No More Poodles II: Bogue versus Vogue. By Ben Watson
In the second installment of his music column, Ben Watson wages a war of social being against the hip priests of consensus reality. Just what it is that makes things vogue? When you're young and ignorant, vogue is all you're offered, and you perforce make do with that - until you've burrowed your own way into that festering midden called culture. A select few among the older and more knowledgeable finally gain the power to make vogues, or at least to jump on Zeitgeists which seem mysteriously to arrive from nowhere. What's vogue must titillate with the unknown and pullulate with danger, though it must also confirm existing institutions and flatter acknowledged expertise. So I'd cite as ‘vogue' the John Latham revival, which has everyone from David Toop to Stewart Home and Lol Coxhill and Ulli Freer ‘celebrating' the work of the artist who burned books back in the '60s. What's the opposite of vogue? What I like, which I'll call bogue. Bogue is casting off precedent, and doing what you have to. As I put it in an episode of Late Lunch With Out To Lunch called ‘Output' (Resonance FM, 8 December 2009): ‘Pertinent art is the necessary output of a particular set-up, not some arbitrary clown drawn on black velvet with a great swanky signature beneath'. This could serve as a manifesto of bogue. What made punk fantastic was that its bouleversement of value made everyone face with sober senses what the entertainment industry was actually giving us; its theoretical inputs were put to work, not worn as badges of cool. http://www.metamute.org/editorial/mute-music/no-more-poodles-ii-bogue-versus-vogue -- ---> A living - breathing - thriving networked neighbourhood - proud of free culture - claiming it with others ;) Other reviews,articles,interviews http://www.furtherfield.org/reviews.php Furtherfield – online arts community, platforms for creating, viewing, discussing and learning about experimental practices at the intersections of art, technology and social change. http://www.furtherfield.org Furtherfield Gallery – Finsbury Park (London). http://www.furtherfield.org/gallery Netbehaviour - Networked Artists List Community. http://www.netbehaviour.org http://identi.ca/furtherfield http://twitter.com/furtherfield _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
