Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 18:46:35 -0400
From: Ostrow/Kaneda <so5-AT-is2.nyu.edu>
Subject: Re: avant-garde failing-fortune


>Kristoffer Orum wrote:
>
>>the fact that what we call art is just a
>> (random?) definiton generated by the cultural elite.
The fact is that every catagory of object -- thing--including what we call
nature falls under this discription.  All objects and catagories of things
are symbollic.  Part of what we do as humans is creat catagories --
fragment the continuum.


 In fact objects of artare not different from other kinds of objects (be
they natural or manmade)

As I have already implied al catagories are products of humans -- on this
level they do not differ -- but they do differ in termsof the practices
that human's have chosen to apply or attribute to those objects.  It is
this act of differentiation that  not onlyarises from our practices  but
also organizes them.

 in the way they interact with the rest of the world. All objects viewed out
>> of cultural context (if that indeed is possible) are "the same".
Objects do not inter-act in that they have no volition, we interact with
them and also establish the relations that exist between them --  what we
call objects are mere matter-- catagories  are mer concepts


This is not to say that are is not interesting, but that its the way that
we view
>> art that is intersting. I guess it's a kind of zen'ish point I'm trying
>to make: That the way, is more important that than what.

Perhaps mote to the point  is that art is most interesting when it resists
the way we have come to view it and organizes our perception and concepts
rather than merely responding to them in this way different objects and
catagories assert themselves along the lines  by which they have come to be
differntiated and continue to be sustained as such.




     --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---