The Ethicality of Art

Why instigate the whole cloud of dust (make art)? The whole conversation, in all its myriad and nuanced forms? I said at the end of my last post that I think it's the Right thing to do. But why? Because I'm an advocate of dialogue - but not for the reason you may think. Not because it leads to resolution. I'm not so naive as to think that dialogue is a precursor to resolution, in fact, I advocate dialogue for precisely the opposite reason - because of the inherent conflict involved. Cultural production is a means whereby we propagate an incessant argument, a nebulous linguistic glow, hotter in some spots than others.

Urban highlighting project, 2008. Aquarium gravel.

Cultural production (and cultural criticism, which I generously lump under the heading of cultural production) also serves as a way to push ourselves out into the world. Think of the art you make as a prosthetic limb, one of your own shape and design, manifesting itself in the world. You shape these limbs, these extensions of yourself; you put them out in the world; you increase your size; you're continuously pushing yourself out into the world. Taking up more and more space, enlarging your aesthetic footprint. This isn't as menacing as it all sounds, but there is a particular type of violence in motion, in creation, in the conjuring of ideas, the calling up of that which wasn't before and placing it outside the self. In a crowded space where everyone is pushing themselves out into the world, obstruction, overlap, and obfuscation are bound to occur. These conflicts (and concurrences) are the heart of the conversation - in the end, one must recognize that they aren't conflicts between ideas, or between theories, but between people. The ghost of a hundred thousand dead artists and critics live on through their now disembodied prostheses, reattached to a willing host body. This is the most appropriate metaphor for the arts in academia: academics cutting off their own limbs to wear the flashiest or most powerful prostheses, sacrificing their own hands and feet to continue the conversation, all the while haunted by the tingling in their phantom limbs, all the while thinking about what their own hands and feet would've done, what their own mouth would've said.

Fill the cracks we forget about with something brighter, make them remember they're there.

I'm well aware that this is a vicious criticism of academia that doesn't always hold true, but I feel it clearly illustrates the difficulty discerning the difference between pushing oneself out in the world and continuing to push others out in the world. One can argue that the self, when one looks close enough, is no more than an amalgamation of others in indistinguishable proportion, so we are all merely pushing parts of others out into the world, a bucket brigade carrying the whole history of art/culture forward. To me, this is possibly the most interesting facet of the incessant argument that takes place - the struggle to determine how much of your self is in your prostheses, how much of your self is in your reservations and assertions. Because, as I said before, this isn't a conflict between ideas and theories, but between people, between others and the self, between the self and the self.

Let the wind sweep them away or let people put them in their pockets.

To that end, I think the ethicality in art is integrally tied to questions of identity, to an investigation of the self and others that should be the right of all humans. We should all be allowed to look as deeply as we can into the faces of the past, the eyes of the body that used to own the limbs we're using now. Making art (and everything that goes along with it) is the Right thing to do because it allows us to look closer at ourselves and others, it lets us see the water in the buckets we're carrying, it's let us spit in them or cut our hand off and send it on it's way.

Art and photos, C. Fritton, 2008.

One may think that by advocating the incessant conversation, I am endorsing the academic "house of cards" I've previously vilified, but I'm not. The academic aspect of cultural production is only a small part of the global incessant conversation (luckily for us) - and it's crippled by corruption, misguidance, conservatism, elitism, and capitalism, just like many other aspects of the conversation are: the Art world, museum culture, popular criticism, etc. The conversation is so much bigger and multifaceted than we can imagine; each of those parts are going to have their strengths and weaknesses.

Installation art in Toronto in conversation with mine, taking high-lighting literally.

Soon, I'd like to start turning my attention toward other parts of the conversation, parts that escape some of these handicaps, parts that are setting their own more democratic rules, parts that aren't embroiled in the pandemic problems listed above.