In reply to: Re: Is it merely intellectually stimulating to attempt an understanding of art through representations on the web? posted by julia scher on April 20, 1996 at 23:00:00:
Yes. Freedom's second prospect comes once it has retrieved its artistic
authenticity.
It is obvious that abstract democratic systems of exploitation and
domination are brought into being and refined through the deviation or
co-optation of creativity. The only forms of creativity that power can deal
with, or wishes to deal with, are those which the spectacle can recuperate.
But what people do officially is nothing compared with what they do in secret.
Think of all this aesthetic flourish relegated to anonymity and deprived of
sufficient means of manifestation, imprisoned by subsistence and obliged to
find outlets by sacrificing its
queasy richness and conforming to the spectacle's categories.
Think of Cheval's IDEAL palace ---- which I went to visit last summer.
Even more to the point, consider the extraordinary diversity of anyone's
dreams -- the ingeniousness.
Every individual is constantly building an ideal democratic realm within
themselves, even as their external motions bend to the requirements of
soulless routine.
Joseph Nechvatal
Paris
Welcome to mirror worlds : concepts of art continuously venturing toward
the Bacchanalian
http://www.dom.de/arts/artists/jnech/