296 IATE PR ! TEIN RO N PP ATIO

LS N REA

MI IMAGI today? EIN And what would we want THE T art to be in the more egalitarian, non- ILS Y M hierarchical societies we dream of? IND This I know: an anarchist aesthetic should C An art exhibit, albeit a never be boxed in by a cardboard imagination.

small one, is always housed in the United bathroom of a coffeehouse in my town. A recent Pointing Beyond the Present display featured cardboard and paper haphazardly V glued together, and adorned with the stenciled or The name of one radical puppetry collective, Art and ictorian hand-lettered words of classical anarchists such as Revolution, aptly captures the dilemma faced by Mikhail Bakunin and . The artist’s contemporary anarchist artists. It simultaneously W

statement proclaimed, “I am not an artist.” The affirms that art can be political and that revolution orkers, show offered only “cheap art,” with pieces priced at should include beauty. Yet it also underscores the a few dollars. Undoubtedly the materials came from fine line between art as social critique and art as V recycling bins or trash cans, and perhaps this artist- propaganda tool. Moreover, it obscures the question ictorian who-is-not-an-artist choose to look the quotes up in of an anarchist aesthetic outside various acts of “low-tech” zines. rebellion. It is perhaps no coincidence at all, then, Str There is something heartwarming about that Art and Revolution’s logo design echoes the oft- oll

finding anarchist slogans in the most unexpected of quoted Bertolt Brecht contention that “art is not a (public places. So much of the time, the principles that we mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which anarchists hold dear are contradicted at every turn, to shape it”—with “ART,” in this collective’s case, never discussed, or just plain invisible. And thus literally depicted as the hammerhead. inter

seeing some antiquated anarchist writings scribbled Certainly, an art that self-reflectively vention), on makeshift canvases in a public place, even a rest- engages with—and thus illuminates—today’s many room, raised a smile of recognition. crushing injustices is more necessary than ever. An

But only for a moment—then despair set in. art that also manages to engender beauty against T r Why is anarchist art so often a parody of itself, pre- the ugliness of the current social order is one of the oy , dictable and uninteresting? Sure, everyone is capable few ways to point beyond the present, toward some- NY ,

of doing art, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is thing that approximates a joyful existence for all. 2005. an artist. And yet it is generally perceived as wrong But as capitalism intensifies its hold on in anarchist circles that some people are or want to social organization, not to mention our imagina- Photo: be artists, and others of us aren’t or don’t want to tions, efforts to turn art into an instrument of be. Beyond the issue of who makes works of art, why social change leave it all that much more open to can’t art made by anti-authoritarians be provoca- simply mirroring reality, rather than contesting or Amy

tive, thoughtful, innovative—and even composed of offering alternatives to it. And short of achieving Scar materials that can’t be found in a dumpster? More to even the imperfect horizontal experiments of places the point, why do or should anarchists make art at all like Buenos Aires and Chiapas, much less replac- fone. 299

298 ing statecraft with confederated self-governments, through the firing lines to summits far beyond the form as well as content into the everyday-made- what we share and enjoy together, in the open,

attempts to make art into a community-supported fighting crowds.”1 extraordinary by creative cultural expressions. always subject to use by all, subject only to directly MI public good remain trapped in the private sphere, This is perhaps art’s greatest power, even On the other hand, when we’ve democratic structures, and always the

however collectively we structure our efforts. Artistic when distorted by the present-day social order: the actually expropriated or “freed” spac- vigilant sentry of a better and better LS expression is fettered by the present, from commodi- ability to envision the “not yet existent.” es, we seem to re-create an society. fication to insidious new forms of hierarchy, and aesthetic of deteriora- It’s not that everyone TEIN TEIN hence creativity is as estranged from itself as we are The Temporary and the Trashed tion in those places needs to make art, nor should from each other. already destroyed artists offer an aesthetic of revolt or

LS Such alienation isn’t limited to the aesthet- Since the 1970s, a series of interconnected phenom- by state and capi- a revolting aesthetic—that is, mere ic arena, of course. But precisely because creative ena loosely drawn together by the term “globaliza- tal, racism and fear, negation or else nihilism. That’s “freedom” appears to defy any logic of control—in almost reveling in not what makes art revolutionary.

MI tion” have transformed the world. One of these

“doing-it-yourself” (D-I-Y), one is supposedly craft- changes is the rise of “global cities” as nodes of the rubble. The deg- It’s that everyone needs to routinely ing a culture that seems control, and over time, this has become embodied in radation foisted on the experience critical-utopian art as commons, 2 1. Sadakichi Hartmann, “Art and Revolt,” The to be utterly of, for, and by the designed/built aesthetic environment. In City poor, the marginal, and commons as a critical-utopian art. Blast 1, no. 22 (December 1, 1916): 3; repr., The us—it is especially seduc- of Quartz, Mike Davis wrote of the “fortress effect” the forgotten is gleefully Blast, ed. , intro. Barry tive as a space of resis- picked up as some sort of pirate sensibil- Pateman (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005), 181. behind a free-market maneuver in the aftermath of The Art of Value tance. Our aesthetic tools the 1960s to reoccupy abandoned (read: poor because ity. All too often, capitalism’s trash is the 2. The term “global city” was first coined in Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, should be able to help us abandoned by capital, whites, and so on) downtowns. blueprint for own trashed creations, as if To some degree, whether self-consciously or London, Tokyo (Princeton: Princeton University build new societies just as New megastructure complexes of reflective glass artistic expressions modeled on a better, not, anarchists’ artistic impulses get to the Press, 1991). much as demolish the old, rose up in city centers, hiding elite decision-makers more visually pleasing world might just heart of what makes capitalism so deplor- 3. Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the 3 Future in Los Angeles (London: Verso, 1990), but our renovations will and their “upscale, pseudo-public spaces” inside. make us too comfortable to swashbuckle our able. “Value” is determined by how much 226, 229. likely be forever askew Several decades later, with global capitalism seem- way to revolution. Garbage, along with the one has and can continually exchange as 4. Obviously, many artists use free or discarded when set on an already- ingly triumphant, brazenly transparent architecture shoplifted and the plagiarized, are all romanti- well as accumulate, whether in the form materials because they don’t have the financial damaged foundation. is replacing secretive one-way windows. Just take a cized as somehow existing outside domination of money, property, or especially control resources to buy art supplies, and hence their aesthetic can simply be chalked up to a lack And no matter how shod- peek at the revitalized Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, by anarchist artists who thoroughly inhabit a over others. We anarchists, and billions of means. But also prevalent among anarchist dily constructed, they will Germany. Corporate office-apartment buildings of social structure (as does everyone) where the of non-anarchists, know that value can artists is the notion that trash is valueless from the standpoint of capitalism, and so by utiliz- always be sold out from see-through glass reveal lavish interior designs, and best of peoples’ cultures are tossed aside, stolen, never be measured by piling quantity ing such material, one is creating something under us to the highest are ringed by airy public plazas featuring cheerful or plagiarized for profit and power.4 on top of more quantity; that how we of noncapitalist value. Or at least throwing capitalism’s excess in its face as some sort of bidder. Still, we have to sculptures, artsy ecological waterways, and multi- Whether conceived of as circus or chaos live our lives, and especially how we incriminating evidence. This reduces capitalism be able to nail down some- media installations. (or both), however, these types of civic artworks treat each other and the nonhuman to economics, though, and ignores Karl Marx’s thing of the possibilities are as evanescent as the latest iPod updates; they great insight: that capital is first and foremost Since anarchists today are by and large world, is what matters. a social relation. Whether one uses expensive or ahead. neither city planners nor architects, nor those com- merely frolic on built environments instead of As a political philosophy, Ar t free art supplies, the social organization behind Art at its best, missioned to produce public art, we’ve had to make collectively shaping them. Such artistic strategies aspires to the ongoing and them both remains the same. But of course, even then, should maintain the are ultimately hollow, replicating the feeling of life on the level of economics, waste management is do with temporary festivals of resistance decry- project of balancing individual sub- Revolution a multitrillion dollar industry, utterly dependent dual character of social ing the environment that’s been built to constrain under capitalism, whether one has material plenty jectivity and social freedom—the on recycling and garbage. So whether you take a materialist or social theory perspective, a “cheap critic and social vision- the majority of humanity. Such carnivals against or not. Instead of offering a challenge or a vision, qualitative dimensions of life— art” aesthetic is perfectly compatible with pres- ary. For the role of the capitalism have succeeded in fleetingly reclaiming both our joyful and joyless D-I-Y art ends up parrot- knowing that both are essen- ent-day forms of domination. Today’s junk can critic is to judge, to dis- ing the bipolar “choices” that most people struggle logo. easily become—and has—tomorrow’s boutique everything from facades to landscapes to outdoor tial to the potentiality of the item; society’s rejects (from punks to urban black cern, not simply beauty, art. And in those moments, libertarian leftists have against daily: the lure of the ephemeral, unattain- other. As a practice, anarchism youth) can become—and have—tomorrow’s for- but also truth, and the able spectacle, or utter rejection in the debris of its Cour mula for hipster culture. become impromptu designers of place. The pre- engages in prefigurative poli-

role of the utopian is to ferred artistic medium here is flexibility, with a dab excess. And yet this reopening of social space via tics, from forms of cooperation tesy 5. Contrast this to the project of anarchy qua primitivism, which is to somehow “forget” that strive to implement such of anonymity. A large stick of chalk, a homemade creativity brings with it a sense of inclusiveness, to institutions of direct democ- we are imaginative, qualitative beings marked possible impossibilities. stencil, or strips of cloth are easily concealed, and of democratic places remade and consented to by racy. This is what makes and of by our capacity for dialogue and hence rea- Ar

As Sadakichi Hartmann just as easily used to transform a sidewalk, wall, or all—or at least the potentiality thereof. keeps us human, in the most t

soned actions, and instead “return” to passive and receptacles foraging for our most basic needs, put it in a 1916 Blast fence into a canvas. In these and many other ways, Art as social critic/visionary, when dog- generous sense. And such a project which seems to me exactly what capitalism and article, radical artists gedly and imaginatively placed in the commodified Revolution. statecraft as forms of social organization strive anarchist artists set up the circus tent of a playful will be forever necessary, whether within, against, to reduce us to. This is no digression: when we should “carry the torn urban renewal, bringing glimpses of the pleasure (non)commons of today, just might play its part or beyond capitalism.5 deny our very ability to think symbolically, the flag of beauty and liberty in moving us toward a noncommodified commons: notion of art disappears too, not to mention us as in reworking social spaces together, of integrating One way that anarchists attempt to reclaim humans along with it. 301

300 value is by carving out a cultural realm that allows are among the easiest of targets, primarily because actually destroy quality. And without the qualitative Such recognition is the first step toward

everyone to participate, to be valued for what they they became the poster kids for anticapitalist mobi- dimension, there can be no appreciation of beauty or valuing our world, toward knowing we can self- MI can envision and/or create, and by redistributing lizations. Devising a cheap and collective manner craft, or the self who crafted that beauty. manage the whole of our lives. But it can only come

the possibility of producing works of art through to produce artistic expressions of resistance isn’t This Wal-Martization of resistance art— when our artisanal efforts are part of crafting a LS the use of affordable, accessible, indigenous mate- problematic per se; such creations have allowed cheap, accessible, homogeneous, and everywhere— social beauty. This, in turn, can only be defined in rials. We use what’s at hand, often lend a hand to us to prefigure a better life even as we protest isn’t the only conundrum we face. It is as hard for us, the process of doing-it-ourselves (D-I-O), where we TEIN TEIN whoever wants to make art, and attempt to do this present-day horrors. But when puppets all start “even” as anarchists, as it is for “ordinary” people to don’t necessarily all produce art but we do all sub- in ways that are multicultural and inclusive. In iso- looking alike—whether filling the streets of Seattle resist the hegemonic forces at work: those dominant stantially participate in engaging with, debating,

LS lation from the other realms of life—economics and or Hong Kong; when they are mass-produced from types of organization and ways of thinking that judging, and determining the place(s) of creative politics, the social and the personal—and embed- the same materials, in the same manner; when become naturalized, and hence almost unquestioned expression.7 The qualitative would be that realm of ded within structures of domination and forms of they are something eco-entrepreneurs can fund to in a given time period. Perhaps the only bulwark social criticism and pleasure that comes in the full MI

oppression, however, the cultural effort to revalue both create the appearance of grassroots protest against internalizing and thereby reproducing the recognition of free selves within a free society. value frequently reproduces the social system we and turn radical notions into the most liberal of current hegemonies we rebel against is our ability oppose. demands6—then we are developing our own factory to simultaneously think critically and act imagina- Working at Cross-purposes Examples abound here, sad to say. Puppets forms of creativity. Those we mean to empower—the tively. Indeed, this is where anarchism as a political everyone-as-artist—become near- philosophy excels: in its ongoing suspicion of all The creative act—the arduous task of seeing some- - . , assembly-line workers. So even phenomena as possible forms of domination, and thing other than the space of capitalism, statism, oss Italy gath when the production is fun or its concurrent belief in nonhierarchical social rela- fatally the gender binary, racism, and other rooms without chisel) a acr Society

a done in an edgy warehouse space, tions and organization. This ethical impulse—to live

at a view—is the hope we can offer to the world. Such om was iggiu,

fr the profound recognition (of self every day as a social critic and social visionary—cer- V aesthetic expressions must also aim to denaturalize and Elia of and society) that comes from the tainly infuses anarchist rhetoric. It also underscores

e, the present, though. And this dual “gesturing at vers

Historical creative act is lost. Art and the all those values that anarchists generally share: and beyond” will only be possible if we continually tragically and car e squar r artists become unthinking, crank- mutual aid, solidarity, voluntary association, and so interrogate this historical moment, and ask whether ed native r a

a ing out copycat rip-offs of the lat- on. But for even the most diligent among us, acting our artworks are working against the grain within pistol stone

a est political art trend. on these ethics is much trickier than holding them that context. occur The distribution and in our hearts or jotting them down in a mission ed For the pull of the culture industry is Power/Bar calipers, fir consumption of such works can statement. strong. No matter how subversive and cutting-edge death Grieving as . become equally debased. At a con- A British anarchist historian recently asked we might remain in our creative works, global owd (1869–1903), cr vergence in Windsor, Canada, to me for a tour of Hope Cemetery in Barre, Vermont. capitalism is always ready to recuperate our every Marjorie ti (such challenge free trade agreements In Barre’s heyday, at the turn of the twentieth cen- the innovation. Our rebellious ad-busting has become of Cor accidental

of several years ago, a prominent tury, socialists and anarchists worked together in indistinguishable from advertisements employing other-in-law tools his br tesy puppetista angrily insisted that the granite industry, living and dying (often and too Elia rebellion-as-sales-pitch. For instance, just after ving

his thousands of anti-capitalists young) as those who made tombstones. These Italian Seattle 1999, an ad featured protesters running in cour vers, member car should pause their direct actions immigrants built an anarchist library and later a their Nike sneakers from tear gas and police, with and 1904. A car , to watch her collective’s street labor hall, established a food co-op and art school, the familiar “just do it” tagline. Yet it was unclear Photo VT

rati. theater. “We’re here to entertain published newspapers such as Cronaca Sovversiva, whether this image was the brainchild of Nike or other e, finest includes r br you, and you need to stop and be and hosted speakers like Big Bill Haywood, and rab- Ser activists—and either way, it didn’t matter. It sold a Bar e's his entertained!” ble-roused. Yet, more than anything, they sculpted lifestyle; it mocked a movement. r peace). , y which by It certainly isn’t enough their communal aesthetics into the hard grey stones Creative work and/or processes of collec- of Bar

Giacinto to make sure that more and more dotting the cemetery, a lasting commons to the good

of tive art-making without an explicit politics that ved

base, people are cultural producers (or works of these radicals. “Look at the artisanal qual- integrally and forever vigilantly incorporates criti- car Cemeter One symbol

the consumers of free art)—the anar- ity of each and every gravestone,” to paraphrase cal thinking into its practice will almost necessarily, leader was (a

ve chist version of D-I-Y quantity my visitor. “This exemplifies the difference between especially under the current conditions, become part Hope 1892.

car piled on top of more D-I-Y quan- the appeal of Marxism and anarchism back then. of the problem. Some of this will be clear, as when in tity, somehow adding up to a new Factory workers could never see themselves in their socialist

e our freely traded handmade patches become the branch r society. Indeed, “the people” mak- work, but these stone carvers could recognize them- inspiration for prefabricated “made-in-China” cloth- monument the helped Bar ing art might mean that there selves in their designs; they could see their own palm ing in pricey boutiques. The less-obvious manifesta- to monument, for His

a is no art at all, for quantity can potentiality.”

ti tions are more troubling: when the D-I-Y sensibility mont er Cor came ering shot. V and 303

302 itself, so key to anarchist artistic creations, slowly taries without a narrative, or screen prints that alienation from (only) the realm of production to begin with), but more crucially is unfeeling in light but surely ingratiates itself into multiple main- reduce social conflict to “us” versus “them.” that of consumption, culminating most famously in of the millions who are forced to use garbage as MI stream commodities, from Home Depot’s “You Can The artist-as-social-visionary has to peer the Situationist International’s critique of everyday architectural (and often edible) material. Or else to

Do It” to the new Oreo kits that allow the consumer hard to separate potentiality from peril right now. life and assertion of “all power to the imagination.” supposedly avoid high tech—conveniently forgetting LS to “make” their own, with cookie tops and cream As autonomist Marxist, Harry Cleaver commented Life had become a spectacle, with us as its passive that nearly all commodities involve communications separated. in 1992 in relation to anarcho-communist Peter spectators.11 Today, this estrangement has gone one technologies in their design, production, distribu- TEIN 6. Some Vermont puppeteers, who certainly The flow, of Kropotkin’s method, “He had to seek out and iden- step further in a globalizing cyber-society, where tion, and/or disposal. The task for artists here is to needed the money for their many unpaid proj- course, doesn’t simply go tify, at every level, from the local workshop and people eagerly join the spectacle as active actors in separate the wheat from the chaff: to critique the ects, were commissioned to produce a puppet show for the 2005 Montreal Climate Control in one direction. As “prod- industry to the global organization of the economy, the vain hope of feeling life again—through such ways in which new types of technologies/production Conference. Yet there were strings attached. ucts” of the dominant cul- signs of the forces of cooperation and mutual aid things as reality television, hot dog-eating contests, help facilitate, versus potentially diminish, point- The eco-capitalist who financed these puppets ture, we also are influ- working at cross-purposes to the capitalist tenden- and pieing prominent individuals—only to par- less excess or new methods of exploitation as well as had his own agenda in mind: make the art look like a self-initiated activist protest, but enced before we ever cut cies to divide all against all.” Then and now, such ticipate more thoroughly in their own removal from time-space compression, alienation, fragmentation, keep the theme in line with his own reformist 13 political point. The artists were, in essence, a stencil or edit a video. cross-purposes are what gesture at “the future in the world. And thus here’s another aim for art: to and of course top-down power. paid to produce and think for their financial Without constant aware- the present,” to again cite Cleaver, but discerning capture the new forms of alienation that appear as Which brings us to the question of maintain- backer, not for themselves and their own politi- ness, we almost unwit- them isn’t easy.8 active engagement, but that ultimately sap the very ing power, or sovereignty: the possession of supreme cal concerns. tingly take up the project life out of us all. authority. Wars, revolutions, and “peacetime” are all 7. As Erik Reuland noted in editing this chap- ter, “Many people would also argue that the of this society of control, Providing the Keys to Closed Doors A third area worthy of artistic scrutiny is essentially waged in the name of seizing this ulti- whole definition of art should be exploded, and with its fragmentation, what geographer David Harvey has called “time- mate power (with anarchists hoping to redistribute many things traditionally considered crafts or trades could be viewed—and invested with the insecurity, and shallow The artist-as-social-critic doesn’t have to search space compression,” pointing to “processes that it horizontally), but the ongoing consolidation of sov- same value—as artistic practices. They’re not infotainment. Social iso- far for subject matter these days, and yet many so revolutionize the objective qualities of space ereignty is where much of the terror is often done. necessarily asserting that everyone can and should draw, write songs, and so on.” Such a lation is mirrored by an people seem to be “pushing against an open door,” and time that we are forced to alter, sometimes in An increasingly uneven balance of power is held in debate is complex, but at the risk of overgener- anarchist art that asserts to borrow from Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s quite radical ways, how we represent the world to place today by nation-states inculcating a particular alizing for my present purposes, the notion that its anonymity, where we ourselves.”12 Under globalization, temporality has blend of fear, despair, paranoia, and hate, and if all art’s definition should encompass much more, formulation in Empire. That is, the social ills and many more people could thus be considered willingly erase our own we’re contesting have long since been superseded become an ever-accelerating, just-in-time, simul- else fails, returning once again to “improved” forms artists, seems to often so water down what we subjectivity, and its tem- by even more horrific phenomena. As Hardt and taneous phenomenon, and spatial barriers have of torture as a last resort. Anarchist art frequently mean by art and artists and makes both unrec- ognizable. Why does this matter? Precisely porariness and flexibility, Negri argue, we’ve been “outflanked by strategies shrunk or even been overcome altogether. Yet anar- just pokes fun at anxieties, depicts its own hatreds because of the concern articulated here about where we willingly give of power.”9 Our countermove, then, must be based chist art often still harkens back to a nostalgic time- and paranoia, or worse, lapses into portraying the the recognition of our selves and each other as profoundly individuated humans, with wonder- up accountability and on imminent critique, working through the inter- space of “before,” clinging to archaic forms and/or ways that states retained control in the past—say, fully differing artistic and nonartistic things connectedness. The con- nal logic of what we’re scrutinizing toward its own content—the pastoral black-and-white woodcut, say. via a monopoly on violence (something that suicide we might choose to excel in, embedded in a temporary state’s eviscer- Here’s an additional artistic aspiration, then: to bombings, 9-11, and other nonstatist acts of vio- profoundly articulated community of our own undoing and alternative potentialities. It must be a ongoing self-determination. ation of human and civil critique of the “real by the possible,” as philosopher interrogate the dizzying “no-time” and displacing lence have shown to be false). Contemporary art 8. Harry Cleaver, “Post-Marxist Anarchism: rights, with its move from Henri Lefebvre asserted in 1958.10 “no-place” of our present virtual reality and real should instead scrutinize and expose present-day Kropotkin, Self-Valorization, and the Crisis of “the rule of law” toward One theme picked up and challenged by virtuality. mechanisms of power: how the mundane as well as Marxism,” 1997 extended essay (available from AK Press), 5, 8 (emphasis added). “the rule of lawlessness,” radical artists over a century ago was fragmen- This dovetails with the dilemmas raised by the lovely—the bus to work, the toothpaste tube, 9. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire. is reflected in an aesthetic tation, an emergent concern in their day. Now, high technologies and excessive consumption/waste. or the nice new neighbor—are made into objects of (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, that exalts in its own out- social atomization is a fact of everyday life, and During the industrial era, artists such as film- anxiety-as-control; how explainable events become 2000), 138. law status. The art of car- more frighteningly, is accepted and even celebrated. maker Charlie Chaplin showed the “little guy” being paranoiac fantasies of hate-as-control (the Muslim, 10. Henri Lefebvre, foreword to Critique de tography allows radicals dragged through the gears of Modern Times, yet in the Jew, or the Mexican “is responsible”); and how la vie quotidienne, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1958), Contemporary artwork that portrays fragmentation 16; cited in Richard Gombin, The Origins of to map out the constant only serves to mimic rather than decry our societal our informational age, the computer now bypasses one’s private spirituality, sexuality, or diet (indeed, Modern Leftism (1975; repr., Baltimore, MD: fear of being watched by, “breaking apart,” precisely because the damage has the cog as emblematic, and the “programmer guy” one’s very personhood) become fair game as physical Insubordinate Editions), 47. in turn, surveilling oth- already been done. So here comes one task for art: is pulled into The Matrix. Moreover, the new forms and psychological abuse in the faceless, nameless, 11. See, for example, Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (1967; repr., Oakland: AK ers. And much of what to depict resistance not as fragmentation per se, for of production made possible by digital technologies hopeless Gitmoization of torture-as-control. Press, 2006); Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution anti-authoritarian artists mere description has lost all power of critique, but to have filled houses with kitsch, dumpsters with This list of aesthetic concerns could stretch of Everyday Life (1967; repr., London: Rebel Press, 2001). For more on the Situationist produce replicates the illustrate how social acquiescence to it has become a food, and big-box stores with clerks. One anarchist out further, but let me wrap up with an area that International along with some downloadable culture of distraction that valued commodity. answer to technological/production shifts has fre- art, from the start, has always tried to capture: texts, see http://www.bopsecrets.org/index. keeps people from acting quently been to use garbage as art material—a remembrance. From bison hunts to biblical stories, shtml. This ties into a related issue: alienation. and thinking for them- Building on Karl Marx’s work, avant-garde artists decades-old artistic choice that has lost any bite from victories in battles or revolutions, from social- 12. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins selves—such as documen- and intellectuals long ago moved the critique of (especially since most commodities are now junk to ist realist to fascist art, artists have attempted to of Cultural Change (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1990), 240.

305

304 memorialize the past as a means to sustain or shape most of us battle, from racism to heterosexism the emergent global order with clear eyes, and envi- ‘remembering,’ and thus establish, through the act

the present. At its best, such creative recollections to anti-Semitism, and sadly on and on. But it is sion and prefigure humane alternatives with even of public participation, each person’s memory.” In MI have attempted to make sense of the past and the through such concerns that, for instance, racism clearer eyes, that we might just win. 1986, they erected a twelve-meter-high lead column

present in order to contemplate a better future— operates in specific ways right now, and can there- in a town square in Hamburg, Germany, and “invit- LS especially in the face of hegemonic representations. fore be illustrated and potentially fought. Today’s Collectively Gesturing Toward Utopia ed passers-by to write their name on its surface.” It Strikingly, however, the current moment is marked form of fragmentation, for example, has turned became a “community board without restriction,” TEIN TEIN by a reversal of aeons of art history: forgetting. many toward fundamentalisms—Islam, Judaism, So how might we begin to clamber out of our boxed- and “mimicked the process of an ideal democracy—a Call it the postmodern condition, or blame it on the or Christianity—as a means to regain community, in existence, precisely in order to “win,” knowing public space open to unrestricted thought...and all-

LS speed of daily life or efforts to escape harsh reali- often at the expense of women, queers, and indeed that there will never be a final victory but sim- encompassing dialogue.” Over seven years, which ties, but history seems to get lost almost before it’s anyone dubbed as the transgressive other. Fear has ply better approximations of fundamentally trans- included the fall of the Berlin wall, the column was been made, and we’re left with a hodgepodge art of an object, and in the contemporary United States slowly lowered into the ground as sections filled up.

MI formed social relations?

immediatism. Such ahistoricism erases the develop- that is frequently the young black male and the One starting point might come from Emma A debate ensued during that time over public space/ mental logic of domination and hence our ability to bearded Middle Eastern man. Spatial displacement Goldman, who in 1914 observed that modern art art, and especially the Nazi past and neo-Nazi pres- contest it, but also that of the revolutionary tradi- brutally creates refugees, who then become targets should be “the dynamite which undermines supersti- ent. But as this disappearing “countermonument” tion and hence our capacity to nurture it, thereby of hate. You get the picture. Rather, you can paint, tion, shakes the social pillars, and prepares men and was also meant to illustrate, “in the long run,” helping to “disappear” hope. The artistic impera- print, or perform the picture. women [sic] for the reconstruction.”14 Another might according to Shalev-Gerz, “it is only we ourselves tive here is simple: struggle against memory loss, Lest I seem to be blaming artists for an be found with anarchist artist Clifford Harper, who who can stand up against injustice.”18 including our own. inegalitarian world, or minimally for not doing noted of his 1974 “utopian images” posters: “they To my mind, the best efforts are the ones The above themes may seem amorphous. enough to challenge it through their work, let me depict an existence that is immediately approach- that focus as much on horizontal social organiza- Worse, they may appear to be completely removed reiterate: I desire to encourage shifts in cultural able.”15 And yet another is hinted at by libertarian tion as on aesthetic questions, thereby highlighting from the many pressing, often life-and-death production and cultural producers in order that both left social theorist Murray Bookchin, who in 2004, the D-I-O art-as-commons dimension of anarchism issues people face—the numer- can contribute to the project of ever-freer societies. reflecting on his imminent death, wrote, “To live that, again to my mind, really does distinguish an ous “isms” that There are valid reasons for artistic choices—say, without a social romance is to see without color. antiauthoritarian art. Novelist Ursula Le Guin, whether to sign a work or not—but all too often Imagine what life would be like in black and white, for one, imagined a utopia where museums might such choices seem already circumscribed without being able to hear—to be deaf to music. function like libraries. The Internet now facilitates or shaped by today’s social ills. Art Step by step our potentialities like hearing became open-source, interactive electronic museums. Other should instead aim to turn the tables: organized sound, and the Marseillaise was born.”16 inklings of this can be found in those creative this miserable historical moment could Other points of departure come from on- projects that play with, and work at, the notion of be the raw material for artists to give the-ground experimentation by contemporary art- communal control of our now-privatized spaces and at U

shape to choices of our own construc- prefigure directly democratic, confederated social n ists, some anarchists and others not, that grapple i the t e

tion—ones that might circumscribe dom- with some of the concerns mentioned above. Such structures. d

V V i c ination. as provocateur street artist Banksy, who despite his One compelling case study is the United ictorian t o

As an anarchist whose creativity growing fame and fortune, still manages to question Victorian Workers, Local 518, organized in late r i a

comes through the act of writing, I know how present-day sovereigns maintain their control. November 2005 by an artist/activist collective as n

W Str all too well that penning words or print- Whether painting giant windows to a better world a counterpoint to the Victorian Stroll in Troy, New o r k oll ing a poster both become damaged in the on the separation wall being erected by the Israeli York. The “official” stroll is a privately funded e r

s (public context of a damaged world. And the world annual event designed to lure holiday shoppers ,

government, or placing a life-size figure dressed in n

seems increasingly damaged at present. A to the “historic streets of downtown” by creating e Guantanamo Bay-orange within the scenery of a w s

lithographer friend recently told me, “I’m Disneyland ride, Banksy serves to startle, to act as a “magical stage” peopled by the Victorian upper p inter a

not making art right now, because I don’t crust; the “unofficial” version “gave a presence p

a vigilant public eye. Moreover, he asks people to e r

vention), want to produce work that’s nihilistic, and “imagine a city where graffiti wasn’t illegal... A city to those whose labor built the city by dressing in c r e

that’s all I can feel these days.” Despite these that felt like a living breathing thing which belonged Victorian-era working-class apparel and performing a t

19 e counterrevolutionary times, though, we must to everybody, not just the real estate agents and the a period-inspired strike during the event.” Many of d

f o

all try to work through our own fears and the bystanders as well as the participants, though, T barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and r r

a 17 oy despair, in ways that allow our imaginations to stop leaning against the wall—it’s wet.” couldn’t tell the difference, and the full history of n , d

NY run utopian. My hope is to instill hope in others Another example comes from installa- nineteenth century Troy was reinserted into the d i s , t

by claiming that it is through our continual abil- tion artists Esther Shalev-Gerz and Jochen Gerz’s public imagination. As one of the artists involved r 2005. i b

ity, together and alone, to understand and resist attempt to deal with “‘forgetting’ in a place of with this project remarked, “It was a collective u t e d

307

306 intervention into public memory and Christmas the-clock during the campaign, was designed “to capitalist, fascist, or socialist—cannot build a dai- isn’t identifiable as anarchist art by its look but shopping.”20 Certainly, “by making visible the class connect various practitioners of reclamation as well lyscape that speaks to who we are and want to be. instead by its sensibility. I long for a nonhierarchical MI and labor struggles of the as initiate a critical dialogue about the building of And that there also needs to be an integration—or aesthetic that isn’t afraid of instituting imagination

13. Josh MacPhee offered the following com- era,” this interventionist a radical aesthetic/arts movement in Chicago and reintegration in many cases—of what is now seen as as a public good, which can also stand up to public LS ment while editing this chapter: “The trouble is art piece “obliquely points beyond.”22 (For more on this campaign, see Josh art into those things now viewed as either material involvement and interrogation, as well as directly that Modern Times is a better movie than The Matrix!” I agree. And given that it’s perhaps out the city’s motives to MacPhee and Nato Thompson’s piece on DSLR in necessities, functional, or infrastructure. Mostly, democratic decision-making. That has an unending harder than ever to make artwork that isn’t present a selective histo- this book.) though, they gesture, hopefully and often joyfully, commitment to the notion that through creative TEIN degraded from the start, Josh asks, “What is an artist to do, simply accept that degradation? ry conducive to consump- And in one final example, in summer 2006, at a time-space of “after.” expression, humans achieve a qualitative self- and Is not the woodcut a harkening to a time when tion,” as Shopdropping CampBaltimore, in a surprising collaboration with What would such a time-space beyond hier- social recognition that can, by breaking through the craft mattered, and therefore a rejection of the 21 made-in-China [or made-in-the-USA] aesthet- observed. But it also the Contemporary Museum of Baltimore, encour- archy, domination, and exploitation look like, and alienation we experience today, point toward self- ics?” Sure. But what Josh and I are both getting cleverly and clearly aged people to debate urban design through the what of an anarchist art then? That is something we determined social relations—not wealth or fame, at is this, to quote him again: It is “no longer transforms the “Whose lens of social justice while building a network to need to dream up together, through our various acts but knowing that we are fully seen by and see oth- about what we do (with capitalist globaliza- 23 tion, everyone has access to everything, so Streets? Our Streets!” of transform art and society. According to anarchist of imagining, debating, fighting for, and deciding on ers, “warts and all,” as we shape a world of beauty skateboarding, noise music, tall bikes, and silk protest moments into a Mike McGuire, who participated in the project, that ever-dynamic time-space. together, all the while defining “beauty” by what screening become fodder for Coke ads) but how we do it. This is a deceptively simple idea, but it tangible lesson played out CampBaltimore built “a trailer that could serve as In the meantime, in this present awful upholds values such as cooperation, dignity, love, can be easily misunderstood. It does not mean in the actual historical a mobile convergence center,” which included “a time-space, I dream of an art that agitates even freedom, and other anarchistic ethics. that there is a ‘correct’ way to do things (that is, a way to move into a neighborhood and not gen- space—potentially spark- small infoshop, a place from which to serve meals, as it unmasks injustices; that educates even as To hell with cardboard! Let’s utilize what- trify); we are still beholden to the larger systems ing civic dialogue and a mobile sewing workshop, and a place to do film it inspires; that organizes even as it models self- ever artistic mediums are necessary, toward endless, we exist in. But it does mean that the ethics of how we do things matters, for the very reason action around contempo- screenings” within neighborhoods. Another part governance. That surprises and provokes, some- plastic possibilities in societies of our own, ongoing that they are at the core of the new world we are rary injustice. involved “Headquarters: Investigating the Creation times upsetting a few carts in the process, and that collective creation. That would be beautiful, indeed. trying to build.” I appreciate the dialogue Josh In a much more of the Ghetto and the Prison-Industrial Complex,” United CampBaltimor and Erik added to this chapter in the editing process—a good example of “how we do it.” expansive effort in April housed in the museum. Here, “blurring the lines

14. , foreword to The Social 2001, the three-day between the practices of artists and activists,” the W Significance of the Modern Drama (Boston: Department of Space museum also became “an infoshop and center of orkers Richard G. Badger, 1914), available at http:// and Land Reclamation operations: a platform for activities that investi- sunsite3.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/ e’s

Drama/foreword.html. campaign involved sixty gate Baltimore’s program of uneven urbanism and Association, 15. See http://www.infoshop.org/wiki/index. mostly illegal reclaimings a site to mobilize for local and global struggles.”24 trailer php/Clifford_Harper. of public space in Chicago, “It’s not like a traditional model of political activ-

16. Murray Bookchin, “The Twilight Comes thereby explicitly link- ism or artistic models of political activism. It’s being Early,” November 2004, available at http:// ing artistic expression both—and [it’s] trying to offer an alternative way, dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/book- Baltimor chin/twilight.html. to vibrant conversations seeing other ways...grappling with the evaporation used 17. See http://www.banksy.co.uk/outdoors/ and decentralized self- of public spaces in the city and the privatization of tramp.html. for management in the city’s everything,” explained museum artist-in-residence e, 18. See http://www.shalev-gerz.net/ENG/index_ 25 MD, many distinct neighbor- René Gabri. Rather than art on the walls, then, food eng.html; http://www.thephotographyinstitute. org/journals/1998/shalev_gerz.html. hoods. As the weekend’s “Headquarters” featured short videos documenting 2006. 19. For more on the official Troy Victorian catalog noted, “Artists/ grassroots struggles in Baltimore, a dry-erase map ser

Stroll, see http://www.troyvictorianstroll.com/ activists/radical citizens of the city that people could write on, a flowchart vice about/index.cfm. For the unofficial version, see the “Action” section under the “Projects” header have once again found outlining socioeconomic interconnections, a mini Photo at http://www.daragreenwald.com. common ground” in mul- library, and a meeting space, among other things. after

20. E-mail to the author, October 19, 2006. tiple practices that “all The trailer and museum became platforms for cour a

21. See http://www.rpi.edu/~scarfa/portfolio/ resist the encroachment people to think and converse about their city—and mar project-pages/victorian-stroll.htm. of top-down centralized hopefully change it. tesy 22. See http://www.counterproductiveindus- control and private capi- In these instances and others, there is a ch of tries.com/dslr/dslrIdeas.html. in

tal. Projects of reclama- sense of attempting to engage with the complexities CampBaltimor 23. See http://www.campbaltimore.org. tion situate the producer of the present, and via a process of art-as-dialogue, suppor 24. E-mail to author, September 22, 2006; http:// www.contemporary.org/past_2006_04.html. at a critical intersection working together to both critique and reconstruct of power.” A central head- our lived public places. Such imaginative projects t 25. Quoted in Bret McCabe, “Unite and of Conquer,” City Paper, July 12, 2006, avail- quarters, open around- indicate that centrally planned forms—whether the able at http://www.citypaper.com/news/story. e. asp?id=12015.