the limits of desire perhaps evolving into the limits of art
barrett john erickson
>
> barrett john erickson wrote:
>
> >> -- barrett said: ...
> > an isolated object can't _cause_ me to do anything, i assume you're the
> > same and would argue no different.
>
> elag: Yes, I agree. I just want to underline the fact that porn (as any
> propaganda) functions as reinforcement... positive or negative reinforcement.
>
> Similar to the way a poster of Uncle Sam pointing at you may reinforce your
> patriotism (or desire to kill foriegners).
> Or
> an anti-perspirant ad may reinforce your paranoia about body odors.
>
> every thing in my environment affects me in some way and it is important to my
> well being to question their potential effects...
without wishing to divert attention from what i think may be a productive
path, i need to register my objection to the use of the word "porn" without
quotation marks. as it seems to imply that "porn" has some kind of
ontological reality whereas i see it as a conjured taboo -- a boogeyman for
the prudes.
that said ...
the substance of your comments leads to the exploration of art, artist,
observer, reaction and eventually the general concept of utility.
i suspect you are attaching too much to the object and not enough to the
creative (re)action of the "observer". Duchamp thought of art as a process
which had two poles: the artist and the person experiencing the product of
the artist (what i would call an "artifact" of the creative process).
"art" for him was what happened when someone experienced and added their
own creative (inter)action to the work of the artist.
i think this was a perceptive and accurate depiction of the art _process_.
the "work" of the artist might take many forms (as artifact) but remains
essentially only a medium (with no intrinsic meaning or utility) which
allows the interaction of two creative nodes.
[as our tools have no intrinsic meaning or utility until humans put them to
use.]
as i read your comments, i wonder how you and others in the group see this.
-- barrett
bar...@MagneticFields.org
http://www.MagneticFields.org/
"Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of
the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and
future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be
perceived as contradictions."
...André Breton
--
bar...@MagneticFields.org
http://www.MagneticFields.org/
"Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of
the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and
future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be
perceived as contradictions."
...André Breton
barrett john erickson
netscape wouldn't "paste as quotation" the entire post. this may also
cause some confusing ">" placements when viewed on your reader.]
Nikolaus Maack, in response to elag, wrote:
>elag (el...@concentric.net) writes:
>> a circle is not propaganda
>
>Yes it is. Watch an episode of Sesame Street some time and see how they
>push circles and squares and triangles at you. We are taught that these
>primary shapes are somehow more meaningful than say, a squiggle or
>decahedron. A circle is just as much propaganda as a Pepsi logo.
a good point, but i'd argue that the label "propaganda" can only be applied
in the context of a human usage. it is, therefore, not a property of the
circle, but the human process which turned the circle into a tool.
>Because everything is art, everything is also propaganda.
i can't accept this equation for the above reason, although i accept most
of the argument which follows it -- with the exception of us being "duped"
by a pepsi logo (again for the above reason -- but even your later example
of Negatiland seems to refute this).
art and propaganda are human processes each of which require the
participation of others. as such they _are_ equivalent, but not
necessarily coincidental.
>When we see a
>circle, and are told it is a circle, and told that circles represent
>wholeness and unity and perfection, we are duped just as much as when we
>see a Pepsi logo. The Pepsi people tell us that Pepsi is fine and good
>and will make us happy. They are no more guilty of creating propaganda
>than Sesame Street is. Or they are both guilty. Morality is liquid
>anyway. Good, evil, one wears white and one wears black.
but then, again i have to reject
>Everything is art. Everything is propaganda.
because the natural extension is: therefore nothing is art, nothing is
propaganda.
the dialectic disappears, not in synthesis, but in the banal loss of
definition.
>Everything limits our experience. By looking at one thing and not another,
>the thing we see is defined as meaningful and significant.
i agree with this, except to assert again that it is not the "thing" which
limits our experience, but the _actions we've taken_ relative to that thing
(a human choice made).
>If society holds up a circle, the letter A, a Pepsi logo, or whatever, >society attempts to tell us that it is significant and of meaning. By doing >this, our experience is limited.
or rather: we are faced with a decision to accept or reject which will
inevitably result in some limitation (which we may or may not be
immediately aware of).
>A surrealist strives to crack the code.
i would say "subvert the code" -- but perhaps not a big distinction since i
think you mean something very similar.
>Society holds up the circle and
>says "THIS IS A CIRCLE AND IT IS OF MEANING." The surrealist denies the
>meaning of the circle.
at least as an attribute of the circle itself. what is _really_ denied is
society's assumption of our autonomous prerogative to determine meaning
relative to our own lives.
>The surrealist dissects the circle. The
>surrealist points at other shapes and says, "Why aren't these shapes of
>meaning? What's wrong with straight lines and cubes and spheres? Why
>must we look at circles?"
>
>You can do the same thing with a PEPSI logo, if you'd like. That's what
>Negatiland did on their wonderful album, Dispepsi. They dissected Pepsi
>and played with their definitions. A surreal act.
actually sounds quite situationist also (which i don't consider in conflict
with surrealism).
but i'm not familiar with this group. some more info?
Talysman
write in alt.surrealism:
">You can do the same thing with a PEPSI logo, if you'd like. That's what
">Negatiland did on their wonderful album, Dispepsi. They dissected Pepsi
">and played with their definitions. A surreal act.
"actually sounds quite situationist also (which i don't consider in conflict
"with surrealism).
"but i'm not familiar with this group. some more info?
Negativland is actually a SubGenius group (or, at least, is much
admired by the SubGenii, and have most of their airplay on "Hour of
Slack" and similar SubG radio programs.)
I haven't really heard much of their work (or seen... I think they
work in many kinds of media.) I certainly haven't heard the DISPEPSI
album, which was an object of much debate in alt.slack recently
(many of their fans seemed to think it wasn't as good as their older
works.) they use soundbytes and "found" material woven together in
sound collages.
if you do a search for Negativland in alt.slack, you will unearth a
huge amount of information... including (unfortunately) posts by the
record industry lawyer who sued Negativland over copyright issues.
--
"I love to dance with cemetery girls
the moon comes out the earth unfurls" ---Barnes & Barnes
His Most Feathered Eminence, the Ur-Beatle
Talysman
write in alt.surrealism:
"i suspect you are attaching too much to the object and not enough to the
"creative (re)action of the "observer". Duchamp thought of art as a process
"which had two poles: the artist and the person experiencing the product of
"the artist (what i would call an "artifact" of the creative process).
""art" for him was what happened when someone experienced and added their
"own creative (inter)action to the work of the artist.
"i think this was a perceptive and accurate depiction of the art _process_.
"the "work" of the artist might take many forms (as artifact) but remains
"essentially only a medium (with no intrinsic meaning or utility) which
"allows the interaction of two creative nodes.
"[as our tools have no intrinsic meaning or utility until humans put them to
"use.]
"as i read your comments, i wonder how you and others in the group see this.
I'd agree that a process can be art, but also I think that the
more everday definition of art as artifact applies, too; the two
form opposite poles of an "art continuum".
I mainly started thinking about how processes can be art when
contemplating modern art, most of which I think is crap (red
bars on a blue background? COME ON!) all that crap started
to make sense when I began thinking of the art community as
the actual "art" in these cases: any fool can paint those
stupid pictures, but what's important is the conversations in
the art galleries of people trying to *justify* those stupid
pictures as "art". the conversations (performances) are the
real art.
I first thought of this after seeing a program about an artist
who makes skillful (but obvious) counterfit money, tries to
get restaurants and stores to accept the money along with an
IOU and an explanation, then sells his "art" to collectors,
who buy the "money" back from the stores (at a profit for them.)
receipts, counterfit money used, and the actual item purchased
(if any) are then mounted together in a display that the new
art owner then takes home. this is all much more artistic than
those red bars, but you can see the same idea: it's not just
the artifact, but the whole process that is part of the art.
--
Don't give me none of that TIMEZONE crap!
elag
Nikolaus Maack
me:
>>Because everything is art, everything is also propaganda.
barrett john erickson:
> because the natural extension is: therefore nothing is art, nothing is
> propaganda.
Which is fine by me. Buddhists go around saying everything is an
illusion. This destroys the concept of illusion. As a buddhist pal of
mine once said, "When the illusion of my head is hit by the illusion of a
rock, I experince the illusion of pain." If everything is illusion, it's
pretty safe to say to make the leap to the concept that everything is art.
And maybe this is pointless in a logical, definition based sense, but as
an emotional approach to the world, I think treating everything is an
illusion/artwork makes life more interesting. And that, of course, is the
most important ideal of all. If it makes life interesting, it must be good.
> the dialectic disappears, not in synthesis, but in the banal loss of
> definition.
All right, if we (I) go around defining EVERYTHING as art, then the word
art is effectively destroyed. However, that doesn't change the fact that
everything is, potentially, art. All you have to do is take a thing,
isolate it, record it, or point at it, and suddenly it is art. Maybe the
word "art" should be destroyed. Why not? It's fun to destroy things.
This is the end result of Warhol and other crazy artist weenies doing
rather odd things. Hang a urinal on the ceiling (this artwork is at The
National Art Gallery here in Ottawa) and it becomes art. Take a coat rack
(also here at the NAG) and hang it from a thread, and it's art. Some
people get very ANGRY when they see this stuff. The usual ignorant
response is, "I could do that, so it ain't art."
Except there's no denying that it's art. There it is, hanging in the art
gallery. It's art. The real debate should focus on whether or not the
object, the artwork, is of any value. Of course it's art, but is it art
of worth? To take it back to the buddhist idea, of course it's an
illusion, but is it a useful illusion?
Anything of use, anything interesting, anything that makes life sparkle,
is a good thing and should be worshipped while naked.
Me:
>>Everything limits our experience. By looking at one thing and not another,
>>the thing we see is defined as meaningful and significant.
bje:
> i agree with this, except to assert again that it is not the "thing" which
> limits our experience, but the _actions we've taken_ relative to that thing
> (a human choice made).
This of course assumes that we have free will, which is debateable, but I
hate that whole argument so I'm not going to get into it. Yes, choice
does enter into the whole thing, but I would argue that your choices are
limited simply by the environment you're brought up in. If you are raised
in North America, chances are you're going to mainly be exposed to all the
silly shit we North Americans believe in. You'll get the work ethic
stuff, the Christ stuff, the do unto others stuff.
Chances are you will not be exposed to the Hindu religion. Taoism
probably won't be a major part of your upbringing. You most likely will
not be sacrificing goats to a village god based on the memories of some
important ancestors.
What you seem to be saying, bje, is that we can choose not to be affected
by the propaganda that surrounds us. This is simply untrue. On some
level, every Pepsi commercial we see does affect us, even if the affect is
simply, "I reject this!" When Sesame Street holds up the circle and says,
"Circle, goddamnit!" do we have the choice of saying, "No! I do not
accept the circle as the primal shape! Fuck you, Big Bird!"
It affects us before we are even capable of making a choice. Our very
language limits our thinking. If we don't have a word for it, it doesn't
really exist in a tangible way. Our culture catches us and puts a
stranglehold on our thoughts before we even start to consider things like
"choices". The propaganda seeps in day one out of the womb, I'm afraid.
Which doesn't mean we can't fight it every day of our waking lives. That
sounds like fun, so let's do that. But you have to recognize how big a
Monster you're choosing to fight.
[Negativeland]
> but i'm not familiar with this group. some more info?
They're anelectronic group of guys who take samples and do odd things with
them. They're most famous piece, I guess, would have to be "Christianity
is Stupid." It's a lovely piece of satirical music.
Dispepsi, their latest album, takes Pepsi commercials and talk radio spots
and other found noise and intermixes it with music. The result is a
deconstruction of Pepsi advertising campaigns, and using the tricks of
advertising to work against Pepsi.
"And my mind just turns to Pepsi and I think if it a lot.
Smart drinks lead me to forget, and Kool Ade isn't hot."
They do bits on Coke VS. Pepsi, Buy Nothing Day, and other interesting
stuff. The result is quite bizarre. I highly recommend it.
Another beautiful and sick thing Negativland did was... Well, a young boy
murdered his parents with an axe. Negativland issues a press release
saying, "Our song didn't do it," or words to that effect. They more or
less started a rumour that their music was involved in the killing, and
that the song "Christianity is Stupid" started an argument amongst the
family that resulted in the kid comitting murder.
After they issues the press release, Negativland got real quiet, saying
nothing more. Then the media started calling. The end result was a news
spot on the 6 o'clock news that talked about the link between murder and
music. All of this fun can be heard first-hand on the lovely album,
"Helter Stupid."
We should all aspire to attack the world at large in the way that
Negativland does.
N.
--
"Likewise, I am no fan of Islam...but that doesn't preclude a
total ignorance of obvious good teachings in the Koran."
--Brian RA Sterling, Grandmaster Freenet Nutbar
xepera
about the performance afterwards. They loved it. It gave them a
chance to engage in high-falutin' criticism.
When I look at art I think to myself; "that artist had fun, or that artist
had a bad day," etc. Who cares about a dumb object? What is
important is what it tells about a state of being.
When you see a child or an idiot do something clumsy, do you
ridicule, or do you quietly appreciate your own advantage?