-----Original Message-----
From: Saul Ostrow <sostrow@gate.cia.edu>
Sent: Mar 12, 2006 3:29 PM
To: "Christiane Robbins @ Jetztzeit" <cpr@mindspring.com>,
soft_skinned_space
<empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>, soft_skinned_space
<empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Moore N = c
part of the problem is that students are learning ( an therefore artist/
teachers
are
teaching) the algorithm as written by those who were/ are engaged in
institutional
critique -- now, we all know the institutions 9museums, galleries,
curators,
critics,
theorists, historians) loved this critique because it gave all power to
them.
this
approach whcih places blame and there fore volition with the system actually
empowers
those institutions to appropriate and define cultural production - rather
than
merely be
a condition of such production - This took the burden off the artist/
audience,
who in
turn were happy to be relieved of all obligations to engage in the
construction/
maintance of the cultural subject -- Modernism/ post-Modernism dis-struction
of the
cultural subject emposwered them to be passively and knowingly passive -- as
a probe: it
might now be time to re-read Marx's thesis on Feurbach - and
re-contextualism
them in
terms of culture rather than history --
---------- Original Message -----------
From: "Christiane Robbins @ Jetztzeit" <cpr@mindspring.com>
To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 13:49:08 -0800 (GMT-08:00)
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Moore N = c
Wow .... the narrative for this algorithm is so ... cute ... its almost
endearing.
However, we are just skimming here and I find when this surface slide
remains
unexamined, it becomes somewhat problematic. This penchant for glibness
may
well be informing the dialectics of this conversation ... and/or it may
simply
be adding to the paradox.
Further thoughts?
Best,
Chris
JETZTZEIT
" ... the space between zero and one ... "
Walter Benjamin
Los Angeles _ San Francisco
California
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 01:59:13 -0500
From: "Saul Ostrow" <sostrow@gate.cia.edu>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Moore N = c
To: "Christiane Robbins @ Jetztzeit" <cpr@mindspring.com>,
soft_skinned_space <empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>,
soft_skinned_space <empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Message-ID: <20060313065502.M4988@gate.cia.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
I'll only respond to this point -- the institutional critique assumed that
one could
creat political change via cultural means -- which was a reiteration of an
enlightenment
principle which pre supposes consciousness leads to action -- my point is
that we have
confused consciousness with action in that the critique replicates the
instituional bias
it is meant to expose - transparency is meant to define the target - now that
we know
what thispart of the dynamicis how have we changed our practice substantially
- rather
than merely reactively
Marx on Feuerbach - ‘the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the
point
is to change it.’ Isn't that one of the trajectories of the institutional
critique?
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 09:16:22 -0500
From: "G.H. Hovagimyan" <ghh@thing.net>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Moore N = c
To: "Christiane Robbins @ Jetztzeit" <cpr@mindspring.com>,
soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Message-ID: <8A6DE1DF-FE30-4EEC-9649-1776CE4A4AA5@thing.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; delsp=yes;
format=flowed
gh comments:
I think the question is who defines what art is? And also who defines
what an artist is? Antonin Artaud talks about that is his essay, No
More Masterpieces from the book Theatre and its' Double. Maybe
someone on the list has the exact quote but I'll paraphrase,...."each
generation has the right to define in their own terms in their own
way what is means to love, hate, feel loss and so on. Let the plays
of the past dwell in the past. No more masterpieces." There is
another dynamic at work in the topic for the Documenta proposed by
Beurgel, that is the learnedness and the weight of history that
people in the art world work with.
I went to the DIVA (NYC) this weekend and saw a lot of video art.
One piece that struck me was a video of a young Chinese man's face.
The video was him doing a series of video-performance works. On piece
was of him putting elastic bands all over his head to distort the
skin. He then slowly cut them off. The elastic bands left the
inevitable crisscross trails on his face. This piece was exactly
like the work of a 1970's Austrian artist whose name escapes me. He
used to do the same thing and photograph the results. He called them
Farce Faces. The work of course come from what children do when they
are playing with elastic (rubber) bands and their parents aren't
looking. I've encountered this with Mainland Chinese Contemporary
Art. They are doing work that is 1970's process/ body/ conceptual
art. So my question is, is this a cultural colonialism? Is this the
Chinese playing catch-up with Western Modernism? Does Artaud's
dictum apply here?
What I suspect is that the art world would rather deal with an art
form that is familiar such as video or conceptual art than try to
seriously integrate digital art forms into the discourse. Simply put
most curators are not trained to deal with computers.
In any case I said in my first post that performance art was perhaps
the most promising thread of discourse to come out of modernism.
Perhaps that is what is happening with the Chinese. It is interesting
to come back around to the initial question "Is Modernity our
Antiquity?" and wonder what the "our" means.
My original art algorithm is an art work made specifically for this
venue (on line discussion). It has no value in the greater art
world. It has no use value. It doesn't exist for any other than the
few people that read about it here. It is, however, art.
http://nujus.net/gh/
http://post.thing.net/gh/
http://spaghetti.nujus.net/rantapod
http://spaghetti.nujus.net/artDirt
On Mar 12, 2006, at 9:01 PM, Christiane Robbins @ Jetztzeit wrote:
We may well be dealing here with merely one interpretation of the
"institutional
critique" of the late 80's and a rather overarching one at that.
Your email
draws your assumption as fact when you state that "we all know the
institutions
... loved this critique because it gave all the power to them." I
don't know
this to be the case. Point in fact, I doubt that it carried that
much weight when
it was first introduced - and that being in the USA. The resistance
to this critique
that I witnessed when its tenets were introduced was memorable ....
and this email
speaks to its staying power.
On the other hand, if you are implying that the proponents of the
institutional
critique have now been incubated and absorbed by "the Borg", and that
we are now witnessing a incestous, mannered, iteration of that
critique ( ie. Andrea
Fraser's lastest work ), then you may have a point. Then again, it
becomes necessary
to offer an analysis of the cultural machinations of the past 15 -
20 years which
have led us to this point and, again, it is not an a facile
summation of modernism
or post-modernism ( please note that this is not at all the same as
notions of modernity.)
Of course, my own POV is within the USA, but given the cultural
tremors ( especially
in the art world/s) of this centrifugal force, I believe that its
influence has
been far reaching and contributed a viable sense of agency to
numerous cultural
producers. Larger political, economic and nationalistic forces have
been introduced
during the past 15 years which have undermined individual agency
and subjectivities
- and this has not at all been limited to visual art practices, not
to producers
nor to various cultural institutions. We have not been operating in
a vacuum, that
is without question.
Trans-medial and trans-cultural perceptions of artistic practices
produce imaginary
patterns which overlap but are not identical to our own
individuated, inhabited,
material realities. It is this interaction of the material, the
cultural and the
imaginary that offers an infusion of richness to the topos of this
conversation
- especially relative to the socio-economic impact of globalism,
capitalism, consuming,
notions of modernity and yes, passivity. Passivity is an
increasing ( and, yes,
alarming ) mode of being in the world - especially in the USA.
This is due to so
to so much more than the hubris implied in thinking that this was
due to modernism
and/or post-modernism as it played out in the visual arts.
Marx on Feuerbach - ‘the philosophers have only interpreted the
world, the point
is to change it.’ Isn't that one of the trajectories of the
institutional critique?
Thanks for the discussion -
Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: Saul Ostrow <sostrow@gate.cia.edu>
Sent: Mar 12, 2006 3:29 PM
To: "Christiane Robbins @ Jetztzeit" <cpr@mindspring.com>,
soft_skinned_space
<empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>, soft_skinned_space
<empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Moore N = c
part of the problem is that students are learning ( an therefore
artist/ teachers
are
teaching) the algorithm as written by those who were/ are engaged
in institutional
critique -- now, we all know the institutions 9museums,
galleries, curators,
critics,
theorists, historians) loved this critique because it gave all
power to them.
this
approach whcih places blame and there fore volition with the
system actually
empowers
those institutions to appropriate and define cultural production -
rather than
merely be
a condition of such production - This took the burden off the
artist/ audience,
who in
turn were happy to be relieved of all obligations to engage in the
construction/
maintance of the cultural subject -- Modernism/ post-Modernism dis-
struction
of the
cultural subject emposwered them to be passively and knowingly
passive -- as
a probe: it
might now be time to re-read Marx's thesis on Feurbach - and re-
contextualism
them in
terms of culture rather than history --
---------- Original Message -----------
From: "Christiane Robbins @ Jetztzeit" <cpr@mindspring.com>
To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 13:49:08 -0800 (GMT-08:00)
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Moore N = c
Wow .... the narrative for this algorithm is so ... cute ... its
almost
endearing.
However, we are just skimming here and I find when this surface
slide remains
unexamined, it becomes somewhat problematic. This penchant for
glibness
may
well be informing the dialectics of this conversation ... and/or
it may
simply
be adding to the paradox.
Further thoughts?
Best,
Chris
JETZTZEIT
" ... the space between zero and one ... "
Walter Benjamin
Los Angeles _ San Francisco
California
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empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre
------------------------------
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End of empyre Digest, Vol 16, Issue 15
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