The #Occupy movement is drowning in pleas for compassion and whiny personal stories on the one hand and pseudo-revolutionary insanity of kids who read too much Zizek and Baudrillard and never managed to digest their readings.
Via The Mahablog (that I highly recommend to everybody as a great source of balanced and insightful discussions of politics and economy), I discovered an initiative called Occupy Museums and apparently launched by the Occupy Wall Street’s Art and Culture group.
Here is what the initiative’s organizer had to say:
We see through the pyramid schemes of the temples of cultural elitism controlled by the 1%. No longer will we, the artists of the 99%, allow ourselves to be tricked into accepting a corrupt hierarchical system based on false scarcity and propaganda concerning absurd elevation of one individual genius over another human being for the monetary gain of the elitest of elite. For the past decade and more, artists and art lovers have been the victims of the intense commercialization and co-optation or art. We recognize that art is for everyone, across all classes and cultures and communities. We believe that the Occupy Wall Street Movement will awaken a consciousness that art can bring people together rather than divide them apart as the art world does in our current time.
Let’s be clear. Recently, we have witnessed the absolute equation of art with capital. The members of museum boards mount shows by living or dead artists whom they collect like bundles of packaged debt.
I sometimes complain about my students’ writing. None of them, however, could have ever managed to write something as egregiously bad as the above-quoted passage. So this is good news already.
Jokes aside, the real question now is whether the #Occupy movement can offer anything more than pleas for compassion, stories of the intense anxieties of the well-off, and the pseudo-revolutionary proclamations from a bunch of overpampered kids.
Clarissa's Blog 
Once again it is strange for me — and I find it quite “Western” — this demand to be “given” something. Who is the benevolent deity who needs to bestow? Once again (concerning my thesis), my thesis guy had little money, but had achieved a little fame through having won a book award. He decided he needed to go to East Germany to carouse with the potential sympaticos over there. So he got on a plane, without a passport and with holes in his shoes. When he arrived at the other end, he told the authorities that he was seeking refuge from the governmental regime back home and that their own media would not allow them to put “a famous writer” in prison. Now, that’s what I call gumption — even if it did involve embroidering the truth. The strategy worked, too.
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I feel the same, to be honest. The “Gimme, Gimme” routine gets quite annoying after a while.
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“pyramid schemes of the temples of cultural elitism”
“co-optation”
“divide them apart”
Fucking Shakespeare that is.
This one time I went to the LA County Museum of Art and saw hundreds of magnificent works from all over the world and all throughout history. I sure felt victimized.
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Madame Suess, were I rich enough to ‘victimise’ all of you, I would invite you to live in my study and snark in this annotated fashion for our collective entertainment. You’re a delight and a treasure.
Jennifer, it’s funny you should see this as a ‘Western’ thing, because all through school (which had been set up by the darling colonisers, and at my time still had several Anglo-Indian teachers), we were given to understand that the West worked hard and honestly for everything it got, and the East was steeped in a culture of entitlement and demands. What do you say to that?
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After I dropped my supplies for the Occupy Toronto encampment today, I went to the Marc Chagall exhibit at the Ontario Art Gallery where I’m a member. (http://www.ago.net/chagall-and-the-russian-avant-garde) After watching the film examining the historical references for the time period when Chagall was commissar of art for Vitebsk, Belorussia and reading your quote on Occupy Art, I have the distinct impression that this sounds like something that Aleksandr Bogdanov, a Russian cultural theorist might have written supporting the Proletarskie kulturno-prosvetitelnye organizatsii in 1920 Russia.
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“For the past decade and more, artists and art lovers have been the victims of the intense commercialization and co-optation or art”
Weren’t Adorno & Co. complaining about the same in the 1920s? I really wish people knew more World history.
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According to Maha’s commenters, there’s a very likely chance that the “Occupy Museums” movement is a fabricated stunt, and that we are, in their words, “being trolled”.
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I hope this declaration from the protesters is not a stunt. That would be pity because it’s good.
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It seems to have been a real thing that happened yesterday, if you go to Bloomberg’s site and look up “occupy museums” in the news section.
The group had to skip Frick because “three museums is a lot in one day.”
Now we all know that artists make shit up by profession, and they put a lot of energy into their shit-making. This still could be some kind of elaborate goof. Such a thin line between master trolling and poorly planned bullshit.
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the real question now is whether the #Occupy movement can offer anything more than pleas for compassion, stories of the intense anxieties of the well-off, and the pseudo-revolutionary proclamations from a bunch of overpampered kids.
Yes, it can! Here comes “Hot Chicks of OWS” filmed by Steven Greenstreet.
http://hotchicksofoccupywallstreet.tumblr.com/
The filmed women, btw, didn’t know they would be put on a site of such nature, and honestly thought they were seen as political activists, sharing their opinions.
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When Steven Greenstreet was criticised, f.e. by Rebecca Traister who said
He proceeded to make rape jokes. Here a post by Amanda with the screenshot
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/speaking_out_about_ows_sexual_harassment
Classy, ah?
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Do you tell your students to make arguments rather than assertions? If so, you should follow your own advice. This post says nothing except that, according to you, Occupy Museums constitutes “pseudo-revolutionary proclamations from a bunch of overpampered kids.” Why do you hold that view? Who knows?
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In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not teaching here. When I write my blog, I’m not at work.
And it’s very frustrating having to explain for a gazillionth time in a row that this is not an academic publication or a university lecture. This is a personal opinion blog. Which is stated in the blog’s header.
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Believe me, I did not mistake this post for an academic publication or a university lecture. The academics I know — and most of the non-academics too — are the kinds of people that give reasons for their personal opinions whether they’re at work or not.
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Then why did you begin the discussion by mentioning how I interact with my students? I’m not seeing any students of mine take part in the discussion. Are you?
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I was responding to the second-to-last paragraph of your post.
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