[-empyre-] Revison

[Sally Jane Norman]

Kia ora 

torn as usual between being fascinated, impressed, intimated and irked by highly articulate, headily referenced contributions and grateful to all for generous insights (perpetually haunted nonetheless by Levinas et al as to how far giving equates with need for recognition which is a pretty basic social driver that fortunately keeps lists like this up in the air but that's an ants' nest aside...).

All this discussion about the complicit and compliant and good and bad and values and meta-physics (in or out of bed) etc has me curious about the scope of references being used across the list, and Saul's mention of tactical and strategic action brings to mind something from 2007 which all of you probably know about all too well, but which I continue to find intriguing so am forwarding by way of an indirect contribution.

best wishes from snowy sussex habitus

sjn 
(simultaneously over-identifying with multiple irreconcilable positions expressed in this forum, thus reduced to flotsam and citational expedients)




On 29 Oct 2007, at 12:06, Ned Rossiter wrote:
From: 	  info at bavo.biz
Debate and booklaunch: Cultural Activism Today, The Art of Over-Identification
Witte de With, center for contemporary art, Rotterdam 
On the 3th of November, a debate will take place at Witte de With, Rotterdam, on BAVO’s recent book, published by episode publishers,
Cultural Activism Today, The Art of Over-Identification and the possibility and desirability of alternatives to critical and utopian artistic strategies.
Participants are: Maria Hlavajova, Jeroen Boomgaard, Jonas Staal and Wim Nijenhuis.
www.episode-publishers.nl/art/activism.htm
www.bavo.biz

What would happen if art stops with relentlessly criticizing the existing state of affairs, or with passionately producing alternative visions and utopias for today’s late capitalist society? What if art would, on the contrary, fully identify with and affirm the prevailing norms, values, practices, etc., even adding some oil to the fire? The latter would, in other words, demand of artists to no longer automatically assume the role of the ‘good guys’, the eternal idealists, dreamers, etc., who always try to make the best out of the current situation, pushing the system to be something other and better than it is. It would, inversely, ask of them to stop protecting society from what it wants and turn it into the worst version of itself, so as to confront it with its own unsustainability and undesirability.

This is the central tenet of the book Cultural Activism Today. the Art of Over-Identification, edited by the theoretical collective BAVO and published by episode publishers. The volume is a provocative intervention in current debates within the field of art about strategies of resistance, paradoxically summoning artists to   stop resisting. In general, it wants to question the effectiveness of critical and utopian artistic strategies in offering resistance to the current state of affairs, instead pleading for an art of over-identification. The book contains essays by Boris Groys, Alexei Monroe, Dieter Lesage and Benda Hofmeyr and refers to works of artists such as Santiago Sierra, Christoph Schlingensief, Jens Haaning, Irwin, Laibach, Martijn Engelbregt, AVL and others.

Book: Cultural Activism Today, The Art of Over-Identification
BAVO (editors)

________________________________________
From: empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Saul Ostrow [sostrow at cia.edu]
Sent: 10 January 2010 04:59
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: [-empyre-] Revison

Having once embraced our  (our compliance) – might we ask: first, what it is that we are participating in and secondly, does our being in  “collusion” (cooperative)  give us a rhetorical (commendable) position  to advance (toward an objective) - or are we forever limited to making tactical  moves within the domain (episteme, habitus) we occuppy, rather than being able to formulate  strategic and self critilcal goals – It would seem to me   that  the promise of our complicity lies in the former rather than the latter


On 1/9/10 7:02 PM, "Sean Cubitt" <scubitt at unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

Having once embraced our complicity – might we ask: first, what it is that we are participating and secondly, how our how does our being in  “collusion” (cooperative) might give us a rhetorical (commendable) position  to advance (objective) - or are we forever limited to making tactical  moves within the domain (episteme, habitus) rather than  strategic ones – and doesn’t our complicity lie in the former rather than the latter

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