[-empyre-] some thoughts on complicity

[virginia solomon]

this conversation about complicity, and in particular the thoughts about the
ways in which models of critical engagement and aesthetic judgment are no
longer applicable to certain forms of contemporary art practice, is very
exciting! and timely, for the work that I am currently doing on canadian
artist group general idea. I think that much of the group's practice is
about presenting a model of art in which the rigid binary between
criticality and complicity is entirely inapplicable.

I am working on a project that gi did called >Test Tube< in 1979 where they
specifically talk about this binary, and present an alternative that they
call trendy responsibility. http://www.eai.org/eai/title.htm?id=9897 . this
trendy responsibility isn't really a roadmap of any kind, because what gi's
practice is very much about is presenting art as a part of popular culture,
flattening the dialectic between art and popular culture that structures
both high modernism/formalism and a more 'engaged' notion of the
avant-garde. for gi, this distinction didn't exist. in >Test Tube< in
particular, they are experimenting with how to make their art legible and
accessible within a popular format, ie television. true to gi's MO of
occupying many positions and striving for many levels of meaning, though,
they also present themselves within the old mode of the avant-garde project
to collapse art into life. and I think this also engages with our discussion
of complicity. because, if contemporary life, as any number of theorists
tell us, is about greater and greater levels of commodification, then what
is collapsing art into life? if life is commoditized and art is collapsed
into life then art is commoditized. or that seems to be gi's argument. as
johanna and others have put much more eloquently than I, if there is no
outside (and through foucault and bulter, not to mention general idea
themselves in statements from this very video) then complicity becomes a
non-issue because everything is complicit. the question then becomes what
models do we use for engagement and judgment, in addition to practice (not
that engagement and judgment aren't themselves practice)? personally I think
that this is where queer theory and the queer cultural practices from Warhol
to ACT UP that inform queer theory have much to contribute. but I am curious
about what other people think!

thanks to all the contributors for a wonderful discussion. I look forward to
the rest of the month on this topic!

-- 
Virginia Solomon
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