Notes and thoughts related to the discussion of participatory art and the politics of the spectacle in “Artificial Hells” by Claire Bishop.
@ the National Encounter of Avant-Garde Art in 1968, the reception called for an artistic revolution to supplement political work; they demanded that this artistic content be revolutionary and to “deal with the material in a shocking, disquieting, even violent way.” I wonder how this announcement relates to the precarious situations of today? How does the call for shock and violence through artistic medium relate or contrast to today’s necessary resistance and subversions?
My personal opinion is that aesthetics of violence and rage are no longer subversive or threatening to the tactics of alienation we experience in London’s disintegration into global capitalism. Violence and rage are necessary expressions for cathartic release and personal and collective healing, but must be a means to something new if it is to be healing. I imagine violence and rage as very necessary aesthetics in other places or in local situations here in mega London.
I imagine cute, wholesome and folk aesthetics can function as uplifting and gathering subversions to the rational mind of colonialism. A new folkyness can be a method to reterritorialise ourselves and our spaces. Imagine a neo folk tradition that re-engages with the ancient folk themes of nature and spirit, birthed in a new language. Neo would mean to reconstruct, and by reshaping our folk traditions we can continuing expanding contemporary values of liberation and identity while grounding those values in a sense of place and planet.
The cute and the wholesome combat a nihilism intrinsic to capitalist realism.For example, the aesthetics of hardness, fastness in techno or hardcore music cultures could be seen as a nihilistic, out of body accelerationism. To place our hope in accelerating the present means to believe in the liberatory potential of new technologies. If hardcore and techno isn’t about dying, then it’s about birthing a new hybrid existence of human and machine. It is being uploaded. It is techno-optimism.
Perhaps this critique is too rash of an analysis for cultures that celebrate non-textual movement and rhythym, that perhaps are about having fun! But I do feel the lack of wholesome aesthetics in my generation reflects a lack of belief in returning, in sustainability, or of overcoming this age of global capitalism we live in. Wholesomeness is a sort of fantasy of what society could be, and can function as a motivator for positive change around sustainable living and ecological sensitivity.
“Community arts have becomes harmless and unthreathening to social and cultural stability” due to a lack of self-critique. Those organisations became known as kind and compassionate, but not great, since it’s hard to critique the expression of strangers when the intention is about the process if engagement and not the product of creation. They began with a critique of the great, since the “greatness” of art represents a hierarchy of success founded on skill, quality and virtousity that conceals class interests.
What does community work look like today in London? I would like to learn more and how my practice with music and installation could become more participatory. Informally community work happens all the time in the underground, and in regards to my previous tangent this work could be concieved as neo-folk construction.
I would like my installation for the gallery exhibition to be wholesome rather than mysterious, not bending the perception of the participant to pretend an understanding as to conform into the gallery space, but make it simple enough so they can ponder in their own way. All it takes beside the work is a little emoji or a smile 🙂