I might overlook theory but i don't overlook practice. (I know..., there's
no telling them apart... theoretically).
Any escape out of art led to more art -- or to no art at all -- any. Please
give me an example that led to a different art, one that lasts (I do not
mean the continuous growth of media, channels, hypes, etc. They serve their
own goal) I mean art on an entirely different
cultural-social-economical-political-communicational basis. I try to
imagine this without the pretence. I believe there will be very obscure
productions that haven't, yet/ever, been exposed to the public eye: upon
that they will turn into art, immediately.
This is neither cynical, nor fatalist, nor simplistic -- it shows the mere
quality of a symbolic order that is supported so well institutionally,
scientifically, economically, in the media. It's there to stay, rooted
indeed, in its rich and alive and contradictory traditions. Period. We can
only hope to improve its communication/information. Or loose it to some
spectacle, which is probably one way to proceed.
_If_ communication/information media however are to change distribution and
reputation of artistic symbolic production (and this depends largely on the
dominant enormous interests -- see also Morgan Garwood's story on Gates'
'intelligence' -- of media and telecommunications corporations. An absolute
condition is eg. symetric up and download capacity, another computational
power at both ends of the line, another hybridization of media on and off
line, another programming skills at the hand of artists, and so on and so
forth) art might yet enter a period of very precise, immediate,
communicational growth. It will not happen overnight and we will have to
throw off a lot of old habits and markets. It might just work. It needs a
concentrated effort on all levels of artistic production: the practical,
the intermediate, the theoretical, the facilitary, the institutional, the
commercial. It doesn't aim at global mobilization. And it isn't
technological per se.
Indeed we're lost.
Jouke Kleerebezem Amsterdam
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