Re: [-empyre-] Re: commodification [Whispering in the Dark]

[marc <sparkle@c-level.cc>]

Christina McPhee, James and the rest of empyre,

> overcoming the anomie and drift conditions of modernity

I wonder if overcoming a phsychological sense is actually so possible. 
Or if overcoming anomie and drift are worthwhile political aims. Or if 
to overcome anomie is just a neurotic response to anomie.. that maybe 
its healthier to come to terms with it instead.

Perhaps anomie and drift are conditions that just are... we can address 
conditions that create anomie and drift...

Reading Allan Sekula's Fish Story might represent an alternative 
narrative, but the key word is represent. The majority of human 
experience is on the concrete plane, when one puts down Fish Stories, 
we may immediately stumble upon encounter anomie.

But either way, I don't see anomie an issue.

> But surely now new media works in a way such that images start to live 
> counter, contra, lie in wait for truth.

That may be true. But What are we going to do with the realization of 
the contradiction? Realizing something is really less then half the 
story. There can be constant realization... as such a plethora of 
detournemants, of anti-bush websites. Anti-cheney flash videos. A class 
of action known as "billboard liberation." All great... but.....

>  articulation becomes 'meaningful' relative to context, to the sense 
> of place, to the issue outside the hermetically sealed world of image 
> propagation.

Yes. But also what meaningful articulation doesn't always become 
meaningful because of either its context or what it is articulating.
And of course, one groups meaningful articulation is another's jabber.
And concretely, an issue becomes meaningful because it fits within the 
hermetically sealed world of image propagation... Rumsfeld's reality is 
meaningful to the extent that the camera AND ALSO social maintainance 
(an relatively smooth and uninterupted supplying of food, water and 
oil) allows him to propose his policies. The narrative is the 
table-dressing on top of it all, a "reallity" that anyone who looks 
sees is false, and yet remains because the US Military is still in Iraq 
and cameras still interview and broadcast Rumsfeld.

And now we talk about him. And he becomes special.

Now back to commodified discourse and detournment or meaningful 
critique in art-work. All good... accept there is an abundant market 
and conversation about this. Supporting this abundant flowering is a 
the equation detournement=political or meaningful website=political 
change.

Or am I wrong. Is the equation actually just detournament=cool or 
meaningful website=cool?

And If I am not wrong, is then their a verdant economy missing on 
behalf of the concept of "political change?"  What does political (or 
social change) mean. What does it look like? How is that expressed?

Read Yael Grauer's essay, an Open Letter to Kalle Lassen- a great and 
succinct complex investigation of the whole notion of the 
representation of dissent and detournement.
http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/4/issue4.php?page=grauer


Marc




> Critical process, of which the FBI is apparently oblivious, involves 
> recontextualization of a gesture, like Steve's experiments, into 
> another realm, so that an otherwise hidden problematic can open up to 
> view, can be given place: in Critical Art Ensemble/Steve Kurtz's 
> instance, the whole problem of genetically modified food production. 
> Surely this is par excellence a "meaningful articulation".   Surely 
> this is a re(coup)eration, seizing, of the real.