June 21st, 2012 / 1:42 am
Snippets

What exactly is the difference between “art” and “terrorism?”

31 Comments

  1. Jimmy Chen

      terrorism is the waltz between christianity and islam, art is an atheist doing ‘the robot’ alone in the gallery of his mind

  2. A D Jameson

      Terrorism pays better.

  3. Nicholas Williard

      what exactly is the difference between ____ and ____? [insert 2 unrelated nouns]

  4. Brooks Sterritt

      art as limbo w/r/t profit margins, terrorism as death tango

  5. j orloski

       not much. people who take up either always end up dead and hated.

  6. j orloski

       also, zero access to the virgins promised.

  7. E.A. Beeson

      Terrorism doesn’t necessarily involve a murder.

  8. deadgod

      Though your life will be poorer, with tenacity, you’ll survive ignoring the artfulness of made things.

      If you can ignore it, it’s not, or not successful, terrorism.

  9. Bobby Dixon

      Good mothers are proud of good terrorists. 

  10. Taylor Napolsky

      Violence and fear?

  11. Matt Tyler

      “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…”  

  12. deadgod

      Potter Stewart on “hard-core pornography”?

      Summarily pragmatic, but also destructively intellectually coarse.

      If you know it when you see it, and you’re as competent with language as a Supreme Court judge, artful writer, or, hell, interested citizen or reader should be, then, without defining “it” perfectly, you can put into words usefully what “it” is that you know you “know”.

      (–“you” being, in the case Matt quotes, Stewart…)

      I think it’s a mistake, not just epistemologically, but in practice, for subjectivity to be an excuse for ‘pragmatically’ smearing terms into a confidently judgmental blur.

  13. Timothy Peyton

      Do difference. if your art doesn’t attempt to shake people to the core then maybe your not willing to explode for it in the first place. 

  14. Nathan Goldman

      This is super silly.

  15. QKSTKGRYFTS

      “TERRORISM” IS THE ACT OF SYSTEMATICALLY USING VIOLENCE TO COERCE.

      “ART” IS ANYTHING CREATED FOR AN AESTHETIC PURPOSE.

      THAT QUESTION IS ABSURD & “POINTLESS”.

  16. Trey

      they both prevent aliens from wanting to contact us

  17. jtc

      i have a character in this thing i’m working on ask and then pursue the same question. he doesn’t get an answer, yet. or, at least one that’s in any way satisfying. and the question, especially asked in this way, feels facetious or even, yeah, absurd. but as silly as it sounds…i do think there’s an interesting nugget of…something…here…you should rephrase it into an essay that ‘explores the issue,’ and then see what people say. also you should just write my novel i don’t want to do it anymore.

  18. marshall mallicoat

      fucc thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis

  19. marshall mallicoat

       shut the fuck up dude

  20. reynard

      i did a thing about this once

      did you know christopher guest is a lord in england? he’s a goddamn baron! recently a young possum was hanging out on my porch every night & i would yell at him, calling him an ‘ugly bastard’ & a ‘fucking freak’ & so on & one night the little shit came into my house & of course i chased him away but he wouldn’t leave so i stabbed him a couple of times with a kitchen knife & knocked him off the porch with a broom & he hit the domino table downstairs & i never saw him again — sometimes i wonder if i miss him, i remember the glazed, disinterested gaze of his beady eyes as i ran the blade thru his side & clenched my teeth, wishing i could feel his insides with my hand — anywho… hope you had an awesome day!

  21. Anonymous

      well am going to have to drop a link: http://www.terrorpeople.org (about to experience a redux and looking for contributors)  
       to  dichotomize or compare art/terrorism at first glance feels arbitrary and/or nihilistic. there is no difference. in the present state all action is terrorism, and all art is action. the symbolic act with the most impact of the new millenium was… for me it is a frustrating question because it doesn’t offer much (yet) besides a reinforcement of my sadness and complete demoralization regarding the culture i was born into. fuck it. i’m going to drive around in my camaro 

  22. alan

      your answer is “sensible” and pointless

  23. alan

      Ask Stockhausen.

  24. M. Kitchell

      nothing really, seeing as people only pretend to care about either most of the time

  25. Anonymous

      And this concludes our daily dose of Juvenile, Dudebro HTMLGiant Nihilism.

  26. Frank Tas, the Raptor

      Spelling

  27. j orloski

      one similarity: both are generally planned in a state of mind where the completion of the plan is either improbable or suicide.

  28. j orloski

      one similarity: both are generally planned in a state of mind where the completion of the plan is either improbable or suicide.

  29. reynard
  30. Caleb Powell

      What’s the difference between “pickles” and “starvation.” Ask the Unabomber. This is a nonsense question, art & terrorism are so different. Only the narcissist artist seeking fake notoriety might think their art can have the effect of mass violence.

  31. Kate Dino

      What about art *as* terrorism? I started crafting holiday gifts because I knew it annoyed people.