Date: Sat, 13 May 1995 19:50:39 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-AT-panix.com> Subject: The Whitney Biennial, Philoctetes' last stand (a bit long) (please forgive the cross-posting) WHY I SHOULD BE KILLED Tiffany says "You're taking it too seriously. Cultural politics is just that, politics!" You say "That's what I'm talking about. So I'm going to break out. I'm not following the form any more! Klaus Kertess, I knew him once! Let the man run on! Listen to him now:" "What is being proposed here is not a return to formalism but an art in sensuousness is indispensable - whether as play or sheer joy or the kind of subversity that has us reaching for a rose and grabbing a thorn. Art is a platform for experience, not a lesson. The artist's mind/body becomes an instrument of the eye - an instrument that submits to and is orchestrated by the requirements of the work being made. The interaction of the art- ist's unique mental structure (even the most rigorous depersonalization carries a monogram), the artist's culture, and the medium the artist has chosen to embed with meaning is so complexly layered and cross-circuited that ambiguity is, if not willed, certainly entailed." Later he goes on to explain about Sue Williams: "Williams subversively pits the physical and verbal abusiveness of her subjects against the physical gratification of her painting; and through the enjoyment of her painting, the viewer becomes implicated in the messy goings on of her subjects. There are no answers here, only questions about the nature of pleasure. Williams' painting distills more than it defines; it seeks meaning, know well there may be none; it alarms us into wonder and wondering." Then he adds: "Art's alarm goes off on a slow clock. Even in times as disaster prone and obsessed as our current millennial moment, the artist must assume the arrogance of eternity." This is Klaus' "Postcards from Babel" in his Whitney Museum 1995 Biennial Catalog. The world is changing at an enormous rate; whole peoples and species are near extinction; the classic nationstate is questioned throughout Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa; the Internet is under attack and increasing numbers of people are identifying themselves with on-line communities: and Sue Williams' work is subverted into perennial beauty and allegiance with Merleau-Ponty's essay on Cezanne. But Williams' work is precisely content, ambiguous or not, and there is discomfort there, art or not. Tiffany says "You're not saying anything, damn it! You're talking about life and death, about suicide/murder, _Lustmord,_ Jenny Holzer: What's going on here?" You say "It's the language. It's everywhere. It's imperial. It's putting the lid on. It's a rape of the truth. It's an insistence on truth. Listen: Why _must_ the artist assume the arrogance of eternity? Don't you see, the nuclear family in disguise once again, the strait-jacket of organized religion, it's all there! Listen: "art in which meaning is embedded in formal value." Not "embedded in form" but "formal _value_" and there you have it, the circuitry of aesthetic capital, the circuitry of capital if you will. It's not that I'm for politically-correct art or political art - it's that there's a return here to effacement, to the 50s' disdain for the discomfort of the social order until the beats came along. And then there's the "ought" everywhere in this writing: "Art _is_ a platform for experience, not a lesson." But why not? Why _should_ art be one thing and not another? I realize he's using the copula, not the _ought,_ but the ought is implicit; the sentence is performative - he's the perfect curator for the 1990s! And there's the return to the inherent formalism of the work - which is the fetishistic work of totality, the practice of totali- ty, the artist's "mind/body" becoming "an instrument that submits to and is orchestrated by the requirements of the work being made." I am reminded of the orchestras, in fact, that played in the concentration camps, also submissive - and I don't find the analogy far-fetched. The language reeks of Kristeva's "clean and proper body," reeks of purified aesthetics, Leni Riefenstahl. All this in the guise of "a snapshot of our contemporary world and an exploration of the various visions it inspires." (Geoffrey C. Bible, the Sponsor's Statement) -" Tiffany says "And you're angered, towards death, because you believe there is no progress, which means you believe in progress, which means you're already strangled -" You say "Not strangled, not even believing in progress, but this return which is everywhere in our culture sutures over the wounds, from the body (look at what happens to Sue Williams in the essay) onward; if art is to be relevant, it need not be of course political (in the overt sense) or politically correct, but this is a call for disengagement, cauterization, in disguise. What's occurring in the artworld is an insistence on irre- levance, on interiority, metaphor (not the allegory of postmodernism, but the metaphor of disconnection), the beauty of the pristine..." Emote self-strangling beyond the shadow of a doubt! Emote being misunderstood as the gaunt and avant-garde artist he isn't! You say "I'm occupying this space, filling it with words, broken like splintered teeth against the almost-murder of Philoctetes. I'm the shroud that holds blood in! I rage against cleverness, wit, the disguise of Virgil, the stunted marrow of the Internet, I am martyred in the war against language itself. My tongue is torn out by placid Europe's frozen detonation of nuclear bombs raged across four continents!" Tiffany cries "That is not art! Hold the pen/write, pose your hands above the finger-board, strike the keys gently, make music with the words, wire your wrists with silver cords, bend your body into the inscription of disbelief, rise up into violation fabric!" Tiffany cries "Fool them with your death. Become Lenny Bruce, Andy Kauf- mann, Mary Magdalene, Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, return beneath the surface of the earth, strangle the paintings themselves with mold, with scale, with rust, with fungus, with lichen: bacteriality of the worlds destined to kill with a single glance of the infected!" Tiffany cries "Die to fool them with your death!" Tiffany cries "Don't forget America-bomb, internal-ghetto bomb, don't forget body-bomb, don't forget terrible beauty indeed!" Emote death-machinery eco-culture capital! Emote caverns legs mouths liquid teeth of blood! Tiffany screams "Die to fool them with your death!" You beg "Klaus, kill me! Klaus kill me with your song! Klaus, I'm going to lead the armies against Troy! Klaus, give me the bow back! Klaus, make me strong! Klaus, strangle eternity! Klaus, down with the beauty meaning of art! Klaus, I'm raving at you! Klaus, I'm raving at you! I'm raving at you, Klaus! I'm raving!" _________________________________________________________________________ --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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