[iDC] (no subject)

[mlahey at artic.edu]

It's interesting to read here of ethics posited as subversive.  I've recently
begun Naomi Margolis Maurer's incredible book "The Pursuit of Spiritual Wisdom;
the thought and art of Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gaugin".  In the introduction
she describes:

"The small number of artists who rebelled against the Academy during the
nineteeth century...claimed that its methodology reflected the rationalist and
materialist biases of Enlightenment thinking, and that these values debased
art's role as an expression of meaningful truth capable of enlarging the
viewer's understanding of life...[they] criticized the Academy for perpetuating
trivial, worthless ideals, for the falseness and trickery of portraying these
ideals as physical actualities, and for suppressing the genuine emotions and
expressive technical processes which could result in original, moving works of
art...[Gaugin's] accusation that the successful, much admired painter
Adolphe-William Bouguereau "stinks from platitudes and impotence" suggests that
the Academician's work is so artificial and anemic that it breathes decay
instead of vitality - that it conveys no forceful, living truth capable of
moving the spectator's heart or igniting fertile ideas in his mind...the
Symbolists leveled the same kind of criticisms against a branch of their own
movement which they repudiated as decadent...[they] consistently condemned
decadent art as eccentric and unhealthy...

They believed that great art is not merely an individual's unique recreation of
things perceived, but the sum of his feelings and ideas about them: his poetic
understanding of the most universal aspects of human experience...It was
because Naturalism preferred the "facts" of surfaces to the deeper realities of
thoughts and feelings that Denis called it "a theory false and evil in itself -
one of these errors that one meets again...in hours of decadence and
sterility.""

in other words, their art was an intensely ethical art (Van Gogh exemplifying
this with his extreme adherence to the teachings of Jesus, for example).  Yet
their view of ethics was not an abstract "do right" philosophy but grounded in
their assertion that human emotions have an objective existence and reality
which ought not trivially to be flouted in the name of Science.

Of course, this is not a prescription for the views that ought to be taken by
contemporary artists, yet is is intriguing to note that their objections were
raised as the industrial revolution gained momentum - momentum which has
carried us to this very moment in technological history.  I've had designers
pooh-pooh the critique of production as mindless, unnecessary and destructive
by saying "people have been saying that since the nineteenth century".  Indeed
they have...and they have been ignored since the nineteenth century as well.

I would venture to suggest that the discussion of ethics being raised here is at
least partially born of the consciousness that we are teetering on the brink of
a new, exponentially larger phase of the technological cycle.  In the
metaindustrializiation, human beings are as much of a controlled commodity as
steel or oil; something that makes your factory go.  Those who are fighting
this version of reality are really up to their neck in it; the idea of life as
inherently valuable has been compromised all the way to the last line of
resistance.

The story of the country mouse and city mouse is where this really gets
interesting.  Analytically speaking, Serres is discussing the division of
value.  His conclusion: that according to any map of the division of value, all
destination points are equal.  In plain English, once value is present, it
attracts those who would like to "consume" it and all of those who are able to
do so fall into the same category as "consumer".  Fine.  Yet I would take issue
with Mark in that debalancing the type of value consumer (in this case, the
artist) is the most effective way to control the system.  In the end, imbalance
is always corrected; and more often than not through violence, repression or
other highly unpleasant means (extinction?).

I would suggest that if one wants to effectively control this system, one would
have to alter the type of value that is being consumed.  I am referring to the
way that objects of financial or caloric value become tied up in cultural
values.  This is how value consumers attempt to ensure their survival; tie the
access to value to a cultural expression describing a category=my identity. 
This is the Darwinian reality behind such stodgy beliefs like "hip hop isn't
music, it's noise; Mozart is music" and cultural revolutions like the current
high value of hip hop.

what if we disrupted the equation with value encased in a non-identity?  So for
example; consumers only gain access to value when they open access for a
certain number of others?  In this case the reward is for altruism and
theoretically it could be kept going until everyone has a seat a the table.  In
this light, IDC seems to be effective even without an explicit political
agenda.

One can continue adding criteria like, "in order to access value consumers must
create access for those of a drastically lower access to value category (for
example third world)" or "of a drastically excluded category" like prisoners in
factory prisons, and etc.  The farther afield those with access must range to
find those they include, the more inclusive the system becomes.



Quoting mark bartlett <mark at globalpostmark.net>:

> 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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