.
1.
Everything is settled. There is a specific way to do each new thing.
There is even an agreed upon way to break the rules.
2.
Maybe there will be no end, no flash, no blast,
no final show
This is your project and you must finish it
you tell yourself, you keep telling yourself
again and again
all the while knowing that it matters little
whether you finish it or not
(no one will notice, no one will care)
nonetheless you press on
this is my project, you say
this little square of irrelevance
it means something to me
damn them all
this is mine
.
May 16, 2008
May 14, 2008
I see now the problem...
.
I see now the problem is that I am a complete ideologue when it comes to theatre: always fighting for a certain, extremely specific, way of making and thinking about performance. I can be fair and reasonable and believe there is room for everyone but in my heart and blood I know that I am right. And when you are an ideologue you can never really be open and you can never, not for a second, rest. Towards my own ideology I feel only like Bartleby: I would prefer not too. But twenty years of fighting have turned me inside out. I am exhausted. No one particularly cares how or why performances are made. And when I was young, no one advised me to pick my fights more carefully. Is this what being an artist, a certain kind of artist (I suppose), in some sense, finally means? Then again, like Ranciere says, how to open a window and let in some air?
.
I see now the problem is that I am a complete ideologue when it comes to theatre: always fighting for a certain, extremely specific, way of making and thinking about performance. I can be fair and reasonable and believe there is room for everyone but in my heart and blood I know that I am right. And when you are an ideologue you can never really be open and you can never, not for a second, rest. Towards my own ideology I feel only like Bartleby: I would prefer not too. But twenty years of fighting have turned me inside out. I am exhausted. No one particularly cares how or why performances are made. And when I was young, no one advised me to pick my fights more carefully. Is this what being an artist, a certain kind of artist (I suppose), in some sense, finally means? Then again, like Ranciere says, how to open a window and let in some air?
.
April 3, 2008
Hospitality Three - Promotional Text
.
Raised on a steady diet of television, recorded music and the internet, people today sometimes feel more comfortable mesmerized by recordings, or interacting through the interface of a computer screen, than they do dealing directly with real human beings. Hospitality Three: Individualism Was A Mistake will not shy away from this discomfort (a discomfort present at any live performance), rather it will honestly address it in order to deepen our understanding of what it might be like to share space with a group of people one doesn’t necessarily know.
Using the temporary community of people gathered in a room together to watch a performance as a metaphor for the wider community-at-large, Hospitality Three will provide as series of evocative examples of people working together – effectively (and sometimes not so effectively) – giving special focus to the fact that our cultures over-emphasis on individualism often makes such ‘working together’ difficult.
.
Raised on a steady diet of television, recorded music and the internet, people today sometimes feel more comfortable mesmerized by recordings, or interacting through the interface of a computer screen, than they do dealing directly with real human beings. Hospitality Three: Individualism Was A Mistake will not shy away from this discomfort (a discomfort present at any live performance), rather it will honestly address it in order to deepen our understanding of what it might be like to share space with a group of people one doesn’t necessarily know.
Using the temporary community of people gathered in a room together to watch a performance as a metaphor for the wider community-at-large, Hospitality Three will provide as series of evocative examples of people working together – effectively (and sometimes not so effectively) – giving special focus to the fact that our cultures over-emphasis on individualism often makes such ‘working together’ difficult.
.
March 26, 2008
Laura Calderon de la Barca and the Anthology of Optimism
.
Dear Laura Calderon de la Barca,
I am posting this because I have now twice tried to email you and have yet to hear back.
If you are out there please contact us. We are very curious.
Hope you are not offended by anything I have written below.
Optimistically yours,
Jacob
.......
And here is the post:
On January 16, 2008 I sent the following email to Pieter de Buyser, my collaborator on the Anthology of Optimism:
.......
Dear Pieter,
Today, when I was going through my blog to send someone the link about the Anthology of Optimism project:
http://radicalcut.blogspot.com/2007/02/towards-critical-optimism-preliminary.html
I scrolled down to the bottom and read the following comment by Laura Calderon de la Barca:
------------------------------------------------
Hi, Jacob!
I enojoyed very much sharing your exploration of what opens up inside of what Critical Optimism may be. I googled up the term as part of a websearch I am carrying out for a research project called "Cross-cultural 'Larrikins' in a Neo-Liberal World: Ideology and Myth in postmodern Australia, Mexico and Brazil". I first heard it the day I submitted my PhD thesis, which I wrote in the form of psychotherapeutic session for my country, Mexico, and which contains many elements that match with your reflections and ideas, although applied in different ways. My supervisor, Prof. Bob Hodge from the Univertisy of Western Sydney, suggested I join his wife, Dr. Gabriela Coronado, himself and someone else to start a group of "Critical Optimism Studies". I was delighted with the idea, and when I joined the Larrikin project as a full-time research assistant, one of my duties was to look up material for furthering this inquiry. In what you wrote there are many points of convergence with our project: the clarity about the damaging effects of Neoliberalism, the need to find other alternatives that are neither naive nor disempowering, the need to bring in reflexivity to the equation, and how identities get in the way of this, to name a few.
I am curious about the stories you might have to share on this, and if we can establish a space of sharing that may synergically propel this approach further. My e-mail is l.calderon@uws.edu.au, and I would love to hear from you.
All the best,
Laura Calderon de la Barca
------------------------------------------------
For some reason I think that this is really fantastic. It's almost like something out of a Borges story. Pieter and I think that we've invented the term "critical optimism" and then suddenly there’s a "Critical Optimism Studies" group and what's more it's in Australia. It's like we made it up but of course we couldn't have made it up because actually it already existed. And of course the name Laura Calderon de la Barca does sound just a little bit like that of a fictional character. (I realize this reading is more than a little solipsistic, I think really I'm just being fanciful) And then I very much wonder where it will lead.
And yes, then there is another point: the "Critical Optimism Studies" group is a real thing. There are so many things in the world that would give us a greater sense of belonging if only we knew where to find them.
Optimistically yours,
Jacob
.
Dear Laura Calderon de la Barca,
I am posting this because I have now twice tried to email you and have yet to hear back.
If you are out there please contact us. We are very curious.
Hope you are not offended by anything I have written below.
Optimistically yours,
Jacob
.......
And here is the post:
On January 16, 2008 I sent the following email to Pieter de Buyser, my collaborator on the Anthology of Optimism:
.......
Dear Pieter,
Today, when I was going through my blog to send someone the link about the Anthology of Optimism project:
http://radicalcut.blogspot.com/2007/02/towards-critical-optimism-preliminary.html
I scrolled down to the bottom and read the following comment by Laura Calderon de la Barca:
------------------------------------------------
Hi, Jacob!
I enojoyed very much sharing your exploration of what opens up inside of what Critical Optimism may be. I googled up the term as part of a websearch I am carrying out for a research project called "Cross-cultural 'Larrikins' in a Neo-Liberal World: Ideology and Myth in postmodern Australia, Mexico and Brazil". I first heard it the day I submitted my PhD thesis, which I wrote in the form of psychotherapeutic session for my country, Mexico, and which contains many elements that match with your reflections and ideas, although applied in different ways. My supervisor, Prof. Bob Hodge from the Univertisy of Western Sydney, suggested I join his wife, Dr. Gabriela Coronado, himself and someone else to start a group of "Critical Optimism Studies". I was delighted with the idea, and when I joined the Larrikin project as a full-time research assistant, one of my duties was to look up material for furthering this inquiry. In what you wrote there are many points of convergence with our project: the clarity about the damaging effects of Neoliberalism, the need to find other alternatives that are neither naive nor disempowering, the need to bring in reflexivity to the equation, and how identities get in the way of this, to name a few.
I am curious about the stories you might have to share on this, and if we can establish a space of sharing that may synergically propel this approach further. My e-mail is l.calderon@uws.edu.au, and I would love to hear from you.
All the best,
Laura Calderon de la Barca
------------------------------------------------
For some reason I think that this is really fantastic. It's almost like something out of a Borges story. Pieter and I think that we've invented the term "critical optimism" and then suddenly there’s a "Critical Optimism Studies" group and what's more it's in Australia. It's like we made it up but of course we couldn't have made it up because actually it already existed. And of course the name Laura Calderon de la Barca does sound just a little bit like that of a fictional character. (I realize this reading is more than a little solipsistic, I think really I'm just being fanciful) And then I very much wonder where it will lead.
And yes, then there is another point: the "Critical Optimism Studies" group is a real thing. There are so many things in the world that would give us a greater sense of belonging if only we knew where to find them.
Optimistically yours,
Jacob
.
March 11, 2008
PME-ART New Mandate
.
Through performances, installation, public process and theoretical and practical research, interdisciplinary group PME-ART confronts its contemporary practice via local, national and international artistic collaborations. Combining creation, exploration, critical reflection, dissemination and casual yet significant interactions with various publics, the work is an ongoing process of questioning the world, of finding the courage to say things about the current predicament that are direct and complex, of interrogating the performance situation.
Performing as ourselves, we create actions, conditions and speech executed with a singular intimacy and familiarity. This intimacy reduces the separation between performer and spectator, opening up a space for thinking, tension, reflection and confusion. Within this space we present meticulously prepared material in a manner that is open and loose, sliding the situation towards the unexpected, towards a sense of connection with whatever the audience brings.
Full of paradoxes and contradictions, the work is often destabilizing. Such destabilization is not only about art, but also echoes the social and personal discomfort so often encountered in daily life. We believe acknowledging uncomfortable realities, instead of pretending they are not there, is of fundamental importance for the development of critical approaches that are generous and unpredictable.
We are deeply engaged with the ethical and political challenges that arise when working collaboratively, searching for a delicate balance between the essential freedom of the performers (to create the thinking, physicality and substance of the work) and the rigour necessary to structure and gradually refine the material over the course of the process.
Drawing considerably upon literature, music, dance, visual art, critical theory, philosophy and cinema, such influences are never entirely direct, always infiltrating our practice from personal, unexpected angles.
While the style of the work may seem fragmented, and is in many ways a reflection of the fragmented times in which we live, simultaneously the work generates a deeply human experience with a foundation in basic yet ephemeral realities: people working together, dealing with the audience, simply trying to figure things out.
.
Through performances, installation, public process and theoretical and practical research, interdisciplinary group PME-ART confronts its contemporary practice via local, national and international artistic collaborations. Combining creation, exploration, critical reflection, dissemination and casual yet significant interactions with various publics, the work is an ongoing process of questioning the world, of finding the courage to say things about the current predicament that are direct and complex, of interrogating the performance situation.
Performing as ourselves, we create actions, conditions and speech executed with a singular intimacy and familiarity. This intimacy reduces the separation between performer and spectator, opening up a space for thinking, tension, reflection and confusion. Within this space we present meticulously prepared material in a manner that is open and loose, sliding the situation towards the unexpected, towards a sense of connection with whatever the audience brings.
Full of paradoxes and contradictions, the work is often destabilizing. Such destabilization is not only about art, but also echoes the social and personal discomfort so often encountered in daily life. We believe acknowledging uncomfortable realities, instead of pretending they are not there, is of fundamental importance for the development of critical approaches that are generous and unpredictable.
We are deeply engaged with the ethical and political challenges that arise when working collaboratively, searching for a delicate balance between the essential freedom of the performers (to create the thinking, physicality and substance of the work) and the rigour necessary to structure and gradually refine the material over the course of the process.
Drawing considerably upon literature, music, dance, visual art, critical theory, philosophy and cinema, such influences are never entirely direct, always infiltrating our practice from personal, unexpected angles.
While the style of the work may seem fragmented, and is in many ways a reflection of the fragmented times in which we live, simultaneously the work generates a deeply human experience with a foundation in basic yet ephemeral realities: people working together, dealing with the audience, simply trying to figure things out.
.
March 4, 2008
This isn’t the work we had meant to do
.
This isn’t the work we had meant to do
but it’s work nonetheless. Muscle. Struggle.
you land in the place and just start digging
vaguely remembering other, previous plans
or you dig to forget. Or to turn the head
of past regrets, so they once again face some
present sense of semi-fulfillment
This isn’t the work we had meant to do
but it has its pleasures and its surprises
its drawbacks and its pains
other roads might have been just as hard
or harder
and what does any of that matter now
this is the road you’re on
you can of course turn back
back towards indecision
towards that lost in aimless thought
and constant undecided self-recrimination
or you can forge ahead
and between these two options
as you continue to forcefully dig
there is no real choice
this isn’t what we had meant to do
.
This isn’t the work we had meant to do
but it’s work nonetheless. Muscle. Struggle.
you land in the place and just start digging
vaguely remembering other, previous plans
or you dig to forget. Or to turn the head
of past regrets, so they once again face some
present sense of semi-fulfillment
This isn’t the work we had meant to do
but it has its pleasures and its surprises
its drawbacks and its pains
other roads might have been just as hard
or harder
and what does any of that matter now
this is the road you’re on
you can of course turn back
back towards indecision
towards that lost in aimless thought
and constant undecided self-recrimination
or you can forge ahead
and between these two options
as you continue to forcefully dig
there is no real choice
this isn’t what we had meant to do
.
March 2, 2008
As far as one’s thoughts about our present predicaments...
.
As far as one’s thoughts about our present predicaments or about the future, I have no difficulty understanding from whence the pessimism and cynicism springs. However, what’s critical for me is that regardless of one’s thoughts, one’s actions must be those of an optimist. Otherwise one is only further assuring that the status quo remains unchanged.
- John Gianvito
.
As far as one’s thoughts about our present predicaments or about the future, I have no difficulty understanding from whence the pessimism and cynicism springs. However, what’s critical for me is that regardless of one’s thoughts, one’s actions must be those of an optimist. Otherwise one is only further assuring that the status quo remains unchanged.
- John Gianvito
.
January 20, 2008
The idea that...
.
The idea that we know art is in many ways fundamentally reactionary and conservative but we still want to believe that art is radical and revolutionary and within the space of this paradox there is room for a lot to happen.
.
The idea that we know art is in many ways fundamentally reactionary and conservative but we still want to believe that art is radical and revolutionary and within the space of this paradox there is room for a lot to happen.
.
February 4, 2007
Towards A Critical Optimism: Preliminary Notes
.
Introduction: excerpt from an email dated June 22, 2006
I was drinking with Pieter de Buyser. It looks like I will also be doing a project here in Brussels with him. Don't think I ever told you about him but I met him in London about six years ago and he's been a fan of the work ever since. I've always thought of him as one of the happiest people I know. I am so fascinated by happy people. I always wonder: are they really happy or is their happiness just a cover for some even deeper pain. But in this it is likely I am only projecting.
Pieter was very attracted to this title "An Anthology of Optimism" that I've had kicking around for the past couple of years and he wants to find money to do something with it next year. Pieter is also one of the most optimistic people I have ever met so it seems somehow appropriate that this title, this project that is not really a project but so far only a title, has finally landed here in Brussels with him.
Towards this end, we have spent the past two days speaking about optimism and what it means. Pieter says we try to experience the world directly but this is impossible so we need optimism or pessimism as a gate through which we can view reality. [Note added later: Pieter doesn’t remember saying this and in fact completely disagrees with it. He says he does in fact want to try to experience reality directly and that it is actually possible.] Pieter then denied he was an optimist; he said an optimist believes he will win and a pessemist believes he will loose but he (Pieter) doesn't know whether he will win or loose, he simply goes forward and whatever happens will happen.
But I said I thought he was wrong, if you think you will win that doesn't neccessarily mean you are an optimist, it might only mean you are a winner. Winning and losing have nothing to do with optimism. Optimism is about making decisions about how one is going to act.
Richard (who is here with Sylvie) then said that if you don't take pleasure from life there is no reason to be an optimist, optimism has its foundation in an enjoyment of life, and when he said that I thought it really got to the heart of my problems with living. A dissatisfaction with pleasure, or how for me pleasure is always so deeply mixed with doubt.
Part One: Notes from our preliminary meetings dated January 12 – 26, 2007
Optimism is an attitude towards reality that affects ones actions.
We are talking about, searching for, an optimism that is also critical.
Is optimism also connected to desire?
A critical optimist has respect for the facts: both in knowing them and in the attempt to change things.
Optimism is predicated on the fact that things have to change.
Progress?
Can you be optimistic without being naïve?
You can’t have criticism without doubt.
Q: Is there such a thing as a sad optimist?
A: Yes. Optimism has nothing to do with mood.
Q: Do optimists have a natural advantage in competition? How do they feel about strategy?
A: A critical optimist doesn’t over-emphasize strategy but certainly doesn’t want to be stupid about things either.
What would it take to turn a pessimist into an optimist?
What angers me most about the current situation is that the first world takes its wealth directly off the backs of the third world and yet in general we pretend this is not the case. Or to put it another way: we still have slaves, we’ve just moved them overseas. But whereas before, when the slaves lived in our homes, there was at least a chance that one might treat them decently (if only because one wished to take care of one’s property and protect one’s financial investment), now, with the slaves safely out of sight and out of mind, we basically treat them like complete shit.
A pessimist says the glass is half empty. An optimist says the glass is half full. But a critical optimist says that of course the glass is simultaneously both half empty and half full and the most important thing is that we keep going and keep doing things.
Identity is the enemy of optimism.
An optimist is open to possibilities.
The kind of optimism we are talking about, searching for, arises from a need for optimism, from seeing that without some sort of optimism nothing is in fact possible.
Does an optimist want to take risks for the sake of taking risks?
The fact that air and water are still sometimes free is a deep pain in the hearts of capitalists everywhere.
Critical optimism is about resistance.
Perhaps instead of “critical optimism” we might try “dirty optimism.” Somehow more evocative.
We agree that the biggest problem facing the 21st century is capitalism, that capitalism is the source of most of the worlds problems. And the thing about capitalism is that it in fact contains a great deal of optimism. So maybe one way to fight optimism/capitalism is with some other paradigm of optimism.
How about “Anti-capitalist optimism.”
Critical optimism is an optimism that understands the extent to which we are all actually part of the problem.
Marcel Duchamp’s epitaph reads: « D’ailleurs c’est toujours les autres qui meurent. » (“By the way, it’s always the others who die.”) Which I suppose is in some ways strangely optimistic. Though, thinking about it further, it is probably more ironic than optimistic.
Today Pieter and I had kind of a funny idea. Since capitalism is also in many ways very optimistic, and we want to explore what kind of optimism might be able to work against capitalism, we were thinking about what we could do in the show that would actually feel like it pushed against capitalism. And we thought, very simply, that we could give the audience their money back. Then we thought maybe we could pool all the ticket money together and give it to the person in the audience who deserved it most. Maybe the entire audience could decide together who gets the money. Somehow this idea really feels like something to me, somehow crossing a line that you're not supposed to cross.
I think the three phrases I've been thinking of most in relation to the project are “Critical Optimism”, “Dirty Optimism” and “Anti-Capitalist Optimism.” And more and more I think I like the dirty one best.
Writing about the French Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville said that the most interesting and counter-intuitive aspect was that the revolution happened not when oppression was at it’s greatest, but when the aristocracy was starting to relax it’s strictures and freedom was in fact on the rise. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. The same thing happened in Russia leading up to the fall of the Berlin wall. Therefore, we must ask ourselves what might the signs be that capitalism is loosening it’s strictures on humanity. Such signs are exceedingly difficult to detect since capitalism thrives on constant change and it’s remarkable ability to absorb almost any innovation or shift. But what might it feel like if humanity were able to produce a series of innovations that capitalism could not absorb, a number of innovations that were essential but which it was impossible to profit from economically. What might such innovations actually be?
The ethical decisions we are capable of making are out of scale with the global breadth of the problem.
But optimism has little to do with your concrete situation and more to do with your attitude towards that situation.
Western depression has less to do with our comfort and guilt, and more to do with the way consumer culture robs us of the emotional requirements we most need.
If two police officers were to walk in here right now and arrest me and drag me off to jail, it would be very clear what we had to fight against. We have to get Jacob out of jail, artists should have to right to speak, etc. But what we have to fight against is so amorphous and ever-changing and undefined. And yet one of the reasons it’s so amorphous is because it’s so deeply intertwined with our own behavior and actions. So we have to fight ourselves but we don’t want to. And another way of saying we have to fight ourselves is that we have to change.
At the same time there are very concrete injustices that we can see very clearly. But the concrete injustices often don’t affect us directly.
Without the abstraction of money none of the problems we are talking about could exist.
Being optimistic enough to see the value of small changes.
It is important to differentiate between optimism and necessity.
Are there certain conditions that are particularly conducive for being an optimist. Specifically, a feeling that you are part of a community in which you feel a shared sense of values?
It is incredibly easy to confuse symptoms and causes.
In the long run, critical optimism will always lead you into connection with others. But critical optimism will also often place you in opposition.
Critical optimism leaves the vocabulary of friend and foe behind and prefers to speak of barricades, obstacles, problems and solutions.
A critical optimist accepts that barricades, obstacles and problems are also part of the community.
A box filled with glitter with a rope. And Jacob will say: for every pessimistic thought I have I will pull the rope and let the optimism, represented by glitter, rain down on my head.
First draft of the ‘Anthology of Optimism’ letter dated January 15, 2007
To be taken seriously today it often seems that one is supposed to be a pessimist and we contest this premise. (And not only because we want to be taken seriously.)
Most likely one of the reasons that such a generalized pessimism currently exists is because there are so many misunderstandings about optimism: that it is only naiveté or being in a good mood.
To correct such misunderstandings we propose the phrase “critical optimism” because it seems to us evident that no matter how bad things get we still require optimism in order to keep going.
Critical optimism is willing to look at the current situation with open eyes and rigorous analysis but is never willing to let such analysis fall into cynicism or be used as a pretext to give up trying.
Our anthology will collect a series of proposals as to what optimism might mean in the 21st century. We are requesting from you a proposal along these lines. This proposal can be anything: a photograph, a piece of music, an object, a short text, a drawing or painting, a film or video, or perhaps something we hadn’t even thought of yet.
[NOTE: Sent this short, rough text to my friend K.G. and she wrote back: who are you and what have you done with Jacob the dark, brooding, defeatist man that I know and love?!]
Third draft of the ‘Anthology of Optimism’ letter dated January 24, 2007
A request for your personal contribution to our Anthology of Optimism.
An Anthology of Optimism is a pre-emptive celebration of a critical optimism we tentatively hope will increase in the twenty-first century. If it exists already, such critical optimism has so far remained relatively marginal. With our anthology we hope to spur its further development and acceptance.
If we look around today, we might notice that pessimism is frequently the unspoken assumption: if you are a pessimist you seem consequent, if you are an optimist you seem naive. Of course the main reason for this generalized pessimism is because reality seems almost to demand it, because it speaks to the facts so directly. However, we believe a secondary reason is because there are so many misunderstandings about what optimism might mean: that it represents only naiveté or being in a good mood.
Critical optimism attempts to correct such misunderstandings because it seems evident to us that, no matter how bad things get, we still require some sort of optimism in order to keep going. The critical optimist doesn’t ask why we should keep going. For the time being, life remains an ongoing concern. The most immediate possibility is to develop the attitude with which we want to live and use this attitude to fuel our resistance.
Critical optimism is willing to look at the current situation with open eyes and rigorous analysis but is never willing to let this analysis fall into cynicism or be used as a pre-text to give up trying. It is an optimism that understands the degree to which we are all part of the problem, but nonetheless believes there is always something that can be done. No system is omnipotent or absolute and therefore there is always some room for improvement.
Critical optimism is never just hoping that you get what you want because, though the extent of the involvement of love in optimism cannot be measured, it is certain that one is never an optimist purely out of egoism. With our anthology we intend to explore the full spectrum of possibilities for optimism: from our intimate personal relationships all the way to global political realities.
The purpose of this letter is to request a proposal from you. We would very much appreciate it if your proposal reflected a consequent, considered and personal contribution to the question of what optimism might mean in the twenty-first century. This proposal can be absolutely anything: a photograph, a piece of music, an object, a short text, a drawing or painting, a film or video, or perhaps something we haven’t even thought of yet.
We are sending this request to people we think can give a valuable contribution to this question from a variety of fields and points of view. We will use these proposals in a performance entitled An Anthology of Optimism.
We kindly thank you for taking the time to read this letter and very much hope you will lend a small amount of your time and wisdom to our undertaking.
.
Introduction: excerpt from an email dated June 22, 2006
I was drinking with Pieter de Buyser. It looks like I will also be doing a project here in Brussels with him. Don't think I ever told you about him but I met him in London about six years ago and he's been a fan of the work ever since. I've always thought of him as one of the happiest people I know. I am so fascinated by happy people. I always wonder: are they really happy or is their happiness just a cover for some even deeper pain. But in this it is likely I am only projecting.
Pieter was very attracted to this title "An Anthology of Optimism" that I've had kicking around for the past couple of years and he wants to find money to do something with it next year. Pieter is also one of the most optimistic people I have ever met so it seems somehow appropriate that this title, this project that is not really a project but so far only a title, has finally landed here in Brussels with him.
Towards this end, we have spent the past two days speaking about optimism and what it means. Pieter says we try to experience the world directly but this is impossible so we need optimism or pessimism as a gate through which we can view reality. [Note added later: Pieter doesn’t remember saying this and in fact completely disagrees with it. He says he does in fact want to try to experience reality directly and that it is actually possible.] Pieter then denied he was an optimist; he said an optimist believes he will win and a pessemist believes he will loose but he (Pieter) doesn't know whether he will win or loose, he simply goes forward and whatever happens will happen.
But I said I thought he was wrong, if you think you will win that doesn't neccessarily mean you are an optimist, it might only mean you are a winner. Winning and losing have nothing to do with optimism. Optimism is about making decisions about how one is going to act.
Richard (who is here with Sylvie) then said that if you don't take pleasure from life there is no reason to be an optimist, optimism has its foundation in an enjoyment of life, and when he said that I thought it really got to the heart of my problems with living. A dissatisfaction with pleasure, or how for me pleasure is always so deeply mixed with doubt.
Part One: Notes from our preliminary meetings dated January 12 – 26, 2007
Optimism is an attitude towards reality that affects ones actions.
We are talking about, searching for, an optimism that is also critical.
Is optimism also connected to desire?
A critical optimist has respect for the facts: both in knowing them and in the attempt to change things.
Optimism is predicated on the fact that things have to change.
Progress?
Can you be optimistic without being naïve?
You can’t have criticism without doubt.
Q: Is there such a thing as a sad optimist?
A: Yes. Optimism has nothing to do with mood.
Q: Do optimists have a natural advantage in competition? How do they feel about strategy?
A: A critical optimist doesn’t over-emphasize strategy but certainly doesn’t want to be stupid about things either.
What would it take to turn a pessimist into an optimist?
What angers me most about the current situation is that the first world takes its wealth directly off the backs of the third world and yet in general we pretend this is not the case. Or to put it another way: we still have slaves, we’ve just moved them overseas. But whereas before, when the slaves lived in our homes, there was at least a chance that one might treat them decently (if only because one wished to take care of one’s property and protect one’s financial investment), now, with the slaves safely out of sight and out of mind, we basically treat them like complete shit.
A pessimist says the glass is half empty. An optimist says the glass is half full. But a critical optimist says that of course the glass is simultaneously both half empty and half full and the most important thing is that we keep going and keep doing things.
Identity is the enemy of optimism.
An optimist is open to possibilities.
The kind of optimism we are talking about, searching for, arises from a need for optimism, from seeing that without some sort of optimism nothing is in fact possible.
Does an optimist want to take risks for the sake of taking risks?
The fact that air and water are still sometimes free is a deep pain in the hearts of capitalists everywhere.
Critical optimism is about resistance.
Perhaps instead of “critical optimism” we might try “dirty optimism.” Somehow more evocative.
We agree that the biggest problem facing the 21st century is capitalism, that capitalism is the source of most of the worlds problems. And the thing about capitalism is that it in fact contains a great deal of optimism. So maybe one way to fight optimism/capitalism is with some other paradigm of optimism.
How about “Anti-capitalist optimism.”
Critical optimism is an optimism that understands the extent to which we are all actually part of the problem.
Marcel Duchamp’s epitaph reads: « D’ailleurs c’est toujours les autres qui meurent. » (“By the way, it’s always the others who die.”) Which I suppose is in some ways strangely optimistic. Though, thinking about it further, it is probably more ironic than optimistic.
Today Pieter and I had kind of a funny idea. Since capitalism is also in many ways very optimistic, and we want to explore what kind of optimism might be able to work against capitalism, we were thinking about what we could do in the show that would actually feel like it pushed against capitalism. And we thought, very simply, that we could give the audience their money back. Then we thought maybe we could pool all the ticket money together and give it to the person in the audience who deserved it most. Maybe the entire audience could decide together who gets the money. Somehow this idea really feels like something to me, somehow crossing a line that you're not supposed to cross.
I think the three phrases I've been thinking of most in relation to the project are “Critical Optimism”, “Dirty Optimism” and “Anti-Capitalist Optimism.” And more and more I think I like the dirty one best.
Writing about the French Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville said that the most interesting and counter-intuitive aspect was that the revolution happened not when oppression was at it’s greatest, but when the aristocracy was starting to relax it’s strictures and freedom was in fact on the rise. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. The same thing happened in Russia leading up to the fall of the Berlin wall. Therefore, we must ask ourselves what might the signs be that capitalism is loosening it’s strictures on humanity. Such signs are exceedingly difficult to detect since capitalism thrives on constant change and it’s remarkable ability to absorb almost any innovation or shift. But what might it feel like if humanity were able to produce a series of innovations that capitalism could not absorb, a number of innovations that were essential but which it was impossible to profit from economically. What might such innovations actually be?
The ethical decisions we are capable of making are out of scale with the global breadth of the problem.
But optimism has little to do with your concrete situation and more to do with your attitude towards that situation.
Western depression has less to do with our comfort and guilt, and more to do with the way consumer culture robs us of the emotional requirements we most need.
If two police officers were to walk in here right now and arrest me and drag me off to jail, it would be very clear what we had to fight against. We have to get Jacob out of jail, artists should have to right to speak, etc. But what we have to fight against is so amorphous and ever-changing and undefined. And yet one of the reasons it’s so amorphous is because it’s so deeply intertwined with our own behavior and actions. So we have to fight ourselves but we don’t want to. And another way of saying we have to fight ourselves is that we have to change.
At the same time there are very concrete injustices that we can see very clearly. But the concrete injustices often don’t affect us directly.
Without the abstraction of money none of the problems we are talking about could exist.
Being optimistic enough to see the value of small changes.
It is important to differentiate between optimism and necessity.
Are there certain conditions that are particularly conducive for being an optimist. Specifically, a feeling that you are part of a community in which you feel a shared sense of values?
It is incredibly easy to confuse symptoms and causes.
In the long run, critical optimism will always lead you into connection with others. But critical optimism will also often place you in opposition.
Critical optimism leaves the vocabulary of friend and foe behind and prefers to speak of barricades, obstacles, problems and solutions.
A critical optimist accepts that barricades, obstacles and problems are also part of the community.
A box filled with glitter with a rope. And Jacob will say: for every pessimistic thought I have I will pull the rope and let the optimism, represented by glitter, rain down on my head.
First draft of the ‘Anthology of Optimism’ letter dated January 15, 2007
To be taken seriously today it often seems that one is supposed to be a pessimist and we contest this premise. (And not only because we want to be taken seriously.)
Most likely one of the reasons that such a generalized pessimism currently exists is because there are so many misunderstandings about optimism: that it is only naiveté or being in a good mood.
To correct such misunderstandings we propose the phrase “critical optimism” because it seems to us evident that no matter how bad things get we still require optimism in order to keep going.
Critical optimism is willing to look at the current situation with open eyes and rigorous analysis but is never willing to let such analysis fall into cynicism or be used as a pretext to give up trying.
Our anthology will collect a series of proposals as to what optimism might mean in the 21st century. We are requesting from you a proposal along these lines. This proposal can be anything: a photograph, a piece of music, an object, a short text, a drawing or painting, a film or video, or perhaps something we hadn’t even thought of yet.
[NOTE: Sent this short, rough text to my friend K.G. and she wrote back: who are you and what have you done with Jacob the dark, brooding, defeatist man that I know and love?!]
Third draft of the ‘Anthology of Optimism’ letter dated January 24, 2007
A request for your personal contribution to our Anthology of Optimism.
An Anthology of Optimism is a pre-emptive celebration of a critical optimism we tentatively hope will increase in the twenty-first century. If it exists already, such critical optimism has so far remained relatively marginal. With our anthology we hope to spur its further development and acceptance.
If we look around today, we might notice that pessimism is frequently the unspoken assumption: if you are a pessimist you seem consequent, if you are an optimist you seem naive. Of course the main reason for this generalized pessimism is because reality seems almost to demand it, because it speaks to the facts so directly. However, we believe a secondary reason is because there are so many misunderstandings about what optimism might mean: that it represents only naiveté or being in a good mood.
Critical optimism attempts to correct such misunderstandings because it seems evident to us that, no matter how bad things get, we still require some sort of optimism in order to keep going. The critical optimist doesn’t ask why we should keep going. For the time being, life remains an ongoing concern. The most immediate possibility is to develop the attitude with which we want to live and use this attitude to fuel our resistance.
Critical optimism is willing to look at the current situation with open eyes and rigorous analysis but is never willing to let this analysis fall into cynicism or be used as a pre-text to give up trying. It is an optimism that understands the degree to which we are all part of the problem, but nonetheless believes there is always something that can be done. No system is omnipotent or absolute and therefore there is always some room for improvement.
Critical optimism is never just hoping that you get what you want because, though the extent of the involvement of love in optimism cannot be measured, it is certain that one is never an optimist purely out of egoism. With our anthology we intend to explore the full spectrum of possibilities for optimism: from our intimate personal relationships all the way to global political realities.
The purpose of this letter is to request a proposal from you. We would very much appreciate it if your proposal reflected a consequent, considered and personal contribution to the question of what optimism might mean in the twenty-first century. This proposal can be absolutely anything: a photograph, a piece of music, an object, a short text, a drawing or painting, a film or video, or perhaps something we haven’t even thought of yet.
We are sending this request to people we think can give a valuable contribution to this question from a variety of fields and points of view. We will use these proposals in a performance entitled An Anthology of Optimism.
We kindly thank you for taking the time to read this letter and very much hope you will lend a small amount of your time and wisdom to our undertaking.
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August 30, 2006
One Year and a Day
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I have now been doing this blog for one year and a day. In the beginning I posted quite contentiously every Monday. However, more recently I have posted only occasionally and quite often not at all. What started as a fun idea has slowly graduated into a confusing chore. More precisely, I have become quite self-conscious about the relative merits of any given post. On several occasions it has been brought to my attention that the general tone of my postings is consderably bleak. Of course, I already knew my writing was bleak but there is something very specific about the process of a blog – the assumption of a diaristic/autobiographical tone, the near-instantaneous distribution into the void, the readership of friends and acquaintances who perhaps read into these musings aspects simply never (or only barely) intended – that makes me aware of this bleakness in a different light. There is a rather famous art work by John Baldessari where he wrote “I will make no more boring art” on a chalk board over and over again, like a student kept late after class, and I suspect I should undergo a similar exercise with the phrase “I will make no more depressing art.” It is this fear of posting something too bleak and dispiriting that most often keeps me from posting: a strangely specific form of self-censorship. (If E.M. Cioran had done the same he might have written nothing.)
In the current issue of Artforum, in an article about the queer collective LTTR written by Julia Bryan-Wilson, the following passage caught my attention: “Lauren Berlant, a professor at the University of Chicago, has recently proposed that negativity and depression could be politically necessary responses to the disenfranchised character of our contemporary age. Yet during an era of real despair, a time marked by hatred of all types of difference, we also need these localized moments of pleasure and unsecured possibility, moments motored not only by passion but also a willingness to fail.” It is the first part of the quote that I originally focused on, that “negativity and depression could be politically necessary responses to the disenfranchised character of our contemporary age.” And yes, as the post-Sept 11th debacle – the ever-sharpening acuity of the proto-fascist, globalized now – continues to increase, my ability to look on the bright side of things (never my strongest suit to begin with) continues to apathetically drain away into not even the image of embers. Yet as I copied this quotation into my blue notebook the second part also seemed strangely relevant, that: “we need […] moments of pleasure and unsecured possibility, moments motored not only by passion but also a willingness to fail.” Passion and a willingness to fail, the connection between them at first seemingly slight but with further consideration it grows stronger. To enter into an endeavor in which success seems likely or guaranteed requires no passion. Only under threat of failure, only under the strictures of such risk, is ones passion required to push through the limitations and break through the fear.
[P.S. For the next year, as a small challenge to myself, I will attempt to post one passionate, engaged, non-depressing text on the first Monday of every month. This proposed year of anti-depressing texts will begin on Monday October 2nd.]
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I have now been doing this blog for one year and a day. In the beginning I posted quite contentiously every Monday. However, more recently I have posted only occasionally and quite often not at all. What started as a fun idea has slowly graduated into a confusing chore. More precisely, I have become quite self-conscious about the relative merits of any given post. On several occasions it has been brought to my attention that the general tone of my postings is consderably bleak. Of course, I already knew my writing was bleak but there is something very specific about the process of a blog – the assumption of a diaristic/autobiographical tone, the near-instantaneous distribution into the void, the readership of friends and acquaintances who perhaps read into these musings aspects simply never (or only barely) intended – that makes me aware of this bleakness in a different light. There is a rather famous art work by John Baldessari where he wrote “I will make no more boring art” on a chalk board over and over again, like a student kept late after class, and I suspect I should undergo a similar exercise with the phrase “I will make no more depressing art.” It is this fear of posting something too bleak and dispiriting that most often keeps me from posting: a strangely specific form of self-censorship. (If E.M. Cioran had done the same he might have written nothing.)
In the current issue of Artforum, in an article about the queer collective LTTR written by Julia Bryan-Wilson, the following passage caught my attention: “Lauren Berlant, a professor at the University of Chicago, has recently proposed that negativity and depression could be politically necessary responses to the disenfranchised character of our contemporary age. Yet during an era of real despair, a time marked by hatred of all types of difference, we also need these localized moments of pleasure and unsecured possibility, moments motored not only by passion but also a willingness to fail.” It is the first part of the quote that I originally focused on, that “negativity and depression could be politically necessary responses to the disenfranchised character of our contemporary age.” And yes, as the post-Sept 11th debacle – the ever-sharpening acuity of the proto-fascist, globalized now – continues to increase, my ability to look on the bright side of things (never my strongest suit to begin with) continues to apathetically drain away into not even the image of embers. Yet as I copied this quotation into my blue notebook the second part also seemed strangely relevant, that: “we need […] moments of pleasure and unsecured possibility, moments motored not only by passion but also a willingness to fail.” Passion and a willingness to fail, the connection between them at first seemingly slight but with further consideration it grows stronger. To enter into an endeavor in which success seems likely or guaranteed requires no passion. Only under threat of failure, only under the strictures of such risk, is ones passion required to push through the limitations and break through the fear.
[P.S. For the next year, as a small challenge to myself, I will attempt to post one passionate, engaged, non-depressing text on the first Monday of every month. This proposed year of anti-depressing texts will begin on Monday October 2nd.]
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August 14, 2006
Appetite and fear are inextricably connected...
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Appetite and fear are inextricably connected; and all creatures are endangered by the fundamental project of meeting their needs. But the human creature meets his needs, in both senses; unlike every other animal. He must meet his needs in order to survive, and over time, he will have to become acquainted, too, with what he will learn to call his needs. And what he will meet, unlike any other animal, is the exorbitance, the hubris of his appetites. Indeed the stories he will be told about his appetite – explicitly in words, and implicitly in the way his appetite is responded to by other people – is that it is, at least potentially, way in excess of any object’s capacity to satisfy. He will be told, in short, that he is by nature greedy. He will discover, whether or not this is quite his experience, that he apparently always wants more than he can have; that his appetite, the lifeline that is his nature, that is at once so intimate and so obscure to him, can in the end drive him mad. He may be sane, but his appetite is not. This is what it is to be a human being; to be, at least at the outset, too demanding.
Satisfactions are of course possible but disappointment and disillusionment are unavoidable. At best one can develop a bearable sense of one’s limitations; at worst one is driven mad. Given one’s appetite – given the ways we have inherited of describing it – one becomes realistic, or one lives in the no man’s land of the tantrum and the grudge. To talk about appetite, in other words, is to talk about whatever it is that we have to complain about.
– Adam Phillips, Going Sane, p 101-102
All the new thinking, like all the old thinking, agrees that there is something catastrophic about being a person. The catastrophe is located in various places; in our being born at all, in our being condemned to death; in our vulnerability as organisms, or in our cruel injustices as political animals; in the scarcity of our natural resources, or in our greedy depredation of them; in our Fall, or in our hubris. But all these catastrophes, one way or another, are linked to our appetites, as creatures who want, and who are driven by, what is at once necessary and missing from our lives. Our wants may be ‘constructed’ – given form by the language available in the culture – but that we want is not in doubt. It is whether our wanting has catastrophe built into it - whether our wanting is such that ruinous frustration or ruinous aggression is inevitable; or is indeed a necessity to keep wanting on the go – or whether our wanting is made unbearable only by the ways in which it is responded to, that is now in question. The language of sanity and madness provides a vocabulary for asking and answering questions about appetite.
– Adam Phillips, Going Sane, p 120-121
The sane adult is protective – and not only of children, but of himself and others – in a way that avoids covertly undermining the strengths of those who are apparently in need of protection (‘The friends of the born nurse / Are always getting worse,’ as W.H. Auden wrote). The sane adult assumes that it is possible for people to get pleasure from who they happen to be, and that part of this pleasure is bound up with versions of self-reliance that are not merely a more or less bitter denial of a need for other people. The two most dispiriting forms of modern relationship are the protection racket and the sadomasochistic contract in which, respectively, one person’s strength depends on the other person’s weakness, or one person’s pleasure depends upon the other person’s suffering. The sane person’s project is to find more appealing ways of being weak and strong; or to find alternative pleasures to the pleasures of power and of helplessness. The way most people are prone to see what they call human nature now makes even the thought of alternative forms of pleasure and excitement sound hopelessly naïve. It would be part of the sane person’s sanity to want new forms of pleasure in which neither one’s kindness nor one’s excitement are overly compromised (one emblem of this might be those gay men who experiment in coming without getting an erection). The sane person knows that being able to only be a nice person is the death of sexual excitement; and that being able to only be nasty is too isolating.
– Adam Phillips, Going Sane, p 234-235
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Appetite and fear are inextricably connected; and all creatures are endangered by the fundamental project of meeting their needs. But the human creature meets his needs, in both senses; unlike every other animal. He must meet his needs in order to survive, and over time, he will have to become acquainted, too, with what he will learn to call his needs. And what he will meet, unlike any other animal, is the exorbitance, the hubris of his appetites. Indeed the stories he will be told about his appetite – explicitly in words, and implicitly in the way his appetite is responded to by other people – is that it is, at least potentially, way in excess of any object’s capacity to satisfy. He will be told, in short, that he is by nature greedy. He will discover, whether or not this is quite his experience, that he apparently always wants more than he can have; that his appetite, the lifeline that is his nature, that is at once so intimate and so obscure to him, can in the end drive him mad. He may be sane, but his appetite is not. This is what it is to be a human being; to be, at least at the outset, too demanding.
Satisfactions are of course possible but disappointment and disillusionment are unavoidable. At best one can develop a bearable sense of one’s limitations; at worst one is driven mad. Given one’s appetite – given the ways we have inherited of describing it – one becomes realistic, or one lives in the no man’s land of the tantrum and the grudge. To talk about appetite, in other words, is to talk about whatever it is that we have to complain about.
– Adam Phillips, Going Sane, p 101-102
All the new thinking, like all the old thinking, agrees that there is something catastrophic about being a person. The catastrophe is located in various places; in our being born at all, in our being condemned to death; in our vulnerability as organisms, or in our cruel injustices as political animals; in the scarcity of our natural resources, or in our greedy depredation of them; in our Fall, or in our hubris. But all these catastrophes, one way or another, are linked to our appetites, as creatures who want, and who are driven by, what is at once necessary and missing from our lives. Our wants may be ‘constructed’ – given form by the language available in the culture – but that we want is not in doubt. It is whether our wanting has catastrophe built into it - whether our wanting is such that ruinous frustration or ruinous aggression is inevitable; or is indeed a necessity to keep wanting on the go – or whether our wanting is made unbearable only by the ways in which it is responded to, that is now in question. The language of sanity and madness provides a vocabulary for asking and answering questions about appetite.
– Adam Phillips, Going Sane, p 120-121
The sane adult is protective – and not only of children, but of himself and others – in a way that avoids covertly undermining the strengths of those who are apparently in need of protection (‘The friends of the born nurse / Are always getting worse,’ as W.H. Auden wrote). The sane adult assumes that it is possible for people to get pleasure from who they happen to be, and that part of this pleasure is bound up with versions of self-reliance that are not merely a more or less bitter denial of a need for other people. The two most dispiriting forms of modern relationship are the protection racket and the sadomasochistic contract in which, respectively, one person’s strength depends on the other person’s weakness, or one person’s pleasure depends upon the other person’s suffering. The sane person’s project is to find more appealing ways of being weak and strong; or to find alternative pleasures to the pleasures of power and of helplessness. The way most people are prone to see what they call human nature now makes even the thought of alternative forms of pleasure and excitement sound hopelessly naïve. It would be part of the sane person’s sanity to want new forms of pleasure in which neither one’s kindness nor one’s excitement are overly compromised (one emblem of this might be those gay men who experiment in coming without getting an erection). The sane person knows that being able to only be a nice person is the death of sexual excitement; and that being able to only be nasty is too isolating.
– Adam Phillips, Going Sane, p 234-235
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August 2, 2006
From such frustrations...
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From such frustrations no clear thought will come. Step back, a few steps or a few miles, start slowly, gradually discover the slight, frail moments in which it is possible to pretend it is once again possible to glimpse a few precise aspects as if for the first time. Over time resentments build, one can no longer tell the thing from its distortions. And what's more, the thing slowly becomes the distortions, envelops and integrates them: one big, tangled up, fused together mess. Do not, at first, attempt to untangle. Step back, wait, perhaps over time the taste of a pattern might emerge. And patterns, even imagined ones, so often lend clarity. Step back.
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From such frustrations no clear thought will come. Step back, a few steps or a few miles, start slowly, gradually discover the slight, frail moments in which it is possible to pretend it is once again possible to glimpse a few precise aspects as if for the first time. Over time resentments build, one can no longer tell the thing from its distortions. And what's more, the thing slowly becomes the distortions, envelops and integrates them: one big, tangled up, fused together mess. Do not, at first, attempt to untangle. Step back, wait, perhaps over time the taste of a pattern might emerge. And patterns, even imagined ones, so often lend clarity. Step back.
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July 25, 2006
Note From The Recent Past
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[Lisbon, July 8 2006]
"Those who have never experienced the pleasure of betrayal do not know what true pleasure is." - Jean Genet
In the most beautiful city in the world I experienced the strangest emptiness. It was normal and familliar, but so deeply and consistantly unnerving I was almost on the verge of tears. I felt like a smashed bottle someone was trying to tape back together again. And I also felt like the tape.
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[Lisbon, July 8 2006]
"Those who have never experienced the pleasure of betrayal do not know what true pleasure is." - Jean Genet
In the most beautiful city in the world I experienced the strangest emptiness. It was normal and familliar, but so deeply and consistantly unnerving I was almost on the verge of tears. I felt like a smashed bottle someone was trying to tape back together again. And I also felt like the tape.
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June 13, 2006
We never tried to force it.
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We never tried to force it.
We understood that time was the remedy for our dilemmas, time and thought, not ingenuity or revelation.
We didn’t know what we wanted. But we knew we must remain criminal.
Our cynicism was always mixed with an almost equal dose of naiveté.
[Paris, 2006]
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We never tried to force it.
We understood that time was the remedy for our dilemmas, time and thought, not ingenuity or revelation.
We didn’t know what we wanted. But we knew we must remain criminal.
Our cynicism was always mixed with an almost equal dose of naiveté.
[Paris, 2006]
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June 3, 2006
My philosophy is fundamentally sad, but I’m not a sad man...
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My philosophy is fundamentally sad, but I’m not a sad man, and I don’t believe I sadden anyone else. In other words, the fact that I don’t put my philosophy into practice saves me from its evil spell, or, rather, my faith in the human race is stronger then my intellectual analysis of it; there lies the fountain of youth in which my heart is continually bathing.
– Juan de Mairena as written by Antonio Machado
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My philosophy is fundamentally sad, but I’m not a sad man, and I don’t believe I sadden anyone else. In other words, the fact that I don’t put my philosophy into practice saves me from its evil spell, or, rather, my faith in the human race is stronger then my intellectual analysis of it; there lies the fountain of youth in which my heart is continually bathing.
– Juan de Mairena as written by Antonio Machado
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May 5, 2006
And what did it mean...
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And what did it mean that we felt no true sense of direction, that we were aimless, paralyzed, confused and at the end of the day could not really say why. That we were not criminals of action but only criminals of thought. That we hungered for something new but when we saw something new felt sure it was only the same old thing we’d seen so many times before. That in the morning we waited for evening and in the evening we waited for night. That travel sounded good but staying home sounded even better. That books were written, and re-written, and re-written again, but it was so very difficult to find anyone to actually read them. That the war most certainly continued though it was often no longer possible to read about it in the papers. What did it mean that a crime could be committed and no one could care less. Or that we would pretend to care but essentially fool no one. Profit is difficult to maintain. Sensationalism still works whether or not one can easily see through it. A vague sense of menace hangs stilted in the air. The world we wanted was a world only able to change so much.
[Berlin, 2006]
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And what did it mean that we felt no true sense of direction, that we were aimless, paralyzed, confused and at the end of the day could not really say why. That we were not criminals of action but only criminals of thought. That we hungered for something new but when we saw something new felt sure it was only the same old thing we’d seen so many times before. That in the morning we waited for evening and in the evening we waited for night. That travel sounded good but staying home sounded even better. That books were written, and re-written, and re-written again, but it was so very difficult to find anyone to actually read them. That the war most certainly continued though it was often no longer possible to read about it in the papers. What did it mean that a crime could be committed and no one could care less. Or that we would pretend to care but essentially fool no one. Profit is difficult to maintain. Sensationalism still works whether or not one can easily see through it. A vague sense of menace hangs stilted in the air. The world we wanted was a world only able to change so much.
[Berlin, 2006]
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April 9, 2006
As is generally known, the figure of the art critic...
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As is generally known, the figure of the art critic emerges at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, alongside the gradual rise of a broad, democratic public. At that time, he was certainly not regarded as a representative of the art world but strictly as an outside observer whose function was to judge and criticize works of art in the name of the public exactly as would any other well-educated observer with the time and literary facility: good taste was seen as the expression of an aesthetic “common sense.” The art critic’s judgement should be incorruptible, i.e. bear no obligation to the artist. For a critic to give up his distance meant being corrupted by the art world and neglecting his professional responsibilities: this demand for disinterested art criticism in the name of the public sphere is the assertion of Kant’s third critique, the first aesthetic treatise of modernity.
The judicial ideal, however, was betrayed by the art criticism of the historical avant-garde. The art of the avant-garde consciously withdrew itself from the judgement of the public. It did not address the public as it was but instead spoke to a new humanity as it should – or at least could – be. The art of the avant-garde presupposed a different, new humanity for its reception – one that would be able to grasp the hidden meaning of pure colour and form (Kandinsky), to subject its imagination and even its daily life to the strict laws of geometry (Malevich, Mondrian, the Constructivists, Bauhaus), to recognize a urinal as a work of art (Duchamp). The avant-garde thus introduced a rupture in society not reducible to any previously existing social differences.
The new, artificial difference is the true artwork of the avant-garde. Now it is not the observer who judges the artwork, but the artwork that judges – and often condemns – it’s public. This strategy has often been called elitist, but it suggests an elite equally open to anyone in so far as it excludes everyone to the same degree. To be chosen doesn’t automatically mean dominance, even mastery. Every individual is free to place himself, against the rest of the public, on the side of the artwork – to number himself among those constituting the new humanity. Several art critics of the historical avant-garde did just that. In place of the critic in the name of society arose social critique in the name of art: the artwork doesn’t form the object of judgement but is instead taken as the point of departure for a critique aimed at society and the world.
The art critic of today inherited the older public office along with the avant-garde betrayal of this office. The paradoxical task of judging art in the name of the public while criticizing society in the name of art opens a deep rift within the discourse of contemporary criticism. And one can read today’s discourse as an attempt to bridge, or at least conceal, this divide. For example, there is the critic’s demand that art thematize existing social differences and position itself against the illusion of cultural homogeneity. That certainly sounds very avant-garde, but what one forgets is that the avant-garde didn’t thematize already-existing differences but introduced previously nonexistent ones. The public was equally bewildered in the face of Malevich’s Suprematism or that of Duchamp’s Dadaism, and it is this generalized nonunderstanding – bewilderment regardless of class, race, or gender – that is actually the democratic moment of the various avant-garde projects.
– Boris Groys
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As is generally known, the figure of the art critic emerges at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, alongside the gradual rise of a broad, democratic public. At that time, he was certainly not regarded as a representative of the art world but strictly as an outside observer whose function was to judge and criticize works of art in the name of the public exactly as would any other well-educated observer with the time and literary facility: good taste was seen as the expression of an aesthetic “common sense.” The art critic’s judgement should be incorruptible, i.e. bear no obligation to the artist. For a critic to give up his distance meant being corrupted by the art world and neglecting his professional responsibilities: this demand for disinterested art criticism in the name of the public sphere is the assertion of Kant’s third critique, the first aesthetic treatise of modernity.
The judicial ideal, however, was betrayed by the art criticism of the historical avant-garde. The art of the avant-garde consciously withdrew itself from the judgement of the public. It did not address the public as it was but instead spoke to a new humanity as it should – or at least could – be. The art of the avant-garde presupposed a different, new humanity for its reception – one that would be able to grasp the hidden meaning of pure colour and form (Kandinsky), to subject its imagination and even its daily life to the strict laws of geometry (Malevich, Mondrian, the Constructivists, Bauhaus), to recognize a urinal as a work of art (Duchamp). The avant-garde thus introduced a rupture in society not reducible to any previously existing social differences.
The new, artificial difference is the true artwork of the avant-garde. Now it is not the observer who judges the artwork, but the artwork that judges – and often condemns – it’s public. This strategy has often been called elitist, but it suggests an elite equally open to anyone in so far as it excludes everyone to the same degree. To be chosen doesn’t automatically mean dominance, even mastery. Every individual is free to place himself, against the rest of the public, on the side of the artwork – to number himself among those constituting the new humanity. Several art critics of the historical avant-garde did just that. In place of the critic in the name of society arose social critique in the name of art: the artwork doesn’t form the object of judgement but is instead taken as the point of departure for a critique aimed at society and the world.
The art critic of today inherited the older public office along with the avant-garde betrayal of this office. The paradoxical task of judging art in the name of the public while criticizing society in the name of art opens a deep rift within the discourse of contemporary criticism. And one can read today’s discourse as an attempt to bridge, or at least conceal, this divide. For example, there is the critic’s demand that art thematize existing social differences and position itself against the illusion of cultural homogeneity. That certainly sounds very avant-garde, but what one forgets is that the avant-garde didn’t thematize already-existing differences but introduced previously nonexistent ones. The public was equally bewildered in the face of Malevich’s Suprematism or that of Duchamp’s Dadaism, and it is this generalized nonunderstanding – bewilderment regardless of class, race, or gender – that is actually the democratic moment of the various avant-garde projects.
– Boris Groys
.
April 2, 2006
I am currently reading Secret Publicity by Netherlands art critic Sven Lutticken...
.
I am currently reading Secret Publicity by Netherlands art critic Sven Lutticken. There are many relevant quotes but here are one or two from his essay on performance:
"The conclusion from this can only be that performance art has never been a real threat to the spectacle: its integration into spectacle as media performance comes as no surprise. Yet if performance artists were to radicalize the anti-production tradition, if they were to really roll up their sleeves and take the fight against reproduction seriously - couldn't this result in a form of performance that was incompatible with capitalism? This line of reasoning rests on the assumption that 'the media' are virtually identical with advanced capitalism. Yet following Guy Debord, one can argue that the spectacular character of the capitalist economy is not primarily located in media like film, photography and video, but in commodity fetishism: commodities seem to maintain whimsical 'social' relations due to their exchange value. In the process the commodities become images, hieroglyphic representations of the relations in human society. This primary spectacle of commodities-become-images is thus the prevailing social condition, which is reflected in 'the media' in the form of a secondary spectacle of images-become-commodities, which reinforces the primary spectacle. To get rid of the society of the spectacle, it is hence not enough to get rid of 'the media'; the whole of society must be revolutionized."
[...]
"In recent years it has become more and more obvious that the spectacle has taken a 'performative turn'. Typical of the neo-liberal performance culture is the TV programme in which a mediagenic entrepreneur like Donald Trump selects a new appointee from candidates who must perform themselves in a way that will win them a highly-paid job. The spectacle of the Situationists, which involved a distinction between a dreamlike theatre of commodities and the passive consumer, has been succeeded by a participatory, performative spectacle. Thus we have entered a phase that the Situationists themselves failed to forsee: in spite of the fact that commodities need not be objects, immaterial commodities such as services were somewhat neglected by Marxist theory, including that of SI, and the transformation of anonymous services into personalized performances is a development that was not seen or forseen by the Situationists.
The primary immaterial commodity in Marxist theory was labour power: a statistical average of the amount of labour needed to produce a certain industrial commodity, which is responsible for the exchange value of goods (contrary to the fetishist illusion that they obtain value through mutual relations). In principle, this theory of labour power can also be applied to many services that do not depend on a performer. Services too are commoodities in which labour has been invested, and in most cases the worker will be paid a wage that represents an abstraction - the amount of labour normally needed to do the job. Today, however, it seems increasingly difficult to base the value of goods on this statistical average - plus the surplus value, which the employer pockets. In the contemporary economy, value has spun completely out of control. A trendy cup of coffee may cost a small fortune because it represents an 'experience', a top manager can take home an absurdly inflated bonus because he is a unique performer: he sells a habitus with capabilities and personal qualities that are supposedly unique. The value of such performers and their performances can no longer be measured in abstract labour power. If object-commodities become images in classical spectacle, in the performative spectacle the service too turns into an image. Of course, this does not mean that the other, anonymous service jobs no longer exist, but increasingly the performative colonizes labour: even in jobs where wages are standardized (and low), the worker is expected to put his or her unique charms and qualities into the job if he or she wants to keep it. As anonymous services become performances, even abstract labour power has to be enacted in a personalized way by individual performers. This turns not only performance into a commodity, but ultimately the performer as well."
[...]
"The loose way in which contemporary critics and theorists use the notion of the performative owes much of its charm to the magical, animistic suggestion it imparts. In a culture of the performative imperative, the notion of performativity (or at least its sound-bite version) suggests a world that is infinitely malleable. If everything is performative, everything is open to influence and transformation. Performative language becomes the thinking person's magic: if contemporary society often seems to correspond to the grim picture Adorno painted of modernity as irrational and constraining as the most primitive stages of civilization, the performative alleviates this by reenacting the over-estimation of the mind's power which authors such as Tylor, Frazer and Freud considered to be typical for the earliest stages of civilization: magic as an oneric attempt at controlling a hostile environment. The transformation of the performative into magic is signalled by the refusal to investigate the conditions under which an action or speech act may be truly performative; it is nicer to dream of being a heroic performer like Beuys, than to acknowledge that one is an actor is someone else's spectacle. The first step towards preventing the further degeneration of performativity discourse into sham progressiveness is to acknowledge the conditions of the performative spectacle, which also means acknowledging that Tino Sehgal is not that radically different from Matthew Barney, or Donald Trump."
.
I am currently reading Secret Publicity by Netherlands art critic Sven Lutticken. There are many relevant quotes but here are one or two from his essay on performance:
"The conclusion from this can only be that performance art has never been a real threat to the spectacle: its integration into spectacle as media performance comes as no surprise. Yet if performance artists were to radicalize the anti-production tradition, if they were to really roll up their sleeves and take the fight against reproduction seriously - couldn't this result in a form of performance that was incompatible with capitalism? This line of reasoning rests on the assumption that 'the media' are virtually identical with advanced capitalism. Yet following Guy Debord, one can argue that the spectacular character of the capitalist economy is not primarily located in media like film, photography and video, but in commodity fetishism: commodities seem to maintain whimsical 'social' relations due to their exchange value. In the process the commodities become images, hieroglyphic representations of the relations in human society. This primary spectacle of commodities-become-images is thus the prevailing social condition, which is reflected in 'the media' in the form of a secondary spectacle of images-become-commodities, which reinforces the primary spectacle. To get rid of the society of the spectacle, it is hence not enough to get rid of 'the media'; the whole of society must be revolutionized."
[...]
"In recent years it has become more and more obvious that the spectacle has taken a 'performative turn'. Typical of the neo-liberal performance culture is the TV programme in which a mediagenic entrepreneur like Donald Trump selects a new appointee from candidates who must perform themselves in a way that will win them a highly-paid job. The spectacle of the Situationists, which involved a distinction between a dreamlike theatre of commodities and the passive consumer, has been succeeded by a participatory, performative spectacle. Thus we have entered a phase that the Situationists themselves failed to forsee: in spite of the fact that commodities need not be objects, immaterial commodities such as services were somewhat neglected by Marxist theory, including that of SI, and the transformation of anonymous services into personalized performances is a development that was not seen or forseen by the Situationists.
The primary immaterial commodity in Marxist theory was labour power: a statistical average of the amount of labour needed to produce a certain industrial commodity, which is responsible for the exchange value of goods (contrary to the fetishist illusion that they obtain value through mutual relations). In principle, this theory of labour power can also be applied to many services that do not depend on a performer. Services too are commoodities in which labour has been invested, and in most cases the worker will be paid a wage that represents an abstraction - the amount of labour normally needed to do the job. Today, however, it seems increasingly difficult to base the value of goods on this statistical average - plus the surplus value, which the employer pockets. In the contemporary economy, value has spun completely out of control. A trendy cup of coffee may cost a small fortune because it represents an 'experience', a top manager can take home an absurdly inflated bonus because he is a unique performer: he sells a habitus with capabilities and personal qualities that are supposedly unique. The value of such performers and their performances can no longer be measured in abstract labour power. If object-commodities become images in classical spectacle, in the performative spectacle the service too turns into an image. Of course, this does not mean that the other, anonymous service jobs no longer exist, but increasingly the performative colonizes labour: even in jobs where wages are standardized (and low), the worker is expected to put his or her unique charms and qualities into the job if he or she wants to keep it. As anonymous services become performances, even abstract labour power has to be enacted in a personalized way by individual performers. This turns not only performance into a commodity, but ultimately the performer as well."
[...]
"The loose way in which contemporary critics and theorists use the notion of the performative owes much of its charm to the magical, animistic suggestion it imparts. In a culture of the performative imperative, the notion of performativity (or at least its sound-bite version) suggests a world that is infinitely malleable. If everything is performative, everything is open to influence and transformation. Performative language becomes the thinking person's magic: if contemporary society often seems to correspond to the grim picture Adorno painted of modernity as irrational and constraining as the most primitive stages of civilization, the performative alleviates this by reenacting the over-estimation of the mind's power which authors such as Tylor, Frazer and Freud considered to be typical for the earliest stages of civilization: magic as an oneric attempt at controlling a hostile environment. The transformation of the performative into magic is signalled by the refusal to investigate the conditions under which an action or speech act may be truly performative; it is nicer to dream of being a heroic performer like Beuys, than to acknowledge that one is an actor is someone else's spectacle. The first step towards preventing the further degeneration of performativity discourse into sham progressiveness is to acknowledge the conditions of the performative spectacle, which also means acknowledging that Tino Sehgal is not that radically different from Matthew Barney, or Donald Trump."
.
March 26, 2006
I feel that man should not have thrown himself into this amazing adventure that is history...
.
"I feel that man should not have thrown himself into this amazing adventure that is history. Everything that he does turns against him because he wasn’t made to do something, he was made solely to look and to live as the animals and the trees do."
– E.M. Cioran
"I fear the animals regard man as a creature of their own kind which has in a highly dangerous fashion lost its healthy animal reason – as the mad animal, as the laughing animal, as the weeping animal, as the unhappy animal."
– Friedrich Nietzsche
.
"I feel that man should not have thrown himself into this amazing adventure that is history. Everything that he does turns against him because he wasn’t made to do something, he was made solely to look and to live as the animals and the trees do."
– E.M. Cioran
"I fear the animals regard man as a creature of their own kind which has in a highly dangerous fashion lost its healthy animal reason – as the mad animal, as the laughing animal, as the weeping animal, as the unhappy animal."
– Friedrich Nietzsche
.
March 20, 2006
Every impulse of renovation, at the very moment when it approaches its goal...
.
"Every impulse of renovation, at the very moment when it approaches its goal, when it realizes itself through the State, creeps towards the automatism of the old institutions and assumes the face of tradition. As it defines and confirms itself, it loses energy, and this is also true of ideas: the more formulated and explicit they are, the more their efficacy diminishes. A distinct idea is an idea without a future. Beyond their virtual status, thought and action degrade and annul themselves: one ends up as system, the other as power: two forms of sterility and failure. Though we can endlessly debate the destiny of revolutions, political or otherwise, a single feature is common to them all, a single certainty: the disappointment they generate in all who have believed in them with some fervor."
– E.M. Cioran
.
"Every impulse of renovation, at the very moment when it approaches its goal, when it realizes itself through the State, creeps towards the automatism of the old institutions and assumes the face of tradition. As it defines and confirms itself, it loses energy, and this is also true of ideas: the more formulated and explicit they are, the more their efficacy diminishes. A distinct idea is an idea without a future. Beyond their virtual status, thought and action degrade and annul themselves: one ends up as system, the other as power: two forms of sterility and failure. Though we can endlessly debate the destiny of revolutions, political or otherwise, a single feature is common to them all, a single certainty: the disappointment they generate in all who have believed in them with some fervor."
– E.M. Cioran
.
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