[-empyre-] Bare Life --forward from Conor McGarrigle

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

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Hi All

Sorry for my late arrival to the debate, problems with internet cafes.

I was fascinated with the debate of New Orleans and sorry I missed  
the flow of the debate. I briefly visited there a few years back and  
it struck me as a very unamerican city, that is a city that doesn't  
fit in with this idea that we are receiving, particularly as  
Europeans, of what America stands for today. Even then it was a  
surprise what happened. In recent times I think of what has been  
happening in the US as a slipping of the mask, guantanamo, Kathrina  
every time a little bit more of what made America great slips away  
and we're face to face with  bare life in the US empire.

When GH says he doesn't believe bare life has anything to do with art  
I'm inclined to agree. Art is a poor refuge faced with illness,  
death, disasters, prison camps but at the same time  wa are close to  
bare life these things are never very far from us and perhaps today  
closer then ever. If art matters and is not
 a diversion (divertissement) or
entertainment. It is not about teaching (didacticism) or the
marketing of high priced objects for the idle rich.


it must deal with these things. Still it's not easy. I grew up in the  
70s in Ireland during the troubles - what we called a 30 year war the  
T word was almost never used which is why we can now deal with the  
combatents from both sides - there was much art made about it most of  
it failed in any attempt to deal with the horror of what was going  
on. This is the problem, we need to deal with bare life but its very  
hard.

hope to particiapting more frequently and more fully next time

Conor

On 7/7/06, G.H. Hovagimyan <ghh@thing.net> wrote:
I don't believe that bare life has anything to do with art.  We are
all on the edge of a potential tragedy.  Since I am of a certain age
people around me are succumbing to various diseases. My brother-in-
law is lying in a hospital bed in a stupor from a brain aneurism.  My
poor sister is suffering terribly. One day everything is fine, the
next you are confronted with your fragile world as it collapses.

  I live eight blocks north of the world trade center. My windows
face the buildings. I saw the planes crash into the buildings as I
was doing my morning exercises. I saw the people jumping from the
burning buildings. No it was not on videotape for me it was "bare life."

I have a second home in northeastern Pennsylvania.  Huge rainstorms
and snowmelts have flooded the Delaware River as well as many creeks
and streams in the area.  People lose their homes. One teenage girl
in Livingston Manor became paralyzed with fear and could not jump to
safety as her home was swept away by the floodwater.  The floods are
classified as one hundred year floods but they have occurred three
times in the last three years.

I consider myself lucky.  The World Trade Center didn't collapse on
me, I am not yet in a hospital dying and I still have a home.

It is almost impossible to make art about the WTC attack.  It is an
enormous physical disaster as well as an information event. The same
may be said of the New Orleans disaster that is still unfolding. The
psyche of America is disturbed. It is now operating on a believe
system that has no basis in reality. This narrative and its larger
reality make a fitting subject for art.  The reduction to bare
essentials, to mere survival, does not create the conditions for
art.  If anything the art makes a counter proposition. For example,
concentration camps are mentioned in the original Bare Life,
question.  How does one make art about concentration camps?  I can
think of several examples, Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus or Mel
Brooks comedy film and Broadway play The Producers or Liliana
Canvani's 1974 film The Night Porter or the 1960's TV sitcom Hogan's
Heroes. I'm sure there are many more but these are the ones that come
to mind.  They are not documentaries. They do not bear witness to the
events. What they do is process a collective trauma and re-balances
the human psyche.   This then is the true nature and value of art and
the artist. The artist makes it possible to continue living in spite
of a shattering event.  Make no mistake; art is not social work or
psychoanalysis. Most of all it is not a diversion (divertissement) or
entertainment. It is not about teaching (didacticism) or the
marketing of high priced objects for the idle rich.  True art does
not make one comfortable. What it does is reorder our sense of the
world and our internal narrative.



G.H. Hovagimyan
http://nujus.net/gh/
http://post.thing.net/gh/






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