File spoon-archives/avant-garde.archive/avant-garde_1996/avant-garde_Jan.96, message 11


Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 12:10:36 -0500
From: ostrow-AT-is2.nyu.edu (Ostrow/Kaneda)
Subject: Re: appropriation/free art


I'm sorry I'm just deopping into this discussion in such a hit and run
manner but= time being what it is and the issues being address being more
deserving than a off the cuff response  ......... but
>
>
>-malgosia wrote
>
>At the same time, the notion of having "professional artists", a class
>of people who are paid to produce self-expression, is in contradiction to
>the way I see art.
>

This statement  raises a lot of questions,  but they all stem from whatone might mean by "Self" and the expression of that 'self'. I would hope we
are not talking 19th century Romantic ideals,  Instead I would propose
that we understand the artist ( in its most resent incarnation circa
1960-70) as a developer of modes of expression , these constitute not only
forms and contents but also methods and subjects.  Therefor a professional
artist is not merely reducible to 'self" consciousness , intuition and
conscience or self-satisfaction but also might=be thought of as being a
professional cultural producer whose practice individually or collectively
constitutes a form of agency. What is confusing ( to both the producer and
the audience/ consumer) is that the  job discription is  constantly in a
flux because the cultural environment  that  informs  these producers'
self-identity and in turn is affected by their produce is never static (
often dispite the attempt to universalise both sigure and field). This is
due in part because such producers affect the very base upon which their
work is premised.
The either its mine or commodity aspect of Malgosia's statement would rob
such production of any significance. Art after all is a cultural catagory,
itrepresents shared knowledge  as well as embodies/ externalizes the
collective identities and ideals of the community that embraces it.

SAUL

P.S. Why the concern for appropriation? it is twofold one is that arleast
from a classic Marxist point of view this is what capital does it
appropriates social wealth, not just monetary wealth but wealth in all of
its diverse forms. It does this to maintain its hegemony.
The second reason is that the fastest road to banality for cultural and
social discourse is for its contents and forms to be circulated in a
decontextulized manner. The control of content resides in controling the
means of distribution given we do not control these means we are forced to
at least consider how might we maintain the viability of our practices that
are content driven,




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