Re: [-empyre-] new questions-Abu Ghraib and the image

[Susana Mendes Silva <arslonga@netcabo.pt>]

Hi empyre

the reply of G.H. raises new questions! and also the contribution of  
Christina.

On Jul 21, 2006, at 3:25 PM, G.H.Hovagimyan wrote:

> Hi SMS,
>
> There's a TV show and web site called, "how art made the world that  
> talks about the power of the image and how it has been used  
> throughout history by sovereigns to assert their power. Going back  
> to Agamben, it is the sovereign that creates both the polis and  
> through the ban or excommunication the bare life.

"The political and existential position of ‘the refugee’, and  
progressively of entire populations as the link between ‘State’ and  
‘Nation’ dissolves, is that of what Agamben calls ‘bare life’ (vita  
nuda). Ancient Greek distinguished bios, ‘political’ life, from zoé,  
the same animal or ‘bare’ life to which Nazi law required that the  
individual be reduced by cancelling her national citizenship before  
she could be sent to die in the camps. ‘Bare life’ refers to body’s  
mere ‘vegetative’ being, separated from the particular qualities, the  
social and historical attributes that constitute individual  
subjectivity". (in  Matthew Hyland, http://www.physicsroom.org.nz/log/ 
archive/13/refugeesubjectivity/#10)

> Art is always wrapped up with those in power. It is used to  
> represent power.

I disagree with the "always"...that means that you too are wrapped  
with those in power. are you?

> The Abu Ghraib images are aesthetic, composed presentations of  
> power images.

I see them as a document of revenge and of subjugation. the images by  
themselves are not art. they were made as a trophy like the  
photographs of all tortures related to camps, to dictatorships and to  
wars.


> The debate in art is who decides what is art? The answer is that  
> the artist defines what is art.  Trying to work through the 21st  
> century media-scape and produce art is an interesting endeavor.  
> Artists are slippery characters. They may need the support and  
> patronage of the powerful elite but they are not on anybodies side  
> but the side of art and creativity.

what is art is defined by us, artists, by curators and by critics too.
maybe artists are not all slippery characters as you depicted them,  
maybe they are free thinkers.


> Richard Serra took the most iconic image of Abu Ghraib, the hooded  
> man in chains standing on a box with his hands out stretched like a  
> Christ figure and made a paint stick drawing and billboard. He  
> immediately recognized the aesthetics of the situation.

like you said he "took", he used the image as a reference to use in  
his work.
the image by itself - in the document context - is not art. the  
reference or the appropriation of this image or parts of it had  
became art because artists used it.


> The larger debate for all of us is how artists can live and expand  
> creativity while critiquing the power structures that support the  
> activity of art. One can be excommunicated from the art world.

if an artist would/could be excommunicated from the art world...that  
would mean that as an artist she/he had started to live a "bare life"?

Christina described the Drawing Center incident.
I wonder in what situation, as an artist, is now Amy Wilson? Is she a  
persona not grata or is she seen as an artist with a critical  
approach by the artistic community?




susana mendes silva
www.susanamendessilva.com
arslonga@netcabo.pt