April 17, 2004
Representation & power
There is a danger in the critique of representation. It comes when representation is linked to power. Power subjugates others.
The move here is to make a political analysis of modernism that focused on the relations of power. So domination and subjugation are inscribed within the representational systems of the West, such as the institution of art. It is a cultural and political institution. So representation is not neutral; it is an act of power in our culture. We can then go onto specify particular harmful effects of powerful representations, and the groups most likely to suffer those harms in our culture.
K Weston
The original modernist avant-garde endeavoured to stand outside the art institutions and the market to avoid being incorporated into the networks of power. The response to this fear by the oppositional avant garde was purity and integrity. They tried to produce an art work that did not become a commodity and did not become art.
The modernist obsession with purity ends in a deadend: the dead end of silence as the only pure act, and the dead end of isolation from every audience. To appeal to anyone outside the self is to become implicated in social forms of exchange that are repudiated.
The response is to dump the individuals, accept the enframing and shaping by the power networks of our visual culture, and then critically engage with them.