Re: [-empyre-] poets patrons and the word academic
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 *C*reative *I*nterdisciplinary *R*esearch into *C*o*L*laborative *E*nvironments 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 be considered bad, if the person shows no reasonable effort to figure out whether or not what they are doing is in fact bad. In this sense, carelessness could be a kind of badness (I certainly make many mistakes in this way). If a person is employing a means that is widely understood to be harmful, with predictably harmful effects. Using another person in any way against their will (or without their knowledge), especially if it is going to determine their future, is something that is potentially really bad. Passing the buck letting someone else make a decision which you could have made yourself is also a kind of badness. But at the end of all this, I think that the key factor is the interval imposed on decision-making. If we take decisions away from the automatic, impulsive, and assumed responses, and pause to reflect upon them (the purpose for the action, the means of acting, the presumed outcome, and the actual outcome) we move from being thoughtless to being thoughtful, unreflective to reflective. On the other hand, we have, I think, lost our overall sense of what's bad mainly because we cleave to imposed standards for moral behavior. We (and I am speaking especially about the sort of dumbed-down moral
Re: [-empyre-] poets patrons and the word academic
Simon, Of course you are right. These are contingencies, relative to biological existence. However, our episteme owes a lot to these contingencies. Even the ability to cast a discursive frame that can account for our values as opposed to the values of other systems, suggest that these values might be more than merely arbitrary, they might beget an entire mode of being. As a scholar, I am very interested in technical change. And I am interested in seeing how certain social technologies might change the way we see things that I take for granted as good. For instance, I value concentration and the ability to shift consciously between non-linear and linear modes of thought, which requires something like a traditional text-based literacy and liberal education, with its systems of abstract representation, its rhetorical conventions, and the ability to hold ideas in place for long periods of time while information is added, challenged, amended, its committment to intercourse between different fields of knowledge, etc. But more than anything, I think the culmination of this mode of thinking has been the beginning of the realization that, maybe, we really should all share our stuff and act kindly towards each other. In the past, it was up to mystics and radicals to push crazy ideas like this. Yet, it is clear to me that this is changing. Perhaps this change is even being imposed. But at the very least, it is clear that we have, for the last 100 years, seen the emergence of an authentic popular global consciousness as well as a fiercely orchestrated backlash against the idea of universal solidarity, even as the financial sector tries to create a universal system of exploitation. Christina, Bad is a funny word. But it is good one. Most words either comment on the aesthetic (Ugly, Grotesque, Hideous, etc) or the ethical (Evil, Unethical, Anti-social, etc.) or material (Erasure, Deletion, Destruction, etc.), but bad kind of yokes these spheres together. It creates trouble for our thinking, of course. But it is productive, nevertheless. On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 3:13 AM, Simon Biggs s.bi...@eca.ac.uk 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 *C*reative *I*nterdisciplinary *R*esearch into *C*o*L*laborative *E* nvironments 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 be considered bad, if the person shows no reasonable effort to figure out whether or not what they are doing is in fact bad. In this sense, carelessness could be a kind of badness (I certainly make many mistakes in this way). If a person is employing a means that is widely understood to be harmful, with predictably harmful effects. Using another
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 8
we have lost our ability to even begin thinking about right and wrong. Um, speak for yourself g. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 62, Issue 8
John, apologies for the generalization. I didn't mean to refer to your ability to figure out what was right and wrong...only lamenting what I see as a deficiency in the public sphere where I live (the United States). And, I have to admit that my ability to act and think of justice is severely hampered by my own complicity in the system (I know I paid too little and ate too much for lunch, for instance). Sure, there are plenty of people who are basically dependent on the political apparatuses' collective ability to care and I would say these people tend to be aware of the overall lack of justice (although, there are entire regions of the US where the tendency is to respond to injustice with feelings of enmity If only the illegals weren't here! We'd all have good jobs!). And, in fact, many of the things which should be basic assumptions (access to health care, living wages, education, housing... and on top of this, honesty, trust, mutuality) are luxuries (as Christina pointed out)... but the fact that such basic necessities are considered excessive speaks to the grave injustice that we live under. Until I see the overal injustice in the world corrected by popular engagement and action I will continue to doubt in the ability of American society to begin to think about right and wrong. Take care. Davin On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 1:18 PM, John Haber jha...@haberarts.com wrote: we have lost our ability to even begin thinking about right and wrong. Um, speak for yourself g. ___ 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-] some thoughts on complicity
this conversation about complicity, and in particular the thoughts about the ways in which models of critical engagement and aesthetic judgment are no longer applicable to certain forms of contemporary art practice, is very exciting! and timely, for the work that I am currently doing on canadian artist group general idea. I think that much of the group's practice is about presenting a model of art in which the rigid binary between criticality and complicity is entirely inapplicable. I am working on a project that gi did called Test Tube in 1979 where they specifically talk about this binary, and present an alternative that they call trendy responsibility. http://www.eai.org/eai/title.htm?id=9897 . this trendy responsibility isn't really a roadmap of any kind, because what gi's practice is very much about is presenting art as a part of popular culture, flattening the dialectic between art and popular culture that structures both high modernism/formalism and a more 'engaged' notion of the avant-garde. for gi, this distinction didn't exist. in Test Tube in particular, they are experimenting with how to make their art legible and accessible within a popular format, ie television. true to gi's MO of occupying many positions and striving for many levels of meaning, though, they also present themselves within the old mode of the avant-garde project to collapse art into life. and I think this also engages with our discussion of complicity. because, if contemporary life, as any number of theorists tell us, is about greater and greater levels of commodification, then what is collapsing art into life? if life is commoditized and art is collapsed into life then art is commoditized. or that seems to be gi's argument. as johanna and others have put much more eloquently than I, if there is no outside (and through foucault and bulter, not to mention general idea themselves in statements from this very video) then complicity becomes a non-issue because everything is complicit. the question then becomes what models do we use for engagement and judgment, in addition to practice (not that engagement and judgment aren't themselves practice)? personally I think that this is where queer theory and the queer cultural practices from Warhol to ACT UP that inform queer theory have much to contribute. but I am curious about what other people think! thanks to all the contributors for a wonderful discussion. I look forward to the rest of the month on this topic! -- Virginia Solomon ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] A little known text, but touches on complicity.
Hammering at the Truth. The Four Elements of Virtuality Talking about Avatar Artist Gazira Babeli Patrick Lichty, May 2009 As I write this, Gazira and I were talking about my reflections on Hammering the Void, and in dealing with the moral tropes of Sin, Virtue, and most romantically, Truth, i seemed that my text less resembles an essay and more like a sermon. As this is no more surreal than reflecting on the moral implications of a horde of fourteen proxies wielding cartoon mallets, I'd like to frame this under just such a conceit of a sermon on virtual existence. Let us consider then, my Brothers and Sisters in Virtuality and Hypereality, the implications of unleashing Pandora's Box, of unfurling the Sins and Virtues forth into the Nets, armed with nothing less than Vulcan's Hammer itself; let us consider the effects thereof. I want to say that in setting this forth, the traditional Sins and Virtues give rise to four Principles of experience that remain in virtuality, and those are: Affect, Agency, Volition, and Complicity. It is through these that while after shedding the physical coil, humanity follows us into the Void. Let us meditate upon these in that we may understand the Void. In the beginning of the Hammering the Void introductory video, Gazira and I (or my Man Michinaga proxy) sit before a screen in Second Life, marveling at an opening of 90's net artists, Vuk Cosic and Alexei Shulgin. We gesticulate excitedly like old heavy metal fans about the Monsters of net.art. We agree that she must set the cloud of Gaziric Sins and Virtues upon the world, equipped with large mallets, perhaps as inquisition, perhaps as divine intervention. For the rest of the video, the Gazirae invade virtual social events akin to a host of viral Agents (as per the Smiths from Matrix Reloaded) creating avatar mosh pits and hammering the hapless onlookers. All of this would appear as simple farce; but I know Gazira, and we know one thing... The Truth is out there, we are all complicit in its creation, and Gazira is hammering you over the head with it. One point that is essential to consider when looking at the gaggle of Gazirae and their accouterments, is that she has provided the hammer in the gallery for you. They aren't inflatable hammers, either. They're probably oak or maple, engraved with the Deadly Sins and Noble Virtues, inviting you to pick them up and play. As a side note, I had considered being more explicit in regards to play, but doing so would have been too heavy-handed, which is unnecessary when one is wielding an oak mallet. As Gazira and I have continued to make works in virtual worlds for years, the question returns to the why, which may return us to the Cartesian cogito. However, I would like to remap the Cartesian assertion into a consideration of the increasing retreat into virtual worlds in asking about some of the things that remain in our Pandora's Box of simulation when we remove materiality and embodiment. This leads us back to the fulcrum of our sermon; the median icon of our discussion. The sign at the center of this discussion is the hammer, the archetypal sign of Vulcan/Hephaestus, the God of Technology and Artisans. In Hammering the Void, perhaps the null-stuff of virtuality is the metal of disembodied existence that the Gazira-Hephaestae forge into an ironic tool for the dragging our own mortal encumbrance into cyberspace. Her traditional Sins and Virtues infest the online worlds, placing all they encounter upon the existential anvil or litmus test of action and reaction. There is little time for reflection, for what is under the hammer nothing less than our human nature. What do you do? From this vantage point, the result is the transmutation of the traditional Sin/Virtue binaries into monads of four human elements of virtual existence. These Monads, as we have transmuted beyond Sin or Virtue, are the principles of Affect, Agency, Volition, and Complicity. which are all complex significations embedded into Gazira's Hammer. Affect: Identification with the act. One of the most striking images of the Gazirae is that of the fourteen Sins/Virtues rampaging before their puppeteer in a bold thrust, akin to an ideologue ordering their army into action. This encapsulates this writer''s fascination with the evident identification of increasing numbers with virtual worlds, and as of this writing, there were 65,000 people logged into the single online world of Second Life alone, showing the reality of virtual reality. This evidence is also embedded within the results of each intervention of the Gazirae, from the amusement of the appearance in the Uqbar region, varying to confusion and even anger in other instances. The paradoxical question of the visceral reaction to virtual events shows that affect is not just for identification for another body, but for an identification with their proxies/avatars as well. Although the avatar version
