'In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.'
From my understanding, what Debord, and the Situationists, were saying is that art should move away from being representational- from reflecting life- and instead simply be life.
They believed that rather than art speaking to situations that occur in life they should rather be constructed situations of real life.
But in my mind this doesn't work at all. The Situationists (as far as I know, and I'm certainly not an expert)didn't simply wonder about cities pointing at things happening on the street and say 'this is art'. This doesn't even work in thoery, because if somebody was to do this it would be the pointing and calling that makes it art, not the situation that exists. A degree of mediation- constructing- is still necessary, will always be necessary.
The same is true of Relational Art. They couldn't simply point at relationships that exist already between people and say 'that's art.' There has to be the construction of the situation, of the opportunity for relationships to be made.
Not that I'm saying that Relational artists are running around taking credit for discourses that exist between, say- middle aged women at McDonalds- I just thought it was worth saying that life can't be art without mediation. In my opinion.
Maybe at the start it was anti-art, but by the '60s art had nothing to do with it. It was revolutionary politics.
ReplyDeleteMaybe being at an art school actually causes a foreshortening of vision - we see everything as art, but most of the time it isn't
forgot to say... but yes you are spot on with the observation about mediation - that is exactly it!
ReplyDeleteI don't know how relevant this is but it makes me think of Adorno's paper on committed art and autonomous art (Commitment). About art (or not-art) that is politically didactic in nature.
ReplyDeleteI understand that was their aim, but Adorno certainly has a different opinion!