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Bloom & Decay (Draft XX)

Introduction:

Propagation in the Wasteland

Memories announce themselves as degrading reels of film, playing over and over, with subtle variations depending upon how forcefully we try to change the moments long-since experienced. However, even in the best imagined outcomes, reality molds the mind back to the inevitable result of the things that have already come to pass. So much of our early lives, simple joys, and ignorance based bliss is lost into the void of the mind and its need to distinguish, pasts, presents, and futures*.

In writing on the Destruction of Art Symposium, a month-long symposium focused on the exhibition of destructive and destroyed works that took place in 1966

London, Art historian Kristine Stiles describes Destruction in art as not being the same as destruction of art. Moreover, she went on to write that the destruction in art addresses the negative aspects of both social and political institutions, and manifests as an attack on the traditional identity of the visual arts themselves. While these artists were responding to their individual overarching philosophies of destruction in the form of ephemeral art object and performance based works, there was never an established movement nor manifesto unifying the practice. Though the symposium itself was formulated by the artist Gustav Metzger, who coined the term ‘Auto-Destructive Art’ seven years prior, it would seem final meditations of both destruction and decay as separate from any particular canon following the month-long event would end there.

Eight years later, In the 1974 essay Theory of the Avant-Garde, Peter Bürger presents a similar problem, more directly asking the question as to how the development of art and literature could be reconstructed within a bourgeois society. This question, alluding to a later point made in the piece in which definitions of individual works are thus not made through the autonomy of the object itself, but rather solely through socially institutionalized investigation. The institution of art itself, then presents itself as the system of production and distribution of the prevailing ideas that dictate an object's reception of what we would consider to be Art. Dadaism had poised itself as a radical movement 50 years prior within the European avant-garde, in their manifested criticism of art as an institution (TAV_PB.22). The movement, in fact challenged nineteenth century aestheticism and art object through the self-criticism of art, or rather the theoretical destruction of Art within the realm of the institution. The Dadaists were among the first to introduce a means of subverting capitalist ideas directly within the western art canon, while also destroying traditional comprehension of what we would call aesthetic experience. Though, the paradox in the base ideas of an anti-art itself, reside in the fact that such concepts have long since been inducted into institutional canon, and by extension the greater art market. As recognized by Gustav Metzger, ‘They did not destroy enough’(ADA_GM_30). Object even in a Dadist manner, acting as a signifier to nothing but itself and the meaninglessness nature of the modern world, was still left with meaning by its physical presence in the facet of a world it was attempting to critique.

In Antony Hudek’s The Object (pub.2014), objecthood is understood as a thing that has obtained verified value through the perception of the individual, or a conformed and collective intellect. In both cases, objects become subjects themselves. Later in the text, Hudek addresses the relationship between this valued and venerated thing, as being made object in relationship to the specifically thinking subject (Tobj.HudPg17). However, arguably in both cases, the object is nothing more than a thing, oppressed with meaning and extensions of two subjects’ own ego and narcissism. Consider an art object. In the process of making, a cumulation of things that would have otherwise been overlooked (in the most general sense where one does not actively seek the particularly used material, or in the more ideal situation in which the material is sourced other than otherwise commodified or sentimental means), suddenly become object. That object then becomes one of subjective perceptions by a larger body. The art object, in that particular moment of exhibition, transforms into a mirror, in which this primary subject observes and make reflected judgment on a now secondary subject, the maker. The object itself then operates as if both hiding its own past thingness and intent, in ambiguous form and meaning. However, as the object becomes further commodified through institution, original thinghood transcends to proposed magnificence.

While opulence often has (understandably) more association with physical tokens of wealth, this can be arguably more abstracted in that opulence is the way in which we manifest, cast out, and assert our productions of grandeur into a system that demands it in exchange for the false promise of value (heroism) in the greater and perversely commodified heroic machine*(EB). Post-opulence then, is a theory aimed at dismantling and reversing the deconstruction/reconstruction process. Though the relationship to the art object is similar to that of destructionist practice, it is also a recycling practice between a materials’ thingness and objecthood. Post-opulence introduces unpredictability in material presence, rather than finding comfort in the stable image or object. It aims first, to reveal the sought ideal and iconic states as nothing more than a mimetic reflections of questionable institutional/social standards (Destruction of Art). Secondly, actively creates afflictions and ambivalence toward a conventional aesthetic, through the destruction of the art object (Destruction in Art). Post-Opulence highlights the investment in an idealized form, to then reduce the object back to a state of “thingness”. Moreover, explores a struggle that ensues between the formerly idealized art object (Icon) and new variable form revealed, through a process of deconstruction and decay. Post-Opulence rejects notions of value and stagnation in a commodified system, and operates as institutional disruption in that it consistently makes reference to both actions and signals of changed circumstances and time.

The Reality of Decay

Every moment of our life belongs to the present only for a moment; then it belongs for ever to the past. Every evening we are poorer by a day. We would perhaps grow frantic at the sight of this ebbing away of our short span of time were we not secretly conscious in the profoundest depths of our being that we share in the inexhaustible well of eternity, out of which we tan for ever draw new life and renewed time (*VE).

In his essay, On the Vanity of Existence (1924), Arthur Schopenhauer describes our existence as a fruitless struggle amidst a life dictated by instability and confusion. In that the living body is a dedicated mechanism to strife, in the pursuit of a recognized sustainable present of satisfaction. However, this journey will inevitably end in vain as that which was meant to embody a lasting existence, would not have non-being as its preordained goal(*VE). Arguably, the objective reality is that at one moment life is, and eventually it is not. Moreover, it’s in our subjective reality during the process of life, that such definitions become skewed and distorted through culture and institution. It is through such domineering vessels of that even our basic realities are taken from us, being supplemented by false promises of eternal life, hollow examples of transcendence, and vacant reward for allowing our individual realities to be managed by forces no better nor worse than ourselves. In this, the made environment shapes the way in which we define and find value in our own individual definitions of what our realities are.

Post-Opulence then is eventually interested in both the exploration and disentombing of this turn from humanity's rebellion toward a false dominance of a commodified society. This being said, the visual experience should not be reinforced to just seek the supplementation of permanent images and icons, but go on to embrace the decay of them. While representation is inherently mimetic of reality, Modernist ideology called for the delusion of it and is thus much more dangerous. Where the physicality of the made form is a manifestation of tangible truth, paintings manipulate the texture of the mind. To quote Harold Rosenberg, “Art as action rests on the enormous assumption that the artist accepts as real only that which he is in the process of creating”. In what could’ve been unknowingly hinted by him at the time, was the potential for narcissism in self-referential types of art that creates a volatile iconization of itself in the form of artistic commodity. Good art being overdetermined by economy, while external society is abstracted away.

The Icon

‘It doesn’t matter whether the cultural hero-system is frankly magical, religious, and primitive or secular, scientific, and civilized. It is still a mythical hero-system in which people serve in order to form a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning. They earn this feeling by carving out a place in nature, by building an edifice that reflects human value: a temple, a cathedral, a totem pole, a skyscraper, a family that spans three generations. The hope and belief is that the things that man creates in society are of lasting worth and meaning, that they outlive or outshine death and decay, that man and his products count (*DeDeath5). ‘

An icon is representative of something otherworldly. Moreover, is by extension defined as an object or image deployed to aid devotion/action toward such heroisms. Secondly, an icon is defined separately as a representative symbol, or as being worthy of veneration. Even in such surface definitions, there’s a redundancy in both definitional cases, as an icon serves as nothing more than a manifested access point to something perceived as greater than the self. Whether in a composition, place of worship, or in our pockets, we imbue faith and define reality via iconic vehicles of reconciliation and promises of fixed access to the infinite.

In The Denial of Death (pub.1973), cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker poses that the human mind is occupied by both anxiety and despair as we meditate upon impending demise. Moreover, as humans we seek a buffer or antidote to this truth, in adopting a greater urge to heroism - an application of significance to one’s own existence*(also freud). However, while certain imagined heroisms are inaccessible to most, we find ways of seeking heroism in our daily routines (i.e. work, religion, politics, relationships). This heroism is short lived, in that its destined for failure. This is because the cosmic significance of the individual person is nonexistent. Additionally, we subscribe to what is ultimately the illusion of permanent meaning. As religion was the once prominent means of establishing this illusion of greater individual significance, the institution in this form began to lose its hold as modernity began to supplement this need via a cultural heroism defined by its respective culture.

It’s in the latter that we begin to see the rise of cultural heroes (or icons), and the creation of heroic machines. These apparatuses, being of the institution, dictate the rhetoric that the average individual can only hope to fold into the illusion of being a part of the greater heroic movement. Again, this machine being directed and represented by the culture in which it grows, for better or worse. Becker, asserts that this quest for cultural heroism is the most actualized form of heroism that an individual could hope to achieve. There are rare instances, however, that Becker coined as being called genuine heroism. For Becker, genuine heroism refers to a small population of people that do not require any form of heroism illusion to live, and can face the impossible situation of living that we find ourselves in.

I think that taking life seriously means something such as this: that whatever [humanity] does on this planet has to be done in the lived truth of the terror of creation, the grotesque, of the rumble of panic underneath everything. Otherwise, it is false (DD_EB).] good quote

Applying such a context once again to this idea of the physical icon, the Post-Opulent role is that of the institutional iconoclast, and the introduction of an aesthetic anti-heroism. In that while one accepts that we are indeed subject to the individual limitations of the unconscious drives to cultural heroism, the objects and images we produce in this world are fleeting offerings to the two facts of our current temporal finitude: being and non-being. Moreover, by redirecting the productions of oneself away from satiating the cultural/institutional beast in favor of starving it, one may produce an aesthetic theory or practice similar to that which can be viewed as a genuine heroism.

Final Notes: Anti-Heroism & Reverence of the Non-Opulent Object

In the 1995 piece by John F. Schumaker, The Corruption of Reality, When an individual is in need of order in a chaotic system, the solution requires the individual to establish and maintain an unjustified or artificial order. Schumaker goes on to assert that this develops into a second system of operation that begins to eliminate competing data from the individual consciousness. Thus, the ordered institution becomes dependent on a social body of individual dissociation(CR.34). The example Schumaker provides in regard to the way in which the artificial reality takes hold, is the institution of religion. Much like hypnosis, such institutions produce a state of complacency by way of deconstruction of the individual scope via disassociation, and supplementing through a reconstructive process of suggestion (CR.81). Object and icon begin to then form as waypoints, or rather as gaslights along a darkened street, leading the collective consciousness down a path laid down by unknown entities that claim such passages safe.

Some worthwhile examples come to mind that would reveal the bridge between “hypnotic” and religious behavior. Consider the recently publicized miracle that took place when a figure of Christ on the cross began to shed tears. The cross was situated high against the front wall of the church, too high in fact for anyone actually to see the drops of water firsthand. Yet a great percentage of people who visited the church were convinced wholeheartedly that tears were being shed by the figure. At a later point, zoom cameras were able to show that there were no changes to the figure’s eyes, even while people reported seeing the tears. // They stared at the eyes for long periods of time, which had a trance-inducing effect due to the visual monotony*. At the same time, the staring caused eye fatigue and some inevitable perceptual variations // These effects were then interpreted in relation to believers’ original suggestion, namely, that Christ’s eyes would water (CR.81).’

Here is one example of iconic object, fulfilling the role as a vessel of prescribed imaginative illusion and suggested magnificence, or rather opulence. The maker venerates the thing to object with meaning and direction toward a subject, the object then becomes a mimetic representation and reflection, of the once subjected target. This new observer, with prescribed reason, imbue in the cycle of deconstruction and reconstruction of meaning. In short, an object and the concept of its meaning, means little compared to the amount that institution itself can

There is no art without ourselves, or acknowledgement of the lack of it.

Chapter I

On the Destruction of Ideology:

Post-Opulence & Critique in Early Iconoclasm

If all that changes slowly may be explained by life, all that changes quickly is explained by fire. Fire is the ultra-living element. It is intimate and it is universal. - (PF/GB)

Icon and sacred object have always served as powerful means of instilling pillars of power. While we may think of the word icon in solely western terms, such as digital representation of files or in relationship to objects of Christianity, this use of object or image as vessel to areas beyond our conceptual understanding is a cross cultural phenomenon that has spanned throughout time. From the objects of polytheism and pagan era deity worship, to contemporary vessels such as photographs that capture and represent memory, all can fall within the theoretical characterization of the ‘Mimesis’. This, being the concept that artistic expression and creation are nothing more than a re-representation and imitation of both internal and external realities. In this sense, the iconoclast or destroyer (in terms of being an antithesis to the ‘maker’), inadvertently still holds a specific aesthetic sensibility and potential to create a work that reveals an opposite reality than the initial object implies. Aesthetically and socially speaking, we now exist in a time where iconoclasm thus can be argued to have the ability to present itself as an evidence of progressive victory over historically problematic institutions. Iconoclasm then could be argued to better be described as a conceptual construct, that has evolved in relationship to an auto-destructive culture that in fact created the environment that fosters it. Reframing the negative associations of the destruction of Icon based on Byzantine era victors and influences, iconoclasm overall serves as both a powerful aesthetic strategy and political tool. The legitimacy of the destruction of the icon, has found both evolution and intersection within whole practices of sociopolitical life and contemporary aesthetics. The French Revolution, being one way that iconoclasm had found its most drastic shifts in narrative following the period in which it was defined solely by it’s religious targets, French revolutionaries destroyed artworks and portraits of the wealthy, as these symbolized the luxury, vanity, and opulence of the aristocracy. However, as the social valuation of art itself began to grow, these revolutionaries evolved once more this concept of iconoclasm, and created new techniques of destroying and transforming symbolic meaning through the process of renaming, rededication, and the full removals from sites where display and interpretation can be institutionally controlled.

Hugo Ball, a key theorist and practitioner of the Dadaists in early twentieth century Zurich, took this concept of reframing in the realm of iconoclasm by motivating the Dada movement though complex thinking on language, philosophy, theology, mysticism, history, and politics. Not only did the views of Dada contradict Christian mysticism, but characterized similar institutions (such as the museum), as ‘outdated, hierarchical repositories of power’. Dada thus was at an intersection between iconoclasm, anarchism, and aesthetic experience. Moreover, viewed the iconoclastic movements as being a singular mold of both religious and secular, although its participants would claim one or the other. Dada was responding to aestheticization of late 19th century art, which itself was the aristocratic bourgeoisie response to industrialization - While the use of the term iconoclasm in Balls essays were in relationship to a historical ‘Bildersturm’, otherwise known as the 16th century’s Great Iconoclasm during Europe’s Protestant Reformation, it was treated as an important means of force in political conflicts that continued to resonate into the twentieth century.

Prefacing Modernism, it was thought that ‘Because man is unable to escape the concrete, all abstraction, as an attempt to manage without the image, leads only to an impoverishment, a dilution of, a surrogate for the linguistic process.’ Moreover, that ‘Abstraction breeds arrogance; it makes men appear the same as or similar to God (even if only in illusion)’. In which case, the museum presents itself as it’s church.

In his essay, Functions of the Museum (1973), Daniel Buren describes the museum as being a privileged place with three specific realms of function: In the Aesthetic, Economic, and Mystical. First, it frames itself as the central viewpoint in which to consume the narratives of the collection, under the guise of individual emphasis or freedom from agenda. The museum exhibits what it wants to show, to which point the institution itself becomes synonymous to stage. Secondly, the museum removes object from commonplace, creating an inclusive value system based on the privileged/selected. Thirdly, perpetuates a self-reflecting mythysism of omnipotent power over what is consumed as ‘Art’, in both it’s implied promise and intention of self-preservation. This preservation, perpetuating the idealistic notion of becoming eternal*DB within it.

The museum has been tasked with a cultures’ protection against time itself. It is an artificial space, ‘granting it an appearance of immortality which serves a remarkably well discourse which the prevalent bourgeois ideology attaches to it*DB. The museum presents itself as self-evident, all while protecting itself and it’s own fragility through the serving upward collection of voice and gesture. This collection, becoming where art becomes born and buried* in the museum’s ability to create the space for simplification. The two roles of the collection then presents itself as either a silencing of the many, or the embedding of value upon the privileged few.

Chapter II

Destructive Nature:

Modernism, Auto-Destructive Art, and Post-Opulence

In the western canon, following the end of World War II, iconoclasm via the abstract form (i.e. Tachisme and Abstract Expressionism) became the predominant means of cultural expression within a mass episode of cultural forgetting within the western world. That being, there were no means of both accurately confronting and aestheticizing the horrors of the post-war world that remained grounded in both its reality and truth. In the destruction of recognizable imagery, In favor of the abstract form, reality was even further removed and that unpleasantness successfully buried.

Auto-Destructive Art (1959) was acutely concerned with the problems of the repressed aggressions of and toward the individual, as well as those within the greater society. Additionally, operated against a system that was viewed by Metzger as being the maker of its own destruction, responding to WWII, and the increased Industrialization of war and nuclear armament. In three separate manifestos, he went on to criticize privileged institutions and their dominion of both nature as a tangible entity, and in more metaphysical forms in relationship to the greater society. Metzger viewed people as being vessels of the unresolved and suppressed aggressions against ourselves. Moreover, That this predisposition toward destruction served as a critical threat to the continuation of the institutional illusion of balance and control. It is for this reason that he rationalized, that due to this conflicting unconscious allure, any art celebrating this pleasure would be quickly rejected*(GMB).

How have we progressed in regard to the way in which we in a neo-gilded culture, invest in the ideals of the ideal, consume art, and adorn creation as a half-realized concept; keeping in mind that no product of creation can or will exist in its most opulent or idealized form forever. Additionally, within a culture that both appropriates and consumes the aesthetic and moral principles of it’s would be counter. Mass media, as an example, serves us daily reminders of the realities of our modern day capacity for destruction, disruption, and decay. Through it, catastrophe and their sediments are made both palatable and distant, creating a cognitive distance as a kind of means of not looking, alienation, and disassociation. The question as to whether or not art object can both accurately describe reality and catalyze redemption, is one I put before Post-Opulence to answer, through the reclamation of destruction within the infrathin* moments between a completely destructive process and its inherent aesthetic manifestation following.

The contemporary ways of viewing of this progression/interaction with the perceived and ‘finalized’ art object, mirrors Jean Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality, in which reality itself is formed from an endless reproduction of the real. Moreover, Developing into a relationship of equivalence, indifference, then the extinction of the original*. The way in which mass production has shaped our way of viewing, has both destroyed and altered the relationships we have with our own experienced reality. Additionally, it has created a perceived hierarchy of these two visual forms of completion and degradation into two opposing icons of status.

Where Auto-Destructive Art and Post-Opulence diverge, is in the intention toward the intimate actualization of a specific set of ethical and political ideals, rather than solely becoming a grand spectacle of them. Auto-Destructive Art was interested in complex and large-scale forms, somewhat hypocritical (ironic?) relations to the art market itself, and rings problematically absolute in its overall practice. The practice always needing something tougher (GM-pg34), and was characteristically power driven and hungry in it’s goal of being a ‘constructive force in society (GM-36)’. Auto-Destructive Art craved destruction in the form of violence, expelling through force of action, rather than decomposition. Post-Opulence is based on the passing of time, rather than a specific and complex manipulation of it. Moreover, it strives to relinquish control, rather than perform it. Where the theory of Auto-Destructive Art was an attack on the capitalist art market through performance in conjunction with maximal material form, Post-Opulence is rejection of the idealized or fixed state of material form, as well as an attack on the notions of extended iconization through similarly problematic traditional gallery systems.

Aside from acknowledged relationships to Dada, Auto-Destructive Art sucessfully lacked being a complete theory. However, the work of Auto-Destructive Art began to be defined by its scientific motivations, idealizing the future machine based experiences ‘that we need’ (GM_ADAC-191). These, being equally fallible frameworks subject to the draw of institutional self-preservation. Auto-Destructive Art found manifestation (or lack thereof) not only in the physical practice of deconstructing works, Destruction in art, but also by means of the manifesto/lecture format. Much like Post-Opulence, acting somewhat beyond a means of a self-authoritative or object based artistic practice, Auto-Destructive Art worked as a synthesis of the aesthetic values of destruction, and the performative aspects of public/collective engagement. Specifically to Post-Opulence, the lecture/manifesto takes form in events which have been informally called ‘burnings’. However, the overall criticism of Auto-Destructive Art in relationship to Post-Opulence, is in the synthetic and violent texture of the Auto Destructive movement itself.

(Image credits for Key)

As a continual modernization process provided the western world with a means of dealing with the traumas of war and its disasters, it additionally left open the questions surrounding whom truly carries the authority over the conventions of art and its institutional value. Clement Greenberg, a prominent art critic of the mid-twentieth century, adopted a new iconoclastic ideology and championed Abstract Expressionism within the western canon. His rejection to representation was not due to a personal dislike of the narrative image, but rather out of necessity as aesthetic progress called for it. Abstract expressionism created a standard and climate for the privileged to foster the grand modernist narrative, in that it demanded critical analyses, interpretations, and informed opinions (BJM_37). Here, iconoclasm has found itself appropriated as a tool of illusionary progress in the form of the abstract. Illusionary, in its failure in this form to provide a genuine challenge against normative consumer/capitalist ideology at the time.

The modern studio itself can be seen to conform to the limitations of the neutral space, to which the hope it is to be selected, exhibited, and sold. While on the one hand the studio was a private space, a heroic space, the studio was and remains a space with the intention of convenience for the organizer, curator, or exhibitors own designs*(DB_FS). Institution provides an easy to understand space, in which it’s own values characterize the studio into a described, ‘boutique where we find ready-to-wear-art’ *(DB_FS); tailored and fitted to the markets’ needs. Said institution, abstracting that which challenges between its space of production and its space of exhibition and distribution.

It would seem the case that such institutional powers (Which were/continue to be problematic and white-male dominant) would continue to provide answers. To that point, and the institutionalization of art itself in the development of higher conceptual frameworks belonging to those who can access it, has transformed Art into a vessel

(or icon) of a flawed social order. The concepts and aesthetics of the artistic field grew in relationship with the post war period, which today are still taught as fundamental knowledge. However, Abstract Expressionism eventually removed a necessary conflict between an ‘Advanced Art’ and the dominant culture, in that it kept alive the social and political norms of the west, and thus became an icon in both its material reality and lack of image.

Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power

Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments seem to cause us to forget the future. Instead of being made of natural materials, such as marble, granite, or other kinds of rock, the new monuments are made of artificial materials, plastic, chrome, and electric light. They are not built for the ages, but rather against the ages. They are involved in a systematic reduction of time down to fractions of seconds, rather than in representing the long spaces of centuries. Both past and future are placed into an objective present (RS_NM11)

Minimalism acted as a theoretical reversal of power relations between individual values and those of society. Where in reality, in its compositions, minimalism represented authority. It not only embodied a prevailing social authority, but also the currency of power of the social patriarch. Moreover, made a case of an inherent discourse of implied power that was present in minimalist work, contextualized by inscribed problematic meaning. These included implications of industry, representations mimicking the rhetoric of a perceived dominant figure (the male), and a visual violence/aggression that would be directed toward the viewer, and as a complete occupation of communal space.

In Anna Chave’s essay, Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power (1990), Robert Morris’s work is described as being reminiscent of “carceral images of discipline and punishment”. The images themselves portray imprisonment or and repression, and Chave goes on to comment that even in [Morris’s] writings, he was more interested in power, rather than the countering of the current political/social context of the time. As an example, the Morris piece Hearing was a gallery installation made up by a copper chair, zinc table, and a heated led bed. In the description of the piece, all the installed objects were connected with live electricity, with load speakers playing an interrogation. While the compositions are a clear reference to a prison setting, the implied and forced narrative is that of a context of intimidation and the policed state.

Dan Flavin’s work is described as having including corporate references, in its recontextualizing the mass produced fluorescent light. Moreover, generated a market practice that was solely supported by its authorship over the readily available material, in short, selling the name.

‘Flavin’s Diagonal not only looks technological and commercial - like Minimalism generally - it is an industrial product and, as such, it speaks of the extensive power exercised by the commodity in a society where virtually everything is for sale’ - (Adorno, Pg.46)

Donald Judd’s work can also be argued to be making reference to an implied inner figure or ‘Strong body’. Through composition and scale, Judd’s work captures the characterization of the proverbial ‘strong silent type’ as described by Chave. Moreover, in the work there is the expression of power, which similarly lacks feeling or communication.

While Minimalist sculpture did succeed in its aim of expressing an implicit power over time and space, the model and phallic heavy references to outdated notion, exposed the monuments to their own overcompensation evolving since the previous period. It’s not until pieces are introduced having other dilapidated form via destruction or judgment from time and the elements, that the absolute nature of the works begin to feel less absolute and thus less authoritarian in nature.

Chapter III

Destruction on Display:

Practice & Presentation

It’s in these created moments of chaos, destruction, and broken silence, that we momentarily operate outside of a reality constructed by the mundane. The spectacle of the broken glass, engages our most primal drives, alerting us to the space in which we’re operating, but also instantaneously connects us to a space we presently share with others. By means of joining a destructive process with the power invested in a sought idealized state, a struggle over iconic form through its breaking, salvaging, and reuse begins to be exhumed. Additionally, creates reference to the actions and signals of changed circumstance & time.

In recent years however, we have seen a progression toward the dismantling of this resonant flawed modernity in both iconoclastic aesthetics and social intervention in the Contemporary. The practice and concept, both being free from the confines of institutional structure and influence. As an example, Earlier in 2017, the city council of Charlottesville voted to remove a confederate statue of Robert E. Lee and the surrounding park. Later, on August 12th a ‘Unite the Right’ Rally was scheduled following months of earlier protest from white nationalists. This rally, resulting in the death of one and injury of nineteen others when a white nationalist, James Alex Fields, drove his car through a crowd of counter protesters.

By no means do I make this illustration lightly, but it's worth exploring the fantasticism and need for the illusion/safety found in connection to such a fetishised preservation of toxicity as monument. Moreover, the social revelations made by such progressive iconoclastic action toward said icon and monument, comprised of nothing but material and thing. Ernest Becker might understand this relationship as being the essence of transference as a certain taming of terror, by means of creating order in a chaotic universe (*EB_DD145-9). In that certain monuments, or icons, represent what we aim to be loved by or to hate. In the former, comes with the consequence of Transference Terror*, in which one fears to lose the love of the object that manifests as an icon of one’s heroistic ideal(*EB_145-9). Iconoclasm in this sense, successfully disrupts and challenges the heroic projects/objects of the oppressing institutional body, while revealing it’s reality and greater insignificance. Following the events of Charlottesville, there was a wave of stated illegal and legal instances of iconoclasm of Confederate monuments in Durham, North Carolina, and Baltimore, Maryland**(NI_pg1-9). While the subject is still one between proposed ‘heritage’ and social progress, iconoclasm now manifests as an aesthetic tool that still makes the propositions of progress, however through actual physical instances and evidences of destruction.

During the same year as this Iconoclastic wave, contemporary artists Doreen Garner and Kenya (Robinson), came out with their two-person exhibition White Man On A Pedestal (WMOAP), opening at Pioneer Works in 2017:

Installation view of ‘White Man On A Pedestal’ at Pioneer Works, 2017

‘Pioneer Works is pleased to present White Man On A Pedestal (WMOAP), a two-person exhibition by Doreen Garner and Kenya (Robinson), from November 10 – December 17, 2017. WMOAP questions a prevailing western history that uses white-male-heteronormativity as its persistent model.

Both artists approach WMOAP from an individual practice that is responsive to their individual experiences as black women, operating in a system of white male supremacy. At a time when removing Confederate statues—literally white men on pedestals—were cultural flashpoints of whiteness and class, Garner and (Robinson) play with the size, texture, and scale of white monumentality itself, referencing both real and imagined figureheads of historical exclusion’

Installation view of ‘White Man On A Pedestal’ at Pioneer Works, 2017

Iconoclasm has thus serves as a subtle force of change, beyond the conventional ideas surrounding it as simple brutality. The questions remain open in the aesthetic exploration of the destruction in art, vs. the destruction of art. Moreover, aesthetic iconoclasm being a matter of politics, art, and navigated areas of intersection in relationship to the greater social body. Other exhibitions and areas of site are considered when visualizing some successful means of destruction both in and of art.

Spiral Jetty and La Jetée are two examples of a makers attempt to reconcile with such destructions through time. In each, we get a sense of an acknowledgement and understanding of a descension of the past into a present chaos, entropy. In Spiral Jetty, it’s in the form of the natural degrading archaeology of the pieces’ direct exposure to the elements. The variable and unstable manifestation of form at this location, act as as both a time-marker and the exhumed nature of these decaying themes in relation to the present. Likewise, in the film La Jetée, the subject character of the film, is in constant reference to an abstract time before the dropping of the bomb.

In the present, both works express a returning to a work in progress, both with the intention of resolution, albeit a resolution resulting in decay each time. With the spiral jetty, in it’s created intention, is inevitably going to find itself eroded, as our protagonist in La Jetée is to be ‘liquidated’ as the task becomes complete.

Nothing distinguishes memories from ordinary moments. Only later do they become memorable by the scars they leave. (Narrator, La Jetée)

In the film, there is also a sense of the auto-destructive attitude toward technology and humankind’s industry both to create and destroy. However, the Spiral Jetty again better represents the idea of passive destruction vs. that based around its violet nature. In the former, it’s either the implied violence of individual erasure or world ending catastrophe, and the latter being a relinquishing of something of human production to the natural progress of time and decay.

Lastly, in the documentation piece (Spiral jetty), there’s an interesting shot of Smithson in his film as we follow the maker via helicopter. He runs down the jetty for what seems like an endless amount of time as he progresses towards the center. However, as he follows this spiral form and begins to get closer to the eye, past and near future parts of the track began to be revealed in the frame. Until reaching the center and conclusion of the track, leaving the artist nowhere to go. Likewise in La Jetée, the protagonist asks those residing in the future to return to the beginning, but once returned and as he runs down the pier, it’s revealed that at the end is in fact the inevitability of death. It’s in these final moments, that past, present, and future clash for our subjects, leading to a progressively quickened state of entropy and closure.

Show the line between Bloom & Decay

When Attitudes Become form

Formalized

Passive/conceptual disruption

HS - LA Exhibit

Theme/theatre

aggressive/violent disruption

Contrast to Post-Op

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waluigis-837th-testicle · 2 years ago

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you put it into words beautifully.

so I've had a lot of different ones over the years.

England

used to genuinely stan him when I first got into Hetalia because i saw a lot of myself in him

i was in a HUGE tea-aboo phase (wannabe British person) and i identified a lot with his personality (snarky/cynical, kind of a hardass, imaginative, lonely)

i watched a lot of British dramas with my parents and read a lot of British poetry and listened to bands like The Police, Genesis, and Jethro Tull so that informed my interest in English history (especially concerning the 19th century)

when i saw punk fan art of him i thought it was super cool and it was the impetus for me to investigate the original punk scene in the 70s/80s (which still informs my fashion sense)

i should mention that never did i fucking EVER gloss over the fact that the actual British empire was a colonizing piece of shit. yes i loved the character, no i didn't conflate him for the irl country of England and its failings

he's no longer my favorite but i do enjoy his design and his cranky old man tendencies

also i defy anyone to come up with a better playlist for him than me so there xx

Scotland

canon be damned, i miss the og sexy redhead

again, genuinely thought he was a cool dude

he informed my habit of dyeing my hair red and getting my cartilage pierced

was on a scottish history kick thanks to the movie brave so he just amped that interest Right The Fuck UP

went so far as to teach myself scottish gaelic

similar to England in thinking he was aesthetically cool. i read up on the history and because of the gaelic i learned i can do a pretty baller (albeit mishmosh) Scottish accent

i was flabbergasted when his canon design came out ngl

nowadays i don't think about him or the UK sibs really at all but they used to be My THING

France

oh fuck oh god oh shit oh girl im drowning girl ive been swept out to sea girl help

didn't really think about him until i commissioned someone to match me w/ a hetalia character and i was assigned Frog Fucker

he's pretty :)

but he's also kinduva bitch :/

i use him as a muse now (which im sure would go straight to his head), he's informed a lot of my artistic motivation vis a vis character designs and world building

i cannot TELL YOU how many characters have been loosely based off France (the character) or things like irl French folklore/history/architecture/literature etc

ngl i self-ship w/ him

i just think he's super cool not only for gender reasons but also France can be portrayed in so many ways??? from foppish and self-absorbed to poetic to calculatedly cruel i just!!!! love exploring the potential for his character!!!! he's infinitely fascinating to me

also did i mention his tits and hair please let me talk about his tits and hair i've been dying to talk about his tits and hair all day

Spain

a bastard-coated bastard with bastard filling

was one of my OG faves because of how sunshiney and ditzy he was

now i like him for his potential to be deceptively valid but also an asshole???

like full on anarchist who would gladly choke the monarchy with his own hands but also will only admit that he fucked up to himself and no one else. you'll have to claw an apology out of him and even then you won't get a proper one

i got interested in Spanish medieval history, specifically during the time of Muslim rulers

it isn't talked about enough look it up stan Al-Andalus she's perfect we love her

i wanna write a fic about Tono but i'd have to get back into learning about Spanish history and it's been a while since I touched on any of that

Romano

bastard energy

love his commentary, one of the funniest characters imo

not super attached to him as i am to the others, but i also think he holds a lot of potential as a character if you were to write him in a grittier fic

mostly i just think he's funny

Denmark

i love me a good himbo with tits you could suffocate in between

randomly got really into him and started teaching myself danish

at one point i was able to think in danish, so there's that

in any event, i think he's fun and funny but i have my own interpretation of him that's much more mellow (closer to how he was portrayed in the first season with a voice actor that sounded like a normal adult man)

i also self ship with him to a lesser degree than france uwu

Prussia

bastard energy but in a polar opposite way to Romano's

he's a stinky man your honor and i wouldn't have him any other way

i also think he's funny

a fascinating mix of nerdy german uncle who wears socks with crocs to the beach and annoying older brother who won't shut up about Star Trek and plays the bass in some local band with his uni buddies

the man has a fucking DIARY

thousands of them

geek ass nerd i love him

Korea

this guy holds a lot of sentimental attachment to me because he helped me place a lot of feelings and have someone to identify with at a time when i felt really alone

silly as it sounds, i loved this guy so much i wrote full on prose about him

i self-shipped with him for a LONG time, and i guess to a certain extent i do still but not with the same fervency/dependency that i used to (yay personal growth)

i completely understand why the Korean government was pissed and wanted him out of the show but :( i'd still like to see him animated

i still have a keen interest in Korean history (especially from Korean rather than American perspectives)

obligatory fixation on idol groups

but again. never creepy or fetishistic about it. just thought the music was good

I have an observation I'd like to share...

I really believe that reason Hetalia fans stick around, or come and go in huge waves, has almost everything to do with the characters themselves and not the actual content of the franchise.

I think having a large cast of characters that are defined by various generic personalities traits is going to draw people in and out depending on their own irl personal life and development (maybe why we've largely been represented by the teenage population lol)

It's easy to pick one that you can readily identify with, and then a lot of us just fill in the gaps with other things that interest us. There are many many hetalia fans that know better than to give into the ignorant source of the icons, and unfortunately there have been more than enough fans that don't think critically about what isn't actually funny (the original series and much of the first animated seasons).

Subsequently, there's also a lot of fandom portrayals of characters most of us accept in place of canon when the real show/manga is still ignorant, outdated, or just plain inaccurate. Sometimes these headcanons go so far as to collectively change physical features based on a general consensus, or in more blunt terms, unwhite-wash.

That all being said, No!! No arguing on my post, there's an infinite amount of other places to do that, so not here!!! I recognize the bad and reject harmful outdated humor, do not bring up the bad here!!

Personally I've loved having a character that can be encased by his boisterous personality and bad eyesight lol, and I know back when I was a tween and had just discovered the series I'm sure I said or imitated very stupid things!!

As people it's our responsibility to learn and grow, it is NOT our responsibility to punish and hurt others (especially minors) for their mistakes.

Who's your favorite character(s) and why? Do they mean a lot to you, or do you just enjoy the designs and slapstick humor?

#hws france #hws denmark #hws romano #hws korea #hws prussia #each for different reasons #they (along with a few other characters) helped me place a lot of feelings and discover interests i otherwise would have had no idea about #but yeah. when you're a lonely teenager with 0 friends and a lot of self contained interests you make do by making friends with anime boys #soapy responds #ohhh this got rambly real quick #long post #hws spain #hws england #hws scotland

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