Imminent Lawless Action: Buck-Morss v. Enwezor

Much of the debate concerning the efficacy of resistance or transformation was due in large part to the much critiqued and destroyed inside/outside binary by neo-Nietzscheans (post-structuralists on to post-colonialists and globalization critics). The potential of art as avant-garde and of an avant-garde (military) as art was thrown out with the dirty (but bubbly) bathwater of romanticism, authenticity, and positionality (not only with the dirty (but bubbly) bathwater of romanticism, authenticity and positionality, but with the architectonics of the bathroom itself (tub, sink, tile, and plumbing)). Perfectly visualized, this destruction of the architecture was perhaps indexed by Gordon Matta-Clark as emblematic and foretelling of what was to come. Rather than view building codes and their potential transformative effects, architectural frameworks were dismantled, ridiculed(3) , and set within the parameters of gallery walls for select viewership and narrowly-tailored ownership.

It is perhaps here that I draw a distinction between art and “art.” First, I am more than happy to abdicate the former term to the existing institutions and institutionalized practitioners of said medium. In this sense, art can be said to be an appendage of the now global entertainment system, well endowed with professional degrees, the respectability and keen insight of curators, and the sharp, lucid and analytical criticism of the many contemporary art critics and few art theorists. “Art,”(4) on the other hand, is that practice which begins to feel the need to politically and directly engage with other discourses and with other spaces. It is constantly dissatisfied, and perhaps more importantly and on point, dissatisfied with itself. A similar correlation can perhaps be made to the “art” produced right after its initial reception and interpretation of early French theory: the mixture of political dissatisfaction mixed with fresh and noncomplacent ideas and energies.

The immediate relationship of the aforementioned notion of “art” to the history and practice of the avant-garde is perhaps quite obvious. However, and in light of the many differing interpretations on and definitions of the avant-garde, I will juxtapose two semi-recent but differing positions: one held by Okwui Enwezor and the other held by Susan Buck-Morss.

In his curatorial role for Documenta 11, Enwezor fixes his glance and criticism on the Western concept of the avant-garde as well as the relation between the avant-garde and formalism. His position vis-à-vis the avant-garde may be summarized as one that joins a formalist telos (tradition) with the avant-garde impetus (innovation)(5). Enwezor believes that “today’s avant-garde is so thoroughly disciplined and domesticated within the scheme of Empire that a whole different set of regulatory and resistance models has to be found to counterbalance Empire’s attempt at totalization.”(6) In essence, Enwezor is highly suspect of the viability and success of the Westernized avant-garde.

He continues:

“While strong revolutionary claims have been made for the avant-garde within Westernism, its vision of modernity remains surprisingly conservative and formal. On the other hand, the political and historical vision of the Western avant-garde has remained narrow. The propagators of the avant-garde have done little to constitute a space of self-reflexivity that can understand new relations of artistic modernity not founded on Westernism.” [Italics mine]

Buck-Morss on the other hand, does not throw away the baby with the bathwater. I quote at length here in order to do justice to her positionality:

“[C]ertain structures of social life make peace impossible: by their very nature they pit classes, or sexes, or ‘races,’ or nations against each other. It is these structures that need to be attacked, in their everyday banality—not by blowing up buildings(7) , but by blowing up the significance of our seemingly insignificant everyday practices of compliance. And it is here that the cultural avant-garde finds its military mission. If it shocks us in the midst of our mundane existence and breaks the routine of living even for a second…then it is allied with out better side, our bodily side that senses the order of things is not as it should be, or as it could be. The time of this avant-garde is not progress, but interruption—stopping time, or slowing it down, or reaching into past time, forgotten time, in order to shatter the placid surface of the present.”(8)

Additionally, there is a spatial element to Buck-Morss’s concept of the avant-garde. She continues:

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