Re: <eyebeam><blast> Internet, modernisation and net.art

[blast-agent <agent@blast.org>]

Brett Stalbaum <beestal@pacbell.net> writes 2 responses to Ellen
Fernandez Sacco’s <esacco@ucla.edu> post of Thu, 5 Feb 1998:

First message:

Fernandez is correct in pointing out that "How time gets represented in
regard to all of this (the location and positioning of 'art') is
important to consider." As those who have read the entire essay [at
http://switch.sjsu.edu:/web/art.online2/brett.links/conjuring.html]
know, this is actually the general point I was trying to make. The
selection which was posted here is part of an analysis of how a
Baudrillard's critique is interpreted to view contemporary art. That
viewpoint has a certain dangerous currency; the "burning house", if you
will. But I do not simply accept that analysis. The text proceeds to
state:

"There is, however, a way to view this situation so that the precession
of models leads to an understanding capable of enabling routes of
escape. There are deeper level models invested in the figure of the
artist which need to be drawn out and eviscerated. These are for the
most part related to the latent selfhoods of artistic identity from the
modern era. This basically Faucaultian critique emerges from the idea
that art is a historically determined notion based on practices and
objects, which in art's case also meet various semiotic conditions. The
gallery, the museum, the materials, the objects, the patronage and the
simulacra which form the art market are then seen not as deterrence
machinery but rather as social practices which emerge from complex and
contingent conditions. The focus then changes from contemporary art's
worthlessness to how it can be made useful again. In this sense it is
not enough to say that art is catatonic, but rather to understand how
contemporary postmodern/postindustrial contingencies effect art practice
and to situate that practice strategically within them."

I go on to make a case against Foucault's turn toward "technologies of
the self," in favor of artists becoming the kind of knowledge worker
capable of agency within a post-industrial, network based culture. It is
necessary for artists from all backgrounds to consider this, or the
answers to the questions "For what purpose, all of this practice, for
whom, for what audiences,within what political economy?" may be resolved
for us, instead of by us.

Second message:

There is, however, a way to view this situation so that the precession
of models leads to an understanding capable of enabling routes of
escape. There are deeper level models invested in the figure of the
artist which need to be drawn out and eviscerated. These are for the
most part related to the latent selfhoods of artistic identity from the
modern era. This basically Foucaultian critique emerges from the idea
that art is a historically determined notion based on practices and
objects, which in art's case also meet various semiotic conditions. The
gallery, the museum, the materials, the objects, the patronage and the
simulacra which form the art market are then seen not as deterrence
machinery but rather as social practices which emerge from complex and
contingent conditions. The focus then changes from contemporary art's
worthlessness to how it can be made useful again. In this sense it is
not enough to say that art is catatonic, but rather to understand how
contemporary postmodern/postindustrial contingencies effect art practice
and to situate that practice strategically within them.
...
I by no means wish to indicate any sense of pessimism regarding this art
as knowledge work strategy. The cynicism and bitterness often expressed
in post-structuralist critiques such as those made by Baudrillard both
accurately characterize the contemporary art problem, and fail to offer
solutions. It would be as flawed a strategy to dismiss the postmodern
critique of art as it is to only raise the critique cynically in terms
of art's death. I know many artists who are in denial on this point.
What can not be said often enough is that the postmodern state of art is
not grim. The re-coding of cultural software through many means,
including even traditional forms such as painting, can become
conceptually based productive activities once they are rethought and
repurposed. This situation wherein the western social conception of art
and its vast complex of semiotic signifiers can unjoin, dissipate and
connect with other discourses in a knowledge practice is necessary and
exciting.


-----------------------------------------------


On Thu, 5 Feb 1998, Ellen Fernandez Sacco wrote:

> ... if anything, this viewpoint overlooks community based or even
> individual efforts to use cultural forms to sustain identities and
> expression, in spite of the current structures of art administration
and
> institutions...

> ... The relationship of artmaking/cultural practices to self
> determination is only obscured further
> by focusing on too big a picture (art as impotent cultural forms in
the
> culture warehouses of the world...)

{ brad brace } <bbrace@wired.com> responds:

Why-then would we continue to call what-we-might-do "art" and the person
who-does-it an "artist?" The term "net-art" seems mostly an attempt to
validate another centrist art-historical period despite our
contemporaneity -- that is "beyond-the-end" of modernist categories. Why
might we still harbor such a disingenuous distinction? After-all, real
artists and art can only disappear...

{ brad brace } <bbrace@wired.com> has also forwarded this url:

An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control:

http://jya.com/stoa-atpc.htm






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