If we assume for the moment that we can separate the artwork from the social experience surrounding it, I think I can explain what I mean. I see an artwork as an assemblage of components. Each of these components is both formal and social. Each component on its own exerts a kind of social force, and the artwork as an assemblage of the various components exerts a kind of social force. This social force is not historically invariant, i.e. it is not independent of context and in different situations it might work in different ways (hence having to specify that an analysis is relative to a 'current climate'). These forces are ambiguous and hard to control -- they may appear to travel towards a closed rather than an open experience, but may always turn out to go the other way instead, as contexts keep getting scrambled. There's no a priori reason for assuming that indie is 'bad' or that pop is 'good'; but I think it's useful to distinguish the two, at least up to a point, and by indie I mean that I judge the lines of force to be travelling more towards closure than towards openness.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2007-03-28 04:34 pm (UTC)If we assume for the moment that we can separate the artwork from the social experience surrounding it, I think I can explain what I mean. I see an artwork as an assemblage of components. Each of these components is both formal and social. Each component on its own exerts a kind of social force, and the artwork as an assemblage of the various components exerts a kind of social force. This social force is not historically invariant, i.e. it is not independent of context and in different situations it might work in different ways (hence having to specify that an analysis is relative to a 'current climate'). These forces are ambiguous and hard to control -- they may appear to travel towards a closed rather than an open experience, but may always turn out to go the other way instead, as contexts keep getting scrambled. There's no a priori reason for assuming that indie is 'bad' or that pop is 'good'; but I think it's useful to distinguish the two, at least up to a point, and by indie I mean that I judge the lines of force to be travelling more towards closure than towards openness.
No intention here!