Re: <nettime> I farted

[tbyfield <tbyfield@panix.com>]

Spector's gesture may have seemed 'well played' to a few people on on a 
few social networks for few days, but beyond that its impact can only be 
neagtive. During a lull in high-pressure federal budget negotiations, a 
posh museum curator insults a famously thin-skinned president who (a) 
has a penchant for crushing his enemies and (b) rules by pouring 
gasoline on smoldering culture-war issues — what could possibly go 
wrong?

We learned what can go wrong in the '80s and '90s, when 'art' was 
hijacked by a handful of attention-seeking pottymouths. But the main 
result wasn't to establish that the work of Karen Finley or Andres 
Serrano is brilliant or enduring. Maybe it is, I don't really care. But 
we do know that arts programs of every kind across the US suffered 
savage budget cuts — and reactionaries gained a whole new range of 
weapons to pursue their agenda.

But isn't it a bit odd that we'd be debating it in these terms on 
nettime now? The list's roots lie, in part, in the recognition that huge 
swaths of contemporary art had collapsed into irrelevance — part 
theory, part commodity, part ritual, part soap opera. Morlock suggests 
this is a 'perfect illustration of the dismal state of what once was the 
progressive left (20 years ago?)' — but 20 years go we were saying 20 
years before, ad nauseam.

Think for a moment about the range of freedoms Spector had, the 
resources she could have drawn on, to create some interesting or 
challenging situation — *exactly* the origins of this list. Instead, 
she decides to relive the golden moments from her youth.

Cheers,
Ted


On 1 Feb 2018, at 12:03, Keith Sanborn wrote:

> I give the Guggenheim some credit, though the Cattelano is a cynical 
> piece of crap anyway. The ironies there are instructive. Where is a 
> more fitting home for it than in the bathroom of a racist who is 
> obsessed with gold?
>
> And if both analogies are correct, then farting in the Fueher’s face 
> is not an opportunity to be missed. It’s on his level.
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