Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 23:40:04 -0800 (PST)
From: oconnell-AT-oz.net (Mark O'Connell)
Subject: Re: Warhol/sci-fi/turnips


Alan,
>I suggest that you get hold of a copy of Baudrillard's "The Perfect Crime"
>(Verso Press, 1996). It may help to answer some of your questions. It contains
>the essay "Machinic Snobbery". The first 10 pages or so of the book are
>terribly
>dense, but after that it gets a lot easier.

I'll pick it up.

------------------

Julian,

>If I've read B right, the subject can only interpret the world through a
>system of representations.

If the subject is interpreting the world what difference does it make (as
it regards the question) if he's interpreting simulacra/representation or
rocks or sheep or chevrolets?  You've got a subject interpreting the world
in any case you choose. And how is this interpretation not subjective?

>The modernist view of the artist
>expressing herself, or interpreting his world can no longer exist.

This just doesn't follow.  Even if we lived in a world of absolute
illussion there'd be people interpreting that illusion in their own
peculiar ways. Maybe that's what we're all doing right now.
Any statement I make is an expression of my subjective interpretation, as
is any piece I create. At least that seems to be the case.  What am I
missing???

>The
>representation of aesthetics, rather than  *an* aesthetic becomes the
>operational mode.

I'm not clear on this. Could you say more?

>I'm currently looking at how the arts  ed system in the uk is now so
>institutionalised and divorced from a postmod society that it is now a
>represenation of art.

This as well. I don't quite get it.  How is the arts ed system a
representation of art?

--------

Adam,

>I do not claim to know what B. says on this, but I feel, as an artist
>     and a friend of many artists, that "primal ritualism" is about process
>     as opposed to result. There are many artists for whom process is the
>     art, art is the process and the "thing" left over, the artifact, is a
>     byproduct.
>

I got the impression that the primal ritualism stuff had more to do with
fetishism then process. The idea of a fetish is one I really haven't
explored (no I'm not being coy) (at least I don't think so) (well, not in
any scholarly way anyway...) anyhow-   what's you're take on this?





Mark O'Connell
oconnell-AT-oz.net