Hey I thought you might like the below section from my latest zine on ‘art’. I guess I’m coming from a place where the idea of art as an individual, egotistical practice should no longer exist. Its something really hard to come to grips with as someone who has never questioned how even making socially motivated work perpetuates the system we supposedly critique…
“It should be plainly obvious by now that art making, in itself, is an insufficient response to social crisis. The libertarian possibilities of disavowing art as an individualistic activity that is somehow special or superior to other human activities are endless. Creative energies could be channeled into any (or every) action one could imagine. To give up artistic privilege, consumption and productivity — addictions which capital has convinced us gives our individualistic lives value — is the negation of art, the negation of domination.”

My previous comment doesn’t seem to show up for some reason?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against socially motivated work (see my Celebrate People’s History Poster on the Red Feds), but I am interested in the notion (proposed by the people such as Black Mask, Stewart Home, Art Strike 1990-93, Tony Lowe and to some extent Situationism) that by continuing to make work, and therefore to define ourselves as ‘artists’ — we deny others the equal gift of vision and keep art firmly separate to everyday, creative acts ie life. In this way, we perpetuate a system of inactivity, passivity, hierarchy — and most importantly — privilege. From my zine:
“Art which ‘criticises the establishment’ is reintegrated into it, defusing any useful comprehension of its horror. Since this kind of ‘edgy’ work often defines itself in opposition to the very thing it critiques, the work — and the artist making that work — has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. In the end these sub-cultures within the art world only serve to diffuse the potentially radical energies of the creative public so that they pose no real, collective threat to established culture. The critique of the spectacle remains an integral part of the spectacle itself, and in turn legitimises it.”

No worries!