White Bread

I'd love to see more real-life examples of hybridity and syncretism. Syncretism implies not fixed elements, but a contingent affiliation of disparate terms capable of shifting positions, altering relations and with permeable boundaries. There is no simple translation, rather an untranslatability – which seems to me the way towards acceptance. And, within that acceptance, lies true subversiveness, which is what the academic argument for idealistic multiculturalism laments the lack of. The quilts that African slaves in the American South made, which concealed instructions to safe houses in “plain sight” of the slave owners, the celebration of native customs the were held on and looked like the conquerer’s own holidays. Such syncretism is irrepressible, and I feel is the place to look for true multiculturalism. Hybridity is a self-conscious, intellectual attempt at definition. Syncretism is just what happens when artists respond to their environments.

The art happens, whether it will sell or be legitimized by museums or the marketplace is a different issue. Fisher and Lee Weng Choy both made the point that elites today are “multicultural”, but Asian and African elites, sophisticated internationals, still buy into the original Eurocentric values--because that is still the economic power structure -- which is what they are all driven by. The idea of progress, of Other, is driven by the spectacle of the global marketplace run by economic elites.

Choy makes the case for Singapore being such a hybrid—an engineered, branded “New Asia”, which is really just a restrained society disciplined to be globally, economically competitive. An American friend of mine lived in Singapore for a few years, and called it Singa”bore”. We stopped-over for a day each on the ends of a trip. That was enough, there was nothing to compel us to return, which is not the case for the rest of Asia.

"For the West to frame and evaluate all cultural productions through its own criteria and stereotypes of otherness is to reduce them to a spectacle of essentialist racial or ethnic typology and to ignore their individual insights and human values..." (Fisher, 235).

I agree with several of the comments below, that we all categorize events and objects in our minds based on our own experiences. We do have our own biases based on where and how we grow up, and I understand the need to examine oneself through comparison to another. But I don't understand the thought that any one group is better than another, and therefore determines what is right or wrong for the whole.

Fisher's article furthers the discussion from last week's "Other", and I think clarified a lot of thoughts I had last week. It is hard for me to imagine people judging one another based on race, skin tone, religion; and in turn putting value judgements on artwork based on country of origin and stereotypes that surround what that country's artwork should look like. Fisher notes that we will not allow art to have a beneficial effect on us if we come at it with stereotypes and categories surrounding it. This Syncretic view seems like a more comtemporary and realistic approach to a global art world.

After reading the Minh-Ha article, I have was stunned at how invisible the colonial discrimination is in films and our Western appreciation of so-called "Third World" films. It seems that our interest in the Third World is to maintain their subordinance through economic poverty, or presenting them as being "included" in the Western form of dress and attitudes. Particularly of interest was the commentary on Vietnam as being mystified to the point of invisibility: a fault of both opponents of the war and proponents. By not being able to accept Vietnam as viewed through their experience, we are idealizing their culture beyond being able to approach their worldview.

New Asia & a New S. p. e. c. t. a. c. l. e

The Choy's article seems to suggest that there is no way for us except to engage and accept the notion of Spectacle as an essential element in order to change our societies. Does Choy’s article suggest that Singaporeans engage with spectacle, both in their society and their art, in a non- Asian form? The example of Lear was interesting to me; does not the Asian version of Lear suggest a new “something” to the Western societies? I think New Asia introduces a New form of Spectacle to the Western societies as well…

I wonder how much the non-european art world "exoticises" european or western art? Exoticism occurs within the Western world as well, American Art viewed from a European viewpoint, for example. It is human nature to try to place the "other" within a context in which it can be understood, to better relate our experience with those of people we know little about, in terms of a cultural setting. I guess the struggle for the West is to recognize how much of that perspective (reading) is based on class structures and opinons formed on colonization. Because we (western-based artists and art observers) are raised in the post-colonial era, those distinctions are so engraved in our way of life that they are hard to recognize. Maybe this whole idea that we need to fix our perspective in order for the Third World to succeed in the eyes of the West is the exact sort of colonial thinking that got us here. Maybe they dont want or need this approval. Wont they develop their own art world (with all of its positives and negatives) when the West falls into ruin and the East becomes the imperialistic force (once again, until it flip flops again)?

lol- I loved Gabe's comment! I totally agree with the fact that we cannot expect things to be restored by themselves when we are detroying everything needed before hand. What an naive statement, wow.

I had a nice discussion with my south american friend these days.
What I found interesting and what made me think back to the articles is that we always refer back to our western philosophies. Everything that we do is seen through our point of view and it is therefore right! Everything we think is the standard and our opinions are the measuremnt to the rest. That is just so wrong to me. There is so much out there in the world! Are we that good? What if we actually put other countries values, opinions on an equal level to others? Impossible.. it is always us and then the rest.
Then I thought of a similar thing that I frequently encounter regarding my descent from Germany. People ask me about Hitler and tell me how bad that was. Yes, I agree it was very bad. So.. what do they want me to do? I feel like being prejudiced for my countrie's past. Being accused for someting that is so thinly grounded- anyone in that situation would have been a part of the regime because we are all way too attached to our own lives! And besides that, don't we all have a past? Have we not all had a past of killings? What about the native Indinans in the US? 95% killed... and how do we think Columbus was a great man? What about Vietnam? There are bad things that happened and are currently happening. One would hope that we learn from our experiences. However, we ignorantly put ourselves as someone better.
I think I have been drifting of a little, but there is just so much.. the world is a totally mixed place, full of cultures, values, traditions and differences.
Jean Fisher talks about the excessive vision, the world is seen and evaluated through one society's eye- people's art works in other places cannot rise up to our standars.
It amazes me to see that the ideal of it all, the "purity of art" is a label of the West and yet, I feel that pure art has nothing to do with a country, but with an individual. There is no way to justify everybody's doing, but we can try.
Should I have sent this... ? Oh god.

Lee Weng Choy's article is a good one, but, personally, I think it is pretty limited by the author’s scope. The article itself is not complete enough to cover the Asian arts, nor can it conclude that Singapore’s art is and will be a model for future’s Asian arts. With none of his references in any Asian language and even few of them from Asian scholars, it is questionable that the author has a deep understanding of Asian arts, and its history, present and the future.

In my understanding, the real new Asia’s art should be an art which takes the legacy of the ancient Asian arts, has new developments, plus it should absorb the good part of the arts of the other cultures. The author may be good at the last but has problem with the first one.

Nonetheless, the world in everyone’s eyes is biased by his or her mind. It is a good article which gives us a picture of Asian arts in the author’s perspective. I just want to point it out its limitation.

progresssssss

"We may recognize that "progress" has its social and ecological costs, but underlying our pact with modernity is a desire that some day in "the future", there will be a time when the unity of life will be restored." Choy pg 252.

I say bullshit! how can anything be restored when we are constantly destroying in the name of progress. Now not to sound cliche but i think the rainforest is one of the greatest examples of this destruction. it is being destroyed at the rate of ( 240 square miles ) every day. This equals 6417 acres per hour, 107 acres per minute or 1.78 acres per second. rainforests.net The concept of progress is a myth made up by those making money off the worlds resources what is being destroyed in a day could not be replaced in ones life time. "there will be a time when the unity of life will be restored". BULLSHIT!

What strikes me about this week's readings is the constant categorization of, well, nearly everything. Even with innumerable shades of gray, the art world invariably polarizes work as black or white whatever the meaning or media. With regards to terrorism, President Bush said: "If your not with us, you're against us." (Or something like that.) As much fun as the liberal art world makes of President Bush, what's the difference between the constant polarization of art (West vs. East, ethnic vs. European, political Vs. apolitical, etc.) and what Bush said at the beginning of his most recent fiasco?

how about syncretic spectacle?

I have some sympathy for the Choy article because I've been to Singapore several times, and although I'm obviously an outsider, I was also struck by the shiny constructed image of "new asia" that is portrayed there. It's very corporate, and sanitized, and it naturally makes one suspicious... it doesn't seem quite right. I think Choy is saying that that corporate-funded spectacle is problematic in that it tends to offer a single monolithic reading, as opposed to varied, multiplied readings. But I wonder if he's equating that with the West, as essentially a western mechanism.
Minh-Ha is also concerned with narrow single readings for work - where the demand for "clarity" and "something to say" translates to a rigid, linear, "owned" reading. She describes work that invites the viewer in to help create it's reading ("boring" work) as lacking in spectacle.
I worry that both of these set up a binary with the spectacle and the West at one pole, and everything else at the other. I liked the notion of syncretism from the Fisher article, and it made me wonder what a syncretic spectacle would be like? Maybe Bollywood? That seems like an example of full-force spectacle, but on distinctly non-western terms...

from exoticism to the market

I lived in West Africa (mostly Ghana) and spent a year living on a boat traveling down the Amazon river through Columbia, Peru & Brazil. The villages a lived in were totally sans technology including electricity and even watches. While in these places, I often thought of the many artifacts from these cultures which I had seen in museum art collections. Breaking out of Eurocentricism has called for the intermingling of art with sociology and anthropology. With this kind of background, I wonder if we have forced meaning on these art collections above and beyond the original intent of the makers (artists?). What we also bring to these collections and which I have no doubt was the main objective of their elevation was the precepts of capitalism. The artifacts which we now deem art, were originally created as communal objects of myth, religion and ritual. I suppose if one defines art by intent rather than product or process, then these collections belong more to history, sociology and anthropology. On the upside, it also allowed artisans/artists to profit and therefoe enhance knowledge, production and profit in countries which economically suffer. Accra, the capital of Ghana, has a very blooming art market which is bringing villagers into technology and other benefits not seen in the primitive and isolated villages. I had an interesting experience in a Ghanain village spent a great deal of time in. A boy of perhaps 14 saw me painting one day, and asked me if I was from New York City. I invited him to paint with me and he painted a crude copy of Picasso's Les Demoiselles dAvignon. I asked him how he knew about Picasso and he said it was the only American artists he knew about. I've since lost that painting unfortunately, but I still have the other painting he brought to my hut a few days later. I will bring it to class this week. He offered it as a gift along with his address in hopes that I would send him some art supplies from New York City. For me, this sums up the Marco Polo Syndrome.

Scarry

Hey this is going back to our "identity" week - but I thought it was really interesting - partly because I read Richard Scarry books when I was a kid too...

1963 vs. 1991 Corrections

Things like the ribbon addition to correct gender stereotypes are pretty funny, they're just trading one sign for another (driving a steamroller vs. wearing a ribbon).

examples

While reading these articles, a few experiences immediately came to mind. When in Mexico I always wondered why the culture continues to be so Catholic. This question could probably only come from an atheist like myself - but I can't help seeing in the context of the Spanish conquest of Mexico - which was so brutal. And echos of it persist in the sense that Mexico is still colonized by Coca Cola, NAFTA, etc. Things that don't contribute to the independence and prosperity of Mexicans, just keep them in perpetual dependence. So in that context, I always think: I would reject Catholicism, and Coca Cola and the rest.
Mosqueras article was great in the sense that he clearly makes the case that it's silly to think you can cleanly separate what came from the outside, from what is original. I'm sure that within minutes of expose to the foreign, a mixture occurs, and there's no going back. We become hybrids.

The statement from the Mosquera’s essay “to look like no one else or to look like Frida” really made me laugh and say “thank God I do graffiti.” I think statements like those are said when money is trying to be made. If one takes the money factor out, things are looked at a lot differently. I’m not trying to say that Identity needs to be excluded from work,or that cultural identity validates the work, but if the artist feels that it needs to be, then it should and vice versa. If Third World country artist, or any artist, feels some type of pressure from the Western Culture to be a certain way they should give up being an artist.

East meets West, North meets South

Oguibe kind of hit the nail on the head with this bit:
"We see double standards. But that is hardly the most important point. We also find that essential tendency to ignore indigenous historical perceptions and constructs."

The theme as old as time is the one where more "advanced" societies try to save or elevate the "primitive" societies they've "discovered" in "unclaimed" land. Many examples come to mind, most of which we've all read in one history book or another. Problem is, history is often written by the victors according to their specific perceptions accurate or not. Most recently, it's been Europeans running around "discovering" places, claiming them as their own and bestowing their clearly superior culture on the indigenous populations. This colonization has yielded some quite tasty cuisine, inexpensive diamonds, pilfered national treasures and some new takes on art.

Mosquera wrote: "The de-Eurocentralisation in art is not about returning to purity, but about adopting postcolonial "impurity" through which we might free ourselves and express our own thought." Taking this comment and the one that Margo made about capitalist colonization we see a whole new take on the art produced in those areas.

Take for instance the sub-Saharan part of Africa. Colonized, de-colonized and then left with partial infrastructure and poverty. The locals have taken the left0ver telephone wire that would have been considered waste in, say, France and have created a mini-industry by applying their local craft and custom to a new material by weaving traditional Zulu baskets with it. The best part? They're using the Internet (capitalist colonization) to sell these things back to the colonists!

In the modern world, East or West, North or South seems like it lacks definition other than a direction. If you travel eastward long enough, you'll hit the west. If you travel northward far enough, you'll end up going south.

Mosquera calls for a "construction of a contemporary culture- one capable of acting in today's reality- from a plurality of perspectives." For a long time, Western domination in the countries it colonized suppressed the existing culture and tried to conform it to the standards they believed in. (It still happens in a capitalist colonization of culture by the way new McDonalds, Starbucks are popping up all over the world) This domination has set the structures for how non-Western art is viewed within the Western perspective only.

"Third World artists are constantly asked to display their identity, to be fantastic, to look like no one else or look like Frida..."
I found it interesting the way Mosquera points out that art that satisfies the stereotype of exotic is somehow more accepted at the center. He talks about the notion of the "other" as being a threat, rather than embracing it for what elements it might bring.

He also talks about the problems of intercultural communication, and the solution being not only accepatnce of other cultures but an understanding of them in order to "enrich [oneself] with his or her diversity." This is what Oguibe refers to as the Heart of Darkness, the unknown. There is a need to understand the Other, but to also understand where one exists in relationship to that term.

Give me a mutt

Mosquera made such sense of things for me. The Marco Polo Syndrome – where those of us in the egocentric, privileged West view difference as life-threatening rather than nutritional. Growing up in middle class US, and then having a good job and an affluent lifestyle as an adult – it took me some conscious paying attention and traveling to other areas of the world (which most Americans don’t do – only around 20% of Americans even have passports) to realize the value of diversity. My awareness increased when I learned of the richness of art from cultures that were composed of diversity and very tolerant, such as the Tang Dynasty on the Silk Road, and Al Andalus. There is a corollary in nature. The pedigreed dog is much less hardy than the mixed mutt. I no longer would choose to live in an area of the US that wasn’t highly diverse, and I really hope in my lifetime to have the opportunity to live outside the US and learn another language.

While I am very interested in the Eurocentric identification in the art world, I am concerned that the authors didn't clearly acknowledge the inability for international artists to separate themselves from the Eurocentric influence. I was reminded of a short story called Unaccompanied Sonata. In it, when the "artist" was introduced to other works, in an attempt to retain "identity," he unconsciously removed the similarities/crossovers between his work and others. Likewise, are transnational artists able to distinguish themselves apart from their Eurocentric roots without continuing to acknowledge the Eurocentric presence?

“Postmodern interest in the Other has opened some space in the “high art” circuits for vernacular and non western cultures. But it has introduced a new thirst for exoticism, the carrier of either a passive or a second- class Eurocentrism which, instead of universalizing its paradigms, conditions certain cultural productions from the periphery according to paradigms that are expected of it for consumption by the centeres. Many artists, critics and Latin American curators seem to be quite willing to become “othered” for the West.” Mosquera 220.
In a field where “the new”, “the different”, “the avant garde” is supposedly cutting edge that exotic look or feel is something that is so often sought after. The “Eurocentric” reality is this “gotta own”, “gotta have it” mindset that is at the center of killing cultures. To think of objects from another culture as being something that is collectable or even marketable is just a modern notion of European colonization now apparent in “THE ART WORLD”.

I think it is a misconception of historical and contemporary ideas of exotism and the notion of sub-saharan within the African cultures. Rarely do we see the functioning cities, the scholarly societies, contemporary art, that exist within these "primitive" cultures. National Geographics and publications of the sort paint an image of a Third World country so exotic to our own.

"This way history is constructed as a validating privilege that is the West's to grant, like United Nations recognition, to sections, nations, moments, discourses, cultures, phenomena, realities, and peoples". -Oguibe
It is though the Western eyes of the curators, gallery owners, art market, art publications, etc. that creates the discourse of art in our culture. If interested in the exotic, then they will display their ideas of what is exotic, typically this is foreign type, or primitve looking art works. Art work that reflects their notions of modern African Art, etc.

The one statement that really stands out to me in these readings is Mosquera's comment "The contemporary artistic scene is avery centralised system of aparthied". Is it me, or do we re-discover every week how the artworld represents everything evil in our society? It is funny how something so pure as creating, is surrounded by so much impurity. I guess it is money that makes the artworld so judgmental. This post-colonial attitude and approach to art is based on class structures created by wealth. The demands placed on third world art described by Mosquera (originality based on tradition=primative) is based on the worth ascribed by the west, which is a direct efffect of the market that deals with primative or primative based artwork. A pure and true understanding of the "Other" (as described by Oguibe) will only happen when there is a market for that kind of work. It is all good and fine for us to understand this issue as artists but a major shift in opinion about the Third World from the entire West must happen before people will spend money on social-driven contemporary art from places like South Africa.

"the truth of history is that wherever there is a tradition of artistic practice, and that means every society and every culture, there is always a system of appreciation, assessment, definition of values and taste." (Olu Oguibe)

Olu Oguibe talks in his essay about the problematic question, what is modernity, when did it start and where does it belong to and if there is such a thing how did Africa respond to it?

I am asking myself, how do we judge a piece of art to be modern?
To me modernity has to do with funcion and taste in a certain moment- Oguibe mentions " popular art". I think art is linked very closely to a society and often represents its life and values. For example, "township" art reminds me of the very typical paintings and colorful works we find throughout Africa, which are made of local materials and represent the feel, look and funcion as a representation. This is modern to me- it presents the moment and it raises questions for now and future affairs. The art world in Africa is immense.
I believe the West makes a mistake in trying to search for modernity- however the west defines what's modern- in Africa. And why is it so important? Why does the West want to modernize african art?
I found this strong article of Olu Oguibe quite fitting:

"To all intents and purposes, we live in a segregated world where, for instance, the rest may know the West but the West seldom knows the rest, and within the rest only a few know enough beyond their own little home territories. The novelist Chinua Achebe noted long ago that this is indeed the state at which the West has arrived, at that juncture where it no longer has to erase or ignore others consciously, but as a matter of fact. It is a terrible world where this is the case. That it is the nature of our shared condition as cultures struggling to acknowledge one another, even to co-exist, is a tragedy indeed."

Jose Bedia

Here are some samples of Jose Bedia's work. He is mentioned in the first text.

An artist for next week

El Anatsui was born, raised and educated in Ghana. His work is traditionally African in content though western in style. There's a fairly good article in the July/August 2006 issue of Sculpture Magazine.

Butlers essay and reading Dina’s entry instantly made me think about a discussion that my mom had with my grandfather a few years ago. I think the conversation was about how times were changing (started by ridiculous excuse for a goatee). What had me floored was when my mom said (to my grandpa) “do you remember when you hit my sister (my moms older sister) with a belt severely because you caught her wearing pants?” What?! Wearing pants was wrong if you were a woman? People would think she was a lesbian…do remember this was many years ago in Mexico were having an open mind really didn’t apply to most people. It is so insane how wearing pants would have such violent reprocutions.

Outloud Thoughts

You will all hear alot from me today in regards to the articles. But as these articles whirl in my mind, I am getting dressed for class. My school identity is different than my home, work, and weekend identity. For school, I tend to dress down, in jeans and t-shirts. My school attire is far less feminine than my work or weekend attire. But what constitutes feminine attire? A dress? Heels? Nylons? A flower in my hair? Does a feminine attire become something of it's own existence?
Or is it just an unspoken cultural norm/law? Perhaps it is nothing to mull over since we are so familiar with femininity identity. We know how a woman acts, smells, walks, what sexual icons she embodies.
As I dress for class today I am thinking of the Piper video, where she addresses the idea of "visibly black Americans". Visibility and the idea that identity is visible and not visible. One may look a certain way and may in fact be the opposite. But this comes with preconcieved notions within individuals of what we expect an "identity" to look like, to act like, etc.
As I dress for school today I am no exception to the rule of preconcieved ideas of identity.

The idea that television and the media as a controlling force is true. The television holds a certain amount of control over all those who view it. Because the media is something we rely on to be the representative of truth the power of video is expressed in the presentation of real events. But these events can also be controlled as far as what parts are shown through the media, what is edited out, rarely are we allowed to view the whole in its entirety. I grew up not watching tv and I think that serves as a reason for me being suspicious of what is shown.

“Television is linked crucially to the enigma of survival. It inhabits the contiguous neighborhoods of broken experience and rerouted memory. Refusing in its discourse and values to record, preferring instead to play out the myths of liveness, living color, being there, television will have produced a counterphobic perspective to an interrupted history.” Avital Ronell pg 206

I really liked Adrian Piper's article, not only because I think the topic is interesting and one does not usually think about "being black", but also how she confronts the reader with that issue. How she draws him in.
Then I found this of Adrian Pipers works (the picture above and the text go together). To me, her work is very heavy. Almost like talking politics in Europe! ;) I enjoy how she condenses the subjective perceptions of a somewhat black person and we know her points aren't too far fetched. At least I could imagine that people actually feel that way. I like the second text where we can observe a very stereotypical and dull reaction, trying to talk it down, but at the same time creating an even bigger conflict/drama.
Both texts are well exaggerated and generate a reaction in the reader. I must say the first text almost made me feel sick, it just feels horrible. But I hope that the second text also lightened you up. It just seems like that is how a lot of people would act when facing some harshly revealed feelings..

SKINNED ALIVE, that last protective skein of illusion
ripped off.
No insulation against acid reality,
flayed meat exposed to searchlight glares,
burning harsh to panic madness.
No respite, no solace, no refuge anywhere
on my grilled raw surfaces.
Only the corrosive cooking smell, the sickening realization that
there is no self-duplicity in your predation,
not even the inner pretension to virtuous disposition.

No idealistic aspirations here;
draw a breath and nothing, no one rushes in to aerate the blood.
There is no one home to come home to, no one home to avoid, no one home to pay homage to,
no home at all,
just emptiness that suffocates my attempts to fertilize it with stubborn hopes.
No one home, only the wheels turning,
the lips moving
to emit sounds that assemble into
perfunctory rationalizations for our benefit.

The abuse of power makes an honest man of you
the addictive thrill of unconcealed contempt
the exhilarating buzz of sadistic anger
the obsessive fascination with victims there to receive your cruelty,
all these throw your profile into sharp relief
and gain your entry to the universal brotherhood.
The travesty would be to pretend among the company you keep
to believe in the appearances you keep up,
the casual appearance of earnest good intentions.


IT'S FINE. I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN. I DIDN'T NOTICE ANYTHING WRONG. IT SEEMS FINE TO ME. I DON'T KNOW WHY YOU SAY THAT. I DON'T SEE ANY PROBLEM. I'M AMAZED THAT YOU SEE THINGS THAT WAY. I JUST DON'T SEE IT THAT WAY AT ALL. IT WASN'T INTENTIONAL. I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHERE THIS IS COMING FROM. JUST CALM DOWN. TRY TO GET A GRIP ON YOURSELF. THIS IS A COMPLETE SURPRISE TO ME. THE THOUGHT NEVER CROSSED MY MIND. I REALLY DON'T KNOW WHAT TO MAKE OF THIS. ISN'T THIS A LITTLE BIT MUCH? THAT'S A WEIRD WAY TO THINK ABOUT THINGS. I JUST CAN'T RELATE. WE CERTAINLY DO HAVE DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES ON THINGS. YOU'RE MAKING TOO MUCH OF THIS. NOTHING'S THE MATTER. STOP GETTING EMOTIONAL. YOU'RE BLOWING THE WHOLE THING OUT OF PROPORTION. EVERYTHING'S FINE. WHAT DO YOU MEAN? WHAT'S THE PROBLEM? YOU'RE BEING PARANOID. YOU'RE OVERSENSITIVE. YOU'RE READING TOO MUCH INTO IT. STOP JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS. IT DIDN'T OCCUR TO ME. YOU'RE OVERINTERPRETING THE DATA. I DON'T THINK IT HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THAT. IT WAS JUST A SIMPLE MISTAKE. IT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING. YOU'RE SEEING TOO MUCH IN THIS. NOTHING'S GOING ON. I CAN'T IMAGINE WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THAT. I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE REFERRING TO. I REALLY THINK YOU'RE OVERDOING IT. YOU'RE JUST TIRED. DON'T TAKE EVERYTHING SO SERIOUSLY. IT'S NO BIG DEAL. YOU'RE JUST PROJECTING. YOU'RE OVERREACTING. NOTHING HAPPENED. DID I NOTICE WHAT? I DON'T SEE ANYTHING TO GET UPSET ABOUT. I DON'T SEE WHAT YOU'RE GETTING AT. I DON'T UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEM. WHAT'S THE MATTER? YOU'LL GET OVER IT. DID SOMEONE DO SOMETHING WRONG? WHAT'S GOING ON? WHAT'S THIS ABOUT? WHAT'S WRONG? STOP MAKING SUCH A BIG DEAL ABOUT IT. I DON'T SEE ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT. EVERYONE DOES THAT. SO WHAT? BIG DEAL. WHO CARES? NO, NOTHING LIKE THAT. JUST A MISUNDERSTANDING, THAT'S ALL. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS IS ABOUT. I'M MYSTIFIED BY YOUR REACTION. I DON'T GET IT. SO? WHAT'S THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THAT? IT WAS JUST AN INNOCENT SLIP-UP. I REGARD THAT AS PERFECTLY NORMAL BEHAVIOR. I SEE NO PROBLEM WITH THAT. YOU'RE THE ONE WITH THE PROBLEM. WHY BRING THIS UP? YOU SEE EVERYTHING IN TERMS OF YOUR OWN PROBLEMS. WHY IS THAT OBJECTIONABLE? YOU'RE COOKING UP PROBLEMS WHERE THERE ARE NONE. YOU'RE MAKING THINGS UP. I DON'T BELIEVE THAT HAPPENED. I'M NOT SAYING YOU'RE LYING, I'M JUST SAYING YOUR PERCEPTIONS ARE DISTORTED. IT'S NOT NECESSARY TO SEE THINGS IN THAT LIGHT. YOU'RE TOO UPSET TO THINK CLEARLY. WE'LL DISCUSS IT LATER. NO, NOT NOW, I'M BUSY. STOP MAKING TROUBLE. YOU'RE SEEING THINGS THAT AREN'T THERE. THIS IS RIDICULOUS. I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. SO HOW ARE YOU OTHERWISE? I REFUSE TO DISCUSS THIS. WHAT'S SO WRONG WITH THAT? CHANGE THE SUBJECT. PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO EXPRESS THEMSELVES. I'M NOT GOING TO LISTEN TO THIS. YOU TAKE EVERYTHING TOO PERSONALLY. YOU MUST HAVE PERCEIVED THAT INCORRECTLY. I'M SURE YOU'RE MISTAKEN. I'M SURE THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN QUITE THE WAY YOU DESCRIBE IT. SURELY YOU'RE EXAGGERATING JUST A LITTLE. YOU'RE BEING IRRATIONAL. YOU CAN'T MAKE ME BELIEVE THAT. THIS IS SO UNNECESSARY. YOU'RE WAY OUT OF LINE. IT'S NOT YOUR PLACE TO SAY THAT. DON'T PUSH IT. YOU'RE GOING TOO FAR. GET OFF IT. YOU'RE SPEAKING OUT OF PLACE. LIGHTEN UP. YOU'RE ASKING FOR TROUBLE. YOU'RE BEING INAPPROPRIATE. NOBODY CARES WHAT YOU THINK. YOU'RE LEAVING YOURSELF WIDE OPEN. YOU'RE CRUISIN' FOR A BRUISIN'. PUT A LID ON IT. CAN IT. STUFF IT. BAG IT. FORGET IT. DROP IT. I WOULDN'T PURSUE THIS ANY FURTHER IF I WERE YOU. YOU'RE REALLY ASKING FOR IT. DO YOU WANT TO GET IN TROUBLE? YOU'RE GOING TO GET IT. YOU'RE STICKING YOUR NECK OUT. YOU'RE DIGGING YOUR OWN GRAVE. A REAL GLUTTON FOR PUNISHMENT. YOU CAN'T GET AWAY WITH THIS. YOU'RE DEAD MEAT. I HATE TO DO THIS. I'M REALLY SORRY THIS IS NECESSARY. THIS HURTS ME MORE THAN IT HURTS YOU. I'M DOING THIS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. YOU'LL APPRECIATE THIS LATER. I'M JUST TRYING TO HELP YOU. SOMEDAY YOU'LL THANK ME FOR THIS. ACTUALLY I'M DOING YOU A FAVOR. IN TIME YOU'LL UNDERSTAND. YOU'LL LEARN TO SEE THINGS DIFFERENTLY.

The Law

There's a thread in these articles about the law - or about power relationships. The Butler article starts off with the point about the subject being constituted when the law is imposed on them. The Wright article is a call to acknowledge the institutional power at play in the exhibition, and how it effects the content of the exhibition. And finally the Ronell article describes TV as "about the law."

I'm not sure I've digested in which ways this relates to identity - but, as I'm reading it now, I see it as working on an assumption that identity doesn't really come from some pure inner well of being. As Butler writes:

Identifying with a gender under contemporary regimes of power involves identifying with a set of norms that are and are not realizable ... This "being a man" and this "being a woman" are internally unstable affairs.

For Joel's class I'm also reading "We Have Never Been Modern" and so I can't help seeing the notion of a "pure" gender as a vestige of the modern program.

Along those lines, and in agreement with Fields notion of race (as paraphrased by Wright) as a "historically ritualized repetition of an ideology that sustains oppression through it's distinctions" - I have an anecdote. This is also in reply to "my problem" as presented by Adrian Piper: I noticed not long ago that on a couple of forms, where in the past my options for the 'race' question would have been 'caucasian,' 'chicano,' 'latin american,' etc. there was a new category - 'mixed.' I love this category, I was so happy when I saw it - it's really the only possible description of my race or my identity.

Haunted Identity

After reading the articles, I started to think about a new category of identity, which defines certain communities after 09/11, also inferred to in Chica-Iranian project in 2004: http://www.pochanostra.com/#Scene_14

Identity is subject to change and even transformation over time. Is this the media-and art at the service of the media- that manufacture identities for propaganda purposes?

I found it interesting in Butler's article when she refers to the camera as being "empowered as a phallic instrument" and a "vehicle through which the transubstantiation occurs". She also says the camera represents the "white gaze". As a photographer I really started to think about this relationship betweeen the model (subject) and the artist. It seems so much of our concepts of identity are based on the cultural media we are exposed to on a daily basis. We all strive to transform ourselves to some extent to fit some ideal identity norm, whether that be a specific gender role or the role of a succesfull artist. Often those images that we associate with that idealized identity are created by the use of a camera (magazines, tv, movies, internet, etc..) by white executives. Its no wonder people are drawn to the camera as a tool to re-identiify themselves.

On a seperate note, the Wright article accuses the Whitney Curators of limiting the "definition of the human agent in order to call him/her the subject". I totally agree with Wright but isnt that what the public expects to see when going to a show of this kind? Not to justify the Museum not taking a different approach to diversity, but they first and formost cater to the public and shape their biennials accordingly.

Linda Butler hurts my brain

Last night I dreamt I stole a yellow highlighter from Walgreens and used it to highlight every 7th word in Butler's paragraphs. In doing so, I was able to decipher her coded verbosity.
I rented Paris is Burning and will watch it tonight in hopes that I can better understand the discussion and post something a bit more intellectual rather than sarcastic. I think the outrage and controversy around the '93 biennial was that it marginalized the white, heterosexual male and questioned the level of sanctioned training the artworld had and still has for what is "good art". The mere fact that there was more video and installation rather than traditional painting (the most "respected" of visual art forms) shook the foundation of art as a tangible commodity and brought into question the value of art masters.

We all know that art history is organized according to chronology, medium, nationality and geography. The '93 biennial cracked open the narrow pigeon hole documentation of the work/voices of a wider audience (race, gender, religion and orientation) both in producing and collecting. How far have we really come from the Guerrilla Girls?

Because of this exhibition scholars, critics and audiences see and understand the work of contemporary artists more clearly.

On Piper's satirical yet profound questioning of blackness, I was reminded of a poem written by Langston Hughes one of my favorite poets who just happened to be black and homosexual. The poem published in 1953follows:

"That Powerful Drop"

Leaning on the lampost in front of the barbershop, Simple was holding up a copy of the Chicago Defender and reading about how a man looks white had just been declared officially colored by an Alabama court. "It's powerful," he said. "What?"
"That one drop of Negro blood- because just one drop of black blood makes a man colored. One drop- you are a Negro! Now why is that? Why is Negro blood so much more powerful than any other kind of blood in the world? If a man has Irish blood in him they say, "He's part Irish" if he has Jewish blood in him, they say, "He's part Jewish" But if he has just a small bit of colored blood in him- BAM!- "He's a Negro" n ot part Negro, No, be it ever so little, if that blood is black, "He's a Negro"
Now, this is what I don't understand- why our one is so powerful. Take paint- white will not make black white. But black will make white black. One drop of black in white paint- and the white ain't white no more! Black is powerful. Yopu can have 99 drops of white blood in your veins down South- but if that other drop is black, shame on you! Even if you look white, you're black. That drop is really pwoerful. Expalin it to me. You're colleged."
"It has no basis in science," I said, "so there's no logical explanation."

So my question is this, is my son part lesbian?
more to come...

Disempowerment

In searching for more information on Paris Is Burning, I came across the following article
http://www.cpinternet.com/mbayly/filmandtheology5.htm . It referred bell hook’s article “Is Paris Burning” in greater depth than did Butler, and put words to some of my thoughts concerning Livingston’s documentary Paris is Burning, of which I have only seen clips on YouTube.

Quotes from ball participants (from bell hook’s article):
“To be real is to look like your straight counterpart”.
A minority’s dream is to “live and look and work as the white person”
One is a “marvel” if one has “captured the great white way of living and looking”

What bell says viewers see in Paris Is Burning is not black men seeking to become like or impersonate “real” black women, but “their obsession with an idealized fetishized vision of femininity that is white”. Becoming like a wealthy white female is what would liberate and empower the ball-goers.

hooks says that “longing to be in the position of the ruling-class women…means there is also a desire to act in partnership with the ruling-class white male. And so, the oppressive power structure, the “brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness”, which marginalizes and disempowers the ball participants remains unchallenged.

She sees them worshiping at the sacrificial altar of a false god, at the throne of whiteness.

My response to Is Paris Burning was illuminated by bell hooks.

Michael Bayly’s theological analysis, about self-love and how the ball could be a force for positive personal and social transformation is interesting too.

Painting turns conceptual as you look: Under what circumstances does painting turn into conceptual art?

San Francisco Chronicle, 09/22

Group Show: ”Id Is” in Wolf gallery in SF
Frances Trombly’s Aftermath Remnants:
...Part of Trombly's seriousness consists in revisiting and revising notions such as site-specificity, truth to materials and dispersal of form…

Hypocrisy

I find it interesting that those who are the most vocal about pornography, obscenity and/or morality are those who are also least likely to address a problem at the root issue—they’d rather try and beat to death the symptoms, not solve them, or even treat them, but beat them into some sort of submission. For instance, the “threats to women” given as a reason for removing the show at U of M addresses an ancillary outcome that is really the result of poor behavior and upbringing. Violence comes about out of fear or ignorance (or both).

As far as government involvement, I have mixed emotions and views. While I’m not a fan of having information withheld from me at someone else’s discretion, I understand the need for it at certain times. I’m not sure if the AIDS epidemic had begun, say, last year, it would have been addressed the same way (I chose last year specifically because of the Republican occupation of the Oval Office). However, I understand holding back some information to reduce the likelihood of mass hysteria. That’s really what happened back then—even the 8-year-old hemophiliac who contracted the virus from a blood transfusion was treated like a pariah and was refuse the basic right to an education because parents were terrified he would infect their children by looking at them. I’m getting off on a tangent, sorry.

The long and the short of that bit that people today (and 20 years ago) are too touchy and far too easily offended. People now look at every thing as some sort of divinely ordained right—whether it’s a right to take up two seats on an airplane because they weigh 500 pounds or to smoke on a public street or to have their own Puritanical views upheld by the rest of society. More tangents. I’ll stop now.

Thought provoking essays.

Adding to Ginney's comments about gentrification and the exchange between the homeless and the wealthy in these hyperurbanized places, I kept thinking how the push away from homogeneity is strongly a Western argument. Including the other articles we read this week, many of these artistic "war on culture" critiques would have very different meaning in the global experience. While I'm not apart of that culture, I would like to see how this "war on culture" fits into China or Iran.

Deustsche’s article is interesting. I really enjoy seeing the projection works of Krzysztof Wodiczko. The essay is about gentrification fosters gross real-estate speculation and results displacement of low-income residents. Wodiczko’s series of works talk about homeless revive, under changed conditions, the symbolic battle waged during the Commune against architectural representations of power. The projections reveal that municipal monuments intended to memorialize the city’s stability, in fact, commemorate its barbarism.

When I read:” More precisely, the architecture of redevelopment constructs the built environment as a medium, one we literally inhabit, that monopolizes popular memory by controlling the representation of its own history.” I thought about the spectacle that we discussed last semester. The architecture or urban planning is just the medium used by power structures to create spectacles. They try to let the mass believe that the evolution of the city is correct and peaceful, but hide the segregation and polarization of the city.

The essay also let me think about “artist colony”, rethink of “SOHO” and “lofts” which have been popular in many cities all over the world for many years. I thought these are good ways to preserve and restore traditional, ancient buildings. It can help reuse some abandoned real estates and help to establish nice communities. Deustsche’s essay makes I rethink this “art colony” movement. Maybe it’s just a form of Gentrification.

Gentrification, or urban gentrification, is a phenomenon in which low-cost, physically deteriorated neighborhoods undergo physical renovation and an increase in property values, along with an influx of wealthier residents who may displace the prior residents.

At the center of the two articles by Vance is the ability of right wing conservatives and the anti-pornography feminists (conservatives in their own way) to make broad assumptions about a work, or group of works, without considering the context. They also assume the work will be read by all viewers in exactly the same ways they see it. The goal of these groups is to define a "standard of public taste," and in doing so they are also trying to suppress their own fears.

On pg. 135, Vance writes, "physically eliminating objectionable images and symbols as a means to change the culture that produced them [is] a tactic that would be utterly implausible were it proposed to combat anything but sexually explicit imagery." I also think it is the nature of the medium of these works that make them even more confrontational. The past notions that photography and video are "truth," somewhat a documentation of reality, makes it harder for people to look at and understand as art. It perhaps makes it easier to denounce and pass off as trash or filth, or pornography, rather confront underlying issues within the work or themselves.

It is interesting that these groups choose a certain rhetoric when referring to the works in question to persuade how the public responds to them. It is also interesting how they believe their viewpoint is the only correct one. I found in all of these articles a want to suppress diversity, and leave no room for differences of opinion. People do not want to converse, they want to control.

Throwing Stones

The point Deutsch is making in “Architecture of the Evicted” is that the conservative power establishment disingenuously evokes an enthusiasm of the past to justify urban renewal and redevelopment, often of areas currently occupied by the poor and politically mute. Using an aesthetic vocabulary, which includes “history, tradition, preservation”, the New York City development institutions return areas to an earlier, but not original state (this being part of their disingenuity), often throwing the displaced poor into homelessness. Deutsche refers to Krzysztof Wodiczko’s 1984 work using the Astor Building in Manhattan’s Union Square, which challenges and disrupts our understanding of how architecture and monuments reflect collective memory and history. As a social activist, Wodiczko appropriates and activates public sites to examine ideas of human rights, democracy and contemporary capitalist life, while highlighting the alienation, violence and inhumanity that is part of that life.

While I appreciate and agree with the issues Deutsche raises about gentrification, I think she would have more credibility, particularly if she wants to influence those in power, if she would look more deeply at the specific history of the place – Union Square --and acknowledge that the rich might have a historical right to that place. Her argument, then, would be about the moral and societal cost of displacement rather than who should be able to claim squatting rights.

In the article, Deutsche limits the context to just the most recent cycle, where redevelopment is displacing the homeless from Union Square Park. She criticizes that pre-Civil War statues are spiffed up to attract buyers of luxury condos. A city like New York (or Rome, or Paris) is sort of like rubber-banding rush hour traffic – it fluxes over time, moving from affluent to ruin and back again, and again. Deutsche’s point is that corporate interests legitimize the displacement of the poor by claiming a past through “tradition” and “preservation”. She says that these projects, however, do not return the sites to an earlier or original state, rather by refurbishing existing sculptures and street furniture they fabricate traditional neighborhoods anew. She’s arbitrary, however, about which “original” state she chooses.

I personally witnessed this class-clash over land use. I purchased an apartment in a redeveloped building on the Upper West Side in 1980 (I sold it in 1983, I’m sorry to say). As I was leaving for work one morning, a man was gazing up at my building, pointing out a window where he had lived. I felt sad and guilty. The truth of the situation, however, was that when he lived there, the building had been a single-room-occupancy hotel until a fire burned the roof off. The interior of the upper middle class apartment building with its turn-of-the-(last) century wedding-cake plaster ceilings and fireplaces then melted in the elements for years, until finally it was gutted and “redeveloped” as market rate apartments. At some point, the poor, who were displaced by the fire, had displaced the affluent folks.

Union Square had a similar history. It was one of four squares laid out as residential precincts for wealthy New Yorkers prior to the Civil War. The park with its monumental sculptures was gated and locked. It later became a center for “radicalism”, where thousands of protesters waited news of the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. Might we say the rich, who didn’t share the protestors sentiments, were dispossessed? The latest redevelopment did not re-gate the park, so the transformation Deutsche discusses is less exclusive than it originally was.

I’m sympathetic to the plight of the homeless, and I believe the rich can afford, and have a civic obligation, not to greedily gobble up all the best spots. However, the ebbs and flows of old urban centers are much more layered and complex than Deutsche’s analysis accommodates, and for articles like hers to influence and facilitate change, they need to probe more honestly and deeply.

Reading the Vance essays is a confirmation to me that “the majority rules” when one is part of something immense, like the United States. I say the US because the money that the NEA received comes from the government, which really means the people or the US citizens (taxpayers) and to most of them art is portraiture and landscapes, anything other than that is not art. Especially 20 years ago when the country was much more conservative. Personally, I think if your artwork strikes a nerve with someone, the artist is headed in the right direction.
One thing I found so parallel with the AIDS reading is the between the line care
The AIDS reading was really interesting to me. Interesting and sad to see the statistics of how many deaths occurred while the government did nothing. It reminded me of Katrina in New Orleans where in both situations the people mostly affected where the minorities. people of color in New Orleans and (because of media stereotypes) gay minorities in the AIDS epidemic. There was 244 known deaths from aids in 1981 and it was not until 1987 and 1,123 deaths later when the government finally said something public about it. Twenty years later in New Orleans, a national disaster occurred and it still took 3 days for any assistance from the government. I think one point that can be made is not to vote republican!

Sexuality, Gender and Religion. A very touchy subjects for Americans, or should I say the right winged Americans. What I am most intriqued about is the power of the art and image. The mainstream of society is familiar with art, they know it is out there, but they do not necessarily understand it. Same goes for the issues presented in the week's articles.

I think it is interesting that in the case of the NEA debates, it is a question of whether or not the art is in a sense "appropriate" in a public sphere, and made/funded on the publice dime. As in regards to Mapplethorpe's work he is making a "sexual subculture visible". In the eyes of the conservative, it is one thing to know it (homosexuality) exist out "there" somewhere and that this is familiar ground for this subculture, but it is another to actually be drawn into this subculture through the arguable images. This subculture then becomes tangible and real and no longer in the closet (so to speak).

In response to the feminist article, it is interesting that the two feminist groups, the anitpornography and the fundamentlaist share a commonality, yet with different ideals.
"Both share a powerful desire to reshape cultural attitudes toward sexual imagery
as part of a larger program of political, social, and legal reform".
So it then becomes a questions of what is the best approach in reshaping these cultural attitudes. One by keeping the issue (prostitution) under the rug (antiporn feminist) or the other is exploring the issue and looking at it face on. The antipornographic feminist, MacKinnon, states that:
"It is one thing to talk about trafficking women, and it is another thing to
traffic women". She also debates that "Showing pornography sets women up for
harrasment and rape".
But what doesn't? In this cultural there are countless ways that women and girls are sexualized through media, advertising, clothing in department stores, child beauty pageants, etc.

A parrelel in both debates, NEA and the Michigan Law School, goes back to MacKinnon's statement about trafficking women-(in regards to a lifestyle or a pornographical act being tangible). It is one thing to know (homo/sexuality/prostituion, anti-religion) it's out there (talk about trafficking women), but it is another thing to actually endorse/engage in the act, and display this act in public domain.

The Vance articles on censorship make me question if there will ever be a possibility for artists to be funded again by the government? And if so are the requirements going to be stringent as to not allow the possibility for sexually offensive or pornographic images to be shown. Are artists who work in a political, sexual or social nature be restricted from receiving funding. Even though the work of Andre Serrano is responsible for this loss of funding was i feel that it is important for artists to constantly push the envelope and test limits. Which makes me think okay, thats been done now what's next.

CENSOR- WHAT?

After having watched the videos from last week's class and read Carole S. Vance's articles on War on Culture and Feminist Fundamntalism I find it quite amusing and shocking at the same time that we have to deal with the conflicts created by censorship that is in my opinion totally misplaced in the art world and a burden to free evolvment and creativity.
As the text says on page 129: " The fundamentalist attack on images in the art world must be recognized (...) to restore traditional social arrangements and reduce diversity." And: "(...) Images do stand for and motivate social change, the arena of representation is real ground for struggle."
I don't agree with that. The world lives through diveristy, change and innovtion. It lives through controversity and confrontation, though private expression and nonconformity. We need ART- especially provocative art- for that, to express our needs, thoughts and feelings. To understand and perceive society we need to be open for possible discomfort in discussions and pictures. I believe strong picutes (Art) and strong arguments are a neccesity for society to become a better one. How do we gain or develop if we never step out of our frame and old customs?!
The same is true for feminists oposed to pornographic pictures. I might have a different attitude concerning sexual issues through my european background since I see sex as a very important part in our life. Regarding the antipornography feminist's opinion, I don't believe in any of the threats that these pictures are supposed to create. In truth, I feel the opposite. What do we hide about it?
In this regard, I would like to mention Camille Paglia, who is a fellow feminist. She gives a very nice arguement to the antifeminin movement:

"whenever sexual freedom is sought or achieved, sadomasochism will not be far behind"; "rape is male power fighting female power"; and pornography is art.

Because most of my life I was openly lesbian, I totally understand men's passion for women. Women are beautiful and remote and unreachable. You feel desperate. There's nothing you can do to win their favor. The only thing men want is women's attention, and in nude dance clubs, they can get it for a moment.

The feminist line is, strippers and topless dancers are degraded, subordinated, and enslaved; they are victims, turned into objects by the display of their anatomy. But women are far from being victims -- women rule; they are in total control.

My whole life I've been gaga about beautiful women. That's why I have this angle on it -- I can see the way men see. White middle-class feminist rhetoric has been produced by professional women, lawyers, bookworms, and paper pushers who can't stand the fact -- it's unbearable to them -- that most men will still turn their heads and gasp when a beautiful women walks into the room and exposes a little tit and ass. It's a white, bourgeois prejudice to find the seductive wiggling of a butt degrading.

Even though I'm one of those supersmart white middle-class women, I don't have this jealousy. I'm strong enough as a woman to say that it's natural for a beautiful young girl walking into a room to capture the attention of all the men and women. That's an eternal human principle. It's not white male hetero-sexism. It's universal. All people admire youth and beauty. In the Greco-Roman tradition, youth and beauty are divine and worthy of worship. That's my theory. I'm saying that people go to strip clubs to see beauty and it's fucking elitist for people who go to museums to look at paintings and statues of beautiful bodies to denigrate strip clubs. These museum goers are staring at beautiful nude bodies for pleasure, and it's supposedly high art. The educated and rich get their kicks in museums. Most people who come to these mid-level or sleaze-level clubs are usually not highly educated literati. It's perfectly legitimate for them to want to look at beautiful female bodies.

I don't want a culture that says that a woman exposing her breasts is degrading. That's white middle-class bullshit. Men are fascinated and terrified by women's sexuality. That's why they pay prostitutes. The feminist analysis of prostitution says that men are using money as power over women. I'd say yes, that's all that men have. The money is a confession of weakness. They have to buy women's attention. It's not a sign of power; it's a sign of weakness.

The feminists who claim that woman are violated and diminished by this kind of format don't know what they're talking about. Current feminist rhetoric has gotten parched and bleached and sanitized and distorted. It doesn't allow for passion, for instinct, for lust, for beauty, for the awesomeness of nature. It's not sufficient to explain sex."

censorship

After reading the two Vance essays, I found myself trying to figure out what really constitutes censorship. In one section she says there is a kind of de facto censorship because it's only public funds that can reliably support a plurality of perspectives (private funds can be very easily be channeled to support only favored perspectives, and if there is no existing support for a minority perspective, a private funder is less likely to champion it). This is sort of a practical issue - but I don't think it answers the core of the issue (I can imagine Jesse Helms easily worming his way around that question). I think she states the central issue most clearly when it's a question of the implicit assumptions about a given artwork. For example:

If we are always afraid to offer a public defense of sexual images, then even in our rebuttal we have granted the right wing its most basic premise: sexuality is shameful and discrediting.

Once you give ground on the pronouncement that a given piece of art is "offensive" (in the judgment of some supposed authority), it's already been censored (whether or not it gets displayed).

I think all of the essays had this in common: a question of allowing some moral/political/economic authority to set the terms of the discussion. When coming from an outsider perspective it's common to accept the terms unconsciously, or as a prerequisite for joining the discussion. I agree there are many domains where this is an impossible position.

I really enjoyed the Deutsche essay, gives me a much clearer sense of the context of downtown San Jose, or the beige-square shopping centers all over suburbia. It's interesting how little we (the public) normally shape public space. Last week's FUSE speaker Red76 is a good reference for this stuff.

Thoughts

I recall once hearing in a philosophy class long ago, the phrase “nothing is good or bad except that thinking makes it so.” It is a laugh to consider this while reading. What conditions brought the thoughts into the minds of the politicians concerning the NEA grants. Was it really the art that they objected to, or the fact that they were somehow tied to it through government funding? If they had seen the art outside of that connection, would they have given it second thought or moved on to what’s for lunch?

The habit of urban planners to create revitalizations and restorations is from a subconscious fear of change. Granted this is not the case with all, just many. People are unsure of contemporary, they want new but not strange. This is why change happens in small steps and often masked by such terms as traditional.

What Greg mentioned, the use of art as propaganda, is an exercise of thought production: the showing of a work with the end goal of changing how people think. Could it be said that all art is for the production of thought and change of thought?

Vance, Crimp and Deutsche

One thing that really interested me in these readings is the role of art as a tool for propoganda. The use of artwork as a symbol of immorality for political agendas (images or preformance art considered obscene-sometimes these images are not shown to the public by the powers that be so that they can be mystified as a particular harmful evil), or the use of artwork as a symbol for political activists (example Silence=Death). If an artist is creating push-button type art, Should that artist have some responsibility for creating ammunition for political agendas? Is it enough to say "My part is to create dialog", and leave it at that or if you make a picture of a piss soaked christ, or a giant chocolate-christ should you actively engage in the political arena because your fame comes at the cost of the ramifications of that dialog (ie the loss NEA funding and the further privitization of the art world)?

Roberta Smith in NY Times

Dear All,

Hope you're not sitting around reading about art as I am. . . but I see that the article "Is It Art? And Who Decides?" by Roberta Smith--in the 9/16 Sunday NY Times--is floating around on the grad list. I find this interesting, particularly in light of our class discussion last week. Here are a few themes I found in Smith's article that we also addressed in our discussion/readings over the past two weeks.

1) How, since the 1960s, "site-specific" art has developed away from an interrogation of the physical site toward cultural critique (Kwon).

"Mr. Büchel’s dense, fraught creations, which compress masses of material and objects into historically charged labyrinthine environments through which viewers walk, climb and crawl."

2) The (limited) autonomy of the artist in the face of institutional pressure; the power of the curator today (Kwon, Brenson, Kester).

"The artist’s freedom includes the right to say, “This is not a work of art unless I say so.”

3) The YBA-effect, or, the artist-as-entrepreneur and the spectacle of art (Gaywood).

"The meltdown at Mass MOCA is sad for all concerned, yet is also a reflection of the changes wrought since the late 1960s, as installation art evolved from renegade form into an institutional staple of ever-bigger galleries and museums."

4) The effect of the 1990 "culture wars" on the relationship between the artist/museum/public today (this week's readings).

"It’s hard for a museum to recover when it forfeits the high ground. To this day the Corcoran Gallery of Art remains infamous for canceling its 1989 exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs after his work was denounced by Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina. To conservatives’ horror, the show had been partly financed by the National Endowment for the Arts."

Cheers,

Dr. b

RE: Greg's post

I was more interested in the Kotz article than the "yBa" analysis until I read Greg's post. At the end of his comments on this article he referenced a review:

"Another review I found on the "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" show at the Tate Britain (2004 yBA exhibition) by Adrian Searle referred to the work as "Everything shouts" and "everything that doesnt, disapears". "

In the Gaywood article, he concludes with the encompassing notion that "popular art practice has attempted to imply that the pressures of market processing to a large extent override the historical credibility of that work." The relational currency of their work stems from the mythology which grounds the work in contemporary practice.

In an article on a "Freeze" retrospective, another journalist has noted that: "by portraying these artists by means of the codes of the myth that has been generated around them the perceived threat that they embody is dissipated and controlled. After all how much of a threat can they be if they are accepted and supported by the likes of the Walker Art centre and the British Council?"

These "shock artists" are being celebrated for their celebrity, but I call into question the potentiality of "everything shouting" being a culturally lasting quality when the major exchanges for art are predominantly in the Thomas-Kinkade-esque market. I'm not questioning the value of celebrity, but the sustaining potential for celebrity when the masses follow different trends. Is history written by the victors or by the avante-guard?

Gaywood has a lot to say. I would appreciate his saying it much less academically, however. That said, does anyone know of a dictionary and thesaurus product that can be loaded onto a hard drive, not requiring being online to use?


The Young British Artists didn’t see how they were pawns of the establishment. They feigned a subversive mien, but were made relevant, were invented, by an ad man, Charles Saatchi, whose economic interest supported the promotion of the artists in his collection. The YBA thought they were commenting on the Spectacle with their Duchampian appropriations, but they were actually and only agents of the Spectacle themselves.

I‘ve seen some Ybas’ artworks before and I did some more research about it yesterday. I can understand the artists’ theories and why they express art in these extreme forms. But I don’t like this kind of art.

I read some reports about the exhibition “Aftershock” in China (Mar. 2007) which was held 10 years after the exhibition “Sensation” in London. “Aftershock” awoke Chinese artists’ memories of a bunch of artworks emerged around year 2000 which were influenced by 90’s British contemporary art. But this stream of artworks just appeared for a very short period of time because of the totally different situations of China in 90’s from Britain. It lacks the cultural soil to grow this art in 90’s China. Since Duchamp, the post-modernism has been breaking through the tradition by challenging and rebelling it. Ybas tries to break people’s moral standards and society taboo and psychological taboo. In the 21st century, the anti-ybas force appeares. People got aesthetic fatigue with Ybas art style. The “Aftershock” was unshockable this time in China. Compare “Aftershock” with Venice biennial and Documenta Kassel in 2007, people can see the mainstream of art world is in a steady, skilled state. It causes Chinese artists to think about what kind of expression that artists should use? What they should care about are the art form and profundity of the theory and how to communicate with viewers, but not just extremes that provoke viewer’s eyes and nerve.

In the Kotz article, the author spoke about maximum sensory impact, which I think is video's stronghold. The ways video pieces are displayed in galleries and museums requires the viewer interaction from the viewer, from entering the space, moving around possible multiple projections, to deciphering sound and imagery. The fact that video is somewhat confined to a rectangle is not so bothersome, since we are accustomed to this in painting, photography, and everyday objects like television and computers. I did find it kind of funny that the video is not enough; the artists are also reproducing photographs and other documents of the experience for "the market" to take home.

I agree with Kotz's last line of her article, stating that video projection work was/ is "less of a disruption of mass-media signal than a sign of the times." The artists that use projection as their choice of medium are dealing directly with the digital culture we are currently in and have been moving towards in the last 20-30 years. Video work also plays on the fact that we are so bombarded with imagery on a daily basis, that for it to be effective, it has to be powerful. I think there is a definite influence of mass media on contemporary artists, but artists are also taking advantages of the tools of communication.

Dina!

Dina,
Can we show your lipstick and cutting videos in class today? If so, please bring them to class. Thanks, Ginney, Gabe and Victor

I found the article Video Projection: The Spaces In Between to be of interest to me, due to the fact that my work is video and performance. In response to Eames statement, that to many works are modeled after the moving picture, I think this is were the lack of interest to the audience is created. We are so familiar with video, television, movies, commercials, etc. that engaging the audience within the space (which is other than their living room or movie theatre) is the most difficult part of video art/ and video installation. When we go to a gallery and see a painting on the wall, how long do we spend with it? More than a minute, two minutes, five minutes? The expectation for the audience viewing video is predetermined by years of media conditioning.

I think it is interesting that many question/questioned video as an art medium, just as photography was viewed in the late 70's early 80's. Is this due to their relationship to mass media and image/media culture? Where these mediums to "familiar" to be termed art?

Video Projection/ Diana Thater

Reading about Video Projection and Diana Thater it reminded me a lot about Walter Benjamin whom we talked about last semester. While I looked into his works online I found Diana Thater's video projects which build on Walter Benjamin's analysis that is about how we perceive the world while reinflecting our understanding of nature. Using the elemental color palette of video red, green, and blue, her works show a technologically mediated nature and are an example of the mechanics of media representation. Here is another example of one of her works that I thought fits into the reading on page 104 it says " While writers celebrate the "built- in instabilities" that disrupt Thater's system- the "skweded projector lenses", "strobing color separations" and "defective optical apparatus" and "distorted image" - they neglect the extent to which these instabilities are programmed, controlled, and designed to generate pictorial effects." This is very interesting when we look how well these pictorial effects are created..

http://209.32.200.23/thater/thaterframe.html


So, video projections are kind of the "new age" medium for contemporary artists, close to paint and cinema.
I have a question about her idea of video installations- how does she archive that the video speaks about itself?

Projected Art

In my experience, Tony Oursler has been the most successful in the use of projection. He has done an beautiful job marrying projection with a space. When I view works in a gallery, I do it quickly and return to investigate over and over taking little bits of information at a time. I find that video installations distract my flow through a gallery. They seem to require a longer initial investigation which leads me to skip them like a lengthy email. There is a distinct difference in the state of mind that I must be in to view art as opposed to viewing a film. Too many projected works are modeled too closely to the moving picture.

yBa as Critique (of?)

While I read the Gaywood essay I was understanding it as a kind of criticism of the yBa movement. Suggesting that it appropriated but inverted the anti-style of the dadaists and made it style. And appropriated the ready-made but stripped it of it's institutional critique to better compliment the ruling elite. And finally that their highly mediated representation was a mythology that didn't hold much correspondence to the substance of their work.

Then I re-read the title: "yBa as Critique" ... I doubt this means that their work constitutes a critique of the power and image focused marketplace. They are actually celebrating it:

The neo-Formalism apparent in their group shows at that time takes the corporate bull by the horns and glorifies in its participation within the private sector, exposing the guts of the sacred cow (as it were) that "is", that always was "Art."

Is this to say then that they were critiquing what art pretended to be, but never really was? Art was always to serve the elite? Art, and artists always existed as highly mediated representations, and there never was anything else?

On the other hand maybe they are criticizing the same thing their celebrating, why not?

After reading Gaywoods critique of the yBa culture, I decided to research some images of yBa artists onine. I found this piece "fuck face"1994 by Jake and Dinos Chapman. Gaywood states "One recurrent theme of repoted NB developments involves their use of "shock tactics". I could see this shocking a few folks. Another review I found on the "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" show at the Tate Britain (2004 yBA exhibition) by Adrian Searle referred to the work as "Everything shouts" and "everything that doesnt, disapears". It seems there is little room for subtlety within this "movement".

"yBa" vs "yBa"

…Levi-Strauss suggests that this culturally restricted sign currency communicates at a deep structural level the significances that preserve identity within and identification with that society through “conscious” symbolic signifying artworks.

Saatchi gallery website describes My Bed as Tracey Emin’s embarrassing glory; empty booze bottles, cigarette butts, stained sheets, etc, as an aftermath of a nervous breakdown by sharing her most personal space, revealing insecurity and imperfection like the rest of the world. Looking at Tracey Emin’s My Bed, for instance, at the Saatchi gallery in London, I sensed indifference not “embarrassing glory.”

Gaywood’s explanation of mediated identity in “young British art” gave me a sense of relief. My take of his stance was that institutions support the “readymade” aesthetic, re-appropriate it and juxtapose it to the market. “young British art” re-codified low value objects as aesthetic works for an audience of consumers by the support of the institutions. I am still perplexed as what really constitutes art: is the definition of artwork intertwined with notions of historic time, place (institutions) and mass culture –or does art have a life of its own independent of these constraints? How does commercial value of a work affect its artistic worth? Are we not living in a readymade society with prefabricated set of identities to assume….?

Ever wade through Jell-o?

I have to say that Gaywood was particularly dense. After reading it I sat bleary-eyed staring at my husband wondering aloud whether what I'd read was absurdly profound or absurdly incomprehensible. I then read to him a few sentences to illustrate my point. His blank expression spoke volumes and his eventual reply was, "Maybe you should have a glass of wine before re-reading it."

Gaywood seems to applaud the "transgressive art" of the NBs and the yBas yet writes in such a way that the appeal of his writing style could only appeal to the learned and educated class which the NBs seem to be scorning. I mean, this guy uses a string of $50 words when a handful of carefully chosen $3 words would do nicely. And is it ironic that the NBs and yBas snub post-modernism and align themselves with Duchamp but are summarily purchased by the likes of Charles Saatchi and the "neo-Bourgeois?" I mean, wasn’t Duchamp was trying to subvert the system while the NBs overtly seek the commodification of kitsch?

I'm not sure exactly if the Kotz article is unintentionally drawing a parallel between the “Freeze” type stuff and the proliferation of video art although she does speak directly to the awkwardness of “the high-tech formats of modern display culture” merging with “the older forms of connoisseurship and exhibition value associated with unique objects” and further when describing the incorporation of video in the gallery and museum culture.

to facilitate dialogic conversation

Donna's question, "If dialogic art doesn't exactly produce an object, what market does it serve?" can be answered by Ethan when he notes that "Kwon. . . raises the question of the role of the artist as a coordinator of industries, or service provider." Andrea Fraser calls this 'critical-artistic,' services." We're in a service economy right? Don't you artists want to be service providers too? If not, why not?

As per Donna's other question: "[D]oes the concept of being compensated, therefore paid, by our one's own labor mean the work is still legitimate? If not, why does a curator get paid?" My answer has two parts:

a. because the curator is not legitimate; b. the curator is not paid. this is a multiple choice answer.

Dr. B

Curator as artist

Considering the Brenson's discussion of the evolution of the curator, I’m struck by how much they have become the artist. I experienced that last year at the De Young Museum, with the Chicano exhibition curated by Daniel Cornell. This exhibition incorporated several gallery spaces throughout the museum. In one area, he installed sections of border fencing in ways that related to the sculptural qualities of the building’s architecture, and the views a visitor saw through the window. There was a political message, the intricacies of which I no longer remember – but I clearly remember his aesthetic presentation. So, the curator’s work is remembered, while the content of the objects is not.

Thoughts on context: Kwon’s discussion of site specificity contextualizes what I call art-as-science-project and Brenson’s essay gives context to a Context -- the installation.

I agree that the moving of site specific works destroys the work. “As Susan Hapgood has observed. “the once popular term ‘site specific” has come to mean movable under the right circumstances,” shattering the dictum that “to remove the work is to destroy the work.”.” When you remove a piece from it’s environment you not only change its context but it’s content. I recently viewed Richard Serras spash piece at the SF MoMa and was not excited, the piece felt diluted and forced into an environment where it did not belong.

Brenson's essay is about the rising importance of the role of curator, to not only put together interesting shows, but to educate the community, put work into context, and bring in work from other cultures, to increase the dialogue among artists and visitors to the exhibitions. The curator has responsibilities to the public, to educate and inform. Visitors want to not just experience an exhibition, they want to understand it. Curators have a new role of starting a dialogue between artists, cultures, and the general public. Brenson talks about how people are, in one sense, very disconnected from one another, but at the same time, have a need to communicate and understand one another.

This brings him to the rise of Biennial Exhibitions, and the roles these exhibitions have to each of their respective countries. Biennials use art as a means for curators and countries to "break the isolation of their peoples and regions and redefine national and international telationships." (p.61) They become a way to communicate with the art world at large, and bring respect for their local artists, and in turn, their nation.

Brenson quotes a curator from Brazil, saying "It's not for art's sake... It's for the sake of the education of society." (p.62) In this way, the role of art, and the curator to communicate that art to society, becomes very important. In this sense, I view the term Dialogic Art as art that communicates, in some way, beyond the art world sphere. Whether it is site-specific public art, or the attempts of curators to educate a society at large through art, it is, in the broader scheme of things, art that is trying to reach out beyond it historical capabilities.

One of the quotes that I began to think about in many ways is the quote “The once-popular term ‘site specific’ has come to mean movable under the right circumstances,” shattering the dictum that “to remove the work is to destroy the work”. I wonder how many artists changed their minds of re-creating or relocating their work for the sole purpose of making money and compromising their ethical beliefs of the work. On the flipside, how many artists took up the opportunity to re-create or relocate their work for the sole purpose to share the experience with an audience that otherwise could not have experienced the work? Maybe, when Serra made the statement “to remove the work is to destroy the work”, he may not have been aware of other sites where the work can be as powerful and fit perfect as in the original location?

Another sentence that stuck out from the reading was “…part of the responsibility of the curator is to say, This is what I am doing, and it is not the final word.” I think it is very important for a curator to keep in mind what the artist (whose work the curator is going to display) thinks is the best way to display his art. Being a curator can be a difficult job because he/she must juggle the work, the artist (if they are still alive) the audience who is going to come and see the work, and the “higher ups” that oversee the curator. Tough!
Maybe the introduction of a contract between an artist and the curator/institution would be a good idea as Fraser has wrote. It would be a good idea if there were some guidelines, or have some sort of “paved road” for artists.

...fraser and autonomy

What really caught my interest in the Fraser article (and which I will not have time to talk about tonight) was the relationship she proposed between autonomy and appropriating models from other professional fields. While there seems to be an obvious connection between the supposed liberation of "being an artist" versus following current "contract or fee structures," I was struck by the complication of providing service-based-art without falling into a non-autonomous relationship with the provider. Does the provision of services entitle the exacter of payments to hold an agenda and political power over the services? Obviously in the standard contract model which has been used favors this model.

However, as service providers, there must be alternative models to approach the creation of dialog between parties. While I see more artists moving to a corporate theory model, searching for protection behind the system instead of in front of it, is this the only relationship between "service providers" and the "money holders" available?

Yeah, it’s true that to be an artist now is more and more complex. We have to deal with not only skills and markets but also political, economical, technological, and psychological issues. The curator in Brenson’s article also has to take multiple roles and functions. “They must be at once aestheticians, diplomats, economists, critics, historians, politicians, audience developers, and promoters. They must be able to communicate not only with artists but also with community leaders, business executives, and heads of state.”

While facing more and more issues, the artists also try to self-effacement. “…as the curators becomes a more and more visible player in the world of contemporary art, more artists are concealing their egos to prove to the art community, to the general public, and to themselves that they are worth of respect.”

Brenson also talks about the self-consciousness and openness and awareness of curators. How self-conscious and open a curator is decides how transparent the exhibition is. Here, making transparent and self-conscious brings identity to the fore. It’s not just about people’s relations to others and to the world around them but about the processes of everyone’s inner life. To an artist, I think it’s important to be self-aware and open.

My favorite line of text in all of this was from Fraser:

"The cynical, debased version of this kind of analysis is that the artistic field is no different from any other market in luxery goods."

With the next favorite also from Fraser:

"Because we are working for our own satisfaction, our labor is supposed to be its own compensation."

With regards to the first quote, how does that work with Kwon's discussion regarding site specificity especially in the public domain? On the second quote, does the concept of being compesated, therefore paid, by our one's own labor mean the work is still legitimate? If not, why does a curator get paid?

If dialogic art doesn't exactly produce an object, what market does it serve?

Kwon essay poses some interesting questions in regards to artistic production, art as commodity, art as process, art as tangible. She implies that site-specific art was a way for the artist to “resist the forces of the capitalist market economy”. But in the end of the essay it seems that the “capitalist market” found a way to make this kind of art practice beneficial for them. In reproducing the site-specific art and replacing it into a new environment I question the hierarchy of the varying levels of importance within the art. What is the most important aspect of the art? Is it the art piece itself, the artist’s hand, the limited time of existence, the context of the art and place, or the context of the place within the art?

There is a quote in Fraser’s essay that I see as relavent to Kwon and Brenson…”The demand for art addressed to artist is often also directly related to competition between institutions themselves: competition for funding, for press, for audience, and all the other indices of influences over the popular and professional perception of legitimate culture and legitimate cultural discourse”.

Itinerant Artists

I had no idea being an artist was this complex! I think that is great though.
I think reading Miwon Kwon's text gives quite a good picture on how the art work is not just an art work but a commodity and something very vibrant, i would say.
In the end it is just like a business, the art has to suit the site and still remain quite authentic as well as the art has to fit in the regulations of the insitution. As if the artist's work wasn't enough already, he has to take on a lot of personalities and jobs, being an artist, coordinator and curator at the same time. And the traveling makes this a very "creative" job since he has to rethink the site, work with new people, different contracts etc. Very interesting and very different from the old times where artist did not have to deal with the "site" issues and " institutions" so much.
Gosh.. who said being an artist was easy?! ;)

-Jess.

I like the idea of the artist being the commodity rather than the artwork. Kwon talks about the necessity of the artist's present in itenerant projects and thier present being "preformative". The art is not validated unless the artist is present. The artist is providing a service to the institution and in the view of Fraser, should be compensated for that act. I think this can only happen if the artist views the work as serving the community, like the Dialogic Art described by Kester. The artist must view themselves as the product and the producer to compete in this new globalized art community.

Terms

Kwon: Site-Specificity: “unfixed impermanence”

Brenson: Curators/Biennales: “cultural forces”

Fraser: Artistic Service: “cultural institutions” and “institutional critique”

Kester: Conversation Pieces: “empathetic identification”

Dialogic

The question that "dialogic" sets off for me in relation to these texts is : is the artist involved in a dialog, if so, with whom?

In Kwon the site of a work has become a given topical dialog in many cases. She also suggests that the dialog need not be some external pre-existing conversation, but may actually be initiated by the work. This seems to basically fit the notion of art that Mikhail Bakhtin advanced (as sited by Kester) "... the work of art can be viewed as a kind of conversation."

Kwon also raises the question of the role of the artist as a coordinator of industries, or service provider, "what [artists] provide now, rather than produce, are aesthetic, often 'critical-artistic,' services." This connects very directly to the Fraser piece, and further seems linked to the role of the curator in the Brenson essay.

These all challenge the nature of art (object making vs. service) - but approach dialog differently. I tend to see the Brenson piece as possibly addressing dialog among the artists in an exhibition (in this sense the curator is parallel to the artists used as examples in the Kester essay - facilitators of a dialog), but also addressing dialog between the curator and the audience.

I was most forcefully struck by a question that Fraser raises, when he asks if we, as artists, are to be in conversation with ourselves (in a sense); if we produce work consistent only with it's own internal logic. He then follows it with "... but in so doing we forfeit the right to regulate the social an economic conditions of our activity..." and thereby "...forefeit the ability to determine the meaning and effects of our activity according to our interests as social subjects..." Seems so clearly stated and important to be aware of!

9.6.07 CLUI at City Hall

Reminder: We will meet at 5:30 at 4th Street Pizza, just across the street from the San Jose City Hall. The talk starts at 7pm. Also, you can find information about the Center for Land Use Interpretation by clicking the link above. Remember to post your comments on the blog. See y'all soon.

Dr. B