where's the politics? - decontextualised aesthetics, where now?

Where's the politics?


Decontextualised aesthetics

Most of my art - in particular my vocal improvisations, which are what I've done most this year, and which I'll bring to Poetry Emergency are most easily read as just sound. Just an aesthetic experience which decontextualised of any other signifiers might as easily be far-right. After all Marinetti explored visual and sound poetry and could be considered avant-garde, but he was also a fascist.

In my case it's even worse, there is very rarely any language present, meaning no obvious guiding philosophy. I mean I know where I'm coming from, and so do my friends and family, but how does anyone else know? Does it matter?

Well okay, let's take those questions and break them down, adding a few more in there:

• What are my values?
• What is my art?
• Does my art articulate my values?
• Is it possible to bring these things together?
• How will anyone know if I've done that?
• Does it matter?
• Do better?

What are my values?

Before we start, I'm not interested in talking tactics in this section. How to go about accomplishing what you want to achieve is important, but it's not relevant to this essay. Or it kind of is, but only to the extent of how that makes itself manifest in a non-polemical art absent of language. Which is mostly covered by the final four questions, although I can't say that I reach any conclusion. There are also a couple of other places where I mention tactics briefly to add substance to what might otherwise be vague and meaningless aspirations.

So with that out of that way what are my values? In the broadest terms I believe that everyone should be provided with the essentials for life - food, water, shelter, education, healthcare, leisure, a basic living allowance. Those things that provide physical and mental wellbeing and security.

Beyond that there are obvious ingrained inequalities and prejudices which need to be addressed by a range of measures, from learning to respect others beginning in school, through positive action in education and the workplace, constant scrutiny of law enforcement and incarceration (which should be radically reduced), and obligations on businesses and other organisations to be non-discriminatory.

I believe in a reduction in defence spending, in not selling arms to any country, much less repressive regimes. In much more open borders and freedom of movement. In taxation which is properly enforced and where the richest individuals and companies pay more, and where there are genuine penalties for so-called 'tax efficiency'. In working to explore and implement alternatives to late-stage capitalism.

All a little simplistic and general, but I don't think there's much more detail needed for this essay.

What is my art?

I do a range of things. This year that's mostly been vocal improvisations - non-verbal sound art and occasional almost-music utilising a range of conventional and extended vocal techniques.

There have been things which are exclusively or substantially language-based like the spoken accounts of long walks and the Stick Figure Asperger's comix. But they have a specific focus, and while they come closer to articulating my values that's normally more of an incidental byproduct than a major component.

I've done very little visual art this year, or in the last five years, though I have started on a new abstract comic. That is a comic with no representational images, no text and no clear progression of narrative or argument.

Even the unpublished scripts and mixed-mode texts that I've written in the last three or four years are indirect, abstract, fractured and dream-like.

That's what interests me, it's what I feel I'm good at, and it's what I spent a long time working towards. I started out doing a range of things as a teenager, mostly paintings and stories, with the intention that one day I'd be a novelist. Gradually I leant more towards writing, and over time condensed my fiction, scripts, poetry and philosophical reflections into poetry. That poetry then became plainer and more politically motivated.

But I wasn't very good at it. The poetry was often either much too obvious, too derivative of other sources, or involved me trying to take on stories that weren't mine to tell - frequently in a clumsy or offensive way. And I was more interested in fracturing perspectives and language, in subjective experience, and in being indirect.

Which worked for a time, until researching contemporary practices as I started my creative writing MA took me in the direction of sound poetry and visual poetry, and then to sound art and visual art. That in turn brought contact with a range of practicing artists across various media and the gradual emergence of what it is I do today.

Does my art articulate my values?

I'd say yes and no.

Yes, inasmuch as my values imbue most of the actions I take. But that's not especially enlightening, particularly where you don't know who created a piece of work and have no broader context for it. During my BA I also learned to focus less on the biographical minutiae of the creator of a text, or what I thought their intention might be, and more on what was actually within the text, and to an extent how that related to or referenced other texts.

You could say that there's a glimmer of something there - by triangulating similar art and what appear to be the values of an interrelated set of creators you might begin to narrow down a general sense of what values a piece might articulate if you could interrogate it. But that's unreliable and for most people in most contexts unhelpful.

In most situations I'd have to say no. No my art doesn't articulate my values. I know what they are, and I'd say they inform everything I do, but that doesn't make them evident to someone listening to me making fart noises with my mouth and splashing water.

Is it possible to bring these things together?

Maybe?

I'm not sure how I'd do it, but I'm not going to say categorically that it can't be done.

One trap I face is it's easier to do something that can be misread and come across as offensive than it is to articulate my values. For instance it's easy to use a vocal technique associated with a particular culture in a way that seems appropriative. Especially since, given the nature of my work I'll be entirely changing the context and meaning of that sound or sequence of sounds.

In such a situation perhaps the best I can do is acknowledge the influence and encourage people to seek out the original. But again, as with the triangulation of related art and artists mentioned previously, this is something external to the piece itself. That doesn't mean I shouldn't explain myself, or that I should give up on thinking about how to reconcile my values and my art, just that I can't assume anything external to a sound piece will be communicated to anyone listening to that sound piece.

How will anyone know if I've done that?

Well since I've said I don't know how I'll bring my art and my values together in a way that articulates those values through the text without relying on external prompts this question's a little premature. Although we could answer it by saying they won't. No one will know I've attempted to articulate my values through my art.

Or they might infer that I've done so, since it's probably impossible to separate the two, but that they have no way of knowing what those values are. Or that if there is a way of knowing those values it lies outside the art itself, meaning the art can be appropriated for any cause.

Does it matter?

No and yes.

No because my work doesn't matter, and because nobody much cares about the values underlying it. No because in the end we're all dead, and even if my art survives me the immediate context will be stripped away by time. No because I can't control how people receive my art, or how it's used.

Yes because I don't want to be misunderstood, and because my values are important to me and I'd like to share them. Yes because to me they are integral to the work I make even if only at a subterranean level, and I think they're important to the meaning of the work. Yes because it's a subject that comes up again and again, because I'm addressing it in this essay, and because art means more than just something beautiful.

That doesn't mean it has to be polemical. I don't have to write songs of the revolution for the proletariat. Art is important. Art that doesn't take on the straitjacket of a single ideology is important. That art may even have a greater flexibility and ability to last. Which isn't to deny the value and power of art for the moment - it can be a vital thing especially at times of crisis, and a voice for the disempowered and voiceless.

Do better?

So if my art isn't capable of articulating my values because it's indirect then perhaps I need to take a step back and look at ways of embodying those values in another way. Talking about them more, participating in campaigns and protests more, making work in response to events or ideas.

Of course the first thing with these activities should be accomplishing something and not just decorating my art to feel better. And perhaps this takes us back to the start and the fact that my art simply isn't expressive of direct ideas.

Maybe I just have accept that my art and values if not incommensurate can't be expressed in terms of each other. And perhaps the best I can do in those circumstances is allow each thing to be itself, and hope that they retain their integrity.


What now?

I'm honestly quite unsatisfied with the rest of the essay after the introduction and background. It was difficult to write, it's inconclusive, I don't think I've progressed anywhere beyond the opening, and it's repetitive and shallow.

After all the discussion I'm left exactly where I was, with my values standing on one side, and my art standing separate on the other. But perhaps that's the point. Not all art can be made to embody or articulate the values that inform it, even while they remain integral and crucial to it.

If so that's a disappointing but perhaps inevitable conclusion. And I believe that forcing any art into a shape that doesn't suit it does violence to the art itself. More than that, while I'm present I and my actions can stand to articulate those values that aren't obviously manifest in the art. The two can stand side by side.

Nor am I responsible for how others receive my art. Of course I can be responsible for putting bad messages in it, or any unclarity or carelessness that might lead to damaging readings of the work. But as long as those things aren't present, or are minimised as far as possible, then the responsibility for misreading isn't mine, it belongs to the person making the misreading.

Like I say, none of this is satisfactory to me, but that's where we are. I can't see myself making any further progress with these arguments at the moment, so I'll just have to abandon it. Sorry it's been such an inconclusive mess.