Black Magic and the Index of Knowledge
THE END OF ART AND OF ART HISTORY
by Rudolph Hudsucker
Let us not talk falsely now
For the hour is getting late
- Bob Dylan, ‘All Along the Watchtower’
7.
Reading Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History, written shortly before the radical thinker committed suicide by the border in Nazi-occupied France in 1940, is like falling through a philosophical pothole. Rereading it is as if to have an urgent stranger subtly whispering in one’s ear. Written with nothing to lose and staring destiny blankly in the face, Benjamin so lucidly critiques Capitalist society and where it’s heading, that it can be frustrating, to say the least, to be some 60 plus years on and seemingly no more prepared for the ‘state of emergency’ which Benjamin urges us is not the exception, but the rule. But try telling that to the bourgeoisie! Yes Fascism. Benjamin laughs out loud how people, in lieu of signed-sealed-and-delivered progress, can be so surprised that such barbarous acts can still be happening, in 1940. And OH my lord, it’s happening again. What a surprise! Clement Greenberg writes of how the bourgeoisie spawned the avant-garde but then cut it adrift, like a cultural orphan cast out into the cold. But the chickens are coming home to roost.
And as for art? What a bore! Duchamp was in no two minds as to its futility in the mid 20th Century. Max Ernst complained of the exiled European avant-garde living it up like movie stars in New York. And so the art-world continues on as a self-righteous sham, reduced to white cubes and beauty parades for the petty bourgeoisie. How pathetic! And just as our political commentators have become like eunuchs our cultural commentators spout out starbucksafied post modern theory and chit chat about ‘pluralism’ over tim tams and a late. Meanwhile Benjamin’s storm continues brewing.
6.
Raymond Spiteri writes of how the energies of Surrealism were so vital to Benjamin’s development and situation as some one torn between the desire for political action and the ‘trappings’ of his position as an avant-garde intellectual, a life of the mind in a mindless and mechanical age. It was ‘profane illumination’ Benjamin sought and it’s time to fulfill that promise now for a generation with nothing, and no property, to lose. And how weak and pathetic the left has been in stemming the coming tide. What a time bomb to be cast in the next generation’s pram. And just how scary, how far we’ve embraced this machinery, how complicit we’ve been in what et al. identifies as our ‘grand mass illusion’. How eloquently do we need to state our case? How radical do you wish us to become? How much more radical will you make us by the hour?
And art, fucking art, let’s get back to that. Europe today is in a deep slumber. Reagan when he came to power wanted to reduce national arts funding by 50%. He still managed to throw the whole game into the hands of the cigarette and oil companies. Duchamp knew the game was up. The future great artists will have to come from the underground, he predicted. Warhol, when asked the future of art, answered one word, ‘political’. Kraftwerk put out a song with the chorus, ‘Radioactivity, is in the air for you and me’, and the numbskull left didn’t get the irony and accused it of being pro nuclear power. Art, Benjamin tells us, is what it became after being removed from the realm of the cult to the realm of exhibition. John Berger has made hay of the relationship between painting and private property. Now we’re living in the virtual world and art has played more than its share in producing the dark fantasy which now so intoxicates us. A spell of blindness, total satisfaction guaranteed. Baudrillard said Western capitalist society is in the process of forgetting everything.
We have been alienated, reinvented and our artists have been co-opted into fighting over crumbs, for the dumb machinery, the economic apparatus that we are one with in perfect intolerable unity. Our language has been destroyed. Even a simple phrase like ‘I’m lovin’ it’ now sends a shiver up one’s spine. Serious action is required. Baudrillard wrote of terrorism in regards to signs and language. ‘The force of the terrorists comes precisely from the fact that they have no logic’. A language attack could ‘make the system collapse under an excess of reality.’
All that stands between us and non-violent success is the ego or rather the egos, electronically transmitted, broadcasted and controlled through the new technology. Everywhere you look, god-damn individuals expressing their unique individualities. You’re the One babe. It’s You. And dude, you look just like David Beckham. A population that doesn’t know how to dance, party or fuck, but is dressed up to the tee and wearing Calvin Klein. Self-censorhip, programming, reality manufactured so blatantly. And the god-damn mystery of it all, Yeah Right! Benjamin was so brilliant in sabotaging his own chances with the academy and set a stellar model for generations to come. He identified Andre Breton as the first to embrace the outmoded, the discarded, the unwanted. Fascism has made aesthetics political, he said. And what a cess pool it’s become.
3.
Semiotexte began publishing French critical theory with the aim of short-circuiting complicity between radical culture and conservative institutions of taste. Even one of Benjamin’s biggest supporters, Adorno, couldn’t help himself from editing out parts of Benjamin’s thought that didn’t tow the orthodox Marxist line. There’s a high price to pay for independence and Benjamin paid it fully, but when you know reality’s a sham, what’s there to lose? As Europe was crumbling Benjamin risked everything to stick around and study the ruins. He studied the extremes rather than the middle norms. He realized how hostile the bougousie is to any radical free thought. To think is to be asocial. To conform is to play your role in the one dumb Hollywood movie almost the whole world is sitting stupefied by. Freedom, this absurd humanist freedom that Nietzche so effectively destroyed more than a hundred years ago, is still the order of the day. And how distracted we have become from the class struggle as if we were sitting at the end of history in our new advanced selves.
‘Art’ is against the law. Or at least it has been sucked dry of all meaning. In Wellington, Massey University is now the ‘Creative Campus’. The Dowse has spent a boat-load of money only to tackify the gallery and put it firmly in the hands of corporate dollars. Apparently King Kong is art these days. And the serious artists, as always, aren’t invited to the party. It’s the illusion-makers that succeed. And artists must abandon art if there is any hope of truly succeeding. Power adapts and re transmogrifies. Foucault expanded so vividly on much of Benjamin’s project. But the new systems of control while blindingly effective are ever-vulnerable. And as Chomsky says, the right only too well know it. There is no art now, only politics.
0.
We need to reclaim Benjamin’s ritualism. He was ritualistic about everything, the paper he used, the pencils, he never subjected himself fully to the typewriter. Today artists write directly into computers as if throwing onions into a food processor. And they wonder why it all comes out the same. Benjamin’s Arcade’s project revealed just how swiftly industrial production came to dominate the service of our ‘artistic’ talent. Today artists are more like interior decorators or cheap hucksters taking their phony bag of tricks from town to town, or biennale to biennale. The biennale makes one nostalgic for the museum or ready to vomit over all of it. Language needs to sweep through our entire intellectual system like an uncontrollable virus. It’s never been easier to disrupt the technological apparatus and strike astonishment and fear into the minds of the technocrats who run it. The system is all built on self-interest and when all is chaos the cronies won’t bark to their commands. The magic trick is being discovered. Our political puppets are losing confidence in the tautness of their strings.
And art may belong to the modern state and die along with it too. The cultural spoils of the victors have been paraded to the point of being ridiculous. Human consciousness and language will evolve to a point of un-containment. The masters will not know how to give the orders. The ones who have been made invisible will benefit from the invisibility. The visible will be the ones to the see the growing crack in the mirror. Nowhere to run to baby, nowhere to hide. Programmed reality will begin to pixilate uncontrollably. The corporations will collapse and the invisible shall dance wildly around the camp fire. Human consciousness will all be sucked into the black hole of destiny. A million sensations will flood into the senses and we shall realise we have been living with cotton wool in our ears and sand in our eyes. Benjamin studied the extreme and believed in it. He knew that is the only way will grow and survive. We need to stop persecuting our radical edges in the interest of ushering everything into the middle. The middle is only an illusion. And it is an illusion that is running our of steam.
Some References
Benjamin, Walter, Theses on the Philosophy of History.
Benjamin, Walter, Reflections, Schocken Books, 1978
Ed. Kraus, Chris & Lotringer, Sylvere, Hatred of Capitalism, Semiotexte.
Petropoulos, Jonathan, The Faustian Bargain, The Art World in Nazi Germany, Penguin
Ed. Preziosi, Donald, The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, 1998.
Ed. Smith, Gary, On Walter Benjamin, MIT Press
Spiteri, Raymond, Bengamin’s Snapshot of Surrealism: Metaphor, Image and Action, unpublished
