Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 10:09:40 +0100
Subject: Re: art/capital
From: "John Appleby" <pyrew-AT-csv.warwick.ac.uk>


"Luben Karavelov" <luben-AT-airfair.net> wrote:

>I have a different understanding of revolutionary art. So I would like to
>pose
>some questions:
>
>Is it Socialist Realism revolutionary art, or the drama of absurd of Daniel
>Harms
>is revolutionary? (the art of DH was treated by the soviet power as reactionary)

Luben

Sorry if I was a bit unclear, my point was that the Soviets considered
Socialist Realism to be revolutionary. I would not want to make that claim
myself; if anything, I would say it was reactionary. 

I think that it is only art as practice that has the possibility of being
revolutionary, i.e. when it is plugged into some form of assemblage. Hence
my comments about rave culture. I would agree with what Olga Nikolova said
regarding the differences between rave music and rock (although I would
argue that it was the industrial outfits who got there first with the
anonymity thing). However, this in itself was not sufficient to make it
politically threatening in the UK. It was when large numbers of people
started spilling out of the cities at the weekends and pissing off rural
landowners that the government here felt moved to increase police powers
still further. I guess my point here is that rave acted as a bridge which
linked urban youth to rural environment in a way which had not been seen
before and was perceived as politically destabilizing - Rave as a line of
flight out of state sanctioned culture which is then stamped upon and
recuperated by the forces of capital (record companies, 'proper' clubs,
etc.).

There is a very interesting piece on this general topic by Breton, Rivera,
and Trotsky called 'Towards a Free Revolutionary Art' (reprinted in Harrison
and Wood, _Art in Theory: 1900-1990_) which is worth checking out. The
following two quotations really encapsulate the argument:

'True art, which is not content to play variations on ready-made models but
rather insists on expressing the inner needs of man [sic] and of mankind in
its time - true art is unable not to be revolutionary, not to aspire to a
complete and radical reconstruction of society'.

'If, for the development of the forces of material production, the
revolution must build a socialist regime with centralized control, to
develop intellectual creation an anarchist regime of individual liberty
should from the first be established. No authority, no dictation, not the
least trace of orders from above! Only on a base of friendly cooperation,
without constraint from outside, will it be possible for scholars and
artists to carry out their tasks, which will be more far-reaching than ever
before in history'.

Regards

John