VARIANT 30 | WINTER 2007 | 3 The reality of my desires Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority anarchism, Stewart Home, would practicalities such as the Edited by Josh MacPhee & Erik Reuland no doubt take issue.5 provision of basic healthcare, Oakland & Edinburgh: AK Press, 2007, 324 pp; £16 A transcribed discussion the production and distribution between contemporary of alternative media and, on a Do it Yourself: A Handbook for Changing our World printmakers in Realizing the more ideological level, the desire Edited by the Trapese Collective Impossible gives a clue to its ethos to end all political parties. This London & Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2007 and should be restaged by anyone period also spawned a massive entering arts education, posing increase in street art in Buenos Rebel Alliances: The Means and Ends questions such as: What do you Aires, some of it political, some of Contemporary British Anarchisms think about art as a commodity? playful. Erick Lyle delivers a Benjamin Franks If you sell your work, how do thoughtful portrait of his personal Oakland & Edinburgh: AK Press, 2006, 480 pp; £15 you decide the price of a piece? encounters with stencil artists, What do you think is the role(s) from the avowedly political Nico Two books, both purporting of an artist in society? What role from Vomito Attack11 – who has to encourage social change do you think art plays in social consistently refused to appear in according to the tenets of change? What roles do you think stencil art exhibitions sponsored anarchism, have been published art plays in our lives?6 In another by the state, preferring to recently. The first of these, section, Cindy Millstein attempts organise his own illegal events Realizing the Impossible: Art to reconcile some contradictions, – to Cucusita,12 the twenty-nine Against Authority, advocates asking “Why is anarchist art year old skateboarder who began a role for creative practice in so often a parody of itself, stencilling before the crisis and prompting questions about predictable and uninteresting?”7 confines his work to a suburban how society is constructed and At its most convincing, hospital car park. providing alternative models. Realizing the Impossible ignores When Nestor Kirchner was In contrast to this proactive the market-driven contemporary elected President on a low approach to visual culture, Do it art world; when it does engage, turnout and with a narrow Yourself: A Handbook for Changing it does so uncritically. Gee majority in May 2003, he our World claims to be a step- Vaucher – who notoriously immediately defaulted on by-step guide to changing our designed graphics for punk Argentina’s IMF loan, which immediate surroundings, for band Crass – goes on record with has now been paid in full by developing new communities the misguided confession “I’ve Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez,13 and, based on direct democracy and shown in 96 Gillespie in London while worker-owned and managed sustainability. several times, and although it is businesses still exist, the Realizing the Impossible asserts a private gallery, it has the feel unprecedented neighbourhood that, while Marxism constrains of a public space, probably due assemblies have largely been art to the prevailing economic to the fact that is [sic] opposite dissolved. An interview with the conditions and capitalism the old Arsenal football ground members of Buenos Aires (BsAs) harnesses it to the market and on home-weekends you’d Stencil14 – who exhibited their system, “anarchism is not a have several thousands [sic] fans work at the Centro Cultural singular political program so peering into the show. I’ve also Borges, took part in 2004 ArteBA much as a thorough commitment had a good experience showing contemporary art fair and to substantive equality and the at Gavin Brown’s in New York. I’m happily discuss future prospects potential for human liberation,”1 liking the mixture of art worlds for commercial merchandise thereby promoting artistic at the moment.”8 This laisez faire – prompts Lyle to consider: freedom. On this basis, some attitude to the commercial art fairly tenuous attempts are “...in this new era, four years world – a microcosm of capitalism made to link Modernist artists to removed from the economic crisis and a pervasive influence on anarchism, not least in Patricia that gave it birth, the stencil in creativity – is repeated throughout the volume. Leighten’s unsubstantiated Buenos Aires is one step away from BECOMING This is consistent with co-editor Josh MacPhee’s assertion that: advertising. If so, advertising for what? The “new defeatist stance: “Unfortunately, we live in a freedom”? “The Revolution” [...]? Stencils represented “In pre-World War I France, many society where the dominant economic model is one the participation people wanted, and pop culture modernists – including Pablo where the value of things is defined by how much images represented the products they will get. The Picasso, Maurice Vlaminck and Kees you can sell them for. This isn’t a good thing, but stencil was the aesthetic of a new participation that van Dongen – thought anarchist I’m not a purist. I sell art because I don’t know how 15 9 had long faded.” politics to be inherent in the idea else to survive while making it.” The ill-considered nature of many supposedly of an artistic avant-garde and Two articles that stand out for further subversive creative ventures into state- and created new languages of form consideration are a lyrical account of the rise and corporate-controlled space is consolidated in the [...] expressive of their desire to fall of stencil art on the streets of Argentina, and theoretical section which concludes the same effect revolutionary changes in a pragmatic treatment of the capitalist nature of anthology. Anne Elizabeth Moore delivers an art and society. [...] Anarchism much ostensibly anti-corporate activism. The first incisive critique of culture jamming, based on a as a political philosophy was, of these begins with a consideration of financial fundamental misunderstanding of the boycott without question, more influential meltdown in Argentina in December 2001, during and a misidentification of parody and satire with on turn-of-the-century artists which the government’s IMF debt and adherence political change. To illustrate the point, Moore than socialism, in part because to free market neoliberalism caused capital considers the tactics of the Reverend Billy from anarchist theory specifically called flight (the large-scale withdrawal of international the Church of Stop Shopping, typically centred for the participation of artists in funds from banks for fear the country would on ubiquitous branded coffee houses. Rather social transformation, and in part default on its external debt) and the subsequent than launching attacks that prove damaging to because anarchism at one end of implementation of restrictions: the targeted corporation, Moore argues, these its spectrum stood for absolute “...what was so remarkable about the protests in activities actually increase the brand recognition individualism fully compatible with Argentina at that time was that upper and middle on which any successful company depends: a politicized bohemianism.”2 Elsewhere, claims are made class people were active participants in the street “...parody and satire, used to fight the meme war or as that artists associated with protest and direct democracy. The ahorristas, or savers, strategies in their own right, rely on representing the anarchism include Pissaro, were a movement of more or less affluent people very subjects ridiculed. Culture jamming, adbusting, Tolstoy and Wilde, as well as who had lost their life’s savings to the government and parody in general, not only reassert the icons they those who turned to Communism restrictions on money withdrawal from banks. Weekly half-heartedly attempt to dismantle, they encourage – from Malevich to Picasso3 – protests of these upper class folks were black bloc their continued survival. [...] As a method of political while references are made to the protest-reels of smashed windows and spray-painted action, culture jamming, because of its central reliance “Situationist-inspired anarchist bank facades – only carried out in broad daylight on parody and satire as politically effective strategies, 4 without masks by men with suits and briefcases or has already failed. That is, because it reproduces the art movements like the Neoists,” 10 an attribution with which former women in heels.” exact messages it claims to want to upend, culture In the austerity years that followed, Neoist and persistent critic of jamming is necessarily ineffective.”16 neighbourhood committees met to discuss By and large, then, culture jamming does 4 | VARIANT 30 | WINTER 2007 nothing to undermine the actual mechanisms familiar with its arguments, however, the Handbook praise of the impotent activities of profit or the products being traded. Instead, conjures notions of a selective Arcadia, with the of the Rev. Billy and the like. Moore concludes, genuinely critical responses to privileged echelons of society cultivating their own The one exception among the consumer culture are needed, to end the tyranny vegetables on reclaimed land and powering their examples cited, according to of brands and the dogmas they represent and houses with sustainable energy while the Morlocks the terms established by Anne enable us to conceive of something uncontrolled. of the malls are forced to abandon their fossil- Elizabeth Moore