Re: <nettime> So what's the use of art, theory, activism?

[Louis Rawlins via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Hi Everybody. I've been loosely following this conversation with interest.

Brian, to your question: "So what's the use of art, theory, activism?"

I don't know.


Yesterday, I was walking around the neighborhood and talking to my wife,
also an artist (but aren't we all?) and I asked her how she felt about
keeping different forms of media: CDs, DVDs (and for me, it's more: DV
tapes, Minidiscs, who-know-what-format-from-the-nineties). We both
acknowledged we are ambivalent. I note that media on my phone multiple
faster than I can edit, and neither of us are too interested in moving past
our chosen formats: visual, audio.

And, as I've been making headway to work more closely in food and
agriculture, and I concern myself directly with local languages and
cultures, I'm finding that the idea of "preserving" and "exhibiting" media
is indeed becoming less important than how I behave and the people I'm
spending time with, as Stella suggested – I found what she wrote to be
encouraging and salient, supportive. A reflection on showing up, if you
will.

As regards not-knowing (a desirable state, most days), I've been absorbing
a bit more of Fredric Jameson, with his recent passing, and I have to say
that there's does seem to be something there with post/structuralism and
all that mess that was happening behind-the-scenes when I was a child in
the eighties worried about buying chewing gum. I dug Sartre because I was
sick a ton as a kid and I needed some reason to keep on moving. It never
occurred to me that folks, who were the age we are now, were messing around
with how we think about and assemble our worlds. Derrida and El
Lissitzky were design inspirations for me. Form only. The content came much
later, as with any good, long-term, slow-burning propaganda.

Thus, I'd suggest that how we are assembling our worlds around "art" and
"activism" and especially "theory" are probably not serving us the way they
use to. For whom? To whom?

I also can't imagine that unravelling planetary-scale harm happens quickly.
If it takes me a couple years to recover from a month of acute illness, I
would imagine it's going to take generations for humans to come to terms
with taking a wrong turn or two.

Some meanderings:

*An American Utopia: Fredric Jameson in Conversation with Stanley Aronowitz
(2014)*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNVKoX40ZAo

Just started reading the essay that Jameson wrote and published with
responses in 2016. I'm excited to read the Kim Stanley Robinson piece,
since I feel like he is an author that tends to address some of the above /
below questions. (Also, as if describing exactly the problem, when I
searched for "an american utopia youtube" on google.com, I got a bunch of
hits for David Byrne's "american utopia" which is interesting, but
basically a rehashing of Talking Heads songs in an hour-long format:
probably great for the uninitiated, but pretty bland for folks who are
familiar with Talking Heads and who've been seeking solidarity for a long
time.)

*Beck, Diamond Bollocks*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt_3rExtDJE

Whenever my ability to think straight, as Andreas notes, starts to slip,
this song has always been a good antidote. The entire album of Mutations
ought to be required listening and reflection (omg, theory?) in university
classes, but alas, we are still not ready to have a global, collective
conversation about what we've done as humans.

Peace, ya'll. Hope you're all doing well. You give me hope.

Louis

------------------------------
louisrawlins.com
248-808-8908


On Mon, Jan 27, 2025 at 3:00 AM <nettime-l-request@lists.nettime.org> wrote:

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>    1. Re: So what's the use of art, theory, activism?
>       (Andreas Broeckmann)
>    2. Re: So what's the use of art, theory, activism? (Felix Stalder)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2025 14:00:25 +0100
> From: Andreas Broeckmann <ab@mikro.in-berlin.de>
> To: collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
>         <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>
> Subject: Re: <nettime> So what's the use of art, theory, activism?
> Message-ID: <51a2f4d9-ba79-4773-950b-1aaf3b51dcad@mikro.in-berlin.de>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> Dear Brian, folks,
>
> thanks for starting this thread and for your thoughtful questions.
>
> I ask myself, though, whether the challenge that you put to "art,
> theory, activism" is aptly formulated. I understand that you see your
> own practice in this particular triangle, and I guess that the "we" you
> speak of is perhaps meant to circumscribe the people hovering around in
> the same sector. You also say "we on the progressive left." And you ask
> "us" - and I translate that as: you ask  me - to recognise "the mistakes
> [I myself] made on the path to this disaster."
>
> One thing I wonder is how the political positioning is articulated with
> artistic practice? A practice, I would say, that is not necessarily
> inscribed as "activist" and "(aspirationally) useful", but one that
> draws its strength from maintaining a certain level of autonomy, and
> productive uselessness. - Put differently: If things went so badly
> wrong, was the art not good enough?
>
> More importantly, your question also assumes that I (or the "we" in your
> missive) could actually have made a difference to the current situation.
> On the capillary level I agree: whatever we do, living, maybe teaching,
> maybe exhibiting, maybe activating, etc., does have a tendential impact
> on the way things go. But for the current situation, I think it is also
> important to recognise the transformations that go way beyond what "I"
> can influence.
>
> One of these is the technological change that has led, for instance, to
> the almost ubiquitous availability of the communication platforms
> (so-called social media); supposedly, TikTok has a billion users
> worldwide. And then there are also Insta, F, X, and the others. My
> feeling is that what you call "this disaster" is - just quantitatively -
> less a result of my (and maybe your) failures, but rather of the changes
> in which the public sphere is constituted by these technical media. The
> delegation of decision-making to so-called AI systems is exacerbating
> this trend.
>
> The responses in this thread to your initial posting have mostly
> followed up with political (and partly economic) arguments. My
> suggestion is that we turn to one of the virtuous aspects of Netzkritik,
> and look more closely at the ways in which the technological is an
> important basis of what it enables in the political and in the economic
> sphere. (At certain moments in the past, we here on the Nettime list
> discussed particular technical protocols and the political impact that
> they might have. And occasionally we remind each other of Phil Agre, or
> the technophilological diligence of Wendy Chun et al.)
>
> I'm not arguing for some technological determinism. But what I see
> around me is a widespread usage of digital media that makes it almost
> impossible to even think straight, let alone develop a sense of what
> might constitute a good society (or "living-together", samenleving, as
> one says in Dutch). Large parts of the population, many many people,
> young and old, seem to be under the spell of doom-scrolling. And it
> seems to be part of the ensuing political system (what can perhaps be
> called a new fascism) that everybody is now fixated on the human
> individuals whose voices and faces are amplified most strongly in this
> system (DT, EM, etc.).
>
> But in order to understand these mechanisms, we (readers, writers,
> lurkers on Nettime) should perhaps also think about the technical basis
> of this emerging system. (And, just as a provocation, consider whether
> what in the 90s we promoted as "tactical media", was perhaps an early
> instance of what are now the drivers of disaster.)
>
> My suggestion is that the resistant thing to do here, on Nettime, is to
> rise to the occasion and to not just live right (that's also very
> important, and I think that Stella's examples are very inspiring), but
> to discuss how "the nets" impact "culture and politics". Perhaps with
> the ambition to understand what is going on, so that we can think about
> ways to influence the how-things-go towards the better...
>
> Best regards on a rainy Sunday afternoon,
>
> -a
>
>
> Am 22.01.25 um 23:50 schrieb Brian Holmes via nettime-l:
> > Anyone involved in the headliners of this post - or in teaching, free
> > software, and dozens of other idealistic pursuits - can well ask
> themselves
> > the question. What's the use, if the world is going to climate-change
> hell,
> > tech has poisoned people's brains and hearts, and your local fascist
> party
> > is about to get elected, or has just taken power?
> >
> > I am in Stuttgart right now to install an art show, and while exiting a
> > restaurant I leaned over for a closer look at the Trump stickers
> plastered
> > on the computer of the guy seating customers. "Oh, it's just for fun," he
> > said to me. This is the beauty of the world that social media has made.
> >
> > When Millei was elected in Argentina, people on the left were struck
> > speechless for months. With my collaborators at Casa Rio, we were
> involved
> > in a complex project trying to sketch out the rising influence of China
> on
> > the country's political ecology. But the public sphere in which such a
> > project could be meaningful had just collapsed into savage rhetoric
> > underwritten by a clear intent to use violence for a libertarian
> > transformation of the social contract. At one point we all basically had
> to
> > admit our despair. We resolved to go back to the basics, to the things we
> > believe in so deeply that we can't abandon them.
> >
> > Now in the USA we are again struck speechless, for the second time. The
> > difference is, this time we on the progressive left have been betrayed by
> > those who claimed to represent us. Neoliberalism gradually made the
> culture
> > that we produce into a mask over a corrupt political system. Then on
> > October 7 the mask fell. We saw that the center-left elites, the masters
> of
> > cognitive creativity, were imperialists ready to kill for the defense of
> > global capitalism. Their first concern at home was to fire the radical
> > professors and beat back the student protests with the truncheons of the
> > police. When you have to fear your supposed friends, what to expect from
> > your sworn enemies?
> >
> > I don't have the answers. It's why I don't post so much anymore. The
> themes
> > that animated this list over some thirty years are all in tatters. The
> > possibility of a more open and egalitarian world in which we all
> believed,
> > in one way or another, has been smashed by gigantic wrecking balls.
> Anyone
> > who looks back, and does not see the mistakes they themselves made on the
> > path to this disaster, is not really looking at all, in my humble
> opinion.
> >
> > Yet I still hold to my deepest beliefs. And I am now an elder, who must
> > turn experience - even the experience of failures - into something
> valuable
> > for present and coming generations. Resistance happens in the streets,
> but
> > not only. It happens in the way that you live, the way that you change
> your
> > life without abandoning your past.
> >
> > I write today because someone wrote to me offlist. I no longer say a word
> > about what I am doing, I can't promote myself, I'm not on social media,
> but
> > I invite you all to the Kunstlerhaus in Stuttgart, and more
> substantially,
> > to Watershed Art & Ecology in Chicago where I live. I invite you to
> > correspond, to think and feel together, to carry on into the future.
> >
> > warmly, Brian
> >
> > https://kuenstlerhaus.de
> > https//watershed-art.org
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2025 14:03:57 +0100
> From: Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>
> To: nettime-l@lists.nettime.org
> Subject: Re: <nettime> So what's the use of art, theory, activism?
> Message-ID: <eb3230db-bcfa-4552-b70d-4a50530e002a@openflows.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
>
> On 1/22/25 23:50, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:
>
> > But the public sphere in which such a project could be meaningful
> > had just collapsed into savage rhetoric underwritten by a clear
> > intent to use violence for a libertarian transformation of the
> > social contract
>
>
> On 1/25/25 00:12, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:
>
> > All the big issues being discussed here are fundamentally important,
> > and I hold on to social theory and ecological science in order to
> > get some sense of what the future holds. But the future looks
> > desolate, people are afraid, and there is no use at all for art,
> > theory and activism if you can't share them> in a way that builds trust.
>
> Maybe we can take these two points together. We -- people in the
> cultural field doing exhibitions, publications, workshops and events
> "open to all" -- have held out for this notion of a public sphere until
> the very end, longer than almost everyone else. The hard right never
> believed in it. For them, the public has always been something to be
> molded in the pursuit of power.
>
> The political center abandoned the notion of the public sphere in the
> 1990s. Analyses of "post-democracy" around the turn of the millennium
> tracked the rise of technocratic leadership and spin-doctoring closely,
> but it did so --  writing books and making rational arguments -- by
> appealing to the very thing its dissolution it was tracking. Many of our
> "critical interventions" did the same.
>
> Now the dissolution has become so complete, it cannot be ignored, and
> doing more of the same feels like feeding a zombie machine.
>
> I absolutely continue to see the value of art, theory and education.
> They are part of the human condition and aspiration. But we need to
> reimagine them beyond the notion of the public sphere, yet without
> reverting to nativist tribalism (now "accelerated" by technology, as
> Fr?d?ric and others pointed out).
>
> The under-commons, fugitive forms of trust, solidarity and togetherness,
> point to a way of living inside the ruins. But beyond that? There is
> only so much that rhizomatic structures can hold. Another hard lesson
> from the digital experience.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> | |||||||||||||||| http://felix.openflows.com |
> | for secure communication, please use signal |
>
>
>
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