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Re: art is a political problem
tobias c. van Veen
Dec 10, 2003 17:35 PST
[snip] I don't know enough about Beuys -- having only read of him and some of his work and knowing generally of his legacy -- but it seems to me that if this shot was used to condemn Beuys, it is being done so in quite an authoritarian fashion, ie, the ways in which art has been condemned since time immemorial by historians & state. [Here's a pic of this awful scene, moral outrage! moral outrage!] What was the context of the performance, one wonders? Did Haacke explain this? And what of Wagner? Proust liked Wagner too -- was Proust a fascist? Since when did Wagner's ego equate to Fascism? An artist friend of mine (to be left unnamed) was talking about his sound event last night .. he said 'I'm a fascist' -- he's French so it sounded like 'I'm a fasciiieesst'. He was talking about how no one could leave or enter during the event. Art always has its fascisms. My own work has consciously touched on fascism in the squat-techno scenes .. see http://www.shrumtribe.com . Detroit techno mythology of the Underground Resistance variety has a relation to 'giving oneself over' to sound and speaker pounding, also in the events of Richie Hawtin throughout the 90s, a kind of submission that created a kind of sonicult, that I think through its masochism and also sadism could be seen as a fascism of some kind. Perhaps in 20 years we'll see lectures on Genesis P-Orridge, looking at a pic of the androgynous queenman wearing Nazi black jackets in the early '80s, getting crowds of industrialheads chanting DISCIPLINE DISCIPLINE -- and we'll say: ah, what a fascist he was. Nothing could be further from the truth .. Playing with power is the domain of the artist, is it not? tV tobias c. van Veen ----------- http://www.quadrantcrossing.org http://www.thisistheonlyart.com --- tob-*at*quadrantcrossing.org ---McGill Communications------ ICQ: 18766209 | AIM: thesaibot |
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