[iDC] Re: Art

[Malian Lahey]

Quoting saul ostrow <sostrow at gate.cia.edu>:

>The resolution of this contradiction it 
> has been suggested is in the belief that if the economic sphere turns 
> us into animals, the cultural sphere’s task is to be the testing ground 
> for those idealized practices intended to resolve this conflict.  
> 

> Culture’s currency is our dis-satisfaction with the status quo and a 
> desire for change rather than distraction, comfort or despair.  

>Consequently, culture is circumscribed by the 
> political consideration of conscience and the practical ones of 
> exchange. The heroes of the epic struggle for our awareness and 
> emancipation therefore come to be the intellectuals, who continue to 
> negotiate the conventions of their own practices and the limitations of 
> their forms.  Though the effect of such challenges appears to be 
> meaningless and impractical to the general populace we continue to 
> believe that such critical practices can effectively challenge the 
> legitimacy of Capital's power to transform anything and everything into 
> a merely a sign by exposing its most venal nature.
> 
> Saul Ostrow
> Dean,
> Visual Arts and Technologies Environment
> Chair of Painting
> The Cleveland Institute of Art
> 


i believe the above statement to be an extremely good description of at least
part of the gordian knot we find ourselves bound by.

I have tended to see the entanglement described by Saul through the lens of
social darwinism, population ecology and evolutionary anthropology.

We desperately need a serious critique of social darwinism!  I have attempted it
but I am sadly unprepared and this task may take me more than a year.

does anyone have a suggestion?


-- 
Malian Lahey

Muehlebachstrasse 30
8008 Zuerich
Switzerland

+41 0794 342 969