For Harold S. 

 

I have always been curious when they talk about consumption in the field of the arts. I mean, they do it in many more areas, almost all of them, even in which one out of pure common sense would say “not here, impossible”. The universities with the tyranny of thepapers, the media, the electoral circus in which politics became (at all levels), everything audiovisual (films, music, podcasts, feature films, short films), literature, books, conversations... Everything, suddenly, it became a product for consumption.

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          Está tan metida en nuestros symbolic uses this figure that we use as if it were normal. And yes, it is normal because it became the “norm”. Many questions arise: Why do we take it for granted? What are the modes of operation that have been adopted in areas of life so that consumption is the implicit and explicit norm? How did our relationships with things, with others and with ourselves come to this authentic vicious circle? Etc.

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          No tengo ni un indicio response to these serious problems with ecological consequences. But I dare to step timidly into the ambiguous and enlightening field of the arts to try to understand this phenomenon. The problem is so serious that perhaps someone else has come to read this column just because of the scandal caused by the title (How is it that the arts are not consumed? Is it that they don't know about the problems of artists? Don't you know how important art is for society?, etc.). I do not blame them. It is difficult to deal with prejudices so well accentuated. Even the management that has been given to the arts from the administrative management of the public is based on that prejudice.

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     When we talk about consumption we talk about several things: profit (in monetary terms), futility, production, entertainment, experience. Advertising speaking, the question arises of how to capture the attention of the masses on the product in question; how to get it to reach the largest number of people in the shortest time; basically how to make them swallow what's produced before they even realize it's in their stomach.

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          En el ámbito (diría I "the kingdom") of the arts, the question looks bad: in addition to the administrative scaffolding that has been imposed on it, which, through surveillance and stimulation bodies (the Ministry of Culture, for example) is in charge of controlling the contents and the formats of what is done and what can be financed (in other words, there is also an attempt to control what the artist could imagine to do), there is also the sale of “refined artistic experiences”. Precariousness and valorization of the hand. The flourishing of the arts on both sides is prevented: on one because art cannot be made; in the other, because it is difficult to access it and because its contents are more an advertising brand than anything else. What is cynical about this matter of "refined artistic experiences" (to put a provisional label on it), which must be put in tune with criticism, is that it serves darkly political purposes, as Isabel Cristina Diaz has already been saying in her column“Hypocritically correct: the monetization of the protest”.

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       Las instalaciones artísticas más elaboradas (o sea, publicitadas), como la que has been done about Banksy in several Latin American countries, they have the characteristic that they allow the elastic of his brand to be taken and to place some content, some new meanings, some symbolic impositions that, in this case, are used by the State and its conservative elites ( also the progressives, although it is not so noticeable). In the case of the Banksy installation, as well as that of many others that are spectacularly popular, the viewer-client-consumer is given a product, within a specific place, whose purpose is to mount a type of artificial social protest, stripped of all danger, emptied of the content that it has historically had and still has. The modus operandi is like this: on the one hand, repression, physical violence; on the other, symbolic violence, although of a carefully concealed order, without which physical violence cannot be exercised at ease, as Bourdieu said.

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          Esto que menciono son solo Some examples and strategies used in the field of the arts which, as can be seen, has a much greater extension than one would think. The difficulty in getting the arts out of this incredibly corrosive spiral is enormous. But I think you can start with an examination of the state of things, one that goes deep, like with X-rays, to identify the mechanisms that drive it. There is more than a monetary interest behind it…

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          En fin, las artes they are not consumed because they are not products and neither are brands. They are not part of a show, although due to their intensity they shine without the focus of the advertising lights on them; they do not generate quantifiable profits, despite the fact that they continue to imbue passion in the lives of those of us who approach them. They resist being tamed for mere financial gain, which is the easiest way to impoverish them. They elude the passage of time, the obsolescence programmed for products and for life, because they are things made with a secret power, full of the imperishable impetus of those who make them, of their uniqueness.

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          Ya seguiremos hablando de esto . This is just one of the series of deliveries out of order (with a different order than sequential) that I will be working on. Or who knows: that we will work, in our own way, you and me.

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July 3, 2022

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