Rastko Močnik
...ABOUT THE ART

We hardly seem to notice how much discourses which accompany artistic practices, like to be guided by simple dichotomies.(1) It has become a familiar mannerism to speak and write in the terms of 'East and West', of 'before and after' with respect to the East, of 'modern and post-modern' with respect to both East and West. Differences certainly exist: but are they dichotomic? Even if we grant dichotomy its rhetorical value of a convenient starting point, one still wonders why discourses about artistic practices should be unable to invent their own exordial topoi, and why they feel the need to borrow their hors-d'oeuvre from other discourses, from political science, historiography, philosophy, from various ideologies… What could be the relation between those two features: conceptual dualism and discursive parasitism?

Dichotomies we have listed, and one could think of more ('mainstream/alternative', 'dominant/subaltern'), divide the discursive universe into two non-symmetric domains: into the horizon from where a discourse is being proffered, and into its specific exterior. Crude as they may be, they offer simple and easily manipulable ways of how to organise 'the world' and the reflection upon it; above all, they provide a suitable 'point of view' from where to develop whatever one would like to tell. They support discursive elaboration, and do it in a somewhat paradoxical way. For if such a dichotomy is presented by a particular discourse in the way of 'self-foundation', the foundation it actually offers is imported from some other discourse, from another place, from an alibi. Once comfortably seated upon a borrowed foundation, discourse 'about the art' easily, and willingly, continues to import: concepts, turns of phrase, procedures of thought… so that, turning the pages of a catalogue, one often wonders whether it is not there that the real 'exhibition' takes place. It certainly makes one muse upon the contemporary intellectual landscape: the easiness with which words shed off their conceptual loading…; the arrogance of a semi-commercial babbling at appropriating solid products of honest intellectual endeavour…; rituals of faked communication…; amalgamation of conceptual relics with the crudest ideological constructs - all these features, so familiar to be scarcely still perceptible, actually challenge our deepest certainties of communication, maybe even of socialisation.

Let us attempt a positive formulation of the above 'negative' features.
1. Dichotomism: it has nothing to do with a presumed 'structure of the world'; nor is it a pure 'rhetorical' device. It is rather an extravagant way this type of discourse takes to provide itself with a subject. This means many things. First of all, it means that this is the way how this type of discourse establishes itself as an ideological discourse. Secondly, it shows that this particular way of holding an ideological discourse proceeds, as it were, as an inversion of the 'standard' or 'usual' mechanism of ideological interpellation. In the 'standard' or 'usual' situation, an individual unwittingly 'yields' to ideological interpellation, while here a discourse, almost in a state of potentiality, or of 'becoming', hands itself over to another discourse and, through this passive act of surrender, furnishes itself with a subject.
2. Parasitism: it is true that this operation is, in some way, 'profitable' for the discourse 'about the art'. It yields the absolute condition of its possibility, at least for its possibility as an ideological discourse - its subject. On the other hand, though, this 'profit' is gained in return for the utmost sacrifice - the discourse 'hands itself over' in its entirety even before it comes into existence. This is a paradoxical exchange: the discourse 'gives' itself over in its entirety in order to 'be'. The paradox is, so to say, double: firstly, the act of exchange precedes the object of exchange which is only constituted by this very act itself; secondly, since the giving party is only constituted in the act of exchange, the act precedes its own agent. And, as all this were not enough, the object of exchange is identical with one of the agents of exchange: the giving party. The discourse 'about the art' constitutes itself in the act of giving itself over to another discursive instance - and receives in counterpart the absolute condition of its possibility, its subject. This subject is always-already 'ideologically' interpellated by some other discourse which, in this respect, functions as an ideological discourse, regardless of its 'original nature' (i.e., regardless of the way/s it otherwise functions in other respects).

We can now us restate our description.
Without borrowing, discourses accompanying artistic practices seem to be unable to establish themselves, to situate themselves, to think themselves. They are incapable of 'being', unless they hook themselves to some other discourse. They are expelled to foreign discursive horizons, and pushed to seek elsewhere a signifier which they constitutively lack: the signifier of subjectivation.
All this may sound 'frustrating'. But, on the other hand, it may be that we feel 'frustrated' only because we are shaken out of our usual ideological comfort. Does this paradoxical constitution of a pseudo-'ideological' discourse not destroy certain illusions upon which depends the 'self-satisfaction' of other ('normal', 'standard') ideological discourses? Could there be a more candid recognition that no discourse can be self-sufficient? Could there be a simpler way to expose the deaf mechanism of subjectivation?
At this point, we may recall that our concept of the 'art' rests upon a modern notion and, consequently, it depends upon the l'art-pour-l'art understanding of the art: for us, it is in the moment of l'art-pour-l'art that the 'reality', the Wirklichkeit of historical existence of 'the art' raises to the level of its concept. If we conceive of 'the art' as of an autonomous realm - then we should asks ourselves: With respect to what 'the art' is supposed to be 'autonomous'? We may certainly claim that 'art' is an 'autonomous social domain' - but then, it is a constitutive illusion of the capitalist 'social formation' that all the domains that count as domains are supposed to be, or appear to be 'autonomous', or are presenting themselves as such: the economical sphere, the political sphere, the so-called 'civil society', 'culture' etc., etc.
To avoid triviality, we would rather describe the transition from 'non-autonomous' to 'autonomous' 'art' (a transition that can only be described retroactively, hence anachronistically) as a transition from a situation where artistic practices were 'founding' themselves upon various other ideologies, to a situation where the 'art' takes itself for its own ideological foundation.
According to this view, the art would 'take place' within the field of ideology, but it would not be ideology itself. A specifically 'artistic' operation would then introduce an internal distance within the ideological field - a distance which would at the same time preserve ideological mechanisms and their effects, and expose them as 'lure', 'illusion', etc. The aesthetic effect would then proceed from this 'preserving exposure' of ideological machinations and their products: it allows to 'enjoy' the ideological lure without succumbing to it, it exposes the 'charm', the 'charmed eye' and the magicians trick, in one and the same irritatingly-soothing gesture.

A reduced model of the specifically aesthetic procedure would be the transvestite practice to promote into sex-icons personalities of the entertainment industry. By merely being transposed upon a transvestite scene, the same person who, within the context of her 'original' production, was only a repressive piece of kitsch, transforms herself into a fascinating question-mark. Another analogy (or maybe more?) would be the punk strategy to compose elements of dominating styles and hegemonic culture into a new and subversive collage; or another punk-like strategy which consists in an unreserved identification with a mechanism or a 'representation' of the dominant ideology and thus pushes it over the brink of its own self-evident 'normality'…

We can now see that the way how discourses 'about the art' pre-empt their own possibility by borrowing other discourses' dichotomies, somewhat resembles the aesthetic procedure. When a speaker seizes upon a pre-fabricated dichotomy to situate her- or himself as the discursive subject, s/he cannot avoid producing drastic effects. Still, the nature of the effect depends upon the strategy of 'borrowing'.

The effect may reproduce the ideology from where it borrows, as if when the Slovene Prime Minister Drnovšek warned: 'This is the choice between Europe and the Balkans,' - presumingly speaking from 'Europe'. Although he situated himself on the other side of the great divide, Croatian President Tudman achieved the same effect of the most degraded servility when he said: 'I thank the Minister /Alain Juppé/ for having come to our dark Balkans.' While the two speakers situate themselves differently, the ultimate effect of their utterances is the same, since they both identify themselves with the ideological point of view from which the non-symmetrical and value-loaded dichotomy 'Europe vs. the Balkans' makes a self-evident 'sense'.

But the effect may also be subversive, as in the '68 slogan: 'Nous sommes tous des sales Juifs.'

'Discourses about the art' evidently achieve both types of effects. This is what used to be called 'ideological struggle in culture'. But, with respect to the 'art', the two discursive strategies are not symmetrical: it is only the subversive discourses which formally correspond to the aesthetic procedure.

We can see what is 'mimetic' about our 'art': not the 'arts' themselves, but discourses about 'the arts'. They all, or at least most often, mimic the initial gesture by which artistic practices anchor themselves in an ideological alibi. And some of these discourses further imitate the aesthetic procedure of introducing an internal distance into the field of ideology. Only the later can claim some sort of relation with artistic practices.
What sort of relation? It is now evident that 'discourses about the arts' are not of the analytic nature; rather, they are 'analogous': their structure is, to different degrees, 'analogous' to the aesthetic procedure. Some take only the initial gesture; others carry the analogy further and shape their procedures on the aesthetic model.

We may take an old word with which 'discourses about the art' were trying to grasp their object; the expression is much more justified if applied to these discourses themselves: representation. Discourses about the 'art' represent, in their procedures, practices and objects they are 'about'.
But then discourses 'about the arts' inscribe themselves within the horizon of the dichotomy 'discourse/representation' - an opposition that announced the advent of the modern notion of the 'art'. Until Lessing, discourse was like representation, ut pictura poiesis. In his Laokoon, he, too, parasitically borrowed his concepts and clinched them into a set of dichotomies: Mahlerei und Poesie, space and time - representation and discourse.
At its beginning, modern discourse on art situates itself in the terms of this radical dichotomy 'discourse/representation'. Lessing, though, does not seem worried (nor indeed fascinated) by the fact that it is within a certain type of discourse, differing from the discourse of Poesie to be sure, but still within a discourse, that he is developing this dichotomy 'discourse/representation'. He does not seem to notice that the discourse, that his discourse, is in the process of exhibiting its capacity to embrace itself and its other, or at least to articulate an integrated theory of itself and of its specific other - a theory of 'discourse and representation'. Lessing is all too happy to have a dependable criterion of the internal differentiation of the domain of the arts, a criterion that is both 'natural' and metaphysical - the ultimate opposition of 'space and time'. He skips over the really outstanding achievement of his own discourse.
Blind for his own bravura, Lessing hastens to catch what the 'bravura' in the different arts may be, and defines for us what 'the art of the art' is: it is precisely to transcend, to break through the immanent limitation of the specific artistic domain. In Mahlerei, the art of space, the real artistic achievement is to suggest movement, that is, a temporal phenomenon; in Poesie, the art of time, it is to render an image, a 'poetische Gemälde', a spatial phenomenon. The artistic bravura consists in rendering time in space, movement in representation - and space in time, Gemälde in discourse. The art, Lessing tells us, consists in breaking through a specific symbolic impossibility.

Having the historical experience of the modern, i.e., 'Lessingian', art to assist us, we were able to reformulate Lessing's intuition. Although we abandoned his 'physicalist' terms (the terms of 'time and space') and gave up the heroic jargon of 'doing the impossible', the artistic tour de force appeared no less grandiose to us. Situated in the human world of the 'social link', i.e., in the world of ideology, artistic practices continue to achieve 'the impossible', and to break through seemingly unyielding horizons.
Our reformulation permitted us to understand why 'the discourse about the art', and Lessing's Laokoon in the first place, is able to 'embrace itself and its other': why it can be genuinely reflexive, and why it can establish a controlled and reflected relation to its specific other. In short: why it is able to become theory.
The main reason, we have seen, resides in the capacity of the discourse 'about the art' to represent the 'object' it is about - not on the level of 'semantics', not on the level of effects of sense, but in its procedures. But now we can say even more: it is in this way, in the way of 'mimicking the aesthetic processes in its procedures', that the discourse 'about the art' succeeds to incorporate its specific other - the representation. And it is on this 'meta-level' that it finally - represents the 'art', for it performs its very artistic bravura, it achieves 'the impossible' by rendering 'representation' within the horizon of 'discourse'.
This, of course, opens into an infinite regress: it is by representing the representation that the 'discourse about the art' represents the 'artistic' representation which, in turn, represents the representation of ideological representation… But this is a regress that can be stopped - or indeed continued - at any point, depending on the aesthetic doctrine and theoretical disposition of the performer. For the 'vicious circle' does not turn on the level of 'representation', on the level of 'semantic' effects: it is being propelled by operations on the level of discursive procedures or aesthetic processes - and it is there that it can be continued or stopped at any moment.
And it is precisely within these interstices between 'the representation' and 'the discourse' (which 'represents' representational and discursive procedures by its own discursive procedures) that the strategies of the discourses 'about the art' are being performed. The position they take within the interpretational confrontation, i.e., in the cultural class-struggle, depends, so to say, upon the moment when they decide to stop the regress, upon the point where they break the circle… Needless to say, it is the subversive strategies, those that dissipate illusions and break through the charms, that are really 'faithful' to their object - and consistent in their discursive project itself.
Still, there is no a priori necessity about where a particular discourse 'about the art' will situate itself, on which side of the barricade it will end.

It may hardly be necessary to add that the same holds true about aesthetic practices. After the massive outburst of cultural fascism that helped to prepare, to trigger, and to sustain the post-Yugoslav wars, and which continues its sale besogne, it is almost obscene to warn that 'art', 'aesthetics', 'culture' are not unambiguous, do not guarantee against this or that, do not have a predetermined, even less a necessarily positive role in society and in history…

We can explain this ambivalent efficacy of 'the arts' by further elaborating on the idea of aesthetic procedure which we proposed above. For the sake of brevity, we will have to keep our extra-aesthetic analogies. 'Secondary elaboration' upon an ideological opposition can start by 'taking the side' either of the dominating term (e.g., 'Europe'), or of the subordinate term (e.g., 'the Balkans'). This initial move in no way predetermines the final effect of the operation: 'taking the side' of the dominant element may result in the reproduction of its repressive efficacy (as in Slovene Prime-Minister's utterance); or in its aesthetisation (as in transvestite practices); or it may subvert the original opposition (as in some punk strategies). Conversely, while 'taking the side' of the subordinate element certainly introduces some sort of a 'distance' within the initial opposition, it can either result in a particularly perverted affirmation of the dominant term and of the corresponding ideology (as in President Tuđman's case), or it can subvert the opposition and its ideological background (the '68 slogan).
To summarise: one can either opt for the dominating term in the opposition or for its subordinate term; in either case, one can either identify oneself with the particular ideology epitomised by the opposition, or in various ways 'work' on it and transform it. The result does not depend on the simple act of articulating one's discourse to a pre-constructed opposition and its background ideology, in order to support one's 'point of view' by one of the opposed elements.
The final result depends upon whether an additional operation is performed or not: if the supporting ideology is additionally articulated to some other ideological discourse, then there will be a supplementary elaboration of the 'borrowed' ideology, and the result will not be its reproduction; if there is no supplementary contextualisation, then the discourse submits to the 'borrowed' ideology and reproduces it - either simply (as in Drnovšek's case) or with ideological value added (as in Tuđman's case).
Discourses 'about the art' may engage in any of these strategies. If there is to be an aesthetic effect, though, then the supplementary operation and additional ideological 'contextualisation' are necessary.
It follows that the aesthetic process necessarily 'works' upon at least two ideological horizons. Discourses 'about the art' that fulfil the qualifying condition as set above (i.e., the condition that they 'represent', in their procedures, the aesthetic process), will do the same. This means that their structure enables discourses 'about the art' to be subversive in their treatment of ideological discourses. But what does this mean as to artistic formulations and aesthetic processes?
It certainly endows artistic procedures and aesthetic processes with a subversive capacity. But this capacity to subvert is itself a consequence of the necessity imposed upon any artistic procedure, to 'bring together' or to articulate at least two ideological horizons.
Consequently, eventual 'subversiveness' is not the ultimate feature of artistic formulations and aesthetic practices. Their capacity to subvert is only one of the possibilities opened by their 'inter-discursive' structure.

From an irreverently sociological perspective, one could say that 'the art' articulates symbolic registers frozen in counter-position, in dichotomy, maybe torn by irreducible contradiction. This suggests that 'the art' may be an invention by which modern societies supplement to their lack of what in other places, in other times, was practised as shamanism. Has not Levi-Strauss contended that the shaman eases the tension among irremediably opposed and mutually irreducible symbolic registers, that he provides the fleeting effect of totality, the necessary, although never accomplished, condition of human co-existence?

We have seen that our discourses 'about the art' do not tell us much about their object; paradoxically, they rather re-present its efficacy. They enact the transversal function of the art in the minimalist form of a dualism. They freeze the artistic process in the mechanism of subjectivation. Under the pretext of aesthetics, they engage in a sort of meta-ethical exercise: for the dimension where the artistic process performs its 'reconciliatory' function, is subjectively experienced as a domain where symbolic systems clash, where the human being confronts impossible choices - in short, it is the locus of the subject.
We should therefore probably reverse our usual understanding of the relation between artistic practices and those practices which accompany them. We have grown used to the notion that 'the art' could not survive without all those institutions and practices that form its vivid paraphernalia. This image may well participate to a spontaneous social censorship which dissimulates a much more poignant reality. It may well be that institutions, practices, individuals are drawn towards the ambiguous 'reconciliatory' effects of artistic practices in a nostalgic search of an ever lost, fundamentally utopian totality - and they are at the same time repelled from these effects because artistic practices present the totality as an illusion, as a recontre manquée, or maybe as a dangerous self-delusion.
This view: that all those many, heterogeneous, noisy activities and institutions which press themselves around artistic practices, lend some sort of 'support' to the 'art' - feeds on the defunct romantic ideology of the 'a-social nature of the art'. Presumably, the 'art' needs to be tamed, domesticated - presented and represented, explained and interpreted. Should we then conclude to some sort of an immanent failure of the artistic project? For why should it otherwise need this secondary elaboration, this re-presentation of representation, repetition of its effect, whatever the effect might be? A simple, but insistent feature should warn us against fast and easy judgements: practices 'about' the arts are just as irreducible to each other as they are irreducible to artistic practices and to their effects. What is more: even within the same 'genre', individual critical or curatorial or interpretive practices are often mutually exclusive, and always irreducible to each other.

For quite some time now, it has become impossible to pretend that a 'work of art' exists somewhere in its presumed innocence: the filters, écrans, its supplements are always already part of it. We should now add an additional complication: even among themselves, these 'supplements' do not really supplement each other. Our agonistic civilisation does not really allow for shamanistic effects.

1. Most of this text is due to long conversations with Borut Vogelnik; the initial idea was first presented as an invitation to an IRWIN project which, for financial reasons, could not be realised.

Rastko Močnik: sociologist of culture, lecturer at the department of Sociology at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana.

Illustration: Tadej Pogačar www.ljudmila.org/scca/parasite