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Re: art is a political problem
Patrick Lichty
Dec 10, 2003 21:34 PST
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Well, this will be my first foray here, and glad that it's on Greg's missive. To answer Tobias first: "Playing with power is the domain of the artist, is it not?" Really depends on the medium, function, context, etc. I wonder, and I admit that these examples are light years out of context, and for good reason) whether Rodin's Thinker, the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel, Fluxus, Davies' Osmose all necessarily play with power, and in what ways? I'm deeply sorry to make htat sound like an Art History 1001 course, but I find it fascinating how the 'artist' as so constructed, has been complicit and subversive over time. And now, I think that there is a great difficulty in that there is a great deal of complicity that must be undertaken to be more subversive (entering deeply into the culture you wish to learn the mechanisms of), and so on. Furthermore, some of the most complicit are subverting the mainstream culture (such as Thomas Kinkaide and his lot, who are really redefining the mainstream conception of art). And, to paraphrase Grau from Virtual Art, technological art over history has largely served to reinscribe the strength of the powerful. So one line has spawned a complex socio-historical matrix. Just thought I'd throw that out. POLITICS - Can one not be political nowadays? That can possibly be answered a number of ways, a couple of which I'll try to address. One of the hardest theoretical concepts that I had to learn on a visceral level was what I call ' the discursive game', in which a set of discursive/sociopolitical (what have you) parameters are put in place that invalidate any position you could take. A subset of this is the 'Catch-22'; another example is when a female spouse asks a male one in a hetero relationship whether she looks fat. My wife also used to do this with arguments in late feminism. From this, I think it's very important to consider how one frames the situation. If the discourse is such that there can be no apolitical stance, then of course, no one can be apolitical. I am not trying to take us into the hall of mirrirs by being arbitrarily relativist, but I am aware of a number of people who do not 'not care' about politics, which in itself is a stance, but simply don't think about them. This may seem amazing, but there are. Neighbors across from my parents who could not care a whit about politics, and just care about going to work, maintaining their house, and going to church. I admit that these aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer, but they're not ignorant, either. The point is that there is a segment of the world's population that politics do not even register on their radar. And some of them are artists. I would argue, that many (and I hesitate to draw this with too reductive of a model) probably decoratives and weekend dillettantes, but artists nonetheless. Now, if we talk about this under the rubric of people who have any degree of social awareness, then this becomes a very different terrain, as we examine a marked shift in demographic, etc. If there is a social consciousness in the individual, then I am doubtful that the individual can be apolitical. And, this gets quite problematic when looking at the pressures the individual, especially in those not of the bourgeoisie, has to endure which are placed on them by private sector/capitalist pressures. I think that the daily pressures that the capitalist society places upon the individual can cause them to enter a politics that they would avoid if material circumstances were otherwise. But of course, we can then spin off into a discussion of the formation of materialism in the late 20th Century, the rise of Technopoly, and so on, but I think that this is beyond what I'm getting at. Can one be apolitical now? 1: Possibly, if one is totally disengaged (rare) 2: Besides this, probably not, but: a:Today, probably only the upper and upper middle classes (in the US) have the luxury of being able to actualize idealism. b: the underclasses are placed under increasing strain that limits political activity and so reinscribes hegemony c: This is not to say that the underclasses are less political, but may 'typically' posess fewer political freedoms of action. There are people that I know in Louisiana that are living so hand-to-mouth that they don't have the time or energy to engage in _any_ form of political thought. These are extreme cases, but they draw an important example that if one has a mindset that excludes any political engagement (of the types that Greg is talking about), then one can be apolitical. Another nasty conundrum is the issue of discusive localization, of which I've been engaging in a little here. Perhaps a person can be selectively political, or be more or less engaged, but it's getting late and I need to quit before this turns more murky than it already has. I hope you get my points. Best, Patrick Lichty Intelligent Agent Magazine. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gregory G. Sholette" <gshol-*at*artic.edu>; To: <collabo-*at*topica.com>; Cc: "collaboration" <collabo-*at*topica.com>; Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 10:10 PM Subject: Re: [freecooperation] art is a political problem
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