Along with The Public School’s Anti-State Communism seminars at the Brecht Forum, Platypus 1917′s activities seem to me to comprise one of the best fora for well proper Eustonite, post-political Leftist discussion and theorizing, currently accessible A.F.K. in New York.  I’ll have to go to the German Expressionism reception at MoMa like a briefcase posh instead, but I otherwise highly recommend attending this seminar, though I do not necessarily advocate the inevitably doxastic views expressed therein.  I’m still far too preoccupied with working on learning how to die (currently through Critchley), and learning to live (Valery): Le vent se lève! . . . il faut tenter de vivre!, and then again learning how to die (Umberto Eco’s On The Disadvantages and Advantages of Death: “the thought that all experience will be lost at the moment of my death makes me feel pain and fear … What a waste, decades spent building up experience, only to throw it all away … We remedy this sadness by working. For example, by writing, painting, or building cities. You die, but most of what you have accumulated will not be lost; you are leaving a message in a bottle.”)

Aesthetics in Protests

Wed., Mar. 23rd, 6:30-8pm

The New School
Lang Auditorium
55 E 13th st.
2nd floor

PANELISTS:

Mark Herbst, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest
member from W.A.G.E.
Beka Economopoulos from Not An Alternative
Chris Mansour, Platypus

DESCRIPTION:

This panel will focus on the aesthetic tropes that activists use to express political dissent. Theatrical gestures such as street art (e.g., glamdalism), dance parties (e.g., Funk the War), or costumes have found their way into protest tactics. Simultaneously, many contemporary artists create ‘activist’ or ‘social’ art by pulling off media pranks against the government or corporations (e.g., Yes Men), reenact past protests (e.g., Mark Tribe or Sharon Hayes) and other forms of public performances. What are the historical roots that contribute to the use of current aesthetic interventions in political protests? In what ways do they expand or limit the possibilities for protests to transform the social order? How does experimenting with aesthetic and artistic sensibilities influence our political consciousness and practice? Political thinkers and art-activists will address these questions in order to make sense of the various forms of protest today.

QUESTIONS:

1) Contemporary “political” artistic practice aims to raise political consciousness for progressive or left politics. How does — and how can — the use of aesthetic, theatrical and narrative elements heighten political possibilities and consciousness?

2) Over the last fifteen years, the ‘star’ of theatrical protest tactics has risen high in both leftist politics and the contemporary art world.  Bored with the staid march-and-rally routine, activists seek to diversify the form of protest politics: Funk the War, Bash Back, Billionaires for Bush, Claire Fontaine, etc. Such tactics aim to allow the “message” of progressive politics to reach a broader audienceand counter the ‘right wing noise machine.’  Despite this increase in creative ingenuity, the social situation has worsened over the past half a century, and one might even see this creativity as a symptom of worsening conditions (e.g., the deflation of the anti-war protests–which began as some of the largest protests in 20th century history). Given the Left’s greater inability to change reality and gain popular support, how is the creative aesthetic approach towards activism bound up in this failure? What must be rethought in light of these dimming prospects?

3) “How might you articulate the difference between ‘aestheticizing politics’ and ‘politicizing aesthetics’?  How might the difference matter for the understanding of contemporary politico-aesthetic practice.”

4) What role ought considerations of value and aesthetics play in our evaluation of politically minded contemporary art?

___

If you need additional information, or have any questions, please contact Chris Mansour at chris.d.mansour@gmail.com

The Platypus Affiliated Society organizes reading groups, public fora, research, and journalism focused on problems and tasks inherited from the “Old” (1920s-30s), “New” (1960s-70s) and post-political (1980s-90s) Left, for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today.

I was surprised, yet found myself nodding knowingly with a slight grin, to find a.aaaarg.org down this afternoon, having been replaced with a splash page reading “AAAARG.ORG DOESN’T EXIST.”  My first thought: cheeky bastards, they’re hinting at exactly what we should have been doing all along: keeping our mouths shut.  Perhaps the first rule of aaaarg should have always been: you do not talk about aaaarg! How could we not, though?  It’s been the simplest, easiest to navigate, free, no bullshit, no allegiances, and impressively generous library of theoretically oriented texts on the public web.  It also had the cool appeal of a successful relational art project (I’ll defend that contextualization if anyone disagrees), while being basically anonymous, and a clean white-cube gallery like interface.  JSTOR and Academic Search Premier look baroque in comparison.  I used it gluttonously and not in a very eco-friendly manner: rather than bringing a book on the train, I’d scroll aaaarg for a few tantalizing titles in the morning and print a chapter or two of each out; I was hardly ever without an ADD, informavoric selection of paper-clipped continental philosophy or art theory essays folded inside my jacket pocket.  Yet you and I had to acknowledge that although there  maybe is something genuinely lofty (read: noble, important, beyond capitalist economics to use that term in its vulgate, synecdochal (a vulgate and synecdoche into which we funnel lots of unrelated problems) sense) about the material which aaaarg has specialized in providing that made you want think of it as set apart from similar platforms in other industries like music, film, and non-academic publishing, above a certain key threshold of popularity, it begins to look the same, at very least to the companies whose margins are at risk.

I’m not up on the legal or ethical nuances of the now mature debate about copyright/left, piracy, etc, but I think I know two things: I want to see the continuation excellent thought to be written and published and that requires money one way or another; and I think it’s right that my favorite authors, and even the ones I don’t like, get paid so that they can live.  But I also believe that the impulse towards piracy will not go away; the virtually irreversible way the Internet has been designed and then emergently developed, makes piracy, even ultimately ethical piracy, too easy too resist for mortals, perhaps especially when we say “oh, it’s just Foucault, Lacan, Althusser, they’re dead, they won’t mind!”  As it also clear, there are many living (and much less famous than the aforementioned) authors, breathing normal modern people who drive cars and have mortgages, on aaaarg, who, whether they are for or against, are not getting paid where they could (I didn’t say should) be getting paid.  One inchoate suggestion to mitigate comes to mind: the open-source software techie community has been leading the way for many years towards a highly permissive, tip jar model (definitely influenced by communist thought, though they call it common sense)… again, this usually operates under the threshold at which individuals become consumers in a knowledge economy, and points on a parabola, but is something like this model an option for philosophy with a niche audience? Should every writer, tenured or not, make a website with a little donation button; I bet many would be pleasantly surprised if they did.  This is sort of reducible to the argument I hear a lot regarding copyright; make it really easy for us to pay you, to which I’ll add: also pay you whenever we spontaneously feel generous or have some dosh in our pockets to. That’s to a degree the reality we’re working with.

But onto my more theoretical suggestion: I knew from critic Claire Bishop (via Artforum then via Academic Search Premier via Bard College wifi), to read up on Mouffe and Laclau (via aaaarg) who wrote at some length about an agonistic model of democracy.  This is one of the notions on which good relational aesthetics, of which I am a supporter even when I often cringe or get hypercritical about it, seems to be consistently grounded in… Things will probably never be perfect — until we are all uploaded to harddrives and allowed the Vanilla Sky life we all deserve, where we can meet our long lost lovers afresh, again and again, each balmy Jamaican evening or whatever your hetero/homo fantasy, forever, now, never bored, no existential void at the middle of things –  especially in this concatenous, multiplicitous, fragmented present in which we vascillate between advanced civility and brilliance, hopeless endless catastrophic barbarism, and not metaphysically knowing which way up is, what morality is, whether objective reality exists, whether we’re better off than our million year old early hominoid ancestors, whether it’s wrong to eat animals, whether men are all created equally, what historical actors can be legitimately considered in a materalist ontological framework, etcetera, but we can TRY GOD DAMMIT, we can strive (god meant in the secular sense of hetero ego love narratives of course).  We can create microtopias!  Out of recyclable, upcycleable materials.  We can read Bruce Sterling, E.O. Wilson, Stewart Brand, be kind when we can, and start free, ad hoc pedagogical interfaces.  I think the same can be said for the situation with publishing; war is peace in a sense it has been argued if provocatively, so I say let’s keep the agonistic relationship going… there’s more writing out there with more eyeballs getting to it, with more initiatives being orchestrated as a result, than ever before (even if this is partially a function of population increase) and somehow it’s working, agonistically.  There will be casualties!  Frivolous lawsuits against deceased Oklahomans, legitimate lawsuits against brat hipsters who know they’re pushing their luck and milking the radical political associations of p2p spuriously, authors struggling financially who could be struggling less or even well-off, career changes, but there will be more eyes on the prize: truth.  Publishers are going to invent more built-in self-destruct mechanisms, hackers are going to continue cracking DRM.  Non-activists will mostly keep reaping the benefits of using their ex-girlfriends’ Netflix accounts.

The goal is thinking and writing and acting our way out of the catastrophic car-wreck of history, out of technological determinsm (which the self-awarely agonistic model puts a wrench in), and of the fundamentally hostile conditions of the universe (disclosure: I’m a misotheistic agnostic currently, there have been many of us).  Even allowing for singularity and permanent virtual reality vacations, we eventually we need to be getting off this rock in large numbers within the next several hundred years (‘the eventual choice of ours is spaceflight or extinction’ to paraphrase Carl Sagan) and/or, probably both, majorly downsize world population.  Or we give up on the human project and turn to antinatalism, nihilism, a very very very grave form of Lewboski-ism.  I am suggesting the much less drastic but seemingly irrational plan of action that we actually draw out, protract the checkers-like, Tom and Jerry-esque, war over intellectual property, and more provocatively that we occasionally switch sides (we all feel like Dostoevsky’s Underground Man sometimes anyway), batting for the Lessigs, the slashdotters, the Estonian hackers, the spam-kings, and the Mark Taylors and even RIAA on ocassion; it’s a kind of dither that will confuse the hell out of them, and in the process we’ll get to keep our precious content, our precious celebrities and lionized heroes, and not pay that much for it unless we’re hardcore fans, patrons.  We’ll also continue to deal with invasions of privacy, mainstream media and news that panders to what I believe is honestly a mostly imaginary audience of dimwits, stupid ads, and occasional wrongful imprisonment: the secular sacrificing of a life; but you know what, 250,000 people died in Haiti a couple of months ago, and that was the universe’s fault; our ethical perplexedness is not completely unwarranted.

some related images:

Danny Snelson - Endless Nameless

anniversary letter from Richard to Patricia Nixon

Adrain Piper - Everything

Aeolipile - created by Hero of Alexandria, 1st century A.D.

Analytical Engine - unbuilt proto-computer 1829, replica, Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace

Yann Arthus-Bertrand - 6 Billion Others Project

Benjamin Edwards

Ben Fry

Daniel Bozhkov - Training in Assertive Hospitality - 2002

cellular automata

Dylan Stone - Lifesize Watercolor - 2005

Christian Phillip Muller - Passe Immediat

Yes to All - Sylvia Fleury - 2007

from Brucennial - on the cover of Bookforum

David von Schlegell (they look like laptops)

Erwin Wurm

Helmut Smits - Unseen Work - 2008

Jan Hoeft - Hallo herr lewitt

Matthew Barney for JCrew

e-toy corporation - Mission Eternity

Jochem Hendricks - Tax

Part of the Performing Revolution in Central and Eastern Europe Festival, here are today’s goings-on at Columbia:

After Communism: Achievement and Disillusionment since 1989

February 26-27, 2010
Panel schedule: Friday at 2:00pm, 3:45pm, 5:30pm and 7:15pm | Saturday at 2:00pm, 3:45pm, 5:30pm

Presented by The Harriman Institute at Columbia University in association with the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, and Austrian Cultural Forum.

This multi-day symposium brings together public intellectuals, policymakers, cultural figures, and academics from both sides of the Atlantic to assess the global meaning of the 1989 revolutions in East-Central Europe and their aftermaths. Speakers will discuss the changes in our understanding of the Communist system and the sources of its collapse, and the age of “post-communism,” a condition whose contours and duration remain unclear.

http://www.performingrevolution.org/about

Press release:

BRING YOUR OWN ART

X INITIATIVE TO EXHIBIT ALL ARTWORK DELIVERED WITHIN 24 HOUR PERIOD BETWEEN 11 AM FEBRUARY 3RD AND 11 AM FEBRUARY 4TH 2010

BRING YOUR OWN ART is a 24-hour marathon that will take place at X Initiative from February 3rd to February 4th and will be open to everyone. Artists, galleries, curators, collectors and art lovers are invited to come to X and hang their own artworks with no
restriction. BRING YOUR OWN ART is literally a free for all – a temporary occupation that will start on the second floor of X Initiative and expand to the upper floors as more and more art works are delivered and hung on the exhibition walls.

A celebration of the chaotic energies of art and a joyful subversion of hierarchies, BYOA is a spontaneous gathering that offers a DIY platform where any kind of art can be exhibited in
a museum-quality space. Inspired by Walter Hopps’s experimental Thirty-Six Hours, an event that the legendary curator organized in Washington in 1978, during which he installed anything anybody brought that would fit through the door, BYOA is a festive occasion that fosters unusual collaborations between artists, art professionals and dilettantes, while offering an alternative to curated group shows.

During BYOA, on the ground floor, X Initiative will make available a simple stage and basic PA system for bands, musicians and DJs. Performers are welcome to play any kind of music for 30 minutes each.

BYOA is a collaboration with the Fine Art Adoption Network (FAAN), an online network originally commissioned by Art in General that connects artists and potential collectors (adopters). Adopters acquire an artwork without purchasing it by soliciting the artists through FAAN. The artists choose to whom they will give their work. At BYOA, artists can exhibit work they are making available for adoption through the FAAN website, in addition to whatever other work they choose to exhibit. For more info, visit FAAN at www.fineartadoption.net. To post work for adoption, please contact info@fineartadoption.net.

BYOA marks the end of X Initiative, an experimental program for contemporary art, which was founded in March 2009 and will end its activities at 548 West 22nd Street on February 6th,
2010. Founded by Elizabeth Dee and directed by Cecilia Alemani, X Initiative has functioned as an exhibition space and gathering spot for the global art community, with a goal to inspire new possibilities for experiencing and producing contemporary art. Since its beginning, X Initiative has hosted 12 exhibitions and more than 50 events such as panel discussions, lectures, performances and screenings.

BRING YOUR OWN ART RULES OF ENGAGEMENT:

- Free access for all, doors open on February 3rd at 11 AM
- No advance registration required
- 30.000 square feet space to occupy (2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors @ X Initiative)
- Participants can bring any kind of art they like
- Participants need to come with their own tools (X Initiative can only provide two ladders)
- The works will not be insured: X Initiative is not responsible for any loss or damage to works
- The space will have security guards
-All works must be deinstalled and removed from the premises by February 4th at 2 pm. All
works not removed by 2 PM on February 4th will be disposed of.

Location:
X Initiative, 548 West 22nd Street,
NY 10011, www.x-initiative.org

Date:
From Wednesday, February 3rd, 11 AM to Thursday, February 4th, 11 AM

SELECTED PERFORMERS INCLUDE:

Black Lake

Big Game

Black Waterfall and Bobby Service

XOX

Crippler

ALEXCALIBUR

Light Asylum:

16 Beaver Group wishes more art were instrumentalized to serve radical politics … but it’s not.  And so, because we are all complicit, we should go and watch a dozen or so films screened this Sunday, recontextualized “to work for an idiosyncratic, political activism.”  Here is the information from their website:

http://www.16beavergroup.org/monday/

What: Site a specific film performance
When: Sunday 1.24.10
Where: 16Beaver Street, 4th Floor
When: 8:00 pm
Who: Free and open to all
This sunday will be the third in a four-part series investigating the role of abstract and affective processes in a contemporary revolutionary politics, featuring performance and experimental film and video. The evening, as did our last two events, mixes lecture elements with screenings in order to recontextualize select works from the experimental film and video canon, and set them to work for an idiosyncratic, political activism.

Continuing our investigation of linkages between politics and abstraction, tonight will examine the critical category of narcissism.

Using Harari’s text on the late Lacan, and Krauss’ seminal essay from the first October on Video – The Aesthetics of Narcissism as touchstones, this sunday we will investigate the complex interaction between “narcissism” and the political. In previous evenings abstraction has been considered according to Bataille’s categories of the informe (formlessness) and the sacred, and Agamben’s analysis of The Open, with the political necessity of keeping open the spaces exemplified (and intensified) by the abstract Image as a primary theme. Here narcissism (the mirror) figures as a kind of short-circuit, which tonight’s performance-based videos evocatively display. Performance/improvisation – as a strategy of conceptual liberation, as a tool for creating radical intuitive (abstract) spaces, versus a kind of “mimetic narcissism” – as a product of radical devolution. The work of surrealist Jacques Vache (and the fourth dimension of (h)umour) and Duchampian irony will be utilized. Krauss’ essay will be considered but creatively reconfigured in order to take video performance out of its historicized context and set it to work for political activity.

Works to be included tonight (Jonas’s hypnotic meditation on self-reflexivity and alter-ego Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy, Trecartin’s synaptic, digitally manipulated psychedelia What’s the Love Making Babies For?, Charles M. Jones’ classic short Duck Amuck, and Joe Gibbons’ acerbic take on emergence Sabotaging Spring, among others) will be employed to develop the theme.

In order to refigure video performance strategies to their purely abstract/structural dimension, performance works tonight will be interposed with the work of
Japanese filmmaker Takashi Ito.

___________________________________________________
2. Films to be screened

Joan Jonas Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy 15 min.
Takashi Ito Venus 8 min.
Chris Burden Big Wrench 16 min.
Takashi Ito Box 4 min.
Leslie Thornton She Had He So He Do He To Her 5 min.
Takashi Ito Ghost 6 min.
Ryan Trecartin What’s the Love Making Babies For? 20 min.
Charles M. Jones Duck Amuck 7 min.
Takashi Ito Drill 5 min.
Tony Oursler Selected Early Work [excerpt] 10 min.
Takashi Ito Spacy 10 min.
Joe Gibbons Sabotaging Spring 15 min.

Typewritten letter to Reuters:

Vor fast 28 Jahren, am 14. Mai 1970, entstand in einer Befreiungsaktion die RAF. Heute beenden wir dieses Projekt. Die Stadtguerilla in Form der RAF ist nun Geschichte.

Almost 28 years ago, on 14 May 1970, the RAF arose in a campaign of liberation. Today we end this project. The urban guerrilla in the shape of the RAF is now history.

Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance is a far more informative, down-to-earth and easy to read history of curating than Hans Ulrich Obrist’s A Brief History of Curating.  Learned that the hard way.  The first chapter is available free on scribd.

Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance

http://www.installationart.net/index.html

Oh, those UK fine art research institutions!

cover image: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Vectorial Elevation (2002)

Finally, recommended viewing.  The Reality Club recently held a salon at the Hotel Ritz, Paris, during which Stanislas Dehaene gave a talk on new developments in discovering the Signatures of Consciousness.  The 120 minute talk and transcript is here, at http://edge.org/3rd_culture/dehaene09/dehaene09_index.html

Salon D'ete at the Hotel Ritz, Paris

I am not going to uncritically reinforce this event, to be held Wednesday night at the Ace Hotel.  Why?  The Ace has up until quite recently been an unpretenious, relatively relaxed place to hang out after work, with a friendly and diverse crowd.  It hasn’t been too cool.  There hasn’t been a door policy, you’ve been able to find a spot to hang out with friends, family, or colleagues; you’ve been able to get work done at one of the long tables.  My fear is that this event represents the end of a comfortable Ace and the beginning of the Ace’s five minutes of attention as a Purple magazine spot, as the new Jane (forgive me for not knowing what there was in between).