[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 108, Issue 17

Tue Nov 19 01:35:09 EST 2013

I thought I would jump into this conversation with a few notes. This is a fascinating discussion. I agree with the value brought forth by the conjoining of art and politics, but perhaps not in the ways in which artivism constructs forced meaning around those concepts. When I say forced, I mean that there is something *strained* about this word, but maybe I have been influenced by some of you. 

I agree that you cannot separate politics from art. And if all art is political, then we get into the debate of explicit versus implicit goals of the artwork (why oppose the explicit/implicit in such binary terms?). Picasso's Guernica. That is a political painting that addresses a specific story (war and needless suffering). Well, depending on the viewer, context, etc. this painting can be anything, explicit, implicit, decorative, doesn't matter. You can't necessarily force the politics upon the viewer of the art work...and I think that may apply to artivism as well. 

I also keep thinking of a quote I came across recently from the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn in a book on contemporary art. He says: "I don't make political art, I make art politically." I think this statement emphasizes that politically meaningful art galvanizes meaningful change, engaging with the politics of location. I don't see artivism as about the political objective as much as about engaging with the needs and desires of a specific voice (community) in a new discourse...So is artivism making art politically? Is artivism political art? Is one active and the other passive? 

Terminology, especially novel terminology such as artivism is important to debate and debunk (thank you Matt and Owen and others who have done so). We are having discursive struggles over these new portmanteau words that are basically new formulations of old concepts! 

I like that Matt raised the idea that artivism can be propaganda. Yes, of course! I automatically thought of agitprop and 1920's Soviet Montage Cinema - Eisenstein, Dovzhenko, Vertov and state-sponsored artists/filmmakers whose films were highly stylized forms of propaganda. The innovative aesthetics of agitprop artists are what we remember, the propaganda (political) aspects have fallen away, yet they are tucked in there. Soviet montage revolutionized film as an art form. The *revolution*was so much more aesthetic than political. This is interesting to me. Propaganda as art, not art as propaganda! 

So, going back to this idea of working with a community, I have made films about communities as a documentary filmmaker, but, I would never think to call my films artivist or myself as an artivist, even though the films are both explicitly and implicitly political. I didn't want to make a film with a political objective, I wanted to tell a story that matters to me and to someone (the respective communities I address in these films). Mattering is inherently political. And is artivism directing attention to this mattering in some structured empathic way? Maybe..

The commodification, market value, branding of artivism Owen addressed is important to keep in mind..This reminds me of another term I keep coming across.. gasp..."gamification*...where play and games are instrumentalized for various non-play contexts, be damned! I hate this word, but like artivism, it addresses a function, not necessarily a poetics of something...well, does artivism address a poetics - is the poetics nested in the function or the other way around? A lot of questions, I know.. 

Cheers! Sandra 

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Subject: empyre Digest, Vol 108, Issue 16

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: introductory questions (Patrick Keilty)

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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 09:40:52 -0500
From: Patrick
 Keilty <p.keilty at utoronto.ca>
To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] introductory questions
Message-ID:
    <CAG1hG5ecLPcEb_H0ZLn=8mg7iz2FAwgvALnDwZxuGhMGz8+LYg at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"

What a fabulous conversation! It's been a hectic week on this end, so I am
only just getting to this conversation now. I think Matt raises some
important questions about what counts as artivism -- questions I share. I
have a lot of ideas circulating about this, and no definitive answer. So
I'll just recite some of my meandering thoughts. On the one hand, I agree
with Adorno
 that the political content of a work is not necessarily its
most important aspect. There are so many important aspects that go into any
work. Yet work can also become political, by virtue of its context, without
an explicit political message. I'd count this as artivism, too, but in this
case, it's the relationship -- that is, the dynamic and performative
interplay -- between viewer and object that occasions an explicit politics
and turns the work over into artivism. I also feel that it's nearly
impossible for works to escape politics, even if those politics are subtle
or seemingly unknown to us. Such a work doesn't withdraw from politics
because it isn't exempt from politics. I may be saying something similar
here to Selmin -- about how a withdrawal from politics is itself a
political choice. So I don't know where that leaves me in this discussion.
It probably leaves me everywhere and nowhere. Maybe all I can say is
 that
what counts as artivism doesn't depend on whether the work has an explicit
political message. I am also not sure whether artivism depends on its
"effects" -- which I imagine would be difficult to measure, if we put even
the slightest intellectual pressure on the concept. For example, must it be
a collective effect or can it be an individual effect; does it matter who
is effected; does it matter if those effects are sustained?

I fully embrace Owen's comments linking artivism to marketing strategies.
Why not? Maybe this embrace stems from growing up in a fairly adherent
Catholic household. Nothing provides a better education of the power of
propaganda! Sometimes artivism is a form of evangelism. I have no problem
with that. So to answer Matt's last question --
 can there by right-wing
artivism? -- yes.

On Sat, Nov 16, 2013 at 9:26 AM, Matthew Brower <matthew.brower at utoronto.ca>
wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Hi Selmin,
> Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I realize that my questions
> overlap with the questions you?ve identified yourself receiving from your
> colleagues about artivism. They stem from my uncertainty over whether
> artivism is a concept (with internal logics), a category (with parameters),
> an approach (with a toolkit or set of methods), or a brand (with a set of
>
 aspirational values). As I?ve been reflecting on this discussion I keep
> thinking that Owen?s comments linking artivism to marketing methodologies
> are pointing to something significant for understanding what artivism might
> or might not be.
> Another question that I?ve been trying to work through is whether artivism
> has a specific politics.
 Can there be right wing artivism? Are the Tea
> Party?s costumed stunts and actions a flavor of artivism?
> Best,
> Matt
>
> ________________________________________
> From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [
> empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of Selmin Kara [
> selminkara at gmail.com]
> Sent: November-12-13 11:28 PM
> To: soft_skinned_space
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] introductory questions
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>

-- 
Patrick Keilty
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Information
University of Toronto
@patrickkeilty <https://twitter.com/PatrickKeilty>

On Sat, Nov 16, 2013 at 9:26 AM, Matthew Brower
<matthew.brower at utoronto.ca>wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Hi Selmin,
> Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I realize that my questions
> overlap with the questions you?ve identified yourself receiving from your
> colleagues about artivism. They stem from my
 uncertainty over whether
> artivism is a concept (with internal logics), a category (with parameters),
> an approach (with a toolkit or set of methods), or a brand (with a set of
> aspirational values). As I?ve been reflecting on this discussion I keep
> thinking that Owen?s comments linking artivism to marketing methodologies
> are pointing to something significant for understanding what artivism might
> or might not be.
> Another question that I?ve been trying to work through is whether artivism
> has a specific politics. Can there be right wing artivism? Are the Tea
> Party?s costumed stunts and actions a flavor of artivism?
> Best,
> Matt
>
> ________________________________________
>
 From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [
> empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of Selmin Kara [
> selminkara at gmail.com]
> Sent: November-12-13 11:28 PM
> To: soft_skinned_space
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] introductory questions
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>

-- 
Patrick Keilty
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Information
University of Toronto
@patrickkeilty <https://twitter.com/PatrickKeilty>
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