[-empyre-] Complicity
Christiane Robbins
cpr at mindspring.com
Wed Jan 6 11:24:58 EST 2010
A hyper-condensed tour ( informed and infinitely re-iterated
compliments of academic institutualization )
"Could commodities themselves speak, they would say: in the eyes of
each other we are nothing but exchange values."
Marx, Capital, Vol. 1
Marx introduced his analysis of the system of capitalist economic
relations with an account of the commodity form. Arguably, this form
can be see an the nexus of capitalism as well as offering an mechanism
of understanding the inherent contradiction in what has been posited
here as the aestheticized object. I am using the standby of
“commodity” to specifically address the impact of the ‘art market” in
relation to the ’aestheticized object” as it has been discussed thus
far.
Commodity capitalism also fully developed the notion of use value –
Wolfgang’s Huags’ Critique of Commodity Culture, 1986? (in which he
concludes that commodities possess a double reality: the buyer values
the commodity as a means of survival whereas the seller sees such
necessities as a means for valorization. In other words, first they
have a use value and secondly they have the appearance of a use value
which is essentially detached (welcome to our 21st c brandscape.)
Both Marx and Haug suggest that fethishization of the commodity is for
the consumer the fetishization of use. The abstraction of labor which
may well serve as the basis of the fetish quality of commodities is
not something that we, as consumers, can easily comprehend as it
triggers our inability to fully understand or imagine non- fetishized
use values. It is in Haug’s account of commodity aesthetics where he
views human sensuality as wholly inscribed in the appearance – the
surface play - of use value. We then view use value as abstracted and
permutated into market value.
George Lukas aligns this trajectory with his position on reification
in his seminal History and Class Consciousness, 1971. Lukas’s
designation of reification is pivotal to our discussion in that it
suggests that once labor exists as the abstraction of human activity,
it extends its influence to human qualities and personality as well.
Reification then explains the transformation of commodity fetishism
into the realm of the human experiential.
“ The transformation of the commodity relation into a thing of
ghostly objectivity” cannot therefore content itself with the
reduction of all objects for the gratification of human needs to
commodities. It stamps its imprint on the whole consciousness of man;
his qualities and abilities are no longer an organic part of his
personality, they are things which he can own or dispose of like the
various objects of the external world. And there is no natural way in
which man can bring his physical and psychic qualities into play
without their being subjected increasingly to this reifying process.”
Central to both Lukas and Haug’s position re: the commodity form is
that they both suggest that under capitalism the qualities of being
human and the attendant sensual dimension of one’s experiences are
objectified and abstracted – or detached from people and their
activities. Hence they become commoditized and, subsequently,
“reified” or “aestheticized.” The problem then presented is how does
one rupture this process as to recuperate and reaffirm these human
qualities that the commodity form (so generously offered to us via
Taylorization) negates through its abstraction.
Enter Adorno and Negative Dialectics, 1973 – which, to my mind,
embodied a remarkable potential for reclaiming and rethinking art
practices under capitalism. It is dissimilar to the concept of
reification in that it anticipates fetishism as a tension between the
abstracting forces of domination and their (e)utopian antithesis. It
strikes me that the question that we are grappling with here is one of
reconciling this contradiction…. and negotiating with Adorno’s
aesthetic of contradiction that is inherent in “modern works of art.”
Adorno had written Negative Dialectics as an inescapable expose of the
more mundane world – of the quotidian- where ND stands in opposition
the homogenization of “mass culture” – a culture where standardization
is marketed as a signifier of quality and the breadth of qualitatively
diverse cultural forms is translated and materialized into the design
details of commodities. This position, of course, stands in
opposition to the plight of the 30’s and 40’s modernism, which adapted
the principles of Taylorization to respond adequately to crisis
affecting humanity across the EU and NA in ways that prove difficult
for us to imagine today. I am referring here primarily to
architecture and design practices as opposed to visual art.
Perhaps we should inject this concept of ND into our contemporary
brandscape that now represents the Taylorization of consumers as well
as objects. Rather than fragmenting generalized notion of consumers
into discrete and manageable units, our brandscape positions the
consuming subjects as capable of ( if not vulnerable to ) being
simultaneously attached and interpolated from a number of different
sources…. with the mechanisms of social networking serving as an ideal
vehicle for its implementation. Perhaps this is, in part, what Simon
refers to as the “remediated self” and ‘dark matter that mediates our
social contracts” -
The global capitalist landscape of the early 21st c is quite literally
and figuratively overly saturated with an unfathomable number of
reproductions/copies of works of art (primarily of that of the “great
masters “ – from Michelangelo and Leonardo to Cezanne and Monet to
Warhol and Thomas Kinkaid). Is it probable that we now be find
ourselves thrashing about over a struggle over meanings – some of
which often define cultural commodities in conflicting ways…. and that
leave the practice of contemporary artist unmoored.
In response to an earlier reference to Jenny Holzer, the 1980’s
reflected a time when neo-conceptual art aka appropriation art stood
in opposition to the conventions of media and advertising. Irony
prevailed, as did the critique of the commodity – resulting in what
has been identified by some as a radical take on consumer culture. I
believe it was Gary Indiana who slyly coined it “market art.”
Perhaps, the greatest irony of all is that this critical art came into
existence at a time when art was inextricably intertwined and totally
dependent upon the market. In other words at a time when, in
essence, any real degree of agency – of criticality - was simply not
feasible. Where does this expectation – this myth - of agency come
from – the marketplace itself?
“Artists themselves become the historians of their own impossibility
to survive their art.”
What I’ve witnessed for the past 15 yrs or so is a voracious appetite
for the archive – for indexing – that played nicely into the emergence
of database aesthetics. The celebratory re-inscription and of
cultural legacies – of the historical – (even of our own practices)
bears an uncanny and, to my mind, problematic resemblance to the
courts of the 18th and 19th Beaux Arts. This is especially troubling
in any consideration of the role of the academy itself.
I believe it was Virillo that recently said something to the effect
that: art today doesn’t need any interpretation, it has enough
problems proving that it just exists and that it has a legitimate
presence – a quote I do have of his is:
“the accident of art could be that it no longer has any reason to
exist….”
The question for me ( perhaps for us all) then becomes: Is it
possible to re-emerge from such an exhaustion of re-interpretations
upon re-interpretation and the concretizing thereof? Where do we find
that innovative spring that someone alluded to in an earlier post?
All best,
Chris
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