Tag Archives: Jacques Rancière


Samo bedaki in kopitarji

Beseda “sramota” ga hara na družbenih omrežjih. Politične platforme očitno ne morejo biti drugega kot prižnice, s katerih odmeva, kot bi ji rekel Nietzsche, suženjska morala. Če mislite, da je problem izbora na razpisu za hitre teste lajfstajl kriptoboisov, si oglejte instagram drugouvrščenega, ki velja za legit uvoznika, Marka Podgornika. Nothing odd about it, just business as usual. “Seveda je to zame popolnoma tuj, nesprejemljiv način življenja,” izreče bivši minister za zdravje Tomaž Gantar in izpade tako infantilno, odrezano od lajfa kot tisti kardinali, med katerimi v Morettijevem Habemus Papam izbirajo papeža.

Še bolj nadležna je kombinacija pridiganja in snobizma. Mladina, Majda Širca et co. so si potezo italijanskega veleposlanika Tomaža Kunstlja glede razstave Bigger than Myself/Heroic Voices from ex Yugoslavia razjasnili s tem, da je tip lesarski inženir. “Le čevlje sodi naj kopitar,” je njihova omiljena maksima. In other words, samo bedaki in kopitarji. Well, fuck Prešeren in njegovo platonovsko, protofasci delitev dela. “Hlodarsko,” je z nepopisne višave tvitnila Širca in zraven dodala, da je MAXXI delo “Zahe Kadid”. Klodarsko. Zaha Kandid. Snobi in njihov domet. Prečekirajte film-roman Martin Eden, ki je izrazito del rancièrovske let’s-vindicate-the-kopitar fronte. Kot pravi wiki: “Eventually, when Eden finds that his education has far surpassed that of the bourgeoisie he looked up to, he feels more isolated than ever.”

They’re all crooks, but we’re not doing Vstaja 2012 all over again, are we? Res je, Smetnjakov slogan tistega časa se je glasil: “Nekoga mora biti sram.” V zagovor povejmo, da smo s tem mislili izključno sebe. V slogu: če že nikogar ni, evo, potem je vsaj nas. Prek transferja blama, kao što kažu Srbi, smo ga vzeli nase. Tudi sram mora nekdo imeti rad.

But fuck all that. V Jankovićevem odzivu na rušenje Roga se pojavi tale zanimiva poved: “Ne vlečem paralelo s Kapitolom v Washingtonu, pa vendar je bilo nasilje, ki se je zgodilo na Trubarjevi cesti, izzvano s strani tistih, ki so poskušali nasilno stopiti v Rog.” What does he do here? Uporabi retorično figuro, tako imenovano apofazo ali paralipso. Njen klasičen primer bi bil: “Ne bom se spustil tako nizko, da bi se ukvarjal z govorico, da je moj nasprotnik pijandura.” Ali pa ena v skladu s foklorno disciplino odkrivanja nerabe rodilnika: “Ne bomo omenjali, da je pravilno: ‘Ne vlečem paralele’.” Kot takšna je paralipsa seveda idealna figura politične arene. Znamenit primer je Reaganova replika med predsedniško kampanjo leta 1984, ko je za tekmeca Walterja Mondala dejal: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Štiri leta kasneje je bil do Michaela Dudakisa še neizprosnejši: “Look, I’m not going to pick on an invalid.” Reaganovo tradicijo je zgledno nadaljeval Donald Trump. Glede voditeljice na Fox News Megyn Kelly, glavne protagonistke filma Bombshell, je tvitnil: “I refuse to call [her] a bimbo because that would not be politically correct.” Glede severkonorejskega prijatelja pa tole: “Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me ‘old,’ when I would NEVER call him ‘short and fat?’”

Reagan – Trump – Janković. It’s an impressive lineage of gangsterism, pranksterism, tricksterism etc. Tam, kjer snobizem in moralizem vidita ahistorično barbarstvo, primitivizem, vulgarnost, raje vidimo intelektualno zgodovino oz. zgodovino idej. At least JJ tells it like it is to SDS podmladek (and sounds like Samuel P. Huntington or Steve Bannon): “Pred nami je spopad za vrednote, ki bo bolj obsežen, bolj globalen, zaradi globalne tehnologije. Stopate v kruto in zanimivo življenje.”




Predavanje o memih je kot razlaganje vica. 53-minutno razlaganje vica



Tags: Memefy

The Power Display

This is a WW2 bunker made into a home of media mogul Christian Boros. It is also a fortress of corporate art, the Sammlung Boros aka Boros Collection. Yet another communications empire in the mode of Saatchi & Saatchi which does not even speculate, it simply determines what the next big – and it’s all about big – thing is. There was already something imperious in Duchamp’s gesture “this is art, because me, artist, says so” and thus he is the progenitor, the fountainhead1 of this situation. The circular reasoning (plus argumentum ad auctoritatem) that corresponds to the vicious circulating of power as capital or capital as power (not to mention the libido). The gesture was this year most omnipresently repeated by Daft Punk: “Random Access Memories is an absolute masterpiece, because we, the machine, say so.” You’re not saying it’s not, you’re just saying it has to be no matter what.

Curator or rather curatrix, the usual bespectacled prettiness, looked as if she knew her beuyses, weiweis, rancières, žižeks, however, what followed was the worn-out collage of metaphors, symbols, big notions (mirrors, time, parallel universes, “it is a comment on overproduction and overconsumption” etc.), the convenient mischung of over-explaining and as-if-mystique. The main category, indicator of value, remained the ne-plus-ultra adjective of “famous”, uttered somewhat ingenuously, as if it being famous had no connection with it being here, in the Bunker, or as if it being here, in the Bunker, had not every connection with it being famous.

In any case, the whole set-up has but one goal: the numinous effect (or affect that blends into numismatic), the collection, the Sammlung wants to invoke fear and trembling, fascination and compulsion, it demands, decrees to be held in awe. Furthermore, for that singular variety of corporate, Christian Boros must exhibit his own discoveries, household names, darlings, pets. Here comes the underdone, the unaccomplished, even provincial part, the part where work and thought never click. Even curatrix felt more than a hint of embarrassment when she was compelled to vindicate the off-handedness of some of the pieces as wilful work-in-progress. Moreover, the argument of non-corresponding correspondence between matter and form already sounds déjà entendu enough, but can look even worse. “This seems like diamonds, but is just worthless stones.” But it actually does look just like worthless stones. “This seems like a mirror, but it’s only metal.” But it actually does look only like metal.

So, what about that awe? Clearly, the only formidable, groundbreaking thing is the frame, the building itself, the Bunker built not under-, but overground, with a deliberately lame reasoning (grounds) that ground was too time-consuming to dig. The intended plan of covering it in marble possibly proves this was just an excuse. It was the only Roman thing to do, but, in the end, they truly ran out of time. Who were this imperial jokesters? Hitler and Speer.

Shamed, bored, amused you exited the Bunker, you had no business being there. It’s that world of (a supposed or less) 1 percent, with which you’ve got absolutely nothing in common. There, you can only enter as a tourist, someone that would want to belong but can’t, and you must insist you are not of that mould. As a sort of penance you headed to that other (either) side, the high street of Friedrichstraße. There was a man, a curator of high streets, standing tall and talking aloud, almost howling, that “almost” being very relative with the noise of hi-street and all. A crazy, they call him, a nut, a wacko. But he was very precise, oh, so very articulate. To repeat his exact words, exclaimed in English with a German, Herzogian2 accent: “I am not a rrulerr. I don’t want any powerr. I keep myself away from powerr. Why don’t you leave me alone?”

You deplore a world in which this man is deemed crazy.

Snap – I’ve Got the Power

  1. in a way of figure, not cause []
  2. although Werner Herzog is very much about power []


Tags: We are Trash

Kandid vs. Candy boy

Zdi se, da oba predsedniška kandidata pristajata na to, da izbiranje med njima priklicuje platonsko delitev na tiste z zlato dušo, ki mislijo in vladajo, ter tiste z železno, ki delajo, se preživljajo, reproducirajo. Opozicija, ki postane lažna v trenutku, ko se jo prikaže kot dilemo, stvar obkroževanja.

Distinkcija med Türkom in Pahorjem kot distinkcija med patriciji in plebejci, umetnostjo (ne le vladanja) in delom, individualizmom in kolektivizmom itd. funkcionira rasistično ter v vsakem primeru reproducira, z besedami Jacquesa Rancièra, policijsko delitev čutnega, tj. ohranja “harmonično stkano skupnost /…/, v kateri je vsak na svojem mestu, v svojem razredu, kjer opravlja funkcijo, ki mu pripada, ter je čutno in intelektualno primerno opremljen za to mesto in za to funkcijo.”

Dodatna težava je v tem, da je tudi takšna distinkcija – naj bo še tako podla – pretirana (in hkrati premalo izrazita), prelaskava za oba kandidata.

Koliko je Pahor zmožen brisati meje med vladarji in vladanimi, je razvidno že iz načina, kako opisuje svoje trajektorije. Do “malega človeka” se vselej spusti z višav svojega poslanstva, svojih “izkušenj”. Blagoslovljen bodi režim, v katerem takšna naivna prevzetnost lahko izpade dobronamerno. Tudi žalostinka samotarja, ki so se ga vsi odrekli, naracija, ki v teh krajih vedno znova pali, najde svojo realnost v smukanju po Škrabčevi domačiji. Mar ni dovolj ponižujoče že to, da je karkoli od tega treba omenjati? Pahor je zeligovski performance artist, katerega neprestano menjavanje vlog in identitet “pogosto vodi do drugačne oblike poneumljanja, ki izrablja zabrisanost meja in pomešanost vlog, da bi stopnjevala učinek predstave, ne da bi preizprašala njena načela.“ Stanje je tako klavrno, da se celo Rancière ne more izogniti besedi “poneumljanje”. Ves Pahorjev politični program je mogoče zvesti na pesmico-kolo “Mi se imamo radi, radi, radi, radi”, ki v svoji prepesnitvi “kot prašički mladi” vsaj asociira na Orwellovo Živalsko farmo, a kaj, ko je tudi ta že zdavnaj preudomačena.

Türkov “Za skupno dobro” zveni kot moto papeža ali kralja, toda za kako ubogo vednost-oblast gre? Umetnik, človek sveta, državni plemič, Holbeinov wannabe ambasador, ki mu Adorno ne bi pripisal niti polizobrazbe (but then again… komu bi jo?). V endorsanju Umeka ali frazarjenju o Conneryju kot najboljšem Bondu ter Lazenbyju kot najslabšem lahko connoisseurstvo ugledajo le poklicni filistri, kakršna je nekdanja kulturna ministrica. Če ne drugega, mu gre priznati zaslugo, da se je z njegovo pomočjo izkristaliziralo podrepništvo kategorije, ki bi se ji lahko reklo start-up umetniki. Ali kar je skoraj ganljiva zadrega: lokalni badioujevci morajo v dani konstelaciji (vsakdanje)političnih moči staviti na kandidata, ki mu je Voltairov Kandid od vseh knjig “povedal najbolj zanimive in poučne reči”. Za menda istega “obdelujmo svoj lastni vrtiček” Voltaira menda isti Badiou v Dvajsetem stoletju zaničljivo zatrdi, da je eden najpomembnejših mislecev humanitarne povprečnosti.

Relevantnost tokratnih volitev – ne le zaradi vzdušja zadnjih dni – je, da se zdijo irelevantnejše kot kdajkoli. V tem mora biti nekaj spodbudnega.

Cass McCombs – Don’t Vote

"Ni dokumenta kulture, ki ni hkrati tudi dokument barbarstva. In tako kot kulture ni brez barbarstva, tako je barbarska tudi tradicija, ki skrbi za prehajanje kulturnih dobrin iz rok v roke." Walter Benjamin v tem okolju vselej zveni preoptimistično.



Tags: Revisionisms

SMETNJAK x JOHN MAUS

Ena ura, en sam plan, en monolog, črički (škržati?) in veter kot soundtrack, youtube posnetek na velikem platnu. Anti-spektakel, ki prej povleče na Johna Cagea, a ta pripada drugemu glasbenemu postopku resnice. John Maus o the old guys: »They are great and we should enter into a conversation with them, but they didn’t grow up watching E.T.« Zavest, vzgojena ob Živ Žavu in nato priklopljena na internet, požira le byte-size – 3-minutni komadi, članki kot slikanice, filmi brez tišine. Ko thrill popusti in zaslutimo napor, sežemo po miški ali daljincu. Kaj nas zagrabi v plitvinah koncentracije, med besnim, a bežnim procesiranjem podatkov in resetiranjem spomina? John Maus stavi na pop in spektakel: estetsko sublimnost robota, ki se dviga iz plamenov, kofeinsko maničnost zvoka, skompresirano v verz in refren. Radikalni potenciali popa. Smetnjakova metoda se postavi pred ogledalo.

Projekcija video intervjuja z Johnom Mausom: 22. november ob 20h @ Kiberpipa (kinodvorana), Kersnikova 6, Ljubljana. Vstopnine ni. Facebook event.

John Maus – Big Dumb Man

Keywords: television, twitter, facebook, Socrates, punk rock, visibility, Sex Pistols, Nirvana, Lucifer, Minnesota, New Deal, Ronald Reagan, spam, solitude, Ariel Pink, work, postmodernism, dialectic of enlightenment, caricature, inhumanity, The Invisible Committee, OWS, Abu Ghraib, Hunter S. Thompson, State, horror, record store, society of spectacle, Guy Debord, genre film, James Cameron, Terminator, sublimity, contemporary art, Neveldine/Taylor, Crank: High Voltage, decentered subject, Gilles Deleuze, Luciano Berio, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Theodor W. Adorno, Arnold Schönberg, G. W. F. Hegel, Ludwig van Beethoven, Immanuel Kant, Joseph Haydn, dubstep, music journalism, Simon Reynolds, Slavoj Žižek, Richard Wagner, Alain Badiou, Quentin Meillassoux, Simon Critchley, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, pop theory, Gary War, thumbs up, thumbs down, wikipedia, string theory, biopolitics, Jean-Luc Nancy, Maurice Blanchot, E.T., Giorgio Agamben, Martin Heidegger, Greil Marcus, Friedrich Kittler, Avital Ronell, sense, materiality, EGS, Wolfgang Schirmacher, grad school, publishing company, cultural signifier, celebrity, Jay Bernstein, H. S. Harris, misanthropy, Jacques Rancière, F. M. Dostoyevsky, everyday life, St. Francis, The Psychic Warfare, virtue, Funny Farm, experience, bureaucrat, exception, sweet dude, radical, pragmatism, charity, Søren Kierkegaard, pig, Police, Cops, THX 1138, George Lucas, infinite multiplicity, wager