>How do
ideas of free communication, liberty, responsibility, play out in an
examination of art practices meant to be transgressive? Is the
importance of the ends what decides the ethicality of a practice? Or is
transgressiveness the end in itself, justified by the degree of
stultification it fractures?
...AK
If manditory transgression is written into the job description of a
particular group of individuals (artists), and if this is depended upon
by another group(s) of people (art enthusiasts) for amusement and/ or
reassurance, then how can those who wish to be 'truly' transgressive
(within the sign/ language of 'art') act out anything more than a
grotesque caricature of culturally reproduced expectations about their
role (as artists)?
Or, doesn't the act of satisfying social expectations (culturally
encouraged and so easily accepted) of the 'transgressive artist'
stereotype through artist's "transgressive" behavior itself cancel out
the criteria for those same acts to be considered 'transgressive' at
all?
I know this is not exactly the issue at hand, but nevertheless, it does
relate on some level..
The cultural absorbtion and conscious or unconscious perpetuation of
this model (the artist as neccessarily subversive/ transgressive) by
artists and 'non-artists' alike, severly limits the freedom of artists
to participate in the transgression of rigid cultural norms, procedures,
notions/ ideas, power structures, etc. in any meaningful way. It seems
that the only available options for artists in this predicament (who are
concerned with art's transgressive potential) are either:
1.to accept the inefficacy of artistic transgressive pretenses and
resolve to become as overly accomodating, celebratory, and gratuitous as
possible, or
2.to persevere in endless re-enactments of an evermore impotent
vocational stereotype that generally serves to satisfy and amuse when it
is predictably fulfilled (when artists shock, provoke, critique, expose,
or otherwise commit acts of intended transgression), or
3.find other reasons for making art than attempts to unwittingly live
out simulacra of early modernist socio-political vanguard fantasies...
or
4.other
something AJ wrote a little while ago:
To the several MASTERS
who acknowledged
his sovereignty while he was king
UBU ENCHAINED
offers the homage of
his shackles
PA UBU.- Hornstrumpot! we shall not have succeeded in demolishing
everything until we have demolished the ruins as well. But the only way
I can see of doing that is to use them to put up a lot of fine,
well-designed buildings.
