Blake Stimson
Stimson, Blake. "What Is Institutional Critique?" Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists' Writings. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2009. 21-41. Print.
Date: 10/8/2012
List of primary
claims made in this reading:
Historically, institutions reflect and/or define societal
constructs and expectations, as such, institutions, including art institutions,
are political agencies “that devise constraints that shape human interaction.”
(Pg. 21)
Once an institution is established its service to society
and purpose as an institution is undisputed. As a result, institutions are not
held accountable for upholding their commitment to the socialist implications
of institutionality, in which “social thinking, institutional thinking, class
thinking, ... could be made available to consciousness” leading to
“self-realization” through the social practice of “self-abstraction” – negating
individuality in order to achieve greater human (as species) potential. (Pg. 22, 25)
Institutional critique as an artistic genre aims to hold
institutions accountable to “it’s commitment to the old promise of
institutionality,” was “born in protest against the changes in the way we think
about and experience institutions.” To do this, institutional critique
publically examined institutions’ relations with privatized, capitalist
industries that disregarded the institutional aim for greater human potential,
stagnating or settling for “average” as an institutional/human experience. (Pg.
26, 29)
Stimson argues that with the evolution of technology and
“peer-to-pear social organizations,” grand institutions – government, religion,
museums - that served as “hierarchical social organizations that aided and
abetted social life” are no longer the primary stage for public debate and
societal consensus, making the need for institutional critique debatable since
the platform for self-realization became a global platform, not just an
institutional one. (Pg. 32)
I think it’s important to take note and question
institutional restrictions, perimeters, and expectations in your own practice
because you might inadvertently be supporting and perpetuating discrimination,
exclusiveness, political abuse, etc. Institutional critique initiates public
awareness and education as an art practice, which reintroduces the public as
key members of instituionality, which I believe is key in holding both parties
accountable to the aim for institution to be a service to society.
Key Quotes:
“Once an institution becomes established it becomes
autonomous” and, thus, “outstrips its function, it’s ends, and it reason for
existing.” As a result, what could have been seen as an ensemble of
institutions in service of society becomes a society in the service of
institutions.” (Pg. 22)
“It is commonplace to assume institution to be “the rules of
the game in society or, more formally, …the humanely devised constraints that
shape human interaction.” (Pg. 21)
“When the laborer co-operates systematically with others…he
strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of
his species.” (Pg. 25)
“Typology was itself social thinking, institutional
thinking, class thinking, and it was only as such that the truth of class could
be made available to consciousness, even if it occasionally devolved from
meaningful abstraction into philosophical, political, and anthropological.”
(Pg. 27)
“The substance or purpose or meaning of the institution of
art has always been this battle line, and institutional critique as a genre –
like modernism as a whole – routinely attempted to reverse that precess of
unbecoming, to call art back to the sociality of its expression, to wrench it
away from the overwhelming dehumanizing process of becoming a “social
hieroglyph” or “fantastic form of a relation of things.” (Pg. 30)
What is sometimes not adequately appreciated is the origin
of this tactic – an thus of modernism as a whole – in capitalism, itself, in
experiencing oneself as a commodity, as a quantum of labor defined not by human
self-realization but instead by its relational position in “a given state of
society, under certain social average conditions of production, with a given
social average intensity, and average skill of the labor employed.” (Pg. 29)
“Today, just as yesterday, art wants to save us from death a
living image of our passions and our sufferings.” (Pg. 36)
“The great irony and great surprise, for our purpose, is
that, contrary to Burger and the period anti-institutionalism that his study
grew out of, that institution would come to be most powerfully defended,
articulated and renewed b the art development that presumed to the greatest
degree of institutional self reflexivity – that is, what we all have come to
call ‘institutional critique.’” (Pg. 24)
List of facts/stats
discussed in this reading:
In regards to “renewed surge of corporate institutionality”
and “shift from public accountability and public enfranchisement toward private
gain and limited accountability,” 1973 tied to three significant events: the
OPEC oil embargo, the Chilean coup, and the found of the Heritage
Foundation. (Pg. 32)
Institution critique was arguable from 1968 – 1989.
Questions of the reading?
Is institution critique still necessary? Do we agree with
Stimson in believing it is outdated in the way institutions are outdated?
Do institutions influence our “human interactions” and play
an active role in defining “social life?”
Do peer-to-peer organizations later evolve into
institutions, making them at-risk for privatization and limited accountability?
Were institutional critiques effective? Are their
quantifiable results that are evidence of their effectiveness?
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