bogus religiosity

I was really disappointed when we didn't get to hear a speaker this week because it really connects everything and makes it easier to dive into the readings and make real the conversations we read.  But I managed to power on and get through this weeks reading and was thankfully able to compile some sort of response.


A reoccurring theme I've noticed in the past few weeks is this idea of getting the art work out of the museum and put into the real world so that it is no longer perceived with a whack view where the frame and atmosphere gives more meaning than the true meaning of the art piece by itself, as a living representation of culture in the world.  John Berger a art historian, philosopher, and writer was a brilliant man who I have enjoyed studying in the past.  He gives definition to bogus religiosity where he claims that threw reproduction and replacement (moving the art to museums) takes away the true meaning of art and gives it the bogus representation of it self.  The museum now creates the meaning of that art and tells you it must be art if it is in the museum.


All the artists we've read in the conversations have talked about interactive pieces, installations, and performance practice, a way of art that takes power back from institutions and gives it back to the artist and art itself.  I ask you, how can you capture a conversation and put that in a museum?  Because according to the institution art is found in museums, a separate world for the high culture to view what art it, its not in the world... but conversation is at most the basic presentation of art that occurs in all environments and geographies of the world.  Its like one of our speakers mentioned I want to say his name was Dan, a photographer who was obsessed with capturing the intangible, capturing human interaction and thought, art at its core.  I think Mary Jan Jacob wanted to do the same thing, take the power away from the museum, away from the institution and give it back to the people, back to the world.    I found it interesting when they were talking about interactive and performance art pieces and how high culture doesn't understand how that can be art when non-artist help create these art pieces but maybe high culture has got their heads so high in the clouds they can't see the basics of art, the first component always needed to inspire art to be created... interaction, communication, relationships between people, animals, earth, artists and non-artisit.


The Guerrilla Girls were interesting without really saying much about themselves, they seemed very mysterious and didn't give answers to many of Suzi's questions.  They did talk about connection though. They fit through civil injustices that mostly deal with women because they are women so its relevant to them and together their voices roars loader than alone and they are trying to change the motto, the walls are his the floor is mine.  It is not about a numerical system while each minority slowly gets involved and accepted in popular/ high culture its all in the same each minority should abolish together its a process that all should be involved in not just one being more important then the next decade we'll take on the next minority.  It's about the system as a whole changing, changing the definitions of acceptability, environments of art, who an artist is, what art is.  We must remember not to be blinding by bogus religiosity and high culture flare and remember the basics that art is not separate from life but a reflection of it that needs to be a part of our lives day in and day out.