The definition of artistic activity occurs in the field of distribution

Seth Price, “Dispersion” (2001-2002), a document designed for the catalogue of the Ljubljana Biennial Of Graphic Art 2003 curated by Christophe Cherix, printed as a book with Green Naftali 2003.

Seth Price is an Israeli artist who lives in New York. He is a practicing visual artist and also writes on his own art and on theoretical issues in general. This Text, “Dispersion” was created for a graphic art biennial in Slovenia. The text has since been taught in art and critical-theory classes at Columbia, Yale, NYU, and MIT, quickly gaining currency in contemporary art discourse.

Price's text starts with the quote; "the definition of artistic activity occurs first of all, in the field of distribution" (.1). This quote suggests that the cultural field, which we call Fine Art is defined primarily by the modes of distribution ­associated with this field such as art galleries, art magazines, art institutions and art educators. This resonates strongly with another assertion I attempted to make regarding Elizabeth Currid’s reading, that when we analyse the social systems surrounding art and culture the key difference between art and other cultural fields appears to be more a matter of the institutions and businesses which legitimize and distribute art/culture than in any core difference as to the nature of the cultural product being distributed.

That modes of distributing art are politically and conceptually loaded is an assumption that has a strong influence on my own thinking about art and culture. Different places, publications, institutions etc cater to different markets even within a small country like New Zealand. That the way you choose to distribute your work affects who sees it, what value it is assigned and who can afford to own it is a fact that can not be denied to have some political and conceptual ramifications.

How might an artist seek to manipulate these modes of distribution? The artist may wish to express a political view through their choice of a mode of distribution. The artist may also seek to establish new modes of distribution. The artist may recognise that the established mode of distribution serves their goals very well or they may use differing fields of distribution to separate advantage, participating in separate fields concurrently.

That price’s illustrated text Dispersion was created for a graphic art festival is an interesting point to note. Although he is very much operating as a contemporary visual artist throughout his practice, he is here applying the same thinking to the graphic design and content of a publication which sits a little uncomfortably within the normal modes of distribution that a contemporary artist or art writer usually operates within. This resonates with the content of the essay, particularly when he analyses Duchamps attempts to transplant his practice into the context of Amateur inventors conferences; “he was attempting to wholly transplant himself into the alien context of commercial science and invention. In his own analysis: “error, one hundred percent.” Immersing art in life runs the risk of seeing the status of art – and with it, the status of artist – disperse entirely.” (.3) It is interesting to compare this ‘work’ of criticism/art in relation to this quote from within it. I think Price has achieved something here where Duchamp (in the case above) failed (although the anecdote of failure can be seen as a kind of conceptual success in another way). He has managed to slide outside of the normal modes of distribution with a work which sits uncomfortably between art, criticism and graphic design. In doing so, he shows the possibility of something outside the usual system and also gives us the chance to reflect on what the limits of established modes of distribution are.

A collaborative project by local artists Kate Newby, Marnie Slater and Fiona Conner provides another interesting example which could relate to these ideas. For their work The World (will soon turn our way) (.4), the went out of the gallery into a culdesac in Mt Eden where they created work by alterations to the environment the found there. The limits of their own work and the objects which were already on the street was at times hard to distinguish. Even though they had literally gone outside of the gallery system they managed to bring it with them in a way by having the support of the gallery Gamibia Caste. They succeeded in ‘immersing art in life’ in some sense without compromising their own status as artists.

(.1) pp.1

(.2) pp.2

(.3) viewable at Gambiacastle.net

http://www.gambiacastle.net/theworld/1.html

Can hegemonic power be confronted on it's own terms?

Jean Fisher, “Towards a Metaphysics of Shit”, in Documenta 11 Platform 5 The Catalog, Ostfildern-Ruit: Hajte Cantz, 2002, pp.63-70.

Jean Fisher is a freelance writer on art with a special focus on post-colonial theory. She studied zoology and fine art. She has regularly contributed to publications such as Artforum International. Fisher teaches at the Royal College of Art in London and also at Middlesex University. (.1) This text was written for Documenta 11. Documenta is an important art festival held every 5 years in Kassel, Germany.

Walter Benjamin suggested in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction that by undermining the Aura of the art object and therefore removing it’s ritualistic character that art could become more political; “the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics.” (.2)

Fisher offers us a different (but related) evaluation of how a work can best articulate political issues. First she analyses the carnivalesque in western society and the trickster mythology of indigenous cultures as models of agency and dissent. She discusses the ways that these modes of dissent do not challenge the hegemonic structure on its own terms in a binary opposition but tend to do something unexpected, a third thing, and in that way are not trapped completely within the language of hegemonic power:

“Following the postmodern debates of the late 1980s, it seemed clear that oppositionality-as-complaint, in its acceptance of hegemonic language as the point of departure, could no longer be an effective aesthetic strategy of resistance and re-empowerment.…On the other hand, to use a completely different language or set of codes is to provide no ground for communication.…One tactic is not to present something that we all recognize as shocking, but to present the shocking aspect of what is comfortably familiar; or to defamiliarize the commonplace.…So, if one can still speak of an ethical or political dimension to art, I would suggest it rests first and foremost not in subject matter but in the way material and syntactical organization articulates its relationship with the viewing subject.”(.3)

It’s an interesting point that if a work seeks to affect the hegemonic structure then some common ground for communication with that structure must be found while as the same time avoiding contradicting that power directly on its own terms.

Linda Smith is points out this difficulty in communicating with hegemonic power whilst attempting to avoid being defined entirely by that power; “One of the many criticisms that gets leveled at indigenous intellectuals or activists is that our Western education precludes us from writing or speaking from a ‘real’ and authentic indigenous position. Of course, those who do speak from a more ‘traditional’ indigenous point of view are criticized because they do not make sense (‘speak English, what!’). Or, our talk is reduced to some ‘nativist’ discourse, dismissed by colleagues in the academy as naïve, contradictory and illogical….Criticism is leveled by non-indigenous and indigenous communities. It positions indigenous intellectuals in some difficult spaces both in terms of our relations with indigenous communities and within the Western academy.” (.4)

Fisher suggests that “an ethical or political dimension to art...rests first and foremost not in subject matter but in the way the material and syntactical organization articulates its relationship to the viewing subject.”(.5) The important point I take from this is that it’s not so much what is said but how you say it that has the real potential to be subversive. But as the quote from Smith points out above, to ignore the language of the dominant discourse completely is to risk being dismissed, ignored or condescended. This has ramifications for any work that attempts institutional critique. To make a negative gesture towards an institution on it’s own terms might only serve to support the discourse of that institution but in making a positive gesture away from the institution and it’s discourse one risks marginalizing or excluding themselves. A difficult predicament for anyone who finds themselves in a peripheral position to a hegemonic discourse.

(.1) Jean Fisher, Writer’s profile on Iniva.org

http://www.iniva.org/library/archive/people/f/fisher_jean

(.2) Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, reprinted in Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner ed.s, Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001, pp.53

(.3) (.5) pp.66

(.4) Linda Tuhiwai Smith, “Decolonizing Methodologies; Research and Indigenous Peoples” Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1999.

The functional work explores an “expanded” site: the “art world”. - Meyer

James Meyer, “The Functional Site; or, The Transformation of Site-Specificity,” in Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art, ed. Erika Suderberg, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000, 23-37.

James Meyer is Associate Professor of Art History at Emory University in Atlanta. He writes on American and European art since 1945 with a special interest in minimalism, post-minimalism, conceptualism, institutional critique and site-orientated installation. (.1) This text is taken from a book which has been called “The definitive work on the role of installation art within contemporary culture and society.” (.2)

Meyer states that as contemporary (1990’s till now) artists have picked up on the site-specific practices of artists of the 60s and 70s, “these practices, the languages and strategies of now historical activities are hybridized and displaced.”(.3) He points out that these revisitations have varying success, sometimes they have “resulted in something unexpected”(.4) and sometimes seem “uninformed, awkward, or, frankly, dull.”(.5)

The main thing that has been achieved by these revisitations, and what seems to be the main point of the whole text is that the notion of what constitutes a site has been transformed:

“The primary distinction I wish to make concerns two notions of site: a literal site and a functional site. The literal site is, as Joseph Kosuth would say, in situ; it is an actual location, a singular place…The work’s formal outcome is thus determined by a physical place, by an understanding of the place as actual…It is thus a kind of monument, a public work commissioned for the site…In contrast, the functional site may or may not incorporate a physical place. It certainly does not privilege this place. Instead, it is a process, an operation occurring between sites…It is an informational site…an allegorical site…whose vectored and discursive notion of “place” opposes Serra's phenomenological model.”(.6)

These notions are crucial to my zine workshop projects which I have been undertaking this year. In the workshops two important sites are of primary importance. First is the site where the workshop takes place and the group of people at this site. Using this site as a starting point I select a publication to rework with this group. The publication is the second site; I consider the publication as a discursive space. A magazine for example can be seen as a kind of virtual museum or meeting place where certain groups of people congregate to exchange ideas both with each other and the reader. This dialogue is usually one way (although these days there are many ways for readers to become contributors in some senses), through the workshop the people who participate are given absolute control over the content of the magazine and can rework it in any way. This opens up the discursive site of the magazine in unpredictable and possibly subversive ways. The third site is then the place where the work is exhibited but as Meyer is quoted as saying above, in a functional work this site is not privileged.

Miwon Kwon states in her book One place after another: site-specific art and locational identity:

“the distinguishing characteristic of today’s site-orientated art is the way in which the art work’s relationship to the actuality of a location (as site) and the social conditions of the institutional frame (as site) are both subordinate to a discursively determined site that is delineated as a field of knowledge, intellectual exchange, or cultural debate. Furthermore, unlike the previous models, this site is not defined as a precondition. Rather, it is generated by the work (often as “content”), and then verified by its convergence with an existing discursive formation.”(.7)

(.1) James Meyer in Faculty & Staff of Art History Department, University of Emory website.

http://www.arthistory.emory.edu/faculty/meyer.htm

(.2) Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art on The University of Minnesota Press website.

http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/S/suderburg_space.html

(.3) (.4) (.5) pp.23

(.6) pp.24-25

(.7) Miwon Kwon, One place after another: site-specific art and locational identity, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002, pp26.

(quote at the top of blog) pp.27

Claims to Cultural Authenticity in the Apocalyptic World View of Anthropology

James Clifford, “On Collecting Art and Culture”, in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnology, Literature, and Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988, pp.215-251

James Clifford is an American historian who studies the history of anthropology and has thus also had a strong impact in the field of anthropology. He teaches in the multi-disiplinary History of Consciousness department at the University of California, Santa Cruz (.1). In an interesting aside considering Emory Douglas’s presence here at the moment, one of the most famous graduates of that department was apparently Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther party (.2).

The interesting thing about this reading with resonates very much with my own opinions is the way it undermines peoples assumptions about what makes culture authentic. The idea that the various muddled, modern, confusing and changing ways that people express their identities are not expressions of a genuine culture is a mistaken assumption. As Clifford points out this concept is very reliant on an idea that sees industrial society as a force which makes us all the same and somehow puts an end to “authentic” cultures. It is also underpinned by a particular view of time as being linear and moving towards some kind of end point;

“Modern practices of art and culture collecting, scientific and avantgarde, have situated themselves at the end of global history. They have occupied a place – apocalyptic, progressive, revolutionary, or tragic – from which to gather the valued inheritances of Man.”(.3)

This perception of authenticity is quite transparently based in the inability of the culture from which Anthropology sprung to see itself in the same light as that of the exotic other. Clifford goes some way to achieving a more reflexive view of the assumptions tied up in the field by examining the way that the very concepts that underpin the field are subjective to the culture that employs them;

“According to Williams in the eighteenth century the word art meant predominantly “skill”…Culture designated a tendency to natural growth, its uses predominantly agricultural and personal…Art and culture emerged after 1800 as mutually reinforcing domains of human value, strategies for gathering, marking off, protecting the best and most interesting creations of “Man.” In the twentieth century the categories underwent a series of further developments…nevertheless a certain body of assumptions were carried over from the older definitions.”(.4)

Clifford points out that as Anthropology has gained a more reflexive view of it’s own previously held assumptions towards authenticity in the cultures that it studies, this has opened up the field in productive ways. He cites the work of Ralph Coe, who collects and documents objects created for sale by contemporary Native Americans. Coe points out that artifacts “formerly classified as curios, folk art, or tourist art – are located in ongoing, inventive traditions. Coe effectively questions the widespread assumption that fine tribal work is disappearing, and he throws doubt on common criteria for judging purity and authenticity.”(.5) This shift of perspective is fundamentally important for those engaged in cultural activities in Aotearoa New Zealand as it has the potential to shift the somewhat antiquated views that many people have on what constitutes “Authentic” indigenous culture in New Zealand, for example are the ‘ongoing, inventive traditions’ of rap groups an equally authentic representation of Maori culture as a disused traditional instrument in a museum somewhere? Has this new culture become ‘polluted’ by outside influences and lost it’s authenticity? And acknowledging the creative potential of groups to remake and invent ‘authentic’ cultures in new contexts, can we go some way to undermine a perceived cultural lack which many people see in Pakeha and other immigrant groups? How long do these groups have to be separated from their origins before their culture can be perceived as new authentic traditions? Richard Handler, a Sociologist and Anthropologist from the United States writes in periodical Anthropology Today; “Our search for authentic cultural experience – for the unspoiled, pristine, genuine, untouched and traditional – says more about us than about others. Explaining anthropological notions of authenticity will give us yet another example of the startling degree to which anthropological discourse about others proves to be a working-out of our own myths.”(.6)

(.1) James Clifford on wikipedia.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clifford

(.2) History of Consciousness on wikipedia.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Consciousness

(.3) pp.244

(.4) pp.233-234

(.5) pp.249

(.6) Richard Handler, “Authenticity”, from Anthropology Today, Vol.2, No.1 (Feb., 1986), pp.2

The Politics of Reproduction and Distribution

Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, reprinted in Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner ed.s, Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001, pp.48-70

Benjamin was a German-Jewish Marxist born in 1892, he lived in various locations around Germany, France and Europe. He was forced to evade the Nazi’s during world world II and died, probably by committing suicide, whilst trying to flee Europe during the war.(.1) This passage is from his most famous book which has become a seminal work in the humanities.

One passage of this text immediately jumps out as being particularly prescient for close examination in the context of this blog, that is this quote which Benjamin takes from French poet and philosopher of the early twentieth century Paul Valery:

“Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.”(.2)

Paul Valery died in 1945 (5 years after Benjamin) so would never have got to see his predictions come so true as they have in our internet era. Using internet search engines, youtube, blogs etc we can indeed bring images, sounds and cinema into our homes with the movement of a hand. When visual information is made within this context for distribution within this context it begins to make little sense to speak of an authentic original. The Image is utterly dematerialized and becomes almost pure information. Seth Price attempts to predict what ramifications this might have in his text ‘Dispersion’;

“Suppose an artist were to release the work directly into a system that depends on reproduction and distribution for its sustenance, a model that encourages contamination, borrowing, stealing and horizontal blur. The art system usually corrals errant works, but how could it recoup thousands of freely circulating paperbacks?”(.3)

I think this kind of world that Price is describing can already be seen particularly in the world of music as record companies more and more loose control of the distribution of their product, and through sampling a system has been established where ‘contamination, borrowing and stealing’ has become a part of the actual mode of production.

In this mode of distribution which Price is talking about the Aura of the original art object which Benjamin analyses is completely obliterated. Benjamin suggests that the eroding of the Aura of the art object leads art to be released from it's dependance on ritual, possibly with revolutionary consequences;

"the unique value of the "authentic" work of art has its basis in ritual...for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependance on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility...the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice - politics."(.4)

(.1) Walter Benjamin on Wikipedia.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin

(.2) pp.50

(.3) Seth Price, “Dispersion” (2001-2002), a document designed for the catalogue of the Ljubljana Biennal Of Graphic Art 2003 curated by Christophe Cherix, printed as a book with Green Naftali 2003. (pp.3? pages unnumbered)

(.4) pp.52-53

Catalogue as Exhibition Space

Thomas Hirschhorn interview with Hans Ulrich Orbist, Thomas Boutoux ed., Hans Ulrich Orbist: Interviews volume1, Milan: Charta, 2003, pp.393-400.

Thomas Hirschhorn is an artist who was born in Bern, Switzerland. After training as a graphic designer he moved to Paris and joined a communist graphic design collective. He soon quit being a designer and became a contemporary artist. In this text he is interviewed by Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.

In this Interview Hirschhorn discusses his opinions on catalogue essays, he talks about how “A catalogue is often intended to legitimize or revalorize the artwork.”(.1) Hirschhorn rejects this approach, he says that, “A catalogue should inform, create knowledge, and discuss connections and contexts. It should provide space to raise questions, not try to convince me of the work’s validity, and above all it should not attempt to intimidate with its size and sytle.”(.2)

Hirschhorn’s approach acknowledges that printed matter can be considered a site for art exhibition which has different possibilities, restrictions and vernaculars than a gallery space and so offers up the chance for an artist to expand on what has been said in the gallery. They can add to the work or use parallel images and text to open up the meanings of what has been presented in the gallery, or the text/printed matter can operate as a work in it’s own right.

This year three well known New Zealand artist’s presented large shows simultaneously at the Christchurch Art Gallery, we can see the principles that Hirschhorn is discussing here enacted in the three accompanying texts produced by each artist.

Et al produced a show in which the gallery was compartmentalized into sections by screens on which fragmented texts referring to religious fundamentalists etc were scralled over metal trays. The accompanying text which she presented was called the New Zealand Altruism Review (.3) with the subtitle Maintenance of Social Solidarity. The text has an interesting materiality, being printed black and red on News Print. It looks like a handmade newspaper. Overall the aesthetic of the fragmented, hand written texts and the content (refering to Iraqi elections, ‘chosen few’, etc.) offers information which leads our readings of the work in the show, for example we see a roughly drawn illustration of screens used during the Iraqi elections which resembles the screens presented in the show. The connection between the content of the publication and the show is loose and does not close down our reading of the work but does offer some supplementary (albeit confusing) information which helps us to read the work.

Seraphine Pick’s show was a very extensive retrospective. Accompanying her show was a large full colour book that is obviously intended to become a defining catalogue of the artist’s career (.4). The book included texts from various authors and very much attempts to “legitimize and revalorize” Picks career as a painter. Hirschhorn criticizes artists who rely on this strategy but it is perhaps appropriate to do this sometimes with important texts that are intended to showcase an entire career.

Ronnie van Hout also presented a fairly extensive retrospective but he takes an entirely different approach with the book that accompanies his show. Just as Hirschhorn made a self-made catalogue “designed to look like a high school magazine”(.5), Ronnie Van Hout’s book (.6) is designed to look like a children’s puzzle book. He uses this format to good effect, playing off the kinds of games that usually appear in childrens books and incorporating works from his career into the games. By incorporating the previous works into the book, it does in some ways serve the function of a retrospective catalogue but as a whole the publication becomes a new work in it’s own right. The way that he incorporates text and jokes into the games helps the catalogue to “discuss connections and contexts” and “provide space to raise questions”

(.1), (.2), (.5), pp.396

(.3) Et al, "New Zealand Altruism Review; Maintanance of Social Solidarity no.4", printed in association with the Adam Art Gallery, 2008/2009

(.4) "Seraphine Pick", Published by Christchurch City Gallery (?), August 2009

(.6) "Ronnie van Hout's Who Goes There Puzzle Book" published by Christchurch Art Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Who Goes There, July 2009

Western Practice in an Indigenous Framework

Natalie Robertson, “The 10 Predicaments of Maui: Notes on Tricksters”, Brian Butler ed., Volume 1, Auckland: Artspace & Clouds, 2008, pp.16-28.

Natalie Robertson is a practicing New Zealand artist who mainly shows photography. She is involved in a variety of research projects and collaborative practices and is also active as an academic writer. She is a senior lecturer in postgraduate studies at AUT.

Robertson’s text switches between European and Indigenous frameworks. For example she uses Francis Alys’s work as a model for examining the significance of the trickster in Indigenous world-views. She also uses the trickster mythology as a way to understand what motivates contemporary artists. By showing that the activities of contemporary artists can be usefully and effectively understood through indigenous and non-European frameworks of understanding she reveals to us the prejudices and biases of our own ways of understanding these activities.

Robertson’s text shows that there is a place in the stories of indigenous cultures for being inquisitive, for crossing boundaries and shaking up people’s assumptions, the kinds of traits that we would often associate with contemporary artists. She also goes some way to suggest that the kind of wandering inquisitions that we see in post-modern practice is mirrored in the ways that many of these traditional stories are written, shaking up our own assumptions that the two ways of thinking will be radically different.

That fact that she has succeeded in analyzing post-modern practice while incorporating indigenous methodologies is an important achievement. If the legacy of colonialism is to be in some ways undone, it is not enough to attempt to absorb non-western material into the framework of western thought. Writing from an indigenous perspective Maori academic Linda Smith points out in her book Decolonizing Methodologies;

“It galls us that Western researchers and intellectuals can assume to know all that it is possible to know of us, on the basis of their brief encounters with some of us. It appalls us that the West can desire, extract and claim ownership of our ways of knowing, our imagery, the things we create and produce, and then simultaneously reject the people who created and developed those ideas and seek to deny them further opportunities to be creators of their own culture and own nations.”(.1)

By looking at western contemporary art practices through a mixture of western academic and indigenous frameworks Robertson goes some way to help redress the balance of this situation that Smith is so appalled by.

(.1) Linda Tuhiwai Smith, “Decolonizing Methodologies; Research and Indigenous Peoples” Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1999.

Gatekeepers and the Legitimization of Culture

Elizabeth Currid, “The Economics of a Good Party: Social Mechanisms and the Legitimization of Art/Culture”, Journal of Economics and Finance, vol.31, no.2, Fall 2007, pp.386-394.

Elizabeth Currid is assistant professor at University of Southern California's School of Policy, Planning and Development. She studies the sociology of celebrity and pop culture. Her book, The Warhol Economy, published in 2007 by Princeton University Press analyzed the ways that fashion, art and music drive the economy of New York City. This article is taken from the official journal of the Academy of Economics and Finance, in it she analyses the ways in which social mechanisms, i.e. good parties, help to validate art and culture.

Currid uses a sociological approach and emphasizes that casual interactions that may seem peripheral to the serious business of the art/cultural world are in fact crucial to the assignment of cultural currency and the facilitation of cultural distribution. Differentiating between the symbolic value and the economic value of cultural practices, Currid asserts that people she terms ‘gatekeepers’ (.1) are instrumental in assigning symbolic value and helping to transfer this into the economic value of markets through their positions as buyers, curators and dealers etc.

All though she seeks to put special emphasis on Art she collapses distinctions between different cultural fields such as Art, fashion and music, showing that in the cities that she analyses, New York and Los Angeles, the same forces are at work in legitimizing these fields. She points out that;

“Consumers and evaluators of art/culture are not limited to one sector…The social milieu offers the context where these different activities happen at the same time, and those from different realms are able to cross-fertilize in two important ways. First, cultural producers in one realm often act as gatekeepers in another. Successful artists are often looked to as purveyors of good taste in music, while musicians are often sought after to wear designers’ clothes…Second, the increasing commodification of culture means that the skills for one realm of art/culture are useful to other sectors…The ability for art/culture producers to apply their skills to a variety of different sectors allows them to have flexible and longer career trajectories…In other words, art/culture producers have options if they meet opportunity.”

This sociological analysis of the way that art and other cultural fields are differentiated from one another (primarily through distribution) sits in stark contrast to the more lofty idea of the sublime, which is presented by Lyotard(.2). Anyone who examines cultural activities from a sociological point of view can not help but find that the key difference between art and other cultural fields appears to be more a matter of the institutions and businesses which legitimize and distribute art/culture than in any core difference as to the nature of the cultural product being distributed. There seems to be a kind of danger to this analysis that no room is left for an objective standard of quality in art, but there is also a danger in trying to assert any objective standard to a field which Currid emphasizes is “taste-driven and thus needs an intense, subjective evaluation system”(.3).

We can see these ideas put forward by Currid illustrated to some degree in the work of Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija (important to note here also is that although he is a Thai artist it is his residency/participation in the New York and Berlin art scenes which gives Tiravanija international currency).

“In his first exhibitions, for instance, he place the furniture and equipment from the gallery office in the exhibition room, where he also installed a temporary kitchen. Thai dishes were served, and over the meal Tiravanija chatted with visitors, as a pre-planned interaction between artist and viewer.”

(Also important to note here is that, at the openings to these shows those viewers included people whom Currid refers to as ‘gatekeepers’.)

“Tiravanija designs rooms for communication and interaction…Tiravanija thus expounds his thesis – the origin of which may be traced to his cultural connection with Thailand and Buddhism – that “it is not what you see that is important but what takes place between people”.”(.4)

(.1) pp.388

(.2) Jean-Francois Lyotard, “Answering the question: What is Postmodernism?”, trans. Regis Durand, in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984, pp.81

(.3) pp.389

(.4) From an excerpt on Rirkrit Tiravanija in “Art at the Turn of the Millennium”, ed. Burkhard Riemschneider and Uta Grosenick, Taschen, 1999, pp.506

The Sublime / Emotion and Reason / Regret and Assay

Jean-Francois Lyotard, “Answering the question: What is Postmodernism?”, trans. Regis Durand, in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984, pp.71-82

Jean-Francois Lyotard was a french philosopher who died in 1998. In this book, originally published in 1979, La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir he famously summed up the defining feature of the postmodern as an “incredulity towards meta-narratives”(.1). He saw this incredulity as a latent aspect of human thought and thus viewed postmodernism not as a narrowly defined historical movement but an ever-present feature of cognition.

European philosophers of the eighteen century such as Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke were among the first to distinquish between the beautiful and the sublime (.2). Kant asserted that the beautiful has boundaries because it is connected with the form of an object but the sublime is defined by a boundlessness which is beyond the abilities of human cognition. It was asserted by Kant that this resulted in a specific combination of fear and pleasure which was a sublime effect. Lyotard picked up on this concept of the sublime and used it to try and give a unified goal for the varied experimentations that come under the banner of modernism. By undermining the forms and “rules of the game”(.3) passed down to them by older generations, artists strive to more closely define that ethereal thing which is sensed by the viewer as the defining feature of art.

According to Kant, the sublime is a feature of reason but the main way that it is recognized is through an emotional response, which is a combination of fear and pleasure. The sense of a thing outside of our logical cognitive abilities causes an emotional response, which it is suggested compels people to activities such as Art. The connection here between emotion and reason is something quite interesting to me.

In an interview on the DVD “Artists in Focus #2” which was produced for the Biennale of Sydney 2004, American artist Jimmie Durham says, “There is an old, crazy idea that comes from the enlightenment, especially from Descartes that trys to separate reason from emotion and anyone with a little bit of reason can see, these cannot be separated. They’re inseparable. That is so important for the arts, for theatre, for poetry, for the visual arts. It’s so completely important. We’ve taken away the poetry of art in very many circumstances through our constant reasonable critique, as though art could be translated. It’s emotion and logic mixed.”(.4)

This idea that an overemphasis on reasonable critique causes something to be lost in art resonates with another interesting passage from Lyotard’s text where he points out a tension between melancholia and regret on one hand and novatio and assay on the other(.5) On the side of regret he points first of all to the German expressionists and on the side of assay, people such as Picasso and Duchamp. This describes a tension in the experiments of Modernism and Post-modernism between striving for something new on one hand (assay) and the desire to rediscover something that seems to have been regretfully lost (which the german expressions sought in the influence of African art).

(.1) Jean-Francois Lyotard on wikipedia.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyotard

(.2) Sublime (philosophy) on wikipedia.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublime_(philosophy)

(.3)&(.5) Jean-Francois Lyotard, “Answering the question: What is Postmodernism?”, trans. Regis Durand, in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984, pp.80

(.4) “Art as Intellect: Interview with Jimmie Durham”, Artists in focus #2, dir. James Marshall, Craig Judd, Bronwyn Clark-Coolee, Bienalle of Sydney Limited and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2004.

On Received Notions of Criticality

Meg Cranston interviewed by Nico Israel, "Running On Light Feet", from Hot Pants in a Cold Cold World: Works 1987-2007, ARTSPACE & Clouds, Auckland, 2008, pp.6-21

This interview with Meg Cranston is taken from a book published by ARTSPACE and the New Zealand publishing company Clouds when ARTSPACE hosted a survey exhibition of her work entitled Meg Cranston: The Pleasure of Obvious Problems (4 August – 15 September 2007). The show was curated by Brian Butler and included works from various stages of Cranstons art career between 1987 and 2007. I unfortunately missed this show at Artspace but heard a lot about it from friends and have looked into Meg Cranstons work since.

In this interview Cranston mentions a group of LA artists who she admires, or feels a connection with, the are “Mike Kelley, Raymond Pettibon, Jim Shaw, and Liz Larner.” I too have had a long standing admiration and a strong sense of connection with the first three of these artists (I had never heard of Liz Larner). I saw Jim Shaw speak at the Sydney Bienalle, I have long been a fan of Raymond Pettibon’s illustrations starting with his illustrations for punk record covers for bands like Black Flag and Sonic Youth, and I was exposed to Mike Kelley’s band Destroy All Monsters through our tutor Simon Cummings in 2007. I enjoy the way that these people have managed to have active careers as artists by working through a range of cultural fields and by mixing up distinctions between high and low culture (a distinction which my time studying anthropology led me to be extremely cynical towards, especially after being raised in a semi-rural environment which seemed to me to be a complete vacuum of first hand encounters with 'high' culture). She says of the appeal that these artists have for her (pp.15), “I don’t think they’re anti-intellectual or against formal approaches, but they’re against a certain received notion of criticality.” This quote particularly resonated with me and my own approach to making work. Particularly interesting is what she calls “a certain received notion of criticality”. I think what she is talking about is gestures/tropes/aesthetics which become recognizable signs of critical/intellectual/high art thinking. Writing on the difficulty defining what makes Conceptual Art conceptual Seth Price says “Let’s put aside the question of what makes a work Conceptual, recognizing, with some resignation, that the term can only gesture toward a thirty year-old historical movement”(.1). The ‘received notion of criticality’ which Cranston mentions refers to attempts artists and critics make to link work to this historical movement through recognizable gestures. Raymond Pettibon paints with India ink on paper and Jim Shaw uses found paintings from thrift stores. The resulting works have various connotations such as; traditional, unskilled, bad, low (comic book/amateur). I think what Craston finds appealing about these artists is that they do not present a recognizable aesthetic of ‘conceptual art’ but at the same time we can not help but recognize that they are not anti-intellectual or against formal approaches. Their work is not necessarily less conceptual than Conceptual Art but they perhaps they do not feel the need to spell out their criticality in a simple way using obvious tropes.

An interesting comment on the way that people recognize the conceptual nature of work can be found in an interview with Jim Shaw on artist Tony Ourslers website;

TO: A few years ago you developed a major exhibition of hundreds of art works by artists outside the main stream who produced what you call ‘thrift store paintings’. This amazing exhibition toured the US and Europe and was accompanied by a lavish book. Conceptually the project had a great impact on the art public and the high/low dialogue. The issues surrounding this exhibition are important to our generation politically and artistically, and seem to echo around studios today.

JS: Well it wasn’t exactly conceptual, it was taken as conceptual because I went to Cal Arts...(.2)

What this amusing comment brings to attention is the way that a conceptual analysis can be brought by the viewer to any artwork, or cultural activity whether a conceptual critical analysis was intented by the maker or not. This is perhaps why many artists who want to position themselves as conceptual employ and play into ‘received notions of criticality’ which encourage the viewer to bring the kinds of readings associated with the Conceptual Art movement to the work.

(.1) Seth Price, "Dispersion" (2001-2002) a catalogue of the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Art 2003. available from http://distributedhistory.com

(.2) Jim Shaw interviewed by Tony Oursler (Not dated, accessed from www.tonyoursler.com)

http://www.tonyoursler.com/tonyourslerv2/words/interviewsTO/jimshaw.pdf