Kollaborate Komrades

“Every spectator is either a coward or a traitor.”[1]

Hito Steyerl works as filmmaker, videoartist and author in the area of essayist documentary film, postcolonial criticism, as producer as well as theorist. The works are located on the interface between film and fine arts. Main topics: cultural globalization, political theory, global feminism, and migration. Further activities include work as political journalist, film and art critic, catalogue and book author. The films have received international awards and are screened on TV in many countries. Steyerl has a PhD in philosophy, is a visiting Professor for Experimental Media Creation at Universitaet der Kuenste, Berlin, has had numerous lectureships at art and film schools in Vienna, Munich, Hanover.[2]

In her article, Is a Museum a Factory?,(Steyerl, Is a Museum a Factory), Steyerl mentions a work of Jonathan Beller, The Cinematic Mode of Production, where he makes the case that watching the screen is labour.[3] ^(Beller) This informs the piece as Steyerl follows the progress of the worker leaving the factory, becoming part of the artwork, and the audience/worker, participating and consuming themselves and the product of their own labour, in the Factory/Museum/ Art space.[4] Steyerl then goes on to describe how the cinematic work in the museum, requires a multitude as viewer, because the cinematic is now broken up into many parts which can not be consumed by one person, and that the real work might begin in the interaction of this multitude.

I think this ties in nicely with an article in two parts from the same journal by Liam Gillick called, Maybe It Would Be better if we worked in groups of three? The Discursive/ The Experimental Factory, (Gillick) where he describes a discursive art making that has become more prevalent recently. He says,” The discursive is what produces the work and, in the form of critical and impromptu exchanges, it is also the desired result.”[5] He describes how ‘the day before’ is at the heart of the discursive, but as a means of projecting it into some potential future. This makes the discursive useful for confronting a system which is bases its growth on ‘projections’: the “projection of the critical moment is the political power of the discursive”.

The ‘screen that isn’t there’ might be this discursive art. Just as people forming a new public space that resists encapsulation in societal discourse could be an escape from our incarceration within the image, discursive art is a way of projecting this space further into a revolutionary sphere.

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[1] A quote from Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, and quoted in the beginning of Hito Steyerl’s article, Is a Museum a Factory?

[2] http://eipcp.net/bio/steyerl

[3] The Cinematic Mode of Production remands to the reader the following idea: Cinema and its succeeding (if still simultaneous) formations, particularly television, video, computers, and the internet, are deterritorialized factories in which spectators work, that is, in which we perform value productive labour. It is in and through cinematic image and its legacy, the gossamer imaginary arising out of a matrix of socio-psycho-material relations, that we make our lives. This claim suggests that not only do we confront the image wherever we turn—imaginal functions are today imbricated in perception itself. Not only do the denizens of capital labour to maintain ourselves as image, we labour in the image. The image, which pervades all appearing, is the mise-en-scène of the new work.

[4] Without notice, the question of political cinema has been inverted. What began as a discussion of political cinema in the museum has turned into a question of cinematic politics in a factory.

[5] The use of the word discursive includes the following considerations: first (a technical definition), the movement between subjects without or beyond order; second, a set of discussions marked by their adherence to one or more notions of analytical reason. At no point does my use of the word really imply coherence with notions of “discursive democracy” as posited by Habermas and others, yet within the cultural terrain it does have some connection to the idea of melding public deliberation while retaining the notion of individual practice within the “group.”

Is the Market Everything?

Graw, Isabelle. High Price : Art between the Market and Celebrity Culture. Berlin ; New York: Sternberg Press, 2009. Print.

At first I found Isabelle Graw’s article deeply alarming. I read her description of artists who attempted to avoid the market as “artists’ artists” as derogatory, and it seemed to me that she was saying that there is no escape from the market. She seemed to be saying that the market was an unavoidable reality by which the worth of any art could be measured, and that if the market didn’t like art, it was worthless. She describes the line between the market and art as becoming highly permeable (Graw)(pg81), and this could be said of every aspect of life under Neoliberalism. Under the regime of Neoliberalism, all of life is subject to market forces, so art is not likely to be an exception.[1]

Within art itself, since Duchamp, life has permeated art theory and production. Many artists make art that has finally no object that can be seen or sold. Often this art is known, only from documentation of its existence. This may be an attempt to avoid the market, although obviously documentation can be sold as a substitute for the art piece, but it may also be for reasons that are outside the market paradigm. In his book, Art Power, Boris Groys describes artists who document art rather than present it. “ For those who devote themselves to the production of art documentation rather than artworks, art is identical to life, because life is essentially a pure activity that has no end result. The presentation of any such end result—in the form of an artwork, say—would imply an understanding of life as a merely functional process whose own duration is negated and extinguished by the creation of the end product—which is equivalent to death.” (pg 54)(Groys)

But I think it was just this kind of “outside market” thinking that Graw was defining. Earlier in the same book she says, “But every net has its holes, holes that can be made wider, which in theory can cause the entire net to rupture. Being constrained by market conditions does not imply that we cannot reject them. On the contrary, this book advocates questioning market values precisely in the light of one’s own involvement. It is possible to reflect on market conditions other than those seemingly imposed by consumer capitalism”. (Graw)(pg7)

Graw, Isabelle. High Price : Art between the Market and Celebrity Culture. Berlin ; New York: Sternberg Press, 2009. Print.

Groys, Boris. Art Power. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008. Print.

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[1] Instead of conceiving of “the market” as evil Other, I work from the premise that we are all, in different ways, bound up in specific market conditions. Consequently the market is not understood as a reality detached from society. Rather, after sociologist Lars Gertenbach, it is conceived of as a net that encloses the entirety of social conditions.

Sailing into the Big Picture

Sailing into the Big Picture

Hau*ofa, Epeli, et al. A New Oceania : Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands. Suva, Fiji: School of Social and Economic Development, The University of the South Pacific in association with Beake House, 1993. Print.

To quote from the obituary in scoop, “A well known writer of fiction and non-fiction, critic, and thought leader of Oceania, Epeli will be remembered for his many contributions, especially to the Pacific imaginary.

Hau’ofa encouraged the Pacific region to seek a unified, inclusive identity sourced in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, rather than the smallness of individual atolls, scattered islands and struggling nation states. Hau’ofa saw the Ocean as our major source of sustenance, “our pathway to each other and to everyone else, the sea is our endless saga, the sea is our most powerful metaphor, the ocean is in us”. Professor Epeli Hau’ofa was a former Deputy Private Secretary to the late King of Tonga, Reader and Head of Sociology at the University of the South Pacific. He was the founding Director of the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture at the University of the South Pacific and held this post until his untimely passing. He leaves behind a great legacy of literature, art and intellect. Professor Hau’ofa will be sadly missed. His ideas will live on”.(Scoop)

This piece was in keeping with this sentiment. When he pointed out the missionary arrogance in Tonga, he also owned it as part of his own Tongan culture. His sentiments and thinking I found to be entirely anti racist and reading his piece was redemptive and unifying. You felt it would be great to see ourselves as part of Oceania. He appealed to the seafarer in us all (or in me anyway). By such a simple reversal of concept as changing our thinking from “Pacific Islands” to “Oceania”, we move from separation and powerlessness to unity and strength. This appeals to the communist in me.[1]

If we compare this to a New Zealand thinker, Kyle Chapman, at first there appear to be similarities in thinking. Chapman is the leader of the New Zealand National Front, which is a racist right wing separatist group. Reading his essays online you could be lulled into thinking otherwise. He seems to call for Maori and “White Europeans” to join together against a common enemy. He appeals to the idea that Gaelic people had a lot in common with Maori and sites instances of common social harm from globalization. But essentially he is making the case for a sense of culture, in his case a manufactured Gaelic /Norse culture, to hold precedence over any sense of humanity or any struggle against oppression.(Chapman) [2]

I prefer to sail with Epeli Hau’ofa and the “ordinary people, peasants and proletarians” of Oceania.

Chapman, Kyle. "New Zealand European Nationalists and the Issue of Maori Self Determination." Kyle Chapman2010. The Only Blog by Kyle Chapman. True ideas, history and future. Print.

http://kyle-chapman.blogspot.com/

Scoop. "Mourning the Passing of Epeli Hau’ofa 1939 – 2009". Culture. Obituary.15th January 2009. <http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU0901/S00096.htm>.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU0901/S00096.htm

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[1] The difference between the two perspectives is reflected in the two terms used for our region: Pacific Islands and Oceania.

The first term, 'Pacific Islands', is the prevailing one used everywhere; it connotes small areas of land surfaces sitting atop submerged reefs or seamounts. Hardly any anglophone economist, consultancy expert, government planner or development banker in the region uses the term 'Oceania', perhaps because it sounds grand and somewhat romantic, and may connote something so vast that it would compel them to a drastic review of their perspectives and policies. The French and other Europeans use the term 'Oceania' to an extent that English speakers, apart from the much maligned anthropologists and a few other sea-struck scholars, have not. It may not be coincidental that Australia, New Zealand and the USA, anglophone all, have far greater interests in the Pacific and how it is to be perceived than have the distant European nations. 'Oceania' connotes a sea of islands with their inhabitants.

The world of our ancestors was a large sea full of places to explore, to make their homes in, to breed generations of seafarers like themselves. People raised in this environment were at home with the sea. They played in it as soon as they could walk steadily, they worked in it, they fought on it. They developed great skills for navigating their waters, and the spirit to traverse even the few large gaps that separated their island groups.

[2] A good look at the history of Maori Urbanisation is a must, along with the rational ideas that link us together as a Nation. We should no longer resist Maori Culture; we should support it and build that partnership the treaty talked about. Both treaties (Littlewood and Waitangi) wanted New Zealand to be united as a partnership. As long as we are divided we will be defeated by the wealthy, greedy, foreign, globalized capitalists who are over-powering us and controlling the bulk of the population like puppets. It is them who make the policies that destroy us, they are the ones who drive insane, unmanageable money policies and they let the greed and power grey their view of the world and what could be done to actually do well for each people. As Hugh Fletcher, one of the NZ wealthy, said a few years ago; Maori sovereignty means very little when it is transnational corporations rather than national governments that run the economy. We are in a struggle with the “politically correct” views about mingling cultures; multiculturalism (muddy culture). The proponents of this agenda no longer have loyalty to their own people, they no longer care about the Nation, they just follow intellectual ideas about humanity and globalization, they look past all the harm it does and all the sufferingMaori and European New Zealanders have common issues to deal with.

Let us unite against them before neither of us has anything left.

Skilful Manoeuvring in the Arts

Skilful Manoeuvring in the Arts

Glenn Adamson Thinking Through Craft, Oxford: Berg, 2007, pp.69-101

Glenn Adamson is a curator at the Victoria and Albert in London where he is also Deputy Head of Research and Head of Graduate Studies. Since writing this book he has written The Craft Reader, and several other books on design. His current research includes a reassessment of deskilling, division of labour, and stylistic eclecticism between 1750 and 1850.

The bit in the reading that interested me the most was on page 72, where he quotes David Pye's analysis of skill in his book The Art of Workmanship, and Pye describes skill as "the human equivalent to a jig in woodworking or a mold in ceramics-it is control within a productive operation, the ability to reduce error" (my emphasis). This is a succinct and accurate definition of skill without the usual moral component. Skill is something we employ when we don't want to make a mistake; when we want to get it right. It is also something we employ when we want to reproduce something accurately and if the resemblance to the original is important.

I initially felt that in art today, often the art worker is trying to find new areas of knowledge, to discover something they didn't know before they started working on their project, and so skill is something they would want to suppress in order to not get it right. This week on the net I happened upon Simon Sheikh's Representation, Contestation and Power: The Artist as Public Intellectual[1] where he talks about how the artist today has to interact with the apparatus of art production, as I am sure artists always have had to do, but how complex they are today. I realized that apart from the debate around skill in art production itself, there is this whole other area which is also part of the labour of art. The skills employed in this area are vital and I am sure that here we would want to reduce the margin of error and get it right.

Then in the magazine Mediations 25.1[2], in an article called The Soviets of the Multitude: On Collectivity and Collective Work: an Interview with Paolo Virno by Alexei Penzin, Virno was talking about the work of Lev S. Vygotskij[3], where he describes how we don’t acquire our identity from building it ourselves and learning to live in society, but that society slowly brings us into its mold. Perhaps this is true of our skills as well? Our skills that we feel are hard won, are actually shared by everyone. Perhaps we just have to relearn how to share them again.

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[1] A central issue for critical artists today is the question of interactions with the apparatus surrounding art production: the parameters for reception (institutions, audiences, communities, constituencies, etc.) and the potentials and limitations for communication in different spheres (the art world, the media, public spaces, the political field etc.). How connections are made and how they are, indeed, broken. This can be discussed in a number of ways, ranging from the practical and methodological, that is, discussions regarding the use of signs and spaces in installation, about conceptions of tools and politics of representation, the role or function of the artist/author in the construction of other spaces and subjectivities, that is alternative networks or even counter-publics. Such discussions must focus not only on the interface between the institution of art and the individual artist, both politically and artistically, but also on bodily relations in political spaces, the advent and usage of technologies, and finally the establishment of networks, communication lines and escape attempts.

http://republicart.net/disc/aap/sheikh02_en.htm

[2] His main idea is that the social relation precedes and allows for the formation of the auto-conscious “I.” Let me explain: initially there is an “us”; yet — and here lies the paradox — this “us” is not equivalent to the sum of many well-defined “I’s.” In sum, even if we cannot yet speak of real subjects, there is still an inter-subjectivity. For Vygotskij, the mind of the individual, rather than an incontrovertible departing point, is the result of a process of differentiation that happens in a primeval society: “the real movement of the development process of the child’s thought is accomplished not from the individual to the socialized, but from the social to the individual.” Gradually the child acquires the collective “us,” which we can define as an interpsychical dimension, turning it into an intrapsychical reality: something intimate, personal, unique. However, this introversion of the interpsychical dimension, this singularization of the “primordial us,” does not happen definitively during childhood: it always repeats itself during adulthood. Experience is always measured — either in an insurrection, a friendship, or a work of art — through the transformation of the interpsychical into intrapsychical. We constantly have to deal with the interiority of the public and with the publicity of the interior.

Alexei Penzin. “The Soviets of the Multitude: On Collectivity and Collective Work.” Mediations 25.1 (Fall 2010) 81-92

www.mediationsjournal.org/articles/the-soviets-of-the-multitude

[3] Lev Semyonovich Vygotskij (1896–1934) was a Soviet psychologist and internationally-known founder of cultural-historical psychology. Vygotskij was a highly prolific author. His major works span six volumes, written over roughly ten years, from his Psychology of Art (1925) to Thought and Language (1934). The philosophical framework he provided includes not only insightful interpretations about the cognitive role of tools of mediation, but also the re-interpretation of well-known concepts in psychology such as the notion of internalization of knowledge

Critical Studies Honours First Reading

“When Form Has Become Attitude -and Beyond” (1994)Kocur, Zoya, and Simon Leung. Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2005. pp19-31.

Thierry de Duve is a writer and critic who teaches modern and contemporary art at the University of Lille III. He has written at least three books that focus primarily on Duchamp and Duchamp’s impact on art, and has written for the journals October and Artforum.

I enjoyed the way de Duve set his argument out as a framework, a very visual mode of presentation, that allows you to easily follow his line of thought and see where you agree or disagree . If you disagree, you can slot what you think into the framework and see how your ideas fit within it and challenge or rearrange the argument accordingly.

Given his scholarly knowledge of Duchamp, I couldn’t help but feel de Duve’s light treatment of how “FrenchTheory” followed the acceptance of Duchamps ouevre was a little tongue in cheek(Kocur and Leung). Duchamp’s readymade allowed artists to move toward a conceptual basis for their work, and moved the bar on which materials could be used in artmaking. The high forms of painting and sculpture lost their ascendancy and low forms like craft became valid material.

This shift from material to conceptual has been taken a step further in recent art by the move toward social art in it’s various forms. John Roberts argues in his book The Intangibilities of Form, that social art is an attempt to make what he describes as post-cartesian art. Art that has no subject and object or artist and audience. (Roberts) This idea of art being an integral part of society has long been the goal of many artists[1], and although it may not be achievable, it might be fun trying.

Kocur, Zoya, and Simon Leung. Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2005. Print.

Roberts, John. The Intangibilities of Form : Skill and Deskilling in Art after the Readymade. London ; New York: Verso, 2007. Print.

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[1] For example, the Situationists felt that art should show people how society was blinding them to how life could be lived and it should do so using everyday aspects of life.