Anarchy Bang: Introducing Episode Twelve - Art

From Anarchy Bang

This week we will look into the Anarchist relationship with Art, in both its visual and conceptual modes. Art can be in natural affinity with the anarchistic impulse and often overlaps with radical politics directly, that is until it gets recuperated... How helpful are critiques of revolution, utopia and specialization for anarchists when considering art? How would a more aestheticized approach be valuable to us? Are artists self-creating individuals, merely workers or something else? What kind of art inspires us to create new worlds? In what ways does Art reinforce the ideology of the world we want to destroy?

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There are 8 Comments

art as a separate sphere from daily life is BAD THING...cuz i read it in the convoluted prose of a frenchie

and in the zines of BLACK MASK-UAW/MF

anti-art is a nice pose that not enough people took seriously or far enough in order for it to get old and discarded.
that fad should go back in style. i like whatever arts the gilly yawns have broken in france.

i saw a kid making a sand sculpture, that shit was so civ i was going to kick it, but then i realized, hmm that's part of their daily life and not a separate sphere, so i figured it was fine...but then the kid said "I want to be an artist one day!" and i was very conflicted...but i figured their parents and school etc were probably going to try to beat those aspirations out of them...so i let this lame kid parable be...

Myyy revolution this summer is gonna be awesome I'm gonna stomp on every sand castle I see cos they're authoritarian constructs projecting a binary us/them dichotomy. I'll be a hero of the beach returning it to teh wild primitive form, all feudal and colonial monuments even temporary ones SHALL BE DESTROYED, Burying people in sand will be banned as a crual barbaric torture and sexual harasment if the buried person is a female, ALL BANNED!!

“Contemporary art is the uglification of the world!”
An Interview with Annie Le Brun

http://notbored.org/FigaroVox.pdf

Excerpts:

"Q: Has contemporary art locked itself into
ever-intensifying cycle [surenchère] of provocation? And why?

A: Provocation, no doubt, but without anything subversive about it. On the
contrary. It is a matter of affirming again and always an omnipotence, similar to
that of the “victors.” Even better – we are supposed to get accustomed to it and
with a brutality that is perfectly in sync with that of a system that is ready to
annihilate everything that could hinder its development. In this sense, the brutality
of contemporary art has a pedagogical value, whose cynicism consists of
physically convincing us that there is no other reality than that of a market-oriented
totalitarianism that claims there is no alternative.

[...]

Q: Doesn’t this incorporation of discourse into the work itself render any critique
of the work impossible?

A: No, [but] it is essentially cynical, because it involves a whole ensemble of
protocols, behaviors and postures that authorize an domineering attitude [une
attitude de surplomb] that allows people to advance something and its opposite [at
the same time], with the sole aim that nothing should change. This is the official art
of globalization; this is why, with reference to “socialist realism,” I have spoken of
“globalist realism,” which has the superior merit of not seeming to serve a
particular ideology with its specific themes and slogans, but which acts at a deep
level to inaugurate a system of servitude that is voluntary, but also involuntary, if
not unconscious.

[...]

Q: Is there nothing in contemporary art to be saved? Are there artists that you
continue to appreciate?

A: Unfortunately, this is not an aesthetic problem. In this regard, when the
question is to find out how to oppose the catastrophic course that things are taking,
there is nothing [in contemporary art] to be saved. We must remember what Arthur
Cravan said in 1912:11 “We will soon see only artists in the streets, and we will
have all the difficulty in the world discovering among them a single human being.” "

Oh là là

Security mechanisms can monitor your gait. Everyone's is unique. So not only is it a work of art. But a security concern :-)

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