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Dialogues@RU is published annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume One
Spring 2002
To
Live Without Dead Time: An Inquiry into
Political Art and the Art of Political Struggle -
Page 4
Elliot Aronow
Author Thomas McDonough echoes this process of radicalizing art through aesthetic theft and detournement. He argues, "It is a question not of elaborating the spectacle of refusal, but rather of refusing the spectacle. In order for their elaboration to be artistic in the new and authentic sense defined by the S.I., the elements of the destruction of the spectacle must precisely cease to be works of art"(McDonough 26). In accordance with their anti-capitalist leanings, the SI never sold nor displayed their art in formal settings, but rather opted to vandalize the symbols of a repressive culture through graffiti and wheat pasting (Marcus 55). This artistic practice undermined notions of the artist as a producer in the realm of the commodity and instead asserted that the artist and the revolutionary could be one and the same. In his essay on Situationist Guy Debord, author Mario Perniola states:
In an age in which ambitious people are ready to do everything to obtain political power and money, Debord's strategy exploits one factor: the admiration he inspires in those who see that political power and money are secondary to excellence and its recognition. This strategy aims at a kind of superiority similar to that of some of the ancient philosophers, like Diogenes, for whom coherence between principles and behavior was essential (Perniola 19).
This statement parallels Burger's assertion that the connection of ideology with practice in its explication of the Situationists' renunciation of money, prestige, critical acclaim or formal recognition. In accordance with this tenet of the avant-garde, the Situationists asserted that the political realm could not be divorced from the artist realm, due to the all-encompassing nature of the spectacle. This marriage of politics and art lead many to criticize the SI, claiming that their political critiques did not amount to much, due to their status as an art movement, while members of the art world condemned their propagandistic "street art." Former Situationists T.J. Clark and Donald Nicholson-Smith eloquently frame this critique of Debord and the SI in their essay "Why Art Can't Kill the Situationist International:
The denial by Debord and his supporters of any separation between artistic and political activity . . . led in effect not to a new unity within Situationist practice but to a total elimination of art except in propagandist and agitational forms. . . . Theory displaced art as the vanguard activity, and politics (for those who wished to retain absolutely clean hands) was postponed till the day when it would be placed on the agenda by the spontaneous revolt of those who executed rather than gave orders (Clark/Smith 16).
This brings into question Burger's claim that the avant-garde seeks to examine not only the autonomy of art (in terms of its production and consumption), but also its relation to "life praxis," that is so say, the process of connecting ones political beliefs to their everyday existence. In opposition to their critics, the SI saw art and revolution as being interrelated, in that if one is to undermine the power of the spectacle, they must take part in as few of its processes as possible. Thus the liberation of art from the realm of the commodity can be viewed as a radical act in and of itself. To resist the market (which to say the spectacle) is to undermine its ends of means of domination (falsified images and representations). Furthermore, to raise the stakes of the revolutionary project, the SI argued that the spectacle had to be turned against itself, through the practice of detournement and aesthetic plagiarism (Marcus 168). Its tools of manipulation would need to be transfigured into a gun pointed at its own head. This notion of using the spectacle's resources against itself to shed light on the ever-increasing influence of the image on modern thought is one which pervades most Situationist works. This parallels Burger's claim that the avant-garde project is predicated on fostering a union between radical art with "life praxis" and the destruction of art that does not speak to the realities of daily existence, be it social or political (Burger 168). Thus, the SI and their avant-gardist successors sought to breathe new life into what had become a sterile artistic discourse through the process of recontextualizing images to serve politically specific ends.
In accordance with this view that the mediated image can be manipulated and transfigured to create new meanings, author John Berger asserts: "The art of the past no longer exits as it once did. Its authority is lost. In its place there is a language of images. What matters now is who uses that language for what purpose." (Berger 33). Echoing Debord's assertion that fragments can be removed from their contexts to reveal new or hidden meanings, Berger's argument states that artistic autonomy can be achieved through using "language for a purpose." Once examined from this perspective, one can see how various groups, such as the SI, adopt Burger's claim that avant-garde art posits intention and autonomy over the authority of a finished product (Burger 170). This notion of reclaiming art from the hands of those gifted enough to be deemed "artists" by society with the intention of radicalizing and altering old paradigms is one that pervades the aesthetic and musical aspects of punk rock.