Final discussion (end)

- We have less than an hour left, so I would like to ask everyone to keep questions and answers as short as possible, so that we have time for questions. First..


- I have a question. It was so long ago that I almost forgot, but there is a famous Carl Marx saying about the history repeating itself, the second time something happens it is a farce. There is another saying that I was reminded when listening to Molly Nesbith, I think it is from Mark Twain, he says that the history does not repeat itself, it rhymes, which means that it takes at least two sounds, or at least two sentences for a more productive repetition to happen. And one important definition of art came from Mr Ryklin, that is art, and he mentioned such people as Malevitch, Duchamp, Boyce, and I think we will all agree – they are artists who produced works or events that for once and for all changed our perception of the world. Often, those things are not immediately visible, often it takes this rhyming for them to become visible. I would say, without building big theories of delays and dramatic returns, I can say that Duchamp is a different person after the war than he was in 1913 when he first came.. This is a big art discussion about how art retroactively reproduces itself, and sometimes we might not know what is the most important happening right now.. I was thinking about this idea of rhyming because Molly Nesbith’s incredibly elegant talk had to do with, I think, with a repetition, or rhyming of two entire constellation being the period around 1970 in Paris and the US, and Michel Fuko and many theoristis and key artists contributing to the productive intellectual situation.. and you didn’t say this, but I felt and you did hint at the beginning that it has importance now.. and of course, at the end about the Vietnam and the Iraque war. I mean at least the situations produced by those two things.. I mean would you say that is a rhyming situation? I mean it is a horrible rhyme, but the rhyme is not only musical pleasant things.. Would you say that the situation now also helps us to better understand the Vietnam war? Maybe it’s a big political question.. was that your idea also that these two things help us and throw light upon each other?


M. Nesbith: Yeah.. but I also wanted to be very clear that these were conditions that were very specific of the US, and I would not like to throw them like a call over everybody here because I think it felt differently in the US, those conditions. It is not that they are not felt here, it is just.. it is different.
The two things I would say. First of all, I don’t think anybody makes art by themselves. And that part of the conversation which one enters when one makes art, or whether one writes, is a conversation with voices from the past as well as people in the present. And the way those voices from the past come back is various, there is no rule about it. And they do come back, and we need them. And the other point that I would really like to insist upon is that these conversations are interrupted by things that we don’t control, and when you have periods of war, or violence, or famine, or disease, the esthetic conversations have to change, and they usually do. And they may not change in such a way as to literalise the war in the work of art, or literalise violence, but the art does not have the condition that it is exempt from interruption, or surprise.. and the tempo of the rhyming is in part, I think, determined by physical- material and ideological events. Somebody else probably has something else to say about the rhymes, interruptions and returns..


M. Ryklin: Well, I think we can be nostalgic about the sixties. I have recently enjoyed a lot of movies from the sixties, ‘Easy Rider’, for instance, quite a number of them, recalling the atmosphere. And I believe the difference between our time and the sixties is as follows: I mean at that time there were many wars, local wars, but still.. At that time they managed to express reflections on these times, whereas respond and react to them. They were happy to respond to what was going on around them, and the pressing questions were whether we are going to find such tools in the future, that is whether the art can be an intermediary, a conductor in following, in transmitting the events which are the same today. With regard to this, they might have been able to find some answers to this in the sixties. We might not agree with it today, it might sound quite intensive. Remember ‘Anti-Edipus’ which appeared as answer to the events of 1968, and it effectively was written right in the heart of events. Now, let’s recall – in the thirties, in the gloomy and somber time of the thirties in Europe Brecht’s theatre, epic theatre was playing the major role, and it’s inseparable from the October Revolution. And, in fact, if we destroy all the events of the October Revolution, we might not be able to speak about Brecht at all. An eventfulness is dramatically going down, as we may say today because today we have a lot of opportunities of extracting eventfulness out of everything. This is a pretty universal opportunity, this is not how we get to respond to it. This is, I think, is a huge difference.


- I have a question regards the fact that even as we find ourselves in a historic situation, which is often described as a postmodern or hyper-modern condition, it seems to me that we are still standing outside, or in front of two fundamental philosophical, or even methapysical rather concepts of philosophical modalities of space and time. It seems to me that the first part of the presentations, in one sense, had to do with politics of time, and the second part had to do with the politics of space. I was here thinking, of course, about the temporality of the process of individuation, that means of retention retention.. as in Valery Podoroga’s memorial morning of political power of literature, and space, both the political dimension of public space – of Saskia Sassen’s lecture, and the place of politics, or perhaps rather, of political notion to the idea of identification, that is identification and re-identification, and of the distribution of the sensible, or the order of the city as in Rossia. My question to the panel is the following: does art offer the possibility of bridging between those two concepts? By means of art, understood perhaps by understanding art as kind of critical didaction with notion to a kind of art understanding of the reflective junction. Then perhaps formulating politics on both – space and time, and the kind of encompassing political apology.. Do you understand my question?


B. Stiegler: I think, if fact, you pointed.. what Helderlin said about space and time. Hoelderlin is probably the first poet who came out with those themes. And I think Aristotle, if I remember correctly, says, particularly in treaties on soul, you must make distinctions, and all those distinctions are analytical or dialectical. In fact, dialectical distinctions are unsufficient. I think, in the same way, we have today to go beyond the opposition of space and time, the reason for which is, I think, that Derrida is important. He was the first philosopher trying to think beyond this opposition. But I think the problem with Deleuze is that he remains in opposition between time and space. I think, and this is also an occasion for me to answer to Molly, about the market. When I spoke about before about care, when I said that arts of work necessite.. must be.. you must care with that, you can’t get immediate access to the work of art. And also, what is very complicated, it is also Hoelderlin who is saying that, if you don’t have an effect of immediacy if you don’t have the possibility of believing in the work of art, so you are not an expert on the work of art. So, this is the problem, what is a mediation? To be mediative? And this question of communication, for me is what I call the problem of dramatisation. The instruments of the cult, of the care, which were necessary in the religious belief, are necessary for the art work. And the problem with a market is when the market is substituted to those instruments, is substituting its own instruments, you know. When you are making specultion on the financial market, you must develop techniques of belief, for example, Soros is a specialist of such kind. You have that connection between those techniques of belief in market farvater, in the instruments of cult. Why? Because capitalism, like art works, is belief, credit, it is a French version of ‘belief’. And this is the problem pointed out by Max Weber, and, in fact, Max Weber is very important. We were spoking this afternoon about the process of des-enchantement, which was pointed by Max Weber, so the question of care of works of art is always how to pass from space to time, and from time to space. And this is also the problem of critics. There is critics, with specialists of critic, which are substituted with journalists. Because there are no critics today, for me. In France, there are no critics. There are journalists making the buzz for this artist against the other.. but there is no critics. There were critics in the seventies, or sixties.. it’s not mourning, not melancoly in what I’m saying, it’s just objective situation, the ontological situation.
The instrument of the cult have been appropriated by the market. It is very dangerous because something singular always is to be and become comparable. And also in the treaties on soul Aristotle says the sense is idyomatic, it’s singular, but if you want to judge a work of art, you are obliged to compare it with something else. So, you lost it, you lose it. And the problem is that you have to defer that the reason for it is always there. You are obliged to make a process of difference, that is for me the process of individuation, which Simondon wrote about, to come back to the experience of singularity. You are always loosing this experience. And the problem is you have a change of criteria today. With a market which is imposing gegemony, gegemony with its criteria. And it is dangerous. Obviously, when you are loving somebody, you are just loving somebody sometimes, in an everyday life.. You don’t love this person, you think: I love this person, but in fact you are not. And you must care your story of love with different techniques, and one of these techniques is marriage. It is a technique for taking care of love. It is the same with art works. Also, it goes the same for the works of science. So, the problem is for me to think before, or beyond the opposition of space and time because space is possible to determinate, and time is impossible to determinate. In fact, you can produce time only with organisation of space. And the reverse is also true. So, the problem is to think in the process. But this process is working only with instruments. That’s the reason, if you want to think about the history of art, for example, you must think the history of the instruments of art, not only of producing of art works, instruments for care.. This is for me the problem of dramatisation. As a combination, not a combination, but what is beyond as trace, as retention, which is both spatial and time.. the reason for which, dramatisation is so important. Dramatisation is, in fact, the name of the ‘techne’, which is a name of ‘art’ in Greek, or ‘ars’ in Latin.


- I have a question to Molly Nesbith about the role of critics and about the disappearance of the critics and what is a degree of responsibility of art itself for what has happened.. I’ve just seen the exhibition, which was already mentioned here – Biennale in Sevilia, it’s a typical example of a good exhibition which consists of not so very good works of art. All of them are very political and very progressive, but all of them are pointing to some kind of problem that is already known from the press: the war in Iraque, the problem of the homeless – they do not communicate anything new, nothing that we didn’t already know. They are called critical, those works. I think there is a sort of fetishism about critics. Every artist knows that if he painted a tree and he brings it to the exhibition, he says: I’m criticising a tree, that’s why I brought this picture here. So, I believe the fact that these works are critical, this guarantees them against any criticism. This is a very contemporary problem, if an artist is critical on the society or politics, no critic will write that this is a bad painting, that this is a weak work of art. That is an impossibility, it is impossible to say something like that, compared to the movie critic who is still writing that the latest film by Steven Spielberg is not a good film, don’t go and see it. This is because Steven Spielberg is a representative of a mass culture that allows for criticism, but in the high brow art no criticism is possible. The critic is financed by the gallery, so they know very well that a critic is writing an article, and this article is needed by the gallery only to legitimise the artist. The philosopher here, unfortunately, plays the same kind of role. when there is an article, or an oder for an article for a catalogue – in order to legitimise this situation. So, my question is what kind of.. instead of long critical article it is easier to get the name of the exhibition.. This is a brief name – ‘Posthuman’ or something else, which will completely replace the article which is absolutely not needed. So, what is the role of the monitor, of the curator?
A lot has been said about the role of art, don’t you think that this situation has changed?
The role of a movie, of cinematogrhaphy.. this is a classical market, or when a painter wrote a painting or a drawing he is supposed to sell it. But in the contemporary world we face an opposite situation. The market of projects, so to speak. When first the artist gets finances for his work, a sort of grant and so on, and only after that he performs a work of art. And that brings art closer to any other type of cultural activity – books, films, music, with the exception of what is there in the Internet. We get something that has already been filtered, that has already been payed for. That is why there is no avant-garde in literature. At the exhibitions and fairs we see works that have not been yet payed for. Now the situation is changing.. How do you assess this process?


- Ok, first of all, critical art, basically, those who support it will write articles supporting it, and those, who don’t, will walk by with complete indifference, it won’t be criticised with words, it will be criticised in silence. The art loving population walks past by and, you know, does not care. The problem of the newspaper critic is, I mean, it’s just since forever, since there has been a viable art market, newspaper criticism has been corrupted. There is nothing new. I think we passed by that too. What is interesting to me right now is that now is the fact that the market does not need to be legitimised by words, it really doesn’t – it’s got the velocity, and it does not need me, it does not need philosophy, particularly..
the legitimation moves that you are describing.. I have more to do with the artists that want more some kind of recorded conversation with a philosopher, or the writer – to be on page, and it is usually a catalogue of their own work. The big, I suppose, push now in terms of our writing is to produce monographs, which means individual artists, there is not a big tendency now to think of art movements collectively, as of group tendency, there is kind od atomisation of art making in the works of individuals who could only be understood as individuals, and I think it is maybe not so good. But, there is something hopeful here because if, you know, the newspaper critic, who is the descendant of the milieu of the great French salon, if the newspaper critic, or the newspaper critic is not terribly functional any more, in terms of the way things are judged. There is a whole kind of interest in producing a kind of writing for contemporary art, and this kind of writing is best understood if you look at the ‘Documenta’ and especially Katrin Davides with her ‘Hundred Days’, with an effort to try to engage intellectuals and all kinds of thinkers into the big conversation going in many directions at once, using contemporary art as a catalyst. And this kind of conversation can get, I suppose, published, sometimes in catalogues. It’s tended to go off into exchanges that may take the form of interviews, so that conversations about the work of art does not involve one judge and one victim, or object, or person, but rather an exchange of ideas that produces a different kind of base for discussion, right, which is more dynamic, and more open, and, ultimately, I think, more productive in terms of the kind of knowledge moves that can be made. And so the proliferation of the interview and also proliferation of the artist’s book is something to look at, because artists now are very much in the business of monogrhaph making. Many of them are real artists books that try to produce page experiment, and text experiment, and knowledge experiment in the field.. maybe, yes, it is subsidised by a gallery, but it is not really going into the marketing of the work of art in a direct way. It’s a more about trying to expand the resoursive field, in which we can all participate. But, the writing involved here is pretty unruly and at best it is very experimental, and it does not easily fall back into academic writing on contemporary art. But, I think, probably because I am participating in this experimental oart, I like it a lot, I think it goes into the future of the productive discussion. And so, do we call it art criticism? I am not sure, but it certainly is infruitful and it is something pretty new.


J. Rancier: I would like to add something because you see, you can be critical in two ways: speaking of critical art and the art criticism, and I think it is different. And I want to clarify something about what I have said before because you were referring to Sevilla Biennale and you said there is a lot of good art, or progressive art concerning Vietnam, not the Vietnam, the Iraq war.. that’s critical art. I think that things are not so simple. And if fact it is not enough to present the art which is clearly critical of the war or something like that in order to produce something that I understand by ‘critical’ art. I don’t quite like this term, I use it because I want just to say by using ‘political’ art it will mean in the sense that other art is not political – it is not that I want to shuttle that opposition between.. so, let’s still call it ‘critical’ art, though I think we should look for a better term and if someone can think of it, please tell it to me. But what I want to say is, in fact, what is important is really.. in what I see as critical art is art that really manages to create this kind of displacement, some to bring forward, something that dominant gegemony is trying to make invisible. In fact, much of what Bulbis see as critical art will not tell of this effect because it is too much of kind of expression of political correctness, you know, and people are accustomed to it, it is not disturbingat all..
it is some kind of good progress with that sentiment, but it is not disturbing.. So, that I 33.16 will not call critical art, you know, critical art is.. also, it can, in fact, work in ways which are unexpected, and I think what was said before by Daniel Consor, Malevitch, Duchamp and so on – sometimes it’s in fact later that we realise that that art was in fact critical because it has the effect which is extremely important.. So, we need to be .. things are much more complicated in terms of possible effect of critical art..


- The final question, unfortunately, and then we have to go..


- I will speak Russian. A very brief question to the philosophers because a lot has been said about codification of art, of its commercialisation, and that a philosopher is needed as a person standing outside that logic and observer, an outside observer that could provide an outside impetus to the codification of the entire philosophy, of the philosophy itself, of the philosophy in the contemporary world because in capitalism ppilosophy is becoming part of creative industry, and is becoming part of the rules which are becoming part of the broader entity. And when we see the films of Hollywood, the question does rise: you can not unambigously treat it – whether good or bad, but as Stiegler said: the market kills desire, and this could also be true of the philosophy. What could you tell me on that score?


B. Stiegler: I think philosophy is precisely manner of taking care of desire, precisely. And, clearly, this manner of taking care of desire is also a kind of sublimation, that is transformation of desire in what Simondon calls .. that is structure, social structure in which desire disappear. So, philosopy is not on the good side, and the object of desire is.. and the manipulation, the calculation of the object on one side, it is not a problem. Today, I think, we have to come back to the tragic thought which is before the opposition between the good and the bad. The problem is that in respect to capitalism, we have a temptation to think of capitalism as of a good process which guarantees democracy and so on, or the bad process which destroys love, desire. And that is not a problem. The problem, for me, is that capitalism is a stage of dramatisation. The problem is how to think of this economy, which is an economy, and if it is an economy, it is a composition, it is not a system of oppositions. So, now, for me, the task of philosophy is to intend, it is also to contribute to the transformation of life, of the society. For example, Newton was a philosopher, he was not a physician, a physicist.. He thought.. Now we think that he was a scientist, but he thought that he was a philosopher, a metaphysician, and he contributed to the devolopment of what is called now technoscience because it was a beginning of modern science. So, the problem is to avoid opposition in this distribution of roles, of social roles. It is also father philosopher to avoid to think by oppositions.

- Yes, just a few words, you know. I think that is a problem we have not to think of specific role of philosophy as the role of taking care, the development of the idea of taking care. I think it is a problem. But we must not think there is a kind of a specific discipline, you know, which has to take care of the philosophy. Philosopher would be entitled to take care of market, those of people.. No, no. In a certain sense is in charge of taking care, this means, if I am involved in.. for instance, if I have to write, if I am asked to write a text, or a catalogue, I don’t think that I have to take a stand of the philosopher, you know.. If I am asked to write a text for a catalogue, of course, the catalogue will help an artist, you know, to get recognition, his value at the market, etc, etc. Well, of course.. A problem.. my problem when I am in the situation is – do I have something specific to say which is not specific to this artist? you know.. so, I think, the problem is if I write in the catalogue, my question is related to the.. there is a quarrel, for instance, about images, you know.. and I am asked to write a text about issues dealing with and so on. So, I think there is an issue which is at stake here. It means that I write on this topic on the occasion of this exhibition, you know, it is not the problem of philosopher taking care in general, it is a problem of a specific responsibility, not of a philosopher, but anybody. There is a space which is open, how we do in that space..


- If you allow just one word. For me a philosopher is just somebody entitled much more than others in politics, so for me the philosopher is not a role outside of the politics, and everybody in the society is in politics. So, everybody is a philosopher.. I like Josef Boyce said: everybody is an artist. But the problem is you can practice, you are payed, for example, to be a philosopher all the time, so, to make politics all the time. And you have time for that and the people who work don’t have this time. So, the problem is not to say that a philosopher is in charge of taking care, it is to say that someone has privilege and they have to use those privilege for developping taking care of everybody. But it is not a question a theoretical question, it is a very practical question, and this question is linked to organisation of the institutions, techniques, circuits of, for example, of journalism, marketing and so on. We are on those circuit which are, in my own opinion, organological circuits, they are not astral, they are inscribed in history. And in this history, for example, the process of connection between time and space is changing with instruments, with techniques, with tools and we have to speak about that. Now, with that question we are philosophers and some art artists, and the question is what are you? Who are you as philosophers or artists.. and we have to anwer to this question.. I am not.. it is not for me, I am not wrtiting books on Galilei, that is not interesting for me. when I am a philosopher, I try to think politically, in a political kind of way and I think also like you that everybody is capable of that, is in charge of that, but on droit, nothing fact. The problem is the difference between right and the fact, you know.

- And to conclude I would like to encourage us to continue wanting to phylosophise in this market driven situation and now I would like to give the floor to the organizers of this conference.


J. Bakstein: I would like to monopolize the word of the organizers and I would like to thank the co-organizers of this conference: the Federal Agency for Cinematography and Culturology, ‘Interrosa’ editorial programme, the Moscow Biennale and, most importantly, I would like to thank all the stars of this conference, the excellent presentations during our active discussions and joint efforts to raise the level of legitimacy of contemporary art and culture, and I believe the junction between art and philosophy has indeed almost taken place here, and I believe it is to be continued. So, thank you all very much and good bye.

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