My Blog

It is no surprise that Eraserhead’s cental festivity is Thanksgiving. The family, as a source of horror, has been a staple of surbversive film for post-war America. Gathering around the table, making painful small talk, complimenting beet salad and digesting in harmony has been a source of unfettered anxiety for at least fifty years. But as I reflect on my last few Thanksgivings, I realize that as opposed to horror, the Thanksgiving of the 21st century is almost a mystery. Often the operating question on the minds of the potato eating hoardes is not, “Why am I related to these people?” but more appropriately, “who are these people?” Thanksgiving is now a mystery as we find ourselves in the midst of an inertia called family that is rapidly losing its historic relevance.

I spend Thanksgiving dinner with Mira’s mother’s side of the family in Connecticut this last Thursday. The grandparents were there, the mother, the aunt, the sister, the cousin, and two new second husbands. Mira’s family reminded me of my own except hers actually saw each other more than once a year. I recall hearing Mira’s grandmother say, “what is normal? who can say what is normal?” It was a classic conversation about how strange their family is. I could easily imagine the same being said over tables across America. Every family asking itself if its family was an aberattion, while at the same time settling on the fact that family was family. What I realized is that ‘normal’ has often been decided exactly by the family. That the family has often been the arbiter of normality (such that this arbitration of the status quo was of course the butt of mockery for the baby boomers). But the family that was once the source of horror now looks quite different. Not only because divorce has become commonplace, but also because many family’s don’t spend much time together. Family is strange because often the family doesn’t feel like family anymore. It’s not weird that mom married a new guy, but that you really have no idea who these other folks at the table are. The thought that family is thicker than blood makes the family blood run cold.

Things feel strange when the cultural practices we participate in stop losing their meaning. My family lives all over the country. This Christmas I am supposed to go to Phoenix to see my grandparents and the rest of my mother’s side of the family: the Kirns. Now, when I was a kid we would see each other far more regularly. We would drive to Idaho and all the cousins and aunts and uncles would be there. It was family. But at some point all that stopped. Maybe it was my parents divorce but also the bind between all the aunts and uncles somewhat wore off. We haven’t all been together in over ten years. I imagine this situation is not specific to my family. The way work is organized people travel more. Geographic distance makes it hard for families to see each other. This lack of proximity makes personal affinities more complicated. Family becomes family in name only but the social cohesion that accompanies family (the time spent together, the internal struggles) is unavailable.

So, I imagine that this Christmas I will sit around a big table and someone is going to say “Normal? what is normal?” and everyone will laugh with their anxiety assuaged, because as quirky as our family is, we are family nonetheless. And while everyone looks down at their plate of steamed vegetables, I will think, “who are these people?”

So, a while back in 2001 when I was just out of grad school and convinced that I would be going to the Whitney Independent Study Program, I went on an interview with Ron Clark (who runs the Whitney ISP). During the interview I got into a discussion that turned slightly into an argument over trickle down Marxism. Now, I often blame this discussion for my not getting in, but to be quite fair there are plenty of reasonable reasons why I wasn’t accepted to that program. I had heard that Ron liked strong headed argumentative types and enjoyed a good discussion so I thought I would just put my thoughts about the Whitney program to the test. This blog is not a gripe session about the Whitney program but does use them as a compelling example of a particular form that Marxism has taken (particularly throughout the 80s and 90s).

I was arguing that folks like the October magazine crowd had used Marxist theory as a way to remove themselves from any reasonably legigle populist discussion. And… that the art that they held up as their best examples, resonated poorly for most art enthusiasts (expert and amateur alike). The question was about reception and possibly being suspicious of the comfortable niche that Marxist, feminist, post-colonial discourse (of their brand) had carved out for itself removed from questions of responsibility to a larger audience. In many regards, at the time, I thought of their rhetorical techniques akin to Reagonomics where the fruits of their thoughts were supposed to somehow trickle into popular thought via the structures of power already in place. It seemed to me that the stilted language developed through postmodern theory had served the role of enconsing a highly specialized academic sub-group that had no real radical revolutionary perspectives whatsoever, and yet, were managing to monopolize Marxist discourse in the art community.

Then something happened today that made me think of things another way. So I was looking at some proposals from a graduate intern student for potential exhibitions here. One of the shows was a bit more pretty. And one was a little more conceptual with some politics thrown in. One of the folks looking at the work described the more political/conceptual practice as more hipster/insider. I was suprised at this easy description. Political practice is an insider methodology? Beauty was a people’s project? That is: the question of beauty felt more populist and the political work felt more insider. This is a crass oversimplification of their feelings, but it is exactly what got me thinking. This stance that more intellectually driven, conceptual practice is an ‘insider’ methodology while beauty is populist goes directly against the teachings that I am familiar with. In my world, beauty is often a practice held up by the bourgoise to remove themselves from the embarrasing political realities of their status quo and exploitative positions. While political work, in theory, tries to address these concerns.

In this reversal, I think I hear the rumblings of much of the major populist rhetoric expounded by Karl Rove and co. The thing is: as opposed to being dismissive, I think there are kernals of truth in this. I think that there might actually be something populist about beauty and there might be something absolutely corrupt in stilted political language. My gripes with the Whitney ISP and the October crowd are based on similar anxieties. Where I sense that the rhetoric of activist practice is used as social capital against any form of revolutionary practice. That is to say: not only is much of the Marxist tradition in the arts simply ineffective, it is, in fact, purposefully deployed against any radical potential in the arts. It would be no surprise that this form of ineffective, bourgois, uber pretensious “theory” has had some results in completely turning people off the potentials of political practice baring anything close to meaningful.

Yet, it also poses dilemnas about the alternatives. Beauty, in itself, is not going to do us much good. Nor is holding onto some ardent anti-intellectualism. But there must be methods for being more discerning. How much of the intellectual tradition that we participate in has more to with the carving out a corner of the discursive market and how much is capable of concrete radical change? How do we go about tearing these two apart? To what degree do our own politics have more to do with subjectivity and social capital (and the markets of subjectivity) than any form of radical social change practice?

I raised these questions in an entirely different manner at Messhall in Chicago. I wasn’t articulating myself well at the time. I think Claire Pentecoste was saying, “But we must carve out our subjectivities. That is what we do.” I didn’t reply appropriately at the time, but the real question for me is not against creating subjectities, but the part where we delude ourselves about the intended goals of our own identities. When we spout marxist theory and end up praising completely unreadable conceptual work that only shows in Linz, what exactly are we up to? When our ideas seem to disconnect us rather than connect us to the potential of radical politics, what are we up to? Hmmm… it’s these questions that are on my mind, and I feel like they play themselves in the quest for meaning that haunts political processes today.

I often find the boundary separating science and art somewhat arbitrary and useless. I often can be found haphazardly dismissing either term as useless and then go into some rant about the need for a new language. And while, I will still retain this stance, I had an interesting interaction with an artist who is doing a show at MASS MoCA. His name is Carsten Holler and he is a soft spoken german who is absolutely invested in his practice. He loves espresso and apparently has several aviaries tucked away at his home

He was telling me how he often sits on panel discussions regarding the merger of science and art and he finds it a bit annoying. As an artist with a PhD in the biological sciences, he is not unfamiliar with scientific methodology. And in fact, he appreciates it greatly. But he often thinks that art allows one to say multiple things at once and that in science, you benefit from saying one. I enjoyed that distinction greatly as its switches the languages of both forms of inquiry towards one of tools. That is, they are both a set of different tools used to gain different results. It allows us to get art out of the question of taste, because we are still invested in the question of ‘findings’ but it doesn’t absolutely shove art into the terrain of some myopic utilitarianism. These distinctions can easily be applied to art and activism as well. The need to move between constructive ambiguity and the need to speak specifically about something. I think that arty things tend to embrace ambiguity in its ability to speak on multiple levels and to also elude language. I suspect that is why, for many people, the idea of didactism is antithetical to art. But of course, one who only loves ambiguity, has already let go of the desire to act against a system of repression. I think. Well, that may not actually be true. I wonder if there is a tactics of complete ambiguity. I bet there are many and I bet I would find 95% of them highly suspect.

I think this terrain between art and science, art and activism is a useful one to move through and articulate. I say this because I know that these false dichotomies (particularly when they are subject to folk’s careers and ontologies) ends up shaping our culture greatly. A more activated language that speaks to the production of meaning and empowerment, could provide a handy resource for a younger generation that find themselves caught between the utility of science and the hopeless luxury of art. That we are talking about developing an infrastructure of meaning production. These terms are useful because ultimately we must produce a politics that addresses the overwhelming power of media and information to produce subjectivities. It is this ability of spectacle that has overwhelmingly undermined a global sense of democracy. In order to construct a new language around a hands-on democratic project, we must be able to articulate the power of meaning production and the ills of coercive meaning domination (spectacle). ok yes, that was a rant.

Now, the thought on science and art is often one where I think I could do something a little more radical in my shows at the museum. I suspect that it would be quite useful for folks to read a cohesive straightforward treatise on why the work at MASS MoCA isn’t simply science. That it is in the work’s desire to say multiple things and their ability to engage the viewer in this process, that it differentiates itself from a scientific method. But speaking basically on the subject would do great things.. It could allow a visitor to apprecate meaning as multiple, participatory and vast. It could also make the art experience removed from the language of taste and to that of content.

So, I was on this panel this weekend and I was terribly concerned that this time, in fact, I was just going to bomb. I have been running around from panel to panel every weekend and I think they are slowly taking a toll on me. And unlike last year, where I gave the same presentation on the Interventionists each time, this year, I seem to be grasping at new subjects. So, I am always debuting a new series of hackneyed ideas and they often come out fairly garbled. I know that most people on here that have seen me do any of these recently, would have seen my utterly worst presentation in Chicago. The only redeeming thing about the Chicago presentation is that the ideas presented are on the top of my list of urgency (the talk was on building infrastructures of resonance and the growth of a culture of commodified subjectivities and how that effects the increasingly scene-like art/activist community).  So, I guess, the level of urgency in my Chicago talk would balance it’s utter lack of organization.

But this last talk I gave was on my upcoming show at MASS MoCA, Ahistoric Occassion. Nice title I think. Kind of fun. Maybe annoyingly self-congratulatory (word play often comes off as self satisfied) but the word play is productive. It works. Anyway, the talk forced me to clarify some of the ideas at work in the show and also, publicly, witness some of its shortcomings. But isn’t it interesting that if one is capable of enduring the embarrassment that accompanies oneself thinking out loud in public, one also gains the invaluable insights that magically appear when anxiety is mixed with neurons firing. I learned some things about the show. And one of the most important ideas I would like to lay out now.

The idea came about because we were reflecting on the performance by an artist named Pia Lindman (and organizor of the panel). Dressed in a gray suit she enacted drawings taken from images from the New York Times of people grieving. Almost appearing as a mime, she would star at a pad of paper on an easel and position her body to capture the gestures exactly. Removed from their context, these poses were a bit bizarre, disconcerting and somewhat bland. They seemed to lose a lot of their umph and that was the point. But as I watched, it got me thinking how important the body was in trying to recapture these images. How these images had moved from bodies to mediation through the media, to a pad of paper and back into Pia’s body.

When we are on the panel, Pia asked why it is that this re-enactment is so important for people, particularly in relation to the work of Jeremy Deller who I had presented earlier. I then realized how much the idea of Guy Debord’s spectacle had to do with this. And how, the idea of spectacle particularly influenced performance today. The reaction to a mediated culture is an emphasis on meaning placed in the body. Thus you get all kinds of political rads groups emphasizing the role of personal interaction and embodied practice. And the manner in which folks attempt to recoup the meaning of historic events by placing their bodies literally in the role of history seems palpable and bizarre. I was imagining a world where the news of the day was told in elaborate performances of people enacting the different players. Where the movement of one’s body allowed one to better remember the past. This is the wild idea. What are the influences that spectacle has had on historical re-enactment?

There is a thing called muscle memory right. Can the muscles remember the civil war?

The lens of spectacle,  and mediation, as it applies to collective memory and forms of memory that attempt to sidestep Benjamin’s art in the age of mechanical reproduction (in the hands of capital). This performativity as it applies to events that we personally do not have a connection to, is interesting and definitely a new idea for me. One that I need to chew on. 

I’m in a fed up mood. I mean that in the most pleasurably drunk in the middle of the night way, but nonetheless, I’m fed up my dear friends. It is not such a bad idea to think historically about ones one situation nor is it a bad idea, particularly when one holds such smart and delightful friends as I (and you), to consider oneself as more than a bit part on history’s stage. My friends, we are called upon to enact our part on our limited time here! yes, action is called for.

But what type of action?

Oh, for gods sake it’s more simple than that. Action of any kinds will do for now. Calisthenics on a social level will do. First of all, lets make it a plan to do things that mean something to us and to aggressively confront power on a personal level. I mean if everyone one of us bumped into rich people in one week, if we just snuck out of our homes and let the air out of the tires out of some irresponsible shmuck’s car, well, we would be at the very least activating our own personal form of historic calisthenics. We must be aggresive. AGGRESSIVE! And unapologetic. Just irresonsibly flex your social muscle, it’s happening against a world you believe in every day.

Then there is this other thing:

what does it mean to act historically? I really am down on it all. Why did shit get so bad after Bush? It’s so strange isn’t it? You would have thought that would have been the last gasp but in fact, it was a refreshing breath for the asthmatic right wing. you could feel them catching their breath and hitting their stride as you crouched under your theory books. God, what a mess.

I know I sound marginally mad. I kind of am. I am admittedly frustrated. I had a young graduate student talk to me about where the movement in the US is today. I had to just look at her blankly and think: “You tell me!” Fuck if I know.

I always feel like we are just not accelerated to the new techniques that must be acquired to resist the culture industry. All creativity must come under question. I was on a panel this last weekend, and I was positing that maybe, just maybe, the growth of creativity was a bad thing. That under the new culture of the service industry, we are all absolutely narcissistic and delusional enough to think that our own creativity is enough to make us valuable in the fight for progressive somethingorother. But in fact, our own creativity is a result of bulshitt market capitalism taking us for a ride. Want a ride? think of a new invaluable idea! god, what we really just need is a form of daily practice that makes us confront a not-so-complicated world of dominating power.

We overvalue our ideas and don’t simply just get to it, and kick the shit out of the rich. I mean, why call it capitalism? Isn’t feudalism a resonable model? Just a few daily visits to the owners of our individual towns might do far more than regular posts, wouldn’t you say?

Lets make things tangible. Lets hold them in our hands. Lets seduce them They are people. They are lost. Lets take their breath away.