Reading Bourriaud

"This is a society where human relations are no longer 'directly experienced', but start to become blurred in their 'spectacular' representation."

What is the function of a public private representation?
Visualisation? Images that allows us to masturbate to a perfect illusion of ourselves as part of a social reality?
What kind of reality is that?

Are we living in an infrastructure described in Bourriaud's text "Relational Aesthetics", one following a modernist strategy to achieve a rationalistic visions of an idealistic future?
The infrastructure which allows us to "travel faster and more efficiently, yet it has the drawback of turning its users to consumers of miles and their bi-products".

B. explains the difference between art exhibitions and other forms of artistic presentations, such as TV, theater, litterature..



If we mainly communicate within digitally designed forums or meet in pre-defined spaces such as theatres, this would propose a significant threat to our mobility and means to create open dialogue with each other.

My art exhibition should, according to B., instead enable inter-human commerce. You should be able to participate in a social interstice. You are present in the conversation by the fact that you have something to offer. You are not visiting. You are not existing in an art space after having bought or received permission to do so. You are an asset. Maybe the art work will be able to take form first after you have left?

The opposite would perhaps be the visitor that
views the art space not as a platform of discussions about that what we might think we see, but as a stage or construction site for her ideology and identity. Something that is constructed for her subjective project of understanding herself and the context she belongs to.
The conversations in the foyer after a play are happening between such visitors. They are merely exchanging subjective interpretations of what they just witnessed? The art work is old even before it's exhibited.

Investigating intersections in Private/Public

Is a transport from private to public possible, without the private being exploited?
To what extent do we need to understand this, and at which point must we do something about it?


I will present a hypothetical product that seeks to improve the life of the single individual by collecting all kinds of very specific and personal data, draw calculations on it, and come out with a bunch of recommendations for change that would make the individual a happier person.

The product is designed with non-hostile intentions. Meaning well, the imaginary inventors are confident that the product is truly going to change peoples lives for the better. Automatically included in these optimistic dreams, is the belief that the monetary transactions following the launch of the product, and the commercial relations that will appear, will make out the necessary infrastructure for the change to be completed.

A person at Twitter whom I follow:
"I dream of being able to buy the beautiful things my gifted, hard-working friends create."

Solidarity is about sharing your assets. Fund the things you're fond about. Support only that business which makes you happy.

In a society made out of happy-rethorics around liberal capitalism, your happiness is defined by your place within this commercial system. To find your place, your private must be on display. Defined, categorized, named, calculated.. What we do with our personal details, our private data and intimate information that tells us a possibly very interesting story.

A story about how art intersects with commerce and builds design that creates lifestyles that makes identity that comes with responsibility and rights and needs that is met by consumptive behaviours and so on..

I want to put politics into a product that, much like Google, intends to do "no evil" in the liberal system and open up creativity and freedom to the users/consumers.
I want to display the need for our private to be used as merchandise to any "bigger product". I'd like to do that by interpreting that love story in the form of a pornographic video.

Cindy Gallop Tuesday!

I want to make politics and everyday decisions visible in my art.
Tie them together so that thought theory, lived life and done deals make up three pieces of the same unit. But is it all art? Or is it all politics? Or perhaps they are the same?

: art that reveals the different strategies behind our actions
: actions may reveal the art in our politics?

Cindy Gallop is a huge role model to me. She is a marketing consultant and a powerful lecturer.
She also do sex positive porn activist work via her community/label Make Love Not Porn (misleading title)

: sex positive movements, art porn, marketing strategies and business models are tied together
: inter-disciplinary learning

Today I will dig into the work of Cindy Gallop and hope to learn something. Hopefully something I can use for my own work.


CINDY ABOUT MARKETING

CINDY TED TALKS

CINDY IN GERMAN

CINDY IN WHACK

Work In Progress (mostly notes in Swedish)

Kynicism (Sloterdijk)
"Kynicism represents the popular, plebeian rejection of the official culture by means of irony and sarcasm: the classical kynical procedure is to confront the pathetic phrases of the ruling official ideology — its solemn, grave tonality — with everyday banality and to hold them up to ridicule, thus exposing behind the sublime noblesse of the ideological phrases the egotistical interests, the violence, the brutal claims to power. This procedure, then, is more pragmatic than argumentative: it subverts the official proposition by confronting it with the situation of its enunciation; it proceeds ad hominem (for example when a politician preaches the duty of patriotic sacrifice, kynicism exposes the personal gain he is making from the sacrifice of others)."

Samlarkort
Mina allra första anteckningar inför denna kurs sådde en idé om att arbeta med samlarkort på något sätt. Då skrev jag såhär:

Collecting cards
Planting ideas
Swift exhibitions

Uggla-tolkningar
"To Pretend a Past and Build a Future (Fuck You, Misogyny)"

Om att omdefiniera vad Uggla står för och medvetet missförstå hans (eventuella) sexism för något helt motsatt.

Varför Uggla?
För att han alltid gått ut på bred front. Han är inte en fackelbärare för något särskilt egentligen utan vill provocera "i allmänhet".
Hans musik spänner från avancerade rockkompositioner med sluga punktexter, till arenaflörtande populistisk trala-pop om att vara vit straight man.
Han har själv sagt att queerteori och Uggla inte går ihop.
Att göra denna supersvenne och griniga vingubbe till queer-rörelsens förkämpe är fascinerande enkelt, och blir både roligt och tankeväckande.
Han sjunger ofta för individens fria val och förakt mot människors översittarfasoner, vilket (med lite fantasi) kan likna retorik kring socialt konstruerade kön och motstånd mot heteronormer.

Om att försvara det som är fult och ofullbordat

Varför Uggla?
För att han aldrig ber om ursäkt för vad han gör. Han älskar David Bowie lika mycket som han älskar hejarklacksramsor. Han försöker inte yrka på någon kvalitet, annan än som samhällskommentator. Han personifierar kynismen i sin musik genom att ständigt attackera det som är trendigt och accepterat i samhället (låten "Trendit Trendit", "Passionsfrukt" och "För Kung och Fosterland" tex). Vare sig det är jämställdhet mellan kön, amfetaminbruk på jobbet eller svart arbetskraft.
Det är aldrig Uggla som fullbordar Ugglas låtar, utan åhörarna är alltid de som slutligen skriver under på eller reagerar emot det han gör. Beskrivet i låten "Jånni Balle" bland annat.
På så vis ges vi en sällsynt möjlighet att omtolka och redefiniera Uggla hur vi vill.