Aesthetics and politics -Nikos Papastergiadis

(Not sure if Im grasping all the concepts in this text, possibly because every time I read it Im in bed and about to fall asleep...)

Beginning with an idea of Ranciere's that caught my attention. 

'All people are created equal'. The notion that an illiterate father can teach his son to read. This analogy sets up the ideas surrounding the spectacle. Ranciere suggests that people are not as dumb as one would think. That they are equipped and in fact more than able to receive images, through the media, tv, internet etc, and choose whether or not to go along with the story being told, or to adapt this information into their own story. This is a refreshing insight alternative to the -we are doomed- theories of Deboard and Baudrillard's hyperreality senarios.  

Wochenklausser

WochenKlausser; Could be translated as ‘weeks of closure’. Using a designated period of time, usually around 8 weeks or so, to produce a clearly stated outcome. The works are public interventions, so short time-scales work better for the social issue in need.

The work WochenKlausser are doing is commendable. Though their statements in their ideology are bold. WochenKlasser states that all art should be politically engaging. That ‘people’s ideological principles cannot be changed by colour, sound and forms’.

It is understandable that humanistic issues must take precedence over certain things- most things. Though I cannot think of a world, even a poor world without art.

WK’s outlook is utopian. A utopian ideology suggests there is be a mold that everyone must fit into. Assuming this, means that there would always be someone who would not fit into this idealist model.

That person not fitting into this artless world would be me.

I think Wochenklausser is wrong. Art in the western world, first world, third world, on any level is important. Colour, form and sound can change the world. ‘a world without art is a world that is dismally hollow and impoverished’. It is great that this model is working for them, though it is tough to make claims that shut off the different ways in which people choose to express their ideas in art.

Cool TED talk

As far as I can tell, NSK State, are a politically driven art collective that are creating artworks based on a global utopian ideal. The NSK passport making project, is an artwork where they created passports and embassies for citizens of this virtual state. The idea is 'interesting' in the way that it aims to dismantle the boundaries between different countries and cultures, to dissolve the variances between the first worlds and third worlds and to diffuse the idea of the Other and the alien. (I think)

This leads me onto a TED talk that I saw called the Empathic Civilization. 

This talk is about how our brains can only have empathy toward people we perceive to be in our clan. And how changing the perception of our clan, from the people in your family, to the people in your community, to eventually the people in the whole world, could help humanistic issues such as fair and equal food supply and distribution to every person on the planet and possibly prevent situations like the torture of POW's mentioned in Zizek's essay.....

Well I guess there may not even be a war in the first place, if this theory is correct. 

Anyway watch this, its only 10 minutes.  

 http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_rifkin_on_the_empathic_civilization.html

What about the fashion aesthetic?

I find this article ‘Sitings of Public Art; Integration Versus Intervention’ very interesting. The concerns of the community relating to the insertion of high-brow artworks into public spaces. I also find it interesting that none of these text seem to mention anything about things going in and out of fashion. In this article, which was written in the 70's, the erection of a public minimalist artwork from the 50's and 60's is seen as the worst thing that could happen to a community. The communities were seen to be complaining that minimalist public sculpture was an extension of the museum. It was unapproachable and made no effort to include, integrate or be part of the community. I can see how this argument is made possible, as modernist sculpture inherently holds an inviolable stature, impenetrable and an entity unto itself.

Though what is the initial the reason for these modernist sculptures making their first appearance in the community. What was happening in the years preceding the first public minimalist sculpture? Many artists were making their way to the U.S. fleeing from Germany and Paris, where Hitler was attempting to ban any type of new thinking in art. Abstract Expressionism was being born and it was all new and exciting. A step toward the new future. 

These so called boring minimalist geometric shapes were a radical shift to a new way of thinking. A way of clearing the mind of the clutter of a consumerist society, with clean lines and pure untainted materials. And then, a few decades later, it simply went out of fashion, because it over saturated the market and became common. Art is always looking for the new, so naturally, art styles are going to go out of fashion.

We are currently at a point now where it is fashionable to have a band named after an animal, paint or draw anything with an animal head on it, objects knitted or sewn has become cool, and craft and the DIY aesthetic is everywhere. This could be viewed as a necessary shift from the throw away mass production society that we now live, and the need for this shift is concurrent with our toxic world in crisis. But guess what? In a decade or two, or less, this style will go out of fashion because people will become bored with this aesthetic and the aesthetic it will probably take a shift back to clean lines and a minimalist aesthetic. And we will be stuck reading some Greenbergian-esque art theorists bullshit about how minimalist sculpture is the new way forward. 

Klauser, Lyotard, The Dali Lama and that minimalist guy.

(Sorry... A hugh rant coming, followed by a few questions)

Art and its discourse.

Art of this century and especially contemporary art, seem to be bound to the art discourse. If an artist makes a work that does not successfully comply with the conceptual discourse then the work is deemed common, mainstream, crafty. 

Wochen Klauser's art practice seems to often question the institutions of art and its discourse. It seems that the discourse is bound or surrounded by language. English white critical theorist language. In my opinion, art  is  should not bound by language. It ascends the boarders of  languages from different countries and cultures.  Art is a form of expression, just as language is a form of expression. Two different forms of expression. How can a visual expression be tied to a verbal expression?

Who says that art cannot be an object, conceptual, decorative, bronze, ugly, pretty, ready-made, crafty, abstract, immersive, political, non political, relational or collective.

Who are we to say, just because we are educated in a discourse that is created by -who? Do 'they' say its art? The galleries? The theorists? 

We are being conditioned to like whatever we see in these galleries. Believe in the artists gallery history and artist profile so that this discourse bring economy and value into the art world. 

So going back to Tirivaneja's work with relational aesthetics, why does he need to be accountable to the general public? Also the situation with minimalist sculpture in a public square (Judd or Smithson or who ever that minimalist was). Why does 'that person' need to represent the entire community? Or the general consensus of society, which Lyotard in his essay Terror On The Run, points out that consensus means majority and majority means that someone will always be left out, meaning that the 'Other' or the alien will always be present in our society where consensus exists.

Though Im sure the dali lama didn't get to his position just by being spiritual and meditatingby a stream the whole time. He probably studied law, many languages, economics, world trade, philosophy and different religions as well as Buddhism. So that one can truely subvert by knowing, inside and out, the discourse in which they are rejecting. Which is why Klauser is cool. (what where am I going with this?) (sorry)

Guy Debord and The Littlest Hobo

The Derive, was the act of aimlessly walking around until something happened, invented by the Situationists. This act would bring one out of their everyday routine and into the present, by stimulating the mind with spontaneity. 

This roaming around reminded me of re-runs of a show that I used to watch when I was a kid called

The Littlest Hobo. 

This is a show about a dog that has no home, that just roams around, having adventures, sometimes helping people, sometimes meeting people, getting into situations. You just never knew where this amazing gypsy situationist dog could end up.

The show was made around the 60's and on this version the  titles for the show are in French, so Im thinking that DeBord may have seen this show and got inspired. 

The Second Hand Experience

Situationism is interested in creating situations where one can fulfill their own desires. This goes back to the text "Society of the Spectacle" written by Guy Deboard, the theory that society's experience is based on false or bias images that disable people from having their a true experience. If you have never kissed a girl before, and you saw it for the first time on TV, you would feel that you have had an experience and now know what to do. This tainted second hand experience is exactly what Situationism is intended to break. Consumerism is at the height of this debate as materialistic wants and advertising create false needs and images, and our desires begin to mirror the false experience. 

 Situationists would attempt to disrupt the routines of everyday, which were called anti-art, by doing things out of the ordinary or in the 'wrong place' to wake people up and give them a real and first hand experience.

The King Pins use a type of intervention to wake up the clients of a local Starbucks out of their everyday routines. Moving into the cafe from the street, dressed as dorky sporting male Starbucks employees, the four girls in the artist collective, do a dance routine in the middle of the cafe and then leave when the song is over.

Institution and commodity culture

At the Claire Copley gallery in Los Angeles, Michael Asher removes the wall divide between the store room which housed artworks, undermining the gallery’s portrayal as a facilitator for the visual arts and exposing it as the house where art is valued as commodity.

Daniel Buren creates artworks using stripes to highlight areas of the gallery that go unnoticed. The green and white stripes are used inside and outside. They appear on escalators, on fences, on corners of the gallery, unused wall space, the area between paintings in an exhibition, these particular stripes undermining the value and prestige of the artwork hanging and creating an institutional critique of the gallery space. Burens work at the Guggenheim in NY, (Image on right) cause a lot of fuss between other artists that were exhibiting at the same show as the work was so large and over powering it made a mockery of the other works and blocked the view from to other artworks. The problem facing Buren’s work is that these stripes become iconic, which means that the audience desire to see the stripes only, and no longer view the areas that Buren was originally attempting to highlight.

A lot of these critiques of gallery space become architectural ones, as if the exact same idea was place in any other building then they would cease to be an institutional critique and more of a special awareness piece about the physicality of the body in the space or an awareness of things that go unnoticed. 

Asher, Acconci and Warhol

Michael Asher's work is an institutional critique on the structure of art gallery and art museum. He literally removes the wall in the gallery space, which once seperated the exhibition space  and the offices where the staff worked. This elimination of one of the white walls from the space also takes away a metaphorical divide in the gallery and to exposes the inside, secret, happenings of the gallery. The offices, the staff on the telephone, artworks bought and stored are suddenly presented to the audience, integrated with the exhibition floor. This work is site specific, as each location has different walls, different staff, different ways of dealing with business, and a different audience, all which would contribute to a different work. 

This kind of work is controversial as Asher is using the gallery to call attention to his artwork. He is using the gallery to expose it as a vessel which contributes to the commodity culture, though here he is using it himself to bring attention to his work as an artist. This work is not sellable, though like many other artists, such as Christo and Vito Acconci, Asher could sell the photo documentation or the transcripts and legal documentation as a sellable piece, and Asher's profile as an artist would benefit from having the show in this gallery. Andy Warhol was aware that he was critiquing the commodity culture with his pop art silk screens of house hold items, but he also did not deny that he too, was sucked in by the seduction of consumerism.

Art reflecting culture

Art is a reflection of what is happening around us and particularly, and obviously, what is happening around the artist. 

Relational aesthetics, specifically relating to Rirkrit Tiravanija's food installations artworks / happenings, seems to be about gathering, about the need to create community and bringing people together. This type of art could be reflecting a need for collectives and communities in our society. 

With climate change, the current world disaster, lingering on our every movement, people have put our trust for too long into deceitful governments, companies, corporations, and they continually seem to be taking our money, creating waste, and blaming us for it. There is a great need to localize food distribution, travel, education, energy, just to name a few. The need for the proletariat to take back the power from the corporations and create strong communities is in need, and this seems to me to be currently reflected in the art world, with artists such as Hirschhorn and Tiravanija. The anti-factory production, anti-sleek, haphazard, DIY, accessible to all, relational aesthetics, aesthetic,  is the sub-concious message displaying the answer to our global problem.