I dunno. I had flashbacks to college and getting my BFA and this undercurrent of the concept of Social Practices was running through everything at the advanced level of the school.
That art had some level for social consciousness made for some interesting pieces, but often times the conceptual through-line to a piece of art had to be added by either the title, a small essay explaining the concepts, or if you’re really lucky, asking the artist.
Now I’m pretty rooted in my working class immigrant background, when I did any assignment pieces I kept thinking “okay, but what would someone like my grandma think of this”. Lobster Phone might be a silly looking piece, but knowledge that it’s a statement as a Dada piece about the ridiculousness of the art world and the gallery scene is lost on anyone without the education. They may not see it is the piece of junk the artist intended you to see it as, as a bit the gallery or museum isnt in on.
So my own experiences talk about how difficult it is for art to speak for itself. Ideas in it are basically a Rorschach Test who ever views it, and people walk away with different interpretations, basically “death of the author”. My takeaway isnt to NOT TRY, but that it isnt the perfect method of self expression with it’s ability to be misinterpreted.
Propaganda on the other hand is tailor made to be interpreted only in it’s intended way. It’s meant to be read for what it is, to share the idea it’s made for.
A podcast, a newspaper, a poorly xeroxed pamphlet, it’s all propaganda and to treat it as art strips it of it’s ability to express it’s intended idea. If your local marxist newpaper was taken off the street, pinned to a wall at an art gallery, i defy any of you to tell me it was done to get people to read it. When someone looks at art they either ask questions as soon as they pop into their heads or they compartmentalize a part of their brain to contain all their thoughts on the matter and either store it away or flush them all down the toilet when they move on to the next piece. The first method is far more interesting in my opinion, but as art pieces get into decades or a century old there’s no one around to answer their questions except scholars and amateurs, neither of which can get you an answer from the original artist.
This is the problem with a band like Rage Against The Machine, people can either compartmentalize their thoughts on it, or can let the whole experience wash over them and keep the parts they like or remember, and possibly never look into it. This could be because of a social detachment, RATM isnt there to answer any questions you may have, especially if you didnt buy the album. Mtv or the Radio, or your older sibling or spotify isnt there to answer your questions on why Bulls on Parade slaps so hard or what it’s about.
I used to believe anything can be considered art, i now believe it’s is cruelly damning to consider anything art as it dresses it down, like propaganda, into aesthetic and decorative elements to be looked at separately and never to be reassembled. Like that pink goo or mechanically separated meat, after you shredded everything you cant put it back together into a chicken again.
So chapo trap house isnt art, it is propaganda for leftism, for the detached nihilism you need to cope with a cruel world, and a record of the awful people who run it.
I'm reminded of 17th century Operas, where the spirit of music comes out, sits the audience down, and fucking tells them the allegorical themes of what they're about to see and how to interpret them, in painstaking recitative.
Or earlier. "Two houses, both alike in dignity..."
This is because they were both art and propaganda, quite deliberately. The entire first century of Ballet is a propaganda move by Louis XIV.
I dunno. I had flashbacks to college and getting my BFA and this undercurrent of the concept of Social Practices was running through everything at the advanced level of the school.
That art had some level for social consciousness made for some interesting pieces, but often times the conceptual through-line to a piece of art had to be added by either the title, a small essay explaining the concepts, or if you’re really lucky, asking the artist.
Now I’m pretty rooted in my working class immigrant background, when I did any assignment pieces I kept thinking “okay, but what would someone like my grandma think of this”. Lobster Phone might be a silly looking piece, but knowledge that it’s a statement as a Dada piece about the ridiculousness of the art world and the gallery scene is lost on anyone without the education. They may not see it is the piece of junk the artist intended you to see it as, as a bit the gallery or museum isnt in on.
So my own experiences talk about how difficult it is for art to speak for itself. Ideas in it are basically a Rorschach Test who ever views it, and people walk away with different interpretations, basically “death of the author”. My takeaway isnt to NOT TRY, but that it isnt the perfect method of self expression with it’s ability to be misinterpreted.
Propaganda on the other hand is tailor made to be interpreted only in it’s intended way. It’s meant to be read for what it is, to share the idea it’s made for.
A podcast, a newspaper, a poorly xeroxed pamphlet, it’s all propaganda and to treat it as art strips it of it’s ability to express it’s intended idea. If your local marxist newpaper was taken off the street, pinned to a wall at an art gallery, i defy any of you to tell me it was done to get people to read it. When someone looks at art they either ask questions as soon as they pop into their heads or they compartmentalize a part of their brain to contain all their thoughts on the matter and either store it away or flush them all down the toilet when they move on to the next piece. The first method is far more interesting in my opinion, but as art pieces get into decades or a century old there’s no one around to answer their questions except scholars and amateurs, neither of which can get you an answer from the original artist.
This is the problem with a band like Rage Against The Machine, people can either compartmentalize their thoughts on it, or can let the whole experience wash over them and keep the parts they like or remember, and possibly never look into it. This could be because of a social detachment, RATM isnt there to answer any questions you may have, especially if you didnt buy the album. Mtv or the Radio, or your older sibling or spotify isnt there to answer your questions on why Bulls on Parade slaps so hard or what it’s about.
I used to believe anything can be considered art, i now believe it’s is cruelly damning to consider anything art as it dresses it down, like propaganda, into aesthetic and decorative elements to be looked at separately and never to be reassembled. Like that pink goo or mechanically separated meat, after you shredded everything you cant put it back together into a chicken again.
So chapo trap house isnt art, it is propaganda for leftism, for the detached nihilism you need to cope with a cruel world, and a record of the awful people who run it.
tl;dr: schniff
I'm reminded of 17th century Operas, where the spirit of music comes out, sits the audience down, and fucking tells them the allegorical themes of what they're about to see and how to interpret them, in painstaking recitative.
Or earlier. "Two houses, both alike in dignity..."
This is because they were both art and propaganda, quite deliberately. The entire first century of Ballet is a propaganda move by Louis XIV.