Deep Depression: An Introduction

The labor power of creative industries, cultural producers of new economy, art laborers, artists, designers, architects, writers and so on, are constantly complaining about their working conditions, their bosses, their institutions, their universities, their social networks. It seems that being in a buffer zone (like in creative industries) does not leave any option for actualized creative potential, but only tight managerial constraints that leave marks of frustrations on daily life. It is quiet depressive to know that there is no easy escape from this hell as spectacle have to be extremely conservative in order to be a successful spectacle.

How does this machinery work really? Non-profits, artists’ communities, and new media clans, and ordinary (rich) people who really are passionate about art, and ambitious curators who knows about the cutting edge art, and public lectures and symposiums and discussions and educational initiatives and the family days and everything related to this art business. All of them seems to be together so smoothly! In fact my concerns are boringly ‘modern’, a bit outdated. What I am trying to say that anti-positions (like mine) that does not need to be addressed in terms of their own particularities, i.e. after all art world is no particular place!

I was, for a long time, thinking that, as cultural producers, we had to develop a precise antagonistic position against this constantly collecting, commercial machinery and save ‘art’ from its ties form capitalist mode of production therefore circulation and blah blah, blah blah… This was obviously a very naive attempt tested by first and second and third wave of avant-gardists. Now, as a grown up, knowing that there is no safe heavan, to me the only route is to investigate more at the periphery of the ’social’ (as opposed to periphery of the [traumatic] individual and art).

We are living under a constant siege, as our bodies immersed to images, like tattoo of the times, usually overlapping on to each other, makes it hard to separate one from the other and impossible to erase them as they leave permanent traces, like of scars. This everyday condition is suffocating all possibilities, limiting movement, paralyzing thinking, moving us in to similar directions (i.e hipsterity of intellectual production). Therefore the very strategy need be the one against to the society itself, against common sense (culture?, civilization?) that bounds us together. Following Artaud’s diagnoses, it is true that the sickness is immersed to every level of society, therefore artistic work can only be effective when it operates against to very foundation of this social fabric, including one’s own body. This fabric that makes the ‘institutional’ possible, like a structural framework. A total dissolution is needed.( Ok I am still naive!)

Let’s go back to the ‘art institutions’; trustee network , collectors, philanthropists of this new economy (like bill gates and his variants), I precisely mean the very good people who donate lots of money to the arts, the very people who need to deduct those cash form their taxes and guide political agenda into a conservative catastrophe. Of course, come on, all these can functions only with those people who are the support network, the servants of the wealthy ones, the directors, and the development people and the marketing gurus and et cetera. It is funny, let’s face it, this is the theater. Now, I can think sociologically…

Saygi: Matematikci Grigory Perelman

Su gunlerde tavir almanin modasi gecmis gibi gorunebilir. Vidyocular, futurafcilar, mimarlar, ekonomistler, sosyologlar ve polis sefleri ve futbolcular ve tum digerleri mutlak bir ‘kendi kendine promosyon’ yarisina kaptirip, kisisel web sayfalarini binlerce haber kupuru ile susleyip basarilarini 3uncu tekil sahis agziyla ileri geri duzerken, boyle bir sahsin cikip odulu reddedip medya maymunlarina bulasmadan takiliyor olmasi ders alinmasi gereken bir tavir. Bu global takilan multi kulti, roportaja hazir, ilkesiz ve de bilhassa lavuk kurator ve sanatci takiminina kucuk bir haber olsun istedim.

Grigory Perelman’s Wikipedia Entry

bu da Perelman’in kisisel sayfasi:

Dansistan

Visit our friend Gurur Ertem’s performance art blog;

http://www.dansistan.org/

“Dansistan is a “place” dedicated exclusively to reviews, articles, essays, commentaries, debates, reflections, stories, histories, and possible itineraries on/of contemporary dance and performance art - as well as other related creative forms. It is international in scope, although the blogger is mostly based in Istanbul and New York. Some of the materials posted are copy-righted, while others may be enjoyed as “copy-left” information. Commentaries can be posted either in English or Turkish.”

Sent by: Emily Jacir thru Shobak

To: shobak@idash.org

Today’s Shobak includes a series of links to Qana
killings, sent by New York/Ramallah based Palestinian
artist Emily Jacir.

I really have no notes to add today….

In Bengali there is a phrase:
“Olpo shok e kathor
Odhik shok e pathor”
[With some sorrow you writhe in pain
When sorrow is too much, you turn to stone]

That is possibly the condition of people witnessing
the continuing obliteration of the Middle East

Naeem Mohaiemen
http://www.shobak.org
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Emily Jacir writes: From my friend Tony in Beirut
which he sent today:
I’ve got my own little Hiroshima right here in my
pocket. sometimes i take it out, i put it on the
table, and ponder. it will take us countless years
and several generations to grasp the immensity of the
catastrophe that has (and is) struck us- and these
women who now wear black, and who become more and more
numerous with each passing day- these women are not
only mourning their loved ones, but they are mourning
hope itself. Where are God’s angels when you need
them? I just want one of them to whisper in my ear
that things are going to be ok, maybe then i can
breathe again.
Tony

Shahid Alam:
Imagine waking up tomorrow in an upside-down world,
one in which the history of America’s relations with
the Arabs is inverted. Iraq is now the global hegemon,
the world’s richest democracy, a beacon of freedom;
Iraq and the Arab democracies dominate the world and
what was once the USA. Imagine that the Arabs have
used their power to replace a United States of America
with forty-four nominally independent states….What
would the Americans, now split, divided, corralled
into forty-six racial, ethnic and sectarian states do
if they found themselves in such a world? Would they
resent the surrogate despotisms that ruled over them
with Iraqi arms and money? Would some of their young
men, faced with overwhelming Iraqi power, resort to
suicidal attacks within Iraq itself?