In a fit a nearly responsible writing/vituperation-justification (and providing a chance to write another of those patented really long posts), I took myself to the Zero Culture event last evening, being of one those well-dressed serious-looking art/culture hangers-on (read: I’m still a little too young to troll the 92nd Street Y), and a little curious to see what Paul Golberger is like (and, surprise! he seemed pretty reasonable and incisive, Michael Sorkin’s vitriol notwithstanding). If you missed it, or last week’s post, the goal was to interrogate:
The ongoing wrangles, which have variously devolved around issues of design and security, have most recently polarized around an opposition between culture and memorialization. Culture, ordinarily the bedrock of any act of remembrance, is estranged, even desecrates ground described as hallowed and sacred.
If it was an opening salvo to further the debate on the role of “the arts” or “culture” (it was an entire event that awash in air quotes and qualifications) at the WTC site, it was a tepid one. The points themselves were reasonable, there was a teensy bit of spark, but no position was established that could reframe the debate in terms that might realize something.
Two things, I would hazard, prevented this: one is the unwillingness to place most of the recent changes squarely in the context of politics, and, two, the inherent partisan position of the participants, asserting a right for a particular element — “the arts” — instead of focusing on the insulting behavior of those who mouth fealty to process then jettison that promise when it is politically expeditious. The point is, we could have been defending a rollerderby rink, and the arguments should have been the same.
If anyone there thought “the arts” were worthy of exceptional status and deserving of veneration or priority election or placement at the site, it wasn’t clearly articulated. Mike Wallace and Thelma Golden both made allusive comments about the problem of situating culture in the context of development or memorials, and even more briefly spoke on the conflict between high and low art, but no one made a forceful argument about what or if “the arts” deserve in terms of exceptional recognition.
After about an hour of speaking, the thought that coalesced in my mind was we were watching the replay of the NEA Four, Chris Ofili and Robert Mapplethorpe all rolled into one. There was a brief moment where a crucial point was made (it was Mike Wallace, I believe) that a structural flaw in the entire process was that the narrative of the event and the recovery were commandeered at the national level, and deformed to fit an almost pre-existing ideology (the farcical connection between Al Queda and Iraq). In light of that, it occurred to me that the various defenses being made were a fairly typical, and futile, running hard up against the well established playbook that politicians use: assume a proto-populist role, and find some freaky artist to attack. The artists are defended by and large in the framework of vaguely leftist, aspiring to be populist (free speech) rhetoric, but that is an unwinnable fight. Arms were taken up, nonetheless, because the left has been consistently fractured in its opposition to the war in Iraq (and even in the best way to counter terrorism), and I think many thought, consciously or unconsciously, that we could “win” this one, that somehow a counter-narrative could be established that would stem the putrid grandstanding happening downtown, and that it would ripple outward, bringing down the house of cards our petty emperor was attempting to erect.
How the arts community got suckered into this one (not that it isn’t easy to most of the time) was addressed only once: in one of the few truly insightful or scandalous observations, Paul Goldberger inserted an almost parenthetical comment that people used to attending expensive benefits for arts organizations got caught up in the brush with power and were unduly flattered by the idea that their input would make difference downtown (I’m paraphrasing a bit, so don’t sue me).
Why is it an unwinnable fight? Because art is inevitably an expression of, and distraction for, the elite. Everyone in that room last night knew who Hans Haacke was without reading his bio. I could walk into a gathering of people of similar scale from here to LA and find at best a tenth of the attendees who even heard of him. The Drawing Center is an elite institution, there is no denying that. And there is nothing wrong with that. We are not a populist country; we are country where political identity can be manipulated by appeals to economic self-interest, and, apparently, appeals to religious belief (though I suspect this is a synecdoche for economic self-interest). That self-interest, more often than not, is a limitless desire to accumulate capital, regardless of the impact on community. The arts sit uncomfortably at the apex of that process, leeching off those who have managed this trick to an effective degree (or were lucky enough to be borne into it), trying to hew an impossible path of jealousy, criticism, and some vague claims of exceptional status due to the mirror, prism or whatever allegorical device one posits for filtering culture.
We wanted to put the Drawing Center downtown for no particular reason, except that Manhattan is the center of the arts (because it is, without coincidence, the economic center) in this country. The World Trade Center housed as many populist, working class strivers as any other building, but the firm that suffered most dearly, Cantor Fitzgerald, was filled with an aberrant number of millionaires who did things that most people couldn’t even identify. They were elites, and I’m sure a number of them supported the arts ardently. And if they didn’t, they would learn to when their expensively educated kids woke up and realized being a painter was a lot more fun that being a bond trader like dad.
Surely one could say there is something flawed about this, but those who do dwell pretty regularly on the fringe. But the debate downtown is limited largely to those who think this is just fine a model, the only separation being some got a lot closer than others, and that creates friction.
All of this makes it impossible to posit an argument that resonates in a broad cultural context. Even most of the people who can be goaded into turning up their nose at the liberal, East Coast elite, still eagerly come to see our museums, and often take great pleasure in the process. More than anything, they don’t want to be reminded of how provincial they appear to the people in that room last night.
And there is no doubt that is the case. A fascinating moment of total implosion occurred when a family member came up and read a mostly disingenuous statement that seemed like it came directly from the Machiavellian mind of Debra Burlingame. We heard the usual garbage talking points about “it’s not about the arts, but the kind of the arts” followed by a litany of projects that, absent the loaded emotional context from which they were drawn, would have resulted in pained eye-rolling from most everyone there (and probably still did for some). There were glimmers of a viable argument, via pandering to positioning these examples of outsider art (that might be welcomed at places like MAD or the American Folk Museum), or terms that might indict the clannishness of the arts we were lamenting the exclusion of. But no one rose to point out that the some 30-odd examples offered, from a traditional curatorial viewpoint, were infinitesimal for an institution that needs to fill programming for a century (MoMA has what, 100,000 items in inventory?), and the Memorial is already slated to have something on the order of 200,000 sf of display space. I’m not aware of anyone recommending that the Memorial Center — or whatever we are calling it nowdays — not include such items. But, true to form, no one wanted to attack a family member by pointing any o
f this out, or, worse, the awkward, polite disinterest indicated that, yes, there is even less a dialogue than anyone presumes.
It was said obliquely by panel members, and more vociferously by a downtown resident that the families have a disproportionate influence. No one likes to say that publicly, but it is demonstrably true, and it is not an attack on the memory of the victims to say so. Rather than speculate on the particulars of why this has happened (which I fear may succumb to the perception of ad hominem), it might be better observe the counter-arguments against such a strong involvement by the families.
It was, and is, a public space. Who was there was, in the end, random. Many of those who did die had an almost infinitely higher probability of being victimized, but they were not singled out as individuals, nor were they electing this risk cognizant of impending doom (unlike a member of the armed forces). As a measure of how random the risk was, my sister, who never lived here, and was visiting friends of her fiance in New Jersey, was planning to make a trip to the WTC the day of the 1993 attack. I forget what exactly prevented it (sickness, oversleep, something innocuous), but considering the likelihood of this coincidence is indicative of how wide the victim pool was. Therefore, acknowledging the human impact of this event is essential, but the symbolism of the attacks should not be subsumed to individual experience.
Hewing a path between remembering the individuals, which strikes me as a private process, and examining and remember the context of the event, which is a public one, has been at the forefront of every rational person’s consideration since the day it happened. As it was pointed out more than once, it was the process as was promised at the outset that led local leaders of the arts to believe that their interest and participation was both welcome and encouraged. Certainly, the purported openness and inclusiveness lulled everyone into a false sense of collaboration. But the presumption that Libeskind’s vague pronouncements would carry enough force to effect a long-term plan (and inspire the funding) was abetted by the myopic arrogance of cultural institutions that forgot that they are easy targets for a populist argument, and often are fairly deserving of that charge (and if you want to quibble, ask City Harvest what they could have done with the $600 million MoMA spend building a new building).
Even as everyone comes away looking like a patsy, a fool, or a craven operator, the entire evening mostly avoided the huge amount of blame to be laid squarely at the feet of our ostensible leaders. It took over an hour before anyone uttered Pataki’s name, and only in the very last minutes did anyone bother (it was the go-to guy for controversy, Haacke, likely feeling the most frisky, since he has the least to lose, his air rights fully exploited) to note that our liberal champeen, Hilary Rodham Clinton, moved pretty much in lockstep with Curious George throughout the process. This bipartisan bit of politicking affirms the most consise and forceful argument of the entire evening, again from Haacke, that, as regards development at the site, vis a vis both the inclusion of culture and the larger issue of expecting some amount of transparency as the projects move forward, there is no hope.
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Eloquent, attractive. Irrelevant?
In a fit a nearly responsible writing/vituperation-justification (and providing a chance to write another of those patented really long posts), I took myself to the Zero Culture event last evening, being of one those well-dressed serious-looking art/culture hangers-on (read: I’m still a little too young to troll the 92nd Street Y), and a little curious to see what Paul Golberger is like (and, surprise! he seemed pretty reasonable and incisive, Michael Sorkin’s vitriol notwithstanding). If you missed it, or last week’s post, the goal was to interrogate:
If it was an opening salvo to further the debate on the role of “the arts” or “culture” (it was an entire event that awash in air quotes and qualifications) at the WTC site, it was a tepid one. The points themselves were reasonable, there was a teensy bit of spark, but no position was established that could reframe the debate in terms that might realize something. Two things, I would hazard, prevented this: one is the unwillingness to place most of the recent changes squarely in the context of politics, and, two, the inherent partisan position of the participants, asserting a right for a particular element — “the arts” — instead of focusing on the insulting behavior of those who mouth fealty to process then jettison that promise when it is politically expeditious. The point is, we could have been defending a rollerderby rink, and the arguments should have been the same. If anyone there thought “the arts” were worthy of exceptional status and deserving of veneration or priority election or placement at the site, it wasn’t clearly articulated. Mike Wallace and Thelma Golden both made allusive comments about the problem of situating culture in the context of development or memorials, and even more briefly spoke on the conflict between high and low art, but no one made a forceful argument about what or if “the arts” deserve in terms of exceptional recognition. After about an hour of speaking, the thought that coalesced in my mind was we were watching the replay of the NEA Four, Chris Ofili and Robert Mapplethorpe all rolled into one. There was a brief moment where a crucial point was made (it was Mike Wallace, I believe) that a structural flaw in the entire process was that the narrative of the event and the recovery were commandeered at the national level, and deformed to fit an almost pre-existing ideology (the farcical connection between Al Queda and Iraq). In light of that, it occurred to me that the various defenses being made were a fairly typical, and futile, running hard up against the well established playbook that politicians use: assume a proto-populist role, and find some freaky artist to attack. The artists are defended by and large in the framework of vaguely leftist, aspiring to be populist (free speech) rhetoric, but that is an unwinnable fight. Arms were taken up, nonetheless, because the left has been consistently fractured in its opposition to the war in Iraq (and even in the best way to counter terrorism), and I think many thought, consciously or unconsciously, that we could “win” this one, that somehow a counter-narrative could be established that would stem the putrid grandstanding happening downtown, and that it would ripple outward, bringing down the house of cards our petty emperor was attempting to erect. How the arts community got suckered into this one (not that it isn’t easy to most of the time) was addressed only once: in one of the few truly insightful or scandalous observations, Paul Goldberger inserted an almost parenthetical comment that people used to attending expensive benefits for arts organizations got caught up in the brush with power and were unduly flattered by the idea that their input would make difference downtown (I’m paraphrasing a bit, so don’t sue me). Why is it an unwinnable fight? Because art is inevitably an expression of, and distraction for, the elite. Everyone in that room last night knew who Hans Haacke was without reading his bio. I could walk into a gathering of people of similar scale from here to LA and find at best a tenth of the attendees who even heard of him. The Drawing Center is an elite institution, there is no denying that. And there is nothing wrong with that. We are not a populist country; we are country where political identity can be manipulated by appeals to economic self-interest, and, apparently, appeals to religious belief (though I suspect this is a synecdoche for economic self-interest). That self-interest, more often than not, is a limitless desire to accumulate capital, regardless of the impact on community. The arts sit uncomfortably at the apex of that process, leeching off those who have managed this trick to an effective degree (or were lucky enough to be borne into it), trying to hew an impossible path of jealousy, criticism, and some vague claims of exceptional status due to the mirror, prism or whatever allegorical device one posits for filtering culture. We wanted to put the Drawing Center downtown for no particular reason, except that Manhattan is the center of the arts (because it is, without coincidence, the economic center) in this country. The World Trade Center housed as many populist, working class strivers as any other building, but the firm that suffered most dearly, Cantor Fitzgerald, was filled with an aberrant number of millionaires who did things that most people couldn’t even identify. They were elites, and I’m sure a number of them supported the arts ardently. And if they didn’t, they would learn to when their expensively educated kids woke up and realized being a painter was a lot more fun that being a bond trader like dad. Surely one could say there is something flawed about this, but those who do dwell pretty regularly on the fringe. But the debate downtown is limited largely to those who think this is just fine a model, the only separation being some got a lot closer than others, and that creates friction. All of this makes it impossible to posit an argument that resonates in a broad cultural context. Even most of the people who can be goaded into turning up their nose at the liberal, East Coast elite, still eagerly come to see our museums, and often take great pleasure in the process. More than anything, they don’t want to be reminded of how provincial they appear to the people in that room last night. And there is no doubt that is the case. A fascinating moment of total implosion occurred when a family member came up and read a mostly disingenuous statement that seemed like it came directly from the Machiavellian mind of Debra Burlingame. We heard the usual garbage talking points about “it’s not about the arts, but the kind of the arts” followed by a litany of projects that, absent the loaded emotional context from which they were drawn, would have resulted in pained eye-rolling from most everyone there (and probably still did for some). There were glimmers of a viable argument, via pandering to positioning these examples of outsider art (that might be welcomed at places like MAD or the American Folk Museum), or terms that might indict the clannishness of the arts we were lamenting the exclusion of. But no one rose to point out that the some 30-odd examples offered, from a traditional curatorial viewpoint, were infinitesimal for an institution that needs to fill programming for a century (MoMA has what, 100,000 items in inventory?), and the Memorial is already slated to have something on the order of 200,000 sf of display space. I’m not aware of anyone recommending that the Memorial Center — or whatever we are calling it nowdays — not include such items. But, true to form, no one wanted to attack a family member by pointing any of this out, or, worse, the awkward, polite disinterest indicated that, yes, there is even less a dialogue than anyone presumes. It was said obliquely by panel members, and more vociferously by a downtown resident that the families have a disproportionate influence. No one likes to say that publicly, but it is demonstrably true, and it is not an attack on the memory of the victims to say so. Rather than speculate on the particulars of why this has happened (which I fear may succumb to the perception of ad hominem), it might be better observe the counter-arguments against such a strong involvement by the families. It was, and is, a public space. Who was there was, in the end, random. Many of those who did die had an almost infinitely higher probability of being victimized, but they were not singled out as individuals, nor were they electing this risk cognizant of impending doom (unlike a member of the armed forces). As a measure of how random the risk was, my sister, who never lived here, and was visiting friends of her fiance in New Jersey, was planning to make a trip to the WTC the day of the 1993 attack. I forget what exactly prevented it (sickness, oversleep, something innocuous), but considering the likelihood of this coincidence is indicative of how wide the victim pool was. Therefore, acknowledging the human impact of this event is essential, but the symbolism of the attacks should not be subsumed to individual experience. Hewing a path between remembering the individuals, which strikes me as a private process, and examining and remember the context of the event, which is a public one, has been at the forefront of every rational person’s consideration since the day it happened. As it was pointed out more than once, it was the process as was promised at the outset that led local leaders of the arts to believe that their interest and participation was both welcome and encouraged. Certainly, the purported openness and inclusiveness lulled everyone into a false sense of collaboration. But the presumption that Libeskind’s vague pronouncements would carry enough force to effect a long-term plan (and inspire the funding) was abetted by the myopic arrogance of cultural institutions that forgot that they are easy targets for a populist argument, and often are fairly deserving of that charge (and if you want to quibble, ask City Harvest what they could have done with the $600 million MoMA spend building a new building). Even as everyone comes away looking like a patsy, a fool, or a craven operator, the entire evening mostly avoided the huge amount of blame to be laid squarely at the feet of our ostensible leaders. It took over an hour before anyone uttered Pataki’s name, and only in the very last minutes did anyone bother (it was the go-to guy for controversy, Haacke, likely feeling the most frisky, since he has the least to lose, his air rights fully exploited) to note that our liberal champeen, Hilary Rodham Clinton, moved pretty much in lockstep with Curious George throughout the process. This bipartisan bit of politicking affirms the most consise and forceful argument of the entire evening, again from Haacke, that, as regards development at the site, vis a vis both the inclusion of culture and the larger issue of expecting some amount of transparency as the projects move forward, there is no hope.