[OPE] There is always an alternative (musing)

adsl675281@tiscali.nl

Dont' know about you, but I have moments when I feel bogged down in a nightmarish mire of contradictions. But I'm not alone in this, world leaders have this problem http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/13/AR2008081303752.html The treaty of Westphalia and all that.

Could Charlie Marx help out there? Oh no... you say. But maybe, well, yes. The inspiration is, when you're sick of whinges about There Is No Alternative, that There Is Always An Alternative. Now why didn't I think of that one today in a more profound sense? Could have solved a conundrum. But some artists in England did years ago. Perhaps this is not a discussion you would want to have with your spouse, if you have one, but anyway, 

"There Is Always an Alternative articulates an alternative history of art practice and a history of alternative art practices around the early 1990s based on a political understanding of the position of the artist. The title derives from an inversion of one of Margaret Thatcher's favourite ideological phrases, "there is no alternative". This is a phrase used by people attempting to undermine whatever alternative there is and in that sense is always false and falsifying. On the contrary, there is always an alternative."
http://www.tempcontemp.co.uk/alternative.html

...If you can see it. Reifying muddles are often resolved when we invert the terms. It's so simple, you can teach a kid how to do it. But also easy to forget to practice.

Art eh. Marx said beginnings are always difficult in all sciences. Likewise, to start with art... 

But what is the alternative, and what is it really an alternative to? Often we improvise an alternative, because we are innocent of the rules. A colleague started me thinking again...

http://fc01.deviantart.com/fs13/f/2007/077/2/e/Animator_vs__Animation_by_alanbecker.swf

...from which it is evident you can start the art in different ways :-) :-[

... But a sympathetic Dutch bartender remarked to me today over a cold beer, one can think too much. Get on with it. Don't dither. Don't waste your time. Carpe Diem, that sort of thing.

It's summer. It's the holiday time. The weather's good.  It's just art. Life.

Art for art's sake. 

I hope.

If you cannot do anything about it, you cannot do anything about it, and then you better get on with something else.

J. 

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