한스 하케와 피에르 부르디외 대담(free exchange) (1995)

목차
기획자 노트
한스 하케의 작업 목록
서론

Helmsboro Country
Sponsors who know the tune
Creating a sensation
Real simulacra
The crusaders of "high culture"
Defense of the West and the return of absolutism
In the state's noose
A politics of form
Plain speaking

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Helmsboro Country

PB: you have a truly remarkable "eye" for seing the particular forms of domination that are exerted on the art world and to which, paradoxically, writers and artists are not normally very sensitive.
HH: He reminded us that art productions are more than merchandise and a means to fame, as we thought in the 1980s. (...) His(Helmes) election campaigns are regularly laced with appeals to racist sentiments among white voters. (...) The South-Eastern Center for Contemporary Art(SECCA) of Winston-Salem, had put together a traveling exhibition of young artists who had all received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), grants that had been channelled through SECCA. (...) The alarm signal from Richmond triggered a flood of letters to members of Congress, charging that public funds had been used to subsidize a sacrilege. - Mapplethorpe - (...) It was the first time since the establishment of the NEA that political criteria were imposed on the professional review panels who, until then, had been the only judges deciding on grant applications submitted by institutions and individual artists. - This vague formula resembles the "gesundes Volksempfinden" that the Nazis invoked when they purged German museums of "degenerate art". - In order to avoid censorship, artists and institutions applying for public funds are now driven to exercise self-censorship. It is well known that self-censorship is often more effective than open censorship.
PB: Now, all of those people, who are traditionally quite discreet, practice a form of self-censorship, anticipating this kind of situation.
HH: Although the museum got a lot of donations the support of the sponsors disappeared. They are nowhere to be seen when free expression is under attack in the practical world. They don't like to have their names associated with a controversial institution.
PB: Museums need cultural respectability to be able to influence their sponsors. There is a whole network of dependencies. (...) A set of intersecting pressures and dependencies which continue to exist.
HH: These events have taught artists and intellectuals that, aside from individual success in terms of money and fame, there are other things that matter. There is a new sense of solidarity which had not existed for a long time. (...) A sense of awareness. - Boycott. Disgusted by the director's censorship of Mapplethorpe, many on the staff resigned, (...)
PB: They(Artists) are very difficult to mobilize . . . That is one of the major problems encountered by every action in defense of the collective interests of writers and artists. In the first place, quite often they are not aware that they have common interests, and they limit themselves to defending particular interests which compete with those of the others. (...) How can we deny that among the transgressions with which we identify when they are attacked by self-righteous people, there are those which do not really challenge anything, either aesthetically or politically? The literary and artistic fields have always known those false revolutionaries who begin their career with brilliant ruptures, especially on the political terrain, only to wind up in the most profound conformism and academicism, and who make life doubly difficult for the true innovators.

Sponsors who know the tune

PB: today the very people who were indignant at the time are absolutely defenseless when it comes to patronage. Private patronage is in fashion. In face of thise, critical awareness is nil. People move along in a dispersed manner, without collective reflection. (...) Indeed, it may be feared that recourse to private patronage in order to finance art, literature, and science will gradually place artists and scholars in a relationship of material and mental dependence on economic powers and market constraints.

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Politics of Form

PB: At this point, it would seem important to reflect on the fact that the process of autonomization of the artistic world (in relation to patrons, academics, states, etc.) is accompanied by a renunciation of certain functions, particularly political functions. On eof the effects that you produce consists in reintroducing those functions. (...)
HH: I believe the public for what we call art is rarely homogeneous. There is always tension between people who are, above all, interested in what is "told" and those who focus primarily on the how. Neither of them can fully comprehend and appreciate a work of art. "Form" speaks, and "content" is inscribed in "form". The whole is inevitably imbued with ideological significations. (...) Between these two extremes exists a sizable audience that is curious and without fixed opinions. It is in this group that one finds people who are prepared to reexamine the provisional positions they hold. (...) Artists have usually been quite aware of the sociopolitical determinants of their time. Whether artists like it or not, artworks are always ideological tokens, even if they don't serve identifiable clients by name. As tokens of power and symbolic capital. I would like to add that the meaning and impact of a given object are not fixed for all eternity. They depend on the context in which one sees them. (...) "form" expresses a "message", and that a "message" would not get through without an appropriate "form". The integration of the two components is what counts.
PB: (...) You reestablish the link with the context. The proper language is that which is appropriate, opportune, and effective.
HH: As far as work for a given context is concerned, I would like to add that, as with many questions touching the theory and the sociology of art, there is a precedent in the practice of Marcel Duchamp. (...) Being a member of this New York association himself, he knew it well and could imagine what the reaction of his colleagues would be. That's what he played on. (...) Its meaning had changed. With this maneuver, Duchamp revealed the rules of the game, the symbolic power of the context. (...) Our categories of classification then get scrambled. (...) Explicating the context in which artworks were created, as some do, is branded Marxist, a very damaging label. The most accepted practice remains that of decontextualizing objects. (...) Art institutions, a bit like schools, are places of education. They influence the way we look at ourselves and how we view our social relasionts. As is the case in other branches of the consciousness industry, so here, in a subtle way, our values are being negotiated. (...) This interdependence of art and society.