STATE ART IN THE ART STATE, Didi Neidhart, 2010

STATE ART IN THE ART STATE

“Instruments register only those things they are designed to register. Space still contains infinite unknowns.” (Mr. Spock in Star Trek: “The Naked Time”)

In the art state, state art stands for an ideology that reads science as myth and myth as science. Art itself represents the foundation myth and continues to invent new myths: made myths built on the blueprints of others – yet not for the purpose of founding a new myth that would allow the art state to claim anything like an identity or essence and thereby dispose of internal antagonisms. For then it would end as a farce, as a metaphysical bubble among many others waiting to pop. Reinterpretation, reversal and re-signification of myths are primary tasks of state art. Only myth can unveil nothingness – yet not as affirmation, whose all too easy susceptibility to transformations in the sense of sudden affinity with its supposed negative counterparts (myths, totalitarianism, bourgeoisie) generally precludes affirmative action. The art state learns from history and battles anyone who would proclaim it dead! Nothingness must be endured! The art state would rather speculate with the paranoia of state art (or paranoia as state art) than collapse under the weight of irony and cynicism.

And the art state has enemies too! The function of myth in the art state is not simply that of a counterattack under other signs. State art itself acts as a counter-myth, as a radically disparate perception of space and time, of bodies, of movements, of relations. Only the production of counter-myths reveals the myths that history has relegated to the rubbish bin – “His story is not my story,” as Sun Ra says – because myth also claims to be unreal, to be invisible, to exist within majority society only as its negation. State art in the art state allows the invisible to become visible and restores the visible to invisibility – science fiction and spy novels inform the constitution.

How many dimensions does an art state have? In the art state, one searches for traces of the post-modern in the pre-modern: alchemy and chemistry, guilds and secret societies. The fourth dimension is conceived spatially rather than temporally. The ideal art state is a Riemannian space of higher dimensioned, unconnected spaces that can be tactilely connected and attached to one another in an infinite number of ways: neighborhoods between black holes, whose actors and objects cast three-dimensional shadows like phantoms, always appearing where they are least suspected. Only blur sharpens sight.

A secret societal element is written into the art state even before its inception. State art acts as a lodge, a secret society, a conspiracy, yet it does so openly within the state, even if occasionally in a play of disguises, masquerades and mummery. Initiation rites are unnecessary – those who can interpret the secret signs and language, decipher the forms of non-communication, disinformation and the rhetoric of espionage, and recognize the camouflage and slogans for what they are (without betraying them) have already become cogs in the machinery – knowingly, unknowingly, or as yet unaware. “Our music is a secret order”, said Louis Armstrong in 1954 in reply to a journalist’s question – or, as Kodwo Eshun recommended in 1998, union through “obfuscation”. The state secret manifests itself in each work of art. To lift the veil in order to reveal the secret of secrets as eternally veiled is the goal and purpose of any art in the art state – the art state is the doctrine of transubstantiation without God – this secret is the antithesis of the empty center, of nothingness. Nevertheless, the art state is in equal measure a laterna magica, illusion machine and apparatus of seduction, yet those who see only the illusion or the machine remain tourists. Hence the immaterial aspect of the art state is not to be equated with the invisible – the ghostly apparitions, the shadows, are not explained. The traces and trails found in the “real” world (manhole cover, banners, flags, anthem, art objects scattered around the world) are invisible until they catch one’s eye – their motto: “Don’t call us. We’ll call you!”

State art in the art state does not fantasize locations outside of state power. Instead, it acts from the empty center and continuously occupies and displaces the blank spaces anew. It is greater than the state in that it over-identifies with the latter and subversively advances its ideology. State art is the enemy of the state as the constitution of the art state. The mistake written into this constellation is also clear: that of the state-art-producing subject. Therefore, in the art state it is not only art that over-identifies with state ideology, it is the state itself. Bearing in mind the eternal failure of over-affirmation as a subversive tactic, the art state simply inverts the circumstances. It is not just art that acts in niches, in temporary autonomous zones, in the dark, in secret, along the edges, thus not in the state’s field of vision – the art state itself takes on this role. It is precisely the over-identification of the art state with its ideology that renders it subversive per se – the art state as well as state art both shift borders while singing blithely, “My homeland knows neither land nor property”.

Now, what are state artists? Nothing in comparison to state art! Only the latter fulfills the representative function of the art state, both inwardly and outwardly. When persons act in the name of the art state, they act as performers of ideas, concepts and actions. At the same time, the art state overcomes the neo-liberal dilemma where subjects per se are their own artworks – and everyone’s somehow an artist anyway – by radically banning these factors and their effects (autonomy that leads to dependence, self-employment that leads to poverty, repressive mechanisms disguised as simple hierarchies). The art state is no playground for self-realizations and recognizes neither private property nor personal handwriting – all of this falls in the category of treason – there are no “artists of life”, only dangerous artists! The art state answers the liberal lie of artistic freedom with the lie as the art of telling the truth. The art state is not concerned with human capital (neither as homo oeconomicus nor as homo aestheticus) – it counters the terror of the human (public feeling, common sense, socialism with a human face, instincts) with the postulate of the post-human. The post-human surmounts human capital under the sign of the machine – the machine has no purpose – it is defined only by its functions. In the art state everyone is a part of this machine – are parts of machines, constantly part and make new machines: painting machine, dance machine, writing machine, music machine, illusion machine, thinking machine. A party structure is unneeded, even as a parody – in the art state, only mechanical links produce a cadre. Art is the weapon in the struggle against diversity without difference – terror to do damage to stupidity. And it is always right!

Didi Neidhart