[iDC] Art, Lifestyle & Globalisation Questions
Simon Biggs
s.biggs at eca.ac.uk
Mon Apr 2 08:35:34 EDT 2007
Hi Michel
I was also surprised by what Howard wrote, given what I know of him. It
seemed entirely out of character. However, I could percieve no irony in what
he wrote and thus assumed he meant it. What he wrote was short and clear and
I do not think I misunderstood it. If I did then I am sorry.
Regards
Simon
On 2/4/07 11:35, "Michel Bauwens" <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Simon:
>
> I find your contribution of the important role of state-funded very
> valuable.
>
> However, I am surprised that from a short paragraph by Howard explaining why
> some people need to work in the market economy for a living; you deduce that
> he is a hardcore apologist for market only approaches. This is not the
> Howard that I know; and neither is the anti-intellectualist ...
>
> What I think he is referring too is the kind of intellectual who has lived
> so long with public support; that he can no longer imagine that not
> everybody gets this support; and hence is forced to use market economy means
> to support his family.
>
> Conclusion; though I believe Howard does aim to work and live from with the
> U.S. context, and makes various adaptations to his social situation, that is
> different from being a hardcore neoliberal apologist,
>
> Michel Bauwens
>
>
> On 4/1/07, Simon Biggs <simon at babar.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> Rheingold's statement is West Coast liberalism at its worst! Furry
>> Capitalism.
>>
>> In Europe and elsewhere we have lived for two generations within a rather
>> benevolent context. If it was not for a socio-economic system where
>> relatively generous arms length state support for the arts, and other
>> non-industrial means of production, was default we would have seen a very
>> different development in the arts and society since the mid 20th C.
>>
>> Post Object art, performance and most media art, much of conceptual
>> art...in
>> fact most of what could be described as post modern practice, would not
>> have
>> become the dominant forms of our time. That much of the impetus for this
>> has
>> come from Europe is not coincidental. Such paradigms of work are only
>> possible when value is ascribed in ways not afforded by the sort of
>> socio-economic model on which the US is predicated and which Howard is
>> suggesting should be default not only there but globally. One could also
>> argue this using the example of food production. McDonalds versus
>> artisinal
>> food production.
>>
>> I found Cecil's plaintive call for a different model both sad and
>> uplifting.
>> Sad that after two generations of profound social change in Europe,
>> generally for the better, some of the same calls for change are made now
>> as
>> in the 1960's. Uplifting, as you do not hear enough of these sorts of
>> calls
>> anymore, perhaps because we have all become so cynical as a result of
>> persistent partial failure. Perhaps we expect to much of our social
>> systems?
>>
>> My life maps almost entirely to the social democratic model. As a young
>> artist my first professional activities were made under the fledgling but
>> nevertheless very beneficial wing of the Australia Council (founded 1972),
>> Australia's national agency briefed to fund the arts through peer review.
>> The effect the Oz Council had on the creative arts in Australia was
>> profound. Within a few years we had moved from an object based private
>> gallery dominated model, where a handful of collectors established taste
>> and
>> the careers of a handful of artists, to a situation where thousands of
>> artists were producing all sorts of crazy things (and often nothing at
>> all)
>> and showing this work in a diversity of artist run and non-profit spaces,
>> or
>> simply in the street or on the beach. It was a very creative and healthy
>> time and in many respects resembled the joyful situation that Cecil calls
>> for.
>>
>> In the UK this sort of system was also in place from even earlier, with
>> the
>> Arts Council of England as a very early example of social beneficience.
>> Other European countries, Canada, New Zealand and a number of unusual
>> suspects, had similar models in place. Even in the US, at state level,
>> there
>> were similar arrangements and, for a short time, even the NEA managed to
>> make a decent attempt at being a national arts agency run for and by
>> artists.
>>
>> The sort of model that Howard is promoting is based on a mean perception
>> of
>> human nature, predicated on an undertsanding that people are only
>> motivated
>> by their own need and where profit can only be gained at the expense of
>> others. This is the logic of capitalism. It is also the logic of the
>> criminal mind.
>>
>> So, I read Cecil and the innocent idealism makes me cringe; but I read
>> Howard and I get angry because what he espouses is the same ethic that
>> amoral corporations are trying to export to the world under the moniker of
>> Globalism. An ethic that has brought us to such a bad place in world
>> history
>> and now threatens the social compacts and contracts that have underpinned
>> the relatively enlightened social models of a number of countries since
>> the
>> Second World War.
>>
>> Rheingold articulates an anti-intellectualism that compounds his sins.
>> Anti-intellectualism is of course a common symptom on the right of
>> politics.
>> I find this interesting as in this Howard is denying his own roots.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Simon
>>
>>
>>
>> On 1/4/07 01:06, "Howard Rheingold" <howard at rheingold.com> wrote:
>>
>>> If people did not produce objects to be sold, we'd all be working
>>> very very hard to food, house, and transport ourselves. All too
>>> often, intellectuals who have never had to meet a payroll -- or face
>>> failure to meet a payroll -- fail to distinguish between a
>>> multinational corporation and a mom and pop store.
>>>
>>>
>>> Howard Rheingold
>>> howard at rheingold.com
>>> www.rheingold.com www.smartmobs.com
>>> what it is ---> is --->up to us
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mar 31, 2007, at 4:15 PM, Cecil Touchon wrote:
>>>
>>>> If artists are to engage in any dialog of a public nature such as
>>>> exhibitions, publications, performances and whatnot, how shall they
>>>> build enough wealth and capital to sustain their activity and carry
>>>> on a home life (support a family)? Capitalism as in produce objects
>>>> to be sold? The public dole? Maintain poverty? Work for a corporation?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> If artists wish to engage in helping to shape the world to come,
>>>> toward what are they moving in terms of a desired result?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Is it enough just to complain about, point out the problems of, or
>>>> screw with the things you don¹t like? Assuming the answer to be no,
>>>> what else should one¹s time be spent doing in order to feel that
>>>> one is making a difference or helping to move the world in a better
>>>> direction?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I notice that universities are training a lot of people to work for
>>>> corporations and show them how to find ways to screw the general
>>>> public out of small enough amounts of money to avoid calling it
>>>> criminal behavior, yet we all know it is and are being screwed over
>>>> regularly.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> How do we train ourselves and our children to shape the world into
>>>> a place we are not afraid to live in?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> How do we establish and honor higher standards of living our lives
>>>> so as to generate joy and peace?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> What ideals should we establish among ourselves that we can all
>>>> support together?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Why should we merely accept the ideals that organizations and
>>>> governments and corporations want to instill in us for their benefit?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Why do we allow ourselves to be thought of as corporate consumers
>>>> and properties of a state?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> What would it be like if artists decided to shape a world where
>>>> artists would want to live in? What would be important to them? How
>>>> would they do it?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Cecil Touchon
>>>>
>>>> http://cecil.touchon.com
>>>>
>>>> 817-944-4000
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: idc-bounces at mailman.thing.net [mailto:idc-
>>>> bounces at mailman.thing.net] On Behalf Of Alan Clinton
>>>> Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 9:02 PM
>>>> To: dew.harrison at rgu.ac.uk
>>>> Cc: idc at bbs.thing.net; dewharrison at yahoo.co.uk
>>>> Subject: Re: [iDC] Art, Lifestyle & Globalisation
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> A couple of thoughts here related to the questions you have posed.
>>>> First, the rhetoric of purity (is there an outside of capitalism?)
>>>> can be, I think, an endgame producing the sort of corporate artists
>>>> Stallabras describes and those who are overly concerned that they
>>>> may make a mistake with their art (or their theory)--no one wants
>>>> to be called a hypocrite.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The problem of artists, intellectuals, and capitalism is a real
>>>> one. Should I refuse to teach at the Georgia Institute of
>>>> Technology because of its ties to the military industrial complex?
>>>> If I had refused, when I was just out of graduate school, I would
>>>> have had little opportunity to critique the system in anything
>>>> resembling a full-time way--I wouldn't have had those
>>>> impressionable students either. But then, if I had gone too far in
>>>> my critiques, I would have been fired. Artists, it strikes me, are
>>>> in a similar position. How to survive in an organism long enough
>>>> to destroy or recreate it?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Rather than attempting to start from a position of purity, perhaps
>>>> we should recognize that people will find themselves starting out
>>>> from various positions of impurity within the system. And, there
>>>> will be many ways of working against this system, of speaking to it
>>>> in ways that I call, borrowing one of Derrida's metaphors,
>>>> "Tympanic Politics":
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> "In his elucidation of marginalia as a discipline unto itself,
>>>> Derrida gives a poetic anatomy of the tympanic membrane and its
>>>> surroundings. The ear is swirling, labyrinthine, and cavelike.
>>>> Penetrating its depths presents a difficult, frightening prospect.
>>>> In addition to traversing a maze of passages, one must confront the
>>>> wall of the tympanum which has the capability to muffle the loudest
>>>> of noises. If normative discourse/art does not reach the inner ear
>>>> with the proper sense of volume or urgency, then how is one to
>>>> suggest the political or historical importance of a particular
>>>> issue? For the alternative would be to shock the system in such a
>>>> way as to puncture the tympanum altogether, effectively dismantling
>>>> the apparatus so that nothing can be heard at all. It would be as
>>>> if Constantin Brancusi, on the verge of rejecting Rodin's method of
>>>> clay modeling with taille directe, had shattered The Craiova Kiss
>>>> with the first hammer strike into formless stone. Derrida's answer
>>>> to such questions, of course, is always a more specific anatomy of
>>>> the situation at hand. He suggests that since the tympanum is
>>>> oblique with respect to the ear canal, its subversion requires an
>>>> oblique approach as well (taille indirecte?), some form of
>>>> rhetorical ambush. How does one 'unhinge' something that cannot be
>>>> shattered?"
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Alan Clinton
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 3/28/07, dew.harrison at rgu.ac.uk <dew.harrison at rgu.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Dear IDCs,
>>>>
>>>> I have been enjoying the recent discussion sparked off by the
>>>> passing of Baudrillard and would like to move the debate at a
>>>> tangent to this, but continuing with ideas surrounding forms of
>>>> social control, power and politics. I am concerned with the
>>>> domination of the corporate within the cultural and wonder at
>>>> the position I find myself placed in as an artist and academic
>>>> working in an educational instituion.
>>>>
>>>>> Digital media and new technology is reconfiguring our
>>>> relationship with the world and is also affecting how artists
>>>> relate with their public. Now, new locative technology can position
>>>> art in the everyday of people's lives and activities outside the
>>>> gallery space. Although psychogeography and mobile media enable the
>>>> 'interactive city' for artists to key into, they also promote ideas
>>>> of corporatised play in an urban space and tend to be
>>>> interventionist and intrusive. 'Big brother' media and cctv
>>>> surveillance allows for few informal, ungoverned social meeting
>>>> places. This means that artists are having to find interstices
>>>> between the formal constructed and observed social spaces where
>>>> unorthodox art can happen to engage with its audience. Just how is
>>>> such practice being supported within the neo-liberal economic
>>>> structures of globalistation? Julian Stallabrass suggests that this
>>>> only produces artists (in Brit Art particularly) who posture as
>>>> edgy, risky individuals but who are in real terms busy establishing
>>>> market positions for themselves. The answer lies somewhere in the
>>>> inter-related issues of art, lifestyle and globalisation.
>>>>>
>>>>> In the 1960s Marshall McLuhan predicted a technologically enabled
>>>> 'global village' and issued the warning -
>>>>> "Instead of tending towards a vast Alexandrian library the world
>>>> has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile
>>>> piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us,
>>>> Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall
>>>> at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a
>>>> small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and
>>>> superimposed co-existence."
>>>>>
>>>>> I would be extremely interested in your thoughts on the extent to
>>>> which we are 'aware of this dynamic' and offer some questions which
>>>> might help probe the territory -
>>>>>
>>>>> Corporations are rebranding themselves around lifestyle, is this
>>>> influencing creative practice or vice-versa?
>>>>> How do the principals and aesthetics of open source and
>>>> democratic media sit alongside corporate products (iPod etc)?
>>>>> How should arts organisations and institutions respond to open
>>>> networking and ideas exchange, what is a node and a network in
>>>> cultural terms?
>>>>> Are artists the software for the corporation hardware, or the
>>>> activists in sheeps clothing?
>>>>> Where does government funding for the arts sit in the global
>>>> cultural mix, or is corporate money driving the cultural agenda?
>>>>>
>>>> With thanks and kind regards,
>>>>
>>>> Dew Harrison.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> Simon Biggs
>> simon at littlepig.org.uk
>> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>> AIM: simonbiggsuk
>> Research Professor in Art, Edinburgh College of Art
>> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk
>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
Simon Biggs
simon at littlepig.org.uk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
AIM: simonbiggsuk
Research Professor in Art, Edinburgh College of Art
s.biggs at eca.ac.uk
http://www.eca.ac.uk/
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