This Flight from Failure

[emenel]

One more quick thought. Even if we want to reframe artistic intent in a different light (I.e. non-servomechanical) there is always a reason to start. Someone or some group starts on a project with some impetus, their intention for the endeavor. It may or may not include a firm idea of the form of the work, I think in contemporary practice this is less common. It’s more common to start with a line of inquiry and let that lead to an expression of the idea (as artifact, engagement, system, etc)

[equipoise]

It’s more common to start with a line of inquiry and let that lead to an expression of the idea (as artifact, engagement, system, etc)

One of the things I picked up from Greer’s other writings is that this is sort of fundamental to his worldview - intent. Of course, being a ceremonial magician, his entire worldview is pretty much focused intent, so let’s realize that’s heavily colouring even his view of art - I think in his mind art, in a metaphorical sense, is encapsulated intent, just as his magic is encapsulated intent. I do agree with @ht73 that he’s quite narrowminded in his ability to see precisely what he’s talking about in art forms or practices that he’s less familiar with.

But, I’m strongly in the view that there’s a lot “art” as a whole can do for humanity, and while discovery, play, and this practice of “saying nothing” have a strong place especially in a very disciplined artist who has trained themselves to listen to what the universe is saying and to either discover it or express it or bring it into the physical in some way (I’m not trying to nitpick or pigeonhole -just emphasize) – while this practice has a role for the artist and maybe for humanity in a discovery sort of way – the practice of starting from a strongly focused intent and then working WITH the medium and the concept as collaborative (and occasionally opposing) forces to end up with an expression that is a symbiosis of the artist and the process has a great amount of relevance to the human experience throughout our history on this planet. I do think that the more we “abstract” (and I’m not speaking here of the genre) meaning from form or figure, and the more we abstract intent from the final product, the more we lose certain aspects of the impact to exchange for others. This leads into the questions of “who is art for - the artist, the observer, society, the purchaser, who?” and of course also deals with “what is the role of art at all and what responsibilities should an artist have?” So I think what’s coming up here between all of us who are actively interested in this discussion is a classic balance between going very deep into a practice for the pure pleasure of discovery, versus going very deep into the application of intent to create something very specific. Neither excludes the artist’s will or skill, nor the ability of the materials, process, universe, happenstance, etc. from shaping the end result. But I don’t think that it’s appropriate to celebrate John Cage’s statement “I have nothing to say” without also acknowledging the validity of those artists who very much do have quite a lot to say and work hard to find equally creative and often sublime means of expressing it - and judging the results of both of them against an appropriate standard of accomplishment or communication or whatever it is we can put our finger on to say “wow” or not.

So… that to say that intent really matters to me, as well as the means the artist chooses to express that intent, and even John Cage’s intent to say “nothing” is a very strong artistic will expressed in his pieces with great force and clarity.

[ht73]

One of the things I picked up from Greer’s other writings is that this is sort of fundamental to his worldview - intent. Of course, being a ceremonial magician, his entire worldview is pretty much focused intent, so let’s realize that’s heavily colouring even his view of art - I think in his mind art, in a metaphorical sense, is encapsulated intent, just as his magic is encapsulated intent. I do agree with @ht73 that he’s quite narrowminded in his ability to see precisely what he’s talking about in art forms or practices that he’s less familiar with.

There’s a distinction that’s being elided here; that between mind and will. Only with the Cartesian viewpoint do they become conflated.

How then would you (or Greer) interpret Peter Carroll’s statement:

Magic is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with the will. The will can only become magically effective when the mind is focused and not interfering with the will. The mind must first discipline itself to focus its entire attention on some meaningless phenomenon. If an attempt is made to focus on some form of desire, the effect is short circuited by lust of result. Egotistical identification, fear of failure, and the reciprocal desire not to achieve desire, arising from our dual nature, destroy the result.

(Liber Null, p.14)

Or in general the idea that one must often enter “non-ordinary” states of consciousness to participate more fully in magic? That ritual has a key transformative role?

Is it at least possible to see will as something that manifests not through “mind” but through receptivity – as something that appropriates, something that calls one to bring something forth? Resoluteness is heeding the call and bearing full responsibility for the results. It is accepting one’s place as a caretaker and cultivator of what one has been given.

What one is to bring forth, through force of will – why wouldn’t that thing be indeed highly specific? Is this degree of specificity even possible in mental representations that categorize, reduce, generalize, flatten? Creation is nothing if not intensely specific – no two snowflakes, no two leaves on a tree are exactly the same. Each snowflake, each leaf, each painting, each composition overflows every possible thought that could think it. Their essence, perhaps lies in this overflowing. Indeed, if art could simply be “thought”, as a pure exercise of mind, there would be no reason to make or to view artworks.

Resoluteness is not the absence of intent or care, merely a correction in its temporal structure. To speak of resoluteness as opposed to intent is an acknowledgement that true will arrives from the future, not the past. It is perhaps the most primordial phenomenon of the future in its lived experience. Whether creating a painting or simply exiting a room, it is the future that draws us out of ourselves (Greer’s “not you”) and that makes us act to close the gap. The initial spark of commitment or resoluteness is not merely to throw caution to the wind; it involves also a full understanding of what may transpire and a willingness, whatever the consequences, to accept responsibility.

Resoluteness is a mode of care in its deepest sense. But this care is not something we possess, not something that we wield at our pleasure; rather, care possesses us. Care appropriates us while at the same time keeping us honest. It is what calls us to account and what reveals our choices as anything but arbitrary.

Hyginus’s fable illustrates this so beautifully:

In crossing a river, Cura gathered clay and, engrossed in thought, began to mold it. When she was thinking about what she had already made, Jove arrived on the scene. Cura asked him to grant it spiritus , “breath” or “spirit.” He grants her request readily, but when she also asked to give her creation her own name, he forbade it, insisting that it had to carry his name. While the two were arguing, Tellus (Earth) arose and wanted it to have her name because she had made her body available for it.

The judgment is finally rendered by Saturn. He determines that since the spiritus was granted by Jove, he should have it in death; Tellus, or Earth, would receive the body she had given; because Cura, or Care, had been the creator, she would keep her creation as long as it lived. To resolve the debate, homo , “human being,” would be the name, because it was made from humus , earth.

“she would keep her creation as long as it lived.” And then the final judgment being rendered by Time… by temporality in its manifest experience.

Cura (mythology)

Cage’s abdication of mind (“nothing to say”) is the very opposite of “not saying” or the abdication of care. He is saying, and in the end does say something so irreducibly specific, and so overflowing of any concept that it is difficult even to speak of it. Cage abdicates mind in the interest of will; he abdicates mind in order to open himself more fully to care.

[equipoise]

You’ll have to read Greer’s own magical writings to answer your question regarding how he would see all of that - he’s rather widely published.

On the other hand, I am not a philosopher, I am an engineer, and the distinction between mind and will (or the lack thereof, or which viewpoint makes one and which does not) does not particularly interest me.

I did in fact mention that Cage was being very intentional about saying nothing, so I think we agree there; whether it’s mind, will, or whatever. Intent, to me is where the mind and the will meet, and in my view, I think that’s what you were quoting Carroll as saying here:

The will can only become magically effective when the mind is focused and not interfering with the will.

But that’s neither here nor there. I think there are core questions here: can there be “bad” art? is art something someone can “fail” at at all? and is there any truth to the supposition that “without failure there is no success”?

If Cage, to continue with your example, had NOT done a good job of “saying nothing” as it were, would his art still have had a strong impact? Would it have mattered? Is it important that he focused his mind/will/intent/whatever on that or simply that he delivered the concept of “saying nothing” as a musician in such interesting and diverse ways?

[ht73]

You’ll have to read Greer’s own magical writings to answer your question regarding how he would see all of that - he’s rather widely published.

Sadly, based on this article and a few of his others, I’m not likely to follow up on his other writings, not merely because of this issue but because I detect a distinct “Counter-Currents” vibe to it all (“all” including reader comments) – which is very muted and which may not be his prior intent, but I think is nevertheless worth addressing. (and shows again, how fickle “prior intent” really is).

This really hits a sore spot for me because I myself have been accused in other contexts of promoting far-right ideas and have taken great pains to clarify my position as a result. But I will say – Amy Hale is a good source on this – (this Amy Hale: https://www.amyhale.me/bio/) that we do have a major problem in how our stuff gets co-opted, a problem that goes all the way back to Tacitus and to how so much of our story has been told by those who had no @#$%^ business telling it.

Now, none of the above may be fair – a vibe is only a vibe – and there could still be a trove of more interesting material – I am “generally” interested in people like Greer – but I also have a pile of other important stuff I haven’t read that would keep me busy for years. I might do so if Greer enters the orbit of people like Gyrus, David Abram, Graham Harvey, and others who have at times challenged my own thinking in productive ways and hence have influenced it greatly. I guess what I’m saying is we all come from certain contexts and I couldn’t care less about Greer being “good” or “bad” but more in how he fits in to, or challenges those contexts in interesting ways, which is also how I think about art. I was hoping to hear more about your context, but I guess you don’t want to have that conversation.

I think there are core questions here: can there be “bad” art? is art something someone can “fail” at at all? and is there any truth to the supposition that “without failure there is no success”?

I’d be interested as to why you think “good” or “bad” art is a core question. For me it’s much more specific, it’s about the specific thing or conversation or whatever the art brings forth, and whatever else this gathers around it. Trying to flatten everything into a Yelp 5-star rating doesn’t seem to do anything at all. We are finite, life is finite. There will be vital and interesting pieces of art we’ll never come across. Why then does it matter if they are vital and interesting? Or – shouldn’t one ask at least what specifically a piece of art does before asking if it does it well? [And again, I’d be much more interested in the “what”…]

Also, there are simply things in art which don’t communicate. Different universes. Only when they can meet in some way can one even think of comparison. Problem with comparison along some scale of value is, it still flattens or reduces the work. Much better to start a dialogue. Take A and B and instead of asking does A > B, rather ask: what “C” can be produced as a result? If the works can converse, let them! Expand, never contract or reduce. The closest thing we have to objectivity is discourse.

Failure on the other hand is a core question, but a very different one. For me it pertains to the questions: Was the artist resolute in receiving, then taking charge of a vision? Did the artist have the requisite skill to realize that vision? Put another way, which takes up both questions – did the artist get in her own way? All artworks I think fail in some measure. As artists, I think we want to fail less but what is helpful there always plays out more in specifics. At minimum I do think we need to be mindful of the contexts in which artworks are embedded before discussing exactly how they fail or succeed. And this isn’t subjectivism or relativism because there’s really no “subject” here that’s trying to serve as foundation for the failure or success of the work. There’s just the sense in how everything is interconnected and flows through the artist and flows out into other possibilities. Or in how that flow may be blocked.

[ht73]

If Cage, to continue with your example, had NOT done a good job of “saying nothing” as it were, would his art still have had a strong impact? Would it have mattered? Is it important that he focused his mind/will/intent/whatever on that or simply that he delivered the concept of “saying nothing” as a musician in such interesting and diverse ways?

I did want to address this, sorry for leaving it out a second time. I don’t think that Cage ever said nothing, it’s that he said exactly what was there in the work itself.

Thinking nothing as a concept is still very much “thinking”. It’s still very different to “not thinking” or having “nothing to think”.

When one consigns one’s thoughts to the Cloud of Forgetting, in order to open oneself to the Cloud of Unknowing, it is not to have this cloud or the concept of nothing in one’s thoughts, it is literally to consign those thoughts.

[on the other hand… not a perfect analogy; engagement in creative work is moving out into the between, not a total abdication, otherwise there would not be dinergy. it is still useful to maintain the distinction between action and contemplation. still, the same basic performatives apply… which hints at the grounding of the active life in the contemplative.]

The thing with Cage is it’s never anything specifically modern he’s doing, he is simply tapping into various currents of ancient wisdom, whether from Zen, Christian mysticism, Gurdjieff or other sources. They live on again in new ways in his work.

(I’m also sorry if this is cryptic… it’s the best I can do.)

[widdly]

I remember from art school that it was easier to whip up a few abstracts when end of year deadlines were looming. It was easier to present them in class for criticism since the critical framework for abstract work focused more on the conceptual rather than the technical criticism that realistic work generated.

[ht73]

Wanderer, the road is your
footsteps, nothing else;
wanderer, there is no path,
you lay down a path in walking.
In walking you lay down a path
and when turning around
you see the road you’ll
never step on again.
Wanderer, path there is none,
only tracks on ocean foam.

“Wanderer” by Antonio Machado, 1912 (translation: Francisco Varela)

[snadge]

First post here, was going to write a pretty long post about my experiences within the avant garde community but deleted it to say this.

Abstract art has become a con, highly profitable for some and easily exploited.

[alanza]

Well. If we’re calling whole swathes of contemporary art “a con”, I guess it’s about time to stop. I don’t see where we can productively go from here. Sheesh.

[emenel]

Abstract art has become a con, highly profitable for some and easily exploited.

I’m not sure I can stand by a sweeping statement like this… what do you include in “abstract art”? Do you mean painting? Photography? Installation? Performance? Sound?

I know lots of amazing artists working in “abstraction” that certainly don’t see the financial benefit of it and work very hard to make their works meaningful.

Do you mean in the commercial art world? IMO, that’s a whole different game and not what Greer was talking about in the piece that sparked this conversation.

[jasonw22]

Well. If we’re calling whole swathes of contemporary art “a con”, I guess it’s about time to stop. I don’t see where we can productively go from here. Sheesh.

I suspect that there’s a kernel of truth in this overly sweeping statement. Rather than being immediately dismissive, I’m more interested in digging into it and understanding what was specifically meant.

I can certainly think of instances where I’d tend to agree. Others where I definitely wouldn’t.

[ht73]

Not to mention that this entire perspective makes a mockery of representational art, by reducing it to a “function” of likeness or correspondence it more or less never fulfills. [in other words, it’s a classic move of mistaking the picture for the frame]

Also – what exactly is it we are representing or abstracting? Every generation or handful of generations sees things so differently!

[Angela]

Abstract art has become a con, highly profitable for some and easily exploited.

I’m down with that though.

Yer gonna have your ‘authenticity’ and ‘artist’s visions’ on one hand,
and yer works that just function in weird ways as they rub against our institutions, on the other hand. (those aren’t the poles really…but we all know that ;)) So why is it ok that art is a con sometimes? 1. Art is amoral (there are no “shoulds”) and 2.It’s because people like money and our society centres itself around it. Artists know this and play with that membrane.

In the book Art, Performance, Media Nam Jun Paik is asked what makes a work good and he answers that it’s because it’s expensive. If you want to make a work better, you make it more expensive. Infallible advice.

Andy Warhol wanted a million dollars so he made a print of a million dollars and exchanged it for a real million…over and over again. (That’s in his autobiography The philosophy of Andy Warhol: A to B and back again)

Both these examples tickle me in a very particular way.

(I just jumped into the conversation here, but if this is in no way relevant I don’t want to derail.)

[snadge]

Happy to see a conversation, yes my statement is provocative and is meant to be, as to which medium I feel is a con, all mediums suffer but as this forum is dedicated to musical expression let us explore that medium, it’s probably far easier to analyse what I mean.

As someone who has enjoyed making music with electronic gadgets for several decades now for no other reason than the self-satisfaction of doing so I have been involved with many projects, every project I have been involved with had an ulterior motive, always ego driven by those involved, mainly exposure for either profit or sex, neither interests me but it does enable those that are and are willing to put themselves in full view of the public, what is abstract when it comes to a musical performance, does it still have to follow rules?

This is what I would like to debate, I’m not trying to tell people to give up making music because I don’t agree with what they are doing but if you feel that other people should understand what you are expressing via your music, I would like to know why.

[jasonw22]

if you feel that other people should understand what you are expressing via your music, I would like to know why.

I don’t know if it’s a necessity, but it is often a personal goal. Music can be a powerful communication medium, and I would love to be able to use it as such. But when I stick to abstractions, I do find the confidence I have about my ability to communicate intention or meaning through those abstractions is negatively impacted. I have more confidence in my ability to communicate when I move to a more explicit, straightforward, and provocatively I’ll suggest “honest” forms.

What do I mean by honest? I mean “it does what it says on the tin”. It’s not engaging in dual meanings, subtext, or esoteric/hidden/secret motives.

I think it’s possible we’ve grown both cynical and fearful about the possibility for such honesty.

And hey, I get it. I’ve spent a fair amount of time in marginalized communities, esoteric communities. Communities intentionally operating in the shadows because the obscurity is a necessary framing, and the knowledge literally wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t protected from the full sun.

But does this describe everything we might ever express? Obviously not.

[Starthief]

Also – what exactly is it we are representing or abstracting?

That is a very good question, especially in non-visual arts. The abstract/representational division (not to mention, realistic representation vs. exaggerated, stylized, symbolic representation) doesn’t really seem to apply in music, and is itself kind of an abstract idea, isn’t it?

[abalone]

like a pokémon
saying our own name over and over
here’s a photo I took today
and some tracks we made that I like…

//art is a language

[ht73]

I think it’s possible we’ve grown both cynical and fearful about the possibility for such honesty.

And hey, I get it. I’ve spent a fair amount of time in marginalized communities, esoteric communities. Communities intentionally operating in the shadows because the obscurity is a necessary framing, and the knowledge literally wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t protected from the full sun.

But does this describe everything we might ever express? Obviously not.

Well, to keep it short – I think there might be some unreflected privilege behind some of these statements. For me it’s not a matter of “spending time” like vacationing, or like it’s a mask I can put on and take off, it’s not a mask period. It’s who I am and honesty is creating out of that.

I know you didn’t exactly mean it like this, but part of recognizing privilege is also recognizing that it’s sometimes those outside the communities who need to share the burdens (and also joys) of interpretation. That there are dual meanings and subtexts for a reason, which is not to hide (since we could just only communicate among ourselves) but in fact to reach out, to start building bridges but in ways that give us at least some protection.

Yes, successful art is forthright. I get that. But sometimes there are necessary failures or partial failures on the way to success. Part of recognizing one’s privilege is to accept this and make the best sense one can of the expression in the meantime.

[ht73]

That is a very good question, especially in non-visual arts. The abstract/representational division (not to mention, realistic representation vs. exaggerated, stylized, symbolic representation) doesn’t really seem to apply in music, and is itself kind of an abstract idea, isn’t it?

definitely… the argument was never really non-objective vs. representational; it was cherubs vs. smokestacks… in 2018 one can include both and in a cartoonish style…

which is also really not subject matter so much as different ways of seeing… we do also a great injustice towards European painting of the 18th century and before by focusing on technique and not appreciating their way of seeing which is so different from ours… that’s what’s so frustrating about these arguments, it’s not what they say about modern art, it’s how they undermine appreciation also for the art one is trying to defend…

the modern “way of seeing”… also about much more than smokestacks, obviously… it’s about the entire range of visions that came in through photography… (or through ways of seeing – Turner etc. – which anticipated photography), or simply through modern life…

it’s the way of seeing which motivates the question – not how can we represent but what do we represent? what are we really after in our search for subjects? what really is the inspiration that draws us out of ourselves, that occasions the initial abandon? what is it exactly that plugs us in to the flow? can what flows also take on the apparition of an inner vision? at what point does this vision also abandon the object, and give way to other forms of occasioning?