[-empyre-] Process as paradigm

[b gottlieb]

Dear Lucas and Susanne,

thank you so much for inviting me to help moderate/generate this discussion,
it is a great honour to be in such company.  I have been lurking on the
Empyre list for about a month to warm up and I am very pleased to have this
opportunity to meet you all, and to exchange with you.

I would like to respond, as a beginning, to Lucas' introductory post.  Those
of you who have read my text for the process as paradigm catalog will know
my tone may sound brusque, and my humour is dark, please bear with me, but
my concerns are sincere and my contributions intended as openings to
engage.

Lucas, you mention the serious shit which is happening, as an example of a
process, which would be an appropriate subject to be modeled/represented in
processual art works?

Not only is serious shit happening, but indeed, it is shit: ugly stinking
and not aesthetically appealing at all, therefore of no interest to the most
people of any stature except for shit specialists, least of all
well-brought-up artists,.  We have plumbers and sanitation engineers and
sewage technicians and waste disposal companies and water purification
technicians, etc. who are professionals in taking care of the serious shit,
i.e. their professional status in society involves them dealing directly
with the shit. They have steady jobs because they are highly specialized in
an essential civic function. .

Artists, when they deign to treat the serious shit of contemporary reality,
they cannot but aestheticise it.  The art-going public expects this. A
direct confrontation with the serious shit, like that enterprised by BANG
lab, is difficult to distinguish clearly as art. Heath Bunting's borderline
status is a case in point. N.B: he is now signing limited edition
stones. Wim Delvoye produced an artificial shit, the machine which produced
it was highly aestheticised.  But lets say that reality is an ugly and
malodorous person with an unpleasant and violent personality, this person
would be only good for the freak shows, not for the art world.

The question is how much reality can we take, if we must acknowledge that
the serious shit is happening,   compelling us to do something about it? Do
we have that kind of time?  Can we delegate some of the doing to automated
processes, either social, social-mechanical, or digital?   Isn't it better
as an artist not to really know about the serious shit, which has always
existed, pay it some momentary, head-shaking, solemn lip service, and focus
on professional survival, making those in power feel better about
themselves?

However,  Lucas you are completely right to bring up the serious shit, it
not extrinsic to our techno-Utopian agenda (of which processual art plays
some small role in validating), it is absolutely central, maybe we can use
the Lacanian word extimate here,  and once it becomes a subject of our
discourse,it is very likely to become de-natured, losing it's repulsive
aesthetics.  I  would agree, however, that being a conscientious critic
today would involve becoming a specialist in the repulsive aesthetics.

However, when we look at our cellphones, how many of us can really deeply
accept and integrate the fact that it is a holocaust machine? (or maybe
holotaph machine is better since the 'caust' means burning and the over
6.000.000 people who are determined to have died due to the conflict
minerals trade in Congo were not burned, but, one would expect at least
buried)  Behold the smooth 4G haptic functionality of holotaph!

I think this brings us back to Prof. Dominguez (from the previous
discussion)  and the problem of dealing with serious shit.  Although, were
Prof. Dominguez not a Prof. and simply an artist he would likely not suffer
so much for his project.  The problem is that he is an institutional artist
and that he uses the institution, in some ways, to support his project. In
this way, the institution is, necessarily, brought into the picture.  Now,
from the institutional point of view, there is no big advantage to support
Prof. Dominguez.  If he were only to write about the theory of what he
thought should be done, it would be no problem.

But the fact that he is actually, physically involved, also, I think it is
relevant, on the hardware level as well as on the hard-social (or as some
call it "meat-space") level, his intervention becomes truly political. To
support him lowers the University's standing among conservative funders
(which are by far the majority) and raises its standing among the largely
impotent righteous.  And, for me, in this case, it ceases to be simply an
artistic issue.  Even though I support Prof. Dominguez and the BANG lab and
the EDT, and I believe, in an ideal world, all professors would be
encouraged to engage their brilliant minds and creative students in
activities which have only the object of distributing agency a little more
fairly in this world, I also believe this is not an ideal world, and that
the present is less an issue of aesthetics than of politics.

If we are really committed to making a difference in this world; dealing
with the serious shit in a methodical, patient, sustainable fashion,  I
don't think we can count on institutions such as universities or governments
. We need a stronger, more resilient, more courageous, more visionary
support base.   If with processual art we are attempting to prototype
approaches via which we can truly soften up the hard militarized
hegemonic-tramatic core within us and enterprise a different relation with
the other, we will need such long term support, because this sort of social
transformation can only occur over generations.

 Is the process of arts funding a valid topic here?  Do we dare to tread
into an even stickier morass, dear intrepid specialists of the humanities,
and attempt to articulate anew the significance of the term art in the
expression 'processual art'?  I see here in preliminary writing hybrid
animals such as  'art & culture' or 'art & science' as if art alone is not
enough trouble in itself, and when it becomes art & science, isn't it better
described as arty science or science-y art?  By definition today's
electronic devices are mass-produced technical art, which is why they are
called state of the art.


more recently
http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/2010/05/holocaust-by-design.html
most recent
http://gratfortech.blogspot.com/
a long time ago:
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0209/msg00083.html
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