Power Quote
Subcrime
Art is crime because it departs from municipal, state, national, and moral codes, introduces puncture, rupture, lawlessness, collapse. Sometimes Art-as-crime reveals the criminality in the current hygenic system or makes visible a kind of filth that is under threat of extermination. But is the reverse true– is crime Art? If I’m being honest, I ‘d have to admit that some crimes are also Art. I think Fascism had/has a big art component– the brutal State was made like a brutal artwork. This is a sad and flummoxing fact and this is why people so often come back to Fascism when they’re trying to grapple (or not grapple) with Art as maximalism.
Maybe it’s just more accurate to say that Art and Crime are both limit experiences– sometimes they double with each other, sometimes they split from each other, sometimes they feed off of each other, sometimes they destroy each other, sometimes each causes the collapse of the other.
Joyelle McSweeney at Montevidayo
Summer Paris Review:
Gide says somewhere that art and crime both require leisure time to flourish.
Speaking of Subthings, this new video, “Art of the Sonnet”: Paul Muldoon goes hip-hop nasty. A production by the poet Julio de Luna.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilBBPaY7dWo
It is more accurate to say that art and crime are each “boundary situations”, events that limn boundaries by crossing them (or, sometimes in art, by would-be enforcing them ‘from one side’). –and that they often co-exist in more or less tension.
–but (I think) backing off the identity ‘art = crime’ is wise. When I hear this over-identification, I think, ‘have you ever had a gun pointed in your child’s face? [and so on]’
Maybe the key to the similarities and differences between art and crime is just that: violence. Not ‘power’, exactly, but privilege exerted without compassion.
–or maybe the key is that the art audience takes the first step towards ‘it’ – asks for ‘it’ – , where the crime victim is opportunely/inopportunely just ‘there’.
When McSweeney talks of the (I think: exaggerated) “art component” of fascism, of that mode of making the State into a direct criminal, she implies questions that press (on me, anyway): Does something being done more or less artistically mean that that doing has an “art component”? Is “art” an Everything Word for human practice or human being, or even for any purposive movement?
How is the time spent planning and preparing for a bank robbery “leisure time” in a way that the time spent preparing and extending mortgages is not?
Here’s another great thing Joyelle said and one of the best things I ever read about prose poems. From Double Room:
A kid walks into his fourth grade classroom on the day a report on horses is due. When he hands in his report, the teacher sees that there’s just a few notes scribbled on the first few lines, and nothing else. ‘Where’s the rest?’ the teacher asks. ‘The rest,’ the kid replies, ‘is silence.’
I love verse for the way it foregrounds presence and absence, the pane of the voice against and amid the shattering or bolstering silence of the page. Thrilling lyrics, for me, are dynamic; one pressure pushes against another, the voice makes and remakes itself, subsides, tacks around and mounts a new attack on blankness, while the page always gets the last (non-)word, always sounds its inimitable, complete answer.
But lately I’ve been writing prose, and the reason is this: there’s just not that much silence in my life right now. I don’t feel driven or derided by silence. If anything, I’m experiencing too much howling feedback, too much static, churning noise from the non-me world, i.e. print, electronic, audio and visual media; religious and political rhetoric; etc etc. And that’s not to mention the steady hum that derives from my own spleen and noggin. And so poetry for me right now is a new kind of pressing back: I want to make a feedback, a noisome static, a planetary howl of my own. I like prose poetry because it obliterates silence for the time that it exists. I like to fill up the whole line, the whole damn page, many many pages. At the same time, I like its temporality, its ‘flash in the pan’ existence. There’s an honesty in that. I like that it exposes itself. Everything shows in a sentence. And, Christ, if I could write a poem like a flash of lightning in the darkness, in the night, or poem that had the alarming, concise immediacy of the awful sight of some dude’s exposed member, plus that after-feeling of dreadful contamination that obtains when the walls of the trench coat fall again… I’d be deliriously happy. If my pieces don’t work as flash fiction, then for god’s sake let me be a flash poet.
Oppen, Route (8)
This quote combined with other recent highlighted excerpts of Joyelle McSweeney’s pose a weird problem to me, as they propose an air of critical novelty while they’re in fact rehashing so much of what’s been said. My questions are many: is McSweeney simply not aware of much of Rosalind Krauss’s quintessential post-modern essays and books regarding Modernism, or is this a deliberate pastiche of historic thinking — i.e. a strange way of resurrecting Modernist tendencies as a way to say that they offer fresh insight into contemporary poetry? Again, I’m referring to previous entries regarding a call for newness for newness’s sake; a rejection of traditional linear history and notions of influence; and the idea of the counterfeit in art production. Again, this all seems like Krauss 101 (The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths; The Picasso Papers, etc. — all of which are devoted specifically to the ideas McSweeney’s proposing as, well, new). What’s always been interesting to me is the dramatic line that continually separates genres — namely, poetry theory from art theory. Art, right now, is suffering from the very opposite of what McSweeney is calling for here — and, I believe, rightfully so. Visual art’s very subversiveness — which I’m going to distill criminality to — causes it to be labeled as socially aloof, incomprehensible and, therefore, federally and publicly un-subsidizable. It’s very legacy of radicality and sensationalism, combined with current big-ticket market trends, have made artists retreat into a distinctly anti-grandiose/flamboyant/etc. tendancies that, yes, deliberately pay homage to historical forebears as a way of re-asserting depth (rather than sensationalism) in art. The small, the thoughtful and the humble is what many visual artists are striving for (read Richard Flood’s intro to the New Museum’s 2007 UnMonumental exhibition catalogue). Maybe, then, what McSweeney’s articulating in a roundabout way is a longing on poetry’s part to have the same potency. Poetry elicits far less hatred than art. But why is it attractive to be hated? Why not harness poetry’s very palatability to elicit change — i.e. by providing moments in our culture to nourish minutae, solitude, contemplation and, yes, meaningful words. Romanticism, really! Instead, McSweeney is calling for the very modernist myth that Krauss debunks — i.e. the classic avant-garde conceit that art must be wholly original, confrontational, rupture-causing and no one’s child but the artist’s. As it turns out, this is not only completely false and myopic, it’s the very same thinking that underscores successful corporate marketing strategies and feeds our contemporary dilemma (and that’s a light word) of too much stuff, too much shallow novelty, and not enough depth on all accounts. Contemporary social theorists would say that, indeed, playing into our culture’s thirst for all things new and sensational is exactly what’s creating the criminal mindset that plagues our society. And this is a tragedy, not a positive catalyst for change. This isn’t Paris in 1968 — this is post-Rodney King we’re talking about here. Crime is a problem. And it’s a problem that no witty and “novel” poem will solve. Why mimic Reaganomics — which is another shade of fascism, aka Modernism? Moreover, why in the world is it desirable to evoke fascism? Sure, it is very much akin to all Modernist projects in its totalizing vision — but it was also a catastrophic failure. I don’t even have to name the reasons why. I’ll always be baffled by the desire to render academic dogma “edgy” via the wearing of subversive and truly horrifying cloaks. It strikes me as a form of vanity, and not merely puerile but also as an irresponsible use of punditry. I’m under the impression that McSweeney is an educator, not a sensationalist provocateur, so I’m hoping there’s a great explanation to all of this, particularly since many young writers — including those who produce this blog — have such devoted enthusiasm for what she writes.
very, very nice
Bank robbery versus what? Refinancing? Risk (losing your ass versus LOSING YOUR ASS [federal prison]). I don’t understand the question. To pull off a bank robbery and make it ( i think current stats are 97% you will not–but remember they are still hunting down the 3 %) versus writing a great poem are very similar. Except a great poem (not good, fuck good poems) is maybe 1% chance. So.
I enjoy your thoughts here…and yes, this isn’t Paris in 1968.
But I do think its a fucking miracle that people even have these conversations in this day and age. Whether it be you commenting on McSweeney or McSweeney’s writing.
The real crime is not art. It is that there isn’t more people like you and the writer in question. Differences be damned.
Blah. Self-important.
You’re a poetry professor at an elite Catholic private school. Sorry, but you’re not “puncturing moral codes” with your art. This is my problem with Montevidayo– lots of wankery.
i agree. but i do think they up the ante some. its like montevidayo is saying ‘you want to take this outside?’ and i hope everybody says ‘aw yeah’
No, you haven’t responded to the gist of my question–but maybe it’s me who didn’t understand the original quotation ha ha.
Delany clearly – well, I think – understands what he’s taken from Gide (or ‘Gide’) in the context of “thinking” and “daydreaming”: ‘to make art, one needs time to reflect, to ponder, to stew and percolate and fester and wring and so on – just like a criminal needs “leisure” time, after which to busy her/himself with committing crime’.
That’s true enough: before committing most crimes, you need time to think of being a criminal then about that particular crime.
–but I’m asking, ‘so what? you need time to do anything deliberate; the bank robber and the bank employee: how is the former’s commitment of “time” leisurely where the latter’s is not? how is it that art and crime, from the point of view of “leisure time”, are not just jobs??’
(I understand that the penalties for failure (at robbery and mortgage-lending) are different; I don’t see how ‘needing time to think’ is different between art or crime and any job. Pretty sure this is not a rhetorical question.)
No, you haven’t responded to the gist of my question–but maybe it’s me who didn’t understand the original quotation ha ha.
Delany clearly – well, I think – understands what he’s taken from Gide (or ‘Gide’) in the context of “thinking” and “daydreaming”: ‘to make art, one needs time to reflect, to ponder, to stew and percolate and fester and wring and so on – just like a criminal needs “leisure” time, after which to busy her/himself with committing crime’.
That’s true enough: before committing most crimes, you need time to think of being a criminal then about that particular crime.
–but I’m asking, ‘so what? you need time to do anything deliberate; the bank robber and the bank employee: how is the former’s commitment of “time” leisurely where the latter’s is not? how is it that art and crime, from the point of view of “leisure time”, are not just jobs??’
(I understand that the penalties for failure (at robbery and mortgage-lending) are different; I don’t see how ‘needing time to think’ is different between art or crime and any job. Pretty sure this is not a rhetorical question.)
(By the way, when I say “extend a mortgage”, I don’t refer to ‘refinancing’ (necessarily). When banks lend – as with both primary mortgages and the refinancing of primary mortgages – , they extend loans in the sense of ‘offering’ them on some particular terms. I mean that I think that’s the word banks use: ‘we’re prepared to extend a loan to you’. In my small understanding of banking, refinanced loans are not really the old loans with a grace period added – though that’s what they might feel like and/or add up to – ; they’re actually new instruments.)
“Art is crime.”
Sounds like something a person who has lived a life of complete privilege would say.
Lady, if you think art is crime, I guess you haven’t seen too much crime.
as someone who spends more time reading art theory
than literary theory (generally), i’m always struck by how far behind literary
theory is at a common level
like really elementary ideas from art are privileged as “new” and “groundbreaking” in
literature
which is a problem i have with montevidayo often —
like you say, a lot of McSweeney’s thought really
is Krauss 101, but (regardless) i’m glad to see the ideas moved to literature, no
matter how much it bothers me that McSweeney appears to be ignorant of
Krauss
“like really elementary ideas from art are privileged as “new” and “groundbreaking” in
literature”
______________
God, I’ve noticed this as well. It’s almost laughable how historically-unaware writers are today.
To be fair, she does walk back that glibly transgressy identity in the next paragraph, where the qualifications seem (to me) reasonable. That both crime and much art are “limit experiences” that indicate norms and therefore test those norms (or people’s commitments to them) remains an interesting but after-all drastically limited similarity.
Yes, only jackasses who live in their mommy’s basements should have anything to say on the subject. Throw your mum a fuck for me, eh, while we’re all busy with our ad hominem attacks. . . .
[…] when McSweeney suggests that “Art and Crime are both limit experiences,” we should consider what limit these […]
u mad?
Ad hominem attacks
are art because they depart from municipal, state, national, and moral codes,
introduce puncture, rupture, lawlessness, collapse.
I guess but the second paragraph seems really meaningless. You could just keep going with the line of rhetoric and I’m not sure it would expand or detract from the premise.
“Sometimes each is a component of the other. Sometimes they interact in a way that transcends codes of morality. Sometimes they hold hands and walk to the ice cream shop. Sometimes they copulate and produce a hybrid form of art/crime. Sometimes they buy a split level in the suburbs and miss the city but they need more space to raise kids….”
Andrew and MK,
Thanks for all the discussion. If you have thoughts about the posts of Montevidayo, I encourage you to post replies there so that some exchange can happen.
As for the Rossalind Krauss comments: Although RK wrote about copies (as have a lot of folks going back to Benjamin), I think RK and October are pretty different from what Montevidayo or Joyelle is doing. I mean those guys dislike folks like Mike Kelley and have a real problem with “abjection” etc. Krauss tends to dislike all my favorite artists, and like artists I don’t particularly like. I even disagree with Krauss when she writes about Bataille, whose work I tend find really interesting. One of the major touchstones of Joyelle’s ideas is the occult, something I find it hard to believe that Krauss has much interest in. Also: This game of “it’s not new” and “Joyelle claims she’s so edgy” etc – I can’t relate to those kinds of comments, they seem based on fantasies about her intention (This is someone who has repeatedly written in favor of the anachronism of the avant-garde). She has a definite style, which you seem to find off-putting.This kind of rhetoric also seems strangely wed to a kind of decontextualized idea of progress: Krauss has written the original idea about originality and now it should not be restated. So I can recognize that M’Kichell has read Krauss when he writes on HTML GIant, but that doesn’t mean there’s no point in him to express those ideas. Seems like a good idea to me! Though in the end it’s true that Andrew seems to be interested in a very different aesthetic than Joyelle or I are interested in. We don’t want the palatable, quiet stuff. And we’ve written a lot of posts about this matter. And as you note, Krauss doens’t like a lot of the stuff we have written about. I encourage people who are interested to visit the blog and carry out more specific discussions.
Johannes
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