[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 62, Issue 13

[Gerry Coulter]

Re; "But once it enters into materiality....  once it is cast into the realm of
representation...  I don't know how it can avoid being entangled and
burdened by the stuff it is made of (its words, its substance, its
space of presentation, its framing discourse, the interpretive
traditions around art)."

Indeed, what you are into now is Meaning and art's encounter with language. Language here stands in for Meaning which is eternally absent. 

best

g



________________________________________
From: empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of davin heckman [davinheckman at gmail.com]
Sent: January 14, 2010 3:21 PM
To: soft_skinned_space
Cc: soft_skinned_space
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 62, Issue 13

Gerry, I hate to continue pushing on a point...  because I don't want
to be a pest.  At the same time, I'd like to get a better
understanding of your comments.

I do believe that art could very well be the product of some
primordial impulse, that it might be useful to assign it something
resembling a transcendental value.  Certainly, this is the way I
experience my most gratifying ideas when I write stories, cobble
together poems, draw, or just kind of sit around and think about the
kinds of jokes that only I laugh at.  I think we could also assign a
similar sort of singular existence to individuals and events.

My real question, however, is about the transition from something
singular to a representation.  Sure, at the point of origin, I am
totally willing to accept the idea that art is an enigma.  But once it
enters into materiality....  once it is cast into the realm of
representation...  I don't know how it can avoid being entangled and
burdened by the stuff it is made of (its words, its substance, its
space of presentation, its framing discourse, the interpretive
traditions around art).  Maybe it enters into the social, not with an
obligation (in the sense of, "You artists really should stick up for
so-and-so"), but it does start accruing value in the sense that it
engages viewers to respond.  It becomes ladened with responsibility in
the sense that it no longer exists purely as an enigma, but
immediately evokes interpretation.  The more enigmatic works, here,
become more compelling because they generate meaningful
interpretations....  but compelling works also (imo) tend to be
enigmatic enough to engender multiple interpretations.  They resist
being "fixed," but our minds struggle to "fix" them.

For me, the real "punch" in art is that it carves out space for
indeterminacy not BEFORE its execution....  but that its indeterminacy
expands the interval BETWEEN its creation and consumption.  In other
words, its fecundity is in the space between artist and audience.  It
connects the singular aesthetic experience of creation to the singular
aesthetic experience of consumption....  marking the meeting of two
entities who are radically other vis-a-vis the object.  In other
words, it offers something like "presence" via representation.

Respectfully,

Davin



On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 5:14 PM, Gerry Coulter <gcoulter at ubishops.ca> wrote:
> Art is not responsible to anyone or anything. Neither should academics feel the need to speak for others.
>
> It is nice when are makes the world more enigmatic -- artists who disentangle themselkves from theory do the world a favour. Art is amoral, irresponsible, it ceases to be art when we make it otherwise.
>
> Political art and political theory share the same overwrought character. Art is stronger than politics and morality -- it comes from a time before politics, from elsewhere.
>
> best
>
> g
>
> ________________________________________
> From: empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of davin heckman [davinheckman at gmail.com]
> Sent: January 12, 2010 12:19 PM
> To: soft_skinned_space
> Cc: jhaber at haberarts.com; soft_skinned_space
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 62, Issue 13
>
> This is shaping up to be an interesting week on Empyre.  Thank you, everyone.
>
> Sometimes, I think it is good to think about art, politics, criticism,
> theory, morality, etc. from a naive perspective, a sort of psychic
> backtracking, so that we follow the paths that we have avoided in the
> past, and imagine what would be if we were not where we are today.
>
> The knot of art, theory, politics, and  commerce that we live in right
> now is singular, and so it is treacherous to extrapolate this into a
> general theory of how artists or critics or anyone should operate (in
> fact, all speculation is fraught with peril, because other people do
> and want other things).
>
> If art is not meant to communicate, what is it for?  Is it for the
> artist to express him or herself?  If so, then for what end?  I don't
> want to burden art with too much of a redemptive mission...  but at
> the very least, I think art ought to be communicable in some way.
> That the event can be reproduced (as a concept, as a record, a trace,
> an object, a text, whatever)...  that it is has to go from one person
> to another person in some way that intervenes against the flow of time
> and space.  Art has to refer to an idea that at least one other person
> (even a hypothetical one) could agree upon.  To offer the most meager
> definition of art, at the very least, it could be like the words in
> your head that give shape to your ideas.  Undoubtedly, our brains do
> things.  Animals' brains do things.  But when we put these neural
> actions into representation, whether we share this representation or
> not, we enter into that socially constructed space outside of the
> whatever-would-have-happened-had-we-not-intervened (nature?  the
> animal?  physics?).  Now, this is a naive explanation of art.  It
> ignores many of the specifics that determine what we think about when
> we talk about art today.  It even lends art a certain "innocence" that
> might be a good conceit to work under, but which itself is just an
> artifice erected against doubt.  But I think it also ties the notion
> of art to politics in the sense that art always has something to do
> with the other (the other who it aims to represent, the other who is
> its intended audience, the other who it is supposed to be hidden from,
> etc.)  Art, as long as it is made and has any meaning, would seem to
> be concerned with communication of some sort.  And thus it seems that
> it cannot easily be untangled from the moral, the ethical, the
> political.  Furthermore, anything that expresses human will could
> conceivably be formed in the awareness of how this will effect others
> (friends, enemies, nations, environments, species...  even, perhaps,
> yourself....the other that you will become).
>
> What limits we want to draw around introspection and moral
> accountability are things that we might be able to hammer out some
> kind of agreement on.  We might even be able to establish some system
> like the one sketched out by Matthew Arnold, where artists do the
> primary work (and make the messes) while critics do the lesser work
> (present the work as socially valuable).  Maybe we can hammer out some
> other system of art....  with no critics, but just robots which count
> "diggs" and direct individuals to works that were sufficiently "dugg"
> by people like you (with a little bit of extra recommending going to
> sponsored content --yuck).  In any case, figuring out just what the
> relationship between art, criticism, and audience carries with it
> moral implications.
>
> But to just say that art and politics or art and theory do not belong
> together, while it might solve some historically specific problems we
> have today with art institutions, theoretical fashions, a debased
> public sphere, and out of control financial markets....  We live in an
> age where capitalism has radically separated itself from moral
> concern.  It is a social invention that we treat as though it operates
> through natural laws, and should protected from human intervention,
> protected from "art."  The greatest artifice in the history of
> civilization....  and its priests proclaim it beyond art, beyond
> representation, beyond control.  I don't know what we gain, what
> artists gain, by following the examples of a degraded culture.  I
> don't know why artists should resist social, moral, political
> intervention.  I don't see why artists should disentangle themselves
> from the responsibility of theorizing their work.  Or why artist
> should be shielded from criticism, either.  (On the other hand, I can
> see why artists might want to avoid the sort of normative stances we
> associate with Theory or Politics, as these terms relate to
> "respected" schools of thought).  And if we are looking at "radical"
> interventions....  I cannot see how art can intervene against a system
> which is, at its root, hostile to culture, community, life....  by
> removing itself from the very kernel of hope that we have....  the
> idea that maybe we ought to take better care of each other.
>
> Davin
>
> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Saul Ostrow <sostrow at cia.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Pragmatically, it would seem that it is necessary tactically as well as
>> strategically to preserve critical culture
>>  as a realm of relative freedom, and to sustain the promise that through
>> experimentation, it can contribute to the development of the experiential
>> knowledge that is necessary not only to formulate hypothetical alternative
>> to the instrumentality of bourgeois thought, but also to act upon them in a
>> promiscuous manner and therefore be capable of manifesting the ungovernable,
>> the indeterminate, and other imagined as aspects of being. Consequently, art
>> should not be viewed as an apparatus - mechanism capable of achieving
>> specific purposes – be they aesthetic, moral, or political. Being an
>> apparatus places art at risk of becoming instrumental – that is at loosing
>> itself to fixed logics, forms, and functions – of being formal. For it is
>> the systemic or procedural aspect of apparatuses, which make them useful in
>> that they accomplish a task in a predictable manner. Such devices are not
>> neutral in that they delineate via their reasoning and rules (guide-lines)
>> what the task is to which they are to be applied, and the objectives to be
>> achieved. In this the user – whose real desires may have originally brought
>> the apparatus into being – now gives over some aspect of their self to it –
>> their being.  In this exchange the apparatus effectively creates a separate
>> sphere, or territory over which it has domain.
>>
>> Subsequently, it is still necessary to identify the role that art as
>> critical apparatus,  that is  as a self-critical practice which plays a role
>> in the reproduction, replication and distribution of the existent logics
>> that order social knowledge and its attendant subjectivities. In other words
>> how  art as social and cultural practices is always already an apparatus of
>> subjectification in that it seeks the replication of its own truths rather
>> its own emancipation from them. As such, art as an apparatus of critique,
>> cannot be thought of as merely a means to present ones analysis of how
>> values, standards, criteria, and aesthetics become tools (apparatus) of
>> social control, or how they inhibit our ability to engage in effective acts
>> relative to the division and the exercise of social power and wealth.
>> Relative to this it is important to take into account how art as an
>> apparatus even that of social or critical change may contradictorily order
>> our experiences, and understanding and therefore must be dealt with
>> cautiously, perhaps even in cynical manner, that is in all good faith
>> continue to explore it as a social practice, with the intent to acknowledge
>> its failings, or limitations as a mechanism of social change. In doing this
>> art might reveal what role it is to serve in the constitution of a
>> conception of being that is in keeping with the present conditions of our
>> existence, and as such would no longer necessitate the preservation of the
>> present organization of large-scale social production and exchange under its
>> present terms.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
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