Some Groundwork
by Ron Graziani
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Over the course of that last half-century of ecological activism, it slowly became apparent to a growing number of participants that our relationship with the earth had a lot to do with how humans relate with other humans. And the subsequent shift toward an environmental justice approach for a healthy ecological practice—bringing the environmental movement into the broader social and legal crisis of human rights and democratic accountability—has changed the terrain of what ecological activism now means. Nonetheless, as this complex web of social, economic, political and environmental interconnectedness has been taking place on the world stage, the ongoing global political economy of nomadic capitalism has gone in the opposite direction, taking on many of the symptoms of a split personality. With the nation state no longer the political framework, and the regulation of virtual credit having long since replaced the now obsolete money system of the gold standard, the market is constantly attempting to take the place of the state as the arbitrator of social processes. Unfortunately, this has not meant that this emerging global economy has shifted away from its belief in an officially sanctioned standard of value. Nomadic capitalism is still fundamentally fetishistic. On the global cultural front, multi-cultural difference has also become a social reality, and a similar predicament has been occurring. Some have accepted cultural difference as a present and positive way of life and in ways that seriously includes the ethical ramifications of accounting for competing versions of nature itself. But then it doesn’t make a lot of sense to argue from a mono-culturalist point of view. In these ongoing cultural encounters, there continues to be a critical contestation over what the ontological framework is to be—whether difference is derived from some originary natural or universal given or the discursive position that difference is in fact, what makes any identity not only possible but also ethical. There are immense consequences in the ethical distinction between ideology understood to mean any cultural beliefs, habits, and/or conventions (because there is also the nature-of-things) vs. ideology understood to mean cultural beliefs, habits, and/or conventions practiced as if not cultural in substance—that is ‘as if’ referencing a natural or a universal given. The latter version implicates a-nature-of-things, as the very definition of an ideological practice—be it scientific or artistic in its representation. This does not mean that others have given up any pretensions of some a-priori given before a civic encounter occurs, but the ethical implications (and political consequences) of such a desire have proven in practice to be problematic, to say the least. A less fundamentalist path has been a sense of knowledge valued as a kind of provisional form of understanding in a community of participants lacking a consensus. But for that reason it is also performed as a provisional form of knowledge production—and in order to keep open the public’s right to debate genuinely difficult issues enacted in ways that avoid the pitfalls of an interpellative stagecraft. In no way are all the problems resolved in such a ‘perceived’ common ground. And the process has gotten complex in matters of representation—be it in legislative corridors, the social sciences, or the arts. But having said this, there is the often-cited counter-complaint that any kind of ‘postmodern’ shift away from enlightenment principles is a slippery toboggan ride to chaos (and as if not before the fact). The position taken in this show is that this is in itself an act of willful denial of what the encounters on the slippery slopes have been—not some ungraspable abyss, but very productive cultural and legal battles. And in that sense, and in the spirit of this show, the current environmental situation is also a golden opportunity. The law and its accompanying legal system affect all aspects of any society. And like art or economics, it is at the edges of these practices that a potentially healthy or ethical civic future flashes before us, even if often only for a brief moment. But again, having said this, even for those who don’t have a guttural contempt for ‘postmodern’ art, there are the institutional standards promoted by the idea of fine art that continue to keep the former merely an outdoor come-on for the real stuff inside the art museum/theatre. The current challenge for art (and now I am not speaking for the show) is for the ghost of fine art to come to terms with it own past. Put in its most simplified form, to admit openly the crimes committed in its name—and in the hope of becoming a better representative of what such a practice can be. I realize trying to address some of these ethical questions head on with the art in this show is perhaps unfair, way too much burden placed upon what this art is. But if not here where? The narrative of artistic meaning is always a tale of civic struggle. Without context artistic life becomes inert. Contrary to (what should more aptly be called) the a-esthetic versions promoted within the idea of fine art, art comes to life in the specifics of a context. It is in the nurturing refuge called context that art dances. Unfortunately, after several centuries of the fine art framework, many an individual have had their sense of the artist function disenfranchised from their civic-self. And even though the challenge to the old fine art fetish has been going on for some time now, we are still only just beginning to get a feel or sense for what truly imagining a civic worth sustaining as an esthetic experience, can mean in art. The same can be said for our relation to gold. There is always an element of indignity in speaking for another. Nonetheless, this show seems to be trying to address the ideological habits of two old fetishes, gold and its more recent sibling fine art. I also read the title of the show as a somewhat open-ended offer or wager to artists in general, yet in the hope of providing a generous forum for current artists who are developing practices of esthetic jurisprudence. In turn, one might ask you the viewer; how do the art forms in this show give civic shape to what the esthetic pleasure of gold can mean in artistic terms? ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
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