Greetings everyone. McKenzie Wark here. I'll write separately on interests
and
projects. I wanted to comment on the Holmes/Green debate, which i think
is a useful one to get out in the open.
I agree with Charles about the limits of avant garde art practices, their
vanguardism, their complicity with either Stalinism or its surrogates. There
are examples that escape these problems, but they are few and far between.
It is a tradition in perennial crisis.
What's interesting is the way Charles uses this critique of the avant garde
as a bridge to an uncritical embrace of art institutions. I think the
criticisms
Brian offers of art (and academic) institutions is a valid one, and all too
often simple brushed aside. It's the way critical theory becomes
hypocritical
theory. Just refuse to look at your own institutional setting and direct the
critical focus elsewhere.
Which brings me to the double meaning of the word 'collaboration'. While
it might have some good senses, it also has the negative one -- the
collaborator
with the enemy, the one who is coopted, compromised, tainted. To
collaborate is to compromise, to horse-trade, to settle for less.
One resolves the problem by pointing to the bad collaborations one does
not undertake, but exempts the collaborations one actually chooses from
scrutiny.
To be within or without the institutions -- perhaps they're just different
kinds
of compromise. The trick is to keep one's critical awareness when regarding
the collaborations one *did* choose, rather than just pointing the finger
elsewhere.
Give that most of us are 'insiders', Brian's 'outsider' position is the one
to which
we should eb paying attention, rather than reacting to it defensively.
cheers
k___________________________________________________
http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors0/warktext.html
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