Notes: Summer retreat and party plenum. Newport, Rhode Island. August 13, 1953:
We the People, in order to form a more perfect monopoly, establish benefits, insure hegemony, provide for the common stock, promote the corporation, and secure the blessings of liberty to enrich ourselves and that of our future prosperity, we do ordain and establish this constitution to benefit all multi-national institutions, and in order to better and perpetually confer onto this “system”, a set of reciprocal legal and financial obligations among our warrior and excecutive nobility.
That every man be the vassal, or servant, of his lord, that “they” swear homage to him, and in return this/these lord(s) shall promise to give him protection and to see that justice and recompense is received. That this monopoly shall be the expression of a society in which every man be bound to every other by mutual ties of loyalty and service. That said monoply shall be marked by vast gulfs between the very few, very rich, landholders and the masses of the working poor who toil for the profit of this Union…
Photo by: Tom Nagy
This shall serve to confuse and dissuade our intentions of creating a more dystopian vision of a society, whereas the many, shall benefit the few ….
To promote and project a more perfect monopoly we shall promote our present policies concerning literary and artistic work, in as much as it shall be used to market a more benevolent image of this noble Union….
It shall stand to reason that today’s writers and artists who cling to an individualist, arty-bourgeois stand cannot truly serve the Union’s benefits, as their interest is mistakenly and mainly focused on a small number of arty-bourgeois intellectuals whose interests are to promote themselves, and not our afore mentioned Union.
Photo by: Tom Nagy
These intellectual workers should eventually be made to serve the visual guidelines of the Union, to craft a new visual and literary ideology as “The people” still have many shortcomings and have retained many arty bourgeois ideals; and while both the working class and the urban petty bourgeoisie have heartily embraced our ideology, we have still been hampered by “their” struggle to contradict. But, we shall be patient and spend a longtime in educating them and helping them to combat their own arty errors and shortcomings, so that they can advance with great strides towards our more perfect and consumptive vision.
The purpose of our meeting today is precisely to ensure that art and literature fit well into the whole beneficiary machine as a better component part and/or that they operate as a more powerful weapon for uniting and educating the people, and for attacking and destroying the “People’s” established fiduciary institutions to create a new and more perfect Union.
Right on, brother. Fitting in is us.
Artie Burger
Very carefully observed Olivier – you have considerable wit and intelligence. When you say ‘The Monopoly’ are you referring to ‘Capitalism’ and Globalisation’ been the dominant world political ethos?
But what I mean by “monopoly” is also our deep and comfortable acceptance of it, our obedience to its enormous strength and power, our fear of its being destroyed or changed. We have for the most part grown up within capitalist societies and have been indoctrinated to its way, its philosophies and dogmas.
But what I also mean by monopoly is the effects that dogma, any dogma has on all of us humans, and this is why I chose communist propaganda to highlight our remarkable propagandistic similitudes.
Funny that two large multi-national corporation(microsoft and xl capital) would feel perfectly at ease advertising themselves with exactly the same visual language as Maoist China, and these are deep “Cultural Revolution” images, I picked to make my point as clear as I could make it.
But also, and to some extent, I have to admit that I have a tendency to feel a certain latency in everything I do, call it a pharmaceutical side effect, a uneasiness about both my thoughts and their intuitiveness.
By that I mean that I never arrive at any conclusion by careful analysis, thought or observation, it is all slowly ingested overtime to be regurgitate at a later, usually incomprehensible way.
and by incomprehensible I mean that I do not understand how I really function, not that the end results are incomprehensible, as they are to me, obviously, but that I often marvel at how my mind works, it is often so incredibly strange and peculiar. I am sure as hell not, and have ever been, in charge of my personality…. I would presume that we all feel this way.
Isn’t this the way that all artist think? i.e. In an intuitive way rather than an analytic way. You are a right brain thinker and I’m sure you see the dancer move clockwise see below:-
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22556281-661,00.html
oh my fucking god, that dancer is freaky, first I see it going clock wise but there are times when I blink and the dancer goes counter clockwise, and then back to clockwise…..no wonder I am so confused, with my brain switching back and forth, but with a strong right brain penchant. fucking interesting…..
I mainly see the dancer move clockwise – only very occasionally do I see her move anti-clockwise and that’s normally only for a few seconds – which surprises me as I thought I was very logically ‘wired’.
I think it’s interesting to note that the current zeitgeist for advertising photography is de-saturation of colours as in the examples you show of Tom Nagy. Shame your new portfolio is so ‘Technicolour’ – you are too far ahead of the curve on that one Olivier :-(
Thanks for saying so, it is reassuring. Nevertheless, another thing you will see here is my transformation into a still life photographer. I will change my name, develop a whole new portfolio and start advertising myself as that person and see where it goes. Should prove interesting.
This not to say that I will stop my current work, just use the still life to fund the other works, at least that’s the idea.
Since most art directors and photo editors seem unable to accept the fact that one photographer can excel at more than one thing, or that if your site contains too many styles, they become confused and you loose them to themselves. This is the path I am willing to try.
I will explain later, when I start the process, but the best part of all of this is that you guys will get to choose what my pseudonym will be.
Successful commercial photographers are not necessarily good artists – they normally just tap into a seam of fashionable photography for a while and if they are smart then they just change with the times (Annie L for example) It’s simply a case of reinventing yourself.
I’m staying away from that stuff and concentrating on corporate photography to pay the bills – I’m almost there as the money side of things is starting to take care of things. Next stage is to pursue my own work and I’ve got some firm ideas on what I’m doing there.
Your personal work is very interesting but I think you are right to keep the two types of work apart. Thomas Broening appears to have a similar problem of reconciling two very conflicting sides of his work.
Yep, and I think he will end up shooting himself in the foot but we only learn by doing. I certainly hope he manages to pull it off, the poor bugger has four kids… so best of luck.
He would be better off shooting his own work and not tell anyone about it until he is good and ready.
It seems that fine artists are allowed to venture into commercial and editorial work but the opposite is sadly not nearly as true. Aaaaah, the humanity…. but that’s another story as it shall never be told appropriately, unless it’s some sort of reality TV rock opera in 64 acts, featuring a cast of billions. With any luck, I will develop “such a” technology and grow billions. (and those fucking commas, I never know what to do with them, where is” that ” technology?)