Alan Watts :::: Time :::::

Alan Watts a western Philosopher, who has a very deep understanding of the Buddhist Zen, Talks about time, a very absurd notion which tends to keep us away from the Tibetan/Sufi ideology of living in the second:

High Art industry, women and Artists of color:::: Part II

As stated earlier the Guerilla Girls, a feminist group of artists formed in mid 80s, were well aware of the power structures that effected and had control over High art, and the strategies that they chose in order to fight back, were appropriate in its context. For Adorno, “although administration is inescapable, it is vulnerable to the fact that it lacks the ability to plan every detail of every eventuality in advance, and to the extent that it tries to do so, administration becomes consumed by its own inefficiency. This limit guarantees the possibility of something different which, because it is not planned, embodies the value of hope.”[1] Hence Guerilla Girls were able to, under the right circumstances, secure their position by forming autonomy within an organizational form, to which it was opposed, through the involvement of administrators who happened to share the same aesthetic values.[2]

In order to escape the organizations and institutional structures, underneath the power hierarchy that promote high art, Guerilla Girls chose ‘public art’ as the medium to communicate with their audience. Apart from posters which are their most public communication tool, they have also done billboards, bus ads, magazine spreads, protest actions, letter-writing campaigns, and putting up broadsheets in bathrooms of major museums.[3] In this way they have not only escaped the biased administrative selections, which happen within the museums and galleries, but they have also reached a much broader audience.

Another strategy used by Guerilla Girls in order to have the best impact on their audience, has been their reliance on the mass culture rather than the world of high art. Quoting Gertrude Stein, from the Guerilla Girls, “there is a popular misconception that the world of high art is ahead of the mass culture, but everything in our research shows that, instead of being avant-garde, it is derrière.”[4] Because of the honesty that was evident in their work, and the simplicity of their message which, communicated easily with the mass audience, their work didn’t allow any misinterpretation. Therefore the public could easily understand and appreciate their work, without feeling the need to refer to a critic in order to communicate with its message, although the critics still did criticize their work. In other words, in this situation, the public no longer identifies museums and critics as a superior ‘knower’, because the art work is ‘known’ to him/her by itself already.

Apart from the tactics, mentioned above, Guerilla Girls used other techniques as well, which are worth mentioning; they wanted to be shocking. By calling themselves, a group of grown women, ‘girls’ which can imply that they are not complete, mature or grown up, they attracted a lot of attention. Also wearing Guerilla masks as a disguise, in order to both earn attention and remain anonymous. According to Zora Neale Hurson: “being anonymous, operating under code names and alter egos, has meant there are no career gains to be earned by being a Guerilla Girl. This makes us all equal, gives each of us an equal voice, no matter what our position may be in the ‘real’ world.”[5] But one of the most important qualities of Guerilla Girls which earned them a lot of attention has been ‘humor’. By ridiculing and belittling the system that excluded them[6], they not only criticized the system in an amusing way, but, as said by themselves, humor gets people involved. [7]

But are any of the activities similar to Guerilla Girls, General Idea or any other ‘activist art’ movement effective? Do they actually make a difference? Without a doubt they have been indeed effective, but it is not in a way that displays a cultural shift at once. Putting it differently, the major effect of these activists arts happen in a very large time scale. Jeremy Valentine explores this concept, through Hardt and Negri’s Empire: “Empire is not a stable system that is limited and that can be weakened and overcome by direct attack.”[8] Referring to the power structures by the term Empire, Hardt and Negri support this idea, that it is impossible for any activity or protest against the empire to have an immediate effect on the power structure as a whole; the effect can only be gradual. Quoting Valentine again: “In terms of political significance of art, the idea of an oppositional sphere defined in terms of political casualty of aesthetics, […] has dissolved. This is not to say that art is suddenly without effects, including broader social changes. It is to say that these cannot be determined or guaranteed.”[9] Valentine believes these effects cannot be guaranteed mainly because the effect of any opposition to the power structure does not happen instantly. Of course when Guerilla Girls where asked whether they have made a difference or not, they believed they have made dealers, curators, critics and collectors ‘accountable’. They have been protesting for feminism and artists of color for more than 20 years now, and things have certainly changed over these decades.

As demonstrated here and in the previoua post, because the whole power structure that imposes an authority over the art, is affected by white-male-heterosexual-western prejudice, the groups who share a value different than that of the system, do not get the recognition they deserve. Different strategies have been employed by activist artists, such as Guerilla Girls. Such Strategies may have not shown its impact; its influence is gradual over large time scales. But these protests have certainly been effective.

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[1] Valentine, Jeremy. “Empire and Art: Aesthetic Autonomy, Organizational Meditation and Contextualizing Practices” Art, Money, Parties: New Institution in the Political Economy of Contemporary Art. (Liverpool University press, 2004), 199.

[2]Ibid, 200.

[3] Guerilla Girls (whoever they really are). “Guerilla Girls bare all: An Interview” Confessions of the Guerilla Girls. ( HarperPerinial, 1995), 18.

[4]Ibid, 26.

[5] Ibid, 20.

[6] Ibid, 15.

[7] Ibid, 15.

[8] Valentine, Jeremy. “Empire and Art: Aesthetic Autonomy, Organizational Meditation and Contextualizing Practices” Art, Money, Parties: New Institution in the Political Economy of Contemporary Art. (Liverpool University press, 2004), 192.

[9] Ibid, 196.