Ordinary Aura

tiring, yes, but necessary, i feel.

the a-political stance of a lot of current hipster fashion and art is really irresponsible. If there was ever a time when we needed to acknowledge our complicity and agency in the politics of our surroundings, it's now.

However, I am also not one to posit the political against the aesthetic, anymore than I posit the spiritual against the material.

I think we'll end up talking more about the social and hopefully the political as we begin to talk about how the perception of aura (the detection of the holy?), belief in the unseen present, is constructed socially, in company, not in isolation.

welcome gutai, and welcome rowley.

correction on above link:

a-political

Kevin, the initial t-shirt to which your t-shirt is reacting is an even more egregious example of the ironic hipster pose gone awry. It really points out that the shock-the-bouge irony traditionally associated with the avant garde has been pretty completely co-opted by the marketplace. (In fact the idea of avant-garde traditions is its own problem, but that's probably another conversation). I agree that the acceptance of responsibility is necessary for us now as social beings; how that plays into art, and specifically into this show, is another question. A literal, explicit call to vote or something would dilute the presence of the work. What I see as tiring, as Rowley says, is the general histrionic liberal pose that infects a lot of art and lefty discourse. It actually gets in the way of direct, committed, particular conversation and action.

Speaking of religion and politics, I just came across this exerpt this morning from another blog, by a political scientist named Jean-Paul Spiro who is himself a committed Christian. He's critiquing a column by David Brooks, OpEd writer for the NYTimes. The emphasis here is mine.

Brooks has faith—literally—in democracy: “if we muddle through in Iraq and some semidemocratic nation slowly emerges, it won’t be because of American skill. It will be because the democratic creed is so strong it can withstand the highest incompetence.” He believes in American democracy the way an evangelist believes in his religion—which is exactly how the American Founding Fathers didn’t believe in democracy. Brooks seems to be saying that if we can make democracy work, then it works because it didn’t need us to make it work. This, of course, doesn’t make any sense. Then again, it’s quite familiar. Imagine the professional athlete who trains his whole life and then wins the big game, only to turn around and say “I didn’t win this. God wanted me to win.” Um, no—you trained really hard. If you didn’t train really hard, you wouldn’t have won. God is rather irrelevant. Likewise, if democracy works in Iraq, it’s because everybody made it work.

I don’t think any idea is so good that “it can withstand the highest incompetence.” Jesus didn’t tell his disciples to sit around and do nothing: he gave them specific instructions and he told them that His message would only take hold if they made it work. Mohammed was the same. Faith is not enough. It may be well and good if your idea has transcendent validity, but in the end it will only appear transcendently valid if some very competent people put it into practice with skill and precision.

That four-word line in the middle is an interesting position for a practising Christian to take. It's the way I feel myself about human agency and responsibility -- I'm uncomfortable with determinism -- but how do other people feel about this?

yeah it was the original tshirt i was thinking more of. thomas frank of the baffler has written helpfully on how the idea of counterculture was supported and even sometimes invented by advertising execs in the 60's. though i wouldn't expect my work or our show to decide on a political message to convey, i guess I just want to resist separating the political from the aesthetic, or from the ordinary.

as for the spiro quote, i am pretty suspect of the inherent appeal of democracy - i don't know a lot of political theory, but the idea of democracy does seem to carry with it a lot of other modern assumptions/inventions (ideas about individualism, for example) that don't fit just any worldview. it sounds like there are a lot of challenges to iraqi self-governance that an american democracy wouldn't solve.

i think though that you were looking to focus more on the god is irrelevant quote - i guess i would agree that our actions are crucial to the progress of sanctification, the process of fixing what's broken in the world. but i get nervous about the emphasis on personal responsibility in the context of social or political change. poverty, racism, slavery, are not problems solved by encouraging people to act on their own behalf.

if we're talking about salvation though, it's a different context, requiring a different story - the centuries-old faith vs. works argument is sure complex and difficult. it's also a very immediate and pragmatic debate when people who believe in sin start willfully hurting others.

I agree that encouraging people to act on their own behalf isn't the answer, if what we mean by that is acting on their own self-interest. But stressing the responsibility of the individual to society, and the extent to which an individual can participate in political action, is necessary, because there's nothing else in this society but a bunch of individuals.

Slavery dragged on for as long as it did in part because the North was perfectly content to let it go on as long as they could feel it didn't really concern them. In the 1850's, though, laws started being passed that allowed slaveowners to enter Northern states, armed, to retrieve runaways, and Northerners were required to comply with their efforts. At this point a lot of people in the North did suddenly realize that slavery was a national crime, because they were forced to confront their own participation in it. This is a confrontation no American armchair warrior has had to make since the Civil War, really.

I am neither a political scientist nor a committed Christian.
Thanks for reading my blog, though.

John-Paul, if you're still out there, apologies for misrepresenting you. A political commentator, perhaps.

responding to seth, perhaps getting too broad though:

I guess I'm uncomfortable with discussing political action as rooted in individualism in part because it assumes that each person is autonomous, equally empowered, equally equipped to act, and bound to serve "up" the ladder by (very) temporarily submitting their autonomy to a greater good, if only to make their own lives easier.

This is neither true, possible, or desirable.

A lot of liberalism and other well-motivated but inadequate progressive efforts at helping others seek to restore this state of equal autonomy where it is lacking. My ideal world would not be one in which we're all static and equal until called upon to help the greater good, but rather where we continually, ceaselessly acknowledge the ways in which we have been given more than others, and surrender power to them.

(I follow this to an embarrassingly small degree.)

I seek to identify and celebrate the ways in which we are never autonomous, where our every decision is bound by and to the fate of others. The gospel ethic doesn't call on us to cede power "up" to a greater good, but "down" to those who have less power, one at a time, with no end in sight.

It may be that you are defining "individual" different than I though, Seth - I just read it as synonymous with autonomous agency, and this is not something I think is possible or desirable.

I recognize that this is getting way abstract, and maybe unrelated to our show, but I'm still grateful for the discussion.

kevin,

this is days later, but i am high-fiving you all across the blog today!

political, social, etc= necessary. hipsteria fashion art, etc.= irresponsible. yes! yes! yes!

vapid hipsteria, no. thomas kinkaid, no. but, we are the light of the world.