NEITHER ART NOR ACTIVISM
NEITHER ART NOR ACTIVISM | 19.09.2006 14:55 | Bio-technology | Gender | Migration
It should go without saying that we do not have any interest in combining art with activism, but in destroying these specialisms once and for all. However we will not condemn other individuals or groups, thereby reducing our dimensionality via expulsions and schism, but work in the opposite direction. The split in the Lettrist movement between the Hypergraphicists (super-writers) , Isou, Lemaitre etc and the Metagraphicists (post-writers) eg Debord , Wolman etc, is a good example of the mistakes our former-comrades in the so-called anarchist or anti-capitalist movement are making...
NEITHER ART NOR ACTIVISM
The crisis of Situgraphy and situlogy has been typified by Jorn as a conflict between ‘art’ and ‘science’. This impression has remained and still affects us. Increasingly we read of both politics and art, or ‘art and science’ or of ‘art and activism’ coming together in avant-garde cultural praxis. However, in nearly all of these conceptions there has been an increasingly one sided analysis and an increasing lack of critical engagement with form. Artists are content to simply reflect on formal changes. Political engagement is conceptualised as ‘activism’ – together we have an aestheticisation of politics – a staple of fascist ideology. In order to understand what is going on and what has gone before we need to be clear about what we are doing and attack mystical nonsense and confusionist theory as well as overt political reactionary and counter-revolutionary activity. The recent resurgence of attempts at a left-right synthesis is obviously a re-emergence of fascism and those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The conceit here is the recuperation and appropriation of dialectical materialism by the bourgeoisie, i.e. as an art form or a science or a politic. The system which contains the oppositions is not overcome but consolidated and renewed. The synthesis practiced by the fascists is of the left and right of democratic socialism and we have witnessed its consolidation in national socialism more than 50 years ago.
It should go without saying that we do not have any interest in combining art with activism, but in destroying these specialisms once and for all. However we will not condemn other individuals or groups, thereby reducing our dimensionality via expulsions and schism, but work in the opposite direction. The split in the Lettrist movement between the Hypergraphicists (super-writers) , Isou, Lemaitre etc and the Metagraphicists (post-writers) eg Debord , Wolman etc, is a good example of the mistakes our former-comrades in the so-called anarchist or anti-capitalist movement are making. The real problem here is that mistakes are not learnt by these people – and were reproduced in the expulsions from the Situationist International – and the bid for power by the ‘politicos’ over the ‘artists’. Our continued exclusions by Anarcho-Racists eg Mark Brown, Alessio Lunghi etc, illustrate how history repeats and continues to do so. The aim of this text is to try and introduce some coherence so that lessons can be learnt.
Anarchism is the other of government and it is needed just as much as it needs this other. In drawing together the lives of people resisting the government into one point (of 0 dimensions on a 2D plane ) all those using this construction ‘anarchism’, effectively collaborate in the psychopathic geometry of the bourgeoisie. In believing their own propaganda the praxis of the anarchists of the ‘black’ block – confining resistance to Europe, in supposed opposition to European power, in providing a radical other to bourgeoisie government, configures its other as ‘white’ and consolidates white power in relation to the church just as much as to the state (i.e. it draws on European myths of black magic, darkness as satanic and irrational opposed to whiteness as purity, light as divine / reason, enlightenment and fairness.) And despite the left wing of Anarchism’s perceived or superficial opposition to the right wing anarchists of ‘anarcho-nationalism’ etc, given that the state apparatus includes church and international capital, anarcho-nationalism and anarcho-capitalism is essential to anarchist coherence (or integralism) just as much as the anti-religious construction of the life stylist and individualist archetype of the ‘ANARCH’. The anarch is the sovereign individual and is the manifestation of psychopathic geometry on the body of the human being, i.e. the creation of the psychopath. Here the person is situgraphically reduced to 0-dimensions – a single point. However, these problems are not unique to anarchism. Other political, cultural or Art groups also suffer from this decoherence. The cult of the individual within Totalitarian Art for example serves much the same purpose.
Psychogeographic perspective as the radical other of the psychopathic geometry of the bourgeoisie depends upon opening up new dimensions through a persons movements in space. The limits are therefore obvious – they are restrained to the dimensional interventions of people in space and therefore mainly limited to architecture and other forms of infrastructure. Psychogeography cannot create new infrastructure – it can only critique and attack the bourgeois infrastructure that currently exists. However it is also obvious that the work of artists or academics or literary writers of novels can only be a recuperation of even this limited praxis. An example of the failure of such dualistic praxis is the pro-situ praxis of RTS. In creating street parties as situgraphical invasion into everyday life, RTS was totally dependent on a quantitively large PROLETARIAN base. Once the middleclass and ruling class section took control of finances and propaganda etc, the tactic consolidated its power as an organisation, the proletariat was alienated and the revolutionary potential was lost. This is because the whole project is thus recuperated into bourgeois psychopathic geometry – and subsumed into a part of everyday life - carnival as holiday , just as rave culture was recuperated as entertainment, psychogeography was recuperated as acadmia, and direct action or protest as participatory or direct democracy. This is exemplified in the tactic of Global Days of Action as called by the PGA. Without proletarian leadership in calling for these days of action, the bourgeoisie totally subsume the tactic as a cultural diversion and power base of inclusive or participatory democracy. The tactic of power at the G8 in Gleneagles, or the ESF in providing the music concert, the social forums etc, is a good example of this again.
To expound on a Situgraphical perspective – i.e. to break the dualism of the psychogeography/psychopathy, we need to draw out the triolectical materialist analysis of Asger Jorn – so brilliantly developed by the LPA. It should come as no surprise that this year, while the G8 was hosted in Russia, the Russian abstractionist and ‘modernist master’ Kandinsky was on at the Tate Modern. This ‘modernist master’, a student of Theosophy and thought-forms, did much to contribute to the rise of the proto-fascist Futurism school of Art, through occult treatise such as “Point and Line to Plane” where he puts forth his ideas of a fourth dimension. The concept of painting 4 dimensions was a staple of avant-garde art of the time, with its routes in the expansion of cubism, through suprematism, expressionism, futurism as well as the work of the painters Max Weber, Frances Picabia, Marcel Duchamp and others working simultaneously at the fringes and core of Dada/ Surrealism. It is evident that the romanticisation and academic colonisation of those movements is the failure of the revolutionary praxis. That the idea of 4th dimension in painting was readily taken up by the Futurists via Bocelli’s theories and manifestos of Plastic Dynamism, is a particular case in point. In this, Bocelli takes up Kandinsky’s polarisation between ‘intellect’ and ‘intuition’. While intellect is denounced as bourgeois, intuition is used as a mystical device by which to shut down conscious thought and aid remote control manipulation through codes and symbols. Despite the fact that these painters were all suppressed by the Nazional Socialists of Germany as ‘degenerate’, history shows that it was this insidious idea that was to provide an essential form for the maturation of fascism in Italy.
Hypergraphial experiments make it clear that 3 dimensions require another layer of interpretation. The tactic of the proto-fascists of vorticism was to compress many dimensions worth of information into this one extra conceptual dimension. In this way they could make statements at a sub-conscious or subliminal level without having to engage in defending their political positions.However the 4th dimensional viewpoint, whether as an 'intiuitive' dimension or as a spatialised dimension of time (intellect), only served to shut down consciousness, precisely at the point when capitalism itself was under threat during the first world war. The intellect was dismissed as bourgeois - rooted in the the mechanical universe so beautiful elucidated by Baron Kelvin. Intuition then became fetishised as a mystical device which rapidly turns in on itself, becoming an essential aid to remote control manipulation through codes and symbols, reaching its apogee as a sequence of 0's and 1's.
Contrary to occult manipulations,communist praxis is in fact open revolutionary praxis. This depends on constantly opening up new dimensions to human activities. Proletarian self-definition and self-defence is part of the seizing of all means of power. This includes the production and consumption of text from (the) letter to (the) number. For while the bourgeoisie claims the ownership and the benefit of resources, ultimately it is the proletariat which has the capacity to create and destroy. Situgraphy is but one praxis which has taken on bourgeois art's manipulations, its de-humanisation and de-dimensional agenda in a full and conscious way.
The Triolectical perspective of Situgraphy is the triolectical explosion of the staple 3 spatial dimensions of bourgeois science and art, be it physics, maths, geometry or painting. To the 3 spatial dimensions we associate 3 dimensions of time and value (meaning).
We can refer the reader to the following situgraphical sex majik hypergraphics to illustrate how points in/of space, time and value can interlink to form cross-dimensional planes and volumes through which to destroy the psychopathic geometry of bourgeois space, time and value. An in depth situlysis can wait.
evoLhypergrapHyCx, Enkutatash 408
The crisis of Situgraphy and situlogy has been typified by Jorn as a conflict between ‘art’ and ‘science’. This impression has remained and still affects us. Increasingly we read of both politics and art, or ‘art and science’ or of ‘art and activism’ coming together in avant-garde cultural praxis. However, in nearly all of these conceptions there has been an increasingly one sided analysis and an increasing lack of critical engagement with form. Artists are content to simply reflect on formal changes. Political engagement is conceptualised as ‘activism’ – together we have an aestheticisation of politics – a staple of fascist ideology. In order to understand what is going on and what has gone before we need to be clear about what we are doing and attack mystical nonsense and confusionist theory as well as overt political reactionary and counter-revolutionary activity. The recent resurgence of attempts at a left-right synthesis is obviously a re-emergence of fascism and those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The conceit here is the recuperation and appropriation of dialectical materialism by the bourgeoisie, i.e. as an art form or a science or a politic. The system which contains the oppositions is not overcome but consolidated and renewed. The synthesis practiced by the fascists is of the left and right of democratic socialism and we have witnessed its consolidation in national socialism more than 50 years ago.
It should go without saying that we do not have any interest in combining art with activism, but in destroying these specialisms once and for all. However we will not condemn other individuals or groups, thereby reducing our dimensionality via expulsions and schism, but work in the opposite direction. The split in the Lettrist movement between the Hypergraphicists (super-writers) , Isou, Lemaitre etc and the Metagraphicists (post-writers) eg Debord , Wolman etc, is a good example of the mistakes our former-comrades in the so-called anarchist or anti-capitalist movement are making. The real problem here is that mistakes are not learnt by these people – and were reproduced in the expulsions from the Situationist International – and the bid for power by the ‘politicos’ over the ‘artists’. Our continued exclusions by Anarcho-Racists eg Mark Brown, Alessio Lunghi etc, illustrate how history repeats and continues to do so. The aim of this text is to try and introduce some coherence so that lessons can be learnt.
Anarchism is the other of government and it is needed just as much as it needs this other. In drawing together the lives of people resisting the government into one point (of 0 dimensions on a 2D plane ) all those using this construction ‘anarchism’, effectively collaborate in the psychopathic geometry of the bourgeoisie. In believing their own propaganda the praxis of the anarchists of the ‘black’ block – confining resistance to Europe, in supposed opposition to European power, in providing a radical other to bourgeoisie government, configures its other as ‘white’ and consolidates white power in relation to the church just as much as to the state (i.e. it draws on European myths of black magic, darkness as satanic and irrational opposed to whiteness as purity, light as divine / reason, enlightenment and fairness.) And despite the left wing of Anarchism’s perceived or superficial opposition to the right wing anarchists of ‘anarcho-nationalism’ etc, given that the state apparatus includes church and international capital, anarcho-nationalism and anarcho-capitalism is essential to anarchist coherence (or integralism) just as much as the anti-religious construction of the life stylist and individualist archetype of the ‘ANARCH’. The anarch is the sovereign individual and is the manifestation of psychopathic geometry on the body of the human being, i.e. the creation of the psychopath. Here the person is situgraphically reduced to 0-dimensions – a single point. However, these problems are not unique to anarchism. Other political, cultural or Art groups also suffer from this decoherence. The cult of the individual within Totalitarian Art for example serves much the same purpose.
Psychogeographic perspective as the radical other of the psychopathic geometry of the bourgeoisie depends upon opening up new dimensions through a persons movements in space. The limits are therefore obvious – they are restrained to the dimensional interventions of people in space and therefore mainly limited to architecture and other forms of infrastructure. Psychogeography cannot create new infrastructure – it can only critique and attack the bourgeois infrastructure that currently exists. However it is also obvious that the work of artists or academics or literary writers of novels can only be a recuperation of even this limited praxis. An example of the failure of such dualistic praxis is the pro-situ praxis of RTS. In creating street parties as situgraphical invasion into everyday life, RTS was totally dependent on a quantitively large PROLETARIAN base. Once the middleclass and ruling class section took control of finances and propaganda etc, the tactic consolidated its power as an organisation, the proletariat was alienated and the revolutionary potential was lost. This is because the whole project is thus recuperated into bourgeois psychopathic geometry – and subsumed into a part of everyday life - carnival as holiday , just as rave culture was recuperated as entertainment, psychogeography was recuperated as acadmia, and direct action or protest as participatory or direct democracy. This is exemplified in the tactic of Global Days of Action as called by the PGA. Without proletarian leadership in calling for these days of action, the bourgeoisie totally subsume the tactic as a cultural diversion and power base of inclusive or participatory democracy. The tactic of power at the G8 in Gleneagles, or the ESF in providing the music concert, the social forums etc, is a good example of this again.
To expound on a Situgraphical perspective – i.e. to break the dualism of the psychogeography/psychopathy, we need to draw out the triolectical materialist analysis of Asger Jorn – so brilliantly developed by the LPA. It should come as no surprise that this year, while the G8 was hosted in Russia, the Russian abstractionist and ‘modernist master’ Kandinsky was on at the Tate Modern. This ‘modernist master’, a student of Theosophy and thought-forms, did much to contribute to the rise of the proto-fascist Futurism school of Art, through occult treatise such as “Point and Line to Plane” where he puts forth his ideas of a fourth dimension. The concept of painting 4 dimensions was a staple of avant-garde art of the time, with its routes in the expansion of cubism, through suprematism, expressionism, futurism as well as the work of the painters Max Weber, Frances Picabia, Marcel Duchamp and others working simultaneously at the fringes and core of Dada/ Surrealism. It is evident that the romanticisation and academic colonisation of those movements is the failure of the revolutionary praxis. That the idea of 4th dimension in painting was readily taken up by the Futurists via Bocelli’s theories and manifestos of Plastic Dynamism, is a particular case in point. In this, Bocelli takes up Kandinsky’s polarisation between ‘intellect’ and ‘intuition’. While intellect is denounced as bourgeois, intuition is used as a mystical device by which to shut down conscious thought and aid remote control manipulation through codes and symbols. Despite the fact that these painters were all suppressed by the Nazional Socialists of Germany as ‘degenerate’, history shows that it was this insidious idea that was to provide an essential form for the maturation of fascism in Italy.
Hypergraphial experiments make it clear that 3 dimensions require another layer of interpretation. The tactic of the proto-fascists of vorticism was to compress many dimensions worth of information into this one extra conceptual dimension. In this way they could make statements at a sub-conscious or subliminal level without having to engage in defending their political positions.However the 4th dimensional viewpoint, whether as an 'intiuitive' dimension or as a spatialised dimension of time (intellect), only served to shut down consciousness, precisely at the point when capitalism itself was under threat during the first world war. The intellect was dismissed as bourgeois - rooted in the the mechanical universe so beautiful elucidated by Baron Kelvin. Intuition then became fetishised as a mystical device which rapidly turns in on itself, becoming an essential aid to remote control manipulation through codes and symbols, reaching its apogee as a sequence of 0's and 1's.
Contrary to occult manipulations,communist praxis is in fact open revolutionary praxis. This depends on constantly opening up new dimensions to human activities. Proletarian self-definition and self-defence is part of the seizing of all means of power. This includes the production and consumption of text from (the) letter to (the) number. For while the bourgeoisie claims the ownership and the benefit of resources, ultimately it is the proletariat which has the capacity to create and destroy. Situgraphy is but one praxis which has taken on bourgeois art's manipulations, its de-humanisation and de-dimensional agenda in a full and conscious way.
The Triolectical perspective of Situgraphy is the triolectical explosion of the staple 3 spatial dimensions of bourgeois science and art, be it physics, maths, geometry or painting. To the 3 spatial dimensions we associate 3 dimensions of time and value (meaning).
We can refer the reader to the following situgraphical sex majik hypergraphics to illustrate how points in/of space, time and value can interlink to form cross-dimensional planes and volumes through which to destroy the psychopathic geometry of bourgeois space, time and value. An in depth situlysis can wait.
evoLhypergrapHyCx, Enkutatash 408
NEITHER ART NOR ACTIVISM
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