I was listening to some old Rage Against the Machine songs, and thinking back to my more naive younger days when I dismissed them as moronic radicals without noticing how awesome their songs were. I went through a rebellious conservative phase as a teenager.
But I’ve actually been thinking about conservative revolutions, because I’ve been paying attention to politics in the United States lately. I’ve also been studying the political and social ideas of Martin Heidegger and the conservative intellectual scene in Germany in the 1920s. And I saw an Argentine movie a while ago called El Secrete de Sus Ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes), which took place under the Isabel Peron presidency, and dealt with the devastating effects the Peronista death squads had on that society. And I saw a movie at the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s film festival called Politist (Police, Adjective) with a very chilling subtext about a policeman’s duty to follow the law without reference to his conscience or moral sensibilities. And I’ve been thinking about the popular support throughout Iran of the Ahmedinejad regime.
I think Canadians, and Westerners in general, have associated radical thinking and emotionally driven politics with the left, as if conservative politicians were about preserving status quo, too rational, out of touch with their own moral sensibilities. But a conservative revolution can inspire the same powerful feelings as a leftist one. When I started listening to Zack de la Rocha’s lyrics again, I realized how little political content was actually there. You know their sensibilities because they’re famous, but most of their lyrics are poetic exhortations. So I thought that a good exercise in political philosophy was to make a Rage song pro-fascist, changing as few lines as possible.
Ughh!
Hey yo, it's just another bombtrack...ughh!
Hey yo, it's just another bombtrack...yeah!
It goes a-1, 2, 3...
Hey yo, it's just another bombtrack
And suckas be thinkin' that they can fade this
But I'm gonna drop it at a higher level
'Cause I'm inclined to stoop down
Hand out some beat-downs
Cold runna train on punk ho's that
Think they run the game
But I learned to burn that bridge and delete
Those who compete...at a level that's obsolete
Instead I warm my hands upon the flames of their flag (was “the flag”)
As I recall their downfall (was “our downfall”)
And the business that burned us all
See through the news and the views that twist reality
Enough
I call the bluff
Fuck moral humility! (was “Fuck Manifest Destiny”)
Drug lords and media whores (was “Landlords and power whores”)
On my people they took turns
Dispute the suits I ignite
And then watch 'em burn
With the thoughts from a militant mind
Hardline, hardline after hardline
Drug lords and media whores (was “Landlords and power whores”)
On my people they took turns
Dispute the suits I ignite
And then watch 'em burn
Burn, burn, yes ya gonna burn (ad infinitum)
It goes a-1, 2, 3
Another funky radical bombtrack
Started as a sketch in my notebook
And now dope hooks make punks take another look
My thoughts ya hear and ya begin to fear
That ya card will get pulled if ya interfere
With the thoughts from a militant mind
Hardline, hardline after hardline
Drug lords and media whores (was “Landlords and power whores”)
On my people they took turns
Dispute the suits I ignite
And then watch 'em burn
Burn, burn, yes ya gonna burn (ad infinitum)
And it would still be just as good a song. So now, students, you understand the moral indifference of art and emotion.
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
The ‘Sin’ of Omission, History, and Philosophy
I picked up this afternoon, as a summer present to myself, a giant collection of fiction by Jorge Borges, who in the past year has become one of my favourite authors, especially in how I approach my shorter pieces of fiction. Thousands of ideas traversing all disciplines of knowledge animate his work, and his work inspires just as many ideas in his readers. Meditating on his work today has distilled in me the reasons for one of the only concrete, unequivocal stands I take in philosophy and art.
I have occasionally come across a philosopher who believes that the discipline’s goal is to discover ultimate universal truths through argument, and that these truths will be simple, clear, and comprehensive. I’ll omit names of those I’ve met personally, and mention one illustrative example that I’ve only read, Scott Shapiro. It’s an admirable goal, the admission and expectation that one day, philosophy will have completed its task, and in so doing, will be the greatest of all possible sciences. It will have explained all of existence in a short series of simple phrases.
It’s a beautiful dream, but an arrogant, hubristic, and ignorant dream. Consider the nature of expression, not in terms of what is meant or what is said or what is understood, but in terms of what is not said. I say a single word, for example, ‘symbol.’ Most of the time, we concentrate on that spoken word itself, and what it could mean, how we can understand it.
But when I say one word, I choose that one over all the thousands of words that I know in the languages I understand. So much of what is possible is omitted when I act. All the words that I could have said are thrown away and forgotten when I choose that one word. This enormous omission of what could have been, of possibility, of capacity, happens with each utterance of every person.
When I am silent, that is actually when I am closest to articulating those dreamy phrases that encompass all the universe, because I omit the least. In not acting, I certainly don’t omit, but I don’t say anything either. Perhaps that’s what Wittgenstein meant when he ended the Tractatus with “That of which we cannot speak, we must be silent.” There are some possibilities, some capacities, that we should not ignore and discard because of the occasional practical need to say stuff. This, I think Wittgenstein tried to say.
I don’t have Wittgenstein’s mystical leanings, but I think this is important for philosophers to consider when trying to articulate their mission statement. Every word said, every idea developed, requires the omission of all the ideas and words within our capacities apart from that one chosen. Articulating what is requires the omission of what could have been. If philosophy is to take capacity seriously, which I believe it must, then we must consider the radical finitude of all sensible statements. What is said cuts away all that could have been said. Can we really consider all that is said to be a complete picture of reality when so much is invariably omitted?
I have occasionally come across a philosopher who believes that the discipline’s goal is to discover ultimate universal truths through argument, and that these truths will be simple, clear, and comprehensive. I’ll omit names of those I’ve met personally, and mention one illustrative example that I’ve only read, Scott Shapiro. It’s an admirable goal, the admission and expectation that one day, philosophy will have completed its task, and in so doing, will be the greatest of all possible sciences. It will have explained all of existence in a short series of simple phrases.
It’s a beautiful dream, but an arrogant, hubristic, and ignorant dream. Consider the nature of expression, not in terms of what is meant or what is said or what is understood, but in terms of what is not said. I say a single word, for example, ‘symbol.’ Most of the time, we concentrate on that spoken word itself, and what it could mean, how we can understand it.
But when I say one word, I choose that one over all the thousands of words that I know in the languages I understand. So much of what is possible is omitted when I act. All the words that I could have said are thrown away and forgotten when I choose that one word. This enormous omission of what could have been, of possibility, of capacity, happens with each utterance of every person.
When I am silent, that is actually when I am closest to articulating those dreamy phrases that encompass all the universe, because I omit the least. In not acting, I certainly don’t omit, but I don’t say anything either. Perhaps that’s what Wittgenstein meant when he ended the Tractatus with “That of which we cannot speak, we must be silent.” There are some possibilities, some capacities, that we should not ignore and discard because of the occasional practical need to say stuff. This, I think Wittgenstein tried to say.
I don’t have Wittgenstein’s mystical leanings, but I think this is important for philosophers to consider when trying to articulate their mission statement. Every word said, every idea developed, requires the omission of all the ideas and words within our capacities apart from that one chosen. Articulating what is requires the omission of what could have been. If philosophy is to take capacity seriously, which I believe it must, then we must consider the radical finitude of all sensible statements. What is said cuts away all that could have been said. Can we really consider all that is said to be a complete picture of reality when so much is invariably omitted?
Sunday, October 4, 2009
And Sitting on a Flatbed Truck Was a Giant Black NO
Saturday night was the most impulsive trip to Toronto I’ve ever made, where I found myself wandering among a downtown peppered with esoteric art and flooded with people out to gaze at it all. I was suddenly invited to Nuit Blanche Saturday night by my friend Justine to meet her and Mallorie (who I had met the previous night at a drunken haze at Gallagher’s on Augusta. I was actually paying more attention to the end of Beetlejuice playing on the bar’s lcd tv. She said Saturday that she understood perfectly.) at the GO station down the street. Whether you see me walking up Bay street in Toronto flanked by two beautiful women, an uncomfortable third wheel on a platonic girl-date, or on a simple night-trip with two friends will depend on how sexually insecure you are.
I think I was most disappointed by the vodka pool, though I’m not sure what else they could have done with it. It was just a large artificial puddle of vodka, an irregularly shaped black container roughly ten square metres in area and maybe an inch deep, sitting in the lobby of a bank’s office building. All we could really do was stare at the pool. So we did. Leaving the lobby, I discovered the title card explaining the concept behind the vodka pool, an insufferably pretentious commentary about a critique of black market capitalism through its more frequently used currency, alcohol. The tone of the paragraph was what I could call mid-rectum Marxism. I laughed myself inappropriately sick.
On our way to several other installations, after having passed a stand selling fresh corn cobs, we discovered a flatbed truck sitting on the side of a street with two fifteen foot high letters sitting on it spelling NO. This basically encapsulates Justine’s personality. It was the simplest piece of art we saw all night, and the easiest piece to understand in that what it was, was clear to you: a giant word NO. How you took it was entirely up to you.
Later, we saw a performance art piece of Toronto celebrities playing Monopoly with real money in a locked glass room. By the time we got there, it was approaching the end of one shift, and K-OS was flaunting his winnings over Maggie Casella and the other playing, throwing money in the air and, I hope, calling them out from Park Avenue.
One installation we definitely wanted to see was set up in the hallway of an artfully designed shopping centre in Liberty Village: a network of loudspeakers suspended from the ceiling playing recordings of hundreds of different kinds of crying. At the end of the hallway was a separate installation, which consisted of about thirty people dressed in knee-length paper bags covering their faces who would apologize to you while you walked through. I was slightly freaked and amused at first, but just as I was about to leave the crowd of the besacked, five of them stood around me in a circle, and sent me surround-sound “I’m sorry”s. After that, I was actually kind of disturbed.
You can probably figure out the basics of my philosophy of art through these examples, but I’m going to tell you anyway. This has its foundations in some of my rants as a much younger, pre-blogging man, about the futility of overly complicated gestures of protest, so complicated that the political issue in question and how the symbolism articulates it has to be explained to you before you can actually understand the symbolism. Patton Oswalt has a routine about moronic hippies knitting the world’s smallest pair of pants, putting them on a mouse, and setting it loose in WTO headquarters.
Art makes itself laughable with long, pretentious explanations of symbology, and representations so abstract and obtuse as to become ludicrous. That’s why I laughed so hard at the idiotic pseudo-Marxism explaining what the vodka pool “meant.” Art (and philosophy, and literature) is effective when it is ambiguous and clear. That is, it should not require esoteric theory to understand, and it should be open to many different kinds of understanding. Art must provoke thought, and the only way to do that is to open a space within people for them to develop their own thinking and exercise their own creative powers.
•••
One thing Pitchfork’s countdown of the best albums of the 2000s did was remind me of how awesome J Dilla is. I found his best beats to alter your perception of sound just by listening to them, an awesome power (awesome in the sense of inspiring great awe). That list also taught me how to listen to the Donuts album properly. Because the first track is the completion of the single song that is the last, then first, track, Donuts is essentially not an album with a beginning and an end. It's a continuous loop. So I listen to Donuts by putting the album on repeat, beginning at a random track, and listening until I decide to change albums.
Call it the eternal return of the Dilla.
I think I was most disappointed by the vodka pool, though I’m not sure what else they could have done with it. It was just a large artificial puddle of vodka, an irregularly shaped black container roughly ten square metres in area and maybe an inch deep, sitting in the lobby of a bank’s office building. All we could really do was stare at the pool. So we did. Leaving the lobby, I discovered the title card explaining the concept behind the vodka pool, an insufferably pretentious commentary about a critique of black market capitalism through its more frequently used currency, alcohol. The tone of the paragraph was what I could call mid-rectum Marxism. I laughed myself inappropriately sick.
On our way to several other installations, after having passed a stand selling fresh corn cobs, we discovered a flatbed truck sitting on the side of a street with two fifteen foot high letters sitting on it spelling NO. This basically encapsulates Justine’s personality. It was the simplest piece of art we saw all night, and the easiest piece to understand in that what it was, was clear to you: a giant word NO. How you took it was entirely up to you.
Later, we saw a performance art piece of Toronto celebrities playing Monopoly with real money in a locked glass room. By the time we got there, it was approaching the end of one shift, and K-OS was flaunting his winnings over Maggie Casella and the other playing, throwing money in the air and, I hope, calling them out from Park Avenue.
One installation we definitely wanted to see was set up in the hallway of an artfully designed shopping centre in Liberty Village: a network of loudspeakers suspended from the ceiling playing recordings of hundreds of different kinds of crying. At the end of the hallway was a separate installation, which consisted of about thirty people dressed in knee-length paper bags covering their faces who would apologize to you while you walked through. I was slightly freaked and amused at first, but just as I was about to leave the crowd of the besacked, five of them stood around me in a circle, and sent me surround-sound “I’m sorry”s. After that, I was actually kind of disturbed.
You can probably figure out the basics of my philosophy of art through these examples, but I’m going to tell you anyway. This has its foundations in some of my rants as a much younger, pre-blogging man, about the futility of overly complicated gestures of protest, so complicated that the political issue in question and how the symbolism articulates it has to be explained to you before you can actually understand the symbolism. Patton Oswalt has a routine about moronic hippies knitting the world’s smallest pair of pants, putting them on a mouse, and setting it loose in WTO headquarters.
Art makes itself laughable with long, pretentious explanations of symbology, and representations so abstract and obtuse as to become ludicrous. That’s why I laughed so hard at the idiotic pseudo-Marxism explaining what the vodka pool “meant.” Art (and philosophy, and literature) is effective when it is ambiguous and clear. That is, it should not require esoteric theory to understand, and it should be open to many different kinds of understanding. Art must provoke thought, and the only way to do that is to open a space within people for them to develop their own thinking and exercise their own creative powers.
•••
One thing Pitchfork’s countdown of the best albums of the 2000s did was remind me of how awesome J Dilla is. I found his best beats to alter your perception of sound just by listening to them, an awesome power (awesome in the sense of inspiring great awe). That list also taught me how to listen to the Donuts album properly. Because the first track is the completion of the single song that is the last, then first, track, Donuts is essentially not an album with a beginning and an end. It's a continuous loop. So I listen to Donuts by putting the album on repeat, beginning at a random track, and listening until I decide to change albums.
Call it the eternal return of the Dilla.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Many Falling Men and Women
Every week or so, I read through the New York Times obituary section to see who has died, and if any of them are interesting to me. I discovered a few days ago, the death of Ernest Trova, described in the headline as "Falling Man artist." I was immediately intrigued, though even more fascinated to discover that this was a completely different person from the Falling Man that I first thought they were talking about.
You can see a picture of Trova's statue at the linked obituary, and I was fascinated when I found out this existed. I think it makes an intriguing parallel for what I think was a transformative moment in world history. The intellectual movements that dominated the twentieth century shared a yearning for perfect rationality, societal unison in accordance with a master plan. The fascist and communist political movements, Le Corbusier-influence architecture of segmented machine-like functionality, the uniformity of mass production systems. I could go on, but I won't. Also, I should qualify that there was rebellion against these ideas that had equally powerful affects on humanity: the explosion of democracy and its freedom-encouraging offshoots. But these democratic ideas articulated themselves as rebellions and reactions to the totalitarian conformist ideas. Without the power of totalitarian structures in human society in the twentieth century, I don't think the democratic movements would have developed in so many diverse ways as they have.
Here's what this has to do with Trova's Falling Man. This is a sleek, perfectly crafted image, symmetrical along many axes, and implying a spherical perfection. Trova's sculpture is crafted in strict conformity to a very simple set of rules. Man is made into an abstract, sterile shape. Now contrast that with this image, Eric Fischl's Tumbling Woman. It's visceral, bumpy, irregular, asymmetrical, disturbing, and violent. This is an image of death that was so frightening to people that it was quickly hidden after its initial display. We stare in awe and quiet contemplation in Trova's Falling Man, and are made physically ill by Fischl's Tumbling Woman.
Not everyone I know takes Sept 11 seriously. I had one friend who said her strongest reaction on the day was being happy she got the day off school. I have yet to be able to explain this moment better than Don DeLillo did in his essay, "In the Ruins of the Future."
"[Sept 11] was bright and totalizing and some of us said it was unreal. When we say a thing is unreal, we mean it is too real, a phenomenon so unaccountable and yet so bound to the power of objective fact that we can’t tilt it to the slant of our perceptions."
It's hard to find a better symbol for the totalitarian conformity to the simple idea than the architecture of the World Trade Centre, two giant rectangular prisms reaching high into the atmosphere. Their destruction was a moment of chaos, blood splattering, fire exploding, shards of glass flying jagged, dust hideous and liquid choking and invading every orifice. This constituted a kind of final proof that the totalitarian perfection of the 'modernist' idea was a sham, a dream that only made those who held it laughable. Only idiots still hold onto this dream after its final shattering.
•••
An internet update: I am now tweeting. So far, nothing from my phone, because that shit costs money. But when I'm in my house or at a computer, I'll be telling you exactly what I'm doing. I might not go so far as some do with their twitter accounts, but more of my minor brainfarts will be on the internet for all to ignore.
You can see a picture of Trova's statue at the linked obituary, and I was fascinated when I found out this existed. I think it makes an intriguing parallel for what I think was a transformative moment in world history. The intellectual movements that dominated the twentieth century shared a yearning for perfect rationality, societal unison in accordance with a master plan. The fascist and communist political movements, Le Corbusier-influence architecture of segmented machine-like functionality, the uniformity of mass production systems. I could go on, but I won't. Also, I should qualify that there was rebellion against these ideas that had equally powerful affects on humanity: the explosion of democracy and its freedom-encouraging offshoots. But these democratic ideas articulated themselves as rebellions and reactions to the totalitarian conformist ideas. Without the power of totalitarian structures in human society in the twentieth century, I don't think the democratic movements would have developed in so many diverse ways as they have.
Here's what this has to do with Trova's Falling Man. This is a sleek, perfectly crafted image, symmetrical along many axes, and implying a spherical perfection. Trova's sculpture is crafted in strict conformity to a very simple set of rules. Man is made into an abstract, sterile shape. Now contrast that with this image, Eric Fischl's Tumbling Woman. It's visceral, bumpy, irregular, asymmetrical, disturbing, and violent. This is an image of death that was so frightening to people that it was quickly hidden after its initial display. We stare in awe and quiet contemplation in Trova's Falling Man, and are made physically ill by Fischl's Tumbling Woman.
Not everyone I know takes Sept 11 seriously. I had one friend who said her strongest reaction on the day was being happy she got the day off school. I have yet to be able to explain this moment better than Don DeLillo did in his essay, "In the Ruins of the Future."
"[Sept 11] was bright and totalizing and some of us said it was unreal. When we say a thing is unreal, we mean it is too real, a phenomenon so unaccountable and yet so bound to the power of objective fact that we can’t tilt it to the slant of our perceptions."
It's hard to find a better symbol for the totalitarian conformity to the simple idea than the architecture of the World Trade Centre, two giant rectangular prisms reaching high into the atmosphere. Their destruction was a moment of chaos, blood splattering, fire exploding, shards of glass flying jagged, dust hideous and liquid choking and invading every orifice. This constituted a kind of final proof that the totalitarian perfection of the 'modernist' idea was a sham, a dream that only made those who held it laughable. Only idiots still hold onto this dream after its final shattering.
•••
An internet update: I am now tweeting. So far, nothing from my phone, because that shit costs money. But when I'm in my house or at a computer, I'll be telling you exactly what I'm doing. I might not go so far as some do with their twitter accounts, but more of my minor brainfarts will be on the internet for all to ignore.
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