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Works and Curations

Showing posts with label Rudeness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rudeness. Show all posts

Friday, February 3, 2012

A ‘take’ on Art and Rudeness.. ?





When I got a the mail from Johny requesting a "take on Art and Rudeness", must admit that there was a feeling of being stumped. There was been a strong post-modern critic of the 20th century Avant-garde as being culturally violent and brash, the image of a artistic genius has been cast in the mould of arrogance, but art/artist as rude?  True the practice of 'sniggle' existsbut it is seen more as a politically subversive breaching experimentnot exactly fitting the definition of rudeness (i.e. the most commonplace definition of rudeness as uncouth, ill mannered). Rudeness is not a quality claimed from within, it is more of a quality pushed from the top. The culturally dominant is never rudeits acts will be labeled as Subversive, Anarchic, Absurdistall labels claiming a positive ethical space in the ream of social history. On the other hand rudeness has always been 'out there in the margins'.    


So I begin to think …"is 'rudeness' as a category definable by its failure to become acceptable in the mainstream definition of manners…" suddenly it felt that I was looking at a 'concave' and a 'convex'art and rudeness.  This realization surprised meas I had begun my 'take' assuming that parallels would surface. 'Art' sometimes plays the role of   legitimization of rudeness, and when legitimized an act ceases to be termed as rude.


Am I creating too much of a uni-planer version of rudeness? Throughout  the history of art under capitalism or its variants, certain artists have reveled in being 'rude'. The alleged inability of the mainstream to digest rudeness has been the lure to explore rudeness as a site of subversion. Is it that there are two 'takes' on rudeness that we constantly experience? Celebrating it and de-meaning it all at the same time, what does Art do to our experience of rudeness…

But it also a one sided view of Art that I am taking. There have been objects and actions which have been celebrated in the realm of high culture, but have been found extremely 'rude' in pockets of the 'popular'. So what is art and what is rudeness is sometimes determined by where-how strong the hegemony of certain avant-garde practices or affiliations to them lie.


When an act of 'rudeness' is declared to be 'valid' and pedestialized inside institutionsa certain set of narratives are generated around it, casting the semantics of the object/action into a completely different sphere. Viewed through these new prisms of meanings the actions/objects begin to represent acts of (often poetic) subversionssome are even viewed as important monuments in rebellions against hegemonic powers.  Supported by elitist intellectual discourses, a set of actions/objects goes on to become desirably rude.  Actions/objects (falling under the purview of rudeness), which fail to get accreditation by any dominant, or emergent discourses, tend to just fade awaymomentarily mockingly dismissed.

The dialogues between Art and rudeness have been played out on the site of aesthetics. Rudeness has been celebrated as a strategy to shock the bourgeois from its capitalist complacence and reveal glimpses of a greater realityor rather the realities that were taking shape with the avant-garde mocking on Kantian Truth or Beauty.  The rudeness was allegedly justified by 'intentionality'  (or whatever that means). So 'intentionality'   has gone on to become the yardstick of aestheticsor rather its ph scale. Is it just the presence or absence of 'intentionality' that determines which side of the fence the action/object is? Over the years 'intentionality' is being increasingly pre-definedand it tends to find legitimacy only within certain set of politics. To be 'desirable', 'legitimate', 'aesthetic' and hence Art, rudeness has to cooperate or participate within these 'certain sets of politics' (or at least intend to participate).

Then there are other things to consider. The capitalist system thrives not on repressive conformity (as one have learnt to imagine) but rather on individualism and a quest for counter-cultural distinctionthis is how the imagined 'logic of late capitalism operates'. Like everything else that aesthetics has touched, 'rudeness' also has the potential to accumulate cultural capital. As such it should not be so much of a problem, but one still needs to point out that 'original' intentions are usually anti-hegemonic



What does one do, it is these conditions that have lead certain minds to call our times 'Schizophrenic'. A Schizophrenia to be celebrated or to be lamented…. A, certain angst is often needed to be the licensed to indulge in rudeness… but this is also the times when it is idealism is not 'cool'. The logic of our times has ensured that traditional bourgeois ethics that nearly defined Art  (production, consumption and distribution) have been eroded. Sometimes rudeness is a subversive leap into forgotten imaginationsand no matter what the fate of the act is, it has to be judged in the moment of its action.


So what about the day-to-day actions which we dismiss as 'unacceptable rudeness'? Their neglect of the mainstream arrogance reflect a conscious or subconscious rejection of mainstream 'manners'perhaps not 'aestheticised' by our ramblingsit is in these kinds of 'forgetting' that 'innocence' allegedly lies. But it a completely different 'take' involving Art and 'innocence'….some other time.

Publised in mattersofart in the summer of 2006