I recently wrote an article on similarities in the recent evolution of anarchist groups in Los Angeles and art collectives or artists engaging in social practice, specifically comparing the Revolutionary Autonomous Communities‘ weekly food program and the Artists for Social Justice. Below is an excerpt in which I attempt to trace historical similarities between the avant-garde and anarchism, finally contrasting those to relatively recent strategies of horizontalism, reflexivity, and exchange.
Look out for Issue #7 of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest when it comes out in a couple of weeks – not only will you find my full article, but also a constellation of other great writings.
The similarities between the avant-garde and anarchism extend beyond their similar “shock and rupture” tactics; political theorists and art historians alike have declared both to be failed movements. In the avant-garde movement, this failure arises from a paradoxical hierarchy encased in the primacy of the art object. If the art object itself contains the power to elicit epiphany, than the artist is elevated to a status “uniquely open to the world,” and viewers that are open to the transformative experience of the object are likewise more educated and socially aware than those who are not.
Anarchists struggle with a similar created hierarchy, often denouncing those with any connection to institutions and systems of the current society. This has led to an insular mindset dominated by ideologues, with adherence to extremism serving as a measure of commitment. The desire to completely dissociate has undermined the goals of systematic revolution and greater freedom, replacing one hegemony with another.
Complicating these intrinsic problematics is the proven ability of capitalist systems to subsume and harness radical tactics into new forms of control. Belgian political philosopher Chantal Mouffé writes: “The aesthetic strategies of the counterculture: the search for authenticity, the ideal of self-management, the anti-hierarchical exigency, are now used in order to promote the conditions required by the current mode of capitalist regulation, replacing the disciplinary framework characteristic of the Fordist period.” As mass marketing employs the surface aesthetics of the avant-garde or revolutionary iconography to imbue brands with “cool,” strategies of the alternative arts movement are now foundational pillars of the worldwide art market, and corporate structures (as in Google or Apple) embrace a superficial ideal of egalitarian self-management, the “shock and rupture” tactics of the radical left are effectively deflated.
Because of this systematic adaptability, many have claimed “any form of critique is automatically recuperated and neutralized by capitalism.” In the past few years, however, both artistic practice and anarchist organizing have come to embrace new strategies of radicality that are distanced from “shock” tactics in their commitment to a social and spatial awareness. Exemplified by the two Los Angeles groups (the anarchist RAC, and artistic Artists for Social Justice) that started in 2007, this radicality emerges in self-reflexive organization and practical exchange.
“How might one structure an institution that is designed to problematize the idea of the institution?”
In Summer’s Artforum, Taraneh Fazeli poses this question in her reflection on the Night School, a recent hybrid collective artwork-as-pedagogical-structure conceived by Anton Vidokle and housed by the New Museum in New York City.
This question implicitly accepts the paradox of institutional critique, and Vidokle’s search for an answer bespeaks a series of prior attempts and “productive failures” like Manifesta 6. This biennial in Cyprus was organized around an art school structure, but was cancelled before it began. This prompted notions of experimentation and interesting failure, which became the central themes of “United Nations Plaza,” the result of Manifesta 6’s relocation to Berlin comprising a series of lectures and discussions that subverted pedagogical convention.
The Night School grew out of this project and morphed into a series of seminars and workshops over a year that involved multiple artists and cultural thinkers giving both public sessions and private workshops. The “core group” of 28 accepted applicants (of which Taraheh Fazali was one) committed themselves to a year of private sessions and meetings in addition to the public events. The series of eleven seminars were offered on three “tracks,” each on the last weekend of each month. The tracks were loosely organized around subjects like progressive cultural practices (Liam Gillick, Martha Rosler, and Boris Groys), artistic agency (Walid Raad, Jalal Toufic, Okwui Enwezor, Maria Lind, and Paul Chan) and self-organization in the field of cultural production (Rirkrit Tiravanija, Zhang Wei and Hu Fang, Natascha Sadr Haghighian and Raqs Media Collective).
Fazeli recalls her participation in the Night School’s core group, and ultimately believes that Night School was mix of successes and failures – success at facilitating a core group of art world insiders to achieve greater theoretical and cultural knowledge as well as the social networks that provide the armature for professional advancement - but a failure in its ability to problematize the institution in which it exists. Rather it legitimated the museum as a “center for power” and “hotbed of intellectual activity” as Martha Schwendener of the Village Voice describes – the museum easily co-opted dissent by inviting it in, and assembling art stars and individuals with high intellectual capital to participate in this series raised the New Museum’s cutting-edge profile.
I understand the “failure” that Fazeli talks about – the “public” audience of the Night School events could not experience the same level of engagement as the privileged core group and were already self-selected due to societal conventions surrounding museums. As Schwendener says, it was a “long way from Paolo Freire or…Hebert Kohl teaching kids in Harlem.” But institutions exist to perpetuate themselves, and the New Museum has an audience of art students and art world types who were exceedingly well served by this project. Both writers admit how complicated, gratifying, and ethical it was compared to a traditional pedagogical model. It is not really the purpose of the museum to teach the oppressed or to solve societal problems. The museum can, however, function as a site where these questions are raised and discussed, where education and institutions and power can be decoded and reapplied. Just because the museum benefits from such structures is no reason for them not to exist.
So the question remains – can such discussion and sustained pedagogical structures actually problematize the institutions in which they exist? If they can only do so by somehow breaking down and delegitimizing the umbrella institution, then no. The art world doesn’t work that way, not in reality. But working subtly within the paradox of institutional critique, adding to institutional reputation while simultaneously raising questions of theory and power amongst the stakeholders (the art world) can only be beneficial. One aspect does not negate the other. It is disingenuous to wish for a purity of critique, to ignore real contexts or real barriers – that constitutes shooting oneself in the foot before the project even begins (Manifesta, perhaps?). Much better to dream up an interesting structure with the best of theoretical intentions in mind, and see what transpires in all its complex and messy glory.
Read Fazeli’s entire article here.
Thanks to Tanya Yorks for her research help.