[Blake_Stimson,_Gregory_Sholette]_Collectivism_aft(z-lib
Internationaleries 27create a democratic Marxian (egalitarian) type of abstract art. However, forthe internationaleries, the “Cold Artists” and their theoreticians, includingMax Bill, Abraham Moles, and Max Bense, were deeply ideological. In sum,Kalte Kunst was the perfect embodiment of afWrmative culture, blindly adheringto the cold war discourse without any critical reXection on its functionwithin that paradigm. 40 Instead of analyzing their own historical circumstancesin the present, these cold artists projected their practice into a mystiWed,idealized future. Ultimately, cold art reinforced the very ideology itsadherents claimed to reject and, in doing so, committed the same crime asthe believers in industrial design: a belief in a fully rational and perfectlyhomogenized human environment. This was a condition most adamantlydenounced by Asger Jorn in his text “Against Functionalism.” 41This critique formed a base and materialized as both the name andprogram of a group, the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus,severely mocking the Hochshule für Gestaltung in Ulm, or the “New Bauhaus.”MIBI believed such functionalist ideology was the primary culpritlurking within cold war ideology. Therefore MIBI’s experimental critique offunctionalism, modernization, and imposed specialization developed out ofnecessity, its own ironic forms including an excess of impractical actions andafunctional gestures. Once, for example, the members invited groups of schoolchildren to individually paint mass-produced white plates as a sardonic renditionmocking the self-absorbed “professional designer,” or what Max Bill,the founder of the “New Bauhaus,” reverentially called the “Artist-Creator.”They continued their collective games by literally staging exhibitions, retrospectives,historical avant-garde revisions, and art conferences. And insofaras these practices were unspecialized acts they proved difWcult to commodifyand even more difWcult to solidify into a single, homogeneous narrative. DireWnancial straights, however, eventually forced MIBI members to reduce theirvoluminous publication efforts. Still, despite the setback, they collaboratedon an issue of Il Gesto with the Movimento Nucleare while separately publishinga few texts written by Asger Jorn. They also managed to found anInternational Laboratory for Experimental Research in an old convent, which,once again, led directly to a state of “productive chaos”; 42 one result of thisactivity was the famous “Industrial paintings” executed by Giuseppe-PinotGallizio and his friends. 43 By 1956, however, they were forced to consolidatetheir efforts into one issue of the journal, collectively choosing to call itEristica, 44 mockingly debasing the very art of dispute while afWrming the irrelevanceof truth and veracity.It was about this time that the Lettrist International became familiarwith MIBI’s critique of functionalism and their grotesque experimentations.The LI’s work offered a number of similarities with MIBI, especially
28 Jelena Stojanovićin the way they conceived their practice collectively. The LI membersasserted that “What we need now is to take care of collective interests representedby a collective subjectivity.” 45 At the same time, while continuingand challenging similar conceptual legacies to both surrealism and Marxism,they were also deeply inXuenced by the novelty of Lefebvre’s critiqueof public disinterestedness. LI members were also, like MIBI, explicitly attackingthe politics and discourse of the cold war, an approach especially evidentin their Wlmmaking. They believed intervening in mass media challengedideological “conditioning mechanisms.” Perhaps more importantly such interventionsalso helped subvert the “leisure machines” that Lefebvre had deWnedso clearly in his writings.LI members conceived of their artistic activity as a sophisticatedtactical game. They devised a set of equally ironic collective gestures(parodico-serious they called them) 46 for carrying out their actions including“détournement,” “dérive,” “psychogeography,” and “unitary urbanism.”In every case the evocation of play and the logic of games became tools fora thoroughgoing social and cultural critique. For example, by “détourning”the mass media—one of the major “leisure machines” targeted by the group—they focused their activity not on the representation of news or politics, buton the way the media trivialized reality, maintaining the status quo througha “Balance of Power” that was in effect the inculcation of global fear. Hence,the group’s freely distributed publications such as Potlatch 47 or InternationaleLettriste exhibit exactly the same trivialization of reality, only in reverse: “shakein your shoes, bureaucrats,” they exclaimed, while mockingly inverting thepowerful rhetoric of the global superpowers. Hence, their playful experimentationwas deliberately conceived of as a reuse, recycling, or reversingof modernist productive and progressive ideologies that had in turn producedand reproduced the cold war discourse.Always new, however also the same, the LI’s aesthetic and intellectualapproach to mass culture was essentially a form of plagiarism, orwhat they called détournement. This was in turn their main aesthetic tacticand was carried out in three distinct modes, deceptive, simple, and ultra, andincluded everything from simple quotidian plagiarism to borrowing clothingstyles and types of behavior. It was in sum an irreverent, even blasphemous,way of altering private property in order to force it to be collective. 48 At thesame time, détournement suggests an erosion of the imposed and constructeddivision between the public and private. As Louis Althusser suggested, thisdistinction was “internal to bourgeois law and valid in the subordinatedomains in which bourgeois law exercises its ‘authority.’” 49This form of grotesque critique with its use of tactical play andmedia experimentation probably reached its greatest expression in the actions
- Page 2 and 3: ▲COLLECTIVISMAFTERMODERNISM
- Page 4 and 5: COLLECTIVISM▲AFTERMODERNISMThe Ar
- Page 6 and 7: TO LOUISE AND ARIANA
- Page 8 and 9: CONTENTS6. The Mexican Pentagon 165
- Page 10 and 11: AcknowledgmentsThis book would not
- Page 12 and 13: PrefaceThe collectivization of arti
- Page 14 and 15: FIGURE P.1. Promotional poster for
- Page 16 and 17: Prefacexvdirectly opposite individu
- Page 18 and 19: Prefacexviiadmit a desire to see al
- Page 20 and 21: Introduction: Periodizing Collectiv
- Page 22 and 23: Introduction 3to increase their pro
- Page 24 and 25: Introduction 5Modernist artists und
- Page 26 and 27: Introduction 7Those good intentions
- Page 28 and 29: Introduction 9and that helped give
- Page 30 and 31: Introduction 11collectivism brings
- Page 32 and 33: Introduction 13artists on Chicago
- Page 34 and 35: Introduction 15Phase of the Cultura
- Page 36 and 37: 1. Internationaleries: Collectivism
- Page 38 and 39: Internationaleries 19played a “us
- Page 40 and 41: Internationaleries 21Rooskens, Euge
- Page 42 and 43: FIGURE 1.2. Le “Realisme-Socialis
- Page 44 and 45: Internationaleries 25and an active
- Page 48 and 49: Internationaleries 29of the fourth
- Page 50 and 51: Internationaleries 31Debord’s 196
- Page 52 and 53: Internationaleries 33in which the n
- Page 54 and 55: Internationaleries 35be demystiWed
- Page 56 and 57: Internationaleries 37printing a ser
- Page 58 and 59: Internationaleries 39NOTES1. Harold
- Page 60 and 61: Internationaleries 4136. The exhibi
- Page 62 and 63: Internationaleries 4377. Michel de
- Page 64 and 65: 2. After the “Descent to the Ever
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Internationaleries 27
create a democratic Marxian (egalitarian) type of abstract art. However, for
the internationaleries, the “Cold Artists” and their theoreticians, including
Max Bill, Abraham Moles, and Max Bense, were deeply ideological. In sum,
Kalte Kunst was the perfect embodiment of afWrmative culture, blindly adhering
to the cold war discourse without any critical reXection on its function
within that paradigm. 40 Instead of analyzing their own historical circumstances
in the present, these cold artists projected their practice into a mystiWed,
idealized future. Ultimately, cold art reinforced the very ideology its
adherents claimed to reject and, in doing so, committed the same crime as
the believers in industrial design: a belief in a fully rational and perfectly
homogenized human environment. This was a condition most adamantly
denounced by Asger Jorn in his text “Against Functionalism.” 41
This critique formed a base and materialized as both the name and
program of a group, the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus,
severely mocking the Hochshule für Gestaltung in Ulm, or the “New Bauhaus.”
MIBI believed such functionalist ideology was the primary culprit
lurking within cold war ideology. Therefore MIBI’s experimental critique of
functionalism, modernization, and imposed specialization developed out of
necessity, its own ironic forms including an excess of impractical actions and
afunctional gestures. Once, for example, the members invited groups of school
children to individually paint mass-produced white plates as a sardonic rendition
mocking the self-absorbed “professional designer,” or what Max Bill,
the founder of the “New Bauhaus,” reverentially called the “Artist-Creator.”
They continued their collective games by literally staging exhibitions, retrospectives,
historical avant-garde revisions, and art conferences. And insofar
as these practices were unspecialized acts they proved difWcult to commodify
and even more difWcult to solidify into a single, homogeneous narrative. Dire
Wnancial straights, however, eventually forced MIBI members to reduce their
voluminous publication efforts. Still, despite the setback, they collaborated
on an issue of Il Gesto with the Movimento Nucleare while separately publishing
a few texts written by Asger Jorn. They also managed to found an
International Laboratory for Experimental Research in an old convent, which,
once again, led directly to a state of “productive chaos”; 42 one result of this
activity was the famous “Industrial paintings” executed by Giuseppe-Pinot
Gallizio and his friends. 43 By 1956, however, they were forced to consolidate
their efforts into one issue of the journal, collectively choosing to call it
Eristica, 44 mockingly debasing the very art of dispute while afWrming the irrelevance
of truth and veracity.
It was about this time that the Lettrist International became familiar
with MIBI’s critique of functionalism and their grotesque experimentations.
The LI’s work offered a number of similarities with MIBI, especially