The Arts

Form is how memory works.

Peter Schjeldahl dropped the above mini-aphorism on us about three-quarters of the way through his Oct. 8th, article in The New Yorker, "All Together Now" which covered the 2007 Istanbul Biennial, among other things. Coincidentally, I’ve been thinking alot about memory too, mostly because I’ve recently gotten back in touch with some old friends who seem to have entirely memories of our childhood together and I’m not sure how this could be. After reading Schjeldal’s article, I thought I’d try to get some of these thoughts down on paper and see what kind of connections I could find.

Sarcastically, the first thing I thought after reading Schjeldal’s assertion was, whew! Now we don’t have to worry about the hippocampus, basal ganglia or all those pesky neural pathways in the limbic system. Forget those cumbersome classifications like working memory, phonological memory [whatever that is], visual/spacial memory, procedural, declarative, and semantic memory. Olfactory sensations? Emotions? Nope. Form is it.[yep, I know about these obscure things because I'm on meds that influence these systems and I have an obsession with knowing how I'm 'knowing', if you know what I mean...]

Well okay, obviously he didn’t meen it that way you’re thinking, but I’m not so sure. Schjeldahl made the statement, with no apparent irony, in support of a remark by curator Okwui Enwezor that "contemporary art spaces risk becoming ‘incubators of amnesia,’ devoid of historical recall." In this context we have to conclude that Schjeldahl would like to see art spaces–and by extension art works–that are ‘incubators of remembering,’ and ‘rife with historical recall.’ As if David’s The Death of Marat, or Picasso’s Guernica were viable models to aspire to. Too much? Maybe, but Schjeldahl’s statement certainly betrays a longing for a more engaged, even efficacious art. The notion is touching, nostalgic and powerful.

After all, the history of the relationship between images and real things is one of continual distanciation; as EH Gombrich had it, "in primitive societies, the thing and its image were simply two different, that is, physically distinct, manifestations of the same energy or spirit. Hence, the supposed efficacy of images in propitiating and gaining control over powerful presences. Those powers, those presences were present in them."

In other words, the power to paint the bull was the power to kill the bull. In this sense, art did change the world, it gave man the ability [psychologically and therefore physically] to survive. It was as if we were literally in Plato’s Cave; the shadows and the reality behind the shadows were one and the same. Not entirely unlike some video games…

Today, it’s a post-Postmodern, post-Simulacrum, post-Theory, post-[insert favorite enemy here] world, and art is made up of:

a vertigo of serial signs–shadowless, impossible to sublimate, immanent in their repetition–who can say where the reality of what they simulate resides? -J. Baudrillard

Art has evolved–like any other complex endeavor–mathematics, science, poetry–quite indifferenent to concerns outside itself, with its own lanquage, theories, factions, professionals, critics and fans.

And while it often takes everyday life as its subject, contemporary art does not address an everyday audience. When Sherrie Levine rephotographed Walker Evans work, did anyone outside the art world take notice, except to laugh, jeer or write dismissive articles in local newsletters? Which brings us again to the subject of language. Memory, history, politics and form are all of a piece, unified through language, naming and knowing. In other words, we’ve been hi-jacked once again by narrative.

Narrative, not form, is the stuff of memory. If the form we are talking about is visual, which one assumes given Schjeldahl’s profession and the subject of his article, then his use of the term is an obvious set-up, and a good one at that. For if form is how memory works, it begs the question, do the blind have no memory? How would the lack of this one sensation eliminate a major aspect of cognition?

It doesn’t, obviously, and Schjeldahl isn’t implying that it does. I think he is implying something entirely different: synesthesia, or the union of the senses. Can we smell red? Can a sound taste bitter? Or in this case, can one see history ['see, that is history!], or more precisely, can memory be seen ['that is what I saw!'...Rashomon anyone?] both questions which have at their core the classic aesthetic nut, ‘Can art change the world?’

Too big a jump? I don’t think so, given the context of Schjeldahl’s article. It’s implied by the guilt-ridden invocation of the idea that artists somehow have a responsibility to keep people from forgetting…about political and social injustice and atrocities one assumes.

But that is not how art changes the world.

Every ‘outrageous’ or ‘blasphemous’ or ‘seditious’ work of art is always already dismissed by the general public–the audience it most likely intended to arouse [Serrano's Piss Christ anyone?]–and counted on in advance on by the ‘institution’–the very power it probably intended to denounce. Need evidence? The following list is in no particular order and is by no means complete: Constructivism, de Stijl, Bauhaus, Dada, La Révolution surréaliste, Situationists, The Personal as Political, Fluxus, Happennings, Futurism, Expressionism, Suprematism, and most of the art of the seventies…

Whether stated or implied, much of this art attempted to align itself with the la révolution  du jour. Of course, I’m just as guilty as the next. I’d like to believe that the practice I’ve given my life over to has some kind of importance beyond the limited influence of galleries and publications, friends and critics. I often play with these ideas in my work, developing projects that use the language of global aspiration and political ambition. The projects have been accused by some of signifying the inability of art to change the world. Conversely, they’ve been called flat-footed agit prop or propoganda; an ironic attempt to revive a 60′s, grass-roots ethos.

But that is not how art changes the world.

So now after all this, how does art change the world? I don’t really know, but I have a kind of working definition which is helping me in the studio and elsewhere. It goes something like:

• It can let us know that we are not alone.
• It can make us question assumtions we didn’t know we had.
• It can show us things in a different way.
• It can stimulate our imaginations
• It can be absolutely useless, and in so doing, be invaluable
• It can make the world a better place by the simple fact of its existance.

I’ve strayed far from the subject of memory, true. But I think this post makes a kind of sense, because just as we need to believe we are doing something worthwhile, we need also memory, for as Saul Bellow said:

Memories keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.

(to be continued…)