Language, Art and Social Relations: Creative Practice as a Tool of Liberation

From Chelsea Wiki

by Dan Westlake

Introduction

Part 1: Language, Society & the Self

• Language & the Self

• Language & Society

• Language & its ‘Other’

Part 2: Language & Creative Practice

• Transgression/Shock Tactics

• Minimalism

• Sound Work

• Open Work

Conclusion: a case for Nihilism?

Introduction

John Cage (1973) has suggested that if we are thinking of anything else we could not be said to be truly listening. Could this statement be extended to all the senses and is it not through the senses that we experience the world? If we agree to take the word thinking as referring to the cognitive linguistic process i.e thinking in words, as opposed to intuitive sensing or simply experiencing, it could simply be said that when we are thinking we are not experiencing. Instead we are instead caught up in what could be referred to as the prison of language; a barrier standing between us and our sensorial experience of phenomena i.e the world - that which is both outside of us yet we are part of. Can any strategies of creative practice enable us to break through these prison walls thereby opening us up to experience transcendental reality; a radical awakening to what might be described as the true nature of things or simply life as it is and if so what form may these strategies take?

In order to address this question I will primarily employ a critical framework informed by Poststructuralism, particularly Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction; and Zen Buddhism - broadly converging, as they often do, in their relationship with language. Zen would term its goal enlightenment, an awakening from the dualistic trance of, what we are here terming, thinking. While Zen Buddhism’s purpose enlightenment, sometimes described as a radical awakening, could reasonably be defined as liberation from the illusions of dualistic thinking and its attendant suffering, any definitive description of poststructuralism would be inappropriate due it’s essential scepticism towards any form of meta-narrative. As a school of thought though, if not even too broad to define as such, we could possibly accept an acute awareness of the problematic relationship between language and reality, in those labeled poststructuralists being a commonality. If we also accept that Derrida, Foucault, Barthes, Lacan et al are usually seen to be broadly of the libertarian left would it also be too much to suggest a general desire to facilitate some form of emancipation from the structures of language exists within their texts? Derrida, particularly, following on from Heidegger[1] (who himself incidentally called for a, Zen like, radical awakening) seeks explicitly to destabilize what we might, oxymoronically, term the questionable certainties of language[2]. If so we could look at both Zen and poststructuralism as tools of liberation, one aimed primarily at the individual the other concerned with the wider society - both aiming to transcend the structures of language. As creative practice does not take place within an ahistorical void, I will also draw on Guy Debord, as a provider of an astute model of the society that we currently inhabit; as well as those of psychoanalysis and sparingly, quantum theory, both of which inform our present age. I intend to paint a broad picture outlining Languages relationship with the self and social relations before looking at creative practice as a tool of liberation. In doing so I will look briefly at the 20th Century’s avant-guard ‘isms before looking more closely at a selection of particular strategies that have in the past been employed. I will conclude by assessing the success or otherwise of these strategies and what lessons one can, as a practicing artist, draw today.

Part One: Language, Society & the Self

Language & the ‘Self’

To discuss language’s relationship to the Self we must talk first of the relationship between language and Thinking - the linguistic process. Language I am here defining as the word based structure on which Thinking is dependent. It is this process that can be said to define us in both the universal and specific terms. This language based cognitive process, it seems reasonable to state, is what essentially separates mankind from other animals. We are the linguistic animal (Eagleton, 2007, p160) and our own personal cognitive processes are what define us as autonomous individuals - individualized through our use of language rather than being of one unified whole. A language based, or logocentric, approach to experience, systematically divides the world into a series of binary oppositions building structure through a system of signifiers dependent on these oppositions (De Saussure). This could be said to create a barrier between us and the world outside - what we might term reality. In processing the world through language we are, instead, caught up in a network of signs, divorced from authentic reality, which these signs purport to represent. Language being what we might term a quasi-logical system, attempts to classify all as either this or that annihilating the possibility of that which is neither or both (or neither and both). Derrida uses the term hymen, being neither inside nor outside, to draw attention to languages inherently problematic structural make up as a means of mapping the world we inhabit and the map is not the territory (Korzybski). It seems reasonable to suggest here, that if we accept language as being what defines us as human beings, the more we have evolved as a race, the more human we have become, the more wrapped up in language, the more alienated from our environment we have also become. Thinking/language is how we attempt to make sense of the world it is not the world itself. By making sense we mean arriving at some kind of, at least theoretically, rational understanding of the world but language's relationship with logic is, as Derrida has shown us, slippery and now logic itself has been destabilized by research into quantum physics throwing into doubt many assumptions we may have held about a logical, Newtonian, universe.

By being aware of our thinking we are, in effect, saying that this is the world and ‘I’ am thinking about it. There is now separation - a barrier between what is me and all that is other than me. Descartes’ 'Cogito ergo sum’ - I think therefore I am, seems to invite the question ‘I am what?’. Unless we are radical solipsists we intuitively understand ourselves not to be the sum total of the universe in which case the rest of the universe exists and we are separate from it. This is silently implied after ‘I am (…)’ so it may be said to be that it is the very act of thinking that separates us from our universe. While Nietzsche may have 'killed' god the separateness of man[3] has generally been taken to be a priori or at least common-sense in the West until, following through on the ideas of Nietzsche, the idea of man, as fixed, a unified subject, has been challenged by poststructuralism. Eastern belief systems have also generally viewed the idea of man very differently; fundamental to Zen Buddhism is the concept of no-self, a belief that the self is an illusion, no more than a trick of the mind.

Language & Society

So far we discussed the idea of liberation from the structures of language for the individual but now I wish to broaden our scope to look at social relations. Society, whatever particular political system may be in place, is mediated by us (humans) through language so is hierarchically structured because language itself is hierarchically structured, marginalizing and privileging its members. So practice aimed at social liberation can, as with practice aimed at individual liberation, be seen ultimately as an attempt to transcend language. A society will always have its own historical norms appearing as reality, the social territory we presently inhabit, that of advanced capitalism; presents it's own illusions and ideologies - a system or grid that acts as a net covering and by doing so distorting reality. As human beings are social animals and (as long as we remain recognizably human) we will always have some sort of society i.e a codified institutionalization of human relations. Our tool for the organization and mediation of social relations is language, that which defines us, and it is ultimately language itself, this veil of interlocking binary opposites obscuring experience, that denies us what Jacques Lacan (1954) refers to as the 'Real'. The Lacanion 'Real' could be understood as our only authentic form of freedom, freedom from language, systems and hierarchal power structures and their inherent judgments of privilege and exclusion. Therefore, a hierarchal structure, it would appear, inevitably exists in all institutionalized inter-human relationships; be they between two people, a family, community or society. It is, though, important to remember that these relationships are fluid. The word ‘structure’ implies a level of solidity but all structures, as are all phenomena, are in a state of permanent flux therefore open to remodelling.

While the culture of any given society will inevitably reflect its values, social-mores and issues, the relationships within it are dialectic. It can be seen as an arena where fluctuating negotiations or power struggles may take place that will, in turn, affect the society. So cultural praxis, whether or not performed under the institutional banner of Art, have the ability to affect the society that spawns it. It is though important to observe that negotiation within a given culture is not necessarily something happening by simple opposition to the status quo thereby becoming nothing other than its mirror image. When this happens an alternative may appear to be offering liberation that actually limits real choice, if not actually supports the incumbent ideology by offering the false choice fallacy of only one way or its other. The possibility of transcendence can be seen to exist in the exploration and exploitation of a given systems psychological, and sometimes geographic, 'between' spaces (De Certeau, 1980). Michel Foucault has argued that language is an instrument of control born as a device of subjugation. In order to control something it must first be delineated so the naming is a prerequisite to the controlling. Whether society, or indeed man, could be said to even have existed before language is something of a circular question of cause and consequence. To draw again on Lacan, in what he terms the mirror stage, the first lesson we are taught as a child (through language) is that we are separate entities from others this shows us how it is language defines us as individual beings. The individual 'I' here begins to assume a self – an identity that is both object and subject. A self that is observed by the self that, in turn, observes. The idea of this self, a reasonably fixed, individualized and autonomous individual is as we have seen, contentious. It relies on a classical western philosophical model viewing 'man' as separate to 'god'. This view becoming increasingly present through the progressive march of history through the renaissance, enlightenment, modernity to advanced capitalism up to the point where the 20th Century could be referred to as the ‘Century of the Self’ (Curtis, 2002). So we see the self is always defined by its relationship to the society it inhabits. It would seem that both society and the individual are, what could be described as, constructs of language. In fact, it may not so much be a case of being constructs of language but rather of them both actually being language.

Society and the individual are both then, what could be described as, products of language. The individual self is formed, through language, by its relationship to others and society. The codification through language of social relations, by individuals using language, forms a feedback loop, creating the society that creates the individual. So we can see here a triangular structure exists consisting of three interdependent parts: language-self-society. It is important to note that while a desire to break through the prison of walls language may appear to be to cast language itself as our enemy to be defeated, this is not the case. While Language is an instrument of power that could be said to subjugate its user, the aim would be to transcend: to rise above or go beyond - not to destroy. As the three parts of forming our triangle are intrinsically linked, to talk of destroying language would make as much sense as talk of destroying the individual or destroying society an impossibility unless we are talking about the literal extermination of all humanity. Of course a specific society, i.e a specific set of codified rules mediating social relations, may collapse but another will always emerge. As we are social animals who think and communicate with language, social relations will continue to be constructed and conducted through language and language’s innately hierarchical structure will inevitably beget the division of the privileged from the marginalized, though who constitutes the privileged and who the marginalized, is indeterminate.

Language & its ‘Other’

If language is so pervasive that we might reasonably suggest that it is society and is the self. If language is, to borrow Heidegger’s phrase, the house of being, how may we even begin to explain what it might mean to transcend language. What form would this radical awakening take; this lived authentic experience of life as it is? This task is of course somewhat problematic, to say the least, as we immediately run into the difficulty, perhaps impossibility, of explaining that which is beyond language with language. Maybe it would only seem possible to do so in negative terms i.e to define what this experience is not. Possibly the best we could hope to do is to agree on a word, or form of words, to flag up its very indescribableness. Both Zen Buddhism and the continental phenomenological tradition from which Poststructuralism emerged may suggest formulations involving the words Nothingness, Such-ness, Awakening, Dasien or Being but all inevitably suffer the obvious limitations of there being words. Maybe we could just wave our arms around, palms open, and shout ‘THIS!’ but even this would be to describe a strictly phenomenological experience at the expense of even the possibility of any kind of metaphysical comprehension, understanding or experience of the world.

Maybe we must simply accept that the search for such a formulation to describe this transcendent experience will always maintain an elusiveness beyond the means of language - language being a signifier, a map, not the territory. As Saussure has shown us, words work by there differences to other words by what they are not, to describe life as it is it would have to have an other but the only other that could define it would be a life as it is not. Any conception though that we might have of this would, in fact, just be another part of life as it is, ideas being just as much a part of life as it is as any other part[4]. Can we ever speak of a pure awareness, a truth beyond language? The more words we throw at it this the more trite they seem to become - the more they miss-fire. Language exposes its dysfunction as all we can ever hope to describe with language is that which is not the Real while all the time that which is not the Real is actually and inevitably part of what is (the Real). The more we try the more we fail, getting eternally tangled up in a web of to use Wittgenstein’s phrase language games. Though truth, that which Spinoza (cited by Nancy, 2007 p430) called ‘the underlying truth that manifests itself’, may never be successfully mapped out by language, might we find it somehow possible to evoke, sign-post or even materialize such an entity. Language may be a signifier but it cannot be the signified unless the signified is also language its self. It is structurally fluid, constantly changing, evolving and developing as it adapts to the changing nature of those (us) who use it. It can never be the solid truth that it flows over but that is not to say that it’s relationship with truth need necessarily be antipathetical we have, after all, poetry. Poetry where, I would suggest, the truth can emerge in the spaces between the words and if we allow an expansive use of the word poetry we can also talk of art and other forms of creative practice as means of transcending language.

Part Two: Language & Creative Practice

I will now explore the capabilities of various modes of creative practice to resist, negate or transcend the grid of language by acting either on the individual or attempting to change society as a whole. Ideas, movements and strategies discussed are Shock/Transgression, Minimalism, Sonic Work and Open Work. I will not be comparing and contrasting because we are not comparing like with like[5] instead I will be looking at each strategy’s suitability for the task individually. The term creative practice is used as opposed to artistic practice because 'Art', whose definition precedes any explanation of the term artistic, is, paradoxically, both too exclusive and inclusive for the territory explored here. By Creative Practice I mean praxis in order, at least in part, to influence individuals, however bold or modest those intentions may be, either by direct communication or by changing the wider cultural landscape in which the individual operates. The term artistic practice, implying as it does only the practice of artists would, for instance, exclude propagandists, social activists[6] and terrorists all of whom act with the intention of influencing the culture in order to influence the individual. It could also be said to exclude creative other practitioners such as filmmakers and musicians etc. I will though be talking primarily about those whom we would describe as artists and whose practice could be said to be transformative in nature or at least aspiring to be so.

To return again to our question at hand, could a case me be made to suggest that all art is in fact an attempt to break through the barriers of language, be they constructed internally (our thought process) or externally (society)? If so what forms of creative practice may be able to open up this other space that transcends the dualities of language? Can any modes of creative practice really allow us to transcend the prison of language and enable us to experience reality as it is? A case could possibly be made that this idea of transcending language, has broadly been the aim of the entire history of the avant-garde: if we think of this advanced guard operating on the cutting edge what might it be that this edge is intended to cut through? I would suggest the structures of language.

Here follows an excerpt from a speech given in 1949:

‘Cubism aims to destroy by designed disorder. Futurism aims to destroy by the machine myth. Dadaism aims to destroy by ridicule. Expressionism aims to destroy by the aping of the primitive and the insane… Abstractionism aims to destroy by the creation of brainstorms… Surrealism aims to destroy by the denial of reason…’

The above forms part of an attack on Modern Art, or what he termed the ‘the black knights of the isms’ by republican senator George Dondero (cited by Menand, 2005) in a speech to congress. It could be said to show a reasonably sophisticated understanding of the general, if not necessarily specific, aims of various modernisms. The use of the word ‘destroy’ one might imagine being lifted directly out a manifesto by the Futurists, Dadaists or Surrealists while Abstraction and Cubism may have appeared less antagonistic. If we where to replace the word ‘destroy’ with ‘destabilize' his thesis may still stand. The fact that Dondero, as an ideological conservative, felt the need to attack these practices would suggest that Dondero, at least, felt they had some effectiveness in attacking these structures that he felt necessary to defend[7]. I will now look at four specific strategies of creative practice that may hold out potential as tools of liberation today.

Transgressions/Shock Tactics

In Zen Buddhism violence is often used as a tool on the path to enlightenment. A slap on the face or a rap on the knuckles is often a Zen masters answer to a trainee monks question, pain being a radical answer to questions about the nature of reality, a wake up call to the here and now. In (possibly) apocryphal stories and koans the cuttings off of fingers or even limbs are often mentioned. If the loss of a limb is the price paid for enlightenment it could be said to be a price worth paying (Allen, p.115). If creative practice is to be used as a tool for a radical awakening, a fundamental shift from an existence that could be said to be analogous to that spent sleepwalking through life or living within the trance of thinking, one can understand why the shocking power of violence, whether physical or psychological, may have often seemed a legitimate strategy. From the absurdities of Dadaism, through Brunuel and Dali's ‘Un Chien Andalou’ to the violence of Viennese Actionism or Chris Burden’s self-inflicted shotgun wound, forms of transgressive practice aimed at awaking the viewer from a docile acceptance of bourgeois values as axiomatic and natural by means of psychological rupture, tearing apart the constructed facade. We can trace a progression from simulation to actuality as a process that could be termed 'shock inflation', so that the work of a newer generation of transgressive artists from the relatively recently emerged Chinese art scene such as Zhu Yu photographed, apparently, eating a human fetus (Stallabrass, 2004) or Peng Yu slaughtering animals can seem underwhelming.

In popular culture we can see how strategies involving shock, once intended to shake society from its somnolent acceptance of bourgeois cultural norms, can end up emaciated, appropriated by capitalism and pressed into the service of the Spectacle (Debord, 1964). Violence is now often used as mainstream entertainment: a form of titillation for cinemagoers. For instance, the films of Quentin Tarantino could be said to act a locus for the, often white middle class, audience to embrace their Jungian shadow as could the violent and misogynistic gangster rap in recording artists such as 50 cent. To use another example from popular music, it is hard to now imagine just how the antics of the Sex Pistols, a project by the Situationist inspired art school graduate Malcolm McLaren, could once have been seen as so shocking as to appear any real threat to the establishment values of the day. Today such behavior can now be considered just as much a part of the Spectacle of social relations as any other lifestyle choice[8]. This is not to suggest, necessarily, that McLaren’s aim was ever intended to be a serious assault on the fabric of society but show how, through punk, the transgressive praxis of Dada and the guerilla tactics inspired by Situationism came to be embedded within the structures of a dominant ideology.

So in a cultural landscape where what once was seen as shockingly outrageous or obscene is now mere entertainment, inhabiting a comfy space in mainstream culture, a question we may have asked a few years ago is: what now could still be shocking enough to awaken us from our slumber? The events 9/ll, described, allegedly, by Stockhausen as ‘the greatest work of art ever’ (cited by BBC 2001), may have answered our question. Adam Curtis’ polemical series The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom? (2007) Suggests we can trace the roots of modern terrorism and the emergence of the suicide bomber back to the Algerian war of independence, which in turn, could be seen as part of the wider struggle, of Marx inspired revolutionary praxis, attempting to overthrow the hegemony of western imperialism. The Front de Libération Nationale’s Franz Fanon was influenced by the existential writings of John-Paul Sartre who declared terrorism a ‘terrible weapon but the oppressed poor have no others’ (cited by Lévy 2003, p. 343). Sartre, it is suggested, advocated the use of violence not only as a means to political freedom but also as an existential expression of liberation from bourgeois orthodoxies. We can think in terms of a terrorist explosion blowing apart abstract structures as well as their physical manifestations. It may then not be an exaggeration to say that nothing can make us feel more alive, more awake to the experience of existence than proximity to its other: annihilation - as the reality of existence’s fragility is its ever present closeness to that which defines it. It has been suggested that the primordial reason for violence itself may be boredom (Svendson, 2005, p17) and boredom we might define as the opposite of experiencing a sense of aliveness[9]. To this end the shock of ultra-violence might be said to be a successful, at least in the short term, as a strategy for awakening.

Minimalism

Minimalism can be viewed as an attempt to transcend the dualism inherent to both society and individual thinking by attempting to produce work that exists outside the grid of language – work that can be experienced on a purely formal level where 'What you see is what you see' (Frank Stella cited by Batchelor, 1997. P.16). Michael Fried (1962) used the term 'literal art’; though he was antipathetic to the project the term is apt. It was originally applied to the work that followed abstract expressionism in exploiting the space opened up by photography’s liberation of painting from the constraints of representation. Minimalism, though, attempted to escape abstract expressionism’s heroic hyper-masculinity that so privileged the ‘genius’ of the artist. Minimalism explored a less hierarchical exchange between object and subject. Instead of emphasizing the purity of artistic will, it emphasized purity of form and materiality by refusing to be anything other than what it actually was. This materiality sought to deny the possibility of interpretation. This could be seen as an attempt to transcend what could be called the world of men and its accompanying horrors. The term minimalism first came to prominence, describing the work of artists such as Donald Judd and Dan Flavin, in an America defined by racial unrest, political assassinations and Vietnam. Felix Gonzalez Torres (1994, p.97) has spoken of minimalism as a specific response to the television pictures from Vietnam bringing home the brutalities of war to America’s living rooms and it is not difficult to understand a desire to create work that transcended the ugly realities of the age. Where previous 2OC avant-guard movements had tended to align themselves to politically utopianist movements even if, like Dadaism, their political nature was expressed paradoxically in it’s explicitly anti-political stance, we can see in Minimalism a rejection of the very paradigm where creative practice could weigh in on the side of one world-view or another. In Minimalism, by contrast, we appear to witness a desire to transcend the political. It can be understood as an attempt to avoid meaning through the veneration of pure form and we may even detect the presence of an attempt to fill the void left by the death of god. While visceral responses are subjective and personal it is not difficult to understand the attraction of both the idea and realization of the cooling experience of starkly formalist work displayed in a white cube style gallery. A pure experience of quasi-religious meditation free from the dogmas, ideologies, political associates, tribal disputes and primitive beliefs that could be said to taint the practices of codified religion.

We can draw a parallel here with the wider socio-political/cultural currents in the American counter culture of the time. It would be a mistake to engage in a process of reification by turning all the disparate appeals, agendas and movements of a radical alternative America into a unified whole. However we can see a wide range of disparate alternative agendas sharing a common wish to teardown the structures of the orthodox ideology of the period; that of mainstream, patriarchal and reactionary America. These movements for a time seemed to have a realistic chance of actually radically overturning and reshaping the structures of what they saw as a repressive society but they failed to do so. Opposition was crushed by the power of the state through a series of violent repression of student demonstrations, covert sabotage and political assassinations. The second Adam Curtis series I will draw on, The Century of the Self (2002), demonstrated how many radicals, having seen the power of the state head on, came to believe that direct confrontation with the state was futile. Instead they decided to turn inward believing that the only way to change society was to change the self. Influenced by breakthroughs in psychoanalysis and an interest in eastern philosophy/spirituality the focus switched from an attempt to transform society directly to an approach focused on the transformation of the self in the belief that this would inevitably lead to the transformation of society as a whole. In radical communities such as the Erhard Seminars Training (est) the idea encapsulated by the slogan ‘kill the policeman in your head’, Curtis argues, facilitated the gradual demise of utopian dreams of social emancipation that had defined the counter cultures of the 60s. In its wake came the rise of a form of individualism that could be said to have set the tone, or even paved the way, for the later rise of the new right that reached its apogee (or nadir) in the radical conservatism of Thatcherism and Reagonomics. Now abstract concepts such as ‘freedom’ and the ‘rights of the individual’ came to be seen as oppositional to ideas based around collectivity and, arguably, social responsibility. From an idealistic belief in the radical transformation of society we ended up by the end of the eighties with Margaret Thatcher’s (in)famous declaration that: ‘There is no such thing as society’

So to return to minimalism, we can see its vulnerability to the accusation that it not only exhibits a lack of ambition in social terms but that it’s very attempt to rise above and beyond the fray of social relations ultimately leaves it open to accusations of de facto support for the hegemony of the ruling elite. In the same way a person choosing not to vote while claiming to be apolitical can be accused not only of failing in their obligations to society but of supporting the status quo by omission. That its lack of explicit opposition can be viewed as support is debatable. The accusation hinges on the possibly semantic, or maybe theological, assertion that nothing can be said to be truly apolitical but the use of such work as decoration in corporate boardrooms, however, highlights the forms vulnerability to appropriation by ideologies its practitioners may not have been in sympathy with. So we can see the similarities between the development of both minimalism and a general cultural movement, represented here by the likes of est, that believed the only way to change society was to first change the individual, as a tendency towards disengagement with the social sphere. We see here praxis intended to transform, or at least sit apart from the structures of the ruling ideological hegemony, came to serve the ideological requirements of the system that it had intended to resist.

Sound Work

Language’s, or at least modern western languages’, structure is based on a visual processing of phenomena forming an ocularcentric interpretation of reality. As Marshal Mcluhan (1989, p. 67-72) shows in his essay ‘Visual and Acoustic Space’ the development of western thought from ancient Greece onwards has privileged sight uniquely among the senses. Visual processing shows us a separation of things, a hierarchy where each object is separate and distinct and exists in a strictly linear geometric order decreasing in prominence towards the horizon line. This is, of course, illusionary. An objects mass does not become greater or lesser as we move through space. The very idea that objects exist at all as separate entities is, in fact, itself a visual illusion. On a quantum level we understand that there is no strict line of separation between things, where one thing stops and another begins, in actuality even the very solidity of objects is illusionary as at the atomic scale all solidity evaporates. As an example of the advance of ocularcentrism we can contrast the perspective in renaissance painting, where we observe a single correct point of view, with that in the painting, for instance, of the middle ages where scale appears (to us now) arbitrary. We can draw an analogy with the privileging of a centered human point of view in painting with those in science and philosophy. By the age of enlightenment Isaac Newton had seemingly fixed man at the centre of a scientific rationalist universe with this centered point of view necessary for measurement now being seen as true. Though Newton’s deeply held religious convictions where explicitly non-anthropocentric his pronounced rationalism appeared to, at the very least, make god superfluous to our understanding of the universe.

Therefore, if we understand that an exclusively visual understanding of the world is illusionary and that our language (our thinking) is false (or at least not true) due to its reliance on visual processing we may see the attraction of a creative practice based on alternative senses such as sound. Mcluhan points out how aural processing allows the merging of phenomena as the distinctions between this and that blur. Sound enables us to go beyond language - opening up a world of, what could be described as, pure engagement. On a physical and emotional level we feel sound blurring the divisions between inside and outside. The inside/outside dichotomy, the Cartesian distinction between ‘I’ and the world, dissolves as we experience sound moving through us – being both inside and outside. We hear sound not only through our ears but feel it through our bodies. With sound there is an absence of spatial hierarchy as the illusion of solidity disintegrates. Sound resists a logocentric approach to experience. Unlike a visual processing of phenomena, that systematically divides the world into a series of binary oppositions, it transcends this barrier enabling us to become part of reality rather than mere observers of its surface. If we accept John Cage's maxim that when we are thinking of anything else we are not truly listening then the reverse may also be true - that when we are truly listening we are free from thinking. Could it be that it is only when we are free from thinking that we are able to fully embrace experience? It would appear then that sound based work might have considerable merit as a mode of practice able to breakthrough the prison of language. We can experience and interact with it on pre-linguistic primordial level transcending the dualism of the mind/body dichotomy.

Music, it could be argued, lacks emancipatory potential due to its very labeling as such (music) and inevitable codification[10], but does this potential still exist with the exploration of other forms of sound work? Already with the emergence of the term sonic art we witness the beginning of a newer process of reification[11]. Language’s apparently benign embrace may eventually squeeze the life force out of the free flowing and multi-dimensional forms of experimental practice involving sound with the inevitable codification that will follow. As Edgar Varese (1962, p.17) presciently put it in a lecture on composers of, the then emerging field of, electronic music…

‘They are lucky so far in not being hampered by aesthetic codification – at least not yet! But I am afraid it will not be long before some musical mortician begins embalming electronic music in rules.’

If sound though could be said to still contain, at least a limited amount of, potential to succeed as a tool of personal liberation from the structures of language what might its potential be within the wider context of socio/political structure? Pure sounds’[12] literal silence here could be said to render its suitability as tool of social liberation questionable. Most problematically, and paradoxically, it is its emotional power that can leave it dangerously vulnerable to use as a tool of exploitation. Pure sound’s inability to speak directly – to take a stance renders it susceptible to exploitation (a position similar to that of minimalism). For instance we can look to, as an example, a selection of alternative cultural movements based around various forms of arranged sound (music) from rock and roll, through punk to acid house. We can see here movements that at first appeared, and to a greater or lesser extent actually where, radical sooner or later loosing their transgressive edge as they became codified then co-opted by the prevailing capitalist ideology and packaged as lifestyle products. What pure sound lacks is the means to defend itself against language’s appropriation and codification. All cultural movements based around forms of music have died once they collided with language. As soon as a scene is named it is not immediately struck dead but gradually neutered and in the process looses its vitality. Once something is named it becomes possible to control it - vital scenes become impotent as forces of social emancipation once a name-tag is attached. A scenes potency and freedom is dependent on its ability to exploit the spaces between the structures of the dominant ideology, a freedom that can only be fully expressed pre-labeled. Only before labeling, pre-codification, are they wholly free to flow, to change, challenge and surprise. In Tim Lawrence’s Love Saves the Day (2003), his survey of 70’s American dance music culture, we can trace the development of a movement that was born out of the desires of the culturally marginalized, primarily black or hispanic, and gay, thriving outside the structures of mainstream society. It was eventually co-opted by corporate America, labeled ‘Disco’ and mass marketed to heterosexual whites[13]. The invention of the term Disco is crucial here, as it needed a label in order for it to be sold[14]

Sounds innate nature is not of in itself problematic but we can observe difficulties arising when it comes up against language, as it inevitably does. Sounds emotional charge gives it what could almost be described as hypnotic powers of influence. Being beyond language it transcends reason and its raw, purely emotional, pull can be destabilizing. We only need to look, as an example of this, how pop music is utilized as an instrument of torture by the US military in Iraq (Cusick, 2006). Torture aims to pull a part the structures that constitute an individual in order to control, to subjugate the will of the victim. Psychoanalysis also pulls apart the structures that constitute an individual but with the goal of facilitating liberation of the will from destructive schemas. In this process a period of crisis is arrived where the patient is now at their most vulnerable. It is the precisely the destabilization of language and the systems it constructs and sustains which is necessarily in order to create the space conducive to liberty. The danger here, that could be said to lie at the heart of the postmodern epoch, is that when a metanarrative is collapsed a vacuum is revealed that may be vulnerable to occupation by a more malevolent belief system than that that preceded it[15]. This destabilizing ability renders sound a potential tool in the aid of either liberation or subjugation - It has the ability to open us up to both the benign and malignant. We can see, for instance, in the public speeches of charismatic leaders that it is not necessarily the pure reasoning of their words that carries such weight but its combined effect with the quality of vocal delivery that amplifies the message. In the political arena for every Martin Luther King we find a Joseph Goebbels, in popular music for every Nina Simone a Buju Banton and in societies for every call to prayer (Tibet) a call to arms (Rwanda). So while sounds usefulness as a tool of liberation for the individual seem proven if limited its very strengths can also be seen as its great weakness on the socio-political stage.

Open Work

Umberto Eco (1962) defined a specifically open work as one where not only is the work open to interpretation, as all could be said to be, but work which actively invites or requires the readers participation in the construction of meaning. Accepting a de-centered point of view, and the Death of the Author/Birth of the Reader (Barthes, 1967) paradigm, we could argue that if a work intends to only enable a single reading, that designated by its author, it could be said to be authoritarian, with all the uncomfortable associations the word implies. Explicitly Open work deliberately avoids imposing any specific response on the reader[16] on the contrary it attempts to facilitate a space sympathetic to multiple interpretations. This would appear a democratic approach as its opposite, a work intended to close off multiple readings, by contrast now appears antithetical to the human spirit and could be read as an attempt to treat a human being as a machine. To attempt to impose a certain response on a viewer (as the mainstream media, advertising and commercial cinema, etc. attempts to do) could be said to dehumanize. To prescribe a single correct reading of a work, and there by designate all others as wrong is to engage in a process of subjugation and domination where ones own belief system is imposed on another human being. The logical conclusion of such a strategy, if successful, is the annihilation of the subjugated as our individual ways of processing the world are what defines us as autonomous beings.

The indeterminacy that the viewer brings to an Open Work destabilizes the structure on which value judgments depend rendering a simplistic evaluation through the binary-oppositions of success and failure inappropriate. The practice could be said to be analogous to a pure as opposed to applied science, a journey undertaken without a specific end point in mind. Eco and others, such as Gilles Deleuze (1994) have argued that open work is the appropriate response to the indeterminate universe explored in the quantum theories of Heisenberg, Bohr and others. As Cox and Warner (2004, p. 166) put it:

‘If the classic "closed work" expressed the closed system of Newtonian physics and a God-centered universe, "open works” express the indeterminate world of quantum physics and a post-theological universe, an authorless world with out a unique origin, essence, or end’

To put it another way: if god does, after all and contrary to Einstein's ascertain, play dice - maybe we should too? Open Work as well as avoiding the charge of authoritarianism would seem to be a mode of practice more in tune with the universe or life as it is avoiding mans desire to control, a need to control which could be said to have been the author of language itself.

Conclusion: a case for Nihilism?

To completely divide our triangle (language-self-society) into its disparate parts is unfeasible as each element makes the others not only possible but also inevitable. As tools of transcendence though, we can see how of the four strategies we have so far assed, Transgression/Shock Tactics, Minimalism, Sound Work and Open Work only Transgression/Shock Tactics could be said to engage with the individual and society as one. It is also the strategy we can most readily dismiss: while small transgressions and doses of shock may appeal as entertainment for some the fact that they can be deemed as such shows how for the entertained, at least, they really are not that shocking at all. Only escalating levels of extreme violence can continue to really shock and why pursuing such a course of action might seem to be unwise would appear self-evident. Minimalism, on the other hand, as a mode of practice inviting contemplation of pure form, by way of avoidance of superfluous distractions and possibilities of interpretation, could be said to be of limited use as a tool of individual, but not social, liberation. It may be unfair to judge art works outside of their historical context but it ironic that when Felix Gonzalez Torres talked of abstract minimalism as a response to the Vietnam conflict he talked of a deliberately shocking response to shocking times. For many now the idea of minimalism ever being seen as shocking, or in any way radical, would seem almost absurd - minimalism is now more likely to be viewed as a design template utilized in the pages of lifestyle magazines or home makeover shows. Sound Work, again, could be said to be a useful tool in pursuit of individual liberation but its muteness, like that of minimalism, make it vulnerable to misappropriation. This mixed with its emotional power can render this appropriation particularly dangerous. If words are tools of control, responding to man’s hardwired need/desire to control, Open Work could be said to be about letting go of this control. Open Work would seem a prerequisite for any work attempting to transcend the prison walls of language because it’s opposite the closed, or authoritarian work, imposes its structure so would seem a perverse mode of operating if the goal is one of authentic liberation.

It would seem then that while various strategies, or combinations of strategies, may offer temporary individual transcendence, enabling us to get lost in experience - freed from our tendencies of judgment, maybe we could just as well get lost in our contemplation of other phenomena such as nature? It would appear inevitable that all the strategies assessed so far, including those partly suitable as tools of personal liberation, eventually, as they operate within the context of society, become codified within the structures of meaning that comprise its ideological fabric - ending up nothing more than a distraction, part of the problem, part of the Spectacle. Maybe in the social sphere the best we can hope for is an engaged dialectic relationship between creative practice and any given ideology opening up the occasional space of liberation, even for short periods of time before this space is co-opted to the needs of the dominant ideology? The answer then may not be a case of success of failure in a battle between the oppositions of liberation and (psychological) confinement but the nature of the play between these two states. We can view this as a Derridaian free-play moving in and out of the system or more aptly dancing in the spaces between in and out.

In, what could be conceived of as the most important development in art’s recent history, Relational Art, we witness a wide range of strategies employed by a disparate number of artists grouped as such (almost uniformly reluctantly). We see, on the one hand, an explicit rejection of Clement Greenberg’s modernist conception of art as autonomous entity separate from the social sphere and on the other a partial return to the modernist project but in a more modest, as in small, way. With a postmodern reluctance to facilitate meta-narratives, what Nicolas Bourriaud (1988) has referred to as micro-utopias can be created where social structures are destabilized and re-negotiated. We can see here something of a fruition of Situationist, Dada and Fluxus’ anti-art aesthetic as the walls between art and life are collapsed, though these newer forms of practice tend to explicitly promote cooperation over confrontation. Jeremy Deller (2007) has expressed unease with the way the community type projects that he had to some extent pioneered, in the U.K at least, were now too fashionable for his liking; being co-opted by the new Labour project as a tool of social cohesion. What, one may ask, is necessarily wrong with social cohesion as such? This may be, to a small degree, be about the iconoclastic tendencies of the artist, but more fundamentally it is an example of how a successful dominant power structure will co-opt a creative practice to serve its ideological needs. Perhaps the success of such socially engaged artists is to see how far they are able to utilize the resources (money, access, visibility) of the dominant ideology without becoming its instrument. Deller’s response is seemingly to see how far he can ‘push it’ until the dominant ideology drops him, which seems a reasonable response. The problem here is when it comes to resources those who pay the piper, tend ultimately, to call the tune. That we can even talk of Relational Art is, as with all the other strategies we have discussed, is proof that it already exists as a recognized object that, now named, can also be controlled. This is presumably why so many of the artists whose work is labeled thus have attempted to resist the categorization.

So is any form of practice capable of escaping language’s codification and the suffocating grasp of the dominant social structures? If the goal of creative practice is that of emancipation from language maybe, other than small localized and somewhat ephemeral successes, the project is ultimately destined to fail, as it is language that defines us. Maybe it is unwise to judge the project though the oppositions of success and failure, maybe it is a not a matter of if but how we fail, in the words of Samuel Beckett our aim should be to ‘fail well’ (cited by Critchley, 2004). The dematerialization of the art object, that proceeded minimalism as minimalism had expressionism, could appear to be seen as the final attempt by art to avoid language’s subjugation. The strategies we have assessed have tended to address either the individual or society but what of the third point of our triangle: Language itself? If Derrida is correct and there really is nothing outside of the text maybe it is this nothing that we should address. To privilege absence over presence would seem to open up the possibilities of destabilizing the very fulcrum on which our logocentric based processing of phenomena is dependant. Can nothing even be said to exist? If not, would it be correct to say that nothing does not exist? Language’s fragility is exposed here as it falls apart in its attempt to get to grips with the concept. This indicates the effectiveness of nothingness to escape language’s grasp. I will now finish by mentioning three artworks that embody a form of nihilism that addresses nothingness, without comment and leave a silence to follow:

Is it possible for me to do nothing as my contribution to this exhibition?: Keith Arnett

In Search of the Miraculous: Bas Jan Ader

4:33: John Cage

Footnotes

[1] Heidegger also met with D.T. Suzuki, who was instrumental in bringing Zen teachings to the West several occasions.

[2] Derrida’s later ideas exploring the possibilities of religion without religion also echoes those of eastern philosophers with a background in Zen Buddhism such as those of the Kyoto School like Keiji Nishitani who, incidentally, studied with Heidegger for three years. (Nishitani, 1983, p.xiv).)

[3] The term man here is used as in human but the link between logocentricism and what Derrida terms phalogcentricism highlights languages masculine construction. Language itself, being an instrument of control, would seem to indicate the desire to dominate the world as being a masculine tendency. For an excellent polemic on this subject see Men's Madness: The Myth of Male Reason by Christine Halsall.

[4] Philosophical speculation, particularly that informed by quantum theory, may suggest ideas are in fact all there is period but this would be, for me, a new and expanded subject of enquiry.

[5] Shock/Transgression, Minimalism, Sonic Work and Open Work are also not, of course, mutually exclusive. A piece could include a number of or all four strategies combined.

[6] Though of course with much work produced that we could broadly define under the banners of Relational Aesthetics or Social Practice the boundaries between activism and fine art practice can become blurred – this I will later address.

[7] Both Fascism and Soviet Communism also execrated these ‘degenerate’ practices and America, specifically in the case of the CIA‘s promotion of abstract expressionism, would come to embrace them. This we could take as both a sign of these movements’ partial success, i.e there disagreeability to the most oppressive regimes and eventual embrace by a more liberal one, or a sign of their ultimate failure, their apparent inability to resist co-option into the services of another repressive ideology; that of (so called) free-market liberalism. We may be able to read this adaptability as an example for the present triumph of capitalism over its rivals. This success arguably being due to its flexible structure visa vi the rigidity of fascism or soviet style communism which we could compare (capitalism) to other long standing empires, such as the Ottoman or Roman, who succeeded by co-opting as much as by militarily defeating possible challenges to its power.

[8] A recent advertisement by the multinational sports/ leisurewear cooperation Nike recently co-opted the Sex Pistols, long dead, Sid Vicious into an advertising campaign for one of its lines of footwear: Converse.

[9] Vaneigem (1967) speaks in The Revolution of Everyday Life of the material comforts that capitalism has provided: ‘Who wants a world in which the guarantee that we shall not die of starvation entails the risk of dying of boredom?’

[10] By codification I am referring to the general process where something goes through a process of delineation and reification and becomes defined by a set of rules and principles as opposed to the specific process in music where tones, time signatures etc get visually notated.

[11] Any other term such as Sound Work would prove just as problematic.

[12] By Pure Sound I mean sound without text; sound without the songs or speech that carry words.

[13] I have previously written in detail about disco in my essay ‘Underground New York: Cross Cultural Connections: The Fusion between Dance Music, Club Culture and Art in NYC 1975–1985.’

[14] The saturation levels of hype surrounding Disco eventually lead to such a backlash that mainstream America lost all interest in the dance music culture for a decade. This enabled the scene to return to its underground roots where it again thrived, unencumbered by linguistic delineation, until in the late eighties when it was again picked up by the mainstream; this time initially in England, labeled Acid House then Rave then simply Dance Music, bleached of all trace of colour, then sold back to mainstream America.

[15] This danger could be said to haunt our era. As Jean-Francois Lyotard (1979) put it is his formulation of the postmodern condition: ‘Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?’’ We can see in the rise in religious fundamentalisms a grasping for a return to certainties in the wake of the destabilizing of the post-enlightenment narrative.

[16] The term reader is here is to be taken as an inclusive term incorporating reader, viewer or listener etc.

Selected Bibliography

BELSEY, C. (2002) Poststructuralism. Oxford: Oxford University Press

BOURRIAUD, N. (1988) Relational Aesthetics. Paris: Les Presse Du Reel

CAGE, J. (1973) Silence: Lectures and Writings. New York: Marion Boyars

CRITCHLEY, S. (2004) Very Little... Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy and Literature. London: Routledge

DEBORD, G. (1964) The Society of the Spectacle. (Trans) London: Rebel Press

DELLER, J. (2001) Life Is To Blame For Everything. Collected Work & Projects 1995-99. London: Salon 3

DOOLEY, M. KAVANAH, L. (2007) The Philosophy of Derrida. Stocksfield: Acumen

ECO, E. (1989) The Open Work, New York: Harvard University Press

FRIED, M. (1962-77) Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews. Chicago: Chicago University Press

LAURENCE, T. (2003) Love Saves the Day: A history of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979. London: Duke University

LIPPARD L.R (1973) Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. California: University of California

MCLUHAN, M. (1989) Visual and Acoustic Space. In: COX, W. WARNER, D, (ed). Audio Culture: Readings In Modern Music, New York: Continuum. p. 67 - 72.

Selected Film/Video

Atom. Documentary Series (2008) Written/Presented by Professor Jim AL-KHALILI. London: BBC4.

The Century of the Self (2002) There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed. Documentary Series (E3). Written, Produced & Directed by Adam CURTIS. London: BBC

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom. (2007) We Will Force You To Be Free. Documentary Series (E3). Written, Produced & Directed by Adam CURTIS. London: BBC

--Westlake 14:54, 12 April 2008 (CDT)