Authority, Beuys and the Public Image

Useful read for those trying to place Beuys. I also recommend Joseph Beuys: The Reader.

The Boss: On the Unresolved Question of Authority in Joseph Beuys’ Oeuvre and Public Image [Jan Verwoert]

An unconditional acceptance of Beuys’ interpretive authority over his own practice has caused the discourse surrounding the oeuvre to fail to touch on a central unresolved question within it: the question of authority itself. In order to understand the significance of Beuys’ work in the context of the artistic and political debates of the 1960s and 1970s, however, it is crucial to grasp the inner conflicts and unresolved contradictions that run through it, as well as the way Beuys publicly performed the role of the artist with regard to this question of authority. On the one hand he incessantly attacked traditional notions of the authority of the work, the artist, and the art professor, with his radical, liberating, and humorous opening up of the concept of art with regard to what a work, an artist, or a teacher could still be and do beyond the functions established by tradition, office, and title. On the other hand, however, it seems that in the presentation of his own interpretative discourse, Beuys regularly fell back on the very tradition of staging artistic authority with which he was trying to break.

While he abolished the common understanding of the artist’s role and demonstrated in his own practice that an artist could be not only a sculptor or painter but also a performer, politician, philosopher, historian, ethnologist, musician, and so on, he nonetheless had recourse to a traditionally established role model when projecting an image of himself to the public through the role of a visionary, spiritual authority or healer in full agreement with the modern myth of the artist as a messianic figure. While at one moment he provoked free and open debate through perplexing, if not deliberately absurd, actions that left himself open to attack as an artist, at the next moment he would bring a discussion on the meaning of these provocations back to orderly paths by seeking the seamlessly organized worldview of anthroposophy as an ideological justification for his art practice. On the one hand, he gambled on everything that traditionally secured the value, claim to validity, and hence authority of art and artists, while on the other hand he assumed the traditional patriarchal position of the messianic proclaimer of ultimate truths.

(....)

The crucial thing, however, is that Beuys did not simply produce an aura of authority but that he also exhibited the material conditions of its production in all their crudity, and exposed the contradictions inherent in this process in all their obvious absurdity. In this way, Beuys simultaneously constructed and dismantled an aura of authority. The performance constituted an event. Its eventful qualities were, however, simultaneously also reduced to a minimum—not much happened. A man lay wrapped in a blanket between two dead hares and made strange noises for hours. The scaling down of the performance to an activity that could scarcely be perceived as an activity at all, the stretching and expanding of time, the death rattles from under the blanket, and the overall gravity of the mise-en-scène in general creates a peculiar regressive atmosphere. Very much in line with the analysis of auratic authority that Werner Herzog developed in his films, Beuys here too foregrounds the peculiar regressive pull (Freudians would call it the “death drive”) inherent in the peculiar gravitas of auratic authority—a pull that equally also creates its limitation, in that its own weightiness sooner or later weights auratic authority down and brings it to the point of collapse. And indeed, in Der Chef Beuys staged the mechanisms producing this auratic authority together with the event of its slow collapse....(more)

via eflux/wood s lot

image:I Like America and America Likes Me, 1974
_{Photo Copyright Caroline Tisdall / Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York}

Ivory Tower w/Sharon Butler today

If you are attending previews today, you may want to stop by Winkleman Gallery at 4 pm for this discussion.

TODAY: The Ivory Tower

Today at 4pm!
Winkleman Gallery, 621 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001. If you're interested in the discussion but can't come to the gallery, check out the live streaming video and the #class feed on Twitter.

Everyone is welcome, but confirmed participants include:
Greg Bailey--Connecticut College
Mia Brownell--Southern Connecticut State University
Peter Dudek--Hunter College
Rico Gatson--New York University
Ethan Ham--City University of New York
James Holland--Eastern Connecticut State University
Brece Hunnicutt--Non academic, MFA Columbia
Clint Jukkala--Yale University
Kate Kretz--an academic who (gasp) quit teaching
Martin Kruck--New Jersey City University
Kevin McCoy-New York University
Joanne Mattera--Director, Monserrat Encaustic Conference
Tom Micchelli--Cooper Union
John O-Donnell--University of Connecticut
Cathy Nan Quinlan--Non academic
Austin Thomas--Camp Pocket U

Here are the topics we'll be discussing:

• Art schools have drawn heavy fire recently for churning out young artists driven towards quick commercial success at the expense of their long term artistic development. Yet most artist-academics do not consciously try to instill in their students an impatient mercenary sensibility. Where, then, does it come from?

• Artists who are lucky enough to find full-time teaching jobs have to find a way to fit into conventional university systems that don't understand anything about art. Promotion and Tenure Committees, comprising professors from all departments, may understand the importance of gallery exhibitions, but are completely baffled by relational aesthetics, new media distribution, and other contemporary art practices. How do artists maintain their identity and artistic integrity while working within the traditional academic system?

• The corporatization of education has led to a bureaucratic environment in which we are asked to participate in efforts like “Outcomes Assessment” and “Academic Program Reviews” that contradict the open-ended nature of artistic investigation. Are we guilty of maintaining the status quo by seeing our institutions simply as paycheck providers rather than art communities? Why are our teaching and art practices two separate and distinct activities? Are we failing to think creatively?

• How do you feel about the Bruce High Quality Foundation University's critique of traditional art school?

Overview of the #class project:
#class, organized by William Powhida and Jen Dalton, has been selected as a Critics' Pick in ArtForum. Bill and Jen have turned the gallery into a 'think tank' for guest artists, critics, academics, dealers, collectors, and anyone else who's interested to examine the way art is made, seen, and sold in our culture. Their goal is to identify and propose alternatives and/or reforms to the commercial model and attendant commodification of art, but also the unquantifiable, intangible, unpaid aspects of participating in the art world. They transformed the gallery from a showroom into a conference room, where discussions and events will take place from approximately Feb 20 - March 20, 2010. For a full list of events and video feed, click here.

the past decade as Horror

Weeks into 2010, the final year of our first decade into the new century, and I’m just now getting around to assimilating all the year-end lists of 2009 and for that matter decade-end appraisals of the "aughts" floating about. There has been much to gleen, but a few commentaries have really stood out as being quite prescient for the strange time we now live. I assume that these lists are basically an attempt to model our contemporary world . For the most part we're handed consumer lists or within the arts another incrongruous helping of post-modernism for our reflection. So consider this post as the first of a series of attempts at highlighting some places that perhaps speak newly about our contemporary condition.

Our horribly distorted world...

Infocult, which at the close of 2009 pointed out the persistence of gothic rhetoric in current American culture. I knew the obsession with vampires had substance behind it! They’ve done a wonderful job of rounding up examples of commentators referencing horror for their political-historical meditations.

via Infocult:

The world in 2010 is a Gothic world, says Bruce Sterling. Monsters roam the scene:

People have stymied sense of denial about the situation. It's very neurotic, anxious, and repressed. It's feeding into a strongly Gothic political temperament where popular culture is haunted by vampires and zombies. The population *identifies* with vampires and zombies, wants to marry them, settle down with them.

There's an autumnal hush over the cultural landscape. People really hope they won't be hit between the eyes with the two-by-four again, but they also know that they are helpless to defend themselves against the sources of the blows.

RJ Eskow adds some horror movie tropes:

It's that final plot twist, the last horrifying revelation that wrings a final scream out of the exhausted audience. You've seen it a hundred times: The ambulance driver taking the battered victims to the hospital grins ... and he has fangs. A close-up shows that the shambling, good-natured GI taking the townsfolk to safety has the marks of alien spores on his neck...

all is not well in Happy Ending Land. The invaders of our civil liberties are being protected. A pointless war drags on. Health reform is being co-opted by cynical politicians and special interests. What else can it be but a Horror-Twist ending to a Horror-Movie Decade?

Jules Crittendon: "God Damn the Naughts,".

He starts off by describing Christmas in Armageddon - the town, that is. And has fun with strangers: “Look, it’s the Angel of Death,” I said. “Let’s go get him.”

image: Carl Dreyer's Vampyr

the under-valuation of art blogging

Sharon Butler has an interesting post about the recent writing grant recipients for New York's Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation. It seems art bloggers are not fairing well in requests for funding.

It turns out, however, that over 150 bloggers actually found the time to apply, but only one, Greg Cook (New England Journal of Aesthetic Research), was selected. In the LA Times blog, Christopher Knight wonders why.

In fact, in the four years that Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grants have been awarded, only three have gone to writers who produce blogs. Given a total of 87 grants since 2006, bloggers have racked up less than 4%.That's not a very good ratio.

regarding the artist's exhibition postpartum

Christopher Reiger has some substantial thoughts about dealing with feelings of disconnection after a solo exhibition.

I discussed my condition with a writer friend, and her hypothetical explanation of the solo show funk is convincing, at least with respect to my experience of the malady. She contends that, before the solo show, the artist works happily in the studio because he is fully present in his creative labor. In this "process mode," the artist understands the artwork and the art-making as an extension of self, a soulful and intimate activity. Once the artwork is displayed in a commercial gallery, however, the artist must conceive of the artwork anew. In the "product mode," the art is commodified and abstracted, effectively reduced to paper currency, worthless without social consensus. In transitioning from studio space to market space, the artist has crossed over a Hermetic boundary, leaving behind the eroticism of Eros for the commercial quantification of Hermes.

Continue reading at Hungry Hyaena

Image: Christopher Reiger

Eleanor Heartney talks with Phong Bui

I've come to really look forward to these interviews in the BR. Another excellent one by Phong Bui. Heartney looks back on the emergence of globalism in the context of the waning hours of the Cold War and the culture wars of identity politics. Also noteworthy for today's world, Heartney discusses the role of religion in our new era. This is an issue that I assume many of us are grappling with whether we realize it or not. The 'new' metaphysical presence is certainly dictating a lion share of social and political realities across the world. Artist's need to pay attention to this in some manner.

Excerpts:

RAIL: From my own observations, I do feel that the multiculturalism that arose in the 80s, which as we all know was associated with political correctness and the rise of identity politics, had to do with both cultural and economic aspects of globalism. Hypothetically speaking, though culturally it addresses art as a manifestation of basic human interests, economically it seems tied in with corporate interest and political allegiances. In other words, artists tend to see the world at large, from the inside out, whereas corporate interests see the world as small, from the outside in. This, I would say, inevitably creates a huge conflict of communication, which means that artists are usually put in a position of having to satisfy corporate interests, which is so far removed from their intention. But at the same time we also are aware of the real issue of art being irrelevant, no longer as an isolated phenomenon, pursuing its imperatives or personal ideologies without reference to the outside world. How do you see the polarity?

HEARTNEY: I think globalism is very double-edged. It’s interesting because in the art world, when you say globalization, it tends to be a very positive thing because it suggests this new kind of inclusiveness, which admits different sorts of narratives from different places in the world. But it also of course has this other connotation, certainly on the economic front, which is invested in a variety of aggressive forms of corporatization and homogenization. Not only does it wipe out diversity, it seems to be devoted to making us all into the same sort of consumer. However, for artists, I think they find it both exciting and strange to skate between those two realities when they’re dealing with the global art world.

At the panel last week, which was about art critics and globalization, one of the things that was very clear to most of the panelists was that the explosion of International Biennials over the last three or four years has really been a vehicle for bringing artists from far-flung places and introducing them to the larger art world, which is all good, but each of them requires large amounts of money and has multiple agendas. In some cases there is a hidden political motivation that desires to wipe out some egregious kind of political event from the past. In other cases, it’s simply based on pure economic motivations. Either way, artists who participate in those Biennials are quite aware of the two different agendas, yet they’re also advancing their own agendas. So it becomes very complicated. In my case, I find it very important to figure out, “Why this Biennial, at this place, and at this time?” And then I can go on and look at the individual works.

RAIL: To go back to the late 70s and 80s, the name F.A. Hayek, the Viennese economist who wrote The Road To Serfdom (1944) and Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988), somehow loomed quite prominently in the light of Reagan/Thatcher’s political and economic policies. As we knew then, the multiculturalist view had its advantages and its disadvantages. On one hand, there were those who really advocated for and embraced the so-called redemptive “diffusion” from non-Western cultures, which they thought could perhaps replace the old image of the melting pot that allowed differences to be submerged in democracy. Yet on the other hand, you have those who opposed it, who thought it was an anti-Western ideology, and therefore downgraded or undermined U.S. national culture, while raising the status and power of other cultures. Since you have written extensively on the subject, particularly in Critical Condition: American Culture at a Crossroads (1997), which traced the rise of Neo-Expressionism, appropriation, Neo-Geo, and of course multiculturalism, how would you reassess that decade from today’s perspective?

HEARTNEY: You know, writing that book gave me a chance to think about a lot of those issues. The whole multicultural movement, for instance, laid out the groundwork that preceded globalization. On the one hand, it was very much about opening up the art world to these other voices from other cultures and other traditions that had been excluded. But on the other hand there was something about it that often became very militant and very exclusionary, to the point where people were only allowed to express a certain part of their identity. So the notion that we’re all kind of hybrid and made up of many different aspects kind of got lost there. In Art and Today, I have a chapter on art and identity, which I begin with that unitary notion of identity, and by the end I concluded that we’ve moved to a more hybrid notion of identity as something that is much more free-flowing and changing. In terms of the culture war, it had a lot to do with the rise of so-called “identity politics” and the notion that certain groups—non-white, non-male, non-European—were vying for power in the art world.

What was interesting about the whole culture war that rose really in the late 80s and early 90s was that it coincided with the end of the Cold War and the rise of the global market. In so many ways, I think it was a losing battle for the right, but nevertheless one in which they were deeply engaged; and of course looking back now, one that forms the perspective of a year in which we have elected a black president and the nomination of the first Hispanic woman, Sonia Sotomayor, as a Supreme Court justice. I think it’s kind of amazing when you look back to those wars and think that they really felt that they could hold back this tide.

RAIL: Did September 11th, and its aftermath have any bearing on your next book Defending Complexity: Art Politics and the New World Order?

HEARTNEY: September 11th was such an unimaginable event that changed so many things in our lives. One of the things in particular that I was concerned with in that book, which also overlapped with my other book Post-Modern Heretics: the Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art, finished right after September 11th, was the way in which religion suddenly was on the table in a very significant way, religion being a subject the art world had long ignored or seen it as a purely reactionary force. At any rate, when Serrano’s “Piss Christ” created controversy, the one thing that the right wing and the art world establishment agreed on was that it was an anti-religion work. Whereas, in fact, it wasn’t simply that; Serrano has a much more complicated relationship to religion.

Nevertheless, it became clear that there were certain things we had to pay attention to which we didn’t before, and part of it was the role of religion. Whether we see it for its positive and negative sides or not, religion wasn’t something that we’d put behind us, as some kind of relic of the past. In fact, it became an evermore important and growing force. And within these various religions, there is a great deal of controversy and dissention, and to see it as a monolith is a mistake. I think the political uses of religion, both on our side as well as on the side of those who perpetrated that disaster on September 11th, became more amplified. In both cases, it empowered the people who practiced the fundamentalist versions, which tend to see things as solely in terms of good and evil. And of course that kind of mentality had been guiding the Bush administration, pretty much up till Obama’s election.

Drawing: Phong Bui

intended paths

I'm not concerned with spectacular events or frantic rhythms. The works are about concentration, intention and paths of thought: the flow of totality in our perception, the fragmentation of the 'river of phenomena', which takes place all the time.

- Gabriel Orozco

um, the power of art

Excellent goof on Simon Schama's Power of Art.


via: Daily Dish

the muck

I've always been struck by the muck of the Auerbach studio. The horror of ever advancing paint droppings and dust. When you look at his process you see the endeavor of persistence and the growing density of failure. The record lays bare the accumulation of the years marking, scraping, poking, smudging, groping through the gray light where the act never changes. It's good to see examples of this kind of activity as a reminder to guard against the external pressures of an accelerated world of information. Such work addresses physical reality, the tension between process and intention.

Increasingly I'm experiencing a need for painters who have a permanent sense of the tangible. Making work that doesn't simply mirror our times or arranging signs/symbols but making work that is an independent entity in itself. Works that grow through a process which are still vitally indebted to their sources, but ultimately veer towards an independence from those sources. A separate existence from the artist - palpable, fully intact and ready to demand a response by the very nature of that existence.





image: Frank Auerbach studio circa 1984.

Color Traits

I recently came across this project by Alan Woo which should hold some interest for artists. The above pie chart is the "color" of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. Pretty cool.

Alan Woo:

Curious to see if there were any stark similarities or contrasts within particular films, Pie aims to create an incredibly simple and concise baseline of comparison of films trough one particular trait: colour. This project was also the result of my first explorations into processing. The outcome is a number of triptychs comparing various films of particular trilogies, directors or genres. A program written in processing captures each frame of each movie and essentially creates a 'pie chart' of the colours contained within each film producing a simplistic and abstracted representation. Each poster includes the film title, year, director, cinematographer, running time and occasionally, various surprising/unsurprising similarities.

If this kind of thing interests you, a good art related book on the culture of color is Chromophobia by David Batchelor.


I wonder what color Chelsea would be.....

Chris Jagers at Americans for the Arts

Art blogger and Slideroom guru, Chris Jagers is guest blogging at the Americans for the Arts blog. The subject is "Public Art", with Jay Sullivan, Professor of Sculpture and Chair, Division of Art: Meadows School of the Arts.

Here's and excerpt:

CJ: When I first asked you to do an interview with you about “Public Art,” what did you immediately begin thinking about?

JS: I first thought of Foucault’s idea of Heterotopias: spaces within a space, where a certain kind of special activity can take place, both within and also slightly outside of society. Classic examples of this are hospitals, insane asylums or graveyards. These are places where society can have safe conversations about things that they don’t want to deal with all the time or everywhere. Ironically, when I think about Public Art, I think about the Percent for Art Project and this notion that we seek to beautify train stations, airports and other things. There is a heterotopic feel about that. On one hand, it is defining certain structures (usually municipal) as being public in a way that other spaces (like major street intersections) are not. For instance, if I put a big sculpture at a major street intersection, I could get into more trouble (aesthetic) than if I put the same piece of sculpture in a train station—the spaces are “public” in different ways and we expect different things to happen there.

Of course, work like Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc” violated all this … it went into a public place which was owned by the government, a super public space. Yet, it did some things within that plaza that attacked pre-existing boundaries of that being a public space normally appropriate for such works.

CJ: How do these ideas relate to the administrative process of choosing a project?

JS: I have had a chance to be on a few Public Art review panels, and its very interesting to hear the discussion of the jurors who represent the community. And it is also interesting to see what is given as the agenda for pieces because these things are always supposed to address the community. Projects are supposed to be responsive to the place, but at the same time they are encapsulated in a way that can be easily ignored or marginalized. And when a piece is easy to “bracket off” visually, it becomes difficult to address the community. A thing may be there, but it becomes ancillary to the space itself.

Of course, art has always occupied a special place that is different from ordinary objects … so it’s always a negotiation. A negotiation with the public about goals, the role of the piece and which spaces are potentially available for art versus other public spaces which are viewed are more private. In the early stages, but even later, the artist doesn’t have too much say in all this, which is difficult–the panel is in some sense “guessing” who would be best.

a field guide to melancholy

Here's a new author for me and a title that I'm itching to read. Not quite available yet in the U.S. but it has been released in the U.K.

Dylan Trigg has this brief assessment:

As though to perfectly coincide with the onset of winter, Jacky Bowring’s new book, A Field Guide to Melancholy has arrived. I am working through it, slowly. Already I sense it is a book that deserves to be read with a particular kind of pace. Somewhat like memory itself, a book that is conducive to a certain light and rhythm, full of both twilight and permanence simultaneously. Recommended.

sticky sublime and the pusuit of strangeness

I've been thinking about this comment recently:

But to get back to the sublime, if you start out academically and you are a student and you are trying to understand some of the networks behind art, and you are getting more comfortable with what might be, what it could be, what some of the apparatus might be, there still is this very self-conscious deliberate journey you are on and that is much of what I felt in graduate school. This journey oriented to assuming a belief that through this intelligence, through mental acuity, you are going to try to pressure these doors open and to give you some sight. And all that is done without being in tune, necessarily, with the enormous levels an artist can bring into himself, and assume, and let open, once you are relaxed about the arena you are in. Your mind is like a blowtorch, trying to burn down things so you can find a home. You’re in the woods, and now it’s time to both feel the repercussions of what you did, and to flavor yourself with a little more feedback from Camus. I thought a lot of that early stuff of mine was deliberate and intellectually oriented. The piece with the spider, where I coaxed the spider through the tube, some of that stuff started to allow certain chemical and psychological things in, that didn’t get in at the start, because you were too targeted. Like the case about the object, the anti-object and the role of galleries. Soon there came a time when the decisions were made in less calculated ways. They were a bit more mysterious. These are the elements that were going to separate you from other people. They were not strategic. They were violating strategy, and in its place there was a kind of uncertainty. So through this mystique I would find references operating in a large universal, or perhaps, in an arena more capable of strangeness.

Dennis Oppenheim speaking with Bill Beckley

Sticky Sublime, 2001 – pg. 109

infinities and limits

The landscape is infinite and the imagination limited. I see an endless plain under a blue sky while I think of all the places on earth that cannot be touched in a single life time. Yet try as I might, I cannot image the moment of my death. - Bill Viola

image: Gerhard Richter

What do you think is essential reading for the artist?

So this in an open call for a discussion about what you consider essential reading for the contemporary artist. Let's limit it to 5 titles - books or essays. These can be historic, contemporary, of any discipline. You can also include an artists monograph if you can explain why it is essential beyond your affinity to that artist's work, like perhaps the guest essay of that title.


I'd like to see what parallels are out there for artists that are online regularly via blogs, etc.
Also, I'm personally interested in uncovering any educational gaps that I might have. So please impress me with something other than total silence on the subject ;)

Seeing is Forgetting - Robert Irwin

One of the great pleasures so far this summer has been finally (after years) getting around to reading Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees by Lawrence Weschler. This may well be the best book about an artist and their working method and evolution that I have ever read. If you interested in abstraction, this is pretty much required reading. You'll also get a nice little history on the formation of the L.A. art scene from the 1950's on which for an east coast artist, was quite intriguing and it certainly filled some gaps for me. This is a fast read (and great biography actually) with a lot of big ideas and I think some very fruitful fodder on how to approach one's work within your own studio dynamic. My interest and admiration for Irwin has gone off the charts to say the least, it has left a true and at times profound impression. If you teach, I think you need to get a copy of it.

Here's an excerpt regarding Irwin's relationship with his studio practice during his "late lines" period(1962-1964):

In the beginning all of this was not very considered. It was done very intuitively. My concentration was not real good. It was mostly a question of just staying in the studio and simply not going out. Whether I did anything or didn't do anything, whether I was able to work or not, I simply would not let myself leave. But after awhile, if you don't let yourself leave, then everything else begins to leave, that is, all of your other reasons or ambitions in being there; and if you're very fortunate, you might then reach a point of being completely alone in an intimate dialogue with yourself as acted out in the realm of the painting.

a love letter to Japanese painting

I'm gradually getting back into the pace of NY after some time away - thanks to large doses of caffeine which are a poor substitute for the beach but you work with what you've got. I came across this great essay on Japanese art at 3Quarksdaily by Elatia Harris. This is a compelling personal account of a lifelong journey that begins with one woman's childhood reverie and the great tradition of Japanese art.

Harris:

Thanks to Elise Grilli, I was beginning to understand there were two long traditions in Japanese painting that occasionally inter-penetrated but were also separate. Very roughly, there was a tradition that overwhelmingly reflected the civilization-changing influence of China and Buddhism, and one that was Japan's unique contribution to world art, with each flaring into greater vitality at different times over almost 1500 years. Another distinction to look out for was that between art of a private, contemplative nature -- a scroll that is unfolded slowly in the hands, a poem card -- and art best understood as a large element in an entire surround, like the screens above. In the West, the same distinction might attach to the difference between drawing and painting, the former usually done by artists for themselves, the latter having a necessarily public intention. In the West, too, the same artist might excel -- that is, live equally -- in both drawing and painting, but in Japan, with staggering though very few exceptions, art that was contemplative would not issue from the mind or hands of a great decorator-painter.

Image: Trees in Fog, Hasegawa Tohaku, 16th century - Japan's "most-loved" painting.

the artworld is not the world

Indeed, what does happen when there is publicness without a public sphere? When the language of philosophy and politics is used everywhere, at all times, but without referent? We are afloat in a world in which the endless invocation of theoreticians, philosophers and political theorists serves very little purpose other than to bolster the cultural capital pretensions of an artworld detached from anything other than its communicative connectivity and its obscure economic value in an economy of fleeting and faddish desires.......

Pick up any gallery catalogue, read the blurb stuck to any gallery wall and this conflation will come back to you: creativity is communication, and vice versa, and all is well in the world. Whilst there is no doubt a real immaterial practice that corresponds to the happy belief that creativity is communication, it is increasingly the case that the artworld simply is the unfolding of a series of ‘creative communications’ – and that it is in fact quite pleased to think of itself in this way.

continue reading at Long Sunday

moving round

we used to ask what might become after the orgy - mourning or melancholia? Doubtless neither, but an interminable clean-up of all the vicissitudes of modern history and its process of liberation (of peoples, sex, dreams, art and the unconscious - in short, of all that makes up the orgy of our times), in an atmosphere dominated by the apocalyptic presentiment that all this is coming to an end. - Baudrillard

image whiting tennis

NOYFB - the work of Trevor Paglen

We find ourselves in a time where the life of the individual becomes ever more public and transparent. This is starkly contrasted by the growing opaqueness of our institutions and government. With this reality trend in mind, We make money not art has a good primer on the
work being done by Trevor Paglen.

Paglen works at the border of art and research and is currently completing a PhD in the Department of Geography at the University of California at Berkeley. His artistic work deliberately blurs the lines between social science, contemporary art, and other more obscure disciplines in order to construct unfamiliar, yet meticulously researched ways to interpret the world around us. He has published two books (Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights (Amazon USA and UK) which documents the use by the CIA of modified commercial aircraft for extraordinary rendition; and I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me (Amazon USA and UK) about the secret world of military imagery and jargon revealed by patches from classified projects) and is currently preparing the third one (Blank Spots on a Map,

Paglen's work is fascinating to say the least. The core question being -

How do we study something that doesn't exist? Something that must stay hidden?"

It's a great question for the now. How do you engage phenomena which are only detectable through the influence they exercise on the visible world? Take some time to read the run down of his projects as the conceptual frameworks are deep and extremely current.



images: Code Names, 2005 Trevor Paglen
NOYFB. Fabric patch, Ed. of 20, 2006 Trevor Paglen

tip via Kazyz Varnelis