Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 13:24:58 +0100
From: Daniel Haines <daniel-AT-tw2.com>
Subject: Re: art/capital


john,

thanks for this thoughtful response.   I've been through a lot of
different stages in my thinking about this and ended up completely
confused!  it's good to know that  some of my conclusions along the way
can find sympathy elsewhere.   having raised up a theoretical structure
to try and get to grips with art within a d&g(ish!) context, I found it
ultimately completely empty, as so much of the language we use about art
- and especially that word "art" itself - are so utterly without meaning
except within "enlightenment" discourse!  the artist, the aesthetic, the
subject, representation - even abstraction.... it all ends up as just so
much junk... 
but still this persistent idea of "revolutionary" art pops up everywhere
in many forms...  

John Appleby wrote:
> 
 I think that expression may be the only way to think
> about art as non-representational, but am not certain of this.

could you expand on this point?

> On the whole, I think that the really interesting question is the one Jon
> Rubin raised, i.e. what reason is there to think that art is a more
> exemplary form of revolutionary practice that any other.

but for me the question has become - what reason is there to think at
art is a revolutionary practice at all? or ever has or can be?

the common feature of the many versions of this notion is that they
abstract "art" - damn that word - from practice, from immanent processes
and prescribe what art therefore "is"... our categories for
understanding art usually assign it a "supplementary dimension", and, i
think, without exception place  artisitic expression as an  ahistorical,
primal, fundamental-to-human-identity type force.

the great vacuum of the word "art" is a mainstay (theoretically) of
"what it is to be human" discourse,  despite having been (historically)
always the province of a leisured elite...  of course, you can expand
the definition of art to make living itself an artistic enterprise, but
perhaps that just empties the word even further?

 if art is so central to human existence, even the distinguishing
threshold between "Man" and "animal" then it seems hard to see what's so
"revolutionary" about it  in the present day...  this century has seen a
democratisation of "art" but has that empowered us any more than
democracy itself? or just diminished the danger through
individualisation, so that art, like politics, exists in a state of
apathy and irrelevance...

sorry to cycle at random through so many different angles/points, but
like i said, this has been taking up my attention for a long time now!

any responses would be appreciated!

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)