Emancipating Spectators: The Contradictions of Politicized Art

Friday, 30 July, 6:00–8:00 PM

At the Institute of Contemporary Art of the University of Pennsylvania
118 South 36th Street Philadelphia, PA

This Machete group meeting will be held  at ICA as a part of Summer Studio with Anthony Campuzano

In an era in which the critical condemnation of consumer culture has [...]

As with our previous treatment of post-modernism, in the following session we shall approach the notion of the neo-avant-garde not merely as a historical designation or a particular theoretical fashion, but as an attitude and orientation towards the present that inspires artistic practices today, practices that position themselves critically and aspire to the legacy of refusal for which the avant-garde stands.

The notion of postmodernism gained prominence in the 1970s and 1980s as an attempt to historically delimit a new set of artistic practices that seemed out of joint with modernism’s chiefly formal concerns. However, it remains unclear to what extent postmodernism names a break with modernism, its crisis, the extension of its main concerns under new social-historical conditions, or simply a modish term with little or no analytic purchase on the real.

Extending the Machete Group’s interest in the contested legacy of modernism, this meeting shall focus on the dispute between Theodore Adorno and Peter Bürger concerning the critical significance of the historical avant-garde and the theoretical role played by the concept of the autonomy of the work of art. To help frame the discussion of the material, there will be introductory comments by Alexi Kukuljevic, Gabriel Rockhill, and New York based artist, Sean Paul.

Furthering the Machete Group’s interest in framing and reframing the present by articulating modes of thought and practice that run counter to the dominant images of modernity, we propose to start our second series of workshops with an historically minded reflection on the limits of formalism.

The following meeting’s discussion will take its point of departure from Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise (1967) and Chris Marker’s The Last Bolshevik (1993), two films that attempt to grapple often experimentally with the passionate hopes and disappointments that animated revolutionary politics in the 20th century.

The event will include an introduction of the theme “Remastering the Early Avant-Garde” by Alexi Kukuljevic and Gabriel Rockhill followed by presentations of work by Zach Rockhill and Geoff Sobelle.

Introduction to Machete Group, including two brief presentations by Alexi Kukuljevic and Gabriel Rockhill on the contemporary relevancy of past attempts to “think the present” (Foucault, Baudelaire, Bayard, and Kant) plus a general discussion afterwards.