[-empyre-] response to Julian

[Marc Leger]

Julian,

Not only did the SI publish in their journal there is now a
considerable literature on this postwar avant-garde move ement that
you can dig into.

My main response to you on the subject of "queer relational," which so
far I have been very much reading in light of Bourriaud, is that a)
following Peter Burger, I distinguish between bohemian, historical and
neo-avant-gardes (with subsequent discussions that have derived from
this) and b) I don't think that queer is the same as avant-garde for
reasons I explained in my text.  In print I've disputed Montreal
critic Johanne Lamoureux's idea (see her entry on avant-garde in
Amelia Jones' collection on Contemporary Art) that post-structural
notions of hybridity of identity operates as an avant-garde.
Schulte-Sasse makes similar points in his introduction to The Theory
of the Avant-Garde.

It's true that for Adorno modernism is caught up with culture industry
and in his "Transparencies on Film" refers indirectly to Kluge's work
as an acceptable "postmodern" compromise.  Negt and Kluge and their
theory of the Proletarian Public Sphere is of course the
unacknowledged inspiration of Michael Warner's Publics and
Counterpublics and may be of interest to you.  My own formulation,
which would not be the same as Adorno's is that the contemporary
artist always dies twice: the first time as formal autonomy, the
second as culture industry.

Marc


Hmm, perhaps the term Institutional Critique was formalised (institutionalised?)
then but this direction in artistic practice, as I understand, was considered
vital to European Situationism out of disappointment and criticism of the
absorbtion of Surrealism into the museums and the art market. Situationist
International prohibited  the pursuit of an 'art career' by any of its members,
among other more famous reinforcements of intent.

Being true to form the situationists were not strong at documentation and so
there is little in the way of essays in university journals - lest of all
articles in art magazines - to clearly outline these sentiments.

Adorno however would say that the Avant Garde /is/ a pure expression of
modernism altogether, that queer and vanguard practices are anticpated, even
encouraged, by his Culture Industry..

Cheers,

Julian Oliver
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