“Art art takes art seriously (…) It has faith. It is recognizable by its initiates. It is innovative, of course, but largely in terms of a tradition of professionalistic moves and references.” (Kaprow, p101)

he calls for us to “un-art” ourselves, a process he ties up with participation, play and fun, with mass media or “intermedia” (p105), where art is knocked down from its pedestal to become a “lowercase attribute.” Work, he says, needs to be stripped of struggle, just as play must be stripped of game theory. In fact it can be the job of the former artist, the “un-artist” to teach us how to play. First they are called upon to let go of the accreditation of the art world. Then to help us alter our mentality towards time:

“Time that is merely filled is debasing, but time that is flexible and personalized is released time.” (p117)

We discussed this as a kind of performance, which was also a provocation. Clare mentioned Ray Johnson, and I was interested in Johnson’s staging of “nothings” in relation to Kaprow’s “happenings”, and his refusal to have his work shown in the later years of his career. Was it easier to be an un-artist” in 1960 than it is now…is an un-artist the same as an “outsider artist”, or does that term still implicate the artist in a system by opposition to it? We talked about framing, how the participatory, relational, process-led, everyday artwork that Kaprow advocated, is now a staple of contemporary practice; yet it can still be framed through association, affiliation and artworld discourse.

References from the session:

Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, (Clare).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Presentation_of_Self_in_Everyday_Life

Munira Mirza’s (ed) Culture Vultures, (Fran – in relation to function of the artist, instrumentalisation of the arts, Creative Partnerships, dealing with flexibility and uncertainty). Download pdf from this site:

http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/publications/publication.cgi?id=5

Shoreditch Intervention (Robert, activities of an un-artist):

http://piedwagtail.wordpress.com/2010/05/

“the man hath penance done,

And penance more will do.’

I was struck by the incidental random nature of the act, which has such dire consequences. A lot of discussion centered around the Christian imagery, the idea of paying for another’s sins, and of one act deciding the fate of civilization.

The imagery of death was also pervasive and Mark made links to death as the unknown country and the sea, harbourer of “a thousand slimy things”. We also talked about death and the sea as inhabiting the unconscious, and works by Blake and Fuseli that explored the same fascination with, yet fear of nature. Decay and rotting are described with relish and particularly powerful is the zombie mariners sailing the ship:

“They raised their limbs like lifeless tools–

We were a ghastly crew.”

Only through reading aloud did I fully appreciate the weight of the verse endings, like a sinking plumb line, dropping after trails of repetition and alliteration. 

I noticed several references to eyes, especially the way the Mariner fixes the Wedding Guest with his “glittering eye”, but also the sailors eyes on the Mariner and the moon as an eye in the sky – with all the connotations of judgement, observation and perhaps the provision of cardinal points with which the sailor must navigate by and play out his fate, a fate dictated by his society.

Berenice talked about the Mariners compulsion to tell and retell the story as a confession, a disclosure or voiced trauma after spending days and nights with the dead crew around him, literally looking death in the eye. We also talked about the evangelising element of this retelling, spreading the word, but also warning. He is the fool, the outsider, the unwanted one who imparts wisdom where it is not sought. Mark talked about the Charles Laughton film, Rembrandt (1936), where an aged Rembrandt endlessly repeats words from the Song of Solomon (All is vanity..). Others mentioned Dead Man Walking.

and The Lure of the Local

and The Language of Landscape