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| Anna Narnina, artist; date, title and size unknown |
The world is made normal. Again. The abnormality ceases and the breeze plays through, well unfortunately it carries the smell of dying. But we return to the old normal, the pre-19th century normal before all this industrialization shit blew up in our faces. Before Frankenstein's monster turned and devoured us.
The question, "How does art matter in the time of pandemic", so dear to art magazines, is a dull one. Like it mattered before? It may only begin to matter now that there's nothing else to bide our time. We'll have to see. The pre-formed tag line, "it matters now more than ever" (also applied post-9/11) is mind-deadening. No one knows what it is to begin with. Could it be the absence of something, what we notice when there's nothing more to distract us? Doesn't have to be a painting or, just a view of nature or a sound in the street. Nothing. Cage made that clear.
Art is tied to capital,
is capital, everyone knows that now. But what if it's not? That is a desperate situation, even for those not currently selling (full disclosure... ) or trading. What if art were to become the mastery of the many, indeed the society (as it once was) instead of the refuge of the few (from the many)? We would destroy capital as a signifier of added value reverting to pre-colonial values. I would not feel special anymore. But "currency" of whatever type would have intrinsic meaning: backed by cows, or grain, or some other vital commodity.
I used to have a fantasy that all the artists in the world would go on strike and say, "Make your own art! You forgot how, so learn again and save this wreck of a world!" It's the offshoring of intrinsic value in humans that creates the conditions for hegemony of consumer culture, we have to add value somewhere, if not in ourselves; older cultures could see that value right in front of them in the last mocassin they beaded, the last hut they painted or the last skirt they wove. It was clear we were great; and we didn't need to buy value from anyone. The Sharper Image dive watch or Lamborghini Reventon is as shield for our inner worthlessness. No one will look past it nor will we.
The world according this fantasy is destroyed by mindless consumerism, which = destruction/extraction of resources, which = colonialism and slavery, which = centralization of wealth and "superpowers" and etc etc etc.
Because we have no innate sense of our own worth as human beings, because aboriginal/indigenous teachings about our place in the universe have been papered over, over time, because the replacement religions stressed our sinful 'nature', we prefer fake value (gold, diamonds, aforesaid consumer luxuries) to art; but art sneaks in.
Art was banned by Christianity and Islam, but it came in through myriad back doors to each. It was banned by Communist, Fascist, and Nazi governments and reduced to design for mind-numbing, emotion-stirring propaganda*. No art = bad times.
How's N. America doing these days? The only person recongized as an "artist" by the masses, is a musical artist such as Eminem or Ariana Grande. I'd actually go there re: Eminem but you get the drift. The other "artist" is a baffling embarrassment to society. But there's always 'naturalistic' painting. Animals of every stripe like to see themselves in a mirror. And there's sunsets...
Crystals. Everyone loves crystals when they actually look at them. But they are useless. They have no power. What is power? If power were being aligned with yourself... but no. I'm a busy wo/man.
The entrancement of looking in a good crystal is worth more to your spirit than the watch, the Reventon, the yacht, the bonds, the Modigliani in your temp.-controlled vault. What is your spirit worth?
Earth is calling for a revolution. Not of politics, or of capital, but of eros. Of love grounded in spiritual art forms, grounded in the multiple dimensions of which we are born. We have a duty to the invisible world.
*
More on propaganda as art at a later date.
