Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 00:04:32 -0400
To: deleuze-guattari-driftline.org-AT-lists.driftline.org
Subject: Re: [D-G] How does one know when a 'revolutionary' medium has run


 sid littlefield =09<falsedeity-AT-lycos.com> to deleuze-guatta.
The question is how one is to determine whether a medium can still be
considered revolutionary or not. Is it possible for a revolutionary
artform to no longer be able to produce interesting thoughts.

Ishmael Reed wrote a hilarious short-fiction book in 1972 called
"Mumbo Jumbo". Its a very witty book that traces the rhizomatic paths
of a fictionalized jazz revolution called "Jes Grew", from its very
beginnings ("....where did it come from?" - "Jes Grew!") to its
expansive rhizomatic fullest and then to its end, showing how Jes Grew
looses its revolutionary sting by loosing its class significance, but
then there you have it, that WAS the revolution. But Ishmael Reed is a
special case because generally it is difficult to get radical
authentity from an art critic, mainly because they want to justify
their own interest in the subject by granting it unnecessary
significance.

I have found that much of Attali's book "Noise" gives a
straightforward view of radicalism in art. He pretty much reiterates
the Engles and Marx's 1870's take on the art-society-capitalism
dialectic by showing comtemporary examples with chapters on
"representing" and "repeating" circa 1985(?). There seems to be a good
webpage about it at.....
http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/aesthetics%20of%20music/attali'snoise.htm
...and of course all the Marx stuff is free to read at....
http://www.marxists.org/
(Oh, and then there is marcuse's book "one-dimentional man", which is
an awesome read for anyone interested in radical arts and politics)

 Anyway... there is a notion of the revolutionary potential in all the
fields of art... What is art? Why do we seperate Art as a concept from
Life? Did people do that 100 years ago? What else happened 100 years
ago? If art was mine from the beginning shouldn't I know what it is by
now?
Study some art history, get specific, look at the Dada-ists who party
hard at Cabaret Voltaire in 1917, what were they doing? and who was
buying it? What did they really buy? Why did it leave the Cabaret
scene end up at the Museum of Modern Art? Art is like an enactment of
the rhebus, where a word can change the meaning of the object it
represents. So a child can make art and not even know it. And, for
some people, the same piece of art can be a "sell-out" and to someone
else "revolutionary".   "Art" is a concept that we learn about, we
study it to know what it is, it is not a part of us even if it is.
"Art" (as a rhebuic concept) does not come from the "desiring-machine"
that D y G write about in "Anti-Oedipus." But
"throwing-paint-on-the-wall", does come from that "desiring-machine"
so does "smushing-wet-clay" and so does "making-lots-of-money." So too
would "revolutionary-actions" come from that "desiring-machine."

On 6/23/05, joan carol urquhart <jcu-AT-execulink.com> wrote:
"As Foucault says in the intro, Anti-Oedipus is the guide to the
nonfascist life. Capitalism trains us that desire equals lack: that
the only way to meet our desires is to consume. Anti-Oedipus, though,
has a different take: desire does not come from lack. It comes from a
need to make, to create, to experience."

Ok, so we consume, but what has become of our inate need to make, to
create, to experience? After all, it IS still there, but it often
channelled into the realms of Art, that special construct of the
rhebus, preying upon our deepest intellectual weakness, completeness.
So what if we wanted to "smush-wet-clay" or
"play-ragtime-on-the-piano" but we want it to be revolutionary also,
what would we do?
Theres only a bit in "Anti-Oedipus," where D y G write about how the
Production Process must have a Recording Surface, a concept they
briefly mention in Ch.1-The Desiring Machines, Pt.3-Subject and
Enjoyment.
Does anybody know a better place to read about the Recording Surface
of the production process. What is it does it have another name?
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