"How to Start an Avant-Garde" by Robert Ray

How to Start an Avant-Garde is an essay by Professor Robert Ray who teaches English and Film Studies in Florida. He is the author of A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930–1980 (Princeton University Press); The Avant-Garde Finds Andy Hardy (Harvard University Press); and How a Film Theory Got Lost, and Other Mysteries in Cultural Studies (Indiana University Press). He teaches courses in film studies, contemporary criticism, and intellectual history, with a particular interest in experimental critical practice. He holds a PhD from Indiana University, an MBA from Harvard, a JD from the University of Virginia, and an AB from Princeton.

How to Start an Avant-Garde

Although its demise is periodically announced—most recently at the hands of that all-purpose assassin-without-passport, “Theory”—the avant-garde survives as an attitude, a temptation, and even an aesthetic practice. Confronted with media culture's voracious powers of assimilation, which can, within a few years, popularize something such as Punk Rock by transforming it first into “New Wave” and later (and more profitably) into “Alternative,” the avant-garde seems left without its defining characteristic, its refusé status.

Indeed, late-twentieth-century Western culture, wired from birth to grave, requires that we reformulate two famous avant-garde maxims: Gertrude Stein's dismissal of Oakland (“There is no there there”) and Jean-Luc Godard's definition of film (“Photography is truth, and the cinema is truth twenty-four times a second”). In the land of fax machines, cellular phones, and cable TV, “There is no outside there,” and we live under the regime of “Ideology 180,000 times a second.” The avant-garde, of course, has not remained unaffected by this new environment, characterized most of all by speed. But to assume that increasingly rapid co-option will destroy the avant-garde ignores how much the avant-garde itself has, throughout its history, promoted its own acceptance.

From the start, its preferred analogy was to science, where the route from pure research to applied technology is not only a matter of course, but also a raison d'etre for the whole enterprise. From this perspective, the avant-gardist's typical complaint about assimilation seems misguided. When the Clash's Joe Strummer denounced fraternity parties' use of “Rock the Casbah” as mindless dance music, he seemed like a chemist protesting the use of his ideas for something as ordinary (and useful) as, let us say, laundry detergent.

The Impressionists, on the other hand, the first avant-garde, understood almost immediately that assimilation was a necessary goal. As a result, those wanting to start a new avant-garde should study their strategies, especially those designed to deal with the one great problem that, since Impressionism, has dictated the shape of the art world—the problem of the Gap. As a movement, Impressionism arrived at a moment when art (and, by implication, almost any innovative activity) encountered a new set of circumstances. In particular, for the first time in history, the art world began to assume that between the introduction of a new style and its acceptance by the public, a gap would inevitably exist.

As Jerrold Seigel summarizes: The Impressionists' self-conscious experimentalism, their exploration of the conditions and implications of artistic production in a modern market setting, and their sense that they bore the burden of an unavoidable opposition between innovation in art and society's hostile incomprehension—all made their experience paradigmatic.

There is another, more lyrical, way of putting the matter: No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept. And they refuse to accept it for a very simple reason and that is that they do not have to accept it for any reason... In the case of the arts it is very definite. Those who are creating the modern composition authentically are naturally only of importance when they are dead because by that time the modern composition having become past is classified and the description of it is classical. That is the reason why the creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic, there is hardly a moment in between and it is really too bad very much too bad naturally for the creator but also very much too bad for the enjoyer...

For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. Although Gertrude Stein argued that an innovator's contemporaries dismiss his work simply because “they do not have to accept it for any reason,” the standard art history account of the matter runs somewhat differently. In the wake of the French Revolution, the decline of the stable patronage system, which had rested on a small sophisticated audience, ready to commission and purchase art, resulted in an entirely new audience for painting—the bourgeoisie, newly come to power (both politically and financially) but less sophisticated, less secure about its own taste. Such an audience (the prototype of the generalist lost in a world of specialization) will inevitably prove conservative, will inevitably lag behind the increasingly rapid stylistic innovations, stimulated in part by this very system (which, after all, is a marketplace, thriving on novelty) and its technology (particularly photography, the technology intervening most directly into painting's realm).

Mass taste, in other words, must be educated to accept what it does not already know. Of course, most mass art (Hollywood, for example) avoids taking on that project and merely reproduces variations of familiar forms. But unless avant-garde artists remain content with posthumous success (represented as the only “genuine” kind by Balzac's Lost Illusions, a principal source of the avant-garde's myth), they must work to reduce the gap between the introduction and acceptance of their work.

How do they go about doing so? How do you start an avant-garde? Although the avant-garde carries the reputation of irresponsible rebellion, it, in fact, amounts to the humanities' equivalent of science's pure research. Having derived its name from the military (particularly, from the term for the advance troops entrusted with opening holes in the enemy position) and having repeatedly committed itself to scientifically conceived projects (e.g., Zola's “Experimental Novel,” Breton's “Surrealist Manifesto”), the avant-garde has always had its practical side. Indeed, in many ways, it amounts to a laboratory of creativity itself. Thus, the question “How do you start an avant-garde?” has implications for any undertaking where innovation is valuable. Not surprisingly, sociologists of science have long been interested in this question. More to the point here, a large, although scattered, body of writing has developed around the problem of the gap between the introduction and acceptance of modern art.

Tom Wolfe's Painted Word, witty and cynical, takes up journalistically what Francis Haskell's “Enemies of Modern Art” and Rosen and Zemer's “Ideology of the Licked Surface: Official Art” treat learnedly. In what follows, although I will refer to those sources, I will draw primarily on what remains the best discussion of the Impressionists' role in the new art world, Harrison and Cynthia White's Canvases and Careers. That book makes clear that even if you are a great artist, if you want art to become not a hobby but a paying career, you must attend to the issue of the Gap. In fact, you should follow The Eight Rules for Starting an Avant-Garde:

1. Collaboration.

Outsiders working together have a better chance of imposing themselves than does someone working alone. Think of Romanticism (Coleridge and Wordsworth, Goethe and Schiller), Cubism (Picasso and Braque), Surrealism (Breton, Eluard, and Aragon), Deconstruction (Derrida, DeMan, and Miller), Punk Rock (the Sex Pistols, the Clash). Other members of your group will refer to you, cite you, make contacts for you, and collaboration typically proves aesthetically stimulating as well. From the outset, the Impressionists understood this principle. As early as 1864, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Bazille painted together in the forest of Fontainebleau, and subsequently they shared Parisian studios or apartments. Even Manet, a relative loner among the Impressionists, maintained an informal salon at the Café Guerbois, where writers (especially Zola) and other artists (e.g., the photographer Nadar) mixed with the painters.

2. The Importance of the Name.

A crucial factor in the Impressionists' success was the movement's name, which Harrison and Cynthia White point out “was in the great tradition of rebel names. Thrown at them init ially as a gibe to provide a convenient handle to insult them, it was adopted by the group in defiance and for want of a better term and made into a winning pennant” (111). “Impressionism” aptly describes much of their work; the name was easy to remember and carried with it the theoretical justification for a style that seemed unfinished, especially when compared to the fini or “licked” surface of their official, accepted contemporaries, the Pompiers.

No avant-garde group has ever achieved major acceptance without a catchy name: think of Futurism, Structuralism, Situationism, the Yale School, Fauvism, La Nouvelle Vague, and even Dada, a parody of such names, meaningless, or at least intended to be. The name provides a group identity. Using the “Impressionists,” Zola and other critics lumped the individual painters together, and they began to think of themselves as a more coherent group than at first they had actually been. The name provided a hook for critics and dealers, furthering publicity: to review one of the Impressionists was to review them all. The final stage of this group identity generally results in the formation of some official institute or association: the Impressionists formed their own joint stock company, which staged their exhibitions.

3. The Star.

Avant-garde movements need a key figure whose glamour and prolificness will attract and focus the attention of outsiders. The Impressionists had Manet—rich, witty, articulate, and shocking, while also being, by virtue of his training and disposition, the most clearly linked to the great traditions of French painting. Other movements had their own stars:

Cubism: Picasso
Futurism: Marinetti
The Bauhaus: Gropius
Modernism (musical branch): Stravinsky
Surrealism: Breton
Relativity: Einstein
Situationism: Debord
Abstract Expressionism: Pollock
Pop Art: Warhol
La Nouvelle Vague: Godard
Punk Rock: Johnny Rotten
Structuralism: Lévi-Strauss
Semiotics: Barthes
Deconstruction: Derrida
Rap: Public Enemy

4. Traditional Training.

Even if you eventually reject its precepts, some encounters with a profession's more or less official schools give you a sense of what to expect. With that work behind you, you have a better chance of justifying your own deviations by demonstrating that you have chosen to ignore standards that you have mastered. With the bourgeois audience, nothing helped Picasso's reputation more than his masterful skills in conventional drawing. Almost all of the Impressionists (Cezanne is the great exception) studied at either the École des Beaux-Arts or privately with academic painters. Sometimes the definition of “traditional training” may prove less obvious. With Punk Rock, for example, formal music study mattered far less than extensive experience in working bands: thus, for all its self-propagated myth of amateurism, Punk's important bands always contained pros. Yes, Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious were novices, but drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones were certainly not.

5. The Concept of the Career.

The Impressionists demonstrate the effectiveness of refocusing one's attention away from individual paintings, executed for specific occasions designated by a patron, to a whole career and its evolution. Thinking in terms of a career means constructing a narrative that will make sense of an artist's development. The Gap, of course, makes such career thinking more subtle, a matter for continual renegotiation. Adopting the extreme long view amounts to accepting a success that will be, at best, posthumous.

Stendhal's famous line “I have drawn a lottery ticket whose first prize amounts to this: to be read in 1935” represents the test case. As a publicity gambit, it is perfect, wittily establishing the frame of reference most beneficial to his difficult writing: given wider circulation in his own lifetime, it might even have helped him sell more books. The extent to which Stendhal was content with this ultimate payoff, however, was a direct function of his having other sources of income. An avant-gardist without such independent means should probably adopt Andy Warhol's approach instead: “Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist.”

6. New Avenues for Distribution and Exhibition.

The Impressionists' Salons des Refusés, group shows staged by dealers, and one-man exhibitions are all the equivalent of the new record labels (Punk's Stiff and Rough Trade) and new journals (e.g., October, Camera Obscura, Diacritics, Substance) that provide places where off-beat work can appear when the official channels (the major labels, PMLA) are closed. Durand-Ruel, the principal Impressionist dealer, founded his own journal. He also opened new markets for art, particularly in America, by redefining art as an investment, a speculation with possibilities of appreciation, thereby enabling sales to that class which understood money more than painting: the bourgeoisie.

7. Reconceptualization of the Division of Labor.

In the French Academy system, painters (at least those enthroned in the Institut) also functioned as judges, selecting the works that appeared in the annual salons. They both painted and set the standards for new painting. Rapidly detecting this conflict of interest, which discouraged the reception of even slightly different work, the Impressionists, perhaps imitating the burgeoning industrial reyolution surrounding them, divided the labor: painters stuck to painting, leaving to dealers and critics the task of assessment.

In many ways, the avant-garde's history represents a constant tinkering with the division of labor, usually in ways that challenge contemporary arrangements. Thus, with the factory system established as the norm, Duchamp chose to act not only as an artist, but also as his own dealer and critic, thereby recombining the roles the Impressionists had divided. Duchamp's example has become the postmodern standard, with artist/theoretician/publicist figures such as Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Barbara Kruger, and Sherrie Levine.

8. The Role of Theory and Publicity.

In The Painted Word, Tom Wolfe decries Abstract Expressionism's reliance on the criticism that sustained it. That symbiotic relationship, however, began with Impressionism and the period of the new, insecure purchaser. Twentieth-century art made that relationship permanent. requiring, as T. S. Eliot put it, that an innovative artist help create the taste by which his work will be judged. New styles typically demand a new critical idea. Impressionism, as many art historians have observed, marked a shift from arguments about subject matter (deemphasized by many Impressionists) to ones about style. If, according to Wolfe, the key to Abstract Expressionism's success was the concept of flatness (which justified nonfigurative painting to a skeptical public), Manet et al. benefited from the concepts of “the impression” and “the painting of modern life,” terms that legitimized both the sketchy, unfinished appearance of many Impressionist paintings and their everyday, nonclassical subjects.

Even more important, writers favorable to the Impressionists redefined the notion of the artist, who became less an artisan, working for traditional patrons, than a romantic outsider, speculating on future recognition. This new critical idea turned conventional standards upside down. By recasting the Academy as a group of outdated stuffed shirts, vestiges of the ancien regime's hostility toward bourgeois economic and social power, the Impressionists' critics effectively identified the artist with his new client and made rejection by the academy itself the sign of worth. This move proved decisive.

The most brilliant discussion of its effects appear in Francis Haskell's “Enemies of Modern Art,” which turns on Impressionism's critical reception. Haskell wants to remind us how ugly those paintings once seemed. He quotes Albert Wolff, an important critic, reviewing the second Impressionist exhibition of 1876: The rue Le Peletier is out of luck. After the burning down of the Opera, here is a new disaster which has struck the district. An exhibition said to be of painting has just opened at the gallery of Durand-Ruel. The harmless passer-by, attracted by the flags which decorate the façade, goes in and is confronted by a cruel spectacle. Five or six fanatics, one of them a woman, an unfortunate group struck by the mania of ambition, have met there to exhibit their works. Some people split their sides with laughter when they see these things, but I feel heartbroken. These so-called artists call themselves “intransigeants,” “Impressionists.” They take the canvas, paints and brushes, fling something on at random and hope for the best. (207)

In both its tone and judgment, this passage seems as disastrous as a more famous one that appeared in the New York Times in 1956, when television critic Jack Gould reviewed the Milton Berle Show appearance of Elvis Presley: Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability. His specialty is rhythm songs which he renders in an undistinguished whine; his phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner's aria in a bathtub. For the ear, he is an unutterable bore, not nearly so talented as Frank Sinatra back in the latter's rather hysterical days at the Paramount Theater.

This kind of mistake began with Impressionism, the event that revealed how the gap between the introduction and acceptance of radically new art had become systemic. In “The Ideology of the Licked Surface: Official Art,” Rosen and Zemer dramatize this point by concentrating on a single year, 1874, and the painters missing from the Palais du Luxembourg, then France's official museum of modern art: no Manet, no Monet, no Renoir, no Degas, no Cezanne—indeed no painters whom we now consider important: “Over the course of the century,” Rosen and Zemer write, “a gap had opened like a trench between the museum and the new art” (218) so that by 1874, the curators had entirely excluded precisely that body of work that future generations would come to regard as the best of its time. Some of Impressionism's critics were ambivalent about their own responses to these works, whose newness broke with the very forms the writers themselves had previously worked to establish.

Indeed, Impressionism prompted its most scrupulous reviewer to articulate, perhaps for the first time, one of the two great dangers facing any critic of any avant-garde: the possibility that one might simply be too old to understand what had arrived, the problem that we might call “critical senility.”

Reviewing the 1868 salon show, Theophile Gautier, one of the best critics of his generation, diagnosed himself: Faced with this paradox in painting, one may give the impression—even if one does not admit the charge—of being frightened lest one be dismissed as a philistine, a bourgeois, a Joseph Prudhomme, a cretin with a fancy for miniatures and copies of paintings on porcelain, worse still, as an old fogey who sees some merit in David's Rape of the Sabines. One clutches at oneself, so to speak, in terror, one runs one's hand over one's stomach or one's skull, wondering if one has grown pot-bellied or bald, incapable of understanding the audacities of the young. ... One reminds oneself of the antipathy, the horror aroused some 30 years ago by the paintings of Delacroix, Decamps, Boulanger, Scheffer, Colot, and Rousseau, for so long excluded from the Salon. ... Those who are honest with themselves, when they consider these disturbing precedents, wonder whether it is ever possible to understand anything in art other than the works of the generation of which one is a contemporary, in other words the generation that came of age when one came of age oneself. ... It is conceivable that the pictures of Courbet, Manet, Monet, and others of their ilk conceal beauties that elude us, with our old romantic manes already shot with silver threads.

In this new environment, criticism becomes precarious. In 1881 an event occurred that upped the stakes: less than two years before his death, for a rather ordinary effort by his own standards (a painting called M. Pertuiset, the Lion Hunter), Manet won the salon's second-place medal. A few months later, thanks to a friend in the Ministry of Arts, he also received the Legion d'honneur. The importance of these circumstances, in Francis Haskell's opinion, cannot be overstated: Manet, the greatest enemy the Academy had ever known, Manet who had been mocked as no other artist ever before him: Manet was now honoured by the Academy, decorated by the State, accepted (however grudgingly) as an artist of major significance.

Everything will now be acceptable at the Salons: that is the implication that is drawn from all this. ... The acknowledgement that there had been a war, but that the critics had (so to speak) lost it and that it was in any case now over, is perhaps the single most important prelude to the development of what we now think of as modern art. (217-218) From this point on, critics grow wary.

Aware of previous mistakes, reviewers become increasingly afraid to condemn anything, since anything might turn out to be the next Manet. Hence, the second of modern criticism's two great dangers, what Max Ernst called “overcomprehension” or “the waning of indignation”: having propagated the notions of rejection and incomprehensibility as promises of ultimate value, the avant-garde had protected itself from bad reviews. In initiating this move, Impressionism prefigures postmodernism' s diminished concern for the work of art itself, as opposed to the contexts in which such work might occur.

With the rise of what Gerard Genette has called “the paratext,” meaning and value become highly negotiable, just like commodities, just like paintings themselves. And theory and publicity turn out to be the principal tools for influencing the ways in which art will acquire meaning. In the age of Madonna, publicity's importance should be obvious. The Impressionists, however, over a century ago, recognized its role in starting an avant-garde. By the second half of the twentieth century, strange things had become possible.

As I discussed in chapter 3 [of his book, How a film theory got lost and other mysteries in cultural studies -editor] , years after his films' release, Douglas Sirk could now completely transform their meaning simply by saying something about them, thereby achieving a Midas-like alchemy that converted forgotten commercial melodramas into celebrated critical “subversions.”

Since the time when Impressionism first showed us how to start an avant-garde, the role of what has come to be known as Theory has grown enormously. Bohemianism, after all, was from the start what the Goncourt brothers called “a freemasonry of publicity.” Indeed, the avant-garde attitude, which since Impressionism has appeared in painting, music, architecture, literature, and film, has begun to enter the realm of criticism itself. The formally experimental work of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida offers us the early signs of this move. In retrospect, this development seems inevitable. Given the avant-garde's urgent need to contract the Gap, it had to depend on theory as its advocate. Sooner or later, having invented the script for this project, the supporting player would have to take center stage. We have reached that moment now.

High Art, Low Art

In 1990, there was a show at the Museum of Modern Art called HIGH/LOW and I wrote this piece about it in FACTSHEET FIVE. It is a follow up to the previous month’s piece on what I called “Proud Mary”.

The current show at the Museum of Modern Art here in New York is called “High/Low” and it attempts to show that from “just after World War I...direct borrowings from everyday ephemera gave artists a special way to confront the look and feel of modern society.” Now, big deal, right? I mean I think this is something that most of us with a little intelligence, and many without, take for granted. The idea that “High” and “Low” form a continuum is certainly nothing new to those of us that have lived through a decade or three in this century. But one of this exhibition’s many flaws is that it does not see the relationship between “high“ and ” low“ culture as a continuum at all. To the creators of this show, ” low“ art means advertising, caricature, comics, graffiti and billboards- pop culture in general; while ” high“ art means the stuff that gets shown in institutions like MOMA. I guess we’re supposed to think that the world of ” low“ art didn’t even exist- until now, of course- because they hadn’t acknowledged it. But to me and everyone else I know that has seen this show, this exhibition is one big moot (exclamation) point. We can move from Soul Train to Sol LeWit without a lot of discussion. By even positing this theory, the Museum is fragmenting into two worlds that which is really only one. This show is a ridiculous contradiction in terms. It is unnecessary to separate the high from the low, and in fact, to do so is to play a ” high“ art game that has been going on for years and holds little interest for the rest of us.

Why, then, should I bother talking about it? Because not only does it set up a false boundary between the high and the low, but it also leaves ” us“ out of it altogether. This is significant. This exhibition does not address those of ” us“ who both accept and reject certain aspects of both ” high“ and ” low“ culture and in fact are doing something much more interesting than either. We live our lives without a division, we borrow freely from anything that is useful to us, be it ” everyday ephemera“ or the ” innovative styles“ of modern art. We reject both worlds in favor of a third world: the do-it-yourself, self-publishing activity that are part of a tradition which I call the Sub-Modern. This loose-knit Sub-Modern ” community“ is where the ” high“ art world goes fishing for new talent. But our little pond doesn’t really need a name. In fact, like MOMA does with High/Low, to name it is to to ruin it, to categorize it, to destroy it, to assure it’s co-optation by the Proud Mary machine I talked about in my last column (Factsheet Five # 37). Nevertheless, I’ll refer to us as the Sub-Moderns now and I’ll tell you why later.

But first, let’s talk about just why this show is so ridiculous. Perhaps the reason that it limits itself to the worlds of painting and sculpture is an acknowldgement that this show, while considered ” daring“ by the New York art mafia, is in fact being presented at least 50 years too late. After all, media such as television, cinema, rock’n’roll and the rest weren’t at the forefront of our consciousness as they are now. By not addressing these most fascinating aspects of pop culture, perhaps they are saying all this hoopla about High/Low isn’t all that relevant due to the advent of today’s ” high tech“ society in which all the world is only as far away as your remote control device. But I doubt it. Unable to drop the obsession with the plastic arts, they predictably position themselves just a little too ” high“ and skimp on the ” low,“ taking themselves, as always, far too seriously. By 1936 Max Ernst had begun ” to transform into dramas revealing my most secret desires what were previously only banal pages of advertising.“ Status quo today. Ernst and his dada contemporaries felt that mail order catologues and such ” brought together...elements of figuration so distant from each other that the very absurdity of this assemblage provoked in me a hallucinatory succession of images.“ No reflection on you, Max, but what else is new? Marcel Duchamp refered to his ” Green Box“ as ” a kind of Sears and Roebuck catalogue.“ To us this is just a useful metaphor but obviously the curators of this exhibition find this reference quaint enough to finally earn a place in the history of ” high“ art.

Every point in this show has been made before. Yeah great, R. Crumb’s comics. Very innovative for them but to us another veritable institution. We’ve known and loved his work for years. Campbell’s soup cans- terrific. The only thing that I didn’t already know of were called ” affichistes“- immense canvases of ripped up posters by some Italian and French artists of the 1960’s. I liked them just as I enjoy the texture of poster-covered walls I see on the streets of the city. Thank you so much but one new ” undiscovered“ ” movement“ does not a revelation make. What MOMA calls ” low“ has been going on for centuries. The only thing new here is that a few scholars have chosen to take a half-assed look at it.

Even the ” logo“ for the show is an embarrasing failure. Based on a cover design for the 1923 book ” On Mayakovsky“ by the Russian B. Arvatov, the High/Low ” logo,“ currently seen all over New York, leaves behind the twisted elegance of the original’s constructivist design and extracts, instead, a cheesey bastardization of it, poorly executed, devoid of life. Like this logo, the show was an unintended parody of itself. In the process, it reduces the world the rest of us live in to an ” underbelly.“

The show is littered with condescending remarks about the ” low“ lifestyle. I found these statements particularly ludicrous:
1) ” Dubuffet follows an openness to the lacerations of gutter life that is a particular part of French tradition from Baudelaire to Jean Genet and Céline.“
2) a reference to James Joyce and Samuel Beckett’s ” reuse of low verbal comedy.“
3) ” A new generation of radical artists expressed their contempt for modernist art only by taking over it’s ironic jokes and turning them into memento mori.“
4) In 1890, ” social scientists examined (graffiti) to understand criminal types.“ Later, psychologists ” came to regard such untutored markings as clues to the mind’s basic creative processes“
5) R. Crumb’s comics...“have also offered a vein of burlesque realism.”
6) Phillip Guston “used images recalled from old comics- bare planks, cobbled, ungainly shoes and naked light bulbs-as the basis for a monumental art of tragic intensity.”

The world of wooden floors and bare light bulbs that this show finds so entertaining is the way most of the world lives- at least the lucky ones that live indoors. While billions of the world’s people spend their lives hovering near the poverty level, MOMA points out that Fernand Léger “saw utilitarian objects valued in a straightforward manner that he felt overturned prejudices about the hierarchy of beauty.” Beautiful or not, this is our lives they’re talking about, folks. “The forces of commercial and political advertising which threatened to turn the city scape into an unending collage” is our reality and we are forced to confront it every day, not just in the ivory rooms of a museum.

So if the Sub-Modern is the do-it-yourself tendency, it, like low culture, has been going on for some time now. I’m sure others of you out there are better qualified to talk about the history of self-publishing than I am. But history is full of Sub-Moderns. We all know for instance, that William Blake published his own books, Thomas Paine his pamphlets, even Gandhi was depicted in the Hollywood-esque film of his life as saying that a revolution cannot succeed without a printing press. From the cave paintings at Altamira to the “little magazines” of the 20’s to the indie labels and zines of the 70’s and 80’s to today’s “desktop” publishing activities, the Sub-Modern tendency to do it yourself is a way of talking back to the shackles of life in the “low” lane.

The self-publishing movement has gained so much steam in recent years that I see it now a completely separate but equal way of life. Our numbers are growing. Factsheet Five is proof of that. Sure we also participate in “high” and “low” culture; but repulsed by both,we in the self-publishing community have chosen a third way to express ourselves, to communicate our ideas. It is neither as banal and commercial as “low” art or as snobbish and pretensious as “high” art. It is a whole other world which borrows what it needs wherever it can find it. It is part of a tendency that a recent show at the MOMA should have or could have addressed but didn’t- the idea of a middle ground between the two that uses the good qualities of both and the bad qualities of neither to forge a wellspring of activity as rich in it’s diversity as it is in it’s commitment to integrity.

Self-publishing has always been possible but the availability of new tools created by the consumer society have both liberated us and trapped us.You’ve got to play the game just to be able to buy the equipment to get out of the game. We are obligated to hold down our jobs, workin’ for the man every night and day, to be able to photocopy a few pages or purchase a Macintosh or home porta-studio. Many of us have heard the touching high art tales of how Charles Ives sold insurance to support his habit of writing obscure music or how poet William Carlos Williams was a physician by day. Today we do the same. While we contemplate our relationship with the rising and falling tides of “culture,” we need our photocopies, our samplers, our tape recorders, our desktop media. Our pencil and paper. With it we create risky works designed not necessarily to subvert but, rather, to simply express our own vision in a “civilized” world turned smelly from so much dead weight. In spite of our “ungainly shoes” and the “burlesque realism” of our situations, we are teeming with life and have every intention of communicating with other like-minded individuals in any way we can. Certainly not everyone can afford a Mac or a video camera so there are still many of us that don’t have the means to create sophisticated sub-modern artifacts. But copy machines and tape recorders are all around us, and a large audience exists for home-made creations in any form. Those of us who do have the means to produce something (anything!) are doing it. Factsheet Five “reviews” it. But how do we create works of value? Only one aspect of the exhibition touched on that question.

If the MOMA show had a chance to redeem itself, it was in the performance series by yesterday’s-downtown-weirdos-cum-today’s-uptown-superstars like Eric Bogosian, Spaulding Gray, Ann Magnuson and Laurie Anderson, who presented works in the museum’s basement auditorium. I would have liked to have seen all these performances. Their words in the little booklet that accompanied the series seemed honest, thought-provoking, from the heart. Like the painters and sculptors represented in the show, these performers know the Sub-Modern world first hand. They started out there and if they can get on the Gravy Train, and that is what they desire, more power to them. It’s not their fault that inclusion in this exhibition has trivialized their work. I did manage to see Brian Eno’s “lecture” at MOMA. Though he, too, talked too much about Jeff Koons, and little about music, thus contributing to the hype about High/Low in his own charming way, I found several of his ideas quite interesting.

Eno began his talk with a discussion of Duchamp’s readymade “Fountain” (noted in the catalogue as a “flat back Bedfordshire urinal with lip plate #1570-KH.” ) Choosing not to acknowledge that the show featured a replica, Eno discussed “the deification of this particular piece of porcelin” and proceeded to nibble the hand of the institution that invited him to lecture.“This is crap really, isn’t it?” he said at one point. Good little bad boy, Brian.

But Eno became the single thought-provoking feature of this show with his discussion of “irreducible value.” He pointed out that no where does the MOMA catalogue for this show mention money. Indeed, a glaring ommision in a world where the prevailing standards of value have so much to do with aesthetic impact. Eno proposed the idea of an “aesthetic gold standard” saying that art, like “money, is a sophisticated game of trust.” Pulling out a dollar bill he explained that money really has no value unless we agree it does. That, he said, is also the game of modern art.

For the creators of this exhibition, according to Eno, “Value is created by making distinctions between high and low.” He said aesthetic value used to be a universal thing, seemingly ordained by God but “he’s gone now- that’s why artists get paid so much more today.” Good line, Brian. All us Sub-Mods in the audience giggled and cooed in response to this clever iconoclasm. But eventually, Eno made his most important statement: “Exposure is the currency of pop art. Obscurity is the currency of high art.”

If that is the case, if there is no universal standard of value, wouldn’t a world of individuals exchanging home-made examples of their own value systems be the logical place for this all to go? I think so. But perhaps an international network of such people is the most we can hope for. I suppose the majority on this planet will always choose to consume “low;” a few others will choose “high” (some because they truly appreciate esoteric, outstanding accomplishments, others because it is the thing to do). But, as always, there remain a few stubborn types like us. Asked to choose between exposure and obscurity, we don’t like the choice and new rules are the result. We don’t buy the sex-crazed futility of mass exposure nor do we want to live the empty life of an undiscovered genius so we choose a middle road instead- the Sub-Modern. We exist -or subsist as the case may be- beneath the surface of the high/low see-saw. We can borrow from both worlds and, in the process, reject their respective limiting standards of value. MOMA has set “culture” up as an arm wrestling match between Michaelangelo and Michel J. Fox but we won’t play. We won’t chase the “high” art carrot that dangles in our faces. We want the so-called profundity of high art and the planks and bare lightbulbs of our real lives.

In an effort to raise a discussion about what motivates us, I spoke last time of Proud Mary, the media machine that eats all that attempts to disarm it. I don’t want to see the eternal Sub-Modern network be a farm team for the Proud Mary machine. Our activities should not be a rehearsal for, or a microcosm of, the high or low worlds. It is an alternative. We each need to delineate our own value system, one that works for us. The only quality that the entire Network needs to embrace would be simply that we each have the right to our own value system. Anarchists and Republicans, Spiritualists and Materialists can learn to live together if the right of each person to their own opinion is held above all other values. Rather than judging people by some universal standard or manifesto, we must simply acknowledge the right of each of us to peruse the pages of a magazine like Factsheet Five and check off the entries that interest us. Nothing is politically correct except our own right to choose what we want to consume and produce. And that includes feeding off the Proud Mary (while she feeds off of us) for some revenue. I’m not blasting anyone for having to work for a corporation or to show and/or sell their work through a commercial institution. We all have to do it to some extent. But I have coined the term Sub-Modern as a way of grouping us together apart from the High/Low dichotomy. I see our network as a working model for international cooperation without an aesthetic or moral gold standard.

So if these activities don’t need a name, why the collective term Sub-Modern? Because catchy names are something I personally value. I like the sound of it. I enjoy thinking up slogans. I call us Sub-Mods because I want to. I saw the MOMA show, I thought, I’m not“ high” art, I’m not “ low” art. I’m not “ postmodern”- that’s last year’s “ high” art hooey while the stuff I’m talking about has been going on from Day One. The tradition of publishing one’s own work is a strong one and its influences have hit all points on the high-low continuum. People like us have always hunted and pecked our way through the rubble of society and created a few works we feel good about. If it is fashionable to the masses, it gets absorbed into the “ low” world of pop culture, if it’s fashionable to the haughty world of high society, we make our protestations, then join the club. I enjoy observing the way Proud Mary eats her young. I have a sick fascination for the way the integrity of the “ Underground” is destroyed by the “ Uberground-“ be it high or low. So I coined this phrase because seeing myself and the rest of you as an Underground Railroad of the Heart fits my value system. If this term Sub-Modern ever gets used again, fine, if not, that’s fine too. Who knows, maybe some jingle-writer will pay handsomely for it. Nevertheless, if you accept this name for any other reason than that it also fits your value system, you haven’t understood a word I’ve said.

Panmodernism Explained: Proud Mary and the Internal Network

In the following text, which I wrote in the early 1990s, the ideas of Panmodernism were first sketched out. I didn't know it then, but I was explaining a theory in which a big ugly Societal/Corporate machine eats the creations of creative individuals, dumbs them down and churns them out for mass consumption. There is more to it than that, but in a nutshell, that is what Panmodernism is about.

I wrote this text when I was a columnist for Factsheet Five, the self-publishing Holy Grail, the wonderful zine about zines published by Mike Gunderloy in upstate New York. It was sent all over the world to the DIY (Do It Yourself) community. I wrote a column for it called Net Work (as in "How much work could a network net if a network could net work?"). As I say, this appeared at one point though I am not sure of the exact date. It was also published in other publications including Lloyd Dunn's Yawn. But nevertheless, I had just returned from the Festival of Plagiarism in Glasgow, Scotland and my interest in mail art was being replaced by the theories of the culture at large that eventually became Panmodernism. As that Evil Genius of The Alamo, Dr. Al Ackerman used to erroneously say, "This will explain:"

Proud Mary and the Internal Network by Mark Bloch

We are living in a world where, as always, there is a huge Machine out there churning away. There are a few of us who don’t want to be part of it. Well, at least not fully.Not all the time. So we choose to be in this smaller machine which has come to be known as mail art or The Eternal Network.

So here we are in our little world, our Eternal Network. What is it like? It is a collection of individu- als. But inside each of us we have a kind of inner network, a number of voices that speak to us in different ways. Who is the “us” that is being spoken to? I dunno. But hopefully we all are able to corral all these voices into a single vector and with that vector we enter into the external Eternal network. A dissi- dent voice in our Internal Network that hasn’t been listened to can make the message confusing. Every voice in our Internal Network needs to be heard and dealt with before we can communicate effectively with the outer Eternal Network.

So what happens when we get there? Messages are flying everywhere. Each of us is writing and communicating not just to one person but with many others at roughly the same time, in any number of languages, also using representational codes like “art.” So the communication is not just one to one. And as we all know, one-to-one communication is difficult enough. So imagine having to participate in this myriad of cross-currents called The Eternal Net- work with all kinds of people at once, people who you may or may not know, people who may or may not know each other, people who may or may not be in touch with all the voices of their own inner network.

So that makes for a lot of variables when it comes to communication.

If communication is defined as the sending and receiving of a particular message, then absolute com- munication is impossible. What is transmitted is never received in its entirety. We all have slightly different ways of interpreting words and concepts; they mean different things, our values are different, our memories are different, nuances get lost in the transmission. There may be a part of the Internal Network that is quite present in the transmission but not consciously known by the person transmitting.

The key is refining the Internal Network so that the communication is as clear as possible when it leaves the “self” and enters the external network. (Jung called it The Self. For now, I will call it a “node.” A node is the collective energies of one person’s Internal Network, perceived by the outside world, and even to ourselves, as a single conscious- ness. This is not true however; in fact, we all consist of an inner network of many voices, as described above. Those who differ with this opinion may con- sider that the node is not the collective energies of the inner voices but that the node is instead the individual’s consciousness in its most basic state. I personally feel there is more to it than that, however. Jung did, too, and I direct you to Jungian psychology in an effort to understand your own Internal Network.)

When information leaves a self, a node as it were, it begins to bounce around the outer network. Perhaps a message is sent from the sender—Node Z—to another person in the network—Node A, but a copy was also sent to Node B, a partial copy was sent to Node C, etc. Nodes A, B, and C may exchange copies of Node Z’s message amongst themselves, with or without additions. All this activity in the Eternal Network creates webs of complexity that are almost too difficult for a single person to understand. But let’s focus on the lowest level of complexity—the “communication” between Nodes Z and A.

Node Z sends the message. Node A receives the message, it is not a complete transmission of the message but that’s what makes the external Eternal Network worthy of participation. It is the incomplete communication that makes the network interesting and challenging. If we all agreed and understood identically, there would be no need for the Eternal Network. We would be in complete agreement. That would be Utopian but perhaps a little boring. In fact part of the mail art Network has become complacent that way. A feeling that the medium is the message permeates the network (“The address is the art,” so to speak, as I once said.) (I now see that concepts like The Address Is The Art is what has accounted for a loss of meaning in our messages. I apologize for participating in the glorification of this destructive trend.) When the medium is the message, there no longer is a need to even read the actual content of the message, to think about it to respond to it. The fact that something was sent and received is enough. But I hold that this is not communication nor is it interest- ing. It is the imperfections in the communication pro- cess and the need to overcome them that eventually creates understanding between individuals. Compla- cency breeds complacency and eventually isolation.

When something was sent and received and that is enough, it results in what the Big Machine has resulted in—a lot of messages flying around in the form of various media, remaining unread, not fully absorbed, not fully responded to, simply acknowl- edged as yet another message as media. But there is no substance to media—it is a medium for the trans- mission of a message.

It is ironic that a guy called McLuhan gave us this M&M philosophy. The whole thing has been ab- sorbed into the Big Machine and is now used an excuse for the lack of meaning and conviction in our society. McFish, McFries, MacPaint, McLuhan. All medium, transmitted very quickly, with no nutritional value.

When everyone is happy that messages are being sent and received and no one is reading and interpret- ing the messages in their own flawed but human way, a kind of ennui is the result. I feel that is currently the situation in the Eternal Network. We have grown comatose from all the messages. The meanings of these messages don’t permeate and challenge our Internal Network anymore, except occasionally and minimally. Perhaps because they are all media and no content, the intensity of the messages has decreased in power and scope so we end up with a lot of stuff in the mail box that isn’t even worth interpreting. The failure of the messages to be read has resulted in the failure of meaningful messages to be sent. On both sides meaningless messages are being transmitted, resulting in a loss of time and revenue on the part of the participants. We spend all the vital energy of our Internal Network on this process.

Meanwhile the Big Wheel keeps on turning.

Proud Mary is the name of the Machine, Why?— because it is a man disguised as a woman. It is a woman who is not what she appears to be. A woman is often nurturing and forgiving. A man is often aggressive and vengeful. A woman is not proud, a woman can cry, a woman can drop the pretense. She can sacrifice herself for the sake of creation. Yin. The feminine. So the idea of a Proud Mary is an oxymoron. What we get is a machine disguised as a man disguised as a woman. A man-machine in drag.

Devoid of humanity, it is a consumin’ machine. Proud, Big, Turnin’. Eating everything in its path. Rollin’ on the river. It could be called by other names. Proud Mary is Guy Debord’s “Spectacle.” Orwell’s “Big Brother.” Call it what you want. I call it Mary—reminiscent of a certain virgin fucked by a certain god. What could be a more perfect metaphor? Purity and impurity simultaneously. An innocent vir- gin proudly raped, in effect, by the Man upstairs who does it all for her own good and the good of Mankind.

So we in the Network think we are not part of Proud Mary; we are in our own little network. But like the Proud Mary, we have become mesmerized by the turning of the wheel. The medium is the message for us, too. We have become Proud Mary’s little sister.

Certain members of our network see Mail art as a kind of farm team for the Proud Mary. When the form of our message—the medium, that is—is sufficiently polished and has developed to a point of machine-like slickness, we can jump ship and ride on the Proud Mary. But I don’t see it that way. I’d like to see our network grow away from the wake of Mary’s proud Wheel.

The Network, like the businessmen who keep the Proud Mary afloat, are generally of one of two groups. There are backslappers, those who believe in the medium as the message and feel that any transmis- sion at all deserves a hearty congratulations and a slap on the back. Then there are the backstabbers, those who smile on the outside but due to some disgruntled member of their inner network possess a message of hatred and manifest it through a calculated and some- times subconscious act of malice against another individual. They project their inner fears and phobias on other members of the network, perhaps they write a history of the Network and leave out a certain node accidentally. Or steal another node’s idea and call it their own. Or write a letter to other nodes trashing the message of another behind their back. Most of us have let it happen in one form or another. But mali- ciousness is an obstacle to communication. So is an obsession with Mary. Messages need to be directed to the node(s) in question. Like a disgruntled part of the Internal Network, an obsession with Mary muddies the message.

But for some, the messages only take on real meaning when they jump ship to the Proud Mary.

“It seems to me that easy access to the means of artistic (re)production (photocopiers & cassette tapes) altered the material relations between some cultural workers & the com- modities they produce. This results in (or co- occurs with) a changed set of social relations.

Since access to the means of production is no longer necessarily controlled/mediated by a hierarchical class of “owners” (including editors/galleries/critics, via their “ownership” of cultural validation), a network of cultural workers has evolved, producing & exchanging their work amongst themselves, and creating a sub-culture: that of mail art and “Networking.” In reaction to the hierarchical control system in the mass-mediated dominant “art” culture, some confused ideas appear in the mail art sub-culture. One is that all partici- pants have equal access to the “network”. We are all affirmed as creative beings, and offered a completely open venue of expression, to be judged only on the merits of our work. A similar idea is that all product of the “net- work” are in some way of equal value—the perennial “no rejections/documentation to all” mail art show. Ideally, this would put the responsibility for critical response on each individual viewer; but in reality, the role of cultural consumer hasn’t kept pace with changed roles of cultural producer. Folks still seem to wait for validation of their work by some outside arbiter—Factsheet Five, for instance. Hence the endless bitch when your favorite ’zine pans your latest cassette. The situation is self-imposed, though-by complain- ing about unfavorable reviews, the artist gives the power of validation to that reviewer. I believe that folks must learn to make their own critical judgements, and that intelligent reviews by other folks can help with that, if folks can read them as only one person’s opinion instead of gospel.” (From Yawn; unidentified contributor from Cleveland, Ohio)

Where the writer’s example of Factsheet Five lies in relation to Mary is open to discussion. Regard- less, some see Mary as the only legitimate rubber stamp of approval in the world. It is ironic that such perceptions are often what result in some of the clearest messages in our network. For it is in seeking approval and acceptance from Mary that forces oth- erwise backslapping media-mongers to crystallize their fuzzy thoughts into a coherent message. Only then does the medium cease to be of interest as a thing in itself, because, in fact, even though it mimics the Proud Mary, the smaller Network ship has the task of convincing the larger one that that its existence is valid. Unfortunately, it is to the credit of Mary’s Big seductive Wheel that (often unconsciously) many members of the little ship won’t feel right until their messages are vindicated by the Proud Mary machine.

“Art which criticizes the establishment is reintegrated into it, defusing useful comprehen- sion of its horror.” (Also from Yawn; contribution from ASAC-CA)

So it is often only when the messages about mail art or The Eternal Network jump from the private world of the Internal Network to the larger world of the Proud Mary, that the actual message transcends the medium. This is when mail artists and others reach within themselves, to create a message with actual content. As a way of reaching out to the “higher force” that is Mary. A way of apologizing for our transgressions against the larger machine. We put it all in very clear terms, create a true message for interpretation by the Machine. But once that happens and Proud Mary decides whether or not she wants to eat the message (and she always does), it goes out of the control of the mail artist and even the Eternal Network which is the subject of the message. And of course Proud Mary’s function is to eat everything that passes before it. No message or medium is too dis- tasteful for the iron stomach of the Beast Mary.

If the messages were not sent to Mary, then Mary would not know of the network’s existence. She can only eat what she sees and smells and hears about. But again, it is the seductive movement of her wheel that hypnotizes just about everything into her path. Thus, the only chance of not being consumed by the Big Machine is to not let her know of our existence. To ignore the seduction. To cool down the more egotis- tical members of our Internal Networks who long for recognition by the larger machine. To be happy with our own little Eternal Network and not to be so eager to merge with the Proud Mary machine. To stay outside of her influence, as, for example, have certain rare tribes in the frontiers of the African continent who have not yet heard the churnings of the Mary Machine. Who listen to the beat of their own (Mary might say “unsophisticated”) drumming.

But we are not those tribes. We have grown up in the belly of the Beast. We are born of Proud Mary and unto Proud Mary we shall return. But perhaps we get sick and tired of “workin’ for the Man every night and day.” Proud Mary has it within her power to make us think that she is the relief we are seeking. That she is what we need to escape to. That’s what created Mary in the first place. A distrust of our own Internal Network. But now it is Mary that makes us want to escape. She makes us doubt the power of our own inner network to comfort us, to heal us. So we turn to her seductive wheel for nurturing. But she does not and can not nurture us. She only consumes us as we attempt to consume her and she, herself, is very difficult to escape from. Because when we think we jump ship we imagine we are free but in fact Proud Mary is also the river and also the banks of the river and also the land that stretches out on either side of that river. That’s why in our little boat that we think is so free, we are really only mimicking Mary.

How do we actually get out of the way of Proud Mary? Is it possible to jump ship and escape her influence for a part of each day and change Mary’s course without her realizing it? Is it possible to jump Mary’s ship and just enjoy being away from her? Perhaps that’s why we’re such a bunch of backslap- pers, we are just pleased as hell to have the illusion that for once Mary is not chewing our ass like a cow chews his cud. So we congratulate each other and smile. And I can see why we should or could. Even an illusion of a moment of quiet with our Internal Net- work can be very rewarding.

But how would we get away from the Big Wheel once and for all?

For one thing it would require that we no longer write mindlessly about our Eternal Network for her Big Wheel. Not unless we want her to hear about us.

Yes, a more calculated strategy is in order. We need to be more selective about how we leak information to the Mary Machine. We can have our secrets that will keep us from being eaten. And it is important that we don’t get eaten.It is important that someone in our society stay outside of the path of Mary so that we can notice when she’s floating off course. Mary needs a rudder that she does not know about and I propose that the Eternal Network, directed by focused and responsible nodes, be that rudder. We need to learn to steer the Proud Mary without her knowledge. Be- cause we answer to the higher authority of the Inter- nal Network.

Where should we steer her? First of all the message must be returned to the role of message and the medium must be returned to the role of messen- ger. In the old days they used to kill the messenger if they didn’t like the message. Then too, they mistook the medium for the message. But those days are over.

We must all refine our inner networks so that our messages are clear. Then we must insist that our messages are received and responded to appropri- ately. Some of you will object to this. It will take the element of play out of the Eternal Network. Too many rules. Well it is “play” that Mary wants. Mary want us all to play, but to play her way, blindly, without care for the consequences. No parent in their right mind lets their kids play in the middle of a busy street.

There is a time and a place for everything. I think the time for work in the network is now. Those of us who believe in our right to play in our own way must put down our toys for a while and instead work at sending meaningful messages that will be understood and have impact. Perhaps the turning of Proud Mary’s Big Wheel is more benign than we think. It seems so calculated, so thought out, so complete in its path of destruction. Perhaps there is no danger. Perhaps we are Proud Mary and a quiet conversation with our Internal Network can turn the destruction around. But we must determine that ourselves. Proud Mary will have us believe unconditionally that it’s all just a cruise on a riverboat. She will create the waves, we are only passengers. She tells us she has our best interests at heart and that all we have to do is sit back and enjoy the ride.

The Marketeers

When I was in my twenties, I can remember my friend Lucy saying through the post-adolescent haze, something that was actually quite insightful: “Everyone we know is either an artist, teacher or healer.” It was true. “Back in the day,” when I was youthful, handsome and attractive, me and others of my ilk, especially my closest friends, in college or out or never would be, turned our gaze toward the future and dreamed of being great artists. And yes, there were many that became, by default or by choice, gifted and generous teachers and healers. But for me it was the arts that beckoned. My role models were poets like Richard Brautigan, writers like Vonnegut, with his treasure trove of novels, up and coming actors like DeNiro or the actor-directors Woody Allen or Warren Beatty, filmmakers like Copolla or Truffaut, visual artists like Rauschenberg or Robert Smithson, performers like Laurie Anderson or Robert Wyatt, the Talking Heads or the cast of the original Saturday Night Live. Broadcasters like Tom Snyder, Frazer Smith and Rodney Bingenheimer interested me too, as did the after hours David Letterman, who was constantly being compared to Ernie Kovacs. It seemed like something to aspire to. I did have one friend, Arthur, who went to business school in Boston and has gotten rich and gone broke a coupla times since then. But for the most part, Lucy was right. Most of us were artists, teachers and healers of some kind.

Today, it appears that the best creative minds of the younger generation have steered their utopian vision not to art, but to marketing. Perhaps they see it as The Art of Marketing. Perhaps they dream of A Better World Through Marketing, the way the generation a few before mine put their faith in science. But I doubt it. I think most of them just see it as a way to make money. Lots of it. Good gig, they think, as they select their major, Marketing.

The world is now overrun with these nitwits. They haven’t had anything even resembling an original thought since they played with their not-yet-a-dynasty Legos at age 4 or 5. That was when the creativity must have been pounded out of them by god knows what. Marketing experts make it their business to know about this demographic or that, just what makes them tick. But I am no Marketing Expert. I just look at shit and have a mechanism called instinct under my shirt that viscerally tells me if something is good or bad for me. That’s the way people used to do it, before The Attack of the Marketeers. Yes, we learned to listen to our gut. But the Marketeers do it with spreadsheets. So is it any wonder that business is booming, even during our horrid Voodoo Millenial Economy while nothing has any nutritional value? It is because our life is run by corporations and the corporations are getting their cues from these vacuous Microsoft Excel Jockeys.

But I will rail about our Corporatocracy another day. Today I am interested in highlighting what I have noticed about these rich young turks of our Turdworld country. It all comes down to one woman actually. Her name is Connie and she was a bright, sexy and gregarious twenty-something I used to work with. Perhaps she was in her early thirties, I don’t know. But she was a decade or two younger than me and that is what I am getting at. When I was her age, people like her were goofy artist-types, causing no harm to anyone but themselves. Sure we were poverty-stricken, but that, too, is a topic for contemplation elsewhere. We were happy. We were loud, confident and wrong, but of no consequence to anyone except the geezer next door who banged on the wall when the music got too loud.

Now that very geezer is marketed to by the marketing miscreants disguised as know-it-alls in ties, or if you work for a “start up,” no tie. Did you hear about the jumper cable that walked into a bar? The bartender said “OK I’ll serve you but don’t start anything.” Well, what I am trying to say is that now everything is controlled by marketing: the jumper cables, the bars, the joke books, the loud music the young people listen to, the walls people are banging on, even us unwitting geezers (I am in my forties, after all. They’d put me out to pasture if they could find a pasture), are serving our corporate masters via the marketing dweebs. But once again I am straying from my point.

I want to simply tell you about Connie, the clueless marketing dumb ass. As I said, she is an intelligent young woman. I respect her a great deal, believe it or not. In fact, that is my point. She used to be ONE OF US. But now the evil Mysterious Marketing Forces of Unknown Origin have swooped down and stolen our children, our cousins, our sisters and our brethren. Once likable people who were merely bad poets or untalented painters are now doing serious damage to the rest of us with their Bachelors and heaven help us Masters Degrees in Marketing. One day Connie sent out an email. This was in 2004. Only months ago. She sends out an email about our website activites-– regurgitating the conventional web wisdom of 1998. And that was stuff people came up with in the early nineties! The people that came up with it are either the 5% of genius exceptions to the rule of her very generation, or else still-functioning dinosaurs from my era who created the Internet and the web, too. Because 5% of any generation is always ahead of the curve and I do not believe for a second that what I am saying applies to everyone. Just most of them. The vast majority.

Anyway Connie’s email basically rehashed stuff that people were talking about in chat rooms before the marketers started calling them “chat rooms.” Chat rooms were just some some stupid Unix trick that your typical chip-chewing misanthrope thought up in the middle of the night, just like the Usenets and Gophers that circled the planet before the worldwide web made it safe for everyone to get an Internet address because now it had pictures. But again, I ramble. The simple point I am trying to make is that Connie’s email was full of old news and sent around to her bosses and people like me, her temp underlings, as she tried to brown nose the upper floors with some crap she took off some marketing web site who took it of some other website who read it in a book summarizing what some outlaw on the pre-Information Superhighway wrote in an email in 1991. I know this because I traced it back. I looked at what she had written which struck me at first glance, as obvious. As in, “Get to the good part.” But alas, there was none to be had because it was all marketing double-speak. Horseshit about what the web could do for us and our revenue streams if we could only market our well-positioned marketing things properly. Or something. I really don’t remember what it said. I know I saved it and it is here somewhere. I will post it if I ever find it.

But Connie was my boss and it was my job to read her email and comment on the substance of it, which has unbeknownst to her, withstood the test of time. So it must have some merit or the Marketeers wouldn’t be kicking it around on their well designed just-like-all-the other-one websites. Or I could ignore her email, which I did. But what I resent is that 1) I am an artist and I am working for a marketer and 2) marketers are creating markets that the artists and techers and healers have to fill instead of the artists teachers and healers creating art, teachings and healing the people that are then handed over to the marketers to sell. Our society is largely vacuous because the prodcts are not longer the things that people need, the people are now the products that are sold to the corporations. And this makes us feel like... well, products.

Suffice to say that the world has been taken over by idiots who want to sell you something because if they do, they’ll get money and then they can buy the stuff you want to market to them. I suppose it is all designed to make someone feel better somewhere but I haven’t found them yet.