Manifesta
AN ARTIST’S STATEMENT FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
by
Melody Sky Eisler
A thesis
submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Arts, with Honors
Boise State University
May 2005
© 2005
Melody Sky Eisler
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
I dedicate this project to my feminist-superheroine mother Michelle J. Eisler, who has encouraged me to start a revolution ever since I was a little girl. Joseph Campbell believed that the most heroic act is that of motherhood. This is true of my loving mother who has empowered me to change the world.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is with sincere appreciation and gratitude that I thank my senior BFA Thesis committee members: Louie Simon, Nicholas Newman, Francis Fox, Richard Young, Peter Lutze and Ginna Husting, for their support, guidance and encouragement. I would also like to thank the Honors College for creating an environment conducive to revolutionary thought. I would also like to thank Boise State University and the Art Department for awarding me an Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Award for this project. Special thanks to all of the organizations that participated in the project: The Boise City Arts Commission, Northwest Animal Companions, Boise State’s Women’s Center, Treasure Valley Television Public Access Channel 11, Boise State’s Cultural Center, United Way of Treasure Valley, Snake River Alliance, Agency for New Americans, Your Family Friends and Neighbors, and Boise Weekly. Thanks to Karen Bubb for her support and proactive leadership. Thanks to Melissa Wintrow for her feminist encouragement of my activist art throughout the years, she has helped me to become a better activist. Special thanks to Boise State University’s Art Department and the Boise community for embracing this project and showing that art can effect immediate change.
Also, I have to thank my amazing brothers Christopher and Christian for their help and support. This project would not have been possible without the generous support of my family, friends and professors. Thank you all so much.
ABSTRACT
This interdisciplinary and multimedia creative research project was designed to explore the ways in which art can be used to affect social change in the microcosms of our local communities and the macrocosm of our increasingly global world. This project utilized a sculptural video installation titled Ambiance of Sublime Regeneration, a public sculpture titled A Portal to Social Change, public lectures about the artwork, a TVTV channel 11 public access program titled Our Posthumanist Future, and a manifesta discussing the new role of the artist as a public intellectual in the twenty-first century. A Portal to Social Change was a traveling display in front of ten nonprofit agencies in Boise to draw attention to their worthwhile causes, and representatives of these organizations spoke about their nonprofit agencies on my TVTV show Our Posthumanist Future. Ambiance of Sublime Regeneration was displayed at Boise State's Hemingway Center Visual Arts Gallery and was a twenty-foot interactive sculptural environment. The project met with tremendous success and was featured in the Idaho Statesman, the Arbiter and the Boise Weekly. This project was awarded an Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Award from Boise State University.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION ..................................................................................................................iii
AKNOWLEDGEMENTS..................................................................................................iv
ABSTRACT.................................................................…................................................…v
THE POSTHUMANIST AESTHETIC MANIFESTA: AN ARTIST’S STATEMENT FOR SOCIAL CHANGE.....................................................................................................1
Introduction .............................................................................................................1
The Posthumanist Era..............................................................................................3
The Posthumanist Aesthetic...................................................................................10
10 Declarations of the Posthumanist Aesthetic.........................................15
Endnotes.............................................................................................................................22
BIBLIOGRAPHY..............................................................................................................24
APPENDIX .......................................................................................................................29
The Manifestation of the Posthumanist Aesthetic: Putting Theory Into Action
THE POSTHUMANIST AESTHETIC MANIFESTA: AN ARTIST’S
STATEMENT FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead
Introduction
The twenty-first century is upon us and it is time for a new art movement to revolutionize the increasingly global world. This manifesta (a feminist version of manifesto) is a public statement proclaiming the dawn of a forthcoming progressive new “ism” and will put forth a new path for aesthetics and society. The new “ism” is posthumanism and the new aesthetic is the posthumanist aesthetic. This is the commencement of the posthumanist era, which provides new hope in the idea of a world that is not human centered. Posthumanism is a new body of theory aimed at combating the negative effects of five hundred years of humanism in order to create a non-hierarchical integrated global world. This means collapsing the binary Weltanschauung[i] of woman/man, nature/culture, and animal/human. The transgression of boundaries is key to this new world order.
As a visual artist I want to enable the talents of artists, with artwork put to a greater use than merely being a commodity that demarcates high and low culture. Art is a powerful communicator that needs to transgress the institutions of the museum and gallery to have meaningful impact on the lives of everyday citizens. Those institutions are important vehicles as well, although they must not be the only venue for artists.
Posthumanism is a contemporary overarching theory that I am utilizing to explain the root causes of social inequality in the world today. Humanism by definition is a system of thought that focuses on a human’s ability for rational thought rather than reliance on the spiritual or divine. However, in practice humanism has been used to establish hegemonies from the dominant groups in society, creating boundaries between men and women, nature and humans. Humanism is a Eurocentric outlook that creates a hierarchy out of the binary oppositions that it helped to create. Posthumanism is the critical reexamination of humanism as an ideology that generates antagonistic dualisms.
In this regard posthumanism seeks to create a pluralistic worldview that values difference instead of sameness.
Posthumanism is a contemporary body of interdisciplinary theory that attempts to blur and transgress the boundaries constructed by humanism, in order to create a more integrated global world.
Posthumanism is an innovative way of looking at the world anew in this millennium. The world is coming closer together as a result of technology, however the world is in a state of disconnectedness, with cross-cultural communication at an all time low. Posthumanism is a way to ethical globalization. Posthumanism is a key to a better future, and artists are the makers of the key.
I am concerned with new roles for the artist. I see artists becoming more socially engaged with their communities and utilizing art to affect social change in some manner. As artists we have the ability to use our talents of visual communication to make a difference. Textual literacy is taught; visual literacy is not. People in industrialized nations are the victims of an onslaught of images, many of which they cannot understand. We are a visual culture, and this invites and enables manipulation. Here the role of the artist is critical. As visual communicators we have the opportunity to use our abilities to make a difference in the world. All mediums possibly have the instrumental propensity to affect social change; this manifesta however focuses on visual art because that is my focus of interest. This is a peaceful manifesta written to inspire creativity and aesthetics to create social, environmental and political change in our social environments through the assemblage of art and theory.
The Posthumanist Era
The posthumanist era will begin when we no longer find it necessary or possible to construct and perpetuate the separation of humans from nature. It is not about the end of man or the end of art. It is about decentering the power structures that create otherness.
What is posthumanism, and does it exist now? First of all, this manifesta will offer many ideas as to what posthumanism and the posthumanist aesthetic are. However, the need for these things to be fluid and mutable is important for a movement that defies the humanistic need to rationally categorize everything through topology.
We are not defined by posthumanism; we are the definers of posthumanism! This movement is essentially about empowerment, and empowerment is fundamentally about self-control over the individual’s and the collective’s destiny. We must realize that we are in control of the future.
Robert Pepperell, the first artist to write about what he refers to as the post-human condition, sees the end of humanism as the end of, “the infallibility of human power and the arrogant belief in our own superiority and uniqueness.” [ii]
Although posthumanism and posthuman theories are interrelated, they are not synonymous. Posthuman theory focuses on cyborgian theory, which deals with the modification of the human body and mind through technology. However, increasing human potential to create Nietzschean “Superhumans” is not paradigmatically progressive. Posthumanism is charged with the Nietzschean task of evolving humankind beyond humanism’s dangerously centered “man.”[iii] The transformation of the body must lead to the transformation of the mind.[iv] The changes in the human body and the leaps in technology are what inspired theoreticians to realize that the humanistic paradigm of a human-centered world is no longer needed or relevant.
A basic understanding of humanism is crucial to understand what posthumanism is. Humanism had its origins in the ancient Greek world and gained tremendous popularity during the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment. Humanism is an ideology that places humans rather than the divine or spiritual at the center of the world. In the Renaissance, humanism marked a rejection of medieval scholasticism and a return to ancient Greek and Roman philosophies. The world became centered on humans rather than God. David Ehrenfeld, an adamant opponent of humanism, has stated that humanism, “is the dominant religion of the lives of nearly everyone in the “developed” world and all others who want to participate in a similar development.”[v] Critically speaking, a human-centered world made such philosophies as human ascendancy and man’s domination and control over nature possible.[vi] Humanism is about certainty, rationality, control, dominance and predictability. The world can be reduced to its smallest parts to understand it, make sense of it, and then control it. The state of the world today demands that humans may no longer sustain privileged superiority over the environment, animals, or other humans. Humanism places complete faith in humans to be humane.[vii] Technological advances are seen as human progress without questioning the repercussions that this “progress” has had on the environment and other humans. Humanism is power disguised as agency.[viii]
Posthumanist theory is a reexamination of humanism, citing humanism as a root cause of environmental and social problems that as an androcentric paradigm has failed to create a holistic interrelated global world. As Frantz Fanon says, “if we want humanity to advance a step further, if want to bring it up to a different level than that which Europe has shown it, then we must invent and we must make new discoveries.[ix]
Posthumanism does exist now, and my definition serves as a corrective theory. What I mean by this is that posthumanism is intrinsically linked with activism and social awareness. My posthumanism refuses to be immersed in apocalyptic or dystopic visions of the end of the world being brought about by technology and radical shifts in consciousness; this manifesta is counter-apocalyptic.[x] Posthumanism is not the mere manipulation of the human body. There is a fundamental difference between “posthuman” and “posthumanism.” Many theoreticians get ensnared in cyborgian, overly technologically-driven studies, and lose sight of what a movement beyond humanism really entails. We must change our minds, ideologies, and culture, not only our bodies. The term “posthuman” means a human that has moved beyond their limitations as a human being; this could entail anything from a human with a pacemaker or baboon heart to a human who uses the Internet to communicate with someone on the other side of the world. In a sense many humans are posthuman because of technology, however this is a very Western definition grounded in the experience of industrialization.
Posthumanism is not merely about living in a technological world; it is about society progressing past the harmful limitations of humanism.
I
n this regard posthumanism can be all-encompassing of the global world. Not all cultures have created the schism between humans and nature and in that respect prehumanism and posthumanism have simultaneously existed in other parts of the world since the beginning of human culture. We in the Western world need to examine those ideologies that were not tainted with humanism. Posthumanist artists must resist “technoenchantment,” which is the uncritical acceptance and deification of everything technological.[xi] Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” argues the dangers of technological ascendancy replacing human ascendancy, meaning that one form of domination will replace another. Artists must always be critical of technology and the effect it has on the world. They must work to bridge the gaps between the Global North and the Global South to truly create a progressive posthumanism that does not privilege countries excelling in technological breakthroughs.
Posthumanism is a discourse of unification, not universalism. Posthumanism accepts difference, uncertainty, irrationality, and the unpredictable, which all reject patriarchal ascendancy. Posthumanism is a rejection of humanism’s simplification of the world and rejects human or male ascendancy. This is evident in feminism, which seeks the end to patriarchy and strives to create a world with total gender equality. However, feminism has also been androcentric, focusing more on the equality of humans. As the ecofeminist Rachel Carson argued:
Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is--whether its victim is human or animal--we cannot expect things to be much better in this world... We cannot have peace among humans whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity.[xii]
Feminism seeks to end patriarchy, sexist oppression of men and women and narrowly defined gender roles for men and women, in order to create more holistic humans. Animal rights movements seek to end the cruel exploitation of animals. Environmentalism seeks to end the annihilation and exploitation of nature. The very facts that these movements exist are testaments to the posthumanist condition.[xiii] Posthumanism is about how we as humans will live in the present and the type of present we want to create for ourselves. Will we continue to exploit animals, the environment and each other?[xiv] Art must be the exemplar. The creation of art must be about nonviolence. Reaching a global cross-cultural consensus is a difficult task, yet it is one we must work toward.
A posthumanist seeks to end the oppression or marginalization of any other human being regardless of their gender, sex, sexuality, race, religion, ethnicity, ability or nationality. This means creating a global consciousness that seeks to end all forms of violence and cruelty, including cruelty to animals, and to end the exploitation of the environment.
The key to this transformation is envisioning what the future will look like, and that begins by creating the posthumanist aesthetic experience. The transgression of binary oppositions is essential as well. Humanist traits such as rationality are seen as a “masculine” while posthumanist traits embrace the uncertain and irrational, which are associated with “feminine” traits and thus denigrated. We refer to them as “masculine” or “feminine” only to maintain the oppositions. Dichotomous thinking easily creates an “us” and “them” mentality, privileging one set of binaries over another, giving rise to turbulence and tension. We need a world in which such divisions are no longer necessary.
Posthumanism is a term with a multitude of meanings; since its origins are so new it is in a state of constant flux.[xv] The degree of malleability within the framework of this theory should be inspiring to artists. Jacques Derrida in his deconstruction has feared that completely eliminating old structures is impossible, and there is the fear that posthumanism will just rewrite itself as a new humanism in which humans are better bodily equipped but not more conscious of the world around them.[xvi]
Implicit in humanism is a faith in human progress; implicit in posthumanism is the determination to create progressiveness. Posthumanism knows that without regular policing, humanist ideologies will run rampant, ironically halting progress. The twentieth century was one of the most violent in history. Humanism must be stopped. The cessation of humanism will not result in a return to the Dark Ages, because even in those days humans were still in a hierarchical status over nature and animals; the language of domination was rationalized through religion and not humanism. What will result is an end to privilege based on species, race, gender, ability, religion, sexuality, nationality, and ethnicity because the language used to maintain that privileging will be eliminated. As Donna Haraway argued, the elimination of humanist thinking will lead to a hopeful humanity that is no longer a “broken and suffering humanity- in ambiguity, [and] contradiction.”[xvii]
The posthumanist plurality of the present must be embraced over humanism’s uniformity of the past.
In “A Cyborg Manifesto” Donna J. Haraway argued that the epistemological myths of Western civilization are corrupt and are inhibiting socially progressive change. She dismantles fixed hierarchies of existence in her revolutionary manifesto because they came from Eurocentric ideologies that marginalize the rest of the world.[xviii] Haraway advocates deconstructing ontological thinking to be employed in the fabrication of new myths for a new millennium and she states, “liberation rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative apprehension, of oppression and so of possibility.”[xix] To create these new myths Haraway envisions a new cyborg world free from the apocalyptic visions of science fiction:
A cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints.[xx]
She argues for a utopian world where gender is extinct. We are modest witnesses at the beginning of this new millennium, and as Haraway says, we “need an experimental way of life to fulfill the millennial hope that life will survive on this planet”[xxi] Posthumanism is an extension of feminist utopian ideals, “the new utopia meshes with postmodern feminism by ignoring what is usually taken for granted in present societies: by overcoming dualities, utopia effectively presents a deconstruction of these oppositions in their fictions that show there are more possibilities than we think.”[xxii] Subsequently, ending philosophies based on domination and dualities means creating new ones that promote a harmonious world.
Therefore, it is my goal to utilize posthumanist theory in the service of visual art. Art has the capacity to communicate, generate interest, and create spectacle about specific social and political issues in the public sphere. Artists can create this new order.
The Posthumanist Aesthetic
Posthumanism is taking place now and artists are key actors in helping to create this social change. Feminism has succeeded in the repoliticization of the public sphere and of the process of art production and reception.[xxiii] The posthumanist aesthetic continues this feminist legacy by being highly politicized.
Artists are the protagonists, and will be the ones to lead the visual movement to save the world.
Art is more than a commodity or an aesthetically pleasing object. Art must be an aesthetically stimulating object. The art market and art world will have to adapt to seeing art beyond a commodity. Artists must make a living and the market needs commodities to thrive, however, artists must not depoliticize their work to make it more saleable. Installation art, performance art, site-specific and public art all challenge the notions that art is a commodity object.
The idea that creativity is what separates us from machines is still steeped in humanism.[xxiv] Creativity is then tied to ideas of reason and can be used as another tactic in human ascendancy. The posthumanist aesthetic is about creating, not about being creative. Creation is any act of transformation.[xxv] This has powerful implications because every time we create we transform something, thus creating new states of awareness in our environments.
We as artists are creatively transforming our environment. The art continues to create new realities with every interaction it has with a viewer. This has always been the case and we must utilize that vital interaction to spark change.
Artists are directly tied into transforming our world through art. The artists and that art work then function to create change, and move from humanism to humanity. Creativity and reason are not enough. It is not the ability to do these things that should matter. What should matter is what we do with the things that we create.
Artists must use aesthetics to serve their community in order to confront social problems and bring people together in a dialectic exchange.
A rich aesthetic experience is not only about the simultaneous embracing of continuity and discontinuity in the same event[xxvi] (which is a positive blurring of boundaries), it is about the viewer being inspired to action by what they see. Taking this a step further with the artist’s mission of ending antagonistic dualism by blurring boundaries, Pepperell states, “creativity consists in combining elements that already exist but which have previously been seen as separate” and unequal.[xxvii]
The danger that artists sometimes encounter is in over-intellectualized art inquiries. This can become institutionalized inactivity into investigations about the essence of materials, which can lose site of the bigger picture concerning the multitude of the world’s problems. Why should the role of the artist be to engage in world problems? Mel Chin a prominent activist artist argues why artists should be engaged in world issues:
I’m a submerging figure, applying creative energy not just to making objects, but to creating forums for discourse where there’s very little. I see it as a survival relationship as an artist. If you are fueled by all these ideas and all these poetic capacities, and you live in a culture where you feel they are being endangered, it seems appropriate to create conditions of survival for those ideas… It’s not just for art. If there is a future for human beings, we’d better do something.[xxviii]
First of all, artists are ubiquitous. This makes the posthumanist aesthetic a truly global prospect. Secondly, art is about communication. Communicating ideas through visual means can be very powerful.
If not (us) artists, who? If not now, when?
During high modernism it is believed that artists showed the truth of the world by reducing it down to the essence of nature in order to show its construction.[xxix] Activism and intellectualism must be fused; artists must ask themselves what is the greater purpose of these inquiries. This means a rejection of the detached modernist “ivory tower” of academia to a progressive idea of the engaged “organic” intellectual.[xxx] Activism is defined as, “the policy or action of using vigorous campaigning to bring about political or social change.”[xxxi] The campaigning in this instance is the process of putting the art in the public sphere and the artists and their agents taking the responsibility to educate the public about the issues in the art. Art is a vital part of change and cannot be seen as bourgeois or elitist if the art and artists are working for change.
Reclaiming a definition of aesthetics is important because, as art critic Hal Foster says, “the notion of the aesthetic as subversive, a critical interstice in an otherwise instrumental world” is vital for our understanding of how aesthetics can be instrumental in social change.[xxxii] Traditionally, aesthetics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty, especially in the arts. However, I want to reclaim the original definition of aesthetics as formulated by the ancient Greeks. Aesthetics pertained to the senses and how the senses experience the environment around them. It was in mid-eighteenth century Germany that aesthetics was simplified to be only “about beauty.” Aesthetics is not merely about art being beautiful and pleasing to look at.
Aesthetic experience and art have a symbiotic relationship because art helps to create an environment that creates experiences for the viewer. Art is a powerful tool for social change. If art is only about beauty and pleasing the viewer, then art can dangerously become about anesthetizing the viewer. Art traditionally exhibited in museums and galleries is about art being displayed in contemplative and almost religious spaces. In today’s culture humans are constantly seeking stimulation so art can no longer afford to be aesthetic in the traditional sense of the word; the rich aesthetic experience must be stimulating to create active participants in society. Jean Baudrillard also claims an interest in the true sense of the term, “there is still an enormous stake in aesthetics... as a mode of perception, which is precisely the art of appearance, the art of making things appear.”[xxxiii] Art makes “things” appear by raising issues and awareness that perhaps had been overlooked. Artwork along these lines questions the indivisible fabric of hegemonical ideologies in order to destabilize them, paving the way for a world where all humans are equal to the world and no one is above that.
Artists can no longer get away with cruelty for the “sake of art.”[xxxiv]
Artists now must take a very active and responsible role in the implications of the content in their work.
Shock for shock’s sake is a waste of resources. Artists’ commitment to posthumanism means that they must conscientiously refuse to perpetuate any form of dominance or violence in their art. Truly controversial works, “challenge the most originary notions of modern society, and risk the consequences.”[xxxv]
Aesthetics and creativity combine to create pathways of cognition that would otherwise not exist.[xxxvi] This is especially true of public art being placed in unusual places that people must encounter on a daily basis; art becomes a part of everyday life and a vital part of the social environment. This does not mean that viewers would see the art daily, thus rendering it routine and invisible. What it means is that art is infused in the public sphere and more accessible, as opposed to being enshrined only in the institutions of museums and galleries. The new role of the artist is to create art that transgresses the boundaries of decoration and commodity. Art is a political tool and must be used to question the status quo and the direction human civilization has taken; art must elicit and initiate thinking processes.[xxxvii]
The goal of this new aesthetic must be to transform apathy into empathy.
Activist art has been devalued for not containing aesthetic purity, on the grounds that it sacrifices an aesthetic pleasure for a subversive one.[xxxviii] However, activist art does have an aesthetic in the original meaning of the word. Activists refuse to be limited by an idea of the beautiful; their art is not about anesthetizing the masses but rather inspiring the masses to take revolutionary actions. Artists must create a new aesthetic based on Habermas’s idea of “communicative action.”[xxxix] Using communicative action means that artists are self-reflexive and capable of critiquing the world and themselves, resulting in an aesthetic activism. Habermas said, “a work validated through aesthetic experience can then in turn take the place of an argument and promote the acceptance of precisely those standards according to which it counts as an authentic work.”[xl] Aesthetic elitism is a problem that leads to the perpetuation of class distinctions. The artist must step down from a privileged position in high culture to be a full participant in the public sphere. It is not enough for artists to create a piece of art, put it into a gallery or museum and let the public make sense of it.
The first key step for artists is to reject their compliance in helping to create elitist cultures. The posthumanist aesthetic is anti-elitist.
Aesthetics and art making have been further entrenched in humanism by the erroneous and dangerous belief that the genius human mind is not a product of nature but merely borrows ideas from nature.[xli] New criteria for what art and aesthetics are and how they are to be used must be established...
10 Declarations of The Posthumanist Aesthetic
1. Artists are public intellectuals. Artists are cultural workers who must use their visual talents to affect change.
2. We must move towards a social dialectical art. This means creating meaningful interactions between and amongst the public to spark interest and engagement in contemporary issues.
3. Art solely as a commodity is self-serving and a misuse of this powerful medium. Art cannot be only about perpetuating high culture. Public art is a step in the right direction.
4. Aesthetics are about experience. We, as artists, must create visionary art that leads people to experience a progressive future. Aesthetics is not only about beauty, and art does not have to be created by individual geniuses.
5. We must never declare the death of easel painting, or the end of art. This is a futile and useless argument that has been proven wrong again and again. Use your energy more wisely and do not get lost in academic arguments that are not geared towards a progressive future.
6. Create liberatory theory and liberatory content in art. This means discussing the problem and why it exists, while explaining strategies for creating change, and a vision for what that change will look like.[xlii] The creation of meaningful and purposeful works of art also constitutes liberatory practice of theory. Make art that is part of the solution and that does not only reveal problems.
7. Visual illiteracy must be challenged. We live in a visual world and we can no longer be the passive victims of our misunderstandings of our visual world. The ability to effectively communicate visually is imperative for artists. Artists must engage in outreaches to the public to help people better understand the visual world in which they live.
8. Artistic responsibility. The critical language of art is important as a specialized form of written communication used to communicate specifically about art. However, artists as public intellectuals must ensure that the educative aspects are integral to works of art circulated in the public sphere. Also, artists must not perpetuate violence or cruelty in their art. Posthumanist artists are role models.
9. There must be no hierarchy of genre or of mediums. We must celebrate diversity in art and be able to utilize different types for different situations. It does not matter what the art looks like or what materials are used (if it is even object oriented). The fundamental goals for posthumanist art are what ideas are represented and how the art communicates those ideas.
10. There must be no more myth of genius artists with their individual assertions. Art is about process and communication and therefore is not created in a vacuum! Progressive artists use social dialectical art and participatory practices and collaborative art to engage other people in the process. The exemplars of this are Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who employ thousands of people to help them realize their ephemeral site-specific environmental work. They ensure a clear media message about their art and they make sure that their art is seen by millions of people who might not enter a museum or gallery. Public art can sometimes have a greater connection to life and the lived experiences of the viewers.
To assist my construction of the posthumanist aesthetic I am drawing heavily upon the relatively new idea of social dialectical art. Artists have social responsibilities, especially artists who work in the public sphere. Social dialectical art is defined as art that:
has placed the emphasis on artistic engagement as educational, or pedagogic, in a way that attests to inclusion within society as an integrated whole…this is espousing a shift in the terms of engagement between artists and what were traditionally regarded as audiences, to a more therapeutic or correctional interaction with an underscored group of people.[xliii]
Social dialectical art must be about the utilization of dialectics, which are another vital component to this aesthetic. The blurring and transgression of binary oppositions is essential to posthumanism. When the thesis and antithesis unite they will create the synthesis. Thus when art (the thesis) unites with socio-political problems (antithesis) it creates a call to action and possible solution (synthesis).
This new movement needs to use the practices of feminist consciousness-raising sessions. To create a social dialectic art, artists must work together to create a dialogue between themselves. There is power in numbers and in groups working together. Consciousness is not only awareness of oneself and identity; it is an awareness of what is going on in the larger world around the self. In terms of the posthuman, the change in the physical self can lead to a change in consciousness. Consciousness is no longer about “being, it is about becoming”[xliv] According to Peter Baofu there is an implicit danger if this process is absolved:
The analysis of having, belonging and being in the context of consciousness is precisely to show [that] the very nature of beliefs and values has undergone the recurrent metamorphosis of one hegemonic form unto another, with society and culture advancing to further expansion from locality and regionality through globality and post-globality[xlv]
Implicit in Baofu’s argument on consciousness is that if the posthuman does not have a posthuman consciousness to proceed from, then technology will be the hegemonic outcome. Environmental philosopher Arran Gare theorizes, “once the world is conceived as a creative process of becoming… the nihilism of European civilization can be abandoned.”[xlvi] Artists since the 1980’s have been “giving us a frightful warning of the irrational reservoir of dislocated emotions that may overwhelm the advances of technology.”[xlvii] Artists have been questioning the blind faith in technology, wondering if it is just a new form of colonialism.[xlviii] Methodological holism[xlix] is the posthumanist vision that combines disciplines to transcend the models and theories of Cartesian dualisms that our society revolves around. Artistic consciousness is born from the posthumansitic era in which artists are conscious of the vital role collectively working together can have in this world. The Guerrilla Girls, a group of masked feminist art avengers in New York City, proudly proclaim that they are the conscience of the art world.
Artists can now be the conscience of the world through artistic consciousness.
During the last twenty years, artists have been caught in an ideologically tumultuous time because they have had to question the role they play in a larger social context than just the art world. Henry A. Giroux, a professor of cultural studies, articulates this crisis in ideology very well by stating that artists who work in the public sphere become cultural workers:
I want to insert a broader notion of the political back into this argument… to rearticulate the role of artists as cultural workers whose public function offers them the opportunity to serve as border intellectuals who engage in a productive dialogue across different sites of cultural production. Border intellectuals function in the space between "high" and popular culture; between the institution and the street; between the public and the private. At stake here is not merely the opportunity to link art to practices that are trangressive and oppositional, but also to make visible a wider project of connecting forms of cultural production to the creation of multiple critical public spheres. [l]
The term “cultural workers” is very appropriate, because these artists are going above and beyond just producing art for the art world and art market; they are trying to initiate change through their work. Postmodernist art is about the reexamination of traditional conceptions of art, while pushing the boundaries of what are considered to be socially acceptable forms of art. In addition, political art is often questioned as to whether or not it even is art. “But is it art,” is the comment used to ask the questions of the “new activist cultural practices”.[li] Postmodernist art allows for a plurality of disciplines and ideas to be integrated into art. It is also a rejection of modern art ideals that stressed the assertion of individual genius. Sociopolitical art is a new form of art that transgresses the boundaries of the art world to encounter a larger political and public sphere. However, posthumanist art takes postmodern art tactics and infuses them with engagement and activism.
Posthumanist art is always about activism.
Posthumanist art has been inspired by postmodern art, yet it is also returning to some important modernist concepts. Abstraction can be a key component in the posthumanist aesthetic. Realism and the focus on human subjects is part of humanist art, which sees realism as “the truth,” and abstraction as being at best a partial truth.[lii] This realism in humanist art places supreme faith in the depiction of heroic humans to improve the world.[liii] Also, hyperrealism has the tendency in activist art to be overly didactic and repugnant to the viewer. If the work seems preachy, will people want to resist it? In this sense the posthumanist aesthetic is reactionary, referring to the manifesto by Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual Art. He argued a need to break away from humanism’s separation of humans and the spiritual, arguing that the spiritual is vital for the welfare of humanity. This is not an overt religiosity; it is simply an embracing of the non-empirical. Abstraction in art to Kandinsky was more spiritual. Abstraction has the ability to lead the viewer to perceive reality differently, thus realizing that reality is not uniform or fixed. People and animals experience the world on a continuum of experience and no one experiences the world exactly the same way. Kandinsky argued that art should not be limited to material reality and that when using abstraction or non-representation in art, artists have a duty to the non-artist viewer to help them feel and understand the work. [liv] Communicating through abstraction is a more difficult task for the artist and the viewer, but it is much more rewarding. This world is dependent on emphatically empathetic artists creating change. Fantasizing a new world that is utopic is not wasted time. As Gloria Steinem said, “without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.”[lv]
The posthumanist aesthetic is about assemblage, the amalgamation of differences and sameness. A metamorphosis of binary oppositions must be transformed into a world where sameness and difference are one and the “same” instead of polar opposites. Assemblage is freedom from oppression and freedom for self-creation.[lvi] Having a culture that so openly allows mixing is a progressive step away from the rigid boundaries of dualistic thinking that compartmentalizes the world into neat categories.
Progressive activist artists working to create change are posthumanists. Artists, it is time to take up the posthumanist aesthetic claim to make your artistic statements for social change. Using art to create change is the greatest impact we can leave on the world. The objects that we create, whether they are installations or two-dimensional or three-dimensional works, are merely avatars for the process that we use them to create.
For art is no longer about the material end object that is created - it is the process of change that the object or action creates.
Elaine Riley-Taylor, an environmental scholar and activist, believes that to get people to “live a commitment” to changing the world:
requires a constant mode of reflecting and acting to continue the generation of new and more interesting ways of seeing, of thinking, of being, so that we are the journey and the journey is us; alive in the moment of it. Engaged in the ‘present’ of it.[lvii]
Our ideology and philosophy is posthumanism, we declare as artists that we will not tolerate any form of human, environmental, or animal oppression. This puts an end to hierarchical human oppression and the binaries of dominance and submission; this is effectively a decentering of “ the human world” to a unified, not universal, world. We acknowledge that difference is not unbreachable otherness but a part of the global world. Our aesthetic is a posthumanist one because our art does not function as a class marker between the elite and high and low cultures. The work or process is not tied to limiting ideas of beauty; what is important is the experience that this art creates for the viewers and community in which it is created. The transcendent experience allows viewers to have a sociological imagination, to see that the world is interrelated and no one person is to blame for all of the social problems, but that we must all be part of the solution. We as artists are visionaries. We will envision social, political, and environmental change and we will create it.
Endnotes
[i] German for total “ world view,” encompassing ideologies and philosophies that describe the contemporary zeitgeist.
[ii] Pepperell, 176.
[iii] Weinstone, 8.
[iv] Orlan is a French artist who reconstructs her body through plastic surgery to play on these ideas. Her art would be self-serving vanity if it were not for the ongoing transformation of her mind, as well. She reads advanced French postmodernist theory while being operated on.
[v] Ehrenfeld, 3.
[vi] Of course man’s ascendancy over nature goes back to the Bible as well.
[vii] Kurtz, 23.
[viii] Spanos, xiii.
[ix] Badmington, Posthumanism, 26.
[x] Keller, 274-275.
[xi] Graham, 9.
[xii] Rachel Caron wrote the influential book Silent Spring, which sparked the new environmentalist movement in the twentieth century.
[xiii] Pepperell, 176-177.
[xiv] Pepperell, 176.
[xv] Badmington, Posthumanism, 10.
[xvi] Badmington, Alien Chic, 12.
[xvii] Haraway, Reader, 48.
[xviii] Fernbach, 173.
[xix] Haraway, Women Simians and Cyborgs, 149.
[xx] Haraway, Howl Like a Leaf, 3.
[xxi] Haraway, Modest_Witness, 270.
[xxii] Lenning, 190.
[xxiii] Felski, 175.
[xxiv] Pepperell, 105.
[xxv] Pepperell, 114-115.
[xxvi] Pepperell, 105.
[xxvii] Pepperell, 115-116.
[xxviii] Cieri, 148
[xxix] Pepperell 168.
[xxx] Halberstram and Livingston, 9.
[xxxi] The Oxford American College Dictionary, 12.
[xxxii] Foster, xv.
[xxxiii] Baudrillard, 22.
[xxxiv] This means that artists such as Damien Hirst (who uses dead animals in his work) cannot be encouraged by the art world. This is violent art that perpetuates circles of cruelty and human ascendancy over animals and the environment.
[xxxv] Becker, 29.
[xxxvi] Pepperell, 122.
[xxxvii] Mitchell, 177-178.
[xxxviii] Kester, After Image, 1-18.
[xxxix] Kester, After Image, 15.
[xl] Habermas, 20.
[xli] Kant, Critique of Judgment.
[xlii] I based this off of Charlotte Bunch’s revolutionary feminist article “Not By Degrees.” Creating feminist theory must lead to feminist action.
[xliii] Kester, “Dialogic Aesthetic.”
[xliv] Baofu, 4.
[xlv] Baofu, 274.
[xlvi] Gare, 142.
[xlvii] Deitch, 39.
[xlviii] Baofu, 47.
[xlix] Baofu, 275.
[l] Becker, 5.
[li] Felshin, 9.
[lii] Zimenko 236-238.
[liii] Zimenko 236-238.
[liv] Kandinsky, 55.
[lv] I was fortunate enough to hear Gloria Steinem deliverer this quote at a lecture at Boise State University on February 8, 2005.
[lvi] Weinstone, 10.
[lvii] Riley-Taylor, 154.
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APPENDIX
The Manifestation of the Posthumanist Aesthetic: Putting Theory Into Action
This section deals with how I put my posthumanist aesthetic manifesta into practice through my BFA Senior Thesis Exhibition and Honors Senior Thesis. I began conceptualizing this project in the spring of 2004 by asking the question, what media and methods have the greatest propensity to affect social change in the microcosms of our community and the macrocosms of our increasingly global world? I explored this question through the utilization of visual and public art, television and print media, and academic writing under the auspices of posthumanist theory. Slides of visual art portion of the project are on file as well as a VHS video of my TVTV show Our Posthumanist Future.
I have included my three artist statements, and descriptions of each facet of the project. This was a collaborative piece because many other people from around the Boise and Boise State University communities helped in its realization. Collaboration is a key component because as more people became involved in the art it defied the myth of the individual genius artist.
Each facet of the project was an integral part of my research question. This was a creative research project that I formulated as the culmination of my education at Boise State University. This research will help guide me in graduate school as I experiment with what types of art and media affect social change and help to better the communities in which I live. I combined sculpture, installation art, public art, video, television and extensive writing and academic research into one ambitious undertaking to create a dialogue with the community about art, media, and most importantly, social justice as represented through the organizations with which I worked.
Manifesta: My manifesta was the core work of my Honors Thesis Project. I decided after exhaustive research into postmodernist, feminist, and poststructuralist theory that the most effective way to create social change is to understand the root causes of social inequality. As a visual artist and student of visual culture I decided to employ the avant-garde tradition of writing a manifesto. I advocate that artists must begin working outside of human-centric models of art and focus on larger issues. The manifesta (the feminist version of a manifesto) was my opportunity to create new theory regarding posthumanism and aesthetics while integrating various contemporary theories with my hypothesis of what constitutes progressive theory. I then asserted how posthumanism can be used in the service of social change through the arts. Posthumanism is my answer to the root causes of general social inequalities, gender, animal rights, and environmental issues. The manifesta on posthumanist aesthetics and the importance of social dialectical art was exemplified by my installation artwork.
Sculptural Video Installation: I fabricated one large-scale sculpture that was displayed in the Hemingway Gallery at Boise State University. This was a mixed-media sculpture, which integrated video installation. It was fabricated out of steel, fiberglass, rip-stop-nylon, glitter, and pigment. I wanted the sculpture and the video to be sublime. In the past fifty years Abstract Expressionists and Earthwork artists have utilized the concept of the sublime to gain audience attention, by creating large-scale work. My twenty-foot sculpture served as an environment where one entered and watched the video. I have been heavily influenced by the idea of Pacific Islander art that creates environmental sculptures for the dissemination of knowledge. This illustrates my concept of creating transformative sculpture. I wanted this sculptural installation to have a mesmerizing effect on viewers through the use of scale, the juxtaposition of synthetic materials and organic forms, and the video screen. In installation art the whole space and the objects in it are meant to have a total effect on the viewer. My art was primarily abstracted. I see realism as being connected to humanism. Through Germany’s Blue Rider group, the Russian Constructivists, and German Dadaists abstraction has a history of being used for political means in order to facilitate the audience to question their preconceived notions of what constitutes reality. I documented every step of the process, from the actual creation of the artwork to the methods of dealing with public institutions for the display of my sculptures. The process of creating the artwork and interacting with the public was extremely valuable to my project.
Site-specific Display: I fabricated a public sculpture to honor local nonprofit organizations, art organizations and alternative sources of media. I viewed all of these organizations as positive directions for our local and global future. The organizations were: The Boise City Arts Commission, Northwest Animal Companions, Boise State’s Women’s Center, Treasure Valley Television Public Access Channel 11, Boise State’s Cultural Center, United Way of Treasure Valley, Snake River Alliance, The Agency for New Americans, Your Family Friends and Neighbors, and the Boise Weekly. This elaborate sculpture was a portal-like structure that fit around the doors or pathways to these institutions, indicating that these nonprofit agencies are the “portal” towards a more progressive future. The sculpture was also fabricated out of fiberglass, glitter and steel to maintain a cohesive aesthetic with the installation. The sculpture was a rotating piece of public art that traveled to the different organizations.
TVTV show and Media: I created my own public access show on TVTV called Our Posthumanist Future. This show helped me to further disseminate information about my manifesta and my sculptural installation. I had representatives from the various nonprofit organizations on the show to discuss each organization’s issues. The media is very important in a project like this because it reaches such a large audience. The media is a fundamental tool for social artists. I had the potential to reach approximately 65,000 people in this area using public access television. To increase awareness of my project, I sent out press releases to all the TV stations and papers in Boise shortly before the display of my sculptures. This resulted in extensive press coverage from the local newspapers. As the show progressed the viewers saw representatives from all of the organizations and learned more about posthumanism and the meaningful integration of art into our daily lives.
Lectures: Artists who put work in the public sphere have a responsibility to educate the public as to the nature of the artwork. Education is fundamental to my process. Therefore, I gave several public lectures at Boise State University and in the community. Since my work revolves around new theories I wanted to make an attempt to reach out to the public in order to explain and clarify my position. At these lectures I provided pamphlets condensing my manifesta and explaining what I wanted to accomplish at Boise State University and in the community with my multifaceted project.
Artist Statements
Melody Sky Eisler
The Posthumanist Aesthetic: An Artist’s Statement for Social Change
Public Art Sculpture, TVTV Show, Installation, Manifesta, The Public
Fall 2004
As an artist in the 21st century I feel that it is my responsibility to utilize art to help affect social change in a myriad of ways. My multi-faceted project is designed to reach out to as many people in the community as possible in order to create a dialogue about the importance of art as a tool for social change and social justice. The posthumanist aesthetic is a way to experience and utilize art in our new global world. This project involves the following art forms: this sculptural video installation seen here at the Hemingway Gallery, my upcoming manifesto about the posthumanist aesthetic, a TVTV channel 11 public access show titled Our Posthumanist Future, and my traveling temporary public art sculpture Portal to Social Change. I want to embody the role of the artist as a public intellectual, who is engaged with her community in meaningful ways. I began this project by asking the question, “what media and methods have the greatest propensity to effect social change in the microcosms of our community and the macrocosm of our increasingly global world?”
This senior show is merely the beginning of my ambitious goals for art. It is my life long aspiration to create artwork that extends beyond the boundaries of the art world and helps create positive social change in our communities and global world.
Melody Sky Eisler
Portal To Social Change
steel, fiberglass, glitter, the public
Fall 2004
My goal is to use social dialectical art to integrate sculpture meaningfully into the community and to create a dialogue about art with the public. The sculpture is designed as a temporary honorific monument to the organizations that I am working with and to draw attention to their worthwhile work that serves our community. It is meant to be a “portal” to a progressive local and global future, and highlights the importance of non-governmental agencies, alternative media, and the new role of the artist as a public intellectual who is engaged with her or his community. The binder and model are here to document the process that made this project a reality.
The sculpture is made from welded steel, fiberglass and glitter. It is meant to have a mystical quality and to be open to the viewer’s interpretation. It is displayed from dawn until dusk for one day in front of the entryway to each organization’s building. I want the viewer to interact with the artwork by walking through the sculpture. I also have a television show titled Our Posthumanist Future on TVTV channel 11. Members from the different organizations come on this show to discuss their work within the community. The Portal has been displayed since Nov. 4th and will be auctioned off at Boise Weekly’s annual Cover Auction on Nov. 20th at the Stewart Gallery. The proceeds will benefit the YMCA youth art programs.
Melody Eisler
Ambiance of Sublime Regeneration
steel, fiberglass, glitter, rip-stop nylon, thread, fans, TV,
sewing machine stand, video, the public
Fall 2004
The sculptural video installation Ambiance of Sublime Regeneration is an abstracted environmental installation in which the viewer is submerged in the work. I want to inspire people to be more engaged with the world and through their experience become better citizens. I see realism as being connected to humanism, which, as you can read in my manifesta, is a root cause of social inequality. Abstraction has a history of being used for political means in order to allow the audience to question its preconceived notions of what constitutes reality.
The process of creating the artwork and interacting with the public is extremely valuable to my project. My sculptural environment is meant to be a gynocentric chamber in which the viewer is reborn into a progressive future. I want the viewer to be awe inspired by the sublimity of the sculpture while simultaneously becoming part of the art by interacting inside of the space. The video represents a metaphoric journey through the process of regeneration. The entire installation deals with the transgression of boundaries by melding binary oppositions. For example, by feeling organic but being constructed out of synthetic materials, the installation blurs the boundaries between nature and technology. I am optimistic that after interacting in the space the viewers will feel inspired to be the change they want to see in the world.
Conclusion
In conclusion, my interdisciplinary and multimedia project was about creating awareness of social justice through the use of art, writing, and the media. The project met with tremendous success. The nonprofit organizations that I worked with gained more recognition for their causes. Art was expanded from the elite realm of the gallery into the public sphere. The public interacted with art and these organizations in an open environment while experiencing the new theory of the posthumanist aesthetic in practice and action.
posted by Melodysky @ 3:33 PM
