Hito Steryerl “Is a Museum a Factory?”

Steryerl, Hito. “Is a Museum a Factory?” E-Flux Journal Reader 2009. Berlin: Sternberg Press (2009): 28-42. Print. 

Levin, Miriam R. ‘Museums and the Democratic Order,’  The Wilson Quarterly 26.1 (2002): 52-66. Print.

 

Hito Steryerl’s text “Is a Museum a Factory?” primarily explores the shifting relationship between the museum and the factory through the medium of cinema. Steryel talks about the placement and screening of political films, the active additive and/or multiplicity required of viewers to finish the creation of the work, as well as the public arena that the museum itself is placed in. It is this latter concern about the divide between public and private, in the supposed public space of the museum which intrigues me. “Just as the work performed in the factory cannot be shown outside of it, most of the works on display in a museum cannot be shown outside its walls. A paradoxical situation arises: a museum predicated on producing and marketing visibility can itself not be shown – the labour performed there is just as publicly invisible as that of any sausage factory. This extreme control over visibility sits rather uncomfortably alongside the perception of the museum as a public space” (Steyerl, 35). Here Steyerl describes the issue of filming in either place, but only addresses the motive for it in a glancing manner, quoting Goddard “”the exploiter doesn’t show the exploitation of the exploited”” (Steyerl, 35). While I believe this to have been true in the past (building collections of context-less objects from other cultures) as most western museums have traditionally been the sanctioned embodiments, under the guise of historical progress, of the West’s efforts to bring the lands and peoples of the world under its control (Levin, 57); the museum though is shifting to encompass non-western points of view. Marian R. Levin explores the history of the museum and its origins, not as a cultural symbol, but as one of dominance; and how this has changed through the development of new nations such as America, which attempts to encompass many different cultures in their national identity. As Levin points out “Museums, in effect, convey two antithetical messages: one of human liberty, of men and women freely communicating; the other, a controlled vision of ordered progress that has fueled the extension of Western influence for more than two centuries”(Levin, 65) while many museums try to enhance the former, they are still working off the bones of the old, and at times struggle to keep from backsliding “In recent decades, a new generation of curators has sought to take account of new scholarship on class, race, ethnicity, and gender in the exhibitions they mounted…. The system of identification that had been used to categorize artifacts and organize history exhibitions on a continuum of progress was broken. Now it was possible to construct new narratives, to look again at familiar artifacts, and to consider whole ranges of contextual materials previously ignored in order to interpret cultures from more egalitarian and arguably more authentic perspectives” (Levin, 63). Tying in with this new shift to a more open forum; a more public museum; many countries such as Spain have lifted the filming restrictions, making the hidden knowledge public. As well as giving behind the scenes tours of the museum archives; open windows into work preservation areas such as at the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles; and returning treasures to their countries of origin; in an attempt to leave nothing hidden or floundering without some culture/social context.  The limitations on filming and representation in both the factory and museum, I believe arises from a fear of, as well as a need for a monopoly over, knowledge; and the power that stems from it (including monetary power). With the coming of the digital era and other modernizations, the world of the factory is under greater scrutiny, as skirted by Steryerl, the world is now our factory; and the parts we can’t see, or document make us naturally suspicious, for in our society knowledge of the right sort is power.

James Clifford "On Collecting Art and Culture"

Clifford, James. “On Collecting Art and Culture” in the Predicament of culture: twentieth-century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1998):215-251. Print.

James Clifford’s piece ‘On collecting art and culture’ primarily examines the social and cultural context of museum collections. In the beginning of the piece Clifford explores James Fenton’s poem ‘collecting ourselves’ which traces the dark side of museums and collecting; the forbidden areas of self (Clifford, 217). It is this desire; the fetish if you will, that I am most interested in, the distancing of the objects original purpose into an object of obsession in its self. Clifford comes down harshly on the fetishist labelling their obsessions as a tabooed path of too-intimate fantasy (Clifford, 217), that a good collector labels and classifies their collection and knows this history (Clifford, 219), sterilising obsession into socially sanctioned pathways. As Clifford suggests “the collection itself – its taxonomic, aesthetic structure – is valued, and any private fixation on single objects is negatively marked as fetishism” (Clifford, 219) in support of his argument Clifford addresses the book ‘on longing’ by Susan Stewart where she says Susan Stewart “the boundary between collection and fetishism is mediated by classification and display in tension with accumulation and secrecy” (Stewart, Susan. On Longing. London: Duke University press (10^th ed. 2007):163. Print.). Stewart though also discusses the collection as a symbol of the self that once objects are no longer defined in terms of their use value in the environment, but are defined by the collection, they instead “serve to subsume the environment to a scenario of the personal” (Stewart, 162). Giving the collection self beyond its academic physicality I believe is important, as it has power to reflect the personal, in the fetishist, as well as social and cultural traits as a whole, that are otherwise buried under their own tangible weight.

Appadurai, Arjun. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy”

 Appadurai, Arjun. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy” Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (1996): 27-47. Print.

Arjun Appadurai in this text examines cultural flow and its method of transmission. There are two pages that I find especially interesting, that focus on “nostalgia without memory” (Appadurai, 30), a concept I find very interesting. Appadurai talks about the nostalgia inherent in American society, that is then passed on to other cultures, the Philippines for example, the “mega-technologies of the twenty-first century garbed in the film-noir scenarios of sixties’ chills, fifties’ diners, forties’ clothing, thirties’ houses, twenties’ dances, and so on ad infinitum.” (Appadurai, 30) creating a present that also exists in the past. This idea that memory makes time flexible is very interesting to me, recently I read an article by Jason Skeet that examined how Giles Deleuze and Virginia Woolf dealt with time, especially in relation to cinema. Deleuze hypothesised that our crystalline conception of time is actually mobile that “the past is constituted at the same time as the present, with memory existing virtually alongside this present. Singular moments (or haecceities) in the past may continue into the present, growing and accumulating new layers of possibility and meaning” (Skeet, Jason. “Woolf plus Deleuze: Cinema, Literature and Time Travel” Rhizomes.16.2 (2008):13. Print.) this idea is fascinating, the idea that time is flexible, dependent on our needs and recollections, that we can in fact change the past through our memories. Appadurai addresses similar issues of time and memory, but with the flow or culture being the controlling element, “if your present is their future, and their future is your past, then your past can be made to appear as simply a normalized modality of your present” (Appadurai, 31). The idea that time and memory are dependent is curious, similar to the question of ‘if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear, does it make a noise?’ in relation to time I believe this can be true, if no one remembers us did we ever exist? Or does it matter whether we did? Man is obsessed with immortality, and as true immortality is impossible we are obsessed with leaving a mark that we will be remembered by.  Deleuze quotes Fellini in saying “we are constructed in memory” (Skeet, 11) tying into the concept that we exist simply because we are remembered, and not because we existed, that are actions, and others memories of them are in fact more important than ourselves.

Glenn Adamson - "Thinking Through Craft"

Adamson, Glenn. Thinking Through Craft. Oxford: Berg (2007):69-101. Print.

Adamson’s text addresses issues around craft, especially labour and social positioning. While I struggled to engage with text, the issue I found the most interesting is the argument over technique. Adamson seems to side with Jackson Pollock view that “technique is just a means of arriving at a statement”, that skills in a medium are just another tool to portray concepts through; that simply being technically proficient does not instantly equate success or value (Adamson, 69). Generally I agree with this summation but I think that there is value in simple technical proficiency that should not be devalued because the ideas behind it are not successful. That even if you do not comprehend the concepts, because, for example you don’t share the same cultural understanding or background knowledge that the artist is working off, or you simply do not like or agree with them, you can still appreciate the work or skill inherent in the pieces. There are some artists whose ideas do not attract me intellectually but who I can appreciate their technique and skill, one of these artists is Damien Hirst: I respect the clean lines and crispness of his work but I greatly dislike his ideas and motives. Jerry Saltz agrees in relation to one of his painting shows “that they're generic-to-bad photorealist paintings of the sort that any semi-adept student or average commercial artist could have made . . . mak[ing] them ordinary and academic.”(Saltz, Jerry. "Damien Hirst: The not-so-elusive truth: The Emperor’s New Paintings". Modern Painters (May 2005):28. Print.). Technically Hirst’s works are flawless and can be appreciated as such, but in terms of content I find them lacking. Sometimes we need to separate out aspects of a work to be able to appreciate any of it.

Thierry de Dure - 'When form has become attitude and beyond'

de Dure, Thierry. ‘When form has become attitude and beyond’ (1994), Theory in contemporary art since 1945. Malden, MA: Blackwell (2005): 19-31. Print.

This text discusses the many conflicts in art teaching styles, focusing on the traditional academy method of imitation and the Bauhaus; as it struggles to find a balance between the technical and conceptual. De Dure attributes the belief of ‘talent’ to the academic model and creativity to the Bauhaus, stating that both models are now obsolete (de Dure, 22). Concerning these two concepts I agree, as it is my belief that either concept can’t function independently. They are too extreme, talents use of imitation leaves little to explore and true creative invention is impossible; art cannot occur in a vacuum, even unconsciously we as artists draw upon what we have seen, heard or experienced, something cannot come from nothing. I am most interested in this texts exploration of creativity, despite opinions raised in our group discussion I side with the texts interpretation of the Bauhaus belief that “creativity is grounded in a utopian belief [that] everyone is an artist” (de Dure, 22). I believe that all acts of creation from a child’s drawing to mass produced advertising is art, as by their very nature they are created and so require creativity however small in nature. From my observations It is the purpose of the pieces creation that generally labels its creator as an artist or not; as if the intention of art makes it art, seeming to me to be a far to clear cut line. I feel that this line between life and art is indefinable; creation doesn’t stop at the boundaries of the gallery and studio. Seth prices essay Dispersion addresses this issue of what defines ‘art’, he brings up Duchamp’s question of “can one make works which are not of art?”(Price, Seth. "Dispersion" Distribuded History (2002): p.2. Web. 22 Sept. 2010.) Duchamp’s words “call for an art that insinuates itself into culture at large” (Price, 2). I agree with Price’s view of Duchamp’s words, but Price voices the concern that by dispersing the definition of art will lower the status of art and artists (Price, 2). While I can sympathise with this concern, I feel that by having a definition of ‘art’ excludes a lot of work that deserves recognition, but that because of its purpose/motivation its creative aspects are overlooked.