Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 21:44:58 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: the late ironic academic clamour for artistic "certification"



[originally posted on artlist]

Many of the postings on this list stubbornly assume, accept and promote
the singular validity of the staid collegial academia-art "arena." I have
an undoubtedly, unpalatable explanation: Having been sold an increasingly
irrelevant and anemic course of study that only restricts their options
(usually to the college-circuit-itself), these academia-victims actually
have no other option but to continue to accept and perpetuate this
officious, lumpen chicanery... ensnaring new generations of acolytes so as
to "succeed" (wade even further into the irrelevant, petty muck of
stagnate collegial cesspools.) Say it ain't so. 

Here's a scary question: Are there _any_ artists on this list who have
_not_ attended art-school? (Reply off-list; I wouldn't blame you.)

Of course, by even making these observations, by even daring to criticize
this bloated cash-cow, by even questioning the contemporary
validity/relevance of these institution's wooden certifications and pallid
pronouncements... the trite panels and clique conferences.... this makes
things even worse for the acolytes/victims... This is the howling,
self-righteous denial that you hear on this and a few other lists. 

Let's Generalize: 

Just have a look around your local faculty lounges and collegial
studios... Tell me what you see. Can you honestly conclude that this
heavily subsidized (in more ways than one), art is on-whole vital... 
worthy... significant... innovative? (By all means, do point me in the
direction of any exceptions, there are some... but nowhere near enough to
warrant this wasteful, international, ponderous, megalithic
art-diploma-mill.) And you nearly-never see this stuff except in
collegial-journals or campus galleries and their in-town coquettish
affiliations; but of course, what really matters there is collegial
cachet, crusty credentials, citation-as-currency... The expense is very
dear. 

Ivy Bohemia: 

Sneaking-in on the skirts of early upper-class womens' finishing schools,
and following suit, the recent academia-artist was a good in-joke a few
decades back... I mean, no one seriously thought that a student could
become an artist by taking art-courses at status-quo savories... It all
was meant to be a temporary, harmless diversion, a p-c indication of
liberal values, a cheap meal-ticket paid by a few impressionable, usually
bourgeois, youngsters on their way to law-school or some-such. It seemed
like a fair trade-off. 

Academia: the Magic Kingdom, and the Disney-fication of Art and Artists: 
 
Good Joke Gone Bad: Now we have thousands of entrenched, one-trick
"art-professors" churning out hundreds of thousands of middle-class
"certified career artists," who can usually only graduate to become
art-professors themselves. This epidemic benefits no one. 

How is it possible that they can only make a living by essentially failing
to teach others to do this very thing? Artists learn best from other
real-world working-artists. Academia-art is a bubble -- let's pop-it and
see what falls-out. More importantly, let's make big room, on their own
terms for the innovative, the insightful, the non-collegial art -- the Net
is a good starting voice. Significant art has always blossomed from
relatively marginal junctured-outposts; very very rarely from the
simulated offerings of art-institutions. 

(This in turn raises the very real and unsettling probability that all
this "art critical specialty discourse" is really not so necessary, and
that "contemporary art" may now not exist as such.)

A good solution would be to methodically replace academy fine-art with
pragmatic, up-to-date, real-world training in media applications. The time
is surely ripe, and some institutions have finally begun to move, with
great zeal, in this direction. There are some ulterior motives and minor
potential hazards ahead in this, but they look trivial compared with the
current disaster. 

By isolating aspects of net interface/development, hiding behind
second-hand technological theory, attempting to re-establish their same
exclusive collegial hierarchy on the net, then suddenly proclaiming this
to be museum-grade "net-art," the avant-garde fine-art academy attempts to
appropriate and capitalize on an wider evolution which will likely not
include them. 

A somewhat similar course of events may be seen in the early days of video
art, but by contrast, it would seem unlikely that students today would pay
for video-art courses (or "net-art" courses), that offer little likelihood
of advanced technological training nor the ability to actually make
broadcast (as opposed to selectively closeted, art-museum video-art)
television. Not to mention a decent living wage. In fact, the Net-itself
likely provides the best means for most to learn what they need to know
about this inclusive medium -- the physical academy classroom is also made
redundant. 

Real art continues to be the proverbial rhizome, the apparently random
seedling by the wayside, or vital bacteria... it's not seen to flourish in
force-fed, centrist, inbred institutional art-farms. Why pretend? 





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