Tomislav Butkovic
DEMOLISH SERIOUS CULTURE
WE CALL ON ALL CULTURAL WORKERS to put down their tools and cease to make, distribute, sell, exhibit, or discuss their work from January 1st, **ADa, to January 1st, **ADa. We call for all galleries, museums, agencies, alternative' spaces, periodicals, theatres, art schools &c., to cease all operations for the same period.
Art is conceptually defined by a self-perpetuating elite and marketed
as an international commodity. Those cultural workers who struggle
against the reigning society find their work either marginalized or
else co-opted by the plutocratic art establishment.
The ruling class uses art as a 'transcendental' activity in the same
way it once used religion to justify the arbitrariness of its enormous
privilege. Art creates the illusion that, through activities which are
actually waste, this civilization is in touch with 'higher sensibilities' that redeem it from accusations of exploitation and mass murder. Those who accept this logic support the plutocracy even if they
are economically excluded from the class. The idea that 'everything is
art' is the height of this smoke-screen, meaning only that certain
members of the ruling class feel particularly free in expressing their
domination of the masses to one another.
To call one person an 'ARTIST' is to deny another the equal gift of
vision; thus the myth of 'GENIUS' becomes an ideological justification
for inequality, repression, and famine. What an 'artist' considers to
be his or her identity is a schooled set of attitudes; preconceptions
that imprison humanity in history. It is the roles derived from these
identities, as much as the art products mined from reification, that
was must reject.
DESIRE IN RUINS
1. The whole of "post-"modern life is mediated by a series of
abstractions. Creativity, pleasure, imagination, desire, all have a
role to play in the maintenance of the capitalist system.
2. Those who do not reiterate accepted mystifications find their activities and ideas suppressed by both the media and the soft cops in
the universities and community relations.
3. In the past, life was mediated by such abstractions as honesty,
truth, progress, and the myth of a better future. Creativity, pleasure
imagination, and desire are a further refinement of this process. In
the "post-"modern era, they serve the same function as progress &c., in the classical modern age (1909-1957).
4. Creativity is labour reifified to moral good; the name of the work
ethic after its modernization. To those who appose all moralisms,
creativity is just as alienating as wage labour. We reiterate the
anti-moralist slogan 'Never Work' and hold that this formulation
embraces the refusal of creativity.
5. Pleasure is a method for the ordering of experience into a
hierarchy of desirability. It is an abstraction that negates the lived
moment and requires reference to the possibility of past/future (or at
least other) experience. We must reject all such systems of value.
6. Imagination is an abstraction that negates concrete experience. It
is the central mechanism for the dominance of the image as chief agent of repression in our spectacular society.
7. Desire is the permanent deferral of the actuality of the present in
favour of the purported gratifications of an illusory future.
8. We engage an active nihilism for the destruction of this world and
its abstractions:
No more leaders.
No more experts.
No more politicos.
No more thinking 'culture' can change anything except a few bank
accounts.
The show is over.
The audience start to leave.
Time to collect their coats and go home.
They turn around...
No more coats!
No more homes!
ABOLISH PLEASURE
REFUSE CREATIVITY
SMASH THE IMAGINATION
DESIRE IN RUINS
THE PRESENT IS ABSOLUTE
EVERYTHING NOW!
WE CALL ON ALL CULTURAL WORKERS to put down their tools and cease to make, distribute, sell, exhibit, or discuss their work from January 1st, **ADa, to January 1st, **ADa. We call for all galleries, museums, agencies, alternative' spaces, periodicals, theatres, art schools &c., to cease all operations for the same period.
Art is conceptually defined by a self-perpetuating elite and marketed
as an international commodity. Those cultural workers who struggle
against the reigning society find their work either marginalized or
else co-opted by the plutocratic art establishment.
The ruling class uses art as a 'transcendental' activity in the same
way it once used religion to justify the arbitrariness of its enormous
privilege. Art creates the illusion that, through activities which are
actually waste, this civilization is in touch with 'higher sensibilities' that redeem it from accusations of exploitation and mass murder. Those who accept this logic support the plutocracy even if they
are economically excluded from the class. The idea that 'everything is
art' is the height of this smoke-screen, meaning only that certain
members of the ruling class feel particularly free in expressing their
domination of the masses to one another.
To call one person an 'ARTIST' is to deny another the equal gift of
vision; thus the myth of 'GENIUS' becomes an ideological justification
for inequality, repression, and famine. What an 'artist' considers to
be his or her identity is a schooled set of attitudes; preconceptions
that imprison humanity in history. It is the roles derived from these
identities, as much as the art products mined from reification, that
was must reject.
DESIRE IN RUINS
1. The whole of "post-"modern life is mediated by a series of
abstractions. Creativity, pleasure, imagination, desire, all have a
role to play in the maintenance of the capitalist system.
2. Those who do not reiterate accepted mystifications find their activities and ideas suppressed by both the media and the soft cops in
the universities and community relations.
3. In the past, life was mediated by such abstractions as honesty,
truth, progress, and the myth of a better future. Creativity, pleasure
imagination, and desire are a further refinement of this process. In
the "post-"modern era, they serve the same function as progress &c., in the classical modern age (1909-1957).
4. Creativity is labour reifified to moral good; the name of the work
ethic after its modernization. To those who appose all moralisms,
creativity is just as alienating as wage labour. We reiterate the
anti-moralist slogan 'Never Work' and hold that this formulation
embraces the refusal of creativity.
5. Pleasure is a method for the ordering of experience into a
hierarchy of desirability. It is an abstraction that negates the lived
moment and requires reference to the possibility of past/future (or at
least other) experience. We must reject all such systems of value.
6. Imagination is an abstraction that negates concrete experience. It
is the central mechanism for the dominance of the image as chief agent of repression in our spectacular society.
7. Desire is the permanent deferral of the actuality of the present in
favour of the purported gratifications of an illusory future.
8. We engage an active nihilism for the destruction of this world and
its abstractions:
No more leaders.
No more experts.
No more politicos.
No more thinking 'culture' can change anything except a few bank
accounts.
The show is over.
The audience start to leave.
Time to collect their coats and go home.
They turn around...
No more coats!
No more homes!
ABOLISH PLEASURE
REFUSE CREATIVITY
SMASH THE IMAGINATION
DESIRE IN RUINS
THE PRESENT IS ABSOLUTE
EVERYTHING NOW!
posted by jim leftwich at 7:23 PM
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