Re: [-empyre-] affect, low theory, and capture
Hi there - In hopes of being able to cogently contribute to this week's discussion, some of you may find a clip from one of my earlier video pieces to be of interest - Leave little to be Desired. It was my MFA thesis piece ( 1989 ! ) that functioned as both a single channel and installation piece. The piece posted on Vimeo is a short compilation of clips from the lengthier video. And, yes, technically speaking it was digitally created - way back then- in the days of behemoth machines with very long rendering timelines https://vimeo.com/44560594 Chris On Jun 21, 2012, at 7:42 AM, Lauren Berlant wrote: I don't disagree with that--the Auge is great--but maybe we could push a bit harder on the relation of the transitional to the transformational here, and on the relation of class to sexuality. In the hotel, the customer is getting to suspend who she was when not on vacation from herself in the way Auge suggests (the non-place inducing the habitation of self-misalignment) but the servant's relation to her is exactly what a servant's relation is, professional voyeurism as care that, when it has sexual or subjective consequences, has to be kept to oneself. It isn't a non place for the servant. LB Sent from my iPad On Jun 21, 2012, at 9:24 AM, Ana Valdes agora...@gmail.com wrote: But a hotel is also a way for the nomadic to rest for a while to interact with others to listen to gossip to drink to eat to sleep in a bed made by some other than oneself. The hotel is always transitional a non-place as an airport or a motorway if we follow the anthropologist Marc Auge's theory Non-Places. Ana Skickat från min iPhone 21 jun 2012 kl. 11:13 skrev Lauren Berlant lberl...@aol.com: Hi all! I just thought I'd float a few thoughts. 1. The juxtaposition of Jordan's Hotel to Montgomery's Transitional Objects does raise lots of questions about what kinds of refusal to produce a narrow-veined kinship cluster of likenesses and samenesses do to the general queer project of expanding the plane on which relationality appears as a scene in the psychoanalytic and criminal senses, a moving object and a moving target. In Jennifer's piece the mutilated recombined dolls produce no anchor but an anxiety about how to stay in relation; while in Jordan's piece the erotics of stuckness, of a binding to the signifiers of desire, can become both fetishistic of what appetite stands for and, because dedramatized by the music and slow, inarticulate mise en scene, drained of fetishism's drama to demythify or intensify the sign. Hotel in a way is about not a desire for expansive perverse queered transition but a queer stuckness that doesn't expand into the world but expands time into the enigma of relation itself, on the verge of shattering without the fetish's drama and pseudo-finality. 2. This leads me back to Zach's insistence on negativity as that which seems negative: withdrawal, subtraction, immeasurability, escape from capture. I said this to Zach last spring when we were talking about the common and sex, so this is where we are stuck, but: I think it's a mistake to take the state's biopolitical aesthetics of the subject's and a population's forced appearance and translation into data as the defining taxonomy of the moment, because by copying the dominant fetishizing idiom, repeating its own profound stupidity about the relation of information and knowledge, even in resistance to it, you reproduce its idiom as the idiom of the world. Any representation of relational processes (or of object/scenes, as I call them) makes a new closet and a new disturbance. Practices of exposure and literalization are false comforts. (I feel this as well about the romance of the nomad--being a nomad is a lot scarier and incoherently scavenging than Braidotti suggests! That's one way to read Patricia's poem...) I think it's a sign of the crisis of the reproduction of life that the world's we are in that literalization, the sheer immeasurable description of the materiality of affect in action and relation, is everywhere seen as necessary for a new realism. XxoL Sent from my iPad On Jun 20, 2012, at 6:56 AM, Ana Valdés agora...@gmail.com wrote: I saw in the city of Umeå in the North of Sweden a very interesting exhibition, Lost and Found Queerying the Archive. The curators Jane Rowley and Louise Wolthers built the show around some central and pivotal questions: identity, love and sexuality. Many of the voices presented are anonymous, people questioning themselves, searching for some belonging, for some identity, asking themselves about normality and normativity. The norms are made of conventions and consensus, agreements, historical memes written on people's experiences and stories. For me personally it was a great aha moment to read Rosi Braidottis Nomadic Subjects, a book where she writes about
Re: [-empyre-] on working queerly with media
bears an uncanny ( and yet to be acknowledged ) resemblance to the nascent trajectories of identity politics proferred by Harry Hay ( Los Angeles ) and the Mattachine society in the mid-20thc. Any thoughts on this? Thx! C On Jun 5, 2012, at 4:02 PM, Zach Blas wrote: doing new media work queerly! Christiane Robbins J e t z t z e i tS t u d i o s ... the space between zero and one ... Walter Benjamin Los Angeles + San Francisco CA The present age prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804-1872 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Fwd: Call for e-action | Venice Biennale |Manifesto
Hi Tim et all, That may well be the case as you have so eloquently articulated. However, these 20th c strategies strike me as speaking more to adaptive reuse than innovation - more as playing for the court than effecting truly a subversive action, as it so portends. At this point in time and global context, inhabiting the spectacle ( as inviting as it may be to some ) is simply shape-shifting. Best, Chris On Jun 11, 2011, at 7:27 AM, Timothy Murray wrote: Kristine, I understand your impatience but I'm wondering whether me might be able to appreciate this intervention to be in line and solidarity with the kind of thinking about immigration, mobility, and extrastatecraft posited, say, by Keller Easterling in her work on infrastructure or by Arjun Appadurai on stateless migrants and aspiration. Perhaps we could understand this manifesto to inhabit or squat in the spectacle it condemns precisely to foreground rhetorically (and isn't rhetoric a formal and performative condition of art?) the conditions that Johannes articulates. Best, Tim I concur with Johannes. I find nothing interesting in the manifesto's hubris, self-importance, and sophomoric lack of empathy and curiosity (to say nothing of understanding) of those it critiques. Finally, the manifesto exemplifies the spectacle it condemns. Kristine On Jun 10, 2011, at 9:32 AM, Johannes Birringer wrote: Not sure what there is, so lovable, about the rhetorical manifesto (Stateless1 Pavillion Biennale.jpg) of futile gestures, and the proposal to squat between the fascist monuments (german and italian pavilions) in the Giardini, if one were to travel to Italy, that would require a passport, no? and a Biennale ticket? when I became a stateless citizen of the State in Time (NSK issued the virtual passports in the mid 90s), i tried to enter the U.S. with it but no such luck. anyway, to those on the ground there, the pirates, my best wishes regards Johannes I absolutely love this! xl On Jun 8, 2011, at 8:37 AM, Ricardo Dominguez wrote: I will let the group that developed this gesture speak for itself (also a short manifesto as .jpg attached): On 5/27/11 3:35 AM, statelessimmigrantspavil...@riseup.netmailto:statelessimmigrantspavil...@riseup.net wrote: We, the Anonymous Stateless Immigrants, will construct a Stateless Immigrant's Pavilion by occupying the Giardini during the Venice Biennale (June 5-15), pirate style, and we need your help! This is a call for participation to claim space for stateless immigrants in between the erected pavilions of all the nations for a sit-in with tents, bbq, music, dancing, etc. In solidarity with the Spanish Revolution and other emancipatory movements, our actions are closely aligned with our brothers and sisters all over the world who are struggling against the suffocating encroachment of capitalism in all its manifestations and forms. Advocating nomad-ism, autonomy and anonymity as alternatives to the representational border politics inherent within the structure of the biennale itself, this is a call for artists, activists and local people of Venice to join us! You could do so by replying to this email for further organizational support or forward it to relevant people in your network. More information about our statement can be found attached, but please do not hesitate to contact us directly for more info etc! statelessimmigrantspavilion[at]riseup.net Ps: This is not a mass email! our and your anonymity is important for us! I did not attend VB and have only considered the event via this gesture and this union strike: Italian unions certainly know how to get a point across. At the last Venice Bienale, in 2009, workers at the international exhibition went on strikehttp://www.artnet.com/magazineus/news/artnetnews/moma-preview9-29-09.asp , protesting the degeneration of working conditions and picketing the Giardini in August. This time around it was the vaporetto operators who called the manifestazione, meaning that service on the affordable water buses had been shut down for 24 hours in protest of labor conditions. This being Venice, where private water taxis run a cool ¤60, and where the only other alternative to vaporetti is walking miles of twisty, staircase- ridden calli (narrow streets), there were a lot of blisters and missed art at the Biennale today. Chalk one up for the vaporetto union. (Some of the tonier exhibitions fought back, however - the Prada Foundation and François Pinault both supplied water transport to ferry press and VIPs to their shows.)? But I do think the questions you asking about the performative matrix playing out at VB in terms of routing around the question of the Global Citizen and transborder_bodies in terms of presence - even as a frame of a question is definitely out of the question for the state-driven definition of art that state's internal crisis
Re: [-empyre-] chic
Ok then ... let's divert the bandying a bit - In considering chic I, of course, think of fashionable or at least some affectation of a specific notion of fashionability. I also happen to think of gender. If I were to extrapolate a bit more, I can easily position your argument aligning the PC and chicness ( But after seeing how supercomputers and PCs in the 1980s, PCs and the Internet in the 1990s, cell phones in the 2000s etc. have all gone through tremendous surges in their development once they became popular and chic among large numbers of people who had ignored them before,) with its wildly expanded global market via a product design directed toward domestication and personal stylized spheres ( an interiority, if you will.) And in so doing ... then establishing a highly monetized position within a diverse aggregate of cultures. Let us not forget that the essentialized domestic sphere is commonly associated with the female gender. So then do we have the the birth of chic for these purposefully designed objects ( housings ) themselves - apart for the hidden technology drivers such as the graphic cards, etc.? Thanks again for an interesting discussion, Chris On Apr 28, 2011, at 2:59 AM, Tamiko Thiel wrote: Am 28.04.2011 11:45, schrieb xDxD.vs.xDxD: Hi Tamiko things become widespread when they synchronize with the cultures, desires and symbolic domains of people, not when they become chic. Dear Salvatore, Then we are arguing about words, because for me what you just said above is my definition of chic - that they synchronize with the cultures, desires and symbolic domains of people. And yes, if you think I am being purposely provocative of course I am, because I know that many people are uncomfortable with chicness. But after seeing how supercomputers and PCs in the 1980s, PCs and the Internet in the 1990s, cell phones in the 2000s etc. have all gone through tremendous surges in their development once they became popular and chic among large numbers of people who had ignored them before, I believe it is only reasonable to acknowledge and embrace this factor. Would you feel more comfortable if I said popular instead of chic? Where are the boundaries between the two? The fact that they are also useful is somewhat beside the point - all the things I mentioned above were useful before, but not widespread until they became chic. VRML after AGP graphic cards and DSL became widespread in 1999 was suddenly useful, but since it was no longer chic, it was ignored completely and a good platform disappeared from the landscape for no good reason. Such is the power of chic to promote or destroy. take care, Tamiko ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] the art of forgetting
Really a dystopian view relative to whom or what cultural context ? So is Marcuse, who seems out of fashion at the moment but offers a model of action that allows for a dystopian view. On Mar 13, 2011, at 9:58 AM, Simon Biggs wrote: Certainly, in an art world where marketing is so much part of practice then your suggestion that artists should seek to ensure we don't forget them is the mantra. I'd rather not work that way... I am not from an underprivileged background nor live in an especially oppressive environment (although that is debateable) but nevertheless I do think people (including artusts) are obliged to try and make a difference. But that can come in many shapes and sizes. I agree a simplistic approach is not desirable. One reason I'm not with Badiou. Deleuze is far more interesting. Somebody mentioned Nietzsche, which is interesting territory in this respect. So is Marcuse, who seems out of fashion at the moment but offers a model of action that allows for a dystopian view. Best Simon On 13/03/2011 14:01, Julian Oliver jul...@julianoliver.com wrote: ..on Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 02:10:27PM +1300, simon wrote: Simon Biggs wrote: It's part of the role of artists to ensure we don't forget. Hmm, I don't think this is true really. Donning a role of social responsibility, whether that be for a moral project or cultural heritage, hasn't been widely practiced by artists since the Englightenment. Unless you're from an underprivileged background or oppressive political circumstance, it seems assuming such a role in one's art is increasingly frowned upon, lacking rigour, within the broader machine of self-disillusionment that is contemporary art. Rather: It's part of the role of artists to ensure we don't forget about them. Cheers, Simon Biggs si...@littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ s.bi...@eca.ac.uk http://www.elmcip.net/ http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] the act of forgetting
There is an impressive lineage of critical inquiry into these histories of Los Angeles that marks the past 20 years. These range from not only cinematic narrative ( feature, independent, experimental) but to authors such as Mike Davis ( City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, etc.) and Norman Klein ( The History of Forgetting ), the public art practice of CLUI ( Center for Land Use Interpretation) and to the photographic practices of artists such as Alan Sekula - to mention only but four. Best, Chris On Mar 12, 2011, at 2:39 AM, Simon Biggs wrote: Roman Polanski's Chinatown portrays the kind of events you mention in your earlier post about trains and water, how people take control and the affects of that upon those caught up in events. His most recent film, Ghost Writer updates the theme. It's part of the role of artists to ensure we don't forget. Best Simon On 12/03/2011 05:56, Joel Tauber joeltau...@gmail.com wrote: Although we are all bombarded by seemingly endless amounts of imagery and “news”, I am convinced that we are also all suffering from information deprivation, and in a multiplicity of ways. While media conglomerates and government powers shield information from us continually – and spin the information that we are being fed – I think we are also all guilty of collectively forgetting our histories. Information is ignored even when we have access to it. Certain things are just too difficult to face. Government handouts, unregulated corporations, corporate takeovers of the media and of the government, industry’s devastation of the environmentS These are very old stories. Why should we be surprised by these things when they continue to happen? How can we continue to allow them to occur? Simon Biggs si...@littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ s.bi...@eca.ac.uk http://www.elmcip.net/ http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Stephen Wilson
I can't tell you how deeply saddened I am to hear of Steve's passing. Often not fully acknowledged, he was early force behind the advancement of digital media and various conceptual and art practices in the SF Bay Area. Not only had he been a colleague, he was a friend - full of energy, high spirits and always moving forward. He (and George ) offered me my first university faculty position - right out of graduate school which set me on a path that we always chuckled about. Many of us in the digital realm who were orbiting around the Bay Area in the 90's might not be practicing today had it not been for the consistency of his encouragement. And this hovered above the Sisyphean obstacles placed before him by the public university. That is the persistent budget cuts by public university funding that continually plagued his tenure at SFSU. To say he did this best would be an understatement - and he did so not only for the betterment of his own program but he did so to ensure the evolution of the field. The digital media world is in debt to his vision, to his energy, to his good-humored tenacity and to fostering a committed community of artists and intellectuals. Chris On Jan 11, 2011, at 10:46 PM, naxsmash wrote: Wow, that's really sad. He made this amazing compendium: http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~infoarts/links/wilson.artlinks2.html xc naxsmash naxsm...@mac.com christina mcphee http://christinamcphee.net http://naxsmash.net On Jan 11, 2011, at 2:36 AM, Simon Biggs wrote: I'm sorry to say I heard today that Stephen Wilson, author of a number of key books in the area of new media arts and a pioneer artist in the field, passed away in San Francisco. I understand it was quiet and he was with his family. Stephen's passing is a great loss as he has always contributed so much energy to the new media arts. Steve was a net contributor to our community, part of what helped define it and hold it together. He was also a very nice guy with a great sense of humour. Simon Simon Biggs si...@littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ s.bi...@eca.ac.uk http://www.elmcip.net/ http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Welcome Kevin Hamilton, Carl DiSalvo, Yiannis Colakides and Beatriz de Costa.
I, too, have been reading these exchanges with interest. For me it represents a rather fascinating evolution of theories, strategies, actions and struggles that have been taking place for the latter part of the 20thc and clearly continue to this day. Ironically, a pivotal voice in arguing these cogent positions of resistance was another academic appointment at UCSD in the 60's, Herbert Schiller “Schiller warned of two major trends in his prolific writings and speeches: the private takeover of public space and public institutions at home, and U.S. corporate domination of cultural life abroad, especially in the developing nations.” “ Mass Communications and American Empire concluded with a call for a democratic reconstruction of mass communications. Schiller correctly forecast that government-financed public broadcasting would not produce the scope of change, either in outlook or allegiance, that the current social situation demands. Instead, he saw the best possibility for significant change in disaffected social groups of the time, such as black power militants, student activists, university faculty and public sector employees, who he hoped would claim access to mass communications technology and put it to useful social purposes. This, he acknowledged, would require concerted political action to achieve (198-206). Thirty years later, we are no closer to achieving it with respect to television and radio, although the Internet now provides a means for oppositional groups to create grassroots information networks that circumvent these corporate- controlled media.” Mark Hudson I first became acquainted with his writings while in school and viewing videotapes distributed by Deep Dish TV. On a personal level, he was instrumental to my own decision to enter the academy – specifically at a Research University. In accepting his appointment at UCSD, he clearly believed in the viability and merit of intellectual exchange, and to effect change through his teaching, students, academic research and writings. Quite obviously, his was a distinctly different moment and academic/ cultural landscape . His critics are quick to say that he was just another Marxist “pissing in the winds of neo-liberalism.” However, if that cynical perspective were truly accurate, would we even be having this discussion on empyre today? Would an activist academic, such as Ricardo, and several others (who voices now seem mute) have secured an initial appointment – let alone earn tenure and then retain it within the constrictions of research conventions? We cannot afford to forget our own value as artists, media makers cultural producers (!) in this onslaught of privatization that accords us a token use value inscribed by the narrowcasting of a blinded technocratic system. This dismissive framing is one that we cannot afford to internalize and is only a gross disservice to ourselves as well as to cultural and society at large. What has happened with Ricardo and with bang lab is simply indicative that artists now possess tools of agency that are viewed as (mis) representing a threat. It harkens back to a moment writ large in the culture wars of the USA – where Newt Gingrich, then leader of the House of Representatives, set his sights on disemboweling the media arts program of the NEA in 1995. He recognized the power of independent and experimental media – such as that of Marlon Riggs – as providing expansive perspectives that were not sanctioned by the conservative forces – and that might reach viewing audiences of millions. Telling enough, he was not at all really concerned about the visual arts program as that was safely framed by monied interests of the market place and what he viewed as conservative institutions. He merely cut funding to the NEA’s regional re-granting programs ( not overseen by the Feds) alternative spaces, venues and individual artists and media makers that could not easily be corralled to toe the line. Obviously, an analogy can easily be drawn to the internet and the logarithmic development of tactical media during the past 20 years +. The DIY underpinnings of these tactics have repeatedly run in conflict with their host institutions ( if you will.) Kevin’s 4th paragraph is spot on. The core difference now being the full fledged realization of the reach of the privatization of the public research university. Who is defining the public interest these days of scarcity, gaming the system and limited vision. To my mind, the responsible voice of the public academic is to take on this debate - to enlarge it - struggle with it – if not now, when? All best, Chris P.S. Kevin - I believe that Herb's son, Dan Schiller is a colleague of your at Champaign -Urbana. On Apr 27, 2010, at 11:56 PM, Kevin Hamilton wrote: I've been reading this exchange with much interest,
Re: [-empyre-] Fwd: Minor Simulations, Major Disturbances
Re: de Certeau - Ahhh. but there is that nasty issue of intellectual property which innumerable university administrators and academic senate committees have set their sights on for years now. On Apr 15, 2010, at 10:14 AM, Beatriz da Costa wrote: Dear Jo, Rita et al, Thank you all for your thoughtful postings, I am glad I finally joined -empyre- and am getting the opportunity to follow such a lively discussion. Amidst all the events down at UCSD and the responses and comments on this list, my initial thoughts seem to be most closely aligned with Jo's statement below and Rita's dire summation of the university as an institution of control that clearly has the ability to distinguish between scholarship about activism and activism itself (and yes, writing is of course a form of making, but one that fits in much more neatly with the rubrics of academia). Sadly, I am not surprised at all about UCSD's behavior towards Ricardo and EDT's work. California is broke, the UC system is in deep trouble (to say the least), and overall the senate faculty has been playing along with this situation just fine. Some letters, some really smart ones indeed :), some protests, some attempts at organizing, but most of us are still going in to teach our classes and attend meetings in the same way we always did. Some of us have used the funding crises and increased push towards privatization of the UC as an educational backdrop to sharpen the political literacy of our students, and in many ways the publicity around the bang.lab events appears to have a similar effect. However, what this situation really seems to indicate is a somewhat broken approach to the negotiation between Tactical Media and academia. We can't simultaneously ride a career as interventionist artists, claim a political edge and demand funding, space and support from an institution like Calit2. It simply won't work, at least not in the long run. Eventually, the support will either stop, or the political edge won't be quite as edgy anymore. Its a wonderful thing while it lasts, and kudos to everyone who tried. For a while, we really seemed to have quite a few Tactical Media enclaves splattered between different universities in various parts of the country. But there is a time stamp on these moments of convergence and activity, and we shouldn't really be surprised by that. Operating in plain daylight is one strategy, and apparently the one the bang.lab has chosen up to date. But it seems that Tactical Media has equipped us with a few other tools that might be worth revisiting in this context. de Certeau's describes his rendering of the french wig concept to us in the following way: La perruque is the worker's own work disguised as work for his employer. It differs from pilfering in that nothing of material value is stolen. It differs from absenteeism in that the worker is officially on the job. La perruque may be as simple a matter as a secretary's writing a love letter on company time or as complex as a cabinetmaker's borrowing a lathe to make a piece of furniture for his living room ... . If the window for passing politicized tactical media tool development as legitimate research activity is closing, maybe its time to change wigs? Or is it just a matter of never using our tools in any way that could be traced back to the university? I don't know. I tried the latter a few years ago, and it horribly failed. On a much more mundane note: could anyone provide an update about what is actually happening now at UCSD? I checked the bang.lab website, and the last posting appears to be from last week. What happened since? In solidarity, Beatriz da Costa excerpt Jo-Anne Green post: You can't accept grants, teach at a university, and desire tenure without these negotiations and compromises. The best one can do is enter these negotiations armed with knowledge, awareness, and a well thought out strategy for the best possible outcomes for your project. Beatriz da Costa www.beatrizdacosta.net ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] The Power of Nightmares
Hi Simon - Sadly, this is not news to many professors in the States, especially since 9/11 and especially to those on the faculty of Research 1 Universities. It has proven to be the basis of critical issues for several I know and they have struggled ( actually suffered ) for the past decade or so. Some have left the academy for this very reason and others remain - each as their conscience sees fit. Best, Chris On Mar 28, 2010, at 5:35 AM, Simon Biggs wrote: Hi all Please see the thread from the Ambit list below. It is incredibly disturbing. This government official hasn’t a clue how artists think and operate – and yet they are apparently the Deputy Director of Culture for the Scottish government! It is like having Dick Cheney running Amnesty! It is so unbelievable it crossed my mind it is a hoax but this person is indeed who they say they are and seems to be seeking to co-opt artists into a morally bankrupt war of aggression founded on an arrogant imperial foreign policy enforced domestically through a corrupt and corrupting home security apparatus. In the best of times artists are obliged to rip up the rule book and turn over the furniture but in this context we are obliged to do more. How does the artist act responsibly in this context and contest such insidious actions? What artistic interventions might now be appropriate? The second section of the thread presents a text documenting how anthropologists previously responded to attempts by the authorities to similarly co-opt their discipline. The url it points to offers more detailed documentation and background. Whilst I agree entirely with their logic and conclusions I wonder whether the actions they proposed to take in response had any effect. The fact that their deliberations and actions pre-date the Scottish Executive email below by a good period of time shows that they made no difference. What would? Best Simon Simon Biggs si...@littlepig.org.uk Skype: simonbiggsuk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ -- Forwarded Message From: Variant variant...@btinternet.com Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:39:20 + To: am...@lists.a-r-c.org.uk Subject: [Ambit] The Power of Nightmares Militarisation of 'creativity' in Scotland : moral and ethical dilemmas concerning the integrity of creative practitioners how creativity can help in the study of terrorism and forensic science and in how the outcome or story from that is told ...Firstly, let me introduce myself: I'm Wendy Wilkinson and I head up the Culture Division in the Scottish Government. As well as all things culture, my remit also includes the creative industries... However, I'm emailing about a quite separate matter. And it may appear rather bizarre, but bear with me. I'd like to invite you to an informal meeting I'm arranging on 8 April, at my office in Victoria Quay, Edinburgh. And it's to brainstorm/discuss how creativity can help in the study of terrorism and forensic science and in how the outcome or story from that is told. This stems from work that Brian Lang, former principal of St Andrews University, is doing to arrange a conference joining up the centre for study of terrorism at St Andrews university, with the forensic science centre at Strathclyde university and the centre for terrorism at the University of Central Oklahoma. Brian and I are both keen to explore how creativity can contribute and we recognised the first step would be to consult our own creative talent here in Scotland. hence my invite. I am planning to invite a couple of people from the computer gaming industry and perhaps a writer or artistic director, so a small group and it would be attended by Brian and the President of the University of Central Oklahoma who is over here for a visit then. I do hope that you can attend and would be grateful if you could let me know what time you may be available on the 8th. kind regards Wendy Wilkinson Deputy Director: Culture Scottish Government Victoria Quay Edinburgh EH6 6QQ Anthropologists' Resistance to Militarisation The project [‘Combating Terrorism by Countering Radicalisation’] “provoked a furious response from academics”, mainly anthropologists, “who claimed it was tantamount to asking researchers to act as spies for British intelligence” (Baty 2006). James Fairhead, who works for the ESRC’s Strategic Research Board and on its International Committee, declared it is appalling that these proposals were not discussed in any of these committees (quoted in Houtman 2006). Opposition to the project grew significantly after the plans were published in the Times Higher Educational Supplement. As a result, it was withdrawn before its closing date on November 8th 2006. http://www.sussex.ac.uk/anthropology/documents/marrades.doc The eleven originators of the Pledge are deeply concerned that the war on terror threatens to militarize
Re: [-empyre-] post
By way of possible follow-up, some of you may be interested in the research trajectories of a recent USC doctoral student, Annabelle Honess Roe, whose dissertation revolved around a study of animated documentaries as seen thru the lens of epistemology: I argue that animation expands the documentary’s epistemological realm. Not only by presenting the conventional subject matter of documentaries (the “world out there” of observable, the witnessable and the external) in new ways, but also through animation’s potential to visually convey the “world in here” of the personal, the subjective and the internal. In this way, the animated documentary literally animates and enlivens the documentary and, with it, documentary studies – casting new light on some of the central questions of this discipline. As such, my dissertation broadens the scope of both documentary studies and animation studies and the expectations we might have from both of these forms. I begin with the suggestion that there are two key ways in which animation functions in a non-fiction context: either to substitute for missing live-action material or to interpret the world and reality in an expressive way. I suggest that this differs from the way animation and documentary have traditionally been hybridised and in my first chapter I demonstrate this through an examination of the historical precedent for the convergence of animation and documentary. Best, Chris On Feb 26, 2010, at 6:25 AM, christopher sullivan wrote: Hi Thyrza, when you decide what is hardy and what is not is can always lead to trouble, trouble is good, I go there all the time. Temporality and time are pretty big issues. I think as an animator one of the real challenges is presenting real time images, with silence and stillness. Animation is often thought of as something that should be clear, informational, and when one drifts from that. audiences can be confused. In the new film Country Doctor, by Koji Yamamura , there is a bit of this. the film is beautiful, but sometimes you want it to shut up, visually and audio wise (I would say this about my work too) . but perhaps it is animators trying to respond to audiences desire for clarity. I want Prit Pran who I love, to shut up sometime. But animators feel compelled to clarify and give context, perhaps it is an impulse from animation being a commercial vehicle for humor, for most of it's life. Igor Zovalov, is willing to shut up, which I like(see Milch) very depressing but interesting. by the way, I love the Quays and they are paramount, but I would like to here people talk about some of the other great animators who are out there now. have a good day. Quoting T Goodeve tgood...@gmail.com: Hello everyone: I'm not sure I posted correctly. I sent this last night as a reply. Sorry if I'm confusing anyone. Thyrza Sorry I’ve been so lax as a discussant-generator but here I am with some thoughts and reflections. If it’s okay just an aside first: off the top of my fingertips—many of you make stuff you love and live for, also write about with great passion, and the animated worldscape is still and ever will be one of magic and wonder I hope (you have the romantic here), i.e., endless visual and aural reimagings via its ability, or definition, whether anlogue or digital, to do anything and everything within and beyond the spacetime continuum. But sometimes I miss the basic humor, wonder, and sheer “wow” of the simplicity of animation. I mentioned in a post. The blank page and the dot. We lose track, myself included, analyzing the life out of things sometimes and to do this with animation seems particularly perverse. I realize I set myself up for a bit of ridicule here but alas, someone has to speak up for the puppet doll in *Street of Crocodiles* who cradles the bare light bulb baby in its arm and brings it back to life with light, or the frayed and earnest bunny who does his best to keep up with the spinning demented ping pong balls and a pair of disembodied knee socks and slippers moving up and down on tip toes in the Quays “Are We Still Married” — up and down, up and down. I think Christopher Sullivan was trying to get at this but not evieryone is out to do what he does nor interested in the way I am or the Quays or for that matter, those who use it for visualization, but depending on why you do what you do we are here to discuss the breakthrough insights of theory and technology and animation, but it’s just sometimes I’ve felt we’ve let the technology get away with doing too much of the talking, not that it doesn’t have a lot to say. But a more hardy, if overly general, topic is temporality and time, now-time vs say the way cinema’s capturing, sculpting, control of time was such a huge part of its magic. Siegfried Kracauer describe in an essay how powerful just “having” the wind in the
Re: [-empyre-] from chris, independents, animation in teaching.
Chris et all, I don't know what I can say other than thank you so very much for this post - its a most welcome rupture! My apologies in that I don't have any time to adequately respond - in order to do it justice. Best, C On Feb 19, 2010, at 6:43 AM, christopher sullivan wrote: Hi everyone, as the week draws to the end, It has been an interesting mix of thoughts and ideas. One thing that I wanted to talk about before things draw to a close is my hopes for animation, and my thoughts on a pedagogical side. I feel that the independent animated feature is going to increase exponentially in years to come (just hope I get my film to screen before it is a infinite pool) I do hope that these new films will not be plagued with the remakes and adaptations that are now overtaking Hollywood. Besides Charley Kaufman, who is getting original scripts produced? Even Wes Anderson’s (another script writer) Incredible Mr. Fox, is an adaptation, again Charley Kaufman prophetic, in the writing of Adaptation. So the thing that we independent animators have to do is create works that really take advantage of the qualities of animation that set it apart from live action film, and particular for the west to catch up with some of the cinematic chances taken in the east “for instance, Paprika” or the highly disturbing Mindgame. Fringe feature anime is politically very conservative in particular with gender politics, and I am not even talking about being queer enough, I am referring to the heterosexually conservative, and completely fraternal in the sense of the internal mind; men imagining fantasies of women. But these films are very sophisticated in regards to filmmaking. How they play with time, how they create and destroy characters, in constant sates of death and resurrection. So I hope that We as filmmakers can get the backing to create innovative films that challenge audiences not as people going to see animation, but going to see demanding cinema. See you in the trenches. One other thought I wanted to bring up is whether you think that animation is really a good tool to teach artists how to think. I have debated this for years because of its very slow turn around, and the literal amount of idea stuff that a student can handle during their studies. Every successful student I have had, has had other outlets to plow through and discard ideas, be it photography, comics, performance, live action films, writing. I have never had an exclusive animator that I feel really used their time in school fully. I learned more about making art in my early twenties in school doing performance than doing animation, though my artistic identity as an animation artist via grants awards, employment, solidified at this time as well. I am pondering these questions; Is animation a medium that condenses other artistic experiences into a less temporal vision, but not the best generative medium? Is it a good intellectual teaching medium? Of course this is about matters of degrees, as I do believe my students grow in my classes, but they do grow slowly. What are people’s thoughts? Quoting Eric Patrick er...@northwestern.edu: Hi Richard, This is really fascinating stuff... not my area of expertise, but Fernanda Viegas of IBM research in Cambridge is doing some of this sort of work (http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/). Probably what we see more of in our little animation neck of the woods is info-graphics for visualization: http://vimeo.com/3261363. Perhaps Paul is still around and may have some interesting sources to add. Sorry can't be of more help... ep ==Original message text=== On Tue, 16 Feb 2010 5:25:13 pm CST Richard Wright wrote: Hi there, I just wanted to respond to a couple of recent posts about animated documentary and those thorny indexicality questions. I once wrote a proposal called Data Visualisation as the Successor to Documentary Film Making (thinking actually of animated film making). I wonder if Paul or Erik or anyone else had any thoughts about this possibility of taking data records and animating them? Either directly and algorithmically or using more interpretative or even non-digital techniques? The source of the data and the circumstances in which it was obtained can also create difficult ethical questions, quite apart from questions of veracity (they might have been obtained under torture for example). There are very few film examples of this I can think of, not even my own. One of the few is Aaron Koblin's Flight Patterns (http:// www.aaronkoblin.com/work/flightpatterns) and another is Jane Marsching's Rising North (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ efimeravulgata/349639 for a view of the installation version of the video). Andrea Polli possibly.
Re: [-empyre-] chris sullivan p.S.
or ... to take a look at Pat's interactive rendition/ DVD-ROM of Tracing the Decay of Fiction that was created and produced in collaboration with Marsha Kinder and Rosemary Comella of the Labyrinth Project at USC is more like a supernova colliding with a black hole: the convergence of two extraordinary phenomena in a single moment – a nearly inconceivable occurrence from a man who thinks nothing of waiting an entire year to photograph a ray of sunlight shining through a window at a particular angle. Published in Release Print September 2002 Chris On Feb 15, 2010, at 4:41 PM, christopher sullivan wrote: by the way, I show power and water in my not quite animation day in my alternative animation history class. It is a wonderful film. you should all try to get Pat out to show The Decay OF Fiction, his amazing film, that unfortunately he does not like, but I sure do. Chris. Quoting christopher sullivan csu...@saic.edu: Hi Eric, I do think that certain technologies or circumstances dictate trends in work. For instance the non verbal history of independent art films in the 70's and 80's, was directly related to issues of french versus English in Canada, and the fact that the Netherlands, Italy, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, where important places that could not count on language to engage a wider world. And for that matter the frame by frame process does break down time and lead to different ways of looking at the world. But I am questioning starting with formal notions of Code, or digital culture as subjects. I guess it gets back to notions of modernist painting, which is about putting color on a flat surface. All of the great works that I am attracted to in animation, have something inherently frame by frame about them, but there is an underlying content that is being negotiated. I think that animation because of it's labor, tends to give birth to the wondering pilgrim, the emptied city, the lone figure in a minimal world, because you just can't draw fifty people, CGI is changing this, but these limits are good too. They are like the limits of independent theater, no dance numbers, no effects, just words and a few bodies. I also think that the limits of animation, create a need to condense time, in ways that live action does not. and this leads to it's odd sense of time, I hope you have all seen Cat Soup, amazing time play in that film. Quoting Eric Patrick er...@northwestern.edu: Hello All, Eric Patrick here. Rather than repeat my bio, I'll just jump right in... I've been making animated films now for twenty years, and the one thing I've become convinced of is that animation is a ritual act. My own work underscores this in it's experiments with narrative without the confines of character development or plot... rather, I often find myself creating associative connections over causal ones. I'm certainly not the first that has noticed this, but perhaps all animators find it on their own terms... small repetitive acts, done over long periods of time... a withdrawal from day to day life. The very act seems like a description of an alchemist's chamber, saying a rosary, kabuki theatre. In my particular case, I choose a technique that in some way comments on the ideas embedded in my work. This is one of those things that I find to be unique about animation (though I would argue that new media has this ability too): the ability to orchestrate the concept into the very fabric of the image through the technique that is utilized. It's that relationship between form and content that makes animation quite so unique. That these techniques involve increasingly preoccupied states of consciousness only adds to the ritual effect of animation. It's no wonder then that we can see such a wide interest in metaphysics throughout animation history. As an animator stepping into a group dedicated to new media, I'm interested in finding where my experience may cross over with yours. Perhaps we can also weave with Chris Sullivan's intro, because, as he states that technology is a tool but not a subject, I am almost inferring that the process can become a subject. I have shown Pat O'Neil's work Water and Power to students, and interestingly, they told me that it completely changed their relationship to after effects. O'Neil's work somehow seems like it could only be conceived and executed on an optical printer, though it can obviously very easily be created with something like after effects. While I agree that technology is a tool, do certain tools not engender certain kinds of work? best, Eric Christopher Sullivan Dept. of Film/Video/New Media School of the Art Institute of Chicago 112 so michigan Chicago Ill 60603 csu...@saic.edu 312-345-3802 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Christopher
Re: [-empyre-] animetic machines
Gerry - please help me out here w/ further delineation as your notion of the degradation of the image is operative on numerous levels - Thx - C On Feb 6, 2010, at 7:28 AM, Gerry Coulter wrote: With each passing generation the image is further degraded ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] art and ethics
Your point is well taken. However, I find your statement somewhat opaque: But the thing is, u hv to ask why a special amendment isn't required to guarantee the basic rights of regular Americans. On Jan 22, 2010, at 1:58 PM, Jun-Ann Lehman wrote: Perhaps the reasons for introducing the 14th amendment were flawed. Freed slaves shouldn't hv needed to be singled out as a separate entity requiring basic rights if they had been regarded as a part of the mainstream post -constitutional American population in the first place. If the 14th amendment was challenged, it could solve a lot of problems. The thing is, no one would dare because it guarantees basic rights for freed slaves. But the thing is, u hv to ask why a special amendment isn't required to guarantee the basic rights of regular Americans. Freed slaves should hv been regarded as Americans protected by the American constitution. Perhaps that's what the 14th amendment should hv sought to achieve - the INCLUSION of freed slaves, not their exclusion. jun-ann lehman___ jun...@junann.com ___+61 410 506 559___ On 23/01/2010, at 7:44, Gerry Coulter gcoul...@ubishops.ca wrote: Not to worry Christiane -- Americans will continue to get the politicians they deserve (as do we all) best gerry From: empyre-boun...@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-boun...@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au ] On Behalf Of Christiane Robbins [...@mindspring.com] Sent: January 22, 2010 12:20 PM To: soft_skinned_space Subject: Re: [-empyre-] art and ethics Actually, I find the unleashing of corporatist art to be among the very least of worries as a result of yesterday's ruling. I'm certain that others can offer a far more delineated and informed accounting. However, in the interim, for those of you unfamiliar with this stunning ruling ( some are referring to it as a coup ) from January 21, the US Supreme Court basically has overtly transformed our democracy to that of an oligarchy - all under the aegis of the guaranteed right of free speech to all individuals , including corporate personhood. Specifically, and in abbreviated form, the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was created at the conclusion of the Civil War granting basic rights to freed slaves. Since that point in time it has often been utilized by attorneys representing corporate interests to extend additional rights to businesses far more frequently than to freed slaves. Prior to 1886, corporations were referred to in U.S. law as artificial persons. However, in 1886, after a series of cases brought by lawyers representing the expanding railroad interests, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were persons and entitled to the same rights granted to people under the Bill of Rights. Since this ruling, the States have lost the legal structures that allowed for people to control corporate behavior. In other words, corporations came to acquire rights reserved for individual citizens. The US Supreme Court ruled yesterday that corporations (and unions, lest they not be counted!) now have no limits on their financing political campaigns to any political campaign or candidate. Connecting the dots is rather a simple task in this situation. And this was all done to ensure free speech... I'm hoping that others can parse this issue for a better understanding - Chris On Jan 22, 2010, at 8:26 AM, Timothy Murray wrote: Nick, could you explain your reference to the recent Supreme Court ruling to our -empyre- community, since a major proportion of our -empyreans- live outside the US? I'm also wondering why you think that a ruling regarding political lobbying (if this is what you're referencing) would unleash a genre of corporatist art. Thanks so much. Tim international participants...but how to de-link these states seems impenetrable - like the recent Supreme Court ruling that will certainly unleash a whole new genre of freely circulating corporatist art, no? nick From: Johanna Drucker druc...@gseis.ucla.edu To: jha...@haberarts.com; soft_skinned_space emp...@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au Sent: Mon, January 11, 2010 8:12:46 PM Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 62, Issue 13 John, Much different. I agree. I do want to make a space for art that is not tasked with being the moral conscience of the culture too. Johanna On Jan 11, 2010, at 4:09 PM, John Haber wrote: The analogy to rebranding is very interesting indeed, in an excellent post. Let me ask more about it, though. Now, to me it's only an analogy, and of course whatever venting we may wish to have about torture and Israeli policy aren't instantly illuminating regarding art except as a kind of red flag. (Hey, there's injustice in the world, so don't let it happen in this realm.) Indeed, it could actually disguise the problem, by suggesting distinct realms after all, which the whole problematic of complicity in art is supposed to question
Re: [-empyre-] poets patrons and the word academic
I would totally agree with you Christina and appreciate the ethical issues to which you refer. However, there is contradiction between the strategies of market based practices and ellicitation of of empathy that needs to be addressed. The ellicitation of ( culturally specific) empathy is a value inherent in the work of innumerable artists, arguably it is not a value that is highly prioritized in the market system ( of course, that can change as consumer demand dictates.) I, too have admired Chris Jordan's work and used it in my classes and referenced it in lectures for the past few years. However, I view his work as an accident of art as opposed to a practice that was borne specifically from the market system- including the academy/MFA round- about. My understanding is that Chris has successfully stepped out of the structure of the art market ( although he now has gallery representation ) and smartly injected his work into the larger cultural and social discourse - i.e speaking at TED last year and aligning himself with structures apart from the art market/system that are conceptually tied to his work. Many thanks for bringing this up as I'm certain it will evoke a # of responses - Chris On Jan 7, 2010, at 7:44 AM, Christina Spiesel wrote: All, I must have been in my thirties (raising kids in a city) when I realized what luxuries my middle class morals were. Not that they were no good, but that many features would look different from a position of poverty. Example? Honesty. There is one concept that seems more deeply grounded because hardwired in most of our brains, and that is empathy. And this brings me back to the arts. I realize that for those deeply committed to certain kinds of identity politics, this may seem way off, but it seems to me that one of the pleasures and important features of the arts is that they can elicit empathy and feed it all kinds of data. And this is a moral/ethical act. Not necessarily flowing from the previous, for me one of the most deeply political artists who is at the same time a maker of beauty and depth, is photographer Chris Jordan. http://www.chrisjordan.com/ The collection at the top of the page, Message from the Gyre is being recirculated all over the Internet now. I use examples from Running the Numbers in teaching because law cases often have to deal with numbers either so big or so small that no one really can apprehend them. Have a great day, Christina Simon Biggs wrote: Hi David I agree with many of your definitions of bad, which basically boil down to the following. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Exploitation of others is bad. Not taking responsibility for your own actions is bad. I agree with you because, like you, I am socialised to agree that these are shared values. However, these are the elements of a moral framework which derives from and informs a social system – which is a set of contingencies. My argument was that this system is not absolute. For example, animals often do things which we would consider bad. They will exploit others and pass the buck. They do this to survive. When they behave in a manner that we consider “good” they do so because it benefits themselves or members of their immediate community in a manner that enhances their survival. They behave “badly” for the same reason. The shared moral systems people have developed are also a survival strategy. We can dress them up as “good” and “bad” - but we should be honest about why we do what we do and have the values we have. It is to survive, individually and collectively. It is not because the social mores we share have intrinsic value. If you entertain that idea then you are into the domain of faith. Best Simon Simon Biggs Research Professor edinburgh college of art s.bi...@eca.ac.uk www.eca.ac.uk Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments CIRCLE research group www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ si...@littlepig.org.uk www.littlepig.org.uk AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk From: davin heckman davinheck...@gmail.com Reply-To: soft_skinned_space empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 14:30:12 -0500 To: soft_skinned_space empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au Subject: Re: [-empyre-] poets patrons and the word academic Sorry to take my time getting back to your question, Simon. I am still mulling over David Chirot's comment, too (although I think that the question of dangerous poetry hiding code is an interesting and rare official admission that art is precisely about some of the very things we have been talking about here. And that, we should reflect on just why someone might be hasty to define a certain work as bad. I do think that outcomes matter. But there are many other aspects to determining whether something is good or bad. For instance, I think that the level of ignorance under which a person acts could
Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 62, Issue 4
Hi John - Thanks so much for you draft. Just want to make clear that i don't identify myself a Marxist - although my graduate studies at Cal Arts were during a period where critical theory was becoming entrenched and serving as a point of reference ( hopefully not illustration) for art practices. Point in fact, I was raised in family straight out of script of MadMen. This may have more to do with my perspective than anything else! I admit that Purity is an concept that I haven't given much thought to in regard to contemporary art practices ... in fact ... I think that the last time I heard that issue raised was during 'cocktails with Clement Greenberg during a conference. You have certainly given me reason to dig thru my files - Thanks again, Chris What I have mused on is basically coming to terms with On Jan 6, 2010, at 6:00 AM, John Haber wrote: I'm hearing a couple of points stressed by everyone here. One addresses notions of the arts as something pure, separated by other than esthetic motives and distinct in form or content from the rest of culture and society. This notion is wrong and harmful, and the pejorative and disturbing connotations of complicity should not obscure that. Second, the 20th-century Marxist thinkers who introduced the critique of complicity need not be seen as intending to fall into the first trap. This is valuable, but I still think that it overlooks something. I'm embarrassed to return to my own version of a critical history, since you all clearly didn't find it interesting. But bear with me. I singled out a second wave of developments in critical theory, starting around 1970, rather than the earlier period. Consider four reasons. First, it represents a development of critical theory (an increasing buzz word) that more explicitly addresses the fine arts and art institutions. While, for example, that short reader edited by Hal Foster, The Anti-Esthetic, included Habermas with his framework of communicative action beyond art, other changes in the air included the rest of the October editors in the domain of contemporary art, T. J. Clarke and others in art history, feminism, and media studies (yes, thankfully including Sweet Dreams). In mainstream American philosophy, there's a parallel in the institutional definition of art. This trend continues ever since. Second, rightly or wrongly, critical theory foregrounded the very attack on purity as never before. That includes ideological purity associated with Benjamin, formal purity associated with Adorno, and idealism associated with Lukacs, regardless of their motives. Third, critical theory reacted to the realities on the ground. Art had seen Greenberg's assault on kitsch and Kantian influence, although I'll admit to having finished the third critique without quite understanding it! It had seen the triumph of American painting and the change from the imaginary museum to the very real post-Hoving museum. Last and most important, it resonated with artists. Artists developed new approaches to appropriation, feminism, new media, neo- expressionism, and even earlier Fluxus, to name just a few. However, all this was what I'll call B.C.: before Chelsea. One could talk of an institutional and economic nexus, but one galleries still lay further downtown, and one could visit pretty much all of them comfortably in a day. Although Pollock, say, had made the national magazine, the shift to celebrity artists like the YBA, star architects for museums, the assimilation of alternative museums by major one, globalization and the price boom were all still to come. On the one hand, this makes critical theory look even more pertinent, even prescient. On the other hand, art's success escapes the critique. Contemporary art at its most disturbing has continued to reject purity, with larger and larger multimedia installations, like New Year's in Times Square. In other words, be careful what you wish for. In the abstract at least, and in museums, I'm left deeply pessimistic in a way that much of this thread is, I think, not handling. I just happen to be at Duke University this week, where the Nasher Museum is a largely empty tribute to family money. In galleries, though, I often come away elated. There is still a break with purity that opens possibilities without pandering. One can see it in a revival of abstract painting that is not all that abstract, as well as wonderful multimedia and photography projects. Still, it's not as if these efforts disrupt the system, fail to reflect it, or miss being absorbed by it. All that's why I felt it helpful to introduce the slippery approaches of post-structuralism. I'm not wedded to them. I'm more political and formal myself. For me, irony is still a term with the meanings it had in New Criticism! However, these approaches, like indeed good old
[-empyre-] Fwd: complicit post
them so attractive. In a passage that brilliantly anticipates the BOBO consumerism of today, Goodman observed, The Beat subculture is not merely a reaction to the middle class or to the organized system. It is natural. “ And then Brooks continues on ….discussing the evolution of the Bohemian subculture as it turned into a “mass movement” – suitable for the covers of LIFE and LOOK magazine. He locates a binary mirroring of these disparate BOBO elements which eventually lead to their ironic fusion that seems to characterize the complicit artist/academic framed in our discussion this week. That’s it for tonite - once again, thanks to you all for such an engaging discussion – Chris Begin forwarded message: From: Christiane Robbins c...@mindspring.com Date: January 2, 2010 10:21:08 AM PST To: soft_skinned_space empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au Cc: emp...@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au Subject: Re: [-empyre-] complicit post Reply-To: soft_skinned_space empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au Dear Johanna, Many thanks for your post which astutely articulates and reflects a number of conversations with friends and colleagues that I’ve had during the past few months. Specifically, I so appreciate your candor and courage and do hope that your post will open up a space for this productive conversation for Sweet Dreams are made of these ( apologies for the pun which seems somehow appropriate gesture of nostalgia within the haze of New Years'!) Kevin Hamilton initiated an earlier attempt in mid-late November. The resonance of the last sentence in his post stayed with me – “Any thoughts? Maybe a public listserv isn't the safest place to have this conversation? Kevin Hamilton. I felt a chill as I read his sentence as it fully evidenced the dynamics to which your email alludes. So … now ... thanks to the continuum of Empyre and Nicholas we have the introduction of this topic for January – one which is wholly welcome and necessary. I will respond more fully in the days to come – Chris On Jan 2, 2010, at 6:59 AM, Johanna Drucker wrote: All, This is meant as an independent start, not a response to John's post, which I shall take a look at later today. I just wanted to make an initial statement here before engaging in discussion. JD Complicity I believe in art and I believe that aesthetic objects and expressions do something that other things do not. What is the work that aesthetic objects do and what are the grounds for critical apprehension of that activity? My answers to these basic questions does not fall far from the formulations of earlier aestheticians— refinement of discriminatory sensibility, appreciation of purposive purposelessness, shock effect that wakes us to experience, and the opening of the space for experience itself. Works of art and the work of art objects are remarkable, unique, and provocative because they give form to thought in material expressions that make it available to a shared perception. From that, all kinds of cultural effects follow. When I titled Sweet Dreams, I was well aware that the term “complicity” was provocative, suggesting as it does that the critical stance of moral superiority to “common” or “mass” culture taken by many critics and artists was being called into question. But at the same time, I was not suggesting that the acknowledgment that we are – all of us – part of systems of consumption, careerism, professionalism, promotion etc. that are the inevitable apparatus of our conditions of work and existence–meant that we are necessarily aligned with values of oppression and exploitation. But I was trying to point out what feels like blindness (even bad faith at its extreme) in two worlds I know well – that of radical, innovative art practice and that of academic work focused on cultural production across the arts and media. I simply wanted to point out that we are all operating inside the same system that becomes reified as the object of critical study. None of us are outside its machinations, nor, if we are honest, outside the drives and desires it instills in us or to which we subscribe. I was originally motivated to write Sweet Dreams because of the enthusiasm I had for contemporary artists whose work had a playful relation to mass culture that did not begin with the assumption of negativity that was characteristic of some early 20th century avant-garde practices. If we revisit Italian Futurism, we find Marinetti, for instance, fully engaged in mass media as a thematic inspiration (‘wireless imagination’) and as instrument and means of realization (the language of publicity, typography of advertising, use of radio, pamphlets, newspapers as sites and instruments of the work). Dada and Cubist collage work is not antithetical to mass culture, but toying with its materials and their potential as elements
[-empyre-] Complicity
A hyper-condensed tour ( informed and infinitely re-iterated compliments of academic institutualization ) Could commodities themselves speak, they would say: in the eyes of each other we are nothing but exchange values. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 Marx introduced his analysis of the system of capitalist economic relations with an account of the commodity form. Arguably, this form can be see an the nexus of capitalism as well as offering an mechanism of understanding the inherent contradiction in what has been posited here as the aestheticized object. I am using the standby of “commodity” to specifically address the impact of the ‘art market” in relation to the ’aestheticized object” as it has been discussed thus far. Commodity capitalism also fully developed the notion of use value – Wolfgang’s Huags’ Critique of Commodity Culture, 1986? (in which he concludes that commodities possess a double reality: the buyer values the commodity as a means of survival whereas the seller sees such necessities as a means for valorization. In other words, first they have a use value and secondly they have the appearance of a use value which is essentially detached (welcome to our 21st c brandscape.) Both Marx and Haug suggest that fethishization of the commodity is for the consumer the fetishization of use. The abstraction of labor which may well serve as the basis of the fetish quality of commodities is not something that we, as consumers, can easily comprehend as it triggers our inability to fully understand or imagine non- fetishized use values. It is in Haug’s account of commodity aesthetics where he views human sensuality as wholly inscribed in the appearance – the surface play - of use value. We then view use value as abstracted and permutated into market value. George Lukas aligns this trajectory with his position on reification in his seminal History and Class Consciousness, 1971. Lukas’s designation of reification is pivotal to our discussion in that it suggests that once labor exists as the abstraction of human activity, it extends its influence to human qualities and personality as well. Reification then explains the transformation of commodity fetishism into the realm of the human experiential. “ The transformation of the commodity relation into a thing of ghostly objectivity” cannot therefore content itself with the reduction of all objects for the gratification of human needs to commodities. It stamps its imprint on the whole consciousness of man; his qualities and abilities are no longer an organic part of his personality, they are things which he can own or dispose of like the various objects of the external world. And there is no natural way in which man can bring his physical and psychic qualities into play without their being subjected increasingly to this reifying process.” Central to both Lukas and Haug’s position re: the commodity form is that they both suggest that under capitalism the qualities of being human and the attendant sensual dimension of one’s experiences are objectified and abstracted – or detached from people and their activities. Hence they become commoditized and, subsequently, “reified” or “aestheticized.” The problem then presented is how does one rupture this process as to recuperate and reaffirm these human qualities that the commodity form (so generously offered to us via Taylorization) negates through its abstraction. Enter Adorno and Negative Dialectics, 1973 – which, to my mind, embodied a remarkable potential for reclaiming and rethinking art practices under capitalism. It is dissimilar to the concept of reification in that it anticipates fetishism as a tension between the abstracting forces of domination and their (e)utopian antithesis. It strikes me that the question that we are grappling with here is one of reconciling this contradiction…. and negotiating with Adorno’s aesthetic of contradiction that is inherent in “modern works of art.” Adorno had written Negative Dialectics as an inescapable expose of the more mundane world – of the quotidian- where ND stands in opposition the homogenization of “mass culture” – a culture where standardization is marketed as a signifier of quality and the breadth of qualitatively diverse cultural forms is translated and materialized into the design details of commodities. This position, of course, stands in opposition to the plight of the 30’s and 40’s modernism, which adapted the principles of Taylorization to respond adequately to crisis affecting humanity across the EU and NA in ways that prove difficult for us to imagine today. I am referring here primarily to architecture and design practices as opposed to visual art. Perhaps we should inject this concept of ND into our contemporary brandscape that now represents the Taylorization of consumers as well as objects.
Re: [-empyre-] complicit post
Dear Johanna, Many thanks for your post which astutely articulates and reflects a number of conversations with friends and colleagues that I’ve had during the past few months. Specifically, I so appreciate your candor and courage and do hope that your post will open up a space for this productive conversation for Sweet Dreams are made of these ( apologies for the pun which seems somehow appropriate gesture of nostalgia within the haze of New Years'!) Kevin Hamilton initiated an earlier attempt in mid-late November. The resonance of the last sentence in his post stayed with me – “Any thoughts? Maybe a public listserv isn't the safest place to have this conversation? Kevin Hamilton. I felt a chill as I read his sentence as it fully evidenced the dynamics to which your email alludes. So … now ... thanks to the continuum of Empyre and Nicholas we have the introduction of this topic for January – one which is wholly welcome and necessary. I will respond more fully in the days to come – Chris On Jan 2, 2010, at 6:59 AM, Johanna Drucker wrote: All, This is meant as an independent start, not a response to John's post, which I shall take a look at later today. I just wanted to make an initial statement here before engaging in discussion. JD Complicity I believe in art and I believe that aesthetic objects and expressions do something that other things do not. What is the work that aesthetic objects do and what are the grounds for critical apprehension of that activity? My answers to these basic questions does not fall far from the formulations of earlier aestheticians— refinement of discriminatory sensibility, appreciation of purposive purposelessness, shock effect that wakes us to experience, and the opening of the space for experience itself. Works of art and the work of art objects are remarkable, unique, and provocative because they give form to thought in material expressions that make it available to a shared perception. From that, all kinds of cultural effects follow. When I titled Sweet Dreams, I was well aware that the term “complicity” was provocative, suggesting as it does that the critical stance of moral superiority to “common” or “mass” culture taken by many critics and artists was being called into question. But at the same time, I was not suggesting that the acknowledgment that we are – all of us – part of systems of consumption, careerism, professionalism, promotion etc. that are the inevitable apparatus of our conditions of work and existence–meant that we are necessarily aligned with values of oppression and exploitation. But I was trying to point out what feels like blindness (even bad faith at its extreme) in two worlds I know well – that of radical, innovative art practice and that of academic work focused on cultural production across the arts and media. I simply wanted to point out that we are all operating inside the same system that becomes reified as the object of critical study. None of us are outside its machinations, nor, if we are honest, outside the drives and desires it instills in us or to which we subscribe. I was originally motivated to write Sweet Dreams because of the enthusiasm I had for contemporary artists whose work had a playful relation to mass culture that did not begin with the assumption of negativity that was characteristic of some early 20th century avant-garde practices. If we revisit Italian Futurism, we find Marinetti, for instance, fully engaged in mass media as a thematic inspiration (‘wireless imagination’) and as instrument and means of realization (the language of publicity, typography of advertising, use of radio, pamphlets, newspapers as sites and instruments of the work). Dada and Cubist collage work is not antithetical to mass culture, but toying with its materials and their potential as elements of aesthetic expression. Surrealism has a long career of absorption into fashion, film, popular culture. While the useful critical tenets of Russian Formalism, particularly those of Viktor Shklovsky, stress defamiliarization as a way to recover aesthetic experience from the numbing mechanical effects of daily life, they are not more focused on mass culture as the enemy than on other routines and habits. Mass media becomes an object of critical disdain and denigration with the fearful recognition of the power of propaganda to create a “mass” whose hysterias are both destructive and self-destructive. Media studies arises from the terrors wrought by the first world war, and takes the form we know best through the writings of the Frankfurt School, particularly Theodor Adorno, in response to the rise of fascism and the contemporary free-market demon, the culture industries. But the legacy of Adorno’s aesthetics is problematic for us because it has become academic, and
Re: [-empyre-] Chindogu and re-design
Thanks, Renate, for clarifying - I should have looked more closely it now appears that the discussion may have moved on = pursuing this may well be mute! On Nov 29, 2009, at 6:47 AM, Renate Ferro wrote: Chris, That was actually Kevin's post not mine.I was also curious hence my post. Hope you saw Kevin's most recent post.R Hi Renate - I'm intrigued by your use of the descriptive phrases below: ludic Interfaces as well as now read as cold as any reflexive modernist compositional exercise. If possible, I'd appreciate you furthering this position - Many thanks - Chris On Nov 28, 2009, at 10:14 AM, Renate Ferro wrote: Hi Kevin, What were you thinking of specifically here? Got any links? I'm curious... - The nineties saw a string of ludic interfaces in early net.art, yet many of these now read as cold as any reflexive, modernist compositional exercise. Renate Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Chindogu and re-design
Hi Renate - I'm intrigued by your use of the descriptive phrases below: ludic Interfaces as well as now read as cold as any reflexive modernist compositional exercise. If possible, I'd appreciate you furthering this position - Many thanks - Chris On Nov 28, 2009, at 10:14 AM, Renate Ferro wrote: Hi Kevin, What were you thinking of specifically here? Got any links? I'm curious... - The nineties saw a string of ludic interfaces in early net.art, yet many of these now read as cold as any reflexive, modernist compositional exercise. Renate Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Demand Nothing, Occupy Everything? California is burning ....
Hi Marco, Micha, everyone The irony implicit in your statement re: this situation begs for further explication + analysis: It is only in this country that three decades of brainwashing have led to the obliteration of historic memory (the cancellation of May1st being the most notable example), and to the perception that going on strike is somehow out of fashion. And ... to add to the circulating narratives and links - I found it curious that the Chronicle for HE published this - http://chronicle.com/blogPost/California-Is-Burning/8915/?sid=atutm_source=atutm_medium=en Chris On Nov 19, 2009, at 8:34 AM, Marco Deseriis wrote: Hi Micha, yes, thank you for sharing those precious links. At UCSD, very few students, faculty and staff that I've talked to knew about or support the strike do. Myself and a handful of other faculty, staff and students are striking, but is the very idea of a strike not viral but more based in monolothic constituencies and factory models of labor? No, I just think that after 3-4 decades of resting on dreams of unabated growth Americans (and Californians in particular) need to be re- educated and reawakened as to what it means to lose one's job, as to what it means to fight for it, and what it means to risk of losing your job for defending it. So thank you for taking on this rather humongous task ;-) To me it is not a matter of virality but of culture. People in Latin America, Asia, Europe and all over the world keep going on strike for defending their jobs, demanding higher wages, security on the workplace, etc. It is only in this country that three decades of brainwashing have led to the obliteration of historic memory (the cancellation of May1st being the most notable example), and to the perception that going on strike is somehow out of fashion. In actual fact, there exists a growing global movement to defend public education, and to build an entirely different model of knowledge sharing. You are probably familiar with this site: http://www.edu-factory.org which reports the news of 15 arrests at UCLA: http://www.edu-factory.org/edu15/index.php?option=com_contentview=articleid=240:students-arrested-at-uclacatid=34:strugglesItemid=53 and whose picture eloquently show the response of public authorities to this growing mobilization. Perhaps the spreading occupations are more viral? I wonder about this as I start going on strike tomorrow and join actions at UCSD... Well, it is not up to me to say that strikes and occupations are just two sides of the same coin. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre C h r i s t i a n e R o b b i n s - J E T Z T Z E I T S T U D I O S - ... the space between zero and one ... Walter Benjamin LOS ANGELESISAN FRANCISCO The present age prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804-1872 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] more on the grid
Ahhh but that danger is a presumption, no? On Nov 17, 2009, at 12:38 AM, frederic neyrat wrote: (by the way, R Krauss seems to be able to reject avant-gardes fantasies of the origin in forgetting the political aim of this return: when Malévitch says je me suis transfiguré dans le zéro des formes, he's not stupid, he knows that he's not the inventor of the zero - but he has to go through it to create something (as Sherrie Levine definitely did it !): for the avant-gardes, zero, grid, silence are materials for new worlds, new forms of life, not decorative patterns ... at the end of the day, the problem is not the return, the origin, the grid, the zero, but the danger to be immersed in them, to not be able to leave the zero... all my best Frédéric Neyrat) 2009/11/16 virginia solomon virginia.solo...@gmail.com: hi zach the article I was actually thinking about was her originality of the avant-garde, in which she discusses the use of the grid within historical avant-garde practices. specifically, through the use of the grid in modernist painting, she discusses the role that the trope of originality played within the historic avant-garde, and of course she undermines that trope. She discusses the grid to demonstrate the repressed quality of modernism, that its championing of originality comes through an engagement with a form that is a copy of a copy without an original at all (who invented the grid?). she then discusses postmodernism as practices that don't repress the fact that it is a copy of a copy without an original. there are things to be done with copies and seriality and repetition and proliferation, I think, but from a different direction than communications theory that might prove productive for your project. in terms of taking the grid as an emblem of our time, there are interesting contradictions between your discussion and location, and krauss', or more accurately, the practices in which krauss locates the grid. because she is locating it within formalist abstraction, which is precisely seeking to distance itself from the social field in its search for autonomy and medium specificity. so it is a very different kind of function, but one that I think can be really productive precisely because of the infections of which you speak. of course this makes me think of the general idea Infected (the c in the infected is a copyright sign but I don't know how to make that in gmail) series, where they did infected mondrians, duchamps, rietvelds, etc. which of course also gets us back to gay related immune deficiency. and then another question just came to me, concerning the difference between being-invisible and non-being. it seems to be like there are important differences between refusing to be on or taken up by the grid, and not being able to access the grid. maybe this is an old question, but I think it takes on nuances if we are discussing a queer practice of trying to refuse the modernist, enlightenment self and thing up other forms of subjectivity without simply invoking the privilege of being able to refuse. -- Virginia Solomon ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre C h r i s t i a n e R o b b i n s - J E T Z T Z E I T S T U D I O S - ... the space between zero and one ... Walter Benjamin LOS ANGELESISAN FRANCISCO The present age prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804-1872 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Invocation of the Queer Spirits
In an jump here, by chance, has anyone seen this recent piece by Bronson and Hobbs ... and, if so, might you have any comments as to how it may or may not add to our dinner conversation re: relational aesthetics? AA Bronson Peter Hobbs AA Bronson and Peter Hobbs' Invocation of the Queer Spirits (Governors Island), a séance held here on June 25, 2009, invoked historical, queer, and marginalized practices as a way to heal the past and acknowledge the present. As Bronson described, the ritual includes drawing a circle, asking for protection, and invoking the spirits, naming the various histories and communities of the dead. This intervention underscores how queer communities have overlapped with the histories of Spiritualists and shamans, as well as all-male communities such as the military population that called Governors Island home. Inspired by the countless lives and deaths that took place on the island, the project invites us to think again about what is valued and what is excised from our collective history. The physical remains of the ritual are presented here. On Jul 23, 2009, at 11:00 PM, Robert Summers wrote: Virginia Wrote: In the interest of agonism, precisely not antagonism, could you clarify your strategy of recuperative readings? I agree wholeheartedly that just because something evidences problems along one axis, that does not in any way mean that it thereby loses any kind of efficacy. however, I do think that it is important to be mindful of the problem that one strategy presents, so that we might retain what is useful and adapt whatever is problematic, on the basis of its blind spots. I think Vaginal Davis' work, as presented by Jose Munoz, in fact, provides us with a great example of this, and so I wonder if you see her work in particular, qua her work, not qua Fanon, as making and employing tactics that offer recuperative readings? Virginia, I think she does both reparative readings and recuperative readings. On the level of reparative reading is the surfacing of love for and hope in an object (be it an image or a text). Let me turn to Sedgwick's reparative reading, which is a counter to paranoid reading, The sculpture in this picture [of Judith Scott who is a textile artist] is fairly characteristic of Scott’s work in its construction: a core assembled from large, heterogeneous materials has been hidden under many wrapped or darned layers of multicolored yarn, cord, ribbon, rope, and other fiber, producing a durable three-dimensional shape, usually oriented along a single axis of length, whose curves and planes are biomorphically resonant and whose scale bears comparison to Scott’s own body. The formal achievements that are consistent in her art include her inventive techniques for securing the giant bundles, her subtle building and modulation of complex three-dimensional lines and curves and her startlingly original use of color, whether bright or muted, which can stretch across a plan, simmer deeply through the multilayered wrapping, or drizzle graphically along an emphatic suture. All of Scott’s work that I have seen on its own has an intense presence, but the subject of this photograph also includes her relation to her completed work, and presumptively also the viewer’s relation to the sight of that dyad. (Sedgwick, Touching Feeling, 22) Indeed, there is a loving and reparative tying, holding, together. The way that Scott holds her finished work, and the way that this work holds Scott, can be understood as the way Sedgwick holds her own work, and the way I hold all three. More broadly, this holding together can be understood as the ways in which queers hold those objects and subjects that can (for whatever reason) bring pleasure and even pain. There is a queer-intertwining that connects, interconnects, and binds together (for however long and to what ever ends) seemingly disparate bodies (in the broadest sense of the word). And, I think that Vaginal Davis does such work when she creates her nightclubs or performances -- we know there is violence, we know the outside hates queers, we know that people are dying, but how to make a space, if only momentarily that, that doesn't surface what we already know, but rather there is a space that is created that explores other modes of not-knowing, other spaces that have yet to be explored, which can be incredibly transformative,and none of this is to argue to a willing forgetfulness or a ignoring of that pain that covers the earth, but it is to give primacy to love and hope. Another mode of enacting a reparative practice can be seen in this video, and one may argue that it is also a modality of what Munoz calls disidentification (I wonder if there is a connection between reparative readings and/as practices and disidentification): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEdaUvW81Zw In Chicken Man Vaginal Davis re-routs and recycles racist images, enactments, and stereotypes in a way that deflates
Re: [-empyre-] Aesthetics of Queer Relationality
Virginia - Hi - Many thanks for proferring your definitions below as the basis for elaborating further upon our dinner conversation and as a means of departure ... On Jul 7, 2009, at 8:20 AM, virginia solomon wrote: Hi Everyone Like everyone else, I'd like to thank Christina for inviting me to be involved in what is turning into quite the rich conversation, and also to my co-conversants for engagement! I have SO much to say about what everyone else has posted, but I'll start here with just saying a bit about my connection to this topic, which will pick up a bit on what Robert alluded to in his last parasite post. First to loosely define a few terms, as I understand them. Aesthetics - this term has come up already on this post, and I share Marc's distrust of how the word and the concept have circulated in philosophical and modernist discourse, but I use it a bit differently here. Rather than a set style, I think of aesthetics as an operation, as a mode of engagement that takes up a different kind of logic, a different kind of sense-making, than language per se, in terms of presenting theory and offering ways of imagining alternative modes of being and producing knowledge. Clearly this is neither a Kantian nor a Hegelian aesthetic, but I think that the practices that interest me still fit within the allusive capabilities of the term precisely because of their explorations of alterative, less oppressive forms of communicability. This is what aesthetics can offer, I think, in relation to queerness. Queer - Queer, to me, is not an identity. This is really important. It is not a noun. It is a verb, it is a performative as Bulter describes it as an enactment that brings something into being but is precisely that enactment that demonstrates the unnatrualness of the norm. The queer is that which, ontologically, and this is its only ontology, undermines dominant structures of meaning making, which then dictate how we understand knowledge of and being in the world. There is some danger of idealizing the queer, of seeing it as some utopian space of absolute radicality and opposition. But this is to misunderstand queerness. It isn't a space that one can occupy. And the idea of absolute radicality is anatametic to queerness, because absolutes are precisely a part of the system of meaning making that the queer, AS AN OPERATION, seeks to interrogate. Relationality - To recite a story with which I'm sure many of us are familiar, the bourgeois subject is defined precisely by 'his' autonomy, 'his' fixity as a self and 'his' absolute ability for self- determination. That is the dominant narrative of being that we inherit from the Enlightenment, from Modernism, etc. This is one of the primary sites in which I see the queer operation, queerness as an embodied and lived interrogation, operating. Queerness, since Sedgwick and Butler, has insisted on the way in which 'we' form the 'I.' By relationality I mean both the way in which how we understand our very bodies is a relational process, but I also mean the ways we relate to each other in the world, as simple and as complicated as sociability, social life, socializing. Thus for me the aesthetics of queer relationality circulate throughout all spheres of social production, and I am interested in art practices that draw upon this, that enact this operation, as part of a world-making, or rather a space-for-imagination-opening, project. This has gotten long so maybe I'll talk about more stuff under another post? As an art historian, I sort of see my position here as talking about stuff, and the theory that comes from stuff rather than theory that comes from theory (impossible to distinguish as that is). -- Virginia Solomon ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre C h r i s t i a n e R o b b i n s - JETZTZEIT - ... the space between zero and one ... Walter Benjamin LOS ANGELESISAN FRANCISCO The present age prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804-1872, http://www.jetztzeit.net ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] response to Marc's response to Christiane
Hi Marc, Apologies for not responding any sooner but have just returned from holiday Perhaps its simply that the mental fog that has not altogether dissipated from the festivities ... however, I'm troubled by your response and am uncertain if it is a response to my earlier informal post or concretizing your own positions for the group - not that they are mutually exclusive. Rest assured, I understand your post - just not in response to mine. By way of example - First, from my perspective, one cannot simply map on heteronormativity to biopower - I'm uncertain as to what you are referencing - ? Rest assured, that I am not locked into dialectical thinking - far from it. My position was not to divide Institutional Critique in two camps, nor have I mapped the straight/gay issue into a binary positioning, nor a binary layering onto class struggle. Point in fact, I've long viewed these issues as inextricable. My intent was simply to point out that practices which are now commonly referred to as Relational Aesthetics - have a long history in contemporary art and conceptual practices - i.e. Sol Le Witt in 1970 piece acknowledging the transactional underpinnings of the art world and pricing his work basically on a sliding scale ( the price correlating to one's income level.) This history is not often acknowledged within the rather narrow trajectories of Relational Aesthetics. The earlier events and practitioners seemingly stepped outside the dialectic of their times. My questioning has to do with the contemporary exercise of relational aesthetics ... and if, indeed, it steps outside of the dialectic or merely produces a surface play deflection, as dialogue and consensus are primary tools of the dialectic, no? Hence, my early use of the term mannerist. In response to your question re: Lawler, Fraser ( later,) Kolbowski - I have long situated these artists ( + theorists such as Butler, Derrida and Ronell ) in many of my syllabi and curatorial programming in the interstitial and rather fluid, hybrid spaces of conceptual art practices - feminist art practices, neo -conceptual, etc. For those familiar with my own practice - hybridity has been a hallmark, as has been a a refusal to accommodate facile categorizations. However, relative to the directives of this month's focus, I had merely raised these points relative to queer art practices and the systemic machinations of the art world. Further to the point, please help me understand exactly how one is interested in the avant-garde critique of aesthetics without having, however fleeting, an interest in aesthetic models and the historicity from which they rise. and ... in retrospect ... my sincere apologies for not having the time necessary to devote to formulating a cogent analysis suitable for a formalized debate in this forum. I'm deeply engaged in my own projects at the moment and taking a bit of break from theoretical posturing. However, I am interested in the subject of queer relational aesthetics and its contested domains. Thanks again for a lively discussion - Chris On Jul 4, 2009, at 11:37 AM, Marc Leger wrote: hi all, sorry for the repetition of my text - some problems with the server resulted in mine and Christina's efforts to fix the problem leading to repetition. i would like to first respond to Christiane and hopefully I'm not confusing people's comments here first, from my perspective, one cannot simply map on heteronormativity to biopower - of course you can do things with words but from a political viewpoint it relies on taking Hegelian dialectics (or is it Agamben's use of Foucault in Homo Sacer) and suggesting that the concrete universal is heterosexuality - as I stated in my text, from a psychoanalytic perspective, this just doesn't work - it's the flip side of the equally problematic utopia of polymorphous perversity in this sense, I also disagree with the idea that we could divide institutional critique into two camps (again, mapping straight/gay onto the idea of class struggle, if I understand this assertion correctly): one that derives from the queer initiatives of the exhibition at American Fine Arts and an earlier stage based on Asher, Buren, Haacke, Willats. as well, what do you do with people like Louise Lawler, Andrea Fraser and Sylvia Kolbowski? this to me is an especially significant problem in the historiography of the shift from Abstract Expressionism to Neo Dada and Pop Art. lastly, I would say that I'm not in any way interested in queer art practices in the same way that, as a theorist (rather than as a critic working in a manner before the death of the author), I am not interested in aesthetic models (dialogical aesthetic, relational aesthetics, etc) but in the avant-garde critique of aesthetics. Bourdieu, who insists in his own way on the shift from
