“An artist operates on the same territory as ideology. The affirmative and critical potential of art demonstrates itself, therefore, much more powerfully and productively in the context of politics than in the context of the market.”

(Boris Groys, Art Power)

Being one of the major intellectual figures from Eastern Europe operating in Western art circles, Boris Groys persistently believes there is no more potent force in today’s world than art, its influence extending far beyond the art world. Producing more paradoxes per page than any other critic, he provokingly attacks – and consistently demonstrates the many flaws in – the critical discourse surrounding contemporary art.

His basic thesis, namely that the political and propagandistic function of art did not end with the cold war, will leave many believers in the “autonomy” of art irritated and somewhat baffled. Groys states that the existing art institutions, system or market can’t be seen as autonomous in any significant sense of the word. Instead, he makes a case for the political function of art by revealing how art and politics are initially connected. This, however, does not mean that art holds no power in its own: according to Groys it has an outspoken autonomous power of resistance.

Presenting it as a strong force in public space, Groys demonstrates art’s power as propaganda following not commercial but political logic. However, he discusses not per se propaganda but the propaganda function of art in general. He demonstrates this by considering the art produced under socialist systems, which had no market at all, but also by considering today’s Western system. In his view, the abundance of exhibitions, biennials, triennials and art fairs are performing an increasingly political function: making propaganda for the pluralism of the West and the Western life style.

Groys points out that in our so-called postideological age the prestigious international exhibition provides an idealized, curated, image of the perfect balance of power. “The desire to get rid of an image can be realized only through a new image – the image of a critique of the image.” Advocating for a slow and complex return to authorial authority, Art Power is a must for anyone interested in thought-provoking cultural and political philosophy.

Art Power, Boris Groys, MIT Press, 2008

Raj Patel’s new book Stuffed and Starved, is a stunningly clear overview of the dysfunctions of the global food market. Tracing its impacts across the social spectrum from seed to store to plate, he explains the steps to regain control of the global food economy, stop the exploitation of farmers and consumers, and rebalance global sustenance. Patel, who worked both at The World Bank and Food First, brings an impassioned survey that extends many of the themes from Michael Pollan’s ground-breaking book The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Here’s an excerpt from an AlterNet interview with Patel:

The trouble is that with a lot of the development industry, the game is to try and simulate what poor people think rather than actually listening to what they have to say. When I was a graduate student, I worked at the World Bank. The way the international development industry works is to basically transform poor people into puppies with tummy aches whose mute suffering is knowable only to those trained in the art of looking into those big brown eyes and feeling their pain. The idea that it takes a special level of expertise is just nasty.

Stuffed and Starves website
Patel’s website

Feeling deceived and pessimistic after the 2004 US presidential election, Seattle artists Deborah Faye Lawrence conducted an e-mail survey asking artists, writers, friends and strangers to share their concept of an ideally perfect place, and their thoughts on the social, political and moreal aspects of this utopia. Simply she asked:”What does utopia look like to you?” The 15,000 words which she received in response to her question were then worked into her art and resulted in 26 mixed-media collages that critically and satirically speak out against injustice and apathy.

“Treating pictures and words with equal weight, it is not only what Lawrence says, but how she says it. Images shift in scale and pictoral style. Photographs, reproductions, occasionally painted illustrations and words are flawlessly integrated within an imaginary field….She lays her heart and intellect on the line in each piece. While her arguably relevant concerns are set out with communication as a goal, each narrative is laced by the sheer power of what David Hickey called to our attention several years ago- visual beauty. And that, matched with intellect and passion, is immensely satisfying.”
-Frances De Vuono, Review Artsweek, September 2006

‘Dee Dee Does Utopia’, Deborah Faye Lawrence, Published by Marquand Books, 2008

Here’s a video interview with Lawrence.

The world of popular culture and the world of contemporary art both idolize the artist as superstar, a rapidly rising (or falling) hero; as a brilliant and foremost individual genius. This star-maker machinery keeps the Western cult of individuality permanently alive, which renders it continuously superior to the non-objectivity of ideas, politics and social imagination. Despite our self-declared and cultivated postmodern personas (which declared the death of the author a long time ago), we simply like to cling to the ego fetish of old-fashioned Romantic genius.

In their recent book Collectivism After Modernism, Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette adventurously attack the cult of the mastermind while delving into the specific histories of collective art practice. Spanning the globe from Europe to Japan, to the United States, Africa, Cuba and Mexico, the editors have asked significant writers, curators and theorists to explore ways in which collectives function within cultural norms and social conventions. Although each of the contributors brings a highly personal and geopolitical approach to the exploration of these themes, Stimson and Sholette set forth some compelling ideas in their provocative introductory text.

The authors relate collectivism directly to modernism and the avant-garde. Indeed, when considering the historical avant-garde before the Second World War, it is clear that modernism was an attempt to develop an alternative to the then present social life by means of art. From Mondrian’s aim to struggle “against everything individual in man” to Magritte’s “L’invention collective”, modernism was directly involved with the realization of communist ideals, to affirm community and social being. The modernist dream came abruptly to an end immediately after the Second World War, when collectivism was strangled by Cold War paranoia.

In the US and Western European countries, collectivism became associated with a loss of individual will. Instead, a new kind of gathering was established in random social, urban and work related groupings. Stimson and Sholette underline the constant banishment of collectivist tendencies from these groupings, and point out their return in mass-consumed popular culture as the unnamable and dangerous “others” (in the form of aliens, animals or secret societies). A new dynamic collectivism, one of mass culture, replaced old notions related to communism. This so-called ‘collectivism after modernism’ represented the desire of artists to speak collectively and to initiate artworks outside institutional structures, delivering them straight into the world of mass culture.

Stimson and Sholette make a very clear point: despite the art world’s inability to disconnect artistic value from individual achievements, many art practices are accomplished through their collective nature. The other texts in the book illustrate this notion clearly and urgently, sometimes maybe too extensively. But that’s just a minor critique: Collectivism After Modernism is a superb provocation of the market driven art world, a statement in favor of something more social, more collective and more real than art.

More info: here.

‘Collectivism After Modernism’, Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette, editors, University of Minnesota Press, 2007

(This text first appeared in hART magazine.)

In a recent article, NY Times journalist Andrew Revkin writes about three recent books on global warming. Instead of focussing on the obvious battle between the left or the right, these publications contribute to the subject matter by moving towards the center:

[…] in three other recent books, there seems to be a bit of a warming trend between the two camps. Instead of bashing old foes, the authors, all influential voices in the climate debate with roots on the left or the right, tend to chide their own political brethren and urge a move to the pragmatic center on climate and energy.

All have received mixed reviews and generated heated Internet debate — perhaps because they do not bolster any one agenda in a world where energy and environmental policies are still forged mainly in the same way Doctor Dolittle’s two-headed pushmi-pullyu walked. (It didn’t move much.)

Here for the article.

In her highly entertaining book Unmarketable or Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing and the Erosion of Integrity, Anne Elizabeth Moore depicts the absurdity of “our advertising-saturated, late-capitalist wonderland”. Rooted in the DIY philosophy of the punk underground, Moore describes how it became a part of the logic of mass production and corporate culture it originally opposed. The book offers a critical look at advertising agencies who use DIY techniques to reach a youth market, and at members of the underground who have helped forward corporate agendas through their own artistic, and occasionally activist, projects.

I especially enjoyed Moore’s systematic demystification of concepts we usually take for granted. Early on in the book, there is an interesting section about the use of the word “organic”:

“The definition of organic most of us are accustomed to describes living beings; refers to something that develops gradually and without force; and implies the use of agricultural practices reliant on naturally occurring pesticides, fertilizers, and other growing aids but without the use of synthetic chemicals. We think of “organic” as a synonym for natural, untrammeled, sustainable.
Yet the definition of organic used on food packaging is a technical and tautological one, describing a lack of synthetic fertilizers, toxic pesticides, or herbicides, and an adherence to a set of standards put in place by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to regulate the commercial use of the word “organic”. While the definition has been pared down from its original, the word has also become popular in packaging, advertising, and the media; it’s a promotional tool. (…)
So the schism between what we believe organic means (naturally occurring, created without using damaging substances or force, and eminently reproducible) and what it means in the commercial sphere (grown by aid only of other products also labeled “organic”) is vast. Marketers have done more than take full advantage of this schism. They have created it.”

‘Unmarketable’, Anne Elizabeth Moore, The New Press, New York, 2007

Update: Interview with Anne from Bookslut

This historic anthology presents many of the radical and visionary movements, groups, cells of protest and propaganda of the late 1960’s. It includes such now-well-known groups as the Dutch Provos, the Black Panthers, the Yippies, and the Situationists. Check it out!

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