Excellent points, well articulated Ann. I pretty much feel this way too. To
not rush "forward" doesn't default to something complacent or apathetic.
Fluxus led the way to a Post-Modern way of thinking where there is nothing
old and nothing new. "Newness" is a mythology - everything is recycled.
However, I as others do get a kind of charge out of something not previously
seen or understood - something pre-symbolic - not yet categorized and
commodified. There is pleasure in the momentary suspension of the ego. Not
so much a political one up, but a more personal one-up for each viewer.
Curators have difficulty writing about it. Dealers have trouble selling it.
It's not so much newness, as a peeling away. Art is before language.
Aaron
----- Original Message -----
From: ann klefstad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2000 10:51 AM
Subject: Re: FLUXLIST: avantgarde?
> I myself would hope that the notion of "progress" in art, an imagining of
arthistory to parallel, say, the development of material technologies, could
be discarded. Thus the notion of the avantgarde--that is, those out in
front, those "most progressive"--could also be discarded. I don't think that
an "avantgarde" today is anything but a competitive positivist impulse that
unconsciously models itself on technological development, you know, "The
Rise of Man" kind of thing.
> The thing I always liked about Fluxus was its refusal of narratives of
prowess, its ability to mock such narratives (say, the "Twelve Big Names"
thing) and its choice of, instead of the slogan "forward!", the slogan
"sideways!" Many Fluxus practitioners used the "stupid" relation of the body
as animal body to the physical world, and their work (such as Ken's salt
projects) used the elemental physical attributes of things. This does not
make for forward motion, it makes
> instead for a recursion to simple perception, an invoking of
thoughtfulness about what conditions the perception, an invoking of
memory--in other words, movement back, sideways, in circles, not the forward
rush of the avantgarde and its oppositional tactics. Fluxus didn't so much
oppose, beat back, fight, as, say, unravel, comb out, or knit up.
>
> Can we speak in terms of what things do rather than what they oppose?
>
> AK
>
> Josh Ronsen wrote:
>
> > Heiko Recktenwald writes:
> >
> > >When fluxus began in the Cage class, they were some of the
> > >most avantgarde people of its time. Those who call themself
> > >"fluxus" today are not.
> >
> > What does avantgarde mean, today? Who is avantgarde today? These are
interesting questions and I do not know how to approach them.
> >
> > Don't hate me, but I have been reading an article about Online
(Internet) Education in a recent issue of the New York Times Sunday
Magazine. There is quote from a professor (my copy is at home) who is trying
to get "top-notch" universities to let their faculty lecture for his online
ed company: to paraphrase-- the avant-garde (in art) and capitalism as
similar because they are both concerned with the "new."
> >
> > I disagree with this statement, or at least with the superficial aspects
of it. My conception of the avant-garde is one of overturning established
orders and ideologies, which I guess could be considered "new," but it is a
new mentality. Capitalism is ALWAYS concerned with producing goods or
services at a profit, and hasn't changed at all. There is a drive for new
goods and markets and a silly marketing spin on Internet Business as "the
New Economy" (tm), but it isn't.
> >
> > Now the relation between art and capitalism can be scary: is the
avant-garde in art just the capitalist quest for new markets? Ack! I hope
not. Maybe it has become that.
> >
> > For me, if the avant-garde is "overturning established orders and
ideologies," the one it should be directed against is capitalism.
> >
> > I'd be interested in thoughts/reactions on this topic.
> >
> > -Josh Ronsen
> > http://www.nd.org/jronsen
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > --== Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ ==--
> > Before you buy.
>
>
