Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 08:06:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: { brad brace } <bbrace-AT-wco.com>
Subject: Re: avant-garde failing-fortune



On Tue, 16 Jun 1998, Ostrow/Kaneda wrote:

> >Such "recognition" is not purposely sought; that alone would seem to be
> >enough to routinely disturb O/K's reason and grammatical decorum.
> >
> Then why make so much of it -- perhaps if you ignoire it it will go away on
> its own, or you should narrow your target...


It might be fun to answer this. I may be overly vigilant (and humourous
rants can be a cathartic release from the clumsy cloying clutches of
collegial expertise),...  but I've repeatedly seen this exclusive
artworld/collegial dogma lay-waste to many great artists' work/careers and
local cultural development that just happen to perpetually lay beyond this
snotty imperial providence. Art in my time, has borne little and very
occasional resemblance to this supposedly primary, linear fable. The
insistence that it *must* is what sets-me-off.

I fear and sense a recent growing encroachment against the openness and
divergence of the arts on The Net by this increasing desperate cabal in
the name of its "critically" hierarchical pyramid of efficiency -- based
on irresponsible and an often blatantly false artworld history, that is
offered as an easily structured "remedy" to the "disorder" and wonderful
Brownian motion of the Net. (Making little "contemporary compensatory" 
gestures in order to polish the patina of professional careers in
 jeopardy , just doesn't cut-it!) 

I can offer a personal, thrilling example that I know applies to many
other creative souls online. In _one day,_ many more visitors see (and
respond to) my work than would have in any galleries' monthly exhibitions. 
Prior to my introduction to the Net, I'd long accepted the likelihood that
there might at best be a small constellation of (wonderful) people in the
world that might connect with my art; this was and still would be fine by
me. I've never hid my disdain for an art-system that claimed openness and
apparently welcomed other voices but delivered and ensured the exact
reverse -- so, imagine my delight with the Net *and* my disgust when I
catch a putrid whiff this same corrosive dogma online!

The recent, moderated, with "distinguished guest-panelists" <eyebeam> (for
example), "mailing-list" was an annoying reminder of that old artworld
pseudo -preemptive-discourse under-glass. Some of the very same
institutions are now involved. You can listen, you must honour central
premises, but you can't contribute (even "marginally") or criticize
without prior approval. Not even once. 


> ... its a paranoid them they
> conspire against us -- as I have often pointed out it is something learned
> by rout (sp?) by art school students from teachers who feel if there just
> wasn't an art world mafia they would have gained recognition.


Here I agree with you. My posts on other art and education lists are often
based on this very observation. It makes no sense to me, to have thousands
of art-students taught by professors who can't themselves make a living
with their work (except by eventually and often inevitably teaching or
administrating themselves.) Higher-art education should provide at least
the technical skills and realworld professional connections that would
enable students to connect with opportunities and careers. I'm not sure
that even the profession of Artist, if it _can_ still carry any
significant distinction, should arise from Academia.


> As George has pointed out your complaint is a complaint as old as
> modernity, it is raised on both the left and the right...


And as I attempted to point-out, these times are quite different from the
false dichotomies of yore -- the deregulation of the system has become the
system itself...


> The fact is that
> few critics, theorist and historians function in the market place--


You mean that they don't receive any sort of compensation for their
work??? Are you all on annuities and tenured sabbaticals? 


> in
> recent years serious criticism has found itself moved to the margins
> increasingly published in journals --  the editors of large circulation art
> magazines...


Name a "large -paid-circulation art magazine;" just so I know...


> have little or no interest in serious criticism because it more
> often then not  is neither exciting or promotional -- its too dry, too
> serious, todemanding.


Why can't serious criticism be exciting... personable... quirky... even,
promotional? Of course, if it was, then you'd have to explain why it
didn't appear in those wicked large circulation publications. 


> They understand that what sells magazines is
> novelty, sound bytes and  the promise of being in on the new   ( sort of
> like your picture project.)


My "picture project" (The 12hr ISBN-JPEG Project), is about restructuring
and representing 24 years of past works alongside current interjections
and reconfigurations. It's anything but presenting the new only as new,
and it certainly ain't hep daddy-o... 


> On the other hand your Luddite attacks on specialization tends to lead no
> where...


As I said, they lead increasingly, to an embrace of the global age of the
informed and impassioned amateur. Why suffer "experts" gladly?


> Seemingly if you did more than merely appropriate rhetoric...


I'll occasionally interject whatever material I happen to be reading, in
order to make sense or nonsense of it. Academicans soundly disapprove.
"Appropriation" is no longer possible, if it ever was... 


> -- that
> is gain some understanding, some expertise you would be aware...


Rather and typically presumptuous of you! Understanding and expertise are
at best, distantly related -- especially in the authoritarian artworld.


> that for
> sometime now the proposition   that quality, value, significance, etc are
> ideologically established and perpetuated  has held sway.


Oh that much is all too clear! It's the self-serving mechanism of the
curatorial class. Art in thy name only.


> What has been
> proposed is that only a self-conscious  and self -reflexive ideology aware
> of the fact that it is only a tool  will be  capable of displacing the one
> that presently seems so toublesome to some of us...


Sounds more like a claustrophobic collegial meal-ticket to me.


> It is for these and numerous other reasons that  some of  us believe that
> under capitialism it is better to strive to maintain culture not only
> nihilistically but also institutionally.


A nihilistic institutional culture that benefits only its administrative
proponents, and prevents sustainable and imaginative development! 


> The nihilism of the avant garde
> one has to remember was a strategy intent on   demonstrating that bourgeois
> values were neither intrinsic  to art or an objective consdition of its
> being but ideologically determined. The fact is that this nihilism came to
> be a thing in itself -- reified-- cut off from its tactical and strategic
> goals.   All struggles consist of confrontation, compromise and the
> construction of alternative rather than merely opposing practices.


The avant-garde of your curatorial class assumes, in fact requires, the
presence of an adversary with which to pretend to "struggle." I don't
believe that any real alternative is actually desired.


>  --  So,
> so far Brad your complaints do not contribute to any thing other than the
> perpetuation of your complaint.


O/K, my complaint can't be stated often enough; most institutions of art
and overbearing claims of "expertise" are an anathema to creative
progress, which can no longer be understood with those tactic dogmatic
definitions of Art. 

"Just Let Go..."



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