[iDC] Art, Lifestyle & Globalisation Questions

Mon Apr 2 06:35:19 EDT 2007

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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