“Art, like science, not only does not seek orders, but by its very essence, cannot tolerate them. Artistic creation has its laws – even when it consciously serves a social movement. Truly intellectual creation is incompatible with lies, hypocrisy and the spirit of conformity. Art can become a strong ally of revolution only in so far as it remains faithful to itself.”
Leon Trotsky, “Art and politics in our epoch”, published in the Partisan Review in 1938. In a time when the arts seem to be ordered to serve the ideals of nation building, of job creation and of establishing social cohesion, the autonomy of the arts, free of the constrictions of a political reality, needs to be emphasised. As before and as in the time of Trotsky maintaining and preserving this autonomy has proven to be a constant endeavour, something that artists, arts administrators and everybody interested in the arts should strive for. And should, for some reason, the arts opt to “serve a social movement”, as Trotsky suggested, then the obligation is to problematize the social problem; not to offer a social solution. This would be in line with Walter Benjamin’s idea that art can only have the correct political “tendency” if it has aesthetic “quality”. This seems to be the position taken by the Dead Bunny Society (DBS) established in March 2015 and comprising four practising artists with a wide variety of artistic and curatorial experience: Dirk Bahmann, Stephan Erasmus, Peter Mammes and Neil Nieuwoudt. For the first curated DBS exhibition in Pretoria Nieuwoudt has selected and excerpt from the Trotsky article as a brief for the participating artists “to interpret the text freely in whichever way or through whichever belief that they hold – be that anti-political, anti-revolution, pro-political, pro-revolution or any other way that they may interpret the text”.
Adala Michelle Prevost, Barbara Wildenboer, Dead Bunny Society, Dirk Bahmann, Elizaveta Rukavishnikova, Fried Contemporary, Gauteng, Marc Pradervand, Neil Nieuwoudt, Peter Mammes, Rebecca Haysom, Richard Meade, Stephan Erasmus, Stephen Rosin
Participating artists: Dirk Bahmann, Stephan Erasmus, Rebecca Haysom, Peter Mammes, Richard Meade, Neil Nieuewoudt, Marc Pradervand, Stephen Rosin, Elizaveta Rukavishnikova, Barbara Wildenboer, Adala Michelle Prevost
Curator: Dead Bunny Society
Gallery: Fried Contemporary Art Gallery, Pretoria
Dates: 21 January 2016 – 20 February 2016
Website: http://deadbunnysociety.com/archive
Pages: 57
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