[iDC] activism now and
saul ostrow
sostrow at gate.cia.edu
Thu Dec 8 22:31:35 EST 2005
No I don't have a program - though I am trying to figure out the
conditions for one-reconceive the terms so that I might understand what
is I imagine is desirable - rather than repeating worn phrases and
empty slogans and sustaining beliefs that have no material base - to
understand what has become a fetter not only on the means and forces of
production - but also our minds - these days I am interested in what
may be retained and what must be discarded - rather than merely
critiqued or declared dead - the dead seems to always haunt us -- they
return, no matter how much we mean to deny them -- it is because like
a virus we replicate what we oppose -- because we do not think about
our processes only our goals -- we have become instrumental rather than
pragmatic - today I think about how I have contributed to the present
situation by not having been self-critical -- blaming the other for
having out maneuvered me - when in actuality I had failed to see their
strategy because I was to busy advancing MY cause and belittling theirs
- in other words I had become a nominalist and failed to learn from my
own mistakes -- in other words I was reactive - in retreat - defending
what had been won in the name of ideals like self, individuality and
personal freedom that may once having been gained were worthy of being
discarded -- in the name of resistance. What may be the greatest
contradiction today is that our 18th century values continue to order
the productive means of the 21st century -- in other words the fetter
on the productive forces is our mind set - post structuralism was an
attempt though it was quicklyharnessed and applied to 19th century
goals
On Dec 8, 2005, at 8:09 PM, Brian Holmes wrote:
> saul ostrow wrote:
>> What is really interesting about this thread is that spontaniety,
>> resistance, activism, media, etc. are being fetishized, while no one
>> has raised the question of political program and leadership. Are
>> these unnecessary in our fragmented and decentered world, or is the
>> type of essentialism that these decontextualized categories of
>> reaction represent, along with the desire to relocate the political
>> to the cultural sphere a sign that we have not moved beyond the
>> reified modernist vision of the enlightenment project.
>
> Now that's quite a declaration.
>
> Leadership, in the contemporary media-populist electoral democracies,
> has been so bad that I think even a little bit of sympathy for the
> people writing here would excuse them for not desiring it.
>
> However, I personally am very sympathetic to the call for a political
> program. The only ones I see being floated basically involve going to
> war or sparking hostility among different groups of citizens to avoid
> dealing with basic economic and ecological contradictions.
>
> Do you have a political program to propose? Seriously, I'm interested
> and you're right that it's lacking, not just on this thread. Only a
> real political program can produce decent leaders and limit the scope
> of their arbitrary power too.
>
> I tried with other members of the journal Multitudes here in Paris to
> produce one for a while, centered around equality, access to tools and
> rights to difference in the knowledge economy. But now our generous
> visions look so distant from the basic public disourse that clearly
> it's time to work on something more simple and below the belt.
>
> best, BH
>
>
Saul Ostrow
Dean,
Visual Arts and Technologies Environment
Chair of Painting
The Cleveland Institute of Art
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