Junk for Code

Stephen Ross Interview: The Gift#4

In the grid post on branding I introduced some ideas from Stephen David Rose from the third part of the interview conducted by Rick over at Artrift. In that post the idea of 'the gift' was introduced as a way of thinking against the market, instrumental reason and utility. It showed that the distinctive mode of thinking and feeling of the aesthetic is alive and well.

In the fourth part of the interview the idea of intensity of experience is mentioned and Rick asks:

"You mentioned that for several years you avoided aesthetics, that there seemed to be a hiatus between what you were reading in aesthetics and what you were experiencing in art. Can you say more about what was missing in your reading in aesthetics and philosophy of art and what you thought the main task(s) of ‘reconstruction’ would need to be?"

This connects backs to the second part of the interview. My comments on this, with some images of sexuality by Balthus, can be found here.

David Ross' answers are interesting as he introduce some ideas of Bataille with his two kinds of experiences, the 'transfigurative' and the avant gardes 'displacement'. The former is the:

"...the sense of a deep, intense, and transfigurative experience that touched the full range of human possibilities and put them into question, filled with feeling, intensity, reflection, depth; the other, the sense of new, unfamiliar, strange, remarkable, unexpected encounters. Clearly these are in some way the same, yet one is more a consummatory, fulfilling experience, grand, powerful, and deep. Here, a great work of art and for me of philosophy as well----is an achievement, accomplishes and builds something magnificent and unprecedented. The other is much more disturbing, unsettling, displacing, transforming. Much of this displacement is the result of the last century in Western art and aesthetics and in new understandings of the role of art in cultural practices around the world."

There is some discussion of the related experiences to the transfigurative over at philosophical conversations. The one's mentioned are Klossowski's phantasms and Bataille's notion of sovereignty (also here) and intensity

Ross is quite right to connect the intensity and transfigurative experiences of art that are not only disturbing but threatening, to Nietzsche's concept of the Dionysian, which identified suffering with existence. Suffering was expressed by tragedy (tragic drama). The catharsis of tragedy gave rise to culture through the bonds between human being reasserted.

Nietzsche contrasted this 'saying yes to life' with the Appollian, which he identified with Socratic reason. Ross is also right to say that Nietzsche accused philosophy and later natural science of attempting to exercise authority and control over human life by means of an authoritative rationality. He says that though art has a tendency to become authoritative (eg., museums, galleries, concert halls, state councils exercising authority in the name of art, art has always called authority into question. Ross says:

"There is a rebellious, disruptive, unorthodox side to art; it allows for unexpected transfigurations; its most orthodox achievements come with a sense of alternative possibilities....art must play the role of rebel."

Is this reading the history of art through the eyes of the modernist avant garde?
Or is it the transfigurative moment that enables art to play a challenging role to authority.
Or is it because art identifies human existence with suffering? My own preference is the Nietzschean Dionysian one.

Ross then goes on to make an interesting point about philosophy in relation to authority, reason and displacement. He says:

"...my own sense of philosophy was that it too was disruptive, transformative, disturbing, always seeking new questions and alternatives, but that in the academy, and even in relation to art and religion, its need to be authoritative won out over its admiration for what is unfamiliar and strange."

That need to be authoritative was clearly associated with an analytic philosophy that aligned itself with, and became a part of a mechanistic science. But what of an aesthetic philosophy, a philosophy that aligned with art and not science. Ross is critical and his remarks link back to ones he made earlier.

"What it had to say of art always passed through what it had to say of itself. It could not take art and artists on their own terms. And of course much of this is true of science. Yet science and technology are the most transformative of human activities. If only they would allow themselves to experience this inwardly."

Ross wants to break down the boundaries between art, philosophy and science. In the light of the transformative character of techno-sciences genetic engineering, which would enable the rich to buy success through an expensive genetic endowment. I prefer to keep philosophy and art in opposition to science. They continue to speak the moment of suffering and the intensity of inner experience as we move towards a genetically engineered future shaped by those technoscientists who offer us progress, sneer at superstition and talk in terms of freedom for liberation from nature.

There can be no appeal to nature here. Nature, including its climate, has been too throughly transformed for the sake of utility. Nature now reflects the ethos of our free market economics. In the new world dawning from germline manipulation, the children will have been genetically engineered by their parents so they have beautiful bodies and enhanced reasoning abilities.

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Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at December 9, 2003 06:25 AM | TrackBack