scott rigby wrote:
> 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)?
So when does transgression become obedience? When it feels like it.
Transgression as an end in itself , as a gesture, is empty. The negative
dialectic fits the contours of what it is meant to critique so tightly that
it supports it.
Transgression is only active, meaningful, when it is only incidentally
transgression; when it's pursued because of a passion for something else.
When Serrano did "Piss Christ" it could seem that it was meant as a purely
transgressive gesture, whereas it was actually part of a positive meditation
on bodily fluids, the body of the Christ and the relation of bodily fluids
to same (blood, wine, mixed blood and water), and AIDS and martyrdom. It was
a profoundly positive work. But because it seemed to fit the on/off,
red/green, symmetrical patterns of degative dialectic, it was read as only a
transgressive gesture. This reading hollows out the work, empties it of any
substantive meaning or force for change.
Gestures which are solely or primarily trangressive spend all their
energy in establishing their position. They have nothing left over. And it's
that excess, that remainder, that crust of specificity, that makes us need
or want or care about a work.
However, this said, work that avoids transgression simply to avoid
transgression is equally empty. Transgression _or the lack of it_ should not
be the point. What the work means, what matters about it, is what it is
pursuing, not what it's avoiding or setting itself against.
AK
