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GLOWING RAW Discography

Andrew Merrifield - Spatial Practices (via Lefebvre)

Spatial Practices are practices that ‘secrete’ society’s space. For Lefebvre the spatial practices of any society are revealed by ‘deciphering’ its space. Spatial practices, however, have close affinities to percieved space. in other words, people’s perceptions condition their daily reality with respect to the usage of space: for example, their routes, networks, patterns of interaction that link places set aside for work, play and leisure. These practices result from a perceivedspace, a space, for example, that embraces both production and reproduction. Spatial practices structure daily life and broader urban reality and in so doing, ensure societal cohesion, continuity and specific spatial competence.

Towards a historical Definition of ‘Art’

“G. W. F. Hegel and Karl Marx [are] proponents of the position that creativity can only be understood by reference to historical circumstances. Similarly, some philosophers agree (with Dickie) that art is a self-reflexive activity, subject to the qualification that it is ahistoricallyself-reflexive activity… The appearance of a new artworld system constitutes an evolution in the standard for being an artwork. The concept of art is malleable, changing over time. Batteux’s defintion of art does not recognise [Duchamps]Fountainand [Warhol’s]Brillo Boxesas art because he is explaining how fine art is understood in 1746. As Danto says “certain artworks simply could not be inserted as artworks into certain periods of art history” (Danto 1981: 44). As other cultural practices have changed, the prevailing “artworld systems” have also changed, opening the door to some artworks while closing the door on others.”

T. Gracyk

The Philosophy of Art

p 114

Denis Dutton’s relevant characteristics for a defintion of art

[Based upon the universal criteria that all works of art have the common requirement of being producsed by human action]

1.       It is valued as a source of immediate experiential pleasure, and/or

2.       Its production involves specialized skills, and/or

3.       Its form displays style, and/or

4.       It is valued for displaying creativity, and/or

5.       Its appreciation makes it the object of critical discussion, and/or

6.       It represents a real or imaginary experience, and/or

7.       It is distinctively special and marked off from everyday, routine objects and events, and/or

8.       It expresses the individuality of its creator, and/or

9.       It is pervaded by expressive properties, and/or

10.    It challenges our intellectual and perceptual capacities, and/or

11.    It has some historical precedent in an established artistic form, and/or

12.    It provides and imaginative experience for both producer and audience

Henri Lefebvre - [On Søren Kierkegaard] - ‘Critique of Everyday Life’ (Second Ed. 1958)

“Why do some men go on pursuing a ‘hidden world’ with so conscious and emotional a determination? They call themselves sincere; they have reduced their innate tendency to posture to a minimum (for it is a function of the philosophical and scientific mind to do so). But we can argue that, despite all their sincerity, their speculations still contain elements of intellectual play; and that the simple idea that the secret of the universe should reveal itself to them, and to them alone, implies an exaggeration of their own importance so extreme as to border on the burlesque, requiring hypocrisy, playacting, even clowning. But just for the moment let us put to one side the consideration of ‘metaphysical’ thought as dramatic posturing and hypocrisy. Let us just say that they are sincere.

Over there I can hear someone crying out to god – but why? He is the son of a merchant, of a parvenu. He is rich, he can live off his private income and dedicate himself to happiness, love, seduction, art. But the truth is that he is incurably bored. And yet he is very gifted, witty, even brilliant; he loves life, and at the same time he hates it: ‘All existence makes me anxious, from the smallest gnat to the mysteries of the incarnation; all life is a plague to me, most of all myself.’ His thought and his intelligence merely serve to make him anxious about everything. He hates himself, and yet thinks more of himself than of anything else in the world: ‘Basically only one quality exists, the individual, that is the axis of everything.’ He is walled up within himself, trapped in the framework of his life like the bourgeois with a private income, the intellectual, the literary hack he is. But he values the very things which are destroying him, because he exists through them alone. He possesses everything it is possible to possess: money, property, leisure, talent, thought. And yet he possesses nothing, and knows it, and says it: ‘I believe I am brave enough to doubt everything, to fight against everything; but I am not brave enough to recognize nothing, to possess nothing.’  ” p 138-139 

Henri Lefebvre - ‘Critique of Everyday Life’ (Second Ed. 1958)

“But nearer, tumbling down the groove of the valley of the Sèvre like insects, in a prosaic disorder, little houses separated by kitchen gardens where guard-dogs bark and cats wail at night. They are called ‘pavilions’, but no irony is intended. Between these pavilions lie alleyways, muddy paths where the puddles are never dry. Their owners’ superficiality oozes forth in an abundance of ridiculous details, china animals on the roofs, glass globes and well-pruned shrubs along the miniature paths, plaques adorned with mottos, self-important pediments… On Sunday mornings, especially when the weather is fine, these little houses open their entrails to the sun with strings of red eiderdowns, sheets, blankets. They spread over the hillside like hundreds of dead chickens in an immense shop window.” p 42-43