stewart-home-sadie-plant-james-mannox-the-art-strike-papers-the-years-without-art-1990-1993

The Art Strike Papers is a substantial collection of material produced in response to the Art Strike 1990-93. It is made up entirely of pieces whiclihave appeared since the publication of The Art Strike Hand­ book in April 1989. "The Art Strike is surely the proverbial last word inthe sorry saga of anti:-artism. It has the dubious virtue of providing for its'OWn suppersession by being a conscious simulation-·· a veritable mock­ ery. of itself. As pure negation, however, it would surely be rnore valuable if it were only a little more obviously insincere" - Mike Peters and Steve Bushell Concluding l/nartistic Postscript . "The importance of the Art Strike lies not in its feasibility but in the possibilities it opens up for intensifying the class war. The Art Strike addresses a series of issues: most important amongst these is the fact that the socially imposed hierarchy of the arts can be actively and aggressively challenged... The organisers of the Art Strike have quite consciously exploited the fact that within this society what is simu­ lated tends to become real." - Stewart Home Art Strike 1990-1993 "Making the Art Strike. (quasi) real is a series of documents that discuss the act of negation, of not doing art... the texts serve as the simulated reality of an organised strike" Anon Strike Out On Your Own: A Reader's Guide to Simulated Reality in - the Years Without Art "The Strikers quote Jean Baudrillard's statement: 'Art no longer contests anything, if it ever did.' But does refusing to make art contest · anything? If only it did." - C. Carr The Endo/Everything .

Also published.by A.K. Nick Toczek The Bigger Tory Vote: The Covert Sequestration of the Bigotry Vote Noam.Chomsky Terrorizing The Neighborhood: AmeriCan Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era Stewart Home The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrisme to Class War

THE ART STRIKE PAPERS Featuring James Manno� Stewart Home, Sadie Plant, Nik Houghton, .Mr Jones &c AK IQdl.i#J A.K. Press • Stirling • 1991

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Home, Stewart1962� Neoist manifestos. I. Arts I. Title II. Mannox, James 700 III. The Art strike papers ISBN 1-873176-15-5 Typeset by Authority, Brighton. Published by AK Press {l 991) 3 Balmoral Place Stirling Scotland FK82RD Printed in Great Britc!in by BPGC Wheatons Ltd, Exeter

INTRODUCTION Late in the autumn of 1988, Stewart Horne and Mark Pawson were prowling East London in search of Art Strike recruits. They came to visit.me in Beck Road, Hackney. We discussed the socfaland'poli.tical role of art, it's effects on society and how this related to the issue of class. Having done time as an art student, my standpoint was clear, all creative action - conscious or otherwise - was by definition artistic. The concept of art should be transformed, so that all distinctions between artists and the rest of society are eradicated. I was in favour of the Art Strike and we talked about ways in which we could promote the concept, such as picketing art openings and other forms of direct . . action. Stewart and Mark told me aboutthe Art Strike Action Committee in California� and proposed that we fonn a British branch. fagreed to this and the·· ASAC (UK) was fonried on the spot. I felt that oombing galleries would provide us with a dramatic way of stating our position. However, the most provocative action we undertook was leafieting sections of London's art community� The . ASAC (UK) neglecteddireCt action in favour ofpropaganda activities. Vive la revolution! For a while; there was inten8e international activity. British, irish, German and three strategically 10cated American Art Strike groups produced and distributed thousands of propaganda leaflets, posters; comics, pamphlets, T-shirts, balloons, · stickers and badges. However, despite all this activity __;_· as far as I am aware Stewart; Tony Lowes and John Berndt were the only individuals to strike. The ASAC (California) had always saidthat 'Art Strike was the worst idea ever' -and yet it was much more attractive than the 'realistic' ideas it opposed. . Minimal involvement in most of the theoretical discussions weakened the Art Strike's relevence to my everyday life. Of course, the value of any theory will fluctuate over a period of time. Many Art Strikers burned out on discussion after a while and lost their natural grasp of the issues involved. Nevertheless, I hope this book will lift its readers to heights of revolutionary ecstasy and the only efficient act of dissention -suicide. Read and destroy... · · . · Spellings and punctuation have been standa rdised throughout the text: e.g. in the case of US and Canadian writers, what was originally 'labor' has been rendered 'labour', 'ize' spellings are rendered 'ise' etc. Otherwise nothing has been altered. Factual inaccuracies have been left unfootnoted and as they stand a careful whole text will clarify most of these. of the reading '-- James Mannox, London, Summer 1991 for the Art Strike Action Committee (UK) JamesMannox is amusic ian who pl ayswith a number of today's top \llldergroundre cording acts, including Dealh In JUJU!, Current 93 and Spasm.

"Art, seen in relation to its supreme destination. remains a thing of the pasL It has hence lost fpr us what once made it true and vital, its former reality and necessity... - Hegel "The exclusive concentration of artistic talent in particular individuals, and its suppression in the broad mass which is bound up with this, is a consequence of division of labour. If, even in certain social conditions, everyone was an excellent painter, that would not at all exclude the pos­ sibility of each of them being also an original painter. so that here too the difference between "human.. and "unique" labour amounts to sheer nonsense. In any case, with a communist organisation of society, there disapJ>ears the subordination of the artist to local and national narrow� ness. which arises entirely from division of labour, and also the subordi-­ nation of the artist to some definite art, thanks to which he is exclusively a painter, sculptor, etc, the very name of his activity adequately express­ ing the narrowness of his professional development and his dependence on division of labour. In a communist society there are no painters but at most people who engage in painting among other activities." -Marx

TM. Arl Strike Papers ABOUT THE ART STRIKE While the Art Strike was not conceived as a Mail Art project, many of the fifty Qr so individuals who've been engaged in propagating it have close ties with the Eternal Network. As such, it raises issues which are ofpertinence to 1vfai1 Artists and points to ways in which international networking can :be used to give voice to radical social perspec�ves. THE CONCEPT The 1990 Art Strike was called as a means of encouraging critical debate around the concept of art. While certain individuals will put down their tool s and cease to make, distribute, sell, exhibit or discuss their culturalwork for a three year period beginning on 1 January 1990, the numbers involved will be so small that the strike is unlikely to foree the closure of anygallerie s or art institutions. I t will, however, demonstrate that the socially imposed hierarchy of the arts can be aggressively challenged. Art as. a category must be distinguished. from music, painting, writing &c.. Current usage of the term art treats it as a sub-categc;>ry of these disciplines, one which differentiates between parts of thenu>n the basis qf 'perceived values.' Thµs the music of John Cage is considered art, while that of Mactonna is not. Therefore, when we use the term art, we're invoking a distinction between different musics, paintings, works of fiction&c,, onewhich ranks the items to be found within these categories into a hierarchy. Given the diversity ofobjects, texts, compositions &c., which are said to be art, it seems reasonable to conclude that there is no common denominator among these 'art works' which can be used as a criterion for decidiIJg what should or should not be considered art.Whatdistinguishes the art object is tbe particular set of social and institutionalrelationship s which are to be found around it. Put another way, art is . . whatever those in a position of cultural power say is art. . One of the purposes of the Art Strike is to draw attention to tile process by which works of art are legitimated. Those artists and administrators who are in the privileged position ofdeciding \Vhatis and is not art constitute a specific faction of tbe ruling . class. They pro01ote art as a superior form of knowledge and simultaneously use itas a means of �lebrating the 'objective superiority' of tlleir own wayofJife on the basis that they are committed to art. Appreciation of art is generally used as a mark of distinction, privilege and taste. . THE PRECEDENTS The earliest use I've found of the term Art Strike is in Alain Jouffroy's essay 'What'sTo Be Done About Art:l' (included in Art and Confrontation, New York Graphic Society 1968): ";..The abolition of art can really occur in the actual time and space of a pre.revolutionary situation like that of May 1968. It is essential that the minority advocate the necessity of going on an 'active art strike' using the machines of the culture industry to set it in total contradiction toitself. The 1

The Art Strike Papers intention is not to end the rule of production, but _to change the most adventurous part of 'artistic' production into the production of revolutionary ideas, forms and techniques." The problem with this proposal is that without ending the rule of production, avant-garde artists Would simply swap one privileged role for another. Instead of providing entertainment for a privileged audience, artists are to form themselves into a vanguard providing ideas, forms and techniques for the masses. While such a role may be attractive to the artist, it does nothing to alter the oppressive domination of a so called creative elite over the rest of society' The New York Art Strike Against War, Repression and Racism was a coalition of artists, dealers, museum officials and other members of the art commiJnity. Among other things, it called fora one day closure of galleries and museums on 22 May 1970, with optionalcontinuance for-two weeks. On that day the Whitney, the Jewish Museum and a number of galleries closed, while the Museum of.Modem Art and the Guggenheim suspended their admission charges. While some of the aims of the New York Art Strike were laudable (such as protesting against the war in Vietnam), its supporters also used it as a vehiele for strengthening the privileged position artists occupy within contemporary society. However, the New York Art Strikers soon broke into dissenting factions and their movement was moribund before the end of 1970. The next proposal for an Art Strike crune from Gustav Metzger. Writing in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition Art Into Society/Society Into Art (ICA, London 1974), he called upon artists to support a three year Art Strike which was to run between 1977and1980. The idea was to attack the way in which the art world was organised rather than to.question the status of art. However, Metzger was unable to rally support for his plan, presumably because mostartists Jack any sense of the mutual self-interest which would enable them to act in solidaritywith others. In February 1979, Goran Dordevic mailed a circular asking a variety of Yugoslavian and English speaking artists if theywould take part in an International Art Strike to protest aga inst repression and the fact that artists were alienated from the fruits of their labour. Dordevic received forty replies, the majority of which expressed doubts about the possibility of putting the International Art Strike into practice. Because so few artists were prepared to pledge their support, Dordevic abandoned his plan for an International Art Strike. In Eastern Europe, where cultural work is totally professionalised., there have been successful strike actions by artists. During martial law in Poland, artists refused to exhibit work in state galleries, leaving the ruling class without an official culture. More recently in Prague, 500 actors, theatre managers ancl stage directors were among those who announced a week long strike to protest against state violence. Instead of giving perfonnances, actors proposed to lead. audiences. in discussions of the situation (see 'New Protest In Prague Follows BeatiQg ])eath,' New York Times 19/11/89). However, the factthat artists are sometimes prepared to use. their privileged position for what many would view as laudable ends does not place them above criticism. · · 2

The ArtStrikePopus NETWORKl�G THE 1990 ART STRll(E The 1990 Art Strikewas publicly annol.lilced in a flyer Iissued chJring the summe f of 1985. Further information appeared in issrie8 of Smile magazine a.Ilda si.Jcces­ sion of texts, flyers and pamphlets. The idea was pumped by John Berndt in B altimore and myself in Lonclon. One of the earliest respQnses to our propaganda was a packof"Give UpArt/Save Tue Starving" stickers, badges and balloons from Eire based Tony Lowes. The Art Strike virus spread as John, Tony and I energetically promoted the concept. /\.ndSQ, by the end ofl 988, thei�had caused something ofa stir in Mail Art and other circles, but we were still lacking an organisational fonn with which to implement the strike. At this point, Steve P erkins, ScottMacLeod, Aaron Noble and others. dec;idedto form an Art Strike Action Committee {ASAC) in San Francisco. Fired by the initiative of theseactivists, Ifonned a UK ASAC with Mark �awson andJames Man nox. OtherASACs SQOn sprang up in Baltimore, Eire and Latin America. January 1989 saw the Caijfomia ASAC organise an Art Strike Mobilisation Week in San Francisco. The UK and USA East Coast AS.ACS then attempted saturation leafleting of art institutions and artists' housing in London and Balti­ more. This tactic worke<J.very effectively in Baltimore and led to the formation of an anti'-Art SJri!<e group. The larger and more confident art community inLonclon provocative actions such as leafleting a party to was not so easily intimidated mark the closure of a gallery, led to earnest di�ussion rather than howls of outrage. The year continuedw�th propaganda posters made dUJing the San �cisco M Strike Mobilisation Weelc being exhibited at two community art venues in London and then during the Fifth International Festival Of Plagiarism in Glasgow. Lectures and debates were held ill various. art schools and institutes both in the UK and the US. All this activity caught the attention of the med� and ASACrepresentatives made appearances oJ:} nationalradio in both Britain ancl Eire..There w� also a brief Art Strike feature on a London TV station. Written coverage of the Art Strikewas more ex�nsive witl'l features and news stories being carried ineverything from underground magazines to the New York ViUageVoice. � NO THEORETICAL SUMMING UP Since the Art Strike is located in opposition to closure, there can be no theoretical summing.up 9fthe issues i nvolved.The time for theorising the Art Strike will be after i t has taken place. Here and now,it is not possible to resolve the contradictions of a group oUmilitants' ..,..,.. many ofwhom do not eonsider themselves artists'.:_ �striking'. against art�. For the time being, the Art Strike must be understood simply as a propaganda tactic, asameansof raising the visibility and intensity of the class war within the culturalsphere. ,...; fStewart .Hom.e. Londo n 27/12/89. Originally commission ed by Chuck; Welch for his book The Eternal Network: a mail art anthology. · 3

Tlie ArtStrik!;: Papers WHEN BLOWING THE STRIKE IS STRIKING THE BLOW Those whose identity is based on 'their opposition' to the world as it is,· have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo - Stewart Home. There's a lotto be said for the Art Strike, which isjust as well, since between 1990 and 1993nothing can be written or painted or perforllled in its support. There's something to be said against it too � no time limit here-and plenty of roam for diSsent. , Art Strike propaganda claims that the artists' strike will have the effect of bringing the class struggle to the artistic realm. It argue8 that the most radical art and the most critical artists are actually supporting capitalist social relations even when they purport to subvert them; artistic practice must therefore cease since it stabilises and no urishes the social relations its more oppositional forms claim to conteSt. This argument is akin toa wider challenge made by postmodern philosophers such as Baudrillard, who argue that criticism is no longer possible and that theonly efficient way of dissenting from capitalist society·is to commit suicide� The Art Strike Handbook quotes Baudrillard: "Modem art wishes to be negative, critical, innovative and a per}Jetualswpassing, as well as immediately (or almost) assimi­ lated, accepted, integrated, consumed. One must surrender to the evidence: art no longer conteSts anything. If it ever did. Revolt is isolated, the malediction consumed." 1 Any active dissent can be commodified, turned into a proouct useful for the maintenance of capitalism. The slogans of revolutionary politics are used to sell bank accounts, the painting that challenges beauty and form is placed in the gallery where its beauty and form are admired and valued and bought and sold; the biting poem is read on the radio to accompany the liberal critics' display of sorrow at the state of the world. Whatever is said against can be made to speak for, like any weapon, art can be turned against those who use it. The art strikers have emerged out of a tradition of avant-garde culture which has recognised these problems and continually agitates against what ithas defined as the recupera tion of criticism. In different ways, the Dadaists, Surrealists and Situationists, all realised that anything they produced coul.d be integrated into the structures they opposed. Whalever doesn't kill power is killed by it. 2 Thus the Dadaists watched theiranti-art works being categorised as works of art, an d aimed their whole project atthe evasion of this recuperation. After five years of agitation against capital, war and morality; they reached an impasse of suicide or silence. Everything they made or said or wrote was turned against its critical purpose and used againstthem. So they scrapped the whole project.In effect, like the cultural workers of the 1980s, they decided to go on strike. · 4

The Art Strike Papets The Dadaists left a legacy which has indeed been recuperated in the fonn of commodifiedworks ofart, the use of their techniques ofcollage and photomontage in advertisements,· and the presentation of their. work in coffee table books and university seminars. They were rightto believe that this was inevitable as long as they were merely producing, and not controlling the means of production. But on the way, they did constitute a challenge to bourgeois morality; the philosophical assumptions on which it was based and the propaganda of the First World War which legitimated its brutality. In the end they felt that their subversions of established values were merely contributing to the culture they Wished to destroy. The question became one of whether their participation outweighed their silenee as the most effective weapon. It was not a matter of giving up the struggle, but the use of giving up as a means of struggle. Like the art strikers, the Dadaists recognised that both art and the artist are as guilty in their participation as any other commodity or worker. This perspective has far more validity than that adopted by Marcuse and Adorno, who argued that the Dadaist project was misguided in its attacks on conventional art. They considered that art has an autonomy and distance from capitalist relations which must be preserved rather than undermined; art bears an essential negativity derived from its peculiar Form; its rearrangements of reality are conducted on principles of order quite alien to those of capitalism. This Form renders art a "refuge and a vantage point from which to denounce the reality established through domination." 3 Although Adorno and Marcuse criticised the anti-artists for attacking artistic Form, they concurred with the avant-garde aim of ending the distinction between art and the rest of reality. Indeed, Marcuse wished to see a society organised according to the aesthetic principles he saw preserved in art. But they both argued that the achievement of this integration was not a task in which artists can participate. Art must remain in a realm in which calm reflection can remind us of the troths of an authentic life which will be achieved after the revolution. · ·. Expressing their rejection of this view in different ways, the Dadaists, Surreal­ ists and Situationists, worked for the collapse of the distinction between art and the rest of life in the here.and now. Rather than waiting until after the revolution, they argued that the integration of art and life was fundamental tO the achievement of revolution, which· is possible only because of the subjection of capitalism to continual assault on all fronts: ideological; cultural and economic. If art is an area of contestation like any other, it is also an area of integration and recuperation. The Art Strike is a recognition of this double role: it brings industrial struggle to art, challenges artists to jeopardise their careers and identities in the same way as other striking workers, and demands that those who continue to work justify their lack of solidarity. It also presupposes that art is integral to capitalist relations, and that the recuperation ofcritical or radical art is an inevitable attribute of this society. But the Art Strike is merely one way of tackling this situation, and can only be effective if it is regarded as a tactic in the struggle against capitalism rather than the end of tactics. By enlisting Baudrillard in the defence of the strike, its protagonists are in danger of confusing.these roles. 5

The Art Strike Papers Baudrillard argues that the history of criticism, including the Dada expetience, shows that recuperation is inevitable; and that a beliefin .the possibility ofcritical art or any other discourse is naive. This renders criticism pointless, and places the critic in an unjustifiable posit.ion. Participation in the networks of power itattacks willahvays be supportive of them, and silence, apat:hy, and therefusal to contribute or participate in the debate ate the only valid re$pollses to existing society; So Baudrillard says nothing? Far from· it. He produces books, articles and academic papers.·bY· the dozen, most of which are couched in mystified and complex terminology which makes them inaccessible to all those without the opportunjty to study them. The disengagement he proposes is strictly for other people; the masses express their dissent through passivity while the philosophers continue.to profit from and, by their own arguments, support the capitalist system of relations they purport to be attacking. Anyone who does refuse to be creative for the three years of the Art Strike will beless hypocritical than Baudrillard but not necessarily more critical. At the logical extreme of Dada's suicide, Baudrillard's philosophy, or today's Art Strike; is the view that it would }mve been more damaging to capitalis m if nothing had ever been created. Then there would be no ideas or art works to recuperate, and capitalism would have been deprived of a part of its cultural support. But where there is nothing to be recuperated, there is nothing to fight with: the capitalist establishment might be disarmed, but so would its opponents. If there is one characteristic of capitalism we may be sure of, it is that nothing can escape it. But faced with an impossible situation, the loud and active search for possibilities is an alternative to silent passivity. Nothing can escape the saboteur either, and the legacy left by Dada and others is part of an armoury which can be plundered by the subversives as well as the establishment. The culture of the past must not be destroyed or abandoned, but superseded in its use of 'partisan propaganda purposes '4 in the present This can easily be attacked as a form of liberal reformism, changing from within, etc. But we do live within capitalism and .• there is no such thing as change from without The question becomes one of how the change from within must be pursued. The strike is one answer, but it is just as likely t,hat themosteffective anti-capitalistartistsare those who work as saboteurs; Their awareness of Jhe recuperation of their work does not petrify them, instead.; they use this recognition to. sidestep and expose the mechanisms, recuperation amongst them, which perpetuate capitalism. Jhe value of the Art Strike is in its proposal of.silence, rather than silence0itself, the propaganda rather than the deed. The Art Strike must.be seen as a means of exposing, rather than escaping recuperation. Art Strike propaganda reveals the extent of recuperation and proposes an action which cannot be recuperated. But anything which is totally invulnerable to recuperation cannotbe used in contesta­ tion either. Although the Art Strike propaganda is meaningless without the Art Strike, the strike is also useless without the propaganda. Inaction must first be justified and explained through action, you have to say why you're going to be silent The art strikers claim that the tact,ics ofindustrial struggle are being brought 6

Tll4 A.rt Strike Papers , to art, but the strike is not theonlyindustrial w�n, andartists,tiave always t;lken their techniques of sabotage aild. subversion ftom woricer8. DispUteS vary accord­ ing to the nature of the work in question: although car workers might welFstop making cars, printers might prefer to print their own propaganda ralher than stop printing. Tue Art Strike is a valid response to the problems of criticism, but it is not lhe only one. It is a good thing only insofar as it prcxluces more radical art, of which its own propaganda is a perfect e;itample. Consequently it.is a good thing only in its failure, and since this is inevitable, the Art Strike is necessarily a good thing. Once put into the world, tactics such as this can be used by anyone for any ends. So long may such active resistance continue! I:Iere's to lhe saboteurs, lhe double agents, those who tum the world around! Don't Strike, occupy! -Sadie P:lant, fJrst published in Here and Now 10, Leeds Spring 1990. 1 .Art Strike Handbook. p. 38. 2 ,Mustapha IChy� Captive Wo�ds. Ken KDabb (ed) SituaJionist ln.ternatio11alAnthOlogy (Bureau of Public Secrets, Berkely, 1981), p. 171. 3 Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic DimeTISi()n (,MacmillaJl. London, 1979);p.18 4 Guy Debord arid· Gil I.· Wolman. Methods ofDetournement, Situationist ln.ternaiionaI . . . . . . . . · · . . . · cAntholog.y,p 9 •. _. __ .. - - --- ---- . . .. .. .. �-------- ---- . STRIKING AT THE HEART OF ART­ Extract At the age of twenty-seven Stewart Home went on strike Previously a.ctive as artist, orgailiser! writer and publisher, H9me had been a provocative presence on the arts scene. Renowned for his disregard for lhe conventions oft.he art circuit and wilh a determination to subvert the dogma of bolh left and right J;X>litics, Home _had come to .art after a background in pi.ink bands and involvement wilh groups like chiss War. As a wrltt(r and p0blisher, I-Iome freq�ndy.-blurred the �fuiitionsbetween pulp. fic;Ji0,n at1d high� theory. in.his gallery� work Home similariy un�rcut the . / standard practic,e of.culture. Late in 1989 .H(>me wa8 preparing to go. <>,n Art �trike. The idea.imported. from AJJlerica, is that all artiSts, curalOrs, critics should refuse involvement in cultural ,1993.Jhe intention is to 'Dismantle the production fr()111J alluary 1990_to culttµ'alapparatus�·Home hassaidherealisesl)eisperllapslheonlyUKArtStrik:er. 'I <Ion't expect a huge resp<mse/ he states. 'but what s impm1a11tare the questions soinethbig iilce ·this poses. Hopefully it is as much about. triggerjng doubts �· anything else.� • Home's hard-core Qisavowal of an art system he� as ccmupt and in support of lhe State is perhaps pie most r.lQical of strategies. Elsewhere. olher, artists and activists have sought ·,to sliQvel't exjsting dCfinitions 4t Qther ways ·( ) � • - µ· · - NI� HoJJgJlto�� firstpu�lishCd in ArtµtsNewsletter. �bi!c 1990. •. . . . - · .. . . . . . · . ·.-· .· .. Janui9: ' · · ·. · . . . . · · . , . .. . . -_ . · - · _ .. . •.• · · , ' ' • ' • ' •" ' · .: - • • /. • . ; • . - . •• 7 _, oe- • - ,• .- - ,• • •,· ". -- • - • ; -

The Art Strikll Papers ARTISTIC DISAR.MAMENT Cluster round the juke /Joxfor some songs you've probably heard before, it's 110tlring if it isn't pure. - Yeah Yeah Noh, Stealing in the Name of the Lord. The art strike (.. ;)is a good thing only insofar as itproduces more . radical art, ofwhi ch its own propaganda is a perfect example. ,... Sadie Plant, Here and Now 1 O. The success orfailure of Karen Home's' Art Strike' propaganda canclearly not be judged in tenns of how many artists do in fact down toolS'from now until 1 993 that would be too cruel. However, I cannot accept Plant's alternative evaluation, a political failure is not necessarily an artistic triumph: I would argue, on the contrary, that Home's enterprise is a bad thing all round, reactionary both in. what itsays(politics)and in how itsays it(art).TheArtStrike isa goQdthing on ly insofar as it is ignored completely 1: anY success will be a bad thing. Its importance lies in the weaknesses which its success has highlighted. This is most obvious in the area of concepts of art. where the Art Strike has succeeded in popularisi ng a peculiarly banal and ill-thought out version of what art is and what •good art' is or might be. It is about time we got our own ideas onthe subject sorted out. As Milce Peters' article in Here and Now 10 began to suggest, it is notenough simply to advocate 'more radical art' We must first identify what art actually is and does; then we can consider how it might be capable of being 'radical.' My position, briefly, is as follows. Jean-Pierre Voyer wrQte, "Whether the subject sinks inta madness, practices art or participates in an uprising(... ) the two poles of daily life-- contact with a na.rrow and separate reality on the one hand and· spectacular contact with the totality on 'the other-are simulmneously abolished, opening the way for the unity of individual life." (Reich - how to use). Well, no he didn't - for 'art' read 'theory' - but the description hol<ls good. Finding the language for real communication, as opposed to both a spectacular understanding of the tot.ality andthe meaninglessness of everyday'life' 2; going beyond individual iso1ation and spectacular collectivity into a genuine commonality; this is the process of making theory, but also tha:t of ma.kffig art. Voyer'$ emphasis on the subjective experlence of making theory. its effects on the theorist's character armour as well as on her view of the world, apply here also. Art, just as much as theory, is· a process of 'making common meanings': to the extent that those meanings are 'radical' this will be a taxing activity, for the artist as much as the theorist. Contented artists, as well as contented theori.Sts, should be avoided: they are clearly engaged in reiterating meanings which are already common� Tortlired artists, on the other hand, should be sought outand encoliraged . Now, it has for a long time· been assumed that art and theory are in fact n.ot comparable, and thatanyone involved intheforinerowesit to the global struggle to jack it in and concentrate on the latter.(lromcally, much ofthe s icion • proleqU:ian Usp 8 ·

The Art Strike Papers with which· Karen Home is now regarded arosefor precisely this reason). Like so much else that affects us today, this goes back to the fifth conference of the SI (Goteborg, 1961). On that occasion Attila Kotanyi stated that situationist art was impossible under 'the dominant conditions of artistic authenticity;' any art pro­ duced by situationists would promptly be recuperated. By way of solution, Kotanyi proposed that.members of the SI continue to produce art, but that all such work be referred to as 'anti-situationist.' "While various confused artists nostalgic for a positive art call themselves situationist, anti-situationist art will be the markof the · best artists." Whether this could have been, or was intended as; a serious solution is unclear; its actual effect was the exclusion of several members, the redirection of the SI's activities onto the plane of theory, and the long-standing bias against art which was eventually to enable Karen Home to impress the hell out ofa lot of people by dropping names like Gustav Metzger. (OK, OK, I'd never heard of him either). Whether it was justified in its own terms is equally unclear. While one sympathises with Raoul Vaneigem 's call for the SI to cease its involvement in 'the spectacle of refusal;' it's hard to share Vaneigem' s confidence that the (predictable) alternative - 'the refusal of the spectacle' 3- can be embarked on by the simple expedient of producing theory to the exclusion of art. Indeed, the situationists could only maintain their own faith in theory as a spectacle-free zone by continually contrast­ ing 'theory' (hoooray) with 'ideology' (boo, hiss!): a distinction which does little to illuminate the actual relations of the production of theory. and which is in any case difficult to make with any consistency. However we describe the process of recuperation (and Kotanyi'.s statement that situationist art 'will be recuperated by society and used against us,' contains too much paranoia and too little politics to be really useful) we need to be clear that it can be applied to everything. Kotanyi's fear, a school of art called 'situationism,' never came true 4; but the political ideology of 'sftuationism' appeared in 1968 and has never gone away... My contention, then, is that the situationists were mistaken in labelling art as spectacular and theory as authentic. The reason why. no art exists which can be guaranteed free of the taint of the spectacle (or of 'bourgeois culture') is that there are no such guarantees, for art or for anything else; there is no 'this side' of t}\e spectacle. Theory is not tll,e situationists' pure negative, nor is art a toQl of the commodity economy. Rather; both art and theory are means of communication languages of common meanings. Both come in new old, subversive and .spectacu7 .• lar varieties; both, if found threatening, will swiftly be recuperated; both can be plagiarised (or detourned, as we pro-situs used to say) - and the plagiarisms themselves may be useful or useless, radical or reactionary. The more attentive reader will by now have realised that I am not in sympathy with the Art Strike. lean best explain my reasons by referring the reader once again to that historic meeting in Goteborg: more specifically to Karen Home's view of the matter, as given in her The Assault On Culture: utopian currentsfrom l�ttrisme to cla$s war. (Is there any justification for that 'e' on the end of 'lettrisme?' I think we should be told). Home rejects the Si's verdict in favour of theory and against 9

The Art Strike Papers art, siding with the Scandinavian and German situationists who were excluded following the •anti-situationist art' proposal and who later formed a second Situationist International. (For the sake of clarity lhave adopted the real SI's term of abu8e for this group, which I will refer to as the Nashist SI). Home speaks approvingly of these artists, who shared 'a .belief m the collective, and non­ competitive production of art' However, we're not actually talking about 'art' here: ''Overt and conscious use of collective practices to make 'cultural artifacts' do not really fit the description 'art' ""'-at least if one is using the term to describe the high culture of the ruling class in capitalist societies." Nor, indeed, if one is using the term to describe pig farming. The SI'S valuation of theory rested on two oppositions: between theory and art, and between theory and ideology.· Having reversed the terms of the first opposition, Home echoes the second with an equally mythical dichotomy: all art is either 'high culture' (boo) or collective cultural artefact production (hoooray!). Like its counterpart, this is not an easy pOsition to mai n tain empirically. · The significance of all this for the ArtStrike is twofold. Firstly, the terms become blurred: should all 'art' ct>ase, -0r only identifiably •high culture' fonns? Or should art be allowed to continue only ifit passes the Home test('overt and conscious use of collective practices')? This last interpretation might explain why issue 8 of the paper Anti�Clock;.Wise contains both anti-:eulture material and an article in praise of Mail Art by Mark Lawson. s But material from the Mail Art networks has appeared in galleries before·now, which presumably means that too is now an ornament of the ruling class; and in any case Home is currently advocat ing a complete 'refusal of creativity.' Prnblems, prnblemsl More importantly, if one rejects the picture of art as a sea of ruling class culture with a few islands of subversive practice dotted ·about in it, the whole thing collapses. The entire •struggleagainst the received culture of the reigning society' which Hon:te has been conducting since 1985 6 is built on the idea that 'received culture' disseminates the values of 'the reigning society,' with art in particular representing 'the high culture of the ruling class in capitalist societies.· This image of cultureas a conveyor belt, carfying the values of the ruling class into everyday consciousness, is neceSsitated only by Home's a priori decision to divide art into Sheep and goats. It's certainly not necessitated by the facts.True, art is a material process within society;' true, art is never innocent of the existing social order, and is always under pressure to promote it� within the artist' s mind as n:tuchas anywhere. This, though, only adds up to saying that art-'-'- and 'culture''- is a rneans of communication and therefore a space of contestation, or a battleground as we say in English. The task is not t6 com bat received culture but to go to work on it: embracing partsofit, emphatically rejecting others but aoove airdiverting 7 it to our own purposes; , In fairness, it must be said that there is mere to the Art Strike than thaL There is also an argument about artist$ as people, alleging that their status as pseudo'...radical high"cultural merchants gives them elitist delusions about 'the superiority of their 'creativity' over the leislite and work pursuitS of the social majority.' Without the prop of theMti-'culture� argument, though, this looks less like radicalism andmore 10

The Art StrikePapers like guilt'"tripping. Elitism is a disfiguremerit of the character: it's almost as bad as spots. If artists are warned abouti4 though, the answer is simple: go away and get it cleaned up. We don' t want them· moariing to the rest of us about liow ugly they are and all the parties they're missing ('•I couldn't go out looking like this - what would all those beautiful workers say?"). In any case, elitism is a sign of incipient co-option: and co-Option means that your work is being misappropriated. DOn't give up - take it back! Just say no! So much for the overt - political � meanings of the Art Strike. There is, however, more to it than that: there is a sense, as Sadie Plant implied, in which the. Art Strike is an art work. This can best be appreciated by looking again at the question of success or failure, our assessment of which depends entirely on how we interpret the Art Strike itself. Taken straight, it's clearly a miserable failure. It is unimaginable that an actual Art Strike wiHmaterialise: even the ideahas made very little headway outside the pages of Smile and none at all outside the anarchist milieu. Talking about •the Art Strike' at all is doing it a fairly large favour: what exists is·a campaign for an Art Strike, or more precisely propaganda in favour of a campaign for an Art Strike. That propaganda has no more popular support than the calls for a General Strike that issue from time to time from the organs of the corpse of Leninism, and as such deserves the same oblivion. Alternatively, we can take the whole thing as a rather deadpan joke at the expense of •political artists' (if you 're sc> radical let's see you on the picket line), but this doesn't improve matters much: hardly anyone has either got the joke or fallen for it These, however, are notthe only possibilities. In between lies the whole terniin of irony, of saying one thing and meaning two or three others: the terrain where meanings split and proliferate, where the distinction ·between 'theory' and •art• ceases to make sense; This, dearly, is the area where Home's promotion of Art Strike8 operates; this, too, is orie ofth areas where really new meanings get made,9 the e and an area whete Here and Now IQ has squatter's rights; In other words, despite Home's post-situationist attachment to a rigid division between art and theory, the disjuncture betWeen the Art Strike's apparent meaning and its real impact mean that itworks, if it works at all; as a combination of art and theory; or rather, as a demonstration of the impossibilityof separating the two. It makes sense, then, to refer to the Art Strike's propaganda as 'radical art,' at · least in the sense of •unprecedented art,' This though, is not the only consideration: not all new meanings are good ones. Wha4 then, is the Art Strike really 'saying?' Two main themes are apparent: a complete abandonment of politics, associated with an impression ofakindofultimateand unsurpassable radicalism. The firstcan best be approached by considering the hypothetical political impact of a realised Art Strike. Industrial action works to counteract the isolation and passivity which are endemicin this society: strikes are a collective rejection of the strikers' role as workforce and an affirm ation that they'reworth more than that. Astrike by artists, though, would actually promote passivity and isolation: the strikers would not be a group refusing work but a scattering of iridividuals doing riothing. "fo this picture we must add the facts that an art strike will not happen, and ihat very few people 11

The Art Strike Papers either know or care about what artists do with their time anyway� A.call forinaction, which is bound to be ignored, and which is addressed to people whose actions nobody notices: what is .this but an elaborate demonstration of the futility of politics? The Marxists aspired to change the world: the point, it would appear, is to withdraw from it This relates closely to the second point Home has made an easy reputation out of radicals' tendency to confuse the concepts of 'qualitative supersession' and 'reductio ad absurdum:' that is, to assume that all previous radical practice can be superseded simply by 'talcing it further.' This generally takes fairly sophisticated forms: talking about ' situationist ideology,' for example, or alleging thatradical art is part of ruling class cuiture. Latterly, though, Karen Home has specialised in the most radical-looking strategy of all: negate everything. The tendency of the Art Strike is to argue that, outside itself, there is no authentic opposition: that all oppositional activity, radical art included,. is a form of . social integration. The empirical difficulties here � obvious and major: it is hard to see how anyone other than Karen Home c:Ould. ever prove that they were actually "opposing' existing society, and not merely indulging in 'oppositionaiism' - except perhaps by sup. porting the Art Strike, reading Richard Allen and slagging off the SI... The strategy which Home has 'taken further' here is the division between the SI and all other 'theorists,' between the artists of the Na8hist SI and all other 'artists,' and for that matterbetween the Seventh Day Adventists and all other 'Christians.' What is even more important is the end result. So complete a negation results in a politics not of negation but of abstention: if nothing is authentic 'nothing can be done.' This is the true me8sage of the Art Strike. Ultimately Home, like Baudrillard, is advocating silence and inaction,11 is promoting as the ultimate negation, aliena­ tion from one's own capacity to act This has its own interest for theory-collectors and the terminally disillusioned;12 its main interest for the restof us is that it marks Home out as a practitioner of theory for theory's sake, political activity taken up in the belief that it is pointless. To describe this as radical would do violence to the meaning of the word: the word 'reactionary' fits much better. 'Boring' does quite nicely too.13 As with the theory of Baudrillard, as with the 'art for art's sake' espoused by aesthetes from Walter Peter to the Neoists,14 the Art Strike' s only real achievement will be the entertainment it gives its audience - and, ofcourse, the careers it makes. - Mr Jones, frrst published in Here & Now 11, Glasgow Summer 1991. . 1 2 3 - . - . Damn! 'Life's aboutas wonderful asacold' - MarkPerry, 1977. Perry isnotknownto have been familiar with the situationists' theses on the banalisation of everyday life,· but being il · 'punk' he was doubtless influenced by them anyway. Cf. the following comment on the Unification Church mass wedding of a few year back: "A spectacle of pairs, assuredly. Let us no.t forget, however, that this was also 'a pair of spectacles."' Taken from Alec Douglas H. 's The End of Finality (Improbable Books, 1989). The situationists, we must conclude, never got much beyond the reversal of terms. It will be for others to create the 'terms of reversal.•· 12

The ArlStrikie Papers 4 Partial disproof: "Before Pop and after Abstract Expressionism. there was a still-born movement, based in continental Europe..• Called 'Situationism, • this movement ex'­ pressed a rebellious need to counterpose the creative and irreverent with the anticipated (sic) homog�ity ofmedia society. ES$entially anon-starter as artperse the movement had, nonetheless, an .influence on French cinema and architecture" Philip Core reviewing an exhibition at the ICA inNeKiStatesman and Society, 30thJune 1989. Of - course. the cUrators invited this kind of misinterpretation by staging the exhibition in an art gallery, .rathet than simply getting out and creating situations. S Sorry 'Pawson.� Apologies an roWld! . . 6 Not sjngle-fumdedly, of course! Home 's struggles have been i;hi!red with the PRAXIS group. a 311y called Tony from Cork and numerous magazines around the world. all · � called Smik;In addition many interesting uses have been made of that.famous general­ . . . . . purpose pseudonym or 'multiple identity, ' 'George Eliot ' 7 Or 'detouming' it Next week: 'deriving' for beginners. 8 My knowledge of the originators ofthe Art Strik:e - the PRAXIS grQUP is woefully inadequate: however, I suspect that they actually took the Art Strike seriously (but that's 'American8 for you). Only on its anivalin England was it transformed by Karen Home's - creative genius into the polyvalellt multi-media event that we now know so well. 9 .Burroughs half-realised this when he a8serted that cut-ups foretold the futute: simply .rearrange some words to make an unknown phrase or saying and 'the future leaks through,.' Certain}y, new meaniJlgs could be created by this method: it's a kind of automatic writing. I don'tknow, though-call me old-fashioned, butl prefermeanings which have been consciously made to the kind tliat leak out of the end of a random process. You can't beat a good work of art, that's what I say. . 10 A magazine ofradical types. 11 Articles in Smile have advocated 'sensuous inactivity' for tlie duration ofthe ArtStrik:e. . · . ldle b exhibition, a couple of copies of Smile were shown, exhibited under glass so that we could . appreciate the witty and. amusing cover art Those responsible are. believed to fall into both categories. 13 Though, to be fair, this is a. difficulty encountered from time tt> time by the greatest of ·. theorists. "Ifthe element of boredom I have experienced in writing this finds an echo in · the. reader, whatelseis this but one more proofofour failureto live?" as Raoul Vaneigem asked in his foreward to The Kids Book ofHow to Do It, or The Revolution ofEveryday Life as it's sometimes known. How true that is, how very tri.Je� Alld what a cop-out, . 14 Home once described a reference to 'situationist ideology' as a 'calculated insult' To judge from Home's acco'unt of their activities, describing the Neoists as artists is more in the nature of a calculated compliment 12 At the ON THE ART STRIKE .Art abstracts from life. Abstraction i s deletion. When the first artist painted an auroehs on a cave wall, the first critic saw it arid said, "That's an aurochs!" But it wasn't an aurochs, it \Vas a painting. It's been downhill for art criticism ever since. Art, like science, is illumination through elimination. Artists remove in order to improve. In this sense, minimalism is notjust another school ofart, but its evolving essence, and all of modem art can be seen as · a process of progressive self­ destruction. Artists often destroy themselves, occasionally each other, but it was left to a relatively unknown Gennan artist, Gustav Metzger� to give this artistic 13

The. ArtS1rikePapers, . .· impulseJts most succinct articulation when in 1959 he announced his. theory of 'auto-destructive art.' It's not SUI'prising, tllen that Metzger also anticipated the proposed Art Strike 1990-93� · On January 1, J99(J if the.y comply with. the directives of the Group - all artists will put down their tpols for three years. There will be no openings, no stiowings, no readings. Cµl� workers,' unless tlley scab, wi ll also walk out Galleries, museums and 'alternative spaces' will shut down or be converted to serve ore practical purposes. According to the ,\it Strikeleadership, every y artists, by stepping out front under their burden of specialised benefits . creativity, get not only a breather but a chance to geta life, And theplebian �ses. no longer cowed by 'talented bullies,' are ill tum expected to rush into art like fresh air into a vacuum. Although appearing at fJrSt as the suppression of art, the Art Strike is in essence · · the culmination of its tel05� . Iri the Art its realisation .� the ultimate work of Strike, artistic abnegation achieves its final expression: art, having become nothing becomes everything. Ifart is what.artists don't d.o, what isn't art now? The. Art Strike thus becomes an e:!tercise in imperialism. After all, everyone else. has been on an Art Strike all along. With the Art Strike; the leaders � given a chance to catch up with their followers, who weren't previously aware they had l�rs. let alone needed any. · · . Ostentatious renunciation is greed in its most warped and insidiousJorm. By their noisy refusal ofart, the Art Strikers affirm its importanceand thus their own, not unlike alcoholics whose AA meetings testify to the power ofthe dnig and thus to their own power in colloctively renouncing it But tQere the ana.logy .ends. The Art Strikers liken their strike to tile syndicalist General Strike so as to appropriate the glamour of this obsolete tactic. Buta Particular Strike is not a General Strike; and the ArtStrike; since itdoesn' t include the refusal of work by waged or salaried workers (aitists generally being self-employed freelancers or independent contractors), is not a strike at all. .. . . . .What remains after artists forswear art? Artists, of course. The Art Strike magnifies the importance ofartists even asit eliminates their toil. Disencumbel'ed of the obligation to create, the artist no longer must try to infonn or agitate oi' even entertain. All pretence to be useful to other people can be dropped. But that's not to say artists are about to disappear into the crowd-if they did, nobody would ever notice there even was an Art Strike. No, artists must instead make a production out of their refusal to produce, they must Clamour for attention over what they don'r do, even though their credentials for inactivity are precisely their previous art. This is what makes the refusal ofart elitist. The Art Strike is a vanguardist notion: only artists can refuse art, and only artists can flatter themselves tllat they stand. in the way of an outburst of popular cteativity. Actually, the reason the hoi-pol oi don't create art is not be!:ause they're intimidated by ' talented bullies,' but. because their creative power has been so suppressed - abQve a.II by work-tbat tlley devote theirleisure hours to consump;. tion, not creation . School, work. thefamily, religiop, rightism and leftism �. these � > . . .·. • .. . . . ·. ·. .. . .• .· . PRAXI$ . .. .. •• .. . . ·. . .· ' 111 bcXl the mt; · · . 14

The A.rt Strike Papt!fs thw� creativity. The sort of art created by the Art Strike leadersllip, its various predictions an�:l pronouncements, is . much m()re opaque to the proles than the representational art of pre�modern times; and ng less so that modern art, which is too remote from everyday experience for anybody to be bullied by �t; unless by its reputati<>n, which of course. willgrow during theYears Wjthout Art. . ' ' · . Art Strike theorists are ambiguous about the scope of the strike. lfit r�resents the refusal of 'creativity' by specialists, it is only f()r artists. But ifthe Art Strike seeks to close down museums; libraries and galleries, itmQSt include the workers for whom it would, then be a real strike, the employees of the culturalapparatus unable to refuse their creativity since nobody has ever called for it in the first place. · The janitor would as soon mop up the museum as a nuclear powerplant;especially . since the intellectuals will hound him out of there too if they can� Such workers already know firsthand what artists require outlandish antics to comprehend working for the cultural industry is still working. Only for the artist is the Art Strike a work of art. Others who get involved would. be but .the pai9t the striking artists apply to the canvas, prop8 iri a Human lives and livelihoods as the stuffof art. What artis.t inhis ()r her deepest inwardness hasn't loj)ged ti> echo Nero's cry, What an artist dies in rile! Since the Years Without Income hold no a,ppeal for the art industry proletariat or its bureaucracy, they will no doubt remain on the job. The iinpact of the strike will be very uneven. Curators and librarians will begladto be.rid of the hardestpart of their task - keeping abreast of new artworks and conjecturing which ones will pass the test of time. Art has been piling µp since before the BronzeAge, three years will not be time enough to reassess and rearrange and. redistribute the existing inventory. Still, budget pressures may ease. Music, already all butgiven over to 'classic hits,' will be livingin tlie past too. In lieu of live music, disco wUl come back- it pretty much already has. Most people watch TV, not st.age plays now; now everybody will. Are the anists going on strike so that, �ter three years, we beg them to back? If theirs was a place ofprivilege before, how high then will their seat be in 1993? The real inspiration for the Art Strike is not, as is pretended, the General Strike of the proletariat, but rather something already depicted in a work of art - the General Strike of capitalism in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. . perforrnance:..art piece. come But artists won't have to wait three years to profit from the Art Strike. Returns will be immediate and they will increase like compound interest The Art Strike cunninglyacts upon supply, not demand. Existjng art will appreciate in value since there won't be anything coming into the market to compete with it. In addition, there's the surcharge conferred by the mystique ofextinction; subsequently, recent art wm lead the price rise as the last of its kind. In fact; it will stand not as thelast but as the culmination, since the ideology of progress so sways the Western mind that it regularly mistakes the latest of anything for the final form ofa supposed evolutionary process. The last shall be made first, or at least it'.ll be pricyd that way. No wonder some of the less commercially suceessful contemi}oraiy artists are leading the Art Strike, and no wonder others follow them. They don't propose to destroy artworks (although, if done selectively, that would have nearly the same 15

The Art Strike Papers effect as the Art Strike). The Years Without Art will include nothing of the kind, even if everybody joins the strike. Instead, the Art Strike will create a cartel - its inspiration isn't the IWW or the CNT, but rather OPEC. The Art Strike is not,for all its proletarian posturing, in any way indebted to the workers movement, except in the theft of what you'd expeet artists to steal - its imagery. It enables artists to invest their exhaustion with importance. The refusal of art only certifies artists as the expert interpreters of what nobody but artists do. The art of refusal, on the other hand, acts against what everybody does but nobody once did, against work and submission to the state. The art of refusal is the art of living, which begins with the general strike which never ends. - Bob Black, first published in Artpaper, Vol 9. No. 4, December 1989, Minneapolis, MN, USA. TEXTS GENERATED BY AN ART STRI KE ACTION I N ALBANY LETTER FROM N EAL KEATING TO GOVERNOR MARIO CUOMO Dear Governor Cuomo, Recently we have issued public commendations to both you and Commissioner Egan of OGS (Office of General Services) for your apparent participation in the noble, and global, Art Strike. Obviously,you are more well-read than I had previously given you credit for. As things stand, precious few people seem to have any idea of what this Art Strike is all about.I am curious as to how you first became acquainted with the ideas and theories that have since come to represent the Art Strike in all its criticAL (albeit unknown) glory. Do you intend to issue a public statement ofalliance with the Art Strike? Would such a statement include a thorough denunciation of the elitist manipulation of humanity's creative energies - as practiced by the cultural arbitrageurs known as "artists"? As part of observing the Art Strike will you postpone the return of Art in the ESP (Empire State Plaza) concourse untilJanuary 1 , 1993? If not, can youtell me why? Sincerely, - Neal Keating, for the AASAC (Albany Art Strike Action Committee). NEWSFRONT: OFF THE WALL Part curmudgeonly pranksters, part dead earnest activists against the intrusion of right-wing values on the art scene, those participating in the n ine-month old Art Strike have had a hard time "enforcing" their call for a three year moratorium on art. 16

The Art Strike Papers But earlier this month, the Albany Art Strike Action Committee garnered the support of the state Office of General Services (OGS) and Gov. M. Cuomo, however unknowingly this support may have been given. When OGS removed and covered up the art collection in the Empire State Plaza (ESP) concourse, Art Strike moved in, postering the plaza and surrounding communities with a handbill declaring: "All of the art that lined the. walls of the ESP underground concourse has been removed or covered up (and hopefully soon to be destroyed) to call into question the blank emptiness of history that was previously hidden py so many bright colours and squiggly lines." Acwally, the art was removed to install a new security system, and OGS was not amused by the posters. Tom Tubbs, an OGS spokesman said he was "a.westruck" upon receiving a copy of the poster. :{le dubbed the poster a "�errorist note� . . an absurdity, filled with typographical errors and irrational charges." Tubbs wouldn't go into the specifics of the new-and-improved security system, but did say that it would involve "all kinds ofcamerasurveillance, and several other devices." He also said that he had never even heard of the Art Strike, nor did Dennis Anderson, curator of the plaza art collection. All in good fun, said Neal Keating, one of three local Art Strike dis-organisers� "The intent was to suggest something so wild that, even for one moment, it would shatter the silent drone of constant alienation that permeates every aspect of life today," he said in a prepared statement. Keating, a writer who has recently relocated to Albany from Woodstock, said that "even people in high places, whether conscious of it or not, are supporting the Art Strike." Keating challenged Cuomo to "go one step further, and never put the art back up." - Tom Gogola, METROLAND, Albany, New York State 20-26 Sept. 1990. STATEMENT OF PURPOSE RE: ESP CONCOURSE ACTION OF OCTOBER 1990 I We are a group of sensual creatures who occasionally embark on acts of poetic terrorism for the purpose of liberating. the wondrous and propagating the ex­ traordinary. We encourage fully conscious orgiastic participation in life. 2 In particular, the ESP Concourse action was directly targeted at the walls of boredom both in and out of people's minds as they zombie their way through the monotonous underground cavern. The intent was to suggest something so wild that, even for one moment, it would shatter the silent drone of constant alienation that permeates every aspect of life today, and · perhaps drive the beholder to seek out some more intense mode of existence. 3 The Empire State Plaza, like the Pyramids of Egypt, is the mausoleum of a ruling class with a taste for death. Part shopping mall, part warren for state workers, the Plaza is the marriage of commerce and power and nabJrall y shows us baby pictures of their offspring: Art - Art which returns to us for a look, 17

The Art Strike Papers (don' t touch), the creative power we have only to reach out and wi'estaway in order to remake life as an adventure in fellowship, pleasure and play. By flaunting art, especially this collection of Art by the plutocrat Rockerfeller's cocktail party cronies, the ESP mocks and insults everyone whose life · is eviscerated by obedience and work. The Empire State Plaza, with its outdated modem architecture, already looks as if it were built to be excavated, truly; as the Parisian revolutionaries said in 1968, "soon to be picturesque ruins" � and the sooner the better. 4 That a successful Governor and probable presidential candidate would ever attempt to address the overwhelming horror - the ghastly totality of civilisa­ tion, in any kind of honest and critical appraisal is, forthe most part, beyond the scope of normal speculation. To put forth in a public manner such a suggestion is almost like declaring the existence ofa: parallel universe, only in much more human terms. Thus we have acted, For the Art Strike. - Neal Keating, Bob Black, Plr Fez Hafez Ad-Da]Jll LETTER TO THE EDITOR, METROLAN D To the Editor, There is no cause to speak, as Torn Gogola does, of the Albany ArtStrike Action Committee "enforcing" the Art Strike. In a city boasting a combination art gallery and real estate office, the mask has already slipped. Even before our Empire State Plaza action, voluntary compliance with the strike was almost universal. Otir ideas are iri everyone's heads. Nor do we care to protectart against intruding "right-wing values." Right-wing, left-wing or art-for-art's-sake, all art is a source of social separation and serv� a control function. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into represen­ tation. If (unhappy day) the art returns to the plaza, sweptby cameras and laced with censors, the Class war will have returned oh the electronic battlefield. The curator will be dismissed � he doesn't know his stuffanyway if he hasn't heardof the Art Strike --,- and replaced by.an electronics technician with a military background from the upper ranks of the Capital Police who have already paid us a visit Henceforth we will visit museums to be looked at by the art Our challenge to Gov. Cuomo stands. Get rid of the art. Without such fantasies and distractions, the concourse architecture will quickly become unbearable; The empty walls will be so irritating as to require their immediateremoval as well. After the art is gone, after the walls themselves have been removed, comes the concrete construction of momentary ambiences of life and their transformation into a superior passional quality. This is our entire programme, which is essentially transitory. Our situations will be ephemeral, without a future: passageways; The permanence of art or anything else does not e11ter into our considerations, which are serious. - Bob Black, Neal Keating (AASAC) 18

The Art Strike Papers -Tom Cogola replies: I don't know how Keating and Black can claim that "voluntary compliance with the Strike was almost universal," when Keating himself told me in ari interview that "the Art Strike has pretty much been a failure." When I said "enforcing" it was meant as irony, to illuminate the failure ofArt Strike to achieve its aim of an artless world. METROLAND , 4-10 October 1990. JUST SAY N.O In a display of anachronistic cultural militance, artists and activists in London; Baltimore and San Francisco are planning an · 'Art Strike' to last three years beginning January 1 ; 1 990. "We call on all cultural workers to put down their tools and cease to make, distribute, sell, exhibit, or discuss their work from January 1 st 1990 to January 1st 1993," begins a 40-page Art Strike Handbook, published last spring. "We call for all galleries, museums, agencies, 'alternative' spaces, periodicals, theatres, art schools &c., to cease all operations during the same period." While it's unlikely that the luxury market called art will collapse from lackof product early next year, the importance of the Art Strike lies in the nobility of its gesture -'- a calmly strategic 'no' that Herbert Marcuse called 'the greatrefusal.' Though the strikers claim to have fellow travellers as far dispersed as Uruguay and Ireland, none to date have stepped forward in New York. Here in the capital and Babylon of artistic ambition, artists won't sabotage their future by abstaining from the race toward the big time. Stewart Home, a memberof thel..ondon committee says that on January 1 ; ''lwill stop doing things publicly that will make people think of me as a creative person." Home has published a novel and a book ofessays, plays in a punk band called King Mob, organises conferences, and teaches ocqisionally atLqndon Polytechnic ::... a11 of which activities he will cease. For three years, he plans to sell his labour 'in ways that no one would normally interpret as my individual creative act,' for.example as a clerk or in construction work. . The art strikers believe that art is not the res.idue of some enchanted crusade, but merely another product of hmnan labour, like meals or computer chips. Their flat mercantilism places the refusenik activists oddly in sync with clirrenfstandards, by which all aesthetic objects are commodities, plain and simple. By their (i11)action, the strikers seek to force the recognition ofartists as labolirers who can, if they choose, shut down the production line that.serves the senses. 'The Art Strike has a Zen quality of tearing dowll aJogic, but leaving nothing in its place,' says John Berndt of the Baltimore Art Strike Action Commhtee of 100, which has a handful of members. Bemdt has helped stage Art Strike pickets at the Maryland Institute of Art, and Baltimore art openings, and has disseminated 10,000 strike flyers. In January, he plans to stOp his work as an experimental musician arid performance artist. 'I believe in helping institutions to self�destruct · · 19

The Art Strike Papers · and trying to get as much information out of that process as possible.' 'Any way that I can sabotage commodity culture attracts me,' ,says an art striker in San Francisco who, in the venerable spirit of the anonymous collective, declined to be identified. According to another striker,when top-selling New York minimal­ ist Carl Andre apparently heard word of their actions he wrote the Bay Area group to denounce them as 'reactionaries.' The 10-member San Francisco. committee is planning a New Year's Eve action at Artists' Television Access Gallery to inaugurate the strike. Recently, the editors of Photostatic, a marginal art magazine in Iowa City, stated their intention to stop publication in January as an Art Strike action. Stewart Home recently spoke about the work stoppage at the prestigious Institute of Contempo­ rary Arts in London, an appearance that might be likened.to an atheist lecturing a convent. 'It's not important to have hundreds of people stop work,'. he says, 'but to disturb and demoralise those who endorse the system of artistic production and distribution. ' No well-known artists have aligned themselves with the strike, and cultural work will go forward largely unperturbed, but to look for names is.certainly to miss the point. New York is full of artists who are also waiters. By cancelling their personae as creative individuals, those who strike are choosing a real and immeasurable sacrifice. Tile art strikers seem to have studied the old modernist history of epater les bourgeois, espoused by such ace propagandists as Richard Huelsenbeck. In 1920, the German Dadaist wrote, 'The bourgeois must be deprived of the opportunity to buy up art for his justification.' But it remains to be seen whether the Art Strike is truly a work stoppage or merely another piece of performance ....,. more art, or less. -- Edward Ball, first published in the Village Voice, New York 14/1 1/89. ADDING MORE FUEL TO THE ART STRIKE FIRE "To speak of the Art Strike means to speak of the unknown, to speak of a door to a new world, to speak of a desire to discover what one does not know. For how can one know a desire without satisfying it?" ATA Gallery hosted the Art Strike Mobilisation Week January 3-8 with a variety of events: discussion, performances, propaganda-making, dialogue, testi01onial, poetry, direct action, etc. Art Strike, as a polemic, proposes artists give up making art for three years, (1990- 1993, The Years Without Art), isaneffori to free the artist and the artists' product from the chain of commodity in which it is currently entrenched, challenging the hegemony of an elite art market and freeing the artists' time up for other, more important activities, like saving the world. It proposes that such action, or non-action, will help artists get to the 'real' issues (of which art is 20

The Art Strike Papers not one), such as starving children, flooded villages; earthquake victims. T. Marvin Lowes , initial proponent·of Art Strike and ardent polemicist, says: " . . . Art has provided us with fantasy worlds, escapes from reality. . . Art is the glamorous escape, the transformation that Shields us from the world. . . Art has replaced religion as the opiate of the people . . . But art has sold out to chase itS own tail. A self-perpetuating elite market art as a commodity for the wealthy who have everything while making artists themselves rich. . . Art is money . . Artists are . murderers! Without art, life would be unendurable! We would have to transform this world . . . but we do not seize power because we are enchanted by art Forbid art and revolution willfollow - the withholding of creative action is man's (sic) only remaining weapon. . . Which is all very nice. But what went on at ATA this past week could more " honestly be called a dialogue about aesthetics, or a week-long performance piece, than a direct political action. Then again, that's part of the question the. strike ultim ately raises: what's the difference? And what is Art Strike? That was the question · asked from Monday to Sunday at ATA, generating llot one, but many answers. The following is not simply a review, wanting to avoid the slings and arrow s of sincere artists tracking toward the truth about Art Strike - though I'll tell you right off, I'm getting paid by the inch here, enough to make me feel legitimised in my own pursuit of an identity, and little enough to hide from Uncle Sam. It is interpretation, collage, all views are not represented; I take a poetic license whenever! can, I say "Art Strike is" a lot because Art Strike is something unto itself, separate from and part ofthe individual activities that transpired, as well as the collective gathering of what was said/done over the course of the week. It exists in both the past and present tense, Art Strike is a dialogue, a layering, a piling on of words and action. It is what it is: changing; vital, alive. Art Strike is an ae8thetic dialogue aiming to blur further the distinctions between Art and Life. Art Strike is not a cocktail party. Art Strike advocates a performance approach to life, going to a gallery not to see art, butgoing to a gallery to be art. Art Strike is a provocative declaration of aesthetic values and a condemnation of mainstream 'high' art, the potential of the artist to sell out for big bucks, the cheapening of art through commodification. Art Strike is a political statement about a) the art world, b) capitalism, c) commodity culttire, d) our inability to care for one another as human beings. Art Strike is the final leap of the visual artist out · of the frame. Art Strike is an excuse for polemical outbursts. A lot of people get belligerent about Art Strike and what it advocates. Art Strike is still unsure of its terminology. Art Strike is a community effort. Art Strike is a goodjoke. Art Strike is a really bad idea. Art Strike was a good excuse for a good party. Art Strike wishes people thought of art the way they think of potatoes. Art Strike takeS an anti-art stance denoting art just as atheism denotes God (Duchamp)• Art Strike is, quite simply, an artistic statement It is a call for greater creativity in all aspects of one's life. "The whole point is that life during the strike is going to be more creative not less." Art Strike is primarily about artists. The focus of Art Strike on stopping production takes the attention off the artist, which is where it belongs. 21

TheArt $trib! Pap�s Art Strike s11pJ)Orts the developme11t of the artist ill«> a wh ole person. Art Strike recognises the primacy ofthe artist's desire to create and communicate meaningful tr.uths. None of the artists at.ATA really wan ted to give up maldng art. for three years. Some people thoughta good replacement for maki,ng art during the .strilre would be i;i band. Art Strike is-.1seful for stretching the mind, but not nece,ssarily as a habit of action. Art Strike. could be for artists what AAis for alcoholics.. Art Strike �es the lid off all that's false. Art Strike was perhaps the most lively event ever staged at ATAGallery.. Art · Strike · was a supportive · environment for performance. Art Strike provoked a dialogue and performance deserving of note in some critical journal by some critical critic,. somewhere. Art Strike remains unattached to product;. Art Strike e�sts becauseit's less taxi11g to make personas than it is to mak:eart. Yet Art S.trike forbids public personasduring The Years Without Art. Art.Strike is not about style, and specifically, it is not about being cool. Art Strike is going.to fail Alt Strike. condemns the easy way out No one necessarily agrees about what An Strike is. Art Strike aims to liberate artists and non�artists from the rigidity of labels and postures limiting our and attentiveness. As such, Art Strike is a commu­ nist plot. Art Strike is a self-righteous redetermination by people who produce art of little merit aqd are resentful about it Art Strike. invests the art object with a peculiar l ucidity and cultural mobility that it may or may not possess. The polemic ofArt Strike makes some unfathomable leaps: Give up art = Save the starving. Art Strike advocates adeeperrelationship to art while at the same time condemning the . label 'artist ' Tllerewere more boys thall girls at Art S t;rike. Art·S trilre is about th e possibilities of union inherent in . our m�ting, Art Strike i.s about persollal spectacle. Art Strike is a good place to be seen wearing blue and w:hitepolka-do� suits. Art Strike did not address the issue ofbeauty. Art Strike is not about God, but itcould be. ArtStrilre advocl;ltes the qegatio11 of art as the last frontier.Art Strike purports to. be new ,radical, !!:frontier. but anti�art� s been on the books since the tum of the century. Art Strike has no qualms al)out plagiarism. Art Strike exists.in the Twilight of the Raw .in the belief that there is notiling new to be.done in art except torelinquish it. Art Strike is about the intimacy of not �owing. Art Strike is a perpetual challenge. Art Strike neverauthoritively defined Art, Strike, Ae:;thetics, or really any other word of import. Art Strike created a forum t9 talk about all these important words, though, Art: Strike was neither.subtle nor metaphoric, Art Strike is a critical act and ci;:itical inquiry. Art Strike is an intellectual discourse without intellectual rigour� Art S trike is an intellectual discussion obfuscating any commitment to the life of the mind. Art Strike is somewhat self-important Anti-intellectualism is big at Art Strike. Art Strike i.s unformed ill its lexical considerations.It is not always .possible to tell whether ornot Art Strike is taking itself at all seri ously. Art Strike has a good sense of humour. Art Strike never even heard of cellular conspiousness. Art Strike is commiUed to a regenerative process o( c;hange. J\rtS trike cries out forthe beauty of the person, not the beauty of the art object Art Stfike made it easier for me to go into the.studio · . . · •. creativity • 22 . ·

The Art Strike Papers, this morning without worrying if I wouJd have anything 10 show fqr it whep,I left. . Art Strike believes in the ulti111ate power of the artist �un active force in her (sic) a))outJife-style choices. Art Strike is Q()t a .· environment. Art S.trike replacement for Catholicism. Art Strike is about making New Year's re&Qlutjons no people aboµt yoµr work. Art Strike is· the of polyester and paisley� Art Strilce \V� not about the spirit�ty inherent.in tbepr�s ofniaking An. llutit colil<;l, be· Art Strike is abouthow much we love our identities as.artists and how much we love coritradictlng ourselves at the sanie time. A.rt Strike C(}mes about because art is con tradictory. Art S.trike isall about communication andchange. (:hanging is such good artg. This iQ.ea is to be applieQ. in infinite permutations tojust a))outeverything. Bµtit is not so much a matter of realising the Art Strike, or even of building on every level of life everything that could Qnly be an Art Strike memory, or an illµsion, d.reatned and preserved unilaterally. The Art Strike can oµly be .realised by bell!g suppressed. ....; Rache' Kaplan, first publi�hed ii! Coming Up!, San FranciSj;(), Feb. l989, isprimarily tio talk to pursuit makin EXTRACTS FROM YAWN LETTERS FROM YAWN'S READERS Dear Yawn ... here• s some info pertaining to the Boston Institute of Con temporary Arts' panel discussion ofthe Situationist IntemationaL. .•(I) challenged Greil Marcus (artcrific NYC Village Voice) and read the Art Strike flyer.H e interrupted, 'I don't believe artists are murderers. . .' Oddly� no applause. He continued, 'The Neoists and Stewart ijome are only · using the Art Struce to call attention to themselves.! He . conclu®d, 'Art Strike will fail! • lcountered, 'Ofcourse it will fail, but you've .lost the entire point of .why Art Strike must happen.' - Lebanon.New Hampshire. trike rea<fi a�ut ng a pamphlet thang after it, . . . I've. been thinking about this Art S and this is how I see it. I'm not going to go along \VI any Art Strike because what's in it.for me. Little ol' me is supposed to stop doing my measly art boc>ks with no thanks from anyone while the peopl.e who put out 'Art Strike' pamphlets and manifestos are going to gci right on doipg it, keeping . . · right on going with their conceptual art project! Forget it! � San Francisco, California. ART STRIKE . AS ART It's amusing to think !hat ·Art Strikers· could so value theii work that they imagine its cessation would change the economic topography of our country. If they actually �w Art Strik� as a practicaL solution to the Pro'blem of the ai;tisCs 23 ·

Th4 Art S1rike Papers contribution to the perpetwlliort of a:n oppressive sysiem. they would be guilty of the egotism and elitism they deplore. They would be elevated to the status of tragic heroes. · like the lost Olympians, who sacrificed personal glory to the dream of a greater good. The participants have no delusions about their (Iion)actioll and yet; in the imagi.:. nation the :ramifications ofArt Strike are exhilarating. If culturalworkers suddellly · shut up and could no longer view themselves as superior beings, humanity would truly have the chance to create itself anew. What would thiS new humanity risirig like a Phoenix from the ashes of its owll culture be like? Art Strike is a brilliant gesture. Art Strike is symbolic, merely provocative; It is meant to provoke conversation among artists, like all the other insulated works it rails against. It is a piece of performance art that will breakdowll the boundaries between art and non-art tO focus on· life. Since Art Strike is art, during Art Strike, Art Strike itself won't be po8sible. Conceptual at in the wake of Art Strike would be redundant and superficial� No single wt>rk of art could approach the brilliant simplicity/complexity of ArtStrike. I imagine artistsspilling outoftheship ofculturelikeso many bewilderedrats,only to drown. Since art will be irrelevant after the strike, the strike will have accomplished its mission, even though by definition this is impossible. Art Strike is the sound ofone . hand clapping. Therefore it is the most important art of this century - make that this millenium. · · - Karen Eliot REACTION TO THE ART STRIKE Jean-Rene · Lassalle, student, Berlin, 24/12/89: 'This Art Strike is hysterical really ; One might saythatit's like thegraffiti of May '68; sentences . . . w hich were made up to provoke (thought among other things) while perhaps their immediate .• significance is notso very important. The mystique ofthe Artist bathers me some. On the other hand, if one creates, he gives of himself; and this is worthy of some •. recognition.' (Translated from the French). Jacques Abeille, novelist, Bordeaux 3 1/12/89: 'What a silly idea, this Art Strike .it's a logical paradox; that is to say, a statement which involves a .• contradiction, a proposition which negates itself. To choose to. do this strike assumes in the first plaee that you are what you pretend to end: one must. firstbe an artist in order to quit being one. It follows from this that all who during the.se three years present themselves as non-artists will be artists, and that all those who present themselves as artists won't be. By this fonnal logic one will allege that its proposals are universals that do not pertain: the Art Strike doesn't apply to everyone, but only to thosewho are alre,ady manifested as artists .. One should not say 'all who • . . ,' but instead only 'those who , ' or 'certain . . . ' So the proposal of an Art Strike doesn't entail the advancement. of a universal proposition, therefore it hOlds to the official · and . . mercantile distinctions between artists and the rest of the human population. In .•. 24

Th£ Art Strike Papers other worcls. to subvert this distinction, you accept the basis of what you 're trying to subvert, and end up prolonging it by adding on a new criterion: from now on the artists will be the ones participating in the Art Strike during these three years. STATEMENT R.EGARDING THE ART STRIKE 1 990-1 993 Now that I have learned the reasons for the international Art Strike 1990-1993, I declare that I will support it, but in Yugoslavia, the country where I am living and making art, an Art Strike would have no sense because: 1 There is no art market here yeL 2 Prices of art works are so low that you don't sell at all. You make art for . pleasure, philosophical and creative reasons. 3 We have only a few art critics and curators, andthey have no power or influence 4 upon artists. You don't have to pay the galleries for having your own exhibition, but galleries 5 exhibit in official gallery spaces. The serious culture hardly exists here, it is repressed by the primitive, peasant pay you for thaL Shows are not commercial at all , so alternative artists can culwre, so our aim is to develop and support culture here. So I am suggesting all art strikers to come and settle in Yugoslavia during the period 1990� 1993 and continue making art and exhibitions. __. Andre) Tlsma, Novi Sad, 1 1 December . 1989. A PERSONAL STATEMENT BY PHILIPPE BILLE I would like to criticise several points in this Art Strike (1990-1993) projecL First, I disagree with some of the opinions formulated in its promoters' texts. For example, I do not believe that various forms of mischievousness, such as greed, might be suppressed with· the hypothetical abolition of the 'capitalist system' of production; nor .that the 'unendurable' aspects of the human condition,. that art helps us to bear, depend on our economic organisation; nor that it is unjust to designate with a particular word 'artist,' those who manifest certain particular talents; nor that it is deplorable that 'creativity' is unequally spread among the people. Moreover, it is impossible for me to consider, in the private sphere of my 'artistic creation' activity, any idea of prohibition Gust as I reject the idea of any obligation to create, such as often appears in the activity of the professional artists and of.the apprenticeswho aim at becoming so). Nevertheless, there is without doubt much to deplore, and so to criticise, in the present state of arts, culture and civilisation: at least enough, I think, to make it possible to consider this unrealistic idea of the Art Strike (1990-1993) as oppor­ tune, even if only as a curse; or an invitation to reflection. Because the point is, first of all, to ascertain and to assert the notable distance which separates us pretty distinctly from the 'art world.' So, with the same meaning with which I declared lastJune, onm y 33rd birthday, that I wanted to 'retire' as an artist, I agree to follow this (in)action movement by refusing in advance, for this period, any new exhibition project, by limiting my publications to the minimum; by associating to 25

Tiu! Art Stri/<£ Papers it my collection, lately begun of unopened mail, which gathers postal objects coming from the official, associational or commercial institutions, along with various letters of shabby canvassing; by studying the evolution of the debates raised in the American, free and anonymous newsletter YAWN. It will be alleged against me that this is too easy; This is partially true. So what? .· - Translated by Ph. Biiie, reprinted from Lettre Documentaire, Bordeaux, De­ cember 1989. LET'S CO BOWLING WITH ART STRIKE! Perhaps years of neglect can produce dictatorial desires in even the most stalwart of the usually egalitarian underground. Somebody out there (in here) came up with the idea that for the next three years (1990-1993) artists refrainfrom producing art. The idea, known as Art Strike, has been discussed in a surprising number of journals, considering its impossibility, authoritarian high-handedness and ultimate disposability as ideas go. In fact it was one notion that should have been disposed of, but wasn't. And so we will be doing without the work ofavowed strikers for three years. The issue touches rile in a sensitive spot and deserves to be exhumed, because it goeswell beyond just 'fun and games' in the artistic underground. If Art Strike be not a whispered vicious trick of · some · swift-tongued disembodied enemy of creativity, let us assume it has developed out of the sense of despair and powerless­ ness which grips those of us in the midst of creative working in a world of recycled artistic idolatry. Art Strike is a negative powerfeeding on the despair experienced from time to time by those who have chosen notto join the ready-made bandwagon of success in a very unsane surface world. This despair is a burden which is, as we speak, slowing down the progress of a thing which could become far more real and far more strong. To adopt a pose ofcynicismor nihilism is an understandable response to the great beast of mass-produced culture, but it is an uneducated and unproduc­ tive response. I certainly congratulate the perpetrator of this idea virus called Art Strike. As a meme it has gone very far. Ithas changed peoples' plans; stopped their progress dead in its tracks: it demonstrates the power a well placed idea can have, even coming from the 'powerless' underground; Some would say that thatis precisely the point of Art Strike. If so, let's start planting seeds of artistic fecundity instead of spraying herbicides or exponentially increasing barrenness. The harnessing of this power of ideas (verbal and non-verbal) is, ultimately, the greatest responsibil­ ity an artist will ever have. There is an alchemy where art and daily life meet, are one, are sweet, effortless and closer to the existential bone than thirteen billion printed words on Art Strike (or, for that matter, thirteen billion scatological album titles, misanthropic song lyrics, or other by-products of despair); There is a realisation, which can be cultivated, wherein one can calculate the effect of Good one's creation will have upon the planet. Perhaps these intangibles present a vast arid uncharted challenge, 26

The Art Strike Papers but their reward is sweeter than upsetting a corp0rate board meeting with free jazz. There is a realm where one is shown the truth (transitional or penultimate though it may be) in statements like. �God.is afoot, Magic is alive• (and art is footwork­ proper placement of one's 'dogs• and a minimum of howling at the moon footwork and fortuitous event). Divorce the shamanistic function of the artist and you get artifice: the glamour we know all too · well which dominates the media (Garfield vs. Zippy). We need good art. Benet, far better than we're getting� And you Art Strikers are arging voluntary lobotomy for three years? My bardic muse writes, •Methinks you have been quelled by mutant forms who, from the spirit world. cast a pointless dare your way in order to destabilise a Goodness.' · With these words behind me, let me resume my usual cheery countenance and . wish wellto all participants or even semi.:participantsin the gre8t Art Strike 19901993.I do see thewhimsy and the irony in yourflarry of non-activity. Enjoy your vacation, and choose your bowling ball carefully: It's all in the heft - Reprinted from Void:..Post 6. CRITIQUE OF THE ART STRIKE The Bible narrates that the Jews conquered Jericho by playing the trumpets with such an intensity that the walls tumbled. Today, a group ofartists have repeated this story with aCertain difference. They want to destroy the walls of powerflil art institutions by means of radical silence: by the refusal of all activities of art. A total Art Strike ha8 been suggested by Stewart Home and the PRAXIS Group foi the three�year period of 1990- 1993. This Ait Strike is being organised by Art Strike Action Committees residing mostly in America and England. Several months afterthe startofthe Art Strike, Ireceiveddocuments ofthe foUowingkinds: statements and letters from artist$, declarations by magazine editors. active in the strike; and pages ofdiscussion from the underground and setj.ous'press alike. These reactions portrayed a frustrated group of people. Major institlltions did not take much notice ofthis strike, which was being directed against them. Furthermore, a debate raged among the organisers and other artists concerned with the Art Strike: d.� such a strike make any sense at all? ltook all the Art Strike documents available to me' since the start ofthis action, arid I tried to fincl out the reasons for this disturbance and frustration. Stewart Home•s reference to the successful 'strike' ofPolish ariisrs iri the period after 1981 wa8 an error and a starti�g point for a nwnber of later mistakes. :A strike is A) an organi$edextortion; B)for a concrete p se� C) by people who standiri opp<)sitlon to their employer. Th�re was not any artis�· strike in Poland because A) it arose spontaneously and amorphously; B) for no concrete result; C) iridependent careerlsts who took part in a general boycott agrunst a military takeover. It wa.S part-ofa national resistance in a d�rate sitilal:ion and it was fill a.nenipt to demoralise the authorities. It was combat; that is, a revolutionary act .. . completely in the spirit of classical history. . . . .·. . ·The otheraction, Metzger's ArtStrike ( 1977-1980), was planned .asan economic sttike, however; itfailed becarise the individual ptOducers failed to organise. Their · urpo by · . . 27 ·

The Art Strike Papers personal intents vary so greatly that every member pf such a social group became scabs (even in the situations where some large institutions are acting as 'employ­ ers'). Furthermpre,· Metzger could not offer any concrete agenda to the individual participants in his strike, and no concrete organisation was brought forth. to fonnu:tate and administer possible individual declarations. In conttast, the cwrent(second) Art Strike was planned as a politicalresistance and not as an economic strike. But a resistance is a general movement supported by a whole population, and its precondition is a kind of extreme emergency; .that is to say, a 'revolutionary situation' is required. To imagine that intellectuals or artists would take part in suc.h a resistance at any time (like a waJk:-out) because of their unique problems (as an attempt to break the monopoly of the institutions of the arts or to destroy the present cultural hierarchy) is simply not realistic. It is possible to build an administration corps for this job and propaganda .can be distributed, as well; but one cannot create a revolutionary situation complete with the required general 'desperation.' Therefore, this attempt remains. simply .an advertisement, a campaign for something 'like a strike' with the usual mixed echoes that normally goes with a campaign among the intellectual el.ite (indeed, such internal affairs are always hysterical and turbulent, but the culture generally has troµble taking it seriously). However there is another important fact of this strike. This is the very ' meta­ physical' nature of the attempt: the strike was thought to be the refusal of all kinds pf creative activity; that is, a radical form of silence. Let us say no more about tlie difficult question of reaching an audience with this silence, an audience that's been ignoring you all along anyway We still have another question: how should artists who stop their activity .act? What should they do? The human being who goes on strike interrupts his professional activity. But the creative work ofan artist doesn't work that way. Creativity can take different forms (not just artistic, but also such forms as being a mother, a PQlitician, a gambler, for example) but it is never a profession. Instead, it is an existential question for each . individual. . The artist can be forced to fulfil their work as a 'job,' but it will only last if one can succeed in 'changing their identity' as well. It's .evident that the result would be enormous resistance against the attempt An atmosphere similar to general desperation would need to be created, only it. is not in favour of the idea but against iL All energy would be turned against it. The prevailing mood would be character­ ised by uncooperative aggressiveness, caused by the fear oflosing one's identity. In an optimum state it can have a very useful effect. The Polish resistance after the declaration of the state of war in 198 1 had the following interesting result: the artists produced more art than before ..., but this art was explicitly samizdat art, an aggressive expression turned against the ruling elite. These artists would lose their identity only if they .continued their earlier professional work in �e style of 'fine art ' (a highly interesting situation). I visited some artist friends in .Kracow and Wroclaw a year aod a half after the takeover, and this underground actiyity had at.that timejust�hedits �� Some • . . . 28

The Art Strike Papers older •constructivist' artists - real •museum' artists - left behind their abstract style and made small graphics and text designs in the form of leaflets, sometimes in a brutal realistic style. !twas not the expression of a culture but of a primary demand of vital interests. This was a very strange form for an agitative •post modernism' to take, considering it came after a very aesthetic abstract art period. I think this feature of the human being and the oat� of creativity wasn'ttaken into consideration in the present Art Strike. The ASAC in California treated it in a better way: it took up in its programme the idea that artists whose art was turned against serious cull:Ure and elite institutions should expand their activity. Also other publications emphasised that creativity should grow and not decrease during the strike. These concepts should function as a resistance and could ensure that the coherence of the network remains intact, no matter if the strike has any success or not But anyway this notion collapsed at the start. A different concept took its place, one which I attnbute to the initiator ofthe strike, StewartHome. He calls for the total refusal of all kinds of creativity during the strike. Some activists took this call so seriously that they decided to stop their political and review activities and all kinclSofpuOlicinterVentions, aswell. One might talk about the possibility that this rigorousness was a manifestation of a strong radicalism in the spirit of class struggle. There is no reason to deny it But we can also consider another, more personal motivation with a philosophical background. It seems that for Stewart Home, the feasibility of a strike is of minor importance. He postulates the use of underground culture as a testing ground for his idea. This programme is the strategic negation of all creative forms, seen as the current strategy of the artistic individual and art activity. The various forms· for such a negation that Home proposes (Multiple. Names, Plagiarism, Art Strike) are all excellently conceived and deserve appreciation. Following from these ideas, I can see an opposition to the monopolistic nature of art institutions, which was caused by making the underground reflect upon these issues. This philosophy: had exerted a great influence on the underground and the alternative art scene long before the Art S trike became current. Of course, such concepts, built with such virtuosity, have little to do with a political programme. It is a r�ther ordinary cultural accomplishment. To combine it with politics is dangerous. Since a few people have adopted the opinion that only active negation can be the strategy of true creativity, the import of this highly abstract philosophy into the arena of the strike resulted in the strike (which was hopeless anyway) losing its creative energy from the start. All.other question is: to what extent was Home aware of the fact that he himself with this conception had brought into being an instrument which could be suitable for buttressing authority? This authority would be able to discipline a part of the artistic subculbll"e. (It is in fact nmch easier to control a negation than a production). Home was very narrow-minded concerning productive activity in general and the forms of independent art activity in the alternative scene in particular (see the 29

TIU! Art Strike Papers recent issues ofSmile magazine or his book, The Assault 011, Culture). Home had the enormous gall to postulate a generalvalidity for his owQ ideas. I don't know if he realised at all . that in the case of the total participation of the underground in a strike which lasted three years, the whole network would decay. Or is there not much to regret?. (Maybe this.egomania is an element taken from Neoism. But Stewart Home had this mentality before his flleoistperiod began: his first known project was a band he was in called White Colours. Jlis aim was to have all bands in England call themselves White Colours), Even when I pay respect to the expression of Home's opinions; I mustsay: this is not an explicitly leftist mentality, and as political activity, it has nothing at all to do with the emancipation of humanity. It is much more an aristocratic phenomenon or - in the microcosm of the alternative scene - a standardising of all opinions according to the model of totalitarianism. We can also say that we have to face the problem of difference between intellectual abstraction and practical thoughtWe can thank Stewart Home that the seconcl Art Strike was begun at all, but in reality the views and ambitions which initiated the strike were major causes for frustration,. as well. But, the first months of the strike demonstrated that a lot of problems could not be .solved without this . crisis. What these problemsare begins to become clearer now, and this is a positive result. But good motives need better and more professional instruments. Maybe because of this lesson the Art Strike was worth the trouble. - Geza Pemeczky RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS AND OPINIONS ABOUT THE ART STRIKE 1 - How can one participate In the Art Strike (1990-1993)7 Sure, such a distressing perspective is disorienting to some: Asfor the Art Strikers, their tactics vary. Stewart Home in London (who thought up the Art Strike), seems to have chosen a total strike of creativity, which includes all activity relatedto the Art Strike (1990-1993). He is limiting his activity to dispatching only documents concerning the Art Strike that were produced before January 1 , 1990, to whomever asks for them. He explains (in a letter dated November 8, 1989): ' Setting up an ASAC siinply means providing the public with an address from which they can get information about the Art Strike and organising any other activities which you think might help spread the idea. . . In Iowa, Lloyd Dunn has interrupted the publicationof his magazinePhotoS tatic for three years. Instead, he publishes the sporadic and quasi�rurollymous newsfouer YAWN, almost totally dedicated to the Art Strike (1990-1993). I have found certain ofthe ptop'osals advanced therein to be excessive; such as1tschatacterisa­ tion of 'The Artist as a Victim of Tourette Syndrome,' which suggests that artists are pathologically dependenton their need to create; like a nervous tic (issue 7, 3 1/ 12/89). On the other hand, I notice this declaration: 'there is no Art Strike dogma as such. Instead, it is essential that each Art Strike participant 'constrUct their own set of activities in support of the Art Strike.' (issue 6: 24/11/89). · . • . . ' · 30

The ArtStrike Papers 2 - It consists of a paradox ... . . Sure, the proposition of an Art Strike (1990-1993) is paradoxical, incredible, illogical, bizarre, incoherent, extremist, masochistic, unrealistic and pretentious, but it is a social action that has as its primary goal the deliberate provocation of annoyance. 3 - Isn't this pious.Art Strll<e (1990-1993) doomed to failure by lack of Impact? Sure, this is a possibility. In YAWN it says, 'the Art Strike (1990�1993} can only affect those people who choose to be affected by it. . . ' (issue l l , l/3/90). But in Cicero it says: • . ; .Even ifthegoodness (that we seek)were not recognised, it would still be good; for whatever we can say in all truth is commended by its own good nature, even if not approved by any man living.' (On Moral Obligation, I.4. 14). 4 - Art Is already a strike Sure, there.is something to this. On this subject, Lloyd Dunn proposed in the 40th and last issue ofPhotoStatic (December 1989): ' the Art Strike isnot so much a call for doing nothing as it is a call for doing something else. Now, itis quite plausible, accordingto my interpretation of the intent ofthe Art Strike.for a person (whether they think they are doing 'art'. or not) to participate in the Art Strike and yet continue to do wllat they were doing before! As far as I can tell, the Art Strike lashes out at a set of attitudes about art; not 'art' as such. To clarify my position on this, it is perhaps necessary for us to have two definitions for the word 'art,' 1) art: •.. virtually any creative activity, definable by the user of the term themself; and 2) Art: a class and gender-specific activity devoted to the creation of marketable objects . . . The Art Strike simultaneously calls for a rejection of Art, and a re­ evaluation of art. To be effective, the Art Strike must demoralise Artists, and encourage artists.' - Reprinted from Lettre Documentaire No. 9, 25/4/90. STOP THE ART STRIKE The · 1990-1993 Art Strike, which is currently being proposed by an international consortium of petty egomaniacs, needs to be shot dead, summarily executed without delay. The reasons for this conclusion are perfectly clear, as RichardNixon would say, and I shall outline them in this brief paper. The theoretical Marxist gobbyallygooke (Middle English spelling) ·that is the fountain from which this proposal ejaculates is logically unsound, although fascinating in its dire lack of intelligence. This is clearly evident when one examines the main Art Strike argument, which is that someho� Art is a tool, a 'commodity' used by an elite to · · ress' the ma8ses. I hereby challenge ·the . organisers of this mess to firid ten seriously impoverishedpeople willing to sign an affidavit to the effeet that their condition is due to the business practices of Art Galleries. Il11agine Geraldo Rivera crawling thiough the streets of East Oakland, asking street philosophers to rec'ount personal episodes of terror at. the hands of Piedmontian curatOrs! Of course the outcome would be that of all empty tele­ visionalwell, 'with a greasily handsome Gerilldo wringing his hallds. He would be . rep 31

The Art Strike Papers lucky to even find a downtrodden person who gives an Albanian hoot about Art, or Artists, or their picayune opinions. Art simply doesn't matter to the vast majority of individuals. But to this, the smug Marxist would retort: 'But the masses have yet to be enlightened as to the cause of their condition! ' What sanctimonious, pig­ headed borscht! The man pushing a shopping cart down the street would much rather have a T-bone steak marinated with Narsai 's Special Sauce than a thousand tickets to performances at Artists' Television Access (a San Francisco establish­ ment that sponsored an Art Strike event)! And rightly so, for his survival is, and should be, paramount Whether or not there are Art geniuses has bugger all to do with the immediacy of his condition. If the self-satisfied organisers of this bird­ brainish strike were really interested in helping the masses, they'd be proposmg a TV-dinner round-up for the homeless! They'd be putting their money where their fat mouths are, so to speak. It is also clear that the instigators of this foolishness are bent on being famous, and that they are insanely jealous of financially successful artists. This is a case of sour Bulgarian grapes, under the guise of proletarian revolt. It is usually the case that when revolutionaries seize power, they become just as repressive as their former masters; if the organisers of this effort were actually to stop Art production, they would be in the best position in terms of financial gain. Fortunately, I feel confident that this little temper tantrum by a collective of spoiled artistic brats can be nipped in the bud, castrated from the consciousness ofcreativity. Butonly ifyou follow my instructions, and act now. If you agree with this analysis, you 'II do the following: 1 Mail the letter {below) to: Artists' Television Access 922 Valencia Street San Francisco CA 94103 "DearATA : I refuse toparticipate in the 1990-1993 Artists' Strike� As a matter of fact, I pledge to do everything in my power· to encourage more · Art production. I also think that the organisers of this effort are a bunch of cry� babies trying to feather their nests and. make a mess on thefloor." (Signed). 2 Refuse to participate in the strike, if it ever really materialises. 3 Encourage others to create works of Art Creativity is good for people. - Anatoly Zyyxx ART NO MORE - Extracts · ( . . . ) Maybe it's worth investigating The Fifth International Festival of Plagiarism. Organised by Transmission's William Clark and the prolific London based writer of texts, Stewart Horne, it brings together a loose association of artists whose work is in some way participatory and proudly unoriginal. Home is a veteran of previous Festivals, a number of exhibitions, including 1987' s Desire In Ruins at the Transmission, and is one of the key figures in 32

Ths Art Strike Papers expressing . the role of plagiarism in art Art itself. he argues, is chained to bourgeois values which shackle us all,notonly by promoting the tastes and ideals . of the dominant culture, but directly upholding capitalism by doing so� The claims for some art to be a vehicle for social change are herefore bogus, since the perception of art and artists and the struclllres of the t art world will inevitably support the status quo. Plagiarists oppose art's elitism, the praise heaped upon artists in direct propor­ tion to their incomprehensibility to the general public and the process by which works of art become commodities to be dealt with like stocks and shares. Centtal among their concerns is the elitist myth (popular among artists themselves) of the artist as a genius with unique insights. ( ) To draw attention to what art has become, the plagiarist group PRAXIS .has called for an Art Strike, basically a withdrawal of labour like any other industrial action. The idea was fust proposed by Gustav Metzger, who in 1974 called.for artists to cease producing, selling or discussing their work between the years 1977••. 80. Despite Metzger•s lack of impac t, the plagiarists are calling for another threeyear Art Strike beginning in 1 990. . .. . .. .. . . Metzger' s Vision was of galleries and art magazines folding and artists, unable to stop creating, being coerced into camPS w�ere their work would be destroye<J as it was produced. TOO PRAXIS idea of the strike is less ambitious, andJoeused on the role of the artist and how he or she engages with the surrounding culture. It's crucial to their view to disrupt the myth of ' the artist as som eone who has these uncontrollable creative urges; and to show that you can stop and start at will.• But a great deal ofits meaning, according to one of Home's pamphlets, 'lies not in its .· · ·. . . . feasibility but in the possibilities it opens up for intensifying the class war.' And where does the art of plagiarism feature in this? Liberally borrowing from the writings ofRoland Barthes, it emphasises the productive role that the audience hastoplay, 'Rather than passively receivinga work,they recreate itwhen they read a book or look at a picture,' explains Stewart Home. 'In the pure sense it's not plagiarism at all because that would entail taking ideas and claiming them a8 your oWI1. It's a polemical use of the word to focus attentiononthe problems in the area. We 're drawing attention to the facf that we're using other peoples• ideas! "The Festival ofPlagiarism is partly just to show a lot of the things that are going on around the world and also to deal wi th the whole issue of copyright laws. which seem alittle ridiculous in theligh t of all the machinery we've gotrightnow. Videos, xerox niachmes - it' s actually impossible to enf6rce the laws that are there. So it's making a point about that, and obviously ownership in relation to that Also it's interesting tha:t the idea of the ownership of ideas is quite a recent phenomenon. since the 18th century! With every succeedirig plagiarism a n ew layer of meaning is added: This, says Home, makes it a highly creative process. And anyone can do it. That it subverts accepted notions of artistic value, linked in this society with ethi cs about labour time and production makes it a worthy snub of capitalistdogma. or at least that's the idea. Butto theob8erver, what is really the difference between a plagiaristevent 33

The Art Stri/<£Papers and one of the avant-garde works they rail against for being 'tainted by the avant� garde fraction of the bourgeoisie?' · 'It's problematic, butartisbasically whatthebourgeoisiesayis art;andalthough I can control what I do now, I can't control what happens to it� twenty years time, and it might well be considered art in twenty years time. The point is not to claim any universal validity for what we 're doing, and not to assume that people should be interested in what we 're doing - which is the basis of most funding for the arts and the basis of any justification for it, the idea that it has a humanising function. Whereas, we say, this is just what we want to do and we happen·to be interested in this, there are no grand claims for it, or claims that it has some kind of deep significance and therefore ought to interest people. (. . . ) - Alastair Mabbott, The List No. 99, Edinburgh 26n/89. THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ART STRIKE Written during the Fifth lritematlonal Festival of Plagiarism, Glasgow 1989 The Art Strike can only be propagated on the basis of a limited idea of what art is. If art is everything, accor�g to the definition of Dada and Fluxus, an Art Strike would be death . . The propagators. of the Art Strike agree that it is intended to break the barrier between so-called 'low' and so-called 'high' culture. But if these persons would not think and work themselves into those categories, they could neither demand 00r do the Art Strike. Ifart is everything-and I cannotreduce my definition of 'art' to a more restricted one- the word has no meaning at all. Therefore I propose to give up the word 'art.' If there is no art, you do not need an Art Strike. Perhaps the desire for the Art Strike is more interesting than the idea itself. Some possible reasons: In a world where creativity is split up and cannotbe described by definitions or names ('Neoism' and 'Plagiarism' are desperate attempts), unity shall be gained by non-action, if it is impossible by action. This is obvious in the concept of the exhibition ('Reversal of Slogans/Slogans ofReversal'). A slogan is always de:­ manding unity, and slogans are the essence of Neoism and Plagiarism. . Art Strike and death: ·the infonnation sheet about the Festival . includes · the (simplifying) sentence 'Plagiarism is for life, Post-modem.ism is for (.l�th,' .SinceDuchamp, originality('anti-plagiarism') seem stobepossible o,nlyby self­ destruction, mainly of the bOOY (Vienna Actionism, Chris.Burden, etc),Jn fact, the Art Strike idea resu\ts from the wish to do something original and jt is self-

Thi! Art Stria Papers destructive as well (see second statement). Perhaps there is a subconscious desire for death, which led t0 the idea of an Art Strike, although strictly denied by its propaganda. (Thoughts not finished). . .· . - Florian Cramer, frrst published in PhotoStatic 38, Iowa, Autumn 89. . . STEWART HOME I NTERVIEWED · BY SIMON REYNOLDS - Extract (. . . ) I nearly misseq Stewart Home, caught him just days before he began a three year ·Art: Strike' from 1990� 1993, during which he'll neither produce nor discuss any work. Again, it's a 'borrowed' idea. "I. read about this artist, Gustav Metzger, who'd . dedarecl a cultural strike between 1977-80, and thought 'Why doi:i 't we have one?' And I've been planning it for five years. The idea is so ludicrous, it's really funny. Metzger' s idea was that after three years, the bourgeois art economy would collapse and artists could return and dictate how their work was received. But of course, artists are all in competition with each other for sales and gallery s(>aces, so i� never worked. I just wanted to attack this idea ofthe artist who works incontinently, has all this creativi� spewing out uncontrollably, I wanted to demystify the process. Coz being an artist isn't this magical process.' . In order to go on strike, Home first had to become an artist 'It was like a dare· I'd been in punk bands, got bored and then decided to apply the 'anyone can do it' idea to the art world. I started on the avant-garde fringe and then brazene<l my way into doing straight gallery installatim:is. I wanted to see if t could legitimise myself.' 'The thing to remember about critics is that they go along to review ail exhibition and if your.programme notes sound plausible and they can just lift your words, they're more likely to review it So Hound that how you write the press release, how you use theory to bullShif and intimidate the gallery owners, was crucial. All this ·negotiation has tobe unde�en before something is accepted� 'art.' Andl pulled · . .· . itoff.' 'I'm "legitimate': the British Councilpaid for me and my collaborators tO take a show to Sweden. I've got pres8 cuttiilgs, art journals in America write to me asking for theoretical pieces. The annoying thing is that I'in going on strike just when I've started making enough money to live on it But I'm glad to stop really. Having a career in art is boring.' What will you do? . 'Well, coz I've been so involved in all this nonsense for five years, I've built tip an enormous collection of pulp literature that's unread. That should keep nie occupied. A.nd I'm looking around for a job; Trouble is, I'fu over qualified. Most eroployers can't unde�tand why I'd tUm my pack on being an artist:' · - Melody Maker, London 20/1/90. . . . . . . . · · 35 .

Tiu! Arl StrikePapers EXTRACTS FROM BLOATSTICK NO. 2 ART STRIKE ISSUE, SPRING · · 1 990 - ART STRIKE: A STALINIST CRn'IQUE (AN ATIACK ON THE LEADERSHIP) 1 The Art Strike leadership is made up of predominantly White American and British Middle-class males (to obfuscate matters more they sometimes use women's names as AKAs). These men do n()t survive via wages ot salarle}s from the art world they criticise. Will they strike and condemn the capitalist QCCupational (maUil white collar or service industry) structures that provide them with their livelihoods in solidarity with striking artists? . 2 With no Artists' Union how can there be a successful art .strilce? 3 What is Art Strike's relationship with Labour Culture and Labour Unions? Is . itan appropriation of Labour terminology or has Art Strike initiated a dialogue with working people? 4 In showing an Art. Strike booklet to a young African-American student she said to me, 'Why. they've been doing .that in the projects for decades.' Does the leadership realiSe the inherent class, racial and larger occupational stnictures ofprivilege, that form and limit their peer group? S Do they plan to address these larger issues of predominant culture along with those of less visible, yet more radical culture, since their current sexual, racial and class tendencies seem to now preclude theirparticipation in those cultures, or will they remain elitist? 6 What is ArtStrike's relationship with and commentary onthe Cultural Democ­ racy Movement, the· AIDS ACT·UP coalition, Art Against · Apartheid, Art Against AIDS and other activist groups that use art an({ perfonnance in I>issent? 7 Art Strike leadership offers us a perceptive analysis of the art industry's co­ option into the spectacle of advanced Capital but only the vaguest inklings of how to surviveorpractieecultureoutside or in opposition to this Spectacle. C3n you be more specific? 8 Does the Art Strike also. realise their focused critiques of the art world are delivered in the language of that world and are thereby appropriated to the Spectacle of that same world? 9 Will Art Strike leaders become involved in any direct organising outside of pamphleteering and annual exhibitions? 10 What are the resources of the lead.ership? 1 1 Why the anonymity? . 12 Does the leadership of Art Strike naively anticipate a spontanoous anarchic ·uprising in the sociaJ/occupational groupoftheart world atany time?Doos Art Strike use this fanl3sy as an excuse to avoid a coinmiqnent to union organisfug and leadership? y ·· · · ·· · · · . · 36 · ·

TN! Art StrikePapers 1 3 The artists you would desire to strike won't. . . being the commercial artists and . organisations they are satisfiedwith their participation in the Spectacle ofCapi­ talism because they reap its benefits. To my knowledge you have usually lobbied only the alternative non-profit libetal art world, who will supportyour intentions, but not to the point ofjoining you in any action as radical as a strike. Artists any further to. the left, along with other disenfranchised groups, are usually excluded from. the world system you . have targeted,··and Jot all . practical purposes have been · 'striking� for years, please comment on this contradiction. 14 As a satirist and a cultural organisation administrator whose actual food and rentcomes. from the art world, your laissez faire and cynical intellectualism offers tne; and I assume others, no incentive to strike.You seem both incapable of providing leadership, succoui,.resources, radical alternatives to the current structure, or most importantly solidarity with other workers. Please offer us further definitive strategy. 15 . Your critical . commentary · is appreciated although I . know the Art industry sucks. But I also know that the Real Estate industry and the Military industry suck. Why don't you try to get them to strike? art ....,_ Marshall Webber CONFESSIONS OF AN ART STRIKE COMMllTEE MEMBER 'I'm a microscope on that secret place where we all want to go .'' - The Mekons .. Really alm0$t no one is arguing aga.inst the Art Strike 01.1 its own terms. Who is against liQerty? But the strike is far outnumbered by people too fearful or cynical . to make that equation, or to realise that the Art Strike as it's been .formulated is or an artist It would be fair to sar that the incapable of hurti�g a organisers of the strilce are so obsessed with preventing mdivi<f.ual accumulations the strike's marginhlity. . of power tl'Ult they have guaran . 'The Art Strike is, in. fact, a wholly beneyolent, if inefficient, tendency devoted to gift-giving, corresp<>n(fence, and doing good deeds for the community, sort of . Lions or Kiwanis .club. The . apocalyptic like a .rhetorical· sty}e favoured by 111any strikers. -I am not inµcx;ent� i$ just our version of grandiose titles, secret handshake� and Ornamental robes. Or rather. that is now. itwo1,ild 'be viewed if the strike were su�essful, which is to say if the techniques. by which artists and other in-groups alienate themselves. were to be rendered impotentby a mass rejection of the practice. The Art Strike cannot do Other than eliminate itself along with the other crap. We always said the Art Strike was the worst idea ever, we made posters that said so. Yet it was so much more attractive that the workable, cockroach, � . m)n-hiel'archical 37 .• .•

Thi! Art Strike Papers 'realistic' ideas thatit opposed. This embrace of abSUrdity was .one of se\reral liberations I experienced during a year long experiment that was also at times boring, circuJar, frustrating and tedious� Obviously the Art Strike lacked the commitment, energy, appeal and public relations ofDada or Punk. which may only mean that itlacked a money angle, but linsist it was, like those, a magic phrase, the mere incantation ofwhich could stir violent antipathy in some and almostinstan1aneOUS ·gutcomprehension in others. There was a short period during which thewords 'Art Strike' were truly mywords, and during that period I was able to step up in front of a group of people without any preparation and command their attention in a way that! never coW.dbefore or since. l understood in my guts that nothing was true and pennitted myselfto say anything. I blithely advocated at least five separate. platforms depending on the mood and the company. I contradicted myself wildly, in. the belief that paradox is where language warps because it's gotten · close · to reality, ·. and· that · certain contradictions in the text can be the doorways out -0f it. Whenever I became insecure about my image, lcoW.d feel the energy dissipating� It was only then that anyone ever looked to me for leadership. I burned out on the discussion after· a while and lost-my natural grasp of its essence, a grasp which had enabled me to carry on long, valuable discussions without feeling that I had to win each point, a habit of mine that kills conversation and makes me a monologuist. The right thing to say is of course the thing that contributes to the flow and energy of the discourse, and the pleasure of saying the right thing is sublime. One ti.me a friend commented on how frequently I . was saying the right thing and naturally that stopped me. The otherjoy of the Art.Strike was the way we dealt with written text. Anything anyone wrote about the strikeimmediately became common property. I saw my phrases appear without the slightest disjunction in other peoples' writing and I freely incorporated theirs. Hardly anything was signed. This approach was not . taken out of a desire to mystify, but outofan honest recognition that tJteforte which made the strike work, tO the extent that it did work; . \Vas not the c6ntributions of individuals but the simple fact that we were acting in community, that none of us knew anything about the Art Strike exc what we had worked out together. I have focused on the success of afew personal interactions instead of 'disi:nan� tling thedominant culturalappara1Us' bec8use. to m8ke itasplainaspossible,tllat's what it's all about. The dominantcultural apparatus is in our .heads and its function is separati00. It makes us lie to each other, e�loit eaeh other, compete with each other and fear each other; Art Strike as a proposal functioned as a wake up call, . . sayingin effect; that even artists adhere to a sense of the status quo, unoonsciously assuming priyileges and butdens that might better be sharecl equally by all. Art Strike as an event, it could be realised, wollld and . beautiful than any work ofart. Andit w()uld charige the worl<J. ept if be mote, terrifying; �y - Aaron Noble, December 1989�· · · 38

The Art Strike Papers I WILL NOT OBSERVE THE ART STRIKE FOR · THE FOLLOWING REASONS I thought we already had one for the last decade. I believe. the local galleries have 3 years worth of dead artists' work . already stockpiled. LeRoy Neiman endorsed it It will ·do nothing whatsoever. . It is a parody of strikes; how about artists supporting real strikes? If you want to press an issue, you have to start with small actions and · build momentum; then you can do big ones. · There doesn't seem tO be any affinity or outreach with labour unions, homeless activists or others fighting for change. It is thus isolated and NO strike can succeed · without public· support. I'm operating under the assumption that the mainstream culture has already col­ lapsed. We've got video cameras, monitors, printers, tape recorders etc, what the hell do we need from mainstream culture? The 7.0 Loma Prieta Art Strike was enough for me. - Fred Rinne, October 1989 M ESSAGE FROM CARL ANDRE TO THE CALIFORNIAN ART STRIKE ACTION COMMRTEE Congratulations for furthering the cause of capitalism! . The drive of advanced capital proletarianises the primitive capitalist The Luddites broke machines because they did not want to become wage-labourers. . Wage�labour only for all artists! Up the rich! All artists to the sw�t shops! I.et no worker own his own production. WALKING ACROSS SCABBY WATER ­ Extract (. . . ) I guess because I'm so involved with the network of people who are participating in the Art Strike and the Festival ofNon-Participation, I felt like lhad .tohave aformal response; which is where theART SCABS FOR THE ART GLUT comes from; The phraSe 'Art Strike' is valuable for the effeet .it would have on 39 ·

The Art Strike Papers mainstream or commercial media because it's an idea which the media isn't familiar with. In terms of my own life I need some sort ofhyper:-activity, and along with hyper-activity you have to have the affirmative strategies that go along with it I like the notion of an Art Strike because it's a sensation. It creates an immediate response from anyone and it might go no further than that. But then again, if someone who is an artist replaces painting with cooking food, I don't really think that the actual impulses which makeboth those things happen is any different The Art Strike seems to be a denial of the avant garde. . . There is such an enigma attached to the people behind the strike. S tewart Home, by creating an Art Strike is making himself an object of art and that's another one of those contradictions. (. . . ) There are two qualities about the Art Strike. The first, which interests me very little, is the quality of denial which is something we all did when we were very young. It was the only kind of reaction we could have, very primitive kind of response, i.e. 'I don't wanna do it.' The other quality , whic;h I am intrigued by, which is what I will try to study about the Art Strike, is the quality of invisibility, how you take something and make it disappear. It may have the same effects and energies but it doesn't have to exist You're making the impulse of creativity disappear. If I could be in an existence that doesn't have a constant influx of media, I would be very interested in a kind of invisible culture. I think the Art Strike has to admit that there is a basic human response which is creativity and nothing short of lobotomy can get rid of that. The Art Strike teaches how to have some sort of cognition of what is going on without having to channel it through making p3inting all your life. (. . . ) - Mlekal And, Factsheet Five No. 33, Winter '89. STRUCK BY TH E ART STRIKE (AN ART GLUT PREAMBLE) Extracts - What I do like about the Art .Strike is that it's such a strong issue. It's got everyone riled up .. Nobody feels wishy washy about it, people appear to be either gun-ho or angrily against it. The whole notion of the Art Strike forces us to think twice about what we're doing, examine the role of art in society, in history etc.( . . . ) I'm sorry, I have to laugh when I remember asking John Berndt what he was going to do during the Art Strike. I laugh as much at my own frame of mind at the time as I do about his answer, since at that time I hadn't really formulated any thoughts on the Art Strike, and was a bit in awe of the whole idea, especially the fact that some people actually were taking it seriously. John said that among other things, when 1990 came he was going to study electronics and I remember thinking, wow, maybe I should strike and start studying languages, or areas in science that have always interested me. But now it's so clear that lam doing those things, not in a contrived manner,but in the natural path of my art life. If there had 40

The Art Strike Papers never been an Art Strike. rm sure John, being an extremely intelligent person. would have studied electronics anyway at some point, anci integrated it into his creative work. ( quite naturally have ) Stewart Home,whoml see as the mastennind behind the Art Strike, has thought about language and its influence. and also about identity, but I think his emphasis ••. · · misses the point ••• Home's major point. . • . is that 'the avant-garde' manipulates language to form an identity for itself based on appearances of 'rupture.' 'differ­ ence' and •refusal' . . . Home stat(es) that "Marinetti's verbal attacks upon the artistic ideals of the past were never intended to be taken as anything other than the • . • means for creating a symbolic 'rupture' with entrenched tradition.' As ifphysical action is the only waytochange things. Home sounds like a militant anarchist here, but something else became clear to me. · I was intriguedby this last essay in Home's Handbook: I keptfeeling that the crux of the Art Strike was hidden in it� Suddenly it hit me! The Art Strike is an art piece, deftly created by master Home, using all of us artists and our various responses to the strike as his materials. It really is a brilliant piece and as avant-garde as one could get: it's challenging, shocking, makes a lot of people think and has elicited strongreactionsin a number ofdirections. The ArtStrike isan artworkriddledwith ambiguity, hidden meanings, food for action and controversy. And, to use Home's own phrases, it has created and perpetuated its identity by language, by the printed word - pamphlets, · postcards. slogans and logos, articles, ·broadsides, even buttons! Home is doing with the ArtStrikeexactlywhathe appeatsto be criticising in the article, and he's doing it consciously! Confusing, eh? Ambiguous. even perverted, for artists are actually stopping their creative endeavours( ) Is it a • . • movement 'backed up by physical action?' In a sense yes, but it's a negation. advocating 'physica:l' non-action. Paradoxically. the idea of not doing art teaches us a lot about art, just as John Cage's famous ..4' 33" in masquerading as silence reveals the vast realm of sound. Again, whether or not he intended it as such (and the uncertainty is titillating), Stewart Home has created a big and important art work for the avant-garde. The morning after I wrote most of this essay and began to see the Art Strike as an art work, we got a piece of mail which confinned this vision� John Berndt sent us the latest Art Strike rhetoric: 'Critics Praise Stewart Home!' This piece is so obviously tongne.;in-cheek. it doesn't even pretend to be serious. It made me see the Art Strike in yet another light: as ascam, a ploy,an imaginary event, ajoke;And I think Stewart must be laughing the hardest, all the more wheri people take itvery seriously. Not that the Art Strike is a totally empty joke: it has caused a huge stir. and will 'go down• in experimental underground history. Whatever it is, I am not angry at Stewart and his kin(how many of them see as big a picture of it as Stewart, though?). rather I am grateful for the food for thought, and for the opportunity to respond with our own movement - the Art Glut! Long live Rhetoric! Long live controversy! Long live Stewart Home! Long live the Avant-Garde, and may it stay avant rather than derriere. - Ellzabeth Was, circulated-as an undated manuscript" 41

The Art Strike Papers ART STRI KE We call on all cultural workers to put down their tools and cease to make. distril)ute. sell. exhibit, or discuss their work from January 1st 1990 to January 1st 1993.We call for all galleries. museums. agencies. 'alternative• spaces. periodicals. theatres, art schools &c . to cease all operations for the same period. • Art is conceptually defined by a self.,perpetuating elite and marketed, as an · international commodity. Those cultural workers who struggle against the reigning society find their work either marginalised or else co-opted by the bourgeois art establishment The ruling class uses art as a 'transcendental' activity in the same way it once used religion to justify the arbitrariness of its enormous privilege. Art creates the illusion that. through activities which are actually waste. this civilisation is in touch with 'higher sensibilities• which redeem its other activities. Those who accept this logic support the bourgeoisie . even if they are economically excluded from the class. The concept that 'everything is art! is the height of this smoke-screen. meaning .only that certain members of the ruling class feel particularly free in expressing their domination of the proletariat to one another. To call one person an 'artist' is to deny another the equal gift of vision; thus the myth of 'genius• becomes an ideological justification for inequality. repression and famine. What an artist considers to be his or her identity i s a schooled set of attitudes; preconceptions which imprison humanity in history. It is .the roles derived from these identities. as much as the art products mined from reification. which we must reject Unlike Gustav Metzger' s Art Strike of 1 977-1980, our intention is not to destroy those institutions which might be perceived as having a negative effect on artistic production. Instead, we intend to question the role of the artist itself and its relation to the dynamies of power within capitalist society. The above is a text from a leaflet promoting the Art Strike 1990-1993. We have a definition of a particular way that creativity is channelled in present society --.,.. Art. It asserts that art is bourgeois and elitist. You only have to compare the coverage in the tabloids and the 'quality' papers in terms only of square centimetres devoted to its propagation to reveal the class emphasis of something that apologists claim to have universal value. When the artists and administrators choose to make work 'accessible' it is in the hallowed chambers of the secular cathedrals, the gallery and museum. People are ushered in, to pay their respects to the relics, the dead skin ofthe humanist saints. Artists of course lead the way• blazing new trails, boldly decorating whereno one could be bothered before. This seeps down to us lesser mort;als in the form of exciting new advertS, repackaged goodies and novelty philosophies readily bowld­ erised by colour supplement hacks. The insistence on metaphor and allusion to placing in the art historical context make it a coded world as specialist and mystifying as stamp collecting. 42

The Art Strike Papers Commodification is, if not an inevitability, financially useful. Artobjects are the next step up the ladder from executive toys. Intellectual arguments surrounding works become interesting accessories. Neo-Expressionism competes with Mini­ malism for the market share in much the same way as Acid House does with Techno. The most trite examples of this tendency are companies like Hunter and Philip Morris, the one a bomb manufacturer, the other a tobacco corporation, both arts sponsors and both responsible for thousands of deaths, maybe attempting 11 little expiation by applying a philanthropic gloss to their facades. Art creates a false sense of space, an il usionary sanctuary where integrity and intellectual freedom flourish untainted by the coarser aspects of life. · From this radical nature reserve, artists feel that they, when conscience dictates, are able to make forays into social and political activity.The activist artist is always more interested in success within the art .sphere rather than a realignment of society where our stolen creativity is repossessed. Arecent, particularly crass, instance of this is the US artists who painstakirigly reconslructed a shanty town in a gallery. Preci8ely because of the free reign that they feel they have been allowed, artists are able to fine tune the order of appearances. In this way artists, like .other professional intellectuals, become valuable technicians of dominantculture. Whatever doesn't kill power is killed by it. This is as lrue for paintings of the reproductive organs of certain plants · nicely arranged in a vase as for self­ consciously critical work. There are several possible responses. To produce art in a strictly formal way. Refine it to a craft of technical, aesthetic and mathematical precision. The old cliche of art for art's sake, and why not? The problem only occurs when the structure of society detaches. the by-product of an individual period of creativity, maybe with the artist's connivance, and institutes it as a sterile husk, a coinage. To subvert it's supposed transcendence from within by producing superficial work in the hope that art might implode under the immense density ofit's own meaninglessness. In this way a lot of self-importantly named Post Modernist art simplyreels out knowingly badjokes. But you can only play about with the piece8 of shit far so long; Others have tried to widen the boundaries of art. To achieve the aestheticisation of all life. Instead of turning inwards, thrustit out. This can be the highly romantic view put forward by Oscar Wilde or the Surrealists. It can also end up with the nice looking flat roofs of Corbusier that just happen to leak like seives, or result in the missionary zeal of the community artists, rushing round worried that the vast majority have always been :on Art Strike, desperate to introduce· us to the delights of arty-farty vicarious exj>erience. Everyone grins themselves silly when they've got a multi-media arts complex. To an extent this avoids the issue. By defining everything as art, the word loses any currency. (Which is probably a good idea). We live iri the mosthighly aestheticised point in history; adverts, TV, music, \Vith rabi.d ferocity. Muzak is the creation everything iedesigned.and repackaged . of a complete anaestheticism. Alone it is not enough. To expand out into life g � effectively it must be part ofa broaderonslau ht ideC>logical and economic as well 43

The Art Strike Papers as cultmal. That's where the real fun begins. Silence - the position of the · Art Strike; This . is possibly the worst, most incoherent response. When we go to bed, cook or laugh, do we do so. fm: capital? Although we are at present doing so in a society where the major benefactors are bastards, to credit. them with complete control, accidental or not is a paranoid conspiracy theory. To talk of your existence merely in terms ofstrategy is to deny the most important and revolutionary impulse - pleasure. On a level ofmundanepracticality, theonlypeoplewhogo on strikeare probably pretty decent anyway. (It would be great to get the pop star artists to shut up for a while though). To disai:m ourselves of methods of struggle/creativity is doing the recuperators' job for them. Capitalism would ofcourse be different, but would it be any better if nothing had evet been · said against it? The strikers are very vocal in exactly why they choose to produce this art ofsilence. The Art Strike has been claimed as a good 'propaganda art.• Why bother? I am only interested ina sustained period of real life-7' and will notexist as a theatrical symbol. Symbolic acts rely entirely on the media coverage . given to them, as opposed to real acts which have a direct impact In this aspect the strike becomes ultra-leftist posture politics. A holier than thou pose rather than the arty-farty one. The most interesting idea to arise in support of the Art Strike is a calling into question of the role of 'artist' or 'politico.' Presumably the people who define themselves into these categories are making an honest attempt at a reaction to society. The trouble comes when they see themselves only in these terms. The reaction becomes a self-policed act of conformity. You still refer to yourself as 'artist' ifyou make a point ofdesisting from the practice known as •art'f or a certain period of time. Itremains a defined role, albeit negative. Surely it is common sense to avoid this adoption of stereotypes, but to impose another on top makes an equal contradiction. . The voluntary shifting of roles can be fun, allowing for play, but then why only three years? And why do people have to do it at the same time? I can imagine the Art Strike Action Committees becoming self-help groups for those with cultural cold turkey. Silence = Death, not just for AIDS. Renunciation of creativity is a tactic of despair, not even that but the abandonment of any tactics whatsoever. - No author credited, first published in Leisure No. 2, Cardiff, Autumn 1989. · · NO ART FOR ART'S SAKE - Extracts Eliot 1 and Karen Eliot 2, 3, 4 Md 5 make up Baltimore's Art Strike Action Committee,'along with about20otherlessdirecdyinwlvedlocal artists. The group wasformed last �earin supportofan international 'ArtS�.' which is set l()��in this January i and. end on .that same date in 1993 Altqough movemen;ts 1Jave • . 44

Th8 Art Strike Papers popped up recently to fight cuts in National Endowqient for the Arts grants and fight the censorship that goes with it (the Corcoran Gallery boycott - th�'salso •A Day Without Art.' a call for . galleries to close or hold AIDS benefits on December l)...,.;. the wide-sweeping Art Strike that the Eliots demand has nothing to c:1Q with those issues. For that matt.er, it has nothing to do with pay, working condi,tions, or the .other usual reasQilS for work action. ( ) 'There have.been 15 or 16 Art Strikes in the past;' Eliot 1 says, explaining the movement's history. 'Most ofthem have tended to frame their activities as being againstspecific regimes, ()I' to make specific changes in the artworld.' But he says the current strike is aimed at the art world's raison d'etre ,.;..,- and not any one particular political ideology · or artistic stance. 'This strike is •more omnidirec­ tional; he says, 'Ies int.ended to attack attitudes which claim to have universal significan e. ' In other words, much ofthe strike is aimed at the egos of the artists themselves, which like the gallery circuit, have elevated the artist to a superior status in the intellectual and creative hierarchies. 'It's interesting to not.e that thegreat majority ofartists I've met.in mylife seem to be particularly nervous about whatthey're doing,' Eliot 1. the group's unofficial spokesman says, 'They have a great deal of�iety aboutwhether or not it has any value. Essentially , whatwe'redoingis trying to make i t clear to them that it doesn't haye any value at all. In fact, (the art) is negative and completely murdero.us and destructive (because of its links to a murderous and dehumanising ruling class).• - Mlchael Anft, Baltimore City Paper 12/10/89. ••• c THE END OF EVERYTHING .... Extracts Iwonder why those who speak of endihg art are always artistS. And haven'fthey berDada. . ·A couple of months ago, Anonymous sent me (and I Uuink her or him) a packet of Art Strike propaganda. 'Demolish Serious Culture' said the flyer. Art Strike Action .Committees in London and Francisco have declared the Yearsl990 to 1993 to be 'the years without art.' In the spirit of anti-art� I have since lost the infonliation, but I recall it as aprotest against- you know - the Commodity. Now, for one thing, Tehcliing Hsieh already did this piece, though only fora Year. During that period, he did not create, look at, read of, or talk about art. To strike, paradoxically, is to become an artist. It's a conceptual project. The Strikers quote Jean Baudrillard's statement 'Art no longer contests any­ thing, if it ever did.' But does refusing to make art cont.est anything? If only it did. - C� Carr, Village Voice, New York 14/1 1/89. eJl1 been trying .to end it for decades already? I rem 5811 45 . . . . .. . . ··

T�Art:Strike Papers EXTRACT FROM NOVOID 7 - ART STRIKE SPECIAL, DECEMBER 1 989 When reading about the Art Strike, one wonders what it really is. Is it just a pllerile attention'-getting device for a few 'artists' whose work Would otherwise es'cape notice? Is it a stupid symbolic gestllre, the product ofanger against adefined target but with no clear plan of3c'tion? or is it a serious response to cultwal problems, which it has some chance of solving? The A.S. isn't any one of these, but a combination of all thtee. lthink many of its contradictions are a result·of taking itself too seriously. Around a kernel of an idea there are the encumbra:Dces of ideology, elitist snottmess and the smug virtuousness ofthe Politically Correct; These distractions caused me to reject the A.S. for a long time, and have probably caused others to reject it too. Another·fautt ofthe A.S.is that it doesn't carry its pointfar enough; Yes, ani.sts enjoy an artificially privilegedrole in society, but they are not alone. Writers, pOets and musicians also get more acclaim than they deserve. This is sigrtificantsince many A.S. organisers have announced that, instead of doing art daring the strike · period, they will write or work on musical projects. Only one, to my knowledge, has announced that he will follow. the A.S. directive: 'Give up art. Feed the starving. ' It is disheartening that the AS AC lacks the moral strength to enact what they preach. Righteousnes8, ·. demanding of sacrifice but only from others/they resemble another group ofphony preachers:...televangelists. Could Stewart Home be the Jim Bakker of the avant-garde. rm starting to think so. All of this posturing should not be confused with the idea itself. When stripped of its extravagant wishful thinking, it's apparent that the A.S. wants change to result from the (in)action of individuals, and not the art world in its entirety. The art world will not give up its privileged status, that much is clear. If individuals, though, begin to question their role in it, thenits effects on society � .necessaijly clinlinished. Art, in !:he current cllltural context, is noise. Some art might be interesting. or even subversive, but it is noise nonetheless. In response, artists can of{er more nojse, in the form of new •art movements' orjust more art, or theycan offer siltmce. The A.S. is asking for this silence. In a time of consta:nt bombardment .with •culture.' silence may be a welcome relief. If this. is what the A.S. is after,. then I support it. . I dort•t support, though, the A.S.'s political motivations, By inferring that il:Je withh()lding of art will precipitate revolution the ASAC is wrongly sugg�ting that � Cultur<f consumption is a necessary part of S�iety. This same error was tnade by the Situationists. It's unfortunate .tha� the ASAC does not have the wisdom to recognise Situationism 's shortcomings. - conn Hinz · · . . .. .. . 46

· T"4AnStrfke.1'aper$ NETWORKING THE '90s ._ Extract Art Strike serves a purpose in the current situation ofJ118il a¢: IHs acl�sifigagent which is intended to get artists thinking about w�y theY • art aJld. whom they serve by doing so. After talking to Stewart Home;\Yh<> originated J1te COllcept, it is my opinion that theconcept is intrinsically C011nected to theEnglishc� system and an understanding of the extreme right and left politics that h.:>ld S\YaY o�r there. For this reason. most North Americans. a.nd indeed,.tliose outSide England, find the whole of the arguments. difficult to gl'asp. .. · · · -J.on Held Jr•. Factsheet Five No. 35, Spring 1990. 20 OF THE> MOST DIFFICULT, AWKWARD AND SEARCHING QUES� TIONS YOU COULD ASK ABOUT THE ART STRIKE 1990-93 1 What is the Art Strike? Art Strike is the totalwithdlawal of all ctiitmal productioQ for a period of 3 years (1990-1993). All artists willcease to distn�te, sell. exhibit, or discuss their work between January 1st 1990 and January 1st 1993 2 Wbat art wiU be str,uck? Art Strike is a total assault upon all cul'1JI'81 activity within the modernist and • . < . . < · · · . . .. · ·•. . . · · ·· . • · ·· post-modernist traditions. 3 Strike for l"�t? . To dismantle the cultural apparatus. 4 Is this a joke? Absolutely not. How can you have showswhei;ipeople don 'teven have shoes? 5 lVllat is tbe Art Str�e? Art Strike is the rough �dtessing Of frelltivity. What an �st considers .to be h� or her iaentity is nothing b1,1ta (tivisive set ofsch<>Qled, snotty attitll.des , 6 What's wrong with being an artist? .• . . To call one person an artist is to deny another the equal gift of vision. 7 What will I be ifl'm not an artist? Think of how many people have experienced sexUal eestisy w1U19ut even talking about making art. 8 what's wrong with maklng art? · Vfe'reliving in an isolation tank, only instea<f of warm water we're bathing in bullshit. Within the information economy, opposition spreads th� flow each s�ent c�tes its own negatioll•· contel".t shifts co11stantl>'• . and die only principle that emer�es fro1n the din is .the principle ofthe flU:X itself, f<>nsumption. · · .. . . · .. ..· ·. . . . . · . . . · · .· · ·· . .·. . · · . . · .. 47

The Art Strike Papers . 9 What is the Art Strike? Silence. 10 What do you expect to accomplish? We will step outside of history. 11 Why should I go on strike? Self-interest 12 Is this a joke? Sure: a joke. a fraud. the worst idea ever. 13 What is the Art Strike? In its origins, just another cocky whiteboy spectacle. Now, however, girls are playing too. 14 What's in it for you? We hope topromote ourown careers, Ofcourse. only the Strike•s failure would accomplish this. so you don't get out of it that way, 15 · Why do so many people hate this idea? Because they stand to lose everything they don •t have and wouidn•t deserve even if they did have iL · 16 Will sex be better in the years without art? It goes without saying. · 17 What is the Art Strike? Art Strike is the ceremonial mask of a movement away from competitive art making and toward an acognitive culture. 18 Who's behind it? Better that a thousand movements fail than one leader succeeds. Anyone can organise the Art Strike. many have. 19 Why 3 years? In the first year the world will be a field of undifferentiated experience. In the second year figures will emerge from the background. In the third year an acognitive culture will arise. 20 Why must we stop making art? Because the refusal of artistic identity is the only weapon left to us and the demolition of serious culture the only way ahead. - Compiled by the Art Strike Action Committee of California, originally published as a flyer, Summer 1989. CONFESSION IN SUPPORT OF THE 1 990.-93 ART STRIKE I may as well admit it from the start. They've been right all along,l'm useless. totally worthless. But then, chances are, so are you, or you wouldn't be wasting your time reading this magazine. Not really wasting your time. Wasting the precious air that your excuse for a body is breathing, when you should be rotting in a rapidly disapi)earing · 48 ..

The Art Strike Papers Amazonianjungle, perfonning theonly functionlhal:you'regoodfor, ascompost. After all. isn't it about time that you did something for the trees after having deforested them for so long for the sake of making �rto put your silly. egotistical drawings on? No. not wasting your time. This magazine might even be damn 'good' foryour lowly conniving, pseudo-sensitive pollution you so ludicrously glorify as ART. Face it. you 're a careerist of the most parasitic kind. At least admit that this CoBalt slopinprintedfonn i.s nomore thana Sonof'TrueCrimes' manual withpretensions of superiority. I have! . When I realised that useful people like car mechanics, wet nurses and rilad bombers havegood reason to scorn my flights of imagination and abstract thinking, I was brave enotigh to blurt out to the world that rm just another con artist. Just out for an unfairly easy living and a free meal. mST LIKE YOU! (dirty ScCIDbler). Do you have the guts to spill it out as honesdy as I have? Or are you just. going to snivel and complain that cushy Bolton Hill (or . wherever) apartment thatyoiJrparentspayforbecause you'reincapableoffacingharsbreality long .enough to support yourself? ·. Or maybe you're too busy being duped into gentrifying Someplace like Hollins Market so that the rich can get richer and the you-know-who can get you-know-whaler. Ever notice how many of your non­ artist neighoours are going to pris<m? Avant-garde = Gentrification. Be it of the . soul or of the city. when the artists coine. there goes the neighbourhood. Not that rm any better than you are. That's why this is a confe8sion. As my parent set (U!NTATIVELY a coNvENIENCB) is infamous forhaving written, 'Artists are only good for three things: making glasses. basket-weaving arid counterfeiting money.• Wellput, but with all due respect. not going far enough. Have you ever asked yourselfwby you're reading this magazine? Prol>ably not, so let me tub it in your mug. Oh, I'd say h8.1f of your motivation lies with your scummy need to pick up those little tricks of the ttade like how to pretCnd to convince the government and corporations that youjust might be smart enough to bad-mouth them if they don't give you payola to support your addle-brained pot habit - au so that they can pretend to be doing something socially usefulby keeping you alive. Then there's your pathetic need to qualm Y9W' microscopic conscience with that big fat mutual pat on the back. 'Gee, you're sooo talented! I justlove the way you take that palette blife and squiggle it around like that! OOOIIll! thatreally is great! That prick andpussy and horse tonguecollage would . really shock your mom and dad! Better not let them see it! (giggle).; So what'stheballpointofthis? TheARTSTRIKE, theonly answertoaproblem we sbould've gotten rid of with the bubonic plague. In fact. why stop for just 3 years? 'fake a go<>dlook at yQurself. stop exercising solely to get your mouth up art alt()gether� Do you want tO be so ashalneci of between Your legs and yoU£$elfthatwhenyou'refifty-fiveand yourgrandchildrencome toVisityou in the nursing home you can't even look them in the eye? I>on't forget, ifeven they hate < you. you won't be able to bum your fucking cigarette money off them, . I>on'tbe more of a scab than you already are, SUPPORT THE �T SJRIK.Ef nm ore, originally published in the Maryland arts magazine CoBalt. · · in. · . . give . · - 49

The Art Strike Papers THE I NTERNATIONAL STRIKE OF ARTISTS? - Extl'acts "Would you take part in an International strike of artists.? As a protest against art system's unbroken repression of the artist and the alienation from the results of his practice. It would be very important io demonstrate a possibility of co-ordiiiating activity independent from art institutions, and organise an international strike of artists. This strike should repre,sent a boycott of art system in a periOd of several months. Duration, exact date of beginning, and fonns of boycott will be worked out on the completion of the lis.t of enrolled artists and propositions. Please give notice of this to the artists you know. The deadline foi: applications/suggestions is15 May 1979." · - I received about forty replies to this circular letter. Majority of artists expressed their reserve to this idea or doubt tO the possibility of its realisation, but there were positive answers too. The idea . of the International artists' strike is under present circumstances probably an utopia However, a8 the processes of institutionalisation of art activities are being successfully applied even to the most radical art projects there is a possibility that this idea could one day become an actual alternative. I therefore bel.ieve that publishing of the replies I receive<J could be of certain foteresL . Coran Dordevlc Dear Goran, Thank you for your letter and apologies for not writing sooner. I have, in fact, been on strike all summer, but it has not changed anything and I am anxioiis to begin work again, which I shall do very soon. GOod luck, · Susan Hiiier Dear Goran Dordevic, Jbank you for yotir leµer o{22 Feb 79. I think the l;Ut system has the same relation to the world syst�m that a seismograph has tC> an earthquake. You cannot change a phenomenon by means ofthe instrument that records it. To change the art system one must change the world system. Be well · Carl Andre ' 50

The. Art Strike Papers . Dear Goran. . . .•• . . . . Thanks for your letter. Personally I am already on strike ofproducing any:tiew form · . .. . · .· · . . · ... . · ·· . in my work since 1965 ....:C. (i.e; 14 years). I don't 8ee what lcould do more -' Best Regards (Daniel) Buren or n ])ear G a , · . •· . Thank you . for your communication .· on the prOP()Sed International· strilre . for Artists. I did not respond because I do not believe that this proposal is either · . . . ·. .· . . · . . · . .. . .· .· . . . . . ·. ··. · .. . • efficient nor sensible. / . MuS<?ums and commercitil galleries will go on functioning very well without the C on of the socially concerned artist, and these ofcourse w011ld be the only ones to possibly join such utrike. �er th �thholding socially critical works fto111 the art-system every ttiek an should employed to inject such works into th�mainstreain an world. m the particularly since theY are normal1y not well received there. Sincerely yours, . . · . · .·· . .. . . . ·. · . .···.·. . . . ()--Operati .. . .· .· )J(}ok . ·. . . . . .· . be . .. . . . : · Hans Haacke The reason Les Levine did nolr�ply is because we �eive literally tllou�ds of circulars in the studio each month and it is impos$ible for Mr. Levine to respond personally to each one of these. We can only deal with personal mail.It' s likely Mr. Levine didn't even see your circular. However, Les Levine is not intere8ted in strikes of any sort. artists• or otherwise. Yours sincerely, Mulberry Baxter Dear Goran. ( ) I am in complete agreement with what you say .about insµtµtions. althoµgh it would be unproductive for me to join a strike. (. . .) . .· · ·. . ·. . . . ·· . . . . . · ... · Yours.· John (Latham) Dear Goran Dordevic, Sorry to take so long, but rather than strike I spend all my energy on striking back at the art system by working around and outside of it and against it and letting it pay for my attempts to subvert it (. . . ) All best, Lucy R. Lippard - First published in Casopis Studenta lstorije Umetosti 3/4, Yugoslavia 1980 with dual Yugoslavian/English text 51

The.Art Strike Papers ART AND CLASS Art, as a category, must be distinguished from music, painting, writing &c. Current usage of the term art treats it as a sub-category of these disciplines; one which differentiates between parts of them on the basis of perceived values. Thus the music ofPhilip Glass is considered art, while that of Adam and the Ants is not. This use of the term art, which distinguishes between different musics, literatures, &c., emerged in the seventeenth-century at the same time as the concept of science. Before this, the term artist was used to describe cooks, shoe-makers, students of the liberal arts, &c. When the term art emerged with its modem usage, it was an attempt on the part of the aristocracy to hold up the values of their class as objects of irrational reverence. Thus art was equated witli truth, and this .truth was the world view of the aristocracy; a world view which would shortly be overthrown by ihe rising bourgeois class. As a revolutionary class, the bourgeoisie wished to assimilate the life of the declining aristocracy. However, since the activities of the bourgeoisie served largely to abolish the previous modes of existence, when it appropriated the concept of art it simultaneously transformed it Thus beauty more or less ceased to be equated with truth, and became associated with individual taste. As art developed, the insistence on form, knowledge of form, and individualism (basi­ cally romanticism), were added to lend authority to the concept as a particular, evolving, mental set of the new ruling class. - Stewart Home, first published in Smile 1 1 , London Summer 1989. Further reading: Distinction: A Social Critique Of The Judgement Of Taste Pierre Bourdieu (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1984). The Cult OfArt: Against Art And Artists Jean Gimpel (Weidenfield & Nicolson, London 1969). Art, An Enemy Of The People Roger L. Taylor (Harvester Press, Hassocks 1978). 52