[-empyre-] Process as paradigm

[notnot]

Hi Antoine,
I agree with you that processual art and even self-referantial processual
art can deal as much with "serious shit" than any other type of artwork.

Aymeric's expression "serious shit" is referring to an earlier mail from
Lucas Evers:"if art can reach beyond the processes it is reflecting on. if
scientific process can be interesting raw material for  artists, can they
really work with it and work with the natural sciences and its findings,
can art be of importance to scientific methods, programs, processes? can
new forms of collaborative practices in their methodology build on notions
of the digital mean something for social change or more modest mean
something for community art? (...) i might sound naive but i am interested
in art engaging in processes that are beyond the representational factor
of art and what that does to art and its autonomy. that question not only
converns art, but also politics, the societal, science. i think this is a
relevant question in a world so radically changing."

I'm not sure if art can go totally beyond the representational. Especially
in the context of art institutions this becomes problematic. .

Lucas, do you have some good examples of art that go beyond the
representational and mean something for the other fields that you
mentioned?

Best Maria

Driessens & Verstappen



> Hi,
> more opinions :
>
> - processual art vs. dealing with serious shit : there is no intrisic
> reason why processual art (or any technologically-based art or media
> art) should be more adequate to deal with serious shit than any other
> artform. Serious shit is the subject. The means, tools, material can
> be anything, including processual art. And I don't find that the
> processual art that I see in exhibitions actually deal more (or less)
> that other forms of art with serious shit.
>
> - contemplative vs. dealing with serious shit. There is no intrisic
> reason why contemplative self-referencial works, in processual art or
> in painting or whatever, will actually deal less with serious shit
> than any other more engaged types of artworks (as per Marias
> demonstration below).
>
> Or maybe we should agree on what "serious shit" refers to.....
>
>
> Le 19 mai 10 à 14:12, Maria Verstappen a écrit :
>
>> Dear Aymeric,
>>
>> On May 19, 2010, at 2:18 PM, Aymeric Mansoux wrote:
>>>
>>> The problem is that usually what is emerging is too often perceived
>>> as a by-product of the process, which only gives to the audience
>>> only two opposite positions in between which they can navigate: On
>>> the one hand a passive state of contemplation - and here we could
>>> probably, indeed, develop the argument of an artist-god delivering
>>> honesis to the masses, or on the other hand, an active position of
>>> treasure hunting investigator trying
>>> to decipher the processed used by the artist.
>>> Within this limited choice, like Simon mentioned in a previous
>>> mail, there is a risk that the work will appear "naïve and
>>> simplistic, concerned with formal and abstract detail" because it
>>> only refers to itself and does not take into account anything else
>>> but its own existence. In this case this would be working against
>>> Lucas' interest
>>> seeing such processes engaging with "serious shit", not to mention
>>> missing the opportunity to understand the cultural impact of these
>>> processes if we focus too much on their underlying mechanical
>>> structure.
>>
>> These two positions are not opposite, they go hand in hand since an
>> observer will only be willing to decipher the process if he/she is
>> in some way intrigued by the generated output. A state of
>> contemplation (observation) is needed to trigger analysis. It forms
>> the basis of all natural sciences. Why is it seen as " a limited
>> choice" in case of an artwork?
>> For me the problem lies more in the difficulty of programming a
>> bottom-up process that is able to generate an output that is
>> intriguing (emergent) enough over a longer time span, that in some
>> ways can compete with Nature, also on a visual level. In an ideal
>> situation, the viewer is confronted with the process for a long time
>> (months) instead of only having a glimpse of it during a gallery
>> visit. This is a difficult and ambitious task and I wouldn't  say
>> that it is "naive and simplistic" to be "concerned with formal and
>> abstract detail".
>> For me it is totally okay to make this kind of self-referential
>> works because it doesn't mean that such works can not engage with
>> the world outside. They can trigger deep reflections about life &
>> creation, autonomy & intervention, artificial versus natural etc.
>> Maybe in a more indirect, philosophical way than some artworks that
>> explicitly engage with the "serious shit" . When presented in an
>> institutional context, thése works often appear to me as being
>> naïve, simple and pretentious. Most of the time the artists'
>> intentions are good, but they seem to lack the consciousness that -
>> if art really wants to influence the socio-political field in a more
>> direct way - we first need to reestablish the basic foundations of
>> the relationship between art and politics. After WO2 society decided
>> that it wasn't a good idea that art and politics have a strong
>> interdependency. Since than our governments subsidize art because it
>> represents an important democratic foundation: our "freedom of
>> speech", but they do no longer openly interfere with the subject
>> matter of art or its significance for society. This has its pros and
>> cons but it certainly killed a lot of possibilities for constructive
>> cultural engagement. Maybe this is going to change but at the moment
>> the only possibility is to take the role of the activist, which
>> implies operating against or outside the institutionalized networks.
>>
>> Maria Verstappen
>> Driessens & Verstappen
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>
> ++ as
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>