“Normie” socialists, having largely lost recent political arguments in the new socialist movement – particularly in the righteous backlash against Angela Nagle – seem to be redoubling their efforts on the cultural front. Jacobin recently posted two highly questionable articles along these lines; John Halle’s “In Defense of Kenny G” and Alexander Dunst’s “Graphic Novels Are Comic Books, But Gentrified.”
Read moreBorn Again Labor Museum (HM London)
This presentation on the “Born Again Labor Museum (BALM)” by Adam Turl (read here by a robot) was given, along with papers from artists Anupam Roy and David Mabb, at a workshop on different strategies for salvaging the “utopian impulse” in contemporary art, at the Historical Materialism conference in London (November, 2019).
Read moreErasing Arnautoff
A false narrative has been produced pitting “aging white male art historians” against “young people of color.” This narrative is doubly false as some of the murals’ most prominent defenders are not white; and there is evidence that many students do not want the frescoes removed.[3] Moreover, this narrative creates a false choice between art and the needs and aspirations of the exploited and oppressed. The question to be examined here is (at least) twofold: why has this false narrative come to dominate and, secondly, what lessons do these dynamics hold for contemporary socialist artists.
Read moreTemporarily Embarrassed Millionaires
My work pivots from the following ideas and concerns:
Art was shamanistic in origin (under primitive communism).
The present day avant-garde is a “weak avant-garde” (see Boris Groys) detached from both the modernizing and utopian impulses of the modern avant-garde.
The solution to this weakness is a popular avant-garde that deals with the lives and concerns of the majority of the world (the working-class, the exploited and oppressed).
A viable strategy to combat the weak avant-garde is “narrative conceptualism;” putting the stories of working-class people up front in experimental artwork.
Outsider Art Is A Lie
Ralph Fasanella, New York (1957)
The concept of outsider art, or self-taught art, is a lie. It conceals the actual artistic arguments and content articulated by the artists who are described in this way. While the history of the concept is more complicated, its present usage is bound up with a racial, class and geographic othering, which centers the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois institutional art world (located in New York City first and foremost) as the norm (when it is itself the outlier).
Read moreWho Will Be Pirate Jenny?
The artist speaking at Artspace 304
The following is an artist talk by Red Wedge's Adam Turl at the opening of his exhibition, The Barista Who Disappeared, at Artspace 304 on June 1, 2018 in the artist's home town of Carbondale, Illinois. This exhibition marks the last (for now) iteration of Turl's two-year project, The Barista Who Could See the Future, about a coffee shop worker and artist living in Southern Illinois who believes he has visions of the future. The city of Carbondale is facing a crisis as budget cuts and inflationary tuition hikes are undermining Southern Illinois University (the city's main employer) with the active hostility of the university's board.
Read moreAesthetic Leveling: Riot + Poetry (Part One)
“Leveler” was coined in the 17th century to describe those who tore down hedges in the Enclosure Act Riots. It was later generalized. As long as the working-classes have sought political and economic leveling these aspirations have been expressed in art and culture – from the social gospel of Matthew to the gestures of punk and early Hip Hop. Aesthetic leveling can be used in ways that divert class anger toward the wrong targets or toward personalized solutions. But it also can express movement toward proletarian consciousness. And the socially promiscuous artist – coming from, and historically mixing with, all classes – is often predisposed toward leveling (as well as a political volatility that produces the aforementioned variations).
Read moreThe Barista Who Could See the Future
This video is part of Adam Turl's installation, The Barista Who Could See the Future, on display as part of the Exposure 19: Jumbled Time exhibition at Gallery 210 in St. Louis through December 2, 2017 (also featuring artists Lizzy Martinez and Stan Chisholm). The installation and short video “documentary” above center around the story of Alex Pullman – a coffee shop worker and artist who claimed he had visions of the future. A zine accompanying the installation, supposedly written by Pullman, reads as follows.
Read moreSoulèvements / Uprisings
Sigmar Polke, Against the Two Superpowers: For a Red Switzerland (1971)
We desperately need to explore a new genealogy for radical art – one that does not focus on obsessive materiality or abstracted gestures (isolated from social catastrophe); that does not avoid the brilliant moments of resistance that sustain us, but is not simply propaganda (although we need propaganda). Soulèvements – curated by philosopher and art historian Georges Didi-Huberman (winner of the 2015 Adorno Prize) – on display at the Jeu de Paume in Paris –provides an important contribution to exploring an alternative tradition for radical art.
Read moreRed Mars: Seeing the Future
The following video interview with artist and Red Wedge editor Adam Turl was conducted by the art critic DIckson Beall for the Saint Louisan:
The artist’s narrative conceptual “Red Mars” is a mixed-media installation of acrylic, coffee, meteorite dust, glitter, stickers, wheat paste on canvas, a telescope, LED sign and booklets. His fictional artist/character views the future of a colonized Mars through a backyard telescope. This character views freedom from a very different perspective, as he creates art and invents “Stories” that confront injustice and consumerism.
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