Bizarre Love Triangle (Westlake 72 Re-Edit)

 Bizarre Love Triangle (Westlake 72 Re-Edit) by westlake72 

Strings Of Life (westlake72 remix)

 Strings of Life (westlake72 Remix) by westlake72

Spaceboy Aug 2001 (analogue mixtape)

Deep House, Deep Disco and other Grooves including New-Wave, Old School Hip-Hop and Go-Go!!!

Includes Eric Kruper presents K-Scope, Liberty City, Norma Jean, Chic, Greg Diomends Bionic Boogie, Talking Heads, The Human League Orchestra, Sugar Hill Gang, The Junk Yard Band and lots more...

From 2 x Technics 1200s to Sony Cassette tape via Numark mixer/ from Marantz tape deck to Macbook pro.

Art After Art

Art as an institution (as opposed to a term simply bestowing praise on creativity or skill, or a term referring to man made objects of cultural interest better described as: artefacts) is a construct centred on artists producing artworks.

It is not a natural, timeless or universal phenomenon, but a specific geo-historical construct that can be traced back to Cennino Cennini's writings on Giotto di Bondone in 1390 at the birth of the Renaissance.

It is a construct that has been skating on thin ice since 1917 when Duchamp entered 'Fountain' for the summer show of the Society of Independent Artists. With *‘Fountain’ Duchamp applied a razor to all but that which was essential to the process of art making, leaving only the selection of objects to be shown (i.e. to bring to the attention of the ‘other’).

Though initially rejected it could be said to exist today, iconic, as a signifier of contemporary art i.e those that except as a given that it is an Artwork may be considered inside the institution – while those that doubt its validity: outside.

Fountain broke the link between art and (physical) skill or (hand-) craft that had previously appeared axiomatic. Problematically though If any 'thing' can be an artwork, (and the ‘dematerialization of the art object, that later followed dispensed even with the necessity of an artwork to carry material form), the concept of 'art' as a term delineating a specific, differentiated, field of creative practice, becomes unstable.


When neither technique nor form can any longer identify that which is art from that which is not art, the entire construct becomes entirely contingent on the specialized status of the artist, who holds a privileged position whereby only he/she possess the unique, alchemic, power of nomination.

But as the artist can no longer be clearly identified by any specific skill or technique his/her status as such, i.e this role, which enabled him/her to declare ‘X’, an artwork, becomes entirely dependent on the fiat of arts triumviri of institutions - its galleries and museums, critics and theorists, and: educational institutions.

The End of Art
Art relied on artworks, artworks relied on Artists, and Artists relied on the validation of arts institutions in the form exclusive access (to knowledge, means of production, and dissemination networks).

In the Information Age we see the dissolution of these 3 signifiers that maintained the status of the Artists as the holder of the power to produce (i.e nominate) artworks:

1) Specialised knowledge: the Internet has democratised access to information - physical books, needed physical space to store them, and physical space can be policed in a way that soft space can not.

2) Specialised skills and equipment: Until the
ubiquity of affordable (or free) creative software,


many means of creative production where expensive in themselves and also required expensive training to be able to use. In the Information Age, user-friendly software has enabled the completion of the de-skilling (actually a de-crafting or de-technique-ing) that began with the readymade - thus enabling the democratisation of the means of creative production.

3) Exclusive dissemination spaces and networks (e.g. galleries/museums and arts publications): The Internet, a free network enabling the dissemination of creative output to a potential audience of millions, is available to all.

The 20th Century idea of the Artist, upon which Art as an institution was dependent is no longer  sustainable as the special privileges of access, to A) specialist knowledge B) means of production and C) sites of dissemination, that previously delineated the artist are no longer specilised but available to all.

Digital Communication and Infomation Technology Technologies have enabled an absence of speciality that has robed the term 'artist' of any real meaning (if everyone is an artist - then no one is an artist), and without Artists there is no more art. Game over.

Dan Westlake ©2011


Re-edited extract taken from:
The artist In the Age of Digital Reproduction:
Creative Practice In A Post-Guttenberg Galaxy

full text availble at: www.artafterart.co.uk

Why David Cameron May Have to Resign

It has been established beyond all doubt that the News Corp regularly and systematically broke the law by illegally tapping (pinging, bugging etc) the telephone and email correspondences of celebrities, members of the public and, crucially, politicians. It has also now been established beyond all doubt the closeness of News International to David Cameron and his inner circle both professionally and socially. In fact the bonds where/are so close that it is not so much a case of connections between the two camps but of the News International/ Cameron Inner circle being single clique AKA the Chipping Norton Set.


This begs leaves the BIG QUESTION: This systematic illegal tapping of politicians emails and phone calls must have thrown up much that would have been absolute gold dust to the Conservative Party in the run up to the last general election, so did any the News International people ever pass on any of this information to either Cameron himself or any other member of the Conservative party? With, for instance, Andy Coulson ACTUALLY EMPLOYED as David Cameron's spin doctor, in the run up to the election, the idea that non of the information illegally obtained by News International, who's dishonesty has been highlighted again and again during this scandal, was never passed onto the Conservative party would appear absurd. To believe this never happened one would have to believe these people (who A) had access to such illegally gained information B) have been proven to be systematically dishonest & C) were working for a Tory election victory) when coming across such information made a decision every-time NOT to pass it on to Cameron or the Conservative Party??? Now if the passing of a single piece of this illegally gained information from News International people to David Cameron or others in his inner circle can be proved It would all be all over: Cameron would have no choice but to resign and would probably be facing criminal charges. This is our Watergate.

PS. look out for plenty more laptops to 'misplaced' in the carparks of Westminster and the fields of Chipping Norton  in the coming weeks...

Westlake 72: Come Over

 Come Over by westlake72

The Evil Rebekah Brooks

Rebekah Brook’s famous, weird, obsession with pedophiles is that they may have represented the one group she felt able to posture from a position of  relatively moral high ground. The recent revelations - her disruption of the investigation of a child murder for one - take even that away from her. We should not though get overly obsessed though with the vileness of Wade/Brooks. The real issue is the deep links between the Murdochs, Brooks, Camerons, Coulsons, Yateses of this world (and the previous Brown/Blair regime) and the cowardliness of the current opposition - with a few extremely honourable exceptions (Chris Bryant, Tom Watson, John Prescot), respect to Norman Fowler too (that’s a sentence I never thought I’d write).

BTW We have set up a Facebook group here: Withdraw Rebekah Brooks UAL award now! to get the University of the Arts to withdraw the Award of an Honoury fellowship to Brooks for 'outstanding contribution to journalism’ (LOL).

The Artist in The Age of Digital Reproduction

http://futurenowexhibit.org.uk/thesis/index.html

Anti-Production:

"The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more" Douglas Huebler - 1969.


1) In advanced capitalist societies we experience  the triumvirate fetishization of progress, production and representation as total ideology mediating all sites of social exchange including art's institutions. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is absurdly still viewed by the mainstream media, the most powerful manifestation of what Louis Althusser termed the  Ideological State Apparatus (ISA), as the key indicator of a nations well being - that is production, regardless of what is that is being produced, is in and of itself viewed as a good thing - while the former ruler of The Kingdom of Bhutan Jigme Singye Wangchuck's sensible and pragmatic concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH) is, in an example of advanced capitalism's power to pervert, patronised as eccentric and quirky.

2) In the modern city where the phenomenological terrain is dominated by simulacra and the hyper-real we are constantly confronted by advertising and other forms of seductive capitalist propaganda creating the illusion of need for yet more product. Strategies of distraction deny us the space to contemplate the emptiness, what  Hegel termed the ‘dark, shapeless abyss’, that exists silently lurking behind the shiny facade of our consumer driven society as it does behind all things. An ideology based on spectacle succeeds because we fear nothingness and wish it to be kept at bay so are grateful for any distraction.

3) In such a society free non-contaminated space paradoxically becomes the most valuable of substances. In a terrain of hyper-stimulation designated art-spaces can provide a site where an individual may for a period of time inhabit a zone free from the pressure to either produce or consume. Unfortunately this experience is often denied us by the actual art objects placed in this precious arena. A valuable experience is thereby denied by ‘needy’ art objects demanding, like infants, our attention.Thus art provides yet more of the spectacle and distraction that denies us the opportunity to simply experience the essentially empty nature of being.

4) From Moses to Marx the problem of idolatry - the worship of false idols - has been a consistent feature of the human condition. We appear hardwired to search for existential redemption and whether we put our faith in monotheistic Gods, technological progress or a sports team we do so to deliver us from the void of a meaningless existence and into a indefinitely deferred promised land. Marx warned of the error of commodity fetishism - the worship of things - while himself fetishizing production and exhibiting a messianic faith in progress through dialectic materialism.

5) In advanced capitalist societies we don’t actually worship products themselves but the abstract concepts they represent such as youth, beauty and wealth. The relationship between consumable products and these abstractions is mediated through the use of lens-based imagery by the ISA in the form of advertising and entertainment. The seductive gloss of these images is an ideal so far removed form all possible realities of youth, beauty and wealth that finally it is not even these abstract concepts themselves we worship but their actual representation. Such is the all-pervasive ubiquity of this image lead spectacle that the possibility of artworks based on lens-based imagery, even those produced as explicit critiques of it, ever resisting its cooption is negligible.

6) Production is the intended outcome of labour a word that's etymological root derives from the Latin laboro: to suffer, carry burden or experience dis-ease. That which is laborious is something other than that which is pleasurable. In advanced capitalism labour is eulogized to such an extent that in the popular press its absence is portrayed as sinful. The most pronounced self righteous vitriol of the ISA in the form of the popular press is reserved for the two groups who are perceived to not labour enough;  celebrities and the unemployed more than any others including even economic immigrants who may be grudgingly accepted as long as the are perceived to be 'hard working'. With the advance of globalization this originally northern European ideology - the Protestant work ethic - spreads like a virus until universally normative. This 'work ethic', now virtually ubiquitous, is essentially the fetishization of suffering acting as an alibi for exploitation. Only a masochist or sadist would  celebrate such dis-ease.

7) The common denominator shared by ALL artists is that they select items to be exhibited. Duchamp's fountain applied a razor to all but that which was essential to the process of art making leaving only the choosing of objects to be shown, and the dematerialization of the art object that followed further dispensed with the necessity of the object to carry material form. The creation of art is then in essence an act of choosing and exhibiting, and where choice is exercised there is individuation. As an artist brings to the attention of others these acts of individuation that need not serve any utilitarian purpose it would appear that the primordial drive to create art is the affirmation of self through the gaze of the other. Art then is not a project born of altruistic intent but an existential need for self affirmation.

8) If one's primary drive to produce artworks is an altruistic intention to improve society the institution that is art may not be a site particularly conducive to such a project. While Duchamp (in)famously  stopped producing artworks to concentrate on playing chess Laurie Parsons, a sculptor working with found objects in the 1980's who appeared genuinely free of this need for self affirmation, stopped producing art work or calling herself an artist and became, instead, a social worker and advocate for societies most vulnerable

9) Though the drive to create art is not primarily altruistic that does not negate our ethical responsibilities as human beings. While to create art is always to produce more (however 'post' this production may be) even if the work is virtually immaterial, to not be reflexive and take responsibility for our contribution to a world already overloaded with objects and images is an ethical negation. Ethics should be grounded in the Hippocratic principle: Primum non nocere (first do no harm). Is our work merely going to add to the spectacle, co-opted by makers of designer labels to produce yet more pseudo-desire - more false need - in order to sell yet more pointless products using up yet more of the worlds resources?


10)  In the production of artworks: if less is more, *nothing* is absolute.



Dan Westlake - ©2009

Art After Art

The Beginning of the End:
Art as an institution (as opposed to a term simply bestowing praise on creativity or skill, or a term referring to man made objects of cultural interest better described as: artefacts) is a construct centred on artists producing artworks. It is not a natural, timeless or universal phenomenon, but a specific geo-historical construct that can be traced back to Cennino Cennini's writings on Giotto di Bondone (see above) in 1390 at the birth of the Renaissance.It is a construct that has been skating on thin ice since 1917 when Duchamp entered 'Fountain' for the summer show of the Society of Independent Artists. With ‘Fountain’ Duchamp applied a razor to all but that which was essential to the process of art making, leaving only the selection of objects to be shown (i.e. to bring to the attention of the ‘other’). Though initially rejected it could be said to exist today, iconic, as a signifier of contemporary art i.e those that except as a given that it is an Artwork may be considered inside the institution – while those that doubt its validity: outside. ‘Fountain’ broke the link between art and (physical) skill or (hand-) craft that had previously appeared axiomatic. Problematically though If any 'thing' can be an artwork, (and the ‘dematerialization of the art object, that later followed dispensed even with the necessity of an artwork to carry material form), the concept of 'art' as a term delineating a specific, differentiated, field of creative practice, becomes unstable. When neither technique nor *form can any longer identify that which is *art from that which is not *art, the entire construct becomes entirely contingent on the specialized status of the *artist, who holds a privileged position whereby only he/she possess the unique, alchemic, power of nomination. But as the artist can no longer be clearly identified by any specific skill or technique his/her status as such, i.e this role, which enabled him/her to declare X, an artwork, becomes entirely dependent on the fiat of arts triumviri of institutions - its galleries and museums, critics and theorists, and: educational institutions.

The End of Art:
Digital Communication Technology has now made this 20th Century idea of the Artist, upon which Art as an institution was dependent, unsustainable. In the Information Age we see the dissolution of the 3 signifiers that maintained the status of the Artists as the holder of the power to produce (i.e nominate) artworks.

1) Specialised knowledge: the Internet has democratised access to information - physical books, needed physical space to store them, and physical space can be policed in a way that soft space can not.

2) Specialized skills and equipment: user-friendly software has enabled the completion of the de-skilling (actually a de-crafting or de-technique-ing) that began with the readymade – (until the ubiquity of affordable (or free) creative software, many means of production where expensive in themselves and also required expensive training to be able to use) - enabling the democratisation of the means of creative production.

3) Exclusive dissemination spaces and networks (e.g. galleries/museums and arts publications): The Internet, a free network enabling the dissemination of creative output to a potential audience of millions, is available to all.

Therefore the special privileges of access, to A) specialist knowledge B) means of production and C) sites of dissemination, that previously delineated the artist are now available to all. Art relied on artworks, artworks relied on Artists, and Artists relied on the validation of arts institutions in the form exclusive access (to knowledge, means of production, and dissemination networks) that is no longer exclusive. The absence of speciality robs the term 'artist' of any real meaning (if everyone is an artist - then no one is an artist), and without Artists there is no more art. Game over.

Theoretical Physicists: The real artists of the 21st Century

Art & Science Are Theoretical Physicists the only true artists left in the 21st Century? Conceptual jester Jonathon Keats has suggested that the science fiction of the future will be written in mathematical equations but sci-fi, speculative fiction and futurism are all now things of the past: We are the future and the romantic idea of the artist is dead, politics is a fiction, and the only space where the Absolute, the Sublime and Beauty remain possible is within the theoretical micro equations of the quantum physics.

Jail Rebecca Brooks and Andy Coulson, now!

Politics Irrefutable evidence from Channel 4’s Dispatches that both the two main political parties and the police are in the pocket of the Murdoch Clan/News International. Former NOTW editor Andy Coulson and current NOTW editor Rebecca Brooks (Wade) were/are engaged in systematic criminal activity including blackmail, phone tapping, illegal payments to police, and perjury. Those in a position to expose News Internationals criminal activities have been threatened, either explicitly or implicitly, with retribution using the very tactics that are currently destabilising our Democracy and legal system. If British Democracy and the rule of law are to be seen as anything but farce Coulson and Brooks should face criminal prosecution and ultimately jail.

Private View: Thursday 27th 6:00pm - 8:30pm

Central Saint Martins’ MA Fine Art - Interim Show 2011
Description: Showcasing the work of Central Saint Martins’ MA Fine Art students
Continues: 28 January - 30 January 11am to 6pm
Location: Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, Bargehouse St, South Bank, London, SE1 9PH

020 7021 1686
http://www.coinstreet.org/

Transport: Tube: Blackfriars, Southwark, Waterloo; bus: 45, 63, 100

Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five: Live on The Tube (1983)

Nostalgia Remember watching this at the time - People retrospectively hype The Tube as hip and cutting edge but it hardly ever had any black acts when hip-hop/electro and funk/soul/boogie where by far the most innovative forms of music during the period (early 80’s). For more classic electro links, mixtapes and re-edits join the Facbook group Let the music play - a homage to electro-funk. For westlake72’s take on the Message mashed with the Clash’s Guns of Brixton go here.

Chuka Umunna

Politics I believe the next Labour PM will be Streatham’s current MP: Chuka Umunna. I was extremely impressed by Umunna’s performance while grilling the vile Bob Diamond. He exhibited three vital qualities that Ed Milliband distinctly lacks: i) Clear, concise, communication skills, ii) A passionate, and authentic, sense of right and wrong, and iii) the appearance of a sharp, intelligent, confidence while still managing to appear ‘normal’. Roll on 2020… Mr Umunna also fancies himself as a bit of a Soulful House DJ. Click here some of his choices.

Sarah Palin: No sense of dignity, No sense of shame.

Politics In Sarah Palin’s video responce to the Arizona shooting it only takes Ms Palin 1 minute 30 seconds before she forgets about paying tribute to the Liberal senator Gabrielle Giffords, who lies fighting for her life and the lives of 6 others (including a 9 year old girl who she neglects to mention), and starts to make excuses for herself, and her hate filled friends in the media: Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh et al and their rabble rousing  rhetoric  'tageting’ Liberals such as Gabrielle Giffords who they attempt to portray as “anti-American”. Rather than show grace, humility and dignity she bizarrely chooses to attack others for “irresponsible statements” while refusing to accept that her, and her cronies, statements could have in anyway have created an atmosphere where violence is used to attack Liberals. If this was a one off incident she may have got away with it but this is only the latest and most serious example of violence directed against those Ms Palin and her supporters in the Media and the Tea Party view as “enemies”. Gabrielle Gifford herself had already warned about the danger posed by Ms Palins tactics:

Gabrielle Giffords warns Sarah Palin there will be consequences (video)

as had others:

Elizabeth Hasselbeck: Sarah Palin's Crosshairs Ad ‘Despicable’ (video)

Even the Republican Judge John Roll had previously received Death Threats from right wingers who objected to his ruling on immigration:

Reports: Judge Roll Received Threats (text)

There are too many instances to list here of right wingers threatening, or using, violence either explicitly or implicitly against their Liberal political opponents so Ms Palin hasn’t got the excuse of hiding behind her own ignorance. In the wake of this paradigm shifting incident she had the opportunity to demonstrate both courage and humility by paying respect to the dead and injured by drawing a line in the sand, acting responsibly and pledging to refrain from using inflammatory language in the future and encouraging her supporters to do the same. Did she choose to show such courage and humility? No, she chose excuses, self justification and cowardice.

Increase the Peace

Music an hour of chilled out sun-kissed soul from my podcast.

Horny Chic (Flying Away)

 Music Horny Chic (Flying Away) by westlake72

This Trumpet lead, soulful, nu-disco groover is the most popular download from my Soundcloud page.http://soundcloud.com/westlake72/horny-chic-flying-away

Glen Campbell: Wichita Lineman (westlake72 remix)

Music Glen Campbell’s Wichita Lineman given an old skool jungle drum’n’bass remix by westlake72 with accompanying mash-up video.

Future Now Exhibition

‘We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us’ - Marshall McLuhan (1964)

All paradigm shifts in art emerge in response to social change and technological innovation. In the last 15 years information technology, particularly the emergence of the internet, has began to touch, and often reshape, every sphere of our lives. It is the electronic inter-connecting network potentially linking every human being directly to every other human being on planet. As human beings we are essentially social constructs – that is we are defined by our relationship to others – any fundamental shift in these relationships mediation is a fundamental shift in what it is to be human. It has been argued that the emergence of the internet is either A) the biggest technological innovation since Guttenberg’s movable type printing enabled the reformation, the scientific revolution and the birth of modernity B) A system as transformative as the very emergence of the written word in Mesopotamian 4th BC, or even C) a biological shift in human kind on a scale of the emergence of language itself. Therefore we are currently living through an age of technology-lead social change so all encompassing that we are presently unable to grasp the full implications of what that change may mean, other than to state simply that this social change will inevitably lead to a fundamental change, not only in what is meant by the term 'art', and what it is to be an 'artist', but what it actually means to be a human being in this emerging post-Gutenberg galaxy.

Future Now is an online exhibition featuring 5 emerging artists working with digital print, video projection, sound performance, text, digital programming, and drawing . This exhibition will create a dialogue with the monumental technology-led social/cultural shifts that have emerged in the last 10 to 15 years focussing on our changing relationships with technology and each other within the birth of the information age.