art?
Was checking arts linked Occupy Museums acts, and asked myself why am not exactly taking part of such actions/activities..
There seems, for me, to be a fair few elements that seem to prevent me from taking part, however here & now I’d like try focusing on power.
To do occupation, perhaps only in my limited mind, there is a sequence of imagining the activity, planning an execution of the imagination, and doing the plan. This seems to make the act of occupation immanent/reducible to the said sequence rather than the act. The sequence is of executing an imaginative process, and the act of embodiment is an illustrative jesture, of the imagination, not part of the imaging process itself.
This raises problems of seeming duality – between mind/body, imagination/action, etc. – however more than that, I think aesthetically, the breakage for me is that to do, to ebact, the imagination, because the act is Not an irreducible part of the said imagination process, one requires Power. The said power is a concentrated direction of energies with a direct purpose. Hence, as much as I might agree & sympathise with the purpose, it has to be said that for people who disagree, the sense is of arbitrary use of power. One has to be initiated to imagine this energy is not used arbitrarily, hence it can be said that the use of the energy to change stuff is a usage of power, limited as it might be, to change a meaning, intent and usage of other powers that currently rule supreme.
Hence, aiming to replace one arbitrary activities with other, is just a change of meanings, not that of sequences. It pre-supposes that I, the group, we, know better than others, hence legitimise, for the group, the activities..
In a sense, we have an occupation of occupation by the occupied – when i assume occupative activities are done by dispossessed.. (.. or people that, respectfully, feel they are?)
In this sense, it feels like perhaps occupation like activities propagate the very language, the very being, and perhaps the very kind of power based legitimacy that they, and me too, fancy getting rid of…
The use of power to enact imagination, from a rhythmic perspective, also reminds me of authoritarian sequence processes that was displayed by people like Mao, Lenin, Pol Pot, Stalin, Pinochet, Napoleon and indeed, Hitler.. The rhythm of needing to enact imagination Now. Famously, Lenin wanted to do communism in his life time, rather than follow Marx more lengthy and slow rhythm..
(Indeed, Marx was a bit upset by the Paris commune on account the He, Marx, is yt to finish the Capital..)
Point being that imagination is in and of itself an activity the Is. An activity that is a sort of Being. By the search of how to enact/embody in an immediate timescale/quick-rhythm, it seems to me that people, unintentionally, abuse the very imagination through ignoring its being, its own language/dna way of living, and thinking of imaginative processes as precurssors to acts.. Even, at times, to the extent that imagination is taken as legitimate, vallied and positive only *if* it is actionable..
(I experience this every time I mention selling the israeli citizenship to people who might actually want/need it. Like refugees… People’s reaction are like: but you can not!!! However the sequence is precisely that, we can indeed imagine!!)
However, it seems to me that to question and critique the notions am referring to here, I will be looking to develop imagination technologies, practices and aesthetics with slave prostitution.. (tbc, i hope..)