[Syndicate] Demagogues in light of the WTC

[furtherfield]

thanx for that Patrick - good post...

marc

> The other day, I found myself enraged by the conversation between nn and Joy
> Garnett over American obesities and the religion of food.  Of what I know of
> the two artists, the differences are striking, but there are two key points
> that come to mind when seeing these posts; the banality of online demagogues
> and the necessity for compassion.
> 
> The necessity for compassion in times like these is the more important of the
> two, so I'll talk about that first.  This human quality is surely not in short
> supply at this time, but the apparent lack of it in the online demagogue
> brings to light a couple questions.  These are whether they are, or are not in
> fact human at all, or whether they are humans who are so devoid of
> comapassion,
> filled with hate for the destruction and disenfranchisement in their own
> counties, or are so completely self-involved that they are incapable of
> showing
> any emp/sym-pathy for those in New York and DC.  In examining the last week's
> posts, this quality of (in)humanity sticks out like a sore thumb, and shows
> the
> naked agendas of those individuals, whether it is a detached sense of cool
> irony, hatred for anything related to NATO, or OCD ranting.
> 
> However, in this liminal social space that we inhabit at this time, it is
> ESSENTIAL that we remember that the United States is not alone in its share of
> atrocity.  The WTC is only unique in its location, place in the world
> hegemony,
> and the methods in which it was destroyed.  The US media has historically been
> almost dismissive about the the suffering in other countries, such as the
> disproportionate casualties in the Gulf War, the 3-minute clips about the
> slaughters in Rwanda, the oppression in Tibet, and the atrocities in the
> former
> Yugoslavia and Chechnya.  Although these events are by far not the same, the
> degree of suffering certainly translates well, and begs our remembrance in the
> light that America has now had a taste of it.
> 
> 1990 and 1998 were very bad times in our lives, as I sat in my living room, my
> wife on the phone with her Serbian expatriate colleague in a rage over the
> handling of Belgrade and Kosova.  It is one of the reasons why my wife and I
> have worked on a number of projects to attempt to raise the awareness of the
> events in that part of the world which were highly distorted by the media in
> the US.  In fact, it was funny that in one of my first conversations with
> colleague Maja Kuzmanovic, she asked me what a 'cluster bomb' was, since I was
> an American, and she assumed I should automatically know such things.  In
> addition, although I typically am only occasionally in agreement with many of
> nn's 'discursive tactics', I understand that as a female of the Former
> Yugoslavia that she has a lot of hatred, pain, and resentment toward the US
> for
> her feelings, but I do not support the taunting and  almost vindictive tone of
> recent quotes.  Such does not reflect well on the Croatian people as Western
> media culture tends to stereotype from the information given, and from such
> suffering, one would hope that from such pain would come empathy for those who
> are going through it now.  This is not a call for Disney-esque, Barney-style
> group hugs, but for genuine backing for those in tough times.  I sis so for
> those I knew in the Balkan conflicts, I do so for those I am getting to know
> in
> the Tibetan situation, those in the Deep South where racism is still a big
> issue, and hopefully in some small part for my friends in NYC.
> 
> The other problem with the tactics of the online demagogue is that the
> contextual frame under which they once operated has been raised far beyond the
> background noise against which they operated before the crashes.  The 'fame'
> of
> an artist, the railing against institutions, cool spitting of regurgitated
> postmodernism, or recalcitrant posings through tens of daily posts are now
> made
> utterly banal by the events of September 11th.
> 
> This is not to say that we are to stop making art, as if we were in an
> Adorno-esque "Art After New York", but the cultural terrain in which we
> operate
> has been radically altered, and demands the artist's consideration of the
> context their work retains in light of these events.  Once again, this is not
> to say that we all have to do work about 'terror' and 'New York', but the
> cultural awareness is now desensitized to the point where previous forms of
> engagements with the subject seem meaningless, or simply are drained of their
> emotional power.  This is merely the reality of the conceptual artist at this
> time.  The contextual framing of all work made after September 11, 2001 has
> changed, and whether the artist chooses to acknoledge this or not is up to
> them, but that shift exists nonetheless.
> 
> Therefore, although I may not agree with their opinions, and although I may
> filter a number of them out because they create too much of a 'noise' factor
> for my daily life, our demagogue friends are deserving of our compassion (just
> before we hit the delete key) as they obviously have had issues of pain and
> suffering in their own lives, that they have not been able to convert this
> information into knolwdge, and therefore wisdom, and that most importantly,
> they have been instantly been made relics of of a previous time in which their
> methods of engagement ring hollow at best.  Cleverness is not enough now,
> there
> must also be a human being behind the facade.
> 
> I have been fortunate, as I do not live in New York, Belgrade, or many of the
> hot spots of the world (but many of my friends do), although I have seen the
> pain that change to the mortal coil affords.  I can't even begin to speak at
> the level that those who live in Manhattan on the events that took place
> there.  However, The events of last week make me realize that if only for a
> while (hopefully) that the cultural playing field has been stretched at
> near-asymptotic angles, and in light of all this, we are made to be seen as
> small as we truly are.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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