I tried
a definition of the direction, art is going, based on DADA - Mail-Art ñ
Internet, 1996:
Mail Art East and West
Art
as an Existentiall Sign
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(c)Friedhelm Schulz
Mail art,
as something you receive privately, tacitly revives a phenomenon that has
been overlooked so far in art. It is the difference between two forms of
contents as known
from private conversation and official speech. Perhaps the claim to truth and
the expectation
of truth in a proclamation has traditionally been connected with an especially
official form for
a very long time. Perhaps as only privileged, examined; chosen and elected
people had been
allowed to pronounce or legitimize such proclamations they were mostly made in
"elevated"
speech. On the one hand, when together with modern artists of his time
Nietzsche speaks as a
psychologist of the "pathos of truth, " he hints at the false and
pious little cloak with which
the pathos of truth tries to cover up uncertainties, anxiety, doubts, and often
strategic
intentions and lies, too. On the other hand, as a philosopher he knows about
and thinks of the
act of constituting any realized concept whatsoever as truth by which the naive
and credulous
people may be easily cheated in the same way. In art, perhaps Michelangelo's
"David" or
Picasso's "Guernica" would be examples of official proclamation,
whereas the "Shoes" by
Vincent van Gogh or even the portraits by James McNeill Whistler could be
compared to
private conversation. The difference between the two modes of speech cannot be
determined
in any grammatical or terminological way, but only from the point of view of
content; and in
art the two different forms cannot be perceived by any specific colors or
forms, but at most
merely by format. Therefore it is very difficult to juxtapose clearly these two
different modes
of expression, especially as they exist equaily in the realm of gesture,
attitude and clothing, as
well as in architecture. This is probably the reason why the science of art has
barely or only
marginally dealt with this phenomenon as a topic.
Mail Art Is Private under All Circumstances
Signs of attribution like language games, rhymes, stave rhymes and spells are
another
formal element with a similar claim to truth, and of validity in every epoch of
art and culture.
the private and subjective aspect of Mail Art was certainly the reason why this
form of "West
Art" was not forbidden in the countries of the East. This art form is not
very striking, and so
the ruling people were proud to be able to permit themselves the international
flair of it as
local color. Even in the early eighties I was allowed to attach my poster to
the Chinese Wall,
openly advertising copy and Mail Art action without being misunderstood or
harassed. The
question arises of what the difference or the relationship is between the
ideological aspect of
the private utterance and the existing official or general validities.
Post-modern philosophy
regrets the loss of relationship as the end of any ideal, of any culture and of
any human
identity, and as the beginning of chaos and non- involvement. Obviously, for
Mail Art there is
no criterion of quality that exists outside the realm of the single art object.
From the point of
view of art history, philosophy and even theology, the problem has not been
solved yet and
reaches deeply down into the structures of our perception. While the second
commandment
from the sixth century before Christ still had to forbid the adore of a
sculpture - that puts us
back into a time when picture, number and even runic letters were
transcendentally
significant signs - in the Renaissance and Humanism the individual began not
only to deal
with Greek philosophy but also in a non-linguistic way with the above mentioned
formal
phenomena of the antique world of gods and idols. And, finally, in modern times
it is DADA
trying to tease and unmask the perhaps most embarrassing aberration of mankind
as nonsense,
as if there were a medium a measure or a criterion of truth beyond Man and
human
perception which we could know about.
Undoubtedly, the aim of DADA and also of today's Mail-Art is not religious, nor
moralistic and by no means aesthetic or arbitrary. Besides all other aspects
still discussed
nowadays because of the First World War, DADA had a missionary trait, just as
Mail Art had
it because of the ideological catastrophe after the Second World War. It is
this missionary
trait which tacitly revives the relationship between form and truth.
As a matter of fact, it only appears that the speaker's desk makes the orator's
speech
true; it guarantees the truth as little as officiousness when it is style of
speech. The saying "He
lies as if it were printed, " however, shows that in general printed
publication is used to
falsely legitimize what is printed, just as the modern pathos of truth serves
to cover up what is
untrue. In most cases these manoeuvres are recognized as betrayal and
temptation. In the
course of the Renaissance and emerging science it was basically the same
phenomenon that
appeared in another style. From then on it was harder to recognize, and
therefore more
malicious. Now truth and consistency are produced or legitimized by the object
represented,
that is by its congruency with the object or an "objective" idea or
even a formula, as if the
object or the idea could be proof of the rightness and consistency of concrete
or ideological
perception or representation. Finally, both can only lead to kitsch and
pretence. While it is
only by intuition that Modernism gradually eliminates such empiricism as
concreteness, and
of such Platonism as idealism and ideology, the proclamations of DADA have
already
reached collective consciousness. Thus DADA has grasped the problem of form and
truth by
ridiculing all ideals and "isms " as euphemistic pretence, and as
totally unjustified claims to
truth or as the prosthesis of truth, and this includes even those it announces
itself together
with all that is proclamatory, officious and objective.
Mail Art as an Existential Sign
It is difficult to recognize this as evil and to understand clearly its gradual
conquest
merely as development. The reason for this is that the formal aspect of the
officious or of the
declarative on the one hand, but also of the conceptual in general, has to be
distinguished
from the similarly formal aspect of a private statement on the other hand. But
even then one
could or should not simply judge the officious form as wrong, untrue or false,
and the private
form as the only true and right one, or as being more true and right than the
other one; just as
Mail Art cannot and must not be considered as exclusively right in contrast to
all other art
forms as basically wrong. That would be a relapse into a state that has just
been overcome,
and where one clings to given standards of truth; a cheap, normative state,
which is especially
seductive because of the highly proclamative character of Mail Art. Normally,
such
judgement should likewise be true the other way round, just as the proclamative
trait of
Michelangelo's "David" and the declarative trait of Picasso's
"Guernica " do not represent
something that is wrong or inappropiate, but, on the contrary, as statements
they provide the
reality of perception as well as of the perceived, and at the same time equally
the
consciousness of it all. Only today with the help of Gerold Prauss philosophy
can these forms
be understood as structures of perception; and only today can they be retraced
in their right
and possibly wrong relationship to each other. As a matter of fact, a charlatan
will always be
able to use this or that form of disguise for betrayal. But modernism
intuitively overcomes the
naive dependency on these forms of perception and expression.
This holds equally true for the language and language games of which Robert
Rehfeldt
in East Berlin had gathered a fine collection from the era of the GDR. They show
the great
achievements of the GDR for Mail Art, increasing the wealth of its reflexion.
In this case, too,
the great grandfathers of DADA are masters of unmasking when ridiculing the
idea that
pathos and forms of rhyme or stave rhyme could guarantee truth or produce
truth. Or the idea
that, inversely, they could or would have the right to legitimize lies as
truth, or change error
into truth by mere confirmation We do not fear for our culture in spite of all
the clever and
nonsensical sayings which appear in whatever form with so-called postmodernism
as they
did, and as they were possible during DADA times and in Mail Art, too. For DADA
as a name
is equally a confession of infantile speechlessness, and at the same time a
hint at the pre-
conceptual of perception, just as Modernism as a name is a hint at the
fashionableness of
validities, and just as in Mail Art the idea is not the end. Just as Modernism
cannot be the end
of modernists or of DADA and Mail Art. Just as Impressionism - and any -ism at
all - was not
the end of Impressionists. But up to now self-discovery and representation has
only been an
alchemical search for and testing of what perception, consciousness, freedom
and culture is or
may be. Thus the ancestor of our Mail Art, DADA, calls any flashy utterance a
pure and
original sign of existence. As such, it is not only a baby's claim to
attention, but an essential
sign of any concept and statement, be it in music, art or culture in general.
Since the early,
pre-historic rock drawings we have experienced every work of art as a sign of
existence. We
are still hardly aware of the fact that this is exactly what we are looking for
as legitimation.
In the process of man's secularization, soon splitting up into almost six
billion single
validities, Mail Art is not at all the high school of communication with only
one address and a
friendly and open-minded sender. But as a quasi ornament, as a stamp and
sticker, each form,
each content and each -ism rather submits to this origin of communication which
that sign of
existence is. This has never been more obvious than when mail came from the
Soviet Union,
from Hungary, Bulgaria, Romani from China or the GDR.
You may object that the above mentioned aspect is only partly and accidentally
visible
in DADA's flashy attitude and that Mail Art's manipulations of what can be
formed find their
limitations in the conditions set by a small envelope and the postal fee for
the copy. It is
obvious that the mode of appearance is thus influenced and restricted.
But Mail Art's affinity and basic parental relationship with the new medium
Internet -
where storage capacities and transmission techniques change data quantities of
some hundred
or thousand pages of theory or philosophy into the ornament of a personal
E-mail message
without the possibility of deriving or legitimizing a bugbear of dignity or a
claim to truth from
this fact - this shows the trend as the logical and right development. It is by
no means an end
of our culture. The first whimpers of DADA were just the first notes of a new
beginning.
Friedhelm Schulz, 1996
Art Theory
1000 questions to an artist
The importance of art and
science of art
If we speak proudly about the development of human
beings from the beginning to now we count up the long list of cultures and we
speak about the combined correlation of art and science. The
reason or the intention, why we do something, is another question.
1. Question
But do you think we should include religion as a third element in this
understanding of culture?
It is naturally a simplification, if we divide human
activity and handling only into
doing
something and doing somehow,
in
the meaning of
what
and how
as
science
and art
in the
principle meaning of subject and predicate, because one can do nothing without
doing it somehow.
Nevertheless
it shows the deep correlation between art and science - and the question why
humans are doing something somehow as an intention - perhaps as a religious
intention - but nevertheless outside of this both, of “what and
how”, could perhaps be our legitimation not to speak about religion, to
put religion out of this principal correlation of culture.
2. Question
If we think in that way about art only as the how to do
something, do you think it would put art to second place under the domination
of science, only as a decoration of do something. Art as a nice way to do
something: Art as design, application, decoration, etc.?
3.
Question
In all
cultures we know, art had become a special profession and art became especial
own science. And the subject of this “science of art” becomes its own
subjectivity, it means this application in the meaning of “how” becomes
now the value of “what” or of “something.” By example “to make art”
instead of to make par example a table + art-design, this “science of art”
includes how to make ceramic colors, to fire clay, to make canvas, to fix
colors, to print books, and so on. All of this then is the “science of
art”.
In this
condition, “art” and “science of art” could place out the intentions of all
other science of practicality and use as we did with religion before.
Now we make art pour le art. Should we
(the artists) think in that way about art as our own value of human doing and
handling?
This could be understood as a definition of modern
art. Art is no more the illustration of religion with the religious intention,
art is no more design or application of the technical realization of any
science.
The intention of art is art.
But if the artist put out all religion and all
empirical science, it could mean in someway we leave religion and science
alone.
It could mean religion gets lost and lose the quality
of scientific and esthetic thinking. Religion lose the empirical
reality. On the other hand, the useful science loses as well the ethical
dimension as it lose the esthetic dimension.
It could mean, that art lose life. Religion, science
and art are going separate ways.
If we see downstairs the paintings of David
Sebberson, we can see, that he tries to demonstrate or to make breaks inside of
the only esthetic geometrics figures as a place perhaps for the possibility of
life.
But with this separation of religion, science and art
my question asked you, if our culture and human being are going to take the way
or to led human being in the form and direction like the film Matrix shows
us. It means although art becomes a virtual reality as it is
represented in that film.
m You see it like this.
m You see it contrary.
m You see it in a different way.
Please write it down (maximum of 100 pages).
If you want to be published in our book, please send
your response with your name and birth date to MailArtMuseum@aol.com.
Open the website http://www.friedhelm-schulz.com/
Any questions? Please ask us, friedhelm@schulz.as.