Art’s contested use-value
I don’t want to sound pessimistic but the world appears to be coming to an end as economies falter, oil prices soar, globalisation’s alienating effects take hold, climate change has increasingly serious repercussions, communities fall apart wracked with social unrest and food shortages become a concern for the west.
At the same time art is being driven closer to a situation where it’s perceived to having a function or ability to solve problems, to escape capitalist exchange and to create social cohesion through an abandonment of it’s uselessness giving it a use-value that goes beyond contemplative value.
Social justice™
Government funding bodies have renewed hopes in the promise of art by championing practices that ride under the banner of ‘relational art’ whose buzzwords and phrases such as ‘participation’, ‘social laboratory’, ‘inclusivity’, ‘interaction’, ‘process’ and ‘community project’ dominate gallery programmes, museum policies and artist’s residencies. Everyone now has an educational programme to meet funding requirements enforced by New Labour policies. The corporate world increasingly takes on the same drive to better its brand image through a display of social conscience as everyone competes for a space to show they care about the world. Whilst late capitalism infiltrates the arena of ‘social justice’, how can we manage the role of art in a productive way?
A slice of ‘We care’ cake?
Why care about art’s role when other action i.e. activism, campaigning, protest could have much greater impact?
Is it because I can create a ‘picture politics’ with my art work, bringing issues into the art worlds focus, illustrating that I care and inviting others to momentarily care thus raking in cultural capital and earning a fair crust as corporations and art institutions invest in my work to buy a slice of my ‘We care’ cake?
Or is it because I believe art holds a unique position within advanced capitalist society, with its dialectics of use-value and exchange-value, autonomy and heteronomy, commodification and disengagement from capitalist exchange as not being fundamental to the continuing development of capitalism but rather a tool for a real and lasting positive change this?
Here the latter option comes with smaller benefits to my own daily existence while ‘picture politics’ earns the big bucks in the art world. But an increasing number of cultural practices that could be seen as social work or activism etc have been brought into the focus of the artworld and have become institutionalised as art, analyzed, commissioned and a few t-shirts and mugs sold here and there. There is always some money to be made from practices that appear to shun institutional accreditation or the taint of corporate funding.
The desire to push a practice that attempts to escape the commodity form and the need to earn a living presents a tension and dilemma, which I feel on a personal level. I can only last so long in unrelated service sector jobs to fund my time spent being an artist. Perhaps I lack the stamina and commitment needed to make a real stand. So for now though, and like most, I will carry on complying with the present system. But perhaps my unavoidable compromise is not such a sell-out - after all, isn’t it a bit outdated and delusional to seek society’s complete disengagement with capitalist exchange? Or are we participating in an allowance of art to exist as an exception within capitalist exchange to satisfy our desires to triumph over the current regime?
Should we not reject an art of continued broken promises and instead push for an art that lives up to our hopes? A complete disengagement from capitalism seems incomprehensible; we need to work towards some form of compromise.
In order to see what potential could lie within art and to determine its social function I want to look at what art purports to do.
The claims made around art – problems and contradictions
What are art’s promises? Or more precisely, what are the claims made around art? These claims are socio-historical constructs, which over time have been made around art, by those who are involved in deciding what art is, and not by art itself.
- It sets up a contemplative frame – it gives us a time and space separate from work and away from life commitments
- Art is singular and autonomous
- It has an ability to promote and affect social change
- It is valued for the distance it keeps from capital and occasionally it’s ability to sidestep capital’s flows
These claims throw up problems and contradictions:
- Art’s contemplative frame does provide us with a time and space for thinking, that is in no doubt beneficial, but is it really a time and space separated from work/life commitments and a space away from capitalist exchange?
- The claim that art can be autonomous is rife with internal contradictions. In Adorno, autonomous art is at once both independent and dependent on society, consistent and inconsistent, singular and universal. But importantly he believed that autonomous artworks are fetishes in that they are of no use other than their own existence, art for art’s sake. The fetishised autonomous artwork is self-contradictory by claiming to be useful as some kind of key to society’s emancipation while at the same time claiming to be useless.
(Zuidervaart 1994, 88-89)
- The evaluation of art’s ability to effect social change is a huge and complicated process; art can bring people together and can exercise a collective play the same way a community garden project could. And its contemplative value could be seen to make small changes in a particular social group’s collective subjectivity, but on the scale of things, isn’t this a minute effect due to the closed and inward looking nature of the art world? For now, art just doesn’t live up to its label of progressive social healer and does not provide a key to humanity’s goal of complete freedom.
- For most parts, arts distance from capitalist exchange is a bit of a joke. So few practices manage to seriously question capital’s intrinsic role in propelling and maintaining art’s future let alone actually sidestepping the flows of capital.
Art cannot deliver these promises and we must therefore ask ourselves if we should give up these claims. What could be gained - and what would happen to art?
Steven Wright talks about the trap that art has set-up for itself:
‘Invariably, when some artwork or other is threatened with censorship, the artworld’s reaction is to assert the work’s art status, upholding the privileged status it enjoys in the symbolic order. Ironically however, in so doing, it is implicitly acknowledged that it is merely art, not the dangerous, and thus potentially censorship-deserving, real thing. In other words, cordoning art off from the real has, in many cases, afforded art a place in the public eye, but it has done so at the considerable cost of stripping art of its capacity to find a way to have any real use-value and undermining its claim to do much damage to the dominant order of signs.’
(williamlmoore.com/images/advanced/the%20future%20of%20the%20reciprocal%20ready-made.pdf)
For a long time now, artists have attempted to drive their art closer to life, to collapse the boundaries between the two. This is due to the avant-garde’s desire to expand the field of possibilities and escape dominant modes of production and dissemination, but also because of the idea that if art is closer to life it has a greater chance of fulfilling it’s prophecy of social emancipator. If art could abandon its useless characteristic then it could perhaps become really useful.
Nonart and the refusal of art
In order to understand the implications of a renunciation of art’s claims and it’s framing, it is important to look at ideas on the refusal of art. Dada, Futurism, Constructivism, Fluxus and the Situational International all looked to escape art and carry out their activities under new terms. But I want to discuss Allan Kaprow as his writings feel the most pertinent to my questioning. Kaprow’s definition of nonart is:
‘..whatever has not been accepted as art but has caught an artists attention with that possibility in mind’
(Kaprow 1993, 98)
The paradox of nonart is that once it is uttered publicly it then becomes art, or as Kaprow says – ‘Art art’, his way of defining an art that is consciously made to exist in traditional art contexts. He goes on to describe how Dennis Oppenheim ran across a muddy lot in Canada; he then cast his footprints before exhibiting them in a gallery. Kaprow says that the nonart bit, the activity was the best part whereas he describes the exhibition as ‘corny’.
(Kaprow 1993, 103)
Today, this has become a common occurrence: the artist shows us the remnants of some action or event in the real to try to bring life into the gallery. But so often this ends up being some of the most boring and frustrating art around, failing miserably in trying to capture the energy and spirit of its nonart beginning. So why not just leave it all in its nonart status? Then we would have nothing but artists walking around daydreaming about the possibilities around them without ever taking any action and without anyone ever knowing their thoughts and ideas. Art would only exist as a kind of subconscious practice without any teachings, criticisms, theory, institutions and without any visibility.
Artworks with ‘nonart dimensions’
Many artists have a productive way of using nonart dimensions with their artwork. An artist friend of mine started showing lots of slightly deformed bunches of bananas cast in bronze. I wasn’t quite sure of his intentions with the work until I was told through another friend about his making process, which was not made evident in his exhibitions. This process involved him head-butting the bananas in his studio to get the required smashed effect before casting them. For me, this added a whole new aspect to the work. But what’s interesting is this unseen nonart dimension that initiates the work, it can dominate the work although it may not be apparent to its viewer.
If I follow Kaprow’s definition of nonart then I am contradicting myself by saying nonart, as once they are spoken of, it ceases to be nonart and becomes a part of the artwork. But I want to separate these moments that surround the artwork, they are a part of the artwork in varying degrees but they often start out or end up as events or actions that are not labelled as art; so I will call them ‘nonart dimensions’.
Why is it that when you see an artwork, it can be the process before or even after the present moment, the nonart dimension that is the most interesting and intriguing part? This is the bit of information that artists like to leave out as a puzzle to piece together, or as an oral myth to be disseminated amongst friends and colleagues. The nonart dimension can situate the artwork and can create a foothold for the viewer to find resonances within their own experiences. I am not so concerned with whether the nonart dimension is true or not, it’s the basing of the artwork’s context firmly within the real that gives the artwork sustenance in a number of ways. The viewer can find resonances with their own experience and it can open up the arena of contemplation on the artwork to something much wider and with many more possibilities. It can also be used to mythologise the artist and the artwork. Joseph Beuys’ whole story of his encounter with the Tartar tribesmen has always been questioned but in a way it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not: for me, I can play within the myth he projects just as productively either way. The weight it adds to his artworks that use fat and felt is vital to their success as artworks.
All artworks could be said to have a nonart dimension, as an artwork that takes no source material from some aspect of life itself, is unimaginable. What I am concerned with here specifically are artworks that really allow the viewer to conjure up a mental picture of something that has happened outside of the physical and time-based restraints surrounding the art object in front of them, i.e. the artist running through a muddy lot, the artist manically head-butting bananas as a creative act in his studio.
Now in terms of initiating a high level of cognitive activity, these artworks that productively use nonart dimensions would appear to do well. They require a response from the viewer to recall their own experiences and to visualize and imagine situations and events far beyond the white walls of the gallery that surround them.
Beuysian potential?
So how highly can we value this type of art in terms of it’s social function? Does this level of active imagination contain a Beuysian potential to unlock society’s ability to shape itself? A Beuysian use-value?
Firstly everyone thinks differently and for some a more minimal and inward looking artwork is more productive in sparking thought. Secondly, this all takes place within the confines of an art space and with a small number of viewers: although art is trying to leave its privileged spaces it is still not capable of reaching a sufficient proportion of society.
So even though I believe this art, with strong nonart dimensions, sits at the top of art’s contemplative use-values, I don’t think it’s an art that can fully live up to our high hopes of emancipation.
All too often, it’s only when something shocking in art, catches the mass media’s eye, that there is any slight possibility of art’s contemplative use-value making a threat to transform society’s collective subjectivity. In this situation, the content or issues raised by the artwork is pushed aside by the media’s attack on arts privileged status and the going-over of the old discourse of modern art as scam.
To understand how the claims made around art could be either detrimental to or an aid to art’s potential use-value, and to formulate what that use-value could be, I feel it would be productive to look at the space and time that art allots us for contemplation and ask whether it can constitute a victory over capital in our present state?
The space and time art allots us for contemplation
The spaces that art allots us for contemplation comprise an ever-increasing array of forms. From galleries to magazines, from street corners to pubs and bars and from the internet to trade-fairs. Commodification exists in every form of visibility that artistic practice can take and the art market shows little signs of slowing. These physical spaces all compete for visibility and in order to compete they must be funded in some way or another unless they are reliant on collective co-operation or donation. The Free Art Fair is an example of a tiny space of disengagement with capitalist exchange where artworks are given away to punters who express why they would like the work, instead of the highest bidder acquiring the work. The artists can afford to donate a work in this manner as their principal income is from sales of their work through commercial galleries and from commissions.
(freeartfair.com/index.html)
The Free Art Fair is a mini and temporary refuge operating within the huge cogs of the art economy. But its existence relies upon the functioning of the art market as this gives the artists an amount of time to be able to make art that will bring them no instant economic gain. However, their association with this high profile event will, ironically, increase the value of their artwork within the commercial sector. The artworld system of recognition is predominantly controlled by the status of each artist and the exchange-value of his work. Artists get represented, contracts are drawn up and someone somewhere will be making the largest profit. Every player in the artworld fights for a better standing in the symbolic order of who’s who and who’s associated with whom.
This is a brief view of some of the spaces that art allots us for contemplation. But what is the viewer’s relationship here? If we presume for the moment that the viewers are not involved in the artworld, how are they affected by art’s trappings in capitalist exchange? No differently to any other activity they might take up in their leisure time i.e. a trip to the theatre, a day out for the family to Alton Towers.
For a description of way in which an art viewer is caught up in the flows of capital we can look at Maurizio Lazzarato’s definition of Immaterial Labor, which he describes as:
‘..the labor that produces the informational and cultural content of the commodity’
The ‘cultural content’ he refers to here is the labor of
‘…defining and fixing cultural and artistic standards, fashions, tastes, consumer norms and more strategically public opinion’
and that Immaterial workers are comprised of those who work in,
‘…advertising, fashion, marketing, television, cybernetics, computer and informational workers’.
(generation-online.org/c/fcimmateriallabour3.htm)
If we flesh out his theory and count artistic production as a form of Immaterial Labor, then an art audience is seen to be participating in the production of ‘cultural content’ that carries capitals infiltration further into the realms of social exchange. Lazzarato’s definition is a little fuzzy and David Graeber responds to this by saying that everybody could be seen as Immaterial workers as we are all partaking in the fixing of artistic trends, consumers norms etc and we are all involved in dispersing information about brand names.
(commoner.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/graeber_sadness.pdf)
Art’s allotted space and time for contemplation is a hive of activity in this respect - as is any other space and time within late capitalist society. The old romantic notion of an art of transcendental qualities does not make the space and times art allots us a fortress, a safe house free from the flows of capital. But because these spaces and times for contemplation do not provide of a break from capitalist culture, it doesn’t necessarily mean they cannot be a victory over capital. Graeber paints a similarly happy picture by saying that we tend to assume that capitalism is a total system. But just because it’s value system is so visibly dominant, it doesn’t mean that everything that happens in the world is therefore partaking in capital’s core essence.
(commoner.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/graeber_sadness.pdf)
I believe that a victory over capital is possible but that this does not come about through the spaces and times for contemplation alone. I believe there’s a more complex relationship at work that is made up of multiple forces. I want to look more closely at the artwork’s relation to its commodity form and use-value to see if they contain the potential for some kind of victory.
Adorno’s autonomous art
Adorno’s notion of autonomous art is significant in understanding art’s relation to commodity form and use-value. In Stewart Martin’s article ‘The absolute artwork meets the absolute commodity’, his debate ranges from the antinomy between autonomous art being an effect of late capitalism and autonomous art as being destroyed by it, to the claim that capitalism firstly produces autonomous art before ultimately destroying it. He describes how Adorno sees autonomous art not as an alternative to commodification but as a product of it. Martin gives an account of Adorno’s theory on autonomous art, describing how it is a fetish and it seeks to hide the social determinations of art but more specifically hide them using the same logic as the fetishised commodity. But here is the contradiction: that by doing this, autonomous art still claims to be autonomous and free from commodification. In this way art uses its autonomy against commodification even though it is comprised of it.
(Martin 2007, 16-18)
For Adorno, autonomous art’s criticality lies in the way it appears to be free from economic exchange thus suggesting a change in our present and heavily loaded capitalist society. It also lies in the way autonomous art appears to have no use-value, which he claims recalls a time when the aims of production were different.
(Zuidervaart 1994, 89)
In Martin’s ‘Critique of Relational Aesthetics’ he reveals another dimension to the autonomy of art, as proposed by Adorno. It is the domination of social exchange by exchange-value, which implies that autonomous art is critical by virtue of its anti-social tendencies - its separation from society and life. Here ‘Relational Aesthetics’ and arts heteronomy would appear to uphold capital by its emphasis on social exchange and thus its dissolution of art into life.
(Martin 2007, 374)
‘Ordinary life performed as art/not art’
Allan Kaprow describes activities that seem to suggest something very different to Adorno’s ideas. If Adorno is seen at the autonomous end of art, Kaprow may be seen at the heteronomous end and with a practice far detached from the logic of the fetishised commodity. In his essay ‘Art Which Can’t Be Art’ he claims the simple everyday act of brushing his teeth as an example of ‘art/ not art’, an activity that doesn’t suggest art in any way. He goes on to say how his mind wanders off into a multitude of thoughts related to this act: this appears to be a description of the activity’s contemplative value. What’s most important though is that the activity stays put; it does not enter an art context, unlike every artistic gesture to follow Duchamp which mimicked him by placing the nonart object or action into a gallery. For Kaprow the important thing is the taking of the ready-made object or action, and leaving it in the real and in its nonart status. It seems that Kaprow is talking about perceptions of art and a declaration of its status as he states the paradox of an activity that is art but not art:
‘…an artist concerned with life-like art is an artist who does and does not make art.’
(Kaprow 1993, 219)
For the artist, he himself is making art but to the rest of the world because the activity is not framed in any traditional way and it is not declared by any of the usual tools of announcement, it is not perceived as art. He goes onto say that
‘…ordinary life performed as art/not art can charge the everyday with metaphoric power’.
(Kaprow 1993, 219)
This description takes my ‘nonart dimensions’ idea one step further by not even bothering with the art bit: for Kaprow there’s no need to take the nonart into any art space. Here is an art that is so universal it seems like a prescription for the whole of society to become artists and unlock this incredible potential. This potential appears to have a greater grip on art’s claim as social emancipator from capitalism. By contrast, in Adorno, art’s critique of capital is in its autonomy from society – its separateness and desire to stay within its privileged spaces. But Kaprow opens the floodgates and artistic activity comes crashing in to release society’s potential. Kaprow’s description is something that is relatively free from commodification as it is not perceived as art except to the one who is performing the activity, artists cannot sell their own artwork to themselves.
If we were all brushing our teeth and daydreaming in an art-like contemplative way and then we met up in cafes and discussed our experiences, would this then confirm it as art? And would that discussion then become an art context? Only if we perceived it as such; if we labelled it as art. Otherwise it would exist as just this activity that it wasn’t actually art: perhaps in the back of our minds we all secretly felt it was art but we would never utter it. There are problems with this kind of dissolution of art into life. Not everybody has the ability to think aesthetically let alone apply it towards something that is unconventionally grounded in its relation to art.
It’s possible for artists and those who are familiar with aesthetic thinking to take this step. As Kaprow says,
‘…the sophisticate needs only art-conscious allies who carry the art bracket ready-made in their heads for instant application anywhere.’
(Kaprow 1993, 110)
But doesn’t this uphold art’s elitist character?
If I want Kaprow’s description to be a potential way for art to live up to its claim of emancipation by way of losing its autonomy and losing it’s frame as art, then there is another problem and this is described by Stewart Martin in his ‘Critique of Relational Aesthetics’. Here he describes the polemic between arts autonomy and its heteronomous determination:
‘Anti-art and pure-art are two faces of the same currency. Recognising this transforms the terms of the debate. On the one hand, the anti-art position has had to confront the extent to which the dissolution of art into life is not simply emancipatory but a dissolution of art into capitalist life. It has also had to confront the extent to which capitalist culture has itself taken on this anti-art function to this end. This reveals a critical dimension to pure-art, which the anti-art position must recognise if its critique of art is to function as a critique of commodification. On the other hand, the pure-art position has had to confront the extent to which art’s purity is a form of reification deeply entwined within art’s commodification, indebted to capitalist culture. This requires that the defence of art against commodification must incorporate a dimension of anti-art if it is to criticise this entwinement.’
(Martin 2007, 373)
This standoff between anti-art and pure-art seems to leave us hanging in the air. Kaprow’s description is an interesting proposition for an individual to take up but in the wider context of it being a form of anti-art; it doesn’t live up to our expectations. Martin shows how anti-art’s proposal is a dissolution into capitalist life and one in which all aspects are increasingly becoming infiltrated. So where in this dialectic of autonomy and heteronomy should we position ourselves?
Art’s contested use-value is part of an ongoing saga and one in which recent developments shake-up the terms of the debate. We are witnessing the emergence of art-related practices that intentionally discard their art status in order to build-up a use-value but then surface as art in art contexts to gain visibility. These need to be addressed in order to pertain where art’s social function lies and what form its use-value should take for maximum potential.
Contemplative use-value and ‘purposeless purpose’
Art has found it impossible to shrug off Kant’s statement that it has a ‘purposeless purpose’.
(Taylor 1992, 27)
This is art for art’s sake - its use-value being that it has none. Although these statements are circular and contradictory they have enforced a restraint around art that has prevented it from successfully taking on any use-value without losing its label as art. Adorno also upholds that art’s only social function is that it has none. He also believes its contributions to society come about through its cognitive offerings in the form of the artworks message and expression.
(Zuidervaart 1994, 91)
This is art’s ace card to pull out when questioned about the need for its existence. There is no doubt that art can affect people’s perceptions and have an effect within a collective subjectivity. But, and as Stephen Wright argues:
‘....while this may be true for the elite, if art were able to do much damage to the dominant order of signs without leaving it’s autonomous spaces, we would be aware of it.’
He describes how self-reflexive artworks can produce use-value through what Ranciere champions as the shifting of partition lines in cognitive process in the same way that politics does, and that it is wrong to apply use-value to art by discarding its claims and entering the real.
(findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2479/is_1-2_34/ai_n17216247/pg_1)
But this shifting of partition lines in cognition would appear inadequate in the face of an emerging type of cultural practice that dips in and out of its status as art in order to produce a use-value that has the potential to do damage.
‘Stealth art’
These emerging practices could be described as post-autonomous, post-conceptual, relational, neo-constructivist etc. They are practices that use non-art skills and are involved in activities far detached from any art setting. Stephen Wright discusses such practices and calls them as ‘Stealth art’ because of the way in which they operate in the real without declaring themselves as art before surfacing at some point to gain visibility as art. One such example he covers is the French collective AAA Corp who drive a truck-turned-mobile-silk-screening-studio to events to enable anyone to make their own stickers or posters. Behind this they tow a pirate radio unit, which is again open to all who wish to use it. To add to this they have also made an autonomous refinery for extracting the oil from organic matter such as rapeseed. This oil can be used for culinary purposes but more effectively it is used to fuel all their vehicles.
Wright’s analysis of this project exemplifies them for their clever use of art’s dilemma whereby its status as just art and not the dangerous real thing, limits its abilities. They escape prosecution from their pirate-radio activities and evade road tax on their self-pressed fuel oil by being able to say, “Its just art”. AAA Corp question the use-value of art by showing a very practical way for people to begin their own programmes that light up the road to emancipation. They also question art’s privileged status, upheld by the artworld, by using it to escape prosecution for their activities. Which are very real and in terms of them being an infectious example of DIY autonomy, they can be seen as threatening activities to late capitalism.
(williamlmoore.com/images/advanced/the%20future%20of%20the%20reciprocal%20ready-made.pdf)
In their post-autonomous art practice, AAA Corp play with art’s autonomous and heteronomous character for their own ends and “Stealth art’ practices such as these contain potential and a way for art to maintain a use-value by playing art off against the real. But how damaging might it be to the political purposes of ‘Stealth art’ practices to momentarily denunciate some of their beliefs in collectivity, non-commercial practice and disregard for an artworld status that invariably comes from any visibility, in order for them to bring into visibility their activities in the name of art? This is something that needs to be specifically addressed. In AAA Corp’s case, they get away with it as their use and revealing of art’s privileged status is reliant on their artworld visibility and this gives us sufficient food for thought. Without this productive use of art’s status and autonomy to be used against it as a critique, it could be asked why such a ‘Stealth art’ practice comes into visibility at all? If the audience it reaches through art’s spaces is limited then why bother?
Without art’s claim to singularity and autonomy, the production of what was once art enter onto the more open playing field of heteronomy where it has to compete for attention with everything else in order to have an effect. Is this competing for attention a better situation as it would then give art greater access to the whole of society?
The future is bright - the future is relational
This example of ‘Stealth art’ or post-autonomous practice may be sweepingly termed ‘Relational Aesthetics’ by some, but to do so would be wrong not only because the term has taken such a critical bashing that it now appears defunct, only applicable to the most watery and happy-clappy practices, but also because all things relational threaten and dominate the artworld’s horizon of opportunity in the form of government funding, gallery policies and an army of budding young curators. We have to ensure that the false claims made by ‘Relational Aesthetics’ are not carried off into the sunset too far.
A use-value made up of multiple forces
Society’s accessibility to art and art’s accessibility to society is hindered by art’s privileged status constructed for it over history. The claims made around art therefore fall short of delivering us their promise. We are now at a time when artistic practice has travelled so far away from our perceptions of art and along the way it has gained non-art skills and competences. Artwork with ‘nonart dimensions’ relies on its cognitive functions to accrue use-value, as in Adorno. Kaprow’s ‘Art Which is Not Art’ remains in the artist’s consciousness and is beneficial on an individual level but is never disseminated amongst society, thus releasing it’s potential. By contrast post-autonomous practice or ‘Stealth-art’ has a conceptual freedom that allows it to dip in and out of art status giving it the chance to acquire a use-value that has greater potential.
Between contemplative use-value, ideas on art’s ability to shift partition lines in cognitive activity, and the tangible and more practical use-values of “Stealth art’ that play art off against the real, sits another aspect to art’s contested use-value. John Roberts discusses how the potential of ‘aesthetic thinking’ lies not in the superiority of ‘creative imagination’ but in how aesthetic reason is ‘irreducible to deductive logic’ and thus shows non-aesthetic reason it’s possibilities and limits.
(Roberts 2007, 219)
Art can keep a degree of its autonomy, stay within its privileged spaces, but it can also push its heteronomy and venture further into the realms of ‘Stealth practice’ – it’s the point at which it becomes visible as an aesthetic form that it can fulfil this aspect of it’s potential use-value, revealing to the non-aesthetic world its limits and, in the case of “Stealth art’, by providing a DIY manual for ways to create micro victories over capital. Art with a strong and tangible relationship to life comes out trumps here, inward looking self-reflexive art that is caught up in the spirals of art’s discourse falls danger to being of such a closed nature that any comparison to non-aesthetic reason is so abstract it becomes unproductive.
Goody-two-shoes
The era of what may be called post-autonomy gives us some hope. But ‘Stealth art’ practices need to firmly keep their feet, not only in the critical and dynamic discourses surrounding contemporary art, but they also need to retain their sense of balance otherwise I fear they could be in danger of taking on a goody-two-shoes character. There are plenty of art projects that could be deemed as ‘Stealth practice’, that are inclusive, collaborative and achieve social cohesion somewhere. They may tick some boxes, but I believe they lack something. They lack antagonism, humour, bite, provocation; something that gives them an energy. A goody-two-shoes might live up to some of art’s promises but ultimately we will turn our backs on them in favour of something a little more indulgent.
A Post-Autonomous goal
The space and time that art allots us for contemplation can constitute a victory over capital through practices that set up a critical relationship between their autonomous and heteronomous determinations and through a questioning of non-aesthetic reason by its illogical and quirky colleague, aesthetic reason.
With post-autonomous practice continuing to evade art’s privileged spaces and status, will we reach a point at which these are finally lost, releasing art completely into the open heteronomous playing field to compete for visibility with everything else? John Roberts poses this question and goes on to ask if this happens, how could a workable concept of autonomy exist?
(Roberts 2007, 220)
Getting rid of art’s ‘old skool’ shackles has been the drive for many years now but once released, we will have to be aware that art has been released into capitalist life and in and amongst the flow of all commodities. For now though, we sit in interesting position whereby art appears to be showing signs of an abandonment of its uselessness and a favouring of non-artistic skills to produce a tangible use-value. What we have to manage is the purpose to which such practice is put and how it’s aesthetic value is determined.
Sam Curtis
May 2008
Notes
Books
Zuidervaart, Lambert 1991: Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory, The MIT Press
Kaprow, Allan 1993: Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, University of California Press
Taylor, Mark C 1992: Disfiguring: Art, Architecture, Religion, University of Chicago Press
Roberts, John 2007: The Intangibilities of Form – Skill and Deskilling in Art After the Readymade, Verso
Journals
Martin, Stewart 2007: ‘The absolute artwork meets the absolute commodity’, in Radical Philosophy, 146
Martin, Stewart 2007: 'Critique of Relational Aesthetics', in ThirdText, 21:4
Websites
williamlmoore.com/images/advanced/the%20future%20of%20the%20reciprocal%20ready-made.pdf, accessed: 16/07/08
freeartfair.com/index.html, accessed: 20/08/08
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