My Blog

So, right, I work as a curator and as such, I often fall under the delusion that that is what I should spend much of my time thinking about. I am under just that delusion right now. But in this particular blog, I would like to rant a bit about the rampant myopia in my chosen field.

I have come to learn that there are certain pragmatic necessities in putting exhibitions together that exclude some work that I truly enjoy. For example, I am typically partial to more participatory event based projects, but here at MASS MoCA, those don’t go over well because we have to keep things going for over seven months. We just don’t have the resources to hold seven month events. But that does not mean that this work isn’t important.

Yet, there are tons of examples of cultural projects that MASS MoCA can not do that I completely adore. As someone who came out of Chicago where produced numerous hybrid, event based cultural projects emerged, I am sypmathetic to this format. What cracks me up is that in the ‘curatorial’ field, so many curators really think the perview of art begins and ends in exhibition space related work. And they also convince themselves that this is the most important work going on. It’s just such a joke. A modicum of humility would serve the curatorial field well.

I swear it also has to do with the fact that NYC is, in fact, one of the most formally conservative art places in the world. While there are supposedly thousands of artists operating there, the formats people choose to participate in are often exhibition space related. Even the folks who resent this model will often be found lamenting the fact that people "all around the world" are only producing exhibition friendly work. NYC is not the entire world but folks in NYC often confuse their city for the world. That wouldn’t be so bad if the more interesting practices going on in the world were readily available in NYC, but they aren’t.

This probably ties back to my previous blog about theory vs action, but whatev.

It also makes me so cranky and stupified at the total lack of ambition on behalf of critics in the art world. So much of it rings as some sort of hobby writing. They just kind of meander about without a pulse trying to find some quip to throw in. But none of it feels like there are any stakes involved (because there isn’t for them). But it’s so baffling. If curators actually engaged work with the intention of producing a critical culture, that some of that good ol’ fashioned avant-gardist tendency could flare up, then we could see some real ass-kicking. Then the problem of beauty vs aesthetics wouldn’t get in the way, because we are more importantly participating in a robust cultural movement to institute a radical democracy.

I guess the real trick is not the work itself so much as the communities of resistance that people choose or don’t choose to participate in. The tenor of the field transforms dramatically when folks are actively participating in a movement against global capital and control. And I realize that many of the folks that I can’t stand in my field have never even remotely participated in such a thing. That is, their perspective on radical politics comes from a profound haze of the world-as-hobby approach. I think it is a rare art world person indeed who actually understands that some socially relevant work ACTUALLY has the intention of changing the course of history. Such an attitude strikes our hobbyists as bizarrely naive as opposed to in-line with the course of history. I can see it in their eyes. Their insulated world has never touched anything remotely engaged with a revolutionary practice. And this massive haze of subjectivity is a structural barrier to getting shit done.

Hmmmm… that’s interesting. How to get through their cloudy heads? You might say, "who cares about them? move on!" Well, I used to think like that. But there are lots of them. And, they tend to have their hands on the steering wheels of power. Re-inventing everything can be tiresome and time-wasting for our limited radical resources. No, the radical community must take the reigns from them as well as produce critical counter structures. This is the only way.

So, I was sadly unable to attend this big ol’ seminar with Brian Holmes a few weeks ago because I was cruising around Europe with Mira. Now that sounds pretty pretentious but in fact, all I am saying is that I was sad to not be able to attend the talks. Anyway, I had to participate via conversations with friends that had attended and cobble together what I could of them.

My pal Daniel was fairly exuberant over the entire thing. He is a big fan of Brian’s writings (as am I) and found him consistently on point. Josh, I believe, got typically frustrated with the lack of utility put into place over the course of the weekend. It’s a common concern of his, but one of which I have great sympathy. I am used to these theory get-togethers and often, the rallying cry of stop thinking and start doing inevitably rears its head. It’s what happens. However, the more you go to, the more clear it is that talking is just easier than doing.

I am not convinced that theory gets one much closer to changing things. That effective political action can, in fact, occurr with a far more myopic insight into neoliberal capitalism. There was also talk of how the Chicago model is so different from the NYC model. That the Chicagoans are more ‘on the ground’ in their practice and NYC (albeit very influenced by the Whitney ISP) are more theory heavy. Now, these oversimplifications can be divisive but it’s a useful question to raise. I really feel that a sincere dedication to on the ground action must go hand in hand with any self-described political get together.

Even interrogating myself, I know that I could ramble for hours over the new face of capital. However, when it comes to effective models for social change, my litany runs dry. It’s a much more confounding question and one where a collective level of discussion could prove fruitful. I suspect this is the direction the DSLR/CPI folks want to take with the on-road whistle stop tour. Discussing effective models for aesthetic social action. That feels reasonably satisfying.

I am fairly eager to start connecting the circuits between all the folks we know. Only in so much as producing an infrastructure that can be useful in terms of co-ordinated social action. I have long lost the love for any type of convenient Deleuzian critique of co-ordinated action. I say convenient, because I have never seen that argument used in any way other than to extend ones personal ambitions and not sociall effectiveness.

In general, I am just interested in co-ordinating things enough to put action into high gear. You can just feel that co-ordinated social action resonates so much more deeply than any theoretical article. You can just feel the effectiveness ringing in your bones.

I don’t skateboard anymore. Even when I did, I was fairly terrible. I’m not convinced I ever got ollying down. That was a long time ago.

Ever have those days where you realize you have been moving from one video screen to another? It’s funny to me. My world is a pile of digital information. It’s strange to have so much of my life on a computer. I had this moment when I was working on The Interventionists exhibition where I just found it so absurd how interested in public space I was. Public space? I don’t even leave my house. I swear I only go out “into the streets” for an occassional art project or town fair. It’s funny how romanticized these spaces can be. I was walking with Josh MacPhee through our local town fair and thinking, “ya know, this fair is the type of shit that people I adore constantly theorize about.” Ahh democratic public interaction. In my town that equals a guy cutting logs into bears (that was the biggest hit at the fair), bands playing Bruce Springsteen songs, tons of food stands, MASS MoCA attempting some regenerative community participatory event, and buckets of high school kids flirting with each other and sneaking smokes. I suspect that most of these events are held to release this pent up high school energy. It’s an ok place, but well, lets say, far short of the utopian mark.

What exactly do we anticipate happening in “the streets”? I walk to work a lot. People walk a little more here than most cities, but it’s still a bit of a scarce enterprise. Most folks that walk here look haggered from the walking life. They walk because they have to. It’s not a particularly romantic thing. At least they don’t seem to show the romance off very well. I know that my girlfriend can bet on getting harassed if she walks here (let alone jog). And in this town, taxis are used by those who don’t have cars. In that sense, a taxi will pick up numerous people in a big ad-hoc family commute to Wal-Mart.

I won’t say that all groups that deal with public space are like me. Maybe some of them actually spend time in public space and have a more nuanced perspective of it. (I realize I am using a limited interpretation of public space that excludes other non-geographic territories like the internet. Ok. Sue me. I’m just not so stoked on the internet now-a-days.) Anyway, I bet a majority of artists, activists have some affinities with my hermetic sensibility and often just use the great outdoors as some sort of experimental space for their socio-political hijinks. It’s the great laboratory. Take it to the streets!

I get these moments on my days off where I get tired of being on the computer and say, fuck it, I’m going outside. I put on my Ipod and start walking. I probably get about half a block down the street and start thinking, “now what? What am I supposed to do with this?” Should I do some sort of Lefebre, DeCerteau revolutionary actioin and skip down the street? Should I resist the coercive nature of the city and jaywalk or erect a temporary sculpture in that plot of grass? What the fuck? Why would I do any of this? Maybe I should wander through the streets of my town and talk to strangers? God no. What a mess. What am I supposed to do out here? I can only think of planning some sort of town meeting to take our town back. That would make sense. But ugh, outside of the boring revolutionary ideas, my more desirous side goes flat in the face of the exterior world.

Let me start by saying to myself, I have no intention of making this blog diaristic. I just was thinking of having some sort of venue for thinking out loud. So, maybe its best that I just head into some topic and not concern myself with whether or not this friendster blog scenario will actually end up having more than this initial forray. Well, there is something absolutely enjoyable about a friendster blog. It’s just so dorky. And enjoying that dorky feeling is a part of true living in the 21st century.

So, my thoughts are on Hurrican Katrina and now her sister Rita. I’m sitting here watching the lamenting weather channel who is just too depressed that Rita didn’t just blast Houston into the dark ages. It’s just so strange to move from televised tragegy to tragedy. I have been thinking that this hurricane fever reminds me of one of those classic television tragedy moments. Spectacular history itself can be punctuated by this visually stunning catastrophes or personal dramas such as 911, OJ, Elian Gonzales. It’s one of those surreal moments where because everyone in the country is united in one spectacular psychic moment, truly strange things can happen. Do remember when the anthrax envelopes were cruising around to various reporters offices right after 911? Do you remember how it catapulted the trama of 911 into this surreal space of some sort of action thriller? It felt like the entire country was having a psychic meltdown driven by that enchated glued to the television sensation. I feel like Rita is operating in the same manner. After watching absolutely post-apocalyptic images of an entire city under water (this is definitely the territory of the subconcious) we then get word of another hurricane heading through the gulf. But this time, the paranoia is running so high, and the country so at the edge of its seat, that you get that absolutely incredible picture of the freeways out of houston becoming a global parking lot. Gas stations completely emptied, cars stranded, busses of elderly exploding. Everyone in southern Texas got on the freeway. It is kind of like those moments where people say, “if everyone would just not buy anything today, then we could control the economy.” But of course, such hopes are impossible. Yet, in Houston, it was possible. If everyone gets on the freeway at the same time, there won’t be enough gas. There will be a traffic jam that goes the distance of the state, etc. etc. The only way to really co-ordinate such things are through these mass-spectacular moments of hysteria. And Rita seems akin to the anthrax scare. They are both paranoiac echos of some visually nightmarish cultural event. It’s our on the ground way of coping with completely hard-to-define catastrophic cultural events.

And lets face it: the image of a skyscraper collapsing or a city under water feeds our ongoing suspicians that everything society has built will one day crumble. This is true. But as opposed to these events further confirming a doubt that has been an underlying source of funk since the renaissance, they actually produce a world more in cahoots with the cinema we love so much. When we look over a submerged New Orleans, we realize that this image is dangerously close to one of the many post-apacolpytic cinema experiences. We hold within us a fear and hope that one day the divide between cinema life and real life will be closed. That they will become one.

Spectacular history is quickly becoming our history. As opposed to a history of non-visually compelling events (people losing jobs, cancer, small pockets of violence, poverty), we are now immersed in a world where the bigger the visual effect the more historically important. Why is this important? Because the more visually stunning, the more viewership and the more potential one has for steering that crazy boat called the mass hysterical cruise line. Just to compare to Palestine for a second. I have always thought that state violence is not nearly as visually enticing as the violence of the poor. In visual terms, a palestinian throwing a stone is more evocative than an Israeli troop shooting a weapon. To be quite crass: in visual terms, a palestinian throwing a rock seems to cause more violence than an Israeli shooting a gun. And while that seems crazy, it is. It is crazy.