...race, class, gender and physiology.
I usually reserve my commentaries on the New York Review of Books’ new issue for my joculum.livejournal.com blog, where it fits into a year and a half of growing commentary on the human condition and its discontents.
But since all the readers of joculum already know what I am going to say, I offer this as a quick contribution to the nonexistent dialogue of Counterforces.
I remain fascinated with the implicit editorial interests of NYRB and how often the publication combines its progressive politics with its assumption that the literate politically committed individual needs to be up on the alterations of science and of the European cultural inheritance at the same time as the basics of the postcolonial debate, race, class, gender, and physiology alongside traditional academic disciplines with a little street organizing thrown in alongside modestly revisionist art history.
I want to skip over a good many topics and just mention ever so briefly the juxtaposition of the review essay on Herodotus…the Father of Cultural Studies as much as Thucydides is the Father of Neo-Conservative Politics, as witness who likes to read which (and I, for the record, bogged down on Thucydides freshman year of college and Have Always Meant to Get Round to Reading the other)…to have that more or less next to a quick overview of the way in which the study of chimpanzees influenced the politically loaded discussions of human nature and the degree to which genetic inheritance can be counterbalanced by the adaptability that those critical few genetic differences bestowed upon the human species…and to wind up the issue with a survey of Michel de Certeau, in some depth. Certeau is another one of those cultural theorists more cited than read, in part because his issues have also been raised in part by a good many Anglo-American thinkers, some of whom actually engaged in dialogue with his contributions to the global conversations he helped shape. (I typed “conservations,” and readers of joculum will know I always record my Freudian Typos even when they seem to be merely mechanical.)
Certeau is interested in how otherness gets shaped, and his discussions of the Other seem a whole lot more relevant to the actual conditions of history than all those other Others that led to the discussion of how other we should let the Other be because after all, he she or it was Other.
Human beings, as Herodotus’ infinite curiosity was wont to reveal, like exotica about as much as they hate it. Cultures go to great lengths to enhance or suppress the natural human tendency (yes, natural, goddamn it) to take an interest in the unfamiliar or to be sensibly or excessively afraid that the unfamiliar might be injurious.
Clever purveyors of Otherness in cycles of trade from distant antiquity onward have known how to market themselves as entertaining curiosities with something worth buying, rather than dreaded potential adversaries to be cut down on sight. Unfortunately, the would-be marketers have seldom known all the rules of the new game, and countless thousands have been cut down on sight anyway. A smaller number have been welcomed on arrival as long-expected missing pieces of the others’ cultural puzzle, only to have the others perceive their self-interested scams a bit too late.
NYRB likes to publish lots of examples of cultural collisions in which both parties felt certain that the other was disrespecting them. (This makes its reportage on Iraq particularly interesting.) With that in mind, we might want to circle round from Certeau’s histories of the reception of otherness of all sorts, and re-read Sanford Schwartz’s essay on Frida Kahlo’s painting The Suicide of Dorothy Hale with which the issue begins. And then re-read George Soros’ take on the global economic crisis, and make our way back down the table of contents.
Usually I am incapable of reading an issue without posting about six thousand words of theoretical interconnections. But joculumites already know the conclusions I am going to draw, and usually don’t bother to read them.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Friday, May 2, 2008
towards a counterforces online journal
The sheer volume of responses to Daniel Canogar’s appearance in Atlanta have been of great interest.
One hopeful sign has been the recognition of Canogar’s sources in terms of his dazzling but semi-derivative pieces. The operative word being “semi,” since Canogar’s level of innovation is praiseworthy in any case.
Bloggers recognized early on that his most interesting innovation comes in the fiber optic pieces, splendidly klugy (I am so pleased to have had the engineering term “kluge” handed to me in the past week…to signify an interim, cobbled-together technical solution that works well enough for the job intended, sort of like what Claude Levi-Strauss meant by his adaptation of the French term bricolage).
Canogar’s Photoshopped piles of accumulated crap derive from the various photos of Chinese and Third World stacks of recyclable electronics and from various recent projects that involve metaphors that make visible the sheer quantity of waste generated by late industrial society. But it takes skill to Photoshop that well without having the seams show when the digital photos are enlarged to that degree. (I myself, a bricoleur devotee of the interim solution, probably spent hours blurring thin lines of pixels when there is one tool that would fix the seam problem, but I see enough poorly resolved solutions, the artfully blurry image included, that a job well done is worth celebrating.)
Incidentally, I was intrigued by the news that the popular imagination, on the level of the art-ignorant public, now reads analog photography as unacceptably soft-focus. Is it really true that folks on Flickr prefer the saturated shades of color associated with the Canon digital camera? I don’t waste a lot of time reading comments on such sources, but historians of cultural history need to do so and apparently do.
Canogar’s climbing/crawling video projections in buildings made me realize with pleasure that the genre has come a long way since those gee-whiz days when one still image projected for hours on the side of one bujilding was enough to keep people mesmerized for hours. Then we had versions that were not much better than showing a movie on a blank brick wall, such as alternative spaces in Atlanta have done for decades. Now the genre has grown up, proving once again that it is not the technology that matters, it is the quality of imagination of the user. And the imagination is not a matter of originality but of the ability to see what is being done globally and adapting it adroitly to local circumstances.
It is the “adroitly” part as well as the “local circumstances” part that is the basis of what I like to call the counterforces aesthetic. It needs to be original by virtue of the adaptation to the locale and to local traditions and materials; it needs to be adroit by virtue of the skill and intelligence of the maker. And it needs to be mistaken easily for provincial by the forces of globalizing culture.
And as for local circumstances when it comes to blogs? The links among the growing number of art blogs in Atlanta alone suggest a model for a semi-edited coordination of effort.
Each blogger could (but need not) invite other bloggers to post guest essays on their sites. For few outside the blogging community have the time to read ALL those blogs on all those different blog host sites.
But even easier would be a simple variation on the currently next to useless collective blogs.
Start ONE MORE BLOG that had a very simple ground rule.
Akin to Arts & Letters Daily, it would be an anthology of Atlanta blogs.
Each post would be something that one blogger or another found of particular value or interest on someone else's Atlanta blog. It could be posted with commentary.
But the one rule would be that NO ONE COULD POST THEIR OWN ORIGINAL PIECE. A piece could only be posted if someone else who writes regularly about Atlanta art found that the piece contributed to the dialogue in a way they found interesting.
And the blogger posting the anthology piece could only comment in the comments box, like everybody else.
Theoretically, two best friends could continually post each other's blogs in their entirety, but that could be handled by a simple rule: three nuanced favorable comments by arm's length members of the community would be required if a dispute arises over someone's right to post to the publication. Collective editorial responsibility.
I know that discussions of nomadism and of deconstructed networks are, like, so 1980s, but that doesn't mean that the model itself is out of date. By contrast, it appears to be coming into its own.
One hopeful sign has been the recognition of Canogar’s sources in terms of his dazzling but semi-derivative pieces. The operative word being “semi,” since Canogar’s level of innovation is praiseworthy in any case.
Bloggers recognized early on that his most interesting innovation comes in the fiber optic pieces, splendidly klugy (I am so pleased to have had the engineering term “kluge” handed to me in the past week…to signify an interim, cobbled-together technical solution that works well enough for the job intended, sort of like what Claude Levi-Strauss meant by his adaptation of the French term bricolage).
Canogar’s Photoshopped piles of accumulated crap derive from the various photos of Chinese and Third World stacks of recyclable electronics and from various recent projects that involve metaphors that make visible the sheer quantity of waste generated by late industrial society. But it takes skill to Photoshop that well without having the seams show when the digital photos are enlarged to that degree. (I myself, a bricoleur devotee of the interim solution, probably spent hours blurring thin lines of pixels when there is one tool that would fix the seam problem, but I see enough poorly resolved solutions, the artfully blurry image included, that a job well done is worth celebrating.)
Incidentally, I was intrigued by the news that the popular imagination, on the level of the art-ignorant public, now reads analog photography as unacceptably soft-focus. Is it really true that folks on Flickr prefer the saturated shades of color associated with the Canon digital camera? I don’t waste a lot of time reading comments on such sources, but historians of cultural history need to do so and apparently do.
Canogar’s climbing/crawling video projections in buildings made me realize with pleasure that the genre has come a long way since those gee-whiz days when one still image projected for hours on the side of one bujilding was enough to keep people mesmerized for hours. Then we had versions that were not much better than showing a movie on a blank brick wall, such as alternative spaces in Atlanta have done for decades. Now the genre has grown up, proving once again that it is not the technology that matters, it is the quality of imagination of the user. And the imagination is not a matter of originality but of the ability to see what is being done globally and adapting it adroitly to local circumstances.
It is the “adroitly” part as well as the “local circumstances” part that is the basis of what I like to call the counterforces aesthetic. It needs to be original by virtue of the adaptation to the locale and to local traditions and materials; it needs to be adroit by virtue of the skill and intelligence of the maker. And it needs to be mistaken easily for provincial by the forces of globalizing culture.
And as for local circumstances when it comes to blogs? The links among the growing number of art blogs in Atlanta alone suggest a model for a semi-edited coordination of effort.
Each blogger could (but need not) invite other bloggers to post guest essays on their sites. For few outside the blogging community have the time to read ALL those blogs on all those different blog host sites.
But even easier would be a simple variation on the currently next to useless collective blogs.
Start ONE MORE BLOG that had a very simple ground rule.
Akin to Arts & Letters Daily, it would be an anthology of Atlanta blogs.
Each post would be something that one blogger or another found of particular value or interest on someone else's Atlanta blog. It could be posted with commentary.
But the one rule would be that NO ONE COULD POST THEIR OWN ORIGINAL PIECE. A piece could only be posted if someone else who writes regularly about Atlanta art found that the piece contributed to the dialogue in a way they found interesting.
And the blogger posting the anthology piece could only comment in the comments box, like everybody else.
Theoretically, two best friends could continually post each other's blogs in their entirety, but that could be handled by a simple rule: three nuanced favorable comments by arm's length members of the community would be required if a dispute arises over someone's right to post to the publication. Collective editorial responsibility.
I know that discussions of nomadism and of deconstructed networks are, like, so 1980s, but that doesn't mean that the model itself is out of date. By contrast, it appears to be coming into its own.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
essay tk
I am pondering anew the issue of conflict of interest when one has been sent on a press trip from which one derived much in the way of insight and much information that ought to be shared with the planet at large. This all took place last August, so neither the Glenfiddich distillery, their artist in residence program coordinator, nor the parent company William Grant and Sons will feel too greatly excited and pleased if I finally give up and post my dubiously profound reflections on this web journal.
Romeo Alaeff, of whom I have written at least a little on my joculum.livejournal.com blog, is a genuinely extraordinary artist (in other words, I think his art and his biography fits into the transculturated perspective that constitutes counterforces). So I need to have another go at writing something systematic about him and finding a place to present it that is a larger forum than the counterforces web journal.
"tk" is old-school journalese for "to come," presumably with a "k" to make it easier to search and delete the term, though "tc" would work just fine for that purpose also if the searcher puts spaces before and after. (Otherwise the "replace" function will replace or delete every occurrence of the letters in the middle of words.)
I have several exploratory essays that involve the Glenfiddich story, actually. So you may get more than you ever wanted to know about the metaphoric possibilities of single-malt Scotch and international artist programs in the age of globalization.
Or, of course, you may not. But you have been warned.
There are remarkable tales left lazily untold; or perhaps I have just been waiting for all those editors from months-ago queries to tell me they are not interested, when in fact I know that in the artworld, silence equals not death but a polite "thank you, but no." though often it just means "thank you, but my inbox ate my homework."
Romeo Alaeff, of whom I have written at least a little on my joculum.livejournal.com blog, is a genuinely extraordinary artist (in other words, I think his art and his biography fits into the transculturated perspective that constitutes counterforces). So I need to have another go at writing something systematic about him and finding a place to present it that is a larger forum than the counterforces web journal.
"tk" is old-school journalese for "to come," presumably with a "k" to make it easier to search and delete the term, though "tc" would work just fine for that purpose also if the searcher puts spaces before and after. (Otherwise the "replace" function will replace or delete every occurrence of the letters in the middle of words.)
I have several exploratory essays that involve the Glenfiddich story, actually. So you may get more than you ever wanted to know about the metaphoric possibilities of single-malt Scotch and international artist programs in the age of globalization.
Or, of course, you may not. But you have been warned.
There are remarkable tales left lazily untold; or perhaps I have just been waiting for all those editors from months-ago queries to tell me they are not interested, when in fact I know that in the artworld, silence equals not death but a polite "thank you, but no." though often it just means "thank you, but my inbox ate my homework."
towards a counterforces review of "Learning to Love the Species" by Susan Seydel Cofer
Attentive readers will realize I face the odd conflict of interest of writing in praise of a show that includes a work of art that depicts me.
However, I cannot afford to buy it, and have not been offered it as a gift (which I would not accept as a matter of principle), and the Cofers have not attempted to bribe me with extravagant trips or offers of money so I would assume that ego is the only factor involved.
—which it always is. In all times and in all places.
And that brings me to the reason why I feel that "Learning to Love the Species" is a remarkable exhibition (at the UGA Broad Street Gallery as mentioned heretofore).
Cofer creates allegorical artworks that tend to fall between accepted categories for artmaking. Her papier-mache portraiture (can't be bothered to insert diacritical marks, sorry) uses a medium more often associated with craft projects. But she is a consummately skilled and careful worker in conventional media, so if she uses papier-mache, it will be for the creation of a complex, intelligent, and well-crafted artwork.
And it is the type of complexity that interests me most in terms of the expressed preferences of this Counterforces weblog, which at its best is devoted to the presentation of unfashionable alternatives to the contemporary art dialogue, but to ones that raise substantive intellectual issues. (Or, in the case of Glen Baxter, that make fun of polenta.)
Cofer's spinny choice of title illustrates her perspective: in a show devoted to the facts, foibles, and fantasies of individuals, it is the species alone that gets star billing. There is a reason why she and I were early-adopter readers of E. O. Wilson's approach in Consilience (whether or not we agreed with Wilson's conclusions) and why both of us like some of Tom Stoppard's plays (regardless of what we think of them as intellectual documents or as artworks). Cofer is a playfully big-picture sort of person, tempering aesthetic sensitivity with acerbic wit and refining abstract intellectual perceptions with a strong sense of irony and capacity for visual metaphor.
Her diorama portraits of the mostly rich and putatively powerful (I am the exception to both) are created according to visual metaphors that occur to Cofer, not ones that they themselves pick out. The results are complimentary on a deep inner level—she sees what's up with people and accentuates the positive without altogether eliminating the negative, and sometimes messes with mr. in-between.
So it takes a certain amount of nerve mingled with intrinsic trust to agree to sit for a Cofer diorama portrait, because you never know what kind of company you will end up keeping when the whole scene appears to your wondering gaze. All you know is that it will tell you something about yourself that you either did or did not know.
Whether or not they liked the details, I have never heard anyone say openly, "That's just not right!" As with the interpretations of Hermes, the truth that is told may not be the whole truth, but Cofer does not claim to be the Delphic Oracle either in her breadth of comprehension or her ambiguity. She claims only to be making art based on extensive research into what the subject has chosen to make available, plus whatever else that might suggest.
And as we know from biographies of all sorts, even carefully mapped trails can lead in all sorts of extraordinary and scarcely expected directions.
So when I finally read High Museum of Art curator Carol Thompson's catalogue essay about an exhibition in which I share wall or pedestal space with Cofer's husband Carl, ex-congressman Wyche Fowler, Sir Vidia Naipaul, New York Review of Books co-founder Robert Silver, and a redoubtable range of legendary art patrons whom I will not here name for fear of offending those left unnamed...when, as I say, I read the essay at long last, I expect to be informed and stimulated by a range of vision that is seldom encountered in this era of excessive specializations.
We can be grateful for the existence of Cofer's inexhaustible imagination and curiosity about the world we live in (as well as the one in which some of us don't).
And those of you who read Counterforces regularly and live within driving or flying distance of Athens, Georgia can go hear Ms Cofer deliver a gallery talk on Thursday evening, April 17, 2008 but you will have to visit the University of Georgia website to find out the details, for I can't be bothered to clutter up my posts with things that would require yet another Google search.
However, I cannot afford to buy it, and have not been offered it as a gift (which I would not accept as a matter of principle), and the Cofers have not attempted to bribe me with extravagant trips or offers of money so I would assume that ego is the only factor involved.
—which it always is. In all times and in all places.
And that brings me to the reason why I feel that "Learning to Love the Species" is a remarkable exhibition (at the UGA Broad Street Gallery as mentioned heretofore).
Cofer creates allegorical artworks that tend to fall between accepted categories for artmaking. Her papier-mache portraiture (can't be bothered to insert diacritical marks, sorry) uses a medium more often associated with craft projects. But she is a consummately skilled and careful worker in conventional media, so if she uses papier-mache, it will be for the creation of a complex, intelligent, and well-crafted artwork.
And it is the type of complexity that interests me most in terms of the expressed preferences of this Counterforces weblog, which at its best is devoted to the presentation of unfashionable alternatives to the contemporary art dialogue, but to ones that raise substantive intellectual issues. (Or, in the case of Glen Baxter, that make fun of polenta.)
Cofer's spinny choice of title illustrates her perspective: in a show devoted to the facts, foibles, and fantasies of individuals, it is the species alone that gets star billing. There is a reason why she and I were early-adopter readers of E. O. Wilson's approach in Consilience (whether or not we agreed with Wilson's conclusions) and why both of us like some of Tom Stoppard's plays (regardless of what we think of them as intellectual documents or as artworks). Cofer is a playfully big-picture sort of person, tempering aesthetic sensitivity with acerbic wit and refining abstract intellectual perceptions with a strong sense of irony and capacity for visual metaphor.
Her diorama portraits of the mostly rich and putatively powerful (I am the exception to both) are created according to visual metaphors that occur to Cofer, not ones that they themselves pick out. The results are complimentary on a deep inner level—she sees what's up with people and accentuates the positive without altogether eliminating the negative, and sometimes messes with mr. in-between.
So it takes a certain amount of nerve mingled with intrinsic trust to agree to sit for a Cofer diorama portrait, because you never know what kind of company you will end up keeping when the whole scene appears to your wondering gaze. All you know is that it will tell you something about yourself that you either did or did not know.
Whether or not they liked the details, I have never heard anyone say openly, "That's just not right!" As with the interpretations of Hermes, the truth that is told may not be the whole truth, but Cofer does not claim to be the Delphic Oracle either in her breadth of comprehension or her ambiguity. She claims only to be making art based on extensive research into what the subject has chosen to make available, plus whatever else that might suggest.
And as we know from biographies of all sorts, even carefully mapped trails can lead in all sorts of extraordinary and scarcely expected directions.
So when I finally read High Museum of Art curator Carol Thompson's catalogue essay about an exhibition in which I share wall or pedestal space with Cofer's husband Carl, ex-congressman Wyche Fowler, Sir Vidia Naipaul, New York Review of Books co-founder Robert Silver, and a redoubtable range of legendary art patrons whom I will not here name for fear of offending those left unnamed...when, as I say, I read the essay at long last, I expect to be informed and stimulated by a range of vision that is seldom encountered in this era of excessive specializations.
We can be grateful for the existence of Cofer's inexhaustible imagination and curiosity about the world we live in (as well as the one in which some of us don't).
And those of you who read Counterforces regularly and live within driving or flying distance of Athens, Georgia can go hear Ms Cofer deliver a gallery talk on Thursday evening, April 17, 2008 but you will have to visit the University of Georgia website to find out the details, for I can't be bothered to clutter up my posts with things that would require yet another Google search.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
actually, the show is already open in Tallinn if you're headed in that direction
The Continental Unconscious and Finno-Ugric ethno-futurism are fully explicated in the long essay to which the previous link directs you.
The accompanying photographs by Darius Ziura reveal, among other things, utility stores named Faith, Hope, and (though you have to wait a very long time as the article unfolds before you see it) Charity, or Love as the new scriptural translations have it.
coming soon to a gallery near you, if you happen to live in Estonia
The ultimate Counterforces exhibition, and I had nothing to do with it. Description from Eurozine and the longer original statement is here: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-03-17-kreuger-en.html
"The periphery of the periphery: Anders Kreuger details his research for an upcoming exhibition in Tallinn in the spring of 2008. He is focusing on contemporary art and culture of the "Finno-Ugrian world", peoples united by their language group across the Republics of Mordvinia, Udmurtia, Mari El, and Komi. When Kreuger suggested the topic to his colleagues in Estonia they were not immediately positive: Why spend time in remote places seen as the periphery of the periphery? By visiting those "unknown but not exotic" places, Kreuger hopes to "undo some of the repression and self-repression that has pushed these peoples underground, and also illuminate possible meanings of the Continental Unconscious.""
"The periphery of the periphery: Anders Kreuger details his research for an upcoming exhibition in Tallinn in the spring of 2008. He is focusing on contemporary art and culture of the "Finno-Ugrian world", peoples united by their language group across the Republics of Mordvinia, Udmurtia, Mari El, and Komi. When Kreuger suggested the topic to his colleagues in Estonia they were not immediately positive: Why spend time in remote places seen as the periphery of the periphery? By visiting those "unknown but not exotic" places, Kreuger hopes to "undo some of the repression and self-repression that has pushed these peoples underground, and also illuminate possible meanings of the Continental Unconscious.""
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
coming soon to a gallery near you, if you live in athens, georgia
Susan Seydel Cofer's "Learning to Love the Species" is the first-ever presentation of all of her remarkable diorama portraits of personalities from V. S. Naipaul to yours truly, with more significant and superbly crafted stops at more movers and shakers in Georgia than you can shake a stick at.
It opens on April 8 in the Broad Street Gallery of the Lamar Dodd School of Art, 257 W. Broad Street, Athens, GA, with a reception on April 12, 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. and a gallery talk April 17, 6 - 8 p.m.
If I had been wearing my signature raincoat instead of summer gear made up of my old writings from Art Papers, I think this portrait would resemble Peter Falk, but no one else thinks that.
The miniature artworks are by Frank Hunter, Maurice Clifford, E. K. Huckaby, and, I believe, Susan herself, but more likely there is a sculptor whom I am forgetting. My bad, as apparently they used to say. (Would somebody enlighten me as to where this season's "I has" comes from? I has art opening.)
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