Happy happy joy joy

I feel like the ideal intention of this class is potentially far more constructive and beneficial than the set up of previous THAP classes i have had. As Chris said, Caleb "is treating us like adults", and i think this has been a good wake up call and an important process for third year. The blog is awesome in terms of forcing us to read and to critically think about what we are going to address in class.

However, i feel like given the way the rest of the universities theory classes have been run, the contrast in expectations of this class needed to be clearer and perhaps facilitated our adjusting more from the outset. The expectation that anything we are going to get out of the class had to be driven by ourselves needed to be far more strongly communicated. You may have a theory of how students should participate and a class should run but if this is not the case you need to adapt and construct new ways of dealing and attempting to get them there. We are adults but alot of us dont act like one and aren't used to being treated like one, and i think this needed to be taken more into consideration. For example, i don't think the majority our class was at a level that really facilitated the idea of the class being totally driven as 'conversational', and therefore may have helped to have been more critically driven by Caleb.
I also feel like the aims/ outcomes of this class were really blurry and there have been a few contradictions. I feel like the majority of class discussions have been purely chatting about case studies and not touching on much broader theory has been dissapointing. I also think this is abit nuts when coming to the essay it is obvious that Caleb expects us to have an apt understanding of contemporary theory surrounding politics, art and the idea of 'community'. I think the fact that many peoples essays were on "institutional critique"and the fact that alot of this weeks blog entries have been on how relational aesthetics and activism is going to potentially help or affect theories of their practise demonstrates that this is not the class and perhaps some points have been missed?

Hey Caleb this is no way carries an angry tone, i just wanted to be honest about my criticisms.
In saying that i have personally found this class the most enjoyable theory class, and the contemporary theory i am NOW reading (Ranciere etc) one of the most interesting and relevant.

Jacques Ranciere

I am backtracking to the quote we talked about last week on the history of the temporary links and exchanges that take place between ‘art machines’ and ‘revolutionary machines’. The relevance of the relationship or specific ‘non-relationship’ between art and politics or aesthetics and politics.

Ranciere states, “Critical art, as art which plays both on the union and the tension of aesthetic politics, is possible thanks to the movement of translation which, for quite some time already, had crossed back and forth over the line separating the specific world of art and the prosaic world of commodities”.

We are steps beyond Debord and the artists ability to directly critique and subvert the commoditisation of culture and its reliance on ‘signs’ and ‘spectacles’. The very indiscernible nature of contemporary art and its marriage with commodity and popular culture, results in the risk of any critical art being inscribed “in the perepetuity of a world in which the transformation of things into signs is redoubled by the very excess of interpretative signs which brings things to lose their capacity of resistance” (Ranciere).

Aesthetics (dictionary): the science which deduces from nature and taste the rules and principles of art; the theory of fine arts; the science of the beautiful, or the branch of philosophy that deals with its principles or effects; the doctrines of taste

Aesthetics in art has its own politics or two opposing systems, that which wants art to dissolve into ‘life’ at the expense of its own elimination and the logic of art entering into politics precisely (and of value), because it has nothing to do with it. Political or critical arts task is then to juggle the tension between art becoming ‘life’ (and thus politics) and the existence of an aesthetic sensorality that has specifically set itself aside from other forms of sensory experience (that of life). From a non-art world it borrows a political intelligibility, and thus combining a heterogeneity that comes from art, and it is this very co-existence and balance between art machines and non art/ revolutionary machines that make possible combinations of elements capable, as Ranciere puts it “of speaking twice over; on the basis of their legibility and on the basis of their illegibility”.

Volxtheatre and EKH

What I find really interesting about the Volxtheatre and EKH is this Focaultian idea of Parrhesia. The idea of a balance of personal/self criticism existing at the same level as political/institutional criticism, creating a new broadened self-regulating criticism that still “maintains flow between movement and institution”. Obvious similarities also exist with Laibach in their performances and also in relation to their specific focus on the structuralization of political and authoritarian institutions. Theories of Situationism and site specific public art also resonates through their work, particularly with their ‘situative interventions’ concerning European border policies in 1996.

The choice of theatre out of its bourgeoisie context was with the intention of choosing an art form that most accurately depicts 'real life'. Taking on the role of ‘art machine’ and simultaneously ‘revolutionary machine’ they use theatre for political and cultural protest. The symbolic metaphor of their theatre with all its outrageous characters and contrasting hierarchies and conflicts can be read as a satiric depiction of the way they perceive the state of their society (or all western society in a way?). In an interview with the volxtheatre they claim that life does not exist with the freedom that the government encourages its people to believe. Like the theatre itself we live under a façade of freedom whilst really all societal and cultural situations result from the limitations of the structures put in place by various dominant and manipulative power institutions.


Go to this link for an interview.

http://www.no-racism.net/nobordertour/index_uk.html

Laibach is V cool

Laibach’s ongoing success and pure duration of their existence proves they have found a manageable balance between their intent in producing an artistic service and intent in providing a consistent critique of the authoritarian institutions in Slovenias political and social spheres. They escape the immediate critique of solely existing as another form of political propaganda by existing under the umbrella of a musical/performance/ concert/entertainment aesthetic.  The use of constant appropriation from art history and existing culture industries also gives them a firm artistic relevance and enables a discourse that can be reflective and explorative in not only the art and political realm on individual scales but also of the relationship between art and politics generally. What is of most significance is the fact that they use the very techniques of manipulation that are in place within society that keep us (the public sphere) permanently entertained and distracted, avoiding the structures of this set up to be seen and thus questioned.  Situated in and concerning specifically the country Slovenia and to a less significant part Germany, Laibach adopt and regurgitate symbols embedded in Slovenia and Germanys old stylistic and authoritarian regimes, explicitly suggesting how entrenched both societies control structures still are with these value systems. Consciously not conforming to expectations in either political or cultural fields Laibach are able to hold their shock value as they readily undermine any power structure that attempts to support or categorize them. 

David Hammons

David Hammons is an interesting artist as his work is generally centered around attesting to the civil rights and Black Power movements in USA. Always working within the public space Hammons’s work also blurred the notions of public and private spaces, as well as continually challenging the value of commodities. 'Bliz-aard Ball Sale'in 1983 is a performance piece in which Hammons situates himself on the streets of NYC to sell snowballs which are priced according to size.
The work subverts the activity of commodity exchange and is a commentary on the capitalistic and market driven nature of art and the elitism of the art world.

"THAT'S WHY I LIKE DOING STUFF BETTER ON THE STREET, BECAUSE THE ART BECOMES JUST ONE OF THE OBJECTS THAT'S IN THE PATH OF YOUR EVERYDAY EXISTENCE. IT'S WHAT YOU MOVE THROUGH, AND IT DOESN'T HAVE ANY SENIORITY OVER ANYTHING ELSE".


"DOING THINGS IN THE STREET IS MORE POWERFUL THAN ART I THINK. BECAUSE ART HAS GOTTEN SO....I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK ART IS ABOUT NOW. IT DOESN'T DO ANYTHING. LIKE MALCOLM X SAID, IT'S LIKE NOVOCAINE. IT USED TO WAKE YOU UP BUT NOW IT PUTS YOU TO SLEEP. I THINK THAT ART NOW IS PUTTING PEOPLE TO SLEEP. THERE'S SO MUCH OF IT AROUND IN THIS TOWN THAT IT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING. THAT'S WHY THE ARTIST HAS TO BE VERY CAREFUL WHAT HE SHOWS AND WHEN HE SHOWS NOW. BECAUSE THE PEOPLE AREN'T REALLY LOOKING AT ART, THEY'RE LOOKING AT EACH OTHER AND EACH OTHER'S CLOTHES AND EACH OTHER'S HAIRCUTS."


"THE ART AUDIENCE IS THE WORST AUDIENCE IN THE WORLD. IT'S OVERLY EDUCATED, IT'S CONSERVATIVE, IT'S OUT TO CRITICIZE NOT TO UNDERSTAND, AND IT NEVER HAS ANY FUN. WHY SHOULD I SPEND MY TIME PLAYING TO THAT AUDIENCE?"

David Hammons

Gran Fury and The Gateway Exchange

I have read some interesting things about an art collective based in new york in the late 80s early 90s called Gran Fury. Its interesting how the same debates come about in relation to notions of 'political activism' and supposed 'political art' and the general importance or priority of art in regards to social and political change.  The group was basically an activist group protesting etc against lack of government action towards aids recognition and active prevention. They intervened in public spaces (like the Situationists) by appropriating advertising and mass media communicative techniques (like Holzer etc), to shock absent minded readers in public domains. They comment on the fact that artists are given incomparable freedom to political and social commentry and thus as an "artist collective" were able to exploit this power for political means.
Another interesting one was Jimmy Boyle's Gateway Exchange in Edinburgh which started kind of as an art center for youths and any public members in need of cultural nourishment, as anyone could rock up and join the collaboration of a gant art project or just do their own creative stuff. Boyle talks about the struggles with funding, and the more funding (from government etc) the more their freedom was limited and controlled. The Gateway Exchange grew too large and ended up transforming fan organization for the homeless, poverised and aids affected people, the point of artistic expression (being the original driving force) being completely lost.

I will add more to this later, i need to catch the train.

Situatonismm yeahhhh

Hegel talks about the situation as a disruptive state suspended between two opposing contexts that remains in a constant state of flux without ever the intention of solidifying as one particular identity. This continual movement of difference and fragmentation Hegel terms "reterritorialization". This general idea also reflects Gilles Deleuze notions of the "game of difference and repetition".
" We propose to think difference in itself independently of the forms of representation which reduce it to the Same, and the relation of different to different independently of those forms which make them pass through the negative."
In terms of Debord and The Society and the Spectacle along with the idea of simulation and the supposed loss of a foundation identity (where the idea of "same" or "difference" can be marked from), the fact that everything we experience is in fact a simulation and a copy, the presence of an"original" no longer existing. We then wonder what is of importance and where do we place value? Is it in act the momentum and stimulation of this constant state of flux and the pure potential existence of possibilities that this in turn creates that is all we have left to place value on?

Institutional Critique: Michael Asher

Artists have been working with notions of site specificity to critique art institutions and museums since the early 1970s (even much earlier dada etc). Its interesting to look at the gradual shift in critique away from the physicality of the museum space and general relationship of the physical space to the artwork (serra etc) to an exploration into the inner cultural and ideological influences continuously put on art by the institutional framework.

Miwon Kwon

"Whether articulated in political and economic terms, as in Haacke's case, or in epistemological terms, as in Asher's, it is rather the art institution's techniques and effects as they circumscribe the definition, production, presentation, and dissemination of art that become the sites of critical intervention. Concurrent with this move toward the dematerialization of the site is the ongoing de-aestheticization and dematerialization of the artwork. ...The "work"no longer seeks to be a noun/ object but a verb/ process, provoking the viewers critical (not just physical) acuity regarding the ideological conditions of that viewing."

Why criticism?

An art that is successful in recreating and imitating human dialect within an environment that nourishes and encourages its exploration and re-examination holds an obvious importance within any society. Bourriaud comments in Relational Aesthetics "art is the place that produces a specific sociability"... "it tightens the space of relations, unlike tv".

Claire Bishop argues (along with many others) that although the idea of "mending the social fabric" through artistic action is of undoubtable value, a work cannot be solely successful because it embodies this idea in itself.  If these actions and ideas are to exist as "art" then like all art forms there must exist an artistic criteria that works to define it as "art" and simultaneously distinguishes it from other social and cultural activities of a similar nature. Furthermore, concerning the stimulation and circulation of dialogue it is also crucial that there exists critical comparisons between artworks and artists for similar reasons as stated above, to distinguish art from non art and less from more successful art. 

What has been given some attention in regards to criticism is to how a collaboration is carried out. Artists are being judged on how authentically they attempt to represent the particular social models they are exploring and to what degree their creation can potentially manipulate and produce a supportive outcome.  Another existing critique is that instead of the artist engaging in a mutual active collaboration to produce a shared outcome they are merely engaging in collaboration to facilitate the realization of an end product that is essentially documented as their own creation. 

These are a few points i have come across...

Contextual significance

Bourriaud's definition of 'Relational Aesthetics' undoubtedly draws on the precedents and grounds first explored by the fluxus artists and the performance and conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s.

What is of interest to me is why this label "Relational Aesthetics" has emerged?

The purpose of art in the 1960s and 1970s was still embedded with utopian ideals and hope of cultural reformation. While the fluxus artists with their Fluxfests, Fluxfeasts etc explored many similar modes and concepts of Bourraud's 'Relational Aesthetic's, the difference lies in the initial intent of the artwork. The fluxus artists attempted to breach new modes of interactivity between art and life with the original and ultimate purpose of proposing cultural transformation. However, by the 1980s these naive utopian ideas had long been expelled and by the 1990s conviviality and human interactivity were being explored through art as ideas in themselves devoid of greater social motifs. As Bourriaud comments himself "it actually takes it a step further by postulating dialogue as the actual origin of the image-making process". The intention is no longer to suggest new perspectives but to examine and explore the crossroads of communication, interaction and exchange that exists between human relations.