LIAM GILLICK
Louis Althusser, »How to Read Marx’s Capital«*
Louis Althusser, »How to Read Marx’s Capital«*
Liam Gillick works in close interaction with criticism and theory, regarding not only the basic strategies of his work but also the numerous art criticisms written by the British artist. His themes are repeatedly Modernism and its models of social theory and how they affect society and conditions of production in real life. LIAM GILLICK in an e-mail interview with CHRISTIAN KOBALD.
8. […] My advice therefore is – begin with reading Part II of Volume I entitled ›The Transformation of Money into Capital‹. It is not possible, in my view, to begin (and only to begin) to understand Part I without having read and re-read the whole of Volume I from Part II onwards.
9. This is more than a piece of advice. It is a recommendation, one which I regard as imperative. Everyone can confirm it by practical experience.
Christian Kobald: When did Althusser first become important for you?
Liam Gillick: Althusser was talked about a lot at Goldsmiths in the 1980s. It seems remarkable now, but at the time he was the focus of a number of seminars, but so was S. J. Perelman, the New Yorker humorist and Marx Brothers’ screenwriter. I think it was this mixture of Althusser (Karl Marx) and Perelman (Marx Brothers) that explains the idiosyncrasy of the discourse at the University at the time.1
I believe, that the Marx Brothers provided a sense of anarchy that was completely missing in the Communist Party or the labour unions, etc. Have you been engaged in party or union politics or any other kind of political activism?
I was a Student Union President briefly, but it was a moribund Union at that time, so nothing much happened. I was thrown off the stage during a demonstration against cuts in student grants. A young proto-Blairite from the central committee didn’t like me asking why we had marched to a park in the middle of nowhere in South London instead of heading for the Department of Education or frankly anywhere else. He whispered »Trotskyite« in my ear. I didn’t know whether to kiss him or punch him. Instead I just put more energy into my art work and confirmed my interest in attempting to shift systems from the inside. At the time, the main attraction for many was the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, who were very active selling newspapers and working the streets in a Sartre style. I was not interested and never joined. I was involved with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, as an organiser. I spent a lot of time at the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common, offering support to the camp. This was an important time. It definitely embodied the best combination of the »two Marx« positions. A lot of playing, confusion and mockery of fixed systems.
Did you actually follow Althusser’s recommendation?
Absolutely. It is a clearly written guide about how to read a book. It remains crucial. Of course the idea that he speaks kindly about intellectuals or those who »have made the necessary effort to arrive at ›the standpoint of the working class‹, « reassured me about the potential of an intellectual pursuit having some value within the culture. Althusser’s guide can be argued with, it is written clearly, it shows a pedagogical turn and a desire to share a text with others. It is an extremely useful and interesting thing for a sophisticated theorist to do.
Did you doubt the social value of an artist’s work at that time?
Absolutely. I haven’t changed my position either. It is crucial for art to have a critical function in society, so that everything remains open to question, especially the relevance and potential of contemporary art. Also, you have to remember that a sceptical literary-based context, like that of the UK, has always been suspicious of the potential of visual and critical practice. This is a different resistance than you might find in other European cultures. I was interested in whether it might be possible to recuperate aspects of certain critical practices that we had been told had failed. Althusser’s text seemed like a good way to begin.
What are the critical practices you tried to re-establish?
The potential of applied modernism. Occupying the space between the trajectory of modernism and the relentless track of modernity. The notion of the commune or the group as a valid working model. An embrace of discursive models that can still function. None of these things are directly illustrated in the work, but should be understood as operating in parallel to the work
8. […] My advice therefore is – begin with reading Part II of Volume I entitled ›The Transformation of Money into Capital‹. It is not possible, in my view, to begin (and only to begin) to understand Part I without having read and re-read the whole of Volume I from Part II onwards.
9. This is more than a piece of advice. It is a recommendation, one which I regard as imperative. Everyone can confirm it by practical experience.
Christian Kobald: When did Althusser first become important for you?
Liam Gillick: Althusser was talked about a lot at Goldsmiths in the 1980s. It seems remarkable now, but at the time he was the focus of a number of seminars, but so was S. J. Perelman, the New Yorker humorist and Marx Brothers’ screenwriter. I think it was this mixture of Althusser (Karl Marx) and Perelman (Marx Brothers) that explains the idiosyncrasy of the discourse at the University at the time.1
I believe, that the Marx Brothers provided a sense of anarchy that was completely missing in the Communist Party or the labour unions, etc. Have you been engaged in party or union politics or any other kind of political activism?
I was a Student Union President briefly, but it was a moribund Union at that time, so nothing much happened. I was thrown off the stage during a demonstration against cuts in student grants. A young proto-Blairite from the central committee didn’t like me asking why we had marched to a park in the middle of nowhere in South London instead of heading for the Department of Education or frankly anywhere else. He whispered »Trotskyite« in my ear. I didn’t know whether to kiss him or punch him. Instead I just put more energy into my art work and confirmed my interest in attempting to shift systems from the inside. At the time, the main attraction for many was the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, who were very active selling newspapers and working the streets in a Sartre style. I was not interested and never joined. I was involved with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, as an organiser. I spent a lot of time at the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common, offering support to the camp. This was an important time. It definitely embodied the best combination of the »two Marx« positions. A lot of playing, confusion and mockery of fixed systems.
Did you actually follow Althusser’s recommendation?
Absolutely. It is a clearly written guide about how to read a book. It remains crucial. Of course the idea that he speaks kindly about intellectuals or those who »have made the necessary effort to arrive at ›the standpoint of the working class‹, « reassured me about the potential of an intellectual pursuit having some value within the culture. Althusser’s guide can be argued with, it is written clearly, it shows a pedagogical turn and a desire to share a text with others. It is an extremely useful and interesting thing for a sophisticated theorist to do.
Did you doubt the social value of an artist’s work at that time?
Absolutely. I haven’t changed my position either. It is crucial for art to have a critical function in society, so that everything remains open to question, especially the relevance and potential of contemporary art. Also, you have to remember that a sceptical literary-based context, like that of the UK, has always been suspicious of the potential of visual and critical practice. This is a different resistance than you might find in other European cultures. I was interested in whether it might be possible to recuperate aspects of certain critical practices that we had been told had failed. Althusser’s text seemed like a good way to begin.
What are the critical practices you tried to re-establish?
The potential of applied modernism. Occupying the space between the trajectory of modernism and the relentless track of modernity. The notion of the commune or the group as a valid working model. An embrace of discursive models that can still function. None of these things are directly illustrated in the work, but should be understood as operating in parallel to the work
To me Althusser’s writing seemed condescending and despairing at the same time. I feel much closer to Bourdieu’s approach. Does Pierre Bourdieu have any importance for you?
Absolutely. My work can definitely be understood in light of his work on symbolic and cultural capital. I use much of his terminology in attempting to operate in diverse fields. I just designed a ruler for a new museum of labour and industry in Spain, a brise-soleil for a derelict car park in Sweden and a work for the garden of a rich Belgian collector. In order to do these things at the same time as being involved in a free school in Berlin (Unitednationsplaza) I have to be conscious of his notions of reflexivity and engagement with what we might still call the sociological sphere of practice. I am not trying to point out to the dominant culture that which it already knows, I am interested in the implicated role of the artist as an agent within the society.
I brought up Bourdieu because of the way he connects solidarity and writing.1 Also William Empson’s essay »Proletarian Literature« comes to my mind in context to your work.2 I think it is important to reconsider the relation between art and solidarity if we are trying to work out the contemporary implications of Althusser’s »Golden Rule« (No. 39)3. Do you agree?
I do up to a point, and it explains why there are various approaches to my work. I have been rightly questioned about the formal and aesthetic qualities of some of my structures and the way they don’t seem to be reconcilable with the rhetoric of the practice, but you have to remember my commitment to making art, which might act as a lure or a way into other er ideas. Of course this also means that there are alternative ways for people who are less interested in the physical propositions. I was brought up in a household that was essentially autodidactic in quality. I was the first person in my family to go to University, for example. This is a common post-war experience and this shift of the working classes into an educated framework created tensions between generations but also generated new possibilities towards revised models of communication. My work is predicated on the fact that people are intelligent sentient beings regardless of class, however I am aware that class consciousness in its contemporary form is a complex and imploded notion. An artist today has to find multiple and layered forms of engagement, otherwise they will merely create a parodic form of earlier relationships rather than useful engagements between people and art, and art and people.
How would you define the function of the visual aspects of your work?
I have always been interested in the semiotics of the built world; there is a strong aspect in the visual quality of my work that connects it to earlier notions of applied modernism. The reference points in the work are not »design« or »architecture« but the details and structures that are employed in renovation, compromise and recuperation of flawed social space. There is a strong connection here to the old idea of a formal language that is essentially levelling and can be read across cultures and languages regardless of the necessity to carry a text. This seems to be a somewhat naïve statement but it is at the heart of the visual quality of the work. What happens in a layered Anglo-Saxon culture is that there is a strong desire to separate disciplines to the extent that there is no profound history of direct engagement between notions of avantgarde practice and its attendant critical framework. Now, historically, this has provided certain opportunities in terms of the development of spontaneous social groupings that can emerge without earnest critical support or reflection. But in the long term there is a lack in the culture that combines with other factors in the culture in a soft conspiracy to retain social differences in forms that ensure that the dominant culture (often an amateur culture, in the oldfashioned and paternalistic sense) can continue unaffected by the critical potential of art. There is some DNA missing in the culture due to the fact that there was no nineteenth philosophy of national identity to proceed from. So, art is supposed to remain idiosyncratic, super-self-conscious, ironic or the result of honest hard work. In some ways, my combination of text, analysis and contingent objects in this context creates a profound allergic reaction. It cannot be ignored, but it doesn’t provide a resolved reflection of the failure of art within an acritical environment. Of course, within a more rooted critical framework, the work develops new weaknesses, but these moments of collapse are more synchronised and make more sense.
In your opinion, what kind of art does reflect the complexity of our situation?
There is no single answer to this question. It is not just a matter of looking at art, but of considering the entire matrix of critical relationships within the art context. So we have to look at various groupings of idea producers as they temporarily come together, split and reform in different constellations. The most important art of our time is always the product of a mutating contextual structure. There is a strong tension in the culture between those who want to isolate certain creative practices and those who accept that meanings and potentials develop at the interface between engaged cultural operators, and not necessarily at the interface with the »artwork« itself. We need to build new coalitions of art between generations and between practices in order to build or retain an interest in art. No single bricolage structure can replace the power of collective activity.
* www.generation-online.org/p/fpalthusser11.htm
1 Reflections on this subject are to be found primarily in the chapter »Understanding«, in: P. Bourdieu et al., Weight of the World. Social Suffering in Contemporary Society, Society, Cambridge: Polity, 1999, and in: Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, Stanford University Press, 1996.
2 William Empson, »Proletarian Literature«, in Some Versions of Pastoral, New York: New Directions Paperbook, 1974., p. 6
3 39. Reading them [Wage Labour and Capital and Wages, Price and Profit], one can grasp the kind of language which Marx felt it necessary to use when speaking to workers and militants of the labour movement. Marx knew how to speak simply, clearly and directly, but, at the same time he made not made not the slightest concession with regard to the scientific content of his theories. He believed that the workers had a right to science and that they were perfectly capable of mastering the difficulties normal in any real scientific expression. This golden rule still is – and remains – a lesson for us all.
CHRISTIAN KOBALD is an artist and lives in Vienna.
LIAM GILLICK was born in 1964 in Aylesbury, Great Britain. Numerous solo exhibitions since 1989 include Literally, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2003; The Wood Way, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2002; A short text on the possibility of creating an economy of equivalence, Palais de Tokyo, 2005; Edgar Schmitz, ICA, London, 2005. Selected group exhibitions include Singular Forms, Guggenheim Museum, 2004; 50th Venice Biennale, 2003; What If, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2000 and documenta X, 1997. Since 1995 Liam Gillick has published a number of texts that function in parallel to his artwork including Literally No Place (Book Works, London, 2002); Five or Six (Lukas & Sternberg, New York, 1999); Discussion Island/Big Conference Centre (Kunstverein Ludwigsburg, and Orchard Gallery, Derry, 1997) and Erasmus is Late (Book Works). He lives in London and New York.