More reflections on Prezi v.1
Thanks to all who commented on my presentation. Your questions and comments were helpful, and I should mention that the video is by the Critical Arts Ensemble. The works at the interstices of art, theory, media, technology, and political activism. I take their practice as inspiration for different ways to talk about, create, act/react, and organize labor-as-life-art-practice. This is a concept I may try to develop, but knowing I need to make these links clearer helps.
I think what I tried to think through with the Prezi is that the labor movement in the U.S. has a long relationship to art in the printed form. Because printed text is cheap and easy to produce, portable, and connected to one of the earliest union shops in New York in the late 1800s, I think labor has been reticent to transition to other forms of artistic expression. Also, there is a deep suspicion of the historical and present-day connections high (and I might argue, conceptual) art has to bourgeoise ideology. If art doesn’t work, that is, labor in the service of the revolution, art thus exists for its own sake. Art prints (banners, fliers, union labels, sidewalk imprints, posters) work–they take art seriously as a means to communicate, educate, agitate, and empower. I think the movement is reluctant to interact with digital art as agitation because the message is often disorganized. This runs counter to the movement’s goals to organize, organize, organize. Rhizomatic forms of experiential, spontaneous, flash-mob (dis)organization like the message in the video seem to go against the grain of labor’s work. I want to argue with Raley, Flanagan, and Wark however, that “critical play,” through “tactical media” is serious work–work the movement better take seriously to stay relevant.
Whew. That was helpful to work out. Thanks.
