Re: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art
Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 4:35 pm
Yes, loud and clear...
dada » Thu Jul 12, 2018 3:02 pm wrote:It isn't the content of the video that concerns me, but the form. The "NYTimes art video." I guess you might say that I'm, as Ben Watson puts it "allergic to the power-relations involved in commercialism. For [me], to countenance using something as imbalanced as the mass media to put over a "progressive message" is to agree with manipulation, setting up the artist in a hierarchy above the audience. In other words, "Bad form, or reactionary, derivative treatments are not something that may be excused by a 'progressive' message."
I should probably clarify here, what I see, or rather don't see, as "Free Revolutionary Art."
It isn't (to me) propaganda in support of a revolution. I think this sort of platform-based, soap box art runs counter to the 'spirit' of free revolutionary art. Art is never ('never' is perhaps too strong a word, I know) revolutionary in itself. It becomes revolutionary when the artist that creates it has fully assimilated their politics. These politics cannot be found anywhere on the surface, or (most importantly) hidden somewhere inside. Meaning there's no moral, no lesson to be unpacked. It's an art that is revolutionary by being an example of creativity unfettered, not by making overt or covert overtures to the viewer. The danger to the social order, the revolutionary potential isn't in its message, but by the very fact of its existence.
This idea extends, for me, right back to the present moment, as I sit here typing on the internet. I've been trying to get away from the preachy style of writing. The "I'm an expert, you're an expert, everyone is an authority in something or other, so let's all take turns playing at being ring-master/spectator in the bleachers" method of social interaction. Seeing us reduced to these barely-sublimated-to-not-even-trying-to-hide-it dominance/submission games, I can't escape the feeling that what we call culture and society are nothing more than the acting out of sexual repression.
Yet how difficult it is, to communicate without preaching! For me, at least.
As for Rosemont surrealism, to be honest, it was Franklin's book "Jacques Vache and the Roots of Surrealism" that turned me off to the whole project. Franklin somehow manages to turn the irreverent, pretension-deflating belly laugh of Vache's 'Umor' into pretentiousness itself. Someone should have explained to Franklin, that is what happens when you explain a oke.
The book turns out to have very little to do with Vache. Reading it was an experience not unlike watching a 'based on a true story' Hollywood blockbuster while Rosemont sits in front of you wearing a tall hat. As a bonus, Rosemont instructs us on how to be good nonconformists and revolutionaries by making constant appeals to authority.
So that's what my opinion of Rosemont surrealism hinges upon. What a book. Not that it's the only thing I've read coming out of that scene. But it was the one that opened my eyes. I'm glad Rosemont (and Kerr) republished some of T-Bone Slim's writings under the title 'Juice is Stranger Than Friction,' (although I could do without Rosemont's introduction.) I have no problem with Penelope.