[-empyre-] For whom is art "made"?

Tue May 13 08:13:38 EST 2008

Dear all empyreans,

It's a lot of time since my last contribuition to this community. I
just would like to make a few remarks on this problem of "who is art
for".  I'd like to suggest some ideas that I believe should be
considered:

1) art is made for those who have need of it; it's always been a
paradox that many art works commited with different kinds of freedom
operations have been understood just by a minority of people. However,
art is not supposed to be entertainment, a Bienal is not a Disneyland;

2) art is adressed to different audiences, it depends on who the
artist wants to talk to, and this kind of consideration may interfere
in the decisions concerning creative choices: although it may sound
weird for some, it is possible to be an artist in large massive
difusion sistems, just like in pop or rock music circuits, or comecial
cinema -- although there's a price to pay when you decide to address
such large audiences and to inhabit such production circuits -- it is
an entirely different game to play. Madonna plays it very well, be her
a good artist or not. On the other hand, if you consider Lygia Clark
in Brazil, bringing schizophrenic people inside her home to experiment
her "therapy"devices, it is an absolutely different choice; or Helio
Oiticica, bringing a Samba School into de Museum of Modern Art in the
1960s; or Ricardo Basbaum with his object which travels world wide to
be signified by one person or one group at a time; or Joao Modé with
his "Rede" crafted with the collective contribuitions of a whole
community, with different genders, ethnics or social classes engaged
in weaving a collective net. So, in this sense, art is made for whom
the artist wants to speak to;

3) if we believe in art works, one must consider what did they mean as
a symbol of the supposed "individual freedom" in capitalism during
Cold War: to have worderfull and highly sponsored Biennals and
exhibitions, showing all kinds of poetic decisions and creative
strategies has indeed been a way to show such an image of this side of
the wall -- for the other side of the wall and for ourselves. So, it
doesn't matter how much we believe that artists have been autonomous,
they have been appropriated by power structures and used to promote a
system of power. It is easy to notice how fast public sponsoring
growingly disappears from all important exhibitions starting from the
early 1990s on, when art has lost this kind of role in the global
political arena. It will thus be more and more dependent on corporate
money. However, the fact that they have been used in such disturbing
opperations of ideological propaganda does not diminish art works' and
gestures' strenghth in making experience and thinking radically
different possibilities and landscapes of the present, thus creating a
singular field of knowledge which is perpassed by all other fields but
cannot be determined by none. By inhabiting this space oppened by
Cold-War struggles, art has enlarged our landscape of reality with all
kinds of clandestin discourses, different subjectivities, thus forcing
a "partage du sensible" to happen in completely unexpected and
unplanned and also quite uncontrolled ways -- thus multiplying the
ways of making meaning of our world;

4) Given this, and given the political expectations that many hold
concerning the immediate impact of artistic propositions, one should
not think that art, for itself, will save our world; what is more
important is to understand that, without it, there's not much to save,
since the world will be turned into an enormous controlled and
surveilled productive and funcional "inteligent" anthill.

warm whishs from Brazil

s

--

On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 9:44 AM, Eduardo Molinari
<archivocaminante at yahoo.com.ar> wrote:
> I'm with you GH,
> when I talk about "images", I was tryng to
> say that we are talking about visual art... today,
> and today image-sound-words are visual art.
> But, all these tools, also our bodies,
> are our competence inside of contemporary visual art sistem.
> I mean, is not teather, dance, music field.
> I'm not tryng to divide for nothing,
> but is hard to think about "art" without
> some specifications.
> Also, is still no clear if we are talking
> about private or public culture, in your words.
>
> About "manufacturing". Yes, I know that sounds capitalistic,
> but is not the sense for me of this expression.
> I'm tryng to be incisive with the concept of "cultural industry",
> because this is a blanket that covers our work,
> specially in the "third world".
> An industry without workers? an industry without manufactures?
> is a border, I know, but is a tool for our discussion,
> because our "manufactures", our "work"
> could be defined with another words, but...
> how lives an artist?
>
> is a little funny that we don't like to "manufacture" images,
> but we like to "sell" them?
>
> GH, is really good to think together about this point,
> thank you very much.
>
> eduardo
>
>
>
> Eduardo Molinari / Archivo Caminante
> Aramburu 880, Dto.1 (1640) Martínez
> Provincia de Buenos Aires – Argentina
> 0541 1 47 98 48 35
>
>
> --- El sáb 10-may-08, G.H. Hovagimyan <ghh at thing.net> escribió:
>
> > De: G.H. Hovagimyan <ghh at thing.net>
>
> > Asunto: Re: [-empyre-] For whom is art "made"?
> > Para: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> > Fecha: sábado, 10 de mayo de 2008, 10:22 am
>
>
>
> > >  think that is better to define this. My answer is
> > trying to think
> > > about this: manufacturing images today.
> >
> > gh comments:
> >
> >   I  disagree with this idea.  Art can be made from sound
> > for example
> > or text or interventions that have no images other than an
> > incidental
> > documentary image.  I even dislike the idea of
> > "manufacturing."  It
> > represents a capitalist notion of making of objects to be
> > used as a
> > commodity in the art market.  Indeed, the most advanced art
> > ideas try
> > to neutralize the market and dispense with a fixed object/
> > image. The
> > actual process is to enhance the creative experience for
> > the artist
> > and those who participate in the process. It's a
> > misnomer to call this
> > interactive art.  It may be more about creative situations.
> >  It's not
> > about all the world becoming artists.  Thats another market
> > ploy. That
> > odd notion is what is at the core of web 2.0 . The only
> > possible
> > position for an artists is to define themselves in
> > contradiction to
> > these notions.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > empyre forum
> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
>
>      Yahoo! Encuentros.
>
> Ahora encontrar pareja es mucho más fácil, probá el nuevo Yahoo! Encuentros http://yahoo.cupidovirtual.com/servlet/NewRegistration
> _______________________________________________
>
>
>
> empyre forum
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>

-- 
-- Prof. Dr. Sérgio Roclaw Basbaum
-- Coord. Tecnologia e Mídias Digitais
-- Pós-Graduação Tec.da Inteligência e Design Digital - TIDD (PUC-SP)