From c14e19c8343f3f00944b9d50840501906c4ae2d7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: grr <grr@lo2.org>
Date: Thu, 2 May 2024 18:17:14 -0400
Subject: breaking more things into files

---
 essays/art_or_brend.tex | 141 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 141 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 essays/art_or_brend.tex

(limited to 'essays/art_or_brend.tex')

diff --git a/essays/art_or_brend.tex b/essays/art_or_brend.tex
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef758d7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/essays/art_or_brend.tex
@@ -0,0 +1,141 @@
+\chapter{\textsc{Art} or \textsc{Brend}?}
+
+\begin{enumerate}
+\item Perhaps the most diseased justification the artist can give of his profession 
+is to say that it is somehow scientific. LaMonte Young, Milton Babbitt, and 
+Stockhausen are exponents of this sort of justification. 
+
+The law which relates the mass of a body to its velocity has predictive value 
+and is an outstanding scientific law. Is the work of art such a law? The 
+experiment which shows that the speed of light is independent of the motion 
+of its source is a measurement of a phenomenon crucial to the confirmation of 
+a scientific hypothesis; it is an outstanding scientific experiment. Is the work 
+of art such a measurement? The invention of the vacuum tube was an 
+outstanding technological advance. Is the work of art such a technological 
+advance? Differential geometry is a deductive analysis of abstract relations 
+and an outstanding mathematical theory. ts the work of art such an 
+analysis? 
+
+The motives behind the "scientific" justification of art are utterly sinister. 
+Perhaps LaMonte Young is merely rationalizing because he wants an 
+academic job. But Babbitt is out to reduce music to a pedantic 
+pseudo-science. And Stockhausen, with his "scientific music", intends 
+nothing less than the suppression of the culture of "lower classes" and 
+"ower races." 
+
+It is the creative personality himself who has the most reason to object to 
+the "scientific" justification of art. Again and again, the decisive step in 
+artistic development has come when an artist produces a work that shatters 
+all existing 'scientific' laws of art, and yet is more important to the 
+audience than all the works that "obey" the laws. 
+
+\item The artist or entertainer cannot exist without urging his product on other 
+people. In fact, after developing his product, the artist goes out and tries to 
+win public acceptance for it, to advertise and promote it, to sell it, to force it 
+on people. If the public doesn't accept it at first, he is disappointed. He 
+doesn't drop it, but repeatedly urges the product on them. 
+
+People have every reason, then, to ask the artist: Is your product good for 
+me even if I don't like or enjoy it? This question really lays art open. One of 
+the distinguishing features of art has always been that it is very difficult to 
+defend art without referring to people's liking or enjoying it. (Functions of 
+art such as making money or glorifying the social order are real enough, but 
+they are rarely cited in defense of art. Let us put them aside.) When one 
+artist shows his latest production to another, all he can usually ask is "Do 
+you like it?" Once the "scientific" justification of art is discredited, the 
+artist usually has to admit: If you don't like or enjoy my product, there's no 
+reason why you should "consume" it. 
+
+There are exceptions. Art sometimes becomes the sole channel for political 
+dissent, the sole arena in which oppressive social relations can be 
+transcended. Even so, subjectivity of value remains a feature which 
+distinguishes art and entertainment from other activities. Thus art is 
+historically a leisure activity. 
+
+\item But there is a fundamental contradiction here. Consider the object which 
+one person produces for the liking, the enjoyment of another. The value of 
+the object is supposed to be that you just like it. It supposedly has a value 
+which is entirely subjective and entirely within you, is a part of you. Yet---the 
+object can exist without you, is completely outside you, is not you or your 
+valuing, and has no inherent connection with you or your valuing. The 
+product is not personal to you. 
+
+Such is the contradiction in much art and entertainment. it is unfortunate 
+that it has to be stated so abstractly, but the discussion is about something 
+so personal that there can be no interpersonal examples of it. Perhaps it will 
+help to say that in appreciating or consuming art, you are always aware that 
+it is not you, your valuing---yet your liking it, your valuing it is usually the 
+only thing that can justify it. 
+
+In art and entertainment, objects are produced having no inherent 
+connection with people's liking, yet the artist expects the objects to find 
+their value in people's liking them. To be totally successful, the object would 
+have to give you an experience in which the object is as personal to you as 
+your valuing of it. Yet you remain aware that the object is another's 
+product, separable from your liking of it. The artist tries to "be oneself" for 
+other people, to "express oneself" for them. 
+
+\item There are experiences for each person which accomplish what art and 
+entertainment fail to. The purpose of this essay is to make you aware of 
+these experiences, by comparing and contrasting them with art. I have 
+coined the term \term{brend} for these experiences. 
+
+Consider all of your doings, what you already do. Exclude the gratifying of 
+physiological needs, physically harmful activities, and competitive activites. 
+Concentrate on spontaneous self-amusement or play. That is, concentrate on 
+everything you do just because you like it, because you just like it as you do 
+it. 
+
+Actually, these doings should be referred to as your just-likings. In saying 
+that somebody likes an art exhibit, it is appropriate to distinguish the art 
+exhibit from his liking of it. But in the case of your just-likings, it is not 
+appropriate to distinguish the objects valued from your valuings, and the 
+single term that covers both should be used. When you write with a pencil, 
+you are rarely attentive to the fact that the pencil was produced by 
+somebody other than yourself. You can use something produced by 
+somebody else without thinking about it. In your just-likings, you never 
+notice that things are not produced by you. The essence of a just-liking is 
+that in it, you are not aware that the object you value is less personal to you 
+than your very valuing. 
+
+These just-likings are your \term{brend.} Some of your dreams are brend; and 
+some children's play is brend (but formal children's games aren't). In a sense, 
+though, the attempt to give interpersonal examples of brend is futile, 
+because the end result is neutral things or actions, cut off from the valuing 
+which gives them their only significance; and because the end result suggests 
+that brend is a deliberate activity like carrying out orders. The only examples 
+for you are your just-likings, and you have to guess them by directly 
+applying the abstract definition. 
+
+Even though brend is defined exclusively in terms of what you like, it is not 
+necessarily solitary. The definition simply recognizes that valuing is an act of 
+individuals; that to counterpose the likes of the community to the likes of 
+the individuals who make it up is an ideological deception. 
+
+\item It is now possible to say that much art and entertainment are 
+pseudo-brend; that your brend is the total originality beyond art; that your 
+brend is the absolute self-expression and the absolute enjoyment beyond art. 
+Can brend, then, replace art, can it expand to fill the space now occupied by 
+art and entertainment? To ask this question is to ask when utopia will 
+arrive, when the barrier between work and leisure will be broken down, 
+when work will be abolished. Rather than holding out utopian promises, it is 
+better to give whoever can grasp it the realization that the experience 
+beyond art already occurs in his life---but is totally suppressed by the general 
+repressiveness of society. 
+\end{enumerate}
+
+
+Note: The avant-garde artist may raise a final question. Can't art or 
+entertainment compensate for its impersonality by having sheer newness as a 
+value? Can't the very foreignness of the impersonal object be entertaining? 
+Doesn't this happen with Mock Risk Games, for example? The answer is 
+that entertainmental newness is also subjective. What is entertainingly 
+strange to one person is incomprehensible, annoying, or irrelevant to 
+another. The only difference between foreignness and other entertainment 
+values is that brend does not have more foreignness than conventional 
+entertainment does. 
+
+As for objective newness, or the objective value of Mock Risk Games, these 
+issues are so difficult that I have been unable to reach final conclusions 
+about them. 
+
-- 
cgit v1.2.3

