the balkan ideology: diseases in art
a vision
a globally esteemed white celebrity superstar musician operating under a post soviet country context who creates radiohead style albums that are pseudodeeply about societal reflections, dressed in a bougie outfit who has immigrated a couple of young adult asian orphan women, now dressed in long dark red suits, has renovated a church and built a music hub out of the local niche artists that all under his leadership have signed and extorted a century long contract with global music merchandising enterprises that has them leasing their music worldwide at a fraction of the cost with all the benefits in reach in streaming sales. the citizens of the town all gather outside of the church, which is now fully painted white but subtly left ungated, and begin to protest against the musicians apparent lack of donations to public good. upon being unexpectedly allowed to enter the establishment, they enter a sentimental american new century cliche movie enviornment, ambiently theatricized to envoke the perceived profoudedness of the niche artist who has an apparent lack of materialistic inclination.
he then plays a song live to the audience, who then later reconcile emotionally to his music, but not before being reawakened into riot upon remembering the apparent perceived lack of care by the artist, who for the first time in a long time publicly addresses the country in its own language, making smug defensive remarks about how if he were to open the church up to public interests, it would swiftly be bulldozed by the reactionary government and turned into a childrens public park paid for by russian interests, which he notes is the equivalent of israeli interests in european contexts. after a few smug remarks, he notes the asymmetry in hierarchy between him and the public but reintegrates this framing when questioned about inequality rhetoric as part of a perceived distaste towards public framing rather than public good, and then leaves the establishment, requesting that everyone who likes can freely stay if they wish, so long as they comprehend the expected pressure they will receive upon staying in a territory "they arent prepared to withstand".
the artist
the artist can be identified through everyone, as not a mode of operation at all. the artist is simply a posteriori designation of no worth, or an apriori postulation of non-consequential labeling, there is no real artist in between, nor the recognition between an artist and non-artist. the object of art is subject to a cynical mode of assesment that functions primarily as a dissasociation - and this is known as criticism. this results because of the inevitable rupture between its expected values and derived results, as opposed to its pure function - in that that same reality is the defining characteristic of all possible techne-related immersion. every single act of technical possibility is an artistic act, a "piece" of art, a creation of an art "work", all art is all action, regardless of its banality, perceptivity, interpretation and so fourth. art doesnt involve skills, crafts, works, creations, labour, exchanges, or any form of criterial or qualitative requirement. rather, its a quantitative disposition, a dispose, an association, there are no dissasociations in art, there is nothing learned nor nothing required, not even its comprehension as such (and especially not its denial, which only further enforces it). art has nothing to do with criticism, as criticism is a derived product of its associative power (the dissasociative power is subject to art, and depends on arts associative power, not on its own analytical power).
what thinkers confuse between capitalism, alienation and criticism is the assumption that there is a form of non-artistic artism, or rather a distaste of tastes, the master of artistic indiscrepancies, an alien object so strong that it disables all artistic relevancies, and causes confusions in the perception of narrative time, social space, ethical recognition, reviewability, associative complexes, political engagements and criteriums of taste between the cultural community and the objects of art, but this is simply a result of art's positive power. the positive power functions as a structural operability that fuzes together the associations it creates with opposite associative complexes, creating tension that it then further weaponizes, which leads to its own synthesis. but this synthesis isnt a product of criticism but of more art, it doesnt require interpretation. capitalism is neither a cause of conflictual rupture nor simply any and every technologically-relevant manifestation, but it is a third term, it is an imposition of its own qualities, that has nothing to do with emerging social relations or frequencies, it simply serves as an unfair stand-in for them.
when there are no conditions for an authentic emergence of social integrationism, or an experience of organic interaction between correlated voices that are politically intertwined or causally called-fourth - no matter the voracity, audacity or intensity of this experience - by the impact of their mutual existence in a political space, these same voices lose out on the luxury of a community that casts personally reflected judgement between these voices, be it that this judgement has or hasnt a criteria (as per lyotard's just gaming). the community acts as a symbolic sheild of value that not only personally recognizes the value of the subjectivity of the voice over its politically-relevant existence, but that ties the "political voice" of the subjective proponent with its very subjective quality, thus creating a field of recognition, semblance, convergence (harmony) between the voices in the inner community - meaning that the ideal form of the community is one where there is a luxurious and prosperous judgement where there is an equal skeletal footing for all voice-components instead of a starved, exhausting, debilitating, frustrating, even infuriating propagation of judgement. the judgements themselves also reflect different assertive tendencies, pertaining to the level of luxury.
when they lose this luxury, professional judgement becomes a private and auto-emotional assertion, that is concerned pre-emptively with identities, agendas, affiliations and sets of variables regarding the "color" of the shared experience over its inner properties. in this situation, criticism becomes reduced to an assertion of identity (the political belonging that underlines fast judgement) and this same judgement cast by the "aesthetic shape" of the criticism clearly reveals itself as nothing more than a territorial dispute, it falls short of constructive qualities. no matter the qualities of the critical appropriation, the subject behind it functionally remains on the level of an "i-statement" even if the actual critical value of the statement has philosophical elements. this is because it in fact is a political statement, its an attempt at forming a world around the subject, a world where certain elements behave as conflictual, others as affiliatory, and certain ones retaining or being removed from speculative or contemplative value. there is no way to corporately manage the "customer servicing" of this voice, because it exists as it pertains to its necessity.
white-washing the "i-statement" actually causes even more damage by isolating not only the alienation between the subjects but throughout their own shared motivations for holding the views to begin with. however, the level of assertiveness of opinion is directly proportional to the level of assertiveness of character, meaning that there is an aesthetic of fair views that blast past social confrontationism and are uniquely, as stated previously, a liberating experience for all parties involved. the act of confrontation, when understood as self-confrontation, is a de-supermacist force, it holds a sense of shared responsibility over the political act, which has a self-affirming position, it bypasses the unusual routes that the suffocated judgement requires of the voice to cycle through in order to arrive to the same lower, less luxurious benefits of world-arrangement, over the greater ones of critical non-identiary juxtaposition, a component of fair criticism.
the art world
the subjective act of world-arrangement or a sense of cultural belonging is less of a luxury than that of fair criticism, of the simple act of casting a judgement or review, and in this instance it simply disguises itself as constructively motivated, when in fact often times this very same judgement is social in nature, having to do with the ranks of gossip, identity-formation, social group ordering and so fourth, which removes from the harmony of the craft in order to re-insert the validity of the territorial arrangement. this same act even behaves as is if it concerned with criticism, when that clearly isnt its goal. the suffocation of the subject is caused by political exhaustion that results as a consequence not of globalism and its interaction with the vulgar community (the vulgarity), but rather the vulgarity falls into a state of mania when its forced to evaluate elements of its community without the organic interactions nor harmonic predispositions that would allow it to continue on this path in a fair manner.
critical non-identiary juxtaposition, one of the modes of the fair criticism, is the proper and even pure engagement with the object of "art" - art here means all objects of shared experience, not simply some material object that has a suffocating title - which also isnt art but a territorial dispute. art is free to be, inso far as it pertains to its active appearance in a setting. the instant appearance is an instant art form, even social communication is an art, that is recognized for its strenghts precisely because its missing the suffocating function that supposedly" higher-perceived" territorial-status arrangement disputes hold claim over. this is precisely what shows the value of the artistic form to-be-judged, it has value because it resists apriori judgement and is simply a form of world engagement.
this is also because the exclusionary attitude (unfair criticism, a component of the balkan disease) only selectively comprehends how all objects of art are already self-fulfilling artifacts, immediately upon their conception or even the very thought of them, participating in the spirit of communal art as naturally beholden to all artistic elements simultaneously, as naturally posessive of all elements of the composition of the artistic mentality, which is a natural mentality, not a mentality of force. the artistic mentality has no criteria as per the history of philosophy, other than criteria that german neoclassicists attempted to coincidentally simultaneously gatekeep and yet also act apophatic regarding its nature, and judgement persists and occurs regardless of criteria.
juxtaposition and world arrangement are in fact opposites, although both require a critical lense, one of them makes use of the identity of judgement (which is here the same thing as the judgement of identity, that is, the judge makes use of the apparatus of judgement in its principle - invokves its identity, whilst also the identity of the judgement is the judge's call, for he is not inacting judgement but in fact inacting its identity, the identity of the form of judgement over its substance, even when he is most motivated in its substance)
the tendency of artistic evaluators (remember, artistic refers to everything, from "professionals" to "specialists" to ideologues, politicans, chiefs, surgeons, group of five men in a club - any and all accidental or purposeful social roles - social in so far as they exist as pertaining to the political reality of sociality - which also includes purely private self-indulging experiences) to feel that they posess a vision of intention yet a requirement of intention simultaneously is the state of arrogance. arrogance, pretentiousness, snobbery and elitism are not to be confused with the harsh loss of the term objective as denoting not transcendental but criterial convergences, and as such, the arguments regarding objective vs. subjective taste are irrelevant, and even more so arguments over truth as correspondence.
rather, arrogance as a state now functions to serve the role of perpetuating a constant conflict between perceived vs. reasoned intention. the artists responsibility is now to mediate his own intention, to divorce it from his felt inspirations in order to perform a set of maintenance rituals. this act isnt about felt importance, but about felt legitimacy, since the transcendental connection between importance and its social maintenance are now delegitimized due to the fall of objectivity, the "objective" is now to mediate the postulation of the object, not its legitimacy. the postulation of the object is the felt mediation of its processation, of its deliverance. the object can only be delievered in certain style, not the form of the object but the ritual of its enactment. the object must fulfill some criteria, you must feel as if you can comprehend why the object is delivered. the alienation of the critic confronts the critic, which lowers his own self-legitimizing function (the seeker's complex) which in turn creates a complex of snobbery where the confrontation is re-articulated as a loss of meaning in the object of the art rather than its evaluator. the strenght of art's positive power is in its ability to decouple perspectives rather than conjoin them, positive power has the role of destabilizing essence itself, of suggesting that nature is above essence, that categories are above nature, and that multiplicity conquers monoplicity.
classic aesthetic categories
classic aesthetic categories cannot suffice to mediate the object, and there is no hierarchy of social roles, therefore snobbery is about verticality, not horizontality. it is about the maintenance of alliances, simply, the critic has become the knight, the knighthood is the critics chair, the theatre is the homeground for the evaluator, the cynic. the cynic's salon is the bar, or their home couch, the cynic's conquest is over the legitimacy of others. performing legitimacy is felt as a personal, emotional endeavour. the confusion of multiplurality, of value bipolarity, of multidirectionism, of felt spontaneity, of judgement without criteria, acted or performed statement-pieces, of the direction and death of criticism, is over the character of enactment that arises as a result of this dilemma of felt legitimacy.
the problem, however, is that art's positive power is removed from its ability to be enacted when its negative power (the existence of unfair criticism) serves to ritually delegitimize it. primarily, criticism today isnt about harmony (there is no need for harmony, not that there is disharmony in any way - simply, states and affairs are ran automatically, and hyperstitionally) but about enacted humilation (as bifo observes) which is the negative twin of harmony. if harmony sets in order by converging and organically flowing everything into its lines (which exists today in the balkans and all other uneven realms as a social aesthetic of conformism rather than a structural sorting mechanism that appears not just self-prophetic but seemingly innocous, completely transparent, and almost non-existent - "the things sort themselves out") however, humilation, the negative twin of harmony, creates an aesthetic that makes it inaudibly clear how non transparent and forced the categories that are already pre-emptively sorted behave and appear, which paradoxically increases awareness of the social sorting mechanism (which in itself doesnt even exist in cases of disharmony). the social sorting mechanism cannot function proper in subversive realms (like in todays contemporary world), the way it could in "serious worlds" (like the old world of theology) so it essentially behaves on account of social gossip with no actual social stimuli. it sorts categories of identities and their corresponding voices pre-culturally (pre-philosophically), but post-politically (identity as enacted rather than felt), therefore the roles are forced and autoperformed. performativity today can outright correspond to the political mainline (the real producing craft of politics, its genuine contemporary manifestation) but, autoperformativity is confused with its genuine counterpart in these same instances.
anyone too pulsed to put aside their status, arrogance, or inability to consider political categorical differences isnt deserving of being called having a pulse, one should always be able to seperate criticism, abstraction and consideration. pure judgement always admits the good with the bad, unlike most snobs. snobs are men too weak to put aside the fraility and intensity of the world to consider their own judgement fairly enough so as to actually engage the pieces. having a dead-inside mirror still show more character towards something than the unfaithful reader isnt indicative of a pulse, much the opposite
meat
this makes it even more disgusting though. instead of using the wisdom they gained from being tied to cycles of domination, they were quick to snap out of their fake chains, and continue to look stupid under the new regime by instantly falling to its accumulatory capacities and symbolic demands, quite literally "overfalling" into them. it sort of shows dog mentality, like, the moment the symbol of domination is released the uncontained energy pushes them to the next leap due to inability for personal restraint, it shows the restraint kind of "didnt do anything" if that makes sense. all it does is signify that continued repression is a sensible reply
the kitsch
in art and culture, greenberg's deleuzian-type paranoia to avoid kitsch as the 'great sales apparatus' that 'traps' the proprieter of 'genuine culture' by 'drawing its life-blood' from the reservoir of accumulated experience is turned upside down by adorno's view of kitsch in minima moralia as a 'joy of imitation' that reflects the problem of automated cultural artisanry as a 'taboo' or conflict of simulated experience in regards to fine art's power, challenging it's de-automated/de-imitating essence - in the heideggerian sense of essence as an 'everchanging strife structurally' (as per thompson) built into history.
adorno nontheless remains challenged by the earlier combo of benjamin's view of pure art in mechanical reproduction as denying both the social function and categorical function leading to imitatory art's denovelizing condition, as well as heidegger's view in the origin of art of the 'interplay between earth and world' as 'sheltering agent' is to 'relational meaning', displacing modernity's attempt at 'enframing subjectivism' as an ascent to 'finalizing conceptual dominion', something that mimics benjamin's criticism of pure art.
marx in his manuscripts finds in estrangement an alienation of man from external nature, his 'spiritual aspect', his species-specific aspect, property, mutual relationality, and ultimately transforms his 'species-being into individual life'. as we relate the thingness of things into their 'mere' and 'set up' nature as something failing a sense of wider relation and thus losing its transformative character in heidegger, we see in marx the losing of relations between the labourer and commodity.
yet the commodity also appears as something that induces a relation but not a naturalized state of thingness. adorno finds in film a reification that degrades man in the same way estranged labour would in marx, yet fails to locate the purposive difference between the auto-reproduced object and the simply reproduced, which greenberg wants to argue is the opposite of kitsch, turning it into the sheltering agent that slowly unveils itself as relationally intricate in a heideggerian way to man and his marxian species-character in the heideggerian essence of development.
carriere finds in automation the idea that the truly novel will emerge as the unthinkable, as capital pushes the limit of novel relationality ever-forward. carriere's view in technically man dwells mimics adorno's early and impressive formulation of capital's autocommodification as producing standardized forms of critique that re-introduces the cliche in "fine" circles, in the way of cliches that mimic a hostility of cliches, heeding greenberg's earlier warning of kitsch's 'dangers' that are 'deceptively' 'high enough' to be 'dangerous' to the 'native seeeker of light'.
although as it seems, during adorno's time, it was felt that capital already dominated walter's 'traditional' art with 'ritual value' displacing it with the 'exhibition value' of kitsch to the extent it is impossible to divorce critique without applying the categorizing function to it. seemingly, the categorizing function moved from benjamin's own ambitions of a 'categorical' splitting of fine art, into a categorization of critique itself and its ability to produce non-conforming judgement that isnt 'prepackaged'.
in hegel's lectures on fine art, man duplicates himself, becoming both as 'things in nature are' and as he sees 'himself', mimicking future arguments for the double-sided and mediated requirement for the inquiry into the fine aspects of art. carriere confirms marx's sentiment that mans species-character has been lost due to capital (although for different reasons between the two of them), which she identifies in plato's concept of the agalma, the 'inestimable wonder' found when stripping man of all but his core.
this mimics adorno's view of the kitsch as something that betrays the distinction necessary to seperate critique-as-tradition from heidegger's thingness-resisting-modernity, which ties critique in with the purity of modernity's object of art, causing a downwards cyclical chain that cascades and topples the mystical insides of the relations between object and subject, propulsing and self-generating both methods of critique and re-automatizations. the view of becoming tyrant children in the face of the automation of art as challenging possibly new historical aesthetic models or their limits is also captured nicely by alexander's essay the colors of her coat, mimicking carriere's idea of the tyrant child, 'little children' that enter the kingdom of heaven.