testing…
We’ve got rights the right to starve
We’ve got jobs waiting for work
We’re all brothers lousy and dirty
We’re all free and equal to die like dogs
Peter Weiss, Marat / Sade (a taster: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRfIj59AqBo).
above is from a painting in the exhibition at the tate britain curated by patrick keiller. a good exhibition – lovely mix & a book on the evils on british petroleum.
Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption … is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal.
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle.
rule:
why does the rule exist?
– is there a direct causal effect of the rule?
* if there is does it achieve the purpose of the rule?
* if there is not does this achieve the purpose of he rule?
in whose interest does this rule work for?
* positively
* negatively
there’s an argument given me when i was first grappling with notions of government which stated that not-voting would be an insult to all the working class men and women who struggled to win me my vote. presumably though that struggle was a struggle for a say in how government was running their lives rather than a tacit acknowledgement that an appearance of self-management should be maintained. & it’s still an interesting argument in terms of politicking: regime change is rarely effected by voting, voting in itself will not engage with the problems of society unless those problems are held up to be voted upon and the process which acts on the vote (which surely would have to be run by the voters) follow the results of the vote.
The most implacable enemies of culture — Rimbaud, Lautréamont, dadaism, surrealism — end up being assimilated and absorbed by it. They all wanted to destroy culture, at least organized culture, and now they’re part of our heritage. It’s culture and not the bourgeoisie, as has been alleged, that is capable of absorbing everything for its own nourishment.
Eugene Ionesco, The Art of Theater No. 6″ interviewed by Shusha Guppy, in Paris Review (Fall 1984), No. 93
Accidents, try to change them – it’s impossible. The accidental reveals man.
Pablo Picasso. Vogue, 1 November 1956.
which is why learning academic drawing leaves you unprepared to draw.
& control is an illusion. mistakes are entirely dependant upon purpose.
for more on these see: http://benjaminvarney.wordpress.com/
I’ll example you with thievery:
The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea; the moon’s an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;
The sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears; the earth’s a thief,
That feeds and breeds by a composture stol’n
From general excrement: each thing’s a thief:
The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power
Have uncheck’d theft.
Timon of Athens, William Shakespeare, Timon, scene iii
freedom is illusionary. consider how many actions are reflex / reactionary: ‘we are more acted upon than acting (?)’. an action seems almost an impossibility.
these are nice to do: nice exercise.
once one is speaking broadly & making assumptions about peoples very specific cultural capital / intellectual capital (for example; ‘people won’t get this it is too obscure’) then one is allowing self censorship and very much giving up to hegemony. the industry of demographics, & the extensive use of pigeon holing, is one of control especially once one can convince a populace to take pride in the pigeon hole they are placed in.
(if the object in point is deliberately obscure or obscurity is its only quality (i could imagine that such a thing – in the art world anyway – may come about with an excellent thesis explaining / justifying its importance) then perhaps it is on a hiding to nothing.)
inclusivity assumes that ‘massed’ humanity need be able to appreciate the same things / function at the same levels at the same time. exclusivity is automatically sorting people out and according privilege. neither is desirable.
art by its nature is available to all. as creative beings. but access to education needs to be available to all; very specifically, self education.
Roughly speaking, I think it’s accurate to say that a corporate elite of managers and owners governs the economy and the political system as well, at least in very large measure. The people, so-called, do exercise an occasional choice among those who Marx once called “the rival factions and adventurers of the ruling class.
Noam Chomsky. Talk titled “Government in the Future” at the Poetry Center of the New York YM-YWHA, February 16, 1970
from ‘les baigneurs’.
working on a new set of masks. grappling with notions of ‘exclusive’ or ‘inclusive’ – neither should be inflicted on art.
o 