ESSAY · 5 MIN READ
A rant to my ghost while at Frieze
A stream-of-consciousness rant, half-argued and half-heckled by an LLM, on whether artists are society's conscience or just its most marketable dissidents.
FILED
SOURCE DR McCulloch
CHANNEL ESSAY
LENGTH 5 MIN
STATUS OPEN TO EDIT
[15/10/2023, 14:36:23] David: Pretty things for the decadent 1%
[15/10/2023, 14:37:31] David: As artists we are constantly told that we are the change, we are a mirror to society and also its conscience
[15/10/2023, 15:34:02] David: But are we? Does our art have any impact? Are we not, as the weirdos who would the status quo, defanged by our identities being our only political latent space. Irreverence, solipsism and liberalism churning out generations of community workers, service staff and disenchanted dreamers.
[15/10/2023, 16:12:40] David: Within the post-structuralist context of fine arts education and museology, we are constantly told that we are the change, we are a mirror to society and also its conscience. But are we? Does our art have any impact? Are we not, as the weirdos who would challenge the status quo, defanged by our identities being our only political latent space? Irreverence, solipsism, and liberalism churning out generations of community workers, service staff, and passive consumers of a system we ought to dismantle. The commodification of dissent is at play, turning our rebellions into marketable aesthetics, our identities into consumable brands. Our art, sold to us as a tool for societal reflection and critique, was always co-opted by the very systems we aim to question. The galleries, museums and marketplaces may celebrate our eccentricities, yet simultaneously neutralize our political potential by framing it within acceptable boundaries of dissent. Our defiance is packaged and sold back to us, veiling the structural inequities we wish to expose. The urgency of our message is diluted in the pursuit of palatability, and the radical essence of our work is tamed. Our political latent space, the realm of our identities and expressions, is often the only territory where our rebellions are tolerated. But this space too, is under siege, shaped and reshaped by market logic and societal norms, leaving little room for genuine subversion. The mainstream’s co-option of our rebellious aesthetics not only mutes our critique but continues our path as agents of the status quo, our art a mere accessory to existing power structures. Our hands, never really the harbingers of change (but elevated as such when it suits us), are handmaidens (LOL LLM) of a system that repackages our dissent, sells it, and in the process, defangs it. We are caught in a paradox (it isn’t really a paradox)— our art is both a tool of resistance (never was… this is the great lie… post-hoc essentialism) and a commodity and our identities both a site of rebellion and a market niche.The challenge lies in reclaiming the subversive potential of our art, to resist the pull of commodification, to insist that our work remains an unyielding mirror to society, reflecting not just what is but what could be. Through relentless self-examination and a refusal to be co-opted, we can strive to ensure our art pierces through the veil of complacency and provokes not just thought, but action. Only then can we hope to transcend the labels, the marketplaces and the confinement of political latent space; and embody the change we are told we represent.
[15/10/2023, 16:13:14] David: And maybe, we shouldn’t be artists at all. The role of the artist is already a well-worn groove, with its heavily controlled and commodified nexus of actors. We are the producers of the art object, a systemic dilution of our power to interrogate, innovate and enact tangible change. Our art objects are but totems that make plastic our pacification.In stepping outside the established archetype of the artist, we may unshackle ourselves from the market forces that bind us, the galleries and dealers who mediate our relationship with society. This shift demands a relinquishment of the title, the ‘artist,’ and the privileges and curses that come with it. By relinquishing the title, we disrupt the transactional nature of art, the supply-and-demand chain that both feeds and starves us. We must venture beyond the familiar territories of studios and galleries, to engage with communities, to collide with other disciplines, to challenge and be challenged by the world beyond the canvas and the critique.It’s a proposition for a metamorphosis from art as a noun, a static object, to art as a verb, a dynamic action. Our ‘art’ could manifest as interventions in public spaces, collaborations with marginalized communities, dialogues that bridge ideological divides, actions that confront injustice, and practices that foster empathy and understanding. Without the title of ‘artist,’ we might be free to redefine success, not by sales or accolades, but by the depth and breadth of the connections we forge, the minds we open, the status quo we unsettle.Yet, this is not a renunciation of art but is instead a reclamation of its transformative potential. It’s a call to create a new title that captures thinking through material entanglement and experimentation, as a living practice of engagement, to see creativity as a resource not for individual advancement, but for collective awakening. NONSENSE sycophantly prompted through LLM[/self]-entanglement at FRIEZE. This endeavor is fraught with uncertainty and devoid of maps. It’s a venture into uncharted territories of what art can be, what artists can be, a leap from the precipice of the known into the boundless landscapes of possibility [GET YOUR MICROPHONE AND SPEAK TO THE MASSES IN OXFORD STREET. CHANT. CHANT. SUCH DEMAGOGUE. WHITE HORSE THE SHIT OUT OF IT.]. In shedding the label of ‘artist,’ we may find a liberation, a return to the radical essence of creativity, unbounded by market validations, undiluted by commodification [SUCH PURE. COS YOUR MUM WAS DILUTED BY CLEANING OLD FOLKS HOMES YEAH? WHY DO WE ALL FEEL THAT WE DESERVE LIVES OF 19th CENTURY NOBILITY? MAYBE BECAUSE THE BOOKS WE READ, THE ART WE COLLECT AND COVET, IS MOSTLY FROM THESE PEOPLE. THEIR VOICES ARE LOUD AND EVERYWHERE AND BECOME THE FOUNDATION OF OUR THOUGHTS… THE PHILOSOPHERS… THE WISE-MEN…NEPO-BABIES DRIVEN BY EGOISM… IT IS THEIR DREAMS… DREAMS THAT COME FROM REPACKAGING EASTERN THOUGHT IN A VOCABULARY DESIGNED FOR OPPRESSION, MATERIALISM AND TRADE…IT IS THEIR DREAMS WE’RE ACTING ON, NOT OUR OWN.]. We venture into a realm where art is not a profession but a vocation, not a product but a process, not an object but an interaction. And perhaps, in this realm, we’ll rediscover the primal power of creativity to not just mirror the world, but to reimagine and rebuild it. YEH BEBZ. U GO GRL.