Feeling the Affect

Watching Pier Paolo Passolini’s Salo I was struck again by JG Ballard’s maxim that we have long since succumbed to the death of affect: we are saturated with imagery and ideas of violence, ritualised, stylised, mediated ad infinitum, and thus conditioned to treat them with the deference we reserve for the mundane. I have to disagree.
In Passolini’s film the essence of De Sade’s 120 days of Sodom is transported to Mussolini’s idealised Fascist state, Salo. Here under the auspices of Nazi troops, four members of the Italian social elite comport themselves with decadence, with zealous, experimental, abandon.
Passolini makes it clear where he stands: the ideological associations of the participants, the setting of the story, the faux-polemic, and philosophically bogus utterances of the Faschismo alumni, shows us moral bankruptcy and indulgence so foul, so sexually violent and self-annihilating , that there can be no room for ambiguity. This is, he unequivocally states, wrong.
I found the experience shocking: this is Passolini’s greatest success - affecting me with a deep-seated and brutal convulsion toward his art, infusing me with the visceral disgust I felt gazing at the horrors of his work. I have waited a while to view this sometime banned and notorious film. I attempted to approach it with the same trepidation I felt when, as a kid on the hunt for forbidden enlightenment, I was finally able to procure a pirated, videotaped copy, of A Clockwork Orange. Now I can only imagine that Ludovico’s technique comprises compulsory and endless exposure to Salo. Poor Alex couldn’t close his eyes, couldn’t switch it off. I too was unable to completely look away. Nor could I refuse reflecting upon it.
What of comparative experiences, encounters with works that have shocked me? Cronenbourg’s Crash: a car showroom; automotive fetishism; wound penetration: but there is something in the prosthetic plasticity and stylised act that lacks real power and is almost ridiculous. And it is, of course, a consensual union.
Francisco Goya’s , Great Feat! With Dead Men! show war crimes, dismembered guerrilla fighters, body parts impaled on tree branches, a torso here, a head there, discarded limbs scattered about. And here come the Chapman Brothers with their contemporary sculptured version, Great Deeds against the Dead, the meaning of Goya’s original transmuted to suit their agenda: a physical metaphor of the psychic damage inflicted by ideology, much the same intent, possibly, as Passolini’s project.
I can’t claim to like Jake and Dinos Chapman’s work; like is simply not part of the lexicon they allow us to describe it. But it is worthy of my attention and gives me pause for thought. They understand provocation, repulsion. They know how to affect. As does Marcus Harvey with Myra were children’s hand prints in primary school hues coalesce into the serial killer’s portrait, her empty eyed gaze, the same as in the thousands of reproductions of that 1950’s, tabloid newspaper photograph. It is a devastating work, the economy of expression, the simplicity of the idea, the nauseous feeling of affect.

Metonymy-Oh-Me-Oh-My

Your friendly neighbourhood Reverend (Aka Neil Buddle) has entered the Metonymy 09 exhibition, which is part of the Auckland Writers Fest. This exhibition pairs up artists and writers to produce a collaborative work, including visual art and performance. The pairs are selected by the organisers and the pairs are therefore previously unbeknownst to each other.
The Rev has been paired with Wellington poet and playwright Desiree Gezentzvey. We are working on illustrative prints of 3 poems.

If selected for the final exhibition, the works will be on display on Level 4, Aotea Centre between the 9th-23rd May.
For more information goto: METONYMY

Cut Off Your Nose

Here it s the 3rd Instalment of the 'Techniques for Self- Sabotage' series, entitled Cut Off Your Nose To Spite Your Face...

situationism for artsache

from: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SvdWk8zRrI

Art Is Tree

The notion of art and artist is forever being tested and re-defined. As a self-proclaimed wannabe artist and ex-arts worker, the definitions, assumptions, cliches and stereotypes that accompany this discussion, challenge and disappoint me in equal measure.

Working with arts students as I do currently, is interesting because art school is where many people come to live out their stereotype or have them reinforced by the previous generation of dilettantes-cum-tutors. To the public, artists can be seen to be vague, lazy, pretentious, arrogant, un-professional, difficult divas. Unfortunately this is one of the stereotypes that some artists love to live out, often the less talented ones.

In my dealing with artists, time and time again, I am confronted by people asking for special help and dispensation, because they are 'creative (A hugely over-used word). These 'creative' people believe that they deserve these special dispensations, as if it is a known fact and an unwritten law of the universe. It is often at this point that I ask why do 'creative people' deserve special rules and dispensations? Are artists needs more important than that of others? Are artists superior beings, the pinnacle of humanity and above nurses, teachers, plumbers and fast-food technicians? These questions are closely followed by "If artists are open-minded, capable, adaptable individuals as is claimed, why are they/us so high-maintenance? It is usually at this point, that the art-world bubble starts to burst! They are hard questions, especially to someone couched in the comfortable assumption that they are special and the world wants to bathe in their unique wondrousness.

In my art studies one of the most influential topics I studied was the Russian contstructivists of the post WW1 period. These artists faced with a western world in ruin, dismissed the notion of art for arts sake, in favour of art for the common Good. They though that artists should get involved in social causes, politics, architecture, engineering, clothing, apply themselves to rebuilding the world in a better way through becoming integral in the processes. Their image of the artist was as creative worker, in a boilersuit, pencils in pocket; a pragmatic, creative problem solver interacting on an essential level with society. Not playing peripheral party-pooper. Espousing a life on the margins of society whilst courting and demanding the same society give attention and reward to their special gifts.

In my work often I have been amazed by how bad artists are at communicating visually outside of their art-form. If it is to do with advertising, marketing, promotion or any other form of professional networking, artists tend to either fully refuse or resist as if it is an affront to their superior moral standing and altruism or engage so badly with them as to be damaging. As with most tools and systems, they are not inherently evil. Advertising is a tool for increasing awareness of something, this is a necessary tool and as ever it is how we use it that counts. Marketing and advertising offer the artist a fantastic opportunity to communicate their uniqueness, their visual language, their approach etc. to their target audience, in advance of the actual work, in the same way an entree might whet your appetite for the main course of a meal.

One of the other damaging things is the expectation of funding/grants/support which seems like a throwback to the old 'wealthy patron'. Patronage in the arts is important but it is also a trap of sorts. Art school sets up students to believe that they will not make money, they will not be taken seriously as professionals and they will not be valued. This teaching is often based on the bitter experience of tutors who clearly followed that trajectory. With this attitude, changing whatever prejudices the professional and public world has will be hard. Funding is great and it allows for exploration of important concepts that may not be commercially supported but advance and inform practice. However what use is a generation of artists going out into the world expecting a living, producing obscure temporal art-works that preach to the converted and deter the average viewer, however 'radical' and 'new' the concept appears according to the days fashions?

Personally for me art is about communicating ideas to the largest audience possible. These ideas should be produced practically and distributed as democratically as possible. As in the time of the constructivists, we need artists to engage with the modern world and bring what ever gifts they do have to bear on society. We don't need a lot of aloof creatives, watching from the backbenches as the world turns to custard saying "I'm not a part of this".

Of course 'horses for courses'. There is room for all and that is one of the wonderful things about the art-world. However don't profess to be one thing and demand another. Don't make inaccessible works in secret and expect to be rewarded in public, however 'important' the idea. Don't sell aesthetically pleasing objects with no message and expect to be feted as an visionary artist. And whatever you do don't expect the world to beat a path to your door and give you what you deserve or expect the world to pave the way from your door to the world, just in case you condescend to walk it one day.

With gifts come responsibilities not privileges. Do your work, work hard, represent yourself well, use your creativity in all areas of your life and practice, offer all, expect nothing - you are your own reward.