Tobey Crockett
Everybody is an Artist
Everybody is an Artist
Whenever I raise this issue that everybody is an artist, and even more so now that digital technology makes effective tools available to such a wide range of people, I get a predictable range of objections. The objections mostly center on issues of quality (the work is not any good), creativity (people are just not that creative), expressivity (self-expression is not art), and commodity status ( who would pay for art if it were everywhere). By and large, I think the objections miss the point, because what lies behind the idea that "everybody is an artist" is an urge to create a society in which such a statement would not be absurd, but would instead reflect a cultural reality with a different set of operations than we have today. For the sake of argument, what would society have to be like in order to produce the result that everybody is an artist, and could those conditions ever occur in our global future? I am thinking that this question presupposes that issues raised by post-structuralist, post-feminist, post-colonial and posthuman theory are important. While these theories have been useful in partially dismantling the oppression of the Enlightenment project, it is worth asking if there is anything of traditional humanism worth saving. To propose that everybody is an artist is a way of addressing this topic. Questions of quality, the canon, multiculturalism, hierarchy, inclusion, historiography, universalism, essentialism, particularity, deconstruction, authority, reception, identity, subjectivity, consciousness and pleasure, among others, are all at issue in this simple proposition. I will try to touch on these as best I can in this limited space. The quality issue is actually a question of politics, and not a matter of perception nor aesthetics. "Quality" is defined by the interaction of authority and audience. The post-structuralists give us marvellous tools for deconstructing the author and understanding reception. It is possible for us to have a deconstructed author in which all receivers are authors and the work is what the audience wants to make of it. Post-structuralist theories clearly indicate that we are all undertaking acts of creative interpretation at every moment. In this line of reasoning, quality is a cultural construction, and the actual content of the works is effectively meaningless. But what is really meant by the objection about "quality" is the notion of the "canon" versus "multi-culturalism", implying that the canon knows best. By now we know that this use of the term "canon" is purely a tool of cultural imperialism, a method of limiting market access and preserving the commodity status of the art object. And it too has nothing to do with meaning in the work of art. Is there any other way to talk about quality? Don't we have any non-culturally-imperialist ways of finding "good" in the world? That seems like a question with far reaching implications. I can see some promising trajectories happening via dialogic digital media when people tell their stories, express themselves, share this freely, enable access for as many others as possible and begin to sort out together what it would mean to have an inclusive, particularized, non-hierarchical and pleasurable discourse as the foundation for cultural expression. As we seek to develop our technologies further, and even begin to think of ourselves as potentially posthuman, how can we account for the majority of the population which remains unenfranchised by these new media? This dialogue which takes place on a peer to peer, many to many basis, interests me greatly. Perhaps a nascent aesthetics of particularity or even empathy are opening up important avenues for the future of art making, new directions which are in the process of materializing more clearly. Art can be transformative, as well as reflective. But immediately the objections about creativity and expressivity come up. The first one says that people as a rule are just not that creative. If everybody was as creative as I am suggesting, then the whole world would be filled with artists already. This view also sees digital media strictly as a set of tools, rather than enabling an enfranchisement in a new way of thinking, being or acting. Coupled with this view of limited creativity is the second objection, which sees self-expression as an inadequate definition of art. "I don't mind if people express themselves," a well known authority on art and digital media said to me recently, "Just as long as they don't call it art." Are these fair and reasonable objections? Maybe for the way society is today, yes. But if instead of being inundated with messages about how comparatively worthless their contributions were, a cultural construct if there ever was one, people were encouraged to express themselves, I am sure we would have a much healthier society than we do now. Widespread feelings of failure to live up to such media induced expectations is a cause of psychic rupture for many. Child development experts tell us that children hit a wall of cultural expectations just prior to puberty, a pre-adolescent phase of identity construction during which they begin a rigorous process of self-criticism. Realizing that their pictures do not match up with the photorealism which they see all around them, they essentially give up the art making process. Girls especially seek to emulate such pervasive imagery, not only in their artwork, but in their bodies as well. Advertising is specifically engineered to engender feelings of "lack", so it is hardly surprising that such imagery reinforces other social messages about worthlessness. But instead of denigrating people's abilities to be imaginative and creative as an inherent lack, it would be more accurate to portray people's creativity as stunted and repressed by a deliberate failure to acknowledge and nurture their talents. Why deliberate? Perhaps because a worldwide workforce, itself subject to identification as participating in some form of a global culture, which is empowered by an ability to express itself, think out of the box or take self-actualizing action would likely disrupt the status quo. Referring back to the discussion of quality vis authority, with its implicit hierarchical control of resources, access and benefits, it is clear that determinations of what counts as art is again a political benefit based on power relations, and not truly anchored to questions of merit. Saying that self-expression is not art is an act of political violence aimed at proponents of multi-culturalism and anti-globalisation. Theorists should take time to consider what an investment in an uncreative subjectivity buys in our political economy. Finally, the questions of the commodity status of art and the role of the consumer short circuit the acknowledgement of individual creativity. There is a concern that if everyone were a reasonably good, acknowledged and nurtured artist, then no one would pay billions of dollars to sustain the entertainment industry and the arts. This is an illogical conclusion, as if by becoming themselves active, everyday artmakers would relinquish completely the role of passive audience, but it comes up whenever everyday creativity is broached. It is also a striking piece of logic to equate a creative populace with financial disaster. How can we understand this? The American entertainment industry, an economy large enough to sustain a good-sized country, is not concerned with artistic expression, but with intellectual property, and keeping consumers in a state of perpetual consumption as part of the mainstream economy. What if instead, the entertainment industry were seen as a large resource whose components were continually recycled as part of the daily output of self-expressive, everyday artists? Artists of all stripes would have to be seen in a new light. This is happening every day in the land of hip hop and dj remixes. Digital authoring re-balances the bottom line of commodity fetishized artworks and intellectual property. Everyone can be an artist, but they might not get paid the same way. What are some of the socio-economic changes which such an approach would require? Intellectual property would have to be viewed much more in an "asian" model, wherein it is not "originality" which is as highly valued, so much as the contribution to the "commons" from which others may learn to emulate good and beautiful uses. Notions of freshness and innovation would shift from the never-been-done-before to the ideal of mastery of tropes implicit in the "asian" model above, combined with the unique-ness factor of western individualism, all the while not slipping into mere postmodern pastiche. This is the contribution of a particularized approach, and why it is important that everyone moved to do so, be enabled to make a contribution to the bio-diversity of our cultural gene pool, to borrow heavily from a biological analogy. In so contributing, it would become clear that the notion of "inclusion" results not so much in mediocrity, as it provides a base line of common experience from which to avoid, not replicate, the perils of universalism and essentialism. This would not obviate an artistic discourse, but open it up to more participants who could play and create in response to one another. The tools are already here. Digitization of intellectual property renders it as communalized material, regardless of legal strictures. Dialogic public spheres are taking shape, and new aesthetic vocabulary is emerging to describe artistic phenomena related to play, digital authoring, particularity and empathy. Access is becoming more concretized as the idealized noosphere girdles the planet with not so much the computer monitor and keyboard interface as the cell phone and wireless web applications. Are these changes purely technological and/or tool-based, or is something else happening? Slowly a shift in cultural consciousness is taking place as mass media engenders a mass of individual media percolating through the system. Individuals are finding both the desire and the means to tell their self-expressive stories and to participate in the expanding network of peer to peer communications. Technology can enable, but not lead, human intervention into the flow of historic events which shape the current socio-political climate. Culture is still the product of human choices. In conclusion, the future in which it would be possible to say "everybody is an artist" would have solved many other pressing problems along the way. Tobey Crockett La Crescenta, California |
