-I'm really late. Feel like I'm in the wrong lecture. One of the Goldsmiths professors is talking about the London riots.
-I can't see a free entry point into the rows of seating so I ask some people to get up and I squeeze past. They do an "annoyed laugh" and in my head I'm like 'well that's unfair', but then when I sit down and look around I see that there are loads of free rows of seats.
-On the projector screen: Riot porn image of the carpet store that got burned down in Croydon.
-Professor says, 'Here's an image from Brixton.'
-A student uses an iPhone to take a picture of text on the screen.
-Instead of looking at latecomers with a superior and condescending smile, I'm now looking each of them in the eye, and subtly nodding as if to say, 'it's ok. It's ok.'
-I feel a bit disconnected to what is happening. Maybe it's being late, or drinking five cups of coffee. Or maybe it's that I was expecting a visiting lecturer rather than a member of the Goldsmiths staff. Or, maybe, last week's hi-tech luxury-lecture at UCL has made me acutely aware of the relative squalor of the Goldsmiths auditorium. Like flying first class, and then flying Ryanair.
-Professor struggles with the volume slider on a internet video. Students laugh.
-Professor says 'That was Mike Kelly. When he was alive.' Students laugh.
-Soft, small wedges of feedback from the two mics positioned in front of the Professor.
-"Anti-social private acts"
-Through being property, art is limited in its political reach.
-Not sure if both mics are turned on, but the Professor's voice is distorted.
-Professor asks if the students have seen the work of a particular artist. Students respond reluctantly and quietly.
+The artist is a sculptor, community organiser, blues musician and a fireman.
-Professor tells us she is going to read some Marx, 'I'm very sorry.'
-Another Professor is charging her iPhone from the sockets on stage. She sits in the front row, with the white cord trailing across the desk.
-"Property is theft" is a phrase coined by the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, often wrongly attributed to Marx.
-Left-wing politics at this level, talking about art and revolution and "The Riots" makes me really tired. I need to burrow underneath it.
+With Marx, the proposed inevitability of the (self)destruction of capitalism makes him tiring to read. Capital's success as a book would be judged on how unread it was, i.e., when the inevitable revolution occurred it would necessarily be irrelevant. To read Marx is to confirm the present domination of capitalist ideology.
-Professor says 'the creation of and the destruction of the idea of'.
-Social Necessity vs Valuable Asset.
-Just remembered I have a banana in my bag but feel like I can't be late and also eat fruit in the lecture. I'm not even a student here.
-A student uses an iPad to take a picture of text on screen.
-On screen: Andrea Fraser "How can we rationalise our participation in this economy?"
+The idea that art objects' primary meaning can be found in the web of their economic relations.
-Could objects be comrades not commodities?
-Could objects be enemies?
-Objects can be capitalist, for sure, but could they be socialist, or communist? If capitalism is a void of ideology perhaps objects are necessarily capitalist, if they too are a void of ideology.
-"Convulsions of Empire."
-Sometimes I want to be really well off. Not like, boats and furs and private islands well off. But maybe a three story house in north or east London well off. Turn the heating on when I'm cold well off. Own and not worry about the cost of owning a dog well off. Parents have a second car that I borrow well off. Have been skiing in my life well off. Pay for a full time MA well off. Buy new jeans instead of having to wear black underwear and hoping nobody notices the holes well off.
-Professor says 'I'm going to end on a boring note.'
-I also wish, sometimes, in lectures about Marxist theory, that I was well off enough to be ignorant of how well off I was. Well off enough to feel classless.
-Flat Ontology is enforced (false?) equality. Does it assume an impossible dream, namely that we might be able to think non-anthropocentrically? Is this impossible not just philosophically, but psychologically? Is every denial of correlationism an affirmation of correlationism?
--
-Writing/note taking surfaces in the auditorium, in order of quantity: Black bound, lined notebooks - various sizes, black bound, sketch books - various sizes, black bound grid squared notebooks - mainly A5, A4 spiral bound lined pads (the "economic" choice, reminds me of sixth form college), Macbook Pros, brightly coloured or patterned "gift" notebooks, mostly impractical - too small and/or too thick, the margins of print outs of today's reading, the margins of the other, less relevant print outs, folded bits of miscellaneous, grubby paper, a napkin, the back of a wrist.
--
Q & A
-On screen: screensaver of Microsoft Windows XP Professional logo.
-The Professor and the Other Professor share a single, clip microphone that they pass between them.
-The mundane nature of meaningful political/social action.
-Feedback comes in right-angled, triangular waves, rising to a peak, and then cutting to silence.
-The revolution isn't coming. The working class know that. Why don't we know that? The people who would benefit from the revolution know it isn't coming. The rich think it's coming, and are trying to stop it. The (academic) middle class spend their time theorising the conditions for the possibility of it, whilst our very existence depends on it never happening.
-Can you give up on the possibility of meaningful political change and still have meaningful political thought?
-Maybe if I was well off I could begin to tame objects through ownership.
-Student in front of me has taken his notes in pencil. Seems insane. How has he managed to keep the line so consistent?
-I'm so bored of talking about the riots. I'm also hungry.
-Older student humblebrags about their age (i.e., implies that they have wisdom, experience that young people won't understand).
-Student in front of me is distractedly moving the cursor around on the screen of his Macbook Pro, re-sizing windows and highlighting random lines of text.
-The Professor's computer has gone to sleep and the projector screen suddenly turns a deep, International Klein Blue.
-The "No Signal" icon has appeared on screen, along with a five minute countdown timer to when the projector will automatically switch off. Feel like when I die that might be what I see.
-I guess we are all bit guilty. Why are the humanities so guilty? Art, philosophy, literature. What makes us guilty? Science, capitalism? Does the crisis come from within or without?
-The tang of the real, the smell of it. It's a rotten smell that you cannot locate. A decomposing rat in the space between the walls. 'What's that smell?', asks the visitor. 'Oh that?, we're used to it. It's just the real', we say. The visitor wrinkles their nose and stays for coffee but doesn't eat a biscuit and leaves quickly after.
-It stinks, the real. It is honking. Cheesy. A deep, rich scent.
-What is thought? Bleach, to clean the smell away? No. Febreze, to neutralise and eliminate the stubborn odour? No. Pot pourri, to mingle with the stench of the real, give it a sick depth, a horrifying richness? Yes, thought is pot pourri. Cheap and nasty and making it worse.
-Professor says 'I hate to fetishize craft'.
-Art is in a mannerist phase. Painters know this. When it is not mannerist, it moves outside the scope of art.
-Professor openly worries that her arguments are accidentally in support of "The Big Society".
-Student asks a question about boredom, administration as a site for revolution, and the danger of 'exciting administration'.
-The countdown finishes. The projector turns off. The screen goes black.