[-empyre-] poets patrons and the word academic
Christiane Robbins
cpr at mindspring.com
Fri Jan 8 05:05:59 EST 2010
I would totally agree with you Christina.... and appreciate the
ethical issues to which you refer.
However, there is contradiction between the strategies of market
based practices and ellicitation of of empathy that needs to be
addressed. The ellicitation of ( culturally specific) empathy is a
value inherent in the work of innumerable artists, arguably it is not
a value that is highly prioritized in the market system ( of course,
that can change as consumer demand dictates.)
I, too have admired Chris Jordan's work and used it in my classes and
referenced it in lectures for the past few years. However, I view his
work as an accident of art as opposed to a practice that was borne
specifically from the market system- including the academy/MFA round-
about. My understanding is that Chris has successfully stepped out of
the structure of the art market ( although he now has gallery
representation ) and smartly injected his work into the larger
cultural and social discourse - i.e speaking at TED last year and
aligning himself with structures apart from the art market/system
that are conceptually tied to his work.
Many thanks for bringing this up as I'm certain it will evoke a # of
responses -
Chris
On Jan 7, 2010, at 7:44 AM, Christina Spiesel wrote:
> All,
>
> I must have been in my thirties (raising kids in a city) when I
> realized what luxuries my middle class morals were. Not that they
> were no good, but that many features would look different from a
> position of poverty. Example? Honesty.
>
> There is one concept that seems more deeply grounded because
> hardwired in most of our brains, and that is empathy. And this
> brings me back to the arts. I realize that for those deeply
> committed to certain kinds of identity politics, this may seem way
> off, but it seems to me that one of the pleasures and important
> features of the arts is that they can elicit empathy and feed it all
> kinds of data. And this is a moral/ethical act.
>
> Not necessarily flowing from the previous, for me one of the most
> deeply political artists who is at the same time a maker of beauty
> and depth, is photographer Chris Jordan. http://www.chrisjordan.com/
>
> The collection at the top of the page, Message from the Gyre is
> being recirculated all over the Internet now. I use examples from
> Running the Numbers in teaching because law cases often have to deal
> with numbers either so big or so small that no one really can
> apprehend them.
>
> Have a great day,
>
> Christina
>
>
> Simon Biggs wrote:
>>
>> Hi David
>>
>> I agree with many of your definitions of bad, which basically boil
>> down to the following. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
>> Exploitation of others is bad. Not taking responsibility for your
>> own actions is bad. I agree with you because, like you, I am
>> socialised to agree that these are shared values.
>>
>> However, these are the elements of a moral framework which derives
>> from and informs a social system – which is a set of contingencies.
>> My argument was that this system is not absolute. For example,
>> animals often do things which we would consider bad. They will
>> exploit others and pass the buck. They do this to survive. When
>> they behave in a manner that we consider “good” they do so because
>> it benefits themselves or members of their immediate community in a
>> manner that enhances their survival. They behave “badly” for the
>> same reason. The shared moral systems people have developed are
>> also a survival strategy. We can dress them up as “good” and “bad”
>> - but we should be honest about why we do what we do and have the
>> values we have. It is to survive, individually and collectively. It
>> is not because the social mores we share have intrinsic value. If
>> you entertain that idea then you are into the domain of faith.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Simon
>>
>>
>> Simon Biggs
>>
>> Research Professor
>> edinburgh college of art
>> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk
>> www.eca.ac.uk
>>
>> Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
>> CIRCLE research group
>> www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
>>
>> simon at littlepig.org.uk
>> www.littlepig.org.uk
>> AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk
>>
>>
>> From: davin heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com>
>> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 14:30:12 -0500
>> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] poets patrons and the word academic
>>
>> Sorry to take my time getting back to your question, Simon. I am
>> still mulling over David Chirot's comment, too (although I think
>> that the question of "dangerous" poetry hiding code is an
>> interesting and rare official admission that art is precisely about
>> some of the very things we have been talking about here. And that,
>> we should reflect on just why someone might be hasty to define a
>> certain work as "bad."
>>
>> I do think that outcomes matter. But there are many other aspects
>> to determining whether something is "good" or "bad." For instance,
>> I think that the level of ignorance under which a person acts could
>> be considered "bad," if the person shows no reasonable effort to
>> figure out whether or not what they are doing is in fact bad. In
>> this sense, carelessness could be a kind of badness (I certainly
>> make many mistakes in this way). If a person is employing a means
>> that is widely understood to be harmful, with predictably harmful
>> effects. Using another person in any way against their will (or
>> without their knowledge), especially if it is going to determine
>> their future, is something that is potentially really bad. Passing
>> the buck.... letting someone else make a decision which you could
>> have made yourself is also a kind of badness. But at the end of
>> all this, I think that the key factor is the interval imposed on
>> decision-making. If we take decisions away from the automatic,
>> impulsive, and assumed responses, and pause to reflect upon them
>> (the purpose for the action, the means of acting, the presumed
>> outcome, and the actual outcome) we move from being thoughtless to
>> being thoughtful, unreflective to reflective.
>>
>> On the other hand, we have, I think, lost our overall sense of
>> what's bad.... mainly because we cleave to imposed standards for
>> moral behavior. We (and I am speaking especially about the sort of
>> dumbed-down moral sensibilities that I know best.... the ones that
>> operate in the US) have a tendency to reach for the sort of
>> shorthand "values" that are defined in American political life (Do
>> they prefer one set of sexual behaviors over another? Do they
>> prefer one set of substances over another? Do they support certain
>> types of killing and oppose others?). You can take this shorthand
>> even further, and just boil it down to a handful of profiles (Are
>> they white/other, straight/other, christian/other, etc?) and then
>> you don't even have to worry about goodness and badness at all. If
>> you fall in one camp, you could be helping seniors cross the
>> street, saving kittens from burning buildings, changing tires for
>> strangers stranded on the motorway... it doesn't matter... you are
>> generally going to be regarded as "bad" (or at least "fishy")
>> according to the shorthand. Conversely, if you fall in the other
>> camp.... you can get away with a lot of badness provided you
>> regard your privileged status with some respect. (Look at Tiger
>> Woods.... so he's a married guy who had sex outside of
>> marriage.... that's a solid month of headlines and moral outrage.
>> But, say, you're a good ol' boy like David Vitter, and hire a
>> prosititute dress you in diapers behind your wife's back... you
>> will remain in the senate.) But if you put both of these things in
>> the grand scheme of global badness.... they are trivialities.
>> They might be hurtful for the particular families involved.... but
>> they are not harmful in the same way, that say, Monsanto might be,
>> as the fight for a monopoly of the world's food supply. What it
>> means is that we have lost our ability to even begin thinking about
>> right and wrong.
>>
>> To fold this back into a discussion of art, I think art can help us
>> introduce the interval back into daily life. It doesn't
>> necessarily tell us what to do with that interval, but it reminds
>> us that there can and should be interruptions in what otherwise
>> might be a monotonous, automatic flow of life. Even the various
>> "movements" are primarily concerned thinking about the various
>> aspects of work (the concept, the process, the materials, the
>> product, the thinking about art, etc). As "art" (artifice), art
>> implies a tension with those things that aren't art (the What-would-
>> have-happened-if-you-hadn't-made-art-or-hadn't-made-it-in-this-
>> way). It is always a conscious intervention into the non-
>> conscious. To turn to skating.... I think that skating would fit
>> in this category as it is introduces improvisational uses of places
>> that are typically prescribed. Going back many years, is the
>> slogan, "Skateboarding is not a crime." And I think this is a
>> funny one.... because skateboarding has historically been quasi-
>> criminal. Not because it intends to be criminal... but because it
>> is defined by using ordinary things in unordinary ways. Hackers do
>> this with computers. Poets do this with language. Artists make us
>> think about the space, time, and duration of the present... and I
>> think we experience exhiliration in this because it reminds us, at
>> a deep level, of who we are, what we really care about, that we can
>> think, feel, imagine. And, as a personal value statement, I like
>> those works which inspire us to think, feel, and imagine broadly
>> about solidarity, interconnectivity, and love. So, I don't care
>> what form it takes, as long as it is there to generate a social
>> order outside of the imposed social order.... to replace the false
>> "social contract" (the one that is imposed and enforced) and in its
>> space to offer the possibility of an actual social contract
>> (produced by the desire to enter into relationships of with others,
>> and to commit to those relationships across differences, to
>> sacrifice to those relationships, to find happiness in them). In a
>> way, I guess I am saying that "good art" is "good," not in the
>> conventional moral sense, but because it tends to render its users
>> complicit with an alternate mode of acting... that it leads to
>> reflection, consciousness, awareness. And bad art tries to
>> distract from this mode of critical engagement, and preserves the
>> recieved order.
>>
>> But now that I am thinking about it.... it all strikes me as a lot
>> of flakiness. Maybe it's only an idea. Maybe I just want my
>> artists to be my heroes. But even if life is lived as the futile
>> pursuit of a desired ideal.... it seems, in the end, better than
>> one which is lived in psychological obedience to the managment.
>>
>> In any case.... I hope you are having a good day.
>>
>> Davin
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 5:23 AM, Simon Biggs <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
>> wrote:
>> One could argue that the primary value of art is not in its
>> outcomes, whether an artefact is good or bad, but in how it
>> operates as the “dark matter” that mediates our social contracts.
>> In this respect one can consider art as folded into creativity per
>> se and not privileged as it has traditionally been. Skateboarding
>> culture binds people together as much as the opera. The creative
>> forms that are skateboarding and opera are incidental to the social
>> operations executed as creativity.
>>
>> In this context what is good or bad? Can one conceive of bad social
>> contracts?
>>
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Simon
>>
>>
>> Simon Biggs
>>
>> Research Professor
>> edinburgh college of art
>> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk <http://ac.uk>
>> www.eca.ac.uk <http://ac.uk>
>>
>> Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
>> CIRCLE research group
>> www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ <http://ac.uk/circle/>
>>
>> simon at littlepig.org.uk <http://simon@littlepig.org.uk>
>> www.littlepig.org.uk <http://www.littlepig.org.uk>
>> AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk
>>
>>
>> From: davin heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com <http://davinheckman@gmail.com
>> > >
>> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au <http://empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> > >
>> Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2010 12:37:25 -0500
>>
>> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au <http://empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> > >
>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] poets patrons and the word academic
>>
>> Simon,
>>
>> I agree with your post, wholeheartedly. But would add an extra
>> emphasis to your statement and suggest that it might be a "bad" idea
>> to deny the contingency of relative axes of value. Sometimes, there
>> is a tendency to push art into purely aesthetic or purely moral
>> scales
>> of relation, and I think there is something important about
>> evaluating
>> the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. It is find to impose
>> a separation between form and content, as long as people acknowledge
>> that this itself is a word-game. The beautiful and the grotesque are
>> never purely aesthetic, but they are expressions of ideas, social
>> relations, philosophies, etc. I think there is something great about
>> engaging and arguing over questions of values that can lead to
>> progress, provided, of course, there are certain values to which
>> people are going to accept (either willingly, by hammering out a
>> minimal sort of social contract, or through coercion, simply imposing
>> them). It is a hard-handed approach to social existence, but social
>> existence is what we make it, and if we don't make it widely
>> agreeable.... then it will be, as it is today in most parts of the
>> world, increasingly disagreeable (and even murderous). The
>> disengaged
>> view (which says there is nothing to agree upon, so just worry about
>> yourself) is increasingly ugly. There might have been a time when
>> being venal and trivial was considered brilliantly clever.... but
>> today it just seems obvious. Early on these moves might have
>> conveyed
>> an unpleasant truth about art's complicity... but I think this is
>> something that most people kind of understand (that artists, styles,
>> ideas are promoted by institutions in accordance with market logics).
>> And I think this is why you see such a bloom of great works that
>> convey such a strong desire for sketching out and cultivating a
>> social
>> consciousness, that might start with a foot in the art world, and
>> might make use of those institutions, but which yearns for something
>> else (see, for instance,
>> http://vectors.usc.edu/index.php?page=7&projectId=57). In some
>> cases,
>> this desire for social existence is not even political in the
>> conventional sense (I recently sat in on a children's workshop
>> sponsored by the Minnesota Center for Book Arts
>> <http://www.mnbookarts.org/aboutmcba/aboutmcba.html> and spent some
>> time in the Robot Store in Michigan <http://www.826michigan.org/>,
>> both of which are examples of a wider interest in teaching
>> communities
>> how to make... More importantly, they teach people that art is not
>> something you appreciate.... it's something you use.
>>
>> Take care.
>>
>> Davin
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 5:06 AM, Simon Biggs <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk <http://s.biggs@eca.ac.uk
>> > > wrote:
>> > Good and bad are relative concepts, being the poles of an axis of
>> value.
>> > That axis might be personal or public but it is always
>> contingent. It does
>> > not exist as an absolute geometry but is variable, depending on
>> context.
>> > That context is prescribed by other values of equal contingency.
>> >
>> > Art is a relative concept. Some people consider something to be
>> art, others
>> > do not. There will rarely be agreement and it will not include
>> everyone. You
>> > cannot please all the people all the time.
>> >
>> > It is only a good idea to get into arguments about relative
>> concepts if you
>> > enjoy interminable word-play and the ultimate outcome of agreeing
>> to
>> > disagree.
>> >
>> > Best
>> >
>> > Simon
>> >
>> >
>> > Simon Biggs
>> >
>> > Research Professor
>> > edinburgh college of art
>> > s.biggs at eca.ac.uk <http://s.biggs@eca.ac.uk>
>> > www.eca.ac.uk <http://www.eca.ac.uk>
>> >
>> > Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
>> > CIRCLE research group
>> > www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ <http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/>
>> >
>> > simon at littlepig.org.uk <http://simon@littlepig.org.uk>
>> > www.littlepig.org.uk <http://www.littlepig.org.uk>
>> > AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk
>> >
>> >
>> > ________________________________
>> > From: davin heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com <http://davinheckman@gmail.com
>> > >
>> > Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au <http://empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> > >
>> > Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2010 19:13:43 -0600
>> > To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au <http://empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> > >
>> > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] poets patrons and the word academic
>> >
>> > Maybe bad art is art that does a "bad" thing. There is art which
>> > tries to make a moral evil look like a moral good (take, for
>> instance,
>> > nature photography that is used to give a notorious polluter a
>> > positive reputation.... or, say, propaganda which seeks to
>> convince
>> > people that a human rights abuser is a human rights defender.)
>> Yet,
>> > even art which seeks to tell a lie, at least has the good sense to
>> > know that the fictional utopian world is preferable to the grim
>> > realities that they mask.
>> >
>> > Then there is the kind of badness is that which wants to wash its
>> > hands of ethical considerations, altogether. I would argue that
>> works
>> > that aestheticize violence might fit into this category. There are
>> > plenty of games, for example, which have no content beyond the
>> > representation of killing as fun. But I would also lump purely
>> > capitalistic "art" into this category.... think about high-concept
>> > movie merchandise (novelizations of films, picture book
>> adaptations,
>> > direct to video sequels, coloring books, soundtrack theme songs,
>> > etc.). For every dozen crap trinkets, the manufacturer could
>> > concievably hire an actual artist to make something meaningful....
>> > but instead they choose to flood the world with garbage, made in
>> > sweatshops, that hurts the minds (and sometimes the bodies) of the
>> > people who consume them. (But you could argue that the mindless
>> > acquisition of tripe represents a different utopian impulse,
>> working
>> > in an archival/d-base aesthetic).
>> >
>> > And then there are those works that are productively complicit....
>> > that exist in the zone between two worlds... the kinds of things
>> > which might fit into one system, but which create change in
>> another.
>> > I think of the many movies that actually do make me think, but
>> without
>> > the heaviness that comes with message films... (I think that
>> Where the
>> > Wild Things Are, for instance, is a great movie that goes beyond
>> > simply cashing in on children's desire).
>> >
>> > As always, where somebody begins is an interesting thing. But
>> where
>> > people are going, or trying to go, is much more so. It is always
>> > fascinating when someone betrays their narrow interests in favor of
>> > broader ones.... Or when someone unexpectedly questions their own
>> > biases. Even if people end up in the wrong place, there is
>> something
>> > to be said for effort, intention, affect, etc.
>> >
>> > Happy New Year!
>> >
>> > Davin
>> >
>> > On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 8:40 AM, G.H. Hovagimyan <ghh at thing.net <http://ghh@thing.net
>> > > wrote:
>> >> gh comments below:
>> >>
>> >> On Jan 3, 2010, at 4:30 AM, Sally Jane Norman wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> where and how do/ can we draw the line between bad art and bad
>> causes?
>> >>
>> >> gh comments:
>> >> Bad art is an aesthetic decision that is subjective. I've seen
>> in my
>> >> lifetime art that was considered bad to become re-evaluated as
>> good.
>> >> Actually I think the aesthetic kick is in playing with that
>> >> contradiction and skating close to the line of bad art and bad
>> taste.
>> >> Otherwise good taste and good art turn into so much decoration. I
>> >> don't know what you mean by bad causes but in terms of art I
>> would say
>> >> that when you make art as a political statement its propaganda
>> rather
>> >> than art. If you make art to make money it's commerce rather than
>> >> art. If you make art to illustrate a particular theory or piece
>> >> demonstrate a piece of software it's illustration. I think the
>> only
>> >> proper cause for making art is to advance the art discourse or
>> >> critique it or expand the aesthetic milieu.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> G.H. Hovagimyan
>> >> http://nujus.net/~gh <http://nujus.net/%7Egh>
>> >> http://artistsmeeting.org
>> >> http://turbulence.org/Works/plazaville
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> empyre forum
>> >> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au <http://empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> >
>> >> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> >>
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > empyre forum
>> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au <http://
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> >
>> > Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in
>> Scotland, number
>> > SC009201
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > empyre forum
>> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au <http://
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> >
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au <http://empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland,
>> number SC009201
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland,
>> number SC009201
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
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> _______________________________________________
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