[Photos of Magic Mountain & Novad actions courtesy Jez Bold]
What Is the "Soul of Occupy?" [Draft/BETA]
By Paul McLean
Now, I have said that the community by means of organisation of machinery will supply the useful things, and that the beautiful things will be made by the individual. This is not merely necessary, but it is the only possible way by which we can get either the one or the other. An individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with reference to their wants and their wishes, does not work with interest, and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him. Upon the other hand, whenever a community or a powerful section of a community, or a government of any kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he is to do, Art either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or degenerates into a low and ignoble form of craft. A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an artist. Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has known. I am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of Individualism that the world has known. Crime, which, under certain conditions, may seem to have created Individualism, must take cognisance of other people and interfere with them. It belongs to the sphere of action. But alone, without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all. - Oscar Wilde, "The Soul of Man"
As a matter of fact, setting aside strictly academic art, artists never fall entirely prey to aesthetic co-optation. Though they may abdicate their immediate experience for the sake of beautiful appearances, all artists (and anyone who tries to live is an artist) are driven by the desire to increase their tribute of dreams to the objective world of others. In this sense they entrust the thing they create with the mission of completing their personal fulfilment within their social group. And in this sense creativity is revolutionary in its essence. - from "The Revolution Of Everyday Life" by Raoul Vaneigem (a new translation from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith, The Brooklyn Rail, March 2012
It is the "fact" of the physicality of artworks, their necessary existence as objects with their apparent constancy, that in fact highlights the "inconstant," volatile, and transformative event at the core of art. - Krzysztof Ziarek, The Force of Art
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What is the Soul of Occupy?
Adbusters, the Canadian anti-Capitalist magazine that by accounts issued the call for action which sparked the Occupy Wall Street movement in September of 2011, on April 12th 2012 [1] released another provocative proclamation on its blog,* titled "Battle for the Soul of Occupy." The text was illustrated with a black, red and white banner graphic depicting the ubiquitous Occupy clenched fist and the text "#DEFENDOCCUPY." The call-to-arms was issued by Culture Jammers HQ and encouraged Occupiers to "Jump, jump, jump over the dead body of the old left!" and warned of co-optation of the movement by MoveOn, The Nation magazine and ice cream producers Ben & Jerry, whose influence threatened, in Adbuster's estimate, to "turn our struggle into a '99% Spring' reelection campaign for President Obama."
I don't know about you, reader, but Adbusters' situating Ben & Jerry in a "cabal of old world thinkers who have blunted the possibility of revolution for decades" seems to me a stretch, and certainly doesn't incite any Robespierresque post-Occupy-revolutionary fervor. I sat next to Ben of Ben & Jerry at an organizational meeting for Mark Read's Illuminator, which B & J's ice cream fortune helped bankroll, and Ben Cohen in my view is not a blunter of revolution. He's a food businessman made good, retired, with cash in the bank, who's making an effort to support Occupy strategically, not steal its "Soul." If anything, the conundrum posed to such individuals who are sympathetic to the movement by the movement's schizophrenic response to efforts by "outsiders" to align with OWS is worth examining. [2, 3]
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Friday, April 27, 2012 at 09:31PM 