Re: [-empyre-] Do You Still Your Own Reality?

[Brett Stalbaum <stalbaum@ucsd.edu>]

Hi Randall,

Given, yes. But it raises some interesting questions. At this moment 
(politically/tactically) is it most effective (or interesting) for 
artists to perform their own "pre-emptive reality annihilation" (or 
perhaps: envisioning an alternative future and trying to instantiate it 
as the Rove's of the world seem to do quite successfully), or to 
"culture jam" any such (nearly psychotic) right-wing reality distortions 
(using them as art supplies and comic fodder - seemingly easy to do), or 
perhaps to formulate an art practice that turns to and engages with (or 
grapples with) the real maintaining a general goal of producing tools 
(be they analytic, aesthetic, software, hardware), that are useful for 
individuals in terms of formulating their own, more congruent readings 
of the real? All? Something else?

Randall Packer wrote:

> This, Mathieu, is an example of pre-emptive reality annihilation. If you 
> have all the military might in the world, and 50 million right-wing 
> Christian fundamentalists behind you, you can drive those nostalgic 
> reality worshippers into the ground. You can invent your own reality and 
> you can take it all the way to Babylonia and create your own apocalypse, 
> now...
>
> > Here is an extract from an extraordinary article by Ron Suskind which 
> > goes to the heart of who exactly George W. Bush is, what he stands for 
> > and what his faith-based convictions and policies means for the rest 
> > of us:
> >
> > In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that 
> > the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications 
> > director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. 
> > He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me 
> > something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I 
> > now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
> > The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the 
> > reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe 
> > that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible 
> > reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment 
> > principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the 
> > world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and 
> > when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that 
> > reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other 
> > new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will 
> > sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be 
> > left to just study what we do.''
> >
> > You can read the rest there:
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position= 
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
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--
Brett Stalbaum
Lecturer, psoe
Coordinator, ICAM
Department of Visual Arts, mail code 0084
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gillman
La Jolla CA 92093