This article was downloaded by: [Illinois Wesleyan University]On: 03 October 2014, At: 01:50Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: MortimerHouse, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Art JournalPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcaj20

After the End: Strategies of ResistanceDaniel Joseph Martinez & David Levi StraussPublished online: 03 Apr 2014.

To cite this article: Daniel Joseph Martinez & David Levi Strauss (2005) After the End: Strategies of Resistance, ArtJournal, 64:1, 42-49

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00043249.2005.10791155

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purposeof the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of theauthors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should notbe relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francisshall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, andother liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relationto or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Illin

ois

Wes

leya

n U

nive

rsity

] at

01:

50 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014

Daniel Joseph Martinez. The House AmericoBuilt, 2003-04. Sculpture installation:Smart Side, plywood, dimensional lumber,rosen paper, and Martha Stewart SignatureHouse Paint:Araucana Green, Hosta Leaf,Cosmos Lemon, and Faded Brick. 13 xII x 14 ft. (396.2 x 335.3 x 426.7 ern).Premiered atThe Project, NewYork.

All images courtesy of the artist and TheProject, NewYork/Los Angeles.

Theodore J. Kaczynski's cabin was locatedon Humbug Contour Road, near BigRiver,Lincoln, Montana. Kaczynski wasso intensely inspired by the writings andlifestyle of Henry DavidThoreau that hiscabin is a near-duplicate ofThoreau's cabinat Walden Pond.

The conversations from which this article is excerpted took place in spring 2003 in telephone cells

between NewYork (Strauss) and Los Angeles (Martinez). This piece will continue in the next issue of

Art Journal.

David Levi Strauss:Since we're doing this just before Easter, I thought it

would be good to begin at the end. I've been teaching a seminar at the Centerfor Curatorial Studies at Bard College that concludes with a section called "The

End (and After)," in which we rehearse recent eschatological theories and prac­tices as they relate to art, including those offered by Arthur Danto, Hans Belting,

T.J. Clark,Victor Burgin, the Critical Art Ensemble, Thyrza Goodeve and DonnaHaraway, and PaulVirilio. I What do we do now, after the end: the end of mod­

ernism, the end of art, the end of the social, and the end of history? In your

letter to me anticipating these conversations, you wrote:

After the End:Strategies of Resistance

I wonder if we have come to the end of art, not only our ability to produce

it, but to talk about it. Everything seems to be about the past. Almost every­thing made today seems consistent with the current context of markets,

commodification, decoration, entertainment. No dangerous ideas, nothingto create deep consideration and the possible transfor-

Daniel Joseph MartinElz and David Levi Strauss mation of ourselves and the civil society into our

future.

One of the difficulties with imagining a futureis that our civil society in the United States is in real

trouble right now. As we speak, we have an administra-tion in power that wasn't elected, but was appointed

by a five-to-four vote of a partisan Supreme Court. This was not democracy. This

was an extra-electoral, corporatist coup. And the most surprising thing to mewas how easily the populace was brought along, with little real resistance. I thinkthat resistance would have developed if 9/ I I hadn't happened. But after that, the

administration had virtually free rein; free of the normal checks and balances,

because the judiciary had already made its decision, the legislative branch abdi­cated its responsibility and signed off, and the press fell silent. We entered a new,

postcritical world.

I. Arthur Danto, Afterthe Endof Art: Contem­porary Artand the Pale of History (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1997);Hans Belting,TheEndof the History of Art? trans. ChristopherS. Wood (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1987);T.J. Clark, Farewell to an Idea: Episodesfrom a History of Modernism (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1999);Victor Burgin, TheEndofArt Theory: Criticism ond Postmodernity (AtlanticHighlands, NJ: Humanities Press Internationai,1986);Critical Art Ensemble, "PosthumanDevelopment in the Age of Pancapitalism," inFlesh Mochine: Cyborgs, Designer Babies, and NewEugenic Consciousness (Brooklyn: Autonomdia,1998);Donna Haraway, "Diffraction as CriticalConsciousness," in HowLike a Leaf: An InterviewwithThyrza Nichols Goodeve (New York:Routledge, 2000); and Paul Virilio, "The LastVehicle," in Looking Backon the Endof the World,ed. Dietmar Kamper and Christoph Wolff, trans.David Antal (New York: Semiotext(e), 1989).

Daniel Joseph Martinez: These crises are so urgent and clamor for our atten­tion and intervention. But we seem helpless. I feel frustrated with current aspectsof art-making that seem to differ from those I grew up with and was taught.

What is the purpose of art in our time? Does art still have the possibility of mul­tiplicity? Does art possess a force to achieve a complexity in its resistance, ordoes it abandon itself to meaninglessness, decoration, and superficiality?

Strauss:Where did you get the idea that art has to do with resistance? That'swhat you and I think-that there's something about acts of the imagination thatcan resist the current hegemonies and effect change. But why do we think that?

Martinez: It comes from other artists, from looking at artworks that have thepotential to speak directly to individuals to effect change. It comes from imagin­ing something different than what I see around me. It comes from being hope­ful. Where did you get it?

43 art journal

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Illin

ois

Wes

leya

n U

nive

rsity

] at

01:

50 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014

Strauss: For me, it all started with reading. I read things that changed my mind,

and I glimpsed that this possibility was unlimited. I began to read early and vora­ciously,because I realized that I could go anywhere I wanted in reading. I could get

far beyond Chapman, Kansas. Based on my limited experience, I hardly knew thatanother world existed out there, but I saw it in books. And that changed everything.

Martinez: It was an intellectual freedom. Your mind moved first.

Strauss: A movement of the imagination, yes, and that radicalized me. It's like

Brecht said, "Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon." I rememberwhen I was very young, reading in secret, in hiding, fearing that someone would

come in and stop me-that they would realize, finally, that this activity was just

too open-ended, too mind-alteringly free. I couldn't believe they let me get awaywith this, right under their noses. Some of them even encouraged me to read!

Martinez: My orientation to books and reading didn't come as easily or as early.

Physical action came first; individuals in a drama of social chaos manifested the

first real act of political resistance I witnessed. I was about ten years old duringthe Watts riots. I grew up in Lennox, a small Mexican community next to Watts.

The riots happened just minutes from where I lived. I got a sense of an extremityof movement-what was at stake for the people involved. It was like being in

a hurricane: what could you do but hold on and hope to survive? I was oldenough to be aware of what was going on, but didn't completely understand it.I remember being in the car with my father and seeing soldiers on the street

with bayonets fixed on their rifles. A news story that I always remember wasabout a ten-year-old boy shot for "looting." He had taken a transistor radio. I wasthe same age. I thought, "Wow, a transistor radio, what does it mean? If you're

a black child you get shot for stealing a transistor radio." I didn't necessarily

understand it then, but it came to clarity later.This memory became part of my belief that experiences of human action

and agency are exceptionally powerful and have a tremendous capacity to bebeautiful, poetic, and transformative. I never believed you had to give up beauty

or complexity for art to have a social and political poignancy. These are notmutually exclusive and can be useful in considering effective strategies forworks of art. It never made sense to me that art was separate from everything

else in life.

Strauss: There's a tremendous split between the autonomy of art and theengagement of art with the social. I always say I'd love it if art could beautonomous. I'd like nothing better than to just sit in the corner, fart, and read

Dante, like Beckett said. But that's not possible now.

Martinez: I agree, I think autonomy is an interesting idea, but we would have

to evolve to a place where we could actually do that.

Strauss: But asserting it now is a pointedly premature attempt to jump past therealities and persistent problems of the present without addressing them. Thereis a difference between imagining change to initiate action and mere wishfulthinking. It's like people who speak of a "color-blind" world where race doesn'tmatter anymore. You know, it's a pretty idea, but it's not the world we live in today.

44 SPRING 2005

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Illin

ois

Wes

leya

n U

nive

rsity

] at

01:

50 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014

Daniel Joseph Martinez. Museum Tags:Second Movement (Overture) or Overturecon Claque-Overture with Hired AudienceMembers: I CAN'T-IMAGINE-EVERWANTING-TO BE-WHITE,1993-2004.1993 Whitney Biennial,Whitney Museumof American Art.

Martinez: It's funny you should mention that, because just today we had a

panel discussion for the Whiteness: AWayward Construction exhibition, curated by

Tyler Stallings at the Laguna Art Museum, and a woman in the audience stood

up and said there's no more racism in this country and that we all need to get

over thinking from the point of view of the past as hyphenated Americans. It

was a painfully naive comment on race in this country. The room gasped, evenin Laguna Beach! I said, "The simple fact that you even assert such a position

suggests that you are immersed in tremendous privilege, to believe that you livein a color-blind society, or that the issues surrounding race and power are not

articulated in every situation, every day." Have you been following the affirma­tive-action case at the University of Michigan? More legal briefs have been filed

for this case than for any case in recent history.

Strauss: Including those filed by the Bush administration.

Martinez: Exactly, siding with the anti-affirmative-action camp. Three white stu­

dents challenged the Michigan policy, arguing that it is not fair for a minoritystudent to win a coveted place on a campus just because he or she is a minority.

It struck me as such a distortion of the truth and indicates precisely where weare in the negotiation of race. One white woman rejected by the university said

she was treated unfairly because of the color of her skin. She suggested that courtrecords indicate that if she had been black, Hispanic, or Native American, she

would have been admitted to the university. That is a total misreading and rein­

terpretation of affirmative action.

Strauss: Well, it's surprising how much currency that view now has, and how

the Right has been able to use it with impunity. Before, it wouldn't have flown.

It's a view that has migrated to the mainstream, but it first came from the Far­

Right white-power groups that see white people as the new oppressed group.Their jobs are disappearing, they can't afford health care, their children aren't

being educated. So who do they blame? Nonwhites! It's watered down to make

it palatable in mainstream discourse, but that's the source of it.

Martinez: Here's a question I have in the relation between art and politics. It's

a description of a class taught at Smith College by Thelma Golden, curator for

the Studio Museum in Harlem: '''Post-Multiculturalism in Contemporary Art inAmerica' ... will take a look at the world of artistic seduction beyond multicul­

turalism. An examination of the explication of the self in a global society ..." Iwonder what the positioning of artists as "post-multicultural" is really designedto do? I wonder who is served by this rhetoric? Is this a type of social/aestheticmodification?

Strauss: A certain part of postmodernism has involved an attempt to get outsideof history. And I think that's a mistake; we're not outside of history just becausewe distance ourselves from its more distressing effects in our discourse.

Martinez: There was modernism, then postmodernism, and modernism reap­peared, because it never completely disappeared. If we were truly interested inthe avant-garde as an attempt to engage a new aesthetic complexity with ideaslike asynchronous thinking, object orientation as a method of subverting the

45 art journal

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Illin

ois

Wes

leya

n U

nive

rsity

] at

01:

50 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014

world in art, and enunciation as social action, we would be invested in radical,

dangerous aesthetic experiments that are fearless in their approach to thinkingabout art. We would have to acknowledge these roots in modernism, but then

move beyond them. But I don't think that contemporary art is willing to let go

of its modernist roots. It is a safe and comfortable space to exist in and replicate.When we look at previous movements displaced by modernism, we mistakenly

think of clear beginnings and endings. But ways of thinking and seeing don'tend so abruptly.

Strauss: No, that's an art-historical conceit-a narrative device. But we are in a

period of transition that is especially messy and confusing. Things move in onedirection, then in another; they appear to end, then begin again somewhere else.

There aren't any clear directions or vectors. The old language doesn't work any­more, but the new language isn't quite operational. The good thing about this

time is that anything is possible. It's not like the late 1950S, when Leon Golubhad to leave New York during the heyday ofAbstract Expressionism because he

was a figurative painter. Or when one had to choose between Clement Greenbergand Harold Rosenberg.

Martinez: We have the opposite problem. So many people are pursuing differ­

ent things that there is a vacuum; meaning has been hollowed out. You can't havethoughtful engagements and deeply considered strategies if the democratization

of art allows everything to have equal meaning.

Strauss: I've been working with my students to devise strategies for dealingwith distraction culture, where things are diffuse and happening all at once.It's very difficult to focus the attention for the length of time it takes to make a

coherent or meaningful intervention, because we are forced to leap from onething to another with such rapidity. Golub called this "jittering"-a nervous

kind of movement and energy that requires a different kind of art-making. Hecombined words and images into smart-ass pictures-quick takes.This was inte­

grated into the work of old age, the late work that he referred to as "catastro­

phes" (after Adorno). Like Golub, I want to figure out how to work here andnow. I'm not interested in going back to previous circumstances, because this

is where I live. But it requires different mechanisms and approaches.

Martinez: We need to construct models of thinking and acting that are effectivefor today. I am concerned by the current use of political strategies that arose inthe 196°-70S. They were effective then, but are not applicable now. This replica­

tion of past strategies holds us back.

Strauss: I hear this sometimes in the current antiwar movement. People useterms that made sense thirty or forty years ago, but don't now. I don't fullyunderstand why, but the Right is able to use this old language. Conservatives cango retro and use World War II language for current events, but progressives can't.Is nostalgia necessarily conservative? Can't you miss something without wantingits return? Demonstrating against the war in the streets in New York on February15,2003, didn't feel nostalgic. It felt new-like a beginning. For one thing, therewas a different demographic than in street demonstrations in the early 1970S,

when nearly everyone was college-age.

46 SPRING 2005

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Illin

ois

Wes

leya

n U

nive

rsity

] at

01:

50 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014

2. Christopher Miles,"Daniel Joseph Martinez,"Artforum 41, no. I (September 2002).

Martinez: But what happens when there is an administration that just ignores

this? There have never been so many large antiwar demonstrations around the

world, but this administration does what it wants anyway. If I thought change

could be made by protest and a global consensus on the current political reality,then that's where I would be. But I'm not sure this is the best action anymore.

It has symbolic meaning, but can it be politically effective?

Strauss: Symbols and images are politically effective. It has become increasinglyclear that the massive shift to the right today in the United States is orchestrated

through the manipulation of words and images. Those of us who work in this

world of symbols-artists and writers-have a role to play. What's happening istaking place in the symbolic realm-in the public imaginary. I don't see such a

split between activism and art, or action and imagination.You've been accused of exploiting this split in the past. A review of your

recent work in Artforum opines, "Martinez has seemed at times to be a kind of

political pyromaniac, less interested in putting out fires or harnessing theirenergy than in fanning the flames and basking in their glow"? I'm sure you've

heard this before. You exploit situations.

Martinez: It's a question of how one sees one's role. Now I believe it requires a

more humble but strategic method-a construction of meaning that engages a

process of enunciation as a social act, the organization of the signs of beauty asa political intervention, in order to act with a sustained commitment to ideas

and serious aesthetic investigations larger than ourselves. I am interested inartists who are committed to sets of ideas that are self-sustaining regardless of

current popularity.The goal is to sustain a rigorous process of asking difficult questions. Not

in order to find answers but to have questions about questions that produce con­fusion as a precondition to radical thought. But we rarely ask difficult questions

and are left with a suspicious consensus concerning the meaning of contempo­

rary art. Art is not tested by the challenges of public debate. I don't see why weshould be afraid to ask complex questions about who we are and the role thatwe have.We are a civil society; we do coexist. Have we forgotten that we share in

the responsibility to the communities we live in?

Strauss: One of the fallacies I find in the critique I just read is that you areaccused of fanning the flames, but that means that flames exist. There's some­

thing going on there that preexists your involvement in it. You don't make these

things up.

Martinez: No, I don't make them up. I observe and try to consider meaning

and effect. Something that needs to be looked at in relation to artists' practices,whether as a writer or artist, is the many facets to our work. You and I both

teach. And I find that it's an extremely important part of making work. Thereis a different activity and engagement that takes place in the classroom. One ofteaching's fundamental purposes is to help disseminate information to youngpeople so that they can learn to form opinions on their own, see themselves aswhole people, and affect the world that they live in rather than become mindlessdrones who accept and believe everything they are fed through uniform opin­ions or the media.

47 art journal

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Illin

ois

Wes

leya

n U

nive

rsity

] at

01:

50 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014

Daniel Joseph Martinez. More Human ThanHuman, Self-Portrait # 9c, FifthAttemptto Clone Mental Disorder,or How OnePhilosophizes with a Hammer, After GustaveMoreau, Prometheus (1868) and DavidCronenberg,Videodrome (1982),1998­2002. Performance photographs, digitallight jet print. 48 x 60 in.(121.9 x 152.4 em),

Strauss: You have said that the classroom is the last place left in this country forradical critical thinking.

Martinez: I believe that. Look, the idea that you and I are let loose in a class­room is pretty extraordinary! And they not only let us in the classroom, but theyhire us year after year to continue! The classroom is the last available site for thedebate and germination of genuinely dangerous ideas. It is the site of radicaldemocracy at work-straight, unfiltered, unmediated. And that's a big deal. Whatwould you do if you could actually educate a population so that informationhad the potential to be put to use as working knowledge? The $70 billion thathas been used for the war in Iraq so far could educate every child in the UnitedStates from kindergarten through college. It could pay for every child, withmoney left over to effect real educational reform in this country.

But an educated population is a dangerous one. There's $70 billion to starta war, but there would never be $70 billion to spend on educating the childrenin this country. You want to talk about crimes against humanity? That's a crime

48 SPRING 2005

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Illin

ois

Wes

leya

n U

nive

rsity

] at

01:

50 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014

against humanity. Because an educated population produces a thinking citizenry.

Can you imagine what would happen if you had a literate population that had

actual expectations about the way that they are governed?

Strauss: Ah, well, I think you just answered your own question. Universal pub­

lic education is a radical idea. I mean, why would you want that if you were in

power? It just creates problems. I was living in San Francisco during the propo­sition 13 "property-tax revolt." And I saw people change and begin to think,"Well, yes, we know why we want to educate our children, but why do we want

to educate all these other people's children? Why do that? I mean, we know whywe want to educate ours-so they'll get the goodies and move up. But why do

it for everybody? That just doesn't make sense." This whole idea of universal publiceducation is a fairly new and outrageous idea, and I think many people in this

country are not at all sure that they agree with it anymore. In fact, it's clear that

they don't. Just look at the schools.

Martinez: The United States is tenth in literacy in the world. Tenth! I mean, it'snot that I think it should be first. But it should be better than tenth, since it's the

richest, most powerful nation in the world.

Strauss: You're really very hopeful about what can happen in the classroom. You

think teaching can have a real effect. So how does that jibe with your pessimismabout the possibilities of having any real political effect? Aren't those kids that

you're teaching coming into a world where the likelihood of them being able tohave a measurable effect is vastly diminished?

Martinez: Here's where I'm at my maximum degree of contradiction. I have alot of trouble with the way things are. I object to the values that are promoted as

a norm, but I must coexist with them while I think about how to change them.I want to experiment; I want to test and challenge the conventions of our time.

But lately I feel that everywhere I go I'm just trapped. And I can't stand that. But I

do believe in the potential of teaching-and the imagination. I think we can helpopen the imaginations of young people so that they will not be stopped by these

seemingly insurmountable obstacles because they will no longer see them asinsurmountable. If we can teach them that the imagination is limitless, it seems

to me that there is then the real possibility of a radical shift in the way we thinkand act. If the possibility of a change exists, it's going to exist in them.

Strauss: One of my teachers, the poet Diane di Prima, always used to say there's

only one war: the war against the imagination.

This conversation will be continued in the Summer 2005 issue of ArtJournal.

Daniel Joseph Martinez is a tactical media practitioner and an internationally exhibiting artist who livesand works on the west bank of the Los Angeles River.The works range from digital to analog, ephemeralto solid. He is Professor of Theory, Practice, and Mediation of Contemporary Art at the University ofCalifornia, Irvine, in the Studio Art Department, where he teaches in the Graduate Studies and NewGenres.Department, He is represented by The Project, New York/Los Angeles.

David LeviStrauss is a writer and critic based in New York, where his essays and reviews appear regularlyin Artforum and Aperture. His collection of essays on photography and politics, Between the Eyes. with anintroduction by John Berger, was published by Aperture in 2003. He was a Guggenheim fellow in 2003-04.Strauss currently teaches in the Graduate School of the Arts and at the Center for Curatorial Studies atBard College.

49 art journal

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Illin

ois

Wes

leya

n U

nive

rsity

] at

01:

50 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014