hoy por una vez, pense en escribir en castellano. Vaya, que poco usual, pense.


Pero creo que quizas sea un momento de cambio de sentido y de sentimiento. Un cambio de lugar y de emplazamiento. Una especie de momeno, en el que el mundo se hunde de maneral gloriosa, para solo dejar detras, una mueca horrenda.

Uno, ya no sabe que creer, y que no creer. Hay tanta informacion en el internet, que es dificil saber que tragar, asi como en la biblioteca, donde un archivista incauto, incluye un libro de un think tank. (...)

Me confunde y nose como reaccionar. Tambien, es interesante como el mundo de las noticias nos provee con todas una cantidad inmensa de informacion, sobre el mundo. Sobre miseria, sobre robos, sobre muerte, pobreza... Tanta, tanta informacion, sin inercia, que acaba fusionandose con el mundo del entretenimiento. Como que lentamente, todo el tiempo se acaba pasando, y dilullendo, dentro de todos estos momentos de ocio, bienestar y felicidad.

Pero muchas veces todos esos momentos se saben como una amburgesa de McDonald's, o una bolsa de Doritos. Son objetos muy de colores, apetitosos, sabrosos, que despues de haber consumido su aspecto ideal-ya habiendo pagado-te dejan con un malestar general.

Asi es como me siento con la cultura de hoy en dia. Como que vamos a peor, y hay como un nazismo de las masas sobre la declaracion del buen gusto, cosa que en verdad es resultado de una economia de mercado, en la que la oferta siempre esta disponible si hay demanda. Cualqier cosa vale, si hay alguien dispuesto a pagar por ello. Esto asume que los individuos que consumen son libres de hacerlo. O que no estan indoctrinados, o en algun sentido predispuestos a ciertas elecciones dentro de la oferta. Como los esfuerzo publicitarios de la industria de la musica para poner a sus artistas en todas partes (tiendas, radio, television, ordenadores...) para que los escuches.

Aunque no quiera decir que la cultura deberia de estar regulada por nuestras instituciones actuales, tampoco creo en una industria cultural basada en una economia de mercado. Esto explic el porque la mayoria de nuestra cultura es para los jovenes, que son los que mas gastan en tonterias debido a nuestra ignorancia.

Dentro de un mundo que giral alrededor de la rueda del consumo, y de la"productividad", habria que replantearse el tema de la basura. En estos momentos de complejidad tecnologica, medionambiental, social, cultural (me refiero a las artes), material y psycologica, la urgencia reside en el replanteamiento de futuros, no necesariamente sostenibles (porque esta palabra es como muy rara para ser analyzada aqui) sino mas bien, en futuros justos. La idea de que despues de haber mirado atras, y haber evaluado nuestra huella ethica (hay gente que se asusta con esta palabra) podamos generar ideas de futuro en los que nuestras acciones y nuestras ideas esten mejor ordenadas. Salir de la habitacion de los espejos. En nuestro mundo de los goviernos corporativos.

Atencion, y es que este problema es amplio. Porque dentro de ser humano, lo mas valioso, aunque este soportado por su complejidad biologica, es decir por su fundacion material, es la imaginacion. Un fenomeno no tangible. Una capcidad que vive dentro de nuestro mundo "cerebral" y por decir algo. El problem es cuando la sociedad genera aparatos para moldear la capacidad de imaginar, asi como los momentos y lugares aptos para la imaginacion. Con esto quiero decir, la mente se halla encerrada dentro de una casa, dentro de otra casa. Una especie de doble abrigo. Y por que lo diras, te prguntaras?

Porque el cuerpo biologico ya forma una politica desde el moento en que nace, pero no solo ahi como individuo, sino como expresion del paisaje de futuro de una "familia". Esto es, dentro del nucleo productivo de capacidad reproductiva, para la consolodacion de bienes materiales y multiplicacion de estos mismos.

Y tu me diras: acaso esto no es fundamental para la supervivencia del individuo. Y en esto estamos deacuerdo, pero el echo de tener un hijo, cumple las aspiraciones de el nucleo de l apareja casada, dentro del ambito de la prodiedad privada, etc. Obvio, esto sugiere una capacidad total del individuo a elegir, y una sobecogedora fuerza por parte del ambito estructural, por encima de la capacidad de actuar del individuo, o del ambito personal.

Pero de verdad la razon por la que estaba escribiendo esto es por os pauntes que me dio mi profesora sobre el proceso de creacion de un prototipo de ropa (un toile). Algo mucho mas complicado de lo que me imagine, y que me hace entender porque las marcas de moda rapida (fast fashion) contratan a miles y miles de trabajadores que cobran salarios de mieseria, en factorias en las que hay ninos que trabajan (child labour). Son cosas que son problematicas y dificiles de imaginar ya que las instituciones son guardianes de el conocimiento. Asi consultar sus baules de informacion, se hace mas dificil, y levanta barreras a aquellos que quieran consultar el cumulo de ideas e imaginacion inscritos en libros, peliculas y muchos otros tipos de producciones culturales.

Asi, entonces, sigo con lo del toile. Un toile es -dentro de la industria de la moda- un prototipo de una prenda, sobre la que se quieren explorar y contrastar sobre el diseno en 2d del cuader de dibujo y diseno, los volumenes, proporciones y metodos de construccion de la prenda final. Esto es, es un prototipo de la prenda final, en la que se comprueban, primero la volumetria y las proporciones atraves de los medios del papel, el calico o la muselina (muslin). Segundo se investigan y generan differentes opciones para los cerramientos, las texturas de la superficie, y las caracteriticas constructivas de la piece de vestimenta.

Asi, hay un proceso repetitivo de

1. investigacion
2. produccion de ejemplos (samples)
3. ejeccucion e inclusion en el diseno general, como primer mofificacion

para continuar con el proceso denuevo para la produccion de itireciones con el mismo diseno. Asi pequenos aspectos del diseno se investigan de manera aislada, para luego integrarlas en el diseno general, el cual ira sufiendo cambios a medida que las pequenas modificaciones se van anadiendo.

Asi un toile, no es un solo ejercicio en el que se comprueba que la vestimenta quede a medida del usuario, sino que ademas es un processo de investigacino, innnovacion e implementacion, en el cual se parte del diseno 2d, para finalizar con una pieza ponible sobre un humano con todas sus implicaciones. 

Fin de mi rant.

Words for the month:

Mediascape

Entertainment Industry

Both industries with a lot of money behind to offer us varying versions of the world. Even some with glorious, promising prospects for the future. Others not so bright or appealing. All in all, they do keep us wanting more...

Words for a Thursday

Reification


Thingification


Hypostatization


Pathetic fallacy

(for Ruskin and writers of the 19th century and earlier, "fallacy" could be used to mean simply a "falseness")

Air hates to be crowded, and, when compressed, it will try to escape to an area of lower pressure

to

effusion or movement towards lower pressure occurs because unobstructed gas molecules will become more evenly distributed between high- and low-pressure zones, by a flow from the former to the latter

Fortunately or unfortunately, most of it from Wikipedia

What do you do in that moment when you realise that you got it wrong.

Void where a hope.

Feeling angry, or devoid of some space for yourself, and the others you care for.

Wasting time sketching a theory of otherness.

Seeing it faked by the alternative scene, the looks have become entangled with aspirational gestures of grandeur. But there is no substance.

Walking along the streets at night, you would understand the isolation and desperation of the hermit, enclosed in its individual isolation. Light has become a moment of chance, upon which you stumble.

Void where a hope was to be found, a piece of an answer, or a moment of enlightenment. None of them to be found.

You might think that the act of a hand, the act of kindness is also a form of intelligence, a social alliance of sorts. In hands lays empty a hope of fullness. And so the binary begins.


I am tonite thinking about the boldness and inevitability of the future, that special moment of engagement with fate, or what one wants to become.

The face that to looks at the future into the face, is to be on the edge of hope, forever to be dissapointed. The drama of optimism. The curse of pessimism.

In this way, we can all put to rest those numbing thoughts, those that create the habits of hell, as per the screen phone.

Anew is to conform a new set of rules. A new set of habits. As they do span time they do span consciousness and our ways of perceiving the world. A way of seeing it with which I feel disappointed. There must be more to life than this.

Simon I don't want to die with the music in me

An so, a bit of melodrama paints the picture of hope and pain, moments of solitude in the face of the storm to be faced calmly, with elegance and relentless hope. An opportunity to embellish the pain of intellectual isolation and oblique sensibility.

In that ally, in that bent corner has appeared someone two hundred years after, who unknowingly has found the dark of the darkest places, and can relate to that stream on light coming from that door ajar.

A door from the future to the present. It could not be anyway else.

Matrilineality is the tracing of descent through the female line. It may also correlate with a societal system in which each person is identified with their matriline – their mother's lineage – and which can involve the inheritance of property and/or titles. A matriline is a line of descent from a female ancestor to a descendant (of either sex) in which the individuals in all intervening generations are mothers – in other words, a "mother line". In a matrilineal descent system, an individual is considered to belong to the same descent group as her or his mother. This matrilineal descent pattern is in contrast to the more common pattern of patrilineal descent from which a family name is usually derived. The matriline of historical nobility was also called her or his enatic or uterine ancestry, corresponding to the patrilineal or "agnatic" ancestry.

In some traditional societies and cultures, membership in their groups was – and, in the following list, still is if shown in italics – inherited matrilineally. Examples include the Cherokee, Choctaw, Gitksan, Haida, Hopi, Iroquois, Lenape, Navajo and Tlingit of North America; the Kuna people of Panama; the Kogi and Carib of South America; the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra, Indonesia and Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia; the Trobrianders, Dobu and Nagovisi of Melanesia; the Nairs of Kerala and the Bunts and Billava of Karnataka in south India; the Khasi, Jaintia and Garo of Meghalaya in northeast India; the Ngalops and Sharchops of Bhutan; Muslims and the Tamils in eastern Sri Lanka; the Mosuo of China; the Kayah of Southeast Asia, the Basques of Spain and France; the Akan including the Ashanti of west Africa; virtually all groups across the so-called "matrilineal belt" of Central Africa; the Tuareg of west and north Africa; the Serer of Senegal, The Gambia and Mauritania; and most Jewish communities.

from

Just notes...

Private Property = a legal right granted and acknowledged by society and its institutions for the exclusive use of a certain resource [this concerns allocation=to whom and to whom not?]


Private Ownership = the exclusive right to use or not a certain resource granted by the right to private property [this concerns use=for who and for who not?]

I long time ago, wrote on this blog about the idea of Death.

The fact that one day will arrive.

That is a Certainty.

Full Stop.

***

I have also written about the inevitability of Life.

Life is a certainty as long as you can express and embody this thought.

Life in this sense is a temporality, or a Gap.

              

Life in this sense is something that we have to go through, as long as we are alive.

The inevitably of moving forward is Real. 

That is why, with certainty, you can expect things to change. For better or for worse.

***

I read somewhere, longtime ago, that the moments that make a difference in one's own life, are those when and where one finds the most difficulties. Getting through them. Victory is leaving undamaged a hard temporality, or hardship. 

Unless you are not present, i.e. dead, somewhere you will get.

Life is nevertheless, experienced more or less as a continuum, with certain breaks, i.e. sleep or loss of consciousness. So hardship is not always a moment with a beginning or an end, but a succession of intensities. 

But here I would like to end this idea of intensities, as it complicates our narrative too much too early.

***

It is time, now, that we acknowledge our agency within this continuum, as a unit inside a historical moment.  A history we know, but that we cannot predict. 

This scenario presents us with the idea of the Project. Something we can accomplish within a given temporality, i.e. a day, a weekend, a year, a lifetime.

Do we have to plan it? 

No. But you can be sure that it will happen. 

😂neoliberal private market capitalism😇

two people I am trying to read rigorously soon:

Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991)

 Michel de Certeau (1925-1986)

I found this amazing course! The Architect in History: The Evolution of Practice from the Renaissance to the Present

Harvard Graduate School of Design: PRO 0741000

Fall 2013

Jay Wickersham

Location: Gund - Gropius Meeting Time: Wednesday, Friday 11:30am - 1:00pm

This course examines the history of architectural practice, focusing on the changing role and definition of the architect, with the goal of providing new perspectives on how we design and build today. The course begins in Renaissance Italy, moves through 17th- through 19th-century France and England, and then traces the evolution of practice in the United States from 1800 to the present. Major themes include: Changing models of architectural education, from the Beaux-Arts to modernism. Relationships with clients: How are building needs defined? How have architects made (or lost) money? How has government regulated the built environment? Relationship with the construction industry: Architects’ uses of technologies through history; their role relative to builders, as collaborators or adversaries. How have architects conveyed their design intent to clients and builders through drawings and models? Insiders and outsiders: Evolution of professional organizations and their gatekeeper role; the profession’s treatment of women and minorities. Relationship of architecture to other design professions: Engineering, landscape architecture, city planning, and interior design. Firms and individual creators: Professional myths and historical realities. The growth of big-firm practice, versus the branding and selling of the individual creator; the influence of critics and photographers on design. Class format will be a combination of lecture and discussion. Several classes will feature guest speakers. Readings will include original source materials (both written and graphic), and secondary interpretations. Course requirements will include a research paper, a final exam, and class participation. There is no prerequisite. All readings will be available on the course website.

The advent of the computer in our laboratories and studios has certainly made the shape and form of time amenable to human manipulation and intuition  in a way that as not been the case within rational disciplines since the dawn of the modern era; but without as board and historical an understanding of the time problem as possible, these exciting developments are at risk of falling into formalistic parody or mere embellishments and celebrations of market logic in firctionless freefall. 


Kwinter, S. (2001) Architecture of Time. Athens (Georgia): The MIT Press (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). From Preface.

Today I am compiling pictures of wearable instruments:

Mary Poppins one-man-band 1964

Chicks on Speed E-Shoe A High Heeled Shoe Guitar 2010

Björk's Alexander McQueen Bell dress 2004 

?

?

Knowledge [Bulk]
Thinking [Action on Bulk]
Vision [Direction of Action]
Technique [Deployment of Vision]

Vain. Vanity. Vanitas

Today I wanted to write about the idea of Propaganda, Art and Activism.

What do I mean by Porpaganda? Propaganda I would call any object, say a painting, a poster, a piece of writing, and forms of speech that have the aim of forming an opinion. This is, they operate in a context of choice where one option is favoured against another, or the other. This is, Propaganda is charged with Intent, but and intent with certain Direction, it has a goal to achieve.

Propaganda nevertheless, has certain sense or tint of passivity. Say the effectiveness of a poster relies on people stopping and looking at it, as most images do. Texts rely on them being read, but also read in the way that is intended, which produces a direct and simple graphic language. At this point we could argue that propaganda has an identifying Style.

I am baffled and confused by the word Activism. Wikipedia says:

Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, or direct social, political, economic, and/or environmental reform or stasis with the desire to make improvements in society. Forms of activism range from writing letters to newspapers or to politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing businesses, rallies, street marches, strikes, sit-ins, and hunger strikes.

I think Activism is a step up from Propaganda. Although Propaganda is a form of activism, is feel Activism requires a higher level of engagement. I also associate Activism with Direct Action: when people take issues to their hands and use their bodies and actions as instruments to produce change, like in an occupation by a group of people of a building owned by someone else, or a protest in front of the headquarters of an institution. Most importantly Activism is highly political- and not always grass-roots -and sets in motion actions to achieve a desired result. Its highly political because it usually engages with partisan politics, identity politics, structural categories (race, sex, sexuality, gender, social class, etc.) and mobilises towards achieving a certain aim by using its social potency (a trade union, a student body of certain department, etc.). This means, it is a highly socialsed form of action, where individuals are geared in certain direction because they share a common vision (most usually). 

Some people would think that my characterisation of Activism as propaganda is Wrong -that people might engage in Activism to achieve some goal for their own interest by using other bodies or objects (Adistinction not everyone would make), as if their engagement was somehow disingenuous or not aimed at a collective good- but I wanted to relate them since they both have an aspect of persuasion within a known context. This is, the readings and possible outcomes are carefully constructed. This is something that Xenakis- 20th Century music composer -identifies in electronic music. He explains that in electronic music the outcome of a piece is heavily restricted and predictable, unlike in notation, where performers get to express their individuality through interpretation. 

Although a bit too quick, I wanted to draw Art as distinct to the above. Music in this sense is good at setting parameters of action, rather than producing ticking box exercises. There is room for change in the reproduction of the piece, and therefore in the outcome. This is not possible in electronic music ( there must be someone who has already looked into this). Art I would argue -and as it was with Xenakis- aims at widening the gap of determinism. This is, it aims at indeterminacy, in this case through the personal agency of the interpreter -the person who plays the musical instrument-. 

With time I have seen my "artistic" work compromised by these ideas, and I have been battling them with a lot of difficulties, which has set me in creative stasis (for lack of a better word). My issue here is that when people talk about making the world a better place, they talk about producing a better society (yet again Modernism haunting us!) and having a positive impact. These things are- to start with- generic and underexamined. They assume that Society exists and that, as it stands, it is a positive construct to which we should contribute by ignoring the inequalities embedded within the so called System. They might also assume -most of the time rightly- that structural issues are the problem, rather than issues which could be tackled through personal agency (Liberalism?). 

Art has been widely instrumentalised to make things "better". This is also something to put into question. The idea that "Art" (questionable both as a concept, institution, and a category) can make things better is somehow funny. And the moments when I have seen it does, it has been purely to bank on its ability to attract the human gaze, purely as a device to attract people (tourism) and property speculation (marketing). These are not, in my opinion the founding principles of a work of art. Since again, like propaganda and activism do, have predictable and desirable outcomes (predictable because they are assumed to function in a certain way to improve the system in which they operate, say public works of art to make surrounding properties more valuable in the housing market: tip, check the sponsoring bodies).  

Wikipedia has a good definition (of consumer society "activism")

One can also express activism through different forms of art (artivism). Daily acts of protest such as not buying clothes from a certain clothing company because they exploit workers is another form of activism. One view holds that acknowledging privileges and oppressions on a daily basis ranks as a form of activism. Research has begun to explore how activist groups use social media to facilitate civic engagement and collective action.

The idea that personal agency and political views can find expression in the act of buying (you can't escape Consumerism!). BUT and it is a big but, which leads me into the conclusion.

Art doesn't operate in a vacuum, because it operates in a material world, within a mass of subjects. Meaning: it is embedded in a net of meanings, functions, and dispositions.

Some people find frustrating that some other people produce objects with no "use" (another problematic word!). This might be because they have never looked long enough to start observing. Some people find it difficult to encounter pockets of material where no direct answers are produced. Where "nothing" is produced (this usually equates to assimilation -like when purposefully casting a spoilt ballot as a sign of protest in a democratic country in an election under a bipartisan system-). Some people find it itchy that meaning is reverted back to where it came from. Useless, empty, futile. Vain. Vanity. Vanitas!

Long time no see/no speak

I think what is poetic and potentially nice about the internet is its opacity.

The fact that, as you put words out, there they go...where? difficult to know.

As content gets indexed...visits indiscernible between crawling robots or human clicks.

Does it matter?

***

Today I wanted to talk about the difference between tectonics and stereotomy.

[Briefly]
Stereotomy:
 "the mature technique of stereotomy (from steros, solid, and tomia, cut), which led to the creation of continuous structures consisting of the sum of various layers of stone, more or less regular, and consistently massive and “enclosing”.

Tectonics:
"Northern Europe – an area with a wealth of forests – saw the greater development of the concept of the tectonic (from the Greek tekton, builder) indicating a direct reference to carpentry"

* The re-edited essay has been taken out from the volume by Alfonso Acocella, Stone architecture. Ancient and modern constructive skills, Milano, Skira-Lucense, 2006, pp. 624.

[More Developed]
The role of the construction principles or system is as important as those of the purpose of the building or its form. If the construction system is massive (mass construction), its elements are more or less isotropic and are both loadbearing and enclosing. In the other hand, a skeletal system is a structure of slender linear members defined by its distinction between loadbearing and enclosing functions. These two systems relate to the architectural theory concepts stereotomy of compressive mass and tectonics of the frame respectively, which were defined by Gottfried Semper [4] as the two different material procedures to divide the built form.

They described the fundamental structural and constructive form of architecture and their principles evoked different meanings to the perceiver. A skeletal system or frame is a structure of slender rod-like members assembled to form a two- or three-dimensional composition in which the loadbearing and enclosing functions are fulfilled by different elements. The linear members are erected first and then the spaces between them have to be filled in to create surfaces. Here, the relationship between the internal and external space is achieved not by the structure itself but by non load-bearing elements. The filling becomes an active element in the overall spatial conception. Since framework and filling tend to be made from different materials, the logical conception of a frame construction leads naturally to formal articulation or contrast, allowing clear symbolic expression of the two elements. The non-loadbearing filling carried the symbolism of nonparticipation through history, at the same time that it could give the loadbearing frame an extra-structural purpose (or functional purpose) as focal element. While the frame and the filling enclose an interior, the functional (or extra-structural) purpose of a frame is defining an interior, and the arrangement of its parts is rhythmic with regard to this purpose.

The stereotomy or tectonics of compressive mass is the second material procedure described by Semper [4] and refers to solid construction. Solid construction is made up by casting a material that solidifies upon drying or with layers of modular materials. (Even though the most common materials have been brick, stone and concrete, mass construction is also a possibility with solid wood, where identical units are piled up constructing the built form.) In stereotomy, solid walls are erected and perforated during the building process to create openings, in such way that the openness of the interior spaces with respect to each other and also to the exterior space is greatly restricted. This is how space is created and enclosed, appearing to be permanent, inflexible and rigid. Also, although compressive mass systems can be divided into many identically or similarly shaped pieces, these are unarticulated because their function is basically (structurally and mechanically) the same. This is a clear difference with the tectonics of the frame, where different kinds of activity resulted in articulation of the different elements (i.e. columns, beams or filling).

Citation: Costa Santos, Sandra (2009) Understanding spatial meaning: Reading technique in phenomenological terms. In: Flesh and Space (Intertwining Merleau-Ponty and Architecture), 9th September 2009, University of Illinois, Chicago.

Thomas Hirschhorn

'Doing art politically: What does this mean?'

Today, the terms of 'political art', 'committed art', 'political artist' and 'committed artist' are used very often. These simplifications and abbreviations have long since been obsolete. They are cheap and lazy classifications. Not for a second do I think of myself as more 'committed' than another artist. As an artist, one must be totally committed to one's artwork. There is no other possibility than total commitment if one wants to achieve something with one's art. This is true for any art. Today there is a great confusion concerning the question of what should be 'Political' or 'political'. I am only interested in what is really political, the political that implicates: where do I stand? where does the other stand? what do I want? what does the other want? The politics of opinions, of comments and of views of the majority – does not and has never interested me. I am concerned with doing my art politically – I am not and was never concerned with making political art. The statement, 'doing art politically – not making political art' is a statement I took from Jean-Luc Godard. He said, "It is a matter of making films politically; it is not a matter of making political films". But what does it mean to do art politically?

Doing art politically means giving form

Not making a form – but giving form. A form which comes from me, from myself only, which can only come from me because I see the form that way, I understand it that way and because I am the only one to know that form. To give form – as opposed to making a form – means to be one with it. I must stand alone with this form. It means raising the form, asserting this form and defending it – against everything and against everyone. It means to ask the question of form for myself and try to answer – through giving form. I want to try to confront the great artistic challenge: How can I give a form which takes a position? how can I give a form that resists facts? I want to understand the question of form as the most important question for an artist.

Doing art politically means creating something

I can only create or fulfil something if I address reality positively, even the hard core of reality. It is a matter of never allowing the pleasure, the happiness, the enjoyment of work, the positive in creation, the beauty of working, to be asphyxiated by criticism. This doesn't mean to react, but it means to always be active. Art is always action, Art never is reaction. Art is never merely a reaction or a critique. It doesn't mean being uncritical or not making a critique – it means being positive despite the sharpest critique, despite uncompromising rejection and despite unconditional resistance. It means not to deny oneself passion, hope and dream. Creating something means to risk oneself and I can only do that if I work without – at the same time – analyzing what I am making. To take the risk, to have joy in working, to be positive, are the preconditions for making art. Only in being positive, can I create something that comes from myself. I want to be positive, even within the negative. Because I want to be positive, I must gather the courage to touch also the negative – that is where I see the Political. It means taking action, risking an assertion, assuming a position, a position which goes beyond mere criticism. I want to be critical, but I do not want to let myself be neutralized by being critical. I want to try to go beyond my own criticism, but I do not want to make it easier for myself with a – narcissistic – self-critique. I never want to complain as an artist, for there is no reason to – I can do my work, I can create something.

Doing art politically means deciding in favour of something

I decided to position my work in the form- and force-fields of Love, Politics, Philosophy and Aesthetics. I always want my work to touch each of these fields. All four fields are equally important to me. My work does not have to cover all these fields evenly, however, I always want all four fields to be touched. One of these four form-and force-fields, but only one, is the field of Politics. To choose the force- and form-field of Politics means that, in my work, I always want to ask the question: What do you want? Where do you stand? It also means that I always want to ask myself: What do I want? Where do I stand? The force- and form-field of Politics – just as the field of Aesthetics – can also be interpreted negatively, I am aware of it. But it is never about excluding or rejecting the negative, it is about confronting the negative also, working within the negative also and involving oneself in it, it is always a matter of not being negative oneself. Through my work, I want to create a new truth beyond negativity, beyond current issues, beyond commentaries, beyond opinions and beyond evaluations.

Doing art politically means using art as a tool  

I understand art as a tool to encounter the world. I understand art as a tool to confront reality. And I understand art as a tool to live within the time in which I am living. I always ask myself: Does my work have the ability to generate an event? Can I encounter someone with my work? Am I – through my work – trying to touch something? Can something –  through my work – be touched? Doing art politically means considering the work that I am doing today – in my milieu, in my history – as a work which aims to reach out of my milieu – beyond my history. I want – in and through my life – to address and confront universal concerns. Therefore I must work with what surrounds me, with what I know and with what affects me. I must not give in to the temptation of the particular – but on the contrary – try to touch universality. The particular – which always excludes – must be resisted. For me this means that I want to do my work, the work that I am doing here and now, as a universal work. That is the Political.

Doing art politically means building a platform with the work

Creating a platform enables others to come in contact with the work. I want all of my works to be understood as a surface or a field. This field or surface is the upper surface that enables access or contact with art. The impact or friction takes place on this upper surface, and through a contact, the other can be implicated. This surface – my work – must be a locus for dialogue or for confrontation. I think that art has the power and capacity – because it is art – to create the conditions for a dialogue or a confrontation, directly, one-to-one, without communication, without mediation, without moderation. As an artist I want to consider my work as a platform, a platform which is a clear opening toward the other. I always want to ask myself: Does my work possess the dynamic for a breakthrough? And I ask myself: is there an opening, is there a path into my work? Does my work resist the tendency toward the hermetic? My work must create an opening; it must be a door, a window or even just a hole, a hole carved into today's reality. I want to make my artwork with the will to create a breakthrough.

Doing art politically means loving the material with which one works

To love does not mean to be in love with one's material or to loose oneself in it. Rather, to love one's material means to place it above everything else, to work with it in awareness, and it means to be insistent with it. I love the material because I decided in favour of it – therefore I do not want to replace it. Since I decided in favour of it – and love it – I cannot and do not want to change it. The decision about the material is an extremely important one. That is the Political. And because I made that decision, I cannot yield to wishes and demands for 'something else' or 'something new'.

Doing art politically means inventing oneself guidelines

It means inventing one's own guidelines or appropriating them. My guidelines are: acting in headlessness; 'Energy = Yes! Quality = No!'; being weak – but wanting to make a strong work; not economizing oneself; self-expenditure; 'Panic is the solution!'; being both precise and exaggerating; undermining oneself; being cruel vis-à-vis one's own work, being tenacious, 'Less is less! More is more!'; 'Never won, but never completely lost!'; having the ambition to coin a new concept with my work; assuming responsibility for everything concerning my work; accepting to look dumb in front of my own work; 'Better is always less good!'; refusing all hierarchies; believing in the friendship between Art and Philosophy; being ready – because the first – to pay the price for one's work.

Doing art politically means working for the other

Working for the other means first of all to work for the other within myself. It also means working for a non-exclusive public. The other can be my neighbour or can be a stranger, someone who frightens me, whom I don't know and don't understand. The other is someone I did not think of and did not expect. The non-exclusive public is not just 'all' or 'the mass' or 'the majority', the non-exclusive public consists of the others, the sometimes more and sometimes less numerous 'others'. Through and in my work I want to work for a non-exclusive public. I want to do everything in order to never exclude the other from my work and I want to include the other, always and without conditions. I want to include the other through the form of my work. The other is also the reason why I make no distinction between works in public space, in a commercial gallery, in an art fair, in a museum, in a Art-center or in an alternative art space. That is the Political. To work for the other enables me to position myself as an artist on the outside of the spectrum of evaluation.

Doing art politically means being a warrior.

Doing art politically does not mean working for or against the market

The question is much more about understanding the market as part of the artist's reality and about working in this reality. Not wanting to work for or against the market is not merely a declaration. It is the awareness that only through autonomy and independence can artmaintain itself beyond the laws of the market. Only a direct and affirmed confrontation with the reality of the market – despite the errors, the defects, the faults and the injuries – make it possible to resist and go beyond the market pressure and as an artist, I cannot become dependent. The artist – especially during the first years – always needs support and assistance. Although I know the importance of this support and assistance, I must never let myself or my work be dependent on it.

Aubervilliers, summer 2008

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the relationship between the housing market and the labour market

Whereas Beuys had been a central figure in the post-war European artistic consciousness for some time, American audiences had previously only had partial and fleeting access to his work. In 1980, and building on the scepticism voiced by Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers, who in 1972 Open Letter had compared Beuys to Wagner, art historian Benjamin Buchloh (who was teaching at Staatliche Kunstakademie, just like Beuys) launched a polemically forceful attack on Beuys. The essay was (and remains) the most vitriolic and thoroughgoing critique of both Beuys's rhetoric (referred to as “simple-minded utopian drivel”) and persona (Buchloh regards Beuys as both infantile and messianic).

Firstly, Buchloh draws attention to Beuys's fictionalisation of his own biography, which he sees as symptomatic of a dangerous cultural tendency of disavowing a traumatic past and retreating into the realms of myth and esoteric symbolism. Buchloh attacks Beuys for his failure to acknowledge and engage with Nazism, the Holocaust, and their implications. 

Secondly, Buchloh criticizes Beuys for displaying an inability or reluctance to engage with the consequences of the work of Marcel Duchamp. That is, a failure to acknowledge the framing function of the art institution and the inevitable dependence upon such institutions to create meaning for art objects. If Beuys championed art's power to foster political transformation, he nevertheless failed to acknowledge the limits imposed upon such aspirations by the art museum and dealership networks that served somewhat less utopian ambitions. For Buchloh, rather than acknowledging the collective and contextual formation of meaning, Beuys instead attempted to prescribe and control the meanings of his art, and often in the form of dubious esoteric or symbolic codings. Buchloh's critique has been developed by a number of commentators such as Stefan Germer and Rosalind Krauss.

***

Buchloh's critique has been subject to revision. His attention is given to dismantling a mythologized artistic persona and utopian rhetoric, which he regarded to be irresponsible and even (it is implied) proto-fascist. Since Buchloh's essay was written, however, a great deal of new archival material has come to light. Most significantly, Beuys's proposal for an Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial, submitted in 1958. It has been claimed that the existence of such a project invalidates Buchloh's claim that Beuys retreated from engaging with the Nazi legacy, a point that Buchloh himself has recently acknowledged, although the charges of romanticism and self-mythologizing remain.

The term characterization was introduced in mid 15th century.[3] Aristotle promoted the primacy of plot over characters, that is, a plot-driven narrative, arguing in his Poetics that tragedy "is a representation, not of men, but of action and life." This view was reversed in the 19th century, when the primacy of the character, that is, a character-driven narrative, was affirmed first with the realist novel, and increasingly later with the influential development of psychology.   


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