In The Name of The One Who is Worshipped and Invoked
Dearest Human Beings,
What is Contemporary Art?
Contemporary art has nothing to do with art, definitely nothing.
Contemporary art is a system. The etymology of this word is derived from Ancient Greek word σύστημα (sustēma), “organized whole, body”, from σύν, syn “with, together” + ἵστημι, histēmi “I stand”, root of istanai “cause to stand”, root *sta- “to stand”. And as any system that must “stand”, contemporary art has its own rules, its own “government”. The concept of government is used in reference of cybernetics, the science of the systems (control, regulation, relation and communication in the human beings, the living organisms and the machines). Norbert Wiener (1894-1964) designed this new science, which inspired engineers to design this famous sophisticated and well-engineered artwork machine: the computer.
Cybernetics, “or control and communication in the animal and machine” (Norbert Wiener, 1948), is an ancient Greek word derived from the infinitive verb κυβερναν (kubernan, kyvernan, kybernan), in the semantic field of navigation, which means to steer (steering a cart, a vessel), to pilot (a ship), to drive. This Greek verb is the root verb of the Latin infinitive verb gubernare. In English the verb to govern and in French the verb gouverner derive from the Latin verb gubernare, a nautical borrowing from Greek. As the verb to govern, to direct, to rule, to guide are other verbs that express this notion of control conveyed by the Greek verb κυβερναν and belong to the same semantic field of government and politics. In the book πολιτεία (Politeia), the Republic, Plato makes a comparison between the ideal and philosophical ruler, governor, guide and the steersman, the cox. It is why κυβερναν can be used metaphorically since Plato because this verb expresses this notion of political control.
The core meaning of this verb κυβερναν, to steer (steering a ship), is reflected in the dimension of passivity of what is steered, piloted: a ship, a vessel is an inanimate mean of transportation that the steersman makes animate. In this respect, the definition of cybernetics given by the Oxford Dictionary online cannot be more explicit: “The science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things”. The contemporary art system shows that what is under automatic and total control, art, artists, artworks, art values, etc., is passive because this art system itself is under automatic and total control, then likewise passive, but to a lesser extent. But the passivity of this system does not mean that there is no responsibility at all, on the contrary. Contemporary art system is a “machine”, a “computer”, a “robot” nothing more, nothing less. This art system gives life, makes “animate” what is “inanimate”, “active” what is “passive”; in short it controls and governs as far as a “machine”, a “computer”, a “robot”, could control and govern, according to its own prerogatives with the art of the steersman a κυβερνητική τέχνη (kybernētikē technē).
This system of art, or micro-system, as education, science, economy, politics, business, consumption, way of life and lifestyle, popular culture, entertainment, fashion, sport, etc. is a cog in a machine, a simple wheel of a system of interacting micro-systems linked in a network: the macro-system, the system of systems. The two main objectives, aims of this macro-system are:
1.Separating, disjoining, dissevering, breaking away by any means the humanity from the True and Authentic Tradition which is The One Who is Worshipped and Invoked, The Unique and Absolute Truth. This word Tradition derives from the Latin verb tradere (trans: over + dare: to give) which means to pass down, to hand down. This Unique and Absolute Truth has been passed down generations of human beings over generations of human beings from the beginning of this world until its total destruction. If The One Who is Worshipped and Invoked is forgotten, the human being replaces Him: the human being is “god” (Nietzsche and the death of God).
2.Building the Paradise in this world. The instigators and the promoters of this macro-system of course believe in Paradise, but a paradise built in this world, here and now, with their own hands, because they are impatient or in despair to wait for the death and the after-life or they do not believe in any life after the death.
The art system called contemporary art offers the same logic for any kind of arts: contemporary visual arts, performances, contemporary theatre, contemporary dance, contemporary cinema, contemporary photography, contemporary literature, contemporary music, etc., etc. The attributive adjective “contemporary” has been added only to give the illusion that this kind of art is universal, beyond space and time. This kind of art is “the” tradition. The present is the time of the time, because it exists. Past has disappeared and future is not coming yet.
But it is well known that contemporary art was born in Europe first, and found faithful supporters in America. It is also well known that contemporary art was born in the beginning of the 20th century.
So, contemporary art should be called European-American art. And because Art has been excluded, expelled, banned, this European-American art must be called “The European-American pseudo-art”. Art has been banned, because the European-American pseudo-art is a system, and Art cannot be a system, definitely not a system.
The European-American pseudo-art was born when Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), the European, maintained and argued that anything can be an artwork (the ready-made), and logically, that anybody can be an artist (the “ready-been”). If anything can be an artwork, why anybody could not be an artist?
The European-American pseudo-art reached its maturity when Andy Warhol (1928-1987), the American, maintained and argued that art is a business, art is a show and the artist a showman, as lucrative as a lucrative business could be, as enthralling as an enthralling show could be and as fascinating as a showman could be.
Warhol recognized Duchamp as a pioneer, admired him and in a certain extent has been influenced by him. Duchamp saw Warhol as an eccentric like him. “They understood each other” (Gary Indiana, Andy Warhol and the can that sold the world, 2010). It is not only two artists who met and felt a certain kinship towards one another as two fellow manipulative visionaries about art, yet different in their psychology (Twisted Pair: Marcel Duchamp/Andy Warhol exhibition in 2010): Duchamp the “recluse”, Warhol the “socialite”; but it is above all two independent and complementary visions, logics about art which merged together to build a system. A step further to bring to completion the foundations of the system was the vision of the “socialite” to make marketable the vision of the “recluse”. And this micro-system among other micro-systems was born and ready to offer another truth about the world and the life.
These two visions are the framework of the European-American pseudo-art. It is only within this ideological, and not aesthetical, framework that art, nowadays, can be recognized and considered as art. And this ideological framework became the framework, the foundations, the logic, the essence of all forms of contemporary art.
Art has always been an instrument of power, any power: political one, ideological one and economic one. Art can be used as a part of a system, and it is often the case.
But, it is probably the first time in human history that the essence itself of art became a system ruled by rules which control the core itself of art.
So, if art is a system, the mechanisms of control, regulation, communication, action-reaction, system versus environment/context, feedback, network engineering, etc. are the structural means of control and government of the European-American pseudo-art in order to rule and to govern art as a system. Control and manipulation are the two main keystones and cornerstones of this strange entity called the European-American pseudo-art. As a “computer”, this system exists in the reality through different interfaces.
The religious interface has nothing to do with religions as it is usually understood: to link the humanity to The One Who is Worshipped and Invoked. The word religion derives from the Latin verb, religare, which means to link. In every sense of the word, the word religion means to link the humanity to The One Who is Worshipped and Invoked. The European-American pseudo-art is an anti-religion in the sense that this system connects and links everything, except the humanity to The One Who is Worshipped and Invoked. But modeled after any traditional religions, the same kind of protagonists will play their role in this hypocrite masquerade.
Museums, art galleries, exhibition rooms, etc. are temples. The silence and the white specific texture, grey concept, concrete concept and/or vintage concept (the old as a foil for the ultra/hyper-modern) of the interior design of these anti-temples are one of the expressions and manifestations of the religious interface in order to make explicit a pseudo-religious, pseudo-spiritual and pseudo-sacred dimension of this pseudo-artistic world.
The owners of private galleries, the curators, the collectors, the art critics, the auctioneers, etc. are the “priests” and “monks” who rule this anti-spiritual “clergy” with different ranking according to their fame. The departments of art are also members of this “clergy”, but their purpose is to teach the techniques and to spread the values of the European-American pseudo-art.
The artists are the “prophets”, the “saints”, the “messengers” of the “god-ego-art”! And, paradoxically, they are also gods, or rather “deus ex machina” (ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός: apò mêkhanễs theós), in a materialistic and disenchanted society craving for spirituality and miracles in which only the body has the right to live, the soul has been erased, vaporized. The spiritual dimension of the humanity is deleted and the goal of the contemporary artists is to infuse amnesia in the minds, in the hearts, in the souls of the audience in order to make the human beings to forget who the origin of the humanity is.
Prizes and rewards are the consecration of the artists, their baptism. They are fully recognized, nationally and internationally, as the artists who support officially the European-American pseudo-art. Competitions, which have absolutely nothing to do with art, help to select the “happy few”, the privileged artists who promote values of the art system. The art system (jury) and artists are in collusion to deceive the audience who believes that a competition is always fair, except in art because of the subjectivity of the jury. But paradoxically it is not this subjectivity that characterizes the injustice of this selection, it is on the contrary the objectivity to select artists who fit and match the model and profile of artist promoted by the art system. The art competitions and events are just another way to promote a system: the European-American pseudo-art.
The “Book” is about this “art” literature: magazines, websites, articles about art critics in famous newspapers, fake books about aesthetics, books-catalogs introducing artists with a lot of shining pictures, but very few texts, etc. The Doxa (δόξα) Aesthetica, the aesthetical opinion, is quite simply a vox populi, voice of the people, of the art orthodoxy which spreads stereotypes and a simulacrum of art criticism because the main objective is to promote the European-American pseudo-art, not to discuss about the “rationale” of this art system. The departments of art are also the guardian, the sacred repository of the “Book” by teaching techniques and spreading values of the art system and by publishing research about the conception of what art should be according to continuously varying and shifting, yet well planed, demands of the art system. Any heterodox points of views about different conceptions will be rejected purely and simply and the ones who committed the sacrilege, the sacrilege to call into question the art system, will be “excommunicated”.
The audience, or the congregation, is invited to “pray”, to “worship”, to “celebrate” and above all to “believe”, and mainly to “believe” that the European-American pseudo-art is one of the unique, official and above all incontrovertible ceremonial rituals and liturgies of this “religion” promoted by the macro-system and, to “believe” that the human being is the “god” because the creature can also create.
One of the very exciting upbeat of the art ritual is the opening ceremony, the “mass”, in which not only the artworks is exhibited, of course. Flattery and hypocrisy are the two sides of a mask. As a Greek tragedy or Japanese Noh, the protagonists wear a mask. But if in the ancient Greek tragedy and the traditional Noh, the masks reveal what is hidden, in the opening ceremony the masks hide, simulate and pretend. The dialog of these masks is summarized in three words: connivance, stonewalling and forced conspicuous gallantry. The main artwork exhibited is the ego, the human ego. The objects-artworks are only used as an excuse, as a pretext.
The opening ceremony is a pagan mass in which the “parish priest-owner”, of the gallery introduces the mysterious and miraculous “creator-prophet-spirit-artist” and flatters the egos: the ego of the “parish priest”, the ego of the “creator-prophet-spirit-artist” and the ego of the human ego: human being as a god.
The opening ceremony is a pagan mass in which wine is offered and carries two symbols, the one used in Catholicism, by desecrating what is sacred, the blood of Christ as a sacrifice, and the other one used in the Bacchanalia, this festival from ancient Greece, in which art, pleasure, passions, vices and orgies were mixed up in memory of the god Bacchus, the wine god. These two symbols are not incompatible. The artist offers his blood in the process of the so-called “creation”. But only The One Who is Worshipped and Invoked can create creatures from nothing, the human beings only know, with the help of The One Who is Worshipped and Invoked, how to combine what is divided, separated, scattered, how to build systems. Finally, the showstopper of this ritual liturgy, as a sadomasochist catharsis, happens when the artist, as a “urban shaman”, a quack, arouses with his speech of introduction the audience to go into a trance by projecting and by giving free rein to their own and intimate phantasms of life and death, of peace and violence, of love and hate, of pleasure and sufferings.
The opening ceremony is a pagan mass as a market. Buying and selling are the two poles of a ritual and materialistic dynamic and give the tempo of this strange liturgy. The golden idols-artworks, the golden calf, will offer to the posterity only names like the names of these ancient statues of deities of antique civilizations of whom lost ancient legends and tales tell the story: a “Picasso”, a “Van Gogh”, a “Basquiat”, etc. Futile art idols recognized and adored by the worshippers with the complicity of the money-inquisitor, are only legends, not art.
The morality interface is about morality and ethics in art. Morality and ethics, these two words are used as synonyms even if there is a slight difference (ethics is more theoretical), are the science of the good and the bad. It is obvious that there is no moral or ethical consciousness in the European-American pseudo-art. Rather than to worship The One Who is Worshipped and Invoked, two “idols” are worshipped: the freedom to act freely without scruples and the so-called “freedom of expression”. Because of that, there are absolutely no moral constraints, pressures or coercion in the art process. The artist produces art free from any moral and ethical concern and beyond the two bounds of the good and the bad: the good and the bad do not exist, there are only experiences. This is called amorality. The modern artists do not seem to show any morals in their own life: their life reflects this absence of moral consciousness. And controversy seems to be the main modus operandi used in art process (Robert Hughes, the Shock of the New, 1980).
The philosophical interface –if such an attributive adjective makes any sense when is related to the European American pseudo-art, is the materialism and the anti-spiritualism. This system deals with the materialistic and temporal reality because the Sacred has been expelled and banned from the modern agora and forum.
The ideological interface refers to the core of national values of a nation. The countries/nations communities/societies are in this world divided in two main groups: the first one, very few and nearly nonexistent, which promotes The One Who is Worshipped and Invoked as The Truth for all aspects of the human life and the second one, the majority these days, which promotes the humanity as a “god”. The first group is theocentric, the second one is anthropocentric. And between these two groups, there is only a continuum of values that are oriented more or less to one of the two extreme limits, bounds of this continuum.
The political interface refers to the political power, the political decision-makers, in the framework of any political systems. This political interface is the link between the ideological interface and the social interface. This interface has the power to censure, or to pretend to censure. The political power has its own art agenda which is part of its main agenda: controlling the masses by making them contended, satisfied and happy to be controlled.
The social interface, “the ship control” of this system, is the art establishment: art galleries, public and private museums, international art fairs and festivals, biennales, auction houses, foundations, etc. The art establishment governs and controls, regulates and manipulates the art system. This interface interacts with the political interface, in a continuous and ceaseless exchange, by promoting common and usual art values and by designing new art values.
The economic interface is the market: any artworks must be marketable: it is compulsory. Trading artworks is an art, speculation is the essence of this art business. The marketing, this subject which is taught in any faculty of business worldwide and which is used to sell any common commodities in a consumption society, is implemented in art world. The only difference is that not everybody can afford to buy the “artistic” commodities. The marketing and the promotion designed for this art system are destined only for a minority of privileged consumers: the worldwide fake elite of whom rarity is the core of their way of life. Stendhal, the romantic French writer of the 19th century, used to make reference in English to the “Happy Few”: this upper social class who lives in the artificial paradise built by human beings and shares together, as a privileged minority, the rare and unique secrets of a so-called civilized life, deluded and deceived oneself with an illusory and fake civilization.
The cultural interface is the show. The European-American pseudo-art is an entertainment: “artainment”. The show designs and exhibits illusions, perceptive, emotional and cognitive illusions. And illusions need tricks and knacks to be designed. This art system is a circus. An artist involved in artainment is a showman, a charlatan, a conman, a minstrel, a troubadour, a street acrobat, an entertainer, a clown, a “Barnum”. But absolutely not an artist at all: only an anti-artist. Guy Debord in his book, The Society of the Spectacle, pointed out that in the contemporary societies the representation is much more important than what is represented. From this point of view, only, one understands that appearance is the essence and the essence does not exist: anti-spiritualism and materialism are the two pillars of the so-called modern societies. But his criticism towards religions reveals paradoxically that this book itself is probably also an image, a show: the show of the show!
The psychological interface is about the psychological control, indoctrination, wash brain, wash heart and wash soul of the “dangerous” masses and populace. Infusing new materialistic values in order to increase the spiritual amnesia and to give birth to a spiritually orphan, waif and abandoned humanity, in brief being “Divinityless”, is the purpose of this interface. The media have a very important function in spreading and transmitting these values by manipulating the values system and the representation of the reality in the mind of the masses. The representation of what art should be is an example of how a value is conveyed by the media. Another value is about the price of an artwork. It is normal and natural that an artwork is extremely expensive. No one has officially discussed about this issue and everybody has accepted this fact because the social and economic interfaces manipulate the values scales.
The human interface is reflected in this behavioral and attitudinal profile of the artist of whom the main characteristics are: Machiavellianism, cynicism, hypocrisy, arrogance, pride, smugness, superciliousness, selfishness, greediness, desire of fame, glory and wealth, ostentation, egoism, self-centeredness, selfism and the cult of self-worship, provocation, vulgarity, deception, trickery, dishonesty, meanness, etc., etc. Another important dimension of this profile is the psychiatric and psycho traumatic dimension. A mental sickness, for instance the Borderline Personality Disorder (B.P.D.), known also as emotionally unstable personality disorder, is not something rare among contemporary artists, but it is not something useless, not at all. It is “reused”, “recycled” and sublimed to produce art, as it is specified by this system of art. The issue has always been discussed to know whether the artists have serious psychological traumatism and mental disorders compared to people who are not involved in the artistic field and whether they use their own psychological traumatism to produce art. To the European-American pseudo-art, there is no need to discuss such an issue. Artists are selected not only because they are “talented” –talent means nothing in this art system, it is only a pretext, but above all because they have a psychological traumatism and the selection is very accurate using implicit and hidden psychological tests to discover who among the artists could promote the values of the European-American pseudo-art. Building a national or international career in art is in fact very simple: it is a matter of connections and psychological traumatism.
The linguistic interface is the language itself. Language is another “artwork”, implicit artwork, and the concepts –any kind of concepts, build with the redundancy of these conceptual categories the semantic isotopy of the textual architecture of this “artwork”. Contemporary artists need to explain, to analyze, to interpret, to give sense, etc. to “clumps of atoms and molecules”, “iconic illusions”, “animated chimeras” or “deceptive noises”.
Millions of millions of dollars are spent all the yearlong to organize exhibitions here, international art fairs there. Public tax is spent to promote artists in public museums, and the audience has the right to wonder, if this audience is still intellectually independent, why such artworks have been exhibited. The European-American pseudo-art is expensive: only the rich with a gracious living and a life of luxury can afford to buy, to collect these “clumps of atoms and molecules”, “iconic illusions”, and to participate to these shows of “animated chimeras” or “deceptive noises”. When art becomes the privilege of the upper social class, it is not art: it is luxury. And luxury is a system, by essence.
The European-American pseudo-art will last as far as a system can last: the disharmonies between this artificial and fake system and the natural and authentic rules of the world and the life will decide when this pseudo-art system must collapse and will seal the pseudo-art system’s fate.
When this system will collapse, the only thing that will stand will be the void. It is on the foundations of the void that art will be reborn as it has always been: the Sacred and Spiritual Art.
aliens
meta-art青松林七贤
