It
is an open question as to exactly what constitutes the artist or the work
of art. The same could be said for the figure of the intellectual. Both, perhaps,
are fuzzy concepts by their very nature and so be it. The point is not to
fix these concepts into theoretical surety but to make a claim for what they
might mean and how they might affect us, here, now. We would like to produce
an art that is not driven by the needs of the marketplace and the consumption
of ‘artistic’ commodities. At the same time, we resist the dogmas
of an art for art’s sake that is really only the excuse for a selfish
retreat into obscurity. Is there an autonomous realm of the aesthetic? Perhaps
there is. Let it be debated in the salons, in our salons. The point is not
to produce an art that is directly useful and functional or exactly mirrors
the real. This is the trap of realism that we, in various states of flux,
continue to avoid. Let the art be difficult in the attempt to generate an
experience that means something. Let it be absurd with the hint of the smile
of Democritus or Diogenes; they are not smiling in condescension but in bemused
compassion. Let it be shot through with the glimmers of outrage and horror
that must attend any honest reflection on the disasters of our civilisation
that have still not completely obliterated its promise.
The Flux Factory artist intellectual would be all of these things at once
because it is always an act of resistance to attempt to become whole. We would
be silly and serious all at once. We would jealously guard our freedom to
be and produce while constantly engaging the community that we live in. We
create our own haven at the same time that we fight the various injustices
that all of us are inevitably complicit in. Good art is neither, purely subjectively,
in the eye of the beholder nor, purely objectively, a quantifiable measure.
It is a practice; to overuse an old slogan. This practice is not only a matter
of technique, though it surely involves it. It is not a matter of good versus
bad thinking, though it is always intellectual, always conceptual. In the
end it cannot be captured in a slogan. Thus, we present to you the individuals
who are engaged in the kind of practice that makes us all part of the Flux
Factory community.