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Perils of the Soul
1
Imagine a lovely sunny morning in New York City. You have just went down the street to find the birds chipper, the clouds so bright and the waves (you can hear them whisper) gently rush to shore. It's a holiday (like everyday) and you seek some stimulating intellectual adventure to occupy your soul ridden guilts about being lazy lately. You meet your artist friend (he's a real friend) at the street corner. He is on his way to an Art Fair, “the biggest, the most famous, the one and only, once in a life time, international-can't-miss event” he tells you and grins. You join him; after all, you do have a strong feeling of sympathy (financially invested) for the arts, you know enough to hold a steady conversation about architecture in the Renaissance, and you like to drink. From afar you see the fair and excitement takes hold of you just like when you were a kid going through the pages of your first porn magazine. You enter, and strangely enough there are no big signs, posters, flags or indications of any sort, nothing but pale brick walls. “Perhaps it is part of the fair's concept,” (naked, soulless void) your friend carefully mutters as you step into one of these anonymous booths in hope to come by some answers. No, no catalogs, no gallery owner behind the table, not even the always polite assistant to welcome you with a smile (mysterious yet agreeable), only confused souls going in and out, gloominess drawn on their long weary faces. Not a word printed nor an address on a cardboard, not even the compulsory white paper with the prices indicated. It upsets your sensitive stomach, for you have always seemed to find comfort and guidance in numbers, remembering how your beloved mother used to pick potatoes for dinner (only the hot ones) out of hundreds in the market place. A swift glance at the figures tells you all that you need to know (only on cold nights you hastily collect something you like). But the art is there. A series of small acrylic paintings (oil to your eyes) is hanging on the walls. These magnificent spectacles lure and pull your attention like sirens wailing in the midst of a bottomless ocean; they were made by a heavenly creature, no doubt. Your bewildered eyes stray down, then to the right, to the left, down again, up, anxiously looking for that small label always sitting next to the work like a watchful dog. You look again, but it is not there. It cannot be. There has to be some simple and reasonable explanation to this unfortunate blunder, otherwise how will you know who painted these extraordinary masterpieces? How can you hang it on your wall (next to the staircase) without that plain and obvious information? Perhaps this booth isn't professional enough, or maybe it's not ready yet for the public, so you (and your real quiet friend) retire from that wretched spot, wishing to leave behind that horrible experience. You walk fast and enter the booth next door. With tremble and dread, with eyes crooked, you seek these so uncomplicated and little signs that will reassure your impoverished soul (or verify its suspicions). After a few moments, the air that you breath becomes thick, your vision blurs and you have lost your ability to grasp the honest truth of the laws of gravity. It is a bad dream and in it you are lost, drifting among unnamed walls and untamed artifacts. You enter the opposite booth, then the farthest, the smallest, the whitest, to no avail. You fall on your knees with despair and wish to run away home. But suddenly you hear obscure noises streaming from a television, coming towards you in muffled waves from the booth behind you. “It is the voice of angels” and angels are clean of mischief, you both think out loud (movies are splendid). You enter a particularly spacious darkened booth, you sit, you watch the images racing in time, it ended. You wait and it starts again. Nothing, not one title, not a word. You sit in the dark, thinking about all that you have missed in your life.
2
Capitalistic society has proved that an alternative to an entirely different form of religion or cult is viable; one that does not depend on or work under any dogmatic regime, but its own cult values to exist, one that allows complete religiosity 365 days a year without having to change nothing from one's daily routine. Today's post-industrial virtual realm accommodates the most religious society history has ever seen, a totally autonomous system that reproduces all empirical forces and spiritual phenomenas, feeds on its own flash and eventually reincarnates, ad infinitum. There is no day that is not a feast day, Walter Benjamin wrote as early as 1921 in Capitalism and Religion. The term religion would be best understood as in the original use of the phrase religio: a careful consideration and observation at specific dynamic elements that are perceived as forces: gods, rules, ideas, ideals, intuitions or any other name men gave to these factors, which he experienced in his world as powerful, dangerous or useful enough–to give them careful consideration–or as big, beautiful and significant enough to worship and love them.
Since the birth of knowledge, the expression or application (typically in a visual form) of human creative skills and imagination, or what is called art, was carefully considered and observed. It had to be because it must be perceived indirectly, either by admitting influence of a hidden exclusive entity or by giving particular meaning to a visible object (or to the psyche that made it). Art, in its raw, essential and non-economical state (if there is one) cannot stand the light of day, it must be used and consumed through a veil of assorted special effects, filters and agencies in order to protect the “believers” from its unpredictable, dangerous and arbitrary inclinations. This needed protection evolved through the centuries, shaping itself in the forms of rituals, dogmas and knowledge; originally designed to mediate, this defense mechanism contains all options for complete religious experience but within safe distance and with financial profit as a minor side effect. In today's art-world elaborate and masked structure, financial gain became a no lesser value; the protector had become the inventor, administrator and executor, and the result is a flood of intoxication throughout the system, a state of steep differentiations and concealed processes. Art fairs, galleries, publishing houses, collectors, curators, critics, journalists, and all others work to breed the wonder beast.
The art fair, like all other exclusive operations that select their members, is based not only on the names of the institutions eventually included by it to participate but mainly on the other, on all those (infinite number of others, endless art works) that were not among the chosen ones. By this simple (and to some–obvious) equation, the fair (like the gallery, journal, etc) establishes one of humanity's most ancient “natural” codes of moral behavior–ownership, thus foregrounding and giving body (earthly and holy) to a dogmatic economical hierarchy, merely by preferring specific items, which already proved themselves as “important” in their own previous sphere. Then assigning them a stamp of quality, which transfigures into value and cost, and simultaneously charge them with a symbol of aura, so that they will be carefully observed and considered. Ultimately, these motions translate into fame, power and money, with only one problem (or maybe it's just the way the world moves)—money appears to be crucial not only at the end of this chain reaction but also at the beginning, it directs the movement and regulations of this paradigm. It follows the Catch 22 model; if a poor man wants to have a job as a waiter, lets say, than he must have a clean white shirt to be one. But in order to have a clean white shirt he must work as a waiter first, and so on—in order to survive, the system excludes those who do not serve its interest (there are exceptions but they only reinforce the rule). This procedure is a fact of life in mainstream contemporary art scenes as much as it is in all aspects of men's spiritual institutions (the cinema industry is the finest example). It moves like a snake with its tail in his jaw, with no beginning and no end, as long as the public gets what it wants, while keeping the illusion of the religio and its qualities alive but somewhat in a minor disposition or at least in a second hand need.
The ritual, the structure and the dogma that were supposed to continue to function both as a platform and as guardians, now released themselves, in the name of new powers rising, from their rule as mediators between art and humanity, took over the sinking boat, and turned into art itself. The boundaries between the guardian and the art faded away while the partition between men and the art artificially remain kept. It is as if a library, which functions both as a container for all (that it can allow) options and as its guardian, will start to give meaning, unrelated to the objects or to the intentions of the authors, and beyond its institutionalized instincts to categories. Through it, the library will define significance and modus operandi out of unlimited items, and ultimately will determine the content of what it holds. This act of conquering does not manifest itself solely in large-scale projects or played out as a theoretical scheme, but also reveals itself in the most basic and intimate connections between all agencies taking part in the game. Think for instance, of the detachment between the artist sitting in his studio (usually on his own), creating his or her work, in a particular state of mind and in an “uncontrolled” manner (intuition, inspiration, etc) inherent to the principles of art. And then, as if it was the most common thing to do, pulling the art work to a completely different space, to a disoriented physical and cognitive context, a totally new arena where other numerous factors—strange to the authentic act—are in full charge. All this is being translated and shaped, not by the artist or his/her genuine intentions (as much as he/she would like to see himself/herself as the creator of his work), not by a conspiracy of sort, but by other great forces, ones that unite religio and capital.
Eitan Buganim. Tel Aviv, March 2006.
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