Brave New Avant Garde: Essays on Contemporary Art and Politics

252 Pages·2012·6.089 MB·English

by  Marc James Leger

Léger gathers up what remains of the avant garde’s
once-vaunted radicality and hurls it into a whirling Žižekian
accelerator. Like a “pervert’s guide” to contemporary art,
Brave New Avant Garde reveals a multitude of interventionist
practices and rapidly revolving dark particles that in light of
recent events in Tunisia and Egypt no longer appear exotic,
but instead vibrate prognostic, as if heralding the dawn of a
sweeping phase change in twenty-first century art and
politics.
Gregory Sholette, author of Dark Matter: Art and Politics in
the Age of Enterprise Culture
In this critical tour de force, Marc Léger successfully exposes
the contradictions that animate contemporary art and that
govern the actions of those who “participate in the game of
culture” in the age of neoliberalism. And yet Léger is not
content to simply critique, he also proposes alternatives
through the medium of his concept of a sinthomeopathic
cultural praxis, the product of a successful act of balancing on
and moving along a pro-avant-gardist tightrope woven of
recent politically and socially engaged art practices.
David Tomas, author of Beyond the Image Machine: A
History of Visual Technologies
Marc James Léger’s informed and thought-provoking analysis
of critical art practices and related theories provides essential
orientation for anyone looking for ways to resist and subvert
what Peter McLaren has defined as the two thieves of
capitalism and representative democracy.
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Oliver Ressler, artist and filmmaker, author of Alternative
Economics, Alternative Societies
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Brave New
Avant Garde
Essays on Contemporary Art
and Politics
4
Brave New
Avant Garde
Essays on Contemporary Art
and Politics
Marc James Léger
Winchester, UK
Washington, USA
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First published by Zero Books, 2012
Zero Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd.,
Laurel House, Station Approach,
Alresford, Hants, SO24 9JH, UK
[email protected]
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Text copyright: Marc James Léger 2011
ISBN: 978 1 78099 050 7
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Printed in the USA by Offset Paperback Mfrs, Inc
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Avant Garde Hypothesis
Chapter 1: Andrea Fraser and the Subjectivization of
Institutional Critique
Chapter 2: Community Subjects
Chapter 3: In a Way We Are All Hokies: Polylogue on the
Socio-Symbolic Frameworks of Community Art
Chapter 4: A Brief Excursus on Avant Garde and Community
Art
Chapter 5: Welcome to the Cultural Goodwill Revolution: On
Class Composition in the Age of Classless Struggle
Chapter 6: The Subject Supposed to Over-Identify: BAVO
and the Fundamental Fantasy of a Cultural Avant Garde
Chapter 7: The Revolution Will (Not) Be Aestheticized
Chapter 8: From Artistic Activism to Geocritique: A Few
Questions for Brian Holmes
Notes
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Acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without the
encouragement of the colleagues and comrades I have worked
with in the past few years. In 2006 I completed my doctoral
dissertation in the program in Visual & Cultural Studies at the
University of Rochester. Thanks go to my supervisor Joan
Saab for her support of my research, which gave me the
intellectual freedom I needed to make the move from radical
democracy towards Žižekian ideology critique. My
dissertation would never have been accomplished had it not
been for the loving support of Rosika Desnoyers. Upon
completion of my thesis I set out to consider the challenges to
Marxism that have been posed by contemporary anarchist
theory and post-operaism. During this time I have enjoyed a
productive relationship with Bruce Barber, whose book
Performance, [Performance] and Performers I had the
pleasure and privilege to work on as editor. The chapter “In a
Way We Are All Hokies” was first presented at a Universities
Art Association of Canada panel chaired by Bruce in 2007.
We also co-chaired a UAAC panel in 2010 on the subject of
“the neoliberal undead.”
Working on Bruce’s [performance] books gave me the
inspiration to produce a project of my own, which turned out
to be the edited text Culture and Contestation in the New
Century, published by Intellect in London. Many wonderful
exchanges came from this project, including a collegial
friendship with Aras Ozgun, with whom I co-chaired a panel
on “Creative Labour and Creative Industries” at UAAC in
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2008, and collaborations with Oliver Ressler, which includes
an interview that was published in Art Journal as well as a
North American presentation of his exhibition “A World
Where Many Worlds Fit” at the Foreman Art Gallery in
Sherbrooke, Québec, in 2010. During this time I have had the
pleasure of meeting and working with, in person or through
correspondence, Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge, Lucia
Sommer, Vitaly Komar, Brian Holmes, Gregory Sholette,
Mathieu Beauséjour, Rosemary Heather, Izida Zorde, Gerald
Raunig, John Jordan, Petra Gerschner, Jackie Sumell, Pierre
Allard, Federico Zukerfeld, Yahya Madra, Isabelle Lelarge,
Jelena Stanovik, Christina Ulke and Marc Herbst. All the
while I also enjoyed the abiding support of my teacher Claude
Lacroix, who gave me the opportunity to present new
research to his students at Bishop’s University.
Thanks go to the magazines and journals that supported my
ideas during this time. In particular, I want to acknowledge
the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, where I first published a
version of “A Brief Excursus on Avant Garde and
Community Art” in the 2008 issue. A different version was
also published in C Magazine #98 (Summer 2008).
“Community Subjects” was first published in the Montreal art
magazine Etc #81 (2008). The chapter “Welcome to the
Cultural Goodwill Revolution” was published online by
Journal of Aesthetic and Protest in 2009 and parts of it also
appeared in “Avant Garde and Creative Industry,” which was
published in Creative Industries Journal in 2010. A shorter
version of the interview with Brian Holmes was published in
Art Papers (Summer 2010).
Thanks go to my family and especially my mother, Denise
Léger, for never tiring of talking with me about religion and
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