Polidori, Soth and Katrina

image: Robert Polidori

Back in August I linked to an interview with Robert Polidori on Art:Info about what at the time was an upcoming publication, After the Flood as well as a brief exhibition of a selection of prints at the Met. I commented before that I think After the Flood is one the greatest publications I've ever gotten my hands on and certainly a highlight for last year. I think I look at it daily since purchasing it - it is that dense and that evocative. For me it faithfully illuminates the incomprehensive scale of loss.

Interestingly, today Alec Soth has a postrelated to a question he posed in Sept. "Where are the People" - about the lack of a human subject in much of the photography generated out of the Katrina disaster (among other events worldwide). He lists Chris Jordan, Katherine Wolkoff, and Robert Polidori as examples of artists focused on the scene - the destruction, not so much the direct human story of the aftermath.

Soth:
think these are all terrific photographers. And they’ve done admirable work. But after awhile I find the absence of people in the pictures a little frustrating.

Katrina is a good example of why I often defend the efforts of photojournalists. Certainly photojournalism has numerous faults, but I admire the attempt to connect the subject (in this case Katrina) to real people.

“It makes it interesting to connect it with the life,” said Shulman. Of course! Architecture isn’t some frozen box, it is a home, a place where life is lived. While it is worthwhile to see the architectual devastation of New Orleans, I also want to see the people - the lives actually living in this mess.

I'm sure its an insight shared by many and ultimately brings up issues of exploitation and the voyeur that make many uncomfortable, as practicioners of art and as audience members to works centered around tragedy or violence. Soth goes on to link to a response from Robert Polidori, from the Sept. post - which I have to say is worth the read, it is a damn good rant! As someone who is a big fan of both artists I've gotten a kick out of the exchange for the obvious cheap reasons but more importantly for certain issues they mention.

Polidori counters in his comment from the above linked the thread:

What more are you really going to learn from having a person there?
My belief is that you should take stills of what doesn’t seem to move,
and take movies or videos of does.
It’s my opinion that people come off better in movies.
It is my belief that you have a lot more indices of personal values
by looking at what individuals place in their living interiors than
by looking at their face.
That is why I photograph interiors...

Like I’ve been saying for 33 years rooms are both metaphors and
catalysts for states of being.
The pictures I took in New Orleans are looking at discarded exoskeletons.
The great majority of these residents who left those homes are now somewhere else living an interupted life.

First issue, as someone who follows both artists works, I almost am beginning to see the Sleeping by the Mississippi series (Alec Soth) as a prelude to Polidori's After the Flood (not mention a contemporary parallel of sorts to Dylan's Chronicles).The two bodies of work are about the great Mississippi river which is a major foundation of our national pysche and has historically defined not only the regions it flows through - Minnesota to the Delta to the Gulf -but our national debate as a whole. It has always been at the center of trade, race, development and ecology for generations. The tragedy that played out with Katrina was a direct descendent of previous tragedies such as the 1927 flood, and points all the way back to the great engineering debates of the early and mid-19th century between the Army Corps. of Engineers and the then burgeoning private sector of engineering. The levee debate and subsequent policies of the 1840's-1860's created the Delta and ultimately put in motion a corrupt and scientifically unsound policy that through the generations of development and political hackery created a Frankenstein, leading to the nightmare unleased by Katrina. These two series for me are great documents of that history - the passage and drama of the people who have forged lives around the river and many times lost everything in return.

image: Alec Soth

Now as to whether people are better portrayed by video/film verus still photography, I have to say that depends on the artist. I can only reflect not only on Soth's work but so many others Eggelston, Frank, etc. who are highly successful at evoking the nature of an individual and their place. I don't think one can be limited to one approach as the medium - but given the power of documentary film, Polidori may have a point.. I for one don't find his images lacking in human dimension - at least in terms of his Katrina pictures, but I also see the need for portraiture as well to help tell the "story". That probably has as much to do with my familiarity with the region as any artistic connection but Polidori works seem very alive pictures to me and quite complicated - I like the lack of personage in this instance.

Soth brings up another point which is great to hear, that we must have images from events like Katrina in our galleries, museums, and libraries. With so much art talk and art quoting art, it is good to be reminded that these events and the documentation/artistic investigation of the events, are part of the broader experience and visceral reminders of how we need to hold leadership and ourselves accountable for who we are and how we shape our individual and collective experience.
There is a world out there that has nothing to do with the art market and our discilipinary conceits.

As to the commercial exchange of these sorts of works that is another topic that needs to be discussed... be my guest to take that on.

blogosphere in a bottle

As chance would have it, the Geert Lovink essay on blogging and nihilism has finally been posted in full on Eurozine.com.(thanks Equanimity) Its nice timing have just read blah-feme and posting this. Everyone who blogs or reads blogs needs to read the Lovink piece- it is dense with many subtleties and probably controversial to many bloggers.

First let's revisit blah-feme's excellent question and my widdled down observations from the post.

In short, the question might be reworked here to speak that which it really wants to speak – what are the limits, boundaries, horizons of this thing that we do when we log on to post another post?

1.... it points up the radical openness and indeterminacy of agency in the blogosphere.The questioning of agency has many authors and its radicalisation in the last 20 years or so has been quite remarkable: gaming theory, theories of fields, institutions, habitus and, even, the sinthome – all these new theorisations have pulled the rug from under the Romantic construction of agency as in some sense always traceable to a small number of sources and addressing an ideal addressee.

2.What strikes me as potentially useful, though, at least for a short while, might be precisely the blogosphere's disavowal of simple (mono-directional) agency and its broader engagement with citing, pointing, referencing and quoting. One only has to subscribe to a small number of smart blogs to get a sense of the radical potential for this kind of practice.

3. The blogosphere is, dare I say it, ontologically at odds with modes of thought that seek to reduce, simplify or moralise the social field. At its best, blogging can and continues to hold the promise of refusing that kind of hectoring modality.

4. Of course blogging encourages a rather full-on and belligerent style of writing sometimes...but this is inevitable if something is to try to maintain a contentious relationship with mainstream journalism and pubic opinion. Of course, the blogoshpere does not guarantee anything and we must in the end take responsibility for is shape and contest its colonisers and censors; and even then, of course, there is no guarantee that these kinds of engagement will of themselves make the difference we want them to.

5. Agency has a way of biting back, of digging in just when you think its all over, and it often does so when a number of ideas authored over a large time period are drawn together as a uniform resource: the blogoshpere might form a large part of that resource.

6. So does the blogosphere have an unconscious? And what might that look like? It is undoubtedly structured, undoubtedly disparate and undoubtedly marked by a radical incoherence.

Lovink begins with this bomb (you may want some aspirin to go with this headache)

"Blogs bring on decay. Each new blog is supposed to add to the fall of the media system that once dominated the twentieth century. This process is not one of a sudden explosion. The erosion of the mass media cannot easily be traced in figures of stagnant sales and the declining readership of newspapers. In many parts of the world, television is still on the rise. What's declining is the Belief in the Message. That is the nihilist moment, and blogs facilitate this culture as no platform has ever done before. Sold by the positivists as citizen media commentary, blogs assist users in their crossing from Truth to Nothingness. The printed and broadcasted message has lost its aura. News is consumed as a commodity with entertainment value. Instead of lamenting the ideological color of the news, as previous generations have done, we blog as a sign of the regained power of the spirit. As a micro-heroic, Nietzschean act of the pajama people, blogging grows out of a nihilism of strength, not out of the weakness of pessimism. Instead of time and again presenting blog entries as self-promotion, we should interpret them as decadent artifacts that remotely dismantle the mighty and seductive power of the broadcast media.

continues:

Microsoft's in-house blogger Robert Scoble lists five elements that made blogs so hot. The first is the "ease of publishing", the second he calls "discoverability", the third is "cross-site conversations", the fourth is permalinking (giving the entry a unique and stable URL), and the last is syndication (replication of content elsewhere).[4] Lyndon from Flock Blog gives a few tips for blog writing, showing how ideas, feelings, and experiences can be turned into news format, and showing how dominant PowerPoint has become: "Make your opinion known, link like crazy, write less, 250 words is enough, make headlines snappy, write with passion, include bullet point lists, edit your post, make your posts easy to scan, be consistent with your style, litter the post with keywords."[5] Whereas the email-based list culture echoes a postal culture of writing letters and occasionally essays, the ideal blog post is defined by snappy public relations techniques.

Web services like blogs cannot be separated from the output they generate. The politics and aesthetics defined by first users will characterize the medium for decades to come. Blogs appeared during the late 1990s, in the shadow of dot-com mania.[6] Blog culture was not developed enough to be dominated by venture capital with its hysterical demo-or-die-now-or-never mentality. Blogs first appeared as casual conversations that could not easily be commodified. Building a laid-back parallel world made it possible for blogs to form the crystals (a term developed by Elias Canetti) from which millions of blogs grew and, around 2003, reached critical mass.

Blogging in the post-9/11 period closed the gap between Internet and society. Whereas dot-com suits dreamt of mobbing customers flooding their e-commerce portals, blogs were the actual catalysts that realized worldwide democratization of the Net. As much as "democratization" means "engaged citizens", it also implies normalization (as in setting of norms) and banalization. We can't separate these elements and only enjoy the interesting bits. According to Jean Baudrillard, we're living in the "Universe of Integral Reality". "If there was in the past an upward transcendence, there is today a downward one. This is, in a sense, the second Fall of Man Heidegger speaks of: the fall into banality, but this time without any possible redemption."[7] If you can't cope with high degrees of irrelevance, blogs won't be your cup of tea.

Here are some interesting reactions to Lovink's essay from earlier in the year (the the piece was presented at the Annenberg Center in April 2006)

1. I cite
   
2. Kazys Varnelis

Kazy's seems to think people are hung up on the Nihilism reference. He has this to say:

...one observation that I made after reading it is that for those of us somewhere in the matrix between the academy, architecture, and the Internet, there is a fatal trajectory from post-structuralism to identity politics to dot.com Deleuzeanism to blogging. I'd like to suggest that this isn't merely a conflation of unlike terms but rather that there is a steady evolution here. There is a desire in each of the subsequent movements to affirm the individual (through subject position, through productive agency, and through an active DIY voice), but instead each one actually does a more thorough job of wiping out individual subjectivity than the previous iteration (please slot the blob under dot.com Deleuzeanism... a million 20-40 year old students, all being original, all making nearly identical shapes).
...but, like Geert, what I am observing is not only the massification of the Internet but a more generalized cultural move toward nothingness that expresses itself through the medium of the blog. Through the blog, we attain a complete and fatal condition, making our comments into the void, thereby affirming our existence while we also emphatically assert our distance from any situation we might act in.

Jodi Dean of I cite disagrees on these grounds:

I don't buy it. It remains trapped into thinking of blogs in terms of dominant media paradigms of mainstream news or public relations (celebrity scandal). Thus, it misses new features dependent on the generation of new content, production of new conversations, weaving of different threads (I love Angela's notion of the blog weave), and the traveling carnivals. Because he remains trapped, Geert can only view blogs negatively and thus he reiterates European nihilism from the early 20th century.
More specifically, it's of course a fantasy that there ever was Belief in the Message. Critique of propaganda was coterminous with its introduction. And, hasn't distrust of rhetoric always been a concern of philosophy? Second, I don't think anyone associated the msm with Truth--in fact, positing such a view presupposes a kind of unified audience already put to bed with milk and cookies by cultural studies. Third, if printed and broadcast messages ever had an aura, and I'll say that some have for me, then the fact of a crowded media market doesn't mean that they lose it. It's just more of a challenge.

I personally don't see Lovink as a defender of old media(though it sounds like it here) but I do sense a tinge of European snobbery or perhaps just a contrarian view - blogs as masscult deadends. Nevertheless there is ample supply of important considerations here, especially as we consider the earlier idea of taking responsibility for the shape and scope of the "blogosphere" as an action and as resistance.

To borrow from a commentor on Icite, "the far more interesting rupture brought on by blogs has nothing to do with blogs and everything to do with their interconnectivity and the indexing functions that make the pretense and knowledge of that interactivity possible (Google, Technorati, trackbacks, etc.). If we're still having a debate over whether or not "the blog" is good or bad, we should be very sad". Blogging can be viewed as a corrective, perhaps the best hope for generating some semblance of the former public sphere. I would stil like to hear more about the charge of Nihilism - a social nihilism or political nihilism? or is this simply a critique of "radical democracy?


image: HLIB

Today's Zizek NYTimes editorial

I cite has posted today's Zizek editorial in the NY Times. Who knew!

ONE of the pop heroes of the Iraq war was undoubtedly Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, the unfortunate Iraqi information minister who, in his daily press conferences during the invasion, heroically denied even the most evident facts and stuck to the Iraqi line. Even with American tanks only a few hundred yards from his office, he continued to claim that the televised shots of tanks on the Baghdad streets were just Hollywood special effects.

In his very performance as an excessive caricature, Mr. Sahhaf thereby revealed the hidden truth of the ''normal'' reporting: there were no refined spins in his comments, just a plain denial. There was something refreshingly liberating about his interventions, which displayed a striving to be liberated from the hold of facts and thus of the need to spin away their unpleasant aspects: his stance was, ''Whom do you believe, your eyes or my words?''

Furthermore, sometimes, he even struck a strange truth -- when confronted with claims that Americans were in control of parts of Baghdad, he snapped back: ''They are not in control of anything -- they don't even control themselves!''

Read on ...

Iraq roundup: needed adults, Jamilgate and new victims

Just a quick round up on Iraq as the there are some interesting things swirling about. Juan Cole has some upbeat news tied to the new leadership under Gates.

Bush is bringing in Ryan Crocker, a distinguished career foreign service officer, as the new US ambassador to Iraq. And Gen. David Petraeus will replace Gen. Casey as top ground commander in Iraq. Zalmay Khalilzad, the outgoing ambassador to Iraq, will go as ambassador to the United Nations, replacing the lying blowhard John Bolton.

I'm stricken with a case of the "what ifs" and "if onlys"! What if Gates had been at the Pentagon in 2003 and Petraeus had been in charge of the US military in Iraq and Crocker had been there instead of Paul Bremer? These are competent professionals who know what they are doing. Gates is clear-sighted enough to tell Congress that the US is not winning in Iraq, unlike his smooth-talking, arrogant and flighty predecessor. Petraeus is among the real experts on counter-insurgency, and did a fine job of making friends and mending fences when he was in charge of Mosul. Crocker has been ambassador to Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan, and knows the region intimately (as does Khalilzad). Bremer had been ambassador to . . . Holland. Despite all the talk of the resurgence of the Neoconservatives with their "surge" (actually ramped up occupation) plan, this team is the farthest from Neoconservative desires that you could possibly get.

Imagine that, hiring regional expertise? and don't forget the surge - rather bump.

* I just read this about another new apointee - Admiral William J. Fallon (this could be scary)

JamilGate:

Jamilgate?? What the hell? Well there has been a swelling in the right's blog ranks spearheaded by the shrill Michelle Malkin over an AP source - a man named Jamil Hussein (an Iraqi police officer). He has been cited as a single source by the AP on various killing attributed to the U.S. military. Malkin is supposedly going to Iraq to uncover the "conspiracy" of Jamilgate and bring justice to the AP for publishing insurgent propaganda. Well the AP apparently is vindicated.
No surprise. Of course he is losing his job now and will probably meet with an unattractive fate as a leaker of information but at least Michelle's curiosity can be quenched once and for all. Let's hope Malkin actually goes to Iraq and gets on the wrongside of some Blackwater mercenary on a Greenzone bender. The General has the usual funny take and some links to the right.

Remember that broadcast hanging a few days back by Rupert Murdoch and friends? Well sadly some kids have been paying attention. The second immitation death has occurred. The fine print reads: Saddam a martyr for Islam. Well done gang!!!


images: Huff Post, Jesus' General

does the blogosphere have an unconscious?

Blah feme poses this fascinating question:

In short, the question might be reworked here to speak that which it really wants to speak – what are the limits, boundaries, horizons of this thing that we do when we log on to post another post?

continuing:

I think what is interesting about asking this question in terms of blogging is that it points up the radical openness and indeterminacy of agency in the blogosphere. Or, at least, it shows how that indeterminacy is played out in the blogosphere in a particularly intense and extreme manner. The questioning of agency has many authors and its radicalisation in the last 20 years or so has been quite remarkable: gaming theory, theories of fields, institutions, habitus and, even, the sinthome – all these new theorisations have pulled the rug from under the Romantic construction of agency as in some sense always traceable to a small number of sources and addressing an ideal addressee.

The deconstruction (for want of a better word) of such notions is perhaps the place where the left has had most difficulty – a strong theory of political action is difficult under such circumstances, political engagement much more complex and the terms and scope of any kin of offensive action always much more difficult to determine. What strikes me as potentially useful, though, at least for a short while, might be precisely the blogosphere's disavowal of simple (mono-directional) agency and its broader engagement with citing, pointing, referencing and quoting. One only has to subscribe to a small number of smart blogs like I cite, K punk or larval subjects, to get a sense of the radical potential for this kind of practice.

And, perhaps, the dreadfulness of the right's blogs does not have so much to do with its ideological underpinnings, but, precisely, with the extent to which the blogosphere is, dare I say it, ontologically at odds with modes of thought that seek to reduce, simplify or moralise the social field. At its best, blogging can and continues to hold the promise of refusing that kind of hectoring modality. (see this post on the right and art)

Of course blogging encourages a rather full-on and belligerent style of writing sometimes, and often, if one leaves comments completely open, one can be deluged with heaps of mean-spirited or even obscene comments. But this is inevitable if something is to try to maintain a contentious relationship with mainstream journalism and pubic opinion. Of course, the blogoshpere does not guarantee anything and we must in the end take responsibility for is shape and contest its colonisers and censors; and even then, of course, there is no guarantee that these kinds of engagement will of themselves make the difference we want them to.

But agency has a way of biting back, of digging in just when you think its all over, and it often does so when a number of ideas authored over a large time period are drawn together as a uniform resource: the blogoshpere might form a large part of that resource. So does the blogosphere have an unconscious? And what might that look like? It is undoubtedly structured, undoubtedly disparate and undoubtedly marked by a radical incoherence.

An yet, we all know what blogging tends towards: we have all said it many times before – the egoing, the self-analysis, the unbearable drabness of meing that makes up much of the blogosphere is at least testament to its commitment to a certain discursive tone, a to a certain politics of the ego, to a certain figuration of confession as productive.

This of course brings us round to Ego again....to be continued


image: Engineering News via bldgblog
[Image: Timothy J. Gattie, Boise, ID; "The $330-million Otay River Bridge in Chula Vista, Calif. rises into the morning mist. ].

Obama: mass media smear campaign begins

We are still far away from the 2008 Presidential election but the mass media has already begun its tactics of selecting the nominees through subversive and derisive coverage. We've seen the Giuliani embarassment earlier this week but the most heinous "errors' have been committed against Senator Barack Obama. You know Osama??? It prompted an apology from CNN but now Yahoo has made the same "mistake" Nothing like muddling the minds and planting the seeds of doubt. On top of the blatant associations with Bin Laden, yesterday's news was teaming with Obama cocaine stories from the Senator's autobiography. So the smear season has begun with the MSM. These tactics are the way in which media shapes who the nominees will be long before the potential candidates even get their committees together and never mind that the public might want to have a say in who they support. McCain, Romney and Hillary must be luvin' this.

Original story line with TPM Cafe

Exit 06

Petition
W. H. Auden

Sir, no man’s enemy, forgiving all
But will his negative inversion, be prodigal:
Send to us power and light, a sovereign touch
Curing the intolerable neural itch,
The exhaustion of weaning, the liar’s quinsy,
And the distortions of ingrown virginity.
Prohibit sharply the rehearsed response
And gradually correct the coward’s stance;
Cover in time with beams those in retreat
That, spotted, they turn though the reverse were great;
Publish each healer that in city lives
Or country houses at the end of drives;
Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at
New styles of architecture, a change of heart.



Best wishes and new resolve for the year ahead.

The $350 Billion Noose

I will refrain from a rant about the philistine nature of showing executions on television - something we somehow historically managed to avoid until this morning (FOX 3:55am). Instead I would like to express my exasperation at the continuing ability of the Pentagon and State Dept. to get everything wrong. I'm not simply speaking about morality, but about understanding the dynamics of the conflict (the Iraqi population) and ultimately misunderstanding the "enemy" because the enemy is an "other". We are in the middle of a civil war which we have helped to create and yet we still don't understand the rules of engagement, we don't seem to be able to understand the basics of this sectarian war. Why? Perhaps because we have too many wonks and painfully few regionalists in the ranks. In short we can't see the dynamics because we don't consider the "enemy" as an equal - but as an other, invisible and mysterious.

Here is how Saddam's execution plays into sectarian divisions:

The tribunal...had a unique sense of timing when choosing the day for Saddam's hanging. It was a slap in the face to Sunni Arabs. This weekend marks Eid al-Adha, the Holy Day of Sacrifice, on which Muslims commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son for God. Shiites celebrate it Sunday. Sunnis celebrate it Saturday -- and Iraqi law forbids executing the condemned on a major holiday. Hanging Saddam on Saturday was perceived by Sunni Arabs as the act of a Shiite government that had accepted the Shiite ritual calendar.

The timing also allowed Saddam, in his farewell address to Iraq, to pose as a "sacrifice" for his nation, an explicit reference to Eid al-Adha. The tribunal had given the old secular nationalist the chance to use religious language to play on the sympathies of the whole Iraqi public. (Juan Cole)

It is painful to watch as the situation bottoms out further and further and yet our ignorance charges full steam into the inferno.

Skid Marks: Here's to Hoping in a New Year

I have struggled with my inner desires to generate a long list of "Best Of's" that would mark me as cultured, cool and informed but alas decided that the end of the year should be focused on something a little more meaty just to close things out. The good lists can be found with Tyler Green and Ed Winkleman, as they pretty much cover the culture bases - both high and low. Other Music has my nods for music releases- pretty much spot on (Destroyer's Rubies!). I will just quickly say spend the money on Robert Polidori's After the Flood for all the reasons Tyler Green mentions and yes the DADA show was the best this year. Best blog? Definitely BLDGBLOG - a true force. Read as it as often as possible and you will be edified.

Two posts emerged over the last week - A Quick Comment About Ego (Bill Gusky) and Egoism and Altruism (Speaking of Ashes) that I want to really examine. Bill offers this observation and thoughtful question:

Some have replied that ego is the drive to make one's mark in the world. I suppose that's another side of ego, the side related more to a will to power and self-assertion.

The questions that this drive raises are, "What kind of mark, and where, and why?"

I'd think that the artist whose need to leave a mark on the world is the dominant drive should be asking him/herself the more basic question of why it's the dominant drive. What inner need does this drive to leave marks in the world satisfy?

In his response, Ashes cites David Graeber of Harper's (via Long Sunday) observation that Altruism and Egoism are instrinsically linked, simultaneously rising as a product of market economies. Graeber offers these 3 observations.

1. Neither Egoism nor Altruism is a natural urge; They in fact arise in relation to each other and neither would be conceivable without the market. (these terms extend beyond the behavioral and apply to the broader social systems and the institutions supporting them)

In the ancient world, for example, it is generally in the times and places that one sees the emergence of money and markets that one also sees the rise of world religions - Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. If one sets aside a space and says, "Here you shall think only about acquiring material things for yourself," then it is hardly surprising that before long someone else will set aside a countervailing space and declare, in effect: "Yes, but here we must contemplate the fact that the self, and material things, are ultimately unimportant." It was these latter institutions, of course, that first developed our modern notions of charity. (Graeber)

2. The political right has always tried to enhance the division and thus claims to be the champion of both egoism and altruism simultaneously. The Left has tried to efface it. (in the context of American politics of the last 30 years)

In the United States, for example, the Republican Party is dominated by two ideological wings: the libertarians and the "Christian right." At one extreme, Republicans are free market fundamentalists and advocates of individual liberties (even if they see those liberties largely as a matter of consumer choice); on the other, they are fundamentalists of a more literal variety, suspicious of most individual liberties but enthusiastic about biblical injunctions, "family values," and charitable good works. At first glance it might seem remarkable that such an alliance manages to hold together at all (and certainly they have ongoing tensions, most famously over abortion). But, in fact, right-wing coalitions almost always take some variation of this form. One might say that the right's approach is to release the dogs of the market, throwing all traditional verities into disarray: and then, in the tumult of insecurity, offer themselves up as the last bastion of order and hierarchy, the stalwart defenders of the authority of churches and fathers against the barbarians they have themselves unleashed. A scam it may be, but it is a remarkably effective one; and one result is that the right ends up seeming to have a monopoly on value. It manages, one might say, to occupy both positions, on either side of the divide: extreme egoism and extreme altruism. (Graeber)

Alain of Long Sunday states that in general, "the political left has attempted, in various ways, to eliminate class division by either creating economic systems that are not driven by profit (communism, co-operatives) or replacing private charity with the social safety net of the welfare state. In contrast, the right thrives by constantly reaffirming the antagonism, and even championing it".

I think that this is a valid observation. We always are taught about the class conflict bubbling up from the street, from the riff raff, but rarely does anyone speak of the hostilities manifested and perpetuated upon the masses by the elite. We see evidence in this with the Bush WhiteHouse - the most transparent instigators in ages -the tax cuts for the rich being the most obvious, but the message of class divisions extends to cultural institutions. A local NY example is Lincoln Center, which reinforces that the lower class has one role - to behold the elite. The cheaper seats do not face the orchestra but look towards the "gentle folk" below - the expensive seats.

3. The Real problem of the American left is that although it does try in certain ways to efface the division between egoism and altruism, value and values, it largely does so for its own children. This has allowed the Right, paradoxically, to represent itself as the champion of the working class.

They can imagine a scenario in which they might become rich but cannot possibly imagine one in which they, or any of their children, would become members of the intelligentsia.... A mechanic from Nebraska knows it is highly unlikely that his son or daughter will ever become an Enron executive. But it is possible. There is virtually no chance, however, that his child, no matter how talented, will ever become an international human-rights lawyer or a drama critic for the New York Times. Here we need to remember not just the changes in higher education but also the role of unpaid, or effectively unpaid, internships. It has become a fact of life in the United States that if one chooses a career for any reason other than salary, for the first year or two one will not be paid... The custom effectively seals off such a career for any poor student who actually does attain a liberal arts education. Such structures of exclusion had always existed, but in recent decades fences have become fortresses. (Graeber)

Alain feels that this claim seems counter-intuitive. "Progressives generally argue for policies that call for a fairer distribution of wealth and resources, along with programs that support working families having access to better health care and education. But Graeber's argument is more subtle - from the end of World War II through the late 60's and early 70's, vast resources were put into expanding access to higher education. This was done with the stated purpose of promoting social mobility, to provide the working class the opportunity to "move up" the economic ladder. But by the 1970's, there was an end to the expansion, just as college campuses were exploding with radical, anti-capitalist sentiment.

"Graeber believes the system offered many radicals a sort of "settlement." These folks became "reabsorbed into the university but set to work largely at training children of the elite." As education costs have increased exponentially, the number of working class students at major universities has been trending down for decades."

For an art eductaion context just look at the cost to attend Yale and Columbia and then compare that to the success rate of their MFA graduates to land prized residencies, top gallery recruitment, NY Times reviews, and the better university jobs around the country. Talent is not the unifying factor here - elite status is.

And so Alain asks, "Why do working-class Bush voters tend to resent intellectuals more than they do the rich?

Campus radicals set out to create a new society that destroyed the distinction between egoism and altruism, value and values. It did not work out, but they were, effectively, offered a kind of compensation: the privilege to use the university system to create lives that did so, in their own little way, to be supported in one's material needs while pursuing virtue, truth, and beauty, and, above all, to pass that privilege on to their own children. One cannot blame them for accepting the offer. But neither can one blame the rest of the country for hating them for it. Not because they reject the project: as I say, this is what America is all about. As I always tell activists engaged in the peace movement and counter-recruitment campaigns: why do working-class kids join the army anyway? Because, like any teenager, they want to escape the world of tedious work and meaningless consumerism, to live a life of adventure and camaraderie in which they believe they are doing something genuinely noble. They join the army because they want to be like you. (Graeber)

Speaking of Ashes brings up the point that so many working class kids join the ART army for similiar reasons - elevation, social validation and more recently, status as a marginal entertainment celebrity. It's a hard row to hoe being an artist but its lure is that it wears much better than working at Wal-Mart!

But back to what Gusky wants to know -"what inner drive does this mark-making want to satisfy? Is it just, again, escaping tedium and consumerism?" I think many of us share the same fear that largely and currently the answer is yes. The market mind almost defines that desire. The religious impulse towards creating has been dismissed and the pursuit of genius has been discarded so all that is left for many is escapism from the mundane realities of lower consumer identity and the precept that I will be chosen by the elite because I am special and therefore marketable to the ones who never had to escape in the first place (or so the assumption goes).

I am on the same pages as Ashes and Gusky, in wanting more art and less ego, more art where the artist is transparent. An art that calls upon meaning as living context, which is inclusive of all - the artist, audience, and the environment as the real participants, not simply the ego fatigued ubercollectors and taste makers of the artworld. This meaningful practice cannot be viewed as an exercise in ego or charity but a real thing for the purpose of answering the larger questions who we are and who we may be tomorrow. These are times of crisis and we need to get our act together and get serious about meaning and inclusion. The corporate model of the Museum whether it's Kimmleman's brand or the Krens affair will not make this boat float. That 1% doctrine will ultimately fail institutions and the public at large. Artists have to lead here along with conscientous gallerists, modest collectors and progressives within academia and the larger political body.

Going back again to Gusky's original question, I have to agree that the ego is largely a construct of the westernized mind, and in agrrement with Graeber that altruism is the bone handed out by the egoism of the elite. If I may borrow a phrase, A dog with a bone is less likely to bite! Altruism is ultimately a pacifier that only masks the problems of the lack of larger participation and in its current form only re-enforces class and education divisions within the artworld and by extension the political world. After all the market makes winners and losers and that's what "we' like about it.

I'll close with this thought by Ashes, "Ego-less art will be decidedly emasculated and profoundly personal, almost limp to those still carrying egos. But don't confuse its veracity by judging it with the Western Ego. It will have no borders and it won't carry well in glossy magazines. It will probably sell. Just not enough to impress."

Here's hoping the New Year will reveal some artists that are brave enough to leave their egos behind.


image: HLIB

Final Appearance at the Apollo - today

The hardest working man in show biz will make a final appearance today at the Apollo. The immortal James Brown will lie in repose from 1pm to 8pm.

Re-entry - the airport pictures

Just getting back to the apple and hoping to catch up with things - other than the Gerry Ford love fest (who'd a thunk it????)We all apreciate airports as in-between places so here are my latest entries in a long line of airport observations. Note that these have not been doctored in photoshop - hard to believe but it is true :)


I really was surrounded by desks....

Walton Ford

Some of my contemporaries are just interested in talking about fashion or pornography. You have an American Apparel-style theory of making art, and I couldn’t be more bored with that. But that seems to be all that some painters seem to be interested in now.

And I think, “God, you know, look at what’s happening in the world. Is that your preoccupation: Celebrity, glamour and pornography? Is that really what we’re going to go down in flames celebrating?” - Walton Ford

Finally I see something about a show I've been wanting to post about! The Walton Ford interview at Artinfo is a decent intro into one of the most intelligent artists working right now. I was very much impressed and challenged by his current exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.

For all the blagghing about Ron Mueck, this exhibit seems to have been overlooked - its superior to Mueck's I think. Why? Because it's really about something urgent - not that Mueck's show isn't good because it is - but Ford is on to some major topics (human culture/natural history) without being topical. Stylistically he has embarked on an incredible tightrope -he's pushing a very familiar (cliche) form of drawing into a conceptual and political arena without relying on tiresome irony. How these do not become political cartoons is stunning. The poetic dimension achieved here is far too often missing in works that aim for political coverage or toy with allegory. Quite simply, there is a hell of a lot payoff for the viewer!

Robert Fripp - let the power fall

So finally get down to the keyboard after yet another holiday party which to say the least is getting a bit tiresome but listening to a little Vince Guaraldi is calming my Christmas nerves. I guess it takes Charlie Brown music to do it - follow the muse I say! This post is really about Robert Fripp and his collaborations with Brian Eno - but ultimately about Fripp (not Charlie Brown).

Kazys has a post recognizing the amazing team that is Fripp/Eno and their enormous and graceful forays into ambiance, distortion and feedback, which Kazys rightly aligns as issues confronting network architects (See netlab) and by extention many artists making their way through our current wave of mutilation. If you don't know Evening Star you should buy it - then go for the lesser works - No Pussyfooting, and Equatorial Stars. They're good if you're a real head but Evening Star is the one -seminal art and an aural pleasure. Think of the soundtrack to Richter's Atlas or a subdued Butoh performance. It is a true space to think and feel - in other words it is art.

But this isn't a record review! What has me most enthralled is a link by Kazy's to Fripp's manifesto - Let The Power Fall. I'm just reading this for the first time so I'm pasting this here.

Let The Power Fall
By Robert Fripp

I
1 One can work within any structure.
2 One can work within any structure, some structures are more efficient
than others.
3 There is no structure which is universally appropriate.
4 Commitment to an aim within inappropriate structure will give rise to
the creation of an appropriate structure.
5 Apathy, ie passive commitment, within an appropriate structure will
effect its collapse.
6 Dogmatic attachment to the supposed merits of a particular structure
hinders the search for an appropriate structure.
7 There will be difficulty defining the appropriate structure because it
will be allways mobile, ie in process.

II
8 There should be no difficulty in defining aim.
9 The appropriate structure will recognise structures outside itself.
10 The appropriate structure can work within any large structure
11 Once the appropriate structure can work within any large structure,
some larger structure are more efficient than others.
12 There is no larger structure which is universally appropriate.
13 Commitment to an aim by an appropriate structure within a larger,
inappropriate structure will give rise to a large, appropriate structure.
14 The quantitive structure is affected by qualitative action

III
15 Qualitive action is not bound by number
16 Any small unit committed to qualitative action can affect radical
change on a scale outside its quantitative measure.
17 Quantative action works by violence and breeds reaction.
18 Qualitative action works works by example and invites reciprocation.
19 Reciprocation between independant structures is a framework of
interacting units which is itself a structure.
20 Any appropriate structure of interacting units can work within any
other structure of interacting units.
21 Once this is so, some structures of interacting units are more efficient
than others.

This is enormous so I won't try to make sense of it at the moment but plan to revisit it quite soon as certain posts recently seem to be hinting a similair thoughts.

Marlene Dumas

Why do you think art magazines do that?

They do it because they don’t care about painting. Most people in the art scene have no sense of what a painting is. That’s why art magazines have such terrible layouts, because they look at a painting as if it is a photograph, and it becomes a photograph in the reproduction. They can’t say they understand anything about painting. - Marlene Dumas

Not sure if anyone caught the Marlene Dumas interview on ArtInfo a couple of weeks back but it ha some tasty bits on being a painter and the frustrations she has with the art media as an artist. Dumas has taken over for Alex Katz Chair at Cooper Union and for my money one the greatest living painters. She's one of only a few painters that make me feel actual jealousy when veiwing particular works. Funny how she gets no play here in the States?? ...a travesty really.

Dumas on Teaching:

I see teaching as a very important thing, and not only because I teach them things, but also because we have a dialogue, and you see what you really want. You find things out. I still believe in the Socratic dialogue. Art is really something that you learn from being around people. My own experience in South Africa was that the art school was part of the university, so I learned such a lot in general, not just about painting. I am from a generation that seems to want to copyright their inventions, but I am not one of those artists who think they invented everything. You are part of a tradition. It’s the same as when people write books—they have read other books that they relate to. Painting is part of a visual tradition. The worst kind of artist is one who thinks they’re so wonderful because they don’t understand that there have been all these wonderful things done already, and that you exist in relation to that. Just because an artist from the past is dead doesn’t mean the work is dead. Art is something that relates you to the past, and hopefully to the present as well.

check the interview.


image: The Painter - Marlene Dumas

SlideRoom.com

Attention artists -please do yourself the favor of checking out SlideRoom.com.

This is the brainchild of artist (and blogger) Chris Jagers and looks to be a highly professional online portfolio program that artists (and institutions) can use to present their work. Somehow between his teaching practice and studio practice Jagers has found the time to produce this - must be something in BBQ down there.

Slideroom.com makes it possible for you to upload your images and videos, label and organize them and have them constantly ready for review, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, Grant after glorius Grant!

Make changes instantly.
Password-protect your portfolio to control who sees it and when.
Stay in control long after your send-out date.

So check it out.

Hammer time

High Low welcomes the Hammer to the blogosphere!

109th Congress leaving - thankfully

The greatest collection of assholes ever assembled is finally leaving the building - no not pundits on Fox - the 109th Congress. Probably the worst in history with all due respect to the 1948 class. Muckraker has a nice a send off for the criminals we like to call Congressmen.

Cue Art Foundation: living on a tight budget

Tomorrow Cue is offering another seminar for artists :

Meeting Artists' Needs VI. Living on a Tight Budget CUE Art Foundation (New York NY) VI. Living on a Tight Budget Wednesday,December 6, 2006, 6:30 – 8:00pm

Speaker: Galia Gichon, Down-to-earth Finance Galia Gichon is an Independent Financial Expert who founded Down-to-earth Finance, a company dedicated to demystifying money management and investing for individuals. With over 13 years experience in financial services and an MBA in Finance, Ms Gichon has worked with hundreds of individuals and organizations. This results-oriented seminar will provide an action plan by giving practical exercises to help artists achieve financial freedom and reduce money stress. Ms. Gichon will give tips and ideas to help improve financial habits; she’ll go over the important parts of a credit report and how to improve the rating and will give advice on how to deal with credit card debt.

Where: at CUE Art Foundation located at 511 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 (betw. 10th and 11th Aves.) This lecture is FREE, but registration IS required.

To register, please call 212 206-3583 or send an email to kara.smith@cueartfoundation.org including your name, mailing address, e-mail and telephone number. Seating is on a first-come-first serve basis. We will accommodate the first 50 attendees each evening, and provide standing room only thereafter.

CUE Art Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit arts organization that is dedicated to supporting under-recognized artists via a multi-faceted mission spanning the realms of gallery exhibitions, professional development programs and arts-in-education. For further information please contact Kara Smith, Programs Assistant, at 212 206-3583 or send an email to kara.smith@cueartfoundation.org

CUE Art Foundation's operations and programs are made possible with the generous support of foundations, corporations, government, individuals, and its membership. Programming assistance is provided in part with public funds from City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs and The New York State Council on the Arts through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Experimental Television Center. Meeting Artists' Needs is supported in part by the Joan Mitchell Foundation and American Express Company.

Art Ark

As we head into the fever pitches of the Miami Monolith I thought I would give a shout out to all the hard working art handlers, installers and truck drivers who will be working themselves to the bone for $20/hr. Here's a dedication to what may be a perverse fantasy for some :)

Truck Load of Art - by Terry Allen

Once upon a time
Sometime ago back on the east coast
In New York City, to be exact
A bunch of artists and painters and
sculptors and musicians and
poets and writers and dancers
and architects
Started feeling real superior
to their ego-counter-parts
Out on the West Coast so
They all got together and decided
They would show those snotty surfer upstarts
A thing or two about the Big Apple

And they hired themselves a truck
It was a big, spanking new white-shiny
Chrome-plated cab-over
Peterbilt
With mudflaps, stereo, tv, AM & FM radio,
Leather seats and a naugahide sleeper
All fresh
With new American Flag decals and "ART ARK"
Printed on the side of the door
With solid 24 karat gold leaf type

And they filled up this truck
With the most significant piles
And influential heaps of Art Work
To ever be assembled in Modern Times,
And it sent it West to chide
Cajole, humble and humiliate the Golden Bear.
And this is the true story of that truck

A Truckload of Art
From New York City
Came rollin down the road
Yeah the driver was singing
And the sunset was pretty
But the truck turned over
And she rolled off the road

Yeah a Truckload of Art
is burning near the highway
Precious objects are scattered
All over the ground
And it's a terrible sight
If a person were to see it
But there weren't nobody around
(Yodel)

Yeah the driver went sailing
High in the sky
Landing in the gold lap of the Lord
Who smiled and then said
"Son, you're better off dead
Than haulin a truckload
full of hot avant-garde

Yes and important artwork
Was thrown burning to the ground
Tragically landing in the weeds
And the smoke could be seen
Ahhh for miles all around
Yeah but nobody knows what it means

Yes a Truckload of Art
Is burning near the highway
And it's a tough job for the highway patrol
Ahhh they'll soon see the smoke
An come runnin to poke
Then dig a deep ditch
And throw the arts in a hole
(Yodel)

Yeah a Truckload of Art
Is burning near the highway
And it's raging far-out of control
And what the critics have cheered
Is now shattered and queered
And their noble reviews
Have been stewed on the road


* Ok so this song has little to do with Miami and everything to do with the East Coast/West Coast family feud (circa the late '60's) - still fun though.