The
Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley is sponsoring the working session
"Occupy as Form" on February 10, 2012. Participants have been invited to
post some brief thoughts on the topic in advance of the event. This
guest posting is by Lily Alexander, PhD student in History of Art and Visual Culture at UC Santa Cruz.
After reading Christoph Spehr's “Free Cooperation” in The
Art of Free Cooperation, though initially inspired by the general political
model proposed by Spehr, I then found myself wondering what might be the “art”
in this, and how could I possibly relate his vision to my initial research into
the work of the net.art artists. I
want to use these pages to begin to explore at least the second of these two
questions.
At the end of the first section, Spehr brings up the
question that is lurking behind his initial explanation of a situation of free
cooperation – how might we structure a politics that are dedicated to free
cooperation? His short answer to
this question resonates with my own perspective. There can be no logical deduction to provide the perfect
solution to such a problem when we are considering the transformation of
countless political, economic, and social organizations with infinite
variability. Thus, we can only
visualize patterns of social practice based on several basic criteria
(100). In Spher's view, the
essential task is to first winddown the instruments of domination. For Spher, revolution and immediate
change are unlikely to work, so instead we must imagine a slow, careful process
in which domination is diminished each day. In part, the problem is a Foucauldian one. Spher suggests that the instruments of
domination (or control) are so pervasive that they have become a part of our
biological composition and we no longer know how to function outside of this
system of domination. In order to
counter this, we must undergo “alternative socialization,” in which individuals
and groups are supported in a process of relearning, out of which “unfold
social capacities.” (101-102) We learn to cooperate rather than be
dominated. We learn to be
free.
Eventually, we will transform every social
organization. This transformation
is not based on one ideal model.
Rather, the process is an open-ended one (103). But as I mentioned before, while there
is no one model, we can imagine possible patterns that may help us to create
concrete organizations of cooperation.
These patterns can evolve out of the learning experiences of past
emancipatory movements (101).
Further, Spehr writes “Social experiences and abilities must be made
available individually and collectively: the collective intellectual heritage
and social wealth must be reappropriated from capital in acts of 'subjective
appropriation. (101)
Aside from the fact that I like Spehr's model for change,
and that I believe it may have real seeds of possibility, my original question
was how this might apply to the work of the net.artists. My thought is the following: the
net.artists' work was an artistic model, taking place across a span of several
years, that provides one example of how such a system of free cooperation might
work. Although their work was
artistic, formal, and social, rather than overtly political, many of the points
that Spher describes in the section I have discussed above, find an echo in the
overall body of work of the net.artists.
We see the creation of an alternative model of artistic production and
distribution– one that is based upon various principles, such as that art and
communication should be free, that art-making can be part of a collaborative
process, and that both physical and internet space should be part of a commons
rather than the property of individuals.
In this way, as Spher notes, historicizing and analyzing
such an experiment, and therefore making it available for those who want to
learn from past models of organizations striving towards systems of free
cooperation, might be a valuable project. This is just my first attempt at
trying to think through the relationship between the art/politics relationship
between Spher's political vision and the artistic projects of the
net.artists.
I want to apologize as the above post, though related to the subject of my blog, was submitted by mistake. The intended post was as follows:
ReplyDeleteFree Cooperation:
In an essay entitled “Free Cooperation,” German political theorist Christoph Spehr proposes a politics of free cooperation. In thinking through how we might structure such a politic, Spehr is clear that there can be no single, ideal model. Rather we can only visualize patterns of social practice through an analysis of the rich experiences of past emancipatory movements. Though organizations of free cooperation are not formed on a specific model, and the focus is on maintaining an open-ended process of transformation and adaptation, Spher does give certain basic criteria for such a system, including the necessity for each individual to have equal power to influence rules, to end their participation, and to give conditions for their continued involvement. The Occupy movement in many ways exemplifies the characteristics of such a loose, deliberately informal, political organization. Elements of the movement that have inspired much debate, such as the lack of hierarchical structure, or the absence of a highly specific, agreed-upon set of demands, may be considered formal strengths when understood through the principles of free cooperation. Because the Occupy movement embodies a citizen-based initiative that is both loosely formulated and self-generative, it does not adhere to the typical methodology of more traditional initiatives, with its predictable set of revendications, which in turn define, limit, and channel the potentialities of its constituents into predictable forms, such as political interest groups or unions. Unimpeded by such a narrow focus (which, in cases where a specific legislative outcome is desired for instance, is clearly an advantage), the Occupy movement, may be considered, along with other grass-root protest movements which had deep, transformative ambitions but no “agenda” that could be reduced to a narrow legislative agenda or focus (such as May 68 or the Civil Rights movement), a particularly successful application of the doctrines of free cooperation.