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Lecture by writer and art critic Dave Hickey. Recorded at the University of Memphis, 1997. This is an old VHS rip.
Friday, June 7, 2019
Dave Hickey: Art in a Democratic Society. 1997 (the year I peaked)
- Barry Thomas he's bang on - a bit wrong with his ideas of beauty but the democratic basis of art and its role as moral/lore maker I call - meme seeder. He's so good on the anti academic/ university horse fecal matter definition and control of art - f...shit
- Barry Thomas Thanks István Ping Clover much appreciated
- Wells Tao he's so good, and he's been at this so long, I can't see any evidence of any effect, or response....
- Barry Thomas response to his ideas you mean? He's articulating so much of what I think is correct logic - give or take - for the purpose of modern art, where it came from and how it works... in some ways it's too simple for the silly academics and philosophers who seem more engaged in tying themselves in ever increasing knots rather than what I suspect drives most of us - art doing real things rather than entertaining... I love how he agrees precisely with my thing that around 80% of the best things I have ever come up with start with a diagnosis of an issue followed by eureka resolutions - I have to watch the last third - tomorrow to be sure of all of what he's saying - I do think his notion of beauty vs beautiful is interesting but this goes more toward a condemnation of the oligarchy of any milieu controlling and proscribing one element of culture - 'taste' - Duchamp taught us to look away from taste - with indifference - ie. any problem perceived is either solved with a yes, a no or an indifference... I suspect the real thing is an acceptance that any problem will become a solution which is a new meme and myth and that becomes the new problem / boundary to see through and solve... there is no key there is no prison
- Wells Tao how do you pay for values that spit on paying for values
- Barry Thomas can you tease that out Tao?
- Wells Tao Well I guess my thesis around this has something to do with where creativity/culture/and money intersect
- Barry Thomas exactly... especially - like he is saying - who is in charge of what gets seen and done... the money go round always falls beside the tree inside the drip line - to the sycophants of the status quo feeders - which is not where the necessary changes come from...
- Barry Thomas Artists are always so driven into isolatory oblivion - the edges of culture and the changes that are wrought etch inward so slowly that oft times we don't get the rewards or recognitions... and if and when we grizzel we get turfed further out. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
- Wells Tao there's this great scene, where this taxi mogul, takes robert rachenberg and makes him sell for a lot of money, and robert is like where's my cut, and the guy says, well not now, but from now on your work will sell for a lot of money. And it is framed as if Robert was saying, hey, don't do that, but it wasn't much of a fucking fight. From my perspective. I mean why would you. Well, of course we know the well worn woe of expression being valued only for it's wealth, I've seen the lines of people filing past the billion dollar van gough, while litteraly, Duchamp was outside, by the exit stairs.. that no one used given the cattle sized lifts available..
- Barry Thomas Brilliant... sure - commodification is a dangerous carrot eh... Banksy ... who the fuck is Rauschenberg now anyways? Look at this shit... one of my last 'paintings' in 1979 (apart from the bit of stuff I did in Coromandel 2007) was called 'hopefully meaningless' ( ie. the end of any quest for abstraction must - like this untitled mess of RR's - end in meaninglessness) so we are simply left with hope - - which leads us out into the real world to deliver that hope innit? Duchamp got kindof trapped - still in the old art model the patronage and parties of Drier etc... selling Brancusis etc... all he had to do is what many of us are doing and walk out the door and do stuff in the real world - - take the readymade and take it back home if you like
- Wells Tao I watch this, sometime, but usually he gets me so fired up I'm a pain in the head for weeks
- Barry Thomas Y;know it makes me revert to my idea I fired around a year or three back... that we need to create a medium/forum - something like a conference to articulate exactly what we are on about... the drivers, the results, desires, some histories and futures.
- Wells Tao Personally where I am at, is I'm going separate. I've tried going up the guts of the legit industry, and they've made it clear that my role is martyr only. Un interested in my classical capitalist 'new renewal' perspective so far. that's fine with me, i'd rather appeal to the general public than collect stamps of approval from bigger fish looking at stocking their own feeding ponds..
- Barry Thomas Martyr is a bit strong... perhaps with bene off you didn't forsee what the media and CNZ and WINZ would do to you, perhaps you didn't have the wisdom support structures that could see it coming and who hung you out to dry? the one thing I learned in the environmental advertising thing I created and had nicked and which saatchis and TVNZ stole to profit from to the tune of $1mil ie - Earthcare' was - all (in this case advertising - but it may as well be art) social project initiatives must have no negative unforseen consequenses... they teach this shit at advertising school - ie don't rebrand coke with a word like tnuc - coz someone will read it in the mirror one day
- Wells Tao All the belly aching comes down to, do you have the work or don't you... I've got the work. Only i'm to busy to get it to the public.. Time and place... are comin...
- Wells Tao he eh
- Barry Thomas partly I think it's magic too - I think - I agree with Duchamp - in the end artists only ever make one or two things that stand - or in my terms - affect change. These calls to make these changes are not some system or some method or some cute relationship with people, dealers, agents, galleries - they are milieu moments that scream for change - that's where the magic is - and only a few people/artists can see that need and see what needs doing to affect those changes... jam in some new dimensions to steer the ship in a safer better direction... the rest follow - (under the shelter of the branches)... so maybe twice a lifetime these will happen to the very best - not best but most insightful... the magic of vision... and the holders of the status quos will always loath that impediment to change - cause all their eggs are firmly in the one basket... their noses are in their won troughs of course they are wanting to vilify change agents... in the end this is the 'war' - a perpetual one - even within one's own mind - the personal mind has its own oligarchy/hegemony too.
- Barry Thomas Nice one - sounds like a film in the making?
- Wells Tao I'm a terrance mckenna/ p. dick fan... Culture is not your friend, but it is determined to leave this planet one way or another...
- Barry Thomas Reminds me of some of those stunning monologues in Naked lunch - I can just see you narrating the story - slowly doling out the yarn... no action - just the story plain and simple and rivetting
- Wells Tao I realised recently that every drink of alcohol, tea coffee, any altered reality, sugar, is a spirit move, a desire to let go and embrace something else... everyone, in broad day light, trying to merge out of the plain of base needs.., and this need endlessly manipulated into products that can not satisfy by design.
- Barry Thomas press art pedal to the metal - he got that in one all right and this shit... this is a seriously large scaled art movement - bigger than any silly abstract expressionist bla de bla... this stuff truely is world changing... surely... when this movement eeks outinto the countryside, and 3rd world - we will see major chnage for the good... it is driven by serious logic in the real world ... http://eco-publicart.org/
- Barry Thomas yeah - and add to that drive away from addictive shit the base need to laugh eh? best art ever! I mean laughing is central to the creative urge and like the urinal and many things I have discovered - at the heart of the eureka moment - one can suddenly see what needs to be done... see it all and encapsulate that with the inherent contradictions of the joke... resolved as a kind of purging trauma - released into the new thing... the new idea... now I reckon that's one additcion we should never ever let go of
- Barry Thomas yeah there's lots of it that will be cute for a week or a year and disolve away but what is driving it is... the need for community, a better planet, better food, getting ones hands dirty, melting the FFFFkg cities away - so it will spread to the country - which will be a serious battle with the likes of dairy/ return of our fucked wetlands and rivers etcy etcy... all good stuff a comin down the track
- Barry Thomas I love that thing Hickey said too - that was it 35,000 fine arts graduates pumping out of art school in the USA every year - for what? FFS - this is the mindless shit happening here - god knows we need Dhyana Beaumont 's idea of a proper art school with eco principles - not too fussy - rather than these kids producing more and more stupid commodities -
- Wells Tao I like that art ed is mainstream, big numbers.. more art language around, possibilities to flow around that gate keepers more possible, as the audience is our selves...
- Barry Thomas how does that one go?
- Barry Thomas hey I'm loving this but flagging... gotta hit the sackerarium night Tao :-)
- Wells Tao artists have worked hard to get here, broaden the base,
- Barry Thomas Thanks for the chat - ------------------------------------
- Wells Tao thank you
- Harry Silver Thanks for sharing a great chat! Love time shifted eves dropping.
- Barry Thomas join in - nothing is ever OVER
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