1. I read the "REPORT ON DAMTP PSYCHIC ATTACK ON MANIFESTA 9...". I agree and do not agree with the tactical conclusion "it’s time for artists to face their own misery" since the misery is quite clear to everyone but artists who stay arty or non-arty artists might not be able to face it. Anyway perhaps 99,8 percent of those artists got to do jobs that are not arty, as long as Beuys comes around telling everyone is one and everything is art. it is a vicious cycle to use the term art and criticize it, it's at least (and furthermore) an apologia for doing art as art. it is okay I guess to attack exploitation in the sector of the arts, but (no mission here and no believe) as long as art as a social need is not sublated as art of the bourgeois society nothing can be 'art'. So I rather think of leaving the art-field and check out more economy/work/life (whatever this means) -- mh, the way to the woods I guess? Crisis I’d say.


0. The term art I use in a very particular sense - as a capitalist specialization, therefore the artists are capitalist specialization of non specialists. The exploitation I take rather not on the level of art production in economic sense, but rather as the playing of the role in the capitalist specialization machine. It doesn’t, matter it is critical or conservative, or bourgeois or proletarian. The problem with Beuys was that he played a double game - that was exactly what you call using the word art and criticizing it. I am using the word art since there are existing artists and my call is to resign from playing the role and to become psychic workers. Also the exploitation I see not on the level of the art production, but rather cultural capital is created on the manipulation with masses of the participating artists. Another point is the overwhelming eurocentrism in the whole approach of the white bourgeois propaganda in the form of serious culture and particularly in arts - I mean linguistic and ocularcentric colonialism of mind. Simply I am talking about racism (fascism is just a small part of this much older and bigger problem as it was just the form of how it revealed itself in Europe). Reviewing the economy without referring to colonialism would be stepping deeper back into a capitalist illusion. 


0. If to talk about crisis - this is not economical, but that one of paneconomism.


0. It may be useful to consider our activities in their historical context: amongst other things, the psychic workers union comes from discussions and studies of the work of Gustav Metzger who was one of the artists who pioneered the art strike strategy Metzger also called for artists unions and even was in communication with the graphic artists union in the 60s - but the talks failed ...

 

0. You may have heard of course when Beuys said to Metzger "Jedermann ist ein Künstler" he replied: 'Himmler auch?

 

0. I see no problem in using art and criticising it at the same time - as a teacher I criticise teaching also because real learning is discovery made by people together and for this we must unionise against the spectacle!

 

0. I feel like emphasising Peter Burger's "Theory of the Avant-Garde" where he is in favour of "autonomizing the negative in art", in order to counter the whole alienated mode of living.


0. For me this "running into the woods" seems like a mistake certain "artist activists" do, when they do no counter the eurocentric, paneconomic organisation and the concept of art (and simultaneously they do not oppose bourgeois society as a whole), and just "use the art platform". For me such a habit is an important obstacle on the way to working dialectically;


0. Personally, I see no problem in using art and criticising it  at the same time either - otherwise it will remain a fetish as it was - materialist "deconstruction" is necessary!


1. I just say: read carefully, read dialectically. Ask a baker if he can leave the bakershop. "Running into the woods" was a satire-phrase. And: there's a difference between talking radical and doing radical, or: detecting blind spots is not the royal road get to rid of it.

 

0. But can whitey leave the whiteyshop?

 

0. A problem with art is that it sticks to the feudal setting and it is this that must be first damaged, before we can speak about art's "commodification". Because the latter is the actual cause of art's "autonomy" - which does exist (springing from the institutional setting of the whole concept; but of course not in Adorno's understanding). Why baker, the artisan? Sorry, I think we here all know that art itself is a sham, so why not be open about it?

 

1. The thing that we are living controversial lives in our work and "habitual personal life" (which I really can’t distinguish) is the precarious survive every former named proletarian person has to trespass. Our discourse is connected with academy but the action is on the streets ... therefore I think the double discourse or better named: 'dispute' towards traded terms is part of our existence so the controversial prostitutions will happen on the one or other way ... you work for fucking nothing in an disangled proletarian work relation or you prostitute part of your theory and artwork for surviving and feed and educate your children? I really fucking don’t know but the laws of "selbständiger künstler" or "freischaffender künstler" but the great option offered by voina to live without money ("without own one but with or through the money of other ones good spend") is an interrogative ...

 

1. What I mean is before I sell my legs and arms in factory I try to sell 'some fuckin artworkz' or maybe a blues in subway ... scheisse mannn keine ahnung es ist zum abwinken mit paradoxieen im denkschema und den damit verbundenen handlungsweisen. Before suming the army of krupparbeiter and all collaborating corporate structures I try to prostitute my own "artistic work" ... not less prostitution but even near by bourgeois education, trying to avoid the worse.... [any] ism.......

 

1. We should try to build an open platform for  exactly this discussions  ... von woher ??? vkeine ahnung!

 

1. But in an idea to find : 'gemeinsame nenner in unserer kontroversen position zur kunst'

 

1. bueno joder lo que seA  OSTIAS