From: Freya (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Oct 18 2005 - 13:36:14 PDT
Ooops that last post I wrote in the psych thread was
supposed to be offlist. Sorry everyone.
> I guess what i thought "Tomvick" wrote (sorry i
> don't know your
> name) captures the issue of calling something 'avant
> garde' now.
> The problem with that is that it positions itself in
> advance or
> in opposition, but everything is fodder for
> commodification.
I thought it just meant in advance, does it really
mean opposition too, or is that a connotation it has
gained?
> If you want to call what you do 'underground' or
> 'alternative'
> or 'undigestible' that's fine -- it doesn't matter
> what you call
> it if you just do it. But then it might be called a
> hobby, too.
Hobbies are nice too of course.
> But if you want the association with 'avant garde'
> meaning what
> it used to mean 80-90 years ago, then it seems like
> you're
> either doing what he said (working for a small
> audience), or
> you're deluding yourself that you're in advance or
> in oppostion
> to anything.
It could be you are so far in advance that nobody can
see you in the distance. :)
I guess you can also be opposed to something even if
you are all alone, it's just that you have a good
chance everyone will ignore you perhaps, or sometimes
perhaps not, who knows.
> The point that's really not all that new around here
> (or
> anywhere else really) was that being 'avant garde'
> (in that
> original sense) has to struggle with its *own*
> problem of just
> being a self-important niche where the advertising
> community
> goes for new ideas. And people who solve that
> problem,
> (remember the dadas made huge advances in typography
> and were
> their own ad campaign) to make work that goes
> directly to people
> (however many) and skipping the structures and
> institutional
> credentials of entertainment and art worlds, are
> really doing
> the service most related to 'avant gardism' which
> was not just a
> shelter concept to protect non-mainstream work.
But then if it is ahead of the rest then eventually
the rest of the world may catch up and ideas may or
may not be used in more mainstream circles isn't that
part of the very idea of avant garde?
I guess if the idea of avant garde really does mean in
opposition, then the idea of an alternative place to
go, is also an idea of opposition in a way. By that I
mean that people have an alternative place to engage
with artwork and ideas in opposition to the main one,
and it's very existance is a matter of opposition,
because you have an alternative space, so you do not
have to engage in the main space.
> Mostly what i
> see is people not quite skipping those structures,
> but
> manipulating them and leveraging them for different
> purposes
> than they were originally intended, (hand processing
> started out
> that way) like inside out detournment of a structure
> itself, not
> focussed on an image or object, the way a readymade
> is.
I guess that is sort of trying to co-opt mainstream
society! :)
love
Freya
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