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Temple by Westlake3000

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The David Cameron & Jimmy Carr Show

By attacking Jimmy Carr, Cameron has extended the debate about tax avoiders beyond the broadsheet reading ‘chattering' classes to the tabloid reading masses in a way Uncut could never of dreamed of: A debate that is going to hurt nobody but him and his vile mates. From being the Conservative  Party’s prime asset Cameron is now exhibiting such a level of political incompetence that he is becoming a liability.

Sparkler

Murdoch/Tory Coalition

 
The cosy texts, late night calls and socialising between cabinet ministers and News International's inner sanctum, particularly evident in the familiarity of the language used, reveal that the ‘Coalition’ we are currently governed by is not a coalition between the Tories and their idiotic alibi - the LibDems, but between a party less than a third of country voted for and a, primarily American owned, multinational corporation that NO ONE voted for.

The Independent: Rupert Murdoch’s Men On Th Inside

The Guardian: Texts reveal Hunt's close alliance with Murdoch

WestIake3000: Want To Be In Love

Paris Spring

You & Me

 You & Me by westlake72 

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