Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 10:15:08 +0100
From: Daniel Haines <daniel-AT-tw2.com>
Subject: art/capital


Briam Massumi has written:

'Every society creates a quasi-causal system of this kind. In capitalist
society 
the ultimate quasi-cause is capital itself, which is described by Marx
as a 
miraculating substance that arrogates all things to itself and presents
itself 
as first and final cause. This mode of simulation goes by the name of 
"reality." 

'The other mode of simulation is the one that turns against the entire
system of 
resemblance and replication. It is also distributive, but the
distribution it 
effects is not limitative. Rather than selecting only certain
properties, it 
selects them all, it multiplies potentials: not to be human, but to be
human
plus. This kind of simulation is called "art."'

(http://www.anu.edu.au/HRC/first_and_last/works/realer.htm)


in its own way, this drawing of a distinction between art and capital as
different modes of simulation re-enacts the ever-popular-in-the-20th-
century idea that art is a revolutionary and social-transformatory
experience.

on the other hand, one could argue that in the 20th century art has been
more effectively de-politicised and recooperated within capitalism's
"mode of simulation" than ever before... artists have become incredibly
institutionalised (educationally) at the same time as the (pop)
psychology of "personal expression" has made it possible to sidestep the
social or political implications of their work. add to that the
appropriation of concepts like creativity, spontaneity, and novelty by
corporate multi-national culture and  - quite aside from taking up a
moral position on these changes - it seems odd that the image of art as
"revolutionary" is more popular than ever... 

lacking confidence in macro-politics or global capitalism,
hierarchically organised opposition and "the party", there seems to be a
faith in liberation-through-art or through-culture circulating within
critical discourse, the "collapse of high and low" culture
notwithstanding...

so is this a naive and romantic nostalgia? or can an artistic mode of
simulation elude and radically augment and even overturn capitalisms
mode of simulation? if so, how? if not, why not?

dan h.
-- 
"...musicians must substitute for the limited variety 
of tones posessed by orchestral instruments today 
the infinite variety of tones of noises, reproduced 
with appropriate mechanisms..." 

	Luigi Russolo, 'The Art of Noises' (1913)