Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 08:47:04 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re:  Politics of Cristo............


Heiko wrote:

> I cannot dig DADA other than as a movement against the esthetics of
> pre ww1 world.

> Well, whats political with Cristo ??

Let's try this.  Let's take as our methodological guide Adorno's statement,
that Saul is fond of quoting, to the effect that artists should strive for
the impossible.  As a normative statement I dislike it, but let's for the
moment take the approach that every artist and every art movement has some
characteristic relationship, that can (perhaps with a bit of twisting) be 
labeled as "striving", towards a certain kind of contemporary impossibility.
Let's call this, for short, the _defining impossibility_ (DI) of the given art.
There are two questions that need to be asked about each specific DI: What 
is it?, and: What is the specific relationship of the given art to it?

Now I would say that the defining impossibility of Huelsenbeck's Dada is 
political.  Here we need to clarify what we mean by "politics".  One notion 
of "politics" is that it is what politicians do, just like "shoemaking" is 
what shoemakers do.  I don't think that Dada had any interest in transacting
with what politicians do, or any interest whatsoever in politicians, at least 
not the politicians of its day.  Another is that politics is the structure 
of the practice of everyday life.  I would say that the DI of Dada (always
Huelsenbeck's) was to change that structure.  The method through which it
wanted to effect this political aspiration was artistic.  But here we need 
to clarify what we mean by "art".  One notion is that it is what gets bought
and sold on the art market.  Another is that it is what artists do as artists,
irrespective of whether it gets bought or sold.  Another is that it is what
one does when one approches what one does with a certain special kind of 
attitude and a certain special kind of care.  When I say that Dada's approach
to its political DI was through artistic means, I don't mean "art" in the first 
sense, but in some combination of the other senses.  And I would also say that
one of the goals of the H&H manifesto is to disconcert the readers' habit
of construing "politics" and "art" as specialized professional realms that
have little to do with the structure of the practice of everyday life.
Moreover, I would say that one of the gut feelings behind Dada's "strategy"
is that a world in which these notions were not construed in these narrow
ways would be a very different world and our everyday life would be lived
very differently.

Now to the question of the attitude of Dada towards this DI.  I would say
that Dada treats its DI _as an impossibility_.  This is purposely expressed
by the totally absurd way in which the H&H manifesto states its demands.
So in my opinion, we have here a movement that strives for a certain
impossible that it itself regards as impossible, but that it nevertheless
cannot but strive for.  What do you get out of this?  You get paradox and 
irony and a very fine awareness of one's own absurdity.  And, along the way,
some very fine things that turn to be _possibile_ -- new aesthetic achievements
that, however, were not part of Dada's DI.

Now in Christo's case I would say that his DI is to break a certain "sound 
barrier" concerning the relationship between "art" and "civic" in the
notion "civic art".  He does this by negotiating seemingly-impossible kinds 
of treaties that give him permission to (temporarily or not) "colonize" 
existing physical territories/structures for totally aesthetic purposes 
defined by _him_.  The gist of Christo's activity is this negotiation.  
His DI seems to me project-specific: in each new project, a different
current sound barrier wants to be broken.  Christo's attitude to the
impossibility of each project is pragmatic: the ultimate impossibility
or possibility of the goal will be discovered only through a concerted effort 
to achieve it.  Do his goals amount to anything that can be called
"political"?  I don't know, I guess it depends on one's notion of politics.
And I don't know whether or not he himself regards his goal as political.
But I would say that this question is not central to his endeavour or to
the understanding of his endeavour.

-m


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