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From Contemplating To Constructing Situations
[28]
by Răzvan Ion
The morality of the citizen resides in his
considering that the collective security is
more important than any survival whatsoever.
If the moral now is the one of pleasure,
of the happiness of individuals, then
survival lies under a question mark.
Should nothing more be left of the citizen’s
morality, should we be devoid of the
feeling that we ought to be able to fight in
order to keep your chances for pleasure
and happiness, then we are both shiny
and effete (Raymon Aron). A society of
spectators empty of feedback, invulnerable
to indiscretion and abuse, a pensive
society diminished its chances to build
and progress. The riot, the screaming
voice, with or without the immediate
response from authority is necessary in
the process of building up a democracy, a
powerful community under the practice
of solidarity. If the suitable soil for a pessimistic
philosophy within history belongs
to the thug, it follows that the glamorous
society can be the condemned one. What
would the world we are living in without
an academic, literary perversion enabling
us to watch the fights occurring at the theoretical
level between different disjoint,
disruptive concepts, of an irregular, nonacademic
translation respecting vaguely
etymological texts.
The debate concerning the disruptiveness
of concepts that art employs to legitimize
its position, be it self-directed, or
submissive – in Jacques Rancière’s interpretation
– that defines the political art,
on one side, as a policy of “autonomy”
(the artists’ struggle to be recognized as
practitioners of an autonomous discipline,
with the entitlement for a privileged position,
detached within the society) and on
the other side, a policy of “heteronomy”(
the battle of art itself, yet, to fusion with
the social reality, to consume the society
as a compliant material that can be
organized according to artistic conventions)
is a protracted process. Or as he
himself notes, “a critical art is (…) a precise
negotiation (…) this negotiation must
hold on to some of the tension pushing
the aesthetic experience towards the
reconfiguration of collective life and to
some of the tension pulling out the force
of aesthetic sensitivity from different
realms of the experience, as well as the
eternal undulation of the artist to be
sometimes inside the social, sometimes
outside it, according to the benefits/contexts,
it introduces the idea of a discontinuity
alongside the social which permits
the creation of ruptures.”
The plea for built-in social value of art is
complicated, unless one presumes it
from the start as being true. The implications
of art are very unfathomable and, up
to a certain extent, art can be safeguarded
in terms of other values, such as,
among others, its utility, its sovereignty,
its aesthetic and its message, however,
when art itself conflicts with some of
these values, some of the most shattering
questions emerge.
What do we need today? A basic state? A
state of equalities? A post-state? Where
does the role and methodology of art
intercede? Can it be a tool for struggle,
progress, debate?
Should modern art be the answer, then
the question is how can capitalism be
made more beautiful? Yet, modern art is
not just about beauty. It is also about
function. Which is the function of art in the
disastrous capitalism? Contemporary art
feeds with the crumbs of the massive
wealth redistribution and “on a large
scale from the poor to the wealthy, made
through an ongoing downward battle
between the classes” (David Harvey).
The production of traditional art can serve
as model for the nouveau riche, model
designed by the privatization, expropriation,
and speculations. Certainly, within
the art system there is exploitation, there
are also exploited workers (artists).
Political art through the institutions that it
creates can make a new model of social
order because it has already generated
an exploited and practised model (Boris
Groys). As Hannah Arendt noted, we
need not create a new class, but rather to
reject all classes. We should understand
the artistic space ca a political one
instead of representing political situations
from other areas. Art is not detached from
politics, its politics resides in its production,
its distribution, its perception.
Should we consider this for a fact, perhaps
we will surpass the flatness of the
representation policy and launch a new
kind of policy that is already there, right in
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