final essay version for pdf

8/3/2019 Final Essay Version for PDF

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SOCIETY OF CONTROL:IS THERE NO ALTERNATIVE?

By Abbi Torrance MA Fine Art 2011

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION p 2

1 NO MAN IS AN ISLAND p 4

2 CAPITALIST REALISM p10

3 AESTHETIC REVOLUTION AND ITS OUTCOMES p17

CONCLUSION p22

BIBLIOGRAPHY p24


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INTRODUCTION

Mark Fisher (2009) and Francis Fukuyama (1992) despite having opposing political

ideologies have both warned us of the approach of Nietzsches last man1.

This last man is a despicable, derisive man who has lost his will, he is complacent,

unemotional and takes no risks. He is weak and ill, takes drugs to feel good, everyone

is the same and only concerned about their health. He thinks he is happy. Herbert

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It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the seed of hishighest hope.

His soil is still rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be poor andexhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow there.

Alas! there comes the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his

longing beyond man -- and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whiz!

I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star. Itell you: you have still chaos in yourselves.

Alas! There comes the time when man will no longer give birth to any star.Alas! There comes the time of the most despicable man, who can no longerdespise himself.

Lo! I show you the Last Man.

"What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" -- so asksthe Last Man, and blinks.

The earth has become small, and on it hops the Last Man, who makeseverything small. His species is ineradicable as the flea; the Last Man liveslongest.

"We have discovered happiness" -- say the Last Men, and they blink.

They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. Onestill loves one's neighbor and rubs against him; for one needs warmth.

Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is afool who still stumbles over stones or men!

A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poisonat the end for a pleasant death.

One still works, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime shouldhurt one.

One no longer becomes poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wantsto rule? Who still wants to obey? Both are too burdensome.

No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wants the same; everyone is the same:he who feels differently goes voluntarily into the madhouse.

"Formerly all the world was insane," -- say the subtlest of them, and they blink.

They are clever and know all that has happened: so there is no end to theirderision. People still quarrel, but are soon reconciled -- otherwise it upsets theirstomachs.

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Marcuse (1964) has described a similar man, a one-dimensional man. He said A

comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced

industrial civilization, a token of technical progress. (Marcuse, 1964, p1). He stated:

advanced industrial society created false needs, which integrates individuals into the

existing system of production and consumption via mass media, advertising, industrial

management, and contemporary modes of thought (Kellner, 1991, p xii). We are

slave to our masters because of our desire for ever more material objects. This one-

dimensional thinking he said is the uncritical and conformist acceptance of existing

norms of structure and behaviour. He suggests Westerners, need to reassert their

individuality against technologies that oppress man and nature, and actively oppose

the waste, destruction and exploitation that occurs within advanced industrial society.

(Marcuse, 1960).

Melvin Goodall It Says Here(2010) Photographic print

They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the

night, but they have a regard for health.

"We have discovered happiness," -- say the Last Men, and they blink.(Nietzsche 1891)

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1. NO MAN IS AN ISLAND

Someone points at someone else, with a growing sense of recognition. The stranger is

mortified and transfixed, pinned to the spot. They are released as doubt creeps in and

the hand is lowered. They escape. They are caught again, and the action spreads

through the group. Their simple lives become increasingly complex as they make

relationships and give names. They discover that they know each other well. They

explore and uncover the interconnections and interrelations as their lives interweave

(Island2010).

Flock is an unstable, nebulous object. It is seen from a distance drifting around a

space or up close invading a room and threatening to envelop spectators. They move

as a mass with collective behaviour, governed by a strict program. This behavior

holds them together - like molecules, a herd of animals, a flock of birds, a swarm of

bees. The mass sweeps through a room or garden, washes over chairs and tables,

adheres to furniture or bounces around an interior. This collective entity interacting

with the space, created by their adherence to copy each other and a set of common

instructions (Flock2005).

The 'objects' were temporary, momentary formations, collective entities appearing

around the grounds at different times. The structures were interwoven within the

environment, the spectators included. The performers lurked in the bushes, hid and

stared back at the spectators, or ran for cover, also forming fluctuating masses of

density and instability out in the open. The group, like a startled herd of animals, ran

off into the trees, in response to the spectators behaviour or some internal dynamic,

or would scatter in all directions, like a firework. (Pieces of People 2003).

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Gary Stevens, Island(2010)

In these three performances, Island(2010), Flock(2005) and Pieces of People (2003)

the artist Gary Stevens choreographs a flowing rhythm of actions to represent human

interaction and behaviour. He slowly develops works through long practice periods,

the complex structure, often including a text, grows out of the process and becomes

rich and compelling. He describes and defines a fictive space and situation but the

invention confronts us with our reality (artsadmin.co.uk).

In 2002 the Artist Rod Dickinson reminds us of a much starker example of human

behaviour with his re-enactment of Stanley Milgrams Obedience Experiments.

Milgram began these experiments in 1961 after Eichmann defended his war crimes

saying he was simply following orders when he condemned millions of Jews to death2.

2Milgram developed an intimidating imitation shock generator for participants to shock

unseen role-playing students if they got answers to questions wrong. The participants weretold to continue by the experimenter even if they were worried about the effects of theshocks. 65% of participants despite becoming upset gave potentially lethal shocks to thestudents (Milgram 1974).

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After the experiments Milgram said:

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particularhostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process.

Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently

clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible withfundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have theresources needed to resist authority (Milgram, 1974, p6).

This re-enactment prompts a reassessment of other classic psychology experiments:

Aschs Conformity Experiments3; Festtingers Cognitive Dissonance Experiments4; and

Zimbardos Stanford Prison Experiment5, which he had to stop early after 6 days, he

said that only a few people had resisted the situational temptations to yield to power

and dominance whilst maintaining any morality and decency (Zimbardo 2007).

Milgram (1974) sums up the era saying that the major lesson learned was it is the

situation a man is in that determines how he will act, not the kind of person he is.

In thinking about mans situation one needs to consider the whole effect of the society

within which he lives. Goffman (1959) stated that societies produce the kinds of

individuals they need and in turn, individuals become capable of making the society

that suits them. Giddens (1984) in his theory of structuration says that all human

action is performed within the context of a pre-existing social structure, which is

governed by a set of norms or laws. Therefore all human action is at least partly

predetermined based on the contextual rules under which it occurs. But the structure

3We learn that a third of the time participants will conform to fit in with a group and give the

wrong answer even though they know or think its wrong. However he also discovered that if

the group is small or one other person gives the right answer, there is less conformity (Crisp,R.J. & Turner, R.N. (2010)4We learn that to reduce dissonance (holding conflicting ideas simultaneously), we will

change our opinions to fit in with a situation or group, adjusting our own values and beliefsabout things to align with our own actions or those of others (Crisp, R.J. & Turner, R.N.(2010).5Zimbardo (2007) demonstrates the powerful role that situation plays in human behaviour.

With a group of students role-playing guards and prisoners. He found that the guards becamedomineering and abusive and the prisoners became passive and depressed. In fact he saidthat he couldnt believe that he had allowed the experiments to go on for so long an evil ofinaction (Zimbardo, 2007 p4).

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or rules are not permanent and external, but sustained and modified by human

action. Bourdieu develops this theory with the concepts of Habitus6, Capital7 and

Social fields8.

Joanne Finkelstein says in The Art of Self Invention:

Society rests on assumptions of trust and reciprocity. We must believe thatthe trains will run on time, that money will hold its value, that people are

not murderous and that traffic rules will be obeyed. At the same time we

know that these principles are constantly violated. We live withcontradiction and become alert to the existence of paradox. While we

enjoy the orderliness of the surface life, we know there are irruptivetensions beneath the thin surface membrane, ready to flood out the

situation (Goffman, 1963). To participate in society we cultivate a public

persona much of the training for this dual and divided mentality isdelivered through popular culture (Finkelstein, 2007 p2).

She says that in order to be successful we have to act in certain ways, which shapes

our character. She then questions whether this means we are over-socialised and

made into artefacts beyond our control (Finkelstein, 2007).

Some ideas of control from past thinkers still seem relevant today. Louis Althusser, in

his essay Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus (1970) states that although within

capitalist societies, the individual is regarded as a subject endowed with being a self-

conscious responsible agent, whose actions can be explained by his or her beliefs and

thoughts. This is not a given but is acquired within the structure of established social

practices, which impose on the individual. He says our preferences, values and desires

6Habitus is the set of learned dispositions and taste for social actions that we learn

subconsciously from those around us. It is shared by those of similar class but varies acrossdifferent social groups. It is an unconscious skill that gives us a sense of how to act in specificsituations (Bourdieu, 1977).7Capital is accumulated labour and includes all material and goods. Bourdieu distinguishes

between economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital. Economic capital is the ownership ofsomething that can be sold. Cultural capital is the product of intellectual ability. Social capitalconsists of social relations. Symbolic capital is the recognition of other forms of capital, whichcan give a person prestige (Bourdieu, 1986).8Social Fields are structured social spaces around disciplines such as the arts, politics,

education, science and economy, where people network through social relations. Fields arerelatively autonomous from the wider social space (Grenfell, M 2008).

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are inculcated in us by ideological institutions called Ideological State Apparatus,

which include the family, the media, religious organizations, government and the

education system. He also highlights Repressive State Apparatus, consisting of the

police, courts, prisons, and the army. When individuals or groups pose a threat to the

dominant order the state invokes the systems of law and courts to govern individual

and collective behaviour. As threats to the dominant order mount, the state turns to

increasingly physical and severe measures: incarceration, police force and ultimately

military intervention are used in response (Althusser 1970). However Gilles Deleuze

(1995) in Capitalism: A very special delirium, argues that ideology has no importance.

He says it is the organisation of power that matters. Felix Guattari in the same essay

explains this, he says in traditional politics there are big ideological debates in

parliament, with questions of organization reserved for special commissions. These

questions appear secondary however these problems of organization are the real

problems, never specified or rationalised, only projected afterwards in ideological

terms (Deleuze, G. Guattari, F. 1995)

Deleuze (1990) in his essay Society of Controlgives us a detailed analysis of how

control in societies has changed under different governing regimes. He summarises

Foucaults location of the disciplinary societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth

Centuries. The disciplinary societies initiated the organisation of vast spaces of

enclosure. A person passed from one enclosed environment to another, each with its

own rules, starting with the family, then school, barracks, the factory, occasionally

the hospital and maybe even prison. These environments of enclosure he said aimed

to concentrate, distribute in space, order in time and organise production. These

societies succeeded the societies of sovereignty which aimed to tax and to rule on

death rather than life. This transition took place over time and in turn, Deleuze says,

the disciplinary society is now transforming into a society of control.

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We are in crisis regarding the institutes of enclosure. The authorities continually

announce reforms such as to schools, industries and hospitals. He says these

institutions are finished, they are gradually being taken over by societies of control.

He tells us, Burroughs calls control the new monster and Foucault sees it as our

future. It is a free-floating control with pharmaceutical productions, molecular

engineering and genetic manipulations as part of it. The corporation has replaced

the factory, with its salary according to ability and its encouragement of competition

and rivalry. Perpetual training replaces the school, which will deliver the school to

the corporation. One is never finished with anything. He gives the metaphor of

Kafkas The Trial; Kafka had already placed himself between the two types of social

formation. In disciplinary societies the apparent acquittal and in societies of control

the limitless postponements. He further explains that Individuals have become

dividuals, and masses have become samples, data, markets, or banks. In

monetary terms we have moved from minted money that has gold as a standard to

floating rates of exchange.

He describes the technological evolution with the computer being used by the society

of control, with its risks of failure, hacking and viruses. He says that capitalism has

followed in the same direction, it is no longer involved in production, this is relegated

to the third world. It wants to sell services and buy stocks and shares. The family, the

school, the army are coded figures, deformable and transformable of a corporation

that only has stockholders. Fixing exchange rates rather than decreasing costs or

streamlining products controls markets. He says corruption has gained a new power -

the markets are the instruments of social control and form impudent masters.

Man is no longer man enclosed, but man in debt..Capitalism has retainedas a constant the extreme poverty of three-quarters of humanity, too poor

for debt, too numerous for confinement: control will not only have to deal

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with erosions of frontiers but with the explosions within shanty towns orghettos (Deleuze, G. 1990, p1)

2. CAPITALIST REALISM

Mark Fisher (2009) in his book Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative?paints a

dystopic picture of capitalism and our current cultural malaise. He explores the

consequences of the belief that there is no alternative to capitalism. From The

Communist Manifesto he quotes:

[Capital] has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, ofchivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of

egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value,and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up

that single, unconscionable freedom Free Trade. In one word, forexploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted

naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. (Marx in Fisher 2009, p4)

This turn from belief to aesthetics, and from engagement to spectatorship is held to

be one of the virtues of capitalist realism (Fisher 2009). In claiming to have delivered

us from the mistaken ideologies of the past, capitalist realism presents itself as a

shield protecting us from the perils posed by belief itself. The attitude of ironic

distance in postmodern capitalism is supposed to immunize us against the seductions

of fanaticism. We are supposed to lower our expectations as a small price to pay for

being protected from terror and totalitarianism. Badiou says:

a brutal state of affairs, profoundly inegalitarian where all existence isevaluated in terms of money alone is presented to us as ideal. To justify

their conservatism, the partisans of the established order cannot really callit ideal or wonderful. So instead, they have decided to say that all the rest

is horrible. Sure, they say, we may not live in a condition of perfect

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Goodness. But were lucky that we dont live in a condition of Evil. Ourdemocracy is not perfect. But its better than the bloody dictatorships.

Capitalism is unjust. But its not criminal like Stalinism. We let millions ofAfricans die of AIDS, but we dont make racist nationalist declarations like

Milosevic. We kill Iraqis with our airplanes, but we dont cut their throatswith machetes like they do in Rwanda, etc (Badiou in Fisher 2009, p5).

Deleuze and Guattari describe Capital as a motley painting of everything that ever

was; a strange hybrid of the ultra-modern and the archaic (Fisher 2009, p6). Fisher

says our current malaise the feeling that there is nothing new, is not new. After the

collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 capitalism seemed to completely dominate the

global space, which led Francis Fukuyama (1992) to controversially claim The end of

History, finding in liberal democracy the final form of government and the end of

mans ideological struggle. Nietzsche predicted this over saturation of an age with

history and that it would lead to a dangerous mood of irony in regard to itself

leading to cynicism and detached spectatorialism (Nietzsche 1997, p83). This is

Nietzsches Last Man, who has seen everything but is tired of life, takes no risks and

only seeks comfort and security (Nietzsche 1891). Fredric Jameson (1991) claimed

that postmodernism was the cultural logic of late capitalism. He argues that the

failure of the future is constitutive of a postmodern cultural scene. Fisher states we

are impotent in the face of a neoliberal ideological program, which seeks to

subordinate all of culture to the imperatives of business. However we are not

passively duped, there is an interpassive corporate culture, which solicits our

involvement and encourages us to join in. He tells us how in education, lecturers and

teachers have been locked into managerial self-surveillance, and students persuaded

into the role of consumers. He suggests that the widespread mental health epidemic

is a symptom of our times and critisises the adhoc drug treatment regimes pushed

by the pharmaceutical companies in the name of science, as in all capitalist

organizations their concern is profits, not health. Ben Goldacre (2011) on his blog Bad

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Science exposes the inconsistent practices of science.

Fisher (2011) on his current blog talks about the recent compromising of the

neoliberal program but also the intensification of capitalist Realism, with austerity

measures crippling the masses to support the capitalist system. He talks of the

growing unrest in the Middle East as an opposition to capitalism and liberal democracy

and says that History has started again. Even Fukuyama (2002) has now posed the

question in relation to the rise in Middle Eastern fundamentalism, Has history started

again?

Fisher joins the growing number of thinkers, including Zizek (2009) and Badiou

(2010) calling for a rethinking of the grand narratives of modernism, albeit with a new

understanding of the failures of the past. Fisher suggests we need to consider

questions like what a post-capitalism might be, and how we can get there.

The painter Kaye Donachie considers failed utopian dreams using found footage of

rebellious and revolutionary groups to create narratives that investigate group

dynamics and power structures. Her series Enlightenmentcurated in the showAt the

beginning was a scandalat the Lenbachhaus Museum in Munichbridged ideas of how

the museum can show its historically important but as Ranciere would say sleeping

works and also broaden ideas of how the museum might today be perceived, utilized

and evaluated. These works showed spaces that reveal hidden or coercive power

structures. She explored the spaces and relationships of the Blue Riderartists and the

Lenbachhaus Museum and suggests a form of patriarchal freemasonry behind these

groups. In one painting Donachie depicts Kandinsky and Klee in a Masonic double

handshake. Donachie presents Freemasonry as an elitist discourse, ghosting that of

modernism, which reminds us that while art is regarded as an enlightened occupation,

its most celebrated practitioners often rise to prominence through influential networks

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and connections (Suchin, 2002).

Kaye Donachie (2002) Enlightenment installation of six small canvasses.

Fisher claims the Left will only succeed if it can reclaim modernity from a neoliberal

Right that has lost control of it. This entails understanding how the current possibilites

for agency are controlled by the machinery of Deleuze and Foucaults Control Society,

including cyberspace, the media landscape, psychic pathologies and pharmacology.

He also says that neoliberalisms dominance cannot satisfy the desires that it has

captured. He suggests that we need a genuinely new Left shaped by those desires

and suggests that the green movement is a good starting point or way out as

capitalism will continue to rapidly use up the worlds diminishing resources:

Nothing contradicts capitalisms constitutive imperative towards growth

more than the concept of rationing goods and recourses. Yet it is becominguncomfortably clear that consumer self-regulation and the market will notby themselves avert environmental catastrophe (Fisher 2009, p80)

He also claims there is a libidinal as well as practical case to be made for this new

restraint. He likens our current situation to a generation of parents who have allowed

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their children to do and have what they want without strict boundaries. The children

become more and more demanding and whiney, showing that unlimited licence leads

to misery and disaffection (Fisher 2009, p80).

The Artist Rod Dickinson explores ideas of control and mediation and focuses on the

way our behaviour is moderated by feedback systems. Using detailed research he has

re-enacted events that represent various mechanisms of social control

(roddickinson.net).

Rod Dickenson in collaboration with Steve Rushton(2010) Closed Circuit (Who, What,

Where, When, Why and How # 2).

Closed Circuit interrogates the historical form of the presidential speech and

government press briefing. Two actors deliver a simulated press briefing. The script is

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composed of fragments of press statements and speeches delivered since the Cold

War. The script focuses on how similar declarations have been used by different

governments with different ideologies to declare and maintain states of crisis and

emergency. The press briefing is linked to the feedback circuitry of Television. The

press statement produced for TV thus works as a carefully constructed feedback

mechanism, disseminated by TV, which then shapes political and social reality.

Dickinson says The visual and theatrical syntax of the political briefing alongside the

repetition of rhetoric reproduces the logic that governs public life and media in

general (roddickinson.net).

Adam Dix is another artist who confronts and explores control in our society. He is

particularly interested in behaviours of mass compliance and the contradictions of our

relationship with technology, within this he looks at the impact of telecommunications

on our society. He examines past futuristic predictions of the 21st century and dreams

of a technological utopia, mixed with our current technological aspirations. He says:

It is this embodiment of a contradiction that presents itself within our

understanding of todays communication technology,. the conflictbetween the unification and physical detachment of a persons

engagement with it. The paradox of a need to communicate whileremaining physically isolated by the very object of connectivity has led my

investigation into describing behavioural responses with regard to

communication, how we relate or comprehend technology on a humanisticlevel. In doing so I have found other areas that are representative of

galvanising people into a group response, that project a sense of ritual,coveting, sect and in extremes, fanaticism. (adamdix.com)

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Adam Dix, Satellite State (2009)

Foucault (1984) re-presents us with Kants (1784) essay What is Enlightenment?He

suggests that to be enlightened we need a way out of immaturity which he states is

a certain state of our will which makes us accept someone else's authority to lead us

in areas where the use of reason is called for. Kant gives three examples: when a

book takes the place of our understanding, when a spiritual director takes the place of

our conscience, when a doctor decides for us what our diet is to be. Foucault (1984)

re evaluated this question and suggests that the way out is to subject the present to

critique, a possible way out of the present.

In critiquing the present I think we should consider George Agambens essay What is

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the Contemporary? (2009). He has made a reflection on contemporariness, or the

singular relation one may have to one's own time. He states that those who are truly

contemporary, who truly belong to their time, are those who neither perfectly coincide

with it nor adjust themselves to its demands. He explains that this dys-chrony does

not mean the contemporary is a person who lives in another time, a nostalgic.

Contemporariness is, then, a singular relationship with one's own time,which adheres to it and, at the same time keeps a distance from it. More

precisely, it is that relationship with time that adheres to it through adisjunction and an anachronism. Those who coincide too well with the

epoch....are not contemporaries, precisely because they do not manage tosee it; they are not able to firmly hold their gaze on it (Agamben, 2009,

p41).

3. THE AESTHETIC REVOLUTION AND ITS OUTCOMES

Ranciere (2002) discusses complex ideas in his essay The Aesthetic Revolution and its

Outcomes, which explain in some way, how art can contribute to the what is the

alternative discourse. Schiller stated that Man is only completely human when he

plays and he assured us this paradox is capable of bearing the whole edifice of the

art of the beautiful and of the still more difficult art of living (Schiller in Ranciere

2002, p133). Ranciere suggests we reformulate this to: there exists a specific

sensory experience the aesthetic that holds the promise of both a new world of

Art and a new life for individuals and the community (Ranciere 2002, p133). Ranciere

says this is the question of the politics of aesthetics or the aesthetic regime of art, it

grounds the autonomy of art to the hope of changing life.

To understand the politics of aesthetics he says we need to understand the link

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between autonomy and heteronomy. Firstly the autonomy set up by art is by a mode

of experience, not the work of art. Secondly, for the subject of the aesthetic

experience there is a dismissal of autonomy, hence one of heterogeneity. Thirdly the

object of the experience is aesthetic in as much as it is not only art. He calls this the

original scene of aesthetics (Ranciere 2002, p135).

He describes the contradiction in aesthetics, that art is art to the extent that it is

something else than art. He says there is interplay of three major possibilities. Art

can become life. Life can become art. Art and life can exchange their properties.

Art becoming life Constituting the new collective world: He says the aesthetic self-

education of humanity will frame a new collective ethos (Ranciere 2002, p137). The

politics of aesthetics can succeed where the aesthetics of politics failed. Ultimately he

says, aestheticisation is the alternative to politics. Hegel, Holderlin and Schelling first

proposed this as the Oldest System- Programme of German Idealism. Politics

vanishes in the dead mechanisms of the state in relationship to the living power of

thought of the community. The task of poetry (aesthetic education) is to make ideas

sensible by turning them into images, creating an equivalent of ancient mythology.

They said mythology must become philosophy to make common people reasonable

and philosophy must become mythology to make philosophers sensible (Ranciere

2002, p138). Ranciere goes on to say art is a matter of living in a shared world, but

this art has a temporality as a new life needs a new art.

Life becoming art Framing the life of art: Here Ranciere talks of the museum and

how this institution renders visible the life of art by historicizing it, which gives it a

new life framing it within history. They exhibit a time-space of art as so many

moments of the incarnation of thought (Ranciere 2002, p141). The museum also

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precipitated the end of art, which framed new visibilities of art which led to new art

practices of art.

He gives Hegels example of a Greek statue, which he says is art because it figures

the distance between that collective life and the way it can express itself (Ranciere

2002, p141). He says the Greek statue is the work of an artist who is expressing an

idea that he is both aware of and unaware of at the same time. What matters most is

the limit of the artist, of his idea and his people, thats what makes the art successful.

Art is living as long as it expresses an idea unclear to itself. It lives as long as its

something else than art - a way of life and a belief. He says when art is no more than

art it vanishes. When the content of thought shows itself and when nothing resists it,

this success means the end of art. When the artist does what he wants it becomes

mere trademark. This idea of the end of art, is, that when art ceases to be non-art it

is no longer art either. He describes the history of aesthetics as a clash of: a new life

needs a new art; the new life does not need art (Ranciere 2002, p142).

Art and life exchanging properties: The temporality of art also leads to the boundaries

of art being permeable. Past works may fall asleep and cease to be artworks or they

can take on a new life in a new framing. In the same way common objects can cross

over the boundaries of art. Ranciere warns us that the danger is that everything

becomes artistic, the border becomes blurred, where nothing escapes art, such as

when art exhibitions duplicate commercial videos and objects of consumption,

assuming they are critiquing commodification. He suggests that we should break

away from this area of aetheticised life and draw a new border that shouldnt be

crossed.

He concludes: there is a metapolitics of aesthetics which frames the possibilities of

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art. Aesthetic art promises a political accomplishment that it cannot satisfy, and

thrives on that ambiguity (Ranciere 2002, p151).

Art theorist and critic Alfredo Cramerotti (2009) in his book Aesthetic Journalism:

How to inform without informing, traces the shift in the production of truth from the

domain of the news media to that of art and aestheticism. He says the mass media

has increasingly aestheticised the distribution and publication of information as

Commercial global pressure has led to news being packaged in entertaining formats,

with the separation between information and opinion becoming blurred. At the same

time the Art world is increasingly using investigative work methods to produce

material and knowledge, which they reprocess using aesthetic strategies, often shown

in journalistic formats. He says thus shifting the production of truth from the domain

of the news media to that of Art. Since the 60s Art has gone through a structural

change alongside the sciences, cross-referencing to become increasingly

interdisciplinary. Art has also come to represent knowledge production that resides

outside of established expert domains (Cramerotti 2009).

The artist Uriel Orlow, questions the great narratives of history, and looks for

forgotten histories, he explores the spatial and pictoral conditions of history and

memory, focusing on blind spots of representation and forms of haunting

(urielorlow.net).

The Short and the Long of it (v 1.0) (2010) takes as a starting point thefailed passage of fourteen international cargo ships through the Suez Canal

on 5 June 1967. Caught in the outbreak of the Six-Day War between Israeland Egypt, Jordan and Syria, the ships were only able to leave the canal in

1975 when it re-opened. While stranded, the political allegiances of themulti-national crews were dissolved and gave way to a form of communal

survival and the establishment of a social system. This involved theorganisation of their own olympic games, amongst other activities. Playing

with different modes of documentary and narrative, [the work]focuses on

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this event hidden in the shadow of official histories.(gasworks.org.uk)

Orlow (2010) likens these forgotten histories to heterotopias, which is a space inside

but outside our society, such as hospitals, prisons, nursing homes and ships. They

have their own systems separate from the main. Orlow makes his Art as heterotopia,

a space where things can be brought together to create a new space. He suggests we

think of history as events in space rather than in a linear time. This gives us the

ability to return somewhere and link past and present. He describes the Aesthetic

Revolution as a blurring of facts and fiction, which destabilises mechanisms of truth,

but engages with politics of truth. He says documentary must be fictionalised, the

playing of sources, to suggest new possibilities. He talks about the journalist and the

storyteller and says dont work on a blurred line between them but enter the two

camps. He suggests fiction might be a more powerful way to display fact. He also

reminds us that image is only a snapshot and can never be the whole picture. Sally

OReilly (p9) says Creativity and information are no longer distinct. We must think

of how to inform with a light touch, how to yield pleasure while maintaining a political

grasp, how to know and to dream at one and the same time'. Cramerotti suggests we

'employ fiction as a subversive but meaningful and effective agent of reality'

(Cramerotti 2009 p22). He also highlightsthat art is not about delivering information,

it is about questioning that information' (Cramerotti 2009 p29). Finkelstein says that

art produces a fantasy world that far exceeds reality while also making reality easier

to see (Finkelstein 2007 p15).

Walter Benjamin (1936) also talks about the journalist and the storyteller, he

bemoans the demise of the storyteller, which has occurred in tandem with the rise of

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the novel and the journalist. With this demise he says we have lost the ability to

exchange experiences (Benjamin 1936, p1), the value of experience has fallen, and

the consequence is no councel for others or ourselves. The storyteller tells his story

from experience and makes it the experience of the listener. Villemessant, the

founder of Le Figaro, characterized the nature of information which Benjamin says has

even put the novel in crisis. To my readers, he used to say, an attic fire in the Latin

Quarter is more important than a revolution in Madrid (Villemessant in Benjamin

1936, p4).

Benjamin says half the art of story telling is to keep the story free of explanation as

one re-tells it. Information only lives in the moment its new, it has to explain itself to

that moment, and is therefore shot through with explanation. The story however,

does not expend itself and lives on. He says Boredom is the dream bird that hatches

the egg of experience but because of our busy lives, especially in the city, the gift of

listening is lost and the community of listeners disappears (Benjamin 1936, p5).

CONCLUSION

It seems there is no question that we live in a society of pervasive control, control

that goes far beyond the realms of most individuals knowledge. This control is

Burroughs multi-layered monster, affected by Social structure and conventions,

human psychology, Ideologies, Power structures and global Capitalism.

I am persuaded that there is an alternative to an ever-increasing society of control:

Fisher suggests a new left with green credentials. Zizek suggests we try communism

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again with a new understanding of what it could be. Benjamin suggests we hold on to

the art of storytelling with the authentic experience and counsel it brings with it.

Kant said educate yourself. Foucault said critique the present. Ranciere describes

how the play of art can be an ambiguity that encourages a new life. Ford (2008)

suggests we poke our heads out the fractures of the system and take a look. Strike

through the gaps and create autopoesis.Frederic Jameson suggests:

It would be best, perhaps, to think of an alternate world - better to say thealternate world, our alternate world - as one contiguous with ours but

without any connections or access to it. Then, from time to time, like adiseased eyeball in which disturbing flashes of light are perceived or like

those baroque sunbursts in which rays from another world suddenly break

into this one, we are reminded that Utopia exists and that other systems,other spaces, are still possible (Jameson 2009, p612).

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