark matter also
makes up most of the creative activity occurring in the post
industrial world. At the same time it can only be inferred indirectly
from the effect it has on the institutional art world and, like its
cosmological cousin, creative dark matter is necessary for the
overall smooth functioning of the high culture industry. Without its
unseen "gravitational" pull in other words, the value structure of
the art system would implode and the emperors would be visible
without their attire, or sans their orange wig and kilt as the case
may be.
However, I would argue that this implosion is more immanent now than
it has been in a long time. First because of the art world's evident
embrace of amateur aesthetics, too much to go into here, but should
be apparent. And second for precisely the reasons Brian suggests; a
widespread desire for "·the achievement of some kind of autonomy"
that can begin "the infinite process of collectively giving oneself a
"law" leading to "·the possibility for aesthetic activity to serve as
the imaginary material for a process of social reflexivity." The
interest in collective work by the art world and last year's
Documenta is but one example, is in part recognition of, as well as
perhaps an attempt to recover some aspect of this potentially
subversive/break-away phenomenon. It also reminds me of the art
world's selective embrace of so-called "political art" in the
mid-1980s.
As for the notion that the classical avant-garde artist's call to
move art into life is anachronistic; please consider these two
sentences from Rodchenko in 1921: "Contemporary art is a conscious
and organized life that is able to see and build. Any person who has
organized his life, his work, and himself is a genuine artist." The
same desire that Brian and others propose, to see art dissolve
itself, to no longer be a distinct professional activity, but instead
one that evolves into a reflexive aspect of daily life, also appears
in many of the writings of early Soviet avant-garde artists. Again,
this is all the more reason not to "abandon the entire legacy of
experimental art in the twentieth century to a powerful, directive
few." (ibid)
Finally, I would ask Dr. Green to clarify this interesting remark of his:
"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."
It sounds as if your position is as follows, but please correct me if
this is wrong: anyone who thinks artistic production can sometimes be
useful for imaginatively impeding social injustice, or for
communicating with a non-art public about what Brecht called "the bad
new days," or who simply sees within any informal, creative activity
an element of individual or collective resistance to modern
alienation, is,
A. either politically naïve, or
B. attempting to transform "art" into the adequacy of some type of
historical determinism whose future realization redeems the mere
utilitarianism of this anemic art.
But when you add that:
"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."
I am in agreement. I like to say that after 80 some years, art has
indeed finally merged with life. Only the life art has merged with
sucks.
One thing however that must be added here is the acknowledgement of
an unprecedented level of intervention by private interests and
trans-national corporations into contemporary art since the
Regan/Thatcher years of the early 1980s. At the same timer there has
been an incredible multiplication of cultural institutions and
withdrawal of public (federal) support in the US for art during this
same time frame. What this suggests to me, but not me alone, is that
a certain species of avant-garde and neo-avant-garde art has become
complicit with the objectives of the new aristocracy: the
neo-conservative movement and to only somewhat less of a degree
neo-liberal technocrats. To people peering in from outside the new,
"artistic academy" art may indeed be despised or viewed as a
fashionable or merely curious consumable, but the staggering increase
in the income gap during the past twenty years in the US alone is
reason enough for artists to heed another line of brecht's: they
won't say: the times were dark. Rather: why were their poets silent?
One thing that PAD/D sought to do is to weave together a variety of
university art galleries, community centers, union hall art
showcases, even churches into an alternative network for socially
committed art. A sort of cooperative "dark" art world if you like.
The thing that interests me about the internet is the degree to which
such an alternative has begun to take shape. Hearing from more people
about ways they have sought to establish working autonomous zones for
artistic collaboration, is primarily why I have subscribed to this
list. That does not mean abandoning the need to undermine and
redirect the power of the commodity oriented art world towards the
dark side...
Yours truly,
Another writer (aka gregory sholette)--
gregory g. sholette
Assistant Professor
Arts Administration;
Visual, Critical Studies
The School of the Art
Institute of Chicago
http://www.artic.edu/~gshole/
_______________
280 Riverside Drive, #3E
New York City, NY 10025
USA
<gshol-*at*artic.edu>;