Fetishism

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Whilst it may cite such radical forebears as Dada and the S.I., Playing the City seems to stay safely within the rules of the game. Through its use of jargon, its connoisseurship, its specialist interest in art-as-phenomena, it fetishizes ‘art’; instead of being a means to realise change – a vehicle, a mode of travel – it becomes a resting point. In the end, ‘art’ becomes the goal, not ‘change’. In being an exhibition about art – a showcase of its potentialities – Playing the City wears the outfit of the radical whilst assuring us that its intentions are anything but. It is a child, dressing as the bandit to amuse its parents, wielding its plastic weaponry and shouting clichéd slogans. As Gene Ray says, “one may question the bourgeois paradigm, only not in any way that is effective or has results; one may play with the symbols of radical politics, but one must not act on them; anyone can say the emperor has no clothes or even scream it within the closed walls of a gallery, but no one may cut off his head.”55

Regardless of the individual intentions of those involved in Playing the City, they are contained within a structure (an ‘exhibition’) that, at bottom, works to neutralize radical intent. The art-game is being played, and, voluntarily or not, they are pawns within it.

In his essay On Commitment theorist Theodor Adorno points to an example of art-fetishism in the work of playwright Bertold Brecht; “ It is true that Brecht never spoke as sceptically as Sartre about the social effects of art. But, as an astute and experienced man of the world, he can scarcely have been wholly convinced of them. He once calmly wrote that when he was not deceiving himself, the theatre was more important to him than any changes in the world it might promote.” He goes on to say, “The only ground on which Brecht’s technique of reduction would be legitimate is that of “art for art’s sake” […]” Whether Adorno’s critique rings true or not, he raises a pertinent point; that art, despite any claims to the contrary, can often be as much about art as it is about anything else; so whilst, in Brecht’s case, ‘change in the world’ may have been the ostensive goal, his unconscious enterprise may simply have been about remaining within the world of ‘art’.

The attraction of the fetish is often its use as a resting place – it delays transcendence (the goal) and keeps us in imminence (always about to transcend). In this way, the fetish retains momentum, keeps us playing the game, going around - motion that also serves the interests of the State. In keeping people busy, keeping them moving, it can prevent them from stopping and thinking, from looking inward and asking questions.

With their emphasis on the circular movement of imminence, game playing and fetishism allow us the comfort of familiarity; we can stay in the same spot, doing the same things, without the threat of change and its promise of the unknown. The sanctity of the status quo is maintained. Like any other world (of science, of music, of sport) the art world can provide a resting place, a safe place to live. And like these worlds it provides its inhabitant with an identity: roles to play, a language to speak, thoughts to think. It prescribes. And herein the art-world anchors itself in opposition to the sea.

We’ve been talking of the artist as radical, and it is worth considering that radicalism can also act as a fetish. As we mentioned earlier, Terry Eagleton offers us a picture in which the radical would rather not be the way he is; “They regard themselves as holding awkward, mildly freakish opinions forced upon them by the current condition of the species, and yearn secretly to be normal. Or rather, they look forward to a future in which they would no longer be saddled with such inconvenient beliefs, since they would have been realized in practice. They would then be free to join the rest of the human race.”56

Yet, joining the rest of the human race may well be the kind of future the radical-as-fetishist fears, because it would mean surrendering the distinction afforded by ‘freakish opinions.’ Contrast Eagleton’s description with a soundbite from artist Momus; “Living here, I’d feel there were no more battles to fight, no more doors to kick open. History would stop, there’d be nothing to do but create future generations to hand one’s good-taste, enlightened, healthy-living values down to.” His words don’t seem to reflect an outcast who just wants to fit in, rather the opposite: his difference defines his identity. Momus offers us an interesting view on his brand of rebellion; “It’s important to remember that rebellion -- in other words, the part of our value system that is determined by position, by dialectics, by reaction -- is a kind of collaboration with the things rebelled against. For instance, right now I’m wearing a t-shirt turned inside out, because I’ve decided t-shirts with slogans or images on them are naff. I’m listening to a very abstract piece of music by David Toop, partly to erase or complicate the courtyard ambience of Michael Jackson hits and make the soundscape in my flat a bit “classier”. In both cases, my stance is a collaboration with the “naff” things I’m deliberately snubbing. They become the ground to my figure, the thing that makes it connote. I really have to thank the people I’m rebelling against for “collaborating” with me in this way! Without them, I couldn’t be me.”57

Momus is honest about his fetishism; through dialectics he collaborates with those he rebels against, pole supporting counterpole, in an endless circular dance. His radicalism, as he openly admits, is an identity, a place to live within, not to escape. Momus’ rebellion-games reinforce his position58, as the outsider, the person who ‘kicks doors open’ and rebels against things; and he understands that his counterpole is vital in confirming this position. The art game is equally as important for those that play it, allowing its participants the comfort of stability, through reinforcing their positions. It allows individuals to be ‘artists’ and to go on being ‘artists’.

We’ve also seen how, in much the same way, it can provide a home to the ‘radical’, allowing a parade of radicalism within the safety of make-believe. In this way, a safe-detonation site is created within society, where explosive acts can be tested and observed; an officially sanctioned site-of-rebellion where the radical can do his thing under a watchful eye. By keeping his actions above-ground, in safe forms, this sanctioned playground allows the radical to exist – gives him a place to play, toys to play with - whilst performing a secret act of sterilization, robbing him of his potential to disrupt the status quo. The game-playing radical fears change as much as the system that he rebels against, and his game becomes a pact; ‘allow me to exist, to imagine change, and to fantasize about it, but do not allow it to happen, because I fear it as much as you do.’

In seeing the art-game for what it is, the true radical – committed to change over all else – would refuse to play entirely, becoming the game-breaker (or what Berne refers to as the ‘antithesis’). This would be the uncomfortable radical described by Eagleton, eager to shrug off his guise as soon as possible. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu offers us another description; “[…] by an accident of social genetics, into the well-policed world of intellectual games there comes one of those people (one thinks of Rousseau or Chernyshevsky) who bring inappropriate stakes and interests into the games of culture; who get so involved in the game that they abandon the margin of neutralizing distance that the illusio (belief in the game) demands; who treat intellectual struggles, the object of so many pathetic manifestos, as a simple question of right and wrong, life and death. This is why the logic of the game has already assigned them rôles - eccentric or boor - which they will play despite themselves in the eyes of those who know how to stay within the bounds of the intellectual illusion and who cannot see them any other way.”59


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< PLAYING THE ART GAME
> Revisionism

Related posts:-
Rebel Stance
Art from a distance

Revisionism

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Whilst the game playing of Playing the City may be the outcome of a fetish, we could also perceive it as a form of revisionism. An analogy can be found in the strikes that took place in France, during May’68. When the people of France abandoned the factories and took to the streets, the trade unions were crucial in breaking the strikes and getting people back into their workplaces; ostensively acting in the interests of the workers, the unions played the crucial role of intermediary between the reformers and State, eventually brokering a deal that would see the former return to their posts.60

Those who were striking were sick of a system that they saw as exploitative and wanted a new system, one that wasn’t rigged for exploitation. The unions’ coup de mâitre was in reducing these revolutionary intentions to a program of strictly professional demands61, ameliorating the threat of revolution and forcing a compromise with the State. In transforming a revolutionary challenge – a challenge that wanted to force new ideas, that spoke a new language – into a series of conventional demands (change in wages, working conditions, etc) the unions were able to neutralize the danger of the unknown, disarming a bomb that threatened to explode the status quo. The workers were forced to come to terms with the system, to speak the old language; and the new tongue - with its talk of revolution, of new ideas - was killed in its infancy, along with any ideas about an alternative system.

Just as the trade unions acted as intermediary between the State and those that threatened it, ameliorating their radical energy, we could perceive the various structures of the art world as performing a similar task. As we’ve seen, the very nature of ‘art’ (as in-between, as sea) poses an inherent threat to a system that fears the depths, threatening to explode definitions and suggest other ways. Anchored against this danger is the ‘art-world’, a structure with fixed definitions and conventions, that even plays the system’s most valued game, that of commodity exchange. In place of the trade union, we have the gallery, promising to sanitize the threat of ‘art’ – to quarantine it within its four walls from where it can be safely observed. Fluid becomes congealed; in-between is brought into a pact with the State, made to negotiate and fit into the status quo.

Gene Ray realises this compromise; “To transform art into a revolutionary weapon, it would first be necessary to “abolish” – that is, negate, decompose, dissolve, liquidate – the bourgeois paradigm of art. This negative movement would disentangle the truth of art – its promise of happiness and utopian force – from the untruth of the commodity form.”62 Ray realizes that to return ‘art’ to the sea would involve the decomposition of those structures that demand it become solid, that demand it stand still, stay in one place, pose for the camera and smile. In anchoring it to safe paradigms the gallery rebukes the truth of art; words like ‘exhibition’ and ‘performance’ become nothing more than labels of the bourgeois ideology.

“Set free this truth would then be carried on in a positive and creative movement that goes beyond […] the bourgeois paradigm in the construction of new practices […] To the extent that art realizes [this] it will supercede itself, qua art, and disappear into the conflicts of politicized life, becoming in the process a real weapon of hope.”63 Here Ray talks of the sea; the return of ‘art’ from solid to liquid, to the place of the ‘in-between person’ and not simply ‘the artist’.


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< Fetishism
> CONCLUSION

CONCLUSION

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This text was written in response to a recent event, in which a number of radical acts took place from beneath the umbrella of ‘art’. Our project has been to consider the implications of affiliating radical, against-the-grain actions such as these with the art-world.

We began our disquisition with a brief analysis of a number of art-related avant-garde movements, followed by an equally brief assessment of capitalism, and considered the influence of the latter upon the former. The idea of life hinted at by the avant-gardes - Dada’s demolition of restrictive and oppressive structures; the S.I.’s widening of experience and possibility, its refusal to allow instrumentality to curtail imagination; the category-redefining of Fluxus, with its prolific acts of creativity and promotion of the creative life - these were ideas also to be found in the writings of countless psychologists. Running throughout these writings was the prescription of self-knowledge as a means to realize the “innate idiosyncrasy” of the self, and also as an ethical imperative; with the child and the artist being called to mind as a paradigm of the true individual.

In drawing a parallel to psychology we were able to liberate useful ideas from the territory of the art-world, allowing us to come to an understanding of the essence of ‘art’ as a space – a potentiality - that exists within us all. If capitalism acts to define the borders of our meanings and definitions through State ideology, then art, as in-between, works to explode all borders, returning us to a cosmic expanse.

In this sense, the ‘artist’ becomes anyone who thinks and acts in a certain way, as anyone who swims as well as walks. Fromm even mentions the artist, alongside the child, as a paradigm of the spontaneous individual, and we see that the ‘artist’ exemplifies many of the desirable traits that are talked about by psychologists. Freeing the notion of the ‘artist’ from the realms of the art-world allows us to understand the broader implications of the idea, returning its potentialities to the discourse of everyday existence. The term is democratized, allowing access to those outside of the art-world, whilst at the same time prompting those inside to look beyond the horizons of their habitus.

The nature of ‘art’ presents a radical challenge to a system that has no place for its fluidity, and this is why, as the organizers of Playing the City recognized, it has frequently assumed an important moral and political role in the modern age. However, as a structure of the State, and as a shelter from the anxiety of negative freedom, ‘art’ can often appear to have a twofold, and often contradictory, purpose. Despite the antithesis of art-world and art-as-sea, the former endures as the keeper of ‘art’, often providing a home to those who fetishize ‘art’; and, as an outpost of the State serving to ameliorate art’s watery threat to the status quo.

Our reflections on Playing the City have highlighted how often the ‘art-world’ may not be an effective place from which to present a radical challenge to our systems, encumbered as it is by its own anchored safety; an anchoring which, in many ways, acts against the true nature of art as we’ve come to define it here; art as sea.

The acts of Playing the City may have been more effective if they were considered first and foremost as radical acts, rather than art acts. If these acts were truly about challenging the status quo, then it is our contention that they would have presented a far greater challenge had they not relied on the crutch of art to legitimize their existence.


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< Revisionism
> ENDNOTES

ENDNOTES

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1 Eagleton, Terry. After Theory, p.83
2 Ibid
3 Fromm, Erich. The Fear of Freedom, p.37
4 Ibid, p.40
5 Ray, Gene. Art Schools Burning and Other Songs of Love and War, chap. 5, para. 5
6 ‘Preliminary Problems in Constructing a Situation’, Internationale Situationiste #1, para. 2
7 Plant, Sadie. The Most Radical Gesture, p.59
8 Higgins, Dick. A Child’s History of Fluxus, para. 18
9 Momus, ‘Bourriaud x Curtis’ on Click Opera (blog) see here
10 ‘Preliminary Problems in Constructing a Situation’, Internationale Situationiste #1, para. 1
11 Fromm, Erich. The Fear of Freedom, p.35
12 Ibid, p.36
13 Ibid
14 Ibid, p.37
15 Ibid, p.95
16 Ibid
17 Ibid, p.93
18 Eagleton, Terry. After Theory, p.164
19 Bunting, Medeleine. ‘The narcissism of consumer society has left women unhappier than
ever’, guardian.co.uk, see here
20 Langer, Ellen. Mindfulness, p.28
21 Fromm, Erich. The Fear of Freedom, p.54
22 Gray, John. Straw Dogs, p.194
23 Goldacre, Ben. ‘Don’t Dumb Me Down’, guardian.co.uk, see here. Read his blog here.
24 Eagleton, Terry. After Theory, p.100
25 Sigfried, Giedion, Bauen in Frankreich, p.15 (found in The Arcades Project by Walter
Benjamin, p.390)
26 Fromm, Erich. The Fear of Freedom, p.104
27 For a brief analogy, see Illich, Ivan. Celebration of Awareness, p.18
28 Langer, Ellen. Mindfulness, p.34
29 Fromm, Erich. The Fear of Freedom, p.102
30 Eagleton, Terry. After Theory, p.181
31 Langer, Ellen. Mindfulness, p.63
32 Hillman, James. Healing Fiction, p.103
33 Deleuze, Gilles. The Logic of Sense, p.4
34 Ibid, p.5
35 Winnicott, D.W. ‘Living Creatively’ in Home is Where We Start From, p.51
Langer also uses a culinary example when describing something similar; “So often in our lives,
we act as though there were only one set of rules. For instance, in cooking we tend to follow
recipes with dutiful precision. We add ingredients as though by official decree. If the recipe
calls for a pinch of salt and four pinches fall in, panic strikes, as though the bowl might now
explode. Thinking of a recipe as a rule, we often do not consider how people’s tastes vary, or
what fun it might be to make up a new dish.” (Langer, Ellen. Mindfulness, p.16)
36 Ibid p.43-4
37 Fromm, Erich. The Fear of Freedom, p.224
38 Ibid
39 Ibid
40 Eagleton, Terry. After Theory, p.168
41 Fromm, Erich. The Fear of Freedom, p.225
42 Ibid, p.227
43 Berne, Eric. Games People Play, p.151
44 Ibid, p.91
45 Ibid, p.158
46 Jung, Carl. The Essential Jung, p.195
47 Ibid, p.198, 202
48 Laing, R.D. The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, p.51
49 Ibid, p.60
50 Ibid, p.61
51 Storr, Anthony. Dynamics of Creation, p.153 (emphasis added)
52 Laing, R.D. The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, p.38
53 Fromm, Erich. The Fear of Freedom, p.223
54 Ray, Gene. Art Schools Burning and Other Songs of Love and War, intro., para. 2
55 Ibid, chap. 2, para. 8
56 Eagleton, Terry. After Theory, p. 181
57 Momus, ‘Living in NKLN to keep PZBG alive’ on Click Opera (blog), see here.
58 Berne, Eric. Games People Play, p.42
59 Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, p.54
60 Elliot, Karen. ‘Never Work!’ from Variant, Summer 2009, p.25-29
61 Ibid, p.29
62 Ray, Gene. Art Schools Burning and Other Songs of Love and War, chap. 5, para. 2
63 Ibid, chap. 5, para. 9


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< CONCLUSION