A Review on Method (So Far)
Art must take place outside of galleries, and away from those who place a hold on aesthetics (Like critics, connoisseurs or ‘cultured’ people). Locations of ordinary life – city streets, bus stops, building walls – are all apt locations for works of art.
The internet is a democratic space (for the most part). The world occurs online, and provides itself as a prime location for a work of art.
Concept has become commodified – “The idea” has become currency to be sold and consumed by governments and corporations. Such “conceptually driven” approaches aid in the automation of art through generative Artificial-Intelligence. Analytic and linguistic methods of working provide ammunition to harmful institutions. (It should also be said that conceptually-driven art lends itself rather well to Artificial Intelligence, and is perhaps no longer a viable site for art creation)
Intuition and Emotion has become the groundwork of today. Intellectual detachment is no longer useful, and every being is now thoroughly brought into the world around them. As Hume had predicted, “Reason is a slave of the passions” and now serves as tools towards genocide and diminishing human rights. An individual cannot escape the emotional attachment to its surroundings.
The political has become the basis for our existence. The art of the past preferred covert politics, something no longer possible today. Everything has become loud and apparent. Art is a tool to be used in political action, and this is how all art has functioned in the current decade.
Attention is the economy of the mind. The existence of spectators is more important than the subject being spectated. Morality is nothing in the attention economy. To bring something into existence, it must be seen, and as soon as this ceases it withers away. Art must live on attention alone to be of anything in particular.
To take words from Charles S. Peirce, the ordinary becomes the whole of our conception of any object. Anything ‘elevated’ in a hierarchy has become essentially meaningless. The ordinary, by this I mean the bottom, the base, the ‘poor’ etc, has become the basis of our world. Like bodies, everything thrives on the ‘ground’, so to speak. Carcasses float upwards. Anything ‘lowly’ must now be considered the basis for art, and this is essential in the attention economy, where the ‘low’ encompasses people’s everyday experiences. That which is considered too crude or crass has now become a prime environment for creativity (which is often fostered outside art and academics). What cannot be considered ‘art’ by anyone is now the only activity worth pursuing.
‘Elevation’, the driving engine of past aesthetics, is nothing more than economic colonialism. To ‘elevate’ an object is to assign excess value to formerly ‘ordinary’ objects. This allows wealthier classes to consume, and eventually own, what was previously used and enjoyed by the unprivileged. Elevation is theft from the masses, and only works in favour of the elite (of whatever privilege they may be).
The only ethical action in such structures is to ‘degrade’ (to remove value from) things that are ‘elevated’, so that they may enjoy a non-hierarchical existence in ordinary life. Things we consider to be of ‘Fine Taste’ must be dragged to the ground, brutally and crudely, so they may become useful to the rest of humanity.
The aesthetic object has assumed a practical role. It is a weapon that is now used in the conflict of culture. There is no longer any possibility of detached contemplation, as Kant had founded. Every work of art is an aid or an attack to the very existence of an individual. Neutral objects no longer exist, and neither do neutral observers. Therefore, the very act of observation can no longer be neutral. An aesthetic object must push an individual into action, either in celebration or destruction.
To take from William James, knowledge is a blueprint for our actions. In this same way, art possesses clusters of blueprints that aid in the actions of its observers. The crux of a work is precisely the behaviour it induces on its audience. Currently this takes the form of propelling people into political action. If we are to take this pragmatic approach further, we could say that a work of art is precisely the actions and behaviours of its audience. In this sense the audience (the observer) always takes precedence over the object, or the ideas.
High culture is often anemic, and this is due to a physical limit. Higher classes by nature contain less members. The internet has allowed the majority to cultivate culture with an incredible efficiency, of which any higher class can never compete with by definition. By numbers alone, they are not creating culture.
The relation between ‘harm’ and ‘use’ is partly inverse and partly synonymous. Harm and use both denote a practical change, with conflicting values, whereas the “useless” or neutral denotes no change. Harm has been interpreted as use from a first-person perspective, but it is important to see which actions are ‘harmful’ to certain privileged groups of people, in order to identify efficient methods of inflicting (class) destruction.
Mechanical experience can never relate to ours as human beings. The generality and self-propulsion of Artificial Intelligence is a crystalization of post-structuralist thought. The ‘world as language’ has become deteriorated and static in the process of such mass-information mechanics. The human being, and particularly our uniquely human aspects, must take centre stage in all our actions. The incredible discoveries of generations past have now become a mouse-trap for our very existence.
Craft was to the renaissance what entertainment is to us now. Both are integral aspects of the aesthetic, one that we are eager to deny in order to assert a kind of superiority. But such modes of art (that disregard craft and entertainment) are at risk of extinction and have no real importance for their continuation. Global espousal for ‘slow looking’ is a last-ditch effort by institutions to save their accumulated stock, but this stock is simply not worth saving. Unless current societies de-industrialise (a very rare possibility), aesthetic objects must adapt to the demands of the present. If a painting is observed for a second, it is only worth a second of someone’s time and nothing more. This is a rather fair and democratic system.
Art cannot be taught, only discovered, and we may only teach others to discover. Artists of the past and their writings are useful in finding ways of thinking that lead to discoveries, but these discoveries cannot be codified in any one institution, especially not educationally. A limit turns liveliness into sterility. We do not live in such a world where sterility may be beautiful, like when such Neo-platonists roamed the earth. In all forms of education a person must keep the spirit of the untrained, or else risk the self-mechanisation that troubles the world today.
This is a collection of some of my thoughts, as simply as I can express them. They are primarily influenced by classical Pragmatism (In emphasis on “use” and practical consequence) and Phenomenology (In returning to “the ordinary” or “the ground”, which is analogous to the return to the “things in themselves”.) Other influences may be traced to Dadaism, Anarchist thought (in the rejection of hierarchies), Marxism, Post-Structuralism, and general internet culture. I am also quite indebted to “anti-artists” like Alan Kaprow, and I hope this hostility towards aesthetics does not obscure my love for art (however ironic that may be).
There is likely a large possibility to expand of any one of these points, but I am not so smart, and currently have nothing else interesting to say. I am also quite enjoying the experience of life away from words, and I encourage anyone to do the same.