Making art politically

(continued from previous post)

Now, I happen to find the fact that these areas of thought (and others that are not even classifiable) are not being written about by myself in this blog extremely interesting. Because this leads me towards becoming able to say something about how human experience has been privatised.

In a previous posting (no.22) I wrote something about 'the personal is political'. Now, the idea that there are personal aspects to oneself that cannot be divulged to others because it is does not feel safe to do so, THAT is highly political.

But, you might say, of course it's not safe. Why am I being so naive or idealistic as to think it should be? This blog, as a forum on the interface between personal journal and public noticeboard brings this issue to the fore.

I contend that in contemporary society as we know it, not only are vast areas of the personal unshareable, they are actually inhospitable tracts of land that often we cannot venture into even on our own.

So, in answer to Hirschhorn's injunction to declare where we stand and what we want, I would say that, depending on the individual, part of the attempt at this definition of a subject position may include caveats and qualifications, that, without being able to define or characterise them (e.g. because it is not safe enough to do so) could render the whole project of stating one's location in the world meaningless.

Or am I just taking Hirschhorn's injunction too literally? And actually it is no more than a rhetorical device for invoking the possibility of total self-knowledge and knowledge of the other?

One way in which our experience has been privatised to such an extent that we do not have access to it ourselves is carried out by the mental health system, which takes away from ourselves the rightful ownership and occupation of our own minds, putting them into the hands of experts and professionals who are supposed to understand them better than us. It is a system which makes us believe that our minds are dangerous things that we have to be very careful about investigating if we do not understand how they work as well as, say, a psychiatrist does.

This is interesting: even the very mention of 'mental health' here in this blog is ringing alarm bells in my head and a voice is saying: "Now they all think you're screwy". However, today, rather yesterday, was World Mental Health Day and that lends my interest in the subject some validity. Because if, on World Mental Health Day, you can't talk about how the enjoyment of experience has been stolen from us by a medical system that is backed by a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry which is supposed to control and correct the proper functioning of our brains better than we can ourselves, then when can you talk about it?

It's interesting. I wanted to write something for this blog last night before I went to bed but, sitting at my computer, realised that I was too utterly physically and mentally exhausted from a very full working week to be able to think. I went to bed and slept only four hours before I was woken by my thoughts again. So now I am up in the middle of the night having had just enough recovery time to get me ready for some blog action again.

So, the thoughts go something like this:

However much I protested when starting this blog against the tendency towards gut-spilling in blogs and tried to set myself apart from this by stating that I would be avoiding navel-gazing and instead trying to create a space for many voices to share, I realise that in many ways this blog has become something of a personal journey.

I am thoroughly enjoying this space to think and compose my thoughts 'out loud' with one part of my mind always on the awareness that someone else might read what I write, which in itself creates a desire to transform the strictly personal into a more public text.

However, I know that there is a whole side (or set of sides) of what I am currently thinking that is not getting said here. This is because this forum is a public forum and I am afraid I do not trust the world enough to share these deepest thoughts with you. You are an unknown to me: you might wish me harm but at the same time you could be my best friend. I can't know. This means that for myself (from myself?), in this blog, I am leaving out or withholding significant aspects of my life. They are not getting written. By this I mean, I could be writing them elsewhere, in a 'private' journal for example, but I am not.

They are not getting written.

I don't think I am even prepared to let you know what these aspects of my thoughts relate to.

Or perhaps I could risk this much and tell you some categories in which they might be found: family, money, sex.

Now, I happen to find the fact that these areas of thought (and others that are not even classifiable) are not being written about by myself in this blog extremely interesting. Because this leads me towards becoming able to say something about how human experience has been privatised.

see next blog entry

I've just re-read my previous post. I need to adjust what I said about siding with the victim as explaining my current attraction to Bachmann*. I am a huge fan of Bachmann's work and have been since the 80s when I read her for the first time. In other words, I have had a strong attraction to her writing since then. And this comes from her extraordinary writing which demonstrates great psychological and poetic strength (in the best sense of the word) as well as an ability to transform language into something so agile that I had not necessarily thought possible before reading her. You would need to read Malina, her novel, to understand what I mean by victimhood in her. In some senses she is all about the victim, in that she embodies (in her characters and in her tragic premature death) what it is to be on the receiving end of brutality. But at the same time there is such an extraordinary power and strength (again, in the best sense of the words) to what she achieves and it is this unfathomable co-existence of weakness and confidence that baffles me and is one reason for my enormous admiration for her oeuvre.

She also happens to be one of Hirschhorn's mentioned preferred authors.

*Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973), Austrian writer, author of short stories, poetry, plays and a novel, Malina.

There's another blog post to be written which I don't yet have the wherewithal to compose. It's to do with looking and porn and what Hirschhorn (after Bataille) says about The Eye. And to do with siding with the victim (hence my current strong attraction to Bachmann) rather than with the perpetrator because it's an easier position to own up to. And it's to do with what Hirschhorn has to say about us all being both victims and perpetrators.

Porn and The Eye came up quite a bit in the discussion this evening. I was trying to formulate something but it's a long way off being a question yet.

The eye looks for the red, says TH.

I've been thinking about eyes and penetration.

And about those who feel assaulted by the banner.

And about a kind of resurgence of confidence I'm finding in myself about looking and showing.

All those old debates about the gaze and the gender of the viewer seem to be finding new relevance. And I've got a first year student who is making work investigating heterosexual masculinity.

As capitalism crumbles around our ears.

It's a good (exhilarating/frightening) time.

A good day.

Spent the morning making some work. When I had done what I'd wanted to do I got so excited I had trouble catching my breath. I made what I consider the most perfect piece of work I've ever made. I will show it at our open studios.

Then I went to said studios and spent the afternoon taking photos and putting up more banners and deciding what was going to go on them. In all (if I can get it all done before 25 October which is the first day of the Open Studios) I will have 5 new experiments of work to show.

What a good day it's been.

Then a talk by Juilan Stallabrass at Fabrica about Thomas Hirschhorn and 'The Incommensurable Banner'. JS was very good. Lots of factual information and background, a lot of which I already knew from my research but enough new stuff to keep it interesting. I was much heartened by seeing J there and having a nice chat with him about it all. We have arranged that he will come in to the gallery when I am doing one of my stints so that we can have more of a conversation about our thoughts about Hirschhorn's banner. I showed him my perfect piece of work and had no qualms saying I thought it perfect.

Brilliant to see some more of my Brighton Students there as well. Especially E and some of the first years whom I haven't met properly yet. Also exchanged emails with L at Sussex Uni this evening. She is going to bring their Visual Culture Society group down to the gallery to do a workshop with me in November.

Also spoke to J today who is going to come to see the exhibition and talk to me – and D has emailed me back to say that he will come down from Oxford too. He's doing a poetry gig on the South Bank for Modern Poetry in Translation involving John Berger so must find out about that.

All going well.

I'm firing on all cylinders.

Brrrrum brrruummmmm!!