Interventions on the site of "style"

For me the illuminating ideas expressed in this course have been summed up by Ina Blom in her book On the Style Site, Art, Sociality and Media Culture "..the works produce remarkably flexible atmospheres- atmospheres that consist not only that which is heard and seen but of that which is transformed in hearing and seeing." She goes on further to say that 'relational' works offer not an end product of 'images' or 'sound sequences' for consumption, but subjectivity itself. The work pictured above and including an audio sample here
is part of the work Fifteen Sounds of the War on the Poor Vol.04 established by the art collective called Ultra-Red. They are a group of artist / activists striving to achieve aesthetic form out of the organising of activists into strategic actions. This was produced as a freely downloadable CD containing audio tracks produced in response to the invocation What is the sound of the war on the poor?

Bioneers Food & Farming Campaign

Research for this week's lecture planted me onto a website promoting a group of social and scientific innovators from New Mexico USA called the Bioneers. They state that they are a group dedicated to understanding how nature operates, and to mimic "nature's operating instructions" to serve human ends without harming the web of life. Nature's principles—kinship, cooperation, diversity, symbiosis and cycles of continuous creation absent of waste—can also serve as metaphoric guideposts for organising an equitable, compassionate and democratic society.
This organisation hosts an annual Food and Farming Conference with speakers from food production companies that have achieved sustainable practices and community oriented business practices. They also have a Seed Exchange event where open-pollinated seeds can be freely exchanges in a hope to develop a more robust and diverse local ecosystem. It is the basis of this communal and democratic exchange that I draw a link to the practice of Lucas and Diego, I also believe that if the exchange had perhaps been presented by an artist would qualify as a Relational work.

Laibach Kunst

I personally would love to be in Trbovlje, Slovakia for the Red District Symposium at the end of September. Part of what will be discussed there is the creation of the NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst) State, quoted as "a project that breaks down accepted thresholds between art, performace and real life." It was established as a "state" in 1991 issuing passports and postage stamps, in an attempt to constitute a kind of "cultural performance." Laibach, in 20o6, recorded the national anthem for this state, using ideological shorthand borrowed from Winston Churchill. This subversion of cultural icons, the comment made on the role of the nation state, builds a stimulating base for further discussions at the symposium regarding the role of the citizens within a state and their responsibility for its direction in the future.
-LAIBACH KUNST-

Representational Culture

Can any one individual determine the purpose of art? Can any one institution determine the
purpose of art? Sometimes, i feel, that this idea of collaborative / community practice is
ridiculous, if any artist is to stand up and truly own a work of art, it must contain their message,
artists must make a work of art for themselves, and for an audience that believes in who the artist is. An artist can never be a politician of public space, can never truly be diplomatic about their ideas, can never waver in their beliefs, because without a conviction of concept, a work of art cannot have weight in the public arena. I believe that if you try, as an artist, to consider all of the beliefs of a public that you are striving to produce an artwork for, then you are losing your individuality. Art is not for the people, art is for the educated people. I believe it is, as Jurgen Habermas described, a representational culture in which we dwell, where in fact, it is possible that there are not one, but two passive political parties that rule the public spectrum of ideas, and that the proliferation of commercial mass media in Australia has produced a passive consumer public.

I find the works listed in 'Conversation Pieces', by Grant H. Kester very intrigueing, in the fact that he claims that there is very little modern discourse that can stand as a framework for the works by WochenKlausur, Burke and McAvera. The assertion that these works 'should solicit participation and involvement so openly...is antithetical to modernist and postmodernist art and art theory,' I agree with, it seems collective practice is becoming much more apparent in works such as the following video, titled 'Lux Aurumque' by Eric Whitacre, which involves hundreds of people recording their voices, and performing as an harmonious choir. This work exemplifies communal organisation and donation of time and skill to realise the work. Much less an avant-garde statement on the complacency of virtual vocabulary, as it is a subversion on the communicational opportunities associated with the internet. In other words it fits within what Kester posits as identities that are positioned within the system as opposed to those on the avant-garde of it.

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir - 'Lux Aurumque'

“We have a world of pleasure to win, and nothing to lose but boredom.” Raoul Vaneigem

It seems to me that the current election campaign exemplifies the commodity fetishism that Guy Debord speaks of in Society of the Spectacle. Our political leaders have become brands, interchangeable icons of representation, feverishly pushing party policy, poignantly executed by the Labor party's ousting of our incumbent PM.

Mr Abbott, in his campaign, has been quoted speaking of 'participation reforms' essentially 'motivating' people around the country into a homogenized mass that is without need of state support. In other words, selling the representation of a better life, when in fact his policies will push people to work harder and for longer.

I had many conversations over the last week about the election, and discovered that many people, like myself had voted for a party not because of what they stood for, but because they disliked what the other parties stood for. It seems to me that our Australian flavor of advanced capitalism is no longer a battle of idea's, and what is on offer ideologically to the Australian public is a desolately homogeneous landscape, so while Mr Rabbit flaps his ears and the Ginger Ninja swishes her hair, maybe Australians can step back from the spectacle and consider what it is they are voting for.

Is taste an institutionally cultivated sensibility?

"...you cease reading and you cease articulating and you fall into a state where nothing else is going on but the tactile, experiential process."Irwin, in Lawrence Weschler and Robert Irwin, Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing One sees: A life of contemporary artist Rober Irwin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.) pg 76.
Thank god for the internet!! Artists now have the freedom to express ideas, display propaganda, to re-gain control of the experiential process of art. Artists can reach an extended audience without having to be filtered through the institutional apparatus. I believe this truly represents a period of equality for many people regardless of race, gender, religious belief or educational experience, to be included in the cultivation of taste. Curators, collectors and museum trustees can now be removed from the viewers dialogue with a work, and Robert Irwin's meditative state may hopefully become attainable.

Cutting edge canon or nihilistic dinner party?

Bourriard claims that the current avant garde is the highly politicised cultural practice of human relations, a post-structuralist, technocratic, subjective quotidian beholden in the personages of the 'everyday' art gallery attendee. Examening works by Rikrit Tiravanija, he explains that the substance of an artwork is contained in the exchange between the people that view an artwork. While he claims that the historic avant-garde was oriented toward conflict and social struggle, today's micro-utopias existing within the consuming of a meal or access to an artist's makeshift residence, are too mundane to exact any form of cultural development. Claire Bishop argues that a truly democratic society is one in which 'relations of conflict are sustained, not erased.' She continues to say that 'without antagonism there is only the imposed consensus of authoritarian order - total suppression of debate and discussion,' meaning that the idea of relational aesthetics as Bourriard explains it does not challenge the status quo of society enough to consider itself a permanent canon.

Altermodernity, Supermodernity, Hypermodernity. Nicholas Bourriaud posits art within a "society of the spectical," as a reaction against the standarisation of modernism, and post-modernism's fever to assimilate with the Other. He claims that the conception of artistic practice is contained within the transivity of form, that the 'forever unfinished discursiveness' in which dissemination is contained, has created an 'Altermodernity'. Interestingly our current propensity for inter-human relations on the surface perhaps suggests a new fabric of ideas / communication, as humans strive towards common and yet differentiating forms of communication such as Facebook and Twitter. Surely social media forms, while giving each indivdual a voice, only exist to extend a modernist universalism, I don't believe the communication itself will become the aesthetic objects to be regarded along with the sculptures and paintings, but will be regarded as a whole entity, as a brand, that will ensure the modernist spectacle remains. Sure the arenas of communication may have evolved from the street corners and college campuses of the 1960's, to the frenetic pixels of the internet, but maybe the idea's haven't?