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<font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808">Luis,</font><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808">I hadn't read your comments below before i sent my reply to Ryan and Danny and you. </font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808">I only repeated, there, in more elaborate terms what you've said more eloquently. </font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808">You posit an "altruistic ethics," which flies in the face of both scientism and individualism. We definitely agree on your "navel/lint" law of ethical demise....</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808">Oh yeah! the "common good!"</font></div></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808">I hope Jeffrey Skoller weighs in here in regard to your eloquent expression of why ethics and politics need to be maintained as separate discourses, as you have put it:</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><blockquote type="cite"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808">- "because ethical behavior seems to have become a subversive activity. </font><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: -1; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808">This makes art that follows (not illustrates) an ethical stand subversive as well."</font></span></blockquote></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808">and then your expression of the "law" of altruistic ethics:</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808">"But art is subversive because it subverts conventional knowledge, which if planned, makes it part of a political strategy. This only works when informed by ethics and that is why I am reluctant to take one word for the other. </font><span><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"> </font></span><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808">With politics we compromise, with ethics at least we can tell where and why we compromise, and even if we should compromise."</font></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>and indeed:</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>"the challenge is to reappraise our function as artists [social actors in general] and see what is to be done now."</div><div><br></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>The critical question about your comments is: does art subvert conventional knowledge? Obviously, not necessarily. So, how do we know when that is the case? Which you give criteria for: when it is planned.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>So the ethical issue, in your terms, is: how to plan.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>which you also answer: ethics means - "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(8, 8, 8); ">at least we can tell where and why we compromise, and even if we should compromise."</span></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808">This is the Camnitzer Code of Ethics, for, this historical moment.</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808">at the risk of being pedantic: the Camnitzer Code has a powerful ancestor in Michel Serres work of the early 80's, Parasite, where he uses system theory to read the "fables of Aesop, La Fontaine, etc. The initial chapter performs a system theory (social network) analysis of the fable about the "country mouse" visiting the "city mouse" in the house of the "tax farmer." Scraps from the Tax Framer's table fall to the floor on which the city mouse feeds, and this is the "banquet" to which the country mouse is invited. But the Tax Farmer provides the "banquet" by taxing the production of the country mouse [the originary farmer on which the Tax Farmer feeds]. So the country mouse is the source of the banquet in the first place. So the city and country mice are eating beneath the framers' table when a loud "noise" is heard - and they scatter: the system is suddenly ruptured by unidentifiable "noise." [Art as planned noise] Was the noise the farmer waking up and hearing the commotion beneath his table? Etc. "Parasite" in French simultaneously means 3 things: host, parasite, and noise. To keep this short: Serres demonstrates that each of those "subject" positions are inevitably interchangeable - host becomes guest becomes noise becomes host becomes guest becoming noise. It's an ethico-political model of inevitable complicity. </font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808">Despite the inevitable complicity, Serres' position leads to a clear path for political action: to vastly oversimplify: err, radically, on the side of creating as much "noise" [art] as possible.</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808">"Noise" becomes the index of "political health." Where "health" means, altruistic ethics.</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808">mark</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#080808"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></font></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br><div><div>On Dec 18, 2007, at 3:05 PM, Luis Camnitzer wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><p class="MsoNormal">Addressing Mark: I would follow the Theology of Liberation theoreticians and say that morals are the bureaucratic implementation of a (usually self-serving) interpretation <span style=""> </span>of ethics. So, I am talking more about altruistic ethics. I grant that we don't know very precisely what they are, but we have a hunch. Besides that there is some foundation for ethics in emergence theory and some recent possible location in the DNA make up, it would be futile and probably dangerous to try to pin ethics down to dogmatic precision. But, more vaguely, I feel that we might have gone too far in the promotion of individual navels and their lint, and that we might start considering the common good. This does not have to be in a rigorous scholarly fashion. <span style=""> </span>In this context I believe that there is a serious difference between ethics and politics (one informs the other, but not vice-versa). My very personal way of operating is based on my wish to be an ethical being, on using politics as a strategy to plan the implementation of ethics (in an ethical way, of course) and, in my case to use art as an instrument for that implementation. My choice to use art for this is purely a consequence of irrelevant personal biographical factors. </p><p class="MsoNormal">I agree that in these Bushy times ethics do have political implications, mostly because ethical behavior seems to have become a subversive activity. This makes art that follows (not illustrates) an ethical stand subversive as well. But art is subversive because it subverts conventional knowledge, which if planned, makes it part of a political strategy. This only works when informed by ethics and that is why I am reluctant to take one word for the other. <span style=""> </span>With politics we compromise, with ethics at least we can tell where and why we compromise, and even if we should compromise.</p><p class="MsoNormal">In regard to what Sam raises, it is true that anything we do shapes culture, the same as being apolitical is one form of a political stand. Producing craftsy decorations will indeed shape culture. The question is how passive can we afford to be in this pursuit. And Ryan, this is not about purity or ideological grandstanding. I would say that every single reader of Idc (me included) is bourgeois and unable to seriously "betray" his or her social class. So here, rather than disassembling ideas until they cease to exist (a bourgeois academic misinterpretation of subversion), the challenge is to reappraise our function as artists and see what is to be done now.</p> Luis Camnitzer<br><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">_______________________________________________</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (distributedcreativity.org)</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="mailto:iDC@mailman.thing.net">iDC@mailman.thing.net</a></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc">https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc</a></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">List Archive:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/">http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/</a></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">iDC Photo Stream:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/</a></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">RSS feed:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc">http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc</a></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">iDC Chat on Facebook:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647">http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647</a></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref</div> </blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>