[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> how to defeat activism

[Are Flagan <areflagan@mac.com>]

On 7/30/02 3:07 PM, "Kermit Snelson" <ksnelson@subjectivity.com> wrote:

> But they are
> certainly not the first to have insisted that a revolution requires a
> "distinctive and recognizable aesthetic." [7]  Hitler certainly did as well.
> So did Stalin.  So did the Taliban.  No one will ever agree on what is more
> aesthetically preferable, nor on which sexual mores are truly liberating,
> nor on what practice is the more spiritually fulfilling.  That's why making
> such things an integral part of politics is, as Walter Benjamin wrote and
> history shows, a recipe for war.  Aesthetics and sexual mores should be left
> out of politics for the same reason that religion should be.
> 
> The reason why humanity never seems to live up to this truth is that finding
> one's own way is hard.  That personal task, not politics or revolution, is
> the true role of creativity, artistic expression and identity formation.
> But a "tactical" aesthetic of consumption, of criticism, of refusal, of
> opposition is the very opposite of this.  It's a lot easier than finding
> your own way.  It takes no real work at all.  It's the aesthetic of a slave,
> a parasite, and a vandal. [8]  And if you seek its monument, look around.
> 
> Kermit Snelson


K,

What seems to be forgotten in this exhaustive *timeline* is that each
aesthetic move have had its countermove - what has become key moments of
political remove in the concept of an artistic avant-garde: constructivism,
AIZ, etc. It seems that over the course of the same *history* people have
found it necessary to wage war on aesthetic terms, precisely because, as it
is noted, they are ruled by an aesthetic (which always implies a politics).

It should be noted that after the recent *liberation* of Kabul, TIME
magazine ran a celebratory feature that showed people carrying TVs out of
hiding and a group of men leering at a deck of pornographic playing cards.
The cost of such *aesthetic* pleasures (aka political freedoms): thousands
and thousands and thousands of dead. (Yoy tell me if endless reruns of
*Friends* is worth it.)

It seems to me that K is proposing another version of the bubble that has
passed for genius in some  circles and the quest for Nirvana in others; the
way (just add light and you have the Biblical quote). But by removing
everything from something, you are perhaps not left with essence but
possibly nothing. Arguably aesthetics, sexual mores and religion actually
compose what we term politics and are inseparable from our concepts of what
rules and governs, even constitutes, creativity, artistic expression and
identity formation. How can one approach these entities without taking their
dominant definition(s) into account, as K suggests? Well, already the
sublime, the avant-garde (which is both of its time and ahead of its time),
heaven et al get top marks for promoting a personalized liberation from our
earthly preoccupations, but alas they always return to fundamentally support
what they seek to remove. What remains of K's pursuit is an ancient
conundrum and a personal/aesthetic/political blunder.

God bless America,

-af

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