dissertation

thoughts

1. writer's strike

2. mythology of the artist

3. army of the arts

1. Writer's strike. Creatives going on strike and eliciting sympathy from
the general public. the size of the strike, the history of the strike,
correlations in pre-capitalist history.

2. mythology of the artist. The capitalist system maintains the artist as
a privledged "higher" individual, one who is "allowed" greater
freedom, who is expected to be non-conformist, and whose purpose is a
mystical "feeding the soul" purpose. Capitalism has removed every
other fig leaf of mysticism from history (see the manifesto) but it
keeps the status of the artist is a mythical pre-capitalist state.

3. analysis of 2nd order for the army of the arts by Mayakovsky. a
number of lines are about new forms of art, art as workers, industrial
proletariat art.
This is a wrong conception, because it's romanticizing the proletariat
but, like most "communism" from soviet russia, it's developing
capitalism. The communist regime created a capitalist system in russia
while intending to do the opposite, this means economically they
created a capitalist system, based on exploitation, with the party in
the place of the bourgeoisie, but they did not create the attendant
mythologies. instead they tried to slap on new myths. Thus, this poem
is critical of the capitalist myth of the
artist as soul-feeder, mystic, etc and instead advancing the artist as
a romanticised proletariat worker. Meanwhile capitalist nations are
dividing the arts between high and low, art vs craft, fine art vs
commodified art.

maintaining fine art is maintaining an obsolete catagory for artists.
Keeping artists in a pre-capitalist mode of production, which delays
the aquisition of a post-capitalist mode of production. Duchamp,
warhol, etc broke this, especially warhol, by commodifying the fine
arts he brought the art world up to speed with the rest of the
capitalist economy, which creates the possibility of art gaining a
post-commodity status, because you can't be post commodity until
you're commodity. So, now, the fine art / low art distinction is
falling away, painting, scupture, theatre, and conceptual art are
becomming more accessible, less "fine" and media that have already got
the commodity status (music, film) are advancing beyond it.

So, what is revolutionary art? Where are ideas of this? Art as
politics. Politics as art, shaping society, not just raw materials.
The formation of a self-aware class conscious group of creatives, not
fighting for our rights or trying to escape opppression, not demanding
patronage, but simply creating new modes of production, developing
them, advancing them, and replacing old modes and the capitalist mode.

What do these new modes of production look like? I don't know exactly,
but the current modes are the capitalist mode (based on exploitation
of labor and commodification of objects) and the feudal mode (based on
patronage of labor and mysticfication of objects) the ideal mode is
cooperation of labor and sharing of objects. The actual new mode will
probably be something else, though, because, cuz ideals are, by
definition, impractical. The actual new mode won't be the ideal, but
it will be an improvement (as capitalism was an improvement over
feudalism) the people who are starting to adopt or develop this mode
today are the DIY artists. Indie musicians, theatre producers, DIY
fashion designers, etc. The fact that these people are starting to
engage with commodification, and blurring the lines between art and
craft, are confronting new technologies (either embracing or refusing)
means they are starting to experiment with different economic modes.
there are no answers yet, but, there will be, and the more exploring
we do the sooner we'll get there.