WALKING ACROSS SCABBY WATER EXTRACT

(_) I guess because I'm so involved with the network of people who are participating in the Art Strike and the Festival of Non-Participation, I felt like I had to have a formal response; which is where the ART SCABS FOR THE ART GLUT comes from. The phrase 'Art Strike' is valuable for the effect it would have on mainstream or commercial media because it's an idea which the media isn't familiar with. In terms of my own life I need some sort of hyper- activity, and along with hyper-activity you have to have the affirmative strategies that go along with it. I like the notion of an Art Strike because it's a sensation. It creates an immediate response from anyone and it might go no further than that. But then again, if someone who is an artist replaces painting with cooking food, I don't really think that the actual impulses which make both those things happen is any different. The Art Strike seems to be a denial of the avant garde_ There is such an enigma attached to the people behind the strike. Stewart Home, by creating an Art Strike is making himself an object of art and that's another one of those contradictions. (...)

There are two qualities about the Art Strike. The first, which interests me very little, is the quality of denial which is something we all did when we were very young. It was the only kind of reaction we could have, very primitive kind of response, i.e. 'I don't wanna do it. The other quality, which I am intrigued by, which is what I will try to study about the Art Strike, is the quality of invisibility, how you take something and make it disappear. It may have the same effects and energies but it doesn't have to exist. You're making the impulse of creativity disappear. If I could be in an existence that doesn't have a constant influx of media, I would be very interested in a kind of invisible culture. I think the Art Strike has to admit that there is a basic human response which is creativity and nothing short of lobotomy can get rid of that. The Art Strike teaches how to have some sort of cognition of what is going on without having to channel it through making painting all your life. (...)

Miekal And, Factsheet Five No. 33, Winter '89.

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