Lessons in Futility: Francis Alys and the Legacy of May '68
Grant Kester
Third Text, Volume 23 Issue 4 July 2009 , pages 407 - 420
I just read an article that I think is relevant to the concepts we have learnt so far in this course. Kester wrote the book Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art in which the introduction was last weeks reading covering dialogical art and the WochenKlauser collective.
It outlines writings by Jean Luc Nancy and his idea of human labour as aggressive, Claire Bishop (a good revision of her article in October Magazine) and then a detailed explanation of Aly’s work ‘When Faith Moves Mountains. Specifically, Kester discusses the artists intent and the experience of the volunteers involved.
What also is fascinating is an explanation of why the May 68 revolutions failed – with an explanation first of Schillers Letters on the aesthetic education of man. Schiller wrote that man was incapable of self-governing and that what was required was an encounter with an autonomous work of art – where the viewer could retreat from life into the ‘protected enclave of the canvas’. (Add a bit of Greenbergian critique here too).
May 68’s attempts to challenge entrenched power only ended up inadvertently reproducing it (Peter Starr). The ‘Third Way’ is also explained – ‘a new form of oppositional intelligence that would abjure the mechanisms of the state, the party or the union, assuming an entirely new counter-institutional form’. This form would not risk the inevitable compromise that would result from direct involvement with the mechanisms of social or political change.
This third way is via the arts and literature. Here some of Barthes is explained too.
It’s a really great read so I’ll copy the link below. The article is downloadable as a PDF.
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