[-empyre-] response to Marc's response to Christiane

[Christiane Robbins]

Hi Marc,

Apologies for not responding any sooner but have just returned from  
holiday....

Perhaps its simply that the mental fog that has not altogether  
dissipated from the festivities ... however, I'm troubled by your  
response and am uncertain if it is a response to my earlier informal  
post or concretizing  your own positions for the group - not that they  
are mutually exclusive.  Rest assured, I understand your post - just  
not in response to mine.  By way of example -  " First, from my  
perspective, one cannot simply map on heteronormativity to biopower "   
- I'm uncertain as to what you are referencing - ?

Rest assured, that I am not locked into dialectical thinking - far  
from it.   My position was not to divide Institutional Critique in two  
camps, nor have I mapped the straight/gay issue into a binary  
positioning, nor a binary layering onto class struggle. Point in fact,  
I've long viewed these issues as inextricable. My intent was simply to  
point out that practices which are now commonly referred to as  
Relational Aesthetics - have a long history in contemporary art and  
conceptual practices - i.e. Sol Le Witt in 1970 piece acknowledging  
the transactional underpinnings of the art world and pricing his work  
basically on a sliding scale ( the price correlating to one's income  
level.)  This history is not often acknowledged within the rather  
narrow trajectories of Relational Aesthetics.  The earlier events and  
practitioners seemingly stepped outside the dialectic of their times.   
My questioning has to do with the contemporary exercise of relational  
aesthetics ... and if, indeed, it steps outside of the dialectic or  
merely produces a surface play deflection, as dialogue and consensus  
are primary tools of the dialectic, no?  Hence, my early use of the  
term mannerist.

In response to your question re:  Lawler, Fraser ( later,)  Kolbowski  
- I have long situated these artists ( + theorists such as Butler,  
Derrida and Ronell )  in many of my syllabi and curatorial programming  
in the interstitial and rather fluid, hybrid spaces of conceptual art  
practices - feminist art practices, neo -conceptual, etc.   For those  
familiar with my own practice - hybridity has been a hallmark, as has  
been a a refusal to accommodate facile categorizations.

However, relative to the directives of this month's focus, I had  
merely raised these points relative to queer art practices and the  
systemic machinations of the art world.  Further to the point, please  
help me understand exactly how one is interested in the avant-garde  
critique of aesthetics without having, however fleeting, an interest  
in aesthetic models and the historicity from which they rise.

and ...  in retrospect ... my sincere apologies for not having the  
time necessary to devote to formulating a cogent analysis suitable for  
a formalized debate in this forum.  I'm deeply engaged in my own  
projects at the moment.... and taking a bit of break from theoretical  
posturing.  However, I am interested in the subject of queer  
relational aesthetics and its contested domains.

Thanks again for a lively discussion -

Chris



On Jul 4, 2009, at 11:37 AM, Marc Leger wrote:

> hi all,
>
> sorry for the repetition of my text - some problems with the server  
> resulted in mine and Christina's efforts to fix the problem leading  
> to repetition.
>
> i would like to first respond to Christiane and hopefully I'm not  
> confusing people's comments here
>
> first, from my perspective, one cannot simply map on  
> heteronormativity to biopower - of course you can do things with  
> words but from a political viewpoint it relies on taking Hegelian  
> dialectics (or is it Agamben's use of Foucault in Homo Sacer) and  
> suggesting that the concrete universal is heterosexuality - as I  
> stated in my text, from a psychoanalytic perspective, this just  
> doesn't work - it's the flip side of the equally problematic utopia  
> of polymorphous perversity
>
> in this sense, I also disagree with the idea that we could divide  
> institutional critique into "two camps" (again, mapping straight/gay  
> onto the idea of class struggle, if I understand this assertion  
> correctly): one that derives from the queer initiatives of the  
> exhibition at American Fine Arts and an earlier stage based on  
> Asher, Buren, Haacke, Willats.  as well, what do you do with people  
> like Louise Lawler, Andrea Fraser and Sylvia Kolbowski? this to me  
> is an especially significant problem in the historiography of the  
> shift from Abstract Expressionism to Neo Dada and Pop Art.
>
> lastly, I would say that I'm not in any way interested in "queer art  
> practices" in the same way that, as a theorist (rather than as a  
> critic working in a manner before the death of the author), I am not  
> interested in aesthetic models (dialogical aesthetic, relational  
> aesthetics, etc) but in the avant-garde critique of aesthetics.   
> Bourdieu, who insists in his own way on the shift from desire to  
> drive, is an important reference for me.  again, from my  
> perspective, you can't map queer on top of avant-garde and use the  
> same Hegelian Marxist underpinnings.  in some ways Judith Butler's  
> work has been the best effort at this though of course it begins -  
> in Gender Trouble - with a rich mix of sources in feminist theory  
> and psychoanalysis.
>
> marc
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre




C h r i s t i a n e   R o b b i n s


														- JETZTZEIT -
... the space between zero and one  ...
Walter Benjamin


LOS ANGELES    I    SAN FRANCISCO


The present age prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to  
the original, fancy to reality,
the appearance to the essence
for in these days
  illusion only is sacred, truth profane.

Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804-1872,




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