[iDC] (no subject)

Wed Dec 19 06:36:08 UTC 2007

Luis,

I hadn't read your comments below before i sent my reply to Ryan and  
Danny and you.

I only repeated, there, in more elaborate terms what you've said more  
eloquently.

You posit an "altruistic ethics," which flies in the face of both  
scientism and individualism. We definitely agree on your "navel/lint"  
law of ethical demise....

Oh yeah! the "common good!"

I hope Jeffrey Skoller weighs in here in regard to your eloquent  
expression of why ethics and politics need to be maintained as  
separate discourses, as you have put it:

> - "because ethical behavior seems to have become a subversive  
> activity. This makes art that follows (not illustrates) an ethical  
> stand subversive as well."

and then your expression of the "law" of altruistic ethics:

"But art is subversive because it subverts conventional knowledge,  
which if planned, makes it part of a political strategy. This only  
works when informed by ethics and that is why I am reluctant to take  
one word for the other.  With politics we compromise, with ethics at  
least we can tell where and why we compromise, and even if we should  
compromise."

and indeed:

"the challenge is to reappraise our function as artists [social  
actors in general]  and see what is to be done now."

The critical question about your comments is: does art subvert  
conventional knowledge? Obviously, not necessarily. So, how do we  
know when that is the case? Which you give criteria for: when it is  
planned.

So the ethical issue, in your terms, is: how to plan.

which you also answer: ethics means - "at least we can tell where and  
why we compromise, and even if we should compromise."

This is the Camnitzer Code of Ethics, for, this historical moment.

at the risk of being pedantic: the Camnitzer Code has a powerful  
ancestor in Michel Serres work of the early 80's, Parasite, where he  
uses system theory to read the "fables of Aesop, La Fontaine, etc.  
The initial chapter performs a system theory (social network)  
analysis of the fable about the "country mouse" visiting the "city  
mouse" in the house of the "tax farmer."  Scraps from the Tax  
Framer's table fall to the floor on which the city mouse feeds, and  
this is the "banquet" to which the country mouse is invited. But the  
Tax Farmer provides the "banquet" by taxing the production of the  
country mouse [the originary farmer on which the Tax Farmer feeds].  
So the country mouse is the source of the banquet in the first place.  
So the city and country mice are eating beneath the framers' table  
when a loud "noise" is heard - and they scatter: the system is  
suddenly ruptured by unidentifiable "noise." [Art as planned noise]  
Was the noise the farmer waking up and hearing the commotion beneath  
his table? Etc. "Parasite" in French simultaneously means 3 things:  
host, parasite, and noise. To keep this short: Serres demonstrates  
that each of those "subject" positions are inevitably interchangeable  
- host becomes guest becomes noise becomes host becomes guest  
becoming noise. It's an ethico-political model of inevitable complicity.

Despite the inevitable complicity, Serres' position leads to a clear  
path for political action: to vastly oversimplify: err, radically, on  
the side of creating as much "noise" [art] as possible.

"Noise" becomes the index of "political health." Where "health"  
means, altruistic ethics.

mark

On Dec 18, 2007, at 3:05 PM, Luis Camnitzer wrote:

> Addressing Mark: I would follow the Theology of Liberation  
> theoreticians and say that morals are the bureaucratic  
> implementation of a (usually self-serving) interpretation  of  
> ethics. So, I am talking more about altruistic ethics. I grant that  
> we don't know very precisely what they are, but we have a hunch.  
> Besides that there is some foundation for ethics in emergence  
> theory and some recent possible location in the DNA make up, it  
> would be futile and probably dangerous to try to pin ethics down to  
> dogmatic precision. But, more vaguely, I feel that we might have  
> gone too far in the promotion of individual navels and their lint,  
> and that we might start considering the common good. This does not  
> have to be in a rigorous scholarly fashion.  In this context I  
> believe that there is a serious difference between ethics and  
> politics (one informs the other, but not vice-versa). My very  
> personal way of operating is based on my wish to be an ethical  
> being, on using politics as a strategy to plan the implementation  
> of ethics (in an ethical way, of course) and, in my case to use art  
> as an instrument for that implementation. My choice to use art for  
> this is purely a consequence of irrelevant personal biographical  
> factors.
>
> I agree that in these Bushy times ethics do have political  
> implications, mostly because ethical behavior seems to have become  
> a subversive activity. This makes art that follows (not  
> illustrates) an ethical stand subversive as well. But art is  
> subversive because it subverts conventional knowledge, which if  
> planned, makes it part of a political strategy. This only works  
> when informed by ethics and that is why I am reluctant to take one  
> word for the other.  With politics we compromise, with ethics at  
> least we can tell where and why we compromise, and even if we  
> should compromise.
>
> In regard to what Sam raises, it is true that anything we do shapes  
> culture, the same as being apolitical is one form of a political  
> stand. Producing craftsy decorations will indeed shape culture. The  
> question is how passive can we afford to be in this pursuit. And  
> Ryan, this is not about purity or ideological grandstanding. I  
> would say that every single reader of Idc (me included) is  
> bourgeois and unable to seriously "betray" his or her social class.  
> So here, rather than disassembling ideas until they cease to exist  
> (a bourgeois academic misinterpretation of subversion), the  
> challenge is to reappraise our function as artists and see what is  
> to be done now.
>
> Luis Camnitzer
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