NOTE FROM CHRIS: respond to zach's post in the comments section.
to respond to the "fuck marriage" dicussion, i'll begin by posting casey's and xarene's comments, just so they're both here as reference points on the blog:
Casey:
So, I know I'm not using the blog, but I just wanted to pitch an initial idea for a CRUFT proposal. How about something called "fuck marriage" that is an attack on the sacred institution of marriage itself (especially if Prop 8 passes)? Rather than begging religious freaks or the State to "allow" others to be part of their stupid club that they don't even respect themselves, it would be way more interesting to just wage an all-out assault on the stupid retrograde institution of marriage. Abolish marriage for everyone. I actually think we'd find some interesting political affinities (libertarians, younger generations, etc.) I think there are all kinds of possibilities for driving a wedge between church and state and creating general uproar. Not that similar ideas haven't been in the mix since the 60s, but we could do it better and put a new perverse tech spin on it. Plus, fuckmarriage.org is available (as is fuckmarriage.com), and it's the best URL ever ...
Xarene:
grant and i were just discussing prop 8 over lunch. and i actually commented something like 'i am a staunch proponent to just say fuck marriage'!!; it's a fucking made-up business by the church, and the government's just got to meddle in anything that it can get it's hands on that a)make money, b)strip our rights. and i think i even suggested something like calling for no marriage for anyone, boy-girl, boy-boy whatever. none!
my friend, brian mcconnell, in san francisco actually got enough signatures to get on the ballot a change of name for the sewage facility for the sf bay area to be changed to george w. bush... his logic being we name buildings, institutions and facilities after presidents, so why not the sewage cleanup, since symbolically we'll be cleaning up the shit he's leaving behind for years to come.
so, we can get enough signatures to get 'abolishing marriage' on ballots for next november!!!
zach (cont):
i think the timeliness of a project on marriage could be incredibly striking and attract much attention. i am so sick of this struggle to belong--to gain something that, in the end, crushes you into conformity. i think we can do something amazing with this, but i would just like to point out that our "fuck" would have to be a compassionate one. it's important to remember that most people--gay or straight--want marriage, and we don't want to totally alienate those people...where would our audience be then? and i don't think we really only want to preach to the converted. how do we carry this out powerfully and remain inclusive? i think it's necessary to reflect upon people who are unable (or not critical enough) to separate affect and love from the institution of marriage in all its juridical, governmental entrapments. this leads me to something else i have been thinking about A LOT, which is a politics of love (something michael hardt is starting to work on). what is political love? how does it bind community, operate as a compassionate activism, and form subjectivity? perhaps this is an appropriate avenue to move a project on "fuck marriage" through?
in terms of the materialization of this, i would like to see a move away from traditional art objects. i'm hoping / assuming we all agree that we'd like to produce an art-like thing that would produce tangible political results. perhaps we could do something performative with the staging of a "wedding"? thinking about wedding cake makes me really excited.
i also wanted to talk about methodology. i think CRUFT already has a methodology to a certain degree, but i think now is the time to intricately flesh out what our methodology is. methodology drives practice, and it grounds our projects in a specific politics. for example, if you look at CAE and their methodology of electronic civil disobedience, this is the methology that has produced a multiplicity of their projects. CAE is able to address numerous, disparate projects, but they all have a similar conceptual grounding. i'd be curious to hear all your thoughts on methodology and how we can deeply tackle this issue. i also noticed that alex galloway recently gave a talk called "on methodology: the alternative algorithm." maybe we should try to see/hear this talk... and i hope this doesn't sound too monolithic--i think our methodology(ies) can be as flexible or rigid as we see fit.
think-tanks. we talked about this idea at ucla. i think it's worth returning to. there's SO much to work with here: what is the visuality of a think-tank? the relationship between the two words? we could do something here in relation to the production of discourse and how that gets targeted, perhaps? it appears to be a nice abstract machine to work various projects within and around.
in closing, i wanted to share this article on art and politics by guy debord: http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/newforms.html
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Thanks for the post zach!
ReplyDeleteMarriage:
I also think this is a great idea. I was thinking about the Prop 8 campaign the other day, and instead of "Vote No on Prop 8" it could be "No Vote on Prop 8". Like, ignore this stupid issue. Obviously, my own vote will be cast opposing prop 8, but I kinda liked the idea.
I agree that "Fuck Marriage" will come across as harsh, and will probably inflame some people, even though its a sentiment I basically share. Maybe inflaming is what we want, but I think there's another subversive but more subtle way to get people thinking about the issue.
Methodology:
This is absolutely crucial. I'm also not particularly interested in making traditional art objects, and I think that was always behind cruft.
I think we'll have to hammer this out in detail when we meet in November, but what I'm truly interested in seeing happen is an observable Cause and Effect relationship. I want to be able to observe an outcome to our practice, theoretically at least if not quantifiably.
This for me is still born out of the first conversations we had, at the end of Fall first year, about questioning the effect of our work in the gallery. This is something I've always struggled with - to what end to we make "traditional art objects". It seems they usually are an end unto themselves. (too bad i love making them anyway).
I think CAE's model is a good one. One we can grow from and out of. Its something we can update.
Chris
So, as a welcome distraction to my thesis reading/writing, here's a further response to Zach and Chris's posts on "fuck marriage" and methodologies:
ReplyDelete"fuck marriage":
My first point with this is if we really would alienate people or if we'd strike a cultural chord that goes way beyond the queer scene, as articulated by Xárene. Part of my reasoning is that conservatives want marriage to be both religious and legal (in the secular sense). I just don't understand how people can raise religious opposition to a secular legal question. If religions want to claim "marriage" as a religious sacrament then let them have it, but then think of some other term for the legal contractual relationship other than marriage (I really don't care what). Do what the French do and just have "domestic partnerships" whether you're same-sex or opposite-sex then do the religious ceremony as an add-on if you want. To use the same term for both entirely kills the issue and allows the Right to define the terms. So, fuck marriage. We can use another term or ditch the whole archaic concept entirely.
That's not an entirely new argument, but it stems from something I see as potentially productive that has arisen in my own project. The more I research the history of our current socioculturalpoliticoeconomic (nice, huh?) moment, the more I'm amazed by the tenuous but powerful alliance that has been forged between religious fundamentalists and free market fundamentalists—the so-called conservative base. This unholy union makes no absolutely no sense to me, particularly in their approach to governmental "regulation." On the one hand, with free market extremists, you have a push for total governmental deregulation of the markets and industries. Yet, at the same time, the religious extremists are all about increased governmental regulation of social behavior. The obvious contradictions seem ripe for exploitation, which is why I have started to describe sociopathy as "social deregulation"—the logical extension of financial deregulation that shows just how at odds the two populations are.
I'm thinking that maybe the stupid marriage question can have a similar power: highlighting the tension between hyper-deregulation and hyper-regulation by the state. That's part of what I find compelling about it. I admit that "fuck marriage" may not be quite the right sentiment/methodology to do this, but I feel there is probably something around marriage that is.
Perhaps the right way to do it is something that re-imagines business contracts and mergers to have the same ridiculous sense of social control that marriage contracts have been subjected to. That might be a cool way to really put pressure on the contradictions.
methodology:
My interest in Deleuzean methods has only grown since our discussions of methodology during our CRUFT meetings last fall. Since traditional techniques of "negative" resistance (satire, parody, subversion, "culture jamming") are not only anticipated but necessary to the system, I prefer strategies that positively amplify, accelerate and push things so much that the perverse absurdities of the system rupture upon themselves and create monsters. This can take an incredible number of forms, but the logic of this is really important to me because it breaks down the polarizing binaries that people expect and deterritorializes the existing landscape into something new, unexpected and productive. I'll post my intro to the VacilLogix project I used for my Duke talk as a separate to see if it's useful in clarifying this distinction.
My critique of CAE is that, when you look at what they actually do and their language, they primarily just migrate traditional modes of aggressive "physical" resistance to the digital realm: "data hostages", "info bombs", "data trespass", "traffic disruption". While this was unavoidable (Gibson predicted a version of it in Neuromancer in 1984 with the Panther Moderns) and perhaps necessary stage of progress, I don't see it as all that productive or transformative. While Steve Kurtz's eventual story is an absolute absurdist tragedy/travesty, it's also not entirely surprising, considering he openly trafficked in terrorist rhetoric. That doesn't justify what happened by any means, but it does make me question the efficacy of his methodology. Is he only inoculating the state against new resistance and making it more defensive?
As an alternative, I'm actually serious when I say I increasingly consider Damien Hirst when of the most radical artists out there. It seems as though his recent career has become a radical performance in fucking with the art market. It's as though his whole point is to make art of such concentrated value that capitalism can't even absorb it (like his diamond skull). His more recent trick of cutting Gagosin and his other dealers out of the loop by selling his own work at public auction is totally unheard of and crazy. Thus, by ridiculously amplifying capitalism and the art market he is actually completely rupturing and undermining it at the same time.
Sorry for the ridiculously long post, but, as you know, that's how I roll ...