Art and the Cultural Turn: Farewell to Committed, Autonomous Art?

Forms of life unite characteristics that are essential to a particular socioeconomic formation. For example, a form of labor is reflected in a particular form of life. The form of life produced by one’s choices is one’s “lifestyle,” which involves creating one’s own subjectivity by consuming semiotic products.

Anton Vidokle and Brian Kuan Wood, “Breaking the Contract,” e-flux journal 37 (September 2012). See →.

The term “autonomous, committed art” refers to Theodor W. Adorno’s retort to Jean-Paul Sartre’s text on the autonomy and commitment of art in his essay, “What is Literature?” in “What is Literature?” What is Literature? And Other Essays, ed. Steven Ungar (Cambridge Mass. Harvard University Press, 1988) See also: Theodor W. Adorno, “Commitment” (1962) New Left Review I/87-68 (September-December 1974)

Julian Stallabrass, “Art as Radical Camouflage” New Left Review, 77 (September–October 2012)

Claire Bishop, “Participation and Spectacle: Where Are We Now?” in Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991–2001, ed. Nato Thompson (New York and Cambridge: Creative Time and MIT Press, 2012), 34–46.

Ibid.

See Cuauhtémoc Medina, “Camaradas ocultistas, escondidos, opacados (Respuesta de Cuauhtémoc Medina al CIJ),” available online at→.

Fredric Jameson, The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998 (Brooklyn: Verso, 1998), 111.

George Yúdice, The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era (Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2004).

Everything seems to indicate that Ernesto Peña Nieto’s government will continue with the policies of cultural engineering and management set forth by his predecessor, Felipe Calderón.

See “Plan Nacional de Desarrollo” from the Felipe Calderón government, 2007–2011, 3.8, Objetivo 21. Available online at →.

George Yúdice, The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era.

Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. (New York: Viking Press, 1968), 197–226.

Ibid.

Tiziana Terranova, “Communication Beyond Meaning: On the Cultural Politics of Information,” Social Text 80, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Fall 2004)

Brian Holmes: “Eventwork: The Fourfold Matrix of Contemporary Social Movements,” in Living as Form, ed. Nato Thompson (New York: Creative Time, 2012), 73.

Jürgen Habermas, “New Social Movements” Telos vol. no. 49 (September 1981): 33–37. A project we can evoke here is Tania Bruguera’s “Immigrant Movement International” in Queens, New York and sponsored by Creative Time and the Queens Museum of Art. It consists of a long-term project in the form of a sociopolitical movement initiated by the artist, whose venue is a community space in the largely immigrant neighborhood of Corona, Queens. Bruguera suscribes to the principle of “useful art,” which aims “to transform some spaces in society through art, transcending symbolic representation or metaphor and meeting with their activity some deficits in reality.” A complimentary project is the “Immigrant Party,” which functions as a political party. Bruguera’s problem with action—other than (provocatively) referring to art as merely utilitarian—is that the political formation of both the immigrant and the political party are obsolete forms of political representation. In this sense, I believe that the task that Brian Holmes entrusted to social movements (to propose and implement new forms of life) is more akin to the current historic and socioeconomic moment (though not unproblematic).

Jodi Dean, “Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics,” Cultural Politics Vol. 1, Issue 1 (2005): 51–74. Available online at →.

Chris Kraus, Where Art Belongs (New York: Semiotext(e), 2011).

See Raquel Gutiérrez, “The Rhythms of the Pachakuti: Brief Reflections Regarding How We Have Come to Know Emancipatory Struggles and the Significance of the Term Social Emancipation,” South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 111 No.1 (2012): 51–64.

Slavoj Zizek, “Capitalism”, Financial Times, November 2012. Available online at →. We must not, however, underestimate the predominance of “content policy,” an example of which is the use of Twitter during Israel’s recent Gaza operations. The Israeli Defense Forces have a large department dedicated to managing its own online social profiles and monitoring those of Hamas. The war against Gaza last November also took place on Twitter. One minute, the account linked to Hamas, @AlQassamBrigades, announces that it has launched a rocket. Only minutes later, the @IDFSpokesperson responds that it has been intercepted. Thousands (or perhaps millions) sent messages of support, both this way and that. See Verónica Calderón, “La propaganda militar en 140 caracteres,” El País, November 20, 2012. Available online at →.

Hito Steyerl, “Politics of Art: Contemporary Art and the Transition to Post-Democracy,” The Wretched of the Screen (Berlin: e-flux journal and Sternberg Press, 2012).

Ibid.

Ibid.

Gregory Sholette, “Speaking Clown to Power: Can We Resist the Historic Compromise of Neoliberal Art?” Available online at →.

Slavoj Zizek, “Cynicism as a Form of Ideology” from The Sublime Object of Ideology (London; New York: Verso, 1989) Available online→

Hito Steyerl, “Politics of Art: Contemporary Art and the Transition to Post-Democracy.”

Institutional critique in the 1970s involved the politicization of conceptual strategies in order to reveal how institutional interests—mediated by economic and ideological interests—frame and define the production, interpretation, and visual experience of the artistic object. Drawing on theories developed by the Frankfurt School and by poststructuralism, institutional critique examined the subjection of art to ideological interests, recontextualizing aesthetic practices within their own ideological backing, linking social and ideological interests with cultural practices focused on the process of masking and neutralizing culture through “repressive tolerance.” See Benjamin Buchloh, et. al, “1971,” in Art Since 1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006), 545–549.

See Stephan Dillemuth, Anthony Davies, Jakob Jakobsen, “There is No Alternative: The Future is Self-Organised,” in Art and Social Change: A Critical Reader, ed. Will Bradley and Charles Esche (London: Tate Publishing and Afterall, 2007).