<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV class="MsoBodyText"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">The promotion of culture as a tool of social conscience is has long been considered a significant aspect of a political struggle. It as an alternative media has been used to get the message out by criticizing the dominant consciousness, conventional values and an ideology of class domination.</SPAN></FONT><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"> </SPAN></FONT></SPAN><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">By promoting doubt, self-criticality, and self-determination as positive forces, this critical culture by negative example proposes that awareness is a determining factor in the evolution of those uncontrollable variables within the human equation. Problematically, those who seek to construct a more egalitarian society and those who wish to turn culture and consciousness into commodities both act in the name of achieving the same promised autonomy of discourse, self–referentiality, and self-reflectivity. Each side in this equation seeks hegemony over the terms and means of cultural production because these are the traditional means</SPAN></FONT><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"> </SPAN></FONT></SPAN><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">by which</SPAN></FONT><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"> </SPAN></FONT></SPAN><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">not only the aesthetic but also the social values, standards and criteria that form our collective sense of self come to be re-enforced, maintained, reformed and reformed. </SPAN></FONT><SPAN style=""><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"></SPAN></FONT></SPAN></SPAN></DIV><DIV class="MsoBodyText"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px; line-height: 24px;"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV class="MsoBodyText"><SPAN style=""><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">The heroes of this epic struggle for political emancipation through </SPAN></FONT></SPAN><SPAN style=""><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">cultural </SPAN></FONT></SPAN></SPAN><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"> awareness are supposedly the artists and intellectuals, who continue to negotiate the conventions of their practices, the forms of mass culture and the means of production by challenging the social relevance of these practices and the limitations of their forms.</SPAN></FONT></SPAN><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"> </SPAN></FONT></SPAN></SPAN><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">Beyond this, critical culture continues is the only area of social production in which the</SPAN></FONT></SPAN><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"> stated ideals of individualism and innovation are sustained</SPAN></FONT></SPAN><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">.</SPAN></FONT></SPAN><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"> Because we are allowed and even encourage to exercise this fetishized, relative freedom </SPAN></FONT></SPAN></SPAN><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"> we continue to believe that</SPAN></FONT></SPAN><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"> our </SPAN></FONT></SPAN></SPAN><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">critical practices can effectively challenge the legitimacy of Capital's mass culture industry which</SPAN></FONT></SPAN><SPAN style=""><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"> on the structural level by turning all real events into an author-less, un-interruptible flow of undifferentiated information and entertainment <SPAN style=""><SPAN style="">produces a reality that is more nuanced, and complex than we suspect. </SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></FONT></SPAN><SPAN style=""><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"> Within its economy </SPAN></FONT></SPAN></SPAN><SPAN style=""><SPAN style=""><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"> our lives are made to appear to be nothing more than a confusion of facts, fictions, and ersatz experiences. </SPAN></FONT></SPAN><SPAN style=""><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"> </SPAN></FONT></SPAN><SPAN style=""><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"> The consequence of this is we are slowly being disconnected from the world of knowledge, awareness that induces the desire to transform our world and ourselves. Under these conditions it would appear to me that in the absence of a viable collective sense of self - that the consturction of one would be the first order of business - otherwise we have no place to speak from or position to speak for.</SPAN></FONT></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><BR></SPAN><DIV><DIV>On Aug 27, 2006, at 10:06 PM, MATTHEW C KENYON wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P class="MsoNormal"><SPAN>Saul,</SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal"><SPAN>I've been thinking about the politics of cultural production by analogy to the shoe industry (Nike) and the popular critique of the shoe industry (via ad</SPAN><SPAN>busters). Nike uses its understanding of youth markets, mass-media, concentrations of capital etc. to produce sports shoes, while propagating the belief that what you put on your feet has something to say about who you are as a person.</SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal"><SPAN>Toronto based Adjusters (popular critics of both Nike's production methods as well as Nike's manufacturing of cool) just started making shoes of their own. The adbuster shoes are the "Anti-shoe" designed and marketed to be an alternative to Nike in may ways (pro-union, renewable materials etc.). <SPAN> </SPAN></SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal"><SPAN>Adbusters move from making a critique of consumer culture, to manufacturing a shoe that makes being critic of consumer culture another nich market-brings up many questions.</SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal"><SPAN><SPAN>The problem with perceiving oneself as a critic outside of the system-is that 1)you are not offering up true alteratives (i.e your comment re: global economies) 2)you never can be outside of the system entirely. Adbusters critical stance regarding Nike Shoe Company failed to cause real change-largely because they were preaching to the converted.</SPAN></SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal"><SPAN>The problem with providing functional alternatives (in this case a "better shoe") is that you must engage in the conventions of the system-in this case in order to market, brand and sell your alternatives. (i.e. Anti-shoe billboards function and look a lot like shoe billboards after all.) This ends up being simply another branding strategy, and fails to bring about real change. <SPAN> </SPAN></SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal"><SPAN>Instead, I' like to think of the role of the artist as a kind of thermostat-providing cultural feedback. The Artists (thermostat) function is to deliver messages to the power center(s) (air conditioner) not to assume their function. I see this reactionary position as one position in a system of feedback. Where the problem exists is in a system where consumption/production run unchecked-The air conditioner without a thermostat. </SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal"><BR></P><P class="MsoNormal"><SPAN>Link:</SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal"><SPAN><A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackspot">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackspot</A></SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal"><SPAN><SPAN>Have a great first week of class. I'll try and do the same on sept. 5th.</SPAN></SPAN></P><DIV><BR></DIV><DIV><BR></DIV><DIV><BR></DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span">Matthew Kenyon<BR> Assistant Professor<BR> 210 Patterson Building<BR> School of Visual Arts<BR> The Pennsylvania State University<BR> University Park, PA 16802<BR> <BR> <A href="mailto:mck16@psu.edu">mck16@psu.edu</A><BR> <A href="http://www.swamp.nu">http://www.swamp.nu</A><BR> <A href="http://www.sova.psu.edu/newmedia.html">http://www.sova.psu.edu/newmedia.html</A><BR></SPAN></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>