Re: <nettime> The Art of the Undercommons

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

Didn't Sartre surpass Kant's ego-driven judgment in Critique of
Dialectical Reason and in Transcendence of the Ego surpass Husserl's
blinding conceit of paramountcy?

Kant is, with Husserl, no question are masterful thinkers. But
masterfully, paramountly above the fray, not at all physically risky.
No punishing hemlock for them.

I rescued a number of neophyte artists hunkering in windowless, unsafe
cellars of million-dollar lofts of megawatt artists (Serra, i.e.) who
allowed the occupancy for small rent or for free, magisterially, as
if housing abandoned animals. The youngsters created wondrous objects
highly inappropriate for museums and galleries, many obscene, filthy,
dangerous, using bizarre materials salvaged from global capital crud,
so fragile they could not be moved, so prickly they could not be
touched, so noisy they could not listened, so kaliedoscopic they could
not be seen. So it seemed to me as I searched with flashlight and ear
plugs and rubber boots and fire extinguisher to spot a wall location
to chop a safe exit with stairs to the street.

You may not know that artists in NYC are treated like imbecilic
nobility (like leashed philosophers astroll), with special laws
governing their lofts to allow regally gruesome auto-abuse to occur.
These galvanic-ego-carapaces have placards blaring, no shit, "Artist
in Residence."

Which indicates to the cynical (there are none other in NYC) no art
made here, just talk, prate, snarl about marketing and what rich cur
is cash machining fine art investment.








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