The Social Failure
14 - 22 Oct 2011
THE SOCIAL FAILURE
Curated by Bjarne Melgaard
14 - 22 October, 2011
featuring
Sverre Bjertnes & Masterspetni666er@gmail.com
with
Michael Alig, Aryan Brotherhood, Teodoro Baez, Nathan Bar-Jonah, Robert Bardo, Ken Bianchi, Lizzie Borden, Gary Ray Bowles, Jerry Brudos, Ted Bundy, Harvey Carignan, Douglas Clark, Hadden Clark, Lonnie Franklin Jr., John Wayne Gacy, Edward Gein, Dean Croll Grave, Gary Heidnik, Thomas Dee Huskey, Phillip Jablonski, Keith Hunter Jesperson, Randy Kraft, Charles Manson, Bobby Joe Maxwell, Joe Metheny, Roy Norris, Ottis Toole, Robert Pickton, Dorothea Helen Puente, Dennis Lynn Rader, Richard Ramirez, Angel Resindez, Issei Sagawa, William Sapp, Arthur Shawcross, Daniel Siebert, Anthony Sowell, Jack Trawick
part one: sociopaths tell the truth
So, what constitutes a lie? When does social function and remote rules become the avenger who will never leave you, the one who follows you down a dark alley and says he loves you before whispering "I just raped your kids", the stimulating effect of emotions that you convince yourself you need, the anti-climax of the fantasy that you need relationships to survive. The lie is so entrenched and socially validated as a mechanism of communication that it has become our only way of communicating. The idea that lies actually don't serve very specific, normative function but are like a substance that will infect you with the doubt and fear we all are addicted to. Why not do something thats kills you? That's so much more interesting than killing some loser you cant stand anyway. When a voice becomes a tool that inundates you with doubt and endless stories that never conclude in anything, you realize they want you exterminated as quickly as possible, that they want you erased in order to reinforce their lies and fiction.
We all want lives that incorporate fiction in real life, but never real life that exists solely as fiction. You kill with fiction, you destroy with stories, and you murder with novels. In the end, even killers are just bores- socially adapted beings unable to manage a criminal impulse that none us have ever been able to manage. The criminal intent of art production and art practice is disguised by the fantasy that academia is going to save us from being useless whores who betray each other. The idea of painting as a crime, a studio as a crime scene, and the notion of employees as killers is so immediately evident that even the art world needs to acknowledge it. All artist are, by definition, repressed killers keeping their murder-impulse in control by producing paintings that render their spectators victims. A painting doesn't exist with out a victim- somebody who believes that there's something called truth, someone who imagines that when people tell their stories, it's nothing but lies- the naive notion that art serves the purpose of a well-functioning society that can only be perpetuated on the backs of the failures of others. Contemporary art is about telling you that you are inadequate, that you will never master language, that you will never decode the configurations of meanings that serve no practical purpose. The painting betrays you as your lover always will, doing it simply out of boredom or because they just don't care anymore, the painting will infect you with a counterfeit social strategy that you learn by rote, that you learn out of a whore's will to survive. You will commit this betrayal again and again, destroying the truth for something that you don't even care about. You lie because you need to and because you are a lazy fuck who manages, as every loser does, to destroy others lives because they are stupid enough to believe in your act. Every story repeated is a lie, especially when repeated more than three times. All compulsive liars repeat the same story exactly the same in an almost neurotic manner, forever trying to convince you that they are not lying to you. You need that, you need lies in order to buy into the fallacy that art is not simply a method of controlling the criminal mind. And so what if we die? Who cares, as long as there's a good story attached. There is nothing quite like the death you die every day once you realize that the thing you love most has not only infected you with lies, but is also surprised when those lies eventually stop working, when they fail to serve any further function. Once you are finally infected with lies, terminally and irrevocably infected, you can finally stop boring yourself with your anxieties about death and finality. Your partner is death. He is the lie that slowly kills you, the phantom who convinces you that the illusion of emotion is real. It takes some time, but you will understand, eventually you are bound to recognize the facts. Sentimentality is not emotion.
part two:the social lie that is the truth
Curated by Bjarne Melgaard
14 - 22 October, 2011
featuring
Sverre Bjertnes & Masterspetni666er@gmail.com
with
Michael Alig, Aryan Brotherhood, Teodoro Baez, Nathan Bar-Jonah, Robert Bardo, Ken Bianchi, Lizzie Borden, Gary Ray Bowles, Jerry Brudos, Ted Bundy, Harvey Carignan, Douglas Clark, Hadden Clark, Lonnie Franklin Jr., John Wayne Gacy, Edward Gein, Dean Croll Grave, Gary Heidnik, Thomas Dee Huskey, Phillip Jablonski, Keith Hunter Jesperson, Randy Kraft, Charles Manson, Bobby Joe Maxwell, Joe Metheny, Roy Norris, Ottis Toole, Robert Pickton, Dorothea Helen Puente, Dennis Lynn Rader, Richard Ramirez, Angel Resindez, Issei Sagawa, William Sapp, Arthur Shawcross, Daniel Siebert, Anthony Sowell, Jack Trawick
part one: sociopaths tell the truth
So, what constitutes a lie? When does social function and remote rules become the avenger who will never leave you, the one who follows you down a dark alley and says he loves you before whispering "I just raped your kids", the stimulating effect of emotions that you convince yourself you need, the anti-climax of the fantasy that you need relationships to survive. The lie is so entrenched and socially validated as a mechanism of communication that it has become our only way of communicating. The idea that lies actually don't serve very specific, normative function but are like a substance that will infect you with the doubt and fear we all are addicted to. Why not do something thats kills you? That's so much more interesting than killing some loser you cant stand anyway. When a voice becomes a tool that inundates you with doubt and endless stories that never conclude in anything, you realize they want you exterminated as quickly as possible, that they want you erased in order to reinforce their lies and fiction.
We all want lives that incorporate fiction in real life, but never real life that exists solely as fiction. You kill with fiction, you destroy with stories, and you murder with novels. In the end, even killers are just bores- socially adapted beings unable to manage a criminal impulse that none us have ever been able to manage. The criminal intent of art production and art practice is disguised by the fantasy that academia is going to save us from being useless whores who betray each other. The idea of painting as a crime, a studio as a crime scene, and the notion of employees as killers is so immediately evident that even the art world needs to acknowledge it. All artist are, by definition, repressed killers keeping their murder-impulse in control by producing paintings that render their spectators victims. A painting doesn't exist with out a victim- somebody who believes that there's something called truth, someone who imagines that when people tell their stories, it's nothing but lies- the naive notion that art serves the purpose of a well-functioning society that can only be perpetuated on the backs of the failures of others. Contemporary art is about telling you that you are inadequate, that you will never master language, that you will never decode the configurations of meanings that serve no practical purpose. The painting betrays you as your lover always will, doing it simply out of boredom or because they just don't care anymore, the painting will infect you with a counterfeit social strategy that you learn by rote, that you learn out of a whore's will to survive. You will commit this betrayal again and again, destroying the truth for something that you don't even care about. You lie because you need to and because you are a lazy fuck who manages, as every loser does, to destroy others lives because they are stupid enough to believe in your act. Every story repeated is a lie, especially when repeated more than three times. All compulsive liars repeat the same story exactly the same in an almost neurotic manner, forever trying to convince you that they are not lying to you. You need that, you need lies in order to buy into the fallacy that art is not simply a method of controlling the criminal mind. And so what if we die? Who cares, as long as there's a good story attached. There is nothing quite like the death you die every day once you realize that the thing you love most has not only infected you with lies, but is also surprised when those lies eventually stop working, when they fail to serve any further function. Once you are finally infected with lies, terminally and irrevocably infected, you can finally stop boring yourself with your anxieties about death and finality. Your partner is death. He is the lie that slowly kills you, the phantom who convinces you that the illusion of emotion is real. It takes some time, but you will understand, eventually you are bound to recognize the facts. Sentimentality is not emotion.
part two:the social lie that is the truth