#3 Epeli Hau'ofa "Our Sea of Islands"

"Human nature demands space for free movement, and the larger the space the better it is for people" (p.11)
Epeli Hau'ofa1

"[...] I ask whether 'our' history provides ways of thinking about identity and belonging that might work better for everyone than an increasingly branded citizenship--that is, an identity which you consume, like any other kind of goods."
Stephen Turner2

The question 'where are you from?' used to be easier to answer, but with maturity, it has become incredibly difficult ('Auckland' is seldom accepted by other New Zealanders). The difficulty lies in not only people's insistence that the question be answered, but answered correctly according to their pre-conceptions (surely you are from China? No, I'm not actually).

I remember becoming a real fan of Stephen Turner, who lectured my writing theory paper years ago, because I sensed in his writing a similar displeasure of being told what kind of New Zealander we ought to be, specifically that we must all be 'kiwis'. Turner views 'kiwiness' as a highly-managed convergence of different agendas driven by economic forces, which attracts me because it problematises patriotism as something engineered rather than heartfelt (I wouldn't call myself a patriot of any country).

But that is what grabs me about Hau'ofa's essay: his tone is (dare I say it?) patriotic without coming across as prescriptive. The generosity of calling for more space for everybody is appreciated as I hope such an enlarged world will be spacious enough for people who are reluctant to identify with any place.

Turner mentions that identities are additive, that is, it is a matter of being something AND something else, not this OR that while Hau'ofa portrays a fragmented Melanesia where migration does not necessarily change one's identity (the cited Tongan friend living in California remains 'one of us' and not Californicated). Both of these views imply that cultural identities may be retained indefinitely, which I find perhaps too strong an implication - I mean, if you were Taiwanese for seven years nearly fifteen years ago and can not really remember what it is to be Taiwanese, can this identity still remain in the additive sum of identities?

I wonder why there is not the option of opting out of discourses about place. Given all the promises of tolerance and multiplicity, I feel a bit cheated that an informed refusal remains an unacceptable position. Certain nationalisms are more aggressive and hard-nosed about cultural identities, others more benign and gentle, but it is always assumed that at some point one will participate in the discourses of place at that place. Yes, people all have to live somewhere, but I would like the possibility that this is no more than geography to be left open. I would like the old adage 'home is where the heart is' to be given its due credit by accepting that some people just don't know where their hearts are.


References

1. Hau'ofa, Epeli. "Our Sea of Islands", A New Oceania: Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands, Suva, Fiji: The University of the South Pacific, 1993, pp.2-16.


2. Turner, Stephen. "'Inclusive exclusion': managing identity for the nation's sake in Aotearoa/New Zealand." Arena Journal. 28. (2007): pp.87. Gale Cengage Academic OneFile. Web. 22 May 2011.

#5 Hito Steyerl "Is a Museum a Factory?"

"What else is desperately missing from the museum-as-factory? An exit. If the factory is everywhere, then there is no longer a gate by which to leave it - there is no way to escape relenteless productivity" (p.232)
Hito Steyerl1

"Liden offers blankness - and its aural handmaiden, muteness - less as a critique or a way out than as a condition [...] In her work I sense a tacit acknowledgement that the jig is up, that being an artist is just another way of getting by, a coping strategy for living under late capitalism" (p.223)
Helen Molesworth2

I didn't think of this until opinions that Steyerl's claims are unsubstantiated prompted me to, but could the essay "Is a Museum a Factory?" be considered a manifesto? After all, art manifestos often intend to provoke strong reactions with their rhetoric. Steyerl's bold claims, the article's deliberate legibility (larger-than-usual, non-academic font), the political content - do these tick the boxes of what qualifies a piece of writing as a manifesto?

The manifesto's innate belief in revolution seems to be denied by Steyerl's less-than-optimistic 'there is no way to escape' conclusion. The seeping of work into leisure, the transformation of spectators into workers, Beller's idea that 'to look is to labour', the gallery/museum as a site of hyper-production: these ideas seem so all-encompassing and are presented so matter-of-factly it can be difficult to see a different reality.

But attempts to see a different reality do exist. Helen Molesworth offers Klara Liden's work as an example of an artist trying to 'break out' of this all-consuming system. Molesworth interprets a perceived 'embodied silence' in Liden's work as approaching the position of the Neutral. As proposed by Roland Barthes, the Neutral is the 'third term that disrupts the binary logic underwriting Western civilisation' (Molesworth, p.223) and possibly 'the only way out of the unbearable way in which we have all been turned into consumers' (Molesworth, p.223).

Yet, Molesworth later nudges her 'delight' towards 'something less than hope' by suggesting that Liden's work may be a description of the times rather than a critique (so what could have been an exit is really just another problem to work through). Steyerl's 'exit' is offered to us in a glib one-liner, devoid of any commitment to its realisation in the typical manner of final sentences. What is it about our current environment makes us so cautious to hope for something?

Regardless, the possibility of the manifesto comforts me. Steyerl's claims may or may not be substantiated, but her boldness in conceptualising a difficult reality remains commendable.

References

1. 
   
   
   
   Steyerl, Hito. "Is a Museum a Factory?" e-flux journal reader 2009, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2009, pp 28-42.




2. Molesworth, Helen. "In Memory of Static." Artforum 49.07 (2011): pp.215-223. Print.

#4 Isabelle Graw "Beyond the Dualistic Art/Market Model'

'For we are all, in our own ways, linked to market conditions' (p.93)

Isabelle Graw1

'[T]he present historical situation [...] is characterised by the fact that judgments concerning the general situation proceed from a particular point of view. As a rule, particular existence always risks succumbing for lack of resources. It contrasts with general existence whose resources are in excess and for which death has no meaning.' (p.39)

Georges Bataille2

If I recall correctly, some members of our discussion group answered that their economic position is a consideration in their practice. Some remained quiet. Their quietness now provokes projection and hypotheses.

May this quietness imply a mootness that acknowledges the structural arbitrariness of exchange systems governing creative practices? Graw observes that although 'each individual artist does work toward his or her eventual position' (p.86), these positions remain 'not the result of a wilful act' but are 'attributed' (p.86). This provisional nature of decisions further complicates considerations of economic investment in materials/processes, especially for a young artist: in this hit-and-miss game, 'missing' is not really an option.

Another curious silence is the silence of artists who have stopped being artists. Graw argues the media is obsessed with successful artists due to the art world's correspondence to neoliberal ideologies of competition. Following this argument then, the lack of media interest in 'failed' artists is equally ideological: neoliberalism has no time for the 'non-competitive'. However, given the highly-pronounced contrast between the general and particular economy in the art world where a small minority of artists enjoy the vast majority share of commercial success, the 'fail' rate reflects structural issues which may have little to do with the actual merit of the art being dismissed.

Graw tentatively suggests the multi-faceted nature of the art market may offer a way forward as niches allow less commercially successful artists the financial means to support themselves. Considered together with greater scepticism towards the neoliberal market and new technologies facilitating market fragmentation, perhaps particular economies of individual artists may improve but the larger general economy looks prepared to keep on going.

References

1. 
   
   Graw, Isabelle. High Price: Art between The Market and Celebrity Culture. Berlin: Sternsberg Press, 2009. Print.


2. Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy Volume 1. New York: Zone Books, 1988. Print.

Apologies

Sorry for lateness. The kitchen fire had nothing to with my earlier lateness but does have something to do with this week's lateness.

Overall, I shall do my best to write, right now.

#2 Glenn Adamson "Thinking Through Craft"

[...] skill is, at base, a way of achieving cultural authority [...]

Glenn Adamson1

I find it interesting that whenever a discussion about 'skill' occurs, concepts of 'honesty' and 'care' follow as if 'skill' alone were a sufficient condition for the others. The logical leap seems slightly absurd - if 'skill' is a sufficient condition for 'integrity', then a successful forger ought to be the most integral person of all. Yet we pine for 'skill' in a system that has grown to favour conceptual sophistication. Why?

David Pye's separation of 'workmanship' from 'skill' helped me formulate a different hypothesis about why we pine for 'skill': it's a rather bad case of misplaced nostalgia.

The contemporary artwork has not become less skilled, in fact, it has possibly become more skilled with the increased sophistication of ideas and systems of production. What has been lost is workmanship. And we like workmanship. We like well-made objects carrying traces of the human hand. We like labour-intensive objects. We are not really saddened and made anxious by a loss of skill, we are saddened and made anxious by a loss of workmanship.

I hypothesise we feel thusly because we are a new diaspora of makers. Chris Kraus believes 'nostalgia is a product of diaspora' (Kraus 113) where the act of remembering serves to activate our longing to return. Perhaps there could be a better metaphor, but thinking of ourselves as a diaspora of makers seems to work: conceptualism took off around 1950 and six decades has not quite been enough for 'skill' and 'workmanship' to become distinct from each other in our collective awareness - I mean, 'skill' and 'workmanship' have been synonymous and freely interchangeable for much longer than it has not been - leaving us in an awkward place, a bunch of makers without the cultural authority of workmanship yet also not quite sure how to claim authority for our shiny new conceptual skills. The displacement probably leaves many dissatisfied - we have exhanged the security of workmanship (the good old days when you know for sure life is sussed as long as you can throw a pot) for...what exactly? Uncertainties and ambiguities and exploration and that nebulous cloud expounding the virtues of flux gets great writeups in art magazines but it's an entirely different matter to live by it.

But, diasporas settle and gain new points of traction. I am optimistic that our new 'skills' will also allow us to find our own places in this overwhelmingly new system of production and, perhaps, claim cultural authority.

References

1 Adamson, Glenn. Thinking Through Craft. Oxford: Berg, 2007. p. 69-101. Print.

2 Kraus, Chris. "Bad Nostalgia", Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness. New York: Semiotext(e), 2004. pp 111-114. Print.

#1 Chris Kraus "Cast Away"

[...] anything is permissible in the contemporary world of art so long as it is pedigreed, substantiated, referentialised.

Chris Kraus1

Kraus' personal essay Cast Away acts out the contentious process of framing. From the very moment Kraus begins to describe how she one day spotted some photographs of people in distant lands holding packages couriered from America in a local storefront, this act of description already begins to frame these photographs as art worthy of consideration by simply occuring in a book of essays pondering some rather important artists and art issues.

By writing about these photographs as if they were art when the photographs were content to exist outside that frame, Kraus showed how easy it was to rope in non-art (if I may call it that) and have the reframed things taken seriously (just because she is Kraus? hold that cynical thought). It is this ease which makes me uneasy and perhaps a little cynical.

Reframing something is a strategy we are all very familiar with, but why does it work better in some instances and not others? Would these photographs have been as successful if a lesser writer/artist/curator had undertaken the task? That is, if it were not Kraus but someone else whose authority in the art world was uncertain - say, Justin Beiber or fresh Elam graduates - who was looking and reframing, would this influence the power of the reframed thing to speak art-talk? I think so.

The logical conclusion of this hunch is that the success of a reframing strategy has something to do with the credibility of the re-framer. However, I came to realise that credibility can be less about the individual voice but about the structures which support that voice. For example, I have no idea who Dirk von Lowtzow2 is, but I know Parkett is a reputable art publication (by the way, have you noticed they always supply a short biography of the author just so you can go aha, that guy is credible in his own right to shape my opinions? Somewhere in here is an essay). So when Lowtzow rejects the words 'adorable' and 'cute' in favour of 'cuddly' when framing a discussion of Cosima von Bonin's work in Parkett, the frame 'cuddly' shuffles but ultimately stays.

What's the actual difference between the three? Kraus wonders why nostalgia is bad but sentiment is good; I wonder why cuddly is better than adorable or cute. 'Goodness' seems entirely arbitrary. This is probably why Parkett always invites at least three writers to discuss an artist at any one time - one frame is just not enough wiggle room to fit interesting art.

At the risk of over-simplifying things, it seems then that who gets to frame art makes a lot of difference. Think back to Lauren Winstone's insight that Francis Upritchard has others around her to champion her work when Upritchard evades theory.

Now think about Elam's requirement that all of us justify our practices with theory.

Now think about what may happen if you reject theory at Elam and don't have others speaking on your behalf.

Did you shudder? I did.

Ultimately, can intuitive practices exist successfully without champions to defend it with theoretical frames?

I would like to think yes, because it is sunny at the moment and sunshine makes me optimistic.

But I am not above putting up Champions Wanted posters if the weather turns sour.

References

1. 
   
   Kraus, Chris. "Cast Away", Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness. New York: Semiotext(e), 2004. pp 145-150.


2. 
   
   von Lowtzow, Dirk. "In Fluffy Storms." Parkett 2007: 32-36.

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