An aesthetic of memory?

I am becoming ever more concerned with the artist and their choices in a work, which is odd considering that my presence here has meant that I have ceased producing sculpture altogether and forsaken it for theory.
Coming from a studio background I find it odd and interesting how little we question the formal decisions in the artworks cited in class. This became clear discussing Past Lives by Lorie Novak [below].

Now, I am not going to engage in a crit of Novak's work in a blog piece - I have too much respect for both Novak and the practice of critique - but think it is interesting how hard I find it to engage people in questioning the choices an artist makes. I think Novak's work, especially her Interior Projections  collection exemplify an aesthetic of memory - layering, projection, transparency - that has today become a bit of a cliche. 

For this I sacrifice my own work at the alter of making a point. Below are two film stills from a film piece I made in 2011 about the American West and the problems of westward expansion as a signifier of progress (something I have only been able to articulate as a result of this course).  

Untitled, 2011 Copyright.

Untitled, 2011 Copyright.

The film wasn't my best work (I'm much better with an extra dimension to play with) and I only bring it up here to demonstrate that there is an aesthetic that has become a shorthand for memory, and that it is rife among student artists in academy studios around the world. 

I would attribute the proliferation of this aesthetic to its success at succinctly conveying the message, but that said in art 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' never really caught on as a philosophy.What this aesthetic means in the digital age is also worth questioning; now that overlaying, transparency and projection can all be done in a flash using photoshop, the physicality of working with the artefacts of memory is lost, as is the time invested in creating a piece like Novak's. 

While I don't think theorists are here to write poison letters of critique, I do believe that examining the decisions in a piece of work are fair, even if speculating on the reasons for those decisions may not be. An art work is about the curation of decisions, often agonised over, undone and then repeated. Not to acknowledge that and to exclude it from the dicussion also excludes the artist from the conversation. In the words of Hans Haacke:

The assumption that artists are humanitarians is a beautiful but dangerous myth. Experience tells that artists are not better than other people. As landlords, they exploit their tenants as much as others. They rip off things and ideas as much as others; they are certainly not less, maybe even more concerned about their careers than others; and when there is a choice between monetary gain and truth to professed ideas, the proportion of artists opting for the bank-account is also not considerably different from other people's. The idea of the artist as a priest or saint is a cherished holdover from 19th-century romanticism. It creates an atmosphere that makes it a sacrilege to analyze the artist's economic and ideological position and the role he actually plays in society's superstructure. (The Role of the Artist in Today's Society, Carl Andre, Hans Haacke, John Perreault and Cindy Nemser, Source: Art Journal, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Summer, 1975), pp. 327-331Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/775915 Accessed: 17/03/2013 13:13)

The Rubberbandits

When it occured to me that The Rubberbandits [videos below for your viewing pleasure] could be interesting examples of multidirectional memory I thought I might be going mad, or that I was just really misunderstanding Michael Rothberg. And while I still wouldn't bet my house on it, I think there is possibly an argument to be made. So I am going to try and make it here...

Of all the models of cultural memory that we have looked at I keep coming back to Rothberg and I think its because it is an extremely valuable model for the creative. As I understand him, he is advocating for writers, artists, anyone who contributes to conversations around cultural memory to do it by looking through another culture, not in comparison, but in such a way that a new line of sight is drawn. In my opinion this is what The Rubberbandits do. 

Brian Logan wrote of them in The Guardian:

Their act came about partly in response to Limerick's reputation as a poverty-stricken place (it's where Frank McCourt's misery memoir Angela's Ashes is set), riven with gangs, drugs and crime (it's also Ireland's murder capital). "The media portray Limerick as like Compton in LA," says Chambers. "We're taking the piss out of that." 

I think that last statement is a case of misdirection - they're success is based on not being taken too seriously, so its not in their interests to be examined too closely. I think what they goes beyond parody, through a mixing of gansta rap and Irish social commentary they genuinely do draw new lines of sight on difficult cultural memory in Ireland, such as emigration [see Buddies in Boston below] or assimilation [see Black Man].

Whether they do create multidirectional spaces of memory or not, I am ultimately not sure enough to shout about it. But it does raise in my mind how artists can apply Rothberg's model and confirms the potential of the multidirectional space he advocates.

The Rubberbandits - Horse Outside

The Rubberbandits - Black Man

The Rubberbandits - Buddies in Boston