Re: [-empyre-] on meaningful articulations : strategies

["rherbst@journalofaestheticsandprotest.org" <rherbst@journalofaestheticsandprotest.org>]

Deborah and all the empyre,

----"world of culturejammingTM, but they also seem,
perhaps, to be in defence of retreating from activism
in a cultural arena altogether. (her bio suggests that
she has given up 'activism' per se in favour of...
farming?)

I doubt if Yael will ever give up activism altogether, but I am some one
who generally likes to think of art in the old 
school term of "art in the expanded" field, and likes to ascribe (maybe
innapropriately) political action to several 
seemingly non-political actions. I am not talking about various forms of
discourse that prescribe "resistance" to such 
non-political actions as tv watching or film viewing, but I certainly find
a load of radicalism in agriculture (the oldest 
variety of culture) when done in particular manners. 

----"And I thought about the limitations of artwork about
outside-of-art things in galleries, vis Sekula's work.
(side query: is he really called the 'last Marxist
standing'? What is Martha Rosler?) I do struggle -all
the time- with wondering how artwork about, say,
fishing practice, WORKS when confined to a gallery,
but I absolutely resist dismissing it.
I (rhetorically) ask myself, do I wish all
gallery-based art really did just provide lounge
decorations for the powerful? and do I think the
audience for the gallery-based work is without value?
I guess those are my bottom lines in building habits
of embracing resistances where they may be found. "

I think the operative term here is "confined". When gallery work is
confined by the market, or by the artist, or by the 
academy this becomes an issue, ESPECIALLY when the work purports to be
political. Artists (and activists) do have 
the ability to unconfine their work even in the most conservative
situations. Christina brought up the curation of 
Shamim Monin, who I would agree has done some great projects with distinct
artists in seemingly dead 
environments(see my article
http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/new3/index.php?page=rherbst,
which 
discusses an exhibition by the artist Katie Grinnan coordinated by Shamim).
Whether the artwork or artist  links itself 
to a readily accessible "infrastructure of resonance" 
(http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/new3/
index.php?page=thompson) in the form of direct affinity or alliance, or it
activites more transparent resonances that 
are aesthetics or formal - both are strategies for unconfining work.  When
an artwork chooses to be confined by the 
boundries that all to often work against its Immutability, than I have to
ask why is it that the the artist is allowing 
themselves to be just a painting on the wall, just a rock in a gallery,
just another peice of "political art". 


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