Murketing Debate

I wonder too.

I think that there might be more guff.

http://www.lovebunnipress.com

we're not the politest of folks around.

and this is only one of many reasons why i like you so much.

R.John's right, the conversation wouldn't be so friendly -- or focused for that matter.

But R.John's comments at the end of the interview is an interesting one ("The idea that ART, in any context, can be a liberating means of escaping from capitalism is a silly argument."). But it isn't one I whole-heartedly embrace, mainly because he doesn't offer any elaboration, only the "silly" dismissal. It seems to suggest a rejection of art/aesthetics/artsist having any political value. Is that the position you are taking, R.John?

Tomorrow, I'll print off a hard copy and get back to you (thats too much text for me to comfortably read on-screen).

Yes.
That is what I was getting at.
Art is an effective tool of propaganda, but I feel that as a means of political action it has been long bankrupt.

I think I disagree with you here, R.John, for the simple reason that I believe in the power of ideas and immaterial forces. Which is not to romanticize art or the artist. I don’t think a pop song or a painting can save the world, end hunger, or stop war. Art by itself, of course, has no agency, so to ascribe it transformative powers seems absurd. But I do believe that people’s engagement with art can have a transformative impact on people, both individually and collectively. So, I don’t completely agree with your observation that art “as a means of political action has been long bankrupt.” I do agree that popular perceptions (usually produced and promoted by artists, but also corporate culture) of art as political action are spurious (and potentially dangerous because they re-inscribe simplistic notions of power, domination and resistance). But I’m not willing to state that art has no political value. I initially suspected that we were disagreeing about the degree to which art may have political value (I’m saying some, but greatly limited; I suspected you’d be even less generous), but it seems that you are saying it has none whatsoever.

I am pretty sure that even Walter Benjamin could not have foreseen Van Gogh's Starry Night as a pillow with Snoopy in the middle of it.

Beside the fact that Snoopy was years from creation, the sheer speed of art's over-commodification has been astounding!

And now with a shift work of avant garde art that looks like ad campaigns and ad campaigns that look like those avant garde art ad campaigns, one is hard pressed to find an inspirational idea anywhere. At least one that is not first tainted with the stink of propaganda or ideology.

Second. For whatever fuckery Andre Breton was up to, and there is a good deal of it on record, he was on to something important. Mainly that all revolutions are grotesque twitchings of consumptive whores. Map out their failures along the body bags of their dreamers. Or something.

Ultimately, ART in the pristine and hopeful sense, is an alienating remnant of a super-elite OR ART in its most grimy and drug addled disgust is a malleable tool that skewers those who wield it.

Not to get all Kharkov Writers' Conference on you, but I feel that ART has become so corrupted as to be almost useless to any political project. In other words, still in translated french, "The time for art is over."

I agree with what John posted just above.

Art and anti-art are over. The novel and the anti-novel (a la Pessoa's Book Of Disquiet) are over, too.

I've sat up all night, for many nights having this discussion.
We've come to the end of art, and now there is nothing. But maybe nothing is what we should be focusing on. Nothing is actually pretty powerful, if looked at in the correct way.

Having said all that, tho, I would assert that the PROJECT of art, while dubious, offers specific opportunities and locations for political action. But even these, ultimately, end in failure.

I put too much stock in collaboration and generosity as a means of political "otherness." Process, production, generation of ART Objects re-instills some of the use function, but can not, alone, salvage aesthethics from the dung heap of corrupted and manipulated oppressions.

I would also like to clarify my use of the word "failure." Short of direct rehabilitation, I think the word offers a powerful opposition to all the varied and nuanced careerist traps that ensnare so much of the counter/underground cultures.

I am an advocate of failure. Giving up, quitting, walking away at the brink, shrugging off the interloppers who clamor for more of the same. No idea will be the last good one you can have. Also the constant start and stopping allows for a more varied exploration of larger tracks and deeper caverns.

you are channelling debord.

Sorry for delay in responding to your thoughtful posts.
First, commodification of art doesn't entirely negate its potential political value. Again, I'd underscore potential, since art has neither inherent value nor agency.
Second, revolutions as grotesque twitchings of consumptive whores? Probably right.

There is an interesting wavering in your position, because you seem to want to embrace an absolute position such as advocating failure, but you keep slipping qualifiers in there. Such as when you state art is "almost useless to any political project." Why the "almost"? Because when you use the "almost," I'm there with you. I have a rather cynical position vis a vis romanticizing the political value of art, but I don't embrace the hopeless position you also suggest when you advocate giving up and quitting. I suspect in many cases (and I won't put this on you, since I have no idea if it holds) the rejection of art and the proclamation that "the time of art is over" results from those who once romanticized art and thought there was ever a "time" for art. I was never there, so I don't suffer from that disenchantment. But nor do I advocate some of the definitions of failure you present here (and I think you employ it conceptually in multiple ways). Your advocacy of giving up and quitting is akin to a position of hopelessness and strikes me both as a cyncial affectation (which was probably a quite useful position when employed over there on that marketing board) but contrary to other statements you've made on these boards, to say nothing of your continuing work as LBP.

Ah but, Commodification, as a process, assigns value to the valueless object - thereby installing it in a pantheon of political discourses. I will argue that once a commodity, Art becomes propaganda, which means that its purpose is wholly a politicized, distractionary non-meaning.

Also lets return to Van Gogh's Starry Night. As a painting it marks a dramatic break with Romantic Impressionism and as a kick start to Expressionism - the painting is an important link to various art styles/modes of pictorial interpretation.

But once it is transformed into a commodity it is stripped out of its historical context and thrust into a living ideology of capital, exchange, mass privatized ownership (rarity of mass produced collector's items!), and economic value. The painting becomes a tourist attraction, with souvenirs and other assorted knic-knacs, no longer a painting but a mouse pad, necktie, et al.

In this manner, the ART becomes politicized, a magnetic field of commerce slings around it as its whole purpose shifts to one supporting the violent colonization of capitalism.

An over-simplification, to be sure. But only because deeper readings implicate more and more accomplices.

I think you misunderstand my equivocations. I use the qualifiers as a means of including the opposition's position - meaning that, while I am dismissing Art's political use, I can not overlook the obvious and inherent use that "Art" has been put by political power-brokers as a means of indoctrinating more adherents. I try at least to nod at the opposing counsel once and awhile.

this discussion, but instead to acknowledge my personal blogging limitations, I'd like to restate my original purpose of this thread with a degree of clarity. Here is the original question in my mind: does a debate about commercialism change in even an online space when it shifts from one that is accepting of it to one that is not so much?

Murketing is an amazingly wonderful critical resource, but does, by dint of its existence, accept marketing and consumerism on a deeper level, one that we might not here. And I'd like to know, in an online way, if we might feel more comfortable voicing our stance on issues of consumerism from spaces that are set to question it. (Maybe this isn't any clearer, actually, after all.)

Because here is the thing. Statements like this: "a great deal is entered into with good intentions and has good results. its like arguing that all commercial enterprise is bad, when in fact we know it is essential for the development of economies that create jobs and lift people out of poverty." Seem highly questionable if we don't actually enter into the conversation thinking already that commercial enterprise may have a good side. Technically, I think most of us here at PP know, we don't have any idea whether or not commercial enterprise is "essential" ever, because it always is, already, infusing everything we do.

And then this statement: "Really where would skating be without corporations? they wouldn’t have the R&D budgets for decent footwear, or bearings, there would be no video games.. No Tony Hawk games; Skating, the most “underground” sport would not thrive in any way" strikes me as directly contradictory to the old-school skaters I've talked to and grew up with.

Because this is an essential proposition at the heart of Unmarketable: that we need space free of the assumption that commercialism is good in order to keep it in check. That's why I ask.

OK, sorry. I just wanted to try to state that, for my own sake. Now R. John can go back to complaining about Van Gogh. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Ahh, too much to respond to in too little time, with fussy baby in my lap.
First, R'John, I agree that commodification, as a process, assigns value to the valueless object. But that value is never fixed, always contested, always up for interpretation. Capitalist commodification is a very powerful process that attempts to freeze the discursive meaning of images, art and ideas, but it is never complete and always ripe with contradictions. Let me switch over to a more banal example than Van Gogh. A kid hears The Smith's 'Meat is Murder' and starts to think seriously about veganism for the first time, eventually becoming politically sensitive to the daily issues of animal rights in her life. That pop song has political value, even within the process of commodification, because that individual assigns political value to it. Again, this isn't to assign the song agency or an inherent value. Rather individuals as political agents draw upon the wide array of cultural resources around them and art can often to be a significant one because it can offer someone with new ways of thinking and knowing.

As for Anne's return to her original question, I am interested in hearing you (Anne) offer reflections on how you shifted your own "voice" when engaging in that interview. But clearly the ontological assumptions informing that intervew would not be present here. I laughed out fucking loud when I read those comments about the skating culture needing corporations to thrive.

Its interesting enough. I originally thought about addressing the religious origins and microlending practices of Free Trade as a sort of flu of capitalism, over there at the Muckateer! But then thought better of it, since, the ultimate debate would never be addressed.

I think that the online environment of a blog, like the one Anne was promoting her book on, is a lesser space. Lesser here meaning that while the blog has a regular set of readers, the actual contact those readers have to each other is almost nonexistent. Most of his bloggings have no comment and those that do are usually hand clapping shout outs to the topic or general quality of the post.

While I understand that there is some provocative comment at the end of Anne's interview that is easy fodder for the expression of an alternative view, the ultimate productive use of such engagement seems incredibly low.

The best result would be the creation of a community at the blogsite. But the distance of the positions seems such a corpse littered no-man's land, as to be almost* uncrossable.

I remember a lifetime ago, spending hours arguing with street preachers about the failures of religion or the time spent debating white power thugs that ended up with nose blood all down the front of me. Maybe I lack the attention or the discipline these days, but when I hear certain positions gruntingly articulated - Without Nike there would be no Tony Hawk - I hear only the whistle of the abyss.

* Here I use "almost," since Anne's interview introduces ideas that are distant from and counter to the position of marketing acceptance, yet does so in an interview - a privileged discussion of granted authority which rarely can be sustained in an actual debate.

I do not disagree with your hopeful take on the power of a Smith's song. In a less structured system such a process of discovery would be a profound experience for the individual. That is the hope.

But I fear that the over-coding you are reading is, itself, prescribed by the commodification process. In other words there are already commodities in place to accommodate our little Smiths fan's new found political enlightenment. Ushering her into specific stores, aisles, and toward a whole industry of vegetarianism that mirrors, if not emulates, the meanness of meat production.

Cynical, you betcha. But it gets worse in my horrible world view.

Since, the fact that The Smiths, themselves, are identity generators. Meaning that enjoying their musical product produces a fan base that creates a certain personae, simply by dint of enjoying the music. An allegiance that separates and alienates based in the "specialness/otherness" of acquired "secret" knowledge.

In other words, simply by acknowledging oneself as a Smiths' fan, our girl has assumed a costume of instant identity - one accessory of that costume, of course, is vegetarianism.

Busting open the commodity might be the only way to subvert it, I agree, but what I am trying to argue for is a more complicated subversion of the commodity - re-ascribing it with its worthlessness. At least that is what I sense the Situationist's were trying to accomplish with Detournments or more recently what Baudrillard was driving so hard at.

OK, I think we may actually be in the same neighborhood, as I agree with you on most points here. I agree with the first two paragraphs and would say that your position is astute, not cynical. Where we may disagree is on conceptualizing the agency of our Smith fan. Yes, the commodification process of modern Capitalism relies on this over-coding of signs, symbols, art and ideas. And yes, the Smiths (and the related commercial apparatuses involved) are identity generators (some more powerful than others). But our Smith fan is not a smooth, porous canvas upon which these identity markers are projected and internalized. Our Smith fan is a complex and contradictory construct, and she has a certain (though limited) degree of agency. I believe it is my recognition of the potential for individual agency that keeps me from embracing the absolutist positions you voiced earlier. Yet it is my belief in the potential for individual agency that also leads me to an appreciation of the late Lettrist/Situationist position and, for that matter, Baudrillard's.

If what you are getting at is a reading of Lacan and Deleuze/Guattari, then, maybe, we can reach some agreement. Though, I think I see their analysis begin to collapse under the increasing weight of the pre-configured body that has been digitally re-mastered. On the internet, the BWO has met its match of reification and imaginative deterritorialization. In short, consumerism has finally become psychosomatic.

I wouldn't adopt a Lacanian position for the primary reason that I am only familiar with him through secondary sources and am uncomfortable attaching myself to someone whose work I'm not well versed in (which is slightly different than speaking out of one's ass, which I have no problem doing). But I'm fine articulating a position akin to that of Deleuze/Guattari or, for that matter, Laclau and Mouffe or Stuart Hall. But I quickly recognize a number of problems with their positions myself. The most troubling aspect, for me, is how culturally-specific these conversations seem to be. Polemics on the media saturated body that has been digitally re-mastered by late consumer Capitalism seem to dry on my tongue when discussing the lived experiences of the Somali fleeing Mogadishu right now. That didn't come out right, but I hope you get my meaning. In EMPIRE Hardt and Negri made the ridiculous claim that we are equally part of the smoothed out surface of Empire, but clearly we are not. Wallerstenian notions of core and periphery are still important, which makes me wander back over to Bourdieu. Anyway, I've taken a tangent here and may have just killed the thread. I'm spending too much time reading first-hand reports from Mogadishu.

No. I think your allusion is apt.

Refugee camps are the model socius – displaced populations, migratory, reduced – of the capitalist empire. In the sense that these victims occupy a frontier that is both brutally despicable and stripped of the Empire’s privilege, directly implicates and indicts, if not creaties the smooth surface of our collusion in the Imperial Capitalist's Program.

I guess what I have been trying to say this whole thread is that traditionally autonomous cultural activities – graffiti, all ages shows, fandom, porn, et al – has finally assumed their roles as indicators of submission and conformity. As Anne’s writings seem to want to point to, the colonization is nearly complete. If there are small pockets of resistence, they exist isolated, hobbyist concerns.

In short, trapped in the tent city refugee camps on the edge of Capital’s overly perfumed nation-state.

Well said.

One of the important points Anne's work brings up is that the agents behind these 'traditionally autonomous cultural activities' have been active in their submission to colonization, becoming willing agents in their own commodification and exploitation. I read her arguments as less an indictment of how corporate culture infiltrated the underground (to use one of her own phrases) but rather how the underground has willingly whored and pimped itself out to corporate culture. But perhaps that reading leaves my illusion of agency intact.

I accept the proposition that the 'colonization is nearly complete.' Like Gramsci, what troubles me most is the degree to which we (broadly understood) have been agents in that colonization. But because I refuse to surrender the notion of agency, I am still interested in those pockets of resistance -- whether by the isolated hobbyist, the vegan Smith fan, or the community of displaced families in northern Uganda engaging in non-market-defined interactions.