Commemorating the Great Recession

The Great Recession (21 September, 2012) © Casey Lynch 2011

A new work, in the style of Goya. Also, a proposed public sculpture for anywhere there is an apple store...

The Work of Art in the Hyper-Relational Age

Benjamin at Tiravanija Opening © Casey Lynch 2012

The mass is a matrix from which all traditional behavior toward works of art issues today in a new form. Quantity has been transmuted into quality. The greatly increased mass of participants has produced a change in the mode of participation. The fact that the new mode of participation first appeared in a disreputable form must not confuse the spectator. Yet some people have launched spirited attacks against precisely this superficial aspect. Among these, Duhamel has expressed himself in the most radical manner. What he objects to most is the kind of participation which the relational art elicits from the masses. Duhamel calls the relational art “a pastime for helots, a diversion for uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence which kindles no light in the heart and awakens no hope other than the ridiculous one of someday becoming a ‘star’ in Los Angeles.” Clearly, this is at bottom the same ancient lament that the masses seek distraction whereas art demands concentration from the spectator. That is a commonplace.

The question remains whether it provides a platform for the analysis of the relational art. A closer look is needed here. Distraction and concentration form polar opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it. He enters into this work of an the way legend tells of the Chinese painter when he viewed his finished painting. In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art. This is most obvious with regard to buildings. Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction. The laws of its reception are most instructive.

Buildings have been man’s companions since primeval times. Many art forms have developed and perished. Tragedy begins with the Greeks, is extinguished with them, and after centuries its “rules” only are revived. The epic poem, which had its origin in the youth of nations, expires in Europe at the end of the Renaissance. Panel painting is a creation of the Middle Ages, and nothing guarantees its uninterrupted existence. But the human need for shelter is lasting. Architecture has never been idle. Its history is more ancient than that of any other art, and its claim to being a living force has significance in every attempt to comprehend the relationship of the masses to art. Buildings are appropriated in a twofold manner: by use and by perception—or rather, by touch and sight. Such appropriation cannot be understood in terms of the attentive concentration of a tourist before a famous building. On the tactile side there is no counterpart to contemplation on the optical side. Tactile appropriation is accomplished not so much by attention as by habit. As regards architecture, habit determines to a large extent even optical reception. The latter, too, occurs much less through rapt attention than by noticing the object in incidental fashion. This mode of appropriation, developed with reference to architecture, in certain circumstances acquires canonical value.

For the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning points of history cannot be solved by optical means, that is, by contemplation, alone. They are mastered gradually by habit, under the guidance of tactile appropriation.

The distracted person, too, can form habits. More, the ability to master certain tasks in a state of distraction proves that their solution has become a matter of habit. Distraction as provided by art presents a covert control of the extent to which new tasks have become soluble by apperception. Since, moreover, individuals are tempted to avoid such tasks, art will tackle the most difficult and most important ones where it is able to mobilize the masses. Today it does so in the relational art. Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the relational art its true means of exercise. The relational art with its shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway.

The relational art makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the relational arts this position requires no attention. The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one.

*of course, this is the final section of The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction with the words "movie" and "film" replaced with "relational art."  this really saved me a lot of time coming up with a good critical stance...

What makes a meme a meme? Can ambiguity, self-referential-ity, and critical implications make a meme art? Do memes already have these attributes  Are memes already art?

Calling Home

Since I moved out of my parent’s house 10ish years ago, I’ve never had a “home” phone, only a mobile. In that time, I’ve had 5 or 6 phones, and 3 different numbers. I’ve always been pretty good at having Sprint transfer my contacts, or using Google to back them up. Among the ever growing number of contacts was my parents home number, the land-line number to the house that I grew up in. It has always been in there as “Home,”  and there were separate entries for my Mother’s and Father’s mobile numbers, “Mom” and “Dad” respectively.

My wife and I have been together, counting dating, most of those ten years since I left home.  She is listed under “Jennifer Lynch” and “Kittun”. This March, we found out that she is pregnant. In order to try to get some of our finances in order, we decided to sell our house. It was not our first home together (we have lived in apartment homes all over Atlanta, in NYC and Providence,) but it was the first home that we owed, the first property that had our names on the title. Still, we never had a home phone, a shared landline number. When filling out documents, whoever was holding the pen or typing on the keyboard would put her or my mobile number in the “Home” blank – it probably makes for a quintessential definition of the “postmodern home.”

At any rate, we are currently in another apartment, another temporary home, until we get another house.

We used the money we made from selling our house to pay off some debts, buy my wife a new car, and get me a new cell phone. All my contacts transferred just fine: “Jenifer Lynch/Kittun”, “Mom”, “Dad”, “Home,” etcetera, etcetera.

When we moved, we had to transfer all of our utilities, and the cable company convinced my wife to add a home phone to our bundle in order to save some money. I thought this was a good idea, because as someone who does contract work, I could get a fax machine and start writing off a portion of our rent/mortgage as a home office.

A couple weeks went by, we got settled into our new place, and decided that there’s not quite enough space for a fax machine, so the landline went unused. At the same time, we had both been experiencing poor reception in our apartment, so I started thinking that we should maybe get a phone to plug into the wall.

This past weekend, Jennifer and I took a 350 mile round trip to visit all of our parents. We met each set at a different location; at the lake, at the house, at the stadium. We were able to stay in touch, make and change plans, and get directions by using our mobile phones.

While at my parent’s house, I asked my mom if they had any old phones they weren’t using. She listed all the ones lying around their house, to which I responded with a wishy-washy, half-hearted rejection. On a whim that evening, she picked up a $10 corded-phone while running an errand to the office supply store. It was perfect.

When we got back to our apartment, we unpacked our stuff, started the laundry, and took showers. Tonight, relaxing down into my current home, I decided to plug our new phone into the wall to see if it would actually work. (And to find out what our phone number is.)

After hooking it up, I picked up the receiver and heard a noise I hadn’t heard in a long time, a dial-tone. For my first test, I pushed the buttons to call my mobile phone, and recalled how as a teenager, my friends and I would try to play pop songs with the different key tones. Within seconds, my cell phone rang. I had a silly thought that this would be a good opportunity to have a talk with myself.

Then I really realized something. What label was I going to give this new number in my cell phone “contacts?”

Maybe it’s not as big of a deal as I have made it, but knowing that this new number would stick with me at least as long as I continued living in the Atlanta area, it would need a name…

I went to my “contacts” folder on my mobile phone as if I was walking through a wormhole. I first went to the contact “Home.” I clicked “Edit,” and changed the name to “Grandma and Papa,” the name my nephews and nieces, and soon my little baby girl, call my parents. I then went back to my call history, selected my new landline number, and added it to my contacts as “Home.”