roundup ≠ scrapbook

Starving Artist’s Cookbook

Love and hate! Generally I love reading anything related to food, but I have a feeling this is simply another round of fancy talk talk about the “starving” (young creative cool) artist, romanticisation of starvation, and oh come on, they aren’t really starving, most of them are (were) successful and have (had) money and/or patrons or both, or manage(d) to get by at least.

Of course, artists cook, but they are not the only ones who come up with the so-called “creative” recipes, have interesting ideas with regards to culinary practice, or have something to say through the act of cooking. What about all the housewives mothers fathers cab drivers toilet cleaners? Rainwater soup is not so Flux if you live without running water, a Soup des Jours which lasts many days is all that some people could afford to cook (their names are not John Cage), a “recipe for fried spaghetti, containing spaghetti, garlic, oil, and any herbs on hand” is a classic recipe and seriously, that was what all my then fellow students were sustaining themselves with (the “affluent” ones substitute oil with butter, and top it off with cheese, although not necessarily aged parmigiano or pecorino).

Anyway, where are Tony Conrad’s pickles?

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Rule of Thumb – the Instagrammability of things:

Aspiring artists should judge their work by one criterion and one criterion only: Do people want to take selfies in front of this thing? If the answer is no, then it’s back to the drawing board, friend. You’d do well to make something immersive, something participatory, something that’s such an experience that it acts as a magnet on the surrounding population, much as a Six Flags or a new Shake Shack might. To make anything quieter or less immediately spectacular is to risk irrelevance.

sounds like i’m doomed to be a failure with my obsession for the un-instagrammable!
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Wie kam es eigentlich zu diesem grossen Missverständnis? Wann entstand die aberwitzige Idee des Individuums, ein Individuum zu sein? Mit allen dazugehörigen absurden Individuumsansprüchen. Glücklich sein zu wollen, nur mal als eines genannt? Wann begann dieses Ahnen des Einzelnen, mehr zu sein als andere? War in der Steinzeit alles noch in Ordnung, oder ging es da schon los? Der Rudelälteste, die Urform des neuzeitlichen Egowahns? Keine Ahnung, das wissen Soziologen bestimmt besser. Die meisten wissen alles besser. Auch so eine Unsitte. Eine eigene Meinung haben. Fing das in den 60ern an? Zusammen mit dem Therapiewahn? Ich muss meine Bedürfnisse erkennen, formulieren, und es verletzt mich total, wenn du much ignorierst? Aufmerksamkeit will jeder für seine ungemein interessante Persönlichkeit. Seien Sie ehrlich – denken Sie, einzigartig zu sein? Mehr zu wissen als die meisten anderen? Besser auszusehen, ein spannenderes Leben zu haben/verdient zu haben? Un jedem steckt ein ungesunder Grössenwahn. Vielleicht kann man den mit Evolution erklären und damit, dass der Mensch leider dieses Gehirn hat, mit drei Windungen mehr, und es nicht ertragen kann zu erkennen, dass er sich in seiner Zusammensetzung, seinem Intellekt, seinem Äusseren und seinen mittelmässigen Ideen nicht ein Prozent von Millionen anderer Leute unterscheidet. Wär ihm das klar, DEM INDIVIDUUM, dann stürzte es in eine Krise. Aber wie der Grössenwahn das so mit sich bringt, eine richtig gesunde Sache ist es halt nicht, oder wie wäre es sonst zu erklären, dass trotz der vermeintlichen eigenen Überlegenheit Millionen widerspruchslos einzelne Kameraden als unbedingt überlegen akzeptieren? Ein paar alte Männer verkleiden sich mit roten Umhängen, und Millionen jubeln ihnen auf dem Petersplatz zu. 600 Bedienstete arbeiten für die Royal Family, sie warten bei unbeabsichtigten Begegnungen, bis sie von der Queen angesprochen werden, senken das Haupt, fallen in einen Hofknicks, weil das Tradition is und das ja so einen Halt gibt? Millionen weinen, wenn Lady Di, eine durchschnittlich aussehende Dame mit durchschnittlicher Intelligenz und unterdurchschnittlichen Leistungen zur Steigerung des Gemeinwohls verendet. Als wüssten wir um unsere Nichtigkeit, sind wir bereit, Macht- und Wissensdarsteller unhinterfragt zu akzeptieren. Als lauerte das Wissen um unsere Belanglosigkeit tief unten, versteckt unter einem Laubhaufen aufgehäufter Überheblichkeit. Die zunehmende Einsamkeit des Menschen der Jetztzeit beruht zu grossem Masse in der individuellen Überschätzung des eigenen Marktwertes. Des Sozialstatus und des Aussehens. Die vermeintliche Überlegenheit, geboren aus übermässigem Medienkonsum, Therapiesitzungen und dem Umstand, dass es scheinbar nicht mehr viel bedarf, um zu einem Star zu werden, führt zu einer Stagnation der eigenen Entwicklung. Dummheit ist die Akzeptanz des Status quo, das vermeintliche Wissen um die eigene Perfektion. Das hilft niemandem. Der Gemeinschaft nicht, dem Einzelnen schon gar nicht. Er wird aufwachen, der Grössenwahnsinnige, in einer mässig attraktiven Wohnung, mit einem mässig interessanten Beruf und einem uninteressanten Leben, erwachen, alt sein und sich betrogen fühlend sterben. Und dieser Punkt kommt immer. Egal of Genie oder eingebildete Ausnahmeerscheinung, die meisten von uns werden nur noch 20 bis 30 Sommer erleben. Wow, ist das knapp, und das Leben hat nicht gehalten, was die meisten sich vom ihm versprochen haben. Was für eine Ungerechtigkeit. Der Mensch is mehr, als er zu wissen glaubt, könnte jedoch meinen: Der Mensch is ein austauschbares Teil einer grossen Masse. Der ausserordentlich dilettantische Wahrspruch der 70er Jahre: Kein Mensch is wie der andere, ein fataler Irrtum. Es ist eher ernüchternd zu sehen, wie wir alle einander gleichen, in unseren kleinen Träumen und Sehnsüchten, in unseren Ideen und dem Aussehen, wenn wir das akzeptierten, uns als Teilchen eines grossen Ganzen begriffen, mit einer sehr begrenzten Haltbarkeitsdauer, könnten wir erleichtert aufatmen, dankbar sein, irgendeinen Menschen zum Teilen der Nichtigkeit zu finden, ein Dach, eine Decke, ein Buch, wir könnten us gestatten, uns nicht zu wichtig zu nehmen, und die Welt wäre ein erfreulicherer Ort.

from Die Fahrt, Sibylle Berg. KiWi Verlag.

while a trip to the main biennale di venezia exhibitions reminded us so much of trips to art brut and “outsider art” museums, on our way through the increasingly familiar labyrinths of venice, we found window displays which might qualify for the spitzen-art-world:

my golden plastic lion goes to the barber shop.

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“In the process of composing Visage I, repetition presented for me not so much a process as the observation of the social organisation of time. Thus observed, time organises itself in layers and according to different points of via – social, political and sentimental. That is the sense in which repetition fascinated me. Repetition is thus an area where there are resemblances as well as differences: if I repeat the same phrase twice, the moment has changed. One can hope even if one is very pessimistic, that thought accumulates an experience or a memory, and that if you superimpose a purely mechanical repetition, it is seen every tim as an event and not a redundancy.”

Luc Ferrari, I was running in so many different directions, 1994

“Since i want to make something, I need rules….My option is to follow the rules of the game that I invented, so I also have the option of infringing upon them. We cannot but be aware of the manipulation of opposites: law and freedom, seriousness and derision, abstraction and realism.”

from Jacqueline Caux, Presque rien avec Luc Ferrari

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“Let’s say you have a tube of paint; you didn’t make it. You bought it and used it as a ready-made…Man can never expect to start from scratch; he must start from ready-made things like even his mother and father.”

Marcel Duchamp, quoted in David Joselit, “Molds and Swarms”, in Molesworth, Part Object Part Sculpture, 158.

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(One day in September 1971 I discovered that if I made the slightest mark on a sheet of paper with a pencil, I was irrevocably altering the order of the universe. Any subsequent inventory or documentation of the order of the universe would have to include my mark, and therefore my act called for a new definition of the universal order. That means that changing the universe is a fairly simple thing, it is something that anyone can do, without any university studies. It is more difficult to try to convince the art market that you really did introduce a change, not to mention getting paid for the effort.

Luis Camnitzer, “Chronology”. posted 04.11.2010.)

You haven’t heard about the butterfly-wing theory? When a butter flutters its wings somewhere in China, they affect everything else in the world. That little flutter, what it causes, is connected to absolutely everything else. There is nothing, nothing, no action no matter how small, how insignificant, how invisible, between the blood cells…that does not set the next thing in motion, and that sets the next, and that goes on and on and on…And changes the world.

Jonas Mekas, “Step Across the Border”, 1990.

Three or four hundred yards from the Pyramid, I bent down, I scooped up a handful of sand, I let it silently spill a little further away and said under my breath: I am modifying the Sahara.

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Desert”, 1984.

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I try to pick things that would make people say, “I was just thinking about that a couple of days ago; I didn’t say it exactly like that but I had that idea.”

Laurie Anderson

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I turn to the question audience to see of their experiences might enlighten mine and break the isolation of my experience, to see if performance art puts them into the same dilemma.

Barbara Smith

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Anger and frustration are two very strong feelings of motivation for me. They get me into the studio, get me to do the work.

Bruce Nauman, 1987.

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To be happy with a man and have nothing to say, or to be miserable and do something out of this misery.

Sophie Calle, 2003.

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“Capitalist relations increasingly shaped artistic production itself. Ideally, artists control their output, they create objects in accordance with the laws of beauty, humanising the natural world by transforming matter in a way that expresses their own human essence. The activity of the artist attempts a self expression that is denied in alienated labour. But once artists are at the mercy of the market alienation is reintroduced. The market separates producer from consumer. Ours is a social species that emerged precisely through co-operative labour. The fact that an artist must present a finished product to an audience who passively and privately consume it disrupts the free flow of ideas that are essential to real creativity.”

Chris Nineham, “Art and alienation: a reply to John Molyneux”, Issue 82, International Socialism Journal, March 1999

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My feeling about technique in art is that it has about the same value as technique in lovemaking; that is to say: heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.

John Barth

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What modern art means is that you have to keep finding new ways to express yourself, to express the problems, that there are no settled ways, no fixed approach. This is a painful situation, and modern art is about this painful situation of having no absolutely definite way of expressing yourself. This is why modern art will continue, because this condition remains; it is the modern human condition…it is about the hurt of not being able to express yourself properly, to express you intimate relations, your unconscious, to trust the world enough to express yourself directly in it. It is about trying to be sane in this situation, of being tentatively and temporarily sane by expressing yourself. All art comes from terrific failures and terrific needs that we have. It is about the difficult of being a self because one is neglected. Everywhere in the modern world there is neglect, the need to be recognized, which is not satisfied. Art is a way of recognizing oneself, which is why it will always be modern.

Interview, 1988.

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“The demands of love are too great, and you withdraw.
We destroy the very thing we most desire.”

Postscript to “The Puritan”, 1947/1990.

Louise Bourgeois

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“What do you do?”
“I am omnipotent and do whatever the fuck I like.”

One day in September 1971 I discovered that if I made the slightest mark on a sheet of paper with a pencil, I was irrevocably altering the order of the universe. Any subsequent inventory or documentation of the order of the universe would have to include my mark, and therefore my act called for a new definition of the universal order. That means that changing the universe is a fairly simple thing, it is something that anyone can do, without any university studies. It is more difficult to try to convince the art market that you really did introduce a change, not to mention getting paid for the effort.

Luis Camnitzer “Chronology”

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“Contributing to, or participating in, something that does not tolerate definition or other forms of circumscription (so being part of something that is ultimately unknowable: not knowing what we’re doing) is one of the ways in which “culture” in general essentially reproduces itself.”

Dieter Roelstraete, “What is not Comtemporary Art”, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/106

If so,

“In order to arrive at what you do not know, you must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.”

T. S. Eliot, 2.III, “Four Quartets”

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Bill Readings, until his death a Canadian professor of comparative literature at the Université de Montréal, in his posthumously published book, The University in Ruins (1997), observes that universities are no longer “guardians of the national culture” but effectively empty institutions that sell an abstract notion of excellence. The university, Readings writes, is “an autonomous bureaucratic corporation” aimed at educating for “economic management” rather than “cultural conflict.” The Anglo-American urban geographer David Harvey, reviewing Readings’ book in the Atlantic Monthly, noted that the modern university “no longer cares about values, specific ideologies, or even such mundane matters as learning how to think. It is simply a market for the production, exchange, and consumption of useful information—useful, that is, to corporations, governments, and their prospective employees.”

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“We were talking about whether choosing to be an artist means aspiring to serve the rich. . . . that seems to be the dominating economic model for artists. . . . The most visible artists are very good at serving the rich. . . .”

Time was when art school admonished students not to think this way, but how long can the success academy hang on while galleries are not to be had? (Perhaps the answer is that scarcity only increases desperation; the great pyramid of struggling artists underpinning the few at the pinnacle simply broadens at the base.)

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/107
Martha Rosler “Take the Money and Run”

“Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man’s emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.

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The receiver of a true artistic impression is so united to the artist that he feels as if the work were his own and not someone else’s – as if what it expresses were just what he had long been wishing to express. A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist – not that alone, but also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art.

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If a man is infected by the author’s condition of soul, if he feels this emotion and this union with others, then the object which has effected this is art; but if there be no such infection, if there be not this union with the author and with others who are moved by the same work – then it is not art. And not only is infection a sure sign of art, but the degree of infectiousness is also the sole measure of excellence in art.

The stronger the infection, the better is the art as art, speaking now apart from its subject matter, i.e., not considering the quality of the feelings it transmits.

And the degree of the infectiousness of art depends on three conditions:

1. On the greater or lesser individuality of the feeling transmitted;
2. on the greater or lesser clearness with which the feeling is transmitted;
3. on the sincerity of the artist, i.e., on the greater or lesser force with which the artist himself feels the emotion he transmits.”

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That was the year 1896.

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“Irritation may be let go like an arrow directed at a target and produce some change in the outer world. But having an outer effect is something very different from ordered use of objective conditions in order to give objective fulfillment to the emotion. The latter alone is expression and the emotion that attaches itself to, or is interpenetrated by, the resulting object is aesthetic.”

John Dewey, Art as Experience, Chapter 4 “The Act of Expression”, Pp. 81

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“In art there is the fact of failure, and the fact of partial success. Our metaphysicians must understand this. Works of art can fail so easily; it is so difficult for them to succeed. One man will fall silent because of lack of feeling; another, because his emotion chokes him. A third frees himself, not from the burden that weighs on him, but only from a feeling of unfreedom. A fourth breaks his tools because they have too long been used to exploit him. The world is not obliged to be sentimental. Defeats should be acknowledged; but one should not conclude from them that there should be no more struggles.”

Bertolt Brecht (not Brigitte Bardot)

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“Life itself consists of phases in which the organism falls out of step with the march of surrounding things and then recovers unison with it – either through effort or by some happy chance. And, in a growing life, the recovery is never mere return to a prior state, for it is enriched by the state of disparity and resistance through which it has successfully passed. If the gap between organism and environment is too wide, the creature dies. If its activity is not enhanced by the temporary alienation, it merely subsists. Life grows when a temporary falling out is a transition to a more extensive balance of the energies of the organism with those of the conditions under which it lives.
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If life continues and if in continuing it expands, there is an overcoming of factors of opposition and conflict; there is a transformation of them into differentiated aspects of a higher powered and more significant life…Equilibrium comes about not mechanically and inertly but out of, and because of, tension.”

John Dewey “Art as Experience”, Perigee, Pp. 12-13.

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The contemporary world is doubly hostile to truth procedures. This hostility betrays itself through nominal occlusions: where the name of a truth procedure should obtain, another, which represses it, holds sway. The name “culture” comes to obliterate that of “art.” The word “technology” obliterates the word “science.” The word “management” obliterates the word “politics.” The word “sexuality” obliterates love. The “culture-technology-management-sexuality” system, which has the immense merit of being homogenous to the market, and all of whose terms designate a category of commercial presentation, constitutes the modern nominal occlusion of the “art-science-politics-love” system, which identifies truth procedures typologically.

Alain Badiou, “Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism”, 12. Stanford University Press, 2003.

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