Mythopoeia

"There is something deeply suffocation about life in the prosperous west. Bourgeoisification, the suburbanisation of the soul, proceeds at an unnerving pace. Tyranny becomes docile and subservient, and soft totalitarianism prevails, as obsequious as a wine maker. Nothing is allowed to distress or unsettle us.* The politics of the playgroup rule us all." J. G. Ballard.

Debord's end of art never eventuated (186, ‘Negation and Consumption, Society of the Spectacle), or perhaps it did and we haven't noticed, lulled into a pleasant stupor by conviviality and faux-communities. Perhaps we have come full circle- We are more likely to dérive down the information superhighway than the back streets of Paris, rigidly scripted spaces of encounter and manoeuvrability where 'images perform as connectors between people... the heady confusion of images and their accessibility... make us subjects of supreme choice and supreme possible conscience.... The being that we call ourselves is itself a protean mosaic of images.' (Adam Geczy, Histories, Theories and Exceptions, 2008) Its dangerous territory when at every turn we are being sold some aspect of ourselves- 'it feels good to be yourself'- I know, but I don't need a sandwich to facilitate that! Advertising no longer sells aspirations and lifestyle, but life itself, and along with them our ability to make choices and have consciousness. The Situationalists demanded that ‘we do not adjust our minds, there is a problem with reality.’ I think that the idea of an ‘essential solitude’ of art making (loss of subjectivity in regards to art making, an exile from the world**) has expired, that the psychosocial dimension of identity and existence in a nouveau-imperialist world is so ambivalent, dislocated and rhizomatic is such that it is impossible not to be to some degree ‘produced/producer’- nobody/nothing can exist outside of capitalism. The task then is to be aware of it and maintain individual agency, which is what Bourriaud was getting at with the notion of a ‘society of extras’. Its an aspect of the Situationalist project which has continuing relevance today, and can be identified in the practices of many relational/littoral/dialogical artists with their emphasis on creating alternative social spaces and communities outside of capitalism- but I constantly wonder if they aren’t just some form of immediate, performative, communal mythopoeia, being intellectual/cultural capital in them selves....

Sorry if this is drifting, just sort of thinking aloud...


*Just as a side note, does anyone else find the degree of political correctness and regulated social relations absurd to the point of obscenity? What ever happened to the childhood mantra- 'sticks and stones may break my bones but word will never hurt me.' At what point did we forget to differentiate between !!!!
** Left the book I read this in at home... if anyone wants to know more give me a holler and i’ll dig it up for you.