Art should be
Nobody's Business
1990-1993

We have an abstraction
which is the abstraction
of an art abstraction:
I am talking about the art strike.
(Annette Woolf)

We have a censorship
which is the censorship
of a self-censorship
I am not talking about art strike. (Annette Woolf)

People living in an imaginary world
are esthetes.
An esthetic world is a victim of a
totalitarianism.
Is art strike an imagination only?
(Annette Woolf)

People taking motives for results
are idealists.
They are victims of a philosophy.
Is art strike a good motive only?
(Annette Woolf)

"This is a particular example of a more general problem: the separation of thought and action in our society. We are living in a time when systematically-though without our wanting it so-action and thought are being separated. In our society, he who thinks can no longer act for himself; he must act through the agency of others, and in many cases he cannot act at all. He who acts cannot think out his action, either because of lack of time and the burden of his personal problems, or because society's plan demands that he translate others' thoughts into action. And we see the same division within the individual himself. For he can use his mind only outside the area of his job-in order to find himself, to use his leisure to better himself, to discover what best suits him, and thus to individualize himself; whereas in the context of his work he yields to the common necessity, the common method, the need to incorporate his own work into the overall plan. Escape into dreams is suggested to him while he performs wholly mechanized actions."
Propaganda by Jacques Elull [1962]. New York: Vintage Books, 1973. pp. 27-28

• The Seven by Nine Squares home page
• YAWN 13
• Art Strike 1990-1993