<nettime> Re: RHIZOME_RAW: People Want to Know...If Artists Are Thinking

[Nmherman@aol.com]

In a message dated 9/26/99 6:44:21 AM Pacific Daylight Time, colink@gis.net 
writes:

> talking about subverting the system when the system is the western art
>  world is more like playing an interesting game than a real, practical
>  strategy against a true threat.  Maybe that's okay, art's all about playing
>  games, and games are ways of brainstorming strategies for the real world.
>  
>  Colin

Colin, I disagree completely.  The work is play for mortal stakes.  Artists 
often comment on and influence political or socio-economic conditions.  
Stendhal and Gandhi are good examples.

Western artists are safe from torture etc.  Chinese artists are not.  Why is 
this?  Because the West is rich and powerful and does not fear its artists.  
They are entertainers and scholars without the ability to directly change 
policy or events, and most artists like it that way.  China is vast, poor, 
and over-centralized, and any dissent is potentially lethal; individuals are 
dangerous and expendable.

In other words, the western artist's freedom is an illusion.  We have been 
marginalized and neutralized by the commodification of thought; we have been 
highly complicit in this sequestering.  

Or, to put it another way, is the American businessman complicit with and 
thus responsible for torture in Chiapas?  Is Tom Brokaw?  Is Trent Lott?  You 
can say they are just living and making a living in their little slice of 
world, but the fact remains:  whatever power you exert or have the potential 
to exert is in direct proportion to your complicity.  

If the western high-art world is stagnant, rotten, a playground for the rich 
tended by liverish servants, then it must be extremely guilty.  Subverting it 
is everyone's duty, if you have the right kind of upbringing and an artistic 
bent.  Just ask East Timorese machete babies.

The internet is being shaped according to the interests of global capital.  
Artists have the power to dissent and stop this from succeeding; if we do not 
we have been complicit.  This is the message of Tom's original post, as well 
as an interesting current thread about financial networks on nettime.  Now is 
EXACTLY the time when subverting the artworld will have major consequences 
for world events.


Max Herman
The Genius 2000 Project
www.geocities.com/~genius-2000 

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