#strange (neutral) it is that you have this medium that's debatably art but also like. not always considered by players or devs to be art?

[cyrsed]

you ever think about how mainstream gaming is the way it is bc it evolved from arcade games?

[threewaysdivided]

Quality Should Not Be Binary

In my wanders through life in general - and the internet in particular - I’ve noticed a strange mindset regarding the quality of media and the people who produce it.  It’s this weird idea that something is either 100% perfect, flawless and ‘how dare you claim to be a real fan while suggesting there’s anything wrong’, or that it’s completely awful, valueless and ‘you’re a terrible person for enjoying that or thinking it has anything to offer’ - sometimes flipping from one to the other as soon as a ‘flaw’ is revealed, or a ‘bad’ work does something suitably impressive.

This mindset has never really made sense to me.  Maybe I’m a just habitual over-thinker who spends unhealthy amounts of time analysing things, but I can’t see how this sort of absolutist approach would do anything other than shut down discourse, limit the value to be had from a piece and maybe make people angry.

So in honour of that please enjoy some indulgently long navel-gazing about critical analysis and media quality.

Disclaimer: This post is going to summarise my personal philosophy. Everyone approaches life - and especially art - in their own way and far be it for me to say you’re wrong if you prefer a different approach.  You do you.

Blindness Hurts Both Ways

To an extent I get the simple yes/no mindset.  Analysis takes time and it would be exhausting to give an extensive, nuanced breakdown on your view at the start of every discussion.  Plus the whole ‘dissecting the frog’ thing can definitely apply to enjoyment of media.

However, taking it to the point where you’re denying the positive side of things you dislike or refusing to acknowledge faults in works/people you enjoy has the potential to swing around and bite you in the butt.

Why deny yourself a useful experience? I think there’s an important distinction to make between being good and being useful. Subjective, technical or, ethical ‘badness’ is not the same as having no value. Similarly, being touching, entertaining or otherwise enjoyable doesn’t preclude something from having genuine problems.

Personally, I can find it difficult to work out exactly what’s going right in a generally positive piece.  After all, ‘good’ doesn’t hinge on a single point - it’s usually the product of a lot of things working well together, and it can be hard to figure out cause and effect in a system like that. It’s much easier to look at a failed attempt and identify the specific elements that caused problems, where it had the potential to recover, and places where it might be succeeding in spite of those issues. Similarly, some works can be very strong except when it comes to ‘that one thing’, which in itself is a useful reference.  Negative examples can be just as beneficial as positive ones, and turning a blind eye to a piece’s weaker aspects just denies you that tool.

On the other hand, sometimes a piece and/or creator can be ethically awful while being technically strong or succeeding at its intended purpose. In this case, while they’re not positive it can certainly be valuable to analyse the techniques they use, and even apply those tools when selecting and creating things for yourself.

It’s important to remember that acknowledging where something is strong isn’t the same as endorsing or supporting it, and that there’s a huge difference between pointing out a genuine weakness or failing and maliciously hating on a work or creator.

Why give something that much power? Starting with the gentler side, I think it’s important to remember that a work being ‘good’ on the whole shouldn’t be an excuse to gloss over possibly troubling elements or to give creators a free pass on their actions.  Sure, even the best-intentioned artists make bad PR and creative decisions sometimes but it’s also valid to acknowledge and call out possible misbehaviour when it crops up, rather than blindly playing defence until it reaches critical mass and undermines the good of their work (or worse, actually hurts someone).

There can also be a danger to simply writing off and ignoring ‘bad works’, especially if you dislike them based on ethical grounds.  If something ‘bad’ is becoming popular it’s usually a sign that it’s getting at least one thing right - whether that be plugging into an oft-ignored hot-button issue, or simple shock-value and shameless marketing.  Attributing the success of such pieces to blind luck and ignoring any potential merits that got them there opens up the potential for other, similarly objectionable works to replicate that outcome.

Not to mention the issues that can come from letting these things spread unchecked.  Think about how many crackpot theories and extreme notions have managed to gained traction, in part due to a lack of resistance from more moderate or neutral parties who at the time dismissed them as ‘too stupid’ or ‘too crazy to be real’.  Unpleasant as it may be, I think there’s some value in dipping into the discourse around generally negative media.  If nothing else, shining a spotlight on the misinformation or insidious subtext that a work might be propagating can help genuine supporters notice, sidestep or otherwise avoid the potential harms even as they keep enjoying it.

Why lock yourself into a stance like that? Maybe it’s just my desire to keep options open, but it seems like avoiding absolutist stances gives you a lot more room to move.  Publicly championing or decrying a work and flatly rejecting any counterpoints runs the risk of trapping yourself in a corner that might be hard to escape from if your stance happens to change later.  If nothing else, a bit of flexibility can help you back down without too much egg on your face, not to mention shrinking the target area for fans or dissenters who you might have clashed with in the past.

A little give and take can also help build stronger cases when you do want to speak out.  Sometimes it’s better to just acknowledge the counterpoints you agree with and move on to the meat of the debate rather than wasting time tearing down their good points for the sake of ‘winning’.  The ability to concede an argument is a powerful tool - you’d be surprised how agreeable people become when they feel like they’re being listened to.  

Finally, from an enjoyment perspective, is it really worth avoiding or boycotting what could otherwise be a fun or thought-provoking experience just because you don’t 100% agree with it or have criticised it in the past? Sure, there are absolutely times when a boycott is justified but why deny yourself a good time just because it involves an element that’s been arbitrarily labelled ruinous.  ‘With Caveats’ is a perfectly acceptable way to approach things.

Existence vs Presentation of Concepts

A rarer argument that occasionally pops up is the idea that certain works are inherently ‘inappropriate’, ‘distasteful’, or should otherwise be avoided purely based on their subject matter.  Usually this revolves around the presence of a so-called ‘controversial’ topic; things like war, abuse or abusive relationships, sexual content, bigotry and minorities (LBGT+ relationships being a big one right now).

Personally I think this is a reductive and pretty silly way to choose your content.  No topic should be off-limits for any kind of media. (With the possible exception of holding off until the target audience has enough life experience and critical thinking skills to handle it.  There is some value in TV rating systems.)  Yes, some concepts will be uncomfortable to confront, but they are part of life and trying to keep them out of mainstream art simply stifles the valuable real-world discussions and conversations they might spark.

What we should be looking for is how a work handles the concepts it chooses to use.  There’s a world of difference between presenting or commenting on a controversial topic as part of a work, and misrepresenting or tacitly condoning inappropriate behaviour through sloppy (or worse, intentional) presentation choices.  The accuracy of research and portrayals, use of sensitivity and tact, consideration for the audience and overall tone with which a topic is framed are much more worthy of consideration than simply being offended that the idea exists in media at all.

‘Bad’ Art, ‘Good’ People and Vice Versa

I think it’s important to remember that our content creators are, well, people.  They’re going to have their own weird taste preferences, personal biases and odd worldviews that will sometimes show through in their output. They’re also going make mistakes - after all, to err is human.  Unfortunately, in the creative pool you can also find some genuine bigots, egotists, agenda-pushers, abusers and exploitative profiteers who don’t care about the damage their work might be doing.

It can be discomfiting to notice potentially negative subtext in the work or actions of a creator you like, and upsetting to realise that a work you love is the product of a person who you can’t in good conscience support.  Which of course leads to the discussion of art, artists, whether they can be separated and what to do when things go wrong.

Obviously I’m going to be talking primarily about the ethical/moral side of things, as I think most of us are willing to forgive the occasional technical flub, production nightmare or drop in outward quality from creators we otherwise enjoy.

It can also be a touchy subject so I’d like to reiterate that this is just an explanation of my personal philosophy.  My approach isn’t the only way and I won’t say you’re wrong for taking a different stance or choosing to stay out of it entirely.  

‘Bad’ art from an apparently ‘Good’ person In general, when it comes to apparent bad behaviour or negative subtext from otherwise decent creators, I favour the application of Hanlon’s Razor.

Hanlon’s Razor Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence - at least not the first time.

Art is a subjective medium, with multiple readings and interpretations being possible from the same piece.  It’s definitely possible for an author to lack the  awareness or experience needed to notice when unintended implications or alternate readings have crept into their work.  Sensitive topics are tricky to handle at the best of times and seemingly harmless edits or innocuous creative choices can stack into subtly nastier tonal shifts. Similarly, being a good creator doesn’t automatically make them good at PR or talking to fans - it’s easy to get put on the spot or to not realise the connotations of their phrasing and how it may have come across.   Of course this still means someone messed up, and it’s totally reasonable to call them out for ineptness, but I’d take an unfortunate accident over malicious intent any day.

Then there are times when the negative subtext is a lot less unintentional.  In that case I think it’s important to make the distinction between creator sentiment and the sentiment of the work, character or their production team (if collaborating) before making a judgement on them as an individual.  For example, the presence of casual bigotry might be justified in historical piece that’s attempting to accurately portray the culture of the time, and a creator/actor might write/portray a protagonist with biases and proclivities that they personally disagree with for the sake of a more compelling story.  The presence of a worldview within a work doesn’t automatically translate to the opinion of it’s creator.

Similarly, when considering a problematic production or team it’s worth acknowledging which positions hold creative power, if every member is complicit and why a dissenting individual might stay silent; whether out of contractual obligation, a desire not to throw colleagues under the bus or just because they don’t have the financial security to risk rocking the boat or walking away from the role.   It’s important to figure out who the buck stops with before we start pointing fingers.

Overall, I don’t think there’s much value in passing judgement on an artist for the troublesome content in a single work.  You’ll get more mileage and a fairer assessment from looking holistically across their collection and personal/private channels for telling patterns of subtexts and behaviours.  For the most part I prefer to offer the benefit of the doubt until there’s enough supporting evidence or they do something to definitively out themselves.  Speculation fuelled witch-hunts are no fun for anybody.

‘Good’ art from ‘Bad’ people Exactly what defines a ‘bad’ creator will vary (there’s a reason I’ve been putting the terms in inverted commas).  Whether it’s a disagreement with a key opinion/ creative philosophy/ method, that they’ve done something actually heinous/ illegal, or anywhere in between, enjoying a work while being in conflict with the creator can be a difficult situation to reconcile.  Personally I think there's power to the Death of the Author argument in these cases:

Death of the Author An author's intentions and biographical facts (political views, religion, race etc.) should hold no special weight in determining an interpretation of their writing.

If you’ve found value or enjoyment in a work then you’re well within your rights to enjoy the work on those grounds, even if the message you’ve personally taken from it runs counter to the original author’s opinions or intentions.  

It’s also important to remember that a creator’s personal and/or moral failings don’t retroactively invalidate their skill and achievements in their field.   It’s possible for a person to continue offering valuable insights, observations and lessons on their chosen speciality in spite of their other behaviour or stances.  Their work can have value in isolation, although it may be worth taking the information with a grain of salt when it comes to possible biases.

This becomes a little harder when the disagreeable sentiments bleed directly into their creations but, again, there’s no reason why you can’t decide that the strengths of a work are worth looking at even if they take some squinting past uncomfortable elements to appreciate.

The question should never be ‘can I still enjoy the art?’ because that answer is always yes - if you liked it before learning about the artist then you’re allowed to keep doing so afterwards.  The new context may add caveats to the discussion but it doesn’t demerit the existing positive aspects.

However, Death of the Author runs into problems when the creator is still alive.  If the artist is out of the picture then you can engage freely without any financial support or publicity going back to them.  When they’re still around the question becomes ‘do I still feel comfortable supporting them?’ This is particularly relevant when it comes to online creators, as just interacting with their content can generate passive ad revenue, increase view counts and contribute to algorithm boosts.

I honestly don’t think there’s any one answer to this particular question.  It all comes down to a personal case-by-case judgement; weighing the severity of the conflict against how much you value their work and, in the case of creative teams, whether you think their colleagues are worth supporting despite them.  Even if you decide to pull back there are soft options before going for a full boycott; using ad-block to limit passive financial contributions, buying physical media second-hand or lending/borrowing hard copies to avoid generating any new purchases.

There are creators that I disagree with politically but continue to enjoy because their stance isn’t especially harmful or is relatively minor compared to the value of their work.  There are creators who I no longer want to support but whose pieces I like enough that I don’t regret having purchased from them in the past.  On the other hand, there’s a creative team whose content I adore in isolation but who I’ve had to drop entirely after their leader was outed as an emotionally manipulative office bully.  Where someone else would draw that line comes down to their own personal standards, and it wouldn’t surprise me if another person took a completely different approach.

Don’t be a Jerk

I feel like this should go without saying.  Rational discussion is great.  Being able to have a critical discourse - even one that’s focused on the more negative sides of a work - is wonderful.  Opinions are fun.

However, the thing with opinions is that a lot of them differ.  We aren’t always going to sync up and there are times when you shouldn’t, and won’t be able to, force someone to agree.  In that case, please don’t attack them over it.  You don’t have to like or respect their views but some basic civility would be appreciated.  You’re trying to have a conversation, not win a catfight.  Condescension, derision, high-horsing, ad hominem and otherwise getting personal doesn’t tend to win many friends or endear them to your perspective.   And to the rare few who go so far as to threaten or harass fans, creators and their families; that’s an awful, completely unnecessary, out of line thing to do. (Seriously, never do this, it won’t help and just makes you look crazy.  Also, it can be considered criminal behaviour.)

It’s also important to know when to let things go.  You’re not always going to be able to turn the tide and constantly chasing the argument, stirring the pot and fighting waves of push-back eventually reaches a point of diminishing returns.  No matter how important the issue is there’ll be times when you’re just screaming into the void.  The best you can do is make your peace, say your piece and take your leave.  After all it’s not the school playground.  And unlike the playground, we’re not obliged to stick around.

Value Judgements: It’s Good to Examine Your Tastes

At the end of the day I think you get more mileage from reaching an opinion based on a value judgement of a work’s positive and negative sides than you do from just bandwagoning into blind adoration or hate.  ‘Perfect’ and ‘Unsanctionable’ aren’t binary boxes - they’re points on a scale, and figuring out where you stand on a piece can be a useful mental exercise.  Even if your opinion ends up matching the general consensus, at least you know how you got there and can defend yourself if challenged.  

If nothing else this kind of thing can help you figure out what elements you like, dislike and prioritise in media, and where your personal boundaries lie in regard to different issues.

Still, even after all this there are plenty more factors that determine whether or not you’ll enjoy something.  I’ve dropped way more pieces for not being to my subjective liking than I have due to technical or ethical flaws.  Your tastes are your own, and if needed you can stop the conversation at ‘it’s just not my thing’.

In the end there’s no ‘correct’ way to be a fan of something.  We’re all just here to have fun.  So try not to be an ass when you run across someone who does things differently.

[nofomoartworld]

Art F City: We Went to Gabriel Orozco’s OXXO

Gabriel Orozco Kurimanzutto Gob. Rafael Rebollar 94, Col. San Miguel Chapultepec 11850, México D.F. On view until March 16th

What’s on view: An exact replica of an OXXO (the ubiquitous Mexican 7-11 competitor) except without monetary exchange. Visitors are instructed to pick out three free objects, so long as they aren’t marked with the artist’s own sticker (because those products are artworks for collectors, despite being otherwise identical to the other goods in the store).

Whitney:  Through the wooden barrier which separates the gallery from the street, past the door guard and the gallerists, we entered into a minimalist shi-shi open air courtyard, and then through the sliding doors of an OXXO, which seemed normal because OXXOs are everywhere. Ryan and I turned around to go find some art upstairs. But Michael, being the seasoned critic, knew. It’s not a real OXXO. It’s commentary.

Michael: I honestly can’t think of another artwork that straddles a weird indoor/outdoor space to such uncanny effect. I had heard a lot about this show and thought I knew what to expect, but I too was caught off guard. Whitney, you and I have seen more than our fair share of fake-businesses-as-artworks, from visiting a seedy massage parlor in the Lower East Side to helping run AFC’s pop-up gay bar in Miami Beach. I’m sure we’ve been to many a fake business at art fairs we don’t even remember. But there will be no forgetting this day. Gabriel Orozco has elevated the fake-business-as-medium to the next level in so many ways.   

Whitney: This triggered a Supermarket Sweep fantasy I didn’t realize I have been actively repressing every time I go shopping. You’re allowed to take three items (as long as they don’t have stickers on them, but not many do), so immediately all of us starting weighing the best combinations.

I went for the cookies first, but then it turned out there was beer, and that we weren’t allowed to drink beer in the courtyard without cups, so that knocked out two of my items, and then I got distracted by the gum at the checkout counter, so there went the cookies. After we’d checked out, I think we all got buyer’s remorse. Michael probably should’ve gotten water for his house. I remembered condoms and toothpaste, but luckily those had stickers.

Now I’m hungry for cookies and debating running to the actual OXXO across the street while Michael writes his response.

The bags of dog food with the circle motif are not available—they’re art. The unmarked cans of dog food are free, however.

Michael: One of the most impressive things this piece accomplished: it made us consider the act of shopping differently than any of its myriad artistic predecessors. I’m literally in an OXXO at least once every day (it’s where most Defeños do everything from paying utility bills and refilling drinking water jugs to buying cigarettes and Doritos) but with the aspect of monetary value removed, yet another set of limitations imposed, an almost-mania set in as we tried to adjust to a new value system.

Ultimately, I settled on a beer and two Kinder Sorpresa chocolate eggs. I figured I could have a snack, and still get an “object” as a souvenir. I grabbed two of the “niña” chocolates (even candy is gendered?) because Molly Rhinestones introduced me to the fact that the girls’ toys are usually little glamorous figurines that look like white versions of RuPaul. When I opened my eggs, however, they contained art supplies. “Art supplies” in the old-school sense—one came with a watercolor set in the shape of a frog and the other held colored pencils in the shape of a teddy bear. It felt like the most meta end to this Russian-doll of a game. I like to think Orozco rigged this detail somehow—and in his OXXO, all children’s candy prizes contain gender neutral art stuff that could theoretically yield a traditional “art object”.

Whitney: I think your sense of wonder shows what immediately sets this apart from a zillion other art-as-commerce shows. A convenience store populated entirely with art viewers with Canon cameras and little backpacks doesn’t sound so exciting now that we’re officially past the relational aesthetics wow factor.

But what sets this apart from so many Creative Time commissions, art fair projects, and pop-up gallery-stores is that it’s not a fake store where you can’t get anything, or a fake-real store where you have to buy art, or a real store where you have to “perform” capitalism, or a store manned by the unpaid intern, or a store that provides fake jobs for a month. It’s that this is sponsored by OXXO, and you can get the stuff you want, rather than playing an in-the-know game that doesn’t meaningfully relate to commerce anywhere outside the art gallery. This is a real OXXO store.

It makes me think a lot more about what I consume, for one. (I now have cookies from OXXO). But it’s also not a smirky reveal.

Michael: Exiting the “store” from the opposite door, we found ourselves in an unsettlingly conventional gallery environment. I honestly wouldn’t have lingered among these color-coordinated products—devoid of any implied interaction—if it weren’t for the super-enthusiastic, frank, and helpful gallery attendant who gave us the backstory.

Whitney: This person told us that OXXO’s parent company Femsa is treating the show as a promotional opportunity, so it’s provided the workers, the shelving, the fridges, and all of the products. The stark difference in environments, from the colorful store for regular people to a fluorescent Stanley Kubrick vacuum for elevated people, highlighted how art caters to an entirely different set of consumers, which I think is why art-store projects usually don’t work, because in the end they’re not really for us.

Michael: But I am more interested in the economics of the gallery’s products than the giveaway nextdoor. Orozco has calculated a pricing scheme wherein the first edition of the series (his own artist’s proof) is valued at $30,000 (USD). The next collector to buy a set of these art-stamped OXXO products pays half—$15,000. The next collector pays half of that, and so on and so forth until the last edition only costs $60. The price drops the more “demand” there is for the product (opposite the logic of rarified art objects). It’s an economy of scale, not unlike Tesla’s ambitions to engineer accessible electric cars from the luxury market on down, or the fact that mass-produced shit costs so little because it’s mass-consumed (and, of course, exploitative labor, etc.)

Orozco’s relationship to the market (both high and low) is a smart one. He seems to be playing everyone by just blatantly playing by capitalism’s own rules. There’s not necessarily a critique here that’s so explicit a multinational corporate sponsor would be scared off, but he shines a light on the absurdity of the commercial art world by applying other market principles to the weird, weird system in which art operates. Namely, the power artists and dealers wield to assign arbitrary monetary values to objects that could cost much less, or in this case, be free. And in the bizarre era of late-capitalist neoliberalism, I suppose approaching a sponsor that sells nachos and bags of pre-cooked refried beans feels downright democratic in comparison to the usual art-world check-writers: luxury car brands, LVMH labels, overpriced champagne manufacturers…

Whitney: Completely agree. Orozco’s making a game out of buying with the high-low pricing structure, and your understanding of the rules depends on where you are in the economy. I personally consider the first buyer (of the $30,000) to be the loser and the last buyer (of the $60 work) to be the winner, as the bargain-getter. That’s funny because the only rationale for spending the most money on the same item is to be a winner: buying value which has no real meaning unless all the rich people agree that it does. So I think most people would consider the biggest spender to be a complete idiot, but it doesn’t matter anyway because our opinions literally count for nothing and theirs count for $30,000.

I think the Russian doll is a really accurate metaphor. The larger concept of speculative economics for the super rich is wrapped around the economy of goods, something tangible which the rest of us can understand.

It was a good show.

Michael: My only complaint is that I couldn’t take the Juan-Gabriel-Orozco:

More recent Mexico City coverage:

SLIDESHOW: Mexico City Galleries, Part 1

Museum Punk Show in Need of A Sound Guy

Material Light on Substance, Heavy With Dick Pics

Slideshow: Zona MACO, The Art Fair Where Commerce and Politics Make Strange Bedfellows

We Went to Mexico: General Idea at Museo Jumex Restored Our Faith in Art For Fuck’s Sake

We Went to Mexico: Barbara Kruger and Juan Pablo de la Vega Take the Subway

The Timelessness of Sex, Violence, and Portraiture: Otto Dix at MUNAL

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