Art Front

On Praxis

2009-05-20T14:16:00.000-07:00

For anybody, such as myself, who has wondered where the term 'praxis' derives from and why it has played such a central role in Marxist studies, I offer the following brief overview.

According to Gajo Petrovic's entry in the Dictionary of Marxist Thought (1983) the Marxist usage of this term comes out of the Greek tradition and refers to Aristotle's tripartite division of human activity. In Aristotle's formulation there exist three basic activities that define human beings: theoria, praxis and poiesis. Each of the three kinds of activity had a separate goal. Theoria was a practice resulting in the knowledge of truth. Poiesis was a practice resulting in the production of an external object. Praxis was a practice resulting in the action itself. According to Aristotle praxis was an activity that developed the actor, or subject, rather than the object. He used this kind of activity to discuss the practice of politics or ethics, and praxis likewise carried with it a form of knowledge different than theoria--one wonders whether he considered praxis to be guided by a specific techne (or 'know-how') that was different than the techne of poiesis. It was only later during the Middle Ages that the specificity of praxis was reduced to merely the application of theoria, the model most commonly accepted today.
How does Marx conceive the relationship between these three kinds of activity? According to Jorge Larrain, "[w]hat men are coincides with their practice" (42). This surpasses the distinction Aristotle makes between praxis and poiesis. Larrain explains: "For Aristotle praxis was immanent activity whereas poiesis was activity whose end was external. Marx unifies both aspects so that practice appears as activity which produces an external object and simultaneously expresses the subject itself" (n.18: 217). This interpretation of Marx's usage of 'praxis' (in the Theses on Feuerbach, for example, although it is the concept behind what C. J. Arthur calls mankind's 'practical activity' or what we might call labor (qua in-itself, or unalienated), which Marx refers to throughout his oeuvre) makes sense to me because it does not fall into the trap of mistaking 'alienation' (Entauesserung) for 'objectification' (Vergegenstaendlichung). It also emphasizes that 'practice' is a conscious activity and expressive of 'human essence' (i.e. species-being) while allowing for that 'essence' to be, in turn, altered by ensuing praxis. However, how does one relate this notion of praxis to theoria? Gramcsi, following Antonio Labriola, refers to Maxism as the 'philosophy of praxis' (partially because that has a specific meaning, partially because he had to code his writings while in prison). If praxis carries its own kind of knowledge, how then is (or must) it be shaped by theoria, in Marxist sense? It is easy enough to follow the logic of What is to be Done? and argue that praxis, if it results in a knowledge, is of a 'spontaneous' kind and must be aided or circumscribed by 'socialist' theoria, produced by a different kind of practice. This leaves me cold for several reasons, besides the fact that it seems to replicate an elitist 'inside/outside' conception of socialist politics.

I'll leave this question unanswered.

On the 'revolutionary' character of the NSDAP (briefly)

2009-04-24T21:10:00.000-07:00

I'd like to jump ahead several years for a moment and briefly consider the overal trajectory of the NSDAP during the 1920s. Some historians have spoken of the 'revolutionary' nature of the Nazi movement as a means of highlighting its 'radical break' from republican values. Others have rejected such a viewpoint, arguing instead that the Nazis incorporated various aspects of much earlier nationalist, right-wing groups and therefore should be understood in relation to more longstanding values and pre-existing political associations. The question comes doen to one of imagined continuity, whether or not Nazism--both in an ideological and organizational sense--reflects a subterranean element of German (or even European) history or it it is fundamentally unique and contingent upon a specific socio-historical conjuncture. (Of course there are those interpretations that posit Nazism as an essential aspect of modernity or the German character, but I do not place much faith in these readings.) Some more recent studies have taken a more dialectical approach to the question, translating it from 'either/or' to 'both at once'. Jeffrey Herf's book Reactionary Modernism (1984) is an exemplary model of this approach, recasting older discussion of the post-WWI 'conservative revolution' in a broader cultural dimension. Before Herf even, historians with a pronounced Marxist leaning, such as Tim Mason, had already started to put forward analyses that accounted for how the NSDAP could be both committed to maintaining inherited power structures--if only to better bend them to accomodate their own political goals--as wells as promote a complete reorganization of society. In his essay "Legacy of 1918 for National Socialism" Mason does not discuss this seeming contradication as I have formulated it, but he does touch upon it tangentially in a description of how Hitler combined two contradictory historical explanations for the empire's collapse in November 1918.
In speeches during the late 1920s-early 1930s Hitler employed the popular Dolchstoß, or 'stab-in-the-back' thesis for the collapse that was popular amongst the political right and was originally forumlated almost simultaneously with Germany's capitulation to the allies. According to this view, it was because of various 'anti-German elements' at the home front who sapped necessary support from the military that the country lost the war. Working-class parties and organizations were systematically scapegoated, as were 'foreigners', Jews and unconventional groups (homosexuals, etc.). On the other hand, Hitler traced a longer, more structural explanation for the collapse that emphasized urbanization, moral decline, materialism and the weakness of the imperial ruling class.

(more to come)

Extended Exegesis on Eberhard Kolb's The Weimar Republic.

2009-04-21T21:23:00.001-07:00

As part of my study on the Berlin Dada movement I have had to conduct a far amount of research on the German revolution of 1918-1919. Several books have been helpful in this area. One of note is Eberhard Kolb's The Weimar Republic, part of the Routledge companion series to History. Kolb offers a general historical overview of the period with extremely useful maps and graphs, as well as a concluding section that discusses questions of historiography. In chapter two of this section, "The revolutionary origins of the Republic," Kolb outlines the major shifts in how historians have described the birth of Weimar since the end of WWII. His outline offers much food for thought.

According to Kolb a consensus was reached among historians after the conclusion of WWII regarding the German revolution and that this dominated the debate until the late 1950s. Emphasis was placed on the role of the German Social Democratic Party and their democratic credentials. It was argued that the party provided a democratic bulwark against the threat of the far-left and did the best it could given the overall situation it faced at the time. This line of reasoning partially reflected post-WWII political agendas. It buttressed the 'continuity' argument the Federal Republic of West Germany used to connect the newly founded state to the earlier republic of Weimar and thereby depict the Nazi period as a regrettable historical aberration. It also retroactively aligned the defenders of the Weimar Republic with the Federal Republic's anti-communist stance. Kolb does not explain how this worked out at the time, which, in my mind, raises some question, given the fact that Adenauer and the Christian Democrats not only were opposed to reaching out the SPD after the war but continued to castigate their 'communist' past--at least until 1959 when the SPD repudiated their Marxist heritage at the Bad Godesburg conference. Kolb does note, however, that the consensus view inadvertently supported a 'Marxist-Leninist' assertion that the radical left-wing of the revolutionary movement could have overthrown the National Assembly in 1919 had President Friedrich Ebert not called in the Freikorps.

In East Germany this line was de rigueur. Following doctrines first laid down by the Comintern during the late 1930s, the Social Democrats were categorically condemned for their 'counter-revolutionary' actions during the late teens and early 1920s. Before 1958, however, there were differing accounts of the November revolution. This was rectified by a number of theses laid out that year. Officially, the German revolution was defined as "a bourgeois-democratic revolution, carried out to some extent with proletarian means and methods" (150). Marred by ambiguity, this definition nevertheless touches on some very interesting questions about how we, and especially Marxists, talk about 'bourgeois' versus 'proletarian' revolution and whether it is always the class which benefits from a mode of production that is responsible for constructing it. Marx's 18th Brumaire and the theory of 'Bonapartism' seems to call such a mechanical conclusion into question, as does, in terms of Germany specifically, the work of Geoff Eley and David Blackbourn--I refer to their book The Peculiarities of German History, which critiques the once-popular Sonderweg thesis from a perspective sympathetic to Marxism. The biggest problem with the DDR's line was that it elevates the 'militant Marxist-Leninist party' to the sole determining force of history. Basically, the DDR historians argued that a revolutionary situation existed during the winter of 1918 but that the 'subjective element', i.e. proper organization around a revolutionary party, was lacking. Thus the revolution failed. This view remains influential to this day, particularly among current revolutionary groupings.

During the late 1950s and into the 1960s scholars turned away from their narrow focus on party politics and instead turned to look more closely at the workers' and soldiers' councils that sprang up after WWI and were the true loci of the revolution. Prior to this the councils had largely been viewed as inherently left-wing and proto-Soviet (in the bad sense), but as scholars examined them more in-depth they found that a significant amount of inner turmoil existed within these democratic bodies. They also discovered that, contrary to popular belief, the councils were largely dominated by the SPD, USPD and even bourgeois parties, not the Spartakists, who only had representatives in a few councils in the major cities. These facts refuted both the views of the 'Marxist-Leninist' historians and those who dismissed the councils as hotbeds of Bolshevism. Empirical studies showed that large sections of the working-class were radicalizing outside the control of revolutionaries. This suggests that, although they may not have been leading the movement, consciousness was moving toward the left. Kolb refutes this and is quick to assert that the votes by the council delegates in favor the National Assembly prove that the majority of delegates were for parliamentary democracy over a state closer to the 'Russian' example (153). This, I would argue, is a tendentious conclusion. It does not take into account the SPD's machinations to ensure that the vote would go their way, nor does it adequately consider the gap between the delegates support for the assembly and their simultaneous support for reforms that the SPD-led government was unwilling to grant. It begs the question: what did 'parliamentary democracy' exactly mean to these delegates?

Analysis of the the councils also suggested that their formation occurred in stages. In the first stage, immediately after their initial formation in November 1918 to the election of the National Assembly on January 19, 1919, the councils, Kolb claims, 'co-operated loyally' with the 'revolutionary' government and leaders of the councils saw them as temporary institutions that would give way to a parliamentary government rather than become long-term political institutions conferred with the power of the state. After January 1919 Kolb speaks of a second stage that lasted through the spring of that year (a period of mass strikes throughout the country). Kolb refers to a 'rapid radicalization' within the councils during this period, fueled by disappointment with the speed of reforms. Members began to turn against the government and the government resorted to armed confrontation to stem the radicalization, which, as usual happens in such situations, only spur it further. This radicalization was accompanied by a growing mass movement outside the councils. Kolb writes that it was only during this second phase that a 'councils ideology' emerged, i.e. the idea that the councils could serve as a permanent institution of class struggle or future state. This movement was dominated by USPD forces, although the KPD played a role as well--keep in mind that the USPD would split little more than a year later and the left-wing join the KPD.

As Kolb reports, the new information on the councils has led many historians to conclude that there was no imminent danger of a second 'Russian revolution' in the winter of 1918 and that the threat of the far-left was greatly exaggerated. This argument has an interesting component. Many historians now criticize the SPD for not sticking to its principles but instead succumbing to an irrational fear of Bolshevism. They blame Ebert and the leadership of the SPD for bringing into play reactionary forces that they could have sidelined had they been confident enough to question the strength of the far-left. In many ways this new line of reasoning serves as a kind of 'self-critique' of Social Democracy, holding accountable those who would sacrifice principles in the face of extenuating circumstances. Kolb insists that this revised view not be conceived as a 'third way' in discussion of what kind of government could have come out of the revolution had those in control made different decisions. To do so, he maintains, would give credence to the possibility of a 'dictatorship of the proletariat', a potential he believes has no historical grounding whatsoever. It is hard not to view the argument in this way, however, posed as it is in a 'what if' manner. While a full-blown socialist revolution may have been an unrealistic possibility in the winter of 1918 it makes more sense to me to delve further into the upsurge of radicalization during this period and chart its shifts than to return to a narrative that returns to a narrow focus on the efforts of a single party attempting to reign in a situation they could not control except by breaking with every conviction they ever held.

Althusser Abstract

2009-01-29T20:43:00.000-08:00

The following is an abstract for my paper on Louis Althusser's initial theory of ideology and its relationship to the de-Stalinization process occuring concurrently in the USSR. The working title of the paper is: Stalinist Humanism: Louis Althusser's Reformulation of the Marxist Theory of Ideology and the Dynamics of De-Stalinization. Although I am not quite happy with how the most recent draft turned out and would like to revise several section--particularly my discussion of ideology and an overview of the Sino-Soviet conflict--I decided to turn the paper into my professor, take a grade, and move on with other work. I still believe the final form of the paper will provide some insight into Althusser's thought and open up some aspects of his work that have remained in the dark or at least undeveloped. It explores the historical context of Althusser's rejection of humanism and posits some political ramifications of his choices, both of which, I feel, are important for developing critiques of the methods that dominate academic departments today.

After the death of Stalin in 1953 the international communist movement faced a crisis of legitimacy that affected communist parties around the world. After rising to power over the course of a few years Nikita Khrushchev sought to assuage this crisis by casting the USSR in a 'humanist' light that would assist the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in moving past the acknowledged criminality of the Stalinist period. Khrushchev's reforms ushered in a period of relative liberalization and significantly altered, at least in word, the USSR's relationship to the US and its Western European allies. Changes promoted by Khrushchev also affected communist intellectuals, who were no longer obligated to conform to Stalin's definition of Marxism outlined in the 1938 History of the CPSU (Short Course) and instead began to establish new orientations of their own. One such figure is Louis Althusser, philosopher, teacher and member of the Parti Communiste Français (PCF) whose work during the 1960s is considered by many to be one of the most important reformulations of Marxism since the 1920s. Althusser's writings on the concept of ideology have been particularly influential and are read today by students of critical theory. Although scholars such as Gregory Elliott and Perry Anderson have traced Althusser's work back to the historical context in which it developed, important lacunae remain to be explored. The relationship between the de-Stalinization process initiated by Khrushchev in the USSR and Althusser's theory of ideology is one example. My paper examines this relationship by focusing on Althusser's 1963 essay "Marxism and Humanism" and the way in which Althusser constructs his notion of ideology in this essay by analyzing the rise of 'humanism' in the USSR. I argue that Althusser's theory of ideology is one key aspect of the philosopher's broader attempt to chart a middle course between the anti-Leninist positions of the 'socialist humanists' who broke completely with the communist parties to formulate a 'new left' orientation and the ultra-left position of the Communist Party of China (CPC) who accused the CPSU of backsliding and colluding with its 'imperialist' enemies.

A Quick Quote out of Russia

2007-12-05T08:41:00.000-08:00

A quotation from a famous, perestroika-era Russian playwright named Alexandr Gelman that appeared in a recent article by Michael Kimmelman, the NY Times lead art critic, struck me the other day as being germane not only to the current situation facing artists in Russia today but to the history of art in general. In response to Kimmelman's pondering over the increasingly volatile relationship between artists and the Kremlin Gelman muses: "The less democracy, the more cultural figures matter. If the tendency against democracy continues, cultural figures will gain more influence." Later Gelman concludes: "It's a disgrace for Russia that writers would replace political parties...But maybe that is what will have to happen." This is, interestingly enough, precisely the situation that existed in 19th century Russia under the Tsar. Because all oppositional political discussion was, in effect, silenced by the Tsar's censorship regulations and his police forces (both open and secret), most progressive ideas were disseminated through literature. In the absence of any true public sphere of political debate, writers such as Alexander Herzen, Vissarion Belinksy, Mikhail Bakunin and Nikolai Chernyshevsky embodied the progressive forces of their era because they took up pressing social issues in their work and attempted, at times, to put themselves in the service of the people. That this notion of 'the people' turned out to be little more than an abstraction when put into practice partially explains the failure of these artists to turn their ideas into reality. None were effective politicians, primarily because none could conceive of revolutionary change as being more than an ethical program or a sectarian, putschist movement (e.g. the Decemberists). The rise of Marxism in Russia amongst the intelligentsia would, of course, change all this.

Outside of the Russian context I think Gelman's comment also provides food for thought in relation to the historical rise of the bourgeois in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Memorializing Politics

2007-12-04T02:32:00.000-08:00

Artist Mark Wallinger won the 2007 Turner prize yesterday (the UK's most important contemporary art competition) for his installation State Britain, a meticulous re-creation of the signs, objects and debris that formed anti-war activist Brian Haw's one-man protest against the escalation of the 'war on terror' before it was demolished by the London police in May 2006. Haw began his protest directly across from the houses of parliament in 2001, before the US invasion of Iraqi, but subsequently condemned the British government's involvement in the war and later occupation, as well as highlighting local socio-economic struggles. (I saw Haw's ramshackle outpost when I was in London in 2003 and remember how popular it was with tourists.) After passing the 'Serious Organized Crime and Police Act,' which forbids all unauthorized demonstrations within a kilometer of Parliament Square, Haw's belongings were taken and destroyed. Fortunately, Wallinger had taken hundreds of photographs of the
encampment before the material was confiscated. Working with a team of assistants, Wallinger produced replicas of all the material Haw had amassed, all the signs, all the flyers, even the stove that Haw used to make tea. These replicas were then installed in early 2007 at the Tate Modern, half of which just so happens to lie within one kilometer of Parliament Square. As art, its seems, Haw's protest could live on in a way it could not as a demonstration.

This paradoxical situation is apparently one of the reasons why State Britain was awarded the 25,000 pound prize (just over $51,000). According to the Guardian Unlimited the Turner judges praised the work for its 'immediacy, visceral intensity and historic importance,' and noted its combination of 'a bold political statement with art's ability to articulate fundamental human truths.' What 'truths' exactly is not clear, but it seems that Wallinger's piece is championed both for its ability to explicitly present a political view as well as distance itself from this view. This seemingly contradictory quality is nothing more, however, than an objective fact: the original political view is Haw's, not Wallinger's. Wallinger has merely appropriated Haw's political view and placed it in a new context, an art gallery (in a museum). Cut off from its original context and isolated within the gallery, the materials are no longer seen entirely in terms of their content, i.e. what they say or the message they try present. Within this new context the formal qualities of the materials take on a new found importance. Suddenly how the message is presented and the kind of materials used to make this presentation dominate the discussion, since it is precisely these formal qualities that allow us to step back from the particular content of the original protest and instead address the universal content that lies within the artistic copy. Adrian Searle, art critic of the Guardian Unlimited, said something much the same when he wrote in a Jan. 16th review of State Britain that "By bringing the protest inside an institution, Wallinger gives us a chance almost to freeze it, presenting it as a simulacrum of itself."

The formalization of Haw's protest does not, however, empty it of all political content or value. Ben Street, writing in Artnet back in Jan., argued that Wallinger's installation functions as a memorial, "a monument to the idea of public protest against the war." Street, I think, has the right idea in comparing State Britain to a memorial rather than a ironical appropriation piece à la Richard Prince. Yet, as Street writes, this memorialization of Haw's protest generalizes his demonstration for a specific demand (an end to the occupation of Iraq) into the unspecific idea of public protest. Street goes on to say that "the survival of Haw's camp as art object and its death as protest are one and the same." This perhaps overly fatalistic conclusion assumes that the formalization of Haw's protest (i.e. its being made into art) equals the complete decontextualization and depletion of his message. In a partial sense, of course, Street's conclusion is valid. But the fact that Haw's message is presented in the Tate Modern at all is important insofar as it reflects a growing recognition of the anti-war movement and a broader shift in public discourse. It is politically significant that Wallinger's work has been awarded the Turner prize even if its own political value is limited or questionable (I think it is both).

What are the limits of Wallinger's 'bold political statement'? First of all, the formalization and decontextualization of Haw's protest is not solely the result of moving the protest into an art gallery but is instead an integral aspect of Wallinger's appropriation. Part of the problem is that Wallinger has mistaken 'bold political statements' for politics. Reproducing the statements and placards of a demonstration does not equal a demonstration, both in terms of political effectiveness and 'boldness'. That the Turner judges have incorrectly taken Wallinger's attempt to be both engaged and aloof as evidence of his ability to both make a 'bold political statment' and a work of art that articulates 'fundamental human truths' is only a further indication of the artworld's blind obedience to political abstractions. Second, the appropriation of Haw's protest in the name of art and the subsequent celebration of this act confirm the broad consensus amongst artists and critics today that art, by definition, is the posing of questions. Wallinger's installation raises a lot of questions, so the reports say, and that makes it effective art. That art has primarily become a means of asking critical questions about society without having to provide any answers is both the result of historical development and the misguided belief that art has no laws of its own. Art has always reflected society, never directly, but always in an oblique way. Yet it was only with the rise of modernism that artists begin to consciously address social issues in their art, either directly or indirectly (or even, one could argue, unconsciously). Today, on the other hand, art is social commentary since no one is certain anymore whether it can be defined in terms of formal charateristics. What remains from older, modernist traditions of art is the belief that art requires no justification for its existence outside of itself. Thus today we get art that asks questions, art as social commentary but without any requirement to justify itself or ground itself in reality.

Berlin Dada Abstract

2007-12-03T10:14:00.000-08:00

I am posting an abstract I wrote for the Berlin Dada project. Much of this information already appeared in an earlier post, but I have condensed it and more or less laid out my argument.

Abstract:

Generally speaking Berlin is recognized as having been the most 'political' of the regional centers of the international Dada movement. Whereas a wholesale rejection of 'bourgeois' culture and its vapid aestheticism was more or less the common program of Dada, only in Berlin was the movement's cultural politics deliberately linked to revolutionary socialist politics. Prominent Dadaists such as George Grosz, John Heartfield, and Wieland Herzfelde joined the German communist party in 1918 and strove to align Dada with the broader struggle to win the working class to socialism. This politicization of Dada should come as no surprise given the fact that it occurred during a period of heightened political and social struggle when many artists in Germany were radicalized. Nevertheless, there is little or no consensus amongst art historians as to how we are to conceive the relationship between the Berlin Dadaists and their social context. What role did their art play in their politics? What role did their politics play in their art?
I will address these questions by focusing on Berlin Dada's relationship to the contemporaneous Proletarian Culture movement (known as Proletkult) in the recently formed Soviet Union. Proletkult, which began as a cultural and educational organization independent of the Soviet government, agitated for a complete renunciation of 'bourgeois' culture and the fostering of a new culture built upon a pure proletarian ideology. This call for the immediate implementation of a cultural revolution as a buttress or even a necessary prelude to the political and social revolution spread throughout Europe soon after the Bolsheviks took power in November 1917 and influenced several left-wing artist groups. The Berlin Dadaists saw the theory of Proletkult as means of transforming their rejection of art into a cultural revolutionary project.
To better explain this transformation I will first discuss how Dada came to Berlin in 1917 and was swept up in the prelude and aftermath of the revolutions of 1918 and 1919. Second, a look at how the Berlin Dadaists responded to the Proletkult movement and began to assert themselves as 'revolutionaries'. Third, I will take the First International Dada Fair mounted in 1920 as indicative of the limits of Berlin Dada's cultural politics. Finally, a comparison of Berlin Dada and the expressionist movement, which many also saw as a revolutionary art movement. The problem of Berlin Dada's politics is as much a historical issue as it is a methodological issue. While some art historians view Dada's rejection of aesthetic value and the objet d'art as being inherently political, I base my analysis on the contention that there is no revolutionary art. Political value is not an inherent attribute of art or some aspect of an art work's form; rather, whatever political value a work of art may have is in relation to a broader political context, and the effectiveness of that value is in relation to a broader political struggle. Thus, rather than investigating the 'radicality' of formal innovations, my paper provides insight into how the Berlin Dadaists reacted to a revolutionary situation they could not control and did not comprehend.

History Redux

2007-11-30T05:47:00.000-08:00

I visited a notable contemporary art institute in Berlin today called the Kunst-Werke to see an exhibition entitled History Will Repeat Itself: Strategies of Re-enactment in Contemporary Art. According to the exhibition's curators Inke Arns and Gabriele Horn contemporary artists have started to employ such 'strategies' in order to engage with past social events that are either overrepresented or underrepresented. Pierre Hugyhe, for example, focuses on the real-life events that were subsequently dramatized in Sidney Lumet's 1975 film "Dog Day Afternoon," whereas Jeremy Deller re-stages the famously brutal suppression of a Yorkshire miner's strike in 1984. In the case of Hugyhe's subject matter, the story of a young homosexual bank robber named John Wojtowicz who became a media celebrity in 1972 and overshadowed Richard Nixon's re-election campaign for a short while, the historical record is rich and the characters well-known, if only because they were immortalized in Lumet's film. Even before the film, however, John Wojtowicz and his accomplices/acquaintances were being interviewed on TV talk shows and in the press. Hugyhe 's installation includes news articles from the time period, reviews from the movie, excerpts from TV interviews and a contemporary re-creation of the event with Wojtowicz himself (who, after Lumet's movie came out, said that it was only 30% accurate). As a whole the piece is a meditation on the way in which historical events are filtered through the mass media and the entertainment industry, establishing a common perception of an event that may or may not be historically accurate.

Deller's subject, on the other hand, is not common knowledge and is in fact an historical event that most people, particularly the British government, would like to forget. I confess that I know very little about the 1984 Yorkshire miner's strike, known as "The Battle of Orgreave" (which is also the name of Deller's work), but one learns realizes quickly from the re-enactment that it must have been an extremely radicalizing struggle, given that Margaret Thatcher thought it necessary to send in thousands of police officers to put it down. Unlike Hugyhe's recreation, Deller's focuses on a traumatic event that received either no or only negative media coverage and has primarily been passed down through working class unions, history books and political activists.

Despite the differences in their subject matter, however, both Hugyhe and Delller seem to be interested in linking these historical events to today's reality. This is, I might add, a concern for all the artists in the show. The curators claim that, unlike popular historical re-enactments that stage events from the remote past or generalize from a particular period (think of Renaissance Fairs or Colonial Williamsburg), artistic re-enactments "do not simply affirm what has happened in the past, but question the present by taking recourse to historical events that have left their traces in collective memory." This may be true, but it also seems problematic to me for a number of reasons. One, it seems elitist to say that 'artistic' re-enactments are always critical and 'popular' re-enactments are not, as if the former are somehow inherently subversive or politically valuable. I highly doubt this is the case. Second, I am extremely skeptical when it comes to arguments that rely upon the idea of a 'collective memory'. What does this mean? Hugyhe's piece in the show is all about how our 'collective memory' of a historical event is always mediated by representations of that event, blurring (but not destroying) fact from fiction. Deller's piece is all about how some historical events are effectively erased from the larger 'collective memory' but live on in the memory of a particular social group--more about this later. It seems to me highly unlikely that a recourse to historical events ipso facto equals an effective questioning of the present by way of our 'collective memory'. What is not sufficiently acknowledged in this claim of the curators is that all these works are incredibly context-dependent. Without understanding exactly how these works engage with historical events and how the events themselves relate to the broader historical context in which they occurred, any critical relevance is diminished and the work comes dangerously close to fetishizing history (which, I would argue, is precisely what the curators' want to distance these works from by contrasting them to 'popular' historical re-enactment).

Back to Deller's piece, or rather, Mike Figgis's documentary about Deller's piece, since it was actually the latter that was on display. What I found most interesting was how in re-staging this single battle in a wider class struggle that took place more than 20 years ago, Deller tapped into an a simmering anger amongst the working class in Yorkshire that lives on to this day. Many of the men who played the miners in the re-enactment were these same miners or else knew these miners. When Figgis interviews these men, most have intimate knowledge of what happened, either because they were there or because they had friends or family members who were. Some even compare the social situation of 1984 to the one existing in 2001 (when the re-enactment took place). More amazing still is that, even though the re-enactment was choreographed and rehearsed to ensure safety, tempers flared and clear distinctions were made between those playing the miners and those playing the police officers. While one could argue that this is simply a reflection of cultural influence (nobody likes cops) or a brilliant confirmation of certain theories of performance (we become what we enact), I would say that it instead show the continuation of social instability and the potency of class struggle. This was an imagined class struggle, granted, but enabled these miners and workers to recapture an important episode in the history of that struggle and bringing that relevance home to their own situation. Whether Deller's piece accomplishes this as well I don't know (but I rather doubt it).

In any case, I found Deller's piece to ask the most interesting questions, particularly in connection to another work on display, the re-staging of the storming of the Winter Palace by the Bolsheviks in 1920. There was only a few pictures of this event in the exhibition, but according to the text panel a huge, choreographed re-enactment was staged to celebrate the third anniversary of the actual event. Whereas in 1917 the Winter Palace was taken by very few people, the 1920 re-enactment was a major spectacle with over 800 participants. In Lunacharsky's view, the head of the Commissariat of Enlightenment (Education) and one of the principals theorists behind the Proletkult movement, the audience attending the event were to also be the principal actors, thereby destroying any difference between the spectators and the participants (every avant-gardist's dream). By living 'first hand' this pinnacle event in Soviet history, so Lunacharsky claimed, the people would gain the necessary consciousness to become true 'proletariats'. The ridiculousness of this kind of engineered class consciousness 'from above' is obvious and, unfortunately, is taken as the example of the very idea of class consciousness. What would be interesting, nevertheless, would be to compare this early example of historical re-enactment for explicit political purposes to the 'artistic' re-enactments being produced for supposed implicit political purposes today.

"Dada is German Bolshevism"

2007-11-26T11:20:00.000-08:00

So claims Richard Hülsenbeck in a 1920 article.

Berlin Dada-The Meaning of a Slogan

2007-11-25T06:02:00.001-08:00

(George Grosz and John Heartfield at the 1920 International Dada Fair in Berlin.)

"Die Kunst ist Tot [Art is dead]."

According to a recent essay by the art historian Brigid Doherty this statement does not constitute a total refutation of art so much as diagnose the state of art in the modern world. She writes: “’Art is not alive,’ the placard might be saying, with the implied ethical position that human beings ought not to treat works of art as if they were persons when they do not treat other human beings that way” (91). The reasoning behind Doherty’s reading is clear: the Berlin Dadaists’ attack upon art dovetailed with a wider ranging attack upon the cultural values that held art to be something alive, something worth defending, something to be sustained. For the Dadaists such high minded notions no longer made any sense and belonged to a culture whose values and institutions were to be eradicated in favor of a new culture, whose values would be different. This represents, more or less, the standard, 'progressive' understanding of Dada as an artistic movement which struggled to deflate the pretensions of bourgeois culture by attacking its most sacred object, art.

There is an interesting historical dimension to Doherty's reading. In the same year in which this photograph was taken, Grosz and Heartfield published an article called "Der Kunstlump [The Art Scab]" that chastised the expressionist artist Oskar Kokoschka for putting art above human lives. During the Kapp Putsch in March of that year, when right wing extremists led by Wolfgang Kapp and Walther von Lüttwitz tried to take control of Germany with support from members of the army and were met by an armed working class uprising, a painting by Rubens that hung in a art gallery in Dresden was damaged by a stray bullet. Kokoschka, who was a professor of the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden at the time, wrote an article urging all political parties to respect the art institutions and move their street battles to outlying districts. Kokoschka: "I urgently request all those who intend to use firearms in order to promote their political theories, whether of the radical left, the radical right or the radical center, to be kind enough henceforth to hold their combat exercises away from the Gemäldegalerie [art gallery] of the Zwinger--on the shooting ranges of the heath, for example, where works of human culture will not be in danger. On Monday, the 15th of March, a masterwork of Rubens was damaged by a bullet. [...] Certainly the German people will later find more joy and meaning in these preserved pictures than in the collected views of the politicized Germans of today."

Grosz and Heartfield rightly condemn the derisive rhetoric of Kokoschka's article in their response, but all to easily succumb to an ultra-leftist iconoclasm. "Today the cleaning of a gun by a Red soldier is of greater significance than the entire entire metaphysical output of all the painters," they write. In addition to equating Kokoschka's argument to a typical expression of the bourgeoisie--"The bourgeoisie places a culture and its art higher than the life of the working class"--Grosz and Heartfield reduce art to a bourgeois concept in total opposition to the proletariat. They write: "The concepts of art and artist are an invention of the bourgeoisie and their position in the state can only be on the side of those who rule, i.e. the bourgeois caste."

There is some truth in what Grosz and Heartfield write. Our Western notions of 'art' and the 'artist' are the outcome of the historical bourgeois revolutions and the triumph of capitalism, which destroyed the anonymity of the feudal guild system and freed art, over time, from the restrictions of form and content imposed upon it by the nobility and the church. What Grosz and Heartfield were responding to was the fact that, despite the relative 'freedom' of art during the modern era in terms of form and content, the institutions of exhibition and distribution of art were concentrated in the hands of a small minority of wealthy individuals (or, in the case of Germany, the state). This objective relationship allowed for rapid and wide-ranging artistic experimentation to co-exist with slower and narrower artistic institutionalization. Anyone could be an artist, but only a small few could make a living doing it. Rather than limiting their attack to the objective situation, Grosz and Heartfield extended their assault to the art produced under this situation, 'bourgeois' art (especially expressionism), as well as the artist that produced it. In fact, the 'bourgeois' artist serves as nothing more than a mechanical conduit of the bourgeoisie's values: "The artist does not stand above his milieu and the society of those who approve of him. For his little head does not produce the content of his creation, but processes (as a sausagemaker does meat) the worldview of his public."

The question is: if artists are nothing more than the willing (or unwilling) spokespersons of the bourgeoisie, what does that make George Grosz and John Heartfield? I do not mean simply to accuse them of hypocrisy. This question goes to the heart of Berlin Dada's transformation from a nihilistic 'anti-art' movement to a self-appointed leader of cultural revolution in the service of revolutionary socialism. It is precisely this transition that I aim to put into historical context because I believe, contrary to Doherty, that the 'problem' of Berlin Dada's politics is not ambiguous or summed-up in an ethical mandate to put the welfare of human beings above the well-being of works of art (this is not as radical a principle as Doherty makes it out to be). Rather, the politics of the Berlin Dadaists has everything to do with political and social context of the immediate post-WWI period, particularly the radicalization of artists during and after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the German Revolution of 1918. It was during this period that the Proletkult (short for Proletarian Culture) movement in the recently formed Soviet Union became an international phenomenon. Proletkult stressed the importance of cultural revolution and called for a decisive and total split with any bourgeois cultural traditions or values. Barbara McCloskey, in her book on George Grosz's decades long relationship with the German communist party, writes that the Proletkult movement "suggested a model for reconciling Dada with Communism."

The real problem is that, following certain ideas of Proletkult, the Berlin Dadaists believed their anti-art to have inherent political value with revolutionary potential. These high-spirited claims were resolutely rejected by the German communist party (the Kommunistiche Partei Deutschlands, or KPD), which did not officially recognize the Proletkult movement at the time. Many art historians claim that this reflects the conservative and/or authoritarian mentality of the KPD. However, the basis of this rejection, I would argue, has much to do with the ultra left-wing mentality of the Dadaists and their belief that the eradication of bourgeois culture was not only a goal of the socialist revolution but a necessary precondition. (We can easily blame the KPD retroactively for their conservative aesthetic taste, but that is a different question.) Brigid Doherty tackles this rejection head on and argues that the Berlin Dadaists consciously toyed with their purported identity as ultra left-wing 'infantiles' by creating works that reflect or comment upon this identity. Doherty thus shifts the question back to the works themselves and analyzes them in terms of ambiguous or conflicting ideas of artistic identity. This is all well and good, except that it limits the 'problem' of the politics of Berlin Dada to personal identity and subjective experience, placing these limits directly into the works rather than viewing the political value of these works (or lack thereof) in relation to the boarder political context.

It is within this broader political context that we can begin to understand why Grosz and Heartfield simultaneously declare the death of art and champion the birth of Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin's 'neue Maschinenkunst [new machine-art]'.

Rücksicht

2007-11-23T06:07:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately the internet has been on the fritz for the last week and a half, thereby making any further posts near impossible. At the moment Kaite and I have strung an Ethernet cable through our neighbor's mail-slot into our own--our neighbor happens to be our landlord's mother. Now the internet works fine, much faster in fact than it has in the past. Hopefully the wireless connection that we relied on in the past will be fixed in the coming days and we will no longer have to use the cable. In the meantime, however, I hope to post more often.

Yesterday (Thanksgiving) Katie and I went to the Ausländerbehörde (foreigners' authority) where I had an appointment to apply for an Aufenthalterlaubnis (residence permit). My experience with such bureaucratic necessities in Rome was terrible, so I did not expect any difference here in Germany and I was very nervous during the appointment. The woman I dealt with, Frau Krauzka, was nice enough and tolerated my spotty German. She did, however, mumble and spoke aloud to her printer and computer, such that I was never sure whether she was talking to me or the objects on her desk. There was some confusion over my proof of study, but besides that everything went well and I am now living in Germany legally until the end of January. If I do return in the Spring I will have to go through the process all over again as well as pay the fee one more. Katie, on the other hand, still needs to apply for a residence permit, and since she is not a student, must find another means of legitimating her stay here--but it should not be that difficult, the German government gives residence permit to 'artists' if they can prove that they regularly receive compensation for their artistic work.

I hope the next two to three days to lay out the abstract and outline of the project I have been working on here in Berlin. In the most general terms, I will be writing a prospectus toward an investigation of the social and political background of the First International Dada Fair, an exhibition mounted in Berlin in the summer of 1920. Although several art historians and cultural/social historians have written about this event, I do not feel that anyone has provided an in-depth analysis of both the artistic context and the social/political context in which this exhibition took place. Many scholars focus on one aspect and neglect the other; some consider both aspects but in such a way that any relationship between art and society, or art and politics becomes theoretically convoluted and historically unclear. I am particularly interested in how Dadaists working in Berlin attempted to reorient their earlier outright rejection of 'art' and bourgeois culture into a 'revolutionary' commitment to establishing an oppositional, 'proletarian' culture via the model of Proletkult, a movement for cultural revolution that was popular during this period in the recently formed Soviet Union. This connection is well established; in fact, I would argue that much of theory behind the concept of the 'avant-garde' develops out of this connection and the questions it poses. Reviewing the context in which the Berlin Dadaists attempted to align their art with revolutionary politics from a historical materialist perspective rather than from the perspective of 'avant-garde' theory will shed light, I believe, on aspects of this connection that have hitherto remained opaque.

So, I intend to post my abstract, a timeline of Berlin Dada and thoughts regarding those scholars who have tackled the same topic from other viewpoints, utilizing different methodologies. I'll try to keep up.

Big Pictures

2007-11-16T08:15:00.000-08:00

Monday afternoon I stopped by the Deutsche Guggenheim to check out the Jeff Wall exhibition currently showing there. First off, despite the Guggenheim name the gallery space is a glorified lobby for Deutsche Bank, which owns the building and worked out a deal with the Guggenheim. Three large white rooms and a gift shop constitute the Deutsche Guggenheim, a far cry from its other satellites in Bilbao and Venice--though smallish, Peggy's former palazzo on the grand canal at least feels like a museum, not a corporate showroom. A similar situation can be found in Istanbul, where most of the well known, swanker galleries are tied to banks and financial institutions that either provide space in their own buildings or rent space in prominent locations for rotating exhibitions (namely along Iskital Caddesi in Beyoglu). The difference is that these 'art centers' usually show work by Turkish artists and those unknown outside the insider, festival circuit, whereas, so far as I can tell, the Deutsche Guggenheim only shows up and coming art stars or reliable, blue-chip regulars like Lawrence Weiner, James Rosenquist, Helen Frankenthaler, and, surprise, surprise, Jackson Pollock. Group shows are mounted periodically as well--a exhibition pulled from the Deutsche Bank collection went up in 2005--but what makes the space special is that often new works commissioned for the space (I have no idea who owns these commissioned works after they are exhibited but I would imagine Deutsche Bank takes partial if not full possession.) The Jeff Wall exhibit, for example, is composed a couple new commissioned pieces and few older works (approx. 7 in total). I've never paid much attention to Wall's work and only remember a piece that was at Documenta 11 featuring a man sitting in the middle of a basement workroom or shed with lightbulbs covering the ceiling. I've read a little about Wall though, mostly reviews, except for a critical essay by Michael Fried that appeared in Artforum some time ago. Fried is currently finishing a book on contemporary photography that focuses on Wall's work in great detail, or so I've heard. For those who don't know anything about him, Jeff Walll is a Vancouver, B.C. based photographer who shoots real-life scenes and landscapes as well as staged situations. For the last twenty or so years he has displayed his photographs on light panels which enhance the colors of the prints and give them almost a luminescent, cinematic look that a photograph printed on paper cannot. He has also written several essays on his own work and the history of photography, and is well informed when it comes to contemporary theories of photography. What makes Wall's work really stand out, however, is that is photos are big. Many of the pieces in the current show, I would guess, measure at least 5' by 5'. This puts him in the company as Thomas Struth and Andreas Gursky, but I think Wall was working with large images earlier than these other artists were. The size of Wall's photographs entirely alter one's common sense conception of photography and the photographic aesthetic. The technical achievement alone boggles the mind: how does one print these large photographs without losing the sharpness of the image? I looked closely at one image and noticed a horizontal line through the center of it, so I am guessing that a least a few are printed in sections and then combined onto the light panels. So far as I know Wall's images are not digital (one does not notice any pixels), so the skill required to develop these works must be substantial (and expensive). It is not surprising then that Wall's oeuvre is relatively small for a photographer (around 160 words I think), although I've read that this may also be a conscious effort to narrow his output for theoretical effect (a comment on archives, or the role of the photographer vs. the role of a the painter, or some such thing). Being so big one cannot easily take the image in all at once, or rather, one can, but one is immediately inclined to look around the image, move closer to it, along side it even, to look closer at all the aspects captured in the image that are not entirely visible when the image is seen as a whole. This is, of course, how one often looks at a painting and I assume that is exactly the point. The size (or better, the scale) of the photographic images alters the way one views them and shifts the experience such that one views them as if they were painted images (even though the surfaces look nothing like painted surfaces, one can tell this both when looking at the images from far away as well as close up). A quantitative change has a qualitative effect. This formal 'transformation' is buttressed by the fact that Wall often stages his images to look like snapshots or documentary footage. Whereas almost nobody this day in age believes what they see in a painting to be 'real', nearly everyone considers what appears in photographs to be the documentation of a real-life event. Wall plays with these assumptions in visual terms much like theorists such as Roland Barthes did in theoretical texts. Can we trust any image to be 'real'? Does not photography rely upon formal conventions as much as painting? Is the reality of a photography merely the result of a 'reality effect'? Common questions in academic discussions of photography and/or art theory. Rather than try to answer any of these questions directly I would merely like to discuss the image above from the exhibition and hopefully frame the discussion with them, thereby pointing toward answers indirectly.
The photograph is dated 2006, but the location is unknown. We see a vast sky that takes up approx. 2/3 of the image, much like the landscape paintings of German romantic painters such as Caspar David Friedrich. In the foreground is a street and alongside it stand a number of men, racially diverse, dressed in jeans, warm jackets and hats. One man in the group to the right wears a hard-helmet. These men appear to be waiting, waiting for work. Behind the men are the backsides of single story strip-mall buildings (the awning of a Value Village is just visible to the left of the two men in the middle of image). Two trees stand in the foreground as well, a pine to the right and smaller tree with absolutely no foliage in the middle (I would say it was winter). By the look of th sky it appears to be morning, the morning of a cold day, and these men are day laborers waiting for work on an off-road where people do not normally go unless they are looking to hire someone. Now, this is an image, I think, we are all familiar with, if not personally than at least theoretically. It is well known that many people (and not only men) who are either unemployed or undocumented immigrants rely upon day labor in order to survive. This can be a dangerous enterprise and is commonly frowned upon, forcing day laborers to congregate in back streets or alleys as if they were criminals. Day laborers, especially if they are non-white undocumented workers, are often targeted by racist groups like the Minute Men. These anonymous men in this anonymous location represent a social reality that exists worldwide. This image, therefore, depicts a real situation. Is this reality contradicted by the fact that I know that this image is not 'real', but has instead been staged for the camera? No! [Like that Jon?] While the specific situation captured in the photo may be staged, the general situation it represents continues to be real. I think this is the strength of this particular image. Why Wall chose to stage such an image instead of taking a photograph of actual day laborers waiting for work is a different and, I think, much more interesting question. The title of this photograph is simply, Men Waiting, which does not explicitly identify them as day laborers, but I believe we are meant to see them as such. If we were to say that the focus on day laborers is meant as a political comment what would that comment be? Nothing but a confirmation of the obvious: these kinds of people exist. But the fact that Wall uses stand-ins to represent the existence of these people, these 'men', while perhaps a more symbolic reference to the invisibility of such people, nevertheless further insulates the work from any true relation to the lives of those this image represents. The image, in conclusion, represents a true social reality, but lacks any meaningful connection to or interaction with this social reality. It says everything without saying anything at all.

Commemorating Nov. 9th

2007-11-11T08:15:00.000-08:00

Last Friday night Katie and I visited the Brandenburg Gate to commemorate the 18th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. It was a cold night in Berlin, with a terrible wind chill factor, so we were bundled up in scarfs and gloves. I told Katie that 18 years ago we would have been approaching the gate from deep within the East and would most likely have met crowds of people mixed with Trabis (East German cars) along the Unter den Linden before we even got close to the gate. Surprisingly few people turned out this year however, at least fewer than I had imagined. Perhaps there was a celebration earlier in the day, but by the time we reached the gate I counted only 20 or so people, many of which were foreign tourists. Nevertheless, the twinges of history kept me rooted to the spot. We first stood on the Eastern side of the gate, where 18 years previously East German border guards had erected makeshift barriers to maintain the 'dead zone' they patrolled along the wall. On the Western side of the wall people had already begun to congregate and some stop atop the wall. At some point a couple of revelers jumped down on the Eastern side, daring the border guards to take some action, which they did not. More and more jumped across and walked under the gate to where the guards were keeping East Germans back. The makeshift barriers soon fell.
To mark the occasion the city of Berlin commissioned a work by a Korean artist to be displayed near the gate, a glowing plastic representation of the former wall, neon colored and covered with Korean writing. I believe the work is exactly the same height as the original wall but it does not stand in the same place. Also unlike the original this latest 'wall' resembles an air mattress, and responds to pressure (from a hand, for instance) much the same. Everyone who was there seemed to enjoy it and many had their pictures taken in front of the structure. I overheard a German mother telling her children all about that night 18 years ago, where she was standing, what happened hour by hour. Perhaps the sculpture helped those kids to envision the situation their mother was explaining better than if nothing were there. I was glad I had watched a Der Spiegel documentary with footage from that night earlier in the day.
Speaking of Der Spiegel, a recent issue focused on what are referred to die Mauerkinder, those children who were born in Berlin on Nov. 9th, 1989. These children turned 18 on Friday, meaning that they are the first adult generation to be living in Berlin with no firsthand experience of a divided Germany. Out of the 80 Mauerkinder, approx. 66 were born of parents living in the East, and the magazine used the stories of their upbringing and life experiences to pose a number of questions about present day feelings about the DDR. According to Der Spiegel many of the prejudices and mentalities that existed in Berlin prior to 1989 continue to exist to this day, even among the generation who never experienced them live in the divided city. What has perpetuated the 'wall in the head' syndrome that so many commentators and cultural theorists have spoken of in the past? Upbringing and parental influence is surely a factor. Ostalgie, however narrow or widely you wish to define this concept, is probably another. Unemployment, continued discrepancies in the standard of living of between those living the former East and those living in the former West, low prospects for students post-graduation, governments that support imperialist wars, and a general disillusionment with neoliberal capitalism are surely part of the rejection of the standard 'triumph of freedom' narratives of post Cold War transition, especially amongst the more educated. It will be interesting to see how this generation, both within and outside of Germany, interprets the fall of 'real existing Socialism' once they start to become politically conscious and begin studying the history of the present day world.
When I returned home on Friday night I started looking through some notes and realized that Nov. 9 was also the day that Philip Scheidemann of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (the SPD) announced the abdication of Wilhelm II (without the monarch knowing) and the birth of a German republic in 1918. Scheidemann made this announcement out of a window of the Reichstag to a large crowd waiting outside at 2 p.m. that day. Only two hours later Karl Liebknecht of the Spartacists proclaimed a Free Socialist republic of Germany to an equally large crowd. And thus began two contrasting views of post-WWI Germany that would rock the country for the next six or seven years.

In Response To All Those Who Thought It Would Never Happen

2007-11-11T04:03:00.000-08:00

So, after years of outright refusal and recent months of deliberation I have decided to start a blog. As I assume for most others, the decision came down to convenience: it is much simpler to have updates located at a central spot that people can visit than it is to send them out to everyone you know one at a time. The only other solution seemed to be mass emails. My hope is that by starting this blog I will be able to both share by experiences in Berlin with others as well as formalize my thoughts and receive some feedback. I suspect I will often intersperse posts about Berlin with others about the projects I am working on. Perhaps it is silly to be prefacing this blog with so much introspection, but I have no idea how else to begin. Well, what of it...onward!