"Somehow a minutely detailed reconstruction of a shit-hole gallery is praiseworthy, but the real thing should just disappear? Miraculously, out here on the margins, crap is still real crap, and abject doesn't just refer to works of art, it's a socioeconomic classification. Maybe it's time we began the challenge of exploring a brand new aesthetic horizon, the dark matter of our cultural universe, the aesthetics of failure."
From my place of work, I look out across the Bowery on the John Varvatos shop. Here you can don a pair of designer Converse (they're $300 a pair) and feign that your Rock 'n Roll identity is the real thing. The sting is in the truth--what is now John Varvatos was once CBGB's.
The challenge in Kalm's statement brings to mind another challenge, the recent and recently forgotten idea of "Change." A concept American's went to the polls in support of, though it would be someone else's job to change things, and the "change" was to make things the way they used to be.
We have yet to acknowledge what in our personal way of being is broken, the cause behind the effect of joblessness, healthcareless, and meaninglessness in the art, food, and culture we consume.
"The real thing" is Art made by Artists. The cafe on the corner and the book-that-changed-your-life find their way to our list of personal favorites because they are discovered by the people who love (and need) them.
Those who tirelessly create can expect a life full of wonder, chance, struggle, and awe--what we must also accept, is a life that may never look financially "right" in comparison to the properly placed cogs in turn around us.
The Micheal Hurley record I found on the street with someone's garbage is this morning's listening material. A folk speaker from the seventies is (still) saying something to the thirty somethings of today.
Whatever the critics declare, they have not delved into the minds of the masses, they are perched too high for us to see. Those who create out of truth-telling have something meaningful to say.
For every lost CBGB there is a Goodbye Blue Monday. Have no fear--for all the identical pre-ripped store jeans, there are hundreds, thousands, masses of thinking individuals who are working, creating, evolving and always changing the tides.
Hey Sarah, thanks for taking the time to "deep read" my little article in the "Brooklyn Rail". I was just thinking this morning that one of the things that drives me nuts, are the elitist cliques that control much of what is considered the “art world”. They pass themselves off as über-hip bohemians, but in reality they’re more like the pigs in “Animal Farm”(some artists are more equal than others). Perhaps it’s inevitable that the longer you’re a presence on the NY art scene, the more you become an institution. Unfortunately, you can’t provide a valid “institutional critique” if you’re more invested in maintaining the institution than in the critique.
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