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It is commonly known that as a consequence of the ready-made, the system of galleries and museums changed the modalities of artistic function in the beginning of the past century. Before the ready-made, all the elements of the artwork were inherent/internal to the material in which the work was realized. Although the artists could have some ideas about norms and values, these external elements were not part of the work of art. This is why an artwork that was designed as an artwork could be recognized as such out of an art context, as well. On the contrary, the content of a ready-made is NOT the concrete object, but its context - i.e., the art gallery or museum. It is possible to say that the context is the content of a ready-made, and therefore, the object of the ready-made is the gallery system in itself (Goran Djordevic). What is much more important is that the appearance, the birth of ready-made allowed galleries and museums to take on the monopoly of evaluating the work of art in society. In fact, that a ready-made was accepted as a work of art openly demonstrates the arbitrariness of the definition of the work of art by the gallery system and museums. We can say that the fact that the ready-made was accepted as a work of art is the purest sign of the real power of the system of galleries and museums in society. From that moment on, this relation is unchanged.
What counts is the self-reproduction of the art (rat) system in itself. We clearly see that the same ideology can accommodate different social modes: it can change the content of its ideas, just to survive as an art system. We have to take into account within our strategies of displaying from the very beginning some "devaluation", as we are conscious that much of what is defined as gendered, or Eastern European, or African, does not necessarily have anything to do with real women, real Eastern Europeans, real Africans. Sooner or later, following the logic of capital, anybody anywhere can be in such a position. The relationships between standardized technologies and local experience are not preformed but made, constructed. Public stability for some is private suffering for others. (Donna Haraway) There is nothing outside contingent, partial symbolic practices, no big other that guarantees their ultimate consistency.
Absolute profanation and secularization are important processes. They are initiated by capital itself. This logical inversion may be summarized in the words of Jean Baudrillard: "After all, it was capital which, throughout history, fed on the destruction of every reference, every human objective, which completely loosened every differentiation between false and real, good and evil in order to introduce a radical law of equivalence and exchange, the iron law of its power. Capital was first to perform intimidation, abstraction, deterritorialization, non-connectedness, etc." Alain Badiou argues that it does not matter if this disintegration of referential nodes is going on in an almost barbaric way, still it has, as Baudrillard was already implying in the 80s, something of the ontological value. The processes of disintegration that are side effects of capitalism question the mythos of presence and of total visibility, and, last but not least, the fetish of the absolute One. The machine of capital itself is showing that the essence of presence is multi-layered, is multitude. This multitude was termed by Peter Weibel as zones of visibility and zones of invisibility. It is necessary to take the inconsistency produced by capital as an inconsistency of the multitude in itself. State democracy, argues Badiou, is constantly perpetuating the consensual organization of community and the law of normality. Normality is the way to disseminate the norm. It is always a situation or a codex of normatively imposed regulations which define what multitude is. This process of establishing and nurturing the norm is termed by Badiou: Counting for the One.
The One is the one, the Capital, and it conforms to what may be defined as the tyrannical-dominating-imperial entity. Counting for the One is what the abstract position is effectuating. Counting for the One, for the tyrannical dominating entity, for the logic of capital, is how the Western Europe and North America function. They count: one, two, three new states will be part of the Whole of the (Western) Europe. The counted states are just the object of the Western Europe's phantasm. But with counting for the One, using such a method, we will never come to the Other, that is Two. Counting, we will never come to the Other. The Other is defined by the fact that we start to count at two. Two is not 1+1, and this is why instead of saying it is the Other, Lacan, according to Alenka Zupancic, says it is Two.
And even more: to say that the Other is two means not explaining the difference between the One and the Other, but pointing to the difference immanent in the Other. The third possibility is the Other of the Other (Zupancic), which means that the third option, between One and the Other, is not in fact a third way, or possibility. The third option is actually already inherent in the Other: the Two of the Other stay for its most internal obstacle. The Other of the Other means that the Other is to be perceived not as the double or the repetition of the One, but parallel to it! In such a constellation the History of the world is not the History of the lost mythical One, but is the History with two parallel sources. In this way, for example, Eastern Europe, Africa, South America, Asia, etc. perceived as Two and not simply the Other of the One, can be seen as one of the possible sources.
I would like to remind you that to be present at the same time, to be parallel, not to become the other from the One, the Other after the One, is also a possible strategy in art and culture with the effect of radical de-realization; juxtaposing reality and its fantasmatic supplement face to face and parallel, one near the other.
And philosophy and art will have a chance to re-articulate the position of art and practice with politics if they would accept the impossible possibility of elaborating on a project that cuts with the state politics or, better to say, if they will be in a position to elaborate on concepts that make visible what is for the state, for the capital edifice, its cultural and democratic institutions seen, perceived as impossible. Insisting on the impossible, and making visible what is not possible to be seen, and re-articulating it, is a way of a possible cut of the counting for the One.
Marina Grzinic
Ljubljana
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