Notes for Discussion

The artist creates a model in the form of an artwork that is inserted into the social/political sphere in order to stimulate dialogue and critique, where critique may not exist.

The artist's inner world is made manifest through artistic expression where it might have impact and reshape the outer world of the social/political sphere.

The Proun is a sign of a social utopia. Based on the "basis of weight, speed and the direction of movement," a shift of definition derived from Malevich's interest in time as the "fourth dimension of representation." The viewer must navigate, figuratively through and around the work, to experience it fully. The painting could be turned in different ways revealing different axes. His intent was to represent a force that went beyond nationality or personality. The balance between the tensions of the forces of the individual parts came to represent the flow of life in general. A harmony and balance in this abstract world of time and space become patterns for individual and social organization in the modern world of technology and electricity. The Proun represents a higher form of consciousness and order and thus a revolutionary force in the evolution of man. The Prouns are also visionary architectural renderings, reshaping modern urban space, new models for organizing social structures. The Prouns thus have a transformative power, through techniques of abstraction rather than figurative representation as seen in later Russian Constructivism, to signify a higher spiritual order.

Contrast the Proun with the Liquid Architecture series of Marcos Novak, in which the notion of time and motion is activitated digitally in hyperspace.

El Lissitzky's2 Squares, a political parable, is a new design treatment in its shift from stasis to dynamism, becoming a metaphor for encouraging the reader to take action through the newly realized dynamic forces of graphics and texts). Lissitsky idealized the book as a vehicle for social change. It is the construction of a new world, a kind of genesis story as told through constructivist motifs. This "Supremetist tale" is a narrative sequence of six images or "constructions," that tell the story of a black square and a red square that come to earth from afar and witness a storm where everything flies apart. After the storm, a three-dimensional structure is implanted on the black square and is covered by the red square. The black square withdraws but does not disappear completely. The space in the images changes from a flat surface in the first to the polydirectional deep space of the second, the chaotic explosion of elements in the third and fourth, and the return to a surface seen from above in the last two. Lissitzky made clear his intention to create a text with an expanded vocabulary of signs that demanded of the reader a heightened visual literacy. In this language, diagonal lines become "force vectors" that move the reader's eye through the narrative. 2 Squares was Lissitzky's first demonstration of the "simultaneous" book of the future that would accommodate both the space and time dimensions of the word – its image and sound – and would forge the two into a new unity. This would lead to the film.

One of the images from 2 Squares, a call-to-action stating: "Don't read: Take paper, rods, blocks. Set them out, color, build," has been reinterpreted for the 21st Century in the Telematic Manifesto, organized by Randall Packer. This project involved artists, curators, and technologists discussing the impact of telematics on art, culture, and society at the turn of the new Millennium.

The artist uses techniques of parody, satire, appropriation and mixology to force analysis.

The question is: why, particularly in American culture, do we not exploit the insights of the artist on the national stage, particularly when artists engaged with technology could make considerable contribution to issues related to our increasingly technological world.

The artist attempts at times social transformation through collective action, enabled by the medium of the Internet. According to Peter Weibel, curator of Net_Condition, "The socially revolutionary utopias of the historic avant-garde movements of enlightenment, such as freedom of contract, equal opportunities, and intercultural emancipation are now to be implemented by technology."

Artistic activity on the Net is encouraged to expand and blur its boundaries and explore political, sociological, philosophical, and scientific ideology. This is exemplified by such projects/collectives as RTMARK, Critical Art Ensemble, Mongrel, and Hell.com.

Jodi has been discussed in my article for the Net exhibition, "Beyond Interface."

Mixology on the Web is expanded through the extensive opportunity for remixing, appropriation, collage, etc. Artists such as Paul Miller (aka DJ Spooky) and Mark Napier make extensive use of this technique in on-line and performance art. These artists extend the technique of collage borrowed from their ancestral avant-garde to freely re-contextualize cultural artifacts appropriated from the Internet.

The global Net audience becomes an active participant, and agent of change, in the feedback loop of collective action.

  • Victor Margolin, “The Struggle for Utopia,” University of Chicago Press (1997)

The triumvirate of artist, scientist and industrialist becomes the model for collaborative social action. The artist's role is to envision the future of society and lead, as part of the avant-garde.

Art is not separate, not isolated to the interior artistic vision, but is linked to the real world and to the social life. The artist exploration of inner meaning has new potency when externalized as social action.

The role of the artist thus becomes a participant of the social and political life, a significant player.

The utopian proposal as articulated by the artist functions as a model for new ways of seeing and new social and political structures.

  • Marshall McLuhan, “Understanding Media,” MIT Press, Boston, MA (1964)

The artist is a barometer of the social condition. In regards to technology, the artist provides "immunity" from the impact of technology by nature of his sensitivity to the social transformations brought about by the changing media.

The artist perceives himself as a significant player, not locked up in the studio or the academy. The artist, perhaps more than anyone, grasps the implication of his own time, through the analysis and critique inherent in the artistic process.

How does the artist enter into the mainstream of social activity? By inventing new forms which place him in the dialogue, raise the appropriate questions, and further stimulate the dialogue.

  • Stewart Home, “The Assault on Culture,” AK Press, Stirling, England (1991)

The integration of art and politics (and art and life) has tended towards the utopian, by nature of its yearning for extreme modification of existing conditions. This form also has a tendency towards the totalization of art, the blurring of boundaries of genre and media, tending towards the theatrical and the transformative. This form often takes shape as the gesamtkunstwerk (total artwork).

Utopianism is thus a striving for the unattainable, the creation of impossible models to which mankind aspires in its idealism.