Hi Jesse, sorry to hear you are going through a bad time. ah yes the processes growing gummy in gummy times. Thinking of you and certain avant debates here makes me remember your spat with the bloke who was always telling us that only digital poetry mattered now and everything else was, was, umm, well, gummy or thereabouts.
Cheers
Tim
On 20 Apr 2016, at 01:28, jesse wrote:
> Tim and everyone: Going through some rough times here--mother is dying, a grand man who encouraged me every step of the way is gone, a suicided friend, two student-buddies of mine unexpectedly gone--yet I still have hope for words like 'experimental' and the sometimes glorious coupling of it to words like 'art' and 'poetry' and to the processes by which they grow gummy in gummy times and yet harden in their carapaces when the sun rises to its zenith. Somehow they still mean something worthwhile even as we the living grow dim and stagger forward under our burdens. Jess of Japan
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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> Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2016 13:14:45 +0100
> From: Tim Allen <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: names
>
> As nobody has responded to below I'm responding to myself with a question - Why do you find the terms 'experimental' and 'avant-garde' iffy?
>
> My main reason is that both terms can be used by people to refer to work that is not experimental in any real sense and is certainly not avant-garde. How can the word experimental be applied to practises and methods that now have a long history - so many so-called experimental pieces are variations on previously executed works of art or anti-art so how can they be experimental? This is not a put-down of the works themselves, just of their being called experimental etc. The works might very well be excellent.
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> I don't believe like some that the term avant-garde is meaningless, except historically, but I do think its meaning has been so compromised by artists and the art world that the word should only be used to refer to those who use artistic activity in a purposely exploratory way for reasons that go beyond the aesthetic into the radically political challenge of changing life.
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> In that sense the avant-garde has been an utter failure. Instead of bringing art into life it has done everything possible to seal itself off from life for the glorification of its own sacred space as ART, with whatever money, reputation, careers and other prizes the world has been willing to bestow on its makers. It has been self-deceiving and complicit with the forces of capitalism. The worst thing about it is that the more it proclaims itself as being radical and experimental the more far-reachng is its deception, complicity and egoistical turn.
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> Have a nice day.
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> Tim Allen
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