greetings from New-York

i found this text on adcompany&co site and i thought it is interesting for our project.

27.02.2012 Brief aus New York von Noah Fischer (Occupy Museums) an das Team vom (kommenden) Aufstand - Botschaft an die Niederlande



I guess it's possible that you guys first discovered capitalism in a golden tulip, but we Americans really developed it. Our industries invented products that everyone didn’t know they needed; a booming consumer culture built into Europe’s foundations after the war. But this still wasn’t enough. Our bankers began making money from money itself: packaging debt and betting against these deals. And when this wasn’t enough, we went to war with ancient civilizations, destroying them just to rebuild them into shopping malls for huge profits, but that was also still not enough. So finally, our wealthiest elites began to actually eat the American public. In the US we are experiencing a viral attack on everything that should be commonly owned, or not owned at all: our security, care in old age, education, natural resources, democratic government, our very culture. As we lose these things, our society is becoming un-glued, we are turning against each other like wolves. Unfortunately, we have exported this virus back to you, where it first originated. Here in New York, my Dutch friends, we may be living in your future. I’m writing to tell you that things have gotten really ugly on this side of the Atlantic, and we need your help before its too late.

Despite a perception by New Yorkers that we are at the center of the cultural universe, times have been tough for artists here. The glamorous art markets have not saved us, in fact they have enslaved us by our desires, making us so “hungry” that we’re willing to bite each others faces off for opportunities to enter this market which in reality only has a few winners and lots of losers. We had forgotten that as culture workers, we have a constant responsibility to stay vigilant against those who want to position us as jesters in their royal courts. We had fallen asleep. We dreamt that “political art” meant an expression of our favorite politics for a stage, or on a canvas, to be bought and sold and speculated on by the winners of capitalism. Waking up, we realize that there is no such genre as political art. In our times, only the economic structures around things are political. By letting the commonwealth of our culture morph into a big pyramid shaped market, by participating in this market, we were actually supporting a nasty position while we slept.

On September 17th, we finally woke up, came together, and opened up a space for protest and dialog in Zucotti Park. At Occupy Wall Street, we shared democratic tools developed in Egypt, Spain, Greece, and Brazil that would aid in this new culture. Our aim was to re-discover a culture of the commons and it caught on all over the place. Now we are involved in a global movement.

As it turned out, many of us occupiers are also artists. And now we have expanded the zone of protest into the cultural realm. We have begun occupying museums because economic injustice is as pronounced in the culture sphere as it is in the housing market. Museums claim to serve the public. They contain the symbols and narratives and treasures that we are all taught to believe in. But they have been co-opted by the 1% who sit on their boards influencing culture on one hand while also sitting on the auction house boards and speculating for personal gain on the other. In this way, power in the arts is concentrated and corrupt and this deeply disempowers most artists. So we held general assemblies at the gate of the Museum of Modern Art and Lincoln Center. Soon we were joined by large crowds. We aim to re-direct art away from the luxury markets and toward the common struggle and vision of the 99%.

I hear troubling rumors across the Atlantic. There are accusations in Holland that artists are sucking up public wealth like subsidized babies. This kind of rhetoric is a red flag for US artists. We know that in reality the wealthiest receive structural corporate welfare and keep their expanding riches offshore and immune from politics. To deflect criticism, they make artists into punching bags, that’s what happened years ago in our “culture wars” of the early 1990’s. I fear that the artists of Europe—especially our friends the Dutch, who have so long enjoyed support from the state that we New Yorkers could only dream of, will lose their autonomy from these hungry markets. The virus that wants to eat away the bonds that holds our society together is now infecting you. If you lose this battle, it will be a major setback for all of us.

But this nightmare need not become our reality. Let’s wake up and fight together!

Let’s not separate our art from this struggle, but use our creativity in the service of it.

noahfischer.org

3 comments:

  1. why do you find it interesting?

    i find it self-righteous and filled with naive (mis) understandings of art, of political history, of activism, of the movement and the relationship of artists to it...

    I appreciate the SENTIMENT but i really disagree with a great deal of the SWEEPING statements about the art industry, etc.

    I DO think that "art" -- and i include the museums and the galleries, is in fact a space for a strange ambivalent type of object-making that you SIMPLY cannot find in ANY other part of capitalist society.

    to say that the art world has been co-opted by the 1% is just plain rhetoric that gets us literally no where.

    art is NOT outside capitalism.
    that is the FIRST big mis-understanding here.

    that does not mean that it is lock dead center with it... or that every art work in a gallery is a pure product...

    but as it were..

    if this is a kinda call to start to step outside seeking approval from the art institutiions, fine... but even there i think this is a mis-understanding.

    the art institutions (galleries, etc.) are in fact HUNGRY for cutting edge new work....

    any work you do as an artist is a part of the institution of art

    if you decide to only work in your garage and make performances that way, it is not that you are outside art, but rather that you are expanding art into the garage realm.

    big difference in how one understands things

    in the real world and the real relationships.
    I think for me, i really do not want to get caught up in rhetoric of being politically correct.

    its very tempting and also has VERY GOOD commercial prospects now! (i.e. the performance piece you have mentioned about the Arab Spring)....

    but that being said, i don't think politically correct self-righteous forms of art making open any doors into the actual situation.. imaginatively or personally...

    if one wants to do activism or join a movement, art is not really, imho going to do much to 'make the people' see the light. i don't think.

    good propaganda (cool fuking posters, pamphlets, websites, demos, organizing, etc.) can def do that! (make the movement grow).

    but making real 'art'... i don't know.. and don't really feel its a connection that needs to be hammered at.

    in so far as we have a political sensibility.

    its enough
    and the real deal.

    no need for grand-standing
    i don't feel.

    quite the contrary.

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    Replies
    1. interesting i read the text more with the irony in it may because i saw the show of andcompany and co. they also have this kind of activist 'let's do this, but it is also ironic, that's why i like it, it's not so moralistic like the egyptian show and not pathetic. it's fun and they are making fun of themselves by being revolutionary ad making the real art!!! it's still stays a theater and the real massage is behind that. it works for as a reflection and not a pure action.
      the same with this text, i read it with irony.

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  2. well... this kind of irony is not really in activism... per se...

    sure there is everyday post-modern irony..

    but people don't do things such as link arms on the street and get arrested in teh process out of some kind of ironic fun-fun clever-clever feeling... as a rule... i would say..

    nor all the other thigns that are related to such moments.

    i just fear that groups like and & co actually work to undermine possibilities.. without meaning to.. they sorta make the desire for immediate change a joke...


    this becomes then typical ultra-leftism or a humorous type. to me.

    where its more cool to show how fuked things are, AND to show that you are not any kind of militant (god forbid) every second too (so as to please the liberal program directors at x y z museum, gallery, etc.) AND to just make fun of everything in capitalism, in reactionary politics, etc.

    the thing is its not really all that funny at the end of the day...

    so how is this meeting of minds (performers and audience) working? what is it leaving the audience (and the performers) with?

    what do they walk away from this funny show with?

    sometimes it seems for me: with Being Cool.

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